Taking Shape

by Dustin McNeill

  At least Rob Zombie is a fan of Halloween 5.

  Yes, exactly! (laughs) He did not get inspired. He carbon copied because he liked it.

  I’ve noticed similarities, too. Do you think it was his version of Halloween II? The connection between Jamie and Michael mirroring that of Laurie and Michael?

  Oh, I don’t know about this so much. I was more pragmatic – looking at scenes, not plot. But probably. This was a few years back. So, I have a memory that is more on the specific scenes… how they followed each other… how he sets up the story… how the girls are light and fun in the beginning… how it turns and how he does the killings and so on.

  As far as the “SWAT team massacre,” Rick Nathanson described the scene as leading to a bone of contention between you and Moustapha Akkad, particularly due to how bloody it was. What was Moustapha’s attitude concerning gore and violence in Halloween 5?

  Moustapha wanted to be brief and discreet – and I agreed with him. I didn’t want it to be bloody, but I was getting to the end of the film and I needed to up the stakes and be stronger and more dangerous and more bone crushing. And I forget if we had a contention about that scene. I don’t remember my hard times; I remember my good times. (laughs)

  That’s a good perspective!

  It’s possible that it was too strong for him, the brief killings of the cops.

  By the end of the film, both Jamie and Dr. Loomis are just soaked in blood. Visually, it’s somewhat beautiful. You let the red stuff spill on this one.

  (laughs) Yes, yes, yes, I did. But you know, it’s so fucking crazy, that scene where Loomis hits him with a two-by-four and they’re going at it. It’s lyrical. I wanted to have an end that had lyricism. And he dies on top of him, looking at each other. It was totally my doing. I don’t think it was in the script. We had another cage or something, I forget. It was fun to do. Moustapha allowed me to wreck this house. We asked the people to move out of the house. Brilliant production designer Brent Swift put cobwebs everywhere and fucked their floor.

  Rob Draper, the cinematographer, was a fantastic guy. After the first week of the shoot, I was extremely annoyed by his remarks. ‘Oh, that was another student film shot.’ I look at him, I said, ‘What the fuck is he saying?’ He brought in Ted Churchill who was one of the patrons of the Steadicam in the States. He wrote books. He became a great Steadicam teacher. There were also fears of my use of the Steadicam and I started to get really annoyed because I was seeing these two sneaking and laughing and so on. And I was wondering, ‘What the hell is happening?’

  I said to Moustapha, ‘My director of photography is giving me difficulties. I don’t know how to speak to him. He’s not with me here and there.’ Moustapha said, ‘We get you someone else tomorrow from LA.’ I said, ‘Uh, really? Can we? I mean, uh, do you think so?’ ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, Dominique. You’ve got to work freely.’ So, Rick told Rob, ‘That was the end of the day. Thank you very much. We don’t need you tomorrow. Your services are complete. Goodbye.’ At 10 o’clock PM, I go to Rob – he had his family there – his two kids were living there in Salt Lake City with his wife – and I started to talk to him because we had no real time to talk during the shoot. I was busy watching the dailies and organizing the next day and so on. We talked for two hours. I said, ‘Okay, you stay. Let’s start tomorrow.’

  And from that day on, after this real tough talk, he became the best partner of the world. And the misunderstanding of his snickering about me, it was like he was surprised of so much invention and so much desires of frames and being very specific when I tell a story through a camera. ‘I want this frame to tell this moment of the scene and this movement,’ and so on. He did an amazing job. He offered me, in that house, the freedom of turning the camera 360 degrees without seeing a light. Because he lit it from the outside windows. From each window, there were three lights he was turning on and off depending on where the camera was. We always had sort of a backlight. It was fantastic. He worked like a genius. I really loved him.

  It seems some of these deleted scenes were recently unearthed by those associated with Trancas. Were you aware of this? Would you be open to composing a director’s cut?

  No, I was not told. But why not? I don’t know how many scenes there were that did not make the final cut. But I’ve made director’s cuts of my other movies after they had their good run. The producers asked me to do it and I did it several times. So why not?

  One of the film’s most interesting elements is the introduction of the Man in Black, or the Mysterious Stranger, and the rune tattoo that connects him and the Shape. How did this character come to fruition and how did you justify his relationship to the story?

  That was during the shoot. We were one-third inside the shoot and it was an idea of Moustapha Akkad. He says, ‘Look, I want a new character in the film. Do something, Dominique. Insert him into the movie.’ I said, ‘Uh, okay. I have these scenes left. I can put him into these scenes. I can do some stuff here and there, but I can’t shoot an introduction scene. We need to introduce him. Because I don’t have a location for him.’ Ramsey shot the scene of the bus arriving into town, the footsteps coming out of the bus and the kicking of the dog. I wrote this but I thought it was television shot, not like a feature film shot.

  But this Man in Black, we never completely matured his path, his connection to Michael or his goal. We just knew the big thing that it did for our movie was to create an enigma and to create a strong end because the enigma frees Michael from the jail. So, it was a promising continuation for the next episode. Further than that, Moustapha had no idea of who he was. I’ve made him the brother of Michael – either real family or fake family, you know sort of brothers, buddies, that sort of thing – by giving them the tattoo of the rune. It’s a rune. It’s a force. The tattoo - this line with the triangle – it’s called Thorn. It’s a rune to protect us from evil, basically. I’m born under that rune and I gave it to both of them so we could somehow be linked.

  Have you personally seen Halloween 6 and its interpretation/resolution of this storyline?

  I did not see Halloween 6. I was extremely busy working and making other movies. It was not lack of interest. It was simply because I got busy and I didn’t pay attention. I was probably in other countries, not in the States. I don’t know how it evolved and I don’t know how I would have made him evolve. We had a plan. Michael was in on this. We scratched our heads and we tried to find ways of creating the character. You know, when you’re shooting a movie and such a big ingredient falls onto you – a mandate, an imposition or so – it is hard to encompass all of the possibilities of that new element. My duty was to incorporate it as well as I could inside the Halloween 5 movie. With the kind of mindset that I have – which is unsettling the audience, doing something against the expectation of what the audience believes it’s going to be – I found some ways of doing something with the character, but I forget today.

  This October marks Halloween 5’s 30th anniversary. Some might call it a fan favorite; others consider it controversial. How do you react to this reception among fans?

  As a storyteller, this is a very privileged spot to be – either favorite or controversial – because it means the film and its story have touched the audience. It has provoked some feelings and reactions. For me, this is what matters. Not the result. Not the fact that it is a favorite or hated by the audience. I can understand that it is controversial for the more conservative audience – the ones who like to be comfortable with what they have received, and they want to receive the same quality and product. If you go into a bakery and buy a little bread and next week, the bread is a little different? You’re going to receive the same reaction. Our Halloween 5 is different. Some people are going to like it. Some people are not. But as a storyteller, I feel really privileged to have received such reactions. The thirty-year anniversary is, despite all good vanity, nothing to do with me. This is part of life. This is unavoidable – that things age. The fact that one remembers the film i
s a privilege and I’m very proud and happy about that.

  INTERVIEW Rob Draper

  (Rob Draper: Cinematographer - H5)

  You’ve done more than a few horror projects in your career. Do you consider yourself a fan?

  I actually don’t like horror films too much! (laughs) I didn’t get into the industry wanting to do horror. But yes, I’ve done one or two such projects. The first narrative shoot I did here in the States was Tales from the Darkside: The Series, which led to Tales From the Darkside: The Movie, which led to Tales From the Crypt. But I’m not a big fan. Although I did just finish shooting Creepshow for Shudder and I had a bloody ball doing that. We did twelve half-hour stories and it was all fantastic. We were decapitating bodies and chopping arms off – it was a blast!

  How did you come to work on Halloween 5?

  I had an agent in New York named Robbie Lantz, who was one of the top agents. He was primarily a literary agent, but he represented people like Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson too. He was the guy who brought Marlene Dietrich over to the United States. He also represented Dominique Othenin-Girard and he put the two of us together. That’s how it came about.

  I know some filmmakers shy away from sequels, especially as the number after the title grows higher. Did you have any hesitation coming onto a fifth chapter?

  I didn’t even think of that, to be honest. This was my first Hollywood film. When Robbie Lantz called me about it, those were his exact words. He said, ‘Rob, get ready. This is your first Hollywood film.’ And to be honest, I actually turned them down for Halloween 5 when they first called me. My first son was born in 1985 while I was away for three months doing a documentary in the Middle East. I didn’t even see him until he was three months old. He was born in Sydney while I was off in Turkey. I promised my wife I would never do that again.

  Our next son was due to be born right in the middle of the Halloween 5 shoot, so I turned it down. I had to uphold my promise to my wife that I wouldn’t be away again. But then Moustapha Akkad called me and said, ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We will fly your wife and your young son out to Salt Lake City. We’ll put you up in a nice apartment. We’ll get you the best doctors we can find to make sure she’s well looked-after. And she’ll be with you the entire shoot.’ I mentioned that to my wife, who said, ‘Okay, let’s go!’ So my youngest son was born in Salt Lake City because of Halloween 5.

  Wow. That’s quite a gesture and kind of amazing.

  Moustapha was a real family-oriented guy. He was so kind and thoughtful. He even flew my mother over from Australia for my son’s birth. You wouldn’t find too many producers out there who would do that kind of thing. I took the day off when my son was born and a good friend of mine, Ted Churchill, stepped in to handle filming that day. Moustapha sent flowers to the hospital as well as toys for my five-year-old. By the way, my five-year-old became Danielle’s protector on set. He really took a liking to her.

  How did you and Dominique get along? Was he easy to work with?

  We got along very well. It’s funny because Dominique is in China right now. He recently read an interview I did about five years and go and called me up about it. He said, ‘Rob, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how hard I’d made shooting Halloween 5 on ya.’ But we got on great and became good friends. We hung out a lot after we did that movie. Dominique was so good to work with because he knew exactly how he wanted to tell his story, visually-speaking.

  What did Dominique mean by that? How did he make Halloween 5 hard?

  He wanted to shoot Halloween 5 using these really wide-angle lenses. Every time we set the camera up, we’d set it up in the corner of the room on the floor. With an 8mm lens off in the corner looking out at the entire room, you’ve got nowhere to put the lights. You don’t want to front-light everything, so it was a nightmare trying to light most of those scenes. But it also forced me to develop an approach that worked for the film and also worked for the fast pace that we had to be shooting at.

  Did Dominique reference any other films as having inspired the look of Halloween 5?

  He probably did, but I can’t remember what those would’ve been now. I mainly remember him saying how he didn’t want his Halloween 5 to look like any of the previous Halloween’s. So we went out of our way to head in a different direction as much as possible. One of the ways we did that was those wide-angle lenses I mentioned, often in very close-up shots. Of course, I had already seen the original Halloween, but I never caught any of its sequels. I did have to watch Halloween 4, though, because our film needed to connect with the ending of that one.

  Quite honestly, what I tried to do with Loomis inside the Myers house was to light it the way Marlon Brando’ scenes were lit in Apocalypse Now. There was basically one light and he moved in and out of it. Sometimes he was lit and sometimes he wasn’t. So that’s what I tried to do in the Myers house and, in a way, it’s what I had to do. There was just nowhere to put lights other than coming in through the windows. That would be an issue because you didn’t want it to look like daylight outside when it’s supposed to be night. I thought it worked out great. I’m still quite proud of the lighting on Halloween 5. It certainly wasn’t easy given the choices Dominique made in directing it, but I’m proud of it.

  I remember Dominique telling Donald Pleasence about my lighting idea, that he would have to modify his performance depending on where the light was and wasn’t. He loved that. He thought it was fantastic and was really into it, going in and out of the darkness. Donald was so approachable and easy to work with. He got on well with everyone on the crew. He would always sit around at lunch and talk with us. I don’t remember him ever going off to his trailer unless he had calls to make. It didn’t matter what time of day or night it was, he was a real pro.

  The Apocalypse Now similarity had never occurred to me before, but I see it now. Speaking of the Myers house, what was it like to shoot in? Was it as rundown as it appears in the film?

  Actually, the house was in pretty good shape when we got there. It was dressed down to match what we needed in the film. It had this spectacular mahogany staircase. They had just finished renovating it, as I recall, and here we came with just tons of cobwebs and dust. We put garbage all over the front of it and tore up the lawn and fence. It was a nice house on a nice street. The neighbors all thought it was pretty cool. They would set up lawn chairs across the street and watch us filming into the night. The benefit to using this house was that it was so big. That gave us a lot of room to move around inside. The houses in the other Halloween’s wouldn’t have worked for what we needed. As I recall, they were much smaller. We also built some set pieces for it like the wall with the laundry chute that Jamie crawls into.

  How much of the movie was actually done with constructed sets versus location?

  Very little. We did the hermit’s house at the beginning as a set. That was built very near to the stream we used in that same opening. There were only bits and pieces of sets for the rest of the film. The laundry chute sequence was a set, but aside from that, everything else was on location.

  Looking back on Halloween 5, the laundry chute sequence stands out as particularly tense. How much of a challenge was it to stage that in such a tiny space?

  It was a huge challenge. The one thing we didn’t want was to make it look like what you see in most movies where the air conditioning duct is big enough to fit several grown people inside. We wanted it to look small and claustrophobic. Dominique had storyboarded every piece of that sequence and our production designer, a really wonderful guy named Brent Swift, built that chute from those. In total, there were something like twenty-five elements that went into that scene. It took him about three weeks to work out all the set pieces we would need to film it. We shot it all pretty quickly over maybe a night-and-a-half. We just pasted all of the storyboards up on a wall and referenced them with the different chute pieces that Brent had built. We knew it would cut together well just based on Dominique’s storyboards.

  Sp
eaking of storyboarding, how much of the film did Dominique plan out? Or did he like to improvise once he got on set?

  He did plan ahead, but he also liked trying new things in the moment. He was always open to hearing my suggestions on a given scene. Sometimes he would use them and other times he wouldn’t, but he would always listen to them. There’s a scene where Danielle thinks she’s being chased by Michael Myers. She’s at the clinic and she runs downstairs where there’s laundry hanging all over the place. When we went to shoot that scene, it was just an empty room. The idea was that she would run into the empty room and try to find a hiding place. Being that it was empty, she’d immediately run out and go into the boiler room to hide instead. We shot one take and I said to Dominique, ‘i think there’s a way we could make this really interesting and build tension before she gets to the boiler room.’ I said, ‘What if we do it entirely handheld? We could do the whole chase as two point-of-view shots, hers and his.’ To be honest, everyone shit their pants when I told them we should do that. I remember Moustapha Akkad pulling me aside and asking, ‘Is this really going to work?’ And I assured him it would. And he said, ‘It better!’ Fortunately, everything turned out great in that sequence. It came together nicely in the edit.

  Halloween 5 famously unmasked the Shape for the first time since the original film, though he’s carefully hidden in shadow. How much effort went into planning that moment?

  That was a collaboration between Moustapha, Dominique, and myself. The one thing Moustapha didn’t want was for Michael’s face to be really clearly seen. So I had to light it in such a way that, if you did see him, it was only a small glimpse. Moustapha made sure to be on set while we were filming that day. He didn’t interfere with us, but he wanted to make sure his wishes were being honored. That was Dominique’s idea with it too.