Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition)
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I went in and read for the role and it was kind of funny that I got it, because I have never done anything like this character, before or since. I usually play the harder-edge kind of guy. Even his name, Wayne, was comical. And it was no secret that he was the character who was probably the closest to Rob Hedden. Rob even told me that. It was funny to be on the set, with Rob behind the camera directing me, and I'm standing there with this massive video camera that was the equivalent of one of those old brick-sized cell phones. It was a totally hilarious case of art imitating life imitating art.
ROB HEDDEN:
It's funny sometimes where the inspiration for characters, and character names, come from. In Studio City, California, there used to be this place called the Queen Mary, a drag club. My wife thought it was the funniest place. And there was this guy there who did Tina Turner and all these women. His name was Julius. We just loved him because he was so funny. So the image of this big black guy named Julius just stuck in my head. I thought, "Julius—I'm going to use that name someday!"
V.C. DUPREE, "Julius":
I grew up in Seattle, and when I came to Los Angeles I did what every aspiring actor does—hit the beat. I'd go up Hollywood Blvd. one day, down it the next, dropping off pictures and resumes. And some people actually called back, so I started working right away. Prior to Friday, I'd done some work on episodic TV shows. This was my first starring role.
From what I heard, they had been casting around a lot of other big cities for this particular character, because they wanted someone with boxing experience and a street edge kind of thing. And I'm not a big guy—5'10" and like 160 pounds. So there I am in the audition with all these local boxers who were way bigger than I was. I had like four layers of sweatshirts on and was really trying to fake it. And after the reading, Rob was like, "Awesome! I felt the character. You nailed it. But you're not fooling anybody. How long would it take you to get some meat on you?" From there on out until the movie started, all I did was eat.
PETER MARK RICHMAN, "Charles McCullough":
I was a New York actor—you know, an "Actor's Studio" person. And I was very sincere and hard working in developing my craft, much different than what kids do today. Rob Hedden really wanted me. And reluctantly, I did an on-camera thing for him, because for a long period of time—30 years or so—I never auditioned. I never had to. I could just read the script and say yes or no. Then about 15 or 20 years ago the business changed tremendously. The corporations got involved, the networks got involved, and then they started to audition people for five lines. Twenty five actors up for one stupid part. I resisted because I thought it was below my dignity. But with Friday, my agent said that there was keen interest, so I met Rob, who is very persuasive and personable, and the next thing I know I'm auditioning.
I had never seen any of the films—they weren't high on my pecking order. It was not something where I as going to say, "Oh boy, Friday the 13th!" To me, this was secondary stuff. But it was a paycheck. And I was very well paid.
ROB HEDDEN:
Sean Cunningham's Friday the 13th is quintessential. It's the one that all of us filmmakers who came after have used as a reference point. Story-wise I tapped in to it, and casting-wise it inspired me in many ways. It's why I came up with the Deck Hand character, the one that Alex Diakun plays. He's like Crazy Ralph in the first film—he foreshadows everything, saying stuff like, "You're all going to die! This voyage is doomed!" His appearance sets up the bad things that are going to happen. I always thought that was a very satisfying character, and it's still one of my favorite bits in the movie. Anytime he's on the screen, I smile. And Alex was great casting.
Left to right: Kelly Hu as Eva; Martin Cummins as Wayne; Sharlene Martin as Tamara.
ALEX DIAKUN, "Deck Hand":
For me, it was just a regular audition. I'd been working in Canada for a long time—I never made the move to L.A. I got a call back and Rob Hedden really liked me, and sent a nice card afterward, too. Though originally, when I first read the script, it was like two and a half hours long and all the kids, and my character, had more of a whole storyline that connected us. I actually thought it wasn't really like a Friday the 13th movie at all. Of course, when we started shooting, a lot of that was never shot or edited out. It became more about the killings.
ROB HEDDEN:
Casting Kane Hodder was one of those no-brainer kind of things. Frank Mancuso, Jr. and Barbara Sachs said to me, "You're the director, and if you want to cast somebody different as Jason, you should." But I'm not some guy that has to be king and say, "I have to change this just because I can, because I'm God." It's ridiculous. A good director relies on the talent of the people he or she has chosen to work on their movie. Frank and Barbara did have another guy in mind, a Canadian stuntman. They said, "Kane's great. But maybe if we get a guy up in Canada instead, we can save a few bucks." I said, "Well, yeah, but Kane knows the lore. And I'm the new kid coming in here, right? I didn't direct the last seven movies. I'm getting up to speed like everybody else." So I went with Kane.
KANE HODDER:
Barbara Sachs was the one who told me they might go with a Canadian stuntman for Part VIII. I said, "No, I want to do it!" And she said, "Oh, really? I didn't realize that." If I had not made that call, I never would have done another Jason. I would have been like all the other Jasons who just did one movie. I had to push for it, but at the same time, Rob Hedden had seen Part VII and liked what I did.
Really, at that point, I didn't even care what the story was. I just wanted to play the character again. And it wasn't a money thing, because they certainly didn't pay me any more the second time. In fact, the only time I ever got anything decent was on Jason X. But I never really cared because I enjoyed playing the character so much.
ROB HEDDEN:
The irony of shooting Part VIII was that the first half takes place on this huge cruise ship, and three days before filming we ended up losing the boat we were supposed to shoot on due to a scheduling mix-up. We had to find another boat at the last minute, and it ended up being half the size. I basically lived on this new boat for the weekend before filming and walked it and planned all my shots. And since it was now half the size of what was originally planned, the trick was to make it look twice as big. So that is why you never see the ship all in one shot—you see the front half, the back half, the deck. Then we used a different ship for the interiors, including the disco, the kitchen, and some sets built on a stage. Ultimately, I think we succeeded, but it was an incredibly stressful situation.
RANDOLPH CHEVELDAVE:
After the first boat fell through, we had an old cruise ship that used to fly the inside passage between Vancouver and Alaska called the Prince George. At the time it was owned by an eminent British Columbia entrepreneur named Nelson Scalbania, and had been sitting idle for a number of years, tied up to a wharf. And it could not move, the engines weren't functioning, and it needed a lot of work done to it before it could even be tugged by tugboat. But it gave us engine rooms and some terrific corridors, so we talked to Mr. Scalbania, and he agreed we could use it, and not only that, he didn't really want a lot of money for it. He said, "A dollar, to make it legal." Hey, all right! But what we didn't know was that he owed this enormous debt for wharfing fees. I mean this is a 400-foot ship that had been tied up in the same spot for over two years. So when we started talking with the people who owned the wharfs, they were falling all over themselves helping us. Until they discovered that the fee for the use of the ship was a dollar, and then they stopped. So suddenly, our access to that ship was limited to the most bizarre hours. It put us on a night schedule right from the very beginning, which created real problems in terms of shooting.
DAVID FISCHER, Production Designer:
Prior to Jason Takes Manhattan, I'd worked as an art director on Roxanne, the Steve Martin movie. Then, out of the blue, I got a call from Randy Cheveldave. I had never even seen a Friday the 13th film, but I went and rented a couple of them, and from a design point
of view, they posed interesting challenges. Especially, "Let's come up with some clever ways to kill people!"
Jason Takes Manhattan was also creatively exciting because it was unique. Certainly, the ship was one of our major tasks. We had one practical ship that was in the water, a second ship that was sitting in a dry dock, and a third ship we'd use for certain interior scenes. We even built part of a boat on stage for some interiors, and then there were other sets built across town for other interiors. The real challenge was keeping it all together to make sure it all felt like the same ship. That is probably what I'm most proud of in the film. I hope we fooled the audience.
Gallery: filming aboard the Lazarus #1.
RANDOLPH CHEVELDAVE:
The Lazarus was the other ship in the movie, and it's about half the size of the Prince George. And when we came to use it, it had been recently won in a poker game in Washington, and the new owner didn't know what the heck to do with it. Getting it into Canada was a huge headache, because there were all these Canadian boats that were available, so the only way to use it legally was to import a load of potatoes with the ship. Here we are supposed to be shooting a movie, and now we're a potato delivery service!
MARTIN CUMMINS:
We filmed in Britannia, a bit north of Vancouver. The main ship we shot on was moored off of this old, abandoned mining town. On one side of the highway was this eerie ghost town, with this big old boat hanging off the other side. I think one of the reasons so many science fiction and horror movies and TV shows are shot in Vancouver is because there's constant rain, and this really desolate feeling. Even though we were on the ship most of the time, it was like we were out on the road to nowhere. It was creepy—especially since no one is driving by at two o'clock in the morning when you're shooting. You're alone, and always aware of it.
ROB HEDDEN:
The Prince George just had to be haunted. It was an old abandoned ship with all these art deco interiors. The inside was like the maze in The Shining—it was spooky. And it was listing to one side. One time when the tide changed, the ramp came apart and we had to literally jump across to get off the boat. It was almost like the ship didn't want us to leave.
RANDOLPH CHEVELDAVE:
Many of our problems were unforeseen—just the kind of challenges that can happen when you make movies. We had to fire our original leading man one day into shooting. It wasn't originally Scott Reeves. I hadn't been involved in the original casting session, so I didn't get my first look at this young man onscreen until the first day of dailies came back. And he was a very nice guy, a very handsome guy. But in the dailies he just came across so gay. So gay. Yet in person you didn't feel that at all. It never even occurred to us.
BRYAN ENGLAND, Director of Photography:
After he got fired, the boy called me that night, crying. I could see he had just gotten into the business and he was young and scared to death. He thought he had done something wrong. He said to me, "Do you think it was because I'm gay? How am I going to explain this to my mother? My life's over." He was just wrecked by it. But it was clear after that first day that the sexual tension between him and Jensen just wasn't there. Both of these kids were as cute as buttons, but they just did not seem like boyfriend and girlfriend. He was just too sweet. So I sat with him all night, and told him he didn't do anything wrong. I felt so sorry for him.
ROB HEDDEN:
I was upset that I had to let anybody go. I don't even remember it being my choice. Part of me was like, "I can't bear to do this." And I don't even remember the kid. Steve Mirkovich, our editor, came to me and said, "This guy is not working out." Everybody did. And they were right. For various reasons—part of it was his look, part of it was his acting chops, part of it was his chemistry with Jensen.
SCOTT REEVES, "Sean":
When I was cast in Part VIII, it was your typical process. Back in 1988, I was doing a soap opera on television called "Days of Our Lives," and I was also doing a lot of auditions. Then I got a call for an audition for this feature film, a Friday the 13th. Of course I knew what it was. I had worked in a movie theatre as an usher for quite a few years, starting when I was 15 years old. And when the first four Friday the 13ths had come out. I remember thinking, "If I'm ever in a horror flick, it's gotta be one of those cult classics. Like Friday the 13th, Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers." And sure enough, a few years later, this comes up.
So I went to the audition and got a callback. But then during the course of those auditions, I landed another feature. And I was at the stage of my career where I had to take what was actually being offered to me, so because this other thing was going to shoot in Africa, I had to stop the ball on Friday the 13th. Of course, then over the course of about two weeks everything on this other movie fell through. Which, I would learn in the business, is actually pretty typical.
Anyway, so I had already written off Friday the 13th. But then a few weeks later I get a call from Paramount, offering me this role of Sean Robertson. They did tell me that I was being brought in to replace another actor, who had been working for about two weeks or so. And that was a weird position to be put into. I mean, I welcomed the position, but I felt bad. As an actor, you establish relationships pretty quickly when you do a movie. You're off somewhere, spending 24 hours a day with people. So I was thinking, "Oh, gosh, are these people gonna be thinking, "Who does this new guy comin' in think he is?" I'd be dealing with all those emotions, plus also trying to do my job. So it was kinda strange. But it was a great cast. And I was unemployed, and here Friday the 13th comes up. So ultimately I just went, "Yeah man! I'm there!"
After I took the role, I said to myself, "I gotta see what's going on and where I'm supposed to be at. What is my head space?" So I watched all the previous seven Friday movies back-to-back, to get back into the series. I'd seen probably four or five of them anyway, but I wanted to refresh my memory. And I was a Jason fan. What I really liked the most about the role was that I came out victorious in the end. So that was pretty cool.
The casting of "Young Jason" in Part VIII proved far more calamitous than expected. The production originally hired a young Canadian actor, but the boy was unable to adequately handle the physical hardships of the film's underwater sequences. He was eventually replaced by Timothy Burr Mirkovich, the son of the film's editor, Steve Mirkovich. "I remember the first time I went down, went under, the water, then came up and was banging on the glass—people started panicking because they thought I was down there too long," remembers the younger Mirkovich. "Finally, when I come up, they are like, 'Are you okay!? Because we were really worried!' But I was like, 'I'm fine! Let's go again!' I remember it was really cold, the slime that they stuck on me was 20 degrees. It was freezing—skimpy shorts and two and a half hours of makeup. But it was really exciting to miss school for two months just to go and be in a movie. I was the coolest kid in fourth grade for a couple of months. So it was a good experience." Two decades later, the young Mirkovich has followed in his father's footsteps. Now a working editor in Hollywood, Mirkovich's recent credits include such films as Pineapple Express, The Messengers and the horror hit Devil Inside.
ROB HEDDEN:
Scott Reeves is the nicest guy you will ever meet in the world. And he's not just a great guy, but a good actor too. An underrated one because he was on soap operas, I think.
PETER MARK RICHMAN:
We shot it in Vancouver for seven weeks and it rained for six. We worked our bloody asses off. It was murder. It was freezing cold. I had to wear a wet suit underneath my clothes and I must have looked 20 pounds heavier in the film than I really am. It really was one of the toughest shoots I have ever had. But the nice thing was that the one week my wife came up, the sun came out, and shone every day she was there. And as soon as she left, it rained.
JENSEN DAGGETT:
We were like one big shipwrecked family. We were all just so happy to be up in Vancouver working on such a nutty film. Really, we were like kids in a candy store, beginning our careers and think
ing it would always be this easy and this much fun. And this may be unusual for a film with a bunch of aspiring young actors, but we really were all very supportive and encouraging of each other. I remember a lot of shopping on Robson Street with all of the girls. Then Scott Reeves got engaged to his girlfriend and everyone was pitching in with ideas about how to do it, and where.
SCOTT REEVES:
I got engaged to my wife there, overlooking the Lion's Gate Bridge in Stanley Park. Vancouver was such a romantic place—much more romantic than it is depicted in the movie. And we have had 20 years of a really blessed marriage since. The longer we are together, the more we love each other, and our friendship has grown to this incredible life together.
Coming into this thing late, everybody had already established themselves. And I had only known Rob Hedden through the audition process. So when I first came up to the set, V.C. was the only one that I had really knew. We had done a giant Heinz commercial together, one of those things that was like a short movie and took three days to shoot. So I hadn't seen V.C. since then, and here he pops up on the set of Part VIII and it's like, "Hey!" And V.C., he was a character. He reminded me of a young Bill Cosby. That was fun. I also had some buddies that came up to visit. Jason Priestley was a good buddy of mine at the time, and he's from Canada, too, so he spent some time on the set.
But we all had a ball. Jensen was so giving and so generous, as an actress and as a person. She was just a doll. And I remember she had her mother there with her, so I got to hang out with her family too. We spent a lot of time hanging out outside of work. And 20 years ago is a long time—we were young. We were learning and hungry and excited to be there. When you get to spend that kind of time with people, and create that kind of chemistry with people the way we did, it's always a treat.