JULIE MICHAELS:
I've been in the business for a while and I've worked with some of the biggest directors and they have their processes. But the one thing they don't have is that fresh energy. Adam wanted so bad for his film to be better and different. I thrived on that. I love anybody who has that much drive to make something work. I've learned from my experience in the business not to be afraid of young people because their energy can create a completely different environment.
There was one scene we were shooting early on, where my feet were pretty bloody after running through the forest for days and days. And when Adam realized I was bleeding, he picked me up himself. Little old Adam Marcus, right? And he carried me back to where we were seated to clean my feet off because they were so bloodied. I just wanted so bad to get the shot for him. You wanted to get it for him. I'd still follow Adam anywhere.
RICHARD GANT:
Adam was funny to me. I remember one time he walked onto the set and, for whatever reason, they had started the scene without him. The assistant director, for want of anything better to do, had already called "Action!" But Adam handled it with grace. He just walked on the set, and the look on his face was priceless.
KARI KEEGAN:
Adam Marcus wore lifts in his shoes, I'll tell you that. Because he's short. And I only know that because I was in the wardrobe room and I was like, "Whose high heels are these that don't look like high heels?" And they were like, "Shhhh!" He thinks he's tall, though. He would be like, "I'm 5'10"." And I'm like, "Honey, you're 5'8"!"
Arguably the signature kills of Jason Goes to Hell are the murders of two amorous campers, Luke (Michael Silver) and Deborah (Queer as Folk's Michelle Clunie). The scene was actually a reshoot completed months after the end of principal photography. Test audiences had demanded more traditional stalk and slash elements in the film, and that is what they got—one of the most graphic ever seen in a mainstream film, Friday the 13th or otherwise. "That gag was pretty violent," agrees makeup effects supervisor Greg Nicotero. "We had a whole fire extinguisher filled with blood. Right after the moment of impact, when the weapon is thrust through the fake chest of the girl, we did a quick count of "3, 2, 1!" Then we just let it rip. So as the body ripped upward, blood sprayed everywhere. It was really grotesque!"
STEVEN WILLIAMS:
For me, taking Jason Goes to Hell was about another experience in the acting world. It's always about rent. I don't care what anybody says. People talk about doing art—it's about rent first, then art. So for me doing the movie was about stretching out, doing something a little different. And I had just come off of doing five years of playing this cop, this authority and father/mentor kind of figure on "21 Jump Street," so this was good for me, too.
Adam's age didn't bother me at all. You looked at Adam and think, "Wow, this guy is young." But, again, knowing how I came into the business, as an untrained individual who had the talent and the energy and the ability to do this, I respected him. Adam had a definite handle on who he wanted these characters to be and how he wanted them to be. And at the same time, he valued your contribution, where you were coming from. I'll have my input and my little quirks, but as long as I'm on the same page as the director, the producer, the writer, then I can work for you.
RUSTY SCHWIMMER:
Adam's such a good soul. What I loved most about him was that it was truly a collaboration. He had a lot of guts to listen to other people. His ego never got in the way. One time, I thought it would be really funny if I used my pinky nail to make the eyes of a Jason hamburger. Adam went, "Okay, do it!" Adam almost never negated anything I wanted to try. We were basically at summer camp and they just happened to film it.
ERIN GRAY:
There is something about shooting a horror movie that brings out the kid in all of us. I loved going to lunch with a knife in my back.
STEVEN CULP:
I didn't really get to work with Erin that much, but she was really, really sweet. There was one night when we had to be on set really late on a Friday night. Erin came up to me and she says, "They want me to waive my turnaround." Meaning, because she was due to be called back at a certain hour on that Monday, if they didn't give her enough turnaround time over the weekend they would have to pay her. And I couldn't believe she was asking me for advice, you know, because who was I? She had done all this work and was sort of like the star on the set, and she's asking me? I thought she was just so very nice and quite lovely.
RUSTY SCHWIMMER:
Oh my God, I loved Erin Gray! As sweet as could be. She was awesome. And what I loved most about her was that she was completely game. She understood that this was in good fun, too. You go, girl!
ADAM MARCUS:
Steven Williams is probably going to kill me for telling this story. There was a scene we were going to shoot that involved an effect, which required an appliance be put on Steven's leg. And he had to pull his pants down to attach the appliance. Well, the costume girls came in with one of the K.N.B. effects guys, and while they're working on the appliance, the costume girls had to fit the hole in Steven's jeans. So Steven drops his pants and isn't wearing any underwear. And all we saw were two screaming costume girls running right out of this room.
Steven was definitely sort of a ladies man. He was partying so much at night that he would fall asleep on set between takes. He would just like put his head down and be asleep while we're moving equipment around him. But I gotta tell you, I have never met an actor who came in with a better knowledge of his character, or who was more prepared. This guy was ready every second of the day, any time we needed him. He's incredible.
STEVEN WILLIAMS:
I'm a very loose individual on a set. I'm going to do my thing, I'm going to have a good time, and I'm going to be gregarious. But I've been reprimanded on sets for flirting too much with the women. And I absolutely played up the sexual angle of my scenes with Erin Gray. I found her to be a very good-looking woman. I don't know what she had going, but that was my whole intention in terms of our scenes together!
KARI KEEGAN:
I understand why actors and actresses fall in love on set because it's like instant family>—instant brothers and sisters and instant friends, because you depend on these people in really intimate ways. To make sure that you don't get hurt, that you're acting with somebody, that somebody's directing you. I was sure I was going to get fired every day. I was 25 years old. This was my first movie, and for everybody else, it wasn't. I was the rookie in the group and felt a lot of times like, "I'm not doing this right."
I dropped a flashlight on the first day of shooting and it broke my toe. This is the scene in the garage, where Steven Culp attacks me. That is the first thing I shot, and now I thought my career was ruined by a flashlight and a broken toe, because they're like, "You still have to get out of the car and run." But Adam was very open about coming up with new ideas. I think sometimes it was out of desperation. So John LeMay was just like, "I'll carry her! It will be funny." So if you watch the movie, there's a scene where John's character is pulling me out of the house, and he throws me over his shoulders kicking and screaming and carries me to the car. And John is honestly not much bigger than me!
JOHN D. LEMAY:
My character tends to take all of this very seriously, and out of that seriousness may come some moments of humor. At least, that's what I've tried to do. But let's face it, it's hard to be humorous when you're trying to fight the devil. I saw Steve as just an ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstance, you know? So there wasn't really any layering of attributes that I had to throw on to myself.
I think all actors want to be doing roles that reaffirm our love of acting, and being able to grow and discover more about yourself through performance. I wanted to be doing Angels in America. But you just don't always get a chance to do that. And certainly Jason Goes to Hell didn't lend itself too much to that kind of enlightenment. But Adam was very generous to the actors. He wasn't tied to the script. He loved to let people discover things
. This was a daily occurrence, which made it an incredibly rewarding experience for most of the people involved.
Steven Culp is another great actor. He was tremendous to work with. And I think Steve was very ambivalent at times, as I was. I had conversations with him about what we were doing and what we aspire to be, as actors. And we all seem to take ourselves, as actors, quite seriously at times. Looking back, I think it's very important to have maintained a certain levity about it all.
Famous Los Angeles radio personalities Mark Thompson and Brian Phelps made their screen debut in Jason Goes to Hell. "Friday the 13th was one of Brian's favorite things," remembers director Adam Marcus. "One day, he went on the air to ask for a part in the next movie for his birthday. I actually heard this live in my car. I called up and said, "If you're really committed, I will write a part for you today. I'll even give you a hideously gory death." So Brian got his birthday wish—they had one great scene, they got slaughtered, and they even held a live radio show from the K.N.B. effects shop when they were getting their life casts made."
STEVEN CULP:
I wouldn't be surprised if we were all conflicted about doing it. And John was not the original choice. Jay Underwood was going to do it first, that's what I remember. But Jay dropped out at the last minute because he was nervous about doing a Friday the 13th, too. So John stepped in. And he made this guy a fully human being. As did Kari with her character. But I did think that John was kind of offbeat casting for a hero.
RUSTY SCHWIMMER:
Steven Culp made me laugh. He's very serious. When we were doing the scene where I beat the shit out of him, he was like, "We have to do it this way and that way, blah blah blah." And I've seen him since, and I he's lightened up a bit. But he was so serious at the time it just made me laugh even harder. We just had different ways of doing things, but I have to respect that. He's an awesome guy, and a very good actor.
ADAM MARCUS:
John and I had originally talked about bringing a comedic quality to his role, but once we started the shoot John suddenly wanted to get very deep into it and be very emotional about it. He almost went for a darker view of the character than we initially explored. We even ended up rewriting several scenes for that reason. For example, there's one scene that's not in the film, but I think it ended up on the DVD>—the diner scene where they're pulling all those pranks. Those jokes were originally very big, funny and dirty. And John was sort of against that. He really didn't want to do that. That wasn't where his head was at with the character. So it was rewritten.
But John's a very good actor, and very, very serious. I'm thrilled that we cast him. He brought a certain gravity to that role. The only thing I would say for John was that, ultimately, I still wanted to get a little more sense of humor out of that character.
KARI KEEGAN:
You know the Holiday Inn off the 405 at Sunset? I had only lived in L.A. for four or five months when I was doing the movie and I didn't really know my way around very well. One night at three in the morning, I was released from the set out in Agoura Hills. And at the time I was living right across the street from Hollywood High, and if only I had known I could have just gotten on the 170 and gone like two blocks I wouldn't have been driving and driving and taking a detour and ending up on Sunset Boulevard. So it's like 4:15 a.m. by this point and I see the Holiday Inn and go in to ask for directions. There's a person behind the desk, and I say, "I need to get to Hollywood—do I need to go right or left?" And the guy looks at me, shocked. I say again, "Right or left?" Then I see behind him is a mirror, and I realize that my face is covered in blood. And I have this huge hand-print across my neck where someone has been strangling me. So I paused and thought, "I can either stop and explain why I look like this, which will probably take 20 minutes, or I can just get in my car and go." Then he said, "You go left," I say, "Thanks!" and jump in my car. I look back in my rearview mirror and he's writing down my license plate number. I'm sure he was thinking, "She's just butchered her husband."
After my Holiday Inn experience, John thought it would be better to just pick me up and take me to work. We became really good friends after that, and then me and his girlfriend at the time and I also became really good friends. John LeMay? Love. We had great chemistry. And when we would drive to and from the set we would talk about our characters. What was appealing to me about Jessica was that she was all about returning home, and caring for her baby. Everything else was a byproduct. She had something more going on than protecting herself from the monster. And this whole history of John's character, Steven, not really being there for her to both John and I it seemed like there was more to all of this than just another horror film. I approached it as, "What can I act in this?" Not, "How many times am I going to be half-naked and screaming and running?" Which, certainly, I did. But Jason Goes to Hell seemed more like ALIENS to me than Friday the 13th.
STEVEN WILLIAMS:
To this day, I don't quite understand some of those lines in Jason Goes to Hell. I wanted to give Creighton Duke some dimensions, because the man was a little bit wacky. What was that one about the pink hot dog thing and the doughnut? I just figured this Creighton Duke guy was crazy. So you give it ambiguity. You say something, get a crazed look in your eyes, and just let the audience try to figure out what the hell is going on.
DEAN LOREY:
Perhaps our biggest decision was to take Jason from being this unknown killer in Crystal Lake to being Serial Killer #1, to make him very well-known and establish that everybody wants to kill him. That's one of the reasons the Creighton Duke character is in the movie. He also addressed the question of why Jason keeps coming back every time he's been killed. That allowed us to get a bit more tongue-in-cheek and have more fun with the movie.
STEVEN CULP:
It is a very violent movie. I have an ambivalent response. Because it is a lot more violent when you see it onscreen than it feels when you're actually doing this stuff on the set. I would've been happier, and we all probably would've been, if it had been more of a humorous, outrageous adventure, and a thrill ride. But at least from what I understood, that was simply the requirement of the franchise, as well as the studio putting their hand in and going, "This is what we want. This is what it has to be."
ADAM MARCUS:
The Final Friday is not really a slasher movie. Those movies are all, "Set 'em up, knock 'em down." We wanted to go more for a Terminator kind of thing, especially like in the scene when Steven Culp comes charging into the diner. That scene is like something out of a Sam Peckinpah film. We got to do a lot of great shots, with stylized lighting and even slow-motion. I think it is probably the most effective scene in the film.
Lights, camera, deep fryer. Shelby (Leslie Jordan) gets cooked, with a little help from a Jason-possessed Robert Campbell (Steve Culp), while diner owner Joey B. (Rusty Schwimmer) looks on.
RUSTY SCHWIMMER:
They armed me with some kind of crazy .44 Magnum for that scene! Which is so funny, because in real life, I'm so anti-gun. But once the guns came out, suddenly all of us girls in the cast got all this testosterone. Those were probably my favorite moments making Jason Goes to Hell. We'd all be in the back of the diner set, just shooting shit for fun, and cracking ourselves up.
LESLIE JORDAN:
I look back, and I think it was perfect I was in this movie called Jason Goes to Hell, because my life was in the toilet at the time—Leslie was going to hell, too. I was just an absolute mess in 1993. I was in an abusive relationship with this drug addict. He was this 6'3" cowboy from Weatherford, Texas who had a belt buckle with a turkey on it. And he had this horrendous drug problem, but of course I was going to get him sober, so I ended up in the vortex of his drug addiction. I can remember being on the set of Jason Goes to Hell in a panic because I hadn't heard from him. I was afraid to go to work because I thought if I left my car keys he might take it. Then he got drunk one night and ended up shooting me with a crossbow. He eventually went to jail for attempted murder.
&
nbsp; Anyway, all this was going on in the middle of Jason Goes to Hell, and the apex of it was my death scene. Adam Marcus was so friggin' energetic, and I would come in every day exhausted from having sat up all night long worrying what this cowboy was up to and where my car was. And here was Adam, right out of NYU film school, just bubbling. And now I have to go into the french fry fryer. It was filled with bubbling root beer. So I went in, came up, and out. After the first take, Adam goes, "Oooh! Oooh! Oooh! Dude, I've got a great idea! When you go in, can you balance yourself and kind of kick your legs?" And I said, "Okay, that sounds good." We do another take. Then Adam again: "Hey, dude, I've got a great idea. Can you flail your arms?" I sigh and go, "Okay." Seven takes later, Adam's like, "Dude, I've got another idea..." And I just turned to him and said, "Dude, I've got a really great idea. Get the fucking shot!"
Everybody was like, "What is wrong with sweet little Leslie?"
ADAM MARCUS:
What was terrific about Dean is that he didn't feel like his toes were being stepped on because I added a line, or an actor added a line. Both Dean and I had been actors back in New York, and we knew that we were just gonna play on set and come up with stuff as we went along.
Of course, that can be a double-edge sword. There was always that concern that we'd go too far astray. Some of the criticisms of the movie have said that. But I think one of the mistakes of horror movies is that they are so rigid to the script that they don't allow anything to develop naturally out of situations. Roy Scheider wrote that classic line from JAWS—"We're gonna need a bigger boat">—right on the set, okay? If you're not attuned to listen to what your actors have to say, then you're cutting yourself off at the knees.
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition) Page 69
