Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition)
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NOEL CUNNINGHAM:
When we started Jason X, it was Michael De Luca's project. And when we finished it, Michael had resigned from New Line. All of a sudden, there's a whole new crew of people there, and none of them had any real vested interest in it. It was part of the old regime, so nobody wanted to get their fingers dirty. Or they didn't want their marketing budget to suddenly have $25 million chopped off to promote it. It was the red-headed stepchild that just gets dumped on a doorstep.
JIM ISAAC:
It was crazy. The film had been sitting for so long that it started getting bootlegged on the Internet. I started to get these emails from fans, "I've been invited over to a friend's house to watch a bootleg of Jason X." I would always email back and say, "I know it's tempting, but please don't go!" I wanted people to see it on the big screen like we intended. I was always concerned that people who were watching a lousy-quality tape would judge it based on that and be swayed, and that would create negative buzz. Of course, bootlegging is something I would prefer not to happen, but it is something that we, as filmmakers, can't really control nowadays.
TODD FARMER:
The truth is that New Line didn't have any money. They had put all their eggs in The Lord of the Rings basket and then De Luca left and he was the only guy we had ever talked to at New Line about Jason X. You have this movie sitting on the shelf that none of these executives have any affection for. This happened to a lot of New Line movies—we weren't the only ones. Yet there was too much money invested in it to let it go straight to video. Plus, if they were going to do that, they would have released it immediately. There would have been no sitting on it.
If I were a fan and I had waited that long, I'd probably download it, too. Does it bother me? Yeah. Do I understand it? Sure. When people come up to me and say, "Well, The Matrix was bootlegged, too." Well, of course! The Matrix was giant. It was a huge movie. If it lost $5 million in bootlegs, it can afford that. Jason X couldn't afford to lose $5 million in bootlegs. That would have given us an $11 million opening weekend. It would have made all the difference in the world. We were also sandwiched in between The Scorpion King and Spider-Man. It almost didn't matter how much we grossed. We were going to be destroyed regardless.
I also always thought UberJason should have been kept a secret. Then he eventually turns up on the movie poster. It was like putting a penis on the poster of The Crying Game. UberJason is kind of a goofy idea, but if you're watching the movie for the first time I thought it would be a hoot. People would leave the theater saying, "You've got to see Jason X because you're not going to believe what happens!" But no one listened to me.
Opening weekend, I went to see Jason X with Dean Lorey and his wife, and Kurt Wimmer, who wrote Thomas Crown Affair, and John Gerr who did Romeo Must Die. All were more than willing to go and give support, because most of them are writers and they've all been through this process. We went to the theater and it was only a quarter full. And they were all like, "Don't worry about it—it doesn't matter. You got a movie made!" It was still one of the more depressing moments of my life. Next time I have a movie open, I'm going to Disneyland. I don't want anything to do with it.
KANE HODDER:
New Line Cinema said Jason X didn't deliver, blaming the lackluster box office on performances or whatever. Really, you took two years to release the goddamned thing. How stupid do you have to be to say, "The box office of that movie wasn't very good?" You let it fucking sit, only so people could see it on the Internet for free. You can't be that ignorant.
HARRY MANFREDINI:
One of the sad things that happened with Jason X is that because it sat on the shelf for so long, the special effects were outdated by the time it hit theaters. When it was shot they were pretty cool, and by the time it was released they were passé.
DAVID HANDMAN:
It is always a battle staying true to a script. But truth be known, if we had made the original script, Jason X would have been a comedy not a horror film. It was a cartoon. But ultimately that's not what the franchise is. Sean originally went in and sold a Friday the 13th movie. Yet, at the same time, the people at New Line...Michael De Luca thought the script was hilarious. I still believe that everything about Jason X was better than Jason Goes to Hell. You're not only talking about the difference between a $15 million picture and a $3 million picture, but Jim Isaac was also a producer and brought the visual effects department with him, and Todd's script was very different—I think it's still the most unique horror script I've ever read.
LISA RYDER:
I thought that Jason X was more of an action film than a horror film. There were scares and suspense in it, and maybe some gore. Then when I actually saw it, and I laughed hysterically. I think it is very funny. I don't know if any of us expected Jason X to be a big box office hit. I don't even know why they did a theatrical release. I think the whole idea was just to go for great video sales, right? That's what it seemed geared to.
PETER MENSAH:
I give them credit for taking a franchise that had been out of the public's consciousness for a while and making a fun movie. Because fun is needed. This isn't brain surgery here—this is entertainment. I give a good amount of credit to these guys for trying to keep it fresh.
When I saw Jason X, I was pleasantly surprised because I just didn't know how it would turn out when I was making it. And some of the scenes had me howling, which is great. The fact that there's a sense of humor in there is what I was really hoping for, because if we took it too seriously, where's the enjoyment? Without talking down to the material, it had to be done tongue-in-cheek. You just can't explain Jason X. You're not supposed to.
CHUCK CAMPBELL:
I didn't really expect anything from Jason X. It was such a fun experience to make the film that if it went straight to video it didn't really matter. I certainly didn't look at it as a career-advancing movie for me. I just made a lot of friends and paid off my MasterCard bill.
ETHAN WILEY:
I thought Jim Isaac did a fantastic job. I think everyone involved are very talented, intelligent, creative filmmakers. People always say you can't judge a movie by its budget, but I don't think people realize just how amazing a movie Jason X is with the budget they had. What, $10 million dollars? Studio budgets now are 10 times that, and they don't come up with effects that look as good. And so I thought that it was a lot of bang for your buck. But it's still tough to compete in the box office today when you go up against movies with bigger marketing budgets than the entire cost of Jason X.
It's also a challenge to be put into the circumstance of, "Okay, you've got to create a sequel that's going to be fresh but still stay true to the rules of the genre, and that works?" It's a minefield, because of people's different expectations of sequels in particular. You have the camp that will say, "Oh, it was nothing like the original, so I hated it." Then the other camp that goes, "Oh, it was nothing like the original one, so I loved it." Jim came up with a totally different visual vocabulary for the series, right from that opening shot of the wind-swept planet. It makes you go, "Wait, is this a Friday the 13th? Did I step into the wrong theater?" Jason X is very clever in concept and very tongue-in-cheek, very deadpan. And the absurdity of teenagers thinking about sex when they should be focusing on their science experiments, I thought that was a very clever kind of play on the old themes. Like the scene when Jason is resurrected from the dead when he gets the stench of teenage sex.
NOEL CUNNINGHAM:
You know, it was actually easier that the film sat on the shelf as long as it did, because then you have that distance from it. Otherwise, if it is still your whole life and then it comes out and doesn't do anything, you're truly devastated. In hindsight, there are things I could have and should have done differently. But all in all, we came up with a fun little movie. It's nothing to be ashamed about. Still, I haven't seen Jason X since opening night. I just can't watch it. There are so many missed opportunities. I wanted it to be much scarier, but that was a cre
ative decision that Jim made with the comedy. There are no scares in the movie. There were tons of scares in the script.
My feeling about horror back then was that though Scream had turned it into a viable commercial genre again that whole postmodern approach had also largely run its course. The next subgenre was going to be action horror. That's what Jason X was intended to be. It's a slasher movie—you get the tits and the gore and the fun Jason kills—but there is also action and effects in it. You get all the good things about a horror movie and some of the good things about an action movie. That's the way it was on paper, but with our budget and everything, we couldn't get as much of it as we wanted. And I still think action-horror is the future. If you can blend action and real, true horror and suspense, you'll have a great hit on your hands.
KANE HODDER:
I hate to agree, but there wasn't much suspense in Jason X. But I do think it was a better-made film than the other Fridays. There was more money in it, certainly, and it was of higher quality. Jim Isaac spent more time with the cast than most directors on a film like this would have. Which shows, because that part of his movie was the best. The performances, and the whole interaction between the characters was more interesting and fun than in most other Fridays, whose characters don't often mean shit, really. So I liked that part of the movie. But I have to say my favorite of my Fridays is still Part VII.
JONATHAN POTTS:
I didn't have any illusions—I knew what it was. I was just looking forward to a lead role in a film that would actually be in theaters, that people would talk about, and be in magazines. And it was on the web all over the place. I don't think for any of us it was like, "This is it, man! People are going to see this and we're going to be on our way." But I also knew someone might watch it and say, "Hey, I like that guy." Roger Ebert reviewed the film and even mentioned my name. He tore the movie to shreds—he hated it—but I was like, "Yay! He mentioned me!" I was just thrilled to be a part of it.
TODD FARMER:
I wish we had a name actor in the film, although I think everyone in the cast did a fine job. I wish we'd kept UberJason a secret. I wish the script hadn't been rewritten so many times. If we had stuck to that and not gone so crazy with the rewrites, we would have had a better movie. There's a huge list of regrets. But I wrote the movie I wanted to write—so what if they made a different movie? It doesn't matter. It's only when it gets to a point where you're not passionate about it that it's going to suck. And I never had to deal with that. I always wrote what I wanted to write. Maybe that's why I got rewritten—because I wasn't writing what they wanted.
That's a rude awakening for any writer out here. We're not brilliant as far as the industry is concerned. We literally are just the guys they bring in—we don't do anything special. But the truth is that there would be no movie without us because we're the only ones creating anything original. We're taking a blank sheet of paper and creating a story out of it. Everybody else takes that and goes from there. So I know what our original intention was and we got nowhere near that.
Jason X is not a very good movie. It's not Sean's fault. It's not Jim's fault. It's not Noel's fault. It's not my fault. We all screwed up. We were four guys fighting these stupid battles and we should have been having fun and making the best movie we could make. That's not what we did. We let the fans down, we let ourselves down and we cost ourselves a lot of money.
SEAN CUNNINGHAM:
"Jason in Space" might have been really successful. I don't regret having figured out how to make the movie, but it was always a gamble. So we did it, and then all people said was, "Hmmm. Jason in Space—I'll catch that on cable." They just didn't want to go to the theater to see it. I don't think any of us really knows why, and we never will. And it wasn't that Jim did a bad job or anything. Jim is a good guy. A great guy. Jason X just didn't work on a commercial level.
JIM ISAAC:
I never wanted Jason X to be perceived as a parody. It was just that I had seen so many Fridays that were so similar to each other. I wanted to give the fans something newer, different and fresher. And it wasn't just about the action, but about doing something a little edgier. Scarier. More fun.
I would have done Jason X so differently now. There's no question about it. The final product is not what I had originally imagined, or what we pitched originally to New Line. And that happens all the time. I learned from Jason X that you have to always, always fight for what you believe. More than just doing it right, and on time, and on budget, you're fighting for your vision, because you can't please everybody. You can't always be a nice guy directing a movie. It's a collaborative effort, no question. But there is a point where you have to convey your vision to all the other artists on the project. And when you get everyone on same page, only then can they make your vision even better. Way better. But you have to guide them. And that's when you really come up with something cool.
11. Winner Kills All
New Line Cinema has long been referred to as "The House That Freddy Built," a sobriquet that founder and CEO Robert Shaye would be among the first to acknowledge. Bolstered by the success of Wes Craven's seminal 1984 shocker, A Nightmare on Elm Street, followed by its seven lucrative sequels, New Line would, over the next two decades, rise from obscurity as a fledgling distribution company specializing in often-undistinguished exploitation fare to the most successful and well-known independent studio in Hollywood. By the start of the new millennium, New Line had amassed an impressive and diverse roster of box office hits, including the blockbuster Rush Hour films, the phenomenally successful Austin Powers franchise, and looming on the horizon, the Academy Award winning Lord of the Rings trilogy. But New Line would not forget its less-than-humble roots—or its debt to the razor-clawed villain who made their success possible.
Even after a nearly 10-year gestation period that was both costly and frustrating, the studio did not waver in its commitment to bringing the long-anticipated showdown of Freddy vs. Jason to the screen. Working in tandem with Sean Cunningham's Crystal Lake Entertainment, a reported six million dollars was spent developing some 18 drafts written by more than a dozen screenwriters—including some of the most well-paid "A-list" writers in the business. Yet amid all of the false starts, outlandish concepts and seemingly never-ending rewrites, the key to crafting a logical, satisfying and ultimately entertaining Freddy vs. Jason remained elusive. Diehard fans had been waiting for years to witness the ultimate battle between their favorite horror icons, and both New Line and Sean Cunningham were determined not to let them down. Freddy vs. Jason needed to be more than just an amalgam of each iconic monster's "greatest hits," or a run-of-the-mill slasher sendup with the terror titans at the center of a WWF-style showdown. The dramatic question of Freddy vs. Jason—how to get two distinctly different horror villains into the same ring in a clever, believable way—would have to be answered to Robert Shaye's satisfaction before he would consider green-lighting the project.
Development on Freddy vs. Jason officially began in late 1993, a few months following the release of Jason Goes to Hell. The writing team of Cyrus Voris and Ethan Reiff, who had recently scored a modest hit with Universal's Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, would become the first screenwriters to pitch a Freddy vs. Jason concept to New Line—but far from the last. Meanwhile, Sean Cunningham turned to Lewis Abernathy, his screenwriter on DeepStar Six and House IV, to develop a different take on the project. Although the resulting scripts were often wildly disparate in concept, approach and tone, one particular element introduced in Abernathy's early draft appealed to both New Line and Cunningham: the "Fred Heads"—a cult of nihilistic teens who look to the long-dead Freddy Krueger as their "spiritual leader." The Fred Heads would remain the one constant on Freddy vs. Jason's long and often chaotic road to a green-lit screenplay. And they almost survived. Almost.
ROBERT SHAYE, Co-Chairman, New Line Cinema:
Freddy vs. Jason was always in the air. There wasn't any great navigational plan in mind. Just really, truly
and honestly, an overweening desire to make the movie, which I thought a lot of fans were waiting for, as good as possible.
NOEL CUNNINGHAM, Development Executive, Crystal Lake Entertainment:
Originally, New Line was very excited: "Whoa! Freddy vs. Jason! That's going to be kick-ass!" But then you really have to sit down and start to think about it, and ask, "Okay, what happens? You have two main characters—both of whom are villains. One of them doesn't exist in the real world, and the other one doesn't talk. How do you create a movie around those two characters?" It's damn near impossible.
SEAN CUNNINGHAM, Producer:
If you're going to put these characters in the same movie, are you going to be able to give fans what they expect from both of them? What's the experience of watching a Freddy movie? What's the experience of watching a Jason movie? How are they different? And it wasn't just the rules of each franchise we were worried about, like, "Oh, the virgin has to survive." Or, "The pothead must die in the fourth reel." None of that really applied. It just had to do with the core emotional experience. How are you going to handle Freddy and Jason in the same movie without one contradicting the other? That was a puzzle that we had to address.
ROBERT ENGLUND, "Freddy Krueger":
I had always been defensive when people were whispering, "They're trying to milk the last dime out of these franchises!" Because, in fact, Freddy vs. Jason is fan-originated. I remember as far back as 1984 or '85, guys were coming up to me and going, "What would happen if Freddy Krueger ran into Jason in an alley? Could you kick his ass?" It's always been a curiosity.