DOUG CURTIS:
I love the idea of good versus evil and of evil being so bad. We all have that dark side to us—Ronny talked about that a lot. You have to explore that. And when you get to explore it on an operatic level it becomes more fun than not. It doesn't force you to explore the dark side of mankind, it just gives you some characters who encounter it. I just think it makes for good drama.
RONNY YU:
I always say that Freddy vs. Jason is "Four Fingers of Death vs. The Machete"—Freddy's glove is like a claw, and Jason's machete reminds me of old samurai movies. But the trick is not to be so overt that everybody says, "Oh, this is a Hong Kong movie." My goal was to make a Hollywood movie. So whatever I injected into the film had to hit the audience on a subconscious level. I had a very open-minded attitude, I listened to everybody, especially these people who've been involved with these franchises.
Although the Friday the 13th films have often been criticized for being exploitative and misogynistic, actor Monica Keena feels that the role of Lori subverts many of those preconceived notions. "Women in horror movies have often been sex objects that are just there to look pretty and get murdered. But in Freddy vs. Jason, I didn't think Lori was victimized. In a way, it's a coming-of-age story because she really finds herself, and a strength she never knew she had."
DOUG CURTIS:
Freddy vs. Jason reinvigorated Ronny's career, but he was very unsure as to whether he should be making this movie or not. Ronny would always say to me, "Are you glad you're making this movie?" I'd just say, "I'm glad to be making any movie." But when I said yes to Freddy vs. Jason, I was genuinely happy to be making it. And the closer we got to the end of the journey, the more and more glad I got. I became so proud of what we were achieving on a daily basis.
And on that last day, when it was all done and we knew that we'd pulled it off, there was just a glow about everybody. Despite all the frustrations and aggravations and challenges and stress, we were very lucky. There were so many things that could have gone wrong. But they all went right. It was amazing. It was a movie that was just meant to be.
So, who wins? The claw or the machete? That was the question that had plagued Freddy vs. Jason from day one. Each franchise's fans had their bets on their favorite villain, and to tip the scales in either's favor would alienate just as many as it would appease. Crafting the film's final coda would prove to be the film's greatest challenge. It would also require multiple test screenings, plenty of rewrites, and not one—but three—filmed endings. Ultimately, Freddy vs. Jason would end with neither a whimper nor a bang. Instead, the battle of the century would end... with a wink.
MARK SWIFT:
Originally, in our draft, we killed Will. And everyone was like, "You can't kill Will, that's insane." So we killed Lori's father instead. At the end of the movie, Lori and her father walk into a dry lake bed, because Crystal Lake has been drained. Freddy's glove is on the ground and the father grabs it and says, "We're going to get rid of this—this time for good!" And then Freddy's arm rips through the ground and pulls him down. It was kind of a homage to the first Nightmare. The last image of the movie would be Lori clawing at the dirt, screaming. Freddy has essentially made her an orphan, taking her mother and father. We wanted to have this epilogue that lets you know that maybe the fight is continuing in hell.
DAMIAN SHANNON:
David Goyer wrote a new epilogue that was shot involving a sex scene between Lori and Will, where Will turns into Freddy. I didn't like it. I don't think anyone did. And, thankfully, it wasn't received favorably by test audiences and was cut anyway.
DOUG CURTIS:
The lowest point of making the movie was when Ronny showed the studio his cut. I felt Ronny's cut was terrific. I thought he nailed it. But the studio didn't like it. Bob Shaye didn't like it at all. He was really upset. Stokely came in, and David Goyer came in, and a lot of time was spent in the editing room. There were lots of notes between Ronny's cut and the first test screening, which was about two or three weeks later.
Then, after the first screening, the audience loved the movie. The next day on Ain't It Cool News, there wasn't a bad review. Everybody raved. But then maybe we all got cocky. New Line said, "Well, if they love it that much, we can make it even better." And I thought the next cut was great, too. But at the second screening the test scores actually went down. They were not fantastic—in the 70 percentile positive range—but they were still above the norm. I think they overcut it. Ronny agreed.
I think the really big problem was that now we had no ending, because the ending of the first version that we shot was so stupid. New Line said, "Let's see what happens if there's no ending at all."
MARK VERHEIDEN:
I'm not sure if any of the other Freddy vs. Jason drafts had this, but in mine, Michael De Luca wanted me to write two endings. One where Jason won, and one with Freddy the victor. I remember that New Line's plan at the time was to release it two ways and you wouldn't know which ending you'd get when you went to the theater. They really wanted to try to do that. It would be just another way to sort of jazz up interest in it. Obviously, too, diehard fans would see it twice. That would have been an interesting way to go.
MARK SWIFT:
Really, I think the ending they ended up with is the best one. Bob Shaye came up with that. It's really brilliant because there is a more definite winner, yet an argument can be made that perhaps there isn't. Although, to tell you the truth, when Jason is carrying Freddy's head out of the water I wasn't sure if Robert Englund was doing a Looney Tunes wink to the audience, like, "Hey, thanks for coming to the movie," or if he was really thinking about it in terms of that Freddy is still in control and he's manipulating Jason. But I like the fact that an argument can be made for both sides.
"I look at this movie like a wonderful, dramatic, violent comic book," says Robert Englund. "It's like 'The Bloody Ballad of Freddy & Jason.'"
DOUG CURTIS:
Ronny was the one who came up with the idea that Bob Shaye takes credit for. Fans all wanted an ending, yet they didn't want it to end. That's what's so brilliant about that ending. It leaves it open. In the minds of the people these movies are designed for, they're both winners.
SEAN CUNNINGHAM:
I don't want to be too coarse a producer here, but it's possible for a wrestler to lose a match, then come back and kick ass the next time. The ending of the film reflects the overview that in any particular battle there may be a victor, but the war always continues. How do you kill two people who can't be killed? You can get yourself into a Catch-22 loop. But I think we still have a very strong, visceral ending where people can say, "That's the biggest kick-ass fight I've ever seen!" Ultimately, the biggest winner had to be the audience.
RONNY YU:
Who wins? Since the moment I signed on, that is the question everybody's asking. My mission was to satisfy the hardcore fans who had grown up with these two characters. That's why I felt that no matter what we came up with for the ending, fans of both franchises have to come out feeling like they're the winner. And I'm pretty happy with what we have now. I think it did satisfy both parties.
The release of Freddy vs. Jason would be accompanied by not just one soundtrack CD, but two. Freddy vs. Jason: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack featured 20 new and previously unreleased tracks by such contemporary rock artists as Slipknot, Type O Negative and Ill Ninon. In its first week of release, the soundtrack broke the Billboard Top 40 Album chart, and eventually sold more than 500,000 copies. Hitting stores a few weeks later was Freddy vs. Jason: The Original Motion Picture Score by composer Graeme Revell, who had previously worked with director Ronny Yu on Bride of Chucky. Yu declined to utilize any of the previous composers from either the Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th series, including fan favorite Harry Manfredini, leaving Revell the considerable task of crafting a score that paid tribute to the beloved and now-icon motifs of both franchises while introducing fresh, new elements. The New Zealand-born composer
, who began his musical career as a founding member of the pioneering industrial group SPK, had been acclaimed for his inventive use of non-traditional instruments and sonic textures, and Revell's score for Freddy vs. Jason is no exception, with its aggressive percussion and often startling bursts of sound.
HARRY MANFREDINI, Composer, Part I-Part VII, Jason Goes to Hell, Jason X:
Sean Cunningham and I, were always like a team. He was always loyal. Even the pictures I couldn't do for him, he was always trying to have me on them, even all the way up to Freddy Vs. Jason. Which we're not going to talk about unless you want to hear a grown man scream.
DOUG CURTIS:
Freddy vs. Jason was two different franchises coming together. It wasn't just another Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street. It was nothing against Harry or any of the other composers of the Nightmare movies. Graeme Revell had done Bride of Chucky. He and Ronny had a relationship, and Ronny really wanted him to bring something fresh. And for good reason. He's an incredible composer.
"On that last day, when it was all done and we knew that we'd pulled it off, there was just a glow around everybody," remembers producer Doug Curtis. "Despite all the frustrations and aggravations, the challenges and the stress, we were very lucky. There were so many things that could have gone completely wrong. But instead they all went right. It was amazing. It was a movie that was just meant to be."
GRAEME REVELL, Composer:
I've always enjoyed the idea of only working with people I really like. I'm less interested in going through the hell that scoring a picture can be with studios and directors who can't agree—you just get a compromise at the end of the day. It was Don Mancini, who created Chucky, who recommended me to Ronny. I did the early Child's Play scores, so I'd known Don for a long time. But I called him up right before Bride of Chucky and he was quite surprised to hear from me, actually, because at that time I was starting to be known for doing much bigger-budgeted movies. But I really wanted to do it.
I'm not encyclopedic in my knowledge of the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street movies. I've probably only seen the first two or three of either series. And I am much more of a Freddy fan than I am a Jason fan. You get that split among people. I was really attracted to do Freddy vs. Jason by the way Ronny described the film to me. That it was a big WWF bout, a great ol' slug-fest. I did have concerns about meeting expectations. And why not? Harry Manfredini had done a great job on the past Friday scores, and I knew that was really important to a lot of people. And Jason, of course, has his vocal effect that's so famous— "Ki, ki, ki, ma, ma, ma." And a lot of composers had done a good job on the Nightmare movies in the past. But that challenge actually attracted me, because if you don't do a good job the fans will reject you. I'm used to sticking my neck out. So what I tried to do was create new moods that derived from those themes, and bring in my own set of ideas for the different combinations of characters.
I had to do the score over May and June 2003, and I think I had only about four weeks. I like to layer sounds—there's often 10 things on top of each other at any given time. And I have a big sound bank of stuff that I have recorded everywhere in the world. I have about four or five libraries that I've done over the years. Then I just concentrate on the melodic stuff. I also talked a lot with Ronny about the use of "negative space," meaning that you have to quiet things down for a few seconds before the big scare. I've always said that the horror movie is essentially the monster story from way back. It's a very old genre. Horror is a genre in particular that is totally dependent on peaks and valleys. Sometimes you're ramping up to it, sometimes you're just dropping out. It's very much about a carefully crafted set of surprises and red herrings.
There was mild studio pressure to put some songs in the movie. Ronny had to make some choices with the direction of the songs and he asked me about them, and I agreed with him. Early on, when the kids are in the house—are we going to play songs there or are we going to make that scarier? That was something that we figured out, and we ended up doing a bit of both, songs and score. And the use of songs, sometimes it feels like pandering. The audience is going to think, "Oh, they are just throwing this in to try and make a soundtrack." I was trying to watch Scream 2 one night but I actually found it too silly because if you start using pop music it's too soft. Though I know those are the movies that get the girls. Ultimately, the songs didn't really change my musical choices. Freddy vs. Jason was really fun to do.
New Line Cinema kicked the Freddy vs. Jason publicity machine into overdrive as its U.S. release date of August 15, 2003 loomed closer. Surpassing the cost of the marketing campaigns for all 10 previous Friday the 13th films combined, New Line's PR assault spanned all media, including television, radio, print and the Internet, at a reported cost of $25 million—nearly equal the film's production budget. Beginning with a carefully orchestrated plan to generate early buzz, production tidbits were "leaked" to popular entertainment websites to keep eager fans alerted to every breaking development from the set. New Line also ramped up its merchandising of officially licensed Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street products, ranging from hats and mugs to lunchboxes and comic books. Jason and Freddy even took a trip to Las Vegas a month before the film's release, where, in an elaborately staged event held at Bally's casino, Robert Englund and Ken Kirzinger, in full costume, participated in a mock pre-fight weigh-in and boxing match to the delight of the hundreds of fans and press in attendance. Then, on Thursday, August 14, for the first time in his long and distinguished "career," Jason Voorhees was given a proper Hollywood reception. Held at Hollywood's famed Cinerama Dome, the premiere of Freddy vs. Jason was a star-studded event covered by such mainstream media outlets as Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood and MTV. Jason may never become an A-list star, and he certainly won't win any Academy Awards, but for one bright, shining moment, he was the talk of Tinseltown.
Still, the public reaction that awaited Freddy vs. Jason was far from certain. While New Line Cinema and the filmmakers were—more or less—pleased with their film, the most recent box office numbers for both franchises were hardly encouraging. Certainly the meager turnout for 2002's Jason X did not exactly inspire confidence. And there was still the question of just who the audience was for the film. For the kids of the 1980s who grew up on Jason and Freddy, the characters may have become beloved icons of nostalgia, but were nostalgia nonetheless. And for a new generation of hip, pop-culture savvy teens, Jason and Freddy no longer represented objects of fear but rather postmodern punchlines from such films as Scream and Scary Movie. But any doubts about the commercial viability of Jason Voorhees were short-lived when Freddy vs. Jason made its debut on 3,014 across the United States. Even with widespread summer blackouts threatening to close many theaters across the East Coast, nothing could stop the Freddy vs. Jason box office blitzkrieg. With an opening three-day gross of $36.4 million, the film not only obliterated the career-best debuts of both franchises; it also set a new record for the biggest opening weekend for a slasher sequel. The film also showed surprising staying power during its second weekend, once again claiming the #1 spot at the box office. With a final cumulative domestic gross of $82.6 million, Freddy vs. Jason earned its place as the most financially successful entry in the Friday the 13th franchise (although, with 13.7 million paid admissions versus the original Friday the 13th's 14.8 million tickets sold, it still ranks second in the series in overall attendance.)
Of course, the cultural cache enjoyed by Freddy vs. Jason cannot be counted only in dollars. The success of the long-awaited Freddy/Jason face-off brought its respective franchises full circle. Suddenly Jason Voorhees and Friday the 13th were no longer regarded as relics of the bygone era of exploitation slashers. No one at the time could be certain where the character and the franchise could go from there, and even if it wasn't the last of Jason and Friday the 13th, Freddy vs. Jason served as a fitting conclusion—and a shining testament—to a motion picture phenomenon. And the makers of this "final chapter" to
the original and now-classic Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street sagas will always be able to look back with a wistful smile—and perhaps even a morbid sense of pride—about bringing Jason Voorhees and the mightiest slasher franchise of the '80s to a big, bold and fittingly bloody conclusion.
I went to the screening and the premiere at the Hollywood Cinerama Dome. That's the first time I've been on a red carpet with more than 15 photographers, and this time it's like 50 and a ton of fans yelling out everybody's names. It was really overwhelming. That's one of the things I'll definitely never forget about the experience, just being part of that whole day. It was amazing.
DOUG CURTIS:
The studio would have been happy with a $15 million opening. Still, we were all holding our breath. Then Stokely called and left a message on my cell phone, but it broke up when she said, "Can you believe it made…?" She sounded drunk with excitement. I thought she'd said $8 million. But she actually said it made $18 million or some ridiculous figure, just on Friday. I was just blown away. I suppose "vindicated" is a good word to describe the way we all feel. We delivered a movie that the audience loved, and it's the audience that matters most.
From left: South Korean one sheet, Japanese "Jason only" teaser poster, and Japanese one-sheet.
CHRISTOPHER MARQUETTE:
DAMIAN SHANNON:
After I saw the movie, I thought it would make about $60 million—I didn't expect how much it eventually made. But the thing we'll never know is, which version would have made the most money? The one we wrote or the one on the screen? Because the one thing that's sorely lacking for me in the movie is tension. The characters being afraid, and the moments of stalking—you don't get that same feeling that you got in the early films of the franchises. Maybe that's my nostalgia. I was very young when I saw the first Friday the 13th, and it terrified me. I never got any sense of that here. But, at the end of the day, you have to say, "The movie made $80 million." Ronny more than pulled it off, and a lot of fans love what we did. So that's all you can really ask for.
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition) Page 88
