Rob Zombie Interview, Halloween (2007)

MoviesOnline was thrilled to talk to filmmaker Rob Zombie at this week’s Los Angeles press day for his new horror movie, "Halloween.” With "Halloween,” the visionary director of "The Devil’s Rejects” and "House of 1000 Corpses,” re-imagines one of the most iconic films in the annals of horror, director John Carpenter’s 1978 classic, "Halloween,” featuring the ruthless, masked psychopath Michael Myers.

Inspired by Carpenter’s 1978 original and his theme that "evil can appear in even the smallest of towns,” Zombie’s "Halloween” focuses on the early years of young Michael Myers and the events leading up to his fateful Halloween night murder rampage in the quiet town of Haddonfield, Illinois. Following that brutal night, Michael begins 17 years of incarceration at the Smith’s Grove Sanitarium maximum-security mental facility where he is treated by noted child behaviorist Dr. Samuel Loomis – the only person who can truly understand Michael’s evil nature. Now, 17 years later, Michael escapes from the mental facility on Halloween day and begins a murderous trek back to Haddonfield to continue his killing streak and seek resolution to events from his past.

The original "Halloween,” directed by legendary horror master John Carpenter and released on October 25, 1978, went on to gross $55 million in worldwide box office. It was the beginning of what would become one of the most successful, enduring, and influential horror franchises in film history, spawning eight films over 25 years and creating a legacy that would be duplicated in countless horror films to follow.

Rob Zombie’s "Halloween” stars Malcolm McDowell ("A Clockwork Orange,” HBO’s "Entourage,” NBC’s "Heroes”) as Dr. Samuel Loomis; Scout Taylor-Compton ("Sleepover”) as high school student Laurie Strode in the role made famous by Jamie Lee Curtis in the 1978 original; Oscar nominee Brad Dourif ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” "The Lord of the Rings,” HBO’s "Deadwood”) as Haddonfield’s Sheriff Brackett who tries to help Dr. Loomis apprehend Myers after his escape; wrestler-turned-actor Tyler Mane (Sabretooth in "X-Men,” "Troy”) as the adult Michael Myers; and newcomer Daeg Faerch as the young Michael Myers.

"Halloween” also reunited Rob Zombie with several cast members of his previous films including his wife Sheri Moon Zombie, William Forsythe, Ken Foree, Lew Temple, and Danny Trejo. Rounding out the supporting cast as Laurie Strode’s best friends are "Halloween” veteran Danielle Harris as Annie Brackett and Kristina Klebe as Lynda. Pat Skipper and Dee Wallace play Laurie’s parents.

The film also reunited Zombie with several of his "The Devil’s Rejects” collaborators including director of photography Phil Parmet, production designer Anthony Tremblay, composer Tyler Bates, special makeup effects artist Wayne Toth, and editor Glenn Garland. The talented behind the scenes team also features costume designer Mary McLeod ("88 minutes,” "Resident Evil: Apocalypse”).

Rob Zombie’s "Halloween” brings fresh excitement to the horror genre for both fans of the original and all the new fans. Here’s what Zombie had to tell us:

Q: You love horror and you have a long relationship with it. How does "Halloween” rank for you? Was it personal?

ROB ZOMBIE: That’s one of the questions I always get asked every time I do an interview. "What are your top 5 horror movies?” And I would always say "Halloween.” I always loved it. That was one of the best horror movies. It was always a special movie with me.

Q: Did you feel "Halloween” wouldn’t be "Halloween” without the original score?

ROB ZOMBIE: I wasn’t sure. When I was making the movie, I wasn’t really sure if we would use the John Carpenter score at all because I didn’t know if it would seem weird because it’s so iconic that maybe it would sound weird against this movie. You never know until you get into editing. But once we got into the editing of the movie and we started using some of John’s cues, it worked great.

Q: When Bob Weinstein first presented you with the idea of "Halloween,” how did you react? Were you apprehensive?

ROB ZOMBIE: It’s kind of like you just come into a room like this and you don’t even know what the meeting is about and they bring it up and I was like, "Uh, I don’t know.” I didn’t know what to say. I really had never thought about it before. They weren’t really proposing a remake to me necessarily. They were just proposing Halloween like "What do you think?” and I was like, "I don’t know. That’s a great movie. That’s what I think.” I didn’t really know what to tell them so I basically told them, ‘Well, that’s cool. Thanks for the offer. I’m gonna go away and think about it and see what I come up with.” I knew it was a great opportunity but I didn’t really know exactly how it was a great opportunity. That’s when I went home and thought about it and realized that the only way I wanted to do it is if it was essentially a remake because I wasn’t going to do a Halloween 9. That would be silly. And a prequel I didn’t know if that would be something I’d really want to do either. And that’s when I thought a remake but with an hour’s worth of back story that we’d never seen before and then I started percolating on that for a while and I got an idea and went back and pitched in my head. Wayne Toth, the effects guy, we made these maquettes – one of young Michael and one of sanitarium Michael and a classic Michael and that’s where I thought it could be really something different – to create a different Michael, kind of like the Michael that escapes with the orange mask and try to bring my own stamp to this so it wasn’t just going through the same beats that already exist.

Q: On "Masters of Horror” one of the few injunctions they got was you can’t show kids killing kids. Was anybody concerned about that sequence?

ROB ZOMBIE: No. In fact, that was always Bob Weinstein’s favorite part of the movie. [Laughs] It seemed to be the part he loved the most. I thought maybe the MPAA would have a problem with it because I thought, "Oh boy, how are they going to react to that?” We didn’t have to cut anything. They didn’t seem to care.

Q: You just went in and got an "R”?

ROB ZOMBIE: Yeah. Exactly. We didn’t trim anything.

Q: When you decided to take the gig, what was your thought process on what this film had to be, what you had to keep, and what you had to do differently?

ROB ZOMBIE: Well that was the constant journey, trying to figure out. It almost would have been easier if someone had some guidelines as to what they wanted to keep but nobody cared. Bob Weinstein didn’t even care if I kept the Michael Myers mask. He didn’t care about anything. He just wanted to make a whole new movie. He kept saying, "Make it different. Make it different. Make it your own movie.” So it was all up to me as to what I wanted to keep and I figured that I wanted to keep classic looking Michael Myers at some point in the movie because without that you would all be asking me the question "Why even call it ‘Halloween’?” So I knew I had to keep that. It’d be kind of like making "King Kong” but not actually having the gorilla. Part of the fun of a remake is revisiting Dr. Loomis and Laurie Strode and how you’re going to approach these characters 30 years later so then I decided well I’ll keep basically the John Carpenter moments in the third act and then sort of twist them around and keep acts one and two basically brand new.

Q: In an interview you said Bob Weinstein had no interest in protecting the franchise. That sounds like typical producer non-interest in the integrity of a project. Did that give you pause at all?

ROB ZOMBIE:Maybe that came out wrong. He wasn’t worried about what had gone before. He was just worried about what we were going to do now because the franchise is what it is. There it is. It’s not going anywhere. I think truthfully if you look at the franchise after the last one, Halloween 8, probably Halloween 9 was going to be a direct to video movie if they ever made it. That’s the way it seemed to me. So I think that’s why he was like we need a fresh new start to put this back up here, whereas it’s kind of sunk down to here. I think that’s why he was open to anything.

Q: Did the death of Moustapha Akkad affect anything?

ROB ZOMBIE: No. He died way before I ever got involved with this so I never even met him.

Q: Can you talk a little about casting Scout and what qualities she had that blew you away?

ROB ZOMBIE: Scout was the first person I ever met – I mean the first person I saw for Laurie Strode. I liked her right away. But I was like well maybe I’m just getting excited because it’s the first person I’ve seen. I went through a whole bunch of people and I kept going, "God, I still like Scout the best.” It was really funny because nobody but me could see it. Everyone was like, "She’s not the right girl.”

Q: What did you see?

ROB ZOMBIE: I don’t know. You just know it when you see it. There was something about her. She seemed really fresh. She seemed really sweet and likeable, but she seemed kind of tough. I don’t know. There was just some quality to her I really liked. Nobody saw it. I couldn’t get anyone on board with us. I thought "Oh my God.” So I just played the game of looking at every single girl and I put her on tape three times. She came back and read again and then I had her come back and read with Danielle Harris. Then I had her come back and I got my cinematographer to come in and we put her on film with the others. She was the last person we cast and we shot an entire scene with her. And then finally they agreed that she was the person but I think they agreed because we ran out of time. Now everyone loves her. Now that they’ve seen the movie, they’re like, "Oh my God, she’s absolutely phenomenal. We never realized it.” And I was like, "Well that’s why they hired me. It’s my job.”

Q: What about the decision to keep Laurie and Michael as brother and sister? I believe that’s not revealed in the Halloween movies until maybe the second film.

ROB ZOMBIE: Well what’s really funny about that and it sounds really stupid on my part is there’s nothing like that in the first movie. They brought that in the second movie. But I totally didn’t remember that from the second movie. I’ve seen "Halloween,” the first one, a million times. The second one, I’ve seen it but it was like a million years ago, like 20 years ago the last time I saw it. I totally didn’t remember that part of the movie so when I was writing it, I was thinking like "Oh, this is a cool twist.” And then realized, wait a minute, this isn’t something new. But I had totally forgotten that this was something that had taken place in part 2. But by that point I had already worked it out in my mind that what I wanted the journey of Michael Myers to be by the end of the movie is just him trying to in his own crazy mind put his entire family back together again at all costs. I mean he kills anything that gets in his way obviously because he doesn’t care. At the end of the movie, the headstone is the mother, the dead body of Linda is like Judith, and then he has the baby and they’re all in the house. In his crazy mind, that’s all good.

Q: Have you seen all the sequels?

ROB ZOMBIE: I don’t think I have actually. I know I’ve seen 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7, 8 maybe. [Laughs] I don’t know if I’ve seen 6 or 7. I don’t know.

Q: What about casting Danielle Harris? Was that on purpose?

ROB ZOMBIE: Actually Danielle Harris came in and read for the part of Annie. That was always the part she wanted to play. She didn’t want to play Laurie, she wanted to play Annie. My first response was I didn’t want to cast her because she’d been in parts 4 and 5 and I saw that as a minus. Nothing against any of the people from the other movies because I loved P.J. Soles and all his people, but I just thought it might make it seem like not a real movie, that we’re doing some kind of weird fan tribute to "Halloween.” So I didn’t want anyone who’s been in the other movies. But then obviously she‘s grown up a lot so she doesn’t look like a little girl anymore. I just watched all the tapes of all the girls that came in as Annie and I was like, "Fuck man, Danielle’s the best one.” So I cast her.

Q: You have a lot of people in the film who you’ve worked with previously. Did you write the script and then go who can I put in these parts? Or did you go I’d really like to work with these people? What kind of part can I put in there for them?

ROB ZOMBIE: A little of both. I always knew that I wanted Sheri to play Michael’s mom and I always knew I wanted William Forsythe to play the boyfriend. I always knew if Michael was going to steal his clothes from somebody, he needed somebody big and Ken Foree is about as big as Tyler so that made sense because I can’t have the 7 foot tall guy escape and just steal anybody’s clothes because he’d be walking around like short pants. So I knew Ken would be perfect. Danny Trejo I love. I wanted to work with him but I wanted him to be kind of a wimpy, nice guy – not like the tough guy that he always is. Eventually everyone seemed to find their way into the movie one way or the other. I don’t know how that happened.

Q: Had you been looking to work with Malcolm McDowell? Did you see him as the heir apparent to Donald Pleasance?

ROB ZOMBIE: I did.Yeah. It’s funny because strangely enough I had written a weird early version of "Devil’s Rejects” where I had another character in there that I wanted Malcolm McDowell to play. He doesn’t even know this, not that he cares, but then I rewrote the script a millions times and it went away. Malcolm was always on my list of people that I wanted to work with. When this came up, he was the first name that came into my mind and the only name.

Q: Do you have any intention of contributing to sequels?

ROB ZOMBIE: No, I just wanted to make this movie have a real ending even though no matter how you end a movie, somebody can figure out a way to start it back up again, but to me the movie has a great…it ends.

Q: If you’re not doing any sequels to this, do you have any other projects in mind that you’re working on right now?

ROB ZOMBIE: Yeah. I have some other things. The thing I’m finishing up right now is "The Haunted World of El Super Beasto,” the animated movie. The animation is finally done. So we’re just finishing up the music and sound effects and that stuff. That will probably be out early next year. And just trying to figure out what the next movie is. I’m playing around with a bunch of ideas that I’ve had for a while. I told something to Bob Weinstein that he totally wants to make but I’m not sure what I want to do with it yet. But he’s down for it. I won’t want to announce it yet. I hate announcing things early but the next movie is already in play.

Q: Is it another horror film?

ROB ZOMBIE: Kind of. I wrote this other script that’s not a horror movie that I want to do too, but I’m not sure if it’s the right time. I don’t know. I kind of want to wait until "Halloween” comes out and see. That will dictate what I want to do next.

Q: What kind of genre is the other script?

ROB ZOMBIE: It’s something more along the lines of a movie like "Ghost World” or something like that.

Q: What’s your biggest challenge on this? Was there something you didn’t expect to be a challenge? A difficult day? A difficult scene?

ROB ZOMBIE: The biggest challenge which is kind of a boring answer really was shooting in those South Pasadena neighborhoods because the nights were short and they just shut you down at a certain time so it’s like you’re filming and then it’s like you’re done. Like arghhhhh! I never felt like I got enough coverage anytime there was a nighttime scene and that was driving me crazy.

Q: Was there any concern that explaining the psychology of Michael Myers might detract from the boogeyman-ness of him?

ROB ZOMBIE: Well not for me because I was trying to detract from the boogeyman-ness of him because I thought that that was already beat to death. If only "Halloween” existed, it would be different, but with 8 films I feel that the boogeyman has had a good run. What I thought was scarier, and I always use this as an example, is one day I saw this A&E special on TV on Jeffrey Daumer and they were showing this Super 8 footage of him opening Christmas presents with his grandparents but he had already started killing people at that point. But there he is at Christmas with his nice shirt on opening Christmas presents with a head at home in the refrigerator and to me that seemed a lot freakier. Not because we don’t explain it or we don’t understand it but just that extra glimpse. Because I don’t really explain Michael Myers. We just give more of a glimpse of it. I thought that actually sometimes a little extra knowledge is actually scarier that none at all. I think it was beautiful the way it was in the John Carpenter movie but, like I said, that had already been done so I needed to find a new angle.

Q: Is there any difference in directing a child than directing an adult?

ROB ZOMBIE: Probably but I don’t really take a different approach. Since I don’t have kids and I’m never around kids, I always just talk to kids as if they’re adults. Fortunately, the kids in this movie are all really smart and there was really no other way to talk to them. Daeg who plays Michael is pretty mature for a 10-year-old and the other two kids are too. The girl (Jenny Gregg Stewart) who plays Lindsey Wallace is like, "Well I caught my third boyfriend cheating on me on My Space and I told him…” "What are you 40?” She’s like this tall, 10 years old and so it’s kind of hard to talk to them as kids because they’re so smart. And the kid (Skyler Gisondo) who plays Tommy Doyle was super smart so he was really great. I could give him any kind of complicated dialogue and he’d just spit it out in two seconds.

Q: A lot of your energy is going into filmmaking. Do you still think of yourself as a musician moonlighting as a filmmaker or are you a filmmaker who moonlights as a musician?

ROB ZOMBIE: At this point I think it’s 50 50. I do one project, like when I was doing "Halloween,” 100% Halloween, now it’s done. So I’ll go back on tour. To me, being a musician now is more like less the work load part of it, it’s more like I can do that to relax whereas filmmaking is much more intense and the focus has to be more intense. Going on tour and making music is easy.

Q: Do you feel like you are constantly growing as a director? Do you feel like you’re getting better? And also do you feel like the perception within the industry of you has changed at all?

ROB ZOMBIE: I think the perception changes. I definitely think I’m growing and getting better. The one thing that’s tricky is you always get better as you do things more but films take so long to make that you wish you could make 10 films a year and then you would get 10 times better, 10 times faster maybe. The first film the way I was describing it is complete insanity. "Oh my God, I’m making a movie. It’s complete insanity.” And then the second film you go, oh okay, now I feel like I’ve finally figured out how to harness this insanity and make it a little more of a solid vision. And by this third movie, you feel like you can really pinpoint the insanity and try to manipulate it. Basically, a movie is just manipulating these images to get an emotional response from people.

[Malcolm McDowell joins the interview]

Malcolm McDowell: (using spooky voice) These eyes.

Rob Zombie: There he is. Drunk again! [Laughs]

Malcolm McDowell: How was it to direct children?

Rob Zombie: Much easier than this character. [Laughter]

Malcolm McDowell: Are you kidding? You’ve never had such a good time on a movie.

Rob Zombie: [Laughs] That’s true. How about you?

Malcolm McDowell: It’s right up there. Are you kidding me?

Rob Zombie: This guy never stops laughing.

Malcolm McDowell: Oh God.

Q: So how was it directing Malcolm McDowell?

Rob Zombie: Well, the way I break it down is Malcolm’s probably sober two hours a day.

Malcolm McDowell: No, not even. [Laughter] Not even.

Rob Zombie: Clearly not now. So the early morning shoots were the best for you. After lunch you’re a little bit like [whistles].

Malcolm McDowell: Yeah, yeah. Gone! Gone!

Rob Zombie: [Laughs] So we had to shoot early. You can see some things in the sanitarium when we’re interviewing little Michael, he keeps pulling back.

Malcolm McDowell: That little creep.

Rob Zombie: [Laughs] I wish I was joking. Oh gosh, I am joking.

Malcolm McDowell: We had fun.

Rob Zombie: Yeah it was great. We had a good time. It’s serious work because you want to do something good, but you always want to have fun because if it’s not fun, what’s the point?

Q: Does having to do stuff like this change in any way how you evaluate the work or how you feel about the work?

ROB ZOMBIE: No, I feel I don’t always have answers for everything. [Laughs] So many of the decisions you make are sort of gut reactions at the time so that when people ask you these really in depth questions about things that were sometimes spontaneous decisions, you go, "Hmmm. I don’t know why I did that. I just did it.” It’s tricky sometimes.

Q: Is Debra named after Debra Hill?

ROB ZOMBIE: No. See that never crossed my mind. You would think that that would be a definite yes but see that didn’t cross my mind until right now when you said that.

Q: Can you talk about the state of horror these days? How do you react to what’s coming out?

ROB ZOMBIE: I really don’t care about the state of anything. I kind of just do my thing and go to the movies and I like some movies and I don’t like some movies. I’m not really looking to be part of a movement or start a movement or change anything. All I can really do is focus on the movie that I’m doing at the time.

Malcolm McDowell: It’s hard to make any movie, isn’t it?

ROB ZOMBIE: Yeah. [Laughs] Exactly. It’s a miracle any of them get made.

Q: What have you been a fan of recently?

ROB ZOMBIE: I don’t know. I know I’ve watched some great stuff. "Pan’s Labyrinth” was really good. I really liked that. I missed everything in the last year because I’ve been working on this so I’ve been catching up on DVDs.

Malcolm McDowell: "Lives of Others” he liked.

ROB ZOMBIE: Yeah. "Lives of Others” was good.

Malcolm McDowell: Great movie.

Q: What else?

ROB ZOMBIE: I really enjoyed "Rocky Balboa.” That was the best movie of the year.

Malcolm McDowell: Ohhhh!

ROB ZOMBIE: I did!

Malcolm McDowell: That is the difference between us. Right there.

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