Andrew Form, Brad Fuller Interview

We sit down with the producers of the new Friday the 13th remake to speak of its new terrors! MoviesOnline sat down with producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller to talk about their new movie, “Friday the 13th,” directed by Marcus Nispel and starring Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Aaron Yoo, Amanda Righetti, Travis Van Winkle and Derek Mears.

After the success of 2003's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," Platinum Dunes producers Michael Bay, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller reunited with Nispel to bring a new "Friday the 13th" to the screen. "Because 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' was so successful," notes Fuller, "Michael and Drew and I sat down and said, 'Are there any other titles that we loved when we were growing up?' That's when 'Friday the 13th' came into our minds." "We all felt it would be great to take the character of Jason Voorhees and bring him back to the screen," adds Form.

"We are horror fans first and producers second and we all grew up with and loved the 'Friday the 13th' films," explains Fuller. "They were fantastic and a lot of fun in their own way. They really created a subgenre within the horror genre that struck a cord with audiences. So when you are presented with the opportunity to make a movie like this, it's impossible to say no if you truly are a fan."

Fuller elaborates, "The greatest thing about the films was the experience of sitting in a theater with other people and being scared out of my mind. I went to a summer camp in Maine and one of the big reasons most people get so scared watching the films is because so many of us have had a summer camp experience or have gone camping."

Form and Fuller are partners at Platinum Dunes Productions. The company, which they established with Michael Bay in 2001, creates opportunities for first-time directors to make commercial, high-concept movies on modest budgets for a global audience. Their most recent release was "The Unborn," starring Gary Oldman and directed by David S. Goyer, and in 2009 they will release "The Horsemen," from director Jonas Akerlund, starring Dennis Quaid and Ziyi Zhang.

The partners' first production was the 2003 remake of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," directed by Marcus Nispel. The movie grossed more than $110 million worldwide, won the Teen Choice Award for Best Thriller and was nominated for two MTV Movie Awards. Their second project was the 2005 adaptation of "The Amityville Horror," which was directed by Andrew Douglas and also earned over $110 million worldwide.

Two more films quickly followed: the prequel "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning," directed by Jonathan Liebesman, and a re-conceptualization of the 1986 thriller "The Hitcher." It was during this collaboration that Platinum Dunes signed a first-look production deal with Rogue Pictures.

In 2004, Daily Variety included Form and Fuller among the "10 Producers to Watch," and in 2005 they were listed in Fade In's "The Top 100 in Hollywood." In addition to being two of the busiest producers in Hollywood, Form and Fuller find time to teach in the Producers Program at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television.

Andrew Form and Brad Fuller are fabulous guys and we really appreciated their time. Here’s what they had to tell us about “Friday the 13th”:

Q: The writers wouldn’t talk about what classic horror films haven’t been remade that they’d really like to do, so is there something out there that nobody’s touched yet that you guys would like to do?

Andrew Form: Well our next movie, “Nightmare on Elm Street.”

Brad Fuller: What do you mean that hasn’t been touched? That we haven’t molested it? (laughs)

Q: Nobody has. It just stayed in the 80s or wherever it was.

Brad Fuller: There are untouchable movies like “The Exorcist” in my opinion.

Andrew Form: And “Rosemary’s Baby.”

Brad Fuller: Yeah, those are kind of untouchable. We know that for a fact. So, no.

Q: Besides Elm Street, there’s really nothing?

Brad Fuller: No.

Andrew Form: Elm Street and “The Birds” are the only two other remakes that we are going to be involved with. That’s it.

Brad Fuller: Then we’re done.

Andrew Form: Then we’re done.

Brad Fuller: We’re killed.

Q: What about those cheesy effects? Somebody’s got to do that. It is Hitchcock.

Brad Fuller: Well hopefully.

Q: What was the casting call for a topless water skier?

Brad Fuller: That’s what it said:  topless water skier.

Andrew Form: I swear to you.

Q: Then the one person that can do that gets the part, right?

Andrew Form: That’s not true.

Brad Fuller: That is not true.

Andrew Form: She did not know how to do that when she showed up in Texas. We taught her how to wakeboard…

Brad Fuller: …take her shirt off or ski?

Andrew Form: No, no! I didn’t teach her that. Brian (Brian Witten, Executive Producer) is on it. It’s harder and harder to cast roles like that these days. I don’t mean the wakeboarding part. I mean when, you know…

Brad Fuller: …nudity…

Andrew Form: …when nudity is definitely involved in the part. It’s not that easy.

Brad Fuller: You know, what’s interesting about that is that we tested this movie once and you know the three of us – Michael (Bay), Drew and myself – are all, you know, we’re guys’ guys and we started thinking to ourselves, wow, this is going to be our first movie with nudity. We are going to go for it. We’re going to have nudity, we’re going to have it be like when we were kids. This is how we saw naked ladies for the first time. It was awesome. So we shoot the movie…

Andrew Form: Porky’s.

Brad Fuller: Porky’s. Ah Porky’s, thank you. We shot the movie and we do all of our nudity and we test the movie. That’s always a stressful thing. And the one thing that we felt bullet proof on was the kids were going to love the nudity in the movie. We were convinced that it was going to go over well, and the craziest thing was, the most hated thing about the movie in the first cut of the movie was that there was too much nudity. And the majority of those comments came from boys under 25 which was totally baffling, and ironically, the women had no problem with it, but boys under 25 did.

Andrew Form: By the way, there was a lot more nudity.

Brad Fuller: Yeah, there was a lot more nudity in the movie and the DVD will have a lot more nudity in it.

Q: Did you get an explanation from the focus group?

Brad Fuller: We have our own theory. You want to hear it? The theory is – and I’m serious and I’m a professor (laughs) – the theory is…

Andrew Form: You’re an Associate Professor.

Brad Fuller: The theory is that I think that when we were all growing up – I’m older than him (Andrew) – that the only place to see nudity when we were kids was to go to the movies like Porky’s or Hot Dog the Movie and things like that…

Andrew Form: …or Friday the 13th.

Brad Fuller: Or Friday the 13th. And nowadays, kids get it at home and it’s not the kind of thing that they are comfortable seeing in a room with a lot of other people. That’s my theory. So we pulled back on the nudity.

Andrew Form: But we know if you’re watching a DVD at home…(laughs)

Q: Is it just the same 3 scenes are longer or did you…?

Andrew Form: No, those are the only scenes.

Brad Fuller: The first cut of the wakeboarding scene was just her breasts and some water. So, that was it -- and a ski.

Andrew Form: Or a wakeboard. That was in the first cut of this.

Q: How hard was it to cast Derek Mears?

Andrew Form: That was easy.

Brad Fuller: That was actually one of the easiest roles.

Andrew Form: That was easy. He was easy.

Brad Fuller: The only guy.

Andrew Form: He was the only one.

Q: How did you know about him? Had he done some stuntwork in other films for you?

Brad Fuller: We’ve done a lot of movies with effects, you know, make-up effects, and the guys that have done that on all of our films, they know the people who are stuntmen who can do this type of thing and we’d had some experience with Chainsaw and ended up working with people and knowing what we were looking for and as soon as we met him, it was just done. He had the best attitude.

Andrew Form: Plus he’s the biggest fan of the franchise also.

Brad Fuller: It really made it great.

Q: He’s not scary in person at all?

Andrew Form: No, he’s such a sweet man, just a sweet man. But, you know what? It’s funny because when I met him, I was like, “Wow, he’s so nice.” And then he did his make-up and everything – but the way he wears the make-up, his whole face is still cut out because he wears a mask, you don’t have to make up that part. So, I was still talking to Derek and then finally he put the hockey mask on for the first time on set and he turned and looked at me and I was like, “Okay! We’re all good!”

Brad Fuller: But he has some dark parts in him. He must because – I haven’t seen them – but when he plays that character, he gets there.

Andrew Form: By the way, he’s stronger than you think. Those canoes were real. Those are real metal canoes he was throwing. He’s a very strong man. He’s like, “Let’s do it.” He was launching those things.

Q: What was the production nightmare in this? There had to be one thing that just went wrong.

Andrew Form: Well, nudity was a big nightmare. I’m not kidding you. It’s a challenging thing…

Brad Fuller: Well, it’s a hard to shoot thing. Are you talking about what was hard to film?

Q: What was the nightmare in production? I don’t mean just money-wise. Was there a horrible day, bad weather or what?

Brad Fuller: Every day was…

Andrew Form: Nudity is hard to shoot. You know the movie was a lot of nights -- weeks and weeks and weeks of going to work at 4pm and going home at 7 in the morning. All of our movies were like that, but especially a movie that takes place in the woods. You have the whole beginning which is all night outside. You can never shoot during the day for that and then, you know, that point 45 minutes into the movie, it’s all dark, the whole rest of it, so I think that’s hard for people. For me, I love it because the phone gets turned off at 10 o’clock at night and then all you can think about is the movie. Nobody is texting, no one is doing anything, and it’s so peaceful. I mean, I love working at night. I really do.

Brad Fuller: We both do.

Andrew Form: But it’s hard. Definitely at 3 or 4 in the morning, people start to get tired so it’s hard.

Q: Why is nudity hard to shoot?

Brad Fuller: Well you have to clear a set.

Andrew Form: It’s uncomfortable, you know.

Brad Fuller: You want the girl to feel comfortable and it’s just not like a natural thing. We see it in the movies and it always looks a certain way, then when you’re shooting it, you feel, I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel natural.

Andrew Form: There are 3 people in the room, if that. And no one looks at the monitors. You’re very respectful so it’s hard. You set up and then everyone leaves and then when you have to reset, everyone comes back in and it’s a longer process.

Q: The Friday sequels originally used to have a prologue where the survivor of the last one gets killed. So, do you have an option for the survivors of this one to come back and get killed in the next one?

Brad Fuller: We haven’t thought about doing a next one so I don’t know. I guess we could but we haven’t really given it any thought.

Q: Well, it’s set up so you can.

Brad Fuller: Yes. We just hope we get to make another one.

Andrew Form: We loved making it.

Q: Well there were 10 after the original, how could you not? They were famous for being the most sequelized horror movie.

Brad Fuller: Yeah.

Q: There’s a lot of pressure too because then it would be the 13th. You’d have to make it something huge.

Andrew Form: He’d have to be like 60 feet tall or something.

Brad Fuller: Listen, we’re being a little cryptic because we don’t want to talk about a sequel until we know how this movie does. Feel free to call us. If it opens well, we’ll take calls from all of you. We love those calls but you never know how it’s going to do so…

Q: There was a super fan who won a contest in the screening that I was in. The super fans have seen all of them. I guess he’s probably about 18…

Brad Fuller: He loved it?

Q: Yeah.

Brad Fuller: I’m glad to hear that.

Andrew Form: That’s good.

Brad Fuller: We worked our ass off on that one.

Andrew Form: It was a hard one.

Q: The first Friday was an independent effort. The second film, that’s when (Frank) Mancuso and the studio started getting involved. But you guys were still producing somewhat on the fringe of independent movies. I mean, this thing that Brad, Damian (Shannon) and Mark (Swift) were talking about, there were certain scenes that couldn’t be shot due to budget and stuff like that. Also, I know before you guys got started you had to wade through a lot of legal stuff. Did the studio check in on their property every once and a while? 

Brad Fuller: Here’s the thing, when we make our films traditionally, the movie is a negative pick-up which means that it’s not a straight ahead studio movie so you generally don’t get the same interaction with the studio.

Andrew Form: Until marketing comes in, and then it’s a full studio movie.

Brad Fuller: As producers, we’ve heard the stories where the studio comes in and they’re horrible and they ruin the movie or whatever. We’ve never had that. I mean, the studios have always been respectful.

Andrew Form: We’ve had one bad note from a studio in all of our films. We had Texas Chainsaw I, a studio executive showed up on set and was watching. We were almost done filming the movie and he said to us, “I think there’s too much smoke coming out of that chainsaw.”

Brad Fuller: And I said, “I’ll get right on it.” Smoke it up!! But for the most part, you know, listen, you get crazy notes from people. There was someone involved in this movie. (to Brad) Should I even say this, that they were…?

Andrew Form: I don’t even know what you’re going to say.

Brad Fuller: Someone involved in this movie…

Andrew Form: Was it me?

Brad Fuller: …and it wasn’t you. But I won’t say who, probably on the crew, but someone felt that the scene of the guy when he’s going through the catalog and the whole….

Andrew Form: Oh yes!

Brad Fuller: Someone who saw the movie said, “I think you might want to remove that scene.”

Andrew Form: It’s one of my favorite scenes in the movie.

Q: I thought that was funny!

Brad Fuller: He nailed it!

Andrew Form: Every time it was just as funny.

Brad Fuller: That’s a huge laugh every single time.

Andrew Form: The coffee mug is funny.

Q: I love how he can’t find anything because it’s a winter catalog.

Brad Fuller: But that’s what’s funny about it. For the most part, we’ve never had bad studio – I even hate saying it because now I’m going to bring it on but we’ve really never had it.

Andrew Form: Here it comes.

Brad Fuller: And it’s going to be hard on “Nightmare on Elm Street” because that to New Line is – I mean, that’s their “Batman.” But fortunately, New Line has made how many movies with us now? Three? Four?

Andrew Form: Three. This is our fourth.

Brad Fuller: This is our fourth. So we kind of know how each other works.

Q: What’s the biggest challenge you face when you’re rebooting a franchise?

Brad Fuller: (looking at Andrew) Working with him. That is hard.

Andrew Form: It’s nerve-wracking taking on a character that is so iconic. Jason alone – I haven’t told the story about development, have I?

Brad Fuller: No, go ahead.

Andrew Form: I just want to make sure. (laughs) You know, it was 2-1/2 years of development on this project. Mark and Damian were the third writers on the movie. We started this process and I think we were at a place where it was Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Jason which was so the wrong movie to make and it took 2-1/2 years to figure out the tone, what the movie is, where do you set it, how do you take the elements of what you … It can’t be a remake because Jason’s not in the original until the last shot in the movie, so how do you take the elements from one, two and three? We knew how iconic the hockey mask was, we loved the sack, we put them all into a movie, so it’s really, really hard. It’s not like we’re going to remake Friday the 13th, the script shows up, and we go to Camp Crystal Lake. It was the opposite of that. I mean, it was really hard for us to get a handle on what this movie was going to be and especially the tone because we wanted to make a fun movie. We didn’t want to make a torture movie. It’s not Jason, it’s not Friday the 13th.

Brad Fuller: So, to answer your question, I think the quick answer is the tone was the hardest part for us to nail, the tone of the film.

Q: What’s the latest on Nightmare?

Brad Fuller: We’re getting closer to finding a director. We have a script that we are working from – I don’t think it’s the final shooting script, but we have a script that we’re working from – and we hope to be shooting the movie in 12 weeks from now.

Q: Any pursuit of actors for Freddy yet?

Brad Fuller: Here’s the crazy part. We are getting incoming calls for the first time in our career with actors of real caliber and quality who are pursuing that role which is absolutely astonishing to us.

Q: Wouldn’t you consider Marcus (Nispel) who has done such a great job for you?

Brad Fuller: You know what? It’s not that we wouldn’t consider Marcus. You know, Marcus is going to be a big director after this. The budget on that movie is fixed and I don’t know that we can afford him. He’s a big dude now.

Andrew Form: So is Dan Maloney.

Brad Fuller: (laughs) So is Dan Maloney.

Q: So did you talk at all to Robert Englund, the original Freddy?

Brad Fuller: He doesn’t want to do it. He’s not interested.

Andrew Form: By the way, we’d love to have him be a part of the film but we know that he doesn’t want to. It’s time for him to retire Freddy.

Q: What’s going to sell the new Nightmare? Is it going to be the name value they put underneath the make-up or are you guys willing to open the door to somebody new?

Brad Fuller: I don’t think...

Andrew Form: Yeah. I don’t think the name value has anything to do with it.

Brad Fuller: I didn’t say it because I’m happy that Robert DeNiro wants to play Freddy Krueger. It’s not that. I’m excited that there are actors of a great quality who are interested in stepping into this.

Q: But isn’t it tempting to be enticed by that and thinking it could be Robert DeNiro who wanted the role?
Andrew Form: Right.
Brad Fuller: [impersonating DeNiro from Taxi Driver] You talking to me? 
Andrew Form: That’s actually one of the funniest things you’ve ever said.
Q: Have you been able to get Martin Campbell for “The Birds”?
Brad Fuller: Well, we’ve been having meetings with Martin. We had a meeting with him last week. We are inching closer. He’s in post on his movie that he just directed so it’s taking a little bit longer because he’s in the middle of that. We’re getting closer on a script. I mean, that’s a huge movie. That’s like all of our movies put into one so it’s a big undertaking and that’s why it’s taking so long.

Q: I understand you taught in the Producers Program at UCLA last Fall.

Andrew Form: We taught a genre class.

Brad Fuller: Yeah, we did.

Q: How was the experience?

Brad Fuller: We loved it. We’d love to do it again.

Andrew Form: We can’t wait to do it again.

Q: What did you learn?

Brad Fuller: We learned more than I think the kids do. It was kind of like having our own focus group every week. We brought in our commercials and our posters and scenes from movies and we would talk about them and what makes it great and what makes it horrible and they would pitch their ideas and we would listen to it. It was really, really gratifying for us.

Andrew Form: Yeah, it was a great experience. We’d love to [do it again].

Brad Fuller: Yeah, we’re going to do it again.

Andrew Form: Maybe next year.

Brad Fuller: We’ve just got to figure out a time frame.

Andrew Form: Yeah. We have to get between movies so we can commit to it.

Brad Fuller: So you can call us professors if you like. (laughs)

Andrew Form: Visiting Associate Professors.

Brad Fuller: Yes, exactly.