Interview: Sam Raimi Drag Me To Hell

Though Sam Raimi has spent the better part of the past decade bringing the blockbuster Spider-Man series to the screen, the director rose to cult status with his Evil Dead trilogy.  With those influential films, he helped audiences embrace the shocking spectacle and dark humor that defined his horror brand and inspired a new generation of writers and directors to push the limits of the genre itself. In 2009, he returns to horror with Drag Me to Hell, an original tale of a young woman’s desperate quest to break an evil curse. 
 
Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is an ambitious L.A. loan officer with a charming boyfriend, professor Clay Dalton (Justin Long).  Life is good until the mysterious Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) arrives at the bank to beg for an extension on her home loan.  Should Christine follow her instincts and give the old woman a break?  Or should she deny the extension to impress her boss, Mr. Jacks (David Paymer), and get a leg-up on a promotion?  Christine fatefully chooses the latter, shaming Mrs. Ganush and dispossessing her of her home. 
 
In retaliation, the old woman places the powerful curse of the Lamia on Christine, transforming her life into a living hell.  Haunted by an evil spirit and misunderstood by a skeptical boyfriend, she seeks the aid of seer Rham Jas (Dileep Rao) to save her soul from eternal damnation.  To help the shattered Christine return her life to normal, the psychic sets her on a frantic course to reverse the spell.  As evil forces close in, Christine must face the unthinkable: how far will she go to break free of the curse? 
 
MoviesOnline sat down with Sam Raimi to talk about his new horror film which opens May 29th. He’s a master of the genre and we really appreciated his time. Here’s what he had to tell us:

Q: This film is a return to what you are known for, isn’t it?

Sam: That’s right. I started out in the horror business, making my first feature, Evil Dead. I was shooting it back in 1979, but it didn’t come out until 1982. So, it is a return to that genre for me.
 
Q: After doing the Spider-Man films, is it hard to go back to a smaller film like this? Did you envision bigger special effects that you couldn’t do?

Sam: Absolutely, yeah. I was used to having a very good, healthy budget, and I could do anything I wanted in those Spider-Man films with the visual effects and the size of the set that I needed to build to get a particular shot. I remember, a number of times, when I would work on these shots, my production designer and my producer would come to me saying, “We can’t afford to build all that. We’ve got to keep it a lot smaller.” When we were on the shooting days, I remember that oftentimes my assistant director would come to me and say, “Sam, you’ve got seven or eight shots here, and you’ve got an hour left of daylight, so what are you going to do?” I’d say, “Don’t worry, we’ll come back tomorrow and get it,” and he said, “We’re not coming back tomorrow. You’re never coming back here. Your schedule is this, and you’re going to have to finish in one hour. In fact, you’ve got 58 minutes, after asking me about that.” And so, I was reminded as to the conditions that most filmmakers work under, which is to just keep it a little tighter and cut down that coverage. But, it was invigorating ‘cause I was confronted with the question, “What is the core of this scene, anyways? What are the basics?” And, I was reminded that the basics are the actors and the story they’re telling, and I can probably get what I need with one close-up of my actors.
 
Q: You manage to draw on your vast knowledge of classic horror without ripping it off. Can you comment on that?

Sam: I love great, old, classic horror films. I love James Whale’s work. Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein are two of my favorites. I was really inspired, with this film, and I tried to pay tribute to the work of Jacques Tourneur, the great French filmmaker. He made a movie called Eyes Without a Face. For this film, I was inspired by Curse of the Demon, which is a lesser known film. That was great! I was inspired by those filmmakers, and I tried to take everything I knew, not just from the horror films that I had made, but also from the dramas that I had made, and all that the actors had taught me, and tried to put it all to work in this spooky story.
 
Q: How did you collaborate with your production designer and your visual effects team to create the look of the film?

Sam: For me, it always starts with the main character. Who are they? What journey are they going to take on this picture? This was all about the character of Christine, played by Alison Lohman, and it starts with what she wants and the sin that she commits. But, after that moment, it’s all about this thing that is coming for her and this deadline that is approaching, and her getting more and more desperate to beat this thing from Hell, before her time is up. And so, I felt that most of the picture should be seen the way that she sees it, so we feel that growing desperation. I really wanted the audience to identify with her, which is why I tried to present her as such a likeable character, up front, who is sweet and pleasant and has goals and a nice boyfriend. And, I wanted to present the old woman as an ugly, funny, miserable thing you wanted away from your desk because I wanted the audience to take this sin with her and make this choice with Christine. I felt that, once they could make that sin with her and make the choice to throw the old woman out of the house, they couldn’t detach from the character and what was happening to her because, no matter how much they detach, they made that choice with her and this thing is coming, not just for her, but for them. And, they deserve that fate too ‘cause they were in on the choice, even though they survived the picture. So, I wanted the audience to feel what she felt, so I wanted the camera and the feeling of the movie to get more and more desperate, more ragged, more contrast put into the picture, as the picture progressed, and more hard-edged images and no diffusion filters or softness or pretty shots, by the end. I just wanted it harder and harder lit, and harder looking and feeling, with less and less dolly shots and tripods, and more rough edges.
 
Q: Does your budget inform the style for you?

Sam: Probably. I think the budget does have something to do with the style. It’s good that it’s the story of a sinful girl who gets desperate. I think a low budget embraces a style that will support that story.
 
Q: Is it more fun for you and the actors to have something actually there on set?

Sam: Absolutely! There’s nothing like it for a director or an actor to actually be able to see what it is that they’re reacting to. So often, when you have an actor just against a green screen, it’s not that they can’t imagine what you want them to imagine, it’s just that in post-production, when the animation artist is there, they have their own imagination. They weren’t with the director and the actor, in that moment, and they are still doing something that’s separate. Even though they’re compositing it and trying to make it look like it’s fitting the eyeline, it’s an after-thought. Acting is reacting, and the best performance is one where the actor can see and feel something and react to it. If the thing is put in later, there’s a dichotomy that the audience subconsciously picks up on that seems not real to them.
 
Q: What was it about Alison Lohman that made you want to cast her in this film?

Sam: She was put on a list for me to consider. I had a great casting director who gave me suggestions and when I saw Alison’s name on his suggested list, I just jumped at the chance to try to convince her to take the role. I loved her performance so much in Matchstick Men, where she played the con-woman. She was strikingly original in that. She’s real and she can earn your sympathies, and I needed a certain amount of manipulation of the audience for this because she’s actually a bad girl who does some terrible things, but who I want the audience, at first, to like. She has a quality about her that really made me like her, in that picture. I can’t say whether it’s her eyes or some positive personality she has, but something about her, on film, makes me like her, and I really wanted that. I wanted the audience to connect with her and be with her when she makes that sinful choice. We wanted a character that we could all identify with, and yet she’s a sinner and she sins out of greed for her own betterment, at the expense of the old lady. But, she has a humanity in her. Like the rest of us, she’s a flawed character. She wants to be good, but she’s just a weak person. And, I think there is goodness in her, like in everyone, but it’s a question of what you’re ultimately going to let rule the choices in your life.
 
Q: What made you chose Justin Long to play a more serious role like this?

Sam: I had seen him in a series of Macintosh commercials, and also Dodgeball and one other film, which I can’t remember the name of. I hadn’t seen all of his work, by a long shot, but I always knew he was a great comedian and also a great actor. I needed the audience to connect with Alison. I wanted them to understand that she likes this fellow and I wanted him to be a worthy goal ‘cause she’s going to sin to impress his parents, so that she can win him. I really didn’t want anyone in the audience to say, “You’re going to do this for him?” I really wanted them to say, “Quick! Do it quick, so you can be with Justin, who’s funny and charming and lovely.” He’s like that in real life, but he’s also able to bring those qualities into his character. There’s an intelligence about him. What’s great about him is that he’s able to play the part, and then live in his character’s body and see things with a sense of humor through his character’s eyes, and comment on things in the scene that may be absurd, through his character’s eyes. That’s not the same as Justin. He’s a great actor, in that way.
 
Q: Can you talk about casting Lorna Raver?

Sam: She’s just a really nice lady and a really good actress. She’s got a lot of New York theater experience and she was really committed to the role. She did a lot of research and really worked on that dialect with a really great coach that she found. She really just developed this character into somebody who had some intensity to her because she grounded her in reality first. I really liked working with her.
 
Q: Were there any scenes that you shot that got cut, but might end up on the DVD?

Sam: Not many, honestly. There’s about six seconds difference in the R-rated version than the PG-13 version. In the scene in the automobile where Christine and Mrs. Ganush struggle, Alison Lohman’s character hit the old lady with another staple in the forehead. The ratings board had us take out some of the old woman suckling on Alison’s face. I had a few more shots of that and they mercifully removed some of those. With the amount of blood, I had to use some lesser takes, when it’s coming out of Christine’s nose.
 
Q: Will there be an unrated director’s cut on DVD?

Sam: I don’t know if there’s enough to merit that.
 
Q: When you started this, was it always going to be PG-13?

Sam: Yes, our goal was always to make it PG-13. I had made horror films in the past that were actually unrated films because they were so bloody and intense, and we purposely went out unrated. But, in this case, that was not the goal. This was a story of a character who’s a sinner, who chooses to sin out of greed, and the price she eventually pays for it. It wasn’t just about the blood. It was about trying to scare the audience, and give them laughs and thrills, but it wasn’t about the blood. I had done that particular thing before. And, I think that thinking led into not showing certain things. Because it was about the descent of this character, it was about her choices versus the gore of those things. 
 
Q: What did you enjoy most about making this film?

Sam: I enjoyed working with Alison, Justin and Lorna. The whole team was a very close group of people. The movie itself is like a ghost story you tell around a campfire, and these people were like the guys in the sleeping bags that would be sharing the story with me, as we’re trading it off, back and forth. They were really good collaborators and really got into the spirit of fun for the film.
 
Q: Was the car scene the hardest scene for you to shoot?

Sam: It was the toughest, technically, to shoot ‘cause there were so many little pieces that went into making that scene, and it went on and on and on. We had a car that could break apart in a lot of different ways to be able to get the cameras in there to get these unusual and different angles from what you can usually get, just taking the doors off a car. Physically, I really put Alison through a lot of hell in the scene where the spirit throws her around the room. She must have just felt all beat up, after that. Or, it was when I buried her alive, under 800 pounds of mud. I’m not sure which was the hardest.
 
Q: Did anything strange happen during filming?

Sam: Nothing weird happened to me.
 
Q: This script is incredibly tight, but it allows for breathing room for comic timing. Can you talk about the scripting process?

Sam: Rather than make a screenplay that’s meant to be read and enjoyed, we really tried to do what we usually do, and that is make a blueprint for a movie. Our screenplays are not great reading, but they’re like an architectural plan for me, as a director, as to how to build this thing. We tried to be as lean and as efficient as we could be and, like always, we learned that we weren’t lean and efficient enough, and I would have to cut things out and tighten things up. Mostly, I would sit in the audience and listen and learn that the audience didn’t need all that stuff. They would get it. The audience is always so much smarter than I could ever imagine.
 
Q: Have you given any thought to doing a sequel for this film?

Sam: It’s always possible that they can make a sequel, but I don’t have any plans for one.
 
Q: Having recharged your batteries on this film, do you feel like you’ll be carrying something into Spider-Man 4 that you wouldn’t have otherwise?

Sam: Yes. I think I was humbled and I learned about the basics again, like I did as a young filmmaker, and I’m excited to bring that clarity to the next Spider-Man story.
 
Q: Are you working on that now?

Sam: The writer, David Lindsay-Abaire, a New York playwright, is in New York, supposedly writing the script. Can I use your phone to check?
 
Q: How overwhelming is it to do another film when the first three have been so successful?

Sam: I’m hoping people like the new one, but I haven’t read it yet.
         
Q: Is everybody contracted to come back for another film?

Sam: I know Tobey Maguire is in it. And, at least in discussions about the story, I’ve asked that Kirsten Dunst be in it. But, I have to read it to tell you everything.
 
Q: What’s going on with Evil Dead 4?

Sam: Right now, I don’t have anything new to say about Evil Dead 4. In the past, I’ve talked about it, but I honestly haven’t been working on it in the last year. I’ve just been racing to finish Drag Me to Hell.

“Drag Me to Hell” opens in theaters on May 29, 2009.