Black Phone 2: An Interview with Scott Derrickson

Well, today we have a very special guest.

We have a modern master of supernatural horror.

We have director Scott Derrickson, director of Black Phone, Black Phone 2, Doctor Strange, Sinister, The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

Black Phone 2 is, of course, your next movie out.

Sir, how are you today?

I am great.

Very happy to be here with you, cheerful fellows.

Cheerful?

No, we haven't been described described as cheerful in a long time.

Normally, like,

I've been, uh, people told me that I'm fatter than they thought.

Dude,

I would not use the word dour to describe what I've seen thus far.

Thank you.

Can I ask you a straight up?

Um, if you love Ethan Hawk so much, why don't you marry him?

I have married him.

Uh, that's uh that's what this is about, right?

It's about my marriage to Ethan Hawk.

I love Ethan Hawk so much.

I would marry him, but but he's already married and so am i so we just make movies together open it up it always works

never doesn't work

nothing bad happens when you open up a marriage

it always works out you have an amazing horror icon on your hands with Ethan

as the grabber.

My God.

Isn't he awesome?

He's so awesome.

It is just when you go about like when you started making this process, like when you were, because you worked on Hellraiser films of you've worked with horror icon IP style before and then you created an original sort of character like that in Sinister 2 when you are in black phone when you're creating the grabber is there like a conversation about this is like a horror icon that's going to stick around and how do we build this out

I mean, you can't think about it that way.

What I will say is that I didn't think much about the mask at all.

I came late to that party because I had written the script for the first movie.

We were in pre-production and I remember sitting down at my desk very early on, like the first week, and I was looking at it and I was like, okay, and I was, and it hit me all at once.

I was like, holy shit, if this mask isn't awesome, this movie will fail.

The mask is what they're going to market with.

Ethan's wearing it in every scene.

And so I think I had eight weeks of pre-production and I spent most of that time working on that mask, coming up with what it would be and getting the details right, and the idea of splitting it in half and all that, because

it wasn't until we were in pre-production that I realized how important it would be.

But you don't start off going, I'm going to make a horror icon.

I mean, you can do that, but it won't work.

Yeah.

You know, you have to, you have to make a great movie and have some good design in it.

And, and if you're lucky, it, it, it works.

And then, you know, in this case, it's playing out pretty well.

Yeah, I mean, the idea of changing out the bottom of the mask to reflect his emotions like that that's my that's my favorite part of the characters you know going from frowny grabber to smiley grabber

i like cheered i was like yeah

And you got a little of the no-mouth, you know, in there as well.

You know, don't forget the faceless, the mouthless mask.

Well, I didn't want to do any spoilers.

Technically, it's my favorite grabber.

Yeah.

No mouse grabber is kind of my favorite grabber yeah no mouth no mouth grabber it's like the it's like that kid in uh in uh the twilight zone movie that takes his sister's mouth away i think it probably came from that that haunted me that's

horrifying for horrifying entire childhood that movie scared the shit out of me oh it's terrifying it's terrifying it's great movie but it is very upsetting when you're you see that if you see that movie too young yeah which most people do you have like a concurrent theme in a lot of your movies about

like a youthful vision of what is frightening of like from a perspective almost of like what is frightening like when when you go to write a horror movie especially in stuff like this like do you just like are these images from your head that you put forward into the movie like like like how do you capture so well

like that idea of something that's inherently frightening, objectively frightening, something that's like almost from our nightmares.

Yeah, you know, it's funny.

Different directors, different horror directors would answer that question very differently.

You know, everybody's different.

And I think

some of my favorite horror directors are kind of puppet masters.

They love the manipulation of it.

They're very clever and very craftsman-like with it.

And

I come at it from the position or the perspective of trying to find something that scares me.

Like if it scares me,

I'm a pretty good audience member.

If I'm if I find it frightening, I expect other people to find it frightening.

So I always work from that place.

Like I just keep working at stuff until it's scary to me.

And I'm like, you know,

there's some images in Black Phone 2.

Even as I was working, you know, on the sound mix, I'd seen some of these shots, you know,

hundreds of times.

And every time I'd see it, I'd be like, oh, God, that's so wrong.

You know?

Well, I know that these movies are very personal to you, Black Phone and Black Phone 2.

They are very personal.

That's true.

Yeah,

it definitely is all stemming from

my childhood and middle school and high school years.

Yeah, because you're from Denver, correct?

I am.

Yeah, I'm from North Denver.

I mean, from, I really did the best I could in the first movie to recreate the feeling of the neighborhood I grew up in.

Yeah, is that from like, you're from like Nohiladiso?

I have no idea what you you just did.

You know how like in Denver, it's all like they have like no pasa.

They have like all the crazy, like they have the acronyms for all the neighborhoods.

Oh, right.

No, I grew up in.

That's what that was?

Yes.

Yes.

You had a lot of faith.

You had a lot of faith in me that I would get that.

Hey, we got there.

After you explained what it was.

Hold on.

No, I grew up in an area called Shaw Heights and Federal Heights in North Denver.

So it was this kind of working class, kind of grim, you know,

more on the outskirts kind of area.

And,

you know, the thing I worked hardest for, sounds so weird, but the chain link fences were the main thing I really wanted to focus on in the first movie.

The way they always had the spiky tops on them, and I just, people were getting ripped on those all the time and cut on them, you know, and

there was a lot of bleeding that went on when I was a kid from everybody.

You know, it was just kind of that, that was the neighborhood, you know.

Were there any like crimes when you were a kid that kind of inspired anything about the grabber?

Oh, oh, yeah, for sure.

I spoke to one of the Manson murderers on the phone when I was like eight because

I spoke to Susan Atkins on the phone because my mother had done a handful of freelance

not-for-pay book reviews for the Denver Post.

And one of them was this book that Susan Atkins had wrote called Child of Satan, Child of God.

And she wrote a book review of it.

I don't know if it ever was printed, but Susan Atkins called our house.

I was eight.

And I answered the phone.

And my mom wasn't home.

So I chatted with her for a little.

And of course, at that time, I knew who the Helter Skelter, the movie, had come out.

The book was very popular.

Kids in my school were reading it, which is crazy.

But also, Ted Bundy had just killed a bunch of women in Colorado when I was a kid.

And

he escaped in Colorado.

That was when he jumped

out the window of the law library.

Yeah, he was in full berserker mode.

Then he ran down to Florida.

And there's also this.

I shouldn't say this with a smile.

I think I was nine or 10.

I don't remember exactly what year, but my next-door neighbor knocked on my door and I opened it.

And he said, someone murdered my mom.

And that had happened.

And his mother had been kidnapped and and sexually assaulted and bound up in telephone wire and thrown in the local lake

so there was

so the and and and the satanic panic was happening and kids were getting the milk carton thing was starting i think they're the feel the feeling of like you're gonna die from a from a a strange killer was just everywhere dude when i was a kid

you just fully explained the vibe of all of your films yeah yeah i think there's a lot of truth to that Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I would imagine the paper boy and black five.

I mean, that's a, is that a Johnny Gosh reference, you know, with the dog and so on?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

That was probably where that came from.

I don't remember.

It was

the sense of kids being snatched was a real thing and it was happening

in Denver at that time, in North Denver at that time.

And of course, the satanic panic thing, a lot of that wasn't real, but the abduction phenomenon was very real.

And the stranger danger, that's the phrase

of like the mid-70s to early 80s.

That idea of cops coming to your school and talking to you about how you avoid

getting killed by a strange person who steals you into their van.

Yeah, and then sometimes though,

every once in a while they do take you to Los Angeles and you do lead an incredible life.

But it's a very small percentage.

Very, very small.

Every once in a while, worth it.

Worth it.

Worth it.

Do you feel like you're...

So when you're making this movie, when you're talking, when you're creating the grabber, like, does all of this feed into it?

Like, Black Phone 2, I'm not going to probably say, this is not too much of a spoiler, but there's a little bit more into the grabber's past.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I think that you have to do that.

You know, I think that the balance you got to strike if you're going to try to make a good horror sequel is you can't just regurgitate the first movie and, you know, and sort of give people the same thing

in a different package, but essentially the same experience.

We've all seen horror sequels like that, and they're pretty unsatisfying.

But the other mistake you can make is veering too far off, you know, and doing something that's too...

too off the mark of what people liked about the first one.

So there's always an option.

You can always put it in space.

Well,

space is is is is where you go when you've run out of ideas yeah you know that's when when you get desperate go to space you know and uh because it never doesn't work

every every although i do think the kill and i is it which is the which is the friday the 13th that that has the the frozen face kill is that i think that's jason x i think it's jason x that yeah that frozen face kill might be my favorite serial killer kill in film history it's incredible jason X breaks the space spell.

That's what I do believe.

I think it breaks the curse.

That's the one.

Although I'm always,

I have a soft spot in my heart for Critters 4, but that's just me.

Okay.

That is literally just him.

When you,

is there a difference?

Like, obviously, there's a difference besides just money and respect of making your own sequel to your own hit film and then making, or when you made Hellraiser early on in your career?

like, what are the major differences besides everything?

I mean, you know, that first movie was, you know, the Hellraiser movie that I did, I did because I got a chance to make a movie and I did it, you know, and

it, you know, it has a, it's developed a pretty nice little cult following.

You know, there's a lot of people who really like that movie, who are

fans of the franchise.

No, Hellraiser has my favorite, is my favorite franchise.

Yeah.

Oh, wait, that tells me a lot about you.

So, so Hellraiser 5 is

probably either your third favorite in the franchise or like your ninth favorite in the franchise.

That's my experience with most Hellraiser fans about that one, you know?

But

it was when you're dealing with existing IP that you're like versus the stuff that you created, what exactly are like the differences there?

Like

the internal

working with existing IP is is um

is is always the primary challenge i think of doing that you know is to figure out to to what degree can i uh respect this to what degree can i venture out on my own and um i mean even with doctor strange

i think that probably one of the reasons why i got that job was because i liked i liked the comic so much and i particularly like stephen didko's early renderings of the visuals that he drew were art art.

I mean, high art, in my opinion.

And still, my favorite comic book panels are from those early Ditco Doctor Strange comics.

And a lot of what I did in that movie was directly pulled from there.

You know, so if you've got IP that you're in love with, you know, then you, then you, or look at like what

Zack Snyder did with 300.

You know, I think I heard a story about him meeting, the first production meeting.

He just held up the book by Frank Miller and said, we're making this.

And he, and that's what he did, you know?

So I think that, you know, with Hellraiser, honestly, I wasn't a big fan of the franchise.

I really loved Barker's original film.

I thought Barker's first movie, there's nothing, there's still nothing like it.

There's a transgressive, alien-like, sci-fi, mystical, religious,

just

super transgressive quality to that movie that doesn't feel like anything else that's ever been made.

Yeah.

You know,

yeah, and then Hellraiser 3, you got CD head.

Then you got CD head.

He's flying through the club.

And then you've got his face.

And then after that, they were like, let's call Derekson.

He's never made a movie.

Were you just a writer at that point?

Were you writing?

Just a writer at that point.

They were looking for baby writers.

I mean, it was the Weinsteins that bought the franchise.

And I can't believe this is what we're talking about.

they they bought they had bought the franchise and and were looking for like young writers to write a script to boot up a direct-to-video franchise for them you know so it was intended to be exactly that because there was a big market for that kind of of direct-to-video work at that time direct-to-dvd oh yeah i remember no i remember oh yeah so and so uh i've just pitched them an idea that i thought they would never go for and they really liked it.

Here's what I'll say about that movie.

The script that my old writing partner, Paul Bortman, and I wrote, that script is better than the movie I made.

The script is really good.

And, you know, it was a little ambitious.

I didn't know what the difference was, you know, but

I wrote a $30 million movie that I got to make for $1.8 million.

That's amazing, though.

So with Macphone 2, are you essentially pitching to yourself?

Like, when you're making this movie, do you get to be like, I am me, Joe Hill?

And we get to create this however we want to?

Or is it the, do you have to still get like piles of approval and stuff from up top?

It's a good question.

You know,

on the first Black Phone, the movie was small enough that I don't think anybody from Universal ever gave me any notes on that script or the movie.

I think they just were like, yeah, just give us the movie.

We'll put it out

because it wasn't a big risk.

And then this movie.

I knew I was writing it to be bigger and a little more expensive.

Not super expensive, but, you know, more expensive.

But I think more importantly,

Universal and Blumhouse knew that there was a lot more money to be made in terms of it being a sequel to a hit movie.

And so there was more interest in giving feedback.

But

I've been very lucky working with Blumhouse and with Universal.

They never forced me to do anything.

They give me their notes.

And, you know, sometimes it's Peter Kramer, the head of the studio, just calling me himself and saying, here are my thoughts.

But every every time I've gotten notes from them, it's given with the caveat, do what you want to do with these.

If you don't want to do them, don't do them.

Yeah.

And

it just makes you sort of relax and be like, okay, you know, let's talk them through.

And most of the time, my experience with studio notes is if you have an intelligent

executive like Peter Kramer at Universal, somebody like that who gives you notes, sometimes they're just great.

great and you're like, oh God, why didn't I think of that kind of notes?

But even the ones that you're like, ah, if you sit with the note long enough, there's something there and there's a note behind the note that it's your job to figure that out.

And then go back to them and say, hey, I think that what was bothering you is this.

And they usually are like, yes, that's it.

You know, and that's a, that's a, that's a rewarding process, you know?

So I, I, I like

the

end result of the notes process with the studio.

Now, when, when, occasionally, you know, when, when I disagree hard with the studio, I can be really intractable and, and overreact to things and make everybody suffer.

I try not to do that.

That's called artist privilege.

Yeah, pull a coppola.

Do it anytime you like.

Well,

I do enough of that.

But you do have to stand your ground for what

you believe is going to be best for the movie.

Well,

I certainly have no problem doing that.

I mean, watching Black Phone 2, that was

the thought that I had while I was watching it, like in the best way, like thinking, like, this is the movie that the director wanted to make.

And the thing is that we were actually, we were the first people to see it.

Like we, we actually got to see like the print hot off of the presses.

And I was watching it and some of the gore is, I mean, the gore in this movie is

incredible.

Like just absolutely incredible.

Good head slices.

Yeah.

And I was watching, I was like, God, I hope none of this gets cut by the studio because this is fucking intense.

Oh, no, you guys saw, you guys saw the final, the final cut.

That's great.

Yeah, yeah.

it's done yeah it's a that's amazing yeah it is i've got zero pushback about that of really never no nobody ever asked me to do less of any of that that's at all yeah you know

the movie is crazy for it but between the two movies the only thing that i was ever asked to cut and i won't say who asked me but i was asked to cut the gwen whipping scene in the first movie yeah and i just said over my dead body it's the heart of the entire movie the movie doesn't work without yeah

but to their credit, they were like, okay, okay.

What's with, we talk with Joe Hill.

What's with all you guys?

Scary dads.

You know, Joe Hill created Joe Hill's the nicest, biggest bearded man on the face of the planet.

So wonderful.

Stephen King, also, big beard.

Seems like a lovely man.

They both write stories about big, scary bearded men.

They make scary dads the scariest thing in the world.

What's going on here?

I don't know about them.

I had a scary dad.

Yeah, I am.

So, you know,

did it look like the dad from, he's got a good, scary, alcoholic's beard?

He does.

Yeah, you can, you can pick those up at a discount at Walmart.

So, um,

no, no, my dad didn't have a beard and he wasn't an alcoholic, which I'm very grateful for, but he was violent.

You know, he was angry and he was violent.

So, uh, well, I'm sorry about that.

Yeah.

Well, no, but I also, I also really watched my dad change as I, as I, which is part of Terrence's story.

You know, I watched my dad change as I got older.

I became very close to him in high school and in college and

had a radically different relationship with him than I had in my earlier childhood, which was wonderful.

Oh, yeah.

You can see that in the movie, too, that really actually does come out.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, and I'm not, I'm, I'm not out there trying to, you know, force my shit on other people.

And

I'm not interested in

just trying to get my story out.

It has nothing to do with that.

I just think that, you know,

when you draw from your own experiences, the way things felt to you at certain times in your life, and you try to capture that feeling.

in a detailed way, drawing from the details of your own memory.

Like all those kids in the first black phone, I went to school with all those kids.

I can tell you who they actually were in middle school that I knew.

You know, there was a kid who was just like Robin Ariano, you know, that I knew who was a friend of mine, like exactly.

And I think that when you, when you do that and do it effectively, there is something about in,

I don't know if this is true in all art, I just know it's true in cinema, that when you capture that realistically and truthfully, people feel it.

They just feel like, oh,

this feels real.

This feels very...

like this feels like somebody else's reality and so the more specific you are using all those details the more universal people connect to it.

It's not their experience, but they can feel that it's somebody else's experience.

You know, and you do it in some, you do it in a truly effective way.

Like you do it in Sinister.

I think Sinister is such an exact

depiction of that in terms of the whole movies versus how it bumps into the rest of the movie.

In Black Phone 2, you have these very ornate, beautifully shot dream sequences

that are honestly feel just like what you're saying.

Did you get that with practical or is that digital?

Did you get that the filming of the dream sequences in Black?

Oh, it's all shot with Super 8 film.

That is shot with Super 8.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Oh,

you can tell the difference.

Well, I'll clarify.

It's Super 8, but also there were some scenes where I needed to use more advanced lenses.

And because of the difficulty of the shot, we shot some of it on 16 millimeter and then extracted the 8 millimeter.

8 millimeter film is 16 millimeter film cut in half.

That's literally what it is.

So

I shot some stuff with a 16 millimeter camera and the same Super 8 stock that we were shooting with, and then just cut it in half and took that image out of the, took an eight millimeter image out of the 16 stock, and it's identical to the Super 8 stock.

The only thing that you have to add artificially is camera flutter.

I love Super 8.

I love the instability of it.

I love the stakes.

You still get a lot of that stuff when you shoot on 16, but it's very solidly in the gate.

It's stable in the gate.

So you do have to, if you want it to feel exactly the same in post, I had to add a little bit of instability to the image when we shot with a 16, but it's the same grain, same color responsiveness.

Was it the same thing when you did sinister with the home movies?

Yeah,

only, yeah, I've never, I would never do what is so common now, which is, you know, shoot something digital and then make it look like film or look like, especially Super 8.

The difference is so enormous to start.

Well,

that's why I wanted to ask you about those dream sequences specifically because I wanted to ask: did you finally figure out the filter?

Because nobody, you can always tell

the filter put on top.

There is no, no, because, and look, you have to think of it,

there is no, there is no filter, it's impossible because you know, when you're talking about chemical reaction on film, you know, you've got, you've got, you know,

all the atoms in that piece of physical material that are reacting chemically and forming an image and uh it's not limited to the limitation of of digital pixels you know and to it's just a different it's a different kind of image forming altogether and like i said my favorite thing about super 8 is how messy it is yeah you know now granted

And also, sometimes it gets so messy that you have to reshoot it.

Because sometimes you'll shoot a scene and it's dangerous in that regard because there was, there was, there's one scene in the movie I had to reshoot three times because the Super 8 was so unstable and it was so out of focus on one.

The cameras broke

on one that we didn't know about.

And then the third time we sort of got it right.

But it's funny.

I like the messiness of it.

I use some of the broken camera shots in the movie.

Yeah, sure.

Because I was like, I can't do the whole scene like this, but God, look at that shot.

It's fantastic.

I love the recklessness of it.

I think and what the the aberrations that you get are fantastic i now oh you got something because i want to bring something around to the actors yeah one more thing about the about the super a well i just i love the handheld uh nature of those like dream scene sequences like it almost it put me in the mind of like not just like a 70s feel as far as the film stock but also like 70s horror movies like i felt like i was back in like a 70s horror movie when it cut to those dream sequences was that a deliberate choice?

70s and 80s.

You know, the movie takes place in 1982, and it was like, obviously, it owes a lot to all the...

all the summer camp slasher movies, especially

of the late 70s and the early 80s, especially.

This is a compliment, but it has a lot of nightmare on Elm Street 3 vibes.

Very big influence, obviously.

People are talking about that just from the trailer.

And, you know, I'm old enough to have been

a teenager seeing that movie in a theater when it first,

you know, opened.

And

if you're old enough to have been there when that happened, you have no idea how scary that was.

It was horrifying.

That opening scene, no one had made something like that before.

And so I think that

the love I had for the horror genre as a high schooler and

what that exciting era was definitely plays

in a very mixed bag kind of way into this movie.

That's so cool.

Let's take a break from all the laughter to say thank you to our sponsor, Universal Pictures.

Dead is just a word.

On October 17th, just in time for Halloween, the terrifying Black Phone 2 hits theaters.

Directed by Scott Derrickson and starring Ethan Hawk, who is back as the Grabber and more sinister than ever.

The grabber's story wasn't over.

And he asked the question,

do you know what happens when you die?

Find out for yourself.

October 17th.

Hell is in flames.

It's ice.

Universal Pictures Black Phone 2.

Only in theaters.

October 17th.

Die from your grave.

Alright, so, alright, now you got the movie.

It's a sequel.

It's a direct sequel to Black Phone 2, Black Phone.

It's direct sequel, same actors.

How is it dealing with aging kid actors?

Like, as they get older, like, do they just become better actors?

Or is it one of those where you have to

refine the characters and stuff like that?

You know, I'll tell you a great story.

So, so

when they asked me to make the sequel, they asked me to make the sequel

on Monday after the opening weekend of the first movie.

That's the way Joe Hill talked about it.

He was like,

Jeff Schell, who was the CEO of NBC Universal, emailed me he's like you're gonna make another one right you know

like all right well

no but at that point i didn't feel obliged to i didn't have any ideas about it i i didn't feel the need to do it at all but what a top on top of joe's kind of idea that he brought to the table the thing that really made me want to do it was when i thought you know what what if i wait what if instead of like going and making a sequel What if I go make another movie and take my time and let these kids both get into high school?

And then I make a high school coming-of-age movie in the same way the first one was a middle-aged coming-of-age movie.

And that got very exciting for me.

And I thought that would enable me to make something

more violent, more aggressive.

Yes.

And I felt confident that Maddie, McGraw, and Mason Tames were going to be, you know, they would still have their skill set.

You know, I thought that they would do a really good job.

But I also, you know,

Miguel Mora, who plays Robin Ariano, he

was so beloved in the first movie.

He's got, he's like a rock star online.

He's got like 4 million TikTok followers and 2 million Instagram followers.

Yeah, these kids are famous in a way that we never good and actors don't.

You know what I mean?

So for me, it was like, well, what if I...

He's, you know, his character is gone.

And, you know, but what if I wrote his the character?

What if he played his Robin Ariana's little brother you know so I wrote Ernesto for him to play you know that's the same kid right yeah I actually did I had no idea that it was the same

shit that you just blew my fucking mind

I just re-watched the other one too I literally like I just re-watched black phone

yeah I re-watched the night before going to see the screening yeah

hey that's quite an acting job

well wait here's the thing though you know because I because he was playing such a different character, I was like, I have no idea if this kid's going to be able to do it.

So I wrote it for him.

And then, you know,

but I told him, I said, look, here's the script.

I wrote this for you, but you're going to have to audition because I have to see that you can do this.

And so

he

read with Madeline McGraw a couple of scenes.

And halfway through the first scene I gave him, I was like, oh, he's got the job.

He's going to be great.

Yeah.

And he does an awesome job in it.

But he really, to his credit he really worked on his acting skill would took acting classes really you know and then came and prepared for that audition and did a great job in the movie how much was ethan hawk in the mask

how much was he in the mask yeah when he's in that when he's on camera like is it him in the mask the majority of the of the time

yeah he's he's he's never not in the mask you don't have you know it gets

you mean dude do you have a stand in the middle of standing there's certain things because it was oh yeah and I'm not trying to spoil it.

I was just, I just re-watched the new Toxic Avenger remake, and they were like talking about how, you know, we were trying to match the original where someone else was in the toxi uniform.

We didn't put Peter into it.

And it was just like, oh, I think it's because Peter figured out how to not be in the makeup.

I think Peter figured out a way to skip that part.

Where it's like, Ethan seems like he's the kind of guy that would not let anybody else wear that mask, even even if they wanted to, even if you wanted to.

That's probably true at this point, you know?

And I think that, you know, Ethan, what was interesting is watching the way Ethan, when he saw the, during the pre-production or like when he first came to

North Carolina, where we were shooting Black Phone, the first movie, as soon as he saw the masks, he told me later, he said, as soon as he saw them, he's like, oh, oh, this does.

so much of the work that I thought I was going to have to do that I can do other things that are more more interesting

because of what the mask is going to be doing.

He very quickly processed that and understood

what the mask did that allowed him to do more unexpected things, you know, which is

really wonderful.

It's not that I was shocked, but honestly, I don't know what I thought.

It was that Ethan Hawk honestly was so physically gifted in the movie.

Like,

in Black Phone 1 and 2, he so

immediately steps into a supervillain character.

Yeah, and he makes it seem effortless.

I don't give him a lot of direction.

I don't talk to him much about it.

I mean, we're good friends.

You know, I really love Ethan and we're married.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You talked about it before.

And when is the baby?

No, and

he just is such a brilliant actor.

He just comes ready and he comes with an understanding.

And he's fearless.

He has no fear.

So he also will

really surprise you.

You know, if you you give him, if you give him six takes, he's going to give you six versions of that scene.

And

sometimes

it's version six that's really out of the box where you go, oh, I got to rethink

this whole part of the movie now.

Because there's one thing that he did in it where I was like, oh, it was, it was, I said, just say this whole section.

It'll be.

playing as voiceover, but I just need you to say it.

Just do it on camera.

And I think he took that as a challenge.

And then he made it one of the greatest performance moments in the movie.

And I had to restructure the whole scene because as soon as I saw it, I was like, ah, shit, that's so good.

I have to, I have to build the move, I have to build this section around that shot I just did.

Now, you know, so

he's such a gifted actor and so fearless.

And

I also am lucky because I have his trust.

You know, he really trusts me and he'll do anything I ask him to do.

It's wonderful.

Anything

on set

within legal limits, I guess.

Well, the physicality that he brings to the character, like, it could so easily go wrong.

Like, it's something that it's this physicality that it could so easily be goofy or hokey, but he takes it just up to that edge.

And, like, because the character himself, that's what I love about the character of The Grabber is that it really does capture something that we try to capture on our show when we do our true crime stuff: is that serial killers are douchebags.

They're like they're shitheads.

They're not cool.

There's nothing cool about any of them.

And I'm a serial killer junkie.

I've watched every serial killer, true crime thing out there.

And yeah,

they're absolutely

terrible, weak, obnoxious people.

Yeah.

And that's what I love about the character of the grabber is that it captures that like it really like it just captures that so well like just in his dialogue, but also but Ethan Hawk's movements and the way Ethan Hawk plays him like it really does like oh, that's that's a serial killer.

Yeah, like that's yeah, with

that's just that's that's all Ethan, you know,

I don't think we have ever had conversations about

about the choices he's made playing that character.

He just does it, you know, and that means that as a director, you know, what you want to a good director hires really good actors and then mostly stays out of their way.

So I would say that 90% of my directing is, that was great.

Now do it twice as fast.

That's usually how that's most of my directing because I, because I hired great actors, you know, and there's, there's very rarely any bad, I don't think there's any bad performances in any of my movies because I cast well.

and and uh and i know how to stay out of actors way and make sure that they you know they especially with kids and let them

be natural.

But Ethan just will, he's magical.

He's become such a tour de force as an actor.

And I think he's kind of playing above the rim right now.

You know, the different roles that he's doing, every single thing I see him do now for the last couple of years is so remarkable.

And

he was all the time.

Yeah.

He played the abolitionist that he was exceptional in, that John Brown.

He's just played John Brown.

He was amazing in that.

That's incredible.

He really is.

Why do you think some people

get better as they age and some people fall apart as they age

as artists?

I think that

a lot of it has to do with

what it is that drives you as an artist, you know, because I think that Ethan

certainly had a lot of opportunities when he was younger to become a bigger star.

Yeah, he could have been Batman.

He could have been, well, he probably could have been in that realm.

I think that he

might have been offered Batman.

I don't know for sure, but I know that

there was at least a conversation about that at some point.

But he, yeah, I think he certainly could have gotten something like that, no problem.

And I think that he really has chosen in his career to

pursue

what he thinks is of creative value.

And what I love about him too is that he doesn't believe, we've talked about this together, the two of us many times, about, you know, neither one of us really believe in the separation of high art and low art.

You know, creativity is creativity.

Good art is good art.

And

I think that's one of the reasons why he's really proud of the Black Foam movies and Sinister because he thinks they're really good.

It's really good cinema.

But at the same time, the guy's got four Oscar nominations, you know, because because he's such a fine actor who also loves to make great artistic, you know, or so-called more important films, but he doesn't think of them that way.

So I think his drive is always to, is always a kind of excellence.

And it's just that guy loves poetry and literature and formal painting and art, and he loves cinema.

And he loves documentaries.

And, you know, and I think that he is somebody who has

lived his life in such pursuit of excellence in art and is such a true consumer of great arts and entertainment, great cinema.

He loves movies.

He loves books.

He loves music.

You know, he's just got this Merle Haggard documentary that he just did.

Yeah,

he's a consummate artist.

And the other thing I'll say that's special about him, is because he has all that experience and has directed quite a few films himself by now, he really wants to understand the big picture of what you're doing.

And he wants to contribute to that, you know?

Which means, but you can see it in Black Phone, like directly in these two movies, you can see that.

Yeah, because you can see how it's just, he's just.

He understood the assignment as the kids said, you know?

Yeah.

The whole movie goes like a record scratch when he shows up.

Yeah.

It's like, you can feel it.

He's just like, oh, shit, fine.

That's the whole time.

I was like, yeah, he's here.

Fuck yeah.

Grab is here.

Yeah.

As soon as I watch you, yeah.

I was just saying to afterwards, to Gian Luca, I was just like, I want the

complicated

the grabber is living with jigsaw in an apartment, trying to make, he's trying to become a chef.

Like, I want to see the bear,

but with the grabber.

Like, I want him to have him struggle.

You know, like, there's something about that.

Blackbone 3, the bear.

Yeah, yeah, you got that.

You were here when it was born.

Oh my God, I've got my, I don't need Joe Hill.

I got my dad.

Fuck it, man.

Get that goose out of here.

Is there any one last, like,

honestly, in that way, like, do you have a big capital I important movie that you're like in your head that you want to do?

Is there something that you're like, you can't rest?

You can't go to your grave until you make?

You can't really be like that because

sometimes you just can't get certain movies made.

I always wanted to do a big budget version of Paradise Lost.

I don't think I'm ever going to get to do that.

That's sort of my white whale, if I have to.

That's the big one.

That's the big one.

Yeah, because I just think there's a great movie.

Somebody needs to make a great movie about the greatest myth in human history.

And the idea of a movie about the war in heaven and sort of the gradual fall of Lucifer into Satan.

How do you know?

Somebody's got to make that movie, you know?

I think technically Mel Gibson is right now making that movie because he's doing the prequel.

Have you seen that he's doing the prequel and the sequel to Passion of the Christ?

The sequel.

Okay.

No, he's doing Good Friday, and then he's doing When Jesus Gets Up.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Yeah.

Oh, that happened way after Paradise Lost.

I'm not going to touch Mel Gibson and

Passion of the Christ.

Other than

my favorite way of describing that movie to my friends who hadn't hadn't seen it, they're like, should I see it?

I said, it's the Jesus Chainsaw Massacre.

Oh, yeah, buddy.

That's a horror movie, man.

It's a horror movie.

Jesus gets full

in that movie.

It's probably the most

pound for pound, the most violent mainstream movie ever released.

Oh, dude.

You should remake it.

Ethan Hawk.

Ethan Hawk is Jesus Christ.

He could do it.

It's Jesus Grabber.

Full circle.

I think we did it.

I think we did it.

Yeah, Paradise Lost.

Because you said you're a big comic book guy.

Like, it's been done so well in 90s.

Like, Preacher, I'm sure you've read.

It was done so well.

You know, that sort of story has been done.

It's been told in comic books on the edges of Preacher and Sandman and Virgo.

It's all incredible.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I just think that,

you know, I think I had a version of it that I almost got to make.

I think it would have made a billion dollars, you know.

So you never know, you know, but I've got other, you know, I, I, I,

I go one movie at a time, though.

You know, I look at what any situation I'm in, I'm like,

what's the next movie I'm going to make?

Whatever it is, I'm going to make it as though it's the last movie I'll ever get to make.

Because one day it will be, you know?

Yeah.

And so I'm not strategic about that shit.

I don't, I don't plot out my

career.

I just, every time I finish a movie, I take a look at at where I'm at as the person and think about, you know, what, if I finally get one more film, what do I want it to be?

And I try to make that.

Man, that's, thank you so much for talking with us, dude.

Yeah, this is great, man.

Yeah.

Seriously, it's really like you, you,

we, it was kind of funny.

We're looking back on your IMDb as soon as we were like setting all this up.

It was like, I've seen every single one of this man's films.

Yeah.

I've seen every single one of these movies multiple times.

Yes.

So I was like, it was great.

I didn't have to prepare it all.

Yeah.

Didn't have to prepare it all.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's great.

Good for you.

Easy for me, dude.

Is that all that matters, dude?

From now on, you need to hold that as your mantra.

I didn't have to prepare it.

Don't tell him.

Do not tell him that.

Do not tell him that.

Do not put that idea in his head at all.

Oh, wait a second.

I can just float by.

Wait a minute.

Hey, thank you so much sir Scott thank you

guys this was great so when when when can people see Black Phone 2 in the theaters

comes out on October 17th yes October 17th yeah it comes with our stamp of approval we got to see an early screening of it it's fucking great see it in the theater yes see it in the theater it's it is a theatrical movie there's a lot there's a lot on that screen I will I will back that I will back that up I'm glad you guys really enjoyed it

you know and and I'm very proud of it And you are absolutely right.

That is, it was not, it was a complicated movie to make, and it is exactly, exactly the film I wanted it to be.

Yeah.

You know, which doesn't always happen, you know.

And I'm so, like, the, the gore is just turned up to a new level.

I was very painful.

Like, just, like,

just the, the one, like, I don't want to, you know, spoil it, but the slice.

Oh my God.

It's so good.

Just like that, they're just

the best one.

We cheered

in our little room because it's also funny because now it's like this is like maybe the second or third time we've been to like a fancy screening.

And so, but I'm still like this, so whenever I see a good kill, we're all immediately like,

you guys are maniacs.

That's great.

Mr.

Derrickson, thank you so much.

Thank you, sir.

Hey, my pleasure, guys.

Thank you, Hep, for having me on.

This is really, really a good time.