‘The Blair Witch Project’ With Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan

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the rewatchables is brought to you by the ringer podcast network where you can find the watch with our friend chris ryan that's right still making that huh slow horses Slow horses industry?

I know you've gotten caught up recently.

Yeah, I'm a big Rishi guy.

I know you are.

spent guy when he when he lost his mind gambling for a night it brought me back to the late 90s

you don't understand this guy bill said million dollar picks he said the eagles will lock

you could also rcr in the big picture maybe on some basketball podcast this fall who knows you never know i was on the ringer fantasy football pod though you can't stop me yeah uh My name is Bill Simmons.

We're about to do the weirdest movie I think we've ever done on the rewatchables.

The Blair Witch Project is next

in October of 1994.

Three student filmmakers arrived in Burkettsville, Maryland to interview locals about the legend of the Blair Witch.

All I'm saying is that you got us lost.

No, I know we're not lost.

Oh, you knew that yesterday, too, and you knew that twice.

All right, CR, I don't know where to start, but I'm gonna start here.

Most ripped-off movie gimmicks of the last 50 years.

I made a list.

Superman with Christopher Reeve, comic book heroes, just creates this whole, we'll do a big thing.

We'll get Gene Hackman as the villain, and we'll blow it out, and we'll promote the shit out of it.

And we get, that becomes the blueprint.

48 hours, buddy cop.

These guys don't like each each other.

There's going to be some jokes.

At the end, they'll get along.

People rip that off for the next 40 plus years.

Die Hard

becomes diehard in a blank.

Yeah.

Fatal attraction, blank from hell.

Halloween.

There's a boogeyman killer.

He's unstoppable.

He's just going to go to this camp and kill people.

When Harry Met Sally, the modern rom-com.

Oh, these two, they're not meant to be together.

Oh, maybe they are.

Ah, they made it at the end.

The will they, won't they?

Animal House, the body comedy.

These just guys are just trying to get laid.

Oh, let's do that for 10 years.

And then the Blair Witch Project, which was made for like 10 bucks and created this whole new form of horror called found footage that is still going 25 years later and is one of the most influential movies, not only the last 25 years, but you could really argue the last 50.

It makes no sense.

And I know you like this movie because you wanted to do it, but how do you even explain this?

The right movie at the right time

and the right way of making a movie and the right way of marketing a movie and just capturing the power of the nascent internet and allowing people to feel like they were participating in the movie in a way.

And that might be its greatest legacy.

Now, like even this, this many years on, I think there are some films that have done found footage better, have been more creative with found footage.

Obviously, they're got the paranormal activity franchise that has gone on to probably more financial success than the Blair Woods franchise.

But in terms of being like the right movie for the baby steps of the internet, it's like, this was lightning in a bottle.

Horror movies are effectively dead, except for there's that new post-screen model with I Know He Did Last Summer,

Halloween H2O.

It's usually like kids in high school and they're the faculty.

So we're doing those.

They're like Jason and

Freddy Krueger, they're on their last legs and there had been no innovation at all.

All right.

Normally we bring him in at the end of the podcast, but I have to bring Craig Korlbeck in now, our producer.

Oh,

yeah, you're coming in now.

Craig, this movie comes out in January 1999 when you were a young pup.

I think you were like five years old, four years old, whatever.

Do you believe that people actually thought this was a real movie and these, all these people died in 1999, that that was a thing that really happened

yes and i think if you look at the amount of conspiracies that are going on now when we have the internet everywhere i think it's even more believable that people back then seeing this footage would have thought this was real so i think a hundred percent so the back story they put out a website when did they put the website out cr when the website and the doc came out before so this movie premiered at sundance in january and then came out in theaters in the summer but the website and the curse of the blair Witch sci-fi series or documentary came out like a month before that.

So

there was this huge buzz coming out of the internet and off of the dock.

Yeah, so I'm on the internet right in my sports column back then.

I think I might have still been AOL only at this point.

And the internet,

who's our guy from Heat?

What was his name?

The internet was all out there.

She's got to know where to grab it.

She's got to grab it.

And they do this Blair Witch website.

And it's so early in the internet people are like what the fuck is this they

they found these videotapes in the in the woods of these people getting murdered and now this is gonna be the movie of this so i was dating my future wife for six seven months you know not not as fun as the craig and liz love story but a good love story nonetheless with some with some fun stories behind it but so we go to this and it's still early in the internet where we don't know if it's real or it's not real and we go go opening night because I'm a huge horror guy and I'm super excited.

Can I stop you right there?

Just out of curiosity, which theater in Boston?

Kendall Square in Cambridge.

Bill, we might have been at the same screening.

Man.

Oh, shit.

Yeah, I was at Kendall Square on Friday night.

It's very possible.

We went that Friday night and the movie ended.

And people, one of the few times in my life, people just sitting in their seats and we were so freaked out.

Craig, we were on the theater and we just thought we watched like a snuff film.

Yeah.

And there was no way to research it after the fact.

It was not like now where you'd be like, oh, I'm going to Google it.

Oh, they did this.

Oh, here's and father's.

Like we literally thought it was real.

Did you think it was real, CR?

Yes.

I, well, okay.

I think I thought it was 80%.

Like, I didn't think that they would be showing us a snuff film.

But the 20% that was like, maybe they just did was much more passionate than the 80% that was cynical about it.

If that makes sense.

You know what I mean?

Like, I knew better, but I was like, God, that was convincing.

But wait, so was the marketing of this movie this was this is real or did they just kind of not say that?

Not only was the marketing of the film this is real, the actors were not part of the promotion of the film.

Like very specifically until after it had become a phenomenon, that's when they started appearing on like the tonight show and they dropped the pretense that it was that it was a real, like, this was found footage.

But leading up into the release, there was a

like a pretty plausible sensation that this was like these people who had gone off into the woods and they found their footage.

And like, yeah, like one out of every five person, maybe one out of every three people you talk to, be like, Yeah, it's not real.

Like, they just did this whole elaborate scheme to show like the background of the story.

But it was pretty easy to buy into this because, like Bill was saying, you basically were on dial-up, you were probably using like university computers or whatever.

You only knew your friends that you were friends with.

It's not like you could check in with whoever.

And crucially, Craig, like because of that and because of like the era that it was, most people probably came from an area of the country that had something like this.

And it might have been bullshit, but I had, you know, we have the Pine Barons in the Philadelphia area.

It's like the New Jersey devil.

I'm sure Bill had something in Massachusetts and New England.

I have it right now in the third floor of my house.

But everybody had like a local town myth.

A suburban legend, basically.

Yeah.

So so the guy who played mike in the movie there's a really good oral history about this movie that came out i think in the 20 15th or 20th anniversary and he said the internet michael c williams the guy played mike the internet was new so if you think back some of the things you read on the internet you go oh that must be true i saw it on the internet just like when newspapers came out you believed what you read and they figured out a way to market this movie Where it was just,

I didn't have my

conspiracy build did not exist in 1999, except for the JFK assassination.

So you saw this and you're like, wow, I want to see that.

Found footage.

People were murdered in the woods.

It might be the most 1999 movie ever made because if it came out any year after this, it would be less and less believable.

Well, so think about in 1993, the crying game came out.

And the whole thing about that was there's a secret.

And you just like, don't tell me the secret.

I don't want to know.

And this secret turned out to be the Jay Davidson character.

Then usual suspect, same thing.

Then Six Sense, which was the same year as this movie, same thing.

Is that in your generation, is that possible to keep a secret with a movie like that?

I would say it's impossible.

I'm trying to think of an example of anything related to that, even if it's not in movies.

A TV show?

Like,

you can keep the series finale of an episode secret, but other than that,

not something like this, where it's like people thought it was a snuff film.

Marketing has changed so much now that I would say, if anything,

they are like so hyper-aware when they have a twist that they almost like when I get PR emails about TV shows, like for instance, like I don't want to, I guess, spoil it for the people who haven't watched Succession, but something happens in the last season of Succession.

We were not told explicitly that that happened.

But we were told that the episode that it happened in was very significant and that we should like, please not spoil it for other people.

And so immediately you're like, well, what could it be?

Right.

Right.

Like, I guess Game of Thrones was the last property that, like, effectively.

But that was a very interesting experience because you had like an entire strand of the audience that actually did know what was coming.

And so they were actually, I found to be the one of the great examples of like, honestly, audience generosity was people like Mal and Jason who were like, yeah, obviously, like, I know Red Wedding is coming, but I wouldn't want to spoil that for anybody.

And it was awesome that way.

Hmm.

Well, I'll tell you this.

It's It's one of the most masterful marketing campaigns I can ever remember.

It got me to go opening night, the mystery around it.

Then, when you knew it happened, leaving the theater, still not knowing that night, and still not really having a way to research it.

And then, I don't know, CR, when did we kind of finally realize this was real?

They started doing interviews like I think weeks after, as it became weeks after, right?

Like three to four or five weeks later.

Yeah, I don't, I don't think it was very, it wasn't like this, like, we have to find Heather, Heather, you know?

I mean, like, it was, I think, actually, also like fairly shortly after.

CR led though, we have to find Heather.

He was in the woods in Baltimore.

They had to keep the actress in like a, in like a room for balance.

They did.

Yeah, they did.

Like, they were, they got mad at Josh Leonard for being in an indie movie because they were like, you're going to screw up the premise of our film if people can see you in like some nascent, like, early mumblecore movie soon, you know?

Now we just have like Mr.

Beast buries himself himself alive for seven days and you tune in to see if he makes it.

That's the closest.

Right.

Well,

the other piece of this is in the movie theater, it was so much more terrifying.

There's no way to recreate it in your house.

You could turn all the lights off in your house.

You could make it as quiet as possible.

But when you're in a movie theater with a 50-foot screen and it's dead silent and people are terrified and you get hit the last 15 minutes of that movie, it was, I was about as scared as I can't remember being more scared in a movie theater.

Can you, Chris?

No, this is the single most frightening movie theater experience I ever had.

So the two, the two scariest movies I've ever seen are this

and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

I saw this like another one.

Yeah.

In Kendall Square, opening night.

All it was was like, what's this like a documentary?

Like, have you guys heard about this movie?

Like, because even with Sundance stuff, like, it's not like we were reading movieline.com or something.

It wasn't like I was like like on the net every day reading about movie news and having things explained to me.

So you're just kind of like, this sounds like it's going to be a really big deal.

Let's go see it opening night.

I saw this one and then Texas Chain Saw.

I watched it like one in the morning in an empty house, like moving into a house in Mission Hill in Boston.

And I'd never seen it before.

And I don't think I slept for like the rest of the week.

My dad, there was this place.

God damn, it was somewhere in Boston.

I can't remember what part of Boston.

And they would show movies and they had food and there would be older movies, right?

And it was a little like the model for what Alamo was.

Like pre-Alamo.

Okay.

Yeah, pre-early Alamo.

And you could go and we went and we saw a couple movies there, but one of the ones we saw was Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

So I was probably like 13, 14.

I can't believe I've made him go to movies like this, but

but it was the same thing, like at the end of that.

And I just knew it was scary.

And I just knew the guy holding the chainsaw at the end.

I didn't know anything else.

And same thing where you left and you're like discombobulated.

It was so freaky.

and i don't know if there's another

even halloween which is a masterpiece but it it's so stylized though yeah it's it was more cool you're like oh man i like what they did like it wasn't like this where you're like oh my god this guy's out there we got to get him so i don't know last year or maybe it was yeah about last year i went on a trip to like kind of rural oregon it was me and my wife and then her friend and her friend's family and she has like three daughters and two of the daughters like they were 14 and 12 at the time or something like that.

And we watched Blair Witch for the first time.

Oh.

And it was like late at night.

I think we started at like 11.

And it was like really like kind of a spooky watching experience.

And at first, the girls were like, this is cringe.

This is so fake.

This is so fake.

And then as it gets going and as they

switch goes off in this movie, when they discover like the dolls and when Josh disappears and all this stuff is happening, you could see them on their phones, like Googling, like, is this real?

Did they die?

And I was like, it still works.

Yeah.

It still works.

Like, after all these years, it can still freak people out if it catches them unaware.

So, Craig, you watched it this morning for the first time, but you knew the premise, right?

Because he's a coward and he didn't watch it at night.

I watched it at 7.30 a.m.

this morning.

No, I, I, to be honest, I, I kind of, I mean, I generally knew it was like kids going into the woods in search of something, you know, supernatural.

That was it.

All right.

So we'll, we'll spoil you.

Should we do this at the end, but did it work for you?

I think it's hard.

I've seen 25 years of found footage movies at this point.

Well, he actually, I mean, you're not into scary movies, though.

I'm not, but I can understand why this was such a big deal in the moment.

You know what?

I actually found this movie quite palatable at 7.30 a.m.

Yeah.

Good, good luck having a nice strong cup of coffee.

Yeah.

Josh!

Josh!

To be honest,

I think the horror actually was a little milder than I expected.

Yeah, but you didn't set the mood right.

I mean, 7.30 in the morning, you want to watch this at night in a dark place.

It's a 10 p.m.

start, man.

I did not want that to be my nightcap.

I'm just saying, I mean, they don't really show a lot in this movie.

What would Mike Tomlin say about this?

You know,

Mike's right.

Tomlin, Tomlin's playing in the preseason.

He's doing two a day still.

That's not my style for horror movies.

Tomlin's just grinding out a 13 to 6 win with a horror movie, and that's it.

But yeah, to be honest, I was surprised at how not scary this was to me.

I think we're desensitized now and things are so heightened.

He's not wrong because

as they kept innovating on the found footage thing,

people did better versions of this movie.

No, I mean, they added special effects.

I think the charm of this movie is just the story behind it, which we're going to tell.

But I think it's also very specific, probably for people who saw it in the theater, but also people around me and Bill's age where like the three characters are so relatable and so like you just knew people like that when you were in college or like out of college definitely knew the girl there's like that she existed a hundred different ways Josh's car you knew guys like Mike who lived with his mom everybody's smoking cigarettes everybody's eating shit like and it it still haunts me a little bit like how much it feels like it I think that was part of the appeal is like the idea that it could happen to you because it was happening to people like you right did did Did this movie lose its shine for you guys after you saw it the first time?

Like, would you consider

it only improves over the years for me?

Really?

Yeah.

I had a cycle with it.

I really liked it as a rewatchable and then I didn't because it's really like, especially first 30 minutes, once you've seen it a few times, not really that re-watchable.

And then there's like a 20-minute section where people are just screaming, but the ending's amazing.

But then

my son Ben Simmons got into it And then it had another life with my kids.

And as soon as you watch him watch it, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and, and he was just like, even last night, I was watching it.

He's like, I'm going to come in for the last 25.

Like, it was like,

it's just, uh, you know, they know how to do it.

So that guy, Dan Myrick, who was, it was written by Daniel Myrick and

Eduardo Sanchez, who also directed it, edited the whole thing.

Myrick said,

it was kind of, to our surprise, embraced wholly by the press.

And we fooled, if you want to call it that, a large swath of the public who thought it was real.

We do interviews where people asked if the story was real.

And I'd say, didn't you see the cover of Time magazine?

Didn't you see the story in USA Today?

It's obviously a movie, right?

But if you wanted to believe it was real, it allowed you to do that.

That's what I was kind of saying.

And that's

there was a part of me that was like, how amazing is this that we have that this there this last bit of magic still exists where that might have been the case now you can feel ethically dubious for watching three people get murdered by a witch, but I was into it in 1999.

Totally.

Can I tell you a little bit?

Like, I do want to ask, because you were talking about the things that were so influential and tropes and kinds of movies.

And there's like kind of nascent, there's sort of some found footage stuff that comes before Blair Witch.

Like, there's this movie, The Last Broadcast.

There's a couple of things out there.

There's a cannibal movie, right?

Yeah, like the earth.

Cannibal.

Yeah.

But, like, I think that it ultimately, what this movie's a huge influence is for me as well, especially over the last day or so, like going through the documentary and the website that they had put up and Heather's journals that they published and all this stuff is it kind of feels like where Lost came from, where you could watch Lost and just kind of like watch it.

superficially and be like, I wonder if they're going to get off the island.

I wonder why there's a polar bear here.

Or you could lose yourself in reading about Lost and read these super long recaps and go to all the message boards and find out all the biblical illusions in it.

And I think that was the coolest thing: is that like the reason why Blair Witch remained so present in my life is because, like, every few years, there would be like some cool, like, archived piece from the original press run or from the original sort of viral marketing campaign.

And even now, like, the Reddit board is pretty good.

You look at the Blair Witch Reddit board, I'm like, some good content on this thing.

Right.

YouTube really helped.

All of a sudden, the deleted scenes were on there.

There was a DVD that had a bunch of stuff.

There's a Blu-ray that had a bunch of stuff.

There's like the scene when they all drink together in the hotel.

Yeah.

It's like a super long version of that.

You're right.

It created this little weird world around the witch and this backstory of these murders.

And people were into it.

And I really feel there's three things that I feel really 1990s to me.

One is that you could get away with this movie and make people think it was real.

Two was just people with cameras.

Yeah.

I I mean, I identify, I was the guy with the camera in college, you know, videotaping dumb shit.

But just the concept of, yeah, let's go here.

I'll bring the camera and we'll just kind of fuck around and shoot stuff.

We did that all through the 90s.

I don't know if now people have iPhones.

I don't know if it works the same way.

So that, that's the second piece.

And then the third piece was

what you said earlier about.

you just kind of knew people like that.

They're very specific to the 90s.

These people somehow don't make sense in like 2015 or 2024.

And I don't really know why.

I can't explain it.

It felt very much like, you know,

if you weren't in New York at NYU Film School or in Southern California going to film school out there, but you were interested in movies and you were interested in making movies, like this was a very

but it was also a very relatable setup that there's this woman, Heather, who's like kind of like really wants to be a dock maker, but then like this guy, Josh, is like, I just want to kind of be involved in this, but I don't really have a ton of hustle.

So I'm just kind of like, I'm just like the cool guy who smokes and has a girlfriend and stuff.

Are we going to have enough cigarettes for the trip?

Yeah, and then like one goal.

They obviously get Mike from basically like a bulletin board ad, you know, like, and, and that kind of way of meeting people and the way where you kind of had to band together just really, really makes a lot of sense watching still now.

And the other 90s piece is just where documentaries were at that point.

so like paradise lost came out a little while earlier and became a little mini phenomenon on hbo with mark byers and the missing kids and there ended up being multiple sequels but documentaries were the 1.0 version of documentaries really starting with hoop dreams started to take off where it could be like i took my camera i went here i filmed stuff i edited it into something here it is and that really feels

Perfect for that era too, the way they did this because this is what you did.

The cameras were a little too big.

You had to lug them around.

You didn't even know if there was going to be any upside or benefit to it.

And you just kind of filmed shit and hoped you captured something.

So I don't, I just don't know what this looks like now.

It'd be complete.

They'd all have iPhones.

They would have researched the area completely.

They would have been doing TikTok or Instagram reels as they're doing it.

They would have Starlink GPS.

They would never be lost.

You know, yeah.

I mean, I think that

even the idea of getting lost in America, I mean, she makes a couple of jokes about how it can't happen anymore and the Maryland woods aren't that bad.

And obviously, like, something more mystical is at play here rather than just them walking in a circle.

But yeah, there's that.

There's the idea that I mean, one thing that's so interesting about the way that they perform this movie is that you mentioned how everybody had cameras back then, or there was always like someone who had a video camera, but everybody was really aware that they were on camera.

Yeah.

So now I feel like

performative, but not really.

Yeah, I feel like people are filming with iPhones now and nobody even really notices that they're on camera.

But back then, it was like all of a sudden everybody kind of had to address the camera and pretend like they were in a documentary when they were being filmed.

So there's something very specific about that.

We'll take a quick break, a lot more to discuss with this movie.

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coming back

so

Myrick and Sanchez, they were film students.

They created, they decided basically,

let's make a horror movie for us.

It was like, their equivalent of when when we did calderon's revenge on uh exactly watchables it was a one for us in some ways we should have dedicated that episode to those blur witch filmmakers we should have my apologies though really following their spirit so they were talking about stuff that scared them they rented a bunch of documentary style type movies and they they said the legend of boggy creek ancient astronauts and they were like could this work They created this whole Blair Witch thing.

They had a 35-page outline, but they said they were more influenced by that leonard nimoy show in search of

which by the way a show that i really liked where it'd be like this week bigfoot doesn't exist and leonard nimoy would be creepy and they said uh

if there was footage of kids in the woods and then people analyzed it after but it was way more of a there's some footage and here's the documentary of anybody everybody analyzing what happened and then sanchez said It started becoming obvious the footage in the woods was the best part.

The producer, Greg Hale, is like, it's so so obvious now that that was the movie but at the time you know it took us a while to get there and they basically just event they kept editing it and they eventually figured out somebody had the voila moment of

wait a second what if the entire movie is the found footage and then that's it and that 25 years later still works i guess in in in in the way you're telling it it's like the curse of the blair witch which was this documentary that the same filmmakers made and put up on the sci-fi network on cable yeah was kind of what their original idea for the Blur Witch project was.

That was like half of the movie.

Yeah.

And they were going to send these actors out.

And so it's worth mentioning, like, so they basically hire these actors saying, like, a fully improvised movie shooting in a heavily wooded area for about a week.

They, they get Josh Leonard and Heather Donahue, and, you know, they bring these people on.

They give them an outline that's like 30 pages long.

That's essentially like, you have to.

This has to happen.

You have to be here.

You have to do this.

But these people are shooting it.

And originally they were like, we're just going to do a bunch of like 16-millimeter scenes out in the woods, and that'll be part of this documentary that we're also making.

And then the camcorder got added in eventually as like a

character almost in the movie.

And so, yeah, I mean, like, it's a crazy what if is like, what if they never made this decision?

Because,

I mean, the curse of the Blair Witch is an argument, is arguably like creepier than the movie in some ways, but when you're, but like, the movie, you can just take or leave.

You don't need to know a lot about Burkittsville to watch watch the film.

Yeah,

it's 44 minutes, The Curse of Blair Witch.

You can find it on YouTube.

It's easy to watch.

I think it's on Tubi, actually.

Yeah.

And it's just a blown-out version of the first 12 minutes of the movie.

So they create,

the legend is Rustin Parr,

a hermit, lived deep

in the forest, abducted six children.

But then we get the, I think the fishermen give us the crucial point that

this guy murdered all the kids in the basement, but he would murder them two at a time, put one person in the corner, murder the other one, which is just fucking creepy and weird.

Another one was about a kid went missing in 1888.

So they had that.

There's an old woman whose feet never touched the ground.

So they're planting all the seeds in the beginning of the movie.

So you kind of have to remember as you're watching it the first time, like, okay, I got this, I got this, because it's all going to come back.

But here's the thing.

You can watch this movie, as I did probably most of the, most of my life, and not really even be paying that close attention to the first part.

The point is, is that the woods are cursed, that there's something out there that's bad.

And like, it's over the last couple hundred years made people do these murderous acts.

I mean, there's like a whole thing with this woman named Ellie Kedward, who is,

you know, this Salem witch-esque character who gets convicted to die of exposure, but then apparently haunts the woods.

She's manipulating Rustin Parr.

Like, there's all this stuff you can read about it, but really what you need to know is that these woods are evil and these people wandered into them.

Are you an evil woods guy in general?

Or just

in this movie?

Not a fan.

Not a fan of evil woods at all.

Really spooks me.

You're a big hiking guy, though.

No.

That's one of the things I hate about Los Angeles is people want to go for a walk.

I'm like, not really.

I thought you liked Portland.

Like you liked doing, like, being outdoors, doing outdoors.

i don't mind being in the outdoors

movie it's good hiking for you

i like using the outdoors as a recreational area not as like a aimless walking area

and look when we find little cr tidbits

hiking sucks

my column

the other thing they did was they So they have these actors and they decide they're going to fuck with them.

And the actors know they're being fucked with, but they also don't 100% know they're being fucked with.

And they're not being fed a lot and they're getting sleepy.

And the Greg Hill, the producer, said he'd been through survivor school when he was in the army.

And I thought we could run the actors through a storytelling survivor school obstacle course

where they just had the GPSs in the woods, but then we could fuck with them and they, and then we would have their reactions to what was happening.

And there's stuff that I didn't, I knew a lot of this stuff, but there was doing the research for this pod.

Like I didn't realize there were times when they were just fucking with the tent and the actors really didn't know what was happening because none of this was in the outline.

Yeah, wasn't there, like, also, like, something about like one night they had the art director of the movie like run around wearing like all white and like ran and like ran through the night and like just to freak them out now in the 2020s.

I feel like multiple lawsuits and violations probably would have happened.

Yeah, right.

I think so.

I was triggered on my camping trip for the student film I was shooting.

That guy, Mike,

played by Michael C.

Williams.

He said the only direction they gave him was they wanted me to be the one who was more scared.

They didn't tell me anything.

They didn't want me to change who I was.

The whole idea was be as close to yourself as possible, but you're the super scared one.

So it was cool.

They had that.

Then they're building the website at the same time.

And

that became a destination thing.

It goes to Sundance, becomes that guy, Joshua Leonard, says that was the first year I heard the term buzz film.

All of a sudden, we were the buzz film.

And Sundance, they had like, they had to schedule extra screenings because people were going nuts for it.

Yeah.

And then that was it.

So this movie, the budget was probably around $500,000, maybe a little bit higher.

Different estimates.

It made almost $250 million.

It was the 10th biggest movie of 1999.

Apparently has the best budget to revenue ratio of any movie ever.

Yeah, I was wondering if it was this or paranormal or what it what it might have been but this is it's astonishing it's like a personal fortune i'm even wondering what did five hundred thousand dollars go towards i i don't even i didn't i thought it was even less than that

yeah there was uh they had to

they had to do the gilligan's island theme song like stupid stuff like that oh they had to

they paid the our actors the budget is between 200 and 750 yeah yeah that's still a hell of a return Roger Ebert, do you know the answer to this one?

I didn't.

I didn't want to look it up.

What is is it?

Our guy.

What do you think Raj gave this?

I think he thought it was stupid.

Four stars from Raj.

Our guy.

Yeah.

He said it was an extraordinarily effective horror film.

At a time when digital techniques can show us almost anything, the Blair Witch Project is a reminder that what really scares us is the stuff we can't see.

The noise in the dark is almost always scarier than what makes the the noise in the dark.

Welcome to my life and my house.

What was that?

Do you want to talk about that?

I'm in the attic.

Do you want to talk about your ghost?

I'm just, I'm going to end up like Josh.

I'm just going to disappear one day and my wife's just going to get my shirt with my t-shirt.

A Celtics t-shirt with your

teeth, my tongue, and a finger.

It's like, Bill's gone.

He's not coming back.

Let's do most rewatchable scene, which is brought to you by Paramount Plus.

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Okay, CR, we've done, I think this is our 357th movie.

Maybe more, something like that.

Impossible to come up with re-watchable scenes.

I just listed a couple.

I like when they're in the hotel getting drunk.

I like when they get awakened in the middle of the night in the fucked up forest after the day, the same night she got knocked over the rocks.

And it's like, oh, this is bad.

The second time they get woken up when he's like, I don't think it's a fucking deer, man.

And they're pile of rocks outside the tent.

And she's like, Those weren't out here yesterday.

Three piles for the three campers.

Yeah.

We're obviously not wanted out here.

Let's get the fuck out.

Heather loses the map, leading to Mike revealing he dumped the map.

Do you realize not to you?

But I'm doing the fuck that map said.

I'm sorry.

You are a fucking asshole.

I'm sorry.

You're a fucking asshole.

And if my crap wasn't doing shit all day, if we get hurt or if we die up here, it's your fucking fault.

It is your fucking fucking

they find the crazy part of the forest.

This fun.

This is no redneck.

No redneck is this creative.

It's so funny.

That's such a good line.

Woke up screaming in the middle of the night is another one.

First night after Josh disappears.

So they said, uh,

apparently

Josh didn't know he was was done.

And the initial plan was to have Mike disappear, and it was just Heather and Josh left.

There's a lot of stuff in the research that Heather and Josh, it was not a great eight days for them as a tandem.

Okay.

And there was a lot of arguing, and they made the decision:

let's pull Josh out instead of Mike.

So Josh said he got a note: when everybody goes to bed tonight, stay awake.

Once you're sure they're asleep, leave the tent.

If anyone wakes up, tell them you're going to take a piss.

So he waited, got up, walked out of the tent, and he said, Ed and Dan and Greg, they're waiting for me with flashlights.

And they said, you're dead, dude.

And they took me to a really nice meal at Denny's.

And the other two woke up the next morning and Josh was gone.

And that was all like authentic reactions where they're like, where the fuck is Josh?

And I, too, in 1999, was like, man, I'd love a real nice meal at Denny's.

Yeah, who were you?

I don't know why they didn't invite you.

When do we do Grand Slam breakfast hour?

Heather finds the finger, tongue, and tooth wrapped in Josh's shirt.

That's, I guess, a scene.

Heather's confessional is the most famous scene from that movie.

And then

the ending.

So it's either the confessional or the when they find the house and the whole ending, right?

So I want to do, I do want to give a special shout out to one scene that you, I don't think you mentioned that then created, and this is pretty rare.

It's got to be a really good horror movie for it to create a phobia or an anxiety for you.

Okay.

When they come across the same log.

No, that's the tree we crossed.

That tree is down.

That's the same one.

Oh, God.

No.

Oh, no.

You've got to be kidding me.

This is a joke.

No.

This is not funny.

Mike, just please stop.

Please, please stop.

Please stop.

Please stop.

No.

No, Mike, it's not the same log.

It's not the same log, Mike.

Look, it's not.

It is.

Open your eyes.

It's not the same log.

After they've been walking for 11 hours and they ja vu with the log, you've got to be kidding me.

And she's just like, it's not the same log.

It's not the same log.

And like, she's just like, I can't fuck.

They walked for 10 hours in a giant circle or, you know, through another dimension.

I am petrified of that idea of getting like lost in the woods and being like, we're walking, we're walking straight, and we come across the same thing that we've started at.

That is actually like weirdly like a huge phobia for me.

But the most rewatchable scene is just the last 15 minutes.

Let's do rewatchable scenes.

Today's most rewatchable scene is brought to you by Paramount Plus.

I was kidding.

I was making believe we went backwards.

I thought you would get that change.

It's not the same Adrian.

It can't be the same Adrian.

Where are we?

Where's Craig?

Where's Craig?

So what's your answer?

The last 15 minutes.

Like, just the house.

Yeah.

The confessional is great.

It became the most kind of talking point.

It was the commercial.

It was the most parodied thing in the movie.

It's the most memorable scene.

The ending is the best part of the movie.

There's a school of online discourse that suggests that the video that Heather leaves is like her confessing to like being partly responsible for it, which I never read it that way, but I thought it was as this years go on, people read this movie in all these different ways.

Partly responsible for what?

Well, if you read the Heather's.

I think you're a Blair witch head.

I'm just

a guy.

Phil, I'm just a guy who reads Heather Donahue's journals.

So I gotta ask.

Heather's journals

give you a different sense of the character.

She definitely has has a lot more awareness about the dangers of what they're about to do yeah and a lot more ambition about like confronting those dangers and i think people like deduce from it that maybe she like drove them there or a certain point in the experience became possessed by the blair witch i don't i don't read it that way but it is out there

She says,

I just grabbed this stuff and bring it.

She says it's my fault.

It was my project.

I insisted.

I insisted on everything.

I insisted we walked south.

Everything had to be my way.

This is where we've ended up.

And it's all because of me that we're here now.

Hungry, cold, and hunted.

We're going to die out here.

The ending.

I'm getting downstairs.

Come on.

I hear him downstairs.

Come on.

Josh.

Josh, Josh, is that you down there?

Josh,

yeah, man.

Mike in the corner is just the the fucking best.

It's so good.

It's one of the best ideas anyone's ever had for a closing part of a horror movie.

And what's great about it is some people don't even get it when they're watching it.

Yeah.

Because you have to pay attention to the other part of the movie.

I got it right away.

I'm sure you remember this, like in the theater, even if we weren't in the same screening, like 350 people being like, what the fuck?

Well, because she's shrieking, screaming for a minute.

And that was unsettling.

And then that shot of him just facing the other way.

And I was like,

oh, no.

Yeah.

And then thump.

It's as good as it gets.

Cut to black.

No epilogue, no, like

authorities were never able to find their bot.

It's just like, bang, this is it.

And that contributes to the idea that it is like found footage because it's kind of like, oh, there's no like cool, happy ending where somebody came in and was like, but don't worry because Josh was later found.

You know, it's, it's, yeah, it's dark.

I gave up on Josh when I saw the finger, tooth, and his tongue, but other people might have been holding on.

Yeah, it's brilliant.

The house is brilliant.

I mean, if you're going to nitpick, you're almost like we could have maybe done 15 more minutes in the house of the or five or three or find the house before or the house is such a good character.

It's, it's, I wonder if they wasted it just having it at the tail end.

I'm sure there's like lots of like practical considerations that went into that.

Where it's like,

could they, you know, with the equipment that they had, could they effectively shoot an interior at night?

And like, what was like the deal with like running up and down the stairs?

But I mean, that's the thing is like this was made by the people that you see on the screen.

What was the movie set in Russia

that was a found footage movie with like the creepy building?

And it was near the Chernobyl.

It was like the Chernobyl

Chernobyl tapes?

Something like that.

Chernobyl diaries.

That's a scary one too.

Yeah.

I think the found footage, I watch all of them.

Most of them are bad.

It doesn't matter.

Well, I saw the first paranormal activity in the theater.

I think

I was at my book tour in San Diego.

I want to say that.

I want to say I saw it in San Diego for some reason.

Same thing.

It's fucking when these found footage things go off the rail in the last 50 minutes, it's terrifying.

Anyway,

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All right, CR, what is the most 1999 thing about this movie other than stuff we've already discussed?

Would you go with Heather's 1999 look?

All the things we talked about, the top, or do you have a specific thing we haven't mentioned yet?

Because I have one thing

uh josh's car is very 1999 even if it's not a 1999 car it's like the kind of car that like a broke college student would be driving in 1999 it's like a cellular cigarettes yeah yeah

um there's cigarette butts like between the seats yeah just even the way josh talks like when he's just like i want mashed potatoes and a piece of ass like right it's just a very 99 he's like the guy that at one in the morning he's smoke at six he's like i think courtney love killed kirk Obain.

And you're like, dude, can we go to bed?

Here's the most 1999 thing.

One of the video cameras used by the actors,

they bought it at Circuit City.

Yes.

Filming was completed, and then they returned the camera for a refund to help their budget.

They bought the camera at Circuit City.

There's no more 1999 fact about this movie than that.

I feel like every story I hear about, you know, people making their first feature and like maxing out two credit cards to pay for it.

It always is like, oh, and then I made sex lies and videotapes.

So it all worked out great.

I want to have any bad ones.

I want to know the oral history of dudes who are like, I still have a poor credit score because

I tried to finance my Terminator sequel with a Discover card.

That was us with the Take Hunter one.

That's right.

We funded it with whatever certain best buy with Marriott Bonvoy points.

What's age the best?

Horror movies where the kids are clearly asking for it.

Don't go in the fucking woods.

You knocked over the rock pile.

Like, why?

What do you?

Oh, oh, cool.

Look at this.

Let's stay here tonight.

I think it's an Indian burial ground.

Get the fuck out.

What are you doing?

All of them deserve to die.

All of them.

They just should have been like,

honestly, it should have been like, we're not going further than like 15 minutes from the car.

Yeah.

You know, like, it's just like, this can be like, we can get some scenery.

We are not going in the woods.

The curse of the Blair Witch documentation for Woods Age is the best.

I'm glad.

I got a question for you.

This is, I just got to ask this because we were talking about going into the woods.

Like, how soon after starting the adventure, do you start questioning Heather's navigation skills?

Oh, immediately.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Worst hike partner ever.

Also, not hard to figure out.

The sun's going that way.

It came up this way.

It's going that way.

I think that's how she was navigating and she wasn't really using that old map.

What saves the best?

Making one victim stand in the corner with their back to the second murder.

I don't know how you come up with something that creepy, but congrats, because that's about as creepy as it gets.

You admire the baby.

Little body, you stand over there.

I'm going to kill your brother.

Like, what is a creepier horror movie gimmick than that?

I know.

Standing in the corner, don't move.

You just have to stand that way and you're just listening to the other person get murdered.

It's up there.

It's up there with like the girl from the ring as like one of the scariest like single like seconds in a movie.

Yeah.

Or poltergeist girl go just being in the TV.

Yeah.

We've had some good horror stuff.

So another one,

you mentioned this, the walking around for the same day and ending up in the same spot, just as a concept, is pretty brilliant.

Kudos to them for that.

They all signed a release granting the production permission to, quote, mess with your head.

So, when you watch this movie, the tent attack and a couple other scenes, like they're genuinely don't know what's going on because they don't know if where they are is like a haunted place.

Yeah,

I also think what's one of the things

that's aged the best is

the group dynamic in relation to how fear jumps from person to person.

It's pretty rare that in any group, all three people are feeling like the same thing at once.

So Mike will be freaking out and Heather will be kind of angry at him, but Josh will be trying to make peace.

Or Josh is freaking out and Heather's angry at him and Mike's trying to make peace.

Or Mike and Josh are going crazy and Heather's trying to make peace.

It's like they always have like this

really

precise internal dynamic to their group.

It's really, really well observed.

No music in this movie, other than except for Josh's car, rock songs.

But once we get in the woods, it's just we're silent the whole time, which is a great choice.

The trailer was really good for this, and so was the poster.

Both super effective.

I mean, the poster was also like a missing poster of Heather, right?

Yeah, yeah,

and then uh,

you know, some of the stuff the actors, and there's, and we'll talk about the what stage, the worst piece of it too, but

how this movie became like a huge phenomenon and how dumbfounded they were by it is really interesting.

Just like the concept of becoming famous overnight in this completely improbable way.

Um,

and also like a early doors, like, early stages of people

not being able to separate the actor from the performance and starting to get like mad at Heather and like how she felt like she and like people, people really invading their privacy in a fucked up way.

Yeah, like Heather said, I had this overarching wish that the movie would have just made 7 million.

That would have been a really great sweet spot.

I was just in this position where I was the face of this thing that kind of blew up and I was utterly unprotected.

Josh said, to completely honest, so much of an experience like that happens in a blackout when your life changes that drastically, you don't even understand how crazy you are until you have the opportunity to hindsight.

It was a tidal wave.

It's really like one of, I don't know if there's been another movie quite like that.

You've had movies with actors.

You've had movies where actors could then have a career after the movie, like swingers.

You'd be like, oh, Vince Vaughan, what's his next movie going to be?

These three were all supposed to be dead after the movie.

Yeah.

And kind of had to play dead like a dog.

even after the movie came out.

And then it's like, okay, everybody kind of knows now.

And then their careers were done.

There was also like that feeling with the indie movie scene.

It wouldn't, you couldn't do this on Netflix, is what I guess what I'm trying to say.

It's like you couldn't be like, oh, this is on, like, Netflix would immediately feel like liable for like misleading people or for whatever.

Like.

Their overnight sensation, it wasn't like what happens with like stranger things where nobody knows who those kids are.

And then the next weekend, they're like super world famous.

Right.

This was like legit people being like, so are these people dead?

Are they alive?

And then when they're not dead, the people are.

they're kind of mad at them yeah like a little bit yeah yeah yeah weird

any other what stage the best no we covered a bunch of it it was just like uh capturing that moment when handheld video is really starting to blossom in social circles and just how well drawn the characters are and just how knowable they are the fortune three clap award for most giftable moment is the same winner as the great shot gorder award for most cinematic shot heather's confessional they just go for it it's so creepy how close like we're like inside her nostrils basically and there's like spit and phlegm and her tears and

and she's just so scared it's really smart how they do it why what would you have i mean the only uh competitor would be mike standing against the wall but that's like a three frames of shot like this the heather thing is the correct answer Dennett Thieves Benny Hanna award for scene stealing location has to be the evil house at the end.

Which, for sure.

Unbelievable.

Um, Big Hoonen Burger Award, best use of food and drink.

Are cigarettes eligible for this category?

They are, and I would like to shout out Mike for finding the couple of Lucies at the bottom of his pack.

Yeah, that's that's true dedication to smoking cigarettes.

It's just like, I know I have one somewhere here.

The Butch's Girlfriend Award, weak link of the film, other than uh

the motion stuff, which I think has gotten better over the years.

In 1999, we just weren't used to that, but I think now there's been so many things like that, your eyes kind of get used to it.

It's just really hard for me to accept how they got this lost in the woods.

So, what you said about how they entered a different dimension almost has to be the answer, or they're in, they're possessed by some sort of spirit that's just telling them to do this and they don't realize it.

I go along with the idea that for the first third of the hike, Heather is kind of being loosey-goosey with navigating and is really what she actually wants is to come across some really fucked up stuff.

She doesn't care about getting back in time.

Yeah.

But in her journals, she's like, we have to get home.

We have to get home.

We have to get home.

I think once Josh accidentally knocks over the pile of rocks, then He's like, oh my God, I think that trips something and they can't leave.

So they're walking around and the spirits just Jedi mind-tricking them to stay.

I wish it had been explained

more clearly, but whatever.

Do you have a different week link of the film or no?

No, I mean, I think that

I think that the setup for horror movies is usually like

my favorite part of horror films because that's where you sort of get to know the people.

And the Blair Witch one, like, there's a lot of interviews.

Like, it's, it's somewhat repetitive.

I think if I had like 10 more minutes in the woods and 10 less minutes in town, I would have been fine.

But like, that's also because you have the Curse of the Blair Witch, which has all that stuff, essentially.

I do love the one with the mom with the baby who's like trying to cover her mouth, though.

Yeah, that was good.

I had her coming up later in a different category.

What's age the worst?

Big fat handheld cameras.

DAT machines that you have to lug around.

Yeah.

And by the way, those were like the new sleeker versions because the one, like the one I had in the late 80s, you're like separating your shoulder.

Nostrils in HD.

Poor Heather's nostrils as the TVs have gotten better.

Hasn't been great for.

We're like going way.

You can almost see her brain.

um here's my big one

no fun

no super fun scene in the first like 25 minutes to make me care about the characters more i actually think the drunk scene could have gone longer maybe it wasn't good um or some argument where they're arguing about some sort of pop culture thing or a sports thing or just something where they could connect a little bit before it gets scary it's definitely missing one or two scenes right we're like oh i like these these these three are a fun hang or oh these three are interesting it just but i think that if they had done too much Gilligan's Island stuff, it would have dated it more.

You don't think they should have done the Tarantino?

I think it's fine.

You know what I like about Amsterdam?

What?

They're just like,

you have any what stage the worst?

I mean, number one is that Josh and Mike missed the Juan Dixon and Steve Blake NCAA tournament run.

Yeah, they really would love that.

Such a likable barrel of team.

You know,

exactly.

But for real,

the three actors got fucking jobbed.

Like, yeah, there's a lot of different

accounts of this.

And this has become even a bigger thing now because in 2016, I think, or 18, they did Blair Witch, which was the reboot.

And now Blumhouse has the rights to it and is going to do it again.

They did not really participate in the fortunes of this film.

Yeah, so the backstory, they agree to make it.

It's made for no money.

The guys who paid for everything sold it for $1.1 million to

Artison, which was some studio.

Artison then goes...

See, it's basically an indie deal, but then they go and they make $248 million from there.

They didn't have any points in the movie.

They didn't get bonuses for, you know, certain thresholds.

And And they basically, not only did they make no money, then they had no career after it because their lives got turned upside down.

Yeah.

So it's this cool thing to be in the movie, but somehow they got nothing out of this thing that made $248 million.

And I think it would be one thing if they were like in a James Cameron movie and they like are just walking across the frame and James Cameron is doing everything.

They're literally doing everything in the movie.

Yeah.

They're like shooting it.

They're coming up with, they are the characters in a lot of ways.

And they're, they're doing, I mean, like, obviously it's a collaboration, but I don't think that they ultimately got paid fairly for their work and it's still going there's a lot of stuff that you can really deep dive at the other part that's a what stage the worst so you said how blumhouse owns it now jason blum who's we've done stuff with he's been on my pod a bunch of times he was working at merit max at the time passed on the movie could have bought it did it

huge mistake became he just didn't think it was going to be a hit And then what happens?

Eight years later, he makes paranormal activity.

It's like, you know what?

I fucked up.

And then does a better version of Blair Witch, basically.

I have that in what stage the worst, just because I think that's a loss for Blum.

Let me ask you,

how many of the sequels have you watched?

Are you Blair Witch completely?

I definitely saw Blair Witch 2 on cable when it came out.

It was awful and I hated it.

And I haven't done any of the sequels.

I just, it's over here.

I like the original and that's it.

The Adam Wingard reboot is pretty bad, except the climactic

version of what happens in Blair Witch Project is one of the most physically taxing, like fucking crazy horror scenes I've ever seen.

Really?

Oh, maybe I'll just watch that.

There was supposed, we were supposed to see the Blair Witch.

Here's the Woodstage the Worst.

And the cameraman fucked it up the one time they actually had it when Heather's like, What the fuck is that?

What the fuck is that?

That's what I was saying.

And it was supposed to be the Blair Witch.

And that's the guy running around in white, I think.

And then those guys got kind of fucked on the sequel too, Myrick and Sanchez.

They just wanted to pump it out as fast as possible.

They got they and the guys were like, Can we have some time?

Can we have time to create a new one?

And they were like, No, it's got to happen.

Sanchez said,

Uh, pick a release date, start working on the movie.

There was a fuse tide, and whether you're ready or not, that bomb was going to go off.

And those guys were like, We're out, we're not doing it.

And uh, they made it anyway, and it was terrible.

Another would say the worst.

So, Heather Donahue changed her name

to Rehance.

She retired from acting.

She became a medical marijuana grower, changed her name, and

just seems like really scarred by the whole experience that she was known as Heather from this movie and really regrets it, regrets using her own name and did not have a great experience with the movie.

Yeah, I mean,

there's a variety piece that's kind of like.

25 years later with these folks or 30 years later with these folks and that they're, you can tell it's, it's it's still with them they're still better yeah

the ruffle oh hannah rubidak partridge overacting award they knew and they let it happen don't you call me lady i come in here i give these things to you give me all your gut this and give me all your gut i treated you like a son you stabbed me in the heart

All three?

I don't think you can give it when you're being terrorized by a spectral witch.

Is there really anything that's overacting so i have mike before they realize they're being terrorized when he's just getting super aggro oh yeah and he kind of dials it up a little bit it's like all right it's early mike settle down have have a have a cigarette you haven't even found the same log yet mike yeah come on buddy was there a better title for this movie the first title was called the blair witch tapes

How about this?

Why didn't they just call it Blair Witch?

That's what the reboot winds up being called.

For a while, its code name was The Woods, which is pretty good, but also pretty general.

The Blair Witch project went towards the idea that

this was like somebody was putting together this footage as a project and contributed to the weird kind of like, is this real bit?

Can you dig it a word for most memorable quote?

Does this movie have a memorable memorable quote?

I think no redneck is this creative is up there.

Yeah, you're right.

That's good.

All right.

The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford's hottest take award.

We've alluded to it.

I just don't think you can actually truly understand this movie without watching Curse of the Blair Witch.

And in some ways, Curse of the Blair Witch is almost better.

Like, I would love to see.

That's a hottest take.

Curse of the Blair Witch is almost

just go better because that's the hot take.

I would love to see an assembly of.

the Blair Witch movie with the Curse of the Blair Witch and like have it be like two and a half hours.

My hottest take, I think this is one of the most fucked up franchises we've had.

There should have been 10 of these.

How did,

I just don't understand why did they rush out the sequel?

Why did the next one take so long?

How'd they fuck that one up too?

The blueprint of like Blair Witch Woods, people going back.

Maybe there's a cousin of the Blair Witch in California.

Like this just should have kept going and going.

I don't understand it.

Well, because

they gave all of the opportunities to, to tell like the original stories, right?

Like, there could have been the, the crucible version of this with the original witch.

There could have been the 1940s.

Like, it could have could have been like Yellowstone.

Yeah.

I, I think, I think this is

a multi-billion dollar franchise.

Rip and Beth hanging out in the witch house.

Let's go to 1880s, man.

Hey, guess what?

There's a fucking witch.

I don't know.

I just feel like they really missed it.

I can't believe they it up that badly uh casting what ifs so there are none they they did a whole improv process to find the three actors and that was it they wanted people that could kind of think on their feet heather said that they asked her to improvise and the improv was you've been in prison you've served nine years of a 25 year sentence you're up for parole why should we let you out And she said, I was the only person that said, I don't think you should.

And they were like, cool, you've got the job.

Who knows if that's true?

Best that guy award

everyone in the movie?

Yeah, I mean, you can't really have a that guy

for this, for this movie, I don't think.

I do have.

What fucked-up rewatchables pod this is.

Deion Waiters, I have, though.

The mom who covers her mouth.

I like

Ed Swanson, the younger fisherman.

I liked him.

It's always good when somebody's about, and a bunch of movies have cribbed this.

Somebody's about to take that last step to go to the place you're not supposed to go.

And then they're like, don't go.

It's like, don't fucking.

It's usually like some guy who's working at the last gas station.

He's like, you kids will never learn.

It's a fisherman or like there's some auto mechanic who's helping them with gas or whatever it is.

Recasting Couch Director or City.

So what if they got three actual 1999 actors and made the movie with with three real actors.

Like Affleck, Damon, and Paltrow or something.

I had Michelle Williams, Heath Ledger, and Jake Jolenhall.

It's just early broke back.

It's like the broke back.

Oh, I like that.

I like that.

All of them were acting in the, they were all young actors in the late 90s.

In this version of your broke back witch project?

Broke back witch project.

Is is Michelle Williams' character kind of like, why do you guys keep

getting your own tent?

What's going on here?

I brought one 10.

Why'd you guys bring another 10?

Michelle Williams as the lead would have been really good, especially at this point in her career.

I mean, but like this movie doesn't work if you're like, oh, it's Michelle Williams from

you're right.

Yeah, all the people from this movie became the person.

All right, one more break.

Coming back, Tony Romo.

Chris Collinsworth, or somebody else for the director's commentary of the Blair Witch Project.

I mean,

we got to keep our hot streak going.

We got to get Belichick back.

Keep her back.

I thought you might do Van Pelt.

Josh knocked over that pile of rocks there.

It's just a mental error.

Can't have that.

Can't have that.

Now he's going to get slime on his clothes and they'll find his tongue

in a t-shirt.

I don't think when they keep ending up at that log, I don't think they realize they're

in another dimension at this point.

Yeah, I mean, that's just, that's mental mistakes.

You got to work on that.

you gotta know where you are you can't i i think when mike lost the map

that was a huge moment for them because you don't have a map

reminds them of when scott peoli lost the map once

when i was working with nick saban 1999 we had a map of our place and nick saban lost it

couldn't do it that was it couldn't have it map was gone

I when are you going to break out, Vam Pelt?

I can't wait for that one.

Heather, I'm just a guy in this tent with you right now.

And I got to ask,

I'm not nearly as scared as you.

I've never been that scared, but I still got to ask.

Do you regret going in the woods?

Half-ass internet research.

Heather Donahue's mother received sympathy cards from people who believed their daughter was actually dead.

That happened.

Jesus Christ.

The shoot was eight days.

The actors never knew the Blair Witch was fake.

Thousands of people have gone to Maryland hoping to find the Blair Witch legend and were sadly disappointed because they had to disclose credits.

They had to tear down that house because fans kept going and trying to like break off pieces of it as memorabilia.

Yeah.

And so they had to demolish it.

My half-hist internet research truly made my day.

So I got to share it with you.

So there's.

There's a theory online that Mary, the crazy lady that they visit in the beginning of the movie, is the witch.

Oh.

And that she is basically like not in her witch form when they see her, but that that's why she has like the little sort of voodoo-y ties around her fence that keeps it locked.

And that when Heather is running around filming the rocks in the beginning of the film, in the forest, she says something like,

What was the Bible quote that Mary told us?

about the rocks.

And so people on Reddit basically have found this quote that they think it is, which is from Genesis.

Oh, Jesus.

I know.

I'm going to break out some Genesis.

This pile of rocks and this one special rock both help us to remember our agreement.

I will never go past these rocks to fight against you, and you must never go on my side of these rocks to fight against me.

And it's essentially like they pass the rocks, and that's why the witch comes out.

So you think these filmmakers were smart enough to?

I do.

I do.

Wow.

Great job.

It's a great Easter egg.

I don't even know that's a theory.

Yeah.

And Josh knocks over the rocks.

You know,

Josh goes first.

Have you thrown that theory at Ray Hance yet?

I haven't.

I haven't.

There's a lot of stuff about Josh and Heather not getting along for people who care.

The house used as the Rustin Parr house, which you mentioned, was called the Griggs House, located in Patapisco Valley State Park, 50 miles east of Burkittsville, built in the 1800s, renovated

early 20th century.

It had been abandoned, vandalized, and was decaying for several decades.

And somehow they were able to film in there.

And then eventually now it's gone.

And then Josh's camera, which was a CP16,

about 10 years ago, sold on eBay.

What do you think they got?

It's 30 grand.

10 grand.

Okay.

That's it.

Apex Mountain.

Everyone in the movie.

Yeah.

And the drug.

Literally everyone.

Sundance.

I don't know.

What is the Apex Mountain for Sundance?

This is pretty good.

This movie became a top 10 movie and a phenomenon based on a Sundance screening.

So Sex Lies and Videotape is a huge Sundance movie, right?

Yeah, that kind of creates Sundance.

Yeah.

So I wonder if that kind of functions

in that sense.

Would you say it's Apex Mountain for viral marketing?

Yes.

Good call.

I found footage movies,

probably paranormal activity, right?

Because that leads to nine paranormal activities.

But it's this invents it.

You know, Orion probably doesn't do that.

That franchise.

Do you think it's witches?

I think Wizard of Oz probably for witches.

Fair.

Do you think this is Apex Mountain for Cal Ripken getting mentioned in films?

I'm going to say yes.

How about staring in a corner right before murder?

Apex Mountain, yes.

Artists and Entertainment acquired this movie for 1.1 million and 250 tuple timed it.

I think it's an Apex Mountain for them because I can't think of it.

Yeah,

could have floated some to the cast.

Cruz or Hanks,

why not both?

Why not both as Josh and Mike?

No, gotta pick.

I was thinking

Hanks as Mike,

young Hanks, like 1981 Hanks.

Yeah.

It would be really funny if 1999 Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks were the fishermen.

Magnolia Cruz.

They were the fishermen.

Cruise is doing the Jerry Maguire stuff.

Yeah.

I'm just going to freak out.

I'm in the woods.

Racehorse Rock Band.

So we have Hanks as the winner for that?

Sure.

We're keeping score.

Craig keeps score.

Racehorse Rock Band Wrestler Fantasy Team Name.

Coffin Rockers is pretty good.

Oh, Coffin Rock is a good one, man.

Or Coffin Rockers.

I like fantasy team or Coffin Rock.

Coffin Rock's good.

Pick a nets.

I said earlier, why would you stay near the Indian Barrel Ground?

Super.

Just don't.

Anyone listening?

Indian, if you hear the words Indian Barrel Ground, out.

Just done.

Don't fuck with it.

How did they have this much camera battery?

They charge it at Heather's the day before.

I wonder how.

I mean, every day.

They're there for six fucking days.

Those cameras where you chew up the battery in like three hours.

They would film 20 battery packs.

I think that's a legit nit to pick.

It's beyond a nitpick.

Two cigarette questions.

Why didn't they have more cigarettes?

And then why did it take Mike so long to dig through his pack to make sure there weren't more cigarettes at the bottom?

I feel like CR at his cigarette smoking peak,

the bag's upside down within three hours, and you've gone through every crevice of it to make sure there's no cigarettes left.

Mike's just like, hey, I found some more butts.

It's like, what?

That's what we call a carton trip.

Somebody's got to bring a carton.

Just you never, it's like

a carton trip.

It's just anything longer than two days.

And it's like, we don't know where the next convenience store is going to be.

There's not going to be like any outpost where we can do this.

What else are we going to do while walking around the woods?

All of them smoke, right?

So that's at least 15 SIGs a day for three people.

They're going to be in the woods for four.

So that's.

I think Mike was closer to a pack because when they pick Mike up in the morning, he's burning one when he's seen it.

So Mike might have been like a pack and a half a day.

Yeah.

That goes to a larger nitpick that I had, which is,

with all due respect to Heather as a documentary filmmaker, the camera equipment goes first.

It's just, I'm not thinking this.

Once we know we're dying, let's, yeah, let's try to get rid of this shit.

Yeah.

Good call.

So

I'm moving a lot quicker that way.

You know, I shouldn't have mentioned this in What Stage the Best, and my apologies for not doing it.

Movies where cigarettes are a huge part of the plot, I just really miss.

I just don't think you could do this now where it's like one of the three biggest dramatic forks are the fact that they're finally out of cigarettes.

Yeah.

Now it'd be like, you know, vape.

Yeah, like my, I ran out of Zen.

It would probably be phones if you didn't have your phone.

Oh, yeah, the phone battery.

Your phone battery would be dead.

Yeah.

I can't go on TikTok.

Any other nitpicks?

Do you think that

like there, there's an interesting conversation that happens in the movie where Josh is like, my girlfriend is going to get worried soon.

Like, people are going to notice that we're gone.

Yeah.

Do you think that it's a nitpick that it wouldn't happen sooner?

Or is it like, that's a very 90s thing that it's like, oh, have you seen Bill?

No, I haven't seen him in like a week.

That's a 90s thing to me.

Yeah.

He said he's going to be back Tuesday.

It's Thursday.

Ah.

Probably stopped somewhere.

He's looking for smokes.

Probably found a diner.

Sequel, prequel, prestige TV, all black cast or untouchable.

Prequel was sitting there to do the Yellowstone model.

There are multiple prequels.

The The Rustin Parr story.

Yeah, really such a miss by fucking artisan.

They made so much money from this movie.

Like, fuck it.

Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Treo, Sam Jackson, JT Walsh, Byron Mayo, Harling Mays, Evil Afrika, Ramon Raymond, Philip Baker Hall?

Our new entry, just for this, Private Hudson from Aliens.

She tore down the voodoo witch, man.

What the fuck are we going to do now?

I had Byron, actually.

Heather.

Heather, Josh, Mike.

You know what helps me after a long day of hiking through the Maryland woods, looking for a mythological creature?

Getting in a rented tent for three and turning on the camcorder and seeing what happens.

Let's make a movie.

Let's get rid of two of those three sleeping bags and go to town.

Oh, my God.

This would be a good Byron movie.

It's day four.

I know we're feeling a little gamey.

Just want to Oscar.

I love your scent, Mike.

Just one Oscar who gets it.

Nobody.

I mean, if you could give an Oscar to the marketing department or the marketing campaign, I think.

Do they have that?

They do not.

Marketing would be good.

Probably unanswerable questions.

So this is a passion point for me.

If you're this lost in the woods.

Climb a fucking tree and see where you are.

My wife and I were talking about this last night.

There's got to be a tree you can climb and see how high you can go so you can see

the surrounding areas because they, unless they hike for 40 miles, get to the top of that tree and all you see is trees.

Then I, then I know we're not near anything.

Then you just throw yourself out of the tree and die.

Yeah.

Then it's plan B: start setting trees on fire.

So the oh, yeah, yeah, just kill miles and miles of wildlife to get saved.

No, I don't, I don't, I don't know when you climb to the top, whatever it takes to see that terps run, you gotta do it.

You can't miss it.

Did Mike lose the map because the spirits possessed him?

Unanswerable question.

I never thought about that.

I thought he was basically.

The witch wanted him to kick the map away.

I thought it was supposed to be more like.

Mike is hungry.

Mike is tired.

He does something really fucked up and then doesn't cop to it until the absolute last minute.

Who found the camera stuff?

How long did it take?

I would assume, like, in the documentary, it suggests that there's like, you know, there's search parties.

So, I mean, eventually, like, the authorities find it.

Okay.

Any other unanswerables for you?

Uh, how much did Heather know about where she was taking them in the woods?

Because she obviously knows Coffin Rock, she knows that there's supposed to be a cemetery.

She obviously knows there's supposed to be a house somewhere since that's where the Rustin Parr stuff happened.

So, in the journals,

there's just a sense that she's like, I mean, she's she's very like keyed into some intense writing in the journals, but there's a suggestion that she's like a little bit more aware of the dangers and where they're going than when she's alluding to in the film where she's just like, I know where we're going.

I know where we're going.

Don't worry about it.

We're going this way, you know?

And so it's, that's an interesting and ambiguous part of the movie.

So was Heather evil?

I don't think so, but I think she knew more about the mythology of the area that she was letting out.

Keep down a witch.

Best double feature choice.

Would you go paranormal activity?

It's like the 1.0 and 2.0 version of this.

Well, I mean, honestly, the Curse of the Blair Witch is the double feature.

Oh, good call.

Okay.

The Indian Red Zawana Award, what happened the next day?

Well, in this case, what happened in the next 15 minutes?

How long did it take for Mike to die?

Did he die?

Or did he die?

Because the legend was you killed the one and then you killed the other.

What if Mike's not dead?

Later, we'll talk talk about the cowboys um

now the legend was he then has to die next so you just

i didn't understand that is one thing that you kind of have to consider so josh gets his tongue and teeth ripped out so yeah the blair witch is imitating josh i suppose you just assume josh is dead dead but she you know like it's not killing in pairs if it's three so is josh still there as like a spectral kind of like emissary of the witch I don't really know.

Josh had to go because he kicked the rocks over.

Yes, they slimed his thing.

They were fucking pissed about it.

Yeah, he gets marked.

Yeah, he got marked.

That's what happened.

What piece of memorability would you want from this movie?

Obviously, the camera because it went for 10K.

I don't know.

I don't know what else.

Like, it's like, oh, cool.

It's a slime sleeping bag from Blair Witch.

Heather's Journal.

Heather's Journal.

That's a good one.

Yeah.

Mike's Last Cigarette.

An empty empty mike cigarette pack like a kind of crumpled up wisdom winston could you tell what he was smoking i was looking for that i couldn't i couldn't they really had it hit it i smoked winston lights at the time so i was just i associate it with winston lights you think he was a cheaper cigarette guy or did he splurge or was he a marlborough reds let me just plow

these like a carlton guy yeah

I was thinking, I was thinking probably maybe camels for him, not the Camel Lights, just the...

Oh, unfiltered camels?

Yeah.

the coach finstock award best life lesson don't fuck with witches barrel grounds or the woods i think is a good

good way to uh proceed through life those three things just don't leave eyesight of don't don't leave eyeshot of the car

who won the movie i sadly probably artists and entertainment

they 250 tuple time their investment unless you want to go with the filmmakers it definitely wasn't the three actors the filmmakers but i'm going to include the actors just because they also were part of the filmmaking process, but

to basically revitalize, if not fully

popularize the found footage horror thing that's still going strong today.

I think we won the movie because we found out about your fear of hiking in the woods.

Especially just getting deeply lost in the woods is not, I couldn't handle it.

Is that your number one fear?

Feels like this should be a ringer.

This should be, be, what are the

ringer retreat?

We have to do like trust exercises deep in the woods and sweep

you and fantasy.

We have to get like in a shark cage together.

10 miles into the woods with no phones.

Craig, any last thoughts?

I don't feel like Craig's going to recommend this movie to anybody.

Well, I just think it's hard.

I'm jealous I couldn't experience the phenomenon.

And honestly, there will probably be nothing like this that I could experience or did experience in my life.

So it's just a bummer.

We have two.

Paranormal activity.

Have you seen the first paranormal activity?

Yeah, but you didn't think it was real.

Yeah.

Right.

So even if it's a really scary, effective movie, there will be nothing like this again.

And I can't even think of anything similar.

It's just like Apex Mountain for you had to be there moments.

I don't know.

Oh, that's good.

I like it.

That's it for the Blair Witch Project.

Thanks to Chris Ryan.

Thanks to Craig Korlbeck for producing.

Thanks to Jack Sanders as well.

You can watch this podcast on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel and we will see you next week.

This episode is brought to you by Warner Brothers Pictures.

One battle after another is coming to theater September 26th.

Don't miss legendary writer, director, and producer.

My guy, Paul Thomas Anderson, teaming up with Leo DiCaprio for the first time ever.

Pretty exciting.

They almost teamed together in boogie nights, actually, alongside award-winning actors like Sean Penn, Tiana Taylor, and Benicio Del Toro in this hilarious action-packed adventure following Bob Ferguson, an ex-revolutionary on a mission to find his missing daughter and overcome the consequences of his past.

One battle after another.

Only in theater September 26th.

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