Is it more than just “if you wouldn’t get caught?” I believe Evan was never thinking about cheating, and we all have values that we think we’d follow, but it’s different when you’re there.
It’s the free pizza theory. When I was writing this with Nicolas, we have a theory that no one would ever say no to a free pizza. If you’re at your door and you’re hungry, at 3 in the morning if a free pizza shows up, do you take the pizza? That’s the real question. Evan’ a nice guy. He doesn’t go looking for it. It comes to him but he offers the tissue. He lets them in. He gets in the bathroom. He does all these things that are on the surface.
At the beginning, there’s little hints. They’re not having sex. The whole house is dominated by the wife. He’s kind of relegated to the corner. He’s the architect and he’s designed a world that he has this wife and her art has slowly taken over everything and she runs the show. She’s still taking the kids to the beach on Father’s Day because they had a beach trip planned. She’s not saying, “Well, let’s cancel the whole thing if you have work, honey. We’ll be here for you.” She’s still leaving. There’s underlying hostility at the wife that he buries under this false sense of happiness.
The kids are making fun of his hair. They’re going, “Why don’t you cut your hair?” That’s his identity. That’s the ultimate emasculation when the girl’s do cut his hair. I wanted to almost use chopping off hair and destroying statues as a metaphor for the way I chopped off heads and body parts in my other movies. If you think about what I did to people in Hostel and what the girls do to the artwork, they’re very similar.
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You’re a newly married man, so do you accept a little bit of culpability that you might be vulnerable to a tempting situation yourself?
Obviously I’m recently married and I feel that I’m very happy being married and we’re very happy in a committed marriage. And we discussed that. Obviously in the making of the movie we talked about that. Is this going to be us in 15 years? Lorenza’s really my muse. She’s my inspiration. I want to write great parts for her. In Green Inferno she’s out in the jungle reacting to all these incredible external circumstances. We went into the Amazon and we were dealing with the bugs and the heat and five hours of travel through the jungle just to get your shots.
This is you’re sitting in a chair and you’re talking to people. I thought her range was really, really magnificent, not just within the performance but from one to the other. But we talk about that and we both give each other such support. She’s my best friend and we do everything together. Neither of us would ever want to do anything to screw it up, but we always say people are human and stuff happens. We can’t say what we’re going to be like in 10 years. We can only promise to try and work together.
I think being humble and not so superior and judgmental to say “I’d never do that” helps you make the right decisions.
You can never judge anyone who does that because you’re not in their situation. It’s like if you see a guy hit a girl in the street, you would tackle that guy and kill him. But if that girl had just stabbed that guy’s children and chopped their heads off, you’d go, “Oh yeah, I didn’t realize the context.” I’m not saying that’s the best example, but what I’ve learned, and I say I constantly feel like I know nothing and I’m always relearning, is you can never judge anyone’s situation. You can only judge your own situation. I just try to judge myself and follow my own moral compass.
On the metaphor for chopping off body parts, did you want to deal with a sexual manipulation that’s not physical violence?
Yeah, I wanted to make a film that was more psychological. I love the early Paul Verhoeven films and Polanski films, Peter Traynor, but I wanted to do something that was like a psychological chess game where they’re playing musical chairs. He lets them in but then they go a step further to his face. Then he lets them in and they go further. They’re always one step ahead of him invading his space, looking around, checking the iPad, singing. They’re thinking in a way that he would never think because he would never think to do that to someone, but I didn’t want for the movie to be about physical violence.
They’re toying with him. They’re a cat and he’s a mouse. He thinks that he’s the lion in this situation but he’s really not. It’s so fun to watch Keanu Reeves, who we’re so used to seeing save the world, get flummoxed by these two girls. They’re almost like the Cat in the Hat. They’re like Thing 1 and Thing 2. It’s like a strange version of The Cat in the Hat. When they’re running around and jumping on furniture going, “Get out of my house, get out of my house, get out of my house.” He doesn’t know what else to do. He constantly thinks he has it figured out because he’s smart and he’s the adult and these girls are just 10 steps ahead of him.
Is another lesson that our first impressions can be wildly wrong?
For sure. You look back now, you can see the signs. When the girls come in, they’re like, “Oh, sorry, we don’t want to mess up your house.” They take off their shoes. They do all these things on the surface that seem like they’re being respectful of his house, and that’s all to lure him in as part of the honeytrap. I felt that if the next morning, Evan had walked in and said, “That was amazing. Oh, I’d love some pancakes,” the girls would have laughed and left. But, because he came in and said, “I thought you guys left.” That’s the first thing he says. They go, “It’s on.” They keep giving him moments and he wants to be rid of them. He wants all evidence destroyed.
Even in Hostel, with the hookers, and I’m not trying to compare it to hustle, they’re are almost disposable. Evan just wants the situation to be gone. He wants to clean it from his house. He wants to shower it off like it never happened. And the girls are like, “No, no, no, no, no. You don’t get to do that to us. There’s a price for the pizza and you’re going to pay it.”
Have we gotten to a point in cinema where things like Facebook and Uber are tools, not problems like a cell phone used to be?
Yeah, you have to certainly clear it with Uber and Facebook and there are certain ways you can use it, and iChat and things like that. They’re generally great about it but there’s a fine line of certain things you can’t do about replicating certain graphics. I like using them as plot points. I like it when it’s organic. On “Hemlock Grove” my big thing was they have to talk with iPhones because I don’t believe that they’re actual teenagers in high school if they don’t have them. I just don’t. There are certain weird things. I can believe that’s a seven foot girl with electricity. I can believe he’s a werewolf. I can believe he’s a vampire but I can’t believe they wouldn’t use an iPhone.
So I’m sitting there with the audience and they’re like, “You can’t get a cab. Why wouldn’t he have an Uber?” So that’s not a problem as in well, there’s no Ubers. No, it just takes 45 minutes so they know that’s the clock that we have. We have 45 minutes to lure this guy in. So I like using technology. Even Hostel was actually the first mainstream movie that used texting as a plot point, with the texting with Oli disappearing. I remember that, people going, “Oh, wow.” At the time with Hostel that was the first movie that did that so people thought it was forward thinking. You look back now and it’s like of course, why wouldn’t you have that in there? That’s how people behave.
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It’s interesting to be at Sundance now because I feel like no movie showing here will ever not be seen again. It will at least come out on VOD somewhere. David Cross’s film from last year, he’s releasing it on bitTorrent now! When you started, it was probably you either sold to a studio or you were gone. Now you work with Netflix and you have The Crypt, so is it a good thing that we’re in a time where everything will get seen somewhere?
It’s great. I think all the modes of distribution are changing. I think things are moving forward. Everything’s moving mobile. You’re still going to have the theatrical experience but it’s great that there is VOD and Netflix and Amazon, all these ways for people to really experience movies. That’s what it’s all about. It used to be this wall between hoping a distributor picked up your movie and put it on videotape and for you to get a DVD deal was a big deal. Now, you can get anything. It’s really amazing that someone can make The Babadook and IFC puts it out or we did The Stranger in Chile which IFC Midnight’s releasing. That’s kind of a smaller, more quiet, dark, creepy film but that movie definitely have an audience. There can be an audience of people that absolutely love The Stranger because it’s their type of movie, but you can really target those people so they can get it and enjoy it.
With The Crypt, Jack Davis my partner and I are moving forward doing things and there’s so much content that’s going mobile and we’re partnering. Certain things I can’t say yet but we’re about to do a re-launch that’s going to blow people’s minds the way we’re doing shows, but for me it’s all about having an idea, writing and producing it and getting it out to people. That’s what’s most important.
What’s your next movie after Knock Knock sells?
I don’t know. I wrote the script for Hyde with David O. Russell and we’re putting financing together for that but I also have another script that we wrote, Nicolas Lopez and I, for Nicolas to direct called I’m Not Crazy which I would produce. If that goes first, we’re trying to figure out the order of everything but as far as directing goes, I’d like to do The Hive next but I’ve actually been sent a whole bunch of projects to consider as a director so I might jump on one of those.
Season three of “Hemlock?”
Yeah, they’re almost done shooting. We just wrapped “South of Hell” with Mena Suvari and Blumhouse. I directed the pilot for it. It’s on We TV. We’re they’re only scripted show.
When are we going to see on “South of Hell?”
They’re talking about Spring but don’t hold me to that.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
