INT: Joel Silver

Last Updated on July 28, 2021

Legendary
producer Joel Silver (DIE HARD, the MATRIX trilogy) has been around
long enough to have a pretty keen instinct of what’s going to
appeal to an audience. That’s why his company DARK CASTLE, which
he formed with director Robert Zemeckis, has been going strong for
years. JoBlo.com recently had a chance to sit down with Silver, and
director Jaume Serra, to discuss their new frightfest, HOUSE
OF WAX. This new vision of an old classic features a
bunch of hot, sweaty teens on the run from a freaky mute who’s
just jonesing to put them in wax. Silver and Serra discussed the
challenges of the film, as well as why you’ll never see a sequel
and what it was like working with Paris Hilton.

Why
do you think horror remakes are hot right now?

Joel
Silver: I mean… I don’t know if there hot now,
it’s just been, we have this company Dark Castle, me and my partner
Bob Zemeckis, in the spirit of the late William Castle. We’ve been
trying to re-imagine some of those movies, he (William Castle)
didn’t make House of Wax but it was the same kind of period. I don’t
like thinking of this as a remake, we’ve kept the title and the
idea, but it’s really a completely different movie than the
original. We’re not running from it, matter of fact at the Tribeca
Film Festival, they’re going to show the original movie in it’s
original two strip 3-D version, we’re going to show it a week before
our movie. It isn’t like we’re telling the same story, we have the
same idea, but it’s a different picture.

Have
you thought of doing homage to the old gimmicks they used to do,
wiring theater seats and 3-D?

Joel
Silver: In the first movie, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL,
we gave away a million dollars, as a promotion. We’re doing our own
version of what Bill Castle would have done; I mean the MTV show,
which is on every week, it’s a promotional idea. I remember the
show last week and there were three spots for Amityville Horror, the
audience, they felt, the people who will be watching the show,
they’ll advertise another movie. It’s Ok, it’s a great promotion I
think too, and it’s something no one has ever done before, which
Bill Castle would have done too.

Is
this up fronting the DVD early?

Joel
Silver: We’re trying to put those shows on the DVD,
all five of those half hours. It was an unusual thing, it was like
the REAL WORLD while making a movie, and it was a cool idea.

Can
you talk about the idea of getting comfortable with how much
brutality goes into the bat beating at the end of the film?

Joel
Silver: I mean, it’s a fun movie, you’re not the
audience , the only reason you’re seeing this is
because you’re here! I think that, when I watched Passion, Mel’s
movie…in one of the scenes, they had the whipping scene and I
turned away and when I looked back they were still beating him. I
said to Jaume, ‘Let’s do that.’ But it’s fun, how can it be fun?
Yes, the actor’s fine, he’s on vacation now. This is a great fun
story, that all these kids, none of them are really dead, fingers
weren’t really cut off, it just works for the movie, it’s summer
fare.

The
answer to everyone’s question on why the chose the film was you, who
would you do a film with, who would you want to do a project with?

Joel Silver: I
like these movies, I mean look… Hillary Swank came to us to do the
next film; the next one is starring her. People like these movies,
they tend to be successful, people tend to like them, and Jaume did
a great job, so we try to make them fun and if they’re a commercial
movie then it’s kind of good for everybody.

As
far as young filmmakers, what would you tell them about trying to
get their own careers started?

Jaume
Serra: I think for a director, to get your career
started you just have to be a director. It’s very difficult, that
someone will just give you an opportunity, like he (Joel Silver)
gave me the opportunity to do my first movie, but I’d been directing
for like eight years doing commercials, before that I had to spend
my own money to show what I could do. So, I think the biggest step
for someone to become a director is to earn money somehow and trust
yourself and do something, and if you’re good enough you’ll survive.

How
was the chemistry between you and the actors, this being your first
film?

Jaume
Serra: It was great chemistry; they’re all young,
energetic. We didn’t have a lot of rehearsal. I was lucky that we
scheduled, sort of like… the first scenes of the movie in the
beginning of shooting, they were kind of getting to know each other,
the same time they’re shooting the same scenes where the audience is
getting to know them. After that… they went through a lot of
difficult, prosthetics and heat and wax, and that really bonds them
with the crew. It was a great experience.

From
studying masters like Castle, what do you think is the true formula
that makes a horror film work?

Joel
Silver: There are all different kinds of horror
films, we started doing TALES FROM THE CRYPT in 89 and we did 93
half hours and they’re all different kinds of movies. I don’t think
there is a formula. Horror movies are the only kind of movies where
you can actually take people in a darkened room and with what you
show them and what they hear you can really raise their heart rate,
make them sweat, just change their… feelings about things by just
bombarding them with images and ideas. That’s what’s exciting about
making horror films.

If
you look at the great run in the 70s, of the Freddy Krueger, the
FRIDAY THE 13th movies and NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movies,
they were very different kind of movies, one was supernatural, one
was kind of the slasher type. It’s different kind of scares…the
scariest movie I ever saw when I was a kid was ALIEN, it was a
monster movie and when I made PREDATOR, I was conscious of that. You
think about these pictures, if you can scare the audience, give them
some laughs to take away from the scares, and have a good pay off at
the end, it’s really hard to have a good pay off.

I
think that HOUSE OF WAX has the best pay off of any of our Dark
Castle movies. We don’t have to have characters explaining it for
ten minutes what happened…once they find out the two brothers are
there and what happened, and that house comes down, you believe that
building is melting in front of you, it really wasn’t a building
of wax, but you believe it and you kinda pay off the story.

There are two types of people
who talk about horror films, those who believe the less you see the
scarier it is, like a Hitchcock approach. Then there’s the special
effects type movies. What do you think about the two?

Joel
Silver: They’re both effective. This one is designed
for young people, so this one is maybe a little more graphic, a
little kind of gory. It’s designed as a fun teen slasher movie,
that’s what it is. Some of the more adult ones, THE SIXTH SENSE is
very scary, and THE OTHERS, you see very little. I think it depends
on the filmmaker and what they want to make. The scarier the movie
is at the end of the day the better it is for the audience.

Any
plans to do any more Tales for the Crypt sequels?

Joel
Silver: I’m putting out the DVD, the first
season’s coming out in a few weeks. I was really upset, I didn’t
have as much features as I would like, because we didn’t plan on
that. I had some promotional stuff, we had a few things.

But
you’re not planning any new shows or movies.

Joel
Silver: No, well, who knows, but as of right now I’m
not.

With
the success of all your movies, has Warner’s come to you going
“We want more product?”

Joel
Silver: Yeah, they would love two a year if we could
do it, it’s a great business for them, they’re not expensive movies
and they do real well. We’ve got the next one set to go which is
with Hillary Swank which is called THE REAPING, she plays a miracle
de-bunker, the Hayes Brothers wrote that too. But I have the next
one set what I want to do. I have a bunch of things in development.

Any
more horror remakes?

Joel
Silver: Maybe one. One or two.

How
did you come to cast Paris Hilton?

Joel
Silver: I knew her for years and she wanted to do
this, wanted to do something like this, we thought “let’s take a
shot”. You saw the movie I don’t think you stopped and said
“oh that’s Paris Hilton”. She plays the role, she does a
good job, she’s not the lead in the movie, Elisha’s the lead, and
she’s fantastic. She came to Australia with us, if you saw the MTV
show she was there the whole time, she committed to the picture and
she worked her ass off and I think that it shows. Does she help me
promotionally? We’ll see. I had t-shirts made that said “See
Paris Die May 6^th”, so…she did a great job and I’m a
big fan of hers.

The
night vision scenes with the video camera… was that a conscious a
nod to the video tape? (Note: The famous Paris Hilton sex
tape)

Jaume Serra:
Yeah, of course it was.

Even
the killing scene, the close up, it seemed you were trying to
reference that too, with the pipe coming out.

Jaume
Serra: Not really, the whole video camera idea was
in the script before she was cast, the night vision is a little nod,
nothing else.

Was
she aware of that?

Jaume
Serra: Oh yeah.

Did
you discuss it with her?

Jaume
Serra: There was no need to discuss, it was in the
script.

So
she wasn’t mad about it?

Jaume
Serra: No, she’s a cool girl.

Joel
Silver:
Have you guys talked to her? She’s fine.

Knowing
that a horror movie is so effects intensive, stunt intensive and you
have so much going on… where you worried that it was your first
feature? That it was a horror film, and you had so many things going
on, as opposed to a comedy?

Jaume
Serra: I’d probably be more concerned in a comedy.
In my commercial experience I’ve dealt with like… explosions and
CG and things, so that wasn’t a big concern.

When
we talked to the Hayes brothers they said how you had found this
location for Paris’s death and how that changed their writing. Are
there any other things that contributed that changed the initial
script?

Jaume
Serra: A couple of things in the structure…you get
the script, it’s great, then you have to put it in budget and time.
You have to move things around.

Was
there one where you said, “I wish I could have done this”
but couldn’t because of budget or time?

Jaume
Serra: We didn’t compromise on anything that was
really important, all the story points; we spent the money in the
right places. You can see in the ending, you know, that’s what the
audience wants to see.

Can
you tell us about the set, and how you achieved to make it look like
wax?

Jaume
Serra: It’s very complicated; every shot had a
different technique. If you have a close up on the feet, it’s one
substance. If you have them scratching on the wall it’s a different
substance. We had to do a lot of experimenting, a lot of research,
see what would work for wide shots, light it properly and pray that
when you cut it together you don’t feel that they are different
substances. It was really tough.

Would
you like to do more horror movies or do you want to start branching
out from here?

Jaume
Serra: I would do another horror movie. I had a
great time, but I’d want to move into action stuff, bigger stuff. I
want to explore everything.

Joel
Silver: He’s doing another picture for me called THE
DIVIDE, which will be his next picture.

Whenever
an audience sees a film like this, where the one brother is left
alive, the third brother, first thing they say is, “Oh there’s
going to be a sequel”. Do filmmakers think that way when
they’re making a film?

Joel
Silver: At Dark Castle we don’t make any sequels,
the next Dark Castle film is a sequel, each one ends the way it
ends.

So
no HOUSE OF WAX 2?

Joel
Silver: No, never. There will be THE REAPING as a
sequel, it has nothing to do with it, it’s just… that’s why we
made Dark Castle. I’ve been involved in a lot of sequels, and most
of them may have been successful commercial movies, but they weren’t
successful movies to me. With THE MATRIX, people were confused with
the way the story evolved, the pictures did return 3 billion dollars
of revenue to Warner Bros., so they were successful. But those
stories did exist, they were stories that the boys wrote, they
weren’t really sequels, it was serial fiction. To create another
movie when one is over, just because the first one was
successful…I’m not going to do that.

HOUSE
OF WAX DRIPS INTO
THEATERS ON MAY 6TH