Black Phone 2: An Interview with Scott Derrickson

[INTRO MUSIC FADES OUT]

Host: Welcome to The Last Podcast on the Left. Today, we have a very special guest. We have a modern master of supernatural horror. We have director Scott Derrickson, director of Black Phone, Black Phone 2, Doctor Strange, Sinister, The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

Scott Derrickson: Thank you for having me.

Host: Black Phone 2 is, of course, your next movie out. Sir, how are you today?

Scott Derrickson: I am great. Very happy to be here with you, cheerful fellows.

Host: Cheerful. No, we haven't been described as cheerful in a long time. Normally, like, people told me that I'm fatter than they thought.

Scott Derrickson: [laughs] I wouldn't use the word dour to describe what I've seen thus far.

Host: Can I ask you a straight-up question, if you love Ethan Hawke so much, why don't you marry him?

Scott Derrickson: [laughs] I have married him. That's what this is about, right? It's about my marriage to Ethan.

Host: I love Ethan Hawke so much. I wouldn't marry him, but he's already married and so am I. So we just make movies together. Open it up. It always works. Never doesn't work. Nothing bad happens when you open up a marriage. It always works out.

Scott Derrickson: [laughs] You have an amazing horror icon on your hands with Ethan Hawke as the Grabber. My God. Isn't he awesome?

Host: Isn't he just... isn't he just the best?

Scott Derrickson: He's so awesome.

Host: It is just when you go about like when you started making this process, like when you were because you worked on Hellraiser films, have you worked with horror icon IP style before? And then you create an original sort of character like that in Sinister 2. When you are in Black Phone, when you're creating the Grabber, is there like a conversation about this is like a horror icon that's going to stick around and how do we build this out?

Scott Derrickson: I mean, you can't think about it that way. What I will say is that I didn't think much about the mask at all. I came late to that party because I had written the scripts for the first movie. We were in pre-production, and I remember sitting down at my desk very early on, like the first week. And I was looking at it, and I was like, okay. And it hit me all at once. I was like, holy shit. If this mask isn't awesome, this movie will fail. The mask is what they're going to market with. Ethan's wearing it in every scene. And so I think I had eight weeks of pre-production and I spent most of that time working on that mask, coming up with what it would be and getting the details right and the idea of splitting it in half and all that.

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

Scott Derrickson: But you don't start off going, I'm going to make a horror icon. I mean, you can do that, but it won't work. You have to make a great movie and have some good design in it. And if you're lucky, it works. And then, you know, in this case, it's playing out pretty well.

Host: Yeah. I mean, the idea of changing out the bottom of the mask to reflect his emotions, that's my favorite part of the characters, you know, going from frowny Grabber to smiley Grabber. When he frowns in Blackbone 2, I like cheered. I was like, yeah!

Scott Derrickson: I like cheered. I was like, yeah! And you got a little of the no mouth, you know, in there as well. You know, don't forget the faceless, the mouthless mask.

Host: Yeah, I didn't want to do any spoilers. Technically, it's my favorite Grabber. Yeah. No mouth Grabber is kind of my favorite Grabber. Yeah, no mouth Grabber. It's like that kid in the Twilight Zone movie that takes his sister's mouth away. I think it probably came from that. That haunted me. That's horrifying. for my entire childhood.

Scott Derrickson: Oh, it's terrifying. It's a great movie, but it is very upsetting if you see that movie too young, which most people do.

Host: You have a concurrent theme in a lot of your movies about a youthful vision of what is frightening. From a perspective, almost, of what is frightening. When you go to write a horror movie, especially in stuff like this, like, do you just like, are these images from your head that you put forward into the movie? Like, like, like, how do you capture so well, like that idea of something that's inherently frightening, objectively frightening, something that's like almost from our nightmares?

Scott Derrickson: Yeah, you know, it's funny, different directors, different horror directors would answer that question very differently. You know, everybody's different. And I think I, some of my favorite horror directors are kind of puppet masters. They love the manipulation of it. They're very clever and very craftsman-like with it. And I come at it from the position or the perspective of trying to find something that scares me. Like if it scares me, I'm a pretty good audience member. If I find it frightening, I expect other people to find it frightening. So I always work from that place.

Host: Like I just keep working at stuff until it's scary to me. And I'm like, you know, there's some images in Black Phone 2 that even as I was working, you know, on the sound mix, I'd seen some of these shots, you know, hundreds of times. And every time I'd see it, I'd be like, oh, that's so wrong.

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

Host: That's true. Yeah, it definitely is all stemming from my childhood and middle school and high school years.

Scott Derrickson: Yeah, because you're from Denver, correct?

Host: I am, yeah. I'm from North Denver.

Scott Derrickson: I really did the best I could in the first movie to recreate the feeling of the neighborhood I grew up in.

Host: Yeah, is that from like, you're from like No-He-La-Di-So?

Scott Derrickson: I have no idea what you just did. You know how, like, in Denver, it's all, like, they have, like, no PASA. They have, like, all the crazy, like, they have the acronyms for all the neighborhoods.

Host: Oh, right. No, I grew up in. That's what that was? Yes. Yes. You had a lot of faith. You had a lot of faith in me that I would get that.

Scott Derrickson: Hey, we got there. After you explained what it was.

Host: After you explained what it was. No, I grew up in an area called Shaw Heights and Federal Heights in North Denver. So it was this kind of working-class kind of grim you know more on the outskirts kind of area and you know the thing I worked hardest for sounds so weird but the chain link fences were the main thing I really wanted to focus on in the first movie the way they always had the spiky tops on them and I just people were getting ripped on those all the time and cut on them you know and there was a lot of bleeding that went on when I was a kid from everybody, you know, it was just kind of that, that was the neighborhood, you know?

Scott Derrickson: Were there any like crimes when you were a kid that kind of inspired anything about the Grabber?

Host: Oh, oh yeah, for sure. I spoke to one of the Manson murderers on the phone when I was like eight because I spoke to Susan Adkins on the phone because my mother had done a handful of freelance, not for pay book reviews for the Denver Post. And one of them was this book that Susan Adkins had wrote called Child of Satan, Child of God. And she wrote a book review of it. I don't know if it was printed, but Susan Adkins called our house. I was eight and I answered the phone and my mom wasn't home. So I chatted with her for a little. And I, of course, at that time, I knew who the, what the, how the Skelter, the movie had come out.

Scott Derrickson: Yeah. The book was very popular. Kids in my school were reading it, which is crazy.

Host: And, uh, but also Ted Bundy had just killed a bunch of women in Colorado when I was a kid and, and, uh, and, and he escaped in Colorado. He is, that was when he jumped out the, out the window of the law library. Yeah. He was full berserker mode. Then he ran down to Florida.

Scott Derrickson: And, and, and, but, and there's also this, my, I shouldn't say this with a smile. I think I was nine or 10. I don't remember exactly what year, But my next-door neighbor knocked on my door and I opened it and he said, someone murdered my mom. And that was that had happened. And his mother had been kidnapped and and sexually assaulted and bound up in telephone wire and thrown in the local lake.

Host: So there was so the and the satanic panic was happening and kids were getting the milk carton thing was starting. I think the feeling of like, you're going to die from a, from a strange killer was just everywhere when I was a kid.

Scott Derrickson: You just fully explained the vibe of all of your films.

Host: Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a lot of truth to that.

Scott Derrickson: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would, I would imagine the, the, the paper boy and black, I mean, that's a, is that a Johnny Gosch reference, you know, with the dog and so on?

Host: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That was probably where that came from. I don't remember.

Scott Derrickson: I don't remember. It was the sense of kids being snatched was a real thing. And it was happening in Denver at that time and North Denver at that time. And of course, the satanic panic thing, a lot of that wasn't real, but the abduction phenomenon was very real.

Host: And the stranger danger, that's the phrase of the mid 70s to early 80s. That idea of cops coming to your school and talking to you about how you avoid getting killed by a strange person who steals you into their van.

Scott Derrickson: Yeah, and then sometimes, every once in a while, they do take you to Los Angeles and you do lead an incredible life. But it's a very small percentage. Very, very small. Every once in a while, worth it. Worth it.

Host: Do you feel like you're... So when you're making this movie, when you're talking When you're creating the Grabber, does all of this feed into it? Like Black Phone 2, I'm not going to probably say, this is not too much of a spoiler, but there's a little bit more into the Grabber's past.

Scott Derrickson: Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that you have to do that. I think that the balance you've got to strike if you're going to try to make a good horror sequel is you can't just regurgitate the first movie and sort of give people the same thing in a different package. But the other mistake you can make is veering too far off and doing something that's too off the mark of what people liked about the first one.

Host: Space is always an option. You can always put it in space. Well, space is where you go when you run out of ideas. When you get desperate, go to space. Because it never doesn't work.

Scott Derrickson: Although I do think the kill in i is it which is the which is the friday the 13th that that has the the frozen face kill is that i think that's jason x i think it's jason x that yeah that frozen might be my favorite serial killer kill in film history it incredible jason x breaks the space spell that what i do believe i think it breaks the curse that the one although i always i i i have a soft spot in my heart for critters 4 but that's just me okay that is you know that is literally just him when you is there a difference like obviously there's a difference besides just the money and respect of making your own sequel to your own hit film and then making or when you made Hellraiser early on in your career like what are the major differences besides everything I mean you know that first movie was you know the Hellraiser movie that I did I did because I got a chance to make a movie and I did it you know and and uh and it you know it has a it's developed a pretty nice little cult following you know there's a lot of people who really like that movie who are fans of the fans of the franchise no hellraiser has my favorite is my favorite franchise yeah oh wait that tells me a lot about you so so uh hellraiser 5 is it's probably either your third favorite in the franchise or like your ninth favorite in the franchise that's my experience with most Hellraiser fans about that one, you know, but it was when you're dealing with existing IP that you're like, versus the stuff that you created, what exactly are like the differences there? Like in terms of, you know, working with existing IP is, is, is, is always the primary challenge I think of doing that, you know, is to figure out to, to what degree can I respect this to what degree can I venture out on my own?

Scott Derrickson: And I mean, even with Doctor Strange, I think that probably one of the reasons why I got that job was because I liked the comics so much. And I particularly liked Stephen Ditko's early renderings of the visuals that he drew were art. I mean, high art, in my opinion. And still, my favorite comic book panels are from those early Ditko Doctor Strange comics. And a lot of what I did in that movie was directly pulled from there so if you've got IP that you're in love with then you look at what Zack Snyder did with 300 I think I heard a story about him meeting the first production meeting he just held up the book by Frank Miller and said we're making this and that's what he did so I think that with Hellraiser honestly I wasn't a big fan of the franchise I really loved Barker's original film. I thought Barker's first movie, there's still nothing like it. There's a transgressive, alien-like, sci-fi, mystical, religious, just super transgressive quality to that movie that doesn't feel like anything else that's ever been made.

Host: Yeah. And then Hellraiser 3, you got CD head. You got CD head. And then after that they were like let's call Derrickson he's never made a movie were you just a writer at that point were you writing just a writer at that point they were looking for baby writers I mean it was the Weinsteins had bought the franchise and I can't believe this is what we're talking about um uh they they bought they had bought the franchise and and we're looking for like young writers to write a script to boot up a direct-to-video franchise for them you know so it was intended to be exactly that because there was a big market for that kind of of of direct-to-video work at that time direct-to-dvd oh yeah i remember you know oh yeah so and so uh i've just pitched them an idea that i thought they would never go for and they really liked it this here's something i'll say about that movie the script that my old writing partner Paul Boardman and I wrote that script is better than the movie I made. The script is really good. And, you know, it was a little ambitious. I didn't know what the difference was, you know, but I wrote a $30 million movie that I got to make for $1.8 million. That's amazing, though.

Host: So with Blackphone 2, like, are you essentially pitching to yourself? Like, when you're making this movie, do you get to be like, me, Joe Hill, and we get to create this however we want to? Or is it the do you have to still get, like, piles of approval and stuff from up top?

Scott Derrickson: It's a good question. You know, on the first Black Phone, the movie was small enough that I don't think anybody from Universal ever gave me any notes on that script or the movie. I think they just were like, yeah, just give us the movie. We'll put it out because it wasn't a big risk. And then this movie, I knew I was writing it to be bigger and a little more expensive, not super expensive, but, you know, more expensive. But I think more importantly, Universal and Blumhouse knew that there was a lot more money to be made in terms of it being a sequel to a hit movie. And so there was more interest in giving feedback. But I've been very lucky working with Blumhouse and with Universal. They never forced me to do anything. They give me their notes. and you know sometimes it's Peter Kramer the head of the studio just calling me himself and saying here are my thoughts and and but every time I've gotten notes from them it's given with the caveat do what you want to do with these you don't want to do them don't do them yeah and it just makes you it just makes you sort of relax and be like okay you know let's talk them through and most the time my experience with with studio notes is if you have an intelligent you know executive like Peter Kramer at Universal, somebody like that, who gives you notes, sometimes they're just great, great. And you're like, oh, God, why didn't I think of that kind of notes? But even the ones that you're like, ah, if you sit with the note long enough, there's something there and there's a note behind the note that it's your job to figure that out and then go back to them and say, hey, I think that what was bothering you is this. And they usually are like, yes, that's it. You know, and that's a that's a that's a rewarding process, you know, so I I like the end result of the notes process with the studio now when when occasionally you know when when i disagree hard with the studio i can be really intractable and and overreact to things and make everybody suffer i try not to do that's called artist privilege yeah paula coppola do it anytime i do i do well i do enough of that so but you do have to stand your ground for what you know you believe is going to be best for the movie

Host: I'm certain I certainly have no problem doing that. I mean, watching Black Phone 2 that was the um the idea that was the thought that I had while I was watching it like in in the best way like thinking like this is the movie that the director wanted to make oh and we were yeah and we and we were and the thing is that we were actually we were the first people to see it like we we actually got to see like the print hot off the presses uh and I was watching it and some of the gore is i mean the gore in this movie is great incredible like just absolutely incredible head slices yeah and I was watching I was like god i hope none of this gets cut by the studio because this is fucking intense oh no you guys saw you guys saw the final the final cut that's great yeah yeah yeah it's a that's amazing yeah it is i got zero pushback about that of really never no nobody ever asked me to do less of any of that at all. The movie is great for it.

Host: Between the two movies, the only thing that I was ever asked to cut, and I won't say who asked me, but I was asked to cut the Gwen whipping scene in the first movie. I just said, over my dead body, it's the heart of the entire movie. The movie doesn't work without...

Scott Derrickson: To their credit, they were like, okay, okay. What's with... We talked with Joe Hill. What's with all you guys and scary dads? You know, Joe Hill created Joe Hill's the nicest, biggest bearded man on the face of the planet. He's so wonderful. Stephen King also big beard. Seems like a lovely man. They both write stories about big, scary bearded men. They make scary dads the scariest thing in the world. What's going on here? I don't know about them. I had a scary dad. Yeah, I know. So, you know. Did it look like the dad from he's got a good, scary alcoholic's beard? Yeah, he does. Yeah, you can you can pick those up at a discount on Walmart at Walmart. So, no, no, my dad didn't have a beard and he wasn't an alcoholic, which I'm very grateful for. But he was violent. You know, he was angry and he was violent. So I'm sorry about that. Yeah. Well, no, but I also I also really watched my dad change as I as I which is part of Terrence's story. You know, I watched my dad change as I got older. I became very close to him in high school and in college and and had a radically different relationship with him than I had in my earlier childhood, which was wonderful. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You could see the movie, too. That really actually does come out. yeah yeah you know and i'm not i'm not out there trying to uh you know force my shit on other people and i'm and i'm not interested in uh in just trying to get my story out has nothing to do with that i just think that you know when you draw when you draw from your own experiences the way things felt to you at certain times in your life and you try to capture that feeling in a detailed way, drawing from the details of your own memory.

Host: Like all those kids in the first Black Phone, I went to school with all those kids. I can tell you who they actually were in middle school that I knew, you know, there was a kid who was just like Robin Arellano, you know, that I knew who was a friend of mine, like exactly. And, um, and I think that when you, when you do that and do it effectively, there is something about in, in, I don't know if this is true in all art. I just know it's true in cinema that when you capture that realistically and truthfully people feel it they just feel like oh this is this feels real this feels very like this feels like somebody else's reality and so the more specific you are using all those details the more universal people connect to it it's not their experience but they can feel that it's somebody else's experience you know and you do it you do it in a truly effective way like you do it in sinister i I think Sinister is such an exact depiction of that in terms of the home movies versus how it bumps into the rest of the movie. In Black Phone 2, you have these very ornate, beautifully shot dream sequences that are honestly feel just like what you're saying.

Scott Derrickson: Oh, it's all shot with Super 8 film. That is what? That was shot with Super 8, yeah. Oh, yeah. You can tell the difference. Well, I'll clarify, it's Super 8, but also there were some scenes where I needed to use more advanced lenses, and because of the difficulty of the shot we shot some of it on 16mm and then extracted the 8mm 8mm film is 16mm film cut in half That literally what it is So I shot some stuff with a 16mm camera and the same Super 8 stock that we were shooting with and then just cut it in half and took that image out of the... took an 8mm image out of the 16 stock and it's identical to the Super 8 stock. The only thing that you have to add artificially is camera flutter.

Host: Interesting. Because I love Super 8. I love the instability of it. I love the stakes. You still get a lot of that stuff when you shoot on 16, but it's very solidly in the gate. It's stable in the gate. So you do have to, if you want it to feel exactly the same in post, I had to add a little bit of instability to the image when we shot with a 16, but it's the same grain, same color responsiveness.

Scott Derrickson: Was that the same thing in Sinister with the home movies?

Host: Yeah, I would never do what is so common now, which is shoot something digital and then make it look like film or look like especially Super 8. The difference is so enormous to me. Stark. Huge.

Host: That's why I wanted to ask you about those dream sequences specifically because I wanted to ask, did you finally figure out the filter? Because you can always tell. No, you can always tell. It's a filter put on top. No, because, and look, you have to think of it, there is no filter. It's impossible. Because, you know, when you're talking about chemical reaction on film, you know, you've got, you know, all the atoms in that piece of physical material that are reacting chemically and forming an image. And it's not limited to the limitation of digital pixels, you know. And to, it's just a different, it's a different kind of image forming altogether. And like I said, my favorite thing about Super 8 is how messy it is, you know? Now, granted, and also sometimes it gets so messy that you have to reshoot it. Because sometimes you'll shoot a scene and it's dangerous in that regard because there was, there was, there's one scene in the movie I had to reshoot three times because the super eight was so unstable and it was so out of focus on one the cameras broke on on one that we didn't know about and then the third time we sort of got it right but it's funny i like the messiness of it i use some of the broken camera shots in the movie yeah sure because i was like i can't do the whole scene like this but god look at that shot it's fantastic i love i love the recklessness of it i think and what the the aberrations that you get They're fantastic.

Host: I know. Oh, you got something? Because I want to bring something around to the actors. Yeah. One more thing about the Super 8. Well, I just I love the handheld nature of those like dream sequences. It put me in the mind of like not just like a 70s feel as far as the film stock, but also like 70s horror movies. Like I felt like I was back in like a 70s horror movie when it cut to those dream sequences. Is that a deliberate choice?

Scott Derrickson: 70s and 80s you know the movie takes place in 1982 and it was like obviously it owes a lot to all the all the summer camp slasher movies especially of the of the of the late 70s and in the early 80s especially this is a compliment but it has a lot of nightmare on elm street three vibes very big influence obviously everybody people are talking about that just from the trailer yeah but you know And, you know, I'm old enough to have been, you know, a teenager seeing that movie in a theater when it first, you know, opened. And if you were if you're old enough to have been there when that happened, you have no idea how scary that was. It was horrifying. That opening scene, no one had made something like that before, you know.

Host: And so I think that the love I had for the horror genre as a high schooler and what that exciting era was definitely plays in a very mixed bag kind of way into this movie.

Scott Derrickson: That's so cool. Let's take a break from all the laughter to say thank you to our sponsor, Universal Pictures. Dead is just a word. On October 17th, just in time for Halloween, the terrifying Black Phone 2 hits theaters. Directed by Scott Derrickson and starring Ethan Hawke, who is back as the Grabber and more sinister than ever. The Grabber's story wasn't over, and he asked the question, Do you know what happens when you die? Find out for yourself. October 17th, hell is in flames. It's ice. Universal Pictures Black Phone 2. Only in theaters. October 17. Die from your grave.

Host: Alright, so, alright. Now you got the movie. It's a sequel. It's a direct sequel to Black Phone 2. Black Phone. It's a direct sequel. Same actors. How is it dealing with aging kid actors? Like, as they get older? Do they just become better actors? Or is it one of those where you have to, like, refine the characters and stuff like that.

Scott Derrickson: I'll tell you a great story. When they asked me to make the sequel, they asked me to make the sequel on Monday after the opening weekend of the first movie. That's the way Joe Hill talked about it. I remember Jeff Schell, who was the CEO of NBCUniversal, emailed me. He's like, you're going to make another one, right? Yeah, yeah. You're like, all right, well, great. No, but at that point, I didn't feel obliged to. I didn't have any ideas about it. I didn't feel the need to do it at all. But on top of Joe's kind of idea that he brought to the table, the thing that really made me want to do it was when I thought, you know what, what if I wait? What if instead of going and making a sequel, what if I go make another movie and take my time and let these kids both get into high school? And then I make a high school coming-of-age movie in the same way the first one was a middle-age coming-of-age movie. And that got very exciting for me. And I thought that would enable me to make something more violent, more aggressive.

Host: Yeah. And I felt confident that Maddie McGraw and Mason Thames were going to be, they would still have their skill set. I thought that they would do a really good job. But I also, you know, Miguel Mora, who plays Robin Arellano, he he was so beloved in the first movie. He's got he's like a rock star online. He's got like four million TikTok followers and followers. Yeah. These kids get famous in a way that that we never good and actors don't. You know what I mean? Like so. So for me, it was like, well, what if I he's you know, his character is gone. And you know but what if i wrote his the character what if i what if he played his robin ariana's little brother you know so i wrote ernesto for him to play you know that's the same kid right yeah i actually i had no idea that it was the same thing yeah holy shit that you just blew my fucking mind i just re-watched the other one too i literally like that's him just re-watched Black Phone. Yeah. I rewatched it the night before going to see the screening. Wow. Hey, that's quite an acting job he did.

Scott Derrickson: Well, wait, here's the thing though, you know, because I, because he was playing such a different character, I was like, I have no idea if this kid's going to be able to do it. So I wrote it for him and then, you know, I, I, but I told him, I said, look, here's the script. I wrote this for you, but you're going to have to audition because I have to see that you can do this. And so he, uh, he read with Madeline McGraw, a couple of scenes and halfway through the first scene I gave him I was like oh he's got the job he's gonna be great and he does an awesome job in it but he really to his credit he really worked on his acting skill took acting classes really you know and then came in prepared for that audition and did a great job in the movie.

Host: How much was Ethan Hawke in the mask how much was he in the mask when he's in it when he's on camera like is it him in the mask the majority of the time?

Scott Derrickson: Yeah he's he's never not in the mask you don't have it gets well i don't understand there's certain things because it was oh yeah and i'm not trying to spoil it i was just i just re-watched the new toxic avenger remake and they were like talking about how you know they were trying to match the the original where someone else was in the toxi uniform right he didn't put Peter into it. And it was just like, oh, I think it's because Peter figured out how to not be in the makeup. I think Peter figured out a way to skip that part where it's like, Ethan seems like he's the kind of guy that would not let anybody else wear that mask, even if they wanted to, even if you wanted them. That's probably true at this point, you know? And I think that, you know, Ethan, what's interesting is watching the way Ethan, when he saw that during the pre-production or like when he first came to to uh north carolina where we were shooting black phone the first movie as soon as he saw the masks he told me later he said as soon as he saw me he's like oh oh this does so much of the work that i thought i was going to have to do that i can do other things that are more interesting yes because of what the masks gonna be doing he very quickly processed that and understood what the mass did that allowed him to do more unexpected things, you know, which is just really wonderful.

Host: It's not that I was shocked, but honestly, I don't know what I thought. It was that Ethan Hawke honestly was so physically gifted in the movie, like in Black Phone 1 and 2, he so immediately steps into a supervillain character. Yeah, and he makes it seem effortless. I don't give him a lot of direction. I don't talk to him much about it. I mean, we're good friends. I really love Ethan, and we're married. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were talking about him before.

Scott Derrickson: And when is the baby? He just is such a brilliant actor. He just comes ready. And he comes with an understanding. And he's fearless. He has no fear. So he also will really surprise you. If you give him six takes, he's going to give you six versions of that scene. And sometimes it's version six that's really out of the box where you go, oh, I got to rethink this whole part of the movie now. Because there's one thing that he did where I was like, I said, just say this whole section. It'll be playing as voiceover, but I just need you to say it. Just do it on camera. And I think he took that as a challenge and then he made it one of the greatest performance moments in the movie. And I had to restructure the whole scene because as soon as I saw it, I was like, ah, shit, that's so good. I have to build this section around that shot I just did now.

Host: You know, so he's such a gifted actor and so fearless. And I also am lucky because I have his trust. You know, he really trusts me and he'll do anything I ask him to do. It's wonderful.

Host: Anything On set within legal limits I guess Well the physicality that he brings to the character like it could so easily go wrong Like it's something that it's this physicality that it could so easily be goofy or hokey. But he takes it just up to that edge and like because the character himself, that's what I love about the character of the Grabber. is that it really does capture something that we try to capture on our show when we do our true crime stuff, is that serial killers are douchebags. They're, like, they're shitheads. They're, you know, they're... There's nothing cool about any of them. And I'm a serial killer junkie. You know, like, I love that I've watched every serial killer true crime thing out there. I mean, yeah, they're they're they're absolutely terrible, weak, obnoxious people. Yeah. And that's what I love about the character, the Grabbers, that it captures that. It really like it just captures that so well, like just in his dialogue. But also but Ethan Hawke's movements and the way Ethan Hawke plays him, like it really does. Like, oh, that's that's a serial. Yeah. Like that. Yeah. Yeah, that's all Ethan.

Host: I don't think we have ever had conversations about the choices he's made playing that character. He just does it. And I think that as a director