Fred Dekker is the man responsible for a few of my favorite movies growing up. I've already gushed in this column about his cult classic film Monster Squad, which is likely the greatest movie featuring all the Universal Monsters ever made (and I'll argue that point to the death if need be, see if I don't), but the guy also developed the original story for House (my favorite movie in 10th grade, strangely enough) and wrote and directed Night of the Creeps, another must-see genre mutant that's been notably difficult to find. Dekker also wrote and directed some episodes of the Tales from the Crypt TV series, which has got to be in the top five most bad-ass, uncompromising horror shows in television history. Not only that, he did the Robocop with the jet pack in it. Hell yes he did.
    To top it all off, he's just an awesome guy all around. It cannot be overstated how great it is talk to an artist who's work you've really dug and to find out he's also a down-to-earth, witty and downright nice guy. Dekker got in touch with us after seeing the Mongrel Digs Monster Squad article and it's just been a real thrill communicating with the guy. He agreed to take the time to answer some questions about his films and his experiences in making them. This interview's especially a treat for all you budding filmmakers; there's some good bits of advice that I know from experience they're not doling out in film school.
    (A quick note before we start, we began chatting just before it was announced that Night of the Creeps would finally be coming to DVD and Blu-Ray in October. So, when that comes up, that's what that's about.)

Jared Yanez: In "The Monster Master" featurette from The Monster Squad DVD, you talk a little about getting into UCLA but not into their film program and having to work on short films on your own time. What was that early production experience like and how did it influence your later feature work?

Fred Dekker: I actually started making films (8mm, Super 8, 16mm and on video) from the time I was around 12 years old... so missing out on film school was a momentary setback. Story-telling on film was something I'd learned from watching movies, so my fledgling shorts -- and dabbling in theater both in Marin County and L.A. -- prepared a basic foundation for me. Plus, I hung out at the UCLA and USC film schools quite a bit.

The big difference from student films, apart from the number of different personalities you collaborate with, is the military aspect... which is something I don't think film school talks about. Being a director isn't just "following your vision" and communicating it to a cast and crew, it's leading them into an enterprise of vast logistical machinery. Like being a military commander. In other words, it's not just art, it's a job. You have to "make your days" (that is, getting the work done on a daily basis to stay on schedule and budget), and more important, you have to do it in a way that has your team following you and not slowing you down.

That was the biggest eye-opener going from amateur to pro. The size of the crew and the fact that they're eyeing you for the first few days, waiting to see if they respect you or think you're an asshole. But I've been lucky, all my crews have been terrific.

JY: In the same featurette you describe the initial concept for The Monster Squad as "the Little Rascals meets the Universal Monsters". The resulting film has such a distinctive character to it though that it really feels like its own thing. Could you describe the writing process involved in fleshing out the initial concept into the final story?

FD: Well, obviously, both the Rascals shorts and the Universal pictures have very distinctive iconography -- they're in black-and-white, they have recognizable casts, musical style and ambiance, all very much of the '30s and '40s -- so there was no way The Monster Squad was going to resemble its inspirations exactly (look at Penelope Sphreeris' The Little Rascals and Stephen Sommers' Van Helsing and see how far off the mark you can get even when you aim for it!).

As for the screenplay, Shane Black and I discussed the basic concept, and quickly decided that Dracula should be the key villain (he seemed most likely to be the "brains of the operation" when you stack him up against the assorted walking dead guys and primeval beasts that surround him).

The next issue became: what's the McGuffin? I don't remember who came up with the amulet, but I suspect it was Shane. It's very Lovecraftian, and Shane has always been a big reader. His other influence was a series of books called The Three Investigators, which he loved as a kid in the same way I loved The Little Rascals.

As I recall, we beat out the story structure and characters, then Shane went off and wrote the first draft while I was finishing Night of the Creeps. I had a hand in that first draft, but mostly took over in re-writes to make it a little less woolly and more shootable. The plotting and structure is both of us; the wisecracks mostly Shane, and the heart (Phoebe/Frank, in particular) mostly me. The only scene we actually wrote in a room together was Fat Kid's dialogue before the kids go into the Scary Mansion ("Let's be Nature Squad instead! Looks at rocks, collect birds... not be dead. It's this whole death thing I'm not crazy about.")

JY: The kids in the movie give some incredibly natural performances. I imagine there aren't many low-pressure opportunities to practice directing child actors. What was it like jumping into that territory? What were some of the challenges and solutions that came up?

FD: It's kind of an ironic question since the first "actors" in my early films had been my younger brothers and grade school friends. In other words, kids. I also directed a few plays, including a production of "Bye Bye Birdie" with a cast that ranged in age from, like, 7 to 17. So in fact, I'd been directing kids as long as I'd been directing. Plus, as producer Jonathan Zimbert says in the DVD featurette, I've always been kind of a kid myself, so it flowed very naturally for me.

The key was finding young actors who had personality, but weren't "movie kids." You know -- the type you see in sitcoms and commercials that mug and scream their lines trying to get a laugh? The ones where you can practically see their mothers just outside of camera range, whispering "Bigger!" That was exactly the type of kid we DIDN'T want in the movie. And we succeeded. Not only were they great kids and solid actors, they also had chemistry with each other.

JY: This is still one of the only movies I've seen where the kids sound like real kids (i.e. foul-mouthed little bastards) and it's played casually instead of as a punch-line. How did you get away with the less politically correct material on the kid's side and why do you think it's something you don't see much of even today?

FD: The great thing about Taft/Barish, the company that financed and produced the film, was that it was basically two guys -- Keith Barish and Rob Cohen (yes, THAT Rob Cohen). And the money people, who never said a word. So all we had to do was please ourselves and our producers, and that was it. There was no one else to answer to! Remember, also, this was years before "political correctness." The kids swear and smoke and drink and shoot guns, but nobody batted an eye because the PC Police hadn't been invented yet. Thank God.

Nowadays, you can't write a comma in a script without 47 development executives asking, "Do we really want a comma here? How about a semi-colon? Semi-colons are much more popular with the 18-34 demographic." So we ducked a bullet, and the eventual effect was that it made the movie stand the test of time better than something that was micro-managed. The reason a lot of stuff today feels like there are too many cooks is... well, there ARE too many cooks.

JY: Any light at the end of the Night of the Creeps DVD release tunnel? Any faces whose poking would influence the situation in a positive fashion?

FD: If it hadn't taken me so damn long to get these answers to you, you would have had an exclusive! Because it's all come together in the last month or so. A Special Edition Director's Cut with commentaries, deleted scenes, and a documentary from Michael Felsher (Monster Squad Forever!) is on the books for October, 2009 from Sony Home Entertainment. And the best part is, it will have the ending as I originally envisioned, hence, "Director's Cut". That will be the only change from the theatrical version, but I think it's a crucial one. It's like night and day.

JY: Okay, here's the question I've always wanted to ask about Night of the Creeps. Like any good horror movie it's got some real creative, gruesome stuff in it but the most traumatizing bit for me was a particular off-screen death that's relayed over a taped message. No gore, no effects, but oh man did that get to me worse than any other horror kill in recent memory. Could you talk a little about that scene and how it came about? (**SPOILER ALERT for those who've yet to see Night of the Creeps!**)

FD: The biology of the movie is pretty straight forward -- and essentially inspired by (or stolen from) Alien -- a single creep gets into your moth, you die, it lays eggs in your brain, then you're a zombie until the eggs turn your head into Jiffy Pop, which explodes with a whole new litter of the creeps. The cycle starts all over again.

We see J.C. in the restroom, and it's pretty clear he's surrounded and outnumbered. Survival is unlikely, particularly since he's handicapped. So I decided pretty quickly there was no point in seeing the actual "creeping". Especially with a character we've come to care about; that would be kind of cruel.

The other thing that dictated the tape message was the relationship between Chris and J.C.

I had a lot of really close friends just out of college (J.C. is even partially named after one of them) so I wanted to depict that kind of "bromance" in the movie (one internet wag even went so far as to suggest J.C. is gay and in love with Chris, but that's another discussion!). What I wanted to do was to have a last good-bye between them... and I wanted it to be intimate. Hence the scene you allude to.

Two asides: 1) We actually set up the memo recorder in the scene where Cameron is interrogating the boys. J.C. had used it to tape the Bradster harassing them, but we cut it out. However, if you look carefully you can still see it in his hand in that scene.

2) My ham-fisted way to get Jason Lively in the right mindset to play the scene was this: I got a bunch of photographs of the Holocaust -- Jews behind barbed wire, death camp pictures, ovens, etc. -- and placed them around the room near Jason. So when he's not looking at the recorder, he's looking at images of death and grief and just basically the worst, saddest things on earth. Needles to say, he does not look happy.

(**END SPOILERS**)

JY: What films/music/art/whathaveyous are currently blowing your mind?

FD: Alas, I'm hopelessly limited in my interests. And having a four-year old son generally curbs me getting out of the house as much as I'd like.

That said, in recent years I've loved There Will Be Blood and Sideways and No Country For Old Men. I love Mad Men on AMC. I wish William Goldman were still writing novels, and I wish Propellerheads would make a new album. And I really wish I could go to ComicCon this year and buy some illustration art. But as I say, because of my son, I'm not as current as I might be... although I know and love the Pixar movies backwards and forwards. And the news that Lars von Trier has made a new horror movie makes me salivate.



    Once again I'd like to thank Fred Dekker for taking the time to talk to us, it's been real awesome for me on a personal level. Mark October down on your calendar as the month you're going to go out and get fifty copies of Night of the Creeps. That'd be the month for doing that. You can also do that the following months also, but all us cool kids are getting ours October. So's you know.

Labels: film/tv