Little do they know, by choosing that route, theyve stepped right into the movie.
The Final Girlsis available on DVD, Blu-ray, and digital.
PERRI NEMIROFF: I wanna go back to the very beginning of your directing journey.
When you first started, did you ever imagine yourself working in the horror genre?
TODD STRAUSS-SCHULSON: Yeah, I did.
I grew up in Queens.
Image via Stage 6 Films
I started from left to right, and I thought I would just do that.
Anyways, I watched every movie and I loved horror movies.
I thought I would be a makeup effects artist.
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
That’s what I thought I would be first.
Then I realized, No, I just love these movies.
I loveNightmare on Elm Street3 and4…
Image via Stage 6 Films
So yeah, I loved horror movies, and I loved blood and shit.
I have two follow-up questions.
What was the first horror movie that scared you?
Image via Stage 6 Films
STRAUSS-SCHULSON: The best thing about Q&A’s is I know all the A’s!
I know the answers to those questions.
[Laughs] I was such a wimpy, sensitive boy.
Image via Stage 6 Films
You ever seeFright Night?Fright Nights not scary, but to me it wasso scary.
Is that why you included the poster in the movie?
And then I think it wasNightmare on Elm Street 3and4where I was like, These are just delightful.
Image via Stage 6 Films
And it was all so technical, and that was exciting.
I want to go back toA Very Harold & Kumar Christmasbriefly.
It took that long?
I mean, if the internet is correct, and the internet is always correct, right?
STRAUSS-SCHULSON: Okay, a long answer to a short question.
I madeA Very Harold & Kumar Christmasfirst.
So that was obviously a very intense thing to have happen in your life.
What if kids got stuck in a bad horror movie?
That was sort of basically the idea.
Then I never heard anything else about that.
It was different, but the idea was the idea.
It’s about another chance.
One more day with a parent.
Saving a parent from death.
Josh, who wrote the movie, his father played Father Karras inThe Exorcist, and he died.
So that’s where the movie came from.
So I read it afterwards.
I was like, I gotta do this, and I got involved.
And then we redid the script, we wrote it together and it tookforeverto get the money.
This is pre-Stranger Thingsand this is beforeHappy Death Day.
We don’t know what that is.
We had 26 days to do it.
Was there anything specific you changed in that pitch that you noticed financiers sparked to?
So we went with the other place and took a chance.
The PG-13 rating does work.
STRAUSS-SCHULSON: I think it’s true.
Did anyone wish that it was way gorier?
you might be honest.
[One person raises their hand.]
We didn’t wanna do it.
It was written to be disgusting.
It was really disgusting.
And I said, Well, it’s better to have one.
Let’s go back to the script briefly.
I was like, That would be a cool scene.
You could do that with the budget you had, right?
[Laughs]
STRAUSS-SCHULSON: Definitely not.
And I was like, That’s a fucking clever idea.
There’s no feeling in this anymore.
It’s just so clever.
Very, very successful.
Lets move to the cast now.
STRAUSS-SCHULSON: Easiest to cast was Adam and Thomas [Middleditch].
And he said, I’ll be that guy.
And I said, That’s easy.
So those were the two easiest to cast.
And then I need the opposite the most difficult role to find the perfect fit for.
STRAUSS-SCHULSON: The mother and daughter.
That was so hard and there were a million versions of it.
She’s so sensitive and fragile in it, you know?
And so she, I think, anchors it.
She had an infant on set.
This movie was very special and unique.
It’s crazy that it’s still being screened all this time later.
But there was something that was alive I think about it, I have to.
I talk about it all the time still!
But there was something, I think, alive foreveryonesomehow and you could feel that when they’re together.
You feel it when you’re watching the movie, for sure.
I don’t want to leave the cast just yet.
I know the answer to that question.
The tone of the movie was built into the casting.
Thomas and Adam and Alia [Shawkat] were improving all the time.
Most of that stuff is improvised.
When you have people like that together that just sort of happens.
I don’t know who taught her how to do that, but that was not helpful.
It all sounded pushed, and I was like, What are you doing right now?
So she had to throw that book away and just be real.
Like, Throw everything away.
Don’t have a go at sell a joke.
That isn’t your job.
And it’ll be much funnier if you don’t.
So that would maybe be an example of that.
And shes so good in the final film, and I just saw her do another comedy with Adam.
STRAUSS-SCHULSON: Yeah, shes funny now!
STRAUSS-SCHULSON: Shes funny!
[Laughs]
Alright, let’s go to Billy now.
The mask in a slasher movie is of the utmost importance.
What was it like pinpointing the right look?
Is this what you had in mind from the start or did that evolve?
What can we do that feels like that but isn’t that?
It was hard to get it to be scary.
It was like the eyes had to be dead and it had to have not that many features.
That’s kind of what’s good about Jason.
But, it had the totem thing.
They showed it to me and I was like, That’s Eugene Levy.
This can’t be right.
Is that version of the mask in the movie?
Isn’t there one alt version that is actually in a shot here?
STRAUSS-SCHULSON: Oh man.
[Laughs] How do you know that?
I have obsessed over your movie since 2015.
STRAUSS-SCHULSON: I think that I didn’t know that until you just said that.
I think I actually know the specific shot, too.
STRAUSS-SCHULSON: It’s in the window.
It’s in the window.
STRAUSS-SCHULSON: Because we had to shoot that before they fixed the mask.
[Laughs] That’s the Eugene Levy version.
That’s so funny.
That’s why he’s behind those curtains.
So now you gotta watch the movie again so you could overanalyze it like I did.
STRAUSS-SCHULSON: Great question, Perri, and I have the answer.
Believe it or not.
I’ve been waiting for you to say that to me since 2015.
[Laughs]
STRAUSS-SCHULSON: [Laughs] Great question.
Isn’t she doing great?
She’s doing so good.
She’s so good.
We’re going into night, the crew is thinning out, and things are getting real.
That’s like a robot camera on tracks.
So that was a whole thing and I had to get everyone on board to do it.
And I thought that that would be a really hard sequence.
We’d pre-vised it, we had rehearsed it a lot of times.
We had one night to do it.
Every day was stressful.
We were defying gravity every day, obviously.
It was not the hardest because we had been so planned about it.
There was a pre-vis.
They were like, Just do that.
You gotta be there at this moment and then be gone.
So, that went pretty good.
What surprised me was the fire sequence.
That car blew up.
That was like napalm.
That was much bigger than we anticipated.
And I thought that that would be an easier sequence.
I just figured that’s a stunt and we’ll have three cameras going, and why not?
That was the craziest fucking night.
That was our last night at this, we were at an all-girls sleepaway summer camp in Baton Rouge.
I think it was a Christian summer camp in Baton Rouge.
We destroyed the camp.
Our trucks were driving over pipes and septic tanks were leaking.
We had fucked the whole place up.
They only had enough of that for two burns.
I was like, You forgot this stuff?
And they’re like, Yeah.
I was like, Well, can you go home and get the stuff?
And they’re like, Home is like three hours away.
I was like, You’ve been driving three hours every day to get to set?
So we can only do it twice.
What are we gonna do?
And we had to leave the camp.
It was like four or five in the morning.
And it was sad to leave the camp.
We had been there.
We all felt like campers.
We had like two lights, and it was like, And, action!
And they’re running, and everyone’s doing it you know what a focus puller is?
Were in Los Angeles.
We didn’t know if we were gonna get it.
We were like, This is unbelievable.
You could use this shot top to bottom.
The whole crew applauded for the focus puller.
I’m glad you shout out your focus puller.
Focus pullers, ADs, they all need more credit than they ever get.
STRAUSS-SCHULSON: They need more credit.
He was a hero that night.
Here’s one I was eager to ask you.
They’re an important part of the process.
And what we learned is, Oh wait, so everyone really died?
That’s so sad.
We wanna see them back together again.
We reshot the friends in the hospital, and that was it.
STRAUSS-SCHULSON: That is true.
The DVD is stacked full of stuff.
And you’re free to also buy a DVD player for $40.
Speaking about that ending, has there ever been an actual conversation about making a sequel?
Though it somehow has this life of its own and every year it screened in houses like this.
We had a good idea.
They tried to do it as a TV show once.
Then there would be horror conventions and you would be, yeah, that.
Little do they know, by choosing that route, theyve stepped right into the movie.
