Writer and first-time director Drew Goddard has become one of my absolutely favorite people to interview and pick the brain of on all things geek. I don't need to say anything more about just how much fun you are going to have watching and then re-watching his directorial debut, THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, which he co-wrote with Joss Whedon. It's a film for hardcore horror fans who both love the genre and are a little tired of the cut-and-paste nature of most scare films in the last 10 years.
Whedon began his career being plucked from virtual obscurity by the showrunners of both "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel." He became a "Buffy" staff writer in its final season and moved over the "Angel" after that. Not long after "Angel," Goddard was hired as both writer and producer to the J.J. Abrams-created "Alias," a partnership that led to some really great projects, such as "Lost" (where Goddard was a writer and co-executive producer) and CLOVERFIELD, which Goddard wrote and Abrams produced.
But with THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, Goddard returns to the Whedon-verse, and the results are spectacular, creative, and wholly original, even as the film tackles familiar territory. And as if these accomplishments weren't enough, Goddard's next screenplay, an adaptation of the book ROBOPOCALYPSE, is being directed by Steven Spielberg.
We cover all of this and more in the 30 minutes I got to interview Goddard her in Chicago. As you probably know, you're getting a lot of Drew this week and next from Ain't It Cool News, including a Mr. Beaks Interview from Monday and a very special interview that Quint did with him that you should only read AFTER you've seen THE CABIN IN THE WOODS. Until then, please enjoy my lengthy conversation with Drew Goddard…
Drew Goddard: Welcome. I love your work so much. I love the site. I’ve loved it since way back in the day when I was an intern trying to sneak onto the set of John Carpenter’s VAMPIRES.
Capone: Thank you. Okay, if we are going to run this many interviews with you about this movie, we're going to make them as different from each other as possible, hopefully.
DG: Oh, good.
Capone: What was the jumping off point for this movie? I don’t mean the writing of it; I mean even before the writing, just you and Joss talking about it. What sparked the discussion of this?
DG: It’s funny, I remember Joss and I just missing each other. So a lot of it was like “Hey, we need to write something again together, because that was fun when we used to do that,” because we were off in our separate worlds. So we really just started talking about like “All right, well if we could write anything, what would we write? What would we do?” We started kicking around the ideas and we both kept coming back to the horror genre, because we had so much fun doing those that we just missed it and we knew that that was a good genre to play with and do something different in. I feel like that genre, and maybe sci-fi too, gives you more license to be different and do something outside the box.
Neither of us were interested in just making the same old movie, and we just started talking about horror ideas and brainstorming and Joss had this original idea. He was the one that said, “How about this? It’s called THE CABIN IN THE WOODS,” and he had the basic construct, the basic structure of the upstairs/downstairs and the three-act structure of the movie. As soon as I heard it, I was like “Oh yeah, that’s great. Let’s do that. That’s perfect.” So it really just jumped off from there.
Capone: How do you write with Joss Whedon? What is that process like? Are you just trading ideas back and forth? Are you in the same room?
DG: It’s funny, we’ve honed it very well over the years, and you spend a lot of time working on the structure, the outline. You spend months, and that was how we did "Buffy" episodes. We would spend months talking about that and being really hard on the story, because we found if you get your skeleton right, everything else is easy, but if you don’t get it right then you’re going to be screwing around and messing up the whole time. So we got an outline that we were both like, “This is it. This is great.” Which wasn’t too hard, because his original idea was very solid. As crazy as CABIN gets, it really does lay out very nicely in a three-act structure.
Capone: I agree.
DG: So once we had that, we locked ourselves in a hotel and we said “We are not leaving this hotel until we come out with a script.” So each morning we would divide up the day’s work and say, “Okay, what scenes do you want? What scenes do I want? Okay, well if you get that…. That’s scene is great, so if you get that, then I get this other one.” We both wanted to have sort of equal amounts of the upstairs and downstairs. There are two worlds in THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, and we wanted to each have equal amounts, because both worlds are fun to write.
Capone: So you really did segment it?
DG: Yeah, but there wasn’t any rhyme or reason to the segmenting. It wasn’t like “You’ve got the first half of Act 1 and I’ve got the second half.” No, it was by scenes, and then we would just start writing and we had a hotel room that had two floors, and so I had upstairs and he had downstairs and we’d just yell back and forth if we had a problem, like “Does this make sense? Does this work with what you are doing?” Then we’d pass pages, and at the end of the night we would put that aside and do the next day’s work. I learned this method with him, because at "Buffy" we were so behind all of the time that you didn’t have a lot of time to second guess; you just had to write. You just had to go on your gut and instinct. Sometimes that the best way to do it. I’ve been on projects that we have been developing for years and had years to write, and I’ve been on projects that you had to write over a weekend, like episodes of "Buffy." And sometimes the episodes from the weekend writing session are the ones that end up being way better.
Capone: When you’re rushed, sometimes creative energies come to the surface.
DG: That’s really true, and anything can be second guessed. Any story that you are telling can be second guessed, and if you have enough time, you will find a way to talk yourself out of something.
Capone: Yeah, and speaking of time. You had a lot of time to second guess things on this movie. For example, I remember hearing specifically at some point in this process that this was going to be a post-conversion 3-D film. After the Butt Numb-a-Thon screening, people were asking me “How was the 3-D?” I’m like “What are you talking about?” You actually shot this before AVATAR came out.
DG: Yes.
Capone: So 3-D wasn’t a movement.
DG: [laughs] We saw the entire arc of the 3-D experience over the course of this movie coming out, where suddenly there’s that period in Hollywood where they wanted to make everything 3-D.
Capone: And this movie would not have been any better in 3-D.
DG: If I had shot it for 3-D, it could have been. There’s stuff that I could have done that would have been fun. I didn’t shoot it for 3-D. That was never the plan. I didn’t plan to shoot it for 3-D. I didn’t frame for 3-D. [Laughs] It’s a very dark movie and you can’t do dark with 3-D.
Capone: Yeah, 3-D doesn’t work when it’s dark.
DG: So like none of this would have worked. But of course in Hollywood at that time they wanted everything to be 3-D. They all thought that the reason AVATAR was successful is because it was in 3-D and so we just had to go through those conversations. Joss and I were against it from the start, and luckily we won out. It never got that serious.
Capone: I know you’ve said in other interviews about the film that you're not poking fun at films that are sort of “cut-and-paste” horror movies that are popular these days, but it does feel like a film to me that is commenting on the frustration that I think a lot of horror fans have in the way the current landscape feels like a Horror Madlibs, like you’re just inserting creatures in one slot, the trigger that bring the scares in another. Be honest, is that a little bit of what you’re doing here?
DG: Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot we are angry about, and it’s not just with the horror genre; it’s cinema in general and where we are in this world right now and who we are as a people. All of that is something that this movie comments on, but it all does emanate from a place of love. We love horror movies and we love people; it’s just that you need to get both of those things a good kick to the crotch once in a while.
Capone: When you were coming up with the scenes, were there certain horror movie clichés that you guys were like “Okay, we have to embrace this and then rip it apart or we have to just stay away from it, because we don’t even like it enough to make fun of it or enough to comment on it”?
DG: It’s funny. It wasn’t like we had a laundry list at all; we just told the best story and that’s something that Joss has always preached. “Just tell the best story,” because if you try to wedge these other things in there it gets flat, and you want to avoid it. It was more about, “Let’s tell the story. Let’s see where these characters are, and what’s the best possible way we can screw up their lives.”
Capone: There are certain scenes where the characters decide to take really stupid actions, and Martys says “Really?” He’s the audience. He is the one who is going, “Do you realize everyone in horror movies makes dumb decisions?” He’s the only one that seems to be aware of that.
DG: He comes from a long dramatic tradition of the fool that everyone ignores and yet happens to be the smartest person in the room. That is not something unique that we came up with. Shakespeare did it all the time, that sort of idea of “Why isn’t anybody listening to that guy?” He’s the one everyone is dismissing, yet he seems to know what’s going on.
Capone: Yeah. I think Fran Kranz is going to be the breakout here, even though people have seen him on "Dollhouse," but I think that this is sort of his moment, and I’m glad that he’s finally getting it, because I loved him in so many things.
DG: Yeah, I’m excited for him. I’m excited for people to see what I’ve known all along, that he’s just a brilliant actor, and that he can do so much.
Capone: And essentially this would have been Chris [Hemsworth's] breakthrough role if this had come out when it was supposed to. This and RED DAWN. I love that these two movies have been stuck in this limbo and are finally getting out there. How frustrating was that for you to just have this sitting there? You had to know it was going to impact people and was really going to throw people for a loop.
DG: It was, but we were in good company when THE HOBBIT is getting delayed and JAMES BOND is going down. You’re like “Okay, this is not about us. This is way above our pay grade.”
Capone: But that also means that you might not be the priority.
DG: That’s right. Correct. They had to untangle THE HOBBIT first, but I can’t argue with that. [Laughs] “You know what? Untangle THE HOBBIT first. We'll be all right.”
Capone: “I want to see THE HOBBIT.”
DG: That’s right, and the truth is we knew we were going to come out; it was just a matter of getting the red tape untangled. It’s not like we were screening it before; we were able to just say, “You know what? We’re fine. We are going to go away and then once you guys get your business stuff straightened out, then we'll come out strong.” Joss and I joked, but the truth is this might have been the best possible thing that could have happened to us, because now we are at Lionsgate who totally understands us and totally understands what kind of…
Capone: They were built on the SAW horror franchise.
DG: That’s right, so we speak the same language and they get it and they know how to market this and they believe in us and our actors, one of whom, in the meantime, has gone on to become the god of thunder. [Laughs] Be careful what you worry about. This is actually is the best thing that could have happened to us, so I don’t worry about it too much.
I was much more concerned about protecting the film, because whenever you have a change in management, you never know what the new owners are going to do, and I didn’t want them to make me recut it, because this is the way I want the movie. Luckily when Lionsgate came in, they said “Don’t change a frame.” Once that happened I knew “Alright, it will take a little longer than I had originally hoped, but as long as the movie stays the way it is, I’m fine.”
Capone: Speaking of marketing, I was standing outside the Paramount Theatre at SXSW after the premiere. I didn’t go to see it at SXSW, because I had already seen it and I didn’t want to take up a seat for someone who hadn’t seen it. But I was standing outside the Paramount, and somebody came out and said, “Oh my god, it’s a great movie. Good luck marketing it.” How involved have you and Joss been in the trailer cutting, the poster design, etc.?
DG: Yeah, we’ve been really hands on, but it’s not like we were ever in disagreement with Lionsgate, because they’ve been great. It’s really more about they show us 12 posters, all of which we love, but we have to pick the one we like the most. That’s sort of what our technique is. The main agreement was, because we vacillate tone so much of this movie, it’s important in terms of marketing that we know what we are first and foremost. First and foremost, Joss and I felt very strongly that “we are a horror movie and that’s what we are and then everything else can expand from there.” But to try to sell it any other way is disingenuous to who we are as a movie.
Capone: It does have plenty of genuinely scary moments, and I keep telling people how smart it is, so they're thinking it’s going to be some sort of intellectual approach to horror, and I’m like “No, it’s really kind of down and dirty and scary.” When you are writing the film, do you always lean towards the scare moments more than the commenting scenes?
DG: No. To be honest, I wish I could say we thought about it, but the truth is we didn’t. You just write it. You just put your head down and write the best version that you canm and this stuff sort of happens organically. If you feel like you’ve swung too far one way or another, then you bring it back, because it is all about finding the right balance, but if you think about it too much, you end up writing a math problem rather than a story, and so you can’t worry about it.
Capone: You are one of the few people that has actually had the fortune of working closely with Joss and with J.J. Abrams who are sort of these two pillars on which many fans consider the pillars of modern sci-fi and horror. What are the fundamental differences in working with the two guys?
DG: I’ll start with the similarity, because people have already forgotten this fact and it was true for both of them, but at the time I started--and this was when Joss was doing "Buffy" and J.J. was doing "Alias"--they couldn’t have been less fashionable in terms of what was popular at the time. I got job offers from a bunch of these other shows, and people in my life thought I was crazy that I wanted to go work for Joss and that I wanted to go work for J.J. Networks were betting on shows like "CSI" and "Law & Order," and no one wanted these weird fringe shows.
The thing I watched both of them do is they never compromised what they wanted to do. They never saidm “Well that’s popular, so let’s be more popular.” They just said, “No, we're going to keep telling the stories that we want to tell, and if people come to us, great, but if they don’t, great, as long as we get to tell our stories.” It was true of both of them and I feel like it’s easy to think now, because now the mainstream did come to them. But you forget, at the time people were like “A weird "Buffy" show and a weird "Alias" show?” Nobody other than our core fanbase--I was one of the fanbase; I started as a fan just trying to get on "Buffy" as a fan. So I felt the same way. As fans, we all knew that “Oh no, this is the most exciting stuff happening in entertainment right now; it’s just going to take a while for everyone to get caught up on this.”
Capone: "Buffy" did get popular before it was done, whereas Alias."
DG: It certainly got its credit, but it’s not like the ratings were ever that high. I mean they were high for what they were, for the WB network, and so it was good, but if you compare it to say "CSI," we're still on the fringe.
Capone: You open the film with what 99 percent of every movie would consider the first reveal, and I think a lot of people have asked me who have seen the trailer, “Does it give it away?” My response is always, “I know it feels like it does, but it doesn’t.”
DG: What we see in the trailer we give away in the first two minutes of the movie.
Capone: That’s true. Your official premiere was at SXSW, but I’m curious what went into the decision to play it at Butt Numb-a-Thon. We know that it’s the right audience for the movie, and I had even guess that it was going to play. In fact, there was almost no doubt in my mind it was going to play, but what did you get out of that experience of making that happen?
DG: It just felt right to me. I mean truthfully I wish I could say there was a big plan in place, but the Butt Numb-a-Thon crowd is kind of my ideal audience from my point of view. Like I want this movie to play at 2a.m.
Capone: You should have come.
DG: I wasn’t allowed to, otherwise I would have been there.
Capone: Really?
DG: Because I’ve always just wanted to go to Butt Numb-a-Thon, it just sounds like so much fun.
Capone: Why wouldn’t they let you go?
DG: It was because they already agreed to premiere it at SXSW, and so that had to be the premiere. But then Harry saw it and really wanted it. But I think as part of that deal so that it didn’t feel like we were “premiering it,” Joss and I couldn’t show up and introduce the film, because otherwise we would have. I mean I feel like this movie about love of movies to some extent; we love movies ,and I feel like Butt Numb-a-Thon, the reason why I’ve wanted to go, it feels like if you're there, it’s because you love movies.
Capone: You can’t get in if you don’t.
DG: That’s right, and why would you want to? If you don’t love movies, why would you do that? You have to be there because you love movies and you love watching them.
Capone: In the last few years, I get more out of the vintage stuff that he programs than the newer stuff.
DG: That’s right, it’s not about just “Oh, I got to see that early,” it’s about “I got to have this experience,” and that’s what I feel about CABIN. I feel like I made this movie for people who love movies, and so I wanted to see it play.
Capone: I wanted to talk about what you've got coming up, certainly the one thing we know that you’ve got coming up--the ROBOPOCALYPSE movie, which you’ve written and Spielberg is going to direct it. How involved are you going to be once they start shooting, or do you know yet? Are you going to be there?
DG: I don’t know, but I doubt it. I just want to watch, you know? [laughs] I just want to sneak in and watch, but who knows? The truth is you don’t know about these things. I have no needs to be involved. I know that movie is in good hands.
Capone: I think you can assume that.
DG: That's right. The whole project has just been about getting to see the master at work and getting to see Steven do his thing. I got a call one day where they said, “Hey, do you want to come talk about robots with Steven Spielberg?” This is me as just a hired hand, because it’s an adaptation of a book. I got called on a Sunday, and they said “Hey, do you want to come talk about robots with Steven?” And Monday, I’m like “Yes.”
[Both Laugh]
DG: That’s the fun. I can’t say too much about it, because they like to keep it quiet, but I will say that that has been a dream, just getting to be around him.
Capone: I kind of wonder, when you know you’re writing for him, do you write differently? Do you think, “I can see how Spielberg would shoot this.”
DG: Yeah, but that’s true of any creative partnership. You always want to tailor what you're doing to the people you're working with. That’s part of the job, if you know who they are, because otherwise you’re doing yourself a disservice. The nice thing about Steven is you really don’t ever have to feel hamstrung in your imagination. If you can imagine it, he can make it happen. [Laughs] So that’s what is nice about him. There’s nothing he can’t do, so you never feel constrained.
Capone: And then is there still a CLOVERFIELD sequel possibility? Is that even a real thing anymore? I’ve talked to Matt Reeves about it a couple of times over the years, and sometimes I ask him if it’s happening, and some times he asks me if it should happen.
DG: [laughs] That sounds like Matt.
Capone: I feel like CLOVERFIELD as a beautiful, stand-alone thing.
DG: I think we all feel that way. I think J.J., Matt, and I all feel that way. We don’t want to do it just for the sake of doing it. We don’t want to make a sequel just because “that’s what everyone does. You’ve got to make a sequel.” We don’t care. [Laughs]
Capone: People were so desperate for it at one point that when the title SUPER 8 appeared in the world, they thought that was going to be CLOVERFIELD, but 30 years earlier.
DG: That’s right and look, I love that universe. If there’s a way to return to that universe that feels interesting and new, I’m all for it. It’s just a matter of getting the three of us together and agreeing on something and doing it. It will come down to that. No one wants to make it just for the sake of making it.
Capone: The last thing I wanted to ask you about CABIN is pulling the cast together. If this had come out when it was supposed to, the young actors would have been virtual unknowns, and in a lot of ways those are my favorite horror films where you don’t know anybody, because it feels a little more real. There’s no baggage there. Obviously you couldn’t do that with some of the people in the movie, where the baggage is necessary, but with the kids tell me about why you picked these people.
DG: We looked at hundreds of kids for these roles. We really scoured the earth. We flew Anna Hutchison in from Australia the night before we started shooting, because some of these roles were so hard to cast. The reason they're hard to cast is because we ask so much of them. We change gears so much in this movie. We go from high horror to high comedy. We go from heartbreaking drama to just pure silliness and we do it some times in the same scene. That’s what we used to do on "Buffy" also, and so you need a degree of technical craftsmanship that you don’t normally associate with this type of movie. So we really had to put these kids through their paces. We really were looking for the right fit and it becomes alchemy. It becomes “If this guy works, let’s put him with her and see what happens.” You can’t be afraid to be thorough, you know?
Capone: And then you’ve got Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford. What made them right for those particular roles?
DG: I just love them. I just love those two actors and so that’s one of the fun parts about being a director is you just get to go “Who have I always wanted to work with? Let’s go with them.”
Capone: Did Matt Reeves encourage you to work with Richard after he worked with him on LET ME IN, or was it the other way around?
DG: No, I sent Richard to Matt, because we shot this before, and I called Matt and said, “You’ve got to look at Richard for that role.” That’s what gets confusing about our timeline. But with both of them, there’s a fearlessness to their craft and they have that thing I was talking about earlier, that technical capability. If you look at "West Wing," Bradley could swing between the broadest of comedy to the most heartbreaking five-page political diatribe. He could switch between both of those, and when you know “This guy can do this,” it makes your life a lot easier. It’s the same with Richard. I mean I don’t know of any actor that has a range that goes from THE VISITOR to any of his Farrelly Brothers movies, which is what we were looking for, actors who are unafraid.
Capone: Bradley is just so good about sounding like a bureaucrat. When he showed up on screen, and I realized what he was, I was like “Who else could have done it like that? He’s the best at rattling off that type of dialog.”
DG: I actually screened him in a casting meeting early on with the studio head there. I said, “If Bradley Whitford says no, I don’t want to make this movie.” I actually don’t know who else I could have gotten to play that role.
Capone: How did you end up directing this?
DG: You know I read an interview early on with Paul Thomas Anderson who said, “The only way you get to do anything in Hollywood is to control the script,” and we just wrote this script. We didn’t develop it; we just wrote it. And it’s to Joss’s credit that he backed me. He said, “I back Drew; let’s do this.”
Capone: Was it your idea or his idea?
DG: It was his idea, but he knew I wanted to direct, and he wanted me to do this one and he wanted to produce it, and so that’s how it happens. The only way they will let you do anything is if you can control it, and we just said, “If you want in, great. If not, that’s okay too.”
Capone: What was the horror film that turned you from a boy to a man?
DG: That’s a good question. I like how you phrased that.
Capone: You know what I mean.
DG: Yeah, it could mean it in a couple of different ways, but in terms of my gut reaction to that, I would say it was John Carpenter’s THE THING, because it was the first time it was made clear that you can work on multiple levels. You can be an awesome, balls-out horror movie, and I think it’s the ending that does it, that makes you revisit the whole movie where you look at it and you go, “Oh, this is about something else. This is just about 'Hey, let’s watch a bunch of people try to survive a monster.'"
It’s what Carpenter does better than anyone. There’s nobody better at endings than John Carpenter. He’s really good at giving you an ending that makes you rethink the entire movie in a new context, and I remembered clearly when that cut to black happened in THE THING--I must have been 10 or somewhere in there--where you go “Wait a minute. This is about something else! I didn’t see that coming, and that’s making me re-evaluate this whole movie.” That was it. That movie still haunts me, to be honest with you. I’ve watched it hundreds of times now and I still notice something new every time.
Capone: And on top of what you are talking about, there is groundbreaking special effects and great acting and scares.
DG: And it’s gorgeous. The restrained elegance that you see in a lot of his movies, particularly his early stuff where he’s not afraid to just take his time and let the camera be slow and just let it all happen and build that dread. It’s really one of the most beautiful movies I’ve ever seen, which it doesn’t get a lot of credit for, but it’s just a beautifully shot film.
Capone: So what was the level you were dealing with before that first saw that film? What were the films that kind of just got you giddy about horror films?
DG: A lot of the FRIDAY THE 13th movies were just fun. ALIEN came out around then, but that one scared me too bad. As a kid, I couldn’t watch that for a while. That’s another film that I sort of became a man on, because it took a while before I was like, “Oh, okay I’m able to watch this.” But you know NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. I’m a child of the '80s, I'm 37, so that's what I grew up on. I came of age watching Raimi, Carpenter, Craven, and all of those guys.
Capone: Alright. Thanks so much for giving us so much of your time.
DG: I’ll see you again tonight, but I really do love your work so much.
Capone: Thank you so much; that’s really nice of you.
