MULTIMEDIA > PRESS ARCHIVE

ANDREW DOUGLAS FOR "AMITYVILLE HORROR"
Date: April 3, 2005
Source: Dark Horizons
Full Interview: here

Question: What do you think PETA's reaction will be to the dead dog?
Answer: Oh don't. We don't see a dog. We assume it's a dog. What did you see?

Question: A chopped up dog.
Answer: You're absolutely right. You know what? Damned if you do, damned if you don't. What are they going to say about sticking a finger in a child's (head), what are they going to say about a child being on a damn roof anyway?

Question: How did you get away with actually being able to do that?
Answer: You mean, technically how did we do it? We just had a lot of the same girl.

Question: And her parents were quite willing to let her do it?
Answer: We just gave the parents drugs and used replicas. It's on the damn roof, and I was petrified, absolutely petrified. And nobody in the crew could walk that line, and the child got up there for twenty minutes, we're in our condors with her, she was on wires, but it still so high, after 20 minutes she was completely comfortable. It's astonishing. It's astonishing. It was high. It was really high.

Question: Did you worry about having a John Landis moment?
Answer: Absolutely. I was genuinely, I could barely sleep because that's what was mandated...

Question: It would have been the end of your career?
Answer: It sure would. It would have been the beginning and the end. It sure would. That wasn't why I was worried. I just...

Question: How did you keep the kids from getting scared in situations, not just doing stunts, but in these scary moments? Even the makeup would have been scary to them.
Answer: You know, it's funny, I think they have a far greater sense of what's real and what's playful than we do. I think we hit a certain age where we start to confuse reality. Remember there were long debates about Columbine, people flailing to find how Columbine could happen. 'Oh it must be the videos they watched.' It must be this, it must be that. And none of that's true. The kids in general, up to a certain age, there's clearly playtime - horror - and real time, in a way that we lose I think as adults, so the child, Jodie, Isabella (her credit is just Isabel) , it tickled her pink to come out and have lunch with us with (her makeup on) and it ticked the other kids, because that's play. Of course, none of the children are seeing the whole film or the context of the whole film, so you're not creating fully rounded nightmares in front of them.

Question: What do you tell them, what are they aware of when they're shooting?
Answer: With Jodie, I just told her this is playtime; we're just playing dead. She knew exactly what she looked like, I'd go, 'Play as if somebody just shot you, just play that.' It was very strange and I thought hard to actually figure out that kind of - where it would be play, because I don't want give them trauma. I think the adults are more traumatized than the children.

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Question: When were you the most scared?
Answer: Literally scared? When the child was on the roof. The discussion that we were just having. I got one little kind of tremor, and I'm a rationalist, I got one tremor - the door handle. We'd shot the library scene, do you remember the library scene, have you seen the film? And the library was in this beautiful Catholic seminary just outside of Chicago, beautiful place, and this library had those door handles, the seminary had these door handles, so I kind of ... did I steal it? Anyway, somehow one ended up in my pocket. So we one of the scenes where the doors slam and then the last button (?) and that little piece of horror was the door handle which goes upside down. I didn't know if it was going to make the cut. And for some reason, I don't believe in the supernatural and I don't believe in God, but for some reason when that turned upside down I got a chill. Now is that something deeper than the rational mind? Is that such a strong, deep-seated, icon that if you do that you're calling up Satan? I got a kind of chill, and that's probably the only one, because the rest of the time I was in the same world as Isabella, I'm playing horror, I'm playing dead bodies, I'm trying to make it as grotesque as I can, as maggoty, but I was in Isabella's frame of mind for that.