MULTIMEDIA > PRESS ARCHIVE

GEORGE HUNG OUT FOR AMITYVILLE
Date: April 5, 2005
Source: SciFi Wire/McFly
Full Article: here

Melissa George, who stars in the upcoming remake of The Amityville Horror, told SCI FI Wire that she had her own frightening moments on the production, particularly shooting a scene where she has to rescue her young daughter from the roof of the house. Director Andrew Douglas shot the scene practically, meaning that George was climbing around on a roof 50 feet above ground level with 8-year-old Chloe Grace Moretz, who plays her daughter.

"That was freaky," George said in an interview. "I didn't like that too much. Because little Chloe, you know the scene where she falls off the edge? All for real, you guys. No green screen. All that walking is for real. She had a crane with two pieces of skinny wire that was above her head, and she was balancing by herself [along the roof's ridgeline], and then they just rubbed out the wire."

As for herself, George said, she was hooked with a single safety wire as she struggled to hold Chloe as she dangled off the edge of the roof. "I'm leaning over, and they put a tiny wire around my waist hooked to the side," she said. " You can't believe how horrible [it is] looking at everyone [as if] they were like ants. They were so small. You were up so high. And little Chloe had to have, like, a harness [on] and hang over the edge, and then the crane [camera] would go around and shoot these great, gorgeous, romantic shots."

Between takes, Chloe was so relaxed that she would pretend she was hanging by her neck. That in itself freaked George out, she said. "She was pretending that she was hung, as a joke, and I'm like, 'That's so not funny, little girl. You're adorable and everything, but what you're doing right now...' She was dangling off the edge, 80 feet above the ground, not scared at all, and I'm looking at this kid like, with her eyes rolled back in her head," she added with a shudder. Amityville Horror opens April 15.