Dapper Dan
<i>Just A<br>D R E A M E R</i>
Exclusive: The Makers of Tamara
Source: Edward Douglas
February 1, 2006
Anyone who has ever been in high school may at one point or another fallen victim to the hierarchies and cliques of the system, and if you're one of those unfortunate souls who was ever picked on mercilessly, then at one time or other, you must have thought about ways of getting revenge. It has certainly been the subject of many great horror-revenge movies from Carrie and Prom Night to more mainstream films like I Know What You Did Last Summer.
The new horror-thriller Tamara is decidedly different, because it veers more towards the supernatural than towards straight-out horror, and it does a lot to avoid the usual cliches by adding a few twists. Maybe it's no surprise that this modestly budgeted film was written by Jeffrey Reddick, the mastermind behind the "Final Destination" series.
After the title character, a meek bookworm played by Jenna Dewan, gets on the bad side of the school jocks, they play a prank on her as payback that goes horribly wrong, and they end up burying her in the woods, thinking her dead. Of course, Tamara isn't going to stay in the ground for long, and she returns as an even sexier corpse, hellbent on revenge.
ComingSoon.net spoke to Jeffrey Reddick and director Jeremy Haft about their horror movie, which was originally going to be released straight to DVD by Lionsgate, but then got enough interest at last year's New York Horror Film Festival to get a limited theatrical release via City Lights Pictures.
Jeffrey told us why he decided to attempt this type of horror film. "After 'Final Destination' came out, everyone kept coming to me, saying to come up with another really high concept original supernatural idea," he told us. "I finally decided to just write a movie that I want to see that's really fun and kind of pushes the envelope. I think the beginning of the movie is kind of an homage to 'Carrie,' as we have this put-upon girl who dies at the end of the first act and comes back as this sexy girl bent on revenge. I do like to do movies that have universal themes, and I thought that was one that hadn't been touched upon in a while."
Although Jeremy Haft's first feature film was the Dan Haggerty vehicle Grizzly Mountain, he had since directed an action thriller called Red Team, so making a horror movie wasn't that huge a departure for him. Jeffrey told us how they were brought together on this movie. "Originally, a friend of mine named David Sporn and I set this up with City Lights, and David was attached to direct, but there was some scheduling conflicts and problems with that, so they ended up hiring Jeremy. I didn't actually meet him until he was hired." "Lionsgate sort of put us together, but we've been getting along great," Jeremy confirmed, and Jeffrey admitted that making the movie has been a "real bonding experience."
Of course, we had to know where they found the gorgeous Jenna Dewan to play the title character. "Casting this movie was incredibly difficult," Jeremy told us, "In the first third of the movie, she has to be mousy and quiet, lacking confidence, and then in the second half, she has to be tough, controlling, and sexy. We met every young girl in the world to try to cast this role, but it was really tough to find the girl that could play both roles. A lot of the girls doing the sexy thing would be so over-the-top and it was so forced, but Jenna was able to play both Tamaras. We were getting desperate at the end, and when she walked in, it was like 'Thank God!'"
Of course, there's always a risk when making a horror movie involving teens getting trapped in the obvious cliches, but Jeremy explained why he feels their movie was able to avoid them. "Jeffrey and I really tried not to make this a horror/slasher "Friday the 13th" movie," he said. "When he was doing the rewrites and when I was prepping for the shoot, we thought of it more of a supernatural thriller meets a horror movie. There are certainly elements that are very gory, but we tried—for the most part, not all the time—not to make it over-the-top gore. We tried to have a lot of tension and thrills and kills, and less violence just for violence sake."
Jeremy continued that thought. "I think the thing that works to Tamara's advantage is that when we meet her at the beginning, she's this girl who feels she's ugly on the inside, and that kind of manifests in how she acts and behaves. Another thing I really wanted to do with this movie is instead of having Tamara come back and just go after these kids and start slaughtering them, she has the ability to read their insecurities and their past sins. She starts manifesting those to turn the kids on each other instead, and I thought that was a cool trick that we haven't seen in a movie."
"I'm pleased with the way the project turned out," Jeffrey said. "There were things that were lost that, as a writer, was kind of upsetting. Of course, the first things to go were the more subtle character stuff, because though you have the jock, the tough girl and the nerd guy, in the script, I really strived to give them a lot of layers, and we had to lose a lot of that. We had to lose some of the more intense horrific violence, because of the budget and the shooting schedule, too."
Of course, with any horror movie, gore is a key factor, and we wondered whether Jeremy was ever worried about how far to take it. "We never really worried about ratings, and we never thought that we need to make this PG or R or whatever it was," he said. "It was just trying to do as much as we could that was cool, and that we could afford to get done. There was some stuff we did in post, and stuff we did digitally and practical, so it was a combination of everything."
Lionsgate is going to be more involved in the DVD release, but Jeremy told us that they were very active in the making of the film as well, and we asked if there were any problems with the sexuality. "I think they were a little horrified by some stuff, but we didn't have any major problems."
With the third chapter in the "Final Destination" series arriving next week, we had to ask Jeffrey for his comments on the sequels. Even though he wasn't involved with the third movie at all, he sold the story for the sequel and executive produced it. "What I really wanted to do [with the sequel] was expand the story and not just retell the first one again," he told us. "When I came up with the idea of these characters, I'm going to tie their fates into the fact that the kids in the first movie were alive when they shouldn't have been. That's a good way to tell a fresh story. My original take was a little more dark and ominous, similar in tone to the first movie, but of course, with the sequel, they want to go bigger and better and bloodier. I think the script writers and the director did a good job, and I think it's a worthy sequel to the first movie."
Jeffrey's also currently working on the script for a remake of George Romero's Day of the Dead, so we asked whether that would be a direct sequel to the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. "It's going to be a separate movie," he told us. "We wanted to pay homage to the original with the military and the scientists and the socially relevant stuff that George Romero always does, but we wanted to put a fresh spin on it. There will be similarities, but there'll be differences as well that I think fans will hopefully dig. Steve Miner ('Friday the 13th Part 2') is directing, which I'm really excited about." That's scheduled to start filming later this year.
"I can't complain too much," he continued, when asked to comment about the recent slew of horror remakes. "As a fan, I'm kind of tired of them in general. Unless you can bring a fresh take to the story, it's kind of insulting for any director to think they can top Wes Craven or George Romero or Tobe Hooper, but it's a safer bag, because it goes back to the studios not wanting to take a chance on something."
With that in mind, we wondered what Jeffrey thought about the future of the horror genre. "I don't know what the future brings, but I think that we're nearing the end of PG-13 softer horror movies," Jeffrey replied. "I think those are being played out, so I think people are gravitating back more to the more hardcore R stories, but it's tough. I worked at New Line Cinema for 11 years and I think that's a great studio, but seeing the inner machinations of other studios, they don't like to be too daring. We had a hard time even getting 'Final Destination' set up there, because it didn't have a traditional killer in it, so it took a long time to convince them to take a chance on it. Once they did, of course everyone comes back to me saying 'Bring me back something like Final Destination!'"
In closing both of them let us know what they had coming up. "My writing partner and I recently wrote a thriller for director William Friedkin of 'The Exorcist,' and we also recently sold a comedy to New Line with Vince Vaughn attached to star, and that's called 'Heckled,'" Jeremy told us. "We're hoping one of those two gets made. I'm always directing television commercials and reading scripts and meeting with people trying to find the next movie to direct."
Jeffrey told us about a more personal project he has brewing called The Horror Show. "David Sporn and I have started a production company called Short End Productions, where we want to do supernatural and more hardcore horror," he told us. "'Tamara' is our first project and 'The Horror Show' is looking to be our second one, and that's a project that I want to direct. I know that everybody wants to be a director, but for me, I really want to see my vision brought to the screen completely without having other directors or other writers tweaking it. It's not really about ego, but 'The Horror Show' is one of my favorite scripts. It's kind of 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' meets Stephen King, which are two very important genre figures to me. "
And what about a sequel to Tamara? "Going back to my studio days, it's hard for me not to think as far as franchise goes," Jeffrey admitted. "I've talked to Jeremy and the producers about it, and there are definitely several different directions that we can go as far as expanding the story outward, rather than showing another unattractive girl that's into magic getting killed and coming back. It's going to depend on how the original does."
Tamara opens in New York on Friday, and in more cities on February 17.
Source: Edward Douglas
February 1, 2006
The new horror-thriller Tamara is decidedly different, because it veers more towards the supernatural than towards straight-out horror, and it does a lot to avoid the usual cliches by adding a few twists. Maybe it's no surprise that this modestly budgeted film was written by Jeffrey Reddick, the mastermind behind the "Final Destination" series.
After the title character, a meek bookworm played by Jenna Dewan, gets on the bad side of the school jocks, they play a prank on her as payback that goes horribly wrong, and they end up burying her in the woods, thinking her dead. Of course, Tamara isn't going to stay in the ground for long, and she returns as an even sexier corpse, hellbent on revenge.
ComingSoon.net spoke to Jeffrey Reddick and director Jeremy Haft about their horror movie, which was originally going to be released straight to DVD by Lionsgate, but then got enough interest at last year's New York Horror Film Festival to get a limited theatrical release via City Lights Pictures.
Jeffrey told us why he decided to attempt this type of horror film. "After 'Final Destination' came out, everyone kept coming to me, saying to come up with another really high concept original supernatural idea," he told us. "I finally decided to just write a movie that I want to see that's really fun and kind of pushes the envelope. I think the beginning of the movie is kind of an homage to 'Carrie,' as we have this put-upon girl who dies at the end of the first act and comes back as this sexy girl bent on revenge. I do like to do movies that have universal themes, and I thought that was one that hadn't been touched upon in a while."
Of course, we had to know where they found the gorgeous Jenna Dewan to play the title character. "Casting this movie was incredibly difficult," Jeremy told us, "In the first third of the movie, she has to be mousy and quiet, lacking confidence, and then in the second half, she has to be tough, controlling, and sexy. We met every young girl in the world to try to cast this role, but it was really tough to find the girl that could play both roles. A lot of the girls doing the sexy thing would be so over-the-top and it was so forced, but Jenna was able to play both Tamaras. We were getting desperate at the end, and when she walked in, it was like 'Thank God!'"
Of course, there's always a risk when making a horror movie involving teens getting trapped in the obvious cliches, but Jeremy explained why he feels their movie was able to avoid them. "Jeffrey and I really tried not to make this a horror/slasher "Friday the 13th" movie," he said. "When he was doing the rewrites and when I was prepping for the shoot, we thought of it more of a supernatural thriller meets a horror movie. There are certainly elements that are very gory, but we tried—for the most part, not all the time—not to make it over-the-top gore. We tried to have a lot of tension and thrills and kills, and less violence just for violence sake."
Jeremy continued that thought. "I think the thing that works to Tamara's advantage is that when we meet her at the beginning, she's this girl who feels she's ugly on the inside, and that kind of manifests in how she acts and behaves. Another thing I really wanted to do with this movie is instead of having Tamara come back and just go after these kids and start slaughtering them, she has the ability to read their insecurities and their past sins. She starts manifesting those to turn the kids on each other instead, and I thought that was a cool trick that we haven't seen in a movie."
"I'm pleased with the way the project turned out," Jeffrey said. "There were things that were lost that, as a writer, was kind of upsetting. Of course, the first things to go were the more subtle character stuff, because though you have the jock, the tough girl and the nerd guy, in the script, I really strived to give them a lot of layers, and we had to lose a lot of that. We had to lose some of the more intense horrific violence, because of the budget and the shooting schedule, too."
Of course, with any horror movie, gore is a key factor, and we wondered whether Jeremy was ever worried about how far to take it. "We never really worried about ratings, and we never thought that we need to make this PG or R or whatever it was," he said. "It was just trying to do as much as we could that was cool, and that we could afford to get done. There was some stuff we did in post, and stuff we did digitally and practical, so it was a combination of everything."
With the third chapter in the "Final Destination" series arriving next week, we had to ask Jeffrey for his comments on the sequels. Even though he wasn't involved with the third movie at all, he sold the story for the sequel and executive produced it. "What I really wanted to do [with the sequel] was expand the story and not just retell the first one again," he told us. "When I came up with the idea of these characters, I'm going to tie their fates into the fact that the kids in the first movie were alive when they shouldn't have been. That's a good way to tell a fresh story. My original take was a little more dark and ominous, similar in tone to the first movie, but of course, with the sequel, they want to go bigger and better and bloodier. I think the script writers and the director did a good job, and I think it's a worthy sequel to the first movie."
Jeffrey's also currently working on the script for a remake of George Romero's Day of the Dead, so we asked whether that would be a direct sequel to the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. "It's going to be a separate movie," he told us. "We wanted to pay homage to the original with the military and the scientists and the socially relevant stuff that George Romero always does, but we wanted to put a fresh spin on it. There will be similarities, but there'll be differences as well that I think fans will hopefully dig. Steve Miner ('Friday the 13th Part 2') is directing, which I'm really excited about." That's scheduled to start filming later this year.
"I can't complain too much," he continued, when asked to comment about the recent slew of horror remakes. "As a fan, I'm kind of tired of them in general. Unless you can bring a fresh take to the story, it's kind of insulting for any director to think they can top Wes Craven or George Romero or Tobe Hooper, but it's a safer bag, because it goes back to the studios not wanting to take a chance on something."
With that in mind, we wondered what Jeffrey thought about the future of the horror genre. "I don't know what the future brings, but I think that we're nearing the end of PG-13 softer horror movies," Jeffrey replied. "I think those are being played out, so I think people are gravitating back more to the more hardcore R stories, but it's tough. I worked at New Line Cinema for 11 years and I think that's a great studio, but seeing the inner machinations of other studios, they don't like to be too daring. We had a hard time even getting 'Final Destination' set up there, because it didn't have a traditional killer in it, so it took a long time to convince them to take a chance on it. Once they did, of course everyone comes back to me saying 'Bring me back something like Final Destination!'"
Jeffrey told us about a more personal project he has brewing called The Horror Show. "David Sporn and I have started a production company called Short End Productions, where we want to do supernatural and more hardcore horror," he told us. "'Tamara' is our first project and 'The Horror Show' is looking to be our second one, and that's a project that I want to direct. I know that everybody wants to be a director, but for me, I really want to see my vision brought to the screen completely without having other directors or other writers tweaking it. It's not really about ego, but 'The Horror Show' is one of my favorite scripts. It's kind of 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' meets Stephen King, which are two very important genre figures to me. "
And what about a sequel to Tamara? "Going back to my studio days, it's hard for me not to think as far as franchise goes," Jeffrey admitted. "I've talked to Jeremy and the producers about it, and there are definitely several different directions that we can go as far as expanding the story outward, rather than showing another unattractive girl that's into magic getting killed and coming back. It's going to depend on how the original does."
Tamara opens in New York on Friday, and in more cities on February 17.