![\"girlnext1\"](\"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/girlnext1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Girl Next Door<\/a>\u00a0absolutely wrecked me. I can think of no other horror movie that has been able to bring me to tears. That’s such a rare emotion for the genre. But, when you think about it, tragedy really is the scariest thing\u2014the people you love, in horrible situations, suffering, the threat of their death looming. Horror movies, to truly be horrific, should be tragedies, at least somewhat. Unfortunately, more often than not, they’re merely gory action movies or tongue-in-cheek comedies. If that’s not clear to you now, it certainly will be after watching this film.<\/em><\/p>\n Recently, I had the chance to sit down and pick the brain of its director, Gregory Wilson:<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Girl Next Door is one of my absolute favorite horror movies, but it\u2019s hard for me to even call it a horror movie, because the way that it resonates for me most is as a tragic romance. It gets me in the heart, whereas most horror movies, even though they tend to center around boyfriends and girlfriends and families, you rarely really feel the love, or when deaths occur, the loss. It\u2019s almost a total afterthought, whereas with this movie, the entire foundation is built on love, and the fear of loss. How would you classify this movie? And, did you run into any difficulties as far as classifying it, and its promotion and marketing?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Well first of all, thank you for the question. It\u2019s a great question. When I was pitching for the film, I knew that the producers were already speaking to several\u00a0directors. What I discovered later on was the consistent theme with the other directors was that they were focusing\u00a0on the horror elements. I always looked at The Girl Next Door as a social horror, as opposed to your traditional fantasy horrors\u2014your Freddy Kreugers<\/a>\u00a0and your Friday the 13ths<\/a>, etcetera. So my pitch to them was that the social horror element is a crucial element. I saw a coming of age story among all the kids that were involved, all of them, and I also saw an unfulfilled love story between the two main characters. And that was the approach. I said there are\u00a0really three different stories here, and then of course you have the child abuse element, which to me was the social horror element. And\u00a0that\u2019s why, even though it\u2019s classified as a horror film, it\u2019s very much a dark drama.<\/span><\/p>\n With regard to the second part of your question, the classification, originally the MPAA wanted to classify The Girl Next Door as NC-17, and I remember that myself, and the two producers, got on the phone with the ratings board. The producers asked me to pretty much talk to them and see if I could, not necessarily convince them, but explain to them my approach and why I believe that the film deserves no more than an R rating. Basically, what I told them was that the way that I shot the film, I was very respectful and very sensitive to the material. I tried to leave a little bit more to the imagination. I always believe, as a director,\u00a0the audience can bring more to a film than a filmmaker can, because the audience is completely free, as opposed to, when a Director\u00a0presents the story to them, we\u2019re locked into whatever our vision is.\u00a0This is why I made those certain directorial decisions, in regards to how I was shooting the scenes. The board eventually agreed, and gave us the R rating that we were looking for.<\/span><\/p>\n That must\u2019ve been quite the process\u2014I\u2019ve heard so many horror stories about filmmakers dealing with the MPAA, fighting from NC-17 to R.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Yes, it\u2019s always a fight. It\u2019s always a fight.<\/span><\/p>\n How do you feel about the DVD cover of the film? It seems to represent a much more exploitation-y movie, and it\u2019s very different from the posters. Do you feel that any of the posters or promotional material really nailed the vibe of the film?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0It\u2019s funny, I get a lot of questions about the DVD cover and the various one-sheets that have come out, and my answer is the same\u2014I think a lot of people already have a preconceived notion, either based on the book or based on what they already know about the film, so a lot of times, again,\u00a0 it falls on the audience, and people projecting.<\/span><\/p>\n I personally and professionally had no problem with the image of the girl being blindfolded, because it doesn\u2019t show anything\u2014it leaves a tremendous amount to the imagination. How did she get blindfolded? If anything, it invites exactly what you want, which is, curiosity. How did she get there? What happens from that point forward? I think that the cover served its purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n What did you look for, and find, in the young actors you cast? And in particular, what\u2019d you look for, and find, in the lead actress? Because she really feels eerily perfectly cast\u2014even though she\u2019s older than the character in the novel, when I was reading the original novel afterward, I couldn\u2019t help but imagine her. Her energy and presence was spot on.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n In the original novel, the girl was very young. I believe she was 12 years old. So we knew, legally speaking, that I couldn\u2019t cast a 12 year old and take a 12 year old actress, or actor, through that process. To me, even if it wasn\u2019t illegal, it would have felt immoral. And one of the things that you have to do, which is something that\u2019s usually not really spoken about, is that when you audition kids, particularly for this type of material, you have to audition the parents as well. And in auditioning kids, you want to first see if the kid can perform under these imaginary circumstances, but you want to also see how they deal with the material, and how the parents deal with the material\u2014how comfortable they are, because they\u2019re going to be on set. The parents were always invited and given full access to the set when their children were on set. With this type of material, you can\u2019t have a closed door process, because you have the state labor unions, the Screen Actor\u2019s Guild, and the parents, and everybody there is watching for the welfare of the children. For me, my primary purpose, after serving the story, was the protection of my actors, in regards to the material.<\/span><\/p>\n We casted with those parameters in mind, knowing that we needed kids that can act, and parents that will help us with the process of understanding. A lot of times, I would have to direct by asking a question, and the first question might be to the parents\u2014”Have you ever spoken to them about child abuse?\u201d And if the answer was yes, then I could have a dialogue with the actor about it. But if the parents had not spoken about it to them, then we would use more nebulous terms about pain or loss. With the other actress, who played the little sister who had suffered from polio, it was more, \u201cCould you imagine what it would be like to lose a sister?\u201d, that kind of thing, without going into the details of her abuse. The words \u2018sex\u2019 or \u2018rape\u2019 were never used\u2014it was more about abuse, because they\u2019re just too young to understand.<\/span><\/p>\n How much of the violence and inappropriate content was kept from the young actors during shooting?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n What I did specifically was that, when there were particularly heavy abuse scenes, only the relevant actors were allowed. Usually, if it were a film about adults for example, I might have an adult actor behind the camera, viewing and seeing and interacting so that it can help the other actors in the performance of the scene, and it also helps with sense memory. But because I was dealing with children, I couldn\u2019t do that\u2014I didn\u2019t want to do it that way, because I wanted to protect the kids.\u00a0 So it was more about establishing the kids in the room, and I would be avoiding certain words and imagery, and then I was literally directing them through their emotional reactions. And that\u2019s how I directed them in the scenes.<\/span><\/p>\n And again, everything I was doing was done in conjunction with child labor laws, the parents, the unions\u2014everybody was intimately involved in how I was directing these scenes. In particular, with the lead actress, Blythe, who I thought was fantastic, before we cast her, I talked to her and her agent in detail about how I was going to shoot certain scenes, shot by shot, image by image, to be as protective as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n What was the energy like on set? And in particular, what was the mood like during the shooting of the more harrowing scenes? How did you keep things from getting dour?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n One of the ways you kept it light was by keeping around only the necessary people involved. When the kids weren\u2019t there, they played around. There was a lot of camaraderie, a lot of bonding. And you kept it as light as possible without being disrespectful. So that was really it. The book was one of the most difficult books I\u2019ve ever read in my life because it goes into so much detail, and when you read a book, you\u2019re the director, so you can begin to imagine certain things, and it becomes really heavy.<\/span><\/p>\n So, remembering that, while I was on set, we actually had to go with the emotional opposite when we were between scenes\u2014we\u2019d let the kids go out and play and have fun. And again, in the way that I chose to direct them, I never made them go deep. That was my job, to go as deep as I could, with regard to characters and so on. And there were some cases where I had to switch characters around, with regard to the book, because there was some emotional difficulty that some of the younger actors were having. Once I sensed that, and discussed that with the parents, I\u2019d let them know that I was going to rewrite the scene and swap characters and let the older character say a particular line, as opposed to the younger character. That way, it was never uncomfortable for them. I always kept a very open door with the parents.<\/span><\/p>\n Transparency was really the most important thing, and that\u2019s what made it light. There were no secrets\u2014the secrets were in the story itself, but not in the production.<\/span><\/p>\n The feel of this film is really quite fascinating. It almost has a Douglas Sirk quality, in that that visuals and setting and line readings and music feel deliciously idyllic-yet-fake at times, keying you into that you can\u2019t really trust the surface of this world, and that there\u2019s something sinister underneath. How did you set out to create the tone of the film?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Well that\u2019s interesting you chose the word \u2018fake\u2019. That\u2019s more in retrospect, meaning that, the facade we wanted to create was that everything is okay\u2014this is a normal block, in a normal suburb, in post-World War II America, the 50s, a time of rebirth in America. Suburban America was very clean and above judgment, and so that was the facade that was created so that we could then go deep, literally and figuratively, into the basement, and into these characters. If you notice, we slowly bled color out of the film, the darker it got, particularly in the basement. And then at the end\u2014which was completely different from the book, and something that I was very proud of that I rewrote\u2014we brought color back, and we had the imagery of the river, where we see the reflection. In a sense, it\u2019s almost a rebirth, so to speak. It\u2019s come full circle. So that\u2019s where the music and everything played into the calibrating of the emotion.<\/span><\/p>\n I grew up in the suburbs, so I can kind of relate to the idea of, \u2018who knows what\u2019s happening with my next door neighbor?\u2019 You really don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on unless you\u2019re there to see it.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"girlnext\"](\"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/girlnext.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"girlnext2\"](\"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/girlnext2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n