For those who haven’t seen Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday, this article contains spoilers.
Jason Voorhees is one of the most enduring figures in horror. Regardless if you love or hate the franchise, there’s no denying its impact on popular culture. Often overlooked is what went into making the 12-film series. Through extensive research and interviews, I invite you to take a closer look at the Friday The 13th universe. This is Crystal Lake Confessional.
After being blown into pieces by an FBI SWAT team, Jason’s reign over Crystal Lake seemingly comes to end. But as dark secrets of the Voorhees family are revealed, a deadbeat dad, his ex-wife, and a mysterious bounty hunter must team up and send the body-hopping spirit of America’s deadliest serial killer to Hell once and for all.
To this day, Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday remains the most controversial installment of the Friday The 13th franchise. But rivaling the film’s strange plot is the unconventional story of how the film itself came to be. I recently had the opportunity to speak with the film’s director, Adam Marcus. We discuss how the mythology of Jason, toxic fans, and how he became the youngest director ever hired by a major studio to write and direct a feature film.
Coop: So first off, how did a 23-year-old get the keys to the Friday the 13th franchise?
Adam Marcus: the simple answer to that is, I grew up in the arts! My whole family is in the business. There’s a bunch of singers. There’s a bunch of actors, it’s just that troupe of clown car of artists. My uncle Ned Eisenberg is a journeyman actor who everybody would go oh, that guy. I know that guy. That guy from that thing. Uncle Ned played Eddie in The Burning.
Coop: Really? That’s pretty cool!
Adam: Yeah, he’s one of the guys killed on the raft. He’s the guy who takes the girl out onto the lake and sexually harasses her. Which is interesting, because it was the first Weinstein brothers movie.
C: Oh no, I didn’t even put two and two together with that.
A: It’s amazing how much sexual harassment is in that movie. It’s like, it’s like the theme of The Burning. You go watch it now and you’re like, Oh my god, every guy’s trying to rape every girl in this movie. Gee, who couldn’t see that coming?
C: I honestly wasn’t expecting that connection!
A: Then there’s my Uncle Joe Ellison. He’s is the writer and director of Don’t Go In The House. The movie that came out literally alongside he played alongside Friday The 13th in theaters. Which is kind of incredible.
C: It really is a small world!
A: So that’s sort of my street cred horror-wise. I was born in Manhattan but I grew up in this little town in Westport, Connecticut. Which is the most artsy of the bedroom communities outside Manhattan. It also was the home of one Sean S. Cunningham…
C: Ah, our first real Friday connection!
A: Sean’s son Noel and I were best friends from the time we were like, I think eight or nine. So Noel and I were inseparable. We did everything together. Therefore, I was always in the Cunningham household.
C: Did hanging around that household influence you in being a filmmaker?
A: Well when I was nine years old, my dad took me to see Star Wars when and the minute I saw the Imperial Star Destroyer float overhead I turned my father I went, I want to do that! And I never looked back. And by the way, there’s no exaggeration to that I literally have never spent a day in my life not working towards my film career from nine years old. So any chance I got to be involved in the film industry or in acting or in theater, and anything that revolves around storytelling, that became my focus. And so Sean Cunningham was the quickest and easiest way to get close to that world and Noel happened to be my best friend.
C: Right, the perfect storm of influence and ambition at an early age.
A: It was like just kind of a confluence of things that happened to set me on a path. And Of course, you know, I’m there when they’re making the first Friday The 13th. I’m there when Sean’s wife Susan is cutting Part 2. I was an apprentice to Susan Cunningham, Sean’s wife, and Noel’s mother who is one of the most remarkable women I’ve ever known. She edited Part 2, as well as Sean’s movie, Spring Break. So I was an apprentice to her at Columbia/Tristar.
C: Wait, Spring Break was like 1983 right? Weren’t you a child?
A: With Spring Break, I was 12 or just turning 13 when we made that movie. That is not a movie a 13-year-old boy should be an editor on. I literally started the movie as a boy and finished the movie as a man.
C: Wow, I guess you were destined to be in the film industry!
A: When I was 16 I created my first of several different theater companies I ran in my teens and into my 20s. Sean was very helpful in helping me put together and raise money for my first show and I had the rarest of rare things. I had a profitable theatre Company. So much so, I was able to go to NYU film school and make all my films on the money I had made in theater.
C: That’s pretty amazing in its own right. Was your time at NYU a success?
A: I made a film that won Best Picture at NYU. But it was a comedy. It was not something that people make at NYU. People just don’t make a comedy. Right? Or if they do, it’s ironic comedies. But I was an outsider there mainly because I was a populist filmmaker. And so even though we had swept the awards at the NYU Film Festival, the Dean of NYU would not bring my film to Hollywood. I made a Hollywood movie and he wouldn’t take it to Hollywood.
C: Yeah that’s weird.
A: Crazy, right? Here’s what’s crazier. The two leads of my film were Tom Lennon, the creator of Reno 911 (and Officer Dangle, the guy with the short shorts and the mustache), and Joe Lo Truglio from Brooklyn 99. So I make this incredibly populous comedy and only get two job offers. I get one from David Lynch and Mark Frost to write for season 2 of Twin Peaks and the other offer was from Sean Cunningham. He was like, come to L.A., be my b**** for a year and I’ll give you a shot to direct. So I guess I was going to L.A.
C: I imagine by then everyone knew Twin Peaks was about to be canceled anyway. Plus you already knew Sean so that’s a lot less complicated.
A: Right, and it’s interesting because it’s sort of like I knew the scorpion when I put it on my back. Here’s the thing, Noel was an awesome guy, I love Noel, he was always my friend. But with Sean, even as a teenager, I’d see Sean do some pretty cruel sh**. He was never a nice guy. That was just not Sean. If you could make him money, he was nicer to you. But a nice guy? No, that was not Sean’s M.O.
C: Maybe Lynch and Frost wasn’t such a bad choice after all?
A: So I came out to Hollywood. Sean paid me so little to be his b****, that I lived in a car for a while. That was fun. Especially because I didn’t have a driver’s license because I’d been living in New York for four years. I owned a 63 canary yellow VW bug, which by the way, is the exact same make and model of the car that Kevin Bacon owns in Footloose.
C: That’s another Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon thing for ya!
A: Dude, I’m always one degree from Kevin Bacon because of Friday The 13th, so I am your quick jump to Bacon if you’re ever in a bind!
C: So you’re in Hollywood, living in a Beetle. Then what?
A: I brought a script with me for this movie called Johnny Zombie. That’s my closest friend in college Dean Lorey and I had been workshopping it for years. It was this great little movie. Well, I brought that out to L.A., and to make a very long story very short Sean read the thing hated it. However, he loved the title. He told me I’m going to give you a million and a half dollars and shoot it in Connecticut. But he wanted to bring on a different writer and fire Lorey. And I was like No! I’m not gonna do that! And again, I’m 21 when that happened. A 21-year-old telling Sean S. Cunningham he’s not gonna take his million and a half dollars!
C: Right, that was more than he scrapped together for the first Friday film!
A: I convinced him though. I said, Look, I could fly Dean out to L.A. put us up in some sh***y hotel right for six weeks. And if we can come up with what you’re happy with, then we’ll go with that. Otherwise, you can write you can hire another writer. He did that very thing and we wrote a script he fell in love with! So the movie ended up in a bidding war between New Line and Disney.
C: Well when you’re in a bidding war with Disney…
A: Disney had much deeper pockets. And again, Sean doesn’t care if it’s with the right company he only cares when it’s with somebody that gives him the most money. So of course, he sold it to Disney. So he sets up this big movie at Disney, right? Suddenly went from being this indie film perfect for my directorial debut, into this, you know, Disney PG13, neutered version of the film I wanted to make. It became My Boyfriend’s Back and it was going to be like an $8 million film.
C: You came through on your part pretty quick and sacrificed the movie you had been developing for years in the process.
A: I was like, Okay, you know what? I made you a lot of money. So now give me a movie. And that’s what he said. Okay. I’m making associate producer on My Boyfriend’s Back. And Paramount is selling the rights to Jason Voorhees to New Line. If you can figure out a way to get that f*****g mask out of the movie, I’ll let you write and direct the film. I said, Umm okay and that was it.
C: Of all things, that was his criteria?
A: I loved the Friday movies. I saw them in theaters several times when they hit theaters, so I was like Got it! Sean’s take on it, which was very much my thought as well, was Paramount has done everything but made Jason Vs Godzilla at this point.
C: Which I probably would’ve been totally down for…
A: Me too! But like when you get to Part 5, Jason is no longer mythology. They killed Jason so much, his head is like hamburger meat after what Tommy Jarvis did to him. They’re like, well we can’t do Jason again. I know, we’ll do Roy Burns!. And he’s a genius with makeup! Part 6 they’re like uh oh, we better go get Jason back. Let’s do Frankenstein’s monster on him turn them into a zombie! Then with Part 7, it’s Jason vs Carrie I guess. By the time they get to Part 8, it was just like Jason vs New York? Maybe there will be like tough guys with bandana headbands and boom boxes? And he’ll be on a boat for most of it because we can’t afford to actually go to New York.
C: Yeah they were stretching it pretty then starting with Part 4 anyway.
A: With each decision, it got weirder and weirder. So for us, it was like, okay, we have no interest in starting over. We’re not rebooting the franchise. New Line bought Jason because they wanted Jason.
C: Is that where you started with your approach?
A: Everybody wanted to forget Part 8 happened right? Everyone. Right? And so I’m like, Okay, I’ll start from Part 7. So I wrote a story about Tommy Jarvis. The Steven Freeman character in Jason Goes To Hell was originally Tommy Jarvis. And the whole point was Tommy had peaked when he killed Jason. And quite frankly, hadn’t worked on any other part of his life. So he falls in love with this local girl. She gets pregnant. He doesn’t know, she leaves because he’s kinda the town f***-up, he’s a drunk. Like we have this whole mythology for Tommy.
C: I could see that working. The Steven characters felt as if we knew him already anyway.
A: Then I was informed that I can’t have Tommy. I’m like what do you mean? Do we have Friday The 13th? They’re like, No, we just bought stuff from the first movie. We can’t even use the title Friday The 13th. I’m like, What? I can only have Pamela Voorhees, the camp, the lake, and Jason. That’s it. And now I got to get the hockey mask out of the movie because Sean wants it out.
C: At this point, you kind of have no choice but to think outside the box.
A: It leads me to my biggest problem with the franchise in general. I love it when people try to rationalize this sh** and it’s just nonsense. So in the first movie, Jason jumps out of the water and drags Alice out of the boat. Okay, cool. So he’s at bottom of Crystal Lake and he’s not grown at all. So my response is Jason’s dead right? He died. But somehow he’s been resurrected. Furthermore, you go from Part 1 to Part 2, which literally is 5 years between the two films, and somehow Jason has grown two and a half feet and gained about 125 pounds? Now we got a fully functioning adult?
C: The timeline was screwed up from the get-go and the second film just contradicts what came before it just by existing!
A: Right! Then by Part 4 this guy has been bludgeoned, beaten, broken, murdered over and over again. But somehow this time he died and by Part 6 he’s a zombie. So my response is maybe Jason isn’t a zombie. He’s something otherworldly from Part 1 on. Well, if that’s the case, the only one who could have made him into something more than he is, would be his mother. Pamela would have done anything to protect her child right? What if she looked into the dark arts?
C: That certainly plays into the obsessive, bloody thirsty vendetta Pamela had for the camp in the first film.
A: Pamela finds the Necronomicon and used it to try and resurrect her child but she doesn’t know she got it right. And now you’ve got this kid at the bottom of Crystal Lake who is now something other than just himself. is this child, this little boy, who is now something other than just himself stuck at the bottom of Crystal Lake. When his mother is decapitated at the end of Part 1, that’s when Jason comes up for air for the first time. He is now a resonance, a Deadite, or something the Necronomicon was able to resurrect. Suddenly no rules apply to his character.
C: So this pretty much confirms the long-standing rumor that Jason Goes To Hell is connected to the Evil Dead franchise?
A: Oh, yeah! But thing is, I didn’t have the rights to Evil Dead and neither did New Linen So I went off and asked Sam Raimi for the Book Of The Dead personally. And I went to him because they were working on Army Of Darkness when I was developing my film, and I was on set with Robert Kurtzman all the time. We did everything we had to do in order to put mythology in there so as a horror filmgoer, you would go Holy sh**, that’s the Book of the Dead! What the hell is Evil Dead doing inside the Voorhees house? That’s a huge moment!
C: My head exploded when I saw the Necronomicon! At the time I was into the Evil Dead movies. I didn’t even put it together as a shared universe thing, I thought it had to be based on something real. So here I was this 9-year-old kid trying to read up on the existence of the Book Of The Dead!
A: I love it, love it! So good dude. (laughs)
C: But in all seriousness, it makes perfect sense for Jason Goes To Hell, but it also answers a lot of questions about Jason’s abilities in previous films.
A: That’s how that came into play and what my initial concept for Jason’s evil was by that point.
C: So Sean hated the mask, but why? If he hated what became of the series after his film, why did he buy up the rights with New Line? It’s kinda obvious fans loved the character.
A: Okay, so here’s what you have to remember. Sean Cunningham only made the first movie and had nothing to do with the rest right? He just got money. They paid him for it and they would consult with him from time to time. First off, Sean Cunningham did not want to make a bunch of movies about Jason Voorhees. It’s why he had nothing to do with Part 2 other than his protege, Steve Minor directing, and his own wife editing.
C: Like a Halloween situation with John Carpenter, writing Halloween 2 but not being onboard with the direction.
A: Exactly like a Halloween situation. Let’s remind ourselves: Sean Cunningham never saw a good movie that he didn’t want to rip off.
C: Well the Friday The 13th title alone is an aesthetic take on Halloween.
A: He’s the Quentin Tarantino oh horror movies. He just rips off everybody else’s sh**, right? But where Quentin is a brilliant filmmaker, Sean makes a movie like Friday The 13th. But anyway, so they got to make Part 2 and they honestly put Jason in a sack and because the Elephant Man was a hit. I sh** you not. Sean’s reaction? That’s f***ing stupid. Then you get to Part 3 and there’s a hockey mask in the middle of summer? What? Idiotic but it’s a great image. Sean’s reaction to that? That’s even stupider than the sack!
C: I understand questioning it at first, but it’s iconic and a vital element to the franchise since Part 3. What were Sean’s ambitions when it comes to producing Jason Goes To Hell?
A: When I came out to work with Sean and he’s sitting around a table with Lorey, myself, and his son Noel. He’s asking us where do we see our lives in five years? So we’re all kind of giving our grandiose answers and all that. Then I said, Sean, where do you see your career in five years? And I kid you not, he says to me Winning an Academy Award. The 3 of us almost giggled. It’s like you do know you’re Sean Cunningham right? The father of Friday The 13th, House, and Spring Break and you want an Academy Award?.
C: Well there’s nothing wrong with ambitions!
A: The problem with Sean is if you ask him about directing style, he doesn’t even know what that means. One time I asked for a split diopter on Jason Goes To Hell. It’s in the movie it’s used in the movie but Sean was horrified when I was asking for it. What the f*** do you need that for?
C: Is that the scene with Sherriff Landis on the phone at the police station?
A: Yep! Very good! The reason why it’s in there is that I worked with Brian De Palma on The Bonfire Of The Vanities, and he was one of the biggest influences in my life. He taught me so much about lenses and things like that. Split diopters were one of his favorite lenses, so I love that lens. Anytime I would set up a nice shot, I swear to God, Sean would look at me and go F***ing film school.
C: Did Sean give you any good advice while working on Jason Goes To Hell?
A: I will say to Sean’s credit, he said, Adam, you have a tiny fraction of what most filmmakers have when they make a movie. When people go to see it, they’re paying the same amount of money to see your movie as they do for Terminator 2. So what are you giving them they can’t get at Terminator 2? That’s a brilliant way to look at the business of filmmaking.
C: Right, that puts a lot of things in perspective for a young filmmaker.
A: That was a lot of what Jason Goes To Hell was born from. There have to be some big ideas here. Big ideas to arrest people and to some degree, piss people off! That’s okay! Do The Right Thing is one of my favorite movies of all time but it pisses me off! That’s why Spike Lee’s is a bad***. He’s not afraid to piss your cornflakes.
C: I love the Friday The 13th franchise obviously. But when you look at all the films after the first one, they’re all trying to break some kind of mold.
A: Right right.
C: In that respect, the ones that succeed in that are better films. Even if they are bad sequels. Like Part 5 for example. I love that movie for various reasons but mainly because it knows what it is.
A: No I totally agree with you there dude, totally! It’s the Friday The 13th film with the most dirt under the fingernails
C: Part 6 had a simple story but visually speaking it’s very distinctive. It’s almost a stand-alone film.
A: That’s my favorite in the whole franchise. It’s got the best sense of humor too.
C: Where do you put your film in terms of your personal favorite?
A: Well I don’t put myself on the top. I’m not that arrogant for God’s sake. But for me, it’s the Rogue One of the Friday series. It fixes the fing problem with the franchise. It gives Jason a reason for being and it’s the only one that is a flat-out monster movie. This is my personal opinion. And, hands fing down, it has the best effects and kills in the series.
C: For those who aren’t aware, Jason Goes to Hell FX was done by K.N.B EFX. Including Emmy and Academy Award-winning Greg Nicotero. Currently the producer of The Walking Dead.
A: I know a lot of people say the best kill in the series is the sleeping bag kill from Part 7. That’s awesome! The sleeping bag kill is f***ing great. But sorry kids, nothing comes close to the tent kill in Jason Goes To Hell!
C: My favorite non-kill scene in the movie is when Steven and Officer Randy are fighting outside the cop car and they pull a gun on each other. We don’t know their history, but how they’re talking to each other reveals a rich history between two people who grew up together.
A: Exactly! That’s my brother Kipp as Randy by the way! But yeah and here’s the thing, my film was the only one of them where there was a month and a half of rehearsal scheduled. I treated it like theater and why wouldn’t we? I don’t care what movie it is, the most important job of the director is respect for the people who have to be vulnerable in front of the camera. The actors are our paint. And if we don’t respect those things, we have no f***ing business painting that picture.
C: The older characters bring a greater sense of levity to the story. No matter how wild it gets with the body-hopping and all that. I love the performances because they seem like real people.
A: You know, the reason why Part 4 is so interesting is that they didn’t just cast pretty people. I mean they were plenty of pretty people but it also had awkward teens. Look, when you cast Crispin Glover as one of your teens, you’re definitely going for a more realistic vibe! That’s smart though, right? And we’ve lost that we’ve lost in filmmaking now because every movie now looks like an Abercrombie and Fitch ad.
C: I agree. If you can’t relate to the character in some way, you can’t be scared for them.
A: Take the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and then look at the 2003 reboot. You feel so much pain and sorrow for the ones in the original because you know those people. That’s the difference.
C: Okay so Jason Goes To Hell got really good reviews initially. But it’s somewhere down the reviews turned bad.
A: The internet is a big difference. There was a guy who made a YouTube video called How New Line Destroyed The Friday Franchise okay? That sort of patient zero on the hatred for Jason Goes To Hell. Not saying there weren’t people who hated the film before because there were. But that guy, I can’t even remember his name. Which is good, he means that little to me, but that’s a good example.
C: Yeah, it’s easy for grifters to adopt a certain opinion and take it like their own. It’s pretty much the golden standard for the YouTube generation.
A: There are two elements people complain about when it comes to Jason Goes To Hell. Body-hopping and not enough hockey mask. That’s it. Here’s the thing. If you don’t like the body-hopping concept, I get it. It’s not your thing. Cool. So there’s no way I’m gonna wrestle that opinion away from you. That’s your opinion. You’re entitled to it. God bless. As for the hockey mask, minute-per-minute we have just as much hockey mask screen time as most of the other films.
C: Yeah, most fans are really stuck on the lack of screen time for Jason himself. That’s the complaint I hear the most.
A: To the people who just wanted a hockey mask movie, I didn’t make the movie for them. That’s right. I made the movie for horror fans. For the Friday fans who were tired of being treated like morons. Do you know why it’s so easy to make a Friday The 13th fan film? Because you’re only playing to that audience of people. The kind of audience who just wants a guy in a hockey mask with a machete. That’s it. That’s just too f***ing easy!
C: That seems to be a big issue within the horror community as a whole. They claim to want something interesting but they really want to pander.
A: The thing is man, the same people who love to say there isn’t enough creativity in horror. No one is taking any chances are the same people who say f*** Jason Goes To Hell. There isn’t enough hockey mask! It’s the same people and they’re impossible. Like, no one’s gonna make them happy.
C: Oh I agree. I’ve written a few articles on toxic fandom and Star Wars comes up quite a bit.
A: First off, I’m a huge Star Wars fan bar none. When you walk into my house you’re greeted by full-sized stormtroopers. There are two full-sized Yodas in my office. I’ve got the full life-sized version of Carrie Fisher, I’m that f***ing guy. That being said, Star Wars fans are dicks. They just are! There’s nobody worse than a Star Wars fan for that very reason.
C: In 2019, I was invited to the premiere of Glenn Danzig’s film Verotika…
A: Oh nice! I love the Misfits. I haven’t seen the movie yet but I’m a big Danzig fan!
C: Me too! But there weren’t many members of the press there. There was me and like 3 other journalists and the rest were just people who bought tickets to the film festival. The movie was something else but everyone had a good time. When I got home to write my review there were already like 10 articles published saying how bad the movie was!
A: It’s way more fun to say something is a piece of sh** than it is to say it’s great. It’s just fun to bully a movie! Plus it’s so easy to be a f***ing critic on the internet and there are no consequences.
C: When you speak at conventions and the like, do you encounter a lot of trolls?
A: I’m going to tell you something. I’m like Teflon at this point. My favorite thing to do when a troll comes at me and saying I should get ass cancer or something, I engage with them and I call them by their name. These people change so damn fast when you do that because suddenly, I’m a person. They don’t expect me to ever respond but I do! I ask them about what part of the movie bothered them and what parts did they like. They’ll give me a list of like 20 things they thought were awesome.
C: Internet trolls forget filmmakers are human beings and art is subjective.
A: It’s a cultish kind of behavior. And again, a lot of times I’ll have a really good conversation with one and I’ll say, listen, when was the last time you saw the film? Like 10 years ago? Watch it again. Give it a given a chance. Some will even say That movie grows better with age! I’m like yep! Because we stopped being teenagers after high school.
C: Right, and just because you don’t like something, doesn’t mean its existence isn’t valid.
A: Oh yeah, I love the people who say Only Parts 1 through 8 are cannon… No. Go f*** yourself, it doesn’t work that way.
C: Well I mean, if they want to split hairs, Part 8 is really the one that doesn’t have to count. You could go straight from Part 7 to Jason Goes To Hell and it works completely fine.
A: That’s really the way we went. But look, if someone were to say Part 8 isn’t canon, I would say no, it is. There’s one thing the Friday The 13th franchise has not done even though there’s been a remake. We’ve never retconned the series. Look at Halloween. I mean, talk about a mess! It’s a head-scratcher like huh? Which timeline am I following?
C: You know, even as a kid, I always thought Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers ripped off Jason Goes To Hell quite a bit.
A: That’s amazing! I love that you said that. Thank you! So Daniel Farrands who wrote Halloween 6, sent Dean Lorey and me a fan letter about Jason Goes To Hell okay. A beautiful, beautiful letter, really sweet. It was chapter and verse on how brilliant he thought he was and thought the writing was amazing. Just really a beautiful letter. So Dean and I found out Farrand had written Halloween 6, so we’re like, we got to go see this movie. We sit in the theater and the two of us are like, What!? Oh my God! This guy stole all of our sh**!
C: I knew it! I’ve always said that!
A: It’s crazy how much of our movie is in Halloween 6! They even have a Creighton Duke character!
C: Yes! With the same boots and all!
A: It’s amazing! But I’ll take it though. It doesn’t piss me off at all. You know, I’m glad we affected another filmmaker. That’s terrific right?
C: Yeah, and it’s a shame not many people would admit they were influenced by Jason Goes To Hell. It’s much more hip to say they hate your movie.
A: Ya know, I’ve tried to add up how much money the people who hate my movie and how much money they’ve spent on it. I’ve calculated somewhere around $125 or so? First off, they’ve rented it, bought it on VHS, probably LaserDisc. They bought the DVD, the unrated VHS, the shitty BluRay from that shitty BluRay set. Then they’ll buy it again when it’s part of the Scream Factory boxset.
C: That’s a lot of money on a movie they hate so much, allegedly.
A: When we were doing the Indiegogo campaign for the documentary Hearts Of Darkness, I put in a perk for like 20 bucks where you can be in the credits at the end of the movie in a section where you tell me to go f*** myself.
C: So they’re not only paying you for the opportunity to tell you off, but it’s also helping finance a documentary about the movie they hate!
A: Yeah and by the way, they will also buy the BluRay of that because their name will be in the credits!
C: I absolutely love your sense of humor about the hatred!
A: Look, if you’re in the film business, and you don’t have a sense of humor, you’re in the wrong place, man. It’s not a place for people with thin skin, it’s not gonna work.
C: When is the documentary coming out?
A: Well, here’s the thing. On the way to making the documentary, there was a pandemic. So your guess is as good as mine! But in all seriousness, we’re not done. We have interviewed over 40 people for this documentary and it’s unbelievable what we’ve pulled off. But I can tell you it’s gonna be a really good f***ing documentary. Sean is not gonna be happy.
C: Oh I can imagine! From what you’ve told me today, he’s an important part of this story.
Here’s the thing. He’s simply not a happy man. I look at someone like Sean and I go You know what, dude? At the end of the day, you’re a miserable jerk. And, and I’m really happy and love what I do and love the people I work with. And when people work with me, they tend to work with me their whole lives. Right? The proof is in the pudding. Man. That really what it comes down to. Life is not about how you crush it. It’s about getting to the end of the race and looking behind you seeing a ton of people that you’ve affected in a positive, artistic, joyful way.
C: That’s a wonderful way to put it and a fantastic way to view adversity.
A: I gotta tell you, I know what he’s done to people and he was a horrible bully to me. I mean, you know, when people talk about the of Me Too era, which thank God they are because someone needed to finally shine a light on these mother****ers. But what people don’t talk about are the guys who are tyrants. I find it really disturbing. Strong people don’t talk about the monsters who treat people like they are garbage. Who don’t pay people, or bosses who take all of the money and give crumbs to the people who do all the work?
C: Is there anything positive about Sean Cunningham’s involvement with Jason Goes To Hell?
A: I feel very blessed to have made it and Sean deserves credit for that. He believed in a 20-year-old film student. He believed I could deliver that movie. He gave me the money and let me go make it. I give him all the respect in the world for that. I do. I’m not an a**hole who’d bite the hand that feeds me. I am someone who’s honest about it. I’d say to him listen, thank you very much for that but you treated me like a f***ing dog.
C: People are angry and they’re fighting back in the best way they can. Thankfully the climate has changed to a point where it’s no longer frowned upon to be vocal.
A: You know what, forget about even the monetary stuff and all that, but I mean, dude, this is a guy who’s mad at me because I didn’t get enough shots of an actress’ boobs. I would be like what? What kind of animal are you? And I was 23 years old at the time! He was what, 50? He thinks people are disposable garbage there to help make him money.
C: As cliche as it sounds, but the time is up for the old guard. Even in the horror genre, filmmakers aren’t sticking to a trend as long. We’re getting more films like It Follows and less Saw.
A: Yeah. I don’t think Halloween or Friday The 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street were torture porn. That’s what’s so great about those movies. Right? They were popcorn films that were scary and fun. They had some grand ideas but we’re not about the suffering. I see something like Terrifier and think could that be more female hating?
C: Jason Goes To Hell is the only Friday The 13th film made in the 90s. Was it a conscious decision to go against everything established in the 80s?
A: In some ways, Jason Goes To Hell is a petri dish for the sort of deconstructionist point of view you’re talking about. Do you know how people talk about being raised by wolves? Well, I grew up in theater so I was raised by choreographers. I grew up in a household of people of all shapes, sizes, sorts, colors, sexual orientations and it was normal. That was my life, the people I cared about, and the people I parents got along with. So I try to make sure my movies reflect my world.
C: That’s pretty progressive for 1992 or 1993 whenever you started production on this thing.
A: These films were for so long the bastion of teenage boy fantasies. That’s my response to that. If I want to really scare my audience, I’m gonna scare the teenage heterosexual white male audience that these movies were marketed to. The scene I get asked about more than any other scene is the shavings scene in the Voorhees house.
C: Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that particular scene. If anything, it’s very uncomfortable.
A: I know! That’s why it’s in there! 25 years after the film came out, people are still asking what with the f*** was up with that right? That’s the thing with Jason Goes To Hell, love it or hate it, you’ll never forget it.
C: I saw it when I was 9 years old and even though I was probably way too young to be seeing it, I liked it! I still do!
A: So opening weekend for Jason Goes To Hell, the only other big film that came out that weekend was Searching For Bobby Fischer. Which I was really excited to see. I love Steven Zaillian and I was really excited to see what he’s doing. It looked amazing. So the night my movie opened, instead of seeing Jason Goes To Hell for the millionth time, I bought a ticket for it then walked across the street to the theater that was playing Bobby Fischer. And I watched that film. It’s a beautiful movie. Really quite extraordinary. But 25 years later, nobody’s talking about Searching For Bobby Fischer. No one is still complaining, debating, and getting into fights like they are with Jason Goes To Hell. That’s a very small club indeed and I respect that.
For more info on Hearts Of Darkness: The Making of The Final Friday, please visit INDIEGOGO
Catch up with previous installments of Crystal Lake Confessional here.
Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5 – –Part 6 – Part 7
Part TS – Part 8 – Part 9 – Part HM – Part 10 – Part FvJ – Part 2009