by Scott Derrickson’s new film is based in Joe Hill’s short story and has all sorts of inspiration such as an antique phone in a Victorian house, a 1970’s serial killer, Derrickson’s childhood, kid’s resilience and even, Greek theater.
About Scott Derrickson
The Black Phone is a movie directed by Scott Derrickson, screenplay by Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, produced by Blumhouse and Universal Pictures. Derrickson is an American screenwriter, director, and producer form Denver, Colorado with a BA in Humanities and Communications by Biola University. He got his master’s degree in Film and Production at USC School of Cinema and Television. His dissertation short was Love in the Ruins, released in 1995, about a Christian allegory in which a demon and his apprentice are powerless against a man at a gas station in Los Angeles.
Writing opened doors for him in Hollywood. His first screenplay and direction were in Hellraiser: Inferno, released in 2000. Then he worked in the movie’s sequel Urban Legends: Final Cut. Later, he directed Ghosting, an unreleased film from 2001. His first international success was The Exorcism of Emily Rose, which made 144 million in gross revenue. The movie was based in Annelise Michel, a German girl who was believed to be possessed by a demon. When she was 16 years old, she had her first epilepsy episode and after her treatment in Würzburg’s Psychiatric Hospital, her fear of religious objects and the voices she herd kept her depressed and suicidal. Due to her inability to heal, her parents and the Catholic Church opted to perform an exorcism, a ritual from the Middle Ages that was hardly practiced in the 70’s. The movie won the 2005 Saturn Award for Best Horror or Thriller Film, it also made it to the list of the Top 100 Scariest Movies Ever Made.
Afterwards, Derrickson directed the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, Sinister, Deliver Us from Evil, and the 2016 MCU movie, Dr. Strange. In 2021 with C. Robert Cargill’s collaboration, he wrote the adaptation of Joe Hill’s short story, The Black Phone.
Joe Hill’s Inspiration
Joe Hill is the son of horror expert, Stephen King, and activist and writer, Tabitha King. Like his parents, he is also a writer and published his first book in 2005, 20th Century Ghosts, a collection of horror stories. It won the Bram Stoker Award and The British Fantasy Award for Best Collection. Some of his best sellers are Horns, NOS4A2, Wilkommen in Lovecraft, and Christmasland.
He wrote the short story, The Black Phone, and got inspirited from the 1970’s serial killer and sex offender, John Wayne Gacy to create Al or The Grabber, as depicted in the movie. Gacy killed 33 men, specifically boys and young men. He took his victims to his house and made them wear handcuffs as part of a magic trick. He was also known as The Killer Clown because he usually performed at children’s hospitals as Pogo the Clown.
Gacy murdered his victims inside his ranch house near Norwood Park Township. He persuaded them to go into his house and tricked them into wearing handcuffs as part of a magic demonstration. Afterwards, he abused physically and sexually the minors before asphyxiating them. He buried 29 of his victims in his property, 4 others were thrown into the Des Plaines River. On December 21 1978, after the investigation of teenager’s, Robert Priest, disappearance he was arrested. Two years later, he was sentenced to death on March 13, he was executed by lethal injection on May 10, 1994.
In an interview for Film, Hill explained he also found inspiration in his childhood’s basement. He lived in Mangor, Maine in a beautiful Victorian house that had a huge basement. It looked like a horror movie’s basement and it had mud instead of floor. The walls were made of cement, making it look like a maze. The basement also had old furniture, in a corner, there was an antique phone that wasn’t connected. This place was the perfect imagery to create Al’s basement, which became The Grabber’s as well.
Scott Derrickson’s Inspiration
Derrickson was inspired to write about his childhood through Finney. When he was just a kid, he lived with his sister and with his alcoholic dad. He was also bullied in school, and grew up in North Denver, a very violent place. Youngsters would fight each other and bleed. Around that time, Ted Bundy was in Colorado, The Manson Murders happened, and parents used to punish their kids aggressively. Overall, it was a dark and brutal town to grow in, therefore Derrickson wanted to portray that environment and express the feeling of it. He wanted to make emphasis in the resilience children had when facing real life horrors.
Due to Derrickson’s vision, Hill accepted to be part of the making. He wanted his short story to be portrayed in a film where teenage victims would face danger and bravely confront their destiny instead of a plot where the victims where shown as defenseless. He wanted to the audience to feel kid’s empowerment instead of pity towards them. This can be appreciated in the movie when Finney challenges himself to overcome each obstacle. The story is told through Finney’s eyes instead of The Grabber’s.
Ethan Hawke’s Inspiration
Ethan Hawke is an American actor, nominated in four occasions to the Oscar Awards and has a Tony Award nomination. He is famous for interpreting Todd Anderson in Dead Poets Society, Ben Crandall in Explorers, Troy Dyer in Reality Bites, Jesse in Before Sunrise, Hamlet in Hamlet, and many more. He has also directed short films, documentaries and plays in Off-Broadway. He wrote the novels The Hottest State in 1996 and Ash Wednesday in 2002.
In The Black Phone, Hawke is The Grabber, the man who manipulates boys into watching a magic performance, then kidnap and kill in his basement. In an interview for JOE.ie he explained he felt The Grabber had a malevolent force from an Ancient Greek Drama (Hawke, 2022). He also explained once the masks where fully down, they reminded him of Greek theater and the power of grand gestures Greek actors had. When you rob people of their ability to read your facial expressions, the brain immediately gravitates to studying the body language, it makes the actor play in a different way (Hawke, 2022). With this, he explains how he focused in expressing The Grabber’s evil intentions through his corporal movement rather than showing degeneracy through a frown.
He also found some inspiration in Macbeth because he had previously interpreted him and he learned the great study of evil and where madness comes from. He already knew some of it come from insecurity and search for that security is feeling power over somebody (Hawke, 2022).
Artists are able to find inspiration in all sorts of things and places. In a movie production, everyone involved can find and share his or her inspiration, for example, actors, directors, scriptwriters, stylists, makeup artists, and of course, writers of the original story. As humans, our creative nature shines through us and it relishes our opportunities once we find our motivation, we can always find inspiration to create something. If you are an artist, what are your sources of inspiration?
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