An Interview With Adam Green, Director of Hatchet 2 (Contest Cancelled)

You might know from reading the blog I am pretty big horror fan. When I got the opportunity to interview one of the biggest up and coming directors in the horror genre… well, I couldn’t resist. Adam Green first got his start directing the first Hatchet film, which exploded on the horror scene due to the fact it was a throwback to everything horror fans loved, but no one was really doing.

EDIT: Hatchet 2 was just pulled from theaters today by the MPAA for being unrated. Expect a post about this as soon I as get comment from the director on exactly what happened.

Horror fans are a truly fickle bunch. What was it like directing Hatchet, something so widely embraced in the horror community?

Well, in terms of the first one, the acceptance was a little bit of a surprise, because it was a very selfish film in the fact that I basically got a group of friends together that  made the type of film we would like to see again. I am a huge horror fan I love all of it, but in the 90’s and early 2000’s I was really starting to forget why I got into this stuff in the first place, the torture stuff really doesn’t do it for me the remakes have gotten a little out of hand and the PG-13 “Horror-Lite”.

Where was the villain? Where was the gore? Especially the old-school gore, the latex and silicone like Savini did, where did these great people go?

So when the film first premiered at the Tribecca Film Festival we had no idea what to expect but then all of a sudden like it was standing ovations, praise and reviews and awards and like world wide over the next year and a half of touring it, it just really blew up. I think it’s just like beating a drum that a lot of the horror fans appreciated and caught on to it’s been an amazing ride.

How long did you take to come up for the script to Hatchet 2? I know on the special features of the first Hatchet DVD you make quite a few allusions to things that were going to be in the film.

The story and even the majority of the kills were already planned before we did Hatchet 1. So the crew was already in on where it was going. There were even certain weapons that we show in Hatchet 1 that we knew we would use if we ever did a Hatchet 2.

Tony Todd’s character, originally the producers were like “cant we just get anyone to answer the door and send them away?” I was like no this guy is behind it, and in the sequel he is the lead so we need it to be Tony Todd. So by the time I actually finally sat down to type out the script, and we knew we were going to make Hatchet 2 now it was very, very fast because it was just typing out what we already knew.

It sounds like we brought it together fast but it has been five years since we shot the first one, so its been five years of plotting and scheming.

I am really excited to see Tony Todd comeback he is definitely one of my favorite genre actors, I mean he was Candyman.

Especially in this, he is the movie, he is just front and center. I think this is the best part he has ever played. As much as he is known for Candyman, he probably is only in those films for a total of 7-10 minutes tops and there he is just killing people.

So here he is dramatic, he is funny, he is conniving, it’s such a layered character it’s a revelation to watch his process and watch him work. Actually as a wrap gift, he is giving me his script with all of his character notes that he took in it.

I was shocked because younger actors, a lot of them have sort of lost that motivation maybe or the discipline of what the older actors do. You look at this script and its just every line he has questions, he has got intonations for scenes and its amazing to get to work with someone like that who is that serious about it.

The Tagline for the original Hatchet was “Old-School Horror” is your intention of releasing the second one unrated yet another throwback to those days when someone like Romero would release his film in theaters unrated and uncut?

Kind of yeah. We are really embracing what this film is are and we are really fortunate to be with a distributor Dark Sky Films who have really had our back and didn’t want to just completely censor the film for a rating.

It is unfortunate but with smaller films like this they get put under a microscope a little more than the studio films do, when it comes time to get your rating and once again it was extremely hard to get an R rating for this simply for the violence. Its not drug use, its not sexual content its just the violence.

In my opinion in films like this the violence is fun and are what people are paying to see they want to see these extravagant kills, these great effects sequences and when you have to cut all that out of the film its like a comedy without a punch line.

So the first Hatchet when it came out in theaters I was very disappointed with the version that played because we had a year and a half of these great reviews, awards and this awesome response; when the film finally came out every death scene was cut in half or completely neutered.

This time around we are keeping the film intact and we will see what happens hopefully the horror fans will come out in droves to support something like this. Because it really could be the winds of change for other people to start doing things like this, which I think, would be great.

I know your working exclusively with AMC theaters on the unrated release, have you faced any hurdles with the process you would like to share?

The film was originally intended to go straight-to-video, because we didn’t want to have to scale back on this and deal with what could potentially happen with having the film edited. Dark Sky were very true to what they said, that they were going to make the film that the fans wanted them to make and it was then between them and AMC how they wanted to figure it out.

Its not this controversial movie like they didn’t want you to see this, its all in good fun. The fact that we had a distributor that wanted to embrace that aspect that was really a key component to making this happen.

Finally, you’re very well know for bringing big horror names out for your films Tony Todd, Robert Englund and Kane Hodder, what inspired you to bring Danielle Harris one of my all time favorite scream queens on board for Hatchet 2 in the role of Mary Beth?

Well I think like everyone I have been in love with Danielle Harris since she played Jamie Lloyd in Halloween 4. I became very close to her because of the constant touring with Hatchet, Spiral and Frozen, we do a lot of conventions and appearances; so we became very friendly that way.

What really peaked my interest in Danielle Harris, first of all she originally auditioned for Hatchet. At the time we had already cast Kane, Tony, Robert Englund, Josh Leonard and Mercdes Mcnab, and I was like if I put one more big horror cameo that will detract from the film; because it will be more all about that than anything. So we went with an unknown.

But I was casting a romantic comedy that never ended up getting shot and Danielle came in for that. She read for the part she was supposed to audition, for but then when she was done she said “I like all the female parts in this movie, I have prepared all of them do you mind if I audition for everybody?”  I was shocked because I had never seen that before, I was like “ I guess, go ahead.”

Right there she started to go through every character, a complete different performance for each one. It got to the point I was enjoying it so much, that instead of letting the reader read with her I got in and performed the other parts along side of her because it was so fun, and since then I have been waiting for the opportunity to cast her in something.

So when it became evident that we were going to be going in another direction with that role it was a no-brainer. I went right to her and said we were doing Hatchet 2 how would you feel about it? She didn’t even let me finish she was like “I am in!” Having her has been really great and is really taking the franchise to another level.