| Q: WHERE DID YOU FIND THE TWO LEADS (EMILY PERKINS AND KATHARINE ISABELLE)? JF: The girls? Emily Perkins, plays Brigitte and Katharine Isabelle plays Ginger. They both came from Vancouver, actually. It’s sort of an interesting story there. I got a tape from Vancouver that was basically cut together with girls auditing. There was Emily auditioning and someone was reading for her off camera. If you’ve ever seen the audition process, that’s kinda how it works. Then Katharine, the next person up and she’s reading Ginger and someone’s reading off camera for her. Well, I liked Emily right away and Steve, my producer, liked Katharine right away and we kinda went, “OK, lets keep those girls in mind, but let’s keep looking.” So, we cast in LA, we cast in New York, we cast in Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto and we kept coming back to those two girls. We said, “Well, let’s bring them to Toronto and read them together.” When they came out, one of the first things I found out was these girls actually know each other very well. In fact, they’ve known each other since they were, like, 8. Their families are friends, they have the same agent... In fact, in that audition, Katie was reading for Emily when she was oncamera and Emily was reading for Katie when she was oncamera. They actually did the audition together. I just kinda went, “Oh, my God... this is actually kind of a sign.” Because what I had was 2 girls that already had this really strong relationship. It was nice because it made the whole thing that much more comfortable, the whole process. Because the script had to put these girls through some fairly nasty sequences and things that they had to do, I wanted them to feel like they were in a very safe place to sort of explore and by them coming to the process already knowing each other, it gave them that familiarity and that comfort zone of being able to explore sort of unselfconsciously. It just made the whole relationship between them that much more believable. Q: I ACTUALLY HAVE A FRIEND WHO KNOWS EMILY. SHE’S AN ACTRESS NAMED LAURA HARRIS AND... JF: Yes, I know Laura. Q: YOU DO? JF: I mean, I don’t know her personally. I was very interested in Laura. Matter of fact, I made some calls about her after I saw her in The Faculty. Q: YEAH, SHE SHOT THE FACULTY HERE, IN AUSTIN. THAT’S WHERE I MET HER. BUT I SAW HER IN A BIT PART IN STEPHEN KING’S IT AND I LOVE THAT MOVIE. I’M A HUGE TIM CURRY NUT. I WAS LIKE, “OH, MY GOD! YOU WERE IN THAT MOVIE, THAT’S SO COOL!” THE FIRST AND ONLY THING SHE SAID ABOUT IT WAS THAT THE GIRL WHO PLAYED BEVERLY MARSH WAS A FRIEND OF HERS AND SHE COULDN’T STOP TALKING ABOUT WHAT A COOL CHICK SHE WAS. THAT WAS EMILY. JF: That’s Emily! That’s crazy! Well, you know what? The reason why I decided to move away from Laura was I felt like she was too old, but Emily is the same age as Laura. She’s like 23 or something like that. When I shot with her, she was, like, 22. I could not fuckin’ believe it. The agent was purposefully keeping her age secret. I was actually worried she wasn’t even 16. She looks so fuckin’ young. In fact, she’s quite a bit older than Katie, who plays Ginger. Katie was 17 when we shot the movie and Emily was, like, 22. Q: THAT WAS A LITTLE DISCONCERTING FOR ME... BECAUSE I KNEW I HAD SEEN EMILY SOMEWHERE. I JUST KNEW IT. I JUST KEPT SEEING ONE SCENE IN MY MIND WHEN I TRIED THINKING OF WHERE I KNEW THIS ACTRESS FROM. IT WAS HER AT A YOUNG AGE, EYES WIDE IN TERROR. I WAS LIKE, “WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT MOVIE?!?!?” SHE LOOKED LIKE THE GIRL IN STEPHEN KING’S IT, BUT I DISCOUNTED THAT IMMEDIATELY... THAT MOVIE’S 10 YEARS OLD, THAT COULDN’T BE THE SAME GIRL! JF: Yeah. I just remember, from IT, the scene with Emily at the sink in the bathroom and all the blood sort of shooting out of the sink. That was hilarious. It’s interesting that Emily was in that film. Actually, Katie has already done a... well, I guess it’s not really a horror film, but Katie had a part in Disturbing Behavior. |