Scott Derrickson Explains Why He Needed to Make ‘The Gorge’ Before ‘The Black Phone 2’ (original) (raw)
Scott Derrickson’s The Gorge is about the lengths human beings will go to for love. The action romance contains a handful of other genres on top of it, but the crux of writer Zach Dean’s story centers on the distant courtship of two lonely snipers named Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Levi (Miles Teller). For a period of one year, the highly skilled operatives are contracted to stand guard at their own individual observation towers that are separated by a 600-meter gorge. More specifically, the two gatekeepers are tasked with preventing whatever evil lurks at the bottom of the ravine from getting out into the world.
Despite communication being forbidden by their employer, Drasa and Levi can’t help themselves after prolonged isolation. So they proceed to bond from afar until Valentine’s Day changes everything. Ultimately, Levi risks life and limb to cross the gorge and meet the woman he’s become so smitten with over many months.
Upon receiving Dean’s script, the aforementioned love story struck a personal chord with Derrickson.
“I had recently fallen in love and gotten remarried, so the romance of it really spoke to me. It also ventured into such an interesting hybrid of five or six different genres in a seemingly effortless way,” Derrickson tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of his film’s Valentine’s Day release on Apple TV+.
The wide-ranging risk that Levi takes for Drasa also leads Derrickson to look back on the chances he’s taken in his career.
“Parting ways with Marvel was certainly a massive decision that not a lot of people would make, but that was really important for me at the time,” Derrickson says. “I really love those guys and it’s real that we have a good relationship, but I’m glad that I did that. I’m glad I made The Black Phone instead [of _Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness_]. That was probably the most significant choice.”
Six years after Derrickson directed the widely acclaimed Doctor Strange (2016), he returned to the big screen with The Black Phone, which grossed 161millionagainst161 million against 161millionagainst18 million. Knowing that he and his longtime writing partner C. Robert Cargill fully adapted Joe Hill’s short story of the same name, Derrickson didn’t necessarily plan on making a sequel, but Hill floated an idea that was too tempting to pass up. However, there was a practical consideration for why he opted to make The Gorge first.
“I realized that if I made a big movie like The Gorge first, the [_Black Phone_] kids [Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw] would be in high school by the time I finished,” Derrickson explains. “So I’d have a window of time with them in high school, and I could make a high school coming-of-age movie in the same way that the original was a middle school coming-of-age movie.”
Having recently wrapped The Black Phone 2, the Denver native is making it clear that the second chapter involving Ethan Hawke’s serial killer character, the Grabber, is not a retread of its predecessor.
“[_The Black Phone 2_] is a much more complicated script. This one has a much more complicated world and idea, and it was thrilling to not repeat the first movie,” Derrickson shares. “The worst kind of horror sequel is the one where you try to do the same thing again, but just more of it. That goes for any sequel in any genre, frankly. So I knew I didn’t want to do that, and the best sequels are the ones that surprise you.”
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Derrickson also discusses how _The Gorge_’s chess match and drum battle between _The Queen Gambit_’s Taylor-Joy and _Whiplash_’s Teller were purely coincidental.
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The Gorge is not only coming out on Valentine’s Day, but it’s also a day that factors heavily into the story itself. Levi (Miles Teller) takes a leap of faith because of what Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy) is going through that day. So, in the spirit of The Fugitive being a St. Patrick’s Day movie and Die Hard being a Christmas movie, are you onboard with The Gorge being called a Valentine’s Day movie?
Yes, especially because of what happens on Valentine’s Day in the movie. When they told me they wanted to release it on Valentine’s Day, I thought, “Really!? Okay.” But, yeah, it’s a romantic movie, and there is a significant event that happens on that date in the film.
You usually co-write your own material, and while your fingerprints are all over The Gorge, you and C. Robert Cargill are not credited as full-fledged writers.
We are credited with [additional literary material], which is a WGA credit that they’ll give if you’ve done some significant writing. But you have to rewrite more than half a script to share the [written by] credit, so it’s Zach’s [Dean] movie. The structure of it is very much what Zach originally wrote, and I just found the audacity of the story so appealing. I loved the romance. I had recently fallen in love and gotten remarried, so the romance of it really spoke to me. It also ventured into such an interesting hybrid of five or six different genres in a seemingly effortless way, and that’s all Zach. That’s all his doing. Most of what [Cargill and I] did as writers had to do with the specifics of the gorge and trying to make that mythology unique so that it’s something we haven’t seen before.
Scott Derrickson and Maggie Levin attend the Universal Pictures’ The Black Phone premiere at TCL Chinese Theatre on June 21, 2022. Kevin Winter/Getty Images
I spoke to a director last year who, through no fault of his own, was coming off a six-year gap between films. He then made a point that he was trying to make up for lost time with more volume. I bring that up because you’ve now made three films in the last four years. Were you trying to compensate for the five-year gap between Doctor Strange and Black Phone?
That’s a very fair question, and while I can see why you might wonder that, the answer is no. What drove it, honestly, was the decision to make the sequel to Black Phone. I didn’t feel obliged to make a sequel, but [writer of “The Black Phone” short story] Joe Hill came up with an idea that I liked and it became the genesis of what we ultimately wrote. I then realized that if I made a big movie like The Gorge first, the [_Black Phone_] kids [Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw] would be in high school by the time I finished. So I’d have a window of time with them in high school, and I could make a high school coming-of-age movie in the same way that the original was a middle school coming-of-age movie. They’re two very different kinds of movies.
So when I went about trying to plan that, I found out that everybody’s schedule, including Ethan’s [Hawke], demanded that I make it at the time I did. So I just finished shooting it, and the back-to-back quality was really driven by the age of the kids more than anything. It wasn’t any kind of obsessiveness in needing to not take breaks or to try to make up for lost time. I don’t mind taking time off in between films. What’s important is that each film I make is the film that I most want to make at that time. That’s more important to me than volume.
Miles Teller’s Levi and Anya Taylor-Joy’s Drasa in Scott Derrickson’s The Gorge Courtesy of Apple TV+
The Gorge centers on these two lonely insomniac snipers who connect with one another from towers that are 600 meters apart. How did you approach their distant interactions on the day? Were the actors really ten feet apart on set?
We tried that the first day that we shot, and it was impossible. The tops of those towers were real constructions. So when they’re standing on those balconies, the actors are 40 feet off the ground, and even on a big stage, there was just no way for the actors to interact with each other. It was not something that was possible, and needing to be able to look through the binoculars and perform in a certain way, it just didn’t make any sense. So the actors just had to trust me.
Each time we’d shoot, I’d say to Anya, “Okay, when I shot Miles on Tuesday, this is what we did.” Sometimes, I’d show them some very specificing things in each other’s scenes, but they really absorbed everything I said and showed them. They were very creative in the choices that they made, and that was, technically, a very difficult thing to pull off. So the magic of those scenes is mostly credited to the creativity of the actors and the choices that they made.
Eventually, Drasa and Levi have a chess match and drum battle from afar. Were both moments in the script before you cast The Queen’s Gambit ’s Anya Taylor-Joy and Whiplash ’s Miles Teller?
I swear on the life of my kids that both moments were in the script before we cast the movie. They were always there, and it hit me pretty soon after casting them. I was like, “Oh, wait a minute.” (Laughs.) And then I thought, “I’m not going to change it just because it’s them. People will think that I put it in there [because of them], but that’s not the case.” And now that I’ve done it, it’s really charming and kind of funny. It’s a nice break in the movie, but it was always there.
Did they both have memorable responses to those career callbacks?
Yeah, they felt very similar to me. At first they were like, “I don’t know,” but then they were like, “It’s fun. Let’s do it.” So we had a good time shooting both of those sequences.
On a similar note, it’s always satisfying when one of your characters finds a mysterious film reel and loads it onto a projector. As the creators of Sinister , did that day feel like old times for you and Cargill?
Oh yeah! We actually shot a projected 16 millimeter film. I love having an analog presence on digital cinema. I love the interaction of digital video and actual physical film. There’s something interesting in the interplay of those. So every time I was working on the movie and we would get to that section, I’d be like, “Ah, great. Now I’m watching somebody watch a film. This works for me.”
Miles Teller’s Levi and Anya Taylor-Joy’s Drasa in Scott Derrickson’s The Gorge Courtesy of Apple TV+
Dan Laustsen, who often works with Guillermo del Toro and Chad Stahelski, shot The Gorge , and I noticed that you’ve had a different DP on each one of your features. “Dreamkill” from V/H/S/85 (2023) is the one exception; it was shot by your Black Phone DP Brett Jutkiewicz. Are you trying to reinvent yourself from film to film?
That’s a great question, but the answer is no. It was never in my mind to keep evolving and reinventing myself in that way. With every film that I’ve done, I’ve tried to repeat work with my DPs, but DPs, if they’re good, work a lot. So it’s very hard to get your schedule to line up with a previous DP. I wanted Brett [Jutkiewicz] to shoot the Black Phone sequel. But he was shooting Stranger Things and they were over-schedule, so he couldn’t do it.
I’ve worked with great DPs, and I’ve had good experiences with every single one of them. But, boy, it sure worked out on this one because Dan is extraordinary. He’s so good. I learned a lot from him, actually. I probably learned more from him than any other DP I’ve worked with by just watching him. So it was a great experience to watch the way his mind works when it comes to lighting.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross composed the score for The Gorge , and those guys aren’t easy gets. Did you have to wine and dine them?
I knew that if I tried to do that, it would never happen. We sent them the script, and to my delight, they were interested and wanted to have a Zoom. I only had one Zoom with them if I remember correctly, and I just tried to be as honest as I could. They liked the script, they liked my work, and I said to them: “What I like about your scores is that they always add a third thing to the movie, and the movie would not be the same movie without it. Your scores add something that otherwise is not there, as opposed to strengthening things [like picture and sound design] that are already there. That’s the kind of score that this movie has to have.” And I think it was Trent who asked, “Well, what do you think that third thing is? Can you say?” And I said, “I think the score should feel like the soul of the movie.” And that’s when I saw them both get it. They somehow knew what I was saying.
The next thing they did was write a ton of music before I gave them a picture cut. They wrote eight or nine long tracks of music based on the script, and then I picked the ones that I thought were really in the pocket of what the movie should feel like. So they worked off of those pieces and expanded them and took direction in filling them out into specific scenes. They really wrote a lot of music for this movie.
They’re also very meticulous. They were involved in every aspect. They came to more mixes than any composer I’ve ever worked with, and they wanted to be a part of everything and check everything. They really care about what they do. So they are not only very collaborative, but they are also just good-natured, funny guys. It was a really good experience.
They’re not the kind of composers who typically work on a scoring stage with a full orchestra, so were you ever able to sit in on some of their sessions and watch them work?
I never watched any of their recording sessions. I’ve done that before. On Doctor Strange, we were recording at Abbey Road when Paul McCartney walked into the studio, and I thought I was dreaming. It was very surreal. But [Reznor and Ross] have got their own private methodology and system by which they do things, and I was happy to accommodate them in whatever way they wanted. So they never invited me, and I never asked.
A T.S. Eliot quote recurs throughout the movie: “Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” Is there a moment in your career where you risked going too far and it ultimately paid off in spades?
Yeah, I’ve had a few of those moments. I’ve had to restart my career a couple of times. Parting ways with Marvel was certainly a massive decision that not a lot of people would make, but that was really important for me at the time. I really love those guys and it’s real that we have a good relationship, but I’m glad that I did that. I’m glad I made The Black Phone instead [of _Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness_]. That was probably the most significant choice, but it was something I didn’t do.
In terms of what I did do, it would be Sinister. I didn’t make a movie for three or four years before saying yes to a $3 million movie with final cut, and making that particular film was a real reach for me. That movie isn’t really like another movie. It’s very unique. I thought it might be the last movie I would ever make, and you can feel that in that film. I was like, “If this is the last movie I get to make, then I’ve got to make the movie I want it to be.” And all filmmaking should be that. All filmmaking should reach too far. If you’re not trying to do something that’s remarkable or unique or different or extraordinary in some regard, then why do it? We all want that experience from every movie that we watch, even if it’s a kids’ movie or a comedy. We all want the extreme version, something that really wows us and lights us on fire. Filmmaking should always be about that.
As we touched on earlier, the Grabber returns later this year in The Black Phone 2. You didn’t have any Joe Hill-penned source material on this go-round, but it sounds like he pointed you in the right direction. Overall, how was the experience of charting your own course this time?
[_The Black Phone 2_] is a much more complicated script. There’s a simplicity to The Black Phone, and while it’s not always easy to be simple, [_The Black Phone 2_] is not that. This one has a much more complicated world and idea, and it was thrilling to not repeat the first movie. The worst kind of horror sequel is the one where you try to do the same thing again, but just more of it. That goes for any sequel in any genre, frankly. So I knew I didn’t want to do that, and the best sequels are the ones that surprise you. They really venture into different territory altogether and offer you a fresh experience, even though you’re dealing with characters that you’ve grown to care about from the first film.
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The Gorge premieres Feb. 14 on Apple TV+.