Last Updated on July 28, 2021

PART 1 / PART 2

And the JoBlo.com/AITH excursion on THE EXORCISM OF EMILY
ROSE set continues with Part 2 of the set visit (read Part 1
here). The
capper of my adventure was an engaging Press Conference with Cast and
Crew.
Yes, I got to be five meters away from the
captivating Laura Linney! Beauty, humor and intelligence! The ideal
woman! Marriage crossed my mind! Marriage, kids and bondage…oops sorry….I’m getting off track here.

So without further ado, give a big JoBlo.com welcome to:
Laura Linney (actress), Scott
Derrickson (Director/screenwriter and yes he directed the badass Hellraiser
inferno), Tom Wilkinson (actor), Paul Harris Boardman (screenwriter)
and Campbell Scott (actor and great man) You’ve got the floor, mates!

JOURNALISTS VS. CAST AND
CREW

For the actors; were you familiar with the story underlining this? Did you do
any research into the true story?

Laura Linney:
Um, no, I knew nothing about it. Um, and while it is… There is a, a similar
story that it is based on, but it is not a recreation of that story, so there,
there is a book that was written about the events and I did read that, um, and
then just talked to Scott a lot.

Scott Derrikson:
I filled her in.

This question is for
Tom Wilkinson. You probably have the most to do with the horror element in the
film. How was it working within that, did you do a lot of research and what
attracted you to the role?

Tom Wilkenson:
Almost everything I ever do
in a film I haven’t ever done before. As far as research is concerned, I didn’t
do any. I mean if I can possibly ever not do any research I won’t. What was
interesting about this for my character is that it’s the first time it’s
happened to him, the first exorcism that he’s been involved with, so I thought
it would be quite interesting if you could just do it from the same angle where
both my character and I were kind of beginners.You allow the events to sort of
happen to you in a certain sense rather than controlling them, like an expert
might have done. So I welcomed the idea of doing something that I had never done
before.

My question is for
Scott. I saw THE EXORCIST in the seventies when I was very young and it really
scared me, and when I saw it again in the re-release the whole audience was
laughing at parts that should be scary. Since this genre has been spoofed so
much, how did you approach writing the script and how are you approaching the
direction of it?

Scott Derrikson:
I saw the, the same
re-release and had a different experience. I mean the audience I saw it with
liked it quite a bit and I am a big fan of that picture. But if you’re going to
make an exorcism movie of any kind, you know, you certainly have a certain
burden or hurdle — hurdle to get over with, with that film. And, and for me
— I think if I understand your question you’re asking how did I sort of treat
that…

Did you see that as a
challenge? Were you excited about it?

Scott Derrikson:
The subject matter is profoundly compelling and I think that what everybody
knows is that it is a real phenomenon out in the world whether you believe
there’s anything spiritual to it or not. It happens. People get exorcisms.
And, and there are lots of stories of lots of cases and that fact alone makes it
interesting. And what I wanted to do was approach the subject matter in a less
exploitive way. You can’t out-exorcist THE EXORCIST so you sort of have to
almost go under it in a sense. I certainly want the film to be scary and I want
it to be compelling to watch, but in some ways, I think to really frighten a
contemporary audience you just can’t do that with special effects, sound, camera
tricks and sort of the manipulative tricks of the trade that were implemented
there.

They were extraordinary
at the time but that same sort of approach has been used in a million different
horror films since. And so I think that with this one certainly my intention —
we’ll see if, if we pulled it off — but certainly my intention was for the
effectiveness of the sort of horror elements and the exorcism itself to be
rooted in the reality of these real characters portrayed by great actors and for
the phenomenon that you watch to be very counter-intuitive but not over the
top. And, and for me the result is that it’s effective and it’s really
frightening and it really puts your head in a space of thinking about whether or
not you believe that this sort of thing can happen. So I think what we’re trying
to do is make a movie that’s a little bit more of an exploration of what does it
really look like and what, what’s the range of possibilities there and what can
it mean? And that’s, that’s what we’re trying to do.

For Tom Wilkinson.
How do you feel about the decision that your character makes to perform an
exorcism on the girl? What motivates him and what scares him, and how would you
personally feel about it if you had been put in a similar position?

TW:
Big question, isn’t it?
Well I’m very glad that he does decide to do it, otherwise I wouldn’t be in the
movie. (LAUGHTER) I’d be passing by the window on a bicycle. What is
interesting about priests when they take on an exorcism is that they are not
there personally. They are there as a kind of embodiment of the Catholic
Church. It’s a Catholic priest who’s doing it. So they have to be shriven,
they have to have gone to confession.

They have to have
fasted. They have to be in a state of grace, I’m told, so that they become
merely a conduit. They themselves are not there to sort of grapple hand-to-hand
with the demons, but to act as a conduit from God through the Catholic Church
into the body and soul of the person who’s possessed, and that’s how that works.
So in a certain sense his private feelings are kind of irrelevant. And that’s
the best answer I can come up with.

This question is for
Campbell. Tell us about your character and how do you come up with the look?
You’re usually a stud and this is more of an aged look.

Campbell Scott:
(LAUGHS) Holy moly. Um,
thank you for half of that question.

Laura Linney:
I think he’s one of the
handsomest men I know.

Campbell Scott:
Yeah, it’s been a long time
since I’ve been the young, uh, whatever you said, but, but thanks anyway for

remembering. How did I come up with the look? I don’t know. I always try to
come up with some kind of look that’s going to be different from the last look,
to tell you the truth. And his is my real hair and my real mustache and my real
color which you often see removed for other jobs. I play Ethan Thomas, who’s the
prosecuting attorney. I’m acting on behalf of “The People” in the film and he’s
a very kind of no-nonsense, intense, character who does not obviously believe in
this type of spirituality but does believe that this young woman was harmed by
the neglect of this priest.

He probably doesn’t
really go for Catholicism. He’s a very intense Methodist in the movie. And
Paul and Scott have made a very light but nice , point of, of saying that he is
in fact not just a factual guy, he’s a religious guy, but he’s a different kind
of religious guy. And I don’t know, the look just seemed right. Personally my
looks are always based on two things: what’s going to be different from the way
people have seen me before — ’cause I find that interesting — and also what’s
going to work for the guys.

My question is for
Scott. Given your previous credits for doing films like Urban Legend 2 and all
these sequels, how do you make the transition ….

Scott Derrikson:
Write a good script.. We
wrote the script and developed it outside the studio system. I think a lot of it
had to do with the fact that the script wasn’t a studio concept before it became
a screenplay. We, we wrote it pretty much on our own and did it the way we
wanted to do it, and then it just found the right home. Screen Gems and
Lakeshore just understood it. And there was a lot of interest around the
project as soon as it became kind of available to the studios and we ended up
here because we felt like that was a place where they were going to let us make
it the way that it was.

It’s very satisfying,
because I love the genre and this isn’t even really purely a horror film. It’s
a courtroom movie as well and it’s got very dramatic characters and I certainly
don’t have anything but really positive feelings about the horror genre in
general. But I do think that there are sort of two tiers to it, you know and
this one’s is sort of going to that second tier which is great. And so far
that’s the movie we’ve been shooting.

So the other films
you’ve done didn’t quite get there, are you saying?

Scott Derrikson:
They were both sequels and
they were movies that were green-lit before there was ever a script. Whenever
that’s the case they are constraints and limitations and we’re there to serve a
very narrow purpose. In the case of URBAN LEGENDS there were a lot of producers
and there was a lot of different input. I think that project belongs to a lot of
different people, you and whenever that happens you end up with something that
sort of can lose its way a bit. But I think that didn’t happen on this at all
and I’m very happy to have worked on those other films. It was a great place to
start.

Laura, what was it
about the project that appealed to you? Did you have to think twice before
accepting it?

Laura Linney:
There were things about the
script that interested me that have nothing to do with horror or with typical
horror. The whole idea of people’s personal demons, whether you’re religious or
not, whether that’s depression or anxiety or stress or whatever, interested me,
and there’s a line in the script that deals with that, and I found it found
really interesting. I had very long talks with Scott. I had very long talks
with Clint Culpepper, one of our producers, just to see where they were and what
they were thinking and what kind of movie they wanted to make. And was this
something that I thought I could contribute to in a positive way? And would I
have a good time making it? So yeah, I was thoughtful about it, definitely.

Was there any one
thing that finally convinced you to do it?

Laura Linney:
Scott and his sincerity
about wanting to make a good movie and wanting to be true to the story first.
That went a long way.

This question is for
Scott. It’s my understanding that you’re playing the film in an ambiguous way
where you’re letting the audience figure out is she really possessed or is she
not?Do you find yourself having to self-censor yourself visually when you’re
filming the exorcism scenes because you don’t want to make them too horrific and
imply to the audience that she is possessed ….?

Scott D:
Yeah, it’s a real tightrope
walk, a balancing act and I don’t know how well we’ve achieved that. I do know
that it hasn’t been terribly difficult where I haven’t been distracted by it
because there was so much rigor put into that in the screenplay. And I think
that our actress Jennifer Carpenter who plays Emily Rose is so extraordinary in
the role that actually took a lot of that weight off of me. I really
reconceived how to do the entire movie at her call-back audition because she was
so frightening– it was so surreal, just her in a room full of guys behind a
desk. And what she was doing was so counter-intuitive to watch — what she can
do with her body and the realism to it. I had this terrible sense of gosh, how
am I going to make these possession and exorcism scenes frightening, you
know? What camera tricks can I use? How far can I go? And then when I saw her
I was like “Well, you’ve just got to turn the camera on and point it at her.”
And when she is doing things that are more representative of mental illness,
something that’s not so supernatural it’s equally disturbing. I think that’s one
of the things that’s interesting about it. So she took a lot of the burden off
me in that, in that respect.

From a story point of
view there is a good amount of paranormal things, so you’re always trying to
remember who’s telling this story and of course in that respect it was very
influenced by RASHOMON. When there’s a same event that really is being
remembered in different ways or being thought of as different realities, it’s
incredibly interesting because memory does warp history in some regard. So you
get a certain range of freedom when you’re telling a story like that because
you can go a certain distance and think boy we’re really making this look
supernatural and this is supernatural, but then you’re remembering “Oh, but
that’s the priest telling his version, as opposed to someone else who’s
talking about the same situation from a much more skeptical point of view.”
That’s what’s fun about it and somewhere in the heart of that is what the movie
is about. It certainly is for me.

How did this film
affect your own spiritual beliefs. Do your spiritual beliefs change as you’re
working on any film?

Campbell Scott:
Yeah, I would think that
happens. We wouldn’t often admit it but I would conjecture that that’s part of
the reason — those of us who are actors — became actors in the first place.
There’s something about… not necessarily changing outwardly, but there’s
something about learning about something that you– someone’s point of view,
that you would have never considered before, whether you’re playing a military
person or a priest or a lawyer etc…I mean to me this is the attraction, because
suddenly instead of immediate labeling, which we’re all very fond of because it
cuts the fear down, you’re suddenly looking at someone/something from someone
else’s– literally walking in their shoes. Now, you know, we joke around all
day. It’s an exorcist movie. Do we really believe this stuff?

No, late at night is
probably when we really think about what you’re asking about, and personally I
think those things change as your life goes on too. There have been points of my
life where I might be much more open to the kinds of things that we’re talking
about, whereas another part of my life I might be much more solid and think no,
no, no, I don’t believe in that. It just depends on your track. But the cool
thing about being an actor is that when you get a job you get to go and spend
one or two months or whatever finding that out, and usually nobody gets hurt
which is a very satisfying way to live. Not always. I mean solving those
problems can be very frustrating and piss you off or whatever, you know, or
scare you. But most of the time it’s very, it’s very rewarding.

The question is for
Scott. Who is actually doing the effects and what kind of budget do you have?

Scott Derrikson:
Captive Audience are doing the effects. There were two reasons why I really
chose Captive Audience. One) they did the effects on THE PASSION OF THE
CHRIST. They did both makeup and digital effects and so much of that was
dealing with the human body, and there was a seamlessness I thought to a lot of
the effects in that in terms of both makeup– the blending of makeup effects
and digital effects and there was a realism to it that I thought was very
effective.

They were also the, the
company that I think best understood the aesthetic of the movie and they seemed
really excited about making something that was intelligent. They recognized that
it was very important, given the quality of the actress that they would be
mostly working with in Jennifer, to stay out of her way and rely on her
performance, let her performance be what it is, and only enhance it rather
than distract from it. They’ve really been getting underway I’ve been really
happy with them so far.

This is for you,
Scott. Other than musicals, horror films have probably created the most rabid
expectations. … How do you view the genre in its current state, and where do
you think you’re contributing to it?

Scott Derrikson:
That’s an excellent
question. I know exactly what you’re talking about. I’ve been to all of these
websites at some point, so none of your names are surprising me. Horror fans are
rabid fans. The greatest misconception about horror fans is that they just love
gore but they also really love cinema, this kind of cinema and they love the
things that horror cinema can do that they can’t get anywhere else, not in
horror novels, not in graphic novels, not in anything else. And, um, I think….
what was the second part of your question?

I was just asking you about the current
state …?

Scott Derrikson:
Well, I think that it’s a
very exciting time to be working with this genre because it’s beginning to
branch out where it belongs. I really think that this is a genre that
historically hasn’t gotten the respect that it deserves. I don’t know how else
to put it. I mean in cinema.

But if you look back at
the rest of history, literary history and history of the theater… the macabre,
the horrific and the gothic are things that were so integral in all of the great
arts. The cathedrals have gargoyles on them in Europe. The churches nowadays
don’t have horrific things in them like they did back then. I think that
there’s something about cinema this century as it went on and special effects
developed. it sort of began to pander I think a little bit to the lower common
denominator. And it’s almost like now people are realizing wow, you can really
branch out with this genre. You can really get into ideas and you can really
get into characters and get into situations that are as provocative as anything
you’re going to find in any movie.

Whether it’s THE OTHERS
or THE SIXTH SENSE or THE RING, you know, these are all movies that I think
started to open up the possibilities of the genre. And I think that you can
even be more frightening and still have great characters. And the seventies
gave the promise of that with ROSEMARY’S BABY and THE OMEN, and those are my
favorite horror films and THE EXORCIST. I’d love to think that this is going to
fall in that line, but, you know, that would be presumptuous to think that until
it’s done.

And that’s that on that! I’d like to thank the uber cute Amy Conley at Sony, the
kool journalists who hung out with me and the classy people on set for
making my foray a good one!

READ PART 1 OF MY SET
VISIT HERE

BONUS: Here are my favorite pictures that I took on the trip for those who
give a damn:

Burgers and big tits! You can’t go wrong!

Me and Brad Miska from Bloody Disgusting

Me, a drunk bum we met in the street (great man)
and Sean Clark of Dread Central

Do you shop here? YOU SHOULD!

ROLL END CREDITS