Shane Brady: I’ve been in a situation where I’ve had to do 54 takes of one thing.
Justin Benson: The performers on this project were so amazing and they killed it. Shane worked with us on this for like six months because he’s the guy behind the camera, so we could change his POV performance as we wanted. We were dicks. For like six months we just kept bringing him back. He’s a friend of ours and is at Aaron’s house all the time, so it worked.
It should be said that we’ve worked with a lot of performers now, and everything we do is based on performances, more than most genre films…
Aaron Moorhead: Says the guy who made “Bonestorm.”
Justin Benson: Shane, Nick, and Chase all killed it, and the two skaters aren’t even trained performers, but we could just put a camera on them and give them a topic, and it was like the camera wasn’t even there. You’d get the most interesting dialogue we’d ever read or seen.
Aaron Moorhead: We could try to make up those stories, but they just told stories that were true or false – let’s just say they were false…
Chase Newton: Nah, they were all true. [Laughing]
Nick Blanco: Everything we talked about was true!
Aaron Moorhead: I just didn’t know because they were talking about girls and I’m like, “You know they’ll probably see this, right? This is a pretty big movie.”
Chase Newton: When you guys asked about the last girl I hooked up with, I told a story and after I’m like, “Oh shit, I hope they don’t put that in the movie because if that girl sees it, she’s going to hate me!” [Laughing]
Aaron Moorhead: There’s actually a piece that was cut out just because of tonal problems, but it was so funny. Chase was like, “There was this chick at the park, and she was really fucked up, then she fell between the bleachers and hit the ground. Anyway, a couple of my friends hooked up with her afterwards…” That piece was so hilarious, but we were just like, “Yeah, I don’t know if we can keep that in the story.” [Laughing]
Chase Newton: Well she got up and was like, “Oh don’t trip, I’ve done everything. I’ve literally done everything baby.”
Aaron Moorhead: Wait, she said this after falling through the bleachers?
Chase Newton: Yeah man! So some of my friends were like, “Oh you have, yeah? Well let’s go!” They took her to the back of the park, and I just sat there drinkin’ my beer. [Laughing]
Justin and Aaron didn’t make a film that made us feel like we were on a set, though. It was just a bunch of people hanging, and we could just do our thing.
Justin Benson: You know how in horror movies there’s a formula? It’s like four people go in, and either one person makes it out or there are no survivors. We very intentionally wanted to make a movie where four people go in, and maybe two or three people make it out alive.
Aaron Moorhead: We were going to have three people make it out, but then “Gas Money Kid” rolled out on us.
Justin Benson: But making it out also requires proficient fighting abilities, and that was in our script outline. Thankfully, no one could ever believe these guys would lose.
Nick Blanco: My Mom was like, “You know, if you die, I can’t watch this.”
Aaron Moorhead: No joke! That was actually a big part of our attack on it all. We weren’t trying to subvert, we were just trying to do something fun and creative. A lot of it was like, “What if they’re not only under attack, but also good at fighting back? Then on top of that, they like it!” That’s what’s fun. That’s what’s crazy. Maybe these two kids are an even match for this cult!
Justin Benson: It’s a video game – no one believes found footage exists in our world. That’s what’s so fun about watching these kids go wild. It’s Subzero versus Scorpion, brother.
Aaron Moorhead: If you think about these weird-ass cult members, they’ve probably only been in one fight all their lives. These kids probably get in a fight every week – and one has a gun. Hell yeah, let’s try that, let’s see what happens.
Chase Newton: There were times Justin and Aaron would be like, “Hey man, you’ve got to re-do this scene, and this time don’t smile.” [Laughing] I got a surge out of it, man!
Aaron Moorhead: He was always smiling! He was so happy to be killing these cult members!
WGTC: So is there a competitive factor coming into an anthology movie like V/H/S: Viral, knowing there are other directors bringing their own tales of terror?
Aaron Moorhead: Well I did go through and delete about half of Nacho’s footage, so there was that…
Justin Benson: I was sending Gregg Bishop emails going, “Hey, this is your girlfriend, I’m sleeping with Justin Benson,” but for everyone it came down to finding a way to outdo “Safe Haven.” That’s the model, you want to hit that mark.
Aaron Moorhead: We wanted something that was at least as wild as “Safe Haven,” because there’s really no outdoing it. There’s no bigger. We wanted to make the action equivalent. We wanted to do something like Full Metal Jacket, where the first half it’s a character piece and then it’s a full-on action movie. You meet these guys, get to know and love them, then watch them in a dangerous scenario. That was the attempt.
I like to think there’s a sequel to “Bonestorm” but the characters just didn’t keep rolling. If you remember, the cult members are gathering on the ridge, and a lot of people like to think the kids are fucked anyway. For me, I like to think there was an even bigger battle and they made it out of Mexico. I love that.
Justin Benson: Yeah, it goes into the night, they’re literally stumbling back across customs with all the people partying for Revolucion, and the border officials don’t even question it because everyone else is so messed up. They look like they were just partying with everyone else!
Nick Blanco: Hey man, I’d stay and party! I’ve never been to Tijuana in my life, so we go to film, I’m with a bunch of white dudes carrying rich-ass cameras, and I’m just nervous as hell the whole entire time. [Laughing] I’ve heard the worst stories about Tijuana, I’m thinking we’re going to get robbed and not make it back. That shit was scary!
Aaron Moorhead: I remember telling him, “Put on the luchador mask, flip us off, and skate down the street.” He’s like, “I’m not dropping my board on this street. Those cops are going to arrest me and throw me in jail forever.”
WGTC: So given Hollywood’s constant desire to remake properties, if you were given a remake of your choice, what would it be?
Justin Benson: I’d want to remake something that hasn’t even come out yet, and that’s Preacher. I want to remake the pilot they didn’t shoot yet. It’s going to be the quickest remake ever – we’d remake Seth Rogen’s Preacher. Maybe we can make Preacher for Seth Rogen??
Aaron Moorhead: [Speaking into recorder] Hey Seth Rogen, maybe we can make Preacher?!
Chase Newton: Hell yeah! Hit Seth Rogen up, tell him to get these guys, then smoke a fat blunt with him! [Laughing]
Aaron Moorhead: For me, I don’t think it’s wrong to remake movies, I’m just not particularly interested in it.
Shane Brady: I will say this. With the Batman movies, Christopher Nolan, instead of making his movies so “cartoony,” he based them more in reality. It’s not really a remake, but it’s a new vision of it.
Justin Benson: I don’t think it’s a remake, yeah. Batman Begins isn’t a remake. But the thing that stresses me out about the Batman franchise is that Nolan basically spent all the best source material. Batman Begins is really just Batman: Year One, right? The Dark Knight is really The Killing Joke, and The Dark Knight Rises is that main arc. Now there’s no Batman source material left as strong as those stories. The reason the movies are so strong is because the source material is fuckin’ awesome!
Aaron Moorhead: They’re going to need an original story for the next movie. An amazing original script.
Justin Benson: Think about this – people have been writing Batman adventures since around the 1940s, and over many decades of writing Batman stories, those were the three best. Everyone knows that. Now we don’t have another story of that quality, and I think the material may be spent. These stories have been created over a such a long period, and that’s the best stuff we had. I’d give writing an original story a try, but man.
That concludes our interview, but I’d like to thank the Bonestorm guys for their time. Be sure to catch V/H/S: Viral when it comes out October 23rd!