Last Podcast On The Left - Black Phone 2: An Interview with Scott Derrickson

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

The boys sit down with modern master of supernatural horror Scott Derrickson for a SPOILER-FREE discussion about his newest project, Black Phone 2 (in theaters October 17th), the real-world crimes that inspired the sinister world of Black Phone, the instant iconic appeal of Ethan Hawke as The Grabber, and much, much more! For Live Shows, Merch, and More Visit: www.LastPodcastOnTheLeft.comKevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Last Podcast on the Left ad-free, plus get Friday episodes a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Well, today we have a very special guest. We have a modern master of supernatural horror. We have director Scott Derrickson, director of Blackphone, Blackphone 2, Dr. Strange, Sinister, the exorcism of Emily Rose. Blackphone 2 is, of course, your next movie out. Sir, how are you today? I am great. Very happy to be here with you, cheerful fellows. Cheerful. No, we haven't been described as cheerful in a long time.

Normally like, people told me that I'm fatter than they thought. Dude, I would not use the word dower to describe what I've seen thus far. Thank you, sir. Can I ask you a straight up, if you love Ethan Hawks so much, why don't you marry him? I have married him. That's what this is about, right? My marriage, I love Susan Ock so much. I wouldn't marry him, but he's already married and so am I.

So we just make movies together. Open it up. It always works. Never doesn't work. Nothing bad happens when you open up a marriage. It always works out. You have an amazing horror icon on your hands with Ethan Ock as the grabber. My God.

Isn't he awesome? He's so awesome. It is just, when you go about, like, when you started making this process, like, when you were, because you worked on Hellraiser films, have you worked with horror icon IP style before? And then you created an original sort of character like that in Sinister, too. When you were in Black Phone, when you're creating the grabber, is there like a conversation about this is like a horror icon that's going to stick around and how do we build this out? I mean, you can't think about it that way. What I will say is that I didn't think much about the mask at all. And I came late to that party because I had written the scripts for the first movie.

We were in pre-production. And I remember sitting down at my desk very early on, like the first week. And I was looking at it. I was like, okay. And it hit me all at once. I was like, holy shit, if this mask isn't awesome, this movie will fail. Yeah. The mask is what they're going to market with.

Ethan's wearing it in every scene. And so I think I had eight weeks of pre-production, and I spent most of that time working on that mask coming up with what it would be and getting the details right and the idea of splitting it in half and all that because it wasn't until we were in pre-production that I realized how important it would be.

But you don't start off going, I'm going to make a horror icon. I mean, you can do that, but it won't work. Yeah. You know, you have to make a great movie and have some good design in it, and if you're lucky, It works.

And then, you know, in this case, it's playing up pretty well. Yeah, I mean, the idea of changing out the bottom of the mask to reflect his emotions. That's my, that's my favorite part of the characters, you know, going from frowny grapper to smiley grabber. Right. When he frowns in Blackbone, too, I, like, cheered. I was like, yeah. And you got a little of the no-mouth, you know, in there as well. You know, don't forget the faceless.

the mouthless mask. Yeah. I didn't want to do any spoilers. Technically, it's my favorite grabber. Yeah. No mask grabber is kind of my favorite grabber. Yeah, no mouth.

No mouth grabber. It's like that kid in the Twilight Zone movie. It takes his sister's mouth away. I think it probably came from that. That haunted me. That's- horrifying. For my entire childhood.

That movie scared the shit out of me. Oh, it's terrifying. It's great movie, but it is very upsetting when you see. that if you see that movie too young which most people do you have like a concurrent theme in a lot of your movies about like a youthful vision of what is frightening of like from a perspective almost of like what is frightening like when when you go to write a horror movie especially in stuff like this like do you just like are these images from your head that you put forward into the

movie like like like how do you capture so well like that that's idea of something that's inherently frightening, objectively frightening. Something that's like almost from our nightmares. Yeah, you know, it's funny. Different directors, different horror directors would answer that question very differently. You know, everybody's different. And I think some of my favorite horror directors are kind of puppet masters. They love, they love the manipulation of it. They're very clever and very craftsman-like with it. And I, I come at it from the position or the perspective of trying to find something that scares me. Like, if it scares me, I'm a pretty good audience member.

If I find it frightening, I expect other people to find it frightening. So I always work from that place. Like, I just keep working at stuff until it's scary to me. And I'm like, you know, there's some images in Blackphone, too, that even as I was working, you know, on the sound mix, I'd seen some of these shots, you know, hundreds of times, and every time I'd see, I'd be like, oh, God, that's so wrong, you know? Well, I know that these movies are very personal to you, Black Phone and Black Phone, too. They are very personal. That's true. Yeah, it definitely is all stemming from my childhood

and middle school and high school years. Yeah, because you're from Denver, correct? I am, yeah, I'm from North Denver. I mean, from, I really did the best I could in the first movie to recreate the feeling of the neighborhood I grew up in. Yeah, is that from like, you're from like No, He La Diso? I have no idea what you just did. You know how like in Denver, it's all like,

they have like no passat. They have like all the crazy, like, they have the acronyms for all the neighborhood. Oh, right. No, I grew up in. That's what that was? Yes, yes. You had a lot of faith.

You had a lot of faith in me. that I would get that. Hey, we got there. After you explained what it was, well done. No, I grew up in an area called Shaw Heights and Federal Heights

in North Denver. So it was this kind of working class, kind of grim, you know, more on the outskirts kind of area. And, you know,

the thing I worked hardest for, it sounds so weird, but the chain-link fences were the main thing I really wanted to focus on in the first movie, the way they always had the spiky tops on them and i just people were getting ripped on those all the time and cut on them you know and and uh there was a lot of bleeding that went on when i was a kid

from everybody you know it was just kind of that that was the neighborhood you know well were there any like crimes when you were a kid that kind of inspired anything about the grabber oh oh yeah for sure i spoke to one of the manson murderers on the phone i was like eight because i spoke to i spoke to Susan Adkins on the phone because my mother had done a handful of freelance, not-for-pay book reviews for the Denver Post. And one of them was this book that Susan Atkins had wrote called Child of Satan, Child of God. And she wrote a book review of it. I don't know if it was printed, but Susan Atkins called our house. I was eight, and I answered the phone.

And my mom wasn't home, so I chatted with her for a little. And I, of course, at that time, I knew what the, Helter Skelter, the movie had come out. Yeah. The book was very popular. Kids in my school were reading it, which is crazy. And, uh, but also Ted Bundy had just killed a bunch of women in Colorado when I was a kid. And, and, uh, and, and, and, and he escaped in Colorado. He is, yeah, that was when he jumped out the, out the window of the law library.

Yeah, he was, yeah, he was in full berserker mode. Then he ran down to Florida. Oh, and, and, but, and there's also this. My, my, I'm, I shouldn't say this with a. smile. I think I was nine or ten. I don't remember exactly what year, but my next door neighbor knocked on my door, and I opened it, and he said, someone murdered my mom. And that had happened, and his mother had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted and bound up in telephone wire and thrown in the local lake. So there, so the, and the satanic panic was happening and kids were

getting the milk carton thing was starting i think they're the feeling of like you're going to die from a from a strange killer was just everywhere when i was a kid well i mean you just to fully explain the vibe of all of your films yeah yeah yeah i think there's a lot of truth of that yeah i mean i would i would imagine the the paper boy and black fun i mean that's a is that a johnny gosh reference you know with the dog and so on oh yeah oh yeah that was probably where that came from i don't remember, it was the sense of kids being snatched was a real thing, and it was happening in Denver at that time, in North Denver at that time. And of course, the satanic panic thing, a lot of that wasn't real, but the abduction phenomenon was very real. And the stranger danger,

that's the phrase of like the mid-70s to early 80s, that idea of cops coming to your school and talking to you about how you avoid, you know, getting killed by a strange person who steals you into their van. Yeah, and then sometimes, though, every once in a while, they do take you to Los Angeles and you do lead an incredible life. But it's a very small percentage. Very, very small. Every once in a while, worth it. Worth it. Worth it.

Do you feel like, you're, so when you're making this movie, when you're talking, when you're creating the grabber, like does all of this feed into it? Like Blackphone, too, I'm not going to probably say, this is not too much of a spoiler, but there's a little bit more into the grabbers past. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that you have to do that.

You know, I think that the balance you've got to strike if you're going to try to make a good horror sequel is you can't just regurgitate the first movie and, you know, and sort of give people the same thing in a different package, but essentially the same experience. We've all seen horror sequels like that, and they're pretty unsatisfying.

But the other mistake you can make is veering too far off, you know, and doing something that's too off the mark of what people liked about the first one. Space is always an option. You can always put it in space. Well, that space is where you go when you run out of ideas.

You know, that's when you get desperate, go to space, you know? Because it never doesn't work. Every, every, although I do think the kill and I, is it, which is the, which is the Friday the 13th that has the, the frozen face kill? Is that, I think that's Jason X. I think it's Jason X. That, that frozen fake kill might be my favorite serial killer kill in film history. It's incredible.

Jason X breaks the space spell. That's what I do believe. I think it breaks the curse. That's the one. Although I'm always, I have a soft. spot my heart for Critters 4, but that's just me. Okay. That is literally just him.

When you, is there a difference, like, obviously there's a difference besides just the money and respect of making your own sequel to your own hit film and then making, or when you made Hellraiser early on in your career? Like, what are the major differences besides everything? I mean, you know, that first movie was, you know, the Hellraiser movie that I did. that I did because I got a chance to make a movie and I did it, you know, and, and it, you know, it has a, it's developed a pretty nice little cult following.

You know, there's a lot of people who really like that movie who are fans of the, fans of the franchise. No, Hellraiser has my favorite, is my favorite franchise. Yeah. Oh, wait, that tells me a lot about you. Yeah. So, so Hellraiser 5 is, it's probably either

your third favorite in the franchise or like your ninth favorite in the franchise. That's my experience with most Hellraiser fans about that one, you know? But it was... When you're dealing with existing IP that you're, like, versus the stuff you created, what exactly

are like the differences there? Like, in terms of... Oh, you know, working with existing IP is always the primary challenge I think of doing that, you know, to figure out to to what degree can I respect this to what degree can I venture out

on my own and I mean even with Dr. Strange I think that probably one of the reasons why I got that job was because I like the comic so much and I particularly like Stephen Ditko's early renderings of

the visuals that he drew were art I mean a high art in my opinion and still my favorite comic book panels are from those early did co-Dr. Strange comics. And a lot of what I did in that movie was directly pulled from there. You know, so if you've got IP that you're in love with, that, you know, then you, or look at like what Zach Snyder did with 300, you know, I think I heard a story about

him meeting, the first production meeting. He just held up the book by Frank Miller and said, we're making this. And he, and that's what he did, you know. So I think that, you know, with Hellraiser, honestly, I wasn't a big fan of the franchise. I really loved Barker's original film. I thought Barker's first movie, there's still nothing like it. There's a transgressive,

alien-like, sci-fi, mystical, religious, just super transgressive quality to that movie that doesn't feel like anything else that's ever been made. Yeah. You know? Yeah, and then Hellraiser 3,

you got CD head. You got CD head. he needs to fly through the club and then he got his face I love that shit man and then after that they were like let's call Derekson he's never made a movie were you just a writer at that point

were you writing just a writer at that point they were looking for baby writers I mean it was the Weinstein's had bought the franchise and I can't believe this is what we're talking about they had bought the franchise and we're looking for like young writers to write a script to boot up a direct-to-video franchise for them. You know, so it was intended to be exactly that

because there was a big market for that kind of direct-to-video work at that time, direct-to-d-d-d-dvd-D-D. Oh, yeah, I remember. And so I've just pitched them an idea that I thought they would never go for and they really liked it. Here's something about to say about that movie. The script that my old writing partner, Paul Bordman and I wrote, that script is better than the movie I made.

The script is really good. And, you know, it was a little ambitious. I didn't know what the difference was, you know, but I wrote a, I wrote a $30 million movie that I got to make for $1.8 million. That's amazing, though. So with Backphone, too, like, are you essentially pitching to yourself? Like, when you're making this movie, do you get to be like, I am me, Joe Hill, and we get to create this however we want to?

Or is it the, do you have to still get like piles of approval and stuff from up top? It's a good question. You know, on the first black phone, the movie was small enough that I don't think anybody from Universal ever gave me any notes on that script or the movie. I think they just were like, yeah, just give us the movie, we'll put it out because it wasn't a big risk. And then this movie, I knew I was writing it to be bigger and a little more expensive, not super expensive, but more expensive. But I think more importantly, Universal and Blumhouse knew that there was a lot more money to be made in terms of it being a sequel to a hit movie.

And so there was more interest in giving feedback. But I've been very lucky working with Blumhouse and with Universal. They never forced me to do anything. They give me their notes. And sometimes it's Peter Kramer, the head of the studio, just calling me himself and saying, here are my thoughts but every time

I've gotten notes from them it's given with the caveat do what you want to do with these you don't want to do them don't do them yeah

and it just makes you it just makes you sort of relax and be like okay you know let's talk them through and most of the time my experience with studio notes

is if you have an intelligent you know executive like Peter Kramer Universal somebody like that who gives you notes sometimes they're just great

great and you're like oh God why didn't I think of that kind of notes But even the ones that you're like, uh, if you sit with the note long enough, there's something there and there's a note behind the note that it's your job to figure that out and then go back to them and say, hey, I think that what was bothering you is this. And they usually are like, yes, that's it. You know, and that's a, that's a, that's a rewarding process, you know, so I, I like the end result of the notes process with the studio. Now, when, when, when, occasionally, you know, when I disagree hard with the studio, I can be really. intractable and and overreact to things and make everybody suffer. I try not to do as much as much as it. Yeah.

Paula Coppola, do it anytime you like. I do. I do, well, I do enough of that. So, but you do have to stand your ground for what, you know, you believe is going to be best for the movie. Well, I'm certainly, I certainly have no problem doing that. I mean, watching Blackphone, too, that was the, um, the idea. That was the thought that I had while I was watching it. Like in, in the best way.

Like, thinking, like, this is the movie that the director wanted to make. Oh, 100%. Yeah, and we were, and the thing is that we were actually, we were the first people to see it. Like, we actually got to see, like, the pramp hot off the presses. And I was watching it, and some of the gore is, I mean, the gore in this movie is great. Incredible. Like, just absolutely incredible. Good head slices.

Yeah, and I was watching. I was like, God, I hope none of this gets caught by the studio because this is fucking intense. Oh, no, you guys saw, you guys saw the final. final cut that's great yeah yeah it's yeah it's amazing yeah it is i got zero pushback about that of really never no nobody ever asked me to do less of any of that that's at all yeah you know the movie is great for it but between the two movies the only thing that i was ever asked to cut and i won't say who asked me but i was asked to cut the gwen whipping scene in the first movie yeah and i just said over my dead body it's the heart of the entire movie the movie doesn't

And to the credit, they were like, okay, okay. What's with, we talk with Joe Hill. What's with all you guys? Scary dads. You know, Joe Hill created, Joe Hill's the nicest, biggest bearded man on the face of the planet. He's so wonderful. Stephen King also, big beard, seems like a lovely man. They both write stories about big, scary bearded men.

They make scary dads the scariest thing in the world. What's going on here? I don't know about them. I had a scary dad. So, you know. Did it look like the dad from, he's got a good, scary alcoholic's beard. Yeah.

He does. Yeah. You can pick those up at a discount at Walmart. So, no, my dad didn't have a beard and he wasn't an alcoholic, which I'm very grateful for. But he was violent. You know, he was angry and he was violent. so uh well i'm sorry about that i yeah well no but i also i also really watched my dad change

as i as i which is part of terence's story you know i watched my dad as i got older i became very close to him in high school and in college and uh and and had a radically different relationship with him uh than i had in my earlier childhood which was wonderful yeah oh yeah you could see in the movie too that really actually does come out yeah yeah you know and i'm not i'm not they're trying to, you know, force my shit on other people. And I'm, and I'm not interested in, uh, in just trying to get my story out has nothing to do with that. I just think that, you know, when you draw, when you draw from your own experiences, the way things felt to you at certain times in your life and you try to capture that feeling in a detailed way, drawing from the details of

your own memory. Like all those kids in the first black phone, I went to school with all those kids. I can tell you who they actually were in middle school that I knew. There was a kid who was just like Robin Ariano, you know, that I knew who was a friend of mine. Like, exactly. And I think that when you do that and do it

effectively, there is something about in, I don't know if this is true in all art, I just know it's true in cinema, that when you capture that realistically and truthfully, people feel it. They just feel like, oh, this is, this feels real. This feels very...

Like, this feels like somebody else's reality. And so the more specific you are using all those details, the more universal people connect to it. It's not their experience, but they can feel that it's somebody else's experience, you know? And you do it in a truly effective way. Like, you do it in Sinister. I think Sinister is such an exact depiction of that in terms of the home movies versus how it bumps into the rest of the movie. In Black Phone 2, you have these very ornate, beautifully shot dream sequence. that are honestly feel just like what you're saying.

Did you get that with practical or is that digital? Did you get that the filming of the dream sequences in black? Oh, it's all shot with Super 8 film. That is shot with Super 8. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, you can tell the difference. Well, I'll clarify.

It's Super 8, but also there was some scenes where I needed to use more advanced lenses. And because of the difficulty of the shot, we shot some of it on 16 millimeter and then extracted the 8 millimeter film is 16 millimeter film cut in half. That's literally what it is. So I shot some stuff with a 16 millimeter camera and the same Super 8 stock that we were shooting with and then just cut it in half and took that image out of the, took an 8 millimeter image out of the 16 stock and it's identical to the Super 8 stock. The only thing that you have to add artificially is camera flutter because I love

super right i love the instability of it i love the stakes you still get a lot of that stuff when you shoot on 16 but it's very solidly in the gate it's it's stable in the gate so you do have to if you want it to feel exactly the same in post i had to add a little bit of instability to the image when we shot

with the 16 but it's the same grain same color responsiveness was that the same thing in sinister with the home movies yeah yeah i'd never i would never do what is so common now, which is, you know, shoot something digital and then make it look like film or look like especially Super 8. The difference is so enormous to me. Stark. Well, that's why I wanted

to ask you about that, those dream sequences specifically because I wanted to ask like, did you finally figure out the filter? Because nobody, you can always tell. No, you can always tell. No, because and look, you have to think of it, there is no, there is no filter. It's impossible because, you know, you're talking about chemical reaction on film, you know, you've got, you've got, you know, all the atoms in that piece of physical material that are reacting chemically and forming an image. And it's not limited to the limitation of digital pixels, you know, and to, it's just a different, it's a different kind of image forming altogether. And like I said, my favorite thing about Super 8 is how messy it is.

you know now granted and also sometimes it gets so messy that you have to reshoot it because sometimes you'll shoot a scene and it's dangerous in that regard because there was there was

there's one scene in the movie I should had to reshoot three times because the Super 8 was so unstable and it was so out of focus on one the cameras broke on one that we didn't know about and then the third time we sort of got it right but it's funny

I like the messiness of it I use some of the broken camera shots in the movie. Yeah, sure. Because I was like, I can't do the whole scene like this, but God, look at that shot. It's fantastic. I love, I love the recklessness of it. I think the aberrations that you get are fantastic. I don't, oh, you got so because I want to bring something around to the actors.

Yeah, one more thing about the, about the Super A. Well, I just, I love the handheld nature of those, like, dream sequences. Like, it put me in the mind of, like, not just, like, a 70s feel as far. as the film stock, but also like 70s horror movies. Like I felt like I was back in like a 70s horror movie when it cut to those dream sequences. Is that a deliberate

choice? Seventies and 80s. The movie takes place in 1982 and it was like, obviously it owes a lot to all the summer camp slasher movies, especially of the late 70s and the early 80s especially. This is a compliment, but it has

a lot of nightmare on Elm Street, three vibes. Very big influence, obviously. everybody people are talking about that just from the trailer yeah but you know that's and you know i'm old enough to to have to have been uh you know a teenager seeing that movie in the theater when it first you know opened and if you were if you're old enough to have been there when that happened you have no idea how scary that was it was horrifying that opening scene no one had made something like that before you know and uh and so i think that that the love the love i had for the horror genre as a high schooler

and what that exciting era was, definitely plays in a very mixed bag kind of way into this movie. That's so cool. Let's take a break from all the laughter to say thank you to our sponsor Universal Pictures.

Dead is just a word. On October 17th, just in time for Halloween. The terrifying Blackphone 2 hits theaters. directed by Scott Derrickson and starring Ethan Hawke who is back as the Grabber and more sinister than ever

The Grabber's story wasn't over and he asked the question Do you know what happens when you die Find out for yourself October 17th Hell is in flames It's ice Universal Pictures Black Phone 2

Only in theaters October 17 right so all right now you got the movie it's a sequel it's direct sequel to black phone to black phone direct sequel same actors how is it dealing with aging kid actors like as they get older like do they just become better actors or is it one of those where you have to like refine the characters and stuff like that you know i'll tell you great story so so when when they asked me to make the sequel They asked me to make the sequel on Monday after the opening weekend of the first movie. That's the way Joe Hill talked about it.

He was like Jeff Schell, though, who was the CEO of NBC Universal, emailed me. He's like, you're going to make another one, right? You know? You're like, well, great. No, but at that point, I didn't feel obliged to. I didn't have any ideas about it. I didn't feel the need to do it at all. But what on top of Joe's kind of idea that he brought to the table, the thing that really

made me want to do it was when I thought, you know what, what if I wait? What if instead of like going and making a sequel, what if I go make another movie and take my time and let these kids both get into high school? And then I make a high school coming of age movie in the same way the first one was a middle age coming of age movie. And that got very exciting for me. And I thought that would enable me to make something more violent, more aggressive. Yes. You know, and, you know, I felt confident that Maddie McGraw and Mason Tames were going to be, you know, they would still have their skill set. You know, I thought that they would be do a really good job.

But I also, you know, a Miguel Mora who plays Robin Ariano, he, he was so beloved in the first movie. He's got, he's like a rock star online. He's got like 4 million TikTok followers and 2 million Instagram followers. Yeah, these kids get famous in a way that not that we do. never good and actors don't you know what I mean like so so I love so for me it was like well what if

I he's you know his characters is gone and you know but what if I wrote his the character what if I what if he played his Robin Ariana's little brother you know so I wrote Ernesto for him to play you know that's the same kid right yeah I actually I had no

idea that it was the same kid holy shit that you just blew my fucking mind what's amazing and I just rewatch the other one too. I literally like, and just rewatched black phone. Yeah, I rewatched the night before going to see the screening. Wow. Yeah. Hey, that's quite

an acting job he did. Well, wait, here's the thing though, you know, because I because he was playing such a different character, I was like, I have no idea if this kid's going to be able to do it. So I wrote it for him, and then you know, I, but I told him, I said, look, here's the script. I wrote this for you, but you're going to have to audition. Because I have to see that

you can do this. And so he, he read with Madeline McGraw a couple of scenes and halfway through the first scene I gave him, I was like, oh, he's got the job. He's going to be great. Yeah, and he does an awesome job in it. But he really, to his credit, he really worked on his acting skill,

took acting classes, really, you know, and then came and prepared for that audition and did a great job in the movie. How much was Ethan Hawk in the mask? How much was he in the mask? Yeah. When he's in it, when he's on camera, like is it him in the mask of the majority of the of the time yeah he's he's he's he's never not in

the mask you don't have it it gets yeah I don't want to stand he ever stand it there's certain things because it was oh yeah and I'm not trying to spoil it I was just I just rewatched the new toxic Avenger remake and they were like talking about how you know they were trying to match the original where someone else was in the taxi uniform right didn't put peter into it and it was It's like, oh, I think it's because Peter figured out how to not be in the makeup. I think Peter figured out a way to skip that part, where it's like Ethan seems like he's the kind of guy that would not let anybody else wear that mask, even if they wanted to, even if you wanted them. That's probably true at this point, you know? And I think that, you know, Ethan was interesting as watching the way Ethan when he saw the during the pre-production or like when he first came to to North Carolina.

where we were shooting Black Phone, the first movie. As soon as he saw the masks, he told me later, he said, as soon as he saw him, he was like, oh, oh, this does so much of the work that I thought I was going to have to do that I can do other things that are more interesting. Yes. Because of what the mask is going to be doing. He very quickly processed that and understood what the mask did

that allowed him to do more unexpected things, you know, which is really wonderful. It's not that I was shocked, But honestly, I don't know what I thought. It was that Ethan Hawk, honestly, was so physically gifted in the movie. Like, in Black Phone 1 and 2, he so immediately steps into a supervillain character. Yeah, and he makes it seem effortless. I don't give him a lot of direction. I don't talk to him much about it.

I mean, we're good friends. You know, I really love Ethan. And we're married. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were talking about it before. and when is the baby? No, and he just, he just is such a brilliant actor. He just comes ready, and he comes with an understanding,

and he's fearless, he has no fear. So he also will really surprise you. You know, if you give him six takes, he's going to give you six versions of that scene. And sometimes it's version six that's really out of the box, where you go, oh, I got to rethink the whole, this whole part of the movie. now because that there's one thing that he did in it where I was like it was it was I said just

say this whole section it'll be playing his voice over but I just need you to say it's just do it on camera and I think he took that as a challenge and then he made it one of the greatest performance moments in the movie and I had to restructure the whole scene because as soon as I thought I was like ah shit that's so good I have to I have to build the move I have to build the section around that shot I just did now you know so so he's he's such a gifted out and so fearless and and and I also am lucky because I have his trust you know he really trust me and he'll do anything I ask him to do it's wonderful anything on onset within legal limits I guess well the physicality that he brings to the character like it could so easily go wrong like

it's something that it's this physicality that that it could so easily be goofy or hokey but he takes it just up to that edge and like because the character himself that's what I love about the character of the grabber is that it really does capture something that we try to capture on our show when we do our true crime stuff is that serial killers are douchebacks they're like they're shitheads they're they're not cool they're you know there's nothing cool about any of them and I'm a serial killer junkie you know like I love that I've watched every Syria, killer, true crime thing out there. I mean, yeah, they're, they're absolutely a terrible, weak, obnoxious people.

Yeah. And that's what I love about the character of The Grabbers, that it captures that. Like, it really, like, it just captures that so well, like, just in his dialogue, but also, but Ethan Hawks' movements and the way Ethan Hawk plays. I'm like, it really does, like, oh, that's, that's a serial cat. Like, that's, yeah, with the shitty brother. That's all Ethan, you know. I don't think we have ever had conversations about the choices he's made playing that character. He just does it.

And I think that as a director, you know, what you wanted, a good director hires really good actors and then mostly stays out of their way. So I would say that 90% of my directing is, that was great. Now, do it twice as fast. Yeah. That's usually how, that's most of my directing, because I hire great actors, you know, and there's very rarely any bad, I don't think there's any bad performances

in any of my movies because I cast well and I know how to stay out of actors' way and make sure that they, you know, especially with kids, and let them be natural, you know. Yeah. But Ethan, Ethan just will, he's magical. He's become such a tour to force as an actor.

and I think he's kind of playing above the rim right now. You know, the different roles he's doing, every single thing I see him do now for the last couple of years is so remarkable. And he's working all the time. Yeah. He played the abolitionist that he was exceptional in that John Brown. Yeah.

He just played John Brown. He was amazing in that. That was incredible. He really is. Why do you think some people get better as the age? And some people fall apart as they age when they, as artists. I think that a lot of it has to do with what it is that drives you as an artist, you know? Because I think that Ethan certainly had a lot of opportunities when he was younger to become a bigger star.

Yeah, he could have been Batman. He could have been, well, he probably could have been in that realm. I think that he might have been offered Batman. I don't know for sure, but I know that there was at least a conversation about that at some point. But he, yeah, I think he certainly could have gotten something like that, no problem. You know, and I think that he really has chosen in his career to pursue what is, what he thinks is of creative value. And what I love about him, too, is that he doesn't believe, we've talked about this together, you know, the two of us many times, about, you know, neither one of us really believe

in the separation of high art and low art. You know, creativity is creativity. Good art is good art. And I think that, I think that's one of the reasons why he's really proud of the Black Phone movies and Sinister, because he thinks they're really good, it's really good cinema, you know, but at the same time, the guy's got four Oscar nominations,

you know, because he's such a fine actor who also loves to make great artistic, you know, or so-called more important, films, but he doesn't think of them that way. So I think his drive is always a kind of excellence. And that guy loves poetry and literature and formal painting and art and love cinema. And he loves documentaries. And, you know, and I think that he is somebody who has lived his life in such pursuit of excellence in art and in such a true, consumer of great arts and entertainment, great cinema. He loves movies. He loves books. He loves

music. He's just got this Merle Haggard documentary that he just did. Yeah, he's a consummate artist. And the other thing I'll say that's special about him is because he has all that experience and has directed quite a few films himself by now, he really wants to understand the big picture of what you're doing. And he wants to contribute to that. You know, Which means, but you can see it in Black Phone, like, directly in these two movies, you can see that. Yeah. Yeah, because you can see how he, it just, he understood what, he understood what, he understood the assignment is the kid's say, you know. Yeah.

The whole movie goes like a record scratch when he shows up. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh, shit, fine. That's the whole time. I was like, yeah, grab's here. Fuck yeah. Grab's here.

Yeah, as soon as I'm watching, yeah. I was just saying to afterwards, to G and Luca, I was just like, I want the. complicated the grabber is living with jigsaw in an apartment trying to make he's trying to become a chef like I want to see the bear but with

the grabber like I want him to have like him struggling you know like there's something about that Blackbone 3 the bear you were here when it was born oh my God I've got my I don't need Joe Hill I got my gosh

Fuck yeah! Get them out of here! Get that goose out of here. Is there any one last, like, honestly, in that way, like, do you have a big, capital I, important movie that you're, like, in your head that you want to do? Is there something that you're like, you can't rest, you can't go to your grave until you make? You can't really be like that because sometimes you just can't get certain movies made, you know? I always wanted to do a big budget version of Paradise. loss. I don't think I'm ever going to get to do that. That's sort of my white whale, if I have one. That's the big one. Yeah, because I just think there's a great movie. Somebody needs to make a great

movie about the greatest myth in human history. And, you know, and the idea of a movie about the war in heaven and sort of the gradual fall of Lucifer into Satan. How do you not? Somebody's got to make that movie, you know? I think typically Mel Gibson is right now making that movie. Because he's doing the prequel. Have you seen that he's doing the prequel and the sequel to Passion of the Christ? The sequel? Okay. So he's doing Good Friday and then he's doing when Jesus gets up.

Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. All that happened way after Paradise Moss. I'm not going to touch that, Mel Gibson, and Passion the Christ. Other than my favorite way of describing that movie to my friends who hadn't seen it, should I see it? I said, it's the Jesus chainsaw massacre.

Yeah, buddy. That's a horror movie, man. It's a horror movie. Jesus gets fucked up in that movie. It's probably the most pound for pound the most violent mainstream movie ever released. You should remake it. Ethan Hawk.

Ethan Hawk is Jesus Christ. You could do it. Jesus grab her. Yay. Full circle. I think we did it. I think we did. Paradise Lost that because you said you said,

big comic book guy like it's been done so well in like 90s like a preacher i'm sure you've read um it was done so well you know that sort of story has been done like it's been told in comic books like on the edges of like preacher not in like a full incredible yeah yeah i think i i just think that there that you know i i think i had a version of it uh that i almost got to make i think it would have made a billion dollars you know uh so you never know you know but i've got other I go one movie at a time, though. I look at any situation I'm in, I'm like, what's the next movie I'm going to make?

Whatever it is, I'm going to make it as though it's the last movie I'll ever get to make. Because one day it will be, you know? And so I'm not strategic about that shit. I don't plot out my career. I just, every time I finish a movie, I take a look at where I'm at as a person and think about, you know, what, if I only get one more film, what do I want it to be?

And I try to make that. Man, that's, thank you so much for talking with us, dude. Yeah, this is great, man. Yeah. Seriously, it's really, like, you, you know, we, it was kind of funny, we're looking back on your IMDB as soon as we were, like, setting all this

up, and it's like, I've seen every single one of this man's films. Yeah. I've seen every single one of these movies multiple times, yes. So I was like, it was great. I didn't have to prepare it all. Yeah. Didn't have to prepare at all. Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's great. Good for you. It's easy for me, dude. Is that all matters, dude? From now on, you need to hold that as your mantra. I don't have to prepare it. Do not tell him that. Do not tell him that.

Do not put that idea in his head at all. Oh, wait a second. I can just float by. Wait a minute. Hey, thank you so much, sir. Scott, thank you so much. pleasure, guys. This was great. So when can people see

Black Phone 2 in the theaters? It comes out on October 17th. Yes. October 17th. Yeah, it comes with our stamp of approval. We got to see an early screening of it. It's fucking great. See it in the theater. Yeah, see it in the theater. It's definitely... It is a theatrical movie. There's a lot.

There's a lot on that screen. I will back that. I will back that. I'm glad you guys really enjoyed it. You know, and I'm very proud of it. And you are absolutely right. That is, it was a complicated movie to make. And it is exactly, exactly the film I wanted it to be. You know, which doesn't always happen, you know.

And I'm so, like, the gore is just turned up to a new level. I was very thankful. Like, just the, like, just the one, like, I don't want to, you know, spoil it. But the slice, oh my God. It's just like, that, they're just, that was the best one. We cheered in our little room, because it's also funny because now, like, this is like maybe the second to third time. We've been to, like, a fancy screening.

And so, but I'm still like this. So whenever I see a good kill, we're all immediately like, yeah, yeah. You guys are maniacs. That's great. Mr. Derekson, thank you so much. Thank you. Hey, my pleasure, guys.

Thank you for having me on. It was really a good time.