Panic World - The Blair Witch: The first viral hoax (with David Sims)

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

The Blair Witch Project stands alone in the kind of panic it caused. No film before or since has quite hit the same fevered pitch, where many people actually thought it was real. What made it so magical? How did it come to be, and why did it freak us out like it did? David Sims joins us to talk urban legends, predecessors to The Blair Witch Project, and the found footage films that have since tried to recreate its culture-gripping moment since. Our guest David Sims is a culture writer at The Atlantic, and also hosts the podcast Blank Check. Follow his work @davidlsims and find @blankcheckpod wherever you listen to podcasts. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord? Sign up for a membership at https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude ⁠http://multitude.productions⁠. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let's start with something kind of fun here. A fun question for you, which is, did you have any local urban legends that you were, like, obsessed with as a kid growing up? Oh, man. That's a great question. I'm trying to think. Well, I grew up in New York City. So I feel like the answer is no, apart from, like, abandoned subway stations, which I was obsessed with. Yeah, like, mole people, right?

Yes, like, especially because I lived between 86 and 96th Street stations. There's a station, 91st Street, that is closed, but it's still there. and you can see it on the train if you look really hard as you go buy it this like graffiti covered station so I used to think about people who lived in it

that's probably the closest yeah I think that works I grew up in near Salem Massachusetts so I had a lot of these yeah that's all this shit yeah I grew up like ground zero for that kind of stuff

but did you ever also like a kind of experience a thing growing up or like you would hear a thing from somebody who heard a thing from somebody like very early like elementary school like games of telephone about this kind of stuff two things can immediately come to my one obviously is is uh keel being dead is it kean or kell who is dead oh it was

one of them i think it was keel there was like just people would be like kell died did did you know that and i'd be like he did i'd be like yeah he's he's dead i don't know where that came from but that was like a classic kind of pre-internet sort of like you wouldn't check it you would just sort of be like there was an abandoned local version or a small there was an abandoned building next to my elementary school just you know

whatever like a giant burned out building and we all the time would talk about how we had gone into it and seen crazy things none of us had ever done this oh okay and we were clearly like feed each other

with like lies we're like eight years old or whatever about yeah I went in there and this is what I saw you know I don't know why that started except that we looked at this building every day I was not a very like environmentally adventurous young person. Like I didn't really like going outside.

So my version of this was like in Pokemon red and blue, there was like a series of actions you could take to activate like a secret town. Of course. Yeah. Like haunted Pokemon. Like that was my thing was the haunted Pokemon. You ever get missing no? You ever get that guy?

I ruined a game that I beat with like a 96 Pokemon capture with a missing no. Yeah. Which was worth anything. way back before our current era of misinformation and disinformation and conspiracy theories. In 1999, two young filmmakers, David Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, created their own urban legend, basically, and kind of fooled the world for a little bit. They made a story that was bigger than the movie theater. It was showing in.

It spread literal panic all over America. And it kind of gave us this incredible snapshot of what our entire adult lives would be like now. And I'm talking about the Blair Witch. And with us today on Panic World is a podcaster. I'm a massive fan of. I'm so excited that you're on the show. Welcome David Sims from the Blank Chat podcast. One of my favorite film reviewers, welcome.

Hello. Thank you. That's very silly of you. But it's very nice to be here. And very excited to talk about this thing. Yeah. I have no idea if we would ever talk about. I was worried.

I was worried if you guys were ever going to talk about it. Because so it is the 25th anniversary this year of the movie. Literally the week we're recording this is the 25th anniversary. Yeah, that's right, because it was oddly a summer release. Yes, yes, it was. And to sort of set the stage here, it is the story of three filmmakers who go missing in the woods near Burketsville, Maryland, Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, and Joshua Leonard. And for a while, people did think that this was real. but to start

can you tell me about your experience seeing the movie for the first time when did you actually see this in theaters I was 13 years old this film was rated 15

in Britain I lived in Britain at the time I guess it was just rated 15 for swearing I guess that's the only actual there's like one scene with like

bloody stuff in it yeah there's some goop but I don't think that's you know but yeah but I remember I had to sneak in and it completely got me. See, I was right at the age where I know you might relate to this. I don't know.

This was a movie you actually would end up seeing it asleep over with a bunch of people where you loudly mock it the whole time, right? Because it's like these dorks, this movie's not scary. It's just people running around in the woods, yelling at each other, blah, blah, blah, right? That I feel like is a lot of people in my generation's experience of watching the Blair Witch Project. And by, you know, like I think older people had the more organic experience. with it. I don't know what future generations, the experience they have with it is. But I went and saw it in theaters and it completely got me. I was like, they're dead. That's it. Like, I was so in it. I maintain this is basically the scariest movie I've ever seen in some elemental way of just like, I remember that, you know, that viewing experience very profoundly. And I was, I was impressionable. That's so interesting. I, I was probably eight or nine when it came out.

And I, you were really young than me. Yeah, and I didn't see it right away. I saw it as a teenager after like everything had passed, but I was a huge horror movie fan. And I remember thinking it was sounding cool because I liked horror movies. And then by the time I was able to see it, I already knew it wasn't real. And I had kind of like lost interest. But then when I finally did see it, I actually really liked it.

Like I do. And I liked it again, rewatching it for this episode, actually. Like it kind of holds up. I think it holds up tremendously. I mean, but I am a huge. I think it is an important movie. Yeah. And the fact that it has never really.

been recaptured quite in the magic has never been recaptured quite in the same way like found footage became a thing again years later i'm not saying like people haven't made good found footage movies but but it wasn't like this the thing where right where people going in being like i think they found some footage versus like oh this is like a movie that's pretending to be found footage you know like you're never going to get that again right i don't think well i do have a modern kind of example of something like this that did get me But we'll get to that in a second. But so let's start with the origin is.

So we've got Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez. They're studying at the University of Central Florida in the 90s. And they're like largely upset that movies, like horror movies weren't scary at that point, which I think is accurate. Like by the late 90s, it was like the franchiseification of horror had kind of already taken effect, right? I would agree with that. I would say that the blockbuster horror is largely sequels. and that, you know, loses its, you know, like now when you think about like, okay, well, what's the actual good horror of the 90s?

There's stuff you can surface, but I also think there is kind of like a goofiness to 90s horror. There's like sort of the Sam Ramey, you know, leftovers. There's the Peter Jackson stuff. Like there's the stuff where it's very theatrical and silly and fun. And then there's like the self-aware slasher stuff. And then there's the, you know, yeah, you're right. It's kind of an odd time for horror. In fact, the filmmakers for Blair Witch said that they were largely inspired to make the movie because they wanted something that could actually scare them.

And this was in direct response to them watching Nightmare on Elm Street 6, which is the one with a cameo from Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold. Right. Where it's like, that's Freddy's Dead, I believe. Yes. Which is the first truly bad nightmare movie. I really like the Nightmare series. Me too. I don't know how you feel about it.

I'm a huge Freddie Kruger fan, yeah. I love that guy. What a guy. I love that guy. He's the best. He does. He's like the joker of your dreams. It's the best.

Yes. But like, Nightmare's one to four I'm all in on. Five, the Stephen Hopkins movie, I'm like still fun, starting to feel a little, you know,

a little stretch thin. And then Freddy's dead. It falls off a clip. It's like, is no offense to that film is pretty terrible. Right. And I thought new, the franchise dead.

People sort of forget like Freddie does, that is kind of it. Everything after that is weird meta shit. See, I, as a kid, I like New Nightmare because I was stupid and I was like, this is really deep. This is like really fascinating.

New Nightmare's good. You're not stupid. It's fine. It's fine. Like I remember some creepy stuff in that movie. But hold on. It's not that scary. It's interesting.

It's not that scary. It's interesting. Yeah. So let's go back to Blair Witch here. So the week published in oral history about the movie and this quote comes from that. It's from Eduardo Sanchez and it's about how they came up with the idea behind the movie. Eduardo says the idea was somebody doing some kind of filming in the woods and then coming up with a really creepy house and going inside it and finding all kinds of satanic ritualistic stuff.

Candles, pentagrams, that kind of basic satanic stuff. Maybe something is happening in this place and we shouldn't be there, but then the camera continues and it can't stop and you're stuck with these people. Fun. Which I think you watch the movie and it's like, yeah, that is it. That is the whole idea. They picked the name because Eduardo's sister went to Blair High School and they originally were going to do documentary inside of a traditional movie.

but then they scrap that idea. But what is your sort of simplest way of explaining the lore of the Blair Witch in this movie? Like how would you describe what is actually happening in this movie from a lore perspective? Okay, so you're talking about the lore, the film's internal lore. The internal lore. Yeah, so the internal lore is,

obviously, this is the footage of some student filmmakers who went out to Maryland, Berkittsville, Maryland, which is a real place, right? But they are pretending used to be called to be called Blair back in old really clever ideas yeah and has those

classic thick fucking spooky ass Maryland Jersey woods right where it's like thick trees I mean not a part of the world I like to be in to be to be clear probably partly because of this fucking movie sorry am I can swear

you can swear on this show yeah and they the lore of the film which I'm kind of obsessed with is basically like spooky stuff has happened here since like, you know, kind of pioneer, what do you call it, Patriot days, right? Like, you know, there was most recently and most disturbingly in the 40s, there was a local hermit who abducted and killed some children called Rustin Parr and said that, you know, someone made him do it, right? The forest made him do it, whatever.

And he would make the kids face the wall while he did this. But then there's also other spooky kind of classic, like you said, you're from Salem, right? Like, you know, more in that vein of like, you know, I went out in the woods one day and I saw a woman floating above the ground and... Right, like her feet wouldn't touch the ground. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. And back in the 19th century, some men were killed out here on a place called Coffin Rock. The names are so good. It's so good. What I think is, like, watching it again, what I was really struck by was how the movie never says, like, okay, this is the lore that's important. So the whole movie, you're sort of not sure if they're being haunted, if it's like a deliverance situation, if it's like a serial killer's ghost. Like there's no attempt at explaining what's happening in this movie.

And it works, I think. Yes. I mean, the only thing I know that is intriguing to me is that they, and you might want to tell me this later. I'm not sure, you know, how much you want to drive the car here, but like that they added the kids facing the wall thing. they did one extra interview of filming to put that in there because they came up with that for the ending of like one of them's facing the wall

and they were like we need just one tiny explanation for this so that audiences understand what that's referencing that they will talk about that but yes okay all right I'm not going to talk about it but no no it's I'm glad you did

because like watching it you know this weekend I remember that scene really bothering me actually at the time as a kid watching it I was like, ooh, that is like actually an unnerving weird thing, and I don't like looking at that. Oh, yeah, it's affected. You in the right way. Sure. In the right way, is what I'm saying.

Yeah, yeah. So they make like a short version of this and they show it to an indie film rep named John Pearson. He responds to me saying, I can't believe all of this. I've never heard about it, which is like awesome. I mean, that's what you want to hear. Wait, is that viewable the short thing they made or is that lost a time? So he then gives them $10,000 and they incorporate the footage into an IFC TV show in 1997 called split screen. So it was showing on like very early IFC.

Huh. I don't think I knew that. Yeah. And they would ask split screen. You have. Okay. Yeah, because that was like IFC would just have an interview with Spike Lee on there or whatever. It was just kind of like their thing.

Okay. Yeah. So maybe you remember this. This was, this is I think like a pivotal moment in like the Blair Witch like. IRL lore, which is that it was being used to experiment with a new interactive part of the show based on the show's website. So what they would say was like, do you think this is real or not, go to our website and let us know, which was like a new idea. Okay. No, I didn't know that. I mean, that makes sense, though, that right, people were like, what should we use internet for? You know,

what is website for? Is it for people? Yeah. So how much do you know about like the casting and the planning of of the, the, what they would call method filmmaking of the Blair Witch. Like, do, are you familiar with any of it or? I know they posted essentially casting call and that they did just random improv with, with the folks.

That's really all I kind of, like, like, it wasn't like they were like, okay, so you're in the woods, right? That they were more just kind of like doing like improv games of like, here's a prompt, go. Yeah. So, according to Heather Donahue, uh, the flyers said the shoot will be grueling. We don't care about your comfort, but we do care about your safety,

and the entire thing will be improvised. I would just say no. I don't know. I don't know. What do you think? She responded with game on. That sounds amazing. She would not feel this way years later, but we'll get there. And so the first one to be cast was Josh, who at the beginning of the movie, I actually really had no opinion on. And then by the end, I was like, I think he's the top of my power ranking. Because He goes nuts in the best way. And he was cast first because he came in with a camera and a cowboy. And he knew how to operate a camera, right?

Like that was part of it, right. Right. And apparently when Mike came in, they gave him the prompt, you've just served 10 years of a 25-year prison sentence. Tell us why you should be due for parole. And then he said he tried to channel Morgan Freeman and Shawshank Redemption. And that's how he got cast. Wow.

Wow. Do you, I hate to be, I hate to be power ranking any of these actors who basically just suffered and somewhat had their lives ruined by this movie. But would you put him bottom? Okay. In terms of acting, I think Mike is my favorite. I think I believe Mike is a real person the most. I would put Heather next because I don't like her and I don't think you're supposed to like her, which is like an unfortunate part of the 90s Phil Wicking process here. Like it's all hinged on them not liking her essentially.

because she's a woman who wants to, like, make a documentary. Yeah, and it's by some people around, which is how dare she? Right, exactly. Oh, and for the record, her answer to the nine-year prison sentence prompt was that she said, I don't think you should know. That was her little answer. And they thought, ooh, that's pretty nice. Oh, all right.

I have her top. I weirdly have, I mean, I think it's an iconic performance in a way. You know, just like with a lot of this stuff, it's like, is that a little accidental? Is that a little bit being created by the atmosphere they're creating? I don't know. I weirdly loved the sci-fi channel original miniseries taken. Did you ever watch that? I've never heard of it now.

It was an event series back in the day when sort of the sci-fi channel had event series. It was like a 10 episode, kind of classy X-Files about like the Roswell crash and then like imagining a sort of overarching government conspiracy. With Young Dakota Fanning, I have seen this, yes. Dakota Fanning only shows up at the end. It's got a zillion actors you would recognize now. She's sort of the lead of it. She has like one of the most pivotal roles in it.

And she's kind of good. It's kind of like this performance. It's very nervy. And I have always sort of been like, you know what? She, you know, Heather gets a bad rap, basically. But I kind of agree with you on. Josh, sorry, I'm Michael being the most realistic feeling guy in a way. You're like, yeah, that's just like a guy.

That's just a guy. That's, yeah. And like, Josh is kind of uninteresting until he snaps and he becomes kind of the closest thing to a villain in it. Although Mike, I guess you could argue is also kind of a villain because he destroys the map. I guess what I'm saying is like what is nice about this movie is that at no point did I have the same feelings about anything that was going on. My mind was constantly changing. I was like, oh, right. That's interesting.

And I feel like that is an effective thing. And I will say it was on, you kind of mentioned, like, I don't know how much of what Heather's doing was like on purpose. But at least what she says, Heather Donahue in the oral history says, someone who's going to, her character was going to be able to stay on camera when they're dying. And it's not a person you really want to spend a lot of time with. It's this person who's obsessive. And I think they were hoping for someone kind of prettier, but they couldn't find a woman like an ingenue who. was willing to go, who was willing to be that kind of terrier. And in retrospect, I kind of understand why. And I do think that works. Like the fact that she's like constantly compulsively

filming everything is the only internal motion of the movie, I would say. And of course, it is the number one issue of any found footage movie is the, to what extent do we explain why the cameras are still on? Like how much like sort of background legwork do we need to do to just sort of get audiences is on board versus should we just like let them agree with us like look the cameras ran what can I tell you and I think Blair which it is obviously the most dramatically effective version of that because they're filmmakers and because of her personality and because people you know Josh and Mike do eventually being like why are you filming me like we're having a fight right now like why why are you putting this on camera it's the central tension of like the second half of the movie is like

she just won't stop filming which very millennial code coded actually I would say like yes right I mean I mean, I feel like Cloverfield is the worst, right? I mean, I like Cloverfield a lot as a movie. I think it's also kind of an important little object. But Cloverfield has the most like, oh, I'm going to try and film this. You know, like, where they have these lines. You're like, oh, shut up, man. Yeah.

You mean T.J. Miller. Yeah, T.J. Miller. So, so wait, a couple more notes about the production of this, because I do think it's sort of backing up kind of a few of your points. So pivotal to Blair Witch. Yeah, of course. Yeah. The team coined the term method filmmaking.

And I'm going to quote Greg Hale, one of the producers on the Blair Witch, from an article The Ringer did about it. So he described as this. I had gone through the Army's S-E-R-E school, he says. It stands for survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. You go through this four-day escape and evasion thing with guys chasing you around and stuff. I knew they weren't going to kill me, but at the same time, I was terrified. That kind of sparked the thought of, well, why don't we apply this total immersion scenario to the actors?

If we physically and mentally abuse them enough in the process of getting them up to these intense moments at the end, then they'd be able to tap into emotional places they wouldn't otherwise be able to tap into. Sounds pretty cool to me, right? Yeah. Like, I feel like that's fine. Do you guys want to know something about Greg Hale that I just looked up?

Yeah. He has an extensive clown doll collection. There are 16 clowns. Really? Yeah, apparently. I'm a freak. Well, you know what it is. It's because he's able to reach emotional places

that other people can't because he's constantly immersed immersed in psychological tournaments. Yeah, that makes sense. Boy, everything you hear about this movie you're just like these people should be in jail. Everyone should be in jail for this movie, yeah. So they had them completely isolated. They harassed them at night.

They wouldn't let them sleep. They basically did it like naked and afraid style. And they were giving them less and less information about what they were doing. And so by the end of it, Eduardo Sanchez says they were down to a power bar and a banana for the last two days per day each. That's so crazy.

You read, I think it was eight days, right? They did eight days of woods or maybe even less, right? Was it maybe eight days was the entire shooting schedule. So there's a couple days of them in the town talking to people who are like, oh, I remember the bear witch, you know, and then like five days in the woods. I think it was five, yeah. I would, I mean, I guess I'm not committed to the craft, but I would just fucking lose my mind. I would just go punch somebody.

I'd be like, you're giving us sandwiches. Like, this is stupid. I can act. You don't need to do this to me. But maybe it's why, I don't know, I'm not trying to justify directors sort of somewhat torturing and underfeeding their cast. But I mean, maybe it is part of the magic. Well, I do think it speaks to a tension that I want to talk about throughout this episode today, which is sort of can you make a viral sensation like this without it being at its core somewhat exploitative? Like, there has to kind of be an issue here.

One of the big problems with the way the Blair Witch was created was they used their real names. Yes, which is the crazy, objectively the craziest thing they did. I don't know why they did that. Well, it would come in handy later, which we will get to. But do you know, you kind of talked about like other types of method like Cloverfield and stuff. Are there other movies before this that you can think that would have like inspired this idea? Like, like, what are the peers of Blair Witch in terms of, like, crazy shooting like this? Oh, in terms of crazy shooting is interesting because that I know less about it.

I know they were inspired, but what's, it's called the legend of Boggy Creek. I think that's what it's called, which is like an iconic early 70s version of this movie of like a docu-drawn, a fake docu-drawn. I feel like that used to be how you would do it, right? do the fake documentary you kind of make the footage seem you know juicy and

you know that's a cool movie I've seen that movie but that is nothing like this and I feel like a cannibal Holocaust had similar kinds of things about it right the movies where it's like but the whole thing with like cannibal Holocaust

which is like in my opinion unwatchable I don't fucking know you know like I know people stand up for it or stuff it's like that movie it's all lore, right? It's all, you know, 90% of the people who talk about it back in the day had not even seen it. It's just the movie you know was so disturbing that people were like, it's real and it's banned. It's illegal to watch this movie. I don't know what your experience with Cannibal Holocaust was, but when I was a kid in the 90s, people hadn't actually seen Cannibal Holocaust because I didn't know old Gen Xers who passed around videotapes. I just knew other teenagers who would be like, yeah, that's the movie. that's illegal because it's real or at least people thought it was and you would see like one picture of it and freak out. In college we uh I wrote for a humor magazine and we had this thing on

Sundays called sexy violence Sundays and so we would find like the most fucked up movie and watch them so it was like videodrome a Serbian film 120 days of Sodom like all the classics right we never did Cannibal Holocaust because like I just didn't want to watch like animal cruelty on camera It is funny how, right, the animal cruelty of it is what pinks are people, right? More than like, oh, you know, all this horrible fake torture. Yeah, whatever. That's fine. I can watch hostile and stuff.

Like, you know, it's, it was just too much for me to kind of cross that boundary. But we did watch a lot of movies similar to this, which were like, you know, the ones where you get the viral story of like the snuff film that got caught at the border and the director goes to jail and like all that stuff. Should we? But I mean, have you ever seen the last broadcast? I've never seen the last broadcast. Is that the one I did see? Let's see. It's the one that's about the Jersey Devil

and it sort of has a pseudo-documentary approach that's similar to Blair Witch and it came out before it. And at the time, there was a little bit of like, oh, you know, they ripped this off. And then people actually would watch the film and be like, no, they didn't rip it off. Like it's not nearly as kind of like whole.

you know, the sort of the last brought, the sort of storytelling approach is not quite as good. But I've never seen it and I've often wondered if I should ever check it out. I have never seen it now. I did,

the closest I've seen something to like Blair Witch was one of those viral like fake snuff films where like it's like a bunch of people put on pig masks and like torture someone in a basement and then they like break half with you to go to Denny's and they're like a bunch of juggalo that are like torturing someone in a basement.

I don't remember what the movie's called. Maybe someone listening. does but it wasn't good i didn't enjoy it there's also there's that movie uh thesis the the spanish movie which is one of the more disturbing movies i've ever seen that's about like a snuff film like you know there's that genre of 90s horror that's like movies about snuff film right right like oh i heard you can find snuff films if you look like obviously eight millimeter being the sort of hollywoodized version of that which had come out a couple years before right what What was that?

1999? It might be the same year. Same year. It's the same year. Yeah. Because like I feel like by the end of the 90s, we had become obsessed with like analog horror wasn't a term yet, but like everyone was kind of creeped out by by recordings of stuff.

No, 100%. Like the creepy lore of I found a weird canister film in a box in a basement in a weird place, you know, and like what is this? You know, that's cool. It's still cool. It is still cool. Sinister, the Blumhouse. movie is like a very jazzed up version of that premise, right?

Sinister is, like I said, I love horror movies. And Sinister has so many jump scares that I was actually physically exhausted by the end of it. Like I was, I literally at the screen was like, fuck you. Enough of this. I would agree with that. I think Sinister, like, which is a Scott Derrickson film and he's a filmmaker I am like wildly in and out on.

Yeah. I don't know if it's his fault or if it was just kind of like the peak of that Blumhouse moment where somebody, at Jason Blumby, at Derrickson is like, we just need to actually rattle everyone every five minutes. We can't just rely on atmosphere.

And it's like, the atmosphere sinister is good. The cast is good. If they just chilled out a little bit on the cheap jumps, that would maybe be a great movie. And instead it's kind of stupid. But it's got some stuff.

It's got some stuff. So one of the interesting things about Blair Witch, in terms of like the larger analog horror trend, is that it was one of the first movies to like really lean into using the internet.

So like obviously the before, before, obviously what we mentioned before about it using like the IFC website was like kind of novel at the time, but it also had its own website. Are you familiar with the Blair Witch website? Did you ever see it? That's what I'm here for. That's what I'm here to discuss. Yeah. Let's kick it off with a reading from a Heather's diary that was on the website, shall we? Grant, you know what? I don't like when you overproduce our episodes, but I'm going to let you do it again because it's spooky season. Let's get creepy with this, okay? Like, set the scene. Give me a little backing track. Early entry. To the woods at the end of the week. Three days of odds and ends. Mystical

three. P.S. Still burping the chimichanga, I ate at Chi-Chi's. Okay. 10-17. Their trust is essential. Mutual surrender, like the devout. Boy bonding. I am definitely out of that. Must stop worrying about being the bitchy boss lady. They need to know that I am in charge and that I have the ability to be so. Note to self. That means no waffling. Once in the woods. 1022. Filthy. Stinky. Exhausted. Like me working from home, right?

I have no energy to write at night like I thought I would. Mike started a fight with me today about not knowing where the cemetery was. I knew where it was. Where it is? We are next to it now. I'm thirsty, parched, actually. My shoulders and neck are unspeakably sore, but I think we have good footage. I'm putting a lot of trust in Josh.

Sometimes they're so easily confused. After things are going badly. The scarecrows, voodoo dolls, whatever they were today, were disturbing. I got them all on both 16 and video plus. I cut one down. Probably shouldn't have. The guy's freaked out a bit when I did it, but I want to be able to look at it objectively when we get out of here.

We will laugh about this someday. right after we all have a bath, a beer, a big meal, and well, let's face it at this point, a little nooky wouldn't be bad either. Okay. Good night. Please God or whatever. Get us out of here. Pretty good, actually.

I, now, it's gone now, right? I mean, I know you can, like, you can find it with relative ease on the Internet archive, the wayback machine, whatever, right? but like it for so long was just up. Do you remember? Do you know the date it was taken down as like maybe like 2020 or something? It was relatively recently. And I have to wonder if it was tied to like the looming 25 year anniversary, which is kind of stupid. Like why wouldn't you keep it up for that?

But it is no longer with us, unfortunately. I saw the Blair Witch Project in 1999 and I probably saw it like another time on home video shortly thereafter. and, you know, whatever. I'd seen it like two or three times in my life. And then I remember in like 2008 or 2009 being like, huh, the website. I feel like I looked at the website once. And the website is so famous to it, the lore of its marketing and all that. I wonder if it's still there.

And then I found it. And it was one of the most reliable things I would do to go spook myself just for fun is go look at the Blair Witch website, which I did so many times. That's awesome. It was so simple. right? It was so effective. It was basically just like the mythology. So they would like lay out for you like all the stuff we just said about like Rustin Par and Coffin Rock and all that shit with some grainy little pictures. It was so simple. It was so easy to navigate because it had to be right for like a dial up era. And then it was like here are the filmmakers and here. And it just had these creepy fake pictures. They're so cool of like their car all fucked up that was found later. Right. Like. their tapes and their canisters all covered in dirt. So they had shot scenes that weren't in the woods,

and they took some of those clips and put them on the website. For instance, here's Heather's mom being interviewed. Here, let's listen. Thanks for letting us come into your home today, Angie. In the past, you voiced some of your concerns publicly about Sheriff Craven's handling of the case of your daughter and the other two missing filmmakers. Would you like to elaborate a little bit on this?

Well, to anybody who is watching, watching this, I hope you're never in my situation and you never have to depend on Sheriff Cravens to help you out. They've even insinuated that these tapes and videos that are my daughter and her friends are a hoax, that they made this stuff up. You don't see this shit in the movie, right? So it's just like brilliant, like brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant viral marketing. And I would rattle myself about it to this day. So what's crazy is that actually started very organically. And like in a very like very online way, it was the website was created because IFC didn't want to deal with the comments on the split screen website anymore. It was like getting too much.

And we found, so our researcher Adam found a couple old posts on the initial Blair Witch comment section on the IFC site. So I'm going to read a couple to you here. So here's one. Is there any new info on what happened to the three filmmakers? Or is this just going to remain one of those unsolved mysteries? Actually, the whole story would make a brilliant film. Attention all independent filmmakers. It makes me angry that I'm being sucked into something that alternately terrifies me, yet threatens my intelligence.

I just got to see some of the missing footage for the first time, and some of it absolutely took my breath away. If this whole thing is a fake, bravo to the filmmakers and shame on me for being such an idiot. Hell yeah. I mean, they must have been so happy. Here's another one. Open your eyes. Blair, which is a hoax. to post this since this prank promotional scheme has already garnered way too much attention,

but I'm so dismayed that so many people are buying into it that I feel compelled to point out a few things. And then they basically just like say that a bunch of it doesn't look real, including like news clips inside the footage and stuff, right? I mean, obviously if you tried this today, it would be pretty easy to be like, I think if a bunch of filmmakers like died in the woods and then their car was mysteriously found, like that would have been in the news, right? you know, like, so it would get dispelled immediately. And it's not like the internet didn't exist back then, but it was hard to, you couldn't

just like Google and like plumb around for local news. It was impossible to know, right? I'm going to say impossible. I'm going to use the word impossible. I would say it was impossible. I would also, though, argue with you and say that this thing still, this type of thing does happen, I think. Like I'm on several subreddits for unexplained mysteries.

And like I do think like in the TikTok age, we've kind of come around to a new problem, which is that, like, you can go look to see if, you know, three filmmakers disappear and you can see if the news covered it. But a lot of people, like, don't read. So they're just like, wait, I didn't see a video about this. So it must be, it must be real. And I think you could probably trick Gen Z. Right. It's weirdly easier to trick people and harder. Right. Like, even if you just try to trick people and lots of people just immediately are like, no, this is fake. I did three clicks and I figured that out. There would still be 50% of people who are like, I don't know, man. Like, you see, that picture of a dirty film canister, it looks real to me.

Exactly, exactly. And I do think that like maybe if it wasn't totally planned, the filmmakers were tapping into this thing online in the 90s that was very new, which like I don't know, do you think it's fair to say like the X-Files kind of invented like the way like TV fandoms were talking online? Do you feel like that's? Yes, without a doubt, right?

Is there any, is there even, no, it's X-Files. X-Files. X-Files is the original I am going. on Usenet or alt TV or whatever the hell it was, you know, like those things, like to discuss theories with my friends. Obviously, like, Star Trek, Star Wars, but like X-Files to me. Like, like, yeah, Star Trek was like, communities found each other over their love of Star Trek, but they didn't get together to discuss theories.

They just got together because they loved Star Trek. X-Files is people coming together being like, guys, I think I know what's going on. or I have laid out every piece of, you know, tangential evidence they've given us. You know, it's the most prototype version of that. And I feel like like the Blair Witch, like the X-Files was in conversation with those fans. Like the lone Goodman characters are essentially just like message board users of like watching the X-Files in its own show. And so I feel like the fact that like the Blair Witch is like creating, you know, this internet lore that people can pour over and fight about. Like that was very new.

that had really almost never been done before, I would argue. Right. And they thought that, you know, it would be fine. It would just like help the movie do really well. And it turns out what they were actually doing was releasing the curse of viral marketing on the world forever. And we're going to discuss that right after the break. Do you know about the Blair Witch Safe Word? Have you heard about this?

No. Okay. So they basically had to do. So they basically had no plan other than like scraps of paper they were feeding them and a general idea of like some lore that they were going to reference. So there were two safe words. One for the crew was bulldozer and one for the cast was taco. I think the taco thing rings a bell. So does that mean like they just had to scream taco at the top of their lungs if they were feeling like too freaked out?

Yeah, which I think sounds fine. That's nice. One clever thing they did do was give almost all of the internal mythology. to Heather exclusively. Oh, that makes sense that she's kind of the creative driving force and the other two are like,

yeah, I don't know, man, I'm just, I'm just chilling. Because that is their vibe in the, especially the first act of the movie. Right. Yeah, we can work her camera,

like whatever, you know, this is fun. They're just like two guys that would be like working at a vape store right now, you know, and they're just like,

we're going to help for the weekend, sure. And they also like borrow the equipment, which becomes like a fun detail later. Like they have to like

return it on time. Like, it's all very naturalistic, I think, in a good way. How would you sort of, like, sum up the, like, the opening interview vibe? Like, I don't know about you, but I oftentimes got confused about what was real, what was in, like, the first, like, half hour of the movie. Wait, by real, what do you mean? I guess, obvious question. Okay, like, the thing that trip me up, is our witch is real. No, the thing that really bothered me was like, it's when they start telling the history of the town.

Yeah. And like, I don't know enough about Maryland to know like what that was. So I was just like, yeah, like that could be true. Like sure. Like this could be like, like I said, I grew up near Salem. Like we got spooky shit. Like it could be real. I don't know.

And then I also like still couldn't remember to this day. Like was the Blair Witch like an old urban legend that already existed? It was like a new piece of content for this moment. and it was new, but like, it is hard to keep track, I would say. I agree. And I feel like, here's my thing about Blair Witch as cinema. I think it's brilliant as cinema. I think it's, I do think it's worst sort of, whatever, quality, sort of filmmaking issue is the exposition dumps.

I hate to talk like an internet nerd about the Blair's project. Like, because it's the only time you feel the movie slipping out of the whole found footage brilliance a little bit of just like, oh wow, they just like the first, it feels like, oh, the first guy they found is like, oh, yeah, I remember Rustin Par. Let me tell you what happened. You know, like, it's so hard to avoid with this talking head stuff, the feeling of it being a little scripted because all of the interactions between the filmmakers between Heather Josh and Michael

do feel completely improvised, right? There must have been no script for that stuff at all. No, there was not. A bunch of idiots talking to. Idiots, I say, in a nice way. And they weren't actors. In fact, so here, I'm going to show you a clip. You probably remember this from the movie,

but there's the really good scene where the woman is talking and the kid puts their hand over her mouth. The creepiest story about her that I ever heard was the two men were out hunting. And they were camped near the cabin or something that she's supposed to haunt. And they disappeared off the face of the earth. Really? Okay, it's all right, Ingrid.

I'm just telling a scary story, but it's not true. It's not true. And it's so good, right? It's such a good... has to be faked. I mean, sorry, not fake,

like that has to be just like a genuine little detail they caught that's so cool of the kid going, no, like, it's just creepy and like, it's awesome.

It is awesome. And in fact, years later, check this out. So I'm going to show you a clip here. It's timestamp to where you want to be. So if you click this link right here,

okay. That is the woman and her daughter who's now all grown up. up wearing a corn hoodie. Wait, I'm clicking. I'm clicking. Yeah, we came up on the train, and we were in there, and nobody would talk to them, and nobody would help them. So I'm a teacher, and I felt bad for them. So the teacher and me,

you know, I went to her, and I said, I'll help you. I'll be on camera. I'll help you. She goes, really, really? You'll let us film you? I said, yeah, sure. She said to me, what do you know about the Blair Witch? You've heard of the Blair Witch? And I said, Nothing. It's not... It's nothing. She looked all... She went like this. It looked so crestfallen.

And I thought I felt too bad for her. I said, you know what? Don't worry about it. Just ask your questions. I'll make something up. She goes, really? I said, yeah, I'll make it. And I just literally made up everything on the spot. I mean, it... Kidding me.

Thinking I was helping college kids with their project. What you're actually witnessing in her is a panic attack. Ingrid had some serious anxiety when she was a child. like neurochemical she was trying to get you to shut up she was really trying to get me she was she grabbed your face yeah stop no which is perfect and not want me to it worked good job so i thought and then i thought okay oh as she's doing this i'm thinking oh god she's ruining the film for these kids what can i do what can i do so i tried to work it in so that it would work and that's when i said i'm just telling a scary story it's not true women like it's true uh wow and she looks that you know

what i guess the movie's not that old She looks the same, but damn, her daughter's cool. She doesn't give a shit. She's like, yeah, whatever. I guess I was just for, to be clear, this was, this interview is from 2021. So this is a teenage girl wearing a corn. In 2021, right, exactly. It would make sense if they had just stayed frozen in time forever for her to have a corn hoodie.

Her having a corn hoodie now is kind of a cool choice. Yeah, it's cool. I mean, it's also like Maryland. Like that makes sense to me. That's true. So if a Gen Z kid finds corn, I'm like, great. They have fun with that. We all did.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. So like after they leave the town is when, you know, the movie actually starts in proper. Yes. I would say it's about it. The movie's 80 minutes long and I would say the first 20 are the ramp up. And it's, I think that the Bible lady talking, she's kind of, you know, this sort of old woman who's recounting seeing the Blair Witch and she's holding a Bible.

Like that she's kind of sort of touched enough. Like she feels unsettling in a way. Yes. Everyone else, it's a little more, you know, you got somebody to put on a flannel shirt, a local townsperson, you know, and be like, oh, yeah, well, cough and rock, you know, it's fine. I like the two fishermen. I think they're fun. Like, and, and I think, you know, I think I mentioned this already, but like the fact that

there is all this exhibition being dumped, but they're not at any point telling you what is going to be important, nor are they even signaling it by like putting a real actor in. There's no moment. Right. Exactly. If they were like, but don't you knock over any rocks up there. Right. The movie would truly suck.

Like it would, that would be so devastating to the film if at any point they were like, and they say she would bind twigs together in a strange symbol. Like the fact that they're basically just like, I don't know, man. We don't talk about it much. But this town definitely has weird vibes and spooky stories associated with it. Do with it what you will. Now, when they're basically, Enter the Woods, though, is when the camera starts to move a lot. Did you get nauseous watching this?

So, no. I mean, I would say no. Now, I was trying to remember, I feel like it hit a lot harder in the theater. Like, you know, it's because the image is so large. And maybe because I was less used to it. Am I more used to this now just because I watch TikToks? And people are always swinging the image. their dang phones around? Like, is that what it is? I don't know. I was kind of surprised by the lack of, like, I, you know, obviously I knew that there was no digital video in the 90s, but I was shocked by how little fidelity there was, which I think meant the motion was easier to deal with. Like, my eyes were just like, yeah, this is just shapes and images. Like, I can deal with this, which maybe I'm trained. I was really trying to clock how much it was going to bother me. It didn't bother me at all on rewatch. It felt very natural. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it felt.

like time it kind of caught up to it in an interesting way. Yeah. So here's an interesting kind of thing about the canisters, by the way, because you mentioned these. And this is when they start using this stuff when they get into the woods. So Heather Donah, who said, each of the film canisters would have our initials on them. And they would include their instructions for each scene. Oftentimes, those instructions were conflicting.

Everything you hear about this movie sounds like someone describing a movie that famously was, you know, that was never made. that collapsed, right? It's like they're trying everything. It's like they're trying the worst kind of weird improv slash basically like an extended game of mafia slash a Stanford prison experiment, right?

And that's why I've always wondered because again, it was a week of filming, right? Like, do they exaggerate this a little bit because the movie became such a hit? Like to the extent to which they were fucking with everyone's brains and setting them against each other and all that? I don't know.

You know who could remake this? this movie? You know who could do a really good remake of this movie? Tell me. Mr. Beast, he would kill it. That's what he does. He puts people in the woods and tortures them, right? I don't know much about Mr. Beast. I just like all, I just see like

images of his grinning face and then like some horrifying, you know, uh, he's like jigsaw. He's just, yeah, jigsaw. God bless him. He's a more, he's a slightly more brand safe jigsaw. So this was when the actors themselves came up with the taco safe word because they realized that

they were being fucked with. Uh-huh. So they were like, yeah, they would, they would be, like, basically whisper to each other, like, taco. And then they would kind of, like, come together to figure out what was going on. That's funny. At the midway part of the movie, um, is when we get the map scene, which we kind of already referenced, but here, here it is just so you have it. Um, the map scene to me is the moment where the movie, I think, if it was not made in

such a specific way, would break. Because it's like the one piece of thing that feels like, a plot point when they're in the woods. Because Mike essentially kicked it into the creek in a rage because they've been walking in the woods for, you know, days. Yeah. And if Mike wasn't just such a guy, I would be like, this breaks the movie. But he's just, he's that kind of guy.

Like, he's just, he's also the same guy that finds cigarettes at the end and is like excited about the cigarette. So like it just feels like, you know, everyone knows of Mike. I think the loud thing that film is doing in its first half hour is setting up the lore of the Blair Witch that the woods will be spooky for a good reason. The quiet thing it is doing is what you say, setting up the internal dynamics of Heather is quite driven and to the point of being annoying, to the point of being like, come on guys, we're going to crush it tomorrow and you're kind of like, relax.

But the other guys are quietly more annoying in that they are barely like paying attention. They're kind of like, there's that little scene where it, I think it's Josh, is like, yeah, I think I fucked up that last thing we shot because I like don't know meters. And they have like a two minute conversation about if the lens has feet and beaters on it or not. That, you know, when you're a 13 year old watching this movie at a slumber party, you're like, boo, this movie's boring. Right? You know, and then, but just imagine watching it at Sundance. I wish I could just like zap myself to Sundance and watch it with that like first crowd where you're kind of like, this is so mundane.

Dane to be, like, how could this not be real, right? Like, that's what I was struck by as an adult watching it. Where I was like, I was like, how did you do this? And in fact, so we have a few more details about how they did this. So one, they were using a GPS unit that was pre-programmed every day to lead them in different directions. What was this unit? Like, what was this? I've read that before that they had a GPS unit.

It was like, was this is like a very janky 90s? I think so. Like a satellite, like a set, like a sat map kind of thing. Yeah. And at night, they would not tell them how they were going to spook them. So they would like shake the tent and then they would play audio clips of little kids running around. And they just like psychologically tortured them for several days in a row. But obviously it's like these people, these actors know we are filming a horror movie. They're going to do this to us. We need to get us freaking out on tape. But yes, then there's also the side of them like they're tired. They're in the woods. Shit is being yelled at them. them from a mysterious, like, you know, right? Like, it's weird times. Yeah. And in fact, Josh said that, like, they weren't scared by any of the night stuff. They were actually just really annoyed.

Right. Which I do think has, like, a, like, unexpected positive benefit. Because by the time they're fighting with each other, like, I became uncomfortable watching it. Because it doesn't really feel like they're having fun anymore. Right. Which adds to it, I would argue. I, again, agree. I, however, am terrified.

It is. So I When can we talk about do you go camping? Because I hate camping anyway. I've done it but I don't really You know, I haven't done it in years But like I don't ever want to go camping again And every time I watch Blair Witch

I'm like I would be such a baby now At the least like twig snappy sound right Like I would just immediately go to pieces at night in the woods I don't like camping in a tent Like I have to go do it Even like at a music festival later this month and I don't really want to do that because like I don't enjoy sleeping outside. I enjoy the woods to a point but I don't want to like sleep on the ground.

Like I don't want to do that. Definitely don't like sleeping on the ground. Love walls, love plumbing, things like that. Walls are goaded. That's what I'm always saying. Walls so good. Have you ever been to that shit? Mr. Walls are great from like Gilgamesh or whatever.

That guy rock. So as you said, they filmed for eight days. and um gilligate wait who are you doing no no ignore me carry on they filmed for eight days are you talking about gilgamesh the first epic i said gilgamesh which is a character in a babylonian story yeah the first epic because we can pivot we can pivot Josh is removed from the gang

so wait okay so wait how do you do we know how that worked like they just sort of came in in the daytime and they're like all right Josh come with us and then they just took him to denny's and they were like you're all done Like what happened? So Mr. Beast came down in the helicopter. It was like, you win $10,000 at a daddy's meal. So someone who's like eating someone else's human liver, right? Yeah, exactly.

So Josh says in the oral history, that day my note said, when everybody goes to bed tonight, stay awake. And once you're sure they're asleep, leave the tent. If anybody wakes up, tell them you're going to take a piss. That's all I knew. I just waited until I fell asleep, got up, and walked out. And then when the man... members of the crew found him with flashlights.

They said, you're dead, dude. And then they took him to Denny's. This, they weren't, they can't have been very deep in the woods, right? I don't think so. Just logistically, it would have been a huge pain in the ass to, like, go to them every night if they were. So they must have really been just a little bit in there to be able to, like, get him out that fast. Okay. All right.

Anyway, fascinating. Okay. Yeah. Did he, if I'm him, I'm like, can I hang out with you guys now? Can I see what you've been doing to us? Like, can I be on this side of things? I think what's crazy to imagine is like they're not watching them. They're like checking in with them every night.

But there's no like monitors. It's not like. They're not seeing dailies, I guess. Are they? I don't know. I don't think so. I know that they would like drop, you know, the tapes to them. But I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know when. So the only other thing that really seems to have gone wrong is there's this one scene at night where the crew had this guy dressed up in all white. I guess to be the witch or like a ghost or something. Anyways, he's doing spooky stuff around the tent. And this is the scene where Heather screamed. She's like, what the fuck is that? But it's not on camera.

So what happened is the person who was dressed in all white being spooky fell in the water and had to be rescued. That's funny. So this is like, I literally pointed at the screen yesterday when I was watching this being like, oh, look, it's the scene. Which is when Heather does the final monologue that famously gets parodied in scary movies. movie, one of the greatest movies of all time. Yes. So this is Heather's monologue, the, uh, to the camera that one of the few times that they, they fully do a selfie, which I think is really interesting, actually.

Right. Right. Right. Right. I just want to put up in my mom. I was very naive. Oh, sorry. This is kind of where the reality the movie blends a bit because people think that they're

being tormented in the woods and that's why they're sobbing and screaming, but Heather has always maintained that, no, like, they're acting. She got a note in the canister that day that says you realize now you're going to die. So you got to say what you need to say to make amends. And here's what Heather has to say reflecting back on that scene. We were actually in a car that day. We drove for an hour or so to a new location. So I got to actually goose myself up a little bit. I was so proud of that moment because it's everything you're not supposed to do as a film actress. The snot was flowing and it was unflattering and it was just true and ugly and messy and sloppy. And I don't think people get to see. that very often. A real good, ugly cry on screen. Well, TikTok hadn't been invented yet, so yeah, she's right. I mean, she's absolutely right. And it is so pivotal to the movie, obviously. I mean, it's why they put it on the poster and everything. But it is so funny to think about the most iconic image from the film, maybe barring the twig stick stuff. Yeah. It's something she's just like pointing the camera at herself. Yeah. Like that it's, that's what I just keep wondering about in

terms of how this film was quote unquote directed where it's like they're not there right like they're not really which i guess it makes sense in a way that these guys never no offense amounted to much like they never made another movie that broke through in any way neither of them i know they broke up like but uh i wonder how much of the creative brilliance of this movie is them versus these actors out there in the woods kind of just being as real as they can but then i also know of course these directors sifted through a zillion hours of footage and like made this movie. That's not, you know, that's not. That's not.

That's what I was thinking about actually. Where I was thinking like the editing of this movie, if it had been any different would not work. Like I had a real profound appreciation for the editing. I thought like as a, almost as like a form of journalism. Like they were, they kind of nailed it. And I don't think the pacing never really drags. Nope. Like, I don't know.

It's, it's well done. But before we get to how they piece this whole movie together, we have one more big scene to discuss. My favorite scene, the wall scene. And it does kind of prove your point about like this being kind of a series of happy accidents. Yes. Do you know why Mike is staring at the wall at the end? What do you, when you ask me that question, do you mean do I know why in, in within the the universe of the film he's doing that? No, no, in real life. Do you know why he's doing that? No, I do not. I do like, and I, right, what is the truth? Because they hadn't figured out that that would be part of the lore yet. So why Is he doing it?

What was the random choice there? His instructions from the directions were to hide. So Heather was never supposed to see him there. But they caught him on camera. They kept in the movie. And it's one, I mean, I think it's one of the creepiest things I've ever seen. Okay. And they caught him on camera, like, but it looks, I mean, horrific.

And so they kept it in the movie. It does. It's such a cool image. Right. And so, and then right. And obviously, they didn't have anything in terms of, you know, the Rustin Par would make people look at the wall. They go back.

Right? Yeah. They went back and hired an actor. And the actor who does the Rustin Par monologue stuff, that was added to make that end scene make sense. Because they were like, the image is creepy. We should keep it. And I think I heard that they tested the film without that.

And audiences didn't even hate it, but we're kind of like, why was he looking at the wall? Like they did ask the question. Yes. Yeah. That's so fun. Yeah, and like That scene would not work earlier in the film either. The magical realism of the movie,

ramps and ramps and ramps in such a natural way that by the end when there's like a guy having a nervous breakdown in the corner of this spooky house, like it still works. Like it still works 25 years later when I watched it. I was like, yeah, I believe this, sure. Can I go to that house? Does it exist?

Ooh, I don't know. Does it exist? The Griggs house. So, you know, it is this old, house out in the sort of the woods of Maryland, not that deep into the woods, but it's in there. And they used it. And then the,

ah, that damn state of Maryland demolished it. It was demolished. Yeah, that's really sad. They said they were going to demolish it. And fans started being like, no, like save the Griggs house. And they started like taking donations or something. And Maryland was like, maybe. And then they were like, demolish this fucking place.

Like, and they did. Wow. Rude. Okay. So after they wrapped, um, Eduardo Sanchez said, according to the oral history,

said, we're nobody's. We have no track record, but we're doing something right now that Spielberg could probably never do. We don't have anything, but we really are doing something here that arguably one of the greatest filmmakers that ever lived will probably never experience.

It was the only thing we had. We were broke. We had no money, but we're like, at least we're doing something unique. A bit much, but like, fair. Yeah. Fair. I do think Ready Player 1 would have worked better

as a found footage like horror movie I think it would have looked better I stick up for Ready Player 1 just the movie not the book I have no interest in that book yeah no but do you think that's do you think of that's like a fair way to kind of think about the production of this like they did do

something new it did work and the only thing that's weird is that I feel like it actually hasn't been done that many times since like we've made plenty of found footage movies since but not like this right like no one's ever really tried I guess because it's a weird magic experiment to try to recreate I don't know

I'm surprised it also hasn't spread to like newer mediums like video games like I'm surprised no one has done like the haunt well actually do you know about doki doki dokey literature club I do not dokey okay so yeah so dokey dokey literature club is a very successful video game that does a version of this idea where it's like an anime

dating simulator But then it starts to corrupt itself and you actually have to go into the file directory to delete files. And it starts to infect your computer like a virus as it gets like creepier and creepier. So like that would be kind of an example of how you could do this, I think, beyond film. But it is, I think you're right. It is strange. No one's ever tried to do something like this this way again. Have you ever played the Blair Witch video games?

I never have and they always seemed cool but not that good. Well, this is the problem with the lore of the movie, which is that it doesn't really. really matter in the original because it's throwing a bunch of stuff at you. So when they try to make sequels and prequels, like, I don't really care. Like, I don't, I couldn't tell you what the Blair Witch is and it doesn't really matter. They made these, like, PCC ROM games in the 90s. And I remember that's mostly like you walking around in the woods in various times. Like, one is called Rustin Par, one is called Coffin Rock or whatever.

You know, it's kind of, ooh, you know, like, but I remember their views mostly being like, These are kind of short. Like, they're not, like, maybe make this one game, not three. Anyway, never played him. I'll play him one day. Yeah, I mean, I honestly think the movie works better if it's not supernatural. Like, if it's just townspeople fucking with these people till they go insane and, like, accidentally kill themselves in the woods.

That's interesting. I think there's a version you could watch where, like, that is what's happening. And that's sort of what Blair Witch 2 is. Blair Witch 2 is. Oh, yeah? The insane sequel directed by a documentary and Joe Berlinger is about. is about people who see Blair Witch one and are like, whoa, and go to the woods

to try and figure out what happened and then something crazy happens to them that may or may not be related, might just be them all losing their minds. Is it good? No. It's not good, right? No.

The issue with the movie is that it's not good. When I describe it, people are like, that sounds brilliant. And I'm like, yeah, that's so clever. That's what art is and entertainment thought. And that's what Joe Berlinger thought. Everyone was like, this is such a cool idea.

And then he made this movie that apparently was quite odd and interesting and some producer or someone just freaked out and was like, what the hell? Just can we put some like blood in this? Like what's going on? And they sort of recut and ruin the movie. Anyway.

Oh, wow. Yeah, turning the original Blair Witch into like a ring style thing is actually, that's pretty good. That's what they should have done. That's what they should have done. And then of course there's the out of Wingard movie that's a huge bummer.

That's like a legacy sequel. That's like really. just a bummer. What they got to do is wait 40 years, bring Heather back as like the Jamie Lear Curtis rule and then they can like shoot the Blair Witch with a shotgun and like

you know, have her fight the predator and you know, that's what they need. They should do. Blair Witch should just be in Super Smash Brothers. That's right. I think the Blair Witch should fight the predator which would be actually really sick. Do you want to know what they did after they wrap filming on this movie?

Yes, I do. Would they go back to Denny's? What'd they do? They went back to Denny's, baby. All right. All yeah. Grand slams for everybody. Grand slams.

And we're going to talk about what. Isn't everyone paid like 500 bucks? Like, do you think they were like, this is meaningful in terms of the proportion of our paycheck? Like, is it getting a grand slam? We're going to talk about all that messiness right after this ad, hopefully from Denny's. All right. So they're in the woods for eight days. They had about 20 hours of tape.

And in the editing is when they made a bunch of like massive decisions. So they were planning on doing only 50% found footage. That's when they pivoted to 100%. They added the wall facing stuff. And then they fought almost nonstop about the final cut of the film day and night until it was released. Like the two directors fought with each other? Okay. The two directors.

Myrick and Sanchez. Exactly. Heather was very upset with it because it looked bad. And so she like couldn't put it in her film reel. Like it looked unprofessional. She was like truly this this digital shit looks so terrible. It'll like it'll clash with the rest of my reel. Yes.

Right. Okay. She said that it looked like I went out last weekend and shot it with my friends. Well. Michael said he saw one version that really dragged and that the final version had much better pacing. Interesting. So this is where the marketing campaign starts. one of the producers, Kevin J. Fox, went into the editing room and told them to make copies to show to friends.

And it starts getting passed around. This is now what we would call it going viral. And that's how one of the versions of the movie ended up on a very early, like, piracy website. Oh. I did, I guess, know that. And it's not the finished version of the movie? No, it's an unfinished version, which probably helped, honestly. Right.

Because, like, it kind of adds to this, like, mythos, right? It then becomes very popular as a talking point on, on radio stations. Do you remember those? They're kind of like TikTok, but, like, in your car? Yes, I do remember this. And one, like, after one bump of radio buzz, the Blair Witch website went from 10,000 visits to 60,000 visits. Ooh. That's a huge one.

Was there any one cause of this? it was like a wave of like you got to hear about this thing you know like in the lead up to the movie this is pre-soundance but you uh you mentioned like the screening of sundance do you know what they did as a prank for that screening have you heard about this no tell me they they they listed them all as missing presumed dead on i mdb before it was screened at sundance insane this would never be allowed they uh like right you could never do this now Yeah, and in fact, they couldn't really do it because they, this is nuts. So they put up flyers saying that they were missing, which turned out to be a really bad idea, and they got in trouble for it because a TV executive had been kidnapped at the time. It ended up that he was fine, but they had to take the flyers down because it, you know, it was in poor taste. So I've seen the flyer. I've seen it, I think it's on their website on Wikipedia or whatever, right, like one of the flyers.

the picture of Josh is so bad because his cap is covering like most of his face. Here, I'm going to send you one. It's almost unrealistic. I'm like, come on, guys. We're trying to convince people this is a real flyer here. I'm sending it to you. There you go. But then you can find other ones that are better.

I don't know. It's so cool that they did this. It looks so real. It's so mundane. Yes, I think that's it. every single thing about the marketing, about the filming, it just feels like why would anyone make this because it's kind of boring? But because it's kind of boring, it's exciting. It's like such a weird emotional clash.

Here's a question for you as someone sort of more versed in, let's say, the game of box offices. So Blair Witch was made for $35,000 and it's just distribution rights were sold for $1.1 million to artisan. How big of a deal is that in 1999? Huge. I mean, so, okay, so the most famous, when is, um, God, what is that movie called? Ugh, the William H. Macy Steve Zahn movie. Do you know what I'm talking about? Happy Texas, happy Texas. Happy Texas. Yeah, yeah. Happy Texas was at the same Sundance, right? And that was, that is one of the most famous Sundance acquisition bidding wars for a movie that then comes out. And everyone's like, why was anyone worked up about this movie? It's like super.

mediocre like I don't understand you know classic what they call festival fever that was supposedly Miramax claimed they acquired it for 2.5 million some people said it was way more but that was like you know the absolute peak of hype I would say 1.1 million for 1999 Sundance is is a chunk of change that's like a lot of money you can buy a movie for that now at Sundance like and it wouldn't be seen as that crazy wouldn't be you're not buying one of the hits of the festival movie but you're buying like a real movie you could release. So I'm sure everyone who invest in this movie is already happy because they've been made whole essentially.

Like that's it. You did it. Right. And then the movie goes on. You fulfill the purpose of a micro budget indie. You got your money back and then some and then maybe you'll make a little bit more on home video or from like the Angelix Center. That's like that's sort of like the model of a 90s indie movie.

And then the movie makes $248.6 million at the box office. which is like that's a lot for the for the 90s that's big right yeah it's crazy i mean have we had something like that sense i mean there's like stuff like the my big fat greek wedding that's oh yeah that that is a phenomenon unlike any other that's so bizarre to consider in retrocept because the movie is incredibly ordinary but the only thing that's weird about my big fat Greek wedding is that it opened slow and then just chugged away for eight months, right? Blair Witch Project is a little more standard.

They put it out a limited release in a couple dozen theaters. The hype was massive. They did that for two weeks. And then they put it on a thousand screens and it opened to $30 million, which is crazy. That's like a $26,000 per screen average. I realize not everyone listening to this is a box office nerd, but that is really hard to do with a fairly wide release. So then they expanded it to true.

wide release like 2,500 screens. And then it behaved like a normal hit movie. Like it's not like you know, like it made tons of money, but like it operated in a more traditional way. Like, you know, it made money. It opened big and then the numbers go down and

you end up with a very, very tidy amount of money. It's just that it cost a million bucks versus you know, 40 million. Yeah. One stat on IMDB says for every dollar they spent, they made close to $11,000. I, that fucking owed. So are they rich? This is my question.

They are not. They are not. Who the fuck is rich? Because art and entertainment doesn't exist anymore. I've never heard from the directors again. Like, who gets this money? I am also curious about this because the cast has been like very vocal, like this year, about how they got nothing.

Yeah. One interesting detail before he kind of moved past this, which is that it is, it is understood that about 50% of early audiences believe that they were seeing a real document. Yes, totally. Artists and producers really doubled down. They even ran a documentary on sci-fi, and here's a clip from the trailer. The Blair Witch Project. The most intense theatrical experience of the summer has spawned the most frightening investigation on television.

I don't feel too comfortable seeing the last few days of my brother's life on video. Sci-fi presents the uncensored investigation, curse of the Blair Witch. I remember that. Yeah. That was, yeah, that was right. It was effective. It was spooky. You know, you guys know that M. Night Chalemlan tried to do that, right?

With what? He made a movie called The Buried Secret. I mean, he didn't make it, I guess, but he commissioned it. The Buried Secret of Enmite Chamon, I think before the village came out. Oh, okay. That was basically like a fake mockumentary about how M. Night Shyamalan himself had died as a child by falling in a frozen lake or something briefly and then would

like hear voices and Johnny Depp is in it among other people there's like talking head interviews with people from M. Night Shyamalan's life and also just from Hollywood pretending that he is magic and then they aired it on sci-fi and then sci-fi had to apologize and be like this is fake FYI like we don't want to do that's so good

yep that rules yeah man we should just talk about M-N-N-Sombalin for the next half hour because that guy I got a lot of thoughts in the can about that guy. He's my guy. I love him. He's crazy. The vice president of worldwide marketing for artisan at the time said on the internet, it's easy to establish your own reality. That's what makes it so much fun. And so all of the online marketing was basically being like, this is real, which is great that no one's ever tried this sort of thing again. Like it's great that we don't, you know, there's no adverse consequences socially from doing something like this.

Making a ton of money convincing someone that something is real, you know? Right. I wish I could remember better. when I sort of, when it was widely understood that the whole thing was fake. Like, I just wish I had that timeline more sorted in my head. I feel like a lot of it has passed into myth for me. I'm not sure. I don't know. A friend of mine, actually, he posted this on X like this week where he was like,

25 years ago today, I walked out of a theater with my distraught friend who was truly upset. We watched three kids die in the woods in New Jersey. I didn't know how to explain to him that it was fiction. He's now the biggest MAGA guy I know. And apparently he's like super. into Q&ON and was like celebrating the Trump not dying event with a bottle of Trump wine on Facebook. I was getting all these details yesterday. So. Hey, aye. It is a, it is a straight line, I think. You were asking about like who made money

on this, which is not super clear, but we do know who like got screwed. So Heather said that it basically ruined her career. Her mom was receiving condolence cards being like, sorry for your loss. an executive producer for the for the film Kevin Fox introduced her to somebody and he like could not understand that she wasn't dead because he saw the movie and just assumed that all those people were dead

and she also won a Razzie which is like I mean those things suck anyways but I she doesn't deserve a Razzie for this I mean nobody does but of course not it's a perfect example of why the Razies suck they always have they're worse now even but of that kind of like groupy bully

think of like oh Everyone's turned on this. We should, we should rag on her too. And it's like, you're talking about someone who is basically an unknown person. You know,

like, and you're literally just doing this because it seems fun to bully her, right? Like, that's how it always feels to me with the Razzies. And it's a little easier

when you're making fun of like some fatuous actor who's self-important and full of themselves or, you know, but like, it's like, you leave her alone.

The movie doesn't work without her. Even from her, she's good. I mean, beyond that, it's like, it's, it's,

it's, you're off. But like, she said that she got all kinds of comments about like her her look and her body you know people telling her that she should have stopped and put mascara on uh you know that she wasn't dressed right crazy stuff you ask about the money so the director's got a big payout but they sold the rights to artisan and they also have gone on record saying that they did not like how it was promoted as being they didn't like the kf the k fab aspects of like the promotion i mean i understand that and They can't even be told like, hey, but you're going to make a ton of money out of it. They must make something in residuals. I truly don't know. I would love to know, like, that is like a Hollywood forensic project.

I would love someone to do. Like, the Blair Witch Project made 250 times its budget. Where did the money go? Like, where is it? It is fascinating. In 2000, when they released Blair Witch 2, the three actors sued Artisan. and they reached a $300,000 settlement paid to each of them over several years. The investors earned an estimated $35 million to $40 million from it.

God damn, man, that's the other thing. All right, I want to go back in time and invest in the Blair Witch Project and then go to the Sundance Premier. That sounds great. I would like to as well. I also would like to understand, like, can you make something like this in a way where people don't get screwed over. Is there a way to create a viral sensation like this

and not sort of be exploiting someone in the process? No, I don't think so. All the rules of treating people fairly, which are already sometimes busted, I think kind of go out the window if you're making a micro-budget indie, like there's not a lot of union protection or anything like that.

I don't know enough about this to really speak with expertise, but I don't think, you know, I would always trend towards people get screwed, like is how it tends to be. go. I think so too. I think you can kind of feel it and like when you have a hit like this like in any kind of viral landscape, there is like this feeling of like, ooh, you've done something kind of wrong here and it's working. Like there is that driving force of it, which I think is a lot of the promotion behind the

Blair which falls in that category. Like you're kind of pulling one over on people. Right. Have you heard of Marble Hornets? Of course. I watched every episode of Marvel Hornets. So for the audience who might not know Marvel Hornets. Can you kind of describe broad strokes what Marvel Hornets is? Because I think it's the closest that a modern version of this has come to hitting it. It was a YouTube series that ran for, I want to say, like five years, right? A while. Yeah. It's like 2009, 2000, somewhere around there. That would be a new episode, usually only a couple minutes long, like possibly as short as like 50 seconds. Once in a while, there would be one that was more like five to 10 minutes. And then eventually it got much more intense and very long and all that.

But it's like a sort of a found footagey thing about a guy who is trying to just make a movie with his friends called Marble Hornets, great name. Yeah. And then like something went wrong and his friend disappeared and left a bunch of tapes with him. And he would start uploading these tapes being like, here's another tape where and it's Slender Man. Like there was. It's Slender Man. Yeah.

They're whatever. And then like Ali's. Funderman was fucking with them and you start seeing Thunderman and the tapes and all that shit. What was so clever about it, at least in the beginning, because I kind of fell off of it, but when I first watched it and was really creepy me out,

was that you had to navigate YouTube to different channels to find where they're uploading different pieces of content. So it was sort of like you're the editor of Blair Witch. Like it's putting it on the audience. So I'm like going through and finding these like essentially haunted YouTube channels that are uploading stuff in semi real time and it actually scared the shit out of me. Like it really made me uncomfortable.

Marvel Hornets is scary. I think partly the classic also just you're wired in, right? You're listening to it on your headphones probably. And it would startle me in interesting ways. Marvel Hornets rules. Does Marvel Hornets hold up? In my memory, it kind of went up its own ass at a certain point. No offense to the good boys at Marvel Hornets.

But like there's a moment where like alien, like there's a moment where aliens show up and the episodes are getting longer. and their production budget couldn't like meet the realism. Sure. They needed to hit, you know? Yeah. But the beginnings are creepy because it's like a kid recording himself in his bedroom being haunted by Slender Man. Like it rules. It rips.

So, okay. Do you have any sort of last thoughts about the Blair Witch impact? Like you'd mention Cloverfield. Like has there been anything like this sense? Paranormal activity is probably the closest. Oh, that's a good call. Skinnamarink too, maybe? Yeah, but Skinnamarink was an indie hit.

Like, paranormal activity made $100,000, right? It's a similar success story. Like, hey, these guys made this movie for nothing. It had a really simple hooky premise. It had a really simple visual style of like a static camera filming a bed. And it became a sensation and spawned a franchise and all that stuff. Cool. But the thing about paranormal activity is it had a more traditional marketing campaign.

had this very clever kind of grassroots angle of like, we showed this movie to a bunch of kids in a college town and here's them screaming at it, like, you know, filming the audience. And like, you demand, you should demand this movie too. You know, and then they give it a wide release after a month or so. And it became a big hit. It didn't have the hook of, this is real.

Right. Right. By that point, the found footage premise is accepted and is a cool way to tell a story. But no one's sitting in that theater. being like these people got paranormal activities. I guess you can kind of fool yourself into thinking it if you want to have fun with it. Okay.

Before Blair Witch Project, right, your most famous found footage movies is just a few. It's the Cannibal Holocaust. Man Bites Dog is another one. Oh, yeah. And then like after you would think there would be an immediate boom. And instead the only found footage movies are like true like garbage indie horror crap that nobody has ever heard of like incident at locknest or whatever like shit like it's just like people don't know what that is until paranormal activity which is eight years later that seems to

finally shake hollywood into life and then you get you know that movie wreck and you get cloverfield and you get quarantine which is the remake is sick yeah get district nine right which is like let's do found footage is a sci-fi movie you get uh you know whatever uh remember uh remember Marrows Diary of the Dead. Yeah, you've got Diary of the Dead, which is pretty spooky. It's actually pretty good. Apollo 18, that's fucking that shit on the moon. And then you eventually get VHS, which is basically like, let's just make franchisee short

films of like, what if you found creepy tapes in your house? Like, you know, just like, let's take it all the way. It exhausts people at a certain point. Like, it just becomes like, yeah, you know, I've seen a million of these. Yeah, because they all kind of follow the same pattern. I mean, what is interesting to me is, the long legs promotion that's currently happening

which is kind of this idea of like the movie is so scary like it's gonna scare the shit out you're gonna throw up you're gonna you're gonna cry and shit your pants you're so scared

and I do wonder if that has like a kind of a tendril to the Blair Witch where it's like instead of you're gonna go in there believing this is real you're gonna be so scared it won't even matter

if it's real or right you'll just throw it all over yourself right you're gonna throw up all over yourself like a little like a scared little animal because right you know people kept asking me after I saw long legs if I threw up. Did someone throw up? Was this a story that someone

threw up watching long legs? No. So one, they recorded the heartbeat of the actress seeing Nicholas Cage for the first time. I saw that. That fucking rips. That's good. That's very William Castle. Like, that's fun. Great marketing campaign. It's pretty good. Unfortunately, the movie was absolute dog shit and I'm still mad about it weeks later.

I hate that movie so much. The thing about the throw-up is from, what's the horror movie from the perspective of the slasher? In a violent nature, which was fun. Yeah.

I had a good time with that. Apparently, they recorded the audio of an audience member vomiting during like a very grisly scene in that movie. I know the scene. There's a lot of wet squelching in the audio clip that I listen to. It's really, really,

really gross. You know, it's one of those things where I post the letterbox review calling that scene really gory. And now everyone's in my fucking dimensions going like, wasn't that gory. You know, you can never call a movie scary. No, you can't.

Everyone goes in being like, if this does not suck me into another dimension of fear, it is overrated. And being scared is such a specific experience that relates not just to your own personality, but just like the situation you're in when you're watching a movie. I was so pissed watching Smile. I find them like, all right, I'm going to watch Smile. And I was like, this sucks ass. This isn't scary at all. This is just like, basic.

Nothing will be as scary as when I was eight years old watching Event Horizon for the first time I sleep over. And like that I'll just have to live with for the rest of my life. That's fine. You know, that is, that is what it is, I guess. But I do have to wonder if, like, they're, the emphasis from like studios like neon and A24 of like, this movie's going to fuck you up forever is because they can't recreate the, this is real. So they're like, they've sort of spun it where it's like. like the movie is fake, but it's so scary that it doesn't even matter.

We have used film technology to create horrors unimaginable. Yeah. This is, we went to hell. We literally made hell and you're going to go there for an hour and a half. Congrats. Right. Which, you know, I would watch that actually. So I think, I think that is actually all we've got here.

Play-Witch baby. All right. Let's wrap this up. I want to leave us with this quote. So this is from the producer, this is from Kevin Fox. And he said, were we the harbinger of fake news? I hope not. I don't know what's harmless or harmful anymore.

I've lost track of everything. But that's what you do, right? You slowly erode the trust factor, which is an incredible quote. Because he starts out being like, I don't think we caused like the destruction of reality. But I don't know anymore because I destroyed reality. I just, it's a bummer that people's lives were sort of, you know, low-key ruined by this movie. because I love it so much as a perfect little, like, piece of film history and viewing experience and all that. But I hope someone's happy, I guess, is the way to think of it.

Right. Like, that's why I'm going to ask it about the money. I hope somebody. I mean, it sounds like the producers made the most money out of it, which is a real shit. The producers that kind of exploited the whole thing to make a viral marketing campaign. But, like, I would like to start chopping this movie up into 90-second clips and putting them on TikTok without any context because I think it could actually do very well. I think there's a huge segment of Gen Z that does not know this movie exists. Right, right.

Well, bring it to them into 20-second TikTok clips. I think that could be done, right? Just start posting the videos being like, hey, this is some weird footage I found. What do you guys? I just found this, yeah. Do you guys know about this? Yeah. Thank you for coming on this very spooky episode of Panic World.

I assume everyone knows where they can follow you online, but just in case, Where can people send letterbox-based harassment to you on the internet? I am David L. Sims on X, but I don't use that fucking thing anymore, I guess. I guess I'm a blue sky too, but I am on letterbox. I'm also David L. Sims. And I have a podcast called Blank Check about movies that you can listen to and should listen to. If this is Halloween, we're doing David Lynch right now where we do directors, filmographies.

How far in advance do you guys record episodes? Quite far. Quite far, my friend, unless a guest is hard to get. And I'm a film critic at the Atlantic, and you can read all my stuff there. Well, thank you very much. This has been great. Thank you. Panic World is a Garbage Day production.

You can subscribe to the newsletter at Garbageday. Email. Panic World is written and produced by Grant Irving, hosted by me, Ryan Broderick, and our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. video editing by Kat Rasek and our incredibly derange logo was drawn by Gabby Cash. If you want to give us $5 a month,

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Chill out and touch grass while you still can.