Hard Candy director David Slade

No. Let’s talk about that straight away and address the points that I think you want to talk about. If you’re talking about Ellen Page that’s one thing, if you’re talking about Hayley Stark that’s another. When we made this film two years ago it was done completely independently with independent financing. It was the only way to make this kind of film. It was a seven million dollar budget shot in 18 days and it’s a film about taking responsibility for your actions. Be those actions looking at pornography or being human rather than a misanthropist. From that point of view the idea was to infuse the idea that there’s responsibility in all areas of life that we in the Western world like to eschew because it adds pressure and difficulty to our lives. Yet there is a degree of extremity in which responsibility is required and the more you eschew a responsibility the more chance you end up in those extreme positions. Looking at pornography is a very complicated act. It’s complex because if you want to really think about it, it involves all kinds of emotions, but it also involves the people involved in what you’re watching.

With that in mind it is not really ok to think that a 14 year old girl is hot if you are a 32 year old man. You can think anything you like and not being a prude or advocating personal censorship but to act upon it is a different thing.

Well I wouldn’t call it evil. I would call it a little of a psychological imbalance involved in those actions.

Really? You think so?

It’s interesting you say that because before we got to Ellen Page we saw maybe 300 girls from Los Angeles and various places. Ellen was from Canada, I don’t know whether it’s a cultural difference or whether it was just perchance, but being sexually flirtatious and explicit was really not part of what Ellen brought to this character. It was all on the page. It was there where it needed to be and in rehearsals we found a lot that people from Los Angeles really went with that and that’s what’s wrong. It didn’t really resonate because it pushed you in different directions whereas Ellen found this perfect balance. Yes the sexual flirtation is there because that’s the whole basis from which we begin this film. There was a lot of resistance from certain parties who were part of the financing and that’s the usual process of a director going into a film. People get concerned about the money that’s spent even if it is a small amount. Like, “Well can we cut these lines because they’re a little bit edgy and she’s only 14?” Well for the love of God I was 14. people are sexually flirtatious at 14. I’m not saying that 14 and 15 year old people don’t have sex, nor that they shouldn’t have sex. What I am saying, if you are a 32 year old and you’re going to manipulate somebody then you better damn well take responsibility for doing that.

Well that’s a certain kind of mindset. I got to talk about Brian Nelson who is an incredibly accomplished writer. He really puts complex arguments into really simple words as a result his dialogue is really difficult to edit. I didn’t get that sense reading the script, but I certainly got a sense of having to readjust my values when I’d finished the script. Now, to that end, what people bring into the cinema will determine what they take away and every person will have a different frame of reference. That really is the point. There is no universal reading of this film and everybody’s frame of reference. The way they believe correct behavior or think certain sexual aberrances are ok will be challenged by this film. Some people will get upset because it will be completely opposite of what they want to think is right. When they get to the end of the film they will find they’ve been rooting for somebody that really is completely despicable. Then they have to reevaluate why they were rooting for that person. Ellen is certainly pretty and she was 17 when we shot this. She played a 14 year old girl who sees things as black and white and has not yet filled in those grays. She is full of the passion and the hormones of a 14 year old and that’s what’s driving her through this. She is unstoppable like the mother in the urban myths who can lift the car off a child. The point was not to preach as she does, but to think after listening to everyone’s side of things.

People always say that it’s almost play like. Brian Nelson came from a theatrical background so all of these things point towards it being like a play. But it really felt cinematic to me on the page and my job was to make it cinematic and manage the performances. That wasn’t hard because they are all phenomenal actors.

We were lucky enough to have five days of rehearsal. In those five days we really fleshed those characters out and adjusted certain dialogue. Brian Nelson came in and pretty much tailored lines where they were needed. It feels so fresh because we didn’t really develop the hell out of it. We just went, “Ok, this feels really visceral, this is real and we feel good about it, let’s go shoot it.” There was a certain amount of development but not a ludicrous amount.

I have no opinion on that matter. That’s something that’s not in any way connected to this film and in any way something that’s connected to my psyche.

First let’s talk about the word pedophile. It’s the most offensive word in the English language. One of the few scenes where I had to give notes to the actors was when Jeff gets called that word. I told him “Someone just called you the most offensive thing on the fucking planet, respond to it.” I believe it is something which comes from an abject state of mind which comes from a degree of aberrant behavior which grows to a psychosis and rooted in all of that is if the person is mentally stable to begin with. Films can’t really cater to the mentally unstable because if we did that then we wouldn’t be able to do anything. Then we would be in the Oliver Stone territory of Natural Born Killers like “everyone’s going to blame me.” But if a person was mentally stable to begin with then it’s a lack of responsibility that snowballs to the point of where they could detach their personal morality to go about doing these heinous acts. I can’t go anywhere near that frame of mind that would take me to a place like that. I can only imagine that it’s a degree of psychological disconnection that snowballs and snowballs and snowballs.

At the end of the day, the police will tell you that if a burglar wants to get in, he’ll get in. If a charismatic predator is going after its prey, it’s eventually going to find it. It’s not a moral question that I can answer because I’m not here to stand on a soapbox and be moral. Maybe people would be smarter and they would not go into those chat rooms and they would do other things with their lives. But human nature is an odd and difficult beast. In John Gray’s book he believes that humanism is absolutely a complete lie and we are base beasts. On the other side of it, I’ve gone to countries like New Zealand where everyone’s absolutely warm and wonderful and nice. The state of human nature could be a very warm and wonderful thing if only people were smart and would take responsibility for what they did. If they did something bad and they felt terrible and they went, “You know what, I take full responsibility of that and you won’t hear me do that again.” Perhaps Jeff does take a degree of responsibility and hates himself for it. That’s up to the audience to decide.

There were three drafts already of the script when I came to the project and I just took a meeting at Sony before Hard Candy came to Sundance. The Sony executives really wanted to meet me. One there told me how much she loved Hard Candy. She mentioned some scripts that they had in development anmd one of them was 30 Days of Night. I know Steve Niles’ work pretty well. I bought the original first editions of 30 Days of Night when they came out. When they mentioned that, I told them I would chew my arm off to do it. So I took meetings with Sam Raimi and I read the previous drafts. I didn’t like them very much and I eventually convinced them to bring in Brian Nelson to write the draft of the script that we will be shooting.

Well Stuart Beattie wrote a draft which was much more of an action movie. We felt that we wanted to make it much more of a horror movie. A scary movie that scared people. That has nothing to do with vampires because vampires aren’t scary generally. But we found a way to make a really fresh and really realistic approach to the film.

No, but in a good way. We’re certainly keeping the tone of Ben’s artwork. The town of Barrow is going to be a very dark sort of place with lots of crucifix type poles. The gray tones of his artwork is definitely something which will be a very big part of the film.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

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