“I think the audience is kind of fatigued of found footage.” - Jason Blum, producer
Jason Blum has become Hollywood’s most prolific and successful producer. With five Paranormal Activity films, two Insidiouses and a second The Purgeon the way, Blumhouse Productions is ahead of the game on sheer quantity of franchises and profitability of each. Blum likes to keep budgets down to $3-4 million, so when The Purge opens to $34 mil and Insidious: Chapter Two to $40 mil, that’s practically all profit.
The latest film from Blumhouse Productions is Oculus, a horror movie that Blumhouse picked up from the Toronto International Film Festival. Karen Gillan and Brenton Thwaites star as Kaylie and Tim Russell. Tim is just out of a mental institution after the death of their parents as children. Kaylie blames a haunted mirror for driving their father (Rory Cochrane) crazy, making him kill their mother (Katee Sackhoff). Kaylie comes up with an elaborate plan to destroy the mirror, but it requires documenting the mirror’s manipulative mind games with cameras. Things don’t entirely go according to plan, and in one of the film’s biggest trailer moments, the mirror tricks Kaylie into eating a lightbulb instead of an apple.
Blum began Blumhouse in 2000 but we really started to see his productions come out in 2009 with Paranormal Activity. Before that, Blum worked in acquisitions at Miramax Films and as a producer on films like The Reader, The Tooth Fairy and The Accidental Husband. Later this year we will se the Sundance winner Whiplash, about a drummer (Miles Teller) pushed to the brink by an aggressive conductor (J.K. Simmons), and another found footage horror film, Creep, which played SXSW.
When I met Jason Blum in a suite at the Four Season Hotel, he was very excited to be speaking with Suicide Girls. A fan of the site, he may even have some plans for us it seems.
Jason Blum: I love Missy. I love her. She’s great.
Suicide Girls: I will send her your love.
JB: Tell her I say hello. I love the website. I’m seeing her again in a week or so. I’m trying to do something with you guys.
SG: A Blumhouse production with Suicide Girls?
JB: Something like that, yeah. I’m thinking about it. It’d be cool.
SG: So this is very fortuitous timing.
JB: I’m very happy to talk to you. I really think she’s very cool. I like her a lot.
SG: Do you have a favorite Suicide Girl?
JB: Not yet. [Laughs]
SG: Yet! I like that. So is this a new stage for Blumhouse where you can shepherd another filmmaker’s film in?
JB: No, the company kind of started like this. This is what we did with Oren [Peli]. I saw Paranormal Activity when he had thought it was finished and we got involved. Then three years later the movie finally found a movie theater. I didn’t think it would take quite so long. So we’ve done this a bunch of times. I like being the underdog so I like taking small movies and getting them out there into the world in a substantial way. If that means that we get involved when the movie’s finished, that’s fine. Or, if we start from the ground up and produce it, that’s cool too. That’s less interesting to me than the bigger picture.
SG: So it’s really the Insidiouses and the Purges that are more of a new phase of in house productions?
JB: Yeah, Insidious, The Purge, Sinister, most of the movies we produced from the beginning, and all the sequels to Paranormal, the sequel to Insidious, sequel to Sinister, sequel to The Purge, those we all produced but every so often. Paranormal we did this way. We did Creep which is Mark Duplass’s movie this way and we did Oculus this way. The rest we produced.
SG: Your philosophy is keep the budget to $3-4 million. Was Oculus already more before you got involved?
JB: No, Oculus is about that range. I think it’s pretty close to the budget of Sinister and the other movies that we’ve done.
SG: What was your input after it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival?
JB: I suggested a bunch of cuts which they did and the movie got worse, so it was restored to the cut that’s very close to the one that we screened at Toronto. So my input has mostly been on the marketing side as opposed to the filmmaking side.
SG: What did you think could have been cut?
JB: We shortened the movie a lot. I can’t remember the specific things we cut. We trimmed it here, trimmed it there and it didn’t work.
SG: I imagine you couldn’t take much out of the scene where Kaylie explains her plan.
JB: The history of the mirror. Yeah, we left that.
SG: The lightbulb is such a great moment, but it’s in the marketing. Was there ever any thought to keeping that a surprise?
JB: I don’t believe in that. I was a big proponent of putting the lightbulb in the marketing. I think that it’s very, very hard to get people to come to the movies and more often than not, not always, sometimes people remember it, sometimes people don’t but people like seeing it again or anticipating it. I think the days of saving the best parts for the movie, sadly, are no longer with us. I think it’s very hard to get people into the movie theater without showing the best things in the movie first.
SG: If that’s the intention, then what is left when you get people in.
JB: Do you think the movie doesn’t stand on its own after you see the trailer? There’s 93 minutes left. [Laughs] The trailer is two.
SG: I know, I’m trying to get you to talk
JB: Well, the trailer’s two minutes and the movie’s 100 minutes so I think the storytelling and the performance and all that stuff. I don’t think people go to scary movies for the scares and I also think what makes the scares scary in scary movies is what comes between the scares, which is the story and the actors and the performance. I think that’s the most important part about any movie and especially about a horror movie so I think that’s what people go see the whole movie for.
SG: On the poster you have the kids, not Karen and Ben. Were there ever different poster concepts?
JB: We had a gazillion different, 30 different concepts for the poster. We wanted a striking image that presented fear quickly, because the word Oculus is different than Sinister or Insidious. You don’t immediately know what you’re getting into, so we wanted to be sure that the poster was an image that really conveyed scary. Or threat.
SG: DId the title Oculus ever give you pause?
JB: The title did give me pause but the movie was titled when we came in and it had been out there in the world too much, so they wouldn’t allow me to change it.
SG: Stranger things have happened. Edge of Tomorrowthat’s coming out this summer used to be called All You Need Is Kill. My favorite is when The Flood became Hard Rain.
JB: I think that’s not so good to change a title. Close to release, it’s very hard to change a title. I think that’s very confusing to people. Then people are like, “Oh, what happened to this great movie Oculus that screened in Toronto? I have no idea?” I think that’s pretty tough to do.
SG: And now you can teach people what Oculus means.
JB: That’s right, now we’re an English lesson too.
SG: You said you toyed with some cuts. Did you ever toy with reordering the film so it’s all chronological in two parts, instead of flashing back and forth throughout?
JB: I didn’t but I think they did. I think in editorial at some point, they looked at cuts like that. I think that they did.
SG: And that didn’t work either?
JB: I didn’t see that version of the movie but I guess they like the version of the movie that they have the best.
SG: Speaking of $3-4 million budgets, had horror gotten big for a while and returned to the low budget roots?
JB: You mean like 10 years ago? I think the ‘90s and early 2000s, I think a typical horror movie was $20-30 and now they’re much, much less expensive. Thanks to me, for better or for worse.
SG: Have you been instrumental in reminding the industry and the audience what a low budget horror movie can be?
JB: Yeah, I think they’re better. I think when you take the toys away, when you take the special effects away, you get scarier movies.
SG: I understand your and the fans’ desire to get James Wan back to direct more horror movies.
JB: He’s going to direct a horror movie for me. Tell him.
SG: But shouldn’t we encourage him to branch out? Doesn’t the horror typecast hurt horror filmmakers by not allowing them to do anything else?
JB: No, I want him to branch out. I was thrilled he was doing Fast & Furious, I think it’s great. I just think he’s wrong when he says he’s never going to do horror again. He’s going to make another horror movie and it’s going to be with us. He’s just going to do some other things as well.
SG: Does it have to be Insidious 3? Couldn’t some other hungry filmmaker do some of those movies in the meantime?
JB: Yes, but James is going to do one too.
SG: I think about how poor Wes Craven never really got to do anything else. The one non-horror movie he did was Music of the Heart and then he was never allowed to do one again.
JB: I know, that’s true, but he’s done a lot of scary movies. He could do another movie that’s like that. I like that movie by the way but he could do another one. He’s got to do it cheap. If he made it inexpensively he could do it. I don’t know if he wants to or not. I’d love to do a movie with him.
SG: I loved Whiplash at Sundance. Is that a very different movie for Blumhouse?
JB: It really was very similar to our movies. We did it with Jason Reitman. The production designer of The Purge was the same as the production designer on Whiplash. We used a lot of our crew. We cut the movie in our office. The movie was the same budget as all the other movies that we do. All the physical production staff was the same, so we really used a lot of the people who make our straight up scary movies to make that movie with Jason. It’s in Cannes. I’m psyched about it.
SG: A lot of us have had different interpretations of Whiplash, and this question will reveal mine. Do artists really inside want that pressure that the teacher is giving him?
JB: I think that’s a great question and I think some of them do and some of them don’t. I think some artists really thrive under that kind of pressure and I think some fall apart. I think it really depends on the artist.
SG: Are you involved in a live-action Jemmovie also?
JB: I am. We’re doing that. We’re starting that soon with John Chu. I’m excited about that. I think it’s going to be fun.
SG: Would that have to be a bigger budget for you?
JB: No, it’s right in our sweet spot.
SG: The Purge is a coproduction with Platinum Dunes. Do they want to spend more than you usually do?
JB: Yes, always. We always fight about that. They’re already trying trying to spend more money, Brad [Fuller] and Drew [Form].
SG: So how does The Purge: Anarchy shake out?
JB: I love working with them. We have actually a great working relationship but we joke about that a lot. They always want to spend more than we do. Anarchy is great. I love it. I love the trailer that Universal made.
SG: Thank you for casting Frank Grillo in a lead.
JB: That’s right!
SG: Is this going to be the one that breaks him out?
JB: I think it is. Frank did an amazing job. I think it is.
SG: I don’t know how involved you actually were in The Accidental Husband, but I remember we were about to do a press junket for it when Yari Film Group folded. So I saw a press screening, then the junket was cancelled. Years later it showed up on DVD.
JB: Yes, that’s one of the reasons I don’t make those kinds of movies anymore.
SG: So what was the kerfuffle?
JB: I had a great experience making the movie. The movie actually turned out very well and the company releasing it went bankrupt, so that’s exactly what happened. They were scheduled, there were big signs in the lobby. There were standees in theater lobbies and they pulled it. It was one of many experiences I had on more expensive movies that drove me to low budget land.
SG: So why, with that cast, did it not find some theatrical release?
JB: It’s a complicated technical reason but one company, the movie had a lot of ancillary value and the only way you could sell a movie to another studio is if the studio would get home video, TV and all the other rights. There’s no value in just releasing a movie theatrically only without having the rest of the rights. The person in particular this time wouldn’t give up the rest of the rights so we weren’t able to shop the movie particularly.
SG: But couldn’t release it theatrically?
JB: But couldn’t release it theatrically, yeah.
SG: You’re back in found footage territory with Creep. Do you think that motif will ever play itself out?
JB: I think it’s on the waning. I think the audience is kind of fatigued of found footage.
SG: What convinced you there was still life in it for Creep?
JB: The story. I think the one thing that can go against that is if you have a story that only could be told in found footage, then I think the audience will still accept it, so Creep is about a guy who hires a cameraman to film him before he’s going to die. He’s allegedly got a young child and he’s going to give his young child this tape of him so that fits in organically. There’s no other way to tell that movie except found footage, but most stories you could tell either way and I always tell filmmakers if they’re thinking about it, shoot it traditionally.
Oculus opens April 11.
