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Interview: Todd Farmer on ‘Drive Angry,’ ‘Halloween III’ and ‘Hellraiser’

  • June 26, 2011 at 1:24 am

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before Drive Angry, screenwriter Todd Farmer was probably best known for two things: his screenplay for Jason X, which put the Friday the 13th franchise in space, and for his prolonged sex scene in My Bloody Valentine, which he also scripted. so the man has a sense of humor. he also has a sense of story, which came as a surprise in his first few movies but now can be taken as read. The talented mr. Farmer sat down with me to discuss the Blu-Ray release of Drive Angry, out on may 31st, and to give the latest news on his upcoming high-profile projects: Halloween III and the Hellraiser remake.

Be sure to come back tomorrow for our interview with Drive Angry director Patrick Lussier, who has beans of his own to spill on those two new movies as well!

Crave Online: Drive Angry. I really liked it.

Todd Farmer: well, thank you.

Crave Online: Thank you.

Todd Farmer: We had fun.

Crave Online: I could tell you had fun. A lot of your scripts seem to be in the spirit of “Good Fun,” which I feel is lacking in a lot of horror cinema these days.

Todd Farmer: We would agree. We’d just come out of My Bloody Valentine, and Valentine we had a blast on, and when we first started talking about it we thought we might make it in post on My Bloody Valentine. But when that didn’t happen we just went ahead and wrote the script and it sort of took off from there.

Crave Online: I don’t know if I’m crazy here, but I saw a lot of potential influences on Drive Angry. I saw some Race with the Devil in there. Where did the idea start from?

Todd Farmer: Patrick [Lussier] came to me and he wanted to do something. 3D was brand new back then. My Bloody Valentine was the first live-action. And so we wanted to do something else in 3D so we said, “what would be fun?” And Patrick said, “what if we did a car movie, so we could have all the car movement and all that stuff in 3D?” And so that’s where it originated. I probably would have never thought of it. We also sort of added in elements of High Plains Drifter which was a movie we both loved. Dean Riesner, one of the fellows who wrote it, when I was starting out was sort of a mentor of mine. so it was sort of a reason to fall back on that. It’s a car movie with High Plains Drifter. it seemed like the right combination. That’s kind of how it started.

Crave Online: It’s a good combination. one of the things I like about the film is Nicolas Cage’s character. Obviously he’s laser-focused on his goal but every time there’s a spare second he’s just living.

Todd Farmer: It’s interesting because we never said anything to Nic about High Plains Drifter, but it was clear that he was channeling The stranger. Later we did talk about it and it was kind of funny. But I think [William] Fichtner and Cage brought an element of, “We’ve been away for a long time. We forgot how fun this world can be.” And so I love Nic’s performance. he was fantastic on set. The first day he got there he sat down and just started doing the dialogue. he knew every line. […] he just made it his own. he was wonderful.

Crave Online: you have a cameo in Drive Angry that was eerily similar to your cameo in My Bloody Valentine. [In both films, Farmer has an explicit sex scene with a woman, which turns into a big, nude fight.]

Todd Farmer: Bloody Valentine was a fluke. Bloody Valentine was because we were running out of time, and Patrick basically said, “Would you do it?” and I said “yes.” this we did on purpose. this we did as sort of a funny wink at Valentine. It’s actually a real role. It’s actually a meaty role. I act with everybody except Billy Burke. Amber beats me up, Fichtner beats me up, Nic beats me up… Everybodybeats me up in this movie. And I get to take my pants off.

Crave Online: any excuse, right?

Todd Farmer: Right!

Crave Online: I actually wanted to take you back… your first movie, and correct me if I’m wrong, was Jason X [which put the Friday the 13th franchise in space].

Todd Farmer: yes. just to clarify. Jason was here, and I put him up there.

Crave Online: (Laughs) – I just want to clarify: Jason X rules.

Todd Farmer: Oh thank you, sir.

Crave Online: I have been a very vocal supporter of that film since the day it came out. it was a very clever take on that franchise. And it really made me excited to see what else you had coming as a writer.

Todd Farmer: It’s fun. The situation was that Freddy vs. Jason was in development hell, and we decided to do another [Jason movie] but we didn’t want to step on the toes of what Freddy vs. Jason was doing. Chronologically, we didn’t want to screw it up. so we moved the movie into the future, and I have always loved Alien and Aliens, and I thought, “what if you took out the aliens and you put in Jason?” now, tonally that’s not what we ended up with. But years later, tonally, what we have is pretty fun.

Crave Online: It’s full of a lot of interesting ideas, which is something I think of a lot of Jason movies can’t say. You’ve got nanotechnology and that really brilliant hologram sequence, which I quote constantly: “Hey Jason, do you want to drink some beers? Or smoke some pot? Or have pre-marital sex? Mmm… We love pre-marital sex!”

Todd Farmer: Those were fun.

Crave Online: That wasn’t a question, I was just geeking out. going back to Drive Angry, were you thinking about the 3D in advance on that film while you were writing it, or were you not focused on that at the time?

Todd Farmer: well, it’s funny. only recently have I changed my answer. I used to say, and I still believe this from my end of the writing partnership, for me it’s always about character and story first. But I was thinking back on it and any time I would write a… Take the scene where Frank and The Accountant meet up. There was something The Accountant used to do differently. And Patrick said, “you know, that’s not really ‘3D.’ what if we had a baseball bat and he breaks the bat, throws the bat…” And suddenly you’ve got elements of 3D. so Patrick, being more visual, being the director, he was always focused on 3D from the very beginning. so that’s what made the partnership kind of work because we were both coming at it from different places, neither place better than the other, but you put them together and we’re much better as a team. so the answer is, “one of us was always thinking 3D.”

Interview: Todd Farmer on ‘Drive Angry,’ ‘Halloween III’ and ‘Hellraiser’

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