The Cinefamily Theatre in LA has been known to turn up the spooky on Friday nights for their “Friday Night Frights” series. A few weekends ago, my current horror movie obsession, IT FOLLOWS, was screened and Director David Robert Mitchell and Soundtrack Composer Disasterpeace (Rich Vreeland) made an appearance to answer questions and enjoy the show with fans. I was lucky enough to catch up with them before the film and get a few of my questions answered.
Famous Monsters: Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me! I am a HUGE fan of the film and am dying to hear where the inspiration for this story came from.
David Robert Mitchell: Well I’d been thinking about trying to make a horror film for a long time. I love horror movies and I just wanted to make one. The base idea for this came from a recurring nightmare that I had when I was a kid, which is really messed up. I always remembered it and kept thinking about it over the years and I started adding details and building a story around some of the images that took from that nightmare.
FM: I read in a previous interview that you are a fan of Hitchcock, what are some other horror films that you grew up with that inspired you along the way?
DRM: Oh gosh, there are a ton. Romero—NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, DAY OF THE DEAD—Carpenter—HALLOWEEN, THE THING—I could really go on and on.
FM: Was there a particular element about horror that drew you to it?
DRM: I liked the feeling that I had watching it; I loved the kinds of stories that you could tell. With horror, you can push the edges a little bit more than you can in other genres. You can experiment a bit more and get away with it. I think that’s very exciting.
FM: Will there be a sequel to IT FOLLOWS and if so what could we expect?
DRM: The honest answer is, I don’t know. I have a ton of ideas of what could happen with it, some of which I think are really, really cool, but I’m not sure yet. There’s certainly a lot of ambiguity in the film and I think that that’s one of the things that some people love and some people are more frustrated by. To me, in writing it, I built it in a way that some might see it as something that would be continued, but for me it’s really that ambiguity that makes it its own piece and it doesn’t need to be connected to anything else. That doesn’t mean I don’t have other ideas, or that I wouldn’t consider making a sequel, I would certainly consider it if I was excited enough about those ideas. I am 100% against something that explains what it is about: an origin or connecting it to something magical. To me that goes against what the film is suppose to be. The movie is itself a nightmare and there isn’t an explanation for a nightmare, and there shouldn’t be.
FM: And it is truly a nightmarish experience for viewers. Obviously your writing played a huge part in that, but I feel like the soundtrack was also perfectly tuned to the story. How did Disasterpeace get involved with this project?
DRM: Well I heard his music when I was playing the video game FEZ and I fell in love with the music. I loved the game, but I thought the music was phenomenal. I reached out to him and we started a dialogue. I sent him my first film and I sent him the script for IT FOLLOWS and he agreed to do it. And then a bunch of time passed; we went into production, we made the film, and then we weren’t in touch for a while, but eventually I was like ‘Hey, are you ready to do this?’ And he was super busy with a bunch of other stuff and there was a time where I wasn’t sure if he was going to do it. Luckily I think I just convinced him. The film at that point had just gotten into Cannes and we had a matter of weeks before we had to be finished. So it was an enormous amount of pressure. But we were on the phone together everyday, and sometimes very late into the night and we did that up until less than a week before screening. It was days before I had to get on a plane. Like ultimately the film wasn’t finished, the DCP was finished, and so somebody met me in the parking lot by the airport and handed me the DCP and then I got on the plane and went to France. It was finished at the last second. So it hadn’t really played in front of a live audience, so it was kind of scary in a way that was more terrifying than the movie! But that all being said, it was really nice to work with Rich; I’m a big fan of his and I was really excited to hear what he was creating for the film.
FM: You can definitely tell that a lot of time was put into your collaboration because the soundtrack blends in so seamlessly with the story. How did you feel after the initial reviews came in and IT FOLLOWS exploded across the Internet?
DRM: It felt very nice. You know, you spend years making this kind of stuff, it’s a ton of work and you have no idea if anybody is going to care. So it’s nice when people do.
FM: Well all the praise was truly well-deserved! So Rich, the IT FOLLOWS soundtrack was different from many of the things you had done in the past. How did you approach this project?
Rich Vreeland: So David played FEZ, this video game that I scored in 2012, and reached out to me because he liked the score so much. He wanted to incorporate some of the elements from that score into this soundtrack and we did that but we also brought in influences from traditional horror and 20th century composers like John Cage, and Krzysztof Penderecki (THE SHINING). Because we had such a limited timeframe to do it, we only had three weeks, we used a temp score and reference material to figure out certain beats and energy. That was really helpful because of the time constraints.
FM: Were there any horror movies in particular that you pulled inspiration from?
RV: I don’t know all the movies, because I’m not a horror buff, but we pulled music from Cage, Penderecki, and John Carpenter. Me personally, I’m a big fan of Goblin (SUSPERIA), so I was definitely thinking about Goblin when I was writing some of the tracks.
FM: Much like early horror composers, I think you did an amazing job creating a soundtrack that led the audience through the story by building anticipation and feeding their anxiety. Was there anything personal you tapped into that helped with the creation of the tracks?
RV: I did tap into my limited experience with horror and kind of had a general sense of would be scary. The starting point for me was really the PSYCHO theme. That was my main familiarity with how music can be used in horror to a certain effect. So that framed some of the decisions and really diving into the reference material and getting a sense of what made that stuff work, made it effective. Like, oh this piece gives me goosebumps, why does it give me goosebumps? So I just tried to tap into some of the technical aspects of it.
FM: Were there any horror movies that you saw growing up that really scared the bananas out of you?
RV: Definitely THE SHINING. I’m not sure I ever even finished it, but it was definitely in the background at times when I was growing up. And I was always afraid to sit down and watch it completely.
FM: Do you think you’ll do any more horror in the future?
RV: Yea, if it’s the right opportunity. I like to do different things, try different things, so yea I would. I don’t have any plans to do more in the immediate future, but we’ll see.
FM: Thank you both so much for your time! It was an absolute pleasure speaking to you guys and I look forward to checking out your future projects!
This interview was written on August 21, 2015 By Cameron Hatheway