00:00 I'm playing a person in the black phone who's utterly broken.
00:05 It's like somebody took a hammer to the computer of his brain.
00:09 [music]
00:17 I often like to say that I like to pretend I'm my character's lawyer
00:20 and just see everything through his point of view,
00:22 but I wouldn't want to be the grabber's lawyer
00:24 because the grabber is not going to win anything.
00:27 There's something fascinating about somebody who is so evil and malevolent
00:32 and clearly so ashamed of themselves
00:35 that they don't even want to be seen in any capacity or witnessed.
00:40 And there's a sense about when you wear a mask,
00:43 it gives you a false sense of power,
00:45 that's like nobody can see the real you,
00:48 and that kind of gives you a freedom that is borderline insane on its own.
00:55 So I was in uncharted territory for myself as an actor.
00:58 I was fascinated.
01:00 The director, Scott Derrickson, had this idea that the mask should come in parts
01:06 and that when he really wants to communicate,
01:09 maybe he leaves the mouth part off,
01:11 and when he really wants to see, he leaves the eye part clear,
01:15 or is it just a form of intimidation?
01:18 But it allowed for us to use the mask in a strange way
01:23 to create a new kind of villain.
01:26 My favorite part of the mask is how it's basically the grabber's whole character.
01:32 It adds so much to it.
01:33 I feel like the best part of the grabber is the mystery,
01:36 like how the mask switches out sometimes.
01:39 You can see his emotions, but you can't at the same time.
01:43 It's also like he's kind of trying to trick you or something.
01:46 So yeah, the mask is definitely super terrifying when you see it in person.
01:51 But you look at the great iconic villains--
01:54 Heath Ledger's Joker, Hannibal Lecter--
01:57 these are characters who don't have a backstory.
02:00 You don't know why they are the way they are.
02:03 If the Dark Knight actually told us the truth about,
02:08 "How do you think I got these scars?"
02:11 "You want to know how I got these scars?"
02:13 If he actually told us the real story, he'd be way less menacing.
02:16 He'd be way less scary.
02:18 If there was a scene in Silence of the Lambs where we were told,
02:22 "This is why Hannibal Lecter eats people," he'd be less scary.
02:26 So I think that you have to have a real mystery
02:28 and trust the mystery of an abhorrently behaving character.
02:34 And so the key is make them interesting, fascinating in the present,
02:37 make them dangerous, horrific in the present,
02:40 but then be willing to not do the typical movie development thing
02:44 and try to explain why they are the way they are.
02:47 And then be mysterious.
02:49 What was really cool was right behind the basement,
02:52 because the basement's on a soundstage,
02:54 there was this little platform,
02:56 and that's where they could actually talk to me on the phone.
02:58 So I heard them on the phone, which helped me a lot.
03:01 So that was really cool. It was a really cool mechanism.
03:04 So everything in those scenes were all real, which was pretty cool.
03:08 I know there's things on apps and there's programs that you can use
03:11 in editing to make things look like Super 8.
03:14 But this one looks and feels like actual Super 8 film.
03:17 It's very grainy, and when you blow it up,
03:19 especially on the big screen, the grain is very peculiar.
03:22 The color, the way it captures color is different.
03:25 There's just something about it to me that is the way it has always felt to me.
03:30 And this includes the Super 8 films that I would find that my grandfather shot,
03:35 that I would watch on the home projector when I was a kid.
03:39 They always feel a little creepy to me.
03:42 They just feel a little unnerving. They feel unsettling.
03:45 They feel like they've captured something that maybe they weren't supposed to capture.
03:49 There's something about the aesthetic that's really unique.
03:51 So I became very fascinated with that on Sinister,
03:54 and then I felt like Gwen's dreams in The Black Phone,
03:58 and looking back on the lives and abductions of these different kids,
04:02 I thought it was a great medium to separate it from the rest of the visual material of the movie.
04:07 [laughing]
04:10 [snoring]
04:13 [screaming]
04:15 I had a dream about it.
04:17 [screaming]
04:19 Please let the dream be real.
04:21 [screaming]
04:22 During the table read, or all the table reads that we did,
04:25 we made sure to really talk about the intense scenes that we were going to do.
04:29 And what was amazing about Scott is that before every intense scene or difficult scene,
04:35 he would have a really good conversation with us.
04:38 Like if we ever needed a break or to get water,
04:40 because there's a lot of screaming and crying and everything.
04:43 But I think with Finney and Gwen, because their dad is an alcoholic,
04:47 so they've been through so much together,
04:49 and they really have to rely on each other throughout the film.
04:52 It's very different than other actors.
04:54 He's my favorite actor I've ever worked with,
04:56 and with most actors, you have to spend some real time figuring out how to talk to them.
05:01 Actors are very emotional people. They are big emotional engines,
05:05 and they all sort of need to be talked to in different ways.
05:08 And Ethan's not like that in the sense of he's such a well-rounded artist.
05:13 He's a novelist in his own right. He's a filmmaker. He's a producer.
05:19 He does all kinds of things.
05:22 And I found myself early on in Sinister realizing I can just talk to this guy straight
05:29 without ever having to worry about giving him an angle of understanding.
05:36 And I think we just understood each other, and we became very good friends.
05:39 We stayed friends until now.
05:42 And when I gave him the script for The Black Phone, I just said,
05:46 "I think you can crush this, and this is why."
05:50 And he read it, and he agreed to do with it.
05:52 And I didn't give him a lot of direction on it.
05:54 He really understood that character and really brought that character to the set
05:57 and just did what he did.
05:59 One of the things I like about working with young people is
06:02 they're not far removed from what acting is at its core, which is just a sense of play.
06:07 I'm going to imagine I'm a demon from hell.
06:10 You are a young person, and you can communicate with the dead from this phone.
06:15 Go! You know?
06:17 And he was so excited to be in a movie and to do these scenes.
06:24 I had some nervousness coming to set, what's it going to be like
06:27 to try to terrify this young person and everything.
06:30 But it might surprise people to know that it was really fun
06:34 because kids love a good scary story.
06:37 You know, they love it.
06:40 "I've been trapped in the dungeon for days."
06:43 And they get into it, and it's a little contagious.
06:46 And the whole thing of acting stops being pretentious or important
06:51 and just anything but a sense of joy.
06:56 So even the darkest of emotions can be played with fun.
07:01 He is so incredible. He is the nicest person ever.
07:04 Even after a super hard scene and scary scene with him in the mask
07:09 and me in the basement, and he was just talking to everybody on set with the mask on.
07:13 He's like a normal person. He's having a good time, and they're just terrified for their life.
07:18 But yeah, he's such an incredible person, and I'm so fortunate to be able to work with him.
07:22 (upbeat music)
07:24 (upbeat music)
Comments