00:00Peter Gray from the AU Review. Hello Lee. Hey mate. I spoke to you, it would have been last week, at the
00:06virtual junket. Oh right, right, in LA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you were my, I think, I'm gonna say last
00:12like real-world interview for The Invisible Man in 2020. Oh wow, before none of us lived in the real world.
00:18Yeah, and Invisible Man was like my last like in-person screening. Oh wow. And I'm
00:23gonna say you gave me three great jump scares with that. Okay. And like obviously
00:29with this one, like immediately from the beginning, like you just have that sort of wolf
00:35man figure. And I wanted to know like, because you said there's basically three films, like what you
00:40write, what you film, what you edit, almost four, what you then put together. Yeah, yeah. So like
00:46going from page to screen, like are you always thinking, okay, like you know what the scare is
00:54going to be, you know what the image is going to be, or does it sort of change over time?
00:58It does change, you tweak it in the moment. Like it's strange because I don't write
01:06thinking too much of the movie. I actually write a screenplay to be read. It's a very novelistic
01:10approach. I probably take too much care in the action description and people will say like, well
01:16that stuff doesn't go on screen. But I love the language of, I love writing, so when I'm actually
01:22shooting, it's like I'm adapting this book, this thing that I've written. I'm adapting it and I'm
01:27suddenly realizing that what seemed good to the reader is not so good to shoot. So there's this
01:33constant process of tweaking and changing, you know, throwing things out. I can split my brain
01:39pretty well. Writer me is very precious about what I've written. Director me is brutal. I'm
01:45tearing pages out of my own screenplay, you know, just to make it work, you know, so yeah.
01:50And you've mentioned how you like, you don't really want to do anything unless like it
01:55excites you. And you sort of, you know, pitched this idea of Wolfman. Are you ever sort of thinking
02:02like, how far can I go? I mean with Blumhouse who seem to really like let their directors and
02:09like just have free reign. Are you ever thinking like, how far could I push an idea to actually
02:15see if it gets the not tick of approval? Sometimes. I do have an inbuilt desire for
02:23commercial appeal, meaning I do want people to go and see the movies. I try not to think in terms of
02:34demographics. When I'm writing, I'm not thinking about the market at all.
02:38But there is this inbuilt love of a packed theatre audience. That's my true love is it's not
02:47just movies themselves. It's specifically movies in theatres, in movie theatres. And you know,
02:54some say movie theatres have become an endangered species since COVID and the industry is changing,
02:59which makes me sad. My contribution to keeping them alive is to make great movies that pull
03:06in audiences. So it's, yeah, I must admit that I do seek them out and I do want that.
03:16I mean, it's great to, I feel like every filmmaker that I've spoken to, I very
03:21like want the theatrical experience also. It's so nice that that's still something on people's
03:25minds because I'm the same, like I grew up going to the theatres and it's something that I just
03:30need to have, I need to keep it going. Yeah. I mean, there's a whole, some of my greatest
03:35memories are, you know, going to see Ghostbusters, going to see Gremlins, you know. I think of the
03:45theatres, the smell, you know, the smell of popcorn, you know, it's all, it's so important
03:51to me that like, I think people that do love movies, it's their responsibility to keep that
03:55alive. We have to keep this thing alive that we love if we love it. One of the things that I
04:01really, really loved about this film was the perspective change when Chris Abbott's like
04:05trying to communicate and Julie can't understand him. And like the sound in this film, because I
04:12know in Invisible Man, silence was used beautifully. And in this one, like the spider tapping and how
04:19that was just like amplified. Like, is that one of those things, again, that you're already thinking
04:23of that, or that just kind of happens naturally. And then when it comes to the perspective shift,
04:27like you obviously want it to be that the sound is up close as much as possible. Yes. Yes. I was
04:34thinking about that while I was writing. In fact, I did something for the first time on this film,
04:38I was writing the sound design into the screenplay. I was actually going into great detail.
04:46It sounds like, you know, and I think about sound a lot, but this was the first time I just baked
04:53it into the screenplay. And I was having conversations with the sound designer I work
04:57with before I'd shot a frame. I remember us, we went out for dinner well before we started
05:02shooting the movie. And I was saying, you need to start keeping a library of insect noises
05:08and describing insects. And he was just bombarding me with emails of like insects slowed down.
05:15Like if you take the sound of crickets or cicadas and you slow it down by a thousand times what
05:19that sounds like. There's some really eerie sounds. What's interesting is that's all going
05:24on around us all the time. Yeah. But we as humans, the way our auditory senses work, we learn to tune
05:30things out. Otherwise it would be overwhelming. Yeah. What I wanted to do with this movie in
05:34The Wolf Vision is present the audience with the overwhelming version of what if you could hear
05:39everything at the same volume, you know, so it's, you mix a film. That's the opposite way.
05:46You usually mix a film. And I said to the sound mixes, put the background noise up front. I want
05:53it to be front of house as loud as everything else. No, I mean, it definitely, definitely worked
05:58because I remember just the opening frame. I was like, what the hell am I in for? And you were
06:03saying like, you know, Invisible Man, you changed the perspective of what we think an Invisible Man
06:08story should be. And then with Wolfman, you've done the same thing. And when I spoke to you from
06:12Invisible Man, you said that one of the characters or figures that you were sort of most interested
06:18in is Jack the Ripper. Oh yeah. And I'm just wondering, would you ever want to like turn
06:23Jack the Ripper into a story a la like Wolfman, Invisible Man? I wonder, Jack the Ripper does,
06:29I find unsolved mysteries to be, it's so eerie. Yeah. You know, a solved mystery is that closed
06:36loop. You get that closure. But these true life tales, I mean, they obsess, there are ripperologists
06:43who've dedicated their entire lives to this story. I don't know. I wonder if a great Jack
06:50the Ripper film has been made. I'm not sure it has. Like there's been a few miniseries,
06:55I remember the version with Michael Caine. From Hell. From Hell was, yeah, well, there's a great
06:59graphic novel. God, it's a, it's such a compelling story. I haven't forgotten that. I'm glad you
07:08brought it up. I think, I think, I think someone needs to make it. If it has to be me, I'll try my
07:14best. I'm look, I'm going to say we, I think we should have Leigh Whannell's. Yeah. Like I love
07:18what David Fincher did with Zodiac, another unsolved mystery. Yeah. Maybe there is a really
07:22definitive version like Zodiac of Jack the Ripper. Well, until, until then we'll, we'll settle for
07:28Wolf Manor. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Good to talk to you again. Thanks.
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