What was it about your original short film that convinced people to make "Eight Legged Freaks"?
I shot the short in black and white and gave it a real 50s style. The music was very Vernon Herman-ish, and because it was in black and white that helped me get away with my special effects easier. Even though stylistically it had much more of a 50s feel, it did have modern technology behind the effects. We'd like to put it on the "Eight Legged Freaks" DVD as a special feature.
Did the studio understand what you were hoping to accomplish?
They pretty much got the film from the beginning, and I think it's one of those genres that has a great cross-generational appeal. You get the young kids who are into big bugs and the latest special effects, and you get the people who remember the old 50s B-movies and want to see that again. I think it's one of those movies that's fun for the whole family.
How realistic are the spiders in the movie?
100% accurate. Well, maybe 90%. We made a few adjustments but the computer animators had aquariums with live spiders on their desks to study. They had old National Geographic pictures so they were able to just build these things from scratch and make it incredibly accurate. We didn't want to do a mutant spider movie. We wanted to take regular spiders and blow them up to an enormous size and stay close to nature.
Did you ask the actors to be less realistic to get the right B-movie feel?
I didn't really want it to be camp. I wanted to make sure that the threat was always there and that we didn't make fun of it. The spiders had to be scary, realistic, and threatening enough so the actors would respond in a realistic way. I think you run into problems if you try too hard to play things for laughs, because inherently the idea is funny already. If you look back at those old 50s movies from a present-day standpoint, it's kind of amusing. Whereas at the time they were playing it straight and they were very serious about what they were doing. We knew that it wouldn't work to make it straight, so we had to have some humour in there, it was a balancing act. Our philosophy was, when it's not scary, it's funny; and when it's not funny, it's scary. Having an actor like David Arquette works well because he can be both - a leading man and a comedian.
