Raising Hell
Hellraiser: Inferno (2000), the fifth installment in the immensely popular film series created by novelist Clive Barker, tells the story of Detective Joseph Thorne, a man cut from the same bad cop cloth as Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant. He neglects his wife and daughter, has a penchant for nose candy, and, when he wakes up after a one night stand in the same room as a dead and dismembered prostitute, tries to pin it on his loyal partner. At a crime scene, he discovers a puzzle box, the solving of which, in the Hellraiser universe, summons Pinhead, the Cenobite who lures and ushers humans into hell. Once Joseph solves the box, all those around him begin to die in elaborate ways, and Joseph himself begins to be haunted by strange apparitions and visions. In his quest to discover the murderer, he comes face to face with the inescapable truth – Joseph has gone to hell and is now doomed to be torn apart by his sins, over and over, for the rest of eternity.
Scott Derrickson
The New Pantagruel’s Annie Frisbie fell in love with horror films while working at Kim’s Underground video store while pursuing an MA in Cinema Studies from NYU. She had the opportunity to do an email interview with the writer/director of Hellraiser: Inferno, Scott Derrickson. Derrickson is the writer (with Paul Harris Boardman) of Urban Legends: Final Cut and soon-to-be-released The Exorcism of Annaliese Michele (starring Laura Linney and Tom Wilkinson), both of which Derrickson also directed. Earlier this year Derrickson wrote the story for Wim Wenders’ Land of Plenty. Derrickson is a graduate Biola University where he took bachelor’s degrees in Humanities and Communications, and from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema and Television, where he received his master’s degree in film production. (Readers of tNP may be interested in Derrickson’s article, “Behind the lens - A Christian filmmaker in Hollywood,” Christian Century, January 30, 2002.)
The New Pantagruel:
To start off, could you give us the brief rundown on your background and how you got into filmmaking?
Scott Derrickson:
I grew up in a family that watched a lot of movies, but as I got older, I grew increasingly more interested in literature and the arts. Movies for me were entertainment, but books, music, theater, and painting were art. Then when I was in college, I discovered foreign cinema, and that’s when I realized that movies can be art as well as entertainment. I started experimenting with shooting things on both film and video, and I began to understand that cinema is really the combination of the four art forms I just mentioned – it has the structure and thematic import of literature; the experience of music; the blocking, acting, dialogue writing of theater; and the visual compositions of painting and photography. This revelation is what made me want to be a filmmaker – that cinema is the blending of all great art forms into a medium that is inherently entertaining.
After college, I went to graduate film school at USC, and then went on to become a writer and director. For the last nine years, I’ve written about a dozen studio screenplays, and I’m now directing my second feature.
The New Pantagruel:
It was a bit of a thrill to find out that someone like you exists – a Christian filmmaker with a penchant for horror – and not the old-fashioned kind or the über-hip kind, but the gory, bloody, scary kind. Have you gotten much negative attention in the evangelical Christian community for your work?
Scott Derrickson:
I have gotten some negative attention, but mostly from Christians over 30. Younger Christians typically seem to get it – even if they’re not fans of the genre, they seem to understand why I do what I do. I think I’ve confused a lot of older Christians. There’s definitely a generational gap in the church now – much more so than when I was in my teens and twenties – and the difference between generations can really been seen in their differing attitudes toward art and entertainment.
The New Pantagruel:
In the same vein, how much do you care about what mainstream Christians think about you?
Scott Derrickson:
I care less about criticism as I get older. I’ve accepted the fact that I’m a part of the American church community, but I’m also its critic and a bit of an iconoclast, and that means I’ll be criticized. One of the roles of the artist, I think, is to shine the light of truth into the dark corners of human life. What’s difficult for me is hearing criticism and condemnation second-hand – when you hear that others are gossiping about you. I appreciate it when someone who doesn’t understand or like my work has the courage and integrity to question me directly – that usually results in a philosophical conversation, which is a good thing. I suppose that since younger Christians now seem to be appreciating my endeavors, I have to beware of liking their compliments too much. Hopefully, I’m working toward that balance where neither compliments or criticisms mean too much to me. What matters is if I’m living the life I ought to be living.
The New Pantagruel:
Have you already gotten sick of answering questions like this?
Scott Derrickson:
No, it’s a subject that matters to me.
The New Pantagruel:
Hellraiser: Inferno reminded me of a medieval morality play, and I found your comments about it in the lecture you gave at Biola fascinating. I believe that you accomplished what you set out to do, and that your message is very clear. I’m curious to know how you came to write and direct the fifth Hellraiser movie. Were you seeking specifically to direct a Hellraiser film? Or were you offered Hellraiser and saw in it an opportunity to tell a story that meant something to you? Or is it something else entirely?
Scott Derrickson:
When the job was first offered to me, I turned it down. Then, without really trying, I thought of a way to do the film that would be personally fulfilling. I remember exactly where I was at the time – I was standing in a hotel room in Indianapolis, and the idea came to me that the movie could end with a character confronting the two sides of himself – his spirit and his flesh. Then I thought, “That’s great, but the studio would never let me do that”. Obviously, I was wrong.
The New Pantagruel:
It seems to me that Hellraiser: Inferno undercuts some of the traditional pleasures associated with the horror genre. In fact, you could almost say that the moral message of the film creates a site of resistance to the enjoyment of the scenes dismemberment and violence. What are your thoughts on the relationship between the horror genre and pleasure?
Scott Derrickson:
I respect the fact that people are drawn to observe horrific images and situations, but I also think it’s important for an artist to typically make evil acts and violent images repulsive. To do otherwise can easily lead to a dynamic that’s a bit pornographic, I think. I care deeply about good and evil, and “woe to those who call evil good, and good evil.” I intend for my work to reinforce definitions of good and evil rather than confuse them. The exception to this rule of making violence and evil repulsive, of course, is when trying to illuminate the seductive power of evil. In that case, you want the audience to experience the pleasure of evil, but only so that they can then come to understand evil better. When I watch [Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda documentary] Triumph of the Will (a true horror film!) I do not experience repulsion, but seduction. I really feel the allure of the power of a culture fully enamored with and empowered by evil ideas. That film helps me understand the power of a wicked community and why it can exist. I also think the seductive visual beauty of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet services that film wonderfully. It’s a film about the horror that often lies beneath beautiful surfaces. His film The Elephant Man is the opposite: it’s about the beauty that can exist underneath horrific surfaces. I think that most often, though, the goal is to make violence repulsive, rather than entertaining or attractive.
The New Pantagruel:
Did you grapple with audience/fan expectations? How was your film received in the context of the other Hellraiser films?
Scott Derrickson:
I really didn’t worry about the other films. It was a dead franchise, and I knew that my approach was a bit subversive. Clive Barker wasn’t happy with what I did, but if he wanted to protect the franchise, he shouldn’t have sold it to Dimension. They owned it, and they asked me to reinvent it, so that’s what I did. The fans of the franchise are split about it – some love it, and some hate it. No one seems to be neutral about it, which I think is great.
The New Pantagruel:
Hellraiser: Inferno could have been a Twilight Zone episode, with Pinhead in the Rod Serling role. Whose story is this?
Scott Derrickson:
It’s Joseph Thorne’s story, not Pinhead’s. It’s the story about a man who is hell and he doesn’t know it. It’s about a man who practices the everyday sins of our culture – infidelity, disloyalty, chemical indulgence, etc. And I don’t judge him, because I relate to him. I wrote a character who has gone further with his evil behavior than I have, but I’m still guilty of all the same sins.
The New Pantagruel:
Horror has gone quite mainstream in the last 5-10 years, which has caused a growing interest in Japanese horror. Japanese horror has historically been much more explicit than American or European horror, and certain films or scenes have gone to greatly creative lengths to depict torture and sadism. Some would say that there are lines that should not be crossed, even within a fictional environment. What responsibility do you think filmmakers have towards notions of decency, if any?
Scott Derrickson:
The lines that shouldn’t be crossed have to do with intentions, not content. I believe that any act of violence that is shown for the purely cynical purpose of feeding the audiences appetite for increasingly graphic material has most likely crossed the line. But if the violent material is illuminating (like Seven), or serves a real dramatic purpose (like Silence of the Lambs), or even a comedic purpose (like Shaun of the Dead or Dead Alive), then I think it’s still serves a noble purpose. What I don’t want to contribute to is a thoughtless and ever-increasing appetite for more excessively graphic images. I think that even torture and sadism are fair game for the artist, as long as the filmmaker’s intention is for the audience to identify with the victims of such violence and not the perpetrators. If the idea is to thrill the audience with the vicarious experience of such inhuman behavior, then it’s not only indecent, it’s reprehensible. The torture scene in The Deer Hunter, for example, is hard to watch but it says a lot about the inhumanity of war.
The New Pantagruel:
Mainstream Christian culture, for the most part, can’t seem to accept movies as what they are, especially now that most Christian accept that movies, even R-rated ones, aren’t going to send them straight to hell. And Christians aren’t much different from the rest of America in their consumption of films as product. Additionally, there’s been a wave of support for edgy, dark, violent films, The Matrix and Magnolia being especial favorites among Christians, and for the most part, this just seems like reactionary hipster posing. Do you think that there’s another way for Christians to understand films? Is this even necessary?
Scott Derrickson:
Yes, and I think it has to do with fully appreciating excellence in style as well as meaning and content. The Christian culture has begun to embrace certain movies, but only if their content services the Christian world view. Movies like The Matrix and Magnolia are embraced because Christian meaning can be extracted from them like it’s a biblical text that contains sacred meaning. Christians will elevate those films, but they won’t elevate The Godfather the same way – even though it’s a superior film.
Christians are not yet ready to elevate a film purely for it’s excellence in craft and subsequent entertainment value. Somehow, it’s still got to have content that services our Christian point of view, or it’s not worthy of our stamp of approval. It’s like we’re fans of Renaissance paintings with all of their stories, moral lessons, and religious iconography, but we’re stuck in the Picasso museum. So we stare at those images and talk about how we can learn about narcissism and adultery from Picasso’s work. Sure he was a narcissist and adulterer, but so what? What we should be saying is, “What form! What color! What mysterious imagery and inventive style!” Yes, there is some content there, but the content doesn’t have to be the point. With many movies, the style and craft and sheer emotion is much more important than the thematic ideas. My wish is that more Christians were free to feel justified in loving something for it’s style, craft, and emotion alone. I loved Kill Bill not so much for it’s content (which could be considered morally questionable with it’s ruthless revenge ethic) but its form and style are so exquisite that I must deem it a beautiful work of art. For most Christians, to love a film on those terms is unacceptable.
The New Pantagruel:
There’s a fascinating history of religion within film history itself - I’m thinking of filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Robert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman- even Woody Allen. These filmmakers compose a spectrum of religious engagement, from external criticism to contemplative meditation, but in recent years there’s been a movement of “Christian” filmmakers coming from the explicitly Evangelical Protestant denominations. Clearly, you’ve made a conscious choice to stay away from the ghetto. What kind of Christian are you? By that, I guess I’m asking about denomination, but I’d also like to know a little bit about where you see yourself as a filmmaker concerned with religious issues like those named above.
Scott Derrickson:
I am a member of a Presbyterian church, but I have no loyalty or particular affinity for the denomination itself. The truth is, I attend church to give – the churchgoing experience for me is one of total discipline. On any given Sunday, I would rather stay home and read the New York Times. But I still regard myself as a member of the community of faith, a practitioner of Christian disciplines, and in short, a disciple of Christ. The difference between myself and those Evangelicals you mentioned is that I don’t feel obliged to propagate my point of view through cinema. I’m not interested in winning converts through film – because the gospel is foolishness, and foolishness makes for bad filmmaking. But I can’t ignore the fact that issues of faith and spirituality interest me more than anything else, so I’m not going to avoid them, especially when those issues are important to so many other people. I think that my work is usually an attempt to explore issues of faith from a unique perspective. When writing a script, I don’t set out with an agenda to push, but rather with questions to explore. And I must be willing to let the film take me someplace I hadn’t expected. If I really have faith that God may be involved in the creative process, then I shouldn’t be surprised when the work itself challenges what I think and believe. If I’m so arrogant as to think that I have a superior perspective that the world should share, or if I lack the humility to change my mind about spiritual issues in the course of creating, then I am destined to fail as both a Christian and as an artist.
The New Pantagruel:
What can you tell us about your upcoming film, The Exorcism of Annaliese Michele? The title is fantastic–makes me think of those great 70s films like The Possession of Joel Delaney and The Reincarnation of Peter Proud. And with Laura
Linney!
Scott Derrickson:
It’s about a girl who dies during an exorcism and the priest is put on trial for negligent homicide. It’s a real hybrid – both a courtroom movie and a horror film. I’m really feeling good about the whole project, and it should be coming out about a year from now.
The New Pantagruel:
Thank you so much for your time- I hope you enjoyed the questions, and if you have anything else you’d like to add, I’d welcome it.
Scott Derickson:
My pleasure. I think I’ve said enough.
Copyright 2004-2005 :: The New Pantagruel 1.4.
