Ep. 7 - The Blair Witch Legacy: A Conversation With Eduardo Sánchez

Join Jesse, Zach, and Micheal as they interview Eduardo Sánchez, the co-director of the groundbreaking horror classic, The Blair Witch Project

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I am so so sorry for everything that has happened, because,
in spite of what makes us now, it is my
fault because it was my project, and it's not because
of me that we're here now, hungry and cold and hunted.

(00:27):
I'm so scared.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Tonight, on unknown Horizons, we are thrilled to welcome Eduardo Sanchez,
the visionary code director behind The blair Witch Project, the
groundbreaking film that redefined horror cinema and still resonates powerfully
with audiences twenty five years after its release in nineteen

(00:54):
ninety nine. The blair Witch Project shook the world, popularizing
the found footage genre and forever changing how horror films
are made, marketed, and experienced. Sanchez, along with his co
director Daniel Myrick, took a minimalist budget and crafted a
psychological horror experience that left audiences questioning the boundary between

(01:17):
fiction and reality. Beyond Blair Witch, Sanchez has continued to
explore new frontiers in the horror genre, building a legacy
as a director who understands how to tap into our
deepest fears. Tonight, he joins us to talk about his journey,
the making and the impact of The blair Witch project
and what the future holds for horror storytelling. ED was

(01:40):
kind enough to sit down with us for this pre
recorded interview as our Halloween special between Seasons of Unknown Horizons. So,
without further ado, grab a Halloween treat, turn out the
lights and enjoy our interview with Eduardo Sanchez. So ED firstly,
can't thank you enough for time taking the time to

(02:01):
speak with us tonight. I think, if I may be
so bold slash arrogant, I'd love to set the tone
for this discussion with a personal memory of mine. Like
most other people, I first became aware of the Blair
Witch Project through the brilliant use of teaser trailers on
television back in ninety nine. I would have been eleven

(02:24):
at the time, and you know, I just kind of figured, oh, well,
you know, it's a horror movie. They say it's real,
but maybe it's not. So I was a little skeptical,
but I think honestly, I was so creeped out by it.
I think I just didn't want to watch it. So
I made a conscious decision not to watch the movie,
just based on how scary those teaser trailers were. And
then one night I ventured out of my bedroom to

(02:47):
get a drink of water. It was late at night,
like after ten. My mother was watching The Blair Witch
Project in the dark in the liver like literally the
only light in the house was our television, and I
I walked in the worst possible moment. It was just
when Mike, Heather and Josh encounter the house and I

(03:08):
stood there frozen watching it. And by the time the
credits rolled and the iconic soundscape from Tony Kora started playing,
I was so scared shitless that I went back to
my room and I did not sleep that night, Like
I didn't care if it was real or if it
was fake. What I saw on that screen in a

(03:29):
pitch black room in the middle of the night scared
me to my core. And I have not seen a
film like that before or since. So I really have
to give you and the rest of the cast and
crew props for what I think is the most disturbing
final act of a film of all time.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
Well, I mean, yeah, thanks man, or you know, sorry
about that the uh yeah, no, thanks man. I mean
it's it's I love to hear the stories of you know,
people when they first see it, and also them that's
like the perfect way to see it, right, Like as
far as like, you know, having an impact on you, yeah,
I mean it's the kind it's like the same thing

(04:08):
that I experienced when I was, you know, little like
you and watched a legend of Boggie Creek or any
Bigfoot documentary or any really any episode of In Search
of It just would creep me out. And you know,
something something about that that that you know, like hit
another part of a different part of our brains, right.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Hm hmmm. And before and I definitely want to get
into Boggy Creek and in Search of but before we do,
I did want to ask you about this. I've listened
to a couple recent interviews that you've given, and something
that I wasn't aware of, even as a super fan
of the film, Apparently that scene, at least the lead

(04:46):
up to it, the visual of you know, a POV
of a camera in the dark in the woods and
then suddenly coming across a dilapidated house was the genesis
of you know, the story for the Blair or which project? Correct?
That was the first visual you and Dan came up with.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
Yeah, yeah, that was like the first thing that I
remember as far as like a you know, a you know,
a scene idea, and it was you know, we were
talking about you know, in normal movies there's cuts, you know,
and you like, you know, you can control the what
the audience sees, and and also the audience can expect

(05:25):
is expecting you to do that stuff, you know, So
you know, our thing was like imagine being stuck in
that you know, POV mode and just like wandering down
these halls and you know something bad's gonna happen, but
you can't. You know, there's no relief.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
It's like a nightmare where yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
Like a nightmare. You're you're you're are Yeah, there's no
you don't see the you know, most of the stuff
is just audio and then just you know POV So
it definitely puts you in that place, right.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
M Did that come from a nightmare or something else
that was tangible, because you know, the original inspiration, the
nucleus of it was, like you said, Boggy Creek and
in search of you know, more kind of cryptid based
docu drama stuff, how did you go from you know, hey,
we're inspired by a cryptid like a flesh and blood monster,

(06:15):
to know that this house is central to the vibe
of what we're doing.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
I mean, the house was just you know, something that
we came up with and then you know, you know,
reverse engineered the rest of the story. I mean that
literally was like the first idea we had.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
And what a payoff too, because that is the most
iconic moment of the film. And you know, so many
times you listen to interviews with filmmakers and they're like, yeah, well,
you know, my original vision for this, you know kind
of got lost along the way, you know, once you
start tooling the script and things change during filming and
then of course the editing. But I mean it really

(06:53):
seems like you guys captured like the purest version of
the atmosphere that you were going for with that sequence.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yes, I mean, you know it was you know, the
whole thing was that once the once we got into
that house, we had no idea what was going to happen.
I mean, we the original idea was that, you know,
like again that's I guess that first night that we
were discussing, the idea was that they go into this
house and there's this creepy ass door at the end
of the hall and you're just going into these rooms

(07:25):
slowly getting close to this door, and each room gets
more and more horrific, and you're like, you have to
go down. There's some reason why you have to go.
So you open the door, you go down, and you're
like some you know. But basically, once once we got
into that cellar, we had no idea what was going
to happen. So even when we you know, when we
scouted for that house, we you know, I know, we

(07:48):
needed like a multi level house with a cellar, you know,
and what was going to happen the cellar We had
no idea. Something creepy sou but you know, but that
was kind of like the basis of it, and and
then and then everything else kind of kind of like,
like I said, we reverse engineered the whole the rest

(08:09):
of the it's to kind of fit that thing. But yeah,
it's kind of amazing that that was the end, that
that was really what we originally came up with, and
that was the original you know ending there, you know,
other than like Mike's staying in the corner that we
came up with later, but yeah, that it definitely stayed
almost intact. You know.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Well, that's perfect. It's a perfect situation for a writer
because more often than not, writers sort of find themselves
in this problem where it's like, I've got a really good,
you know, matchbox napkin, you know idea for you know,
just the basic plot of the movie, but God, I
can't figure out an ending, Like even Stephen King infamously

(08:49):
struggles with how do I end this? You guys were
lucky enough to go, hey, we've got a really good
ending here, let's reverse engineer it, like you said, and
before I hand it off to Zach Michael, something that
absolutely blew my mind this week while prepping for this,
and again I hadn't even heard this as a Blair
Witch super fail. Like I've read Matt's book. I've got

(09:12):
every you know, physical media version of the film except
for the Japanese laser disc apparently. Correct me if I'm wrong.
The original idea that you guys had for this film
was it was going to be a documentary crew from
the nineteen seventies, and that house wasn't going to be
you know, the home of a serial killer from the forties.

(09:32):
It was going to be like a satanic cult house. Correct.
There was going to be pentagrams on the wall and
something waiting in the basement for the finale.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
Yes, yeah, that was the original vibe, and you know
and Satanic cult whatever was something that like once they
got into the house, they would see like you know,
pentagrams and you know, candle circles and you know, remains
of you know, sacrifice like just you know, horrific, you know,
things written in blood on the walls like just you know,

(10:00):
and then yeah, they have to go downstairs. So that
was like, that was definitely like the original thing. And
then later on, honestly, we had no explanation for that
house at all other than it being a creepy house.
We didn't really connect the house to Rust and Parr.
I don't know when we connected it. You know, it's
probably sometime time during the mythology. But a lot of

(10:23):
that mythology as far as like connecting the house to
Rust and Parr and like connecting Mike to Rust and
Parr was done later during the website creation.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
And you guys had to go out and shoot that
additional piece of footage of the guy in the ball cap.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
Yeah, that was something that I came up with during
the website creation. You know, I was going in and
really digging deep into the mythology just laying at the timeline,
and I just came up with the whole thing of
you know, just you know what about you know, when
he made the kid, which is horrifying. Man, I was,
you know, we we were Dan and I were in
such a dark place during all this Blair Wige thing.

(10:59):
But the idea of like, you know, you're killing one kid,
and you can't, you know, you turn the other kids,
you know, face away from you so that he doesn't
look at you while you do this horrific act. Like
I was like, oh my god. So we you know,
we I came up with that one, and I added
into the website and then we were like, hey, man,
we should go back and you know, do an interview
to explain to connect that, you know. So you know,

(11:20):
so that came later. You know that that came much later.
But but you know that, and that's a lot of
the mythology came that way, you know.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Was that after you guys decided to cut all the
Phase two footage out of the theatrical version of the
film and stuff that later ended up in Curse of
the Blair, which all the stuff with like Heather's professor
and family, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yeah, the That decision was made in like September of
ninety eight, like right before Sundance, that Sundance deadline, and
we were, you know, we were we had been struggling
for you know, at least four or five months about
like which way to go and how much of the
Phase two to put in, and Dan and I both

(11:59):
agree that it wasn't working, and we had two kind
of different ideas as to how we thought we could
make it work. But then those two kind of like
just we're like, nah, let's just so at the end,
we're like, just let's just cut all the thing, put
a title card on there, and that's all that people get.
And then the idea of like already adding the interview

(12:20):
for the rust and park connection to the house at
the end, that came after Sundance bought us. That was
probably you know, April or you know, when we shot that.
But I guess the rest and park stuff connection had
come in sometime during ninety eight while I was building
the website.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
And I really have to give you props again, because
I mean, I don't want to say that the movie
wouldn't have been effective without you know, rooms filled with
pentagrams and blood and gore. But it really says something
that what is arguably the scariest modern horror film is
largely a bloodless film, aside from you know, the the

(13:00):
bundle with Josh's teeth and you know a little bit
of gore in there. And you guys did not go
for pentagrams. You went for the genius move of rooms,
which would be unrecognizable to you know, because the whole
public knows, oh pentagram okay, spooky Satanists. But when you
see the rooms, it's like, what the fuck is this?

(13:21):
And instead of blood splatter children's hand, Prince, I mean,
the fucking scariest moment of the film leading up to
the final sequence in the house is hearing those kids
giggle outside the tent. Like to this day, it still
sends a chill up my spine. So again like just
stroke of genius after stroke of genius with this and Zach,

(13:42):
I don't want to hog too much a fist interview,
so I wanted to hand this over to you because
I know that you have questions about the Boggy Creek connection.

Speaker 4 (13:51):
Well, moving get to that, I think honestly kind of
transitioned it to where I wanted to go with the
whole mythology elements of everything.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
So it don't mind, I'd like to kind of stay
on that.

Speaker 4 (13:59):
For him, it go for it, So I just wanted
to kind of compliment you ed And much like Jesse,
Blairwitch had a huge impact on my life. I was
seven when the film came out, and I had a
very non restrictive parents, so I was able to see
it pretty early, and the line between fiction and reality
was very blurred for me, particularly because this curse of
the blair Witch, which to my young mind was like

(14:21):
indistinguishable from like an episode of Hanked History. And I
think part of that is just really speaks to how
well thought out the world building and the mythology you
guys did for the film was.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
And jefse can a death to if.

Speaker 4 (14:35):
It's something that I've praised in our personal conversations many times.
In particular when I'm trying to explain to Jesse, like
the lasting impact of love Craft, I'm always like, well,
you see Lovecraft understood, Like with mythology, like you have
to kind of leave some dangling threads.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
You can't explain every little detail.

Speaker 4 (14:53):
You have to have some hanging chads, I guess, and
what I love about blair Witch, and when I think
so many they're down footage films in particular, get wrong,
is that they just over emphasize things. And what I
love about blair Witch is like you have the whole
rust and par thing. You have the interview where they're
like describing the blair Witch add like this almost like
bigfoot sque creature. You have the children, ghosts, you have

(15:18):
the runic elements. You have such a hodgepodge of these different,
like very American and very different blended elements. And that's
how things work in the real world, I mean quote
unquote real depending on where your stands on the paranormal is.
But there is always this kind of very descriptions of things,
where like with Boggy Creek, for instance, some people think
it's just a straight Bigfoot, and then you have the

(15:39):
people that are like, no, it's hath lizard stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
And I think it just adds such an added.

Speaker 4 (15:44):
Layer of realism to have all these different elements, and
like Jesse was saying, it just makes it stand such
a cut above like just having you know, the pentagrams and.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
The blood on the walls.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
Like you said, Zach, that whole Mary Brown sequence where
you're expecting this woman to I think this is why
that fan theory, if you can even call it, that
has proliferated for so long that oh, no, Mary Brown
is actually the witch just because she's an older woman
with angular facial features. You know, you hear you know, Oh,
it's a movie about a patch of woods haunted by

(16:15):
a witch. It's going to be an old crone looking person.
But what Mary is saying and that you know, well,
you know she was covered in fur and all this stuff,
it's like so high strangeness if you will. It's like,
that's not what I think of when I when I
hear a witch. But again, like Zach said, if you

(16:35):
watch these documentaries where they interview real life paranormal eyewitnesses,
ninety nine percent of the time they're going to say
something that throws you for a loop where it's just like, oh,
that's what the alien you saw look like or oh
that's what the ghost looked like, and did it just
added this layer of authenticity to it. It just just

(16:56):
a genius move, right, and I think a great examp that.

Speaker 4 (17:00):
And I don't know how much this case in particular
inspired you guys in the making of the film. I
know it's tally been thrown out there as a potential
reference point. But the bell Witch case, and much like
the Blair Witch. When you first hear bell Witch and
you hear about like the time it took place, it's like, oh,
colonial era, which placed the curse on a family.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
I know where this is going. And then when you
really look.

Speaker 4 (17:24):
Into it, it becomes this like weird poltergeist thing that
involves the future US president and there's just all this,
like Jesse said, high strangeness, with like a haunted cave
and just all these just completely out there elblements. And
I think so much of modern paranormal literature and even

(17:44):
actual investigations they tend to trim away so much of.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
Those weird elements.

Speaker 4 (17:49):
And they really do that for the sake of I guess,
narrative clarity, but to me, it robs it of that authenticity.
And again, I mean, I know I'm repeating myself here.
It's why it's so often when I sit down and watch.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
A horror movie like hell House or you know, any
of these movies that obviously take a lot of inspiration
from Blair Witch, I feel like I'm an ad at
chasing the Dragon, and there's always that gitch that I
can't quite scratch because I just feel like you guys
really touched on something authentic there that a lot of
people just do not. And yeah, I want to circle
back to your mention of the Bell Witch, Zach ed

(18:22):
As you know, like and you've talked about this, I
think I'm a commentary or at least in one of
the behind the scenes documentaries where anytime you would like
kind of start to tease the project that you were
thinking of and working on, you'd be like, oh, have
you ever heard of the Blair Witch. People would sometimes respond, oh,
do you mean the Bell Witch? Was there any inspiration

(18:43):
taken from that story? Or was that just a total
phonetic coincidence?

Speaker 3 (18:48):
To me, it was a coincidence. But as far as
like Ben Rock, you know, who ended up being the
production designer, ended up being a director of a lot
of the kind of the the mockumentaries whatever you want
to call it, after the original Blair after Curse the Blairwitch,
and he wrote Curse the Blairwitch. But so he was
our like mythology guy, and he was like, you know,

(19:09):
Ben was just a weird dude. You know. He was
just into all that stuff, like in a hardcore way.
And I was never that, you know, like smart enough
for me to follow all that stuff. But Ben, you
know is and was, you know, smart enough, so he
would bring he brought in all the ruins. And I
must I mean, he must have known about the bell Witch.
But I didn't know about the Bellwitch at all when

(19:30):
I came up with the name Blair.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
So Ben was the guy that would go to the
library and research old stuff once you gave him like, hey,
this is the vibe we want.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
Yeah, and there was you know, the magazine was it
called fortyen Times or yes, yeah, he was like, you know,
that's the first guy that introduced that to me. I
was like, whoa, what the hell you know? And he
had been you know since you know, subscribe it to
a price since the beginning of the magazine, so he
knew his stuff. But so I'm sure Ben knew about
the bell Witch. But you know, when we were coming

(20:01):
up with a mythology, we wanted it to be like
you were guys were saying, is that and the reason
that like, you know, modern horror films especially and just
modern films in general over explained stuff, and also television
does the same thing. Is that the the audience the execs,
and it's usually you know, somebody high up and most

(20:23):
of the time you don't even know who it is.
They don't trust the audience, they don't trust the intelligence
of the audience, and they are their whole you know,
the whole idea of marketing is they want to get
as many people, many different people into the theaters and
to watch the series as possible, so they don't want
to you know, alien at any anybody.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
And that's why Artisan asked you guys to reshoot the ending.
They will watched four alternate endings that you ended up yes,
kind of halfheartedly doing.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
Yes. That's exactly why, because they were like, what the
hell is this ending?

Speaker 1 (20:55):
You know.

Speaker 3 (20:55):
And also look, they had a point Mike's standing in
the corner in the sun Dance version, which was you know,
pre Artisan made no sense as far as like we
didn't connect the dots at all. It was just a
creepy thing.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
And again you didn't have the interview with the ball
cap guy explaining what part did now.

Speaker 3 (21:10):
I didn't have that. We hadn't come up with that idea,
yet we were still barely catching up with the other stuff.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
So it's a genius move because you guys very easily
could have said, well, look, this is our big break.
They're not asking for us to change much. They just
want to make the final gut punch of the movie
more effective. And who can argue with that? And you
gave it a shot, and those are interesting alternate endings,
but I don't think there is effective. But you guys
came up with this genius back door where it's like, well,

(21:36):
hold on, how about instead of changing the original ending
we shot, what if we throw in fifteen seconds of
a guy giving you the exposition that your brain needs
to retain early enough into the movie that when you
see it, it's a double gut punch. It's not just
holy shit, what's going on with this guy in the corner.
That's fucking creepy. Why isn't he responding to Heather screaming

(21:58):
at him? But it's also your bring go oh my god,
that's right. The fucking dude made the kids stand in
the corner. Like again, I've said it so many times
and I'm not trying to deliberately lick your ass here,
but it's genius.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
You know.

Speaker 3 (22:10):
I mean, look, man, when you look back around it,
you're like, yeah, that was fucking amazing, you know. But
we were just, you know, we were just making calls,
you know, like we make on all of other films
and all the other TV shows that I do. You
just make calls, and sometimes you get it right and
sometimes you get it wrong. Blair Witch was an extraordinary
streak of right calls, you know, of proper calls. So

(22:30):
you know, there definitely was that. But yeah, man, it
was just kind of like the alternate endings were you know,
it made sense to even us to try We're like, yeah,
let's try it, because you know, when when Dan and
I were trying to come up with the ending, we
did go through all those higher budget kind of endings
where like, you know, lights were coming out from the
ground and you know Josh. You know, there's ideas of

(22:50):
like Josh sitting there in a grave, like an open grave,
and you know, just you know, stuff coming out of
the walls, you know, all that stuff. And then you know,
we've got to the point, you know, we didn't have
any money really, and we got to the point where
we hadn't come up with the idea yet and we
were already shooting, so you know, we definitely you know,
backed ourselves into a corner per se, you know, literally
mm hm. And you know, and look, there was also

(23:12):
a financial incentive because we hadn't been paid yet and
we were broke, so we were They're like, oh, we'll
pay you all this money to go back to Maryland
and shoot the endings again, and we were like, yeah, yeah,
of course. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
It's always a rarity when a studio offers you more
money to shoot, it's usually the opposite, like, hey, wrap
this up and let's keep this under budget.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
People, you know, but are yeah, and you know again,
you know, I always said Artisan was the proper you know,
it was the perfect place for Blair Witch. You know,
it's another one of those you know, lucky moments, lucky
decisions that kind of lined up because I don't think
anybody else would have done as good a job as Artisan.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Well, it was the perfect time and place for you
guys too, because there was this sort of indie uprising
in the mid to late nineties where you had you know,
Slacker and Kevin Smith's early work, and studios were starting
to take a risk on well you know, this is
like the Evil Dead. These are just old college buddies

(24:06):
that decided to bring some you know, sixteen millimeter cameras
into the woods and make a little low budget movie.
You know, I don't know if it was you know,
if it would have come out in the eighties or
even the two thousands, if they would have taken that risk,
it was the perfect time for it.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
Well, I mean and also as Artisan was a company
that was relatively new, and they were they were run
by people that were you know, they they they had
a plan for the company, you know what I'm saying,
like they and I think that part of their plan
was to fill in you know, and I don't know
if it was part of the plan or whatever, but
somehow they filled in that little indie gap, that indie

(24:45):
little niche that Merrimax had kind of gotten a little
bit too big. You know, Merrimax was like at that
time because Merrimax really was the champion of those like
small indie films whatever. And then you know again they
you know, companies grow and they're like, no, we're not
going to do anymore these you know, really small films.
We're going to try, you know, get Oscar nominated in
Shakespeare in Love and you got all those movies.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
In the Crying Game and all that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
Yeah, so they basically, you know, so artists and a
couple other companies had this little thing of like, you
were going to take the you know, the stuff that
Merrimax usually would have gotten. We're going to try to
take advantage of that. So they you know, they were
taking risks, you know, and they definitely took a risk
on Blair Witch and you know everything. And they were
the right company for it, you know, they were they

(25:29):
were you know, they had good marketing people, and they
got the movie. They understood the movie, they understood like
the quirkiness of it and like and they leaned into it.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
Oh yeah, what other studio would have let you guys
lean into the whole? Well maybe, well let people think
it's real. We're not going to tell them it isn't
you know. Let's let's run with this. You know, another
studio would have been like, are you kidding me? That's
potential for a lawsuit. But they really let you guys
run with what ended up becoming the real I don't

(25:59):
want to say saving it's not like the film was
in trouble, but it was like the real big bang
for that, Like you said, the website, the Curse of
the blair Witch special on Sci Fi, like letting the
public believe in an age prior to social media and
instant fact checking, like holy shit, this might be you know,
a de facto snuff film is really what helped launch

(26:22):
you guys to an international audience. So good on them
for letting you guys play ball with that.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
No, absolutely, and I always credit them with that because
we I think, you know, as far as like you know,
Axson was concerned, we had had you know, the primary
I guess the prime directive for blair Witch between Dan
and me and then Greg eventually was that everything has
to look one hundred percent real, like as much as
we can, you know, Like, so we studied you know,

(26:50):
other films that had made mistakes, and we you know,
we knew media from the seventies and we grew up
with that, so you know, we kind of kept that
ideline the whole time as well as like you know,
all of shooting, you know, there was there couldn't be
any weird lighting you know, coming from no from you know,
everything had to be explained, everything had to be physical.
You know, nothing could be. We wanted nothing to be

(27:13):
to disprove you know the movie, you know, to be
able to say, oh no they you know they there's
a big light, you know, lighting those woods up. You know,
that's that's artificial light, that's lit.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
It couldn't be too perfect.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
Yeah, it had to be raw and had to be
real and then they But we never imagined that we
were going to like market it that way because we
were again we were afraid that like, you know, if
lawsuits of like and also not lawsuits, but just kind
of like backlash, you know. Yeah. Our whole thing was like, well,
if you fool people, you know, and to go into
the theater or not the theater because we had no idea,

(27:46):
you know, we had no intention.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
Well yeah, because I seem to remember you'd originally your
original best hope was maybe we'll get on cable late
at night.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
Yeah. No, HBO was like, you know, this is a
way before streaming. So it was just HBO and I
guess showtime was around. So it was like, oh man,
if we can get HBO and then maybe like a
video deal, you know, you can make a little bit
of money and then pay our investors and then make
maybe make make another movie, you know.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
So because there was some precedent for that, there was
at the same time you guys were still in production
in Maryland, there was that. And my god, is it
is so confusing to try and even reference these two
films that are essentially the same film because the names
have always get cross reference. But the McPherson tape aka

(28:33):
UFO UFO abduction incident at whatever that aired on UPN
and what ninety seven or ninety eight, So there was
some precedent of we can take this indie found footage
thing and at least put it on TV and maybe
get a limited VHS release. Were you guys aware of
that at the time as like something like hey, this
is you know, this gives us some hope or was

(28:54):
that just another like happy accident of the trajectory of
horror at the time.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
Yeah, dude, it was a happy accident because we we
hadn't I hadn't heard of any of those films.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
Mmm.

Speaker 3 (29:04):
It's the same thing with Capibal Holocaust. We had never
seen that movie or heard of it until after Blair Witch.
The only found footagey kind of movie that we were
aware of before Blair Witch or right as we were
about to start editing the movie was the last Broadcast.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
Oh so you guys now listen. Anything I'm going to
say about last Broadcast, I promise is not a loaded statement.
I know there was some I don't want to say
bad blood, but like the press tried to make it
out that way.

Speaker 3 (29:32):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
And I grew up in Jersey, so I was kind
of aware of the Last Broadcast as it was like
coming out, and I just always thought that you guys
got a little bit of a raw deal from some
of the press that were trying to turn it into
a non story, like, oh, is it possible that they
ripped off the last broadcast? And it's like, you guys
already had Picture Lock by the time that anyone had

(29:54):
heard of that movie. It was a coincidence.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
Yeah, No, I mean we hadn't got Picture Lock yet.
We basically the the timeline of Last Broadcast was we
shot the movie in ninety seven October ninety seven, and
then I moved up to Orlando in like early ninety eight,
and I actually lived, you know with Dan for a
little while, slept on his floor in the living room,
and we started, you know, like at least coming up

(30:18):
with an idea of how the hell we're going to
edit this movie, you know, because there's so much footage.
So we started coming up with a plan. And I
remember the moment that I saw the trailer online to
last broadcast. And this was back in the day. You know,
you went to the website and they had a trailer
if you were lucky, video was you know, I think
this was even for YouTube.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
So away before YouTube.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
Video on the web was very limited, so you'd wait
all day to like download whatever it was, and then
you would watch it. And I remember watching it in
like my freaking heart just sank, and like, you know,
it was like the end. And I remember Dan the
look on Dan's face when he's when I showed it
to him, and we were like, man, this because you know,

(31:00):
you always kind of run to the issue where like
you come up with an idea and then like a
couple of years later, the same thing comes out it's
a big hit or you know whatever. You know, just
again there's a synergy of ideas and sometimes there are
like similar ideas that come up at the same time.
But we were like, damn, dude, we came up with
this idea in ninety one and we sat on it
for you know, five six years. This is why we're

(31:21):
gonna get punished for that, you know, the film guys
are punishing us that this movie is gonna kind of
take all our you know, glory, because for us, that
trailer was like, that's exactly had you know, that's the
footage looks like our footage, and it looks, you know,
the premise is not the same, but it's still like
it's you know, it's found footage. Even before we weren't

(31:42):
calling it found footage. We were calling it more like
POV cinema, first person cinema.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
Yeah, because I imagine that could have felt like, oh, fuck,
we're dead in the water.

Speaker 3 (31:50):
Here, but I mean, dude, it totally felt like that.
And I remember talking Mike Manela, who was one of
the producers on Blair Witch. He was working at the
enz In Theater and he was really well connected with like,
you know, Indie Wire where I think Indie Wire was
out already or like very early in the days of
that you know website, and he was, you know, a

(32:11):
fest He was kind of a one of the He
helped run the film festiv the Orlando Film festal Or
Florida Film Festival that runs out of there. I think
he's the one that sent us the trailer, like hey,
you know, check this out the U r L or whatever.
And then I remember just meeting about it and like
just the team was, you know, Greg and Dan and
me and Mike and probably Rob two, and we were

(32:34):
just like, you know, what are we going to do this?
And then I was like, well, you know what else
can we? They just edit the movie because you know,
we were trying to, you know, see if we could
watch it, but nobody knew anybody, and we were like, now,
let's just forget it. And then long story short, in
September again, that decision that we made in September of
ninety eight, right before the Sun Dance deadline of taking

(32:55):
all the footage out, that was after you know, I
don't know if I was after before, but it was
right around that time that we watched the last broadcast.
We got somehow got a VHS you know, like those
that you you know, you would submit movies on VHS. Oh,
a screener, Yeah, a screener. So we somebody, I don't
know what, you know, probably through the n ZON or

(33:17):
something you know, they let us borrow it, and we
watched it and we were like, you know, again, we
were we were relieved because we're like, no, there's there's
space for both our movies. Because the movies were so different,
you know what I mean, Like it was a very
kind of the same you know the movie. The movie
they're like their cousins, you know, instead of a brother
and sister, you know what I'm saying. So yeah, but

(33:37):
you know, and you know, you can say, you know whatever,
whether you like the movie or not. I thought it
was cool, you know, I thought it was you know, good.
I think you know, the the the the you know,
it was definitely low budget, it was definitely super creative,
you know what I'm saying. I love those aspects of it.
But so then we entered Sundance knowing I think it
might have been after Sundance, but I don't I remember it.

(34:00):
And that's the September of ninety eight is when we
watched it, and that's when we entered Sundance, so somewhere
in that so in so then and then you know,
that's when we realized that, oh my god, it's it's
a different movie. And you know, and then we were
kind of and we were obviously glad that we had
taken off taken out all the documentary stuff because they

(34:20):
had a little bit of that too, and we were like,
you know, again, another one of these, like you guys
you know so graciously calling it genius moves, but it's
just like good luck thing that we just happened to
stumble upon the right decision at the right time, you
know what I mean. And there was a little animosity,
I mean, you know, like I felt bad for those
guys because, like you know, they they went to market

(34:42):
a little bit before us, and they they went to Sundance,
but they weren't an officially like in.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
The they were screened out of competition.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
Yeah, they were at a competition, they were, and they
went there to like cause they were like the you know,
the kind of the the original guys that tried to
distribute a film digitally, you know what I'm saying. So
that was like a big thing for them that it
was like a digital release and it was the first
of its kind. Then you know, as they were making
waves with that, well, they were.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
So ahead of their time that it shot themselves in
the foot. I mean, like I didn't watch the last
broadcast until like maybe five or six years ago, even
though I had heard about it for all these years,
I was so swept up in Blair Witch Fever that
I didn't even want to like check it out because
I didn't want it to like ruin my impression of it.
But when I finally got around to watching it, I'm like,
these guys are making a fucking movie about live streaming

(35:29):
in ninety eight, Like no, Like it was so out
of the lexicon, this idea of streaming video live onto
the Internet that I think that that's a good example
of time wasn't on their side. If they had tried
doing that maybe seven or eight years later, it would
have been, you know, more more publicly received as groundbreaking.

(35:50):
It was a groundbreaking film, but I don't think the
public knew enough about live streaming yet.

Speaker 4 (35:55):
But I think I think part of it too is
just this kind of crickles back to what we been
talking about, is just the ultimate twist of that movie,
which I have nick feelings of that movie overall, but
I respect a lot.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
Of the creativity and the decisions they made.

Speaker 4 (36:08):
But like with the ultimate twist in that movie, I
think what separates it from like the blair Witch is
Like with blair Witch, it to me, it's very believable
that like, if someone came across these tapes in real life,
they could maybe pick them up and distribute them, because
it does happen. I mean, it's kind of in a
somewhat similar way would happen with Grizzly Man exactly, but
like a live stream murder, like I'm sorry, that's going

(36:30):
to be on the news. So even in like the
more limited world of the nineties where we didn't have
social media, instant fact checking and stuff like, I just
don't think the world was in a place where that
could take off and have that like viral sensation or
like the cultural phenomenon that The blair Witch did. I
just don't think it had that umps to it.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
And I mean that's really not saying anything negative about
their film on like a filmmaking level. It's just, you know,
it didn't have that extra spark.

Speaker 4 (36:56):
And you know, whether we want to call it genius
or just strokes of luck, I think, honestly, there's a
bunch of a difference there.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
I think most artistic works that our genius are basically.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
Yeah, yeah, it's true, Yeah, but I mean, it just
is what it is.

Speaker 4 (37:08):
And I think fortunately, like just culture at large is
kind of gotten over that whole like ripoff thing. And
I know, especially like in the nineties, I think there
was a much more of a focus on authenticity. But
then you have a couple of summers in a row
where you have Doc peys Inferno and volcano and Armageddon
and whatever that other one deep defit packed and where
like it's very obvious that parallel thinking exists, and I

(37:30):
think people kind of get over that. And I mean
even now, like I've seen like indie filmmakers, like two
guys make very similar down footage big foot movies, and
they'll kind of have release dates very close to each other,
and they're kind of joking back and forth with each
other on social media. There's not really that animosity or
the oh you rip me off or anything like that
out there. And I mean, I mean, Jesse, I guess

(37:51):
you would have a little bit of experience with that
with your mouth Lamp project, if you don't mind me saying, well.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
Yeah, without like too much shameless self plugging. Zach Michael
and I were in post production right now on a
Blair Witch inspired found Footage Foe documentary that's honestly more
inspired by Curse of the blair Witch, because you know,
just like Zach, when I saw that on TV, I
was like, holy shit, this whole thing might be friggin' real,
Like oh my God, like, you know, shout out to

(38:17):
Ben Rock cause I know, like that special was kind
of his baby. But yeah, we a couple of years
ago we noticed that this trend effect because found footage,
like ever since blair Witch came out, kind of comes
in waves, Like we saw the big resurgence in nine
with paranormal activity, and then shortly afterward there was or
shortly before I can't remember, but there was Cloverfield et cetera,
et cetera, and we saw another wave coming and it

(38:38):
was just like, well, if you're going to make another
found footage movie, that isn't just you know, your standard
ghost in the house movie, like what works. And we
all agreed like, well, what really helped the blair Witch
was this idea of a built in legend And we
didn't want to be so bold to be like, oh,
we could create our own legend that'll be just as effective.

(38:59):
So we're like, well, let's let's find a legend that's
ripe for found footage, and we're like Mothman. No one's
got a Mothman found footage movie. And because we took
our time with it, because we wanted to put a
lot of care into it, like it takes place in
the eighties, so we shot on an old nineteen eighty
seven Panasonic omnivision thing and super eight millimeter and all
this stuff because we put that kind of care into it.

(39:21):
In the time between us starting pre production and post production,
like three Mothman found footage movies have since come out,
and it's just like, eh, okay, great, we won't be
able to say we're first, but like you were saying earlier, Ed,
there's room for everybody in the genre.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
Yeah, oh absolutely. And the thing that happened in the
last broadcast was that we were at sun Dance together
and Blair Witch was like the darling of the festival,
you know, like everybody was that one. And there was
a movie called Happy Texas that was also the darling,
like on the comedy side, and you know, Merri Maxin
paid like a bunch of money for it, and so

(39:56):
both those they were kind of like, you know, the
hype was on both those movies, and you know, and
then here they come with this movie and they're like,
you know, damn man, and there's you know, and again
they were I think, you know, somebody in that on
that camp, in that camp was thinking that we had
ripped them off somehow, And I understand that, but you know,
the timeline doesn't match up, you know what I mean, no,

(40:18):
not at all. Yeah, so that you know, that whole
thing I think soured them, and you know, unfortunately, but
you know, again I always tell people, I'm like, look,
you know, the last broadcast probably would have never even
been seen anywhere if it wasn't for Blair Witch. So
it's kind of not that they should be appreciative of us.
But it was a similar idea in ours just for

(40:38):
some reason hit commercially. But THEIRS I think was helped
because I think on the cover it was like, you know,
the I remember the cover of it saying definitely something
was like, don't know, you know, we're not sure if
it was inspired by it, but definitely preceded the Blair
Witch project or something like that some critic you know
or something. Oh, yes, they were obviously using our film
to market their film so you know, for me, it

(41:01):
was like, well, maybe I understand why they were if
there was bitterness over there, well.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
They probably bought into whatever, you know, Variet. I can't
remember if it was Variety exactly that was hyping this
non existent feud, but you know, they were probably in
the same boat as you guys. You know, they got
the trailer out onto the web and they were starting
to get some festival showings. Then all of a sudden
like ah, man, like you know, it's artisan is putting
this out and for a wide release. Like so I

(41:27):
think you guys were both in the same lifeboat without
knowing it.

Speaker 3 (41:31):
So yeah, now you know it was you know again man,
I mean I remember like personal things of seeing them,
you know, at certain times, and you know it was
unfortunate because there was this kind of tension between us
and you know, there wasn't any need for it, but
I understand how it was coming from them.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
It all worked out for everybody, though, like you said,
it gave them a big boost in attention, and especially
in the age of Reddit now and movie recommendation like
the Blair Witch Project being a found footage starting point
for most people opened the doors for not just like
the movies that came after, but for people to go
back and go, oh, you know what's this? You know

(42:12):
McPherson tape, and you know what are all these other ones?
So it was great for everyone exactly.

Speaker 4 (42:18):
I mean I cure it sucked for them in the moment,
but like blair Witch has done so much for not
only them, but like ghost Watch, like the BBC thing
I always see get mentioned and like the same breath
as blair Witch, which it is a great one. I
don't know if anybody else in the call has seen
that one. No one actually did gets the backlass when
it aired on TV. We wasn't there a suicide ghost Watch.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
Yeah, there was like a mentally disturbed or someone or
a kid with a psychological issue watched it on TV
and thought it was real and he ended up killing
himself and I think they tried suing the BBC over it.
So yeah, there was some controversy there when ghost Watch
came out that was.

Speaker 3 (42:54):
Like, yeah, that's thing. I mean, I don't know about
that one. I think you're right about ghost Watch. And
again it's another thing that we had no idea what
that it had existed until after Sundance and people were like,
it's similar to ghost Watch, and you know, and honestly,
those you know that was back in the day that
you know, you couldn't just download stuff even non just
you know, sometimes you can find stuff on pirated sites,

(43:14):
you know that isn't available you know, commercially, but trying
to get I mean, there's no way I can you know,
we had access to that to see that show, you
know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
Oh, I talked to gen Z about this stuff all
the time where they try bringing that up, like, oh, yeah,
it had to have been like inspired by Cannibal Holocaust
a ghost Watch, and I'm like, listen, I was born
in eighty eight. Not only did I go to Blockbuster
all the time I worked there after high school. I
need y'all to understand this. No one was finding a
copy of ghost Watch or Cannibal Holocaust in a Blockbuster

(43:44):
video in the nineties. It wasn't happening. Well, yes, sEH,
you have to stop you because I did find a
copy of Cannibal Holocaust did a bomb at Pop video
shop when I was about That's different, Yeah, Mama pop
totally you know, yes, possible, but yeah, I mean, it's
it's the whole correlation is not causation. Thing.

Speaker 4 (44:02):
Just because a similar movie exists does not mean that
it is a direct you know. And also it's just
like just because there's two similar ideas does not mean
it's a ripoff. There's a thing called homage. There's also
just things called I mean, in arguably, found footage is
now a genre. I mean, it's such a genre now
that we've had different waves and I mean now we're
kind of in this midst of this like renaissance of

(44:23):
sort of this like I don't really know what you
want to call it, like the more like artistic found footage,
like stuff like skinem the Rink and yeah, it's that
movie that I saw, The Girl that Made, I saw
the TV glow made. We're all going to World's Fair,
stuff like that. I mean, people are doing really creative
things of the genre. I mean, so who cares if
there were two fees that were similar at one point?

Speaker 3 (44:44):
Yeah? No, I mean I feel the same way. Like
you know, Dan, I always saying that we were lucky
that we didn't see Carabal Holocaust before Blair Witch or
else we would have That's that's the one movie we
would have never made. Blair Witch. That's the one movie
that really freaked me out when I saw it. I think,
damn the same way. And somebody sent it to us
after Sundance and we popped it in not only because
of you know, the animal mutilation and stuff, but also

(45:07):
just like it's the exact same premise of our original
premise of Blair Witch. You know, it's like somebody doing
a documentary about the disappearance of you know, three filmmakers,
you know, documentary filmmakers. So it was like we were like,
oh my, because you know, I mean Dan and I.
You know, if we had seen that movie and when
we were in the eighties, you know, we wouldn't We

(45:29):
would have been like, that's already been done, let's go
on to the next idea, and I wouldn't be talking
to you right now, you.

Speaker 4 (45:34):
Know, exactly, kind of like the magic of circumstances. If
that movie hadn't courted so much controversy. It's native Italy
and it hadn't had more international recognition, you may very
well have seen it, because that's part of the reason
that I mean it was, you know, it was an
Italian video nasty. They didn't always get wide released, but
part of The reason that one was so kind of

(45:55):
burried is because they had made all the actors sign
that like non disclosure agreement where they would go on TV.
And then there were legitimate concerns about it being real,
and the director gotten a lot of hot water, and
I think so did the production company and stuff.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
Then it kind of kneecapped it to its wider release.

Speaker 3 (46:12):
I'm pretty sure it was banned here in the United
States right because of the of the animal violence.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
Definitely in the UK.

Speaker 3 (46:19):
Yeah, but but you know, and and again like if
they hadn't, you know, done the real animal mutilations, you know, again,
they kind of shut themselves in the foot by trying
to be provocative. And I understand that, you know, like
I I, you know, I don't know if I have
done the same thing. But you know, we didn't kill anybody,
but we put our actors, you know, in the woods
for eight days. That could be construed as abusive, you know.

(46:40):
So and imagine if you know what if Heather, Mike
and Josh more than had gotten really her or whatever
had died, fallen down or something or you know whatever, Yeah,
we would have been in huge trouble. You know what
I'm saying so, yeah, I mean things work out that way.
But we were just you know, again, there's another moment
where like our jaws dropped when we saw and we're like,
this is the exact same premise of our movie. Man,
Like it's crazy.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
You know, Well, I think that what is lost on
a lot of people. And this brings us back around
to something that I know that Zach and I and
Michael want to discuss, is I think it's lost on
a lot of people. Now that there was a lot
of that parallel thought in the eighties and nineties of
you know, a documentary crew something fucked up happening to them,
whether it be cannibals or something supernatural, because the generation

(47:23):
of the seventies grew up watching In Search of and
while I was born in eighty eight, I was lucky
enough to catch the reruns on the History Channel in
the early two thousands, and I fell in love with
that show. And so I think a lot of these filmmakers,
I can't really speak for the people behind Cannibal Holocaust,
but I'm sure you know, everyone from the McPherson tape
to the last broadcast grew up on that show as well.

(47:47):
And like When I first saw a behind the scenes
featurette where you and Myrick mentioned that, it was like,
like I said, like my heart swooned because I was like,
holy shit, someone is actually talking about this show and
it was an influence on something I love. Because, you know,
pre social media and like, you know, even online discussion groups,
it was hard being a you know, a twelve year

(48:08):
old kid in suburban New Jersey in the early two
thousands and trying to talk to people about this Leonard
Memoy show from the seventies, you know what I mean.
So like hearing that opened up a whole new world
of like, holy shit. Yeah, this was influential, and I've
always wanted to know was there a specific episode or
collection of episodes that really kicked off that vibe with you? Like,

(48:29):
I know you're big on big Foot in the Locknest Monster.
Was it those episodes that helped inspire the Blair Witch.

Speaker 3 (48:35):
Yeah, it was the Bigfoot one, locking this Monster. Anything
with like UFOs, I think there was a couple of
different UFO ones.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Yeah, there was one of the family in Australia.

Speaker 3 (48:45):
Yeah, but even like I mean, honestly, it's even the
like Amelia Earhart one was creepy to me, you know,
Oh hell yeah, you know what I'm saying, Just those
old photos and I remember like almost every damn episode
creeping me out, Like there was one about the people
that could Ben Spoons, you know, mentalists. The show looked creepy.

Speaker 2 (49:04):
And also ghosts and photography that was a very.

Speaker 3 (49:07):
Voice, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
Oh yeah, And the music people always talk about like
Texas chainsaw masks are being so effective because it looks
like a seventies science film and a that's part of
why In Search of Up, especially looking back at it retroactively,
kind of had that same patina of like, for lack
of a better word, grossness. Yeah, it's had a creep
factor to it.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
It's sixteen millimeter with ugly seventies lighting, which like they
just blasted light directly into the room, and you know
that goes back to Blair Witch. That's why Dan and
I when we the first idea for the movie was
like these guys disappear in the seventies, you know, So
there's just a bunch of sixteen millimeter negatives sitting around
somewhere and somebody discovers it and it's this whole movie

(49:49):
because we were like, we were sure that part of
the at least for us, and you know, we've been
talking about it, the look of In Search Of and
all those movies, Legend of Boggy Creek, that the look
of those movies is part of what made it scary,
you know.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
Well, like Zach said, the patina of it. And I know,
Manelo is gonna hate me if he hears this. But
one of the things that I as a tech nerd
always kind of responded to with the original home video
releases that are about to be replaced by an absolutely
astounding release coming from Second Site this November, where you
guys gave them the original film and high eight video

(50:25):
elements to do direct scans, and that's going to be great.
Like I'm not knocking that at all, but aesthetically like
that grime, that grit, that grossness that Zach mentioned is
a technical thing because In Search Of, like you mentioned,
not only was it shot on sixteen millimeter, but like
you guys did with the work print and the eventual
home video master, it was celluloid film that was transferred

(50:49):
to videotape for editing, so you had generational loss and
it fucked with the frame rate. You know, film is
shot at twenty four frames per second. When you transferred
to video, it goes to twenty nine point nine seven
and that creates like a weird wobbliness like motion looks weird.
Detail is lost, there's a blurriness that gets on there.
And I think, even though I know as filmmakers and

(51:11):
editors and I know Neil rest in Peace was very
frustrated with it, I can see both sides of it. Yes,
as a filmmaker and an artist who's pure about the medium,
you want to see the best transfer possible. But there
is also something to be said of, holy shit, this
thing looks really fucking creepy because of the generational loss
and the murkiness of it. It's what a lot of

(51:33):
film historians talking about German Expressionism term the language of shadows.
Like going back to myrnow with Nosfaratu, it's what's in
the darkness and what your eye can't really make out
is what's truly horrifying.

Speaker 3 (51:46):
You know, Yeah, No, I mean I feel the same way.
For me. There is something about like wanting to see
the movie, you know again in the way we edited it.
You know, I'm saying the way because we edited on digital,
but it was just basically high Hi answer it to video,
so it looked like video, you know what I mean.
And then there was when they released a movie that way,
there was a little bit of frustration, like as far

(52:08):
as some people like Mike Manelo and you know, but
to me, I was like, the transfer to film kind
of thing makes it look weird, gives it a weird feeling.
So I totally understand that. But I think that after
watching it now more sections of it on, you know,
with the original High eight, I think possibly when Blair
Witch came out, there still was this thing of like,

(52:29):
especially for us, like sixteen millimeter was kind of like this,
that's the look we were going for. But I think
now since you know, just digital filmmaking and also just
people videotaping everything digitally and iPhones and all that stuff,
now it's like vintage video. It feels like vintage video,
and it still has that creepy thing to it because
it does look authentic. But you know, I'm curious to

(52:51):
see what you guys think once you watch the new
version and see, you know, if it was as effective
or does it lose anything because you gain a little
like it's a little clearer, like it loves a little
more detail. The colors are a little more you know rich.
But it's you know again, it's like, you know, I've
been doing I've just been watching a lot of the
footage just because they've transferred and that I hadn't seen

(53:12):
the original footage in a long time, you know, especially
transferred that nicely. You know, it's beautifully transferred. And it's
just weird because and I know these people. I know
Josh and Mike and Heather. I just saw them a
few months ago in Orlando at a convention and you know,
I talked to them, you know, I texted them with
them this week. But it feels like you're watching on
you know, like an old movie. Especially the footage that

(53:35):
isn't in the movie. It feels like you're watching dead
People's video. It's just it's really weird. It's like, because
their performances are so great throughout and there's so much
footage that didn't make it into the movie that you
just have this when you see new footage, and there
is going to be I guess some new footage in
the new release.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
I was curious about that because the packaging from Second Site.
At least the sneak peeks that they've released so far
mentioned that it's going to be two cuts. It's going
to be the theatrical cut, and then it's going to
be what they call the festival cut, which I can
only assume is the sun Dance cut of the film.
But I also saw a convention appearance from earlier this
year where you and Heather were talking about the scene
where Heather was still under the impression that Patty was

(54:16):
a plant and thought like, oh, you know, this trailer
is all stage.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
So she went through her.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
Medicine cabinet and shit, is that going to end up
on there?

Speaker 3 (54:24):
Well, you know, I mean we've helped Second Sight as
much as we could, and we were we took part
in the documentary, you know, because yeah, just because you know,
it's a UK company, was you know, and honestly, you know,
we feel a little bit underrepresented by Lionsgate. Like Lionsgate,
you know, they have so many things going on that
they kind of ignore Blirwitch when they should be like

(54:44):
maybe paying attention to it.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
You know, I'll say it for you. They did you
all dirty, yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
We we were like, you know, since I mean I
was emailing you know, the people that I knew at Lionsgate,
you know, like a year and a half ago, you
know what I'm saying, like early twenty four because I
was like, we need time to do this, and I
was like, you guys gonna do anything with the twenty
fifth anniversary, you know, because you know, we have a
lot of ideas and this and that or whatever and
a little bit yeah, back to me about that. So

(55:08):
that's part of why we helped as much as we
could on the second site version. And we knew, you know,
Judge Shepperd who did the documentary. We you know, I'm
friends with him. We're friends with him, and he's a
you know, just a great guy. We love him, and
we felt that, you know, he was going to do
justice to a documentary. So we were interviewed for that.
But other than that, you know, we kind of kept
our distance because of the issues that the actors brought

(55:31):
up a few months ago, earlier this year, because you know,
we want to be supportive and also, you know, we
have like as part of the mechanism that made Blair witch,
you know, we have a certain responsibility and we just
can't talk about that kind of stuff. So, but we
did support the actors, and they definitely deserve as much as.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
They want to get, you know, I mean, they deserve
their flowers.

Speaker 3 (55:52):
The movie wouldn't have worked without them, period, you know.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
Oh of course. I mean, you guys laid the most
impressive indie filmmaking foundation that a set of actors could
ever hope to work with. But even if you had
the exact same foundation, if you did not have the
right combination of actors for that film, it still would
not have worked. I mean, I'm with you. I think

(56:16):
Heather should have gotten an Oscar for that film. I mean,
the real should have been her confessional. I mean, Mike, Josh.
The chemistry between the three of them, I don't think
has really been recreated since. I mean, I equate them
to the Brody Hooper and Quint of Horror. Through that film,
they were the perfect trio, and I think their performance

(56:37):
is still the reason why a lot of people still
honestly believe that the footage is authentic in some way.
I got into an argument somewhere in the last two
years with someone online who was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I know the movie isn't real, but the directors hired
actors to you know, reenact the footage because the police
won't release the real footage. Like the mental gymnastics that

(56:58):
some people do these days because they're still so convinced
that there is this truth behind the Blair witch legend
is incredible and I think that is owed equally to
the performance of the actors. It makes people want to
believe that this happened.

Speaker 4 (57:12):
Oh yeah, I definitely think that's part of it. I
mean I showed my wife's to Blair, which she had
never seen. It's the first time maybe like two years ago,
and she still hates Heather and she still brings it
up or weight to ask.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
That my wife hates Heather too. But that just goes
to show what a great actress she is, because that's
not how Heather is in real light.

Speaker 3 (57:28):
No, no, no, exactly.

Speaker 4 (57:30):
But I mean we've watched probably triple digit found footage
movies together and she never brings up any other actors'
performance that have found footage.

Speaker 3 (57:37):
Bie, it's an afterthought. But yeah, Heather definitely got a
raw deal for sure, you know. And also like the
personalities that they were showing, like obviously you know, we
were as directors trying to make problems. You know, I'm
saying we were trying to create problems for them so
that they would argue and they would create scenes for us,
you know what I mean a lot of like instigating
things like Heather doesn't know where she's going and you know,

(58:00):
and then not Heather Side's like, these dudes are trying
to tell you what to do, and you know what,
You've been working on this for years and they have
no right to. You know. That's kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (58:08):
Even the arguments aside, though, like she so geniusly and
I know we're over using that word, but my god,
does everything about this film deserve it. She so geniusly
leaned into Anyone that has ever taken a mass media class,
especially a filmmaking class, knows someone like Heather like the
self important, like I have a vision as a documentary filmmaker.

(58:31):
And she leaned into it so well that the public
bought it, hook line and sinker. And I think that's
why she got the bulk of the hate she did.
It's because she rolled off the performance so well.

Speaker 4 (58:41):
And I think another tell with that is again just
referencing that sheer amount of found footage out there there
are so many movies I watched where it's like, oh,
they're doing a Heather like and it's so obvious that
the main character is doing a version of her performance.
It's almost become its own archetype. So I mean, yeah,
she really deserves more credit. It's one of those performances
where again, and she's just such an effective I don't
even really want to use the word villain because I

(59:03):
think that's unfair to the character, but maybe like anti hero,
that the impact I really feel I can't be overstated.

Speaker 3 (59:10):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, you know, and we always talk about like,
you know, there would have been a movie with three
different actors, but who knows what that movie would have
looked like, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (59:20):
Well, I think that this like really brings this towards
a really good conclusion for this interview. And again, Ed,
I cannot thank you enough for talking shop with us
for the last hour. Unless Zach and Mike have any
like specific nitty gritty questions, and if you do, guys
jump in before going to this. I would really love
to kind of end this episode with sort of like

(59:41):
a quick lightning round of lingering questions for Blair Witch.
One of them that I have is this When I
first saw the film Heather and Mike hearing Josh's voice,
I never thought it was really Josh. I always thought
that the symbolism of the bundle of his teeth and
the blood, and I know some people feorize that maybe

(01:00:02):
his tongue is in there too, but I don't think
you guys made a fake tongue. I've always kind of
equated that to, well, the Blair Witch took things out
of his mouth, teeth, blood, et cetera, so that the
Blair Witch could then mimic his voice and lure them
to the parhouse. Is there any truth behind that?

Speaker 3 (01:00:20):
You're about as much the expert as I am in
that we never wanted to tie in anything like that
or or kind of give any explanation to any of
the things that happened in the movie. You know, I'm saying,
gotcha for me? It was me and Josh in the
woods yelling, you know, and me telling him you know
one more and then you know, all right this, you know,
and then we walked out of there and got the

(01:00:41):
hell out of there. I mean, look, this is and
I've never really thought about this too much, which is crazy,
but because again, we never wanted to go We Dan
and I made, you know, the decision to like that
we wouldn't go any further than like just basic you know,
ideas of like what's happening, But we never wanted to
get like scientific with the Blair Witch.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
You know what I mean exactly? You know now you
asked me that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
In my opinion, the fact that Mike is standing in
the corner at the end of the movie means that
this thing can take over people's bodies.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
You know what I'm saying from your chair, Mike is
possessed at that point.

Speaker 3 (01:01:15):
I think Mike is possessed probably by one of the
kids that Russell Park killed.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
That's creepy.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
Yeah, And so I feel that, like when Josh is
yelling at that and Josh's teeth, I think he did
that to himself just out of madness. Yeah, I think
that this thing takes over people can do that. And
was just like, all right, I'm gonna walk you out
of the camp. You know, I'm gonna wake you up,
and I'm gonna walk you out of the camp from
your friends and walk this way and you're never gonna

(01:01:41):
see your friends again. And Josh just couldn't explain that
to ourselves. You know. Our whole thing was like during
the documentary part of the movie, the documentary filmmakers were
going to find that frame and highlight that there was
in these three frames, these ten frames or whatever, there's
clearly something, you know, monoid running beside Heather, Mike and Josh,

(01:02:03):
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
And thank god that didn't happen.

Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
Yeah, well, I mean I think, you know, I mean, honestly,
we were so disappointed that nothing came out on the film.
And amazingly it was like almost like a you know,
an act of God, but we didn't get any image
it because we dan I remember, like we were like
so close to him. We're like, oh my god, this
is going to be too much, you know, and somehow
nothing came through. But yeah, absolutely it's a lot scarier,

(01:02:28):
you know, her reaction and then you never see anything.
Obviously she saw something, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
And it ties into what Zach was saying also too.
I think if you guys did have that moment in
the film or even in Curse when you took all
the Phase two footage and put it there, if you
had a moment where it freeze framed like, look at
this apparition that was caught on film. I think a
lot of people would have tuned out from that too,
like are you kidding me? Like I can accept that
these kids died mysteriously in the woods, but footage of

(01:02:56):
a ghost this would have been on the news, like,
oh my god, this proof of an afterlife, you know
what I mean. Like the whole leaving it up to
your imagination, like so many great film theorists have said
in the past that you know, there is nothing scarier
than what your mind is going to substitute in the darkness,
I think lent itself to the effectiveness of the film.

(01:03:18):
Everybody has their own visual of what the Blair Witch is,
what these kids are when they're they're shaking the tent
and leaving the handprints on the walls. The fact that
it's left up to the audience is I think really
what kept it. It's like just like you don't see,
you know, the bulk of the shark in Jaws until
an hour into the film, and I think the final

(01:03:39):
tally out of that two hour and ten minute film,
I think three minutes of the shark is on.

Speaker 3 (01:03:44):
Film well, And also that's a monster movie. I think
monster movies are different for me at least because I
think at the end, you know, monster movies, you watch
it for the ending because you're going to see you know,
that's the whole way it is. You know, even in Jaws,
was you know, that's the beauty of Jaws, you know,
is that like, you know, no matter what you say, now,
like you know, some of the stuff looks good and

(01:04:05):
some of the stuff, you know, it looks a little aged,
but whatever, it looks pretty still looks pretty damn good.
And at least at the time it looked freaking amazing
that sharp. Yeah, but the idea of like, you know,
that's the same thing that I did, and you know,
with my Bigfoot movie exists was like I was just kidding.
I was tired of like Bigfoot movies that never showed Bigfoot.
And to me, it was like, yeah, you can do

(01:04:26):
you can be mysterious, and you can be hand held
and like kind of grainy and just you know, zoomed
in images. But by the end of the movie, I
want to see this guy, you know, close up, you
know what I mean, Like that's a monster movie. That's
what Jaws did. But you know, I mean, yeah, it's like,
it's definitely why. You know, horror books are usually much
more terrifying than horror than the adaptations, you know, of

(01:04:48):
the movies, like I remember, you know, I love I
Love Communion that I don't know if you guys know, Yeah,
and that book. But the book is so much more
terrifying than the movie. Man, the book is I read
that in college and I was that in Amityville. Horror. Like,
the books were just freaking terrifying to me, because, like
you said, you can imagine the things happening in your head.

(01:05:11):
They're going to find much scarier imagery in your head
or just thinking of what it's going to be than
anything a filmmaker show you. But man, I mean, if
we would have had money, if we had you know,
extra fifty thousand, and if we would have had access
to like you know, I guess we would have gotten
Ben to do it, and he would have done a
pretty good job. Get like a fake legs or a

(01:05:31):
fake outfit. You know, we would have done something stupid
at the end of that movie. If we had like
enough money, it would have killed that suit. You know,
when the camera, that sixty millimeter camera falls on the ground,
you know at the end of the movie, especially with
that you know, the jitterary, you know, the loss of registration,
which makes everything kind.

Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
Of yeah, it's loose on the sprockets.

Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
Yeah, yeah, is have like this hoofed from the knee down,
like these two hoofed legs come into view.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
You just answered another question of mind because I was
going to ask in your mind who was in the basement.
Was it the Blair Witch or was it par So
from your chair, it would have been the Witch.

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):
Yeah, I mean, you know, again, we do not have
any kind of you know, like as far as like theories,
we don't, you know, we didn't want to answer anything.
So it could be par It could be the Witch.
It could be you know, Josh still in the power,
under the power of the witch.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
It could be the kids.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
It could be the kids, the you know, because obviously
there's a lot of you know, you hear kids out there.
There's a lot of crazy, you know, a lot of
weird things happening out there. It's whatever the you know,
the witch or the demon or whatever the spirit out there,
you know, decided it was just hey, we'll just do this.
I mean, but again, man, you know, and you guys
brought up this point earlier. But the idea that like

(01:06:50):
the reason that we still love Bigfoot and we still
love UFOs and we still love lockness, monster and ghosts
and all that stuff is that nobody has said, oh, look,
here's a bigfoot, here's the carcass of it was just
you know whatever. They come up with some scientific name
for it, and you're like, okay, it's just an animal.
Then the mystery is over, you know what I mean?
You know, and you guys hit on this. It's like
you've got to explain stuff, but you can't over explain things.

(01:07:13):
And I think going back full circle to the beginning
of the interview is that that's a lot of you know,
unfortunately studios that are spending you know, millions of dollars
and they're risking money and their jobs and everything they
feel there is this level of like over explaining, especially
in horror movies, where a lot of it the best
horror movies are like, you don't really know what the
hell happened here, It's just some creepy stuff happened, and

(01:07:35):
there was a little bit of an explanation, like the Exorcist,
like what exactly is happening in the Exorcist. You know,
it's this little totem possessed or you know what, you know,
what's going on, just like there's nobody at the end
of the thing says, well, I guess we now know
that she was possessed by this demon, and then the
demon did this, and then it came from you know,
like you I'm saying that there's nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:07:54):
It's just they tried exploring that in the prequel and
it just didn't work for me.

Speaker 3 (01:07:58):
No, of course not man, of course not. It just
you can't get too deep in it or else it
becomes again like science, it becomes you know, like the again,
the mystery of all kinds of things. As we were,
you know, progressing in our evolution, like what you know,
where we're afraid of the moon, where we were afraid
of the you know, when the moon, you know, solar eclipses,
you would have been like, oh my god, what the
hell's going on? It's the most terrifying event ever, you

(01:08:21):
know for prehistoric man. For us, it's just like, oh,
let's go and see the because we know what it is.
We know what it is, you know what I'm saying.
So yeah, basically eventually everything becomes science, hopefully, and once
it becomes science, you know, it's not scary.

Speaker 4 (01:08:35):
It goes into that whole primal fear of the unknown,
not just about like movie making and like you know,
effective filmmaking, but like horror into itself is like an
emotion and just like evoking it, like explanation is the
death of horror, Like I mean, that's that's where it
comes from. It is mystery and discomfort not knowing what
things are, and like the uncanny that's like the root

(01:08:55):
of all of that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:56):
And so when you strip that away, that's you're not
left with much.

Speaker 3 (01:08:59):
That's why.

Speaker 4 (01:09:00):
And this isn't a unique thought to me, but like
I've very much subscribed to the thought that like horror
works best in like short form, Like that's why I
like horror film, and it's why like horror anthologies with
short stories. I think somebody once said that there's no
such thing as a horror novel. There's only novels of
horrific scenes, because if you work in a long form,
and I kind of subscribe to that notion. I know
Jesse's probably rolling a vibe because he's a Stephen King fan.

(01:09:23):
No no, no, no, My main criticism of King is
his books are too long and he rarely knows.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
How to end to them. I'm right there with you on.

Speaker 3 (01:09:29):
That, but I mean, look, you know, I mean, look
all horror filmmakers and you know, novelists and story you know,
the end is always the most challenging thing most of
the time, you know what I mean. And sometimes you
get it, and sometimes you don't. You know what I mean,
and you know because you don't want to copy anything else,
but you know, what else are you going to do?
You know, there's like, there's only so many ways.

Speaker 2 (01:09:50):
You can't kill the Blair Witch at the end of
the movie.

Speaker 3 (01:09:52):
But again, you leave it mysterious enough, and sometimes you
don't have to go into the explanations that ruin the
whole damn thing, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:09:59):
And that's why the ending works so well, because unlike
a flesh and blood thing like the shark from Jaws
or even a big foot, like what are you gonna
do about the ghost of a witch? You can't shoot it,
so it has to end in that basement. But Michael,
let me hand that off to you. I notice you're
off mute.

Speaker 5 (01:10:14):
Yeah, I just I wanted to, you know, going into
this like over explaining things kind of kills the mystery,
kind of kills the horror of it. You know, the
Alien franchises in the news. Again, I really like the
new movie, but you know, I went and rewatched the
original Alien, and you know, just the breadcrumbs of mystery
they leave throughout the movie. It's a haunted house movie. Yeah,
that's more horrifying than the Xenomorph itself. And you know

(01:10:36):
when they got to Prometheus, and you know, I liked
elements of Prometheus, but you know, again trying to over
explain everything, it kind of kills the horror. It kills
the mystery, and that just you know, I wanted to
chime in just because I was thinking of that. And
you guys are talking about the over explaining just kills
the horror, and it's like it's so true.

Speaker 2 (01:10:56):
True, especially with like Alien.

Speaker 4 (01:10:58):
It like the expansion of that lower it just also
just completely killed like the original, like themes of sexual
horror that came from like Digger's designs and stuff. And
but I don't know, I don't want to get too
into that. I'd be all that could be a old podcast. Yeah, ed,
these might honesty might be better. Ben questions, but I'm
going to give him to you anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
I am a big weird fiction fan. If it hasn't
been obvious, and I got to ask because I have
seen it show up at forums and.

Speaker 4 (01:11:24):
Stuff in the past when Ben was designing like the
stick figures or or I don't know if you contributed
to that as well. Was Carl Wagner ever mentioned?

Speaker 3 (01:11:33):
I mean maybe with Again, Ben was deep into that stuff,
so I'm sure he knew about that, but no, not
at all. I mean, the stick figure was something that
you know, we had very early in the timeframe of
like coming up with the you know, when we were
writing the script and stuff. That was one of the
early scenes where it was like, oh man, they come

(01:11:54):
across these things that looked like humanoids, you know, stick figures,
and we even had like, you know, in one of
the pitch packages. I think the cover of the package
has like I think band drew it like a stick figure,
you know, kind of a humanoid. You have a stick man, yeah,
stick man. You know, that was always part of the
of the script. So I think for Benett was just like,
you know, what's the simplest way because he knew he

(01:12:16):
had to make like a hundred of them. What's the
simplest way that I can convey, you know, something creepy,
you know, humanoid, something that obviously is made by humans,
but it's it's a humanoid, you know whatever. So he
came up with that cool design, and then when we
went to the woods and you know, fabricated all of them.
You know, we didn't give rules to anybody. We were
just like, just create humanoid you know, looking creatures out there,

(01:12:40):
and just make them any way you want. And that's
why in the movie you see all these weird you know,
because to me that was like that's creepy too. It's
just like these weird Every stick figure has kind of
its own personality, you know what I mean, and just.

Speaker 2 (01:12:51):
Knowing someone had been there while they were sleeping.

Speaker 4 (01:12:54):
Yes, the reason I bring it up, just to be specific,
is he of the story in one of his early
collections before he passed away, called Styx, and in particular,
just kind of hearing you subscribe, like your idea of
like Ellie as being just sort of like a totem
or like a representation of like a more of ancient
eldritch kind of horror really makes me smile. But if

(01:13:15):
you want kind of one of these like cannibal Holocaust moments.
Do you ever have a chance to read that short story?
I think the parallels might amuse you a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:13:22):
It's really good. I'll check it out. Man.

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
The second question, and again maybe something more for Ben.

Speaker 4 (01:13:26):
But if Jesse mentioned I'm a Pennsylvania native that I
live pretty close to Burkettsville. I live like right on
the Mason Dixon line, like literally, and I do have
to ask did any local lore go into the world
building at all?

Speaker 3 (01:13:39):
Not from my side. The only thing that Dan and
I were very early on in you know, when we
were coming up with the character, you know, what is
this thing that these filmmakers are going to study in
the woods? And honestly, we would have you know, if
we had some money, you know, we might ended up
with a big Foot movie, you know what I mean,
if we had money for its suit, you know what

(01:14:00):
I'm saying. But we had no money, so it was
always like we can't see anything, you know, we can't
show anything. So when we're coming up with the idea
that because at first we were like, okay, is it?
What the hell was in the woods is? You know,
we hate to kind of fall on the witch thing
because it could be a man. But you can't have
the Blair Warlock project, you know. I mean it sounds
like a you know, Lord of the Rings or something.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
Yeah, you know, it's definitely funny you mentioned that, because
that's that's where I was going to go with this.

Speaker 4 (01:14:23):
Is probably about fifty miles from Burkettsville is a place
called ray Meyers Hollow. It's a local legend near where
I grew up, where there was a warlock who in
the nineteen twenties was actually murdered in his house by
a guy who thought he cursed him, and his ghost
supposedly haunts the woods around his abandoned house. And one
of the elements of the lore is that the dirt

(01:14:44):
roads and the forest twists and bends and changes directions,
and people get lost in the forest when they're out
there at night.

Speaker 2 (01:14:51):
And I just wondered, like, hmmm, if there wasn't any
paralleli I mean, I had a happy accident.

Speaker 3 (01:14:56):
Yeah, no, it's a happy accent. I mean, look again,
it's basically like, you know, there's people have always been
afraid of woods, and you know, obviously there's going to
be similar creepy stories that come up. It's like, it's
kind of like the explanation even though you know, part
of me still wants to believe in Bigfoot for sure,
and I will not say that it doesn't exist. I
don't know enough. But all these Native American tribes mostly

(01:15:18):
have like some kind of Bigfoot legend in you know,
in their mythology or in their history. That's either you know,
there's something collective about a creepy, hairy man, big man
in the woods, or there's actually Bigfoot out there that
many people across you know, the United States we're seeing
back in those days.

Speaker 2 (01:15:34):
In the world. It's in the Himalayas as well too.

Speaker 3 (01:15:37):
Yeah, it's all over the place. So my thing is
that there is this you know, universal thing of seeing
this whatever. So I felt that that's what was happening
with us, is that, you know, there's just similar stories.
And again I was not an expert on any kind
of local legend. And in fact, afterwards people were like,
they is you know what about this? I'm like, not,
I never heard of that. I mean, I wasn't. I mean,

(01:15:57):
you have to understand, this was like, you know, pre internet,
so it's like, you know, now you can say, you know,
Legends of Maryland, you know, and then you get a
thousand freaking story. Back then, you had to find a book,
you had to go to library, and you know, there
weren't many books about the Legends of Maryland, you know
what I'm saying, so or you had to hear it,
you know, from your one of your friends or whatever.
And you know, we never were in that. But the
only thing that really like for us is that, you know,
the Salem witch Trials, because like it's just such a

(01:16:20):
crazy injustice and you know, it just speaks on so
many different levels about you know, how men treated women
and we continue to treat women. And you know what
I'm saying, Like it's in Salem, so it's in the
general neighborhood of you know, Maryland. So we were like, yeah,
maybe there's something that happened with the witch where a
woman was condemned to because of her witchcraft, supposedly and

(01:16:40):
killed and then something comes and you know, destroys this
village and now this curse is here.

Speaker 1 (01:16:45):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:16:45):
So that's the only thing, at least for me that
I was like, yeah, this is I guess the starting
point of the legend is this injustice to a woman?
You know, basically like the Salem Witch trials.

Speaker 4 (01:16:55):
Right, I kind of figured that's what you were going
to say. I just I had to ask as a local.
But I guess it goes back to what my initial
thing I've said was, is it just really speaks to
a test. To me, it was how much of an
authentic urban legend the Blair Witch feels like? Because and
I'm not going to go into the lore of this,
but even like twenty miles down the road from the
place I was just talking about, there's a location near
me called the Seven Gates of Hell, and the lore
surrounding that is very very similar. If you've drawing up parallels,

(01:17:19):
you could be like, oh, this is very similar to
the Blair Wish as well. So it's crazy how, especially
in my area, how neatly it just fits into that
little puzzle of weird message.

Speaker 3 (01:17:28):
Yeah, I completely see that. But also, like you know,
when we were coming up with the mythology, and mostly
you know, Ben was working on it, I guess Dan
and Greg and I worked a little bit on it,
but mostly I would just kind of like put o
little notes here and there, but the whole idea was
like we have to make it believable, you know what
I mean, Like, we can't make it where like newspapers
would have reported, you know, like you guys have brought

(01:17:49):
that up a couple of times, like if this happened
the newspaper, there would have been newspaper articles about this
or at the time or whatever. But I'm like, but
so we kept it weird but also believable, like yeah,
there's you know, the search party for the girl Robin
Weaver disappeared and then they were found. But you know
that's kind of weird. But you know, really what happened there,
you know what I'm saying. It could have been just

(01:18:09):
some people that just you know, messing around, or you know,
there's other explanations for you you know what I mean.
So we didn't want to, you know, because that's what
good lore is, is that this idea of like if
it goes too far, it becomes fantasy, and then that's
you know, losers. It's scary that the value of the
mystery and the scares.

Speaker 4 (01:18:26):
The nice thing about adding that, like time there's like
even like with the coffin rock stuff, which you know,
maybe some people could say pushes it a little, But
then you look at like basically any town has a
cry Baby bridge, and if you really dig into that,
well there's barely ever any historical record of it either,
but that doesn't stop the legend.

Speaker 2 (01:18:41):
So I mean, you know, it's just such.

Speaker 4 (01:18:42):
A delicate balance of keeping it believable. And again, I
just think you guys really just struck it masslessly.

Speaker 2 (01:18:49):
If you keep the lore vague enough, there opens doors
for unintentional overlap with pre existing local lore, and that's
what makes it believable.

Speaker 3 (01:18:59):
I think. Yeah. That's the thing is that we felt
that like Ben knew enough of like real you know, folklore,
and we were kind of you know, we had kind
of grown up with a lot of kind of those
stories and whatever, just especially you know, for me, mostly
from Cuba, you know, my mom telling me stories of
you know, weird things that happened in Cuba or whatever.
So we just felt that as long as it's you know,

(01:19:20):
kind of believable, I think kind of and we wanted it.
We wanted the mythology to mix with other things, you know,
I'm saying. So once people started talking about all the
other you know, things that you guys have mentioned, we
were like, that's great. The more like bleed through the better,
you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:19:36):
Oh yeah, and I just wanted to say, I know
we didn't really get to it.

Speaker 3 (01:19:38):
I love Exists.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
It's probably my favorite Bigfoot horror movie. And I'm going
to have Jesse send you a link to a book
an acquaintance of mine wrote, I don't know if you've
heard of it. It's called Where the foot Prints End.
And I think you'll really enjoy it. It's putting all
like the weird Blair witchy elements back into Bigfoot, really
into that like Native American side of things and stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:19:59):
That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:19:59):
You might enjoy it.

Speaker 4 (01:20:00):
So Linke, But thank you so much for talking to
us today. I know it sounds cliche, but this really
was like a child a dream of trip.

Speaker 6 (01:20:09):
Yeah, same here, Thanks, I mean it was I always
like to dig deep and I always like to like
get beyond, like you know, the basic questions that you
know were asked all the time, So it's really great
to kind of dig deep with, you know, fellow geeks.

Speaker 2 (01:20:24):
Well, thank you for that. And I think just one
last quick question that would be great tone to end
it on. And I know you guys said that explanations
are the killer of horror. So let me flirt with
manslaughter for just a quick second. Here is the thing
that really creeped me out about the implications of the
ending of the movie and the events that led up
to it. Was the possibility there that when the Blair

(01:20:46):
Witch had killed those children, that after death they became
I don't know if minions would be a good word,
or her helpers or whatever, but it always seemed that
like them attacking the tent, like she put them up
to it. And the vibe that I always got was
once they died in the basement, Heather, Mike and Josh,

(01:21:07):
that it wasn't the end for them. There was no
reprieve through death. It was once they were killed, they
joined the children. Do you think that that's a good
theory to have or am I way off the beaten
trail with that.

Speaker 3 (01:21:20):
No, that's a good theory for sure. I mean, whether
it's like, you know, the essence of the kids or
the essence of Rust and Parb still survived somewhere, you know,
as a consciousness or whatever or she or it really
it is using you know, whatever memories it has of
this person that once lived, but yeah, absolutely. Once you
die in those woods, you become, you know, a plaything

(01:21:42):
and I guess a minion, but you know, who knows what?
You know what's going on. But I feel like the
Blair Witch spirit takes in all kinds of information and
actually in a sequel that we wrote, we always planned
on bringing in eventually like a lot of Native American
symbology and actually the stick figure back to Native Americans
that at one point. But we wrote a sequel for

(01:22:04):
lions Gate years ago, and there was a scene where
they see this Native American on horseback, you know what
I'm saying, Like, so basically, this thing that's in the
woods has been taking inventory on whoever comes in there
for as long as a man has been around.

Speaker 2 (01:22:16):
So well, hopefully one day we will all get a
chance to see that sequel. You know, I've heard rumblings
of it over the many years we've all been fans
of the film. And again, Ed, we cannot thank you
enough for your time today. You know, like Zach said,
this has been a childhood dream come true for all
of us, and we really really eagerly await the release
of the second site restoration and we can't wait to

(01:22:37):
join in with the whole twenty fifth anniversary celebrations of
the whole Blair Witch legacy. So again, from the bottom
of our hearts, thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (01:22:45):
Man. Well cool man, I can't wait to see the
Mothman doc. I've seen a little bit. Looks cool Man, looks.

Speaker 2 (01:22:50):
Oh you saw the trailer.

Speaker 3 (01:22:52):
Shit, yeah, I think somebody sent it to me.

Speaker 2 (01:22:54):
It's cool man, dude, you just made my whole life
telling me that.

Speaker 3 (01:22:57):
Holy shit. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Great talking to you.
Let's do it again soon for more blair Wits or
exists or star Wars or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:23:06):
Anytime, open invite man.

Speaker 3 (01:23:08):
See you guys.

Speaker 2 (01:23:09):
Hey, take care.