- Hello. - Oh, man, this is really happening.
Here we are. I'm director Eli Roth.
I'm actor Jack Black.
We're looking at the old-school logo. Do you like that?
- You see I reversed the logo there? - Yes, dude.
- Turning back time. - That's 1972.
Yeah, that was one of the '80s logos there.
Really?
'Cause it looks more like '70s to me.
- We got a little grain on it. - Maybe late '60s.
- This is, like, the '80s Amblin. - That's '80s.
Yeah.
And then this is a modern logo that we treated.
Welcome to the commentary for The House with a Clock in Its Walls.
Remember when E.T. first came out? Do you remember that far back?
I remember going to the cinema and seeing someone with a button,
like, one of the ushers with a button for E.T., and I was so excited to see it.
I remember the line around the block at the Cinerama Dome
that seemed like it lasted for three months.
Yeah.
- You waited in line. Yeah. - Just owned that Dome.
I think E.T. made half of its money at the Cinerama Dome.
You're lucky you got to see it at the Cinerama Dome.
Dude, are we going to be playing at the Dome?
I hope we're at the Dome.
I think we're playing at the Chinese.
Can we lower the level in my earphone a little bit?
No, don't lower mine, though.
- Can we go independently? - Don't lower Jack's.
'Cause I want mine blasting.
- Should we go back to... - No, this is gold.
All right, this is gold. We're keeping it.
So, those titles, we went with the Edward Gorey-style titles there.
Love it. Love the Edward Gorey style.
Gorey is a huge influence.
Jack, I guess we should talk about the project.
- Yeah. Do we have to? - No, we don't have to.
We don't have to talk about it at all. We can talk about your beard.
- Jack is rocking a magnificent... - I don't like to feel restricted.
A magnificent wizard beard.
That's not me.
I know you probably think that's me sitting next to the kid right now.
- No, I don't think anyone thinks that. - Okay.
I think we're waiting for your grand entrance.
But you're about to go on tour,
and I was asking what you do to get ready to, like, go on tour.
Before I go on tour, you know, I've been working the pipes.
You're talking about going on tour
to promote The House with a Clock in Its Walls?
No, I'm talking about you touring with Tenacious D.
- Tenacious D? - Yeah.
I like to work the falsetto
and connect the falsetto voice with the full voice.
Okay. That's a thing that one has to learn?
If you're serious about your craft,
you do work the soft palate
to create one solid voice.
You know that thing where you go...
Yeah, 'cause I can go...
That crack there, you want to create no crack.
- You want to go... - You want it to be a perfect slope.
The way down from the depths of your lowest voice
all the way up there! up!
As you can see, I'm pretty much ready to go on tour.
That's pretty damn impressive.
Thank you.
I gotta say, I love the kimono.
Dude, the kimono is my strongest outfit.
And I don't know if you know,
but I've been trying to get my hands on that kimono
ever since I first put it on my body.
I was like, "I must own this kimono."
And we've all been in support of that.
I don't quite know why that hasn't happened yet.
- I think I do know why. - Why?
- I think it's like a $10,000 kimono. - It might be.
Universal doesn't want to part...
But do you think maybe Steven Spielberg is strutting around in his house...
Well, as you very well know,
Steven is a saver.
- He likes to keep... - He's a collector.
He's got a lot of keepsakes from the movies he's been involved with.
Do you notice the movie that's playing on the marquee there?
Spaceman from Pluto.
Do you know the significance of that?
I don't think Spielberg had anything to do with that one.
- He did. - He did?
He did. Sid Sheinberg, I think when he was running Universal,
tried to change the title of Back to the Future...
- Yeah. -...to Spaceman from Pluto.
- Oh, man. - So, Bob Zemeckis got, like, this...
I love this look by you, by the way.
Bob Zemeckis had this panic attack. It was like, "What do I do?"
So, Steven Spielberg wrote to the studio, going, "Dear Sid,
"that was the funniest joke, Spaceman from Pluto.
"Boy, did we need that laugh.
"It's been a really tense shoot. Thank you so much for that laugh."
It's almost like he didn't see the movie.
I mean, you can't name that movie...
it had something to do with the comic book that McFly is reading...
I know exactly what it had to do with.
That's the reference to the scene where he was like,
"I am Darth Vader."
"Not you, nor any other man from this planet
"will be able to make me ask her out."
- Right. - And so... Yeah.
- Then he became the spaceman from Pluto. - He became the spaceman from Pluto.
- And that does it. - You cannot name the movie that, though.
Can we talk about how great this house was?
We can talk about a lot of things that have already happened
that we were talking about other things about.
Like that look that I gave to that clock tower?
- That was great. - I remember that take.
- You do? - That was one of the great, like,
"Let's do one more where I don't totally ham it up."
And I was glad you said that
because that was the one, and I knew it was the one.
I got to say, I love me
-a good Jack Black ham sandwich. - Yeah.
But I have to say, I think you really gave a brilliant,
and somewhat... You gave a really nice, understated performance
and overstated at the right times.
That's the goal.
- Balancing it. - You want to strike that balance
of the ham and the cheese.
The ham and the cheese.
- If one's too heavy on either side... - It's too much.
I love... Like this, like, "Good night, Mrs. Hanchett."
- You played it a little bit creepy-scary. - Yeah.
Like, he's trying to be a good uncle,
but there's just something a little...
- That improv by you... -"Them's my best jamming hours."
It's a good scene to establish that she's a real pain in the tuchus.
- Yeah. - That she's really an annoying neighbor.
- And that's our friend Colleen Camp. - Yeah.
- The legendary Colleen Camp. - Fantastic.
Dude, how many times did I have to throw the hat
-on the top of that ram horn. - This might have been take eight.
You were getting mad.
- It was so hard. - Yeah.
Well, it was sort of a last-minute thing.
It wasn't like we put the ram there for you to throw the hat.
We went in the set and thought,
"What would be his routine that he does when he comes home?"
Once you suggested that it would be cool if I threw the hat up on the ram horn,
I couldn't give up on it.
- No, you couldn't. - Because you were right.
And how great is this entrance
-by Miss Blanchett. - The best.
Cate Blanchett... I'm sorry she's not here to join us.
What a cool, cool,
-incredible person Cate is. - Yeah.
She loved, loved, loved working with you.
And those are her actual reading glasses.
- Are they? - Yeah.
I think they look a little odd, but apparently, they're very functional.
And we modified them.
Well, this set was done by Jon Hutman, our production designer.
Dude, one of the greats of all times.
He's amazing.
- I love the suit. "Whip up." - Jon Hutman.
That's my favorite.
Adding the H before the W, I don't know why that's always funny.
Yeah, you know, that's my wife's father's influence.
He always liked to add the H sound.
- Is he the jazz musician? - What are you talking about?
Only, like, when he got angry.
- Yeah. Why would you do that? - Yeah.
Yeah, great bass player.
I love this scene here where you just, like...
He genuinely doesn't care if the kid...
I think...
You know, you're so good as a comedic actor...
- Yeah. -...that often, your dramatic chops
get overlooked because you're so funny.
But this is one of those great scenes
where I think you really, really nicely hit the balance.
- And just like, the little "No." - Yeah.
It's funny, but you really, really played it real.
And I keep telling people, I feel like one of the actors...
The last actor I can think of that did it at this level
was Robin Williams when he went, kind of, from Dead Poets Society
-to Awakenings to Mrs. Doubtfire. - Yeah.
Where he does those over-the-top performances,
but really, really with heart.
And I think, you know, Jumanji, I think, is one of the great performances
-of all time in your career. - Thanks, man.
Well, you know, the challenge with this one
and, like, the whole key to it, I think, is that it's the crazy uncle
who I kind of always...
It's in my wheelhouse of playing the crazy uncle.
But this time, he's asked to be a father.
Essentially, he is asked to take over
and he is not comfortable in that role and, you know, neither am I, really.
I'm more comfortable in the crazy uncle...
- Right. Than being the actual dad. - Than being the actual dad.
I have to ask my son Sammy if it's true.
But sometimes I feel like, yeah...
- I think everybody feels that. - Yeah.
It's a lot easier and more fun to be the crazy uncle.
But this is such a great scene where you really feel like he's really trying.
- Yeah... - The father notion.
He's just giving... "Please stop crying."
And we got to talk about Owen Vaccaro.
- Fantastic. - What a great, great kid.
I thought he had such good comedic timing.
- Yeah. - And there's Chair.
And also, just present.
Like, it's a tough thing for any actor to do,
but especially, like, a 10-year-old kid
to come in and just sort of be real, and in the moment, and be present,
and he did it so beautifully all the way throughout the film.
Now, as we know from a very famous Activision commercial,
-you were a child actor as well. - It's true.
Was it difficult being a child actor vs. being an adult actor?
Well, I was a little older than Owen when I first broke in to the industry.
And it wasn't a major motion picture,
but it was a big deal for me to get that first SAG job.
And it was a video game commercial back in 1982.
- For Pitfall! - Called. .. Yeah, Pitfall! , Activision.
For the Atari 2600.
And I think I was, like, 13 years old
and I loved it, and I was so stoked.
Did you get a free Pitfall! game
for doing the commercial? I always wondered that.
I don't know. I don't remember them giving me any free merch.
They just gave me money.
- And that was it? - Straight, cold hard cash.
Gross!
"Gross."
I love that.
- Blanchett. - Yeah.
She's so fabulous.
Oh, my God, dude, I was so intimidated
on that first day when I met her on the set.
And the first scene was you guys chained up together, I believe.
And truth be told, like, the months leading up to the shoot,
I was just, like, thinking about it, going, "Oh, God.
-"She's too good." - Do you think that?
That's amazing that you would think that,
because she told me that she was feeling that way with you.
-"I hope I'm funny enough." - Absurd. Ridiculous.
Like, you know she's gonna nail the drama,
but she was insecure a little bit about the comedy.
And the comedy, I thought, came quite naturally.
Very naturally. I guess that's the magic, is the two worlds colliding.
"You got your comedy in my drama."
- Exactly. -"You got your drama in my comedy."
"Wait a second, this tastes delicious."
You guys are such an amazing pair on screen.
And one of the things that audiences responded to,
certainly at the test screenings, was the two of you guys
-going at it and just insulting... - Yeah.
Just the thing of you insulting Cate Blanchett to her face,
and her coming right back at you, like, fearlessly,
-but doing it with love. - Yeah.
And that was, like, the relationship.
Like, there was such an incredible amount of respect between the two of you.
That was the key to our relationship
was the never-ending jabbing.
And it carried over off-camera as well.
- It really did. It never stopped. - Yeah.
But you guys were always in character.
This is my favorite... Remember, we talked a lot about this, about...
You know, in the book, it says he goes through
-and hunts for the clock in the walls. - Yeah.
And our sound designer, Karen Baker Landers,
did such a magnificent job, and Randy,
that, like, we recorded all kinds of different clocks in walls.
And this is one of my favorite jump scares.
- Yeah. - The evil devil clock.
Dude, tell me that you got the devil clock back at your house right now.
I don't have the devil clock.
There's a lot of things I want. I want all the automatons.
But didn't Owen get one of the clocks?
- Didn't he get his favorite clock? - He did.
Owen did have a favorite clock.
- As well he should. - And he took it. Yeah, yeah.
Uncle Jonathan?
I love this thing of you guys... Just the way you're arguing.
This is one of my favorite little comedic beats,
to way you stuff your face in the doorjamb, it's great.
It's a little bit of a "Here's Johnny."
This is very much a "Here's Johnny" moment.
And that beard.
And this is the first appearance of the mole.
- Yes. - In movies. Never been seen before.
Truth be told, just between you and me
and the 36 people who still buy DVDs,
I actually have a mole right on that spot,
-and usually, I cover it... - Yeah.
...for vanity reasons, you know, in films.
'Cause you don't want to be confused with Cindy Crawford, yeah.
But in this movie, I thought, this warlock
-should really have the mole. - I love it.
And so instead of hiding it, we actually enhanced it
-to make it a little darker. - There was a little mole enhancement.
Because it's a very warlock-y thing.
Warlock with a mole. It's...
I don't know why I always thought
you probably were a warlock from Tenacious D.
What is it with Satan and metal?
Why does Satan, and Warlocks, and wizards, and demons
go so well with rock and metal?
I mean, I guess you'd have to ask Ozzy
-or any other forefathers. - Or Dio, yeah.
Yeah. They started it.
You know, and also horror films,
they go along together
-because of Black Sabbath's origin story. - Yes, of course.
- It was a horror film back in 1969. - Mario Bava film.
They saw the marquee, and they were, like,
"That's a name for a band right there."
- That's what it was. - Black Sabbath.
Fine. All right. You're with us. You can play, right?
But, you know, you could trace it back even before heavy metal, though.
You could trace it back to Robert Johnson,
-the great blues man himself. - Yes.
Back around the turn of the century.
And even before that.
What are the great Satan stories?
You got, like... What was that Christopher Marlowe one
about the Faustian bargain.
Come on, let's go. Defense! Look alive. Look alive, guys.
There's Jimmy. We go to give a shout out to...
Hey, there's my stuntman, Jimmy Waitman.
This is gym teacher Jimmy.
If you notice, he's a slightly more muscular,
better-looking version of Jack Black.
And now, of course, Herman, polio boy...
- Yeah. -...drains the three-pointer.
I try to keep him off-camera as much as possible.
And yet we kind of came in with gym teacher Jimmy
-and he really ran with it. - Yeah.
Good hustle, Herman.
I'm sick of hearing like, "Hey, Jack,
"when you did the flip off of that building,
"you suddenly became slightly more attractive."
Well, we tried to ugly him up
-with the gym teacher mustache. - Appreciate that. Thank you.
This was a lot of fun shooting these scenes.
Those are Brad Fischer, our producer's kids.
- Nice. - Yeah. Olivia and Leo. Right there.
Just wistfully looking at Tarby.
Sunny Suljic plays Tarby. This kid is super cool.
I always told Sunny and Owen, Sunny was like a young Sean Penn,
-or Marlon Brando, or James Dean. - Totally.
And Owen was like a young James Coco.
No, the idea was that one was like a little James Dean
in elementary school, and other was Truman Capote.
- Nice. - This was sort of the style inspiration.
Sunny is a fantastic actor.
He's the lead in Jonah Hill's movie, Mid90s.
- I got to see that. - Killing of a Sacred Deer.
And he and Owen really, really got along great.
They actually became great friends off-camera
and worked really, really hard,
and, you know, they had terrific chemistry.
Both of them had very good comedic timing.
- He does look like a young Sean Penn. - Yeah.
I mean, when he came in and read,
everyone's notes were the same, "little Sean Penn."
That was it.
And Owen's like, "Wait, who's James Coco?"
And then of course he googled, he's like, "Why am I James Coco?"
And that became the joke. But these kids were fantastic.
Everyone says, you know, "Watch out working with kids and animals."
Time of my life. No problems.
- These kids were nailing it, first take. - You are gifted.
I was really impressed with how you gave direction to the kids.
Always got on their wavelength without a moment's hesitation.
It's a gift.
Well, you're the same way with kids.
You know, School of Rock,
-the way you interact with them. - Yeah.
And Rogier Staffers, DP of School of Rock...
- Yes. -...shot House with a Clock.
I had a lot of fear working with kids, too, beforehand.
But then once we were in it, I was like, "Oh, yeah, no."
- Kids are the best. - Yeah.
They're fearless, they'll say anything,
-they'll do anything. - Yeah.
Lewis?
And here's a nice scene with Lorenza.
Lorenza.
The lovely Lorenza Izzo playing the mom.
- And this was fun doing this. - Fantastic in Green Inferno.
Thank you. Yes, it was very nice.
- You watched that during the shoot. - Yeah.
Yeah, Lorenza and I obviously did work in Aftershock
and Green Inferno and Knock Knock.
And she's currently shooting the Tarantino movie.
And we play brother and sister in this, essentially.
Yes. Yeah.
- She is my recently-deceased sister... - Yeah.
- The younger sister. -...who comes back to the boy in a dream.
To visit young Owen.
We did a little trick here...
We will, of course, learn later that she is
Selena in disguise.
We do a little trick where we pop her eyes when she starts to turn.
Very, kind of, cruelly manipulating the child.
...he is.
Hiding something.
But it was fun. Her and Owen were really, really great together.
Yeah.
I'm sorry, sweetheart,
but you're in danger.
It was fun shooting these scenes.
I've never done a kids' movie.
Everything I'd done had been so unbelievably violent,
-it was fun to work in a PG realm. - Totally.
With the youngins.
Well, sometimes, putting the governor on, putting the restrictions on,
where, "Okay, we're not gonna drop any F bombs,
"we're not going to do blood, we're not going to do..."
it actually raises the level of creativity in other areas, you know.
Yeah, sort of like what we have to do in this commentary.
- That's right. - We can't drop the F bombs.
- This is a PG-rated... - We could.
We could, but, you know, it's going to be...
You know how many kids and their DVD players
are going to be listening to this, so...
- Yeah. - When we say to children,
-"This is DVD commentary." - Well, that's the question.
How many people out there still buy and watch DVDs?
- There are seven. - There are seven?
- There are seven of them. - And then how many of those
actually take the time to watch the DVD commentary?
The people that are reviewing them for dvdcommentaryxzom.
- That's good. - Whatever.
- All right, well, to the two people... - I listened to all of them.
I was in film school. I was big into directors'...
- Were you a commentary listener? I was. - Yes.
I had the Taxi Driver, The Seventh Seal,
- The Graduate, everything. - So, wait.
- I had laser discs. - Was Scorsese on there?
- Yes, Scorsese and Paul Schrader. - Nice.
And a film historian from the Raging Bull.
I was like, "I don't even like this movie."
"I'm just going to listen to the commentary to learn something."
- That's what you want. - Yeah.
- This was our first shot. - So, anyone out there
who's watching and listening to learn...
- Yes. - Welcome. Thank you.
This is the first shot of the movie that we did.
- Oh, my God. - First day, you walking down the hall.
This was at the Candler Mansion, which was the heir to the Coca-Cola throne.
And I remember the first day I went outside
and you were playing a video game on your phone
and Owen was knitting.
You know where you can see these kinds of things,
these silhouette cutouts?
- At the Magic Castle. - Yes.
The Magic Castle in Los Angeles.
This was a pretty cool room, this solarium.
This is a real location from the Candler Mansion
with our creepy automatons.
I kinda wanted to have a vibe of Sebastian's studio in Blade Runner.
The guy they go to see. I mean, we wanted that kind of feel.
And there's a Brothers Quay stop-motion short
called Street of Crocodiles that I love, that has this kind of feeling.
I find automatons very creepy.
And, of course, Steven Spielberg has a collection of them.
And was very excited to feature some of his automatons in the movie.
- Where's a Spielbergian one? - He told me about that.
And I thought what was interesting
is that he didn't actually have them in his house,
because his family was a little creeped out by them.
Yes, his children requested that he remove them.
Now here we go to another Shining scene.
And this was when I realized
how amazing you were as an axe-wielding maniac.
I may have been a lumberjack in a previous life.
How did you do that so naturally and effortlessly?
- It just looked amazing. - It just... Yeah.
I remember when you were panting we said, "We really need to do a horror movie."
Like a proper horror movie together, not a kids' horror movie.
Like an actual crazy horror movie together.
I'd love to.
I'd love to go full psycho-killer.
Yeah, because you've never done anything evil or satanic.
I've never gone all the way psycho-killer.
Yeah, I think it's time. I think we have to do it.
This was great. Louis Morin, our VFX supervisor,
and the guys at Rodeo and Maverick and Alchemy,
they did such a great job with the visual effects.
A big thing was making it all look and feel organic.
I wanted like a Tim Burton
Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice kind of vibe.
This is a great turning point for the movie where
we finally learn with the kid what's going down.
This is one of my favorite improve you did.
I love this where he comes up behind...
And you think he's going to be killed.
And then we do the devil scream. You're like, "It's me! It's me!"
It's me.
That makes him scream even more.
There's a little kick you have.
But it's like, when you do that kick,
-then we can animate the chair moving. - Yeah.
Because the chair, we were actually pulling with pipes and stuff.
This is great.
Is this place haunted? Are you gonna ax murder me?
I like this. Remember? This was the audition scene?
That's right.
This is one of my favorite scenes coming up.
"The house likes you."
Yeah, this is a big turning point
where he, kind of, drops the act a little bit.
- He doesn't tell him everything. - No.
We kept pulling the chair.
The chair was stealing every scene.
We're like, "Once we did the chair..."
I don't know, a suit of armor, a sideways suit of armor
was stealing that shot for me.
This was great.
See, I love this,
the way Jonathan is serious about magic and being a warlock,
and about what's going on.
You really, really did it in such a grounded way.
And you really found a character.
I mean, that's one of the things that people would say,
"Is it Jack Black? Is he being Jack Black?"
And it's like, "No." In the way you created a role for Bernie...
Which, by the way, if people haven't seen Bernie,
it really is one of the greatest performances from Jack.
- Thanks. - It's so understated, so good.
But I really think you created the character of Jonathan.
Well, I love this scene, because we had a lot to tell,
we had a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time.
And I thought the way that you shot it,
moving around the room in a circle
as I just reveal
the inner workings of this world was really well done.
Well, thank you. You know, sometimes those decisions come out of time.
As you know, shooting with a kid is very, very hard on time.
You have to film everything with a child.
And then when I film your coverage it's always the photo, a double,
working opposite you.
Unless you're tied directly in a shot,
you're almost never acting directly with Owen...
- That's true. -...which is very, very hard
because you have to act it for him
and then remember him when you're acting with another kid,
who's flatly reading the lines.
I think we had three hours to shoot the entire scene.
And we had a three-page scene.
Everyone's like, "You're never gonna make it. You're gonna go over."
And I thought, "No, if we just follow Owen exploring the room,
"and follow you with your eyes just watching,
"then we can do a wide and a close."
I also wanted to calm the movie down.
The movie's been pretty crazy up until this point.
Think of what we saw in the preceding 10 minutes, it's about to go nuts again...
That was kind of the fun of the movie
was slowing it down for a serious, dramatic scene.
And I love the way you talk about what happened with Isaac.
And you're just kind of dismissive of him.
And really Owen just getting the idea that he can be a warlock.
And you, sort of, not realizing
the can of worms you're opening with him.
But also, when you have a production designer like Jon Hutman,
and a DP like Rogier,
and costume designer like Marlene Stewart,
and the casting,
you can just sit back and let the actors do their thing.
Okay! Have it your way.
I love this scene. You had fun with the books.
I like the way that you get to drink in the room, too,
all the little cool moments
that you got all around the place with those creepy...
Yeah, all those wonderful little trinkets and creepy skeletons.
Fossils and statuettes and everything.
And all the dust on all the books. That was fun.
And this was structured a little different.
We did a couple of montages.
But this is sort of the first trying montage and failing montage.
Yeah.
And there was a thing we tried to do with upside down.
And then, this scene, with the topiary griffin,
people just kind of lost...
We just sort of casually introduce the topiary griffin
that just sort of lives in the backyard.
And eats a bird.
- That's so great. - That wasn't actually even planned.
It just was supposed to start walking in this shot.
But when we showed it to audiences, they loved it.
This is great. This is your improv.
"What smells of rancid sulfur?" I love this.
What smells of rancid sulfur?
Bad kitty!
And then there was, "Bad kitty."
It's so ridiculous.
But, that's what we wanted.
- I was like, you know... - So great.
And then, I think Snakespeare turned out great.
- Dude, look at that. - We spent a long time
really trying to get him to look real.
Throw in the fish.
As long as it's fed.
A little burp.
Used to be Florence's pet garter snake, William Snakespeare.
That always gets a laugh.
The William Snakespeare.
I love your look. The warlock vest with the chain.
I just thought Marlene really did such a magnificent job with the costumes.
Yeah.
Doing period. Have you done a period movie before?
Yeah, King Kong was period as well.
Well, that's right. Of course, yeah, yeah, yeah, '30s.
Another classic.
It's a challenge to improvise
around a period dialogue piece, you know.
I had that in lnglourious Basterds.
I wanted to rant about stuff and I realized I had to rant in 1940s jargon.
- Yeah, that's tough. It's tough. - It doesn't quite free-flow.
It's a lot easier to just rant
and come off the top of your head in your own voice, in your own time.
This is a great moment.
You telling him not to open that cabinet.
- Yeah. Well, that's key. - And that scrapbook.
Now we're seeing a bit into Isaac's past.
His old scrapbook.
- It was fun doing these. Kyle MacLachlan. - Fantastic.
The new Jack and Kyle.
Dude.
- How great was Kyle MacLachlan. - So amazing.
Okay, this scene was the original opening as scripted.
But we realized if we showed too much of the house,
and too much of you guys, once we saw it with Lewis,
-it's like, "We've already seen this." - Right.
So, we started with Lewis. We discover with him and then
we incorporated all the rain because it was a very freezing night.
And I knew if I didn't... Jimmy, by the way. Very athletic.
I don't know if you noticed
that I got slightly better looking in that just one shot.
There is Azazel. See the demon Azazel.
A little foreshadowing, if you notice those little details.
But we had to do the house in various states of destruction.
This was the house pre-clock, post explosion.
All these weird old German drawings.
You can see like, Isaac's writing went crazier and crazier
once he got infected by Azazel.
But I love this scene so much the way we did it.
Yeah.
But it actually worked much better here in the flashback.
Yeah.
We had a discussion of like, what do they do all day?
They just clock hunt. How does that actually work?
So, we had to have a couple of scenes of you guys,
you know, you just around the house
looking for the clock while Lewis is at school.
You can't just be waiting for Lewis to get home.
And this was one of those scenes.
I love this, the way you just kind of casually pick up the fireball.
- Yeah. - And throw it.
And also, Jonathan's bad parenting.
"Responsible thing. Lie to the kid."
Lie to the kid.
It's great, like, totally.
Really works.
I don't know if you noticed but, like,
creating and handling magical fireballs is basically my favorite thing
-in the universe. - It's very impressive.
I feel like you've done that in many, many, many, movies.
And, yet, I don't know other movies where you've
-thrown the magical fireball. - For some weird reason,
it is something I practiced,
without any movie even on the horizon.
I just like the practice of moving imaginary energy balls.
You were great at that.
I mean, we see it later in the montage,
but you're... The finger twirling.
- Yeah - And the wizardry.
I remember the first time we met,
I showed you some clips from the movie Stunt Rock...
- Yes! -...a favorite of mine which combines
prog rock and wizards.
Look it up on YouTube, Stunt Rock, directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith.
- I was certain you had seen it. - It's a hidden treasure. No.
- Somehow I missed that one. - It is a gem.
But it's just, it's the demons. All their songs are about
wizards, the wizard council and Satan battling.
This is one of my favorite things. Jungle Johnny.
This is the ultimate version
of the dad showing up at school, embarrassing the kid.
"Don't you see me?" And Tarby's like...
That's my son whenever I speak out loud in public
when he's around.
He's so mortified and embarrassed by everything I do and say.
Does that make you want to turn up the volume even louder?
Yes.
- Of course. - Look at this look in your face.
He's like, "Can we just get out of here?"
And here the D.J., which is me, is talking about
the lunar eclipse coming up.
Now, this scene,
the backyard scene... There's our griffin moving around.
This was one of those scenes that,
I don't know if you knew this, but in pre-production,
there were people that wanted to cut it,
because we were really on a budget crunch.
- Right. -'Cause this isn't a Marvel movie.
We were on a pretty tight budget.
I'm glad that you didn't buckle to that pressure,
because this is one of my favorite scenes.
And we didn't, and we said, "This is the scene
"where Lewis falls in love with being in the house."
You know, it's been fine, fun and games, but this is the moment
he really feels like he belongs.
And, this scene with you and Cate,
I think this is some of the best acting.
'Cause you're trying to show him about magic and trying to have fun,
but you really just give it heart.
Well, this is where we establish the core of the movie.
You know, where we're talking about the power of strangeness.
Your own uniqueness.
It about how all those things that make you an outcast, that you're embarrassed by
that if you embrace that, those are actually your strengths.
Now it looks like you're pooping.
Well, like Star Wars has The Force.
We have this scene, you know. Whatever you wanna call this power.
- The power of weird. - Yeah, no, this is crucial.
Let me show you what a little weird can do.
This is great.
Some fantastic saxophonery.
Your face there.
I also love this little hop you do
when you're just showboating.
I don't know if that's period saxophone showboating.
- That might have been a little set. - This hop, this is great.
- That's pretty good. - Yeah.
And then of course, Colleen.
My sister, Rachel Siegel, was in the wings.
She was my official saxophone consigliere.
Yes, let's talk about that.
'Cause here you started really playing.
- Had you played sax before this? - No.
- Well, my sister gave me some... - This move.
- Dude. And that's... - That fez move?
I challenge any saxophonist to be able to do that
with their fez during a sax solo.
Yeah. That was impressive.
That was just one of those moves you started doing it,
we were just like, biting our lip laughing.
And this was also one of these scenes that,
you know, it was all Louis, Louis Morin. We really worked hard
on creating something that, obviously, it's not supposed to look realistic,
it's like a planetarium that appears in your backyard.
And the way, you know, that we put the stars in his eyes...
That's beautiful, I noticed that reflection.
Yeah, this really looks nice on the big screen too.
The music of the spheres.
Yeah, well, Nathan Barr, my composer, did such a beautiful job with the score.
We've been working together since Cabin Fever.
And he did both Hostel movies
and Hemlock Grove, and The Last Exorcism.
We really wanted a beautiful, magical score.
But I just love... See, this is where,
you know, the acting goes from big with the saxophone to that really subtle,
have a look around and just drinking it in and watching him enjoy all of this.
And, it's not easy to act this stuff.
-'Cause you have to... - That's cool.
Imagine there's a planet in front of you. Have you not seen it
-with all the effects done? - No.
Look at this twirly you do here.
Yeah, 'cause we literally just finished the effects recently.
Oh, my God! Can you imagine how rad that would be?
Well, that's the wish fulfillment.
We thought of all of that, like,
"What would it be like if you really lived in this house?"
Dude, to be able to manipulate a galaxy like a god?
Yes.
And the frolicking topiary. I love Cate's little umbrella.
Did she know she was spinning a Saturn?
She knew she was spinning a planet, but she does not know it was Saturn.
This is my favorite.
I love this sweet moment.
And then just...
Bad kitty!
You use the litter box!
It's like... That's my favorite. "Use the litter box."
That is your comedy genius. It's so good.
But that's like the fun of that scene is taking what is a pure Amblin moment,
-a true Spielbergy moment... - Yeah.
...and just taking a dump on it.
I remember when you came up with that,
'cause you were saying that this scene is missing a button.
- Yes. - And you came up with the topiary.
I was like, when in doubt, just take a dump on the child.
It's so awful, it's so inappropriate, it's perfect.
It's so unexpected that it actually...
Well, because, you're right though.
We were in the middle of a sentimental moment
and you don't wanna let that just
lay there without a bit of a magical butt blast.
We fought about it and...
And we fought some more...
And then, here we go into what really is...
You know, this scene where he's kinda caught off guard
by the fact that the sister missed him.
It's a black sheep.
"Pretty sure it's swan." I love this.
Pretty sure it's "swan."
This is that audition scene.
Yeah.
But this look that you do right here after he's like, "She's really missed you,"
where he kind of loses his words for a moment.
I don't really think she would've wanted me there.
It's so fantastic, Jack.
It's really, really, really, superb.
Do you like comedy acting or drama? Do you have a preference?
No, I just love telling stories.
If they're funny or dramatic. it's the same kind of feeling of satisfaction
of delivering a beautiful tale.
But you know,
I remember Owen's audition. We saw a lot of great kids.
- Fantastic kids. - And...
And I was worried 'cause Owen was like the youngest of the kids.
- Yeah. - But man,
-did he hit it out of the park. - He just nailed it.
Right.
I love that.
It's just such a sweet scene. And then, of course,
kind of going back and forth, we have the topiary griffin,
then we have the serious scene. And now we...
Look, we added Chair in the left, just kind of watching.
- Yeah. - As if Chair is like the dog.
You can't get enough of the chair.
And then rainbow cat showed up.
I don't wanna talk about rainbow cat.
- I'm like... So stupid. - That's a great touch.
So stupid, I can't explain why.
- Levitation. - It's magic, man.
Okay, this. We were going to do, remember?
He kept dropping you, and you're like, "What if I get stuck?"
- Yeah. - And that was the joke.
It's like, no, no, no.
It should be like he... And that's your comic touch.
You were like, "Levitaius begangus."
They're just running around. "Chair!"
And, of course, Chair comes in.
And what does Chair do?
He goes and gets the 1950s camera and takes a selfie.
'Cause, why wouldn't you?
I mean, if you were caught up there
in a magical spell and you couldn't get down,
you wouldn't... Chair wouldn't help you down.
He would go, "This is too good."
And you go into a little magical mischief.
This is getting into that wish fulfillment
of what would you do if you had that power at school.
And Rose Rita, little Vanessa Williams.
She's fantastic in her little looks, and Owen just...
They became really good friends too.
They were like a little trio, Sunny, Vanessa and Owen.
- This, okay, the magical fingers. - Oh, yeah.
- Yeah. - This is one of my favorite scenes.
"Not if you focus."
This is one of the scenes that we actually did in a reshoot.
Nice.
- Look at that. You haven't seen this yet? - No.
Watch this.
This is great, Owen... It was probably shot six months after we wrapped.
Watch Chair.
- Chair! - Sorry, Chair!
So stupid.
I remember the effects guys...
This is one of my favorite scenes.
The acid is literally about to eat his face.
And you came and you were like, "Should I put a little more cheese?"
Just the proud dad.
Sees the boy playing with acid.
Just tucks him in and there's acid bear.
Yeah. That's the world we live in.
Just sizzling.
I don't know why irresponsible parenting is so unbelievably funny to me.
Now the gongs are going off.
Dude, what's scarier than that monkey?
This monkey's terrifying. That's why we put it in.
- It's the nod to Close Encounters. - You know what it is? It's the gums.
- It's really freaky. - There's so much monkey gum.
The monkey shines. Mechanical monkeys freak me out.
I like this scene.
- It's getting serious now. - Yeah.
I remember there was a lot of...
It's kind of a weird plot.
'Cause it's counting down, but you don't know what it's counting down to.
But, you know, people could stick with it.
It's kind of the fun of the movie is embracing the weird of it.
I love this, the popcorn.
It's the slow reveal of the clock.
And its powers.
The doomsday. We haven't even revealed the doomsday aspect yet.
No, not yet.
- We just know something bad is happening. - It's a-coming.
And here you are, like,
if you were a 10-year-old kid and you had magical powers,
you could obviously make your own bed.
Make your clothes fly into your hand.
In all the stuff I wanted to be like Pee-wee's Big Adventure
when they pulled stuff with strings.
We tried to do as much of the stuff as practically as possible.
You know, on the previous scene when I was...
When I smacked my hand and the popcorn exploded?
- Yes. - I like that's the sort of...
He)', That's you!
There I am. It's our big scene together coming up.
Here you are reading your spells to find hidden things.
Dude, we should do a movie just called Shaw.
I think we want to.
I want to write a series of children's books about Chair.
- Chair should be a spin-off. - And topiary griffin. "Stay."
Watch the little look he gives.
So stupid.
You acting with the chair. This is our acting debut together.
Yeah, very exciting.
- Look at you. - Hamming it up.
Channeling some real '20s acting.
Yeah, I was trying, you know, "I'm gonna make Jack Black look subtle.“
Yeah.
And here's the old... And here's one of my favorite things.
You'll see that there's a doppelganger extra syndrome.
These kids were really funny, the extras.
Congratulations, Tarby.
Thanks, Lewis.
There's a kid with glasses who looks sort of like
Froggy from Little Rascals.
And he walks down the hallway.
But there's a continuity error where he walks down the hallway twice.
Look, he comes on the right.
- Here comes Froggy. - Yeah.
And then he turns around and then like, we say that he has a twin.
And then, here comes Froggy again.
You know, once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Now, wait a second.
Are those two different actors?
- No, that is the same kid. - Oh, my God!
He just walks through the scene twice.
FrogqY-
Maybe it's a young warlock.
He might be.
Doing some kind of doppelganger spell.
Or did you ever see The Matrix where the same cat walks by twice?
Yes, and I saw the Flight of the Conchords
where they thought the were in The Matrix.
Dude, it might be a glitch in the conchords.
It might be.
Were you ever on Flight of the Conchords?
- Was there a Tenacious D... - No, there was never a crossover.
- Why not? That should have been. - We tried to do a concert
with the Conchords, a double bill, but they were unavailable.
Or as I like to think, intimidated.
- By the power of the showdown. - This is great.
- Here you are, searching for the clock. - But they did...
- Yeah. - I love this.
But Flight of the Conchords did play at our Festival Supreme.
And we finally made peace with the fact that we'd never
joined forces before.
- Buried the hatchet. - Well, maybe
there's still time.
And here, this is... We had fun with the sound design of it.
Like, of course, the evil monkey.
And all these automatons.
A lot of these came from real sideshows.
Is that an African-American genie above the automaton?
Yeah. These are all authentic,
real period things from carnivals and sideshows that we found.
It is.
- Dude, check out this. The hand is up. - The wizard arm.
- In the photo. - The arm.
The hand is up.
But the hand is down in reality.
- I love this. - This is one of the great...
I love this shot here.
This wound up being one of the cool trailer shots.
This is sort of our Radars of the Lost Ark
-kind of scene. - Yes.
The Indiana Jones discovering the secret chamber.
Yeah.
All of this, again, Jon Hutman, with that ogre's maw
with the tongue coming down
and finding the secret passage to the hidden room.
I'm gonna have to climb on the tongue.
Yeah, I remember we went inside the tongue.
- It was a big, heavy tongue. - Yeah.
The Tyrrell brothers, these mechanical geniuses
who built the clock room, are really, really good with hydraulics
and built his whole tongue thing and it really worked.
Do you know what was crazy?
When you first told me, "Dude, there's gonna be a giant demon's mouth
-"in the solarium." - Solarium.
And you sent me a picture of it and I was like,
"That's strange, 'cause I have a giant demon mouth fireplace."
- Dude, you have the same fireplace? - And I sent you the photo of it.
- They're almost the same demon mouth. - Identical.
That's when I knew that this movie was meant to be.
- It was a sign. - I know.
The fact that you actually have that...
- Yeah. -...is pretty impressive.
I was like, "We could have just shot this in my kitchen.
"'Cause I have that demon mouth."
That was pretty cool when you sent me that photo.
I was like, "This was meant to be."
I love this lab, the secret lab.
And this is, again, back at the Candler Mansion.
So, that is a real room.
And they used to apparently do magic shows there.
And here we are back in the library
and the kids are playing in the cabinet where they shouldn't be.
What's in there?
But, that's exactly what would happen.
You know, you go to the friend's house and, like...
Your dad is like, "Don't go in there 'cause that's where I keep my Playboys."
And of course, that's, you know, to impress the friend.
How far would one go to impress a cool kid?
- Yup. - All the way.
And Tarby, of course, doesn't believe in any of this.
I love how nervous Owen gets.
He's like, "Do not do it."
And the little Sean Penn just keeps going for it.
This cabinet. Our set dressers and art department,
they had a real fun time making this cabinet
with all the skull and the horseshoes.
- And the book. The evil book. - Tarby.
Tarby.
Tarbs.
No.
We had a really fantastic artist who did all the artwork and illustrations
and the writing and the letters. "Necromancy."
Look at the guy, he's like, "Get out." He's standing in the pentacle.
"Skeleton, get out of there."
Yeah, but once again, some great Edward Gorey-inspired artwork.
Edward Gorey did the fantastic illustrations for the book.
I actually have Gorey artwork around my house.
- Yeah. - And I have
the cover for another John Bellairs, Gorey book.
Johnny Dickson and The Hand of the Necromancer.
That was one that Brad Strickland wrote.
And Brad Strickland continued the series after John Bellairs died.
Brad came to the set and was very excited to meet you
and Priscilla Bellairs, the widow of John Bellairs came as well.
That was a cool day.
It was really cool. They loved that the Muggin Samoon made he into the movie.
And this piece of artwork that was
from John Bellairs' daughter that I think inspired the book,
that's actually in Louis' bedroom.
I like this, where you got the blueprints.
He's serious, he's focusing and...
Here we see a little bit of the loneliness.
This is gonna kind of set up the manipulation later.
It's also establishing the not very conscientious father figure.
Too busy to notice when the kid's in sort of an emotional crisis.
I love this scene.
This little insult back and forth.
...lived to see the purple pachyderm get stumped.
I don't know how much longer any of us will be living, weird beard.
And that's what's great when I have you and Cate.
You know, you can just let a shot breathe.
Let the comedy just happen
and just kinda get closer, and closer and closer.
-"Yeti." - She threw in "Yeti."
But, this is where it gets serious.
You guys start to... You know, I just love how real you guys played it.
You know, and that's what all those great, whether it's ET,
or Raiders, or Gremlins, or Goonies.
Time Bandits.
All the situation was always taken very seriously.
It's very real. Time Bandits was a huge influence on this.
- Yeah. - And visually I watched that
and this movie called The House That Screamed from 1970.
Also, Gore Verbinski's Mousehunt, which is a kind of underrated movie
from 1997 with Lee Evans and Nathan Lane.
You all right, kiddo?
Yeah, that picture on the left next to acid bear,
that was done by John Bellairs' daughter.
Can you tell me what actor from Goomes
was also in Avengers: Infinity War.
- Josh Brolin. - Yes.
- For the Summer of Brolin. - Dude.
It is the Summer of Brolin.
- He's come a long way since Gnomes. - I know.
I know, good old Gnomes.
Now, Jack, tell me, we won't name any names,
but, when you were 13, there was another young actor
that was getting all of the Amblin movies,
and it used to make you nuts 'cause he went to your high school.
And you were always like, "I want to kill him
"because that should be me."
And now here we are all these years later and it is you.
It was a few years after the 13, actually.
It wasn't until I was about 15-16 that I went to Crossroads.
- And Sean Astin... - You named him.
...who was the bane of my existence.
- Sean Astin got every role. - I was the one who was
in all the school plays. He was the one...
- Therefore, you should have been... -...that got the star in Goorfles.
I was like, "He didn't pay his dues."
"I've paid mine. I was in Our Town.
"I was in The Miracle Worker."
- See, we popped her eyes there. - No.
Gotta love Sean Astin. Tremendous actor.
We do love Sean Astin.
But it is funny that now I'm in the Amblin...
- And now here you are. - Yeah.
- All these years. Finally. - And he was fantastic on Stranger Things.
Yeah, it's nice. Is this your first Amblin movie?
Let's face it. It's the whole reason I did the movie.
I wanted to rub Sean Astin's face in it. Sweet revenge.
You wanted to be like, "Look at me, Sean..."
It's what we call the power of "I'll show you."
Never underestimate the power of "I'll show you."
Those Amblin movies for me were it.
You know, obviously I'm known for the gory horror movies,
but the gory ones I mainly saw on home video,
- Friday the 13th, and cable and stuff. - Yeah.
But those theatrical experiences, Poltergeist...
- Yeah. -...that was a big, big,
seminal experience, 'cause it was PG and it was terrifying.
- Yeah. - And your parents could take you to it
but it was still... You know, everyone in the theater was screaming
-in that movie. - Yeah.
You know, the first 20 minutes of E.T.
But this whole thing is just gonna be a big waste of time.
I love the way this scene happened.
It's kind of our... You know, there's tracking shots of the two of them
on the other side of the fence.
The monkey paw,
which I believe Brad Fischer, our producer, has.
There were several artifacts we wanted to take,
but we were terrified that they were actually cursed.
- And here he is breaking in. - Man. Sacrificing.
- Wearing his loafers. - Risking it all.
Doesn't he remember my severe admonishment? Never.
Never, ever, ever.
I love this cemetery.
This cemetery, I think some Goosebumps might have been shot in this cemetery.
Yes. Well, there was only one real cinematic cemetery
available in Atlanta, Georgia.
Yeah. Just outside...
This was really beautiful, the way Rogier lit it.
It's also so fun, 'cause we did Death Wish together,
which is a lot of hospitals and police stations and it was great.
This little grim reaper, Tarby popping up.
And dude, this cemetery has some really old gravestones.
Very old gravestones.
You can find some Civil War era.
So, some of these we put there, but most of them are what's actually there.
And, yeah, it was just great getting to shoot this kind of stuff.
You know, I never got to do like the kids sneaking into the cemetery scene
and really go crazy with the fog machine and owls and coyotes.
Just go for that classic, classic movie,
you know, scary movie imagery.
The hand moving.
It was fun. That book, you could kind of manipulate it underneath.
And then, to do this sort of tapping we did with CGI.
Which was really fun, but, you know, the animators did a fantastic job.
They made everything look really photo real.
And here's the grave.
But it's weird shooting with kids.
We can film with the lead actors, but then you have to wrap them
-at 2:00 in the morning. And then... - You have to get photo doubles.
Those are the photo doubles for the wide shot.
There's a whole strategy to how you do it.
And it's interesting in the test screenings
that we asked parents,
"ls there anything that's too much for kids, for a PG audience?"
And some of them were like, "There is a pentangle."
- The pentangle. -"Pentangle will get you an R for sure."
Or pentagram. They're like, "The pentagram is evil."
Which is interesting.
'Cause to me it's just satanic.
But apparently that's not for children.
And this was fun, doing the spell.
Absorbing the blood.
"For thou who sleeps in stone and clay,
"heed this call, rise up and obey.
Do you use the name Golden Eagle on all your movies?
Well, not anymore,
now that you've blown my cover.
- Did I blow your cover? - No, no.
No, I think...
I think Golden Eagle was just A House with a Clock in Its Walls but...
It said "Golden Eagle" on the call sheet.
And then Cate saw that and wanted to be Piggy Trucker.
Then Owen saw that and Owen wanted a name.
And he said, "I want to be Smashed Avocado."
And I said to Owen,
"You know, you can use Smashed Avocado in the press tour.
"Like, you can go to a hotel and check in as... And they'll be like, 'Mr. Avocado?“
Look at the buggy hand.
For a long time I just... I was Stanley Kubrick.
- And you were just on the call sheet. - Yeah.
Just Stan Kubrick?
- Yeah, in previous movies, and in hotels. - Stanley Kubrick.
- At hotels like Mr. Kubrick? - Yeah.
I liked it. I would do Stevie Janowski.
- Stephen Janowski? - From Eastbound and Down.
So, I asked Owen.
I said, "You know, Owen, you can be
"Smashed Avocado when you check into a hotel.
"And they'll be like, 'Mr. Avocado?"'
And he goes, "I have a much better name."
And I said, "What?" And he goes, "Tom Wheeler."
I was like, "Wait, what?' And he's like, "Yeah, Tom Wheeler."
I go, "Why Tom Wheeler?" And he goes,
"He just sounds like a nice man."
So, here we go. The second.
Now there is only two gongs and it's counting down.
He is sleeping with acid bear at his side.
But now, the magic is not quite working.
Something's a little off.
He tries to use the hand gestures and there's
clothes all over the room and the house is starting to turn.
It's creakier. It's...
And I like this when you walk in the solarium.
It's one of the first scenes we shot.
Might've been the first day where you come in
and you see all the automatons goin' bonkers.
It's almost as though the house is no longer ours.
- We had the power... - And you lost it.
I love this.
And then right in the middle,
that clown that's writing is Spielberg's.
And on the left, there's a moon on that middle shelf?
Those are Steven's.
And these things going crazy, the writing clown.
Yep. Can you hear the voices?
"He's coming home. He's back. He's free."
That baby thing creeped me out. It's like my Brazil one.
It's great.
That's not creepy.
Love that little read.
And right to the cemetery he goes.
'Cause he knows. And I think that was Jimmy.
That might've been Jimmy doing some driving there.
Dude, cool-lookin' car, not easy to drive.
- No, you had to learn that. - No.
The three... Was it a three-speed? I don't know, how did that...
Yeah, it was
-as if it was built in the '30s. - Legit 1930s.
- Yeah, it was. - It was.
I love this scene.
And this is where the first time we get to see you guys, sort of,
-not doing your shtick a little bit. - Yeah, yeah.
Like you guys are always teasing each other.
- Yeah. - But this one, you know,
and we start to get a sense of Florence's backstory.
But you guys are such a great on-screen team.
You look like you've done 15 movies together.
I know.
Really good. Really good duo.
Well, I've told my agent I'm only doing movies
with Cate Blanchett from now on, so...
It's good.
'Cause I told Cate I'm only doing movies with her.
And so, we're only doing movies together so...
I hope that the feeling is mutual because otherwise...
- For sure. -...this may have been my last film.
I love this.
It's great. I mean, you guys just...
You can feel that mutual love and respect.
- Yeah. - You guys look the same age too.
Very close in age I believe.
Well, I'm turning 49 tomorrow.
Oh, my gosh. That's right. It's your birthday.
Yeah. It's the day before my birthday.
This is... This is it. We're getting in right at the last...
Any last thoughts on 48?
Forty-eight has been very good to me.
I'm looking forward to 49.
Crazy people.
Do you think these are enough to keep Isaac out?
Oh, yes. Maybe.
I'm gonna get some more.
Uncle Jonathan?
Don't come up!
And now we see the house is really turning.
With them in the graves.
- And now he realizes that... - Yeah.
-...he's gotta get Lewis out of there. - Yeah.
This house is not our own anymore.
I like this scene.
Any time it's you and Cate together on-screen
it just works so well.
It's really fantastic. We're lucky.
Lucky to get her.
You're right, Lewis. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong.
I don't know why, but for some reason
it really looks like you're green-screened in this next shot.
I can't... Somehow the way the light hits your hair. Look at this.
We are... You were actually there on stage.
- Yeah. - Yet, for some... We couldn't explain it.
I talked about it with Rogier
and Louie. We're like, "Why does it look like we shot that on a green screen?"
I think it's my magical shirt that I'm wearing. It has a...
The glow of your magical mane?
- Yeah, it has a beautiful aquamarine... - The coif?
I love the color of your coif and the beard in this.
- The warlocky look. We discussed that. - Yeah.
Coming up with the Jonathan-Warlock look.
But now it's getting serious,
-playtime is over. - Yeah.
Do you re-do your scenes in your head after you act them?
Of course.
-ls there any scene that you want to... - No, that's the actor's curse
we all must live with.
- There's monkey, my dog. - There's little things that you go,
"I wish I would've done this slightly different."
Do you think about it the day after?
You think about it when you're watching the movie?
Do you think about it now?
I think about it... No, not now.
Now I've made peace with it and I love the way it turned out.
But in the moment,
it's always later that night, on the drive home.
Because you've... Once you're on the drive home,
you're done shooting for the day, you finally relax.
- And when you relax your brain relaxes... - Thinks it could have done that.
You go, "Now it's revealed what I should've done."
They did everything together.
Are there any scenes that you wanna re-do with me right now, here?
- No, I feel... - Because I could act with you.
Okay. Well, if we... Let me see.
- This nickelodeon... - If anything comes up.
By the way, another thing I wish I could've taken home with me,
-those rad nickelodeons. - Those are pretty cool.
This was really fun shooting the magic.
In this we get to do the old...
You know, this is... This is where we could do the old hameroony,
the old ham sandwich of the 1920s nick...
- Once you're nickelodeon acting... - Yeah.
...you can do that over-the-top stuff. It's so much fun.
I was finally allowed to really...
- Really let her rip. - Yeah.
And like, silent film acting is so much fun.
I don't know why,
but we shot it black and white, then we effected it and it's just...
And you could do the little jump cuts
where something's wrong.
This was great. You do the Iitttle beard scratch like...
I love it.
This was one of my favorite scenes to shoot.
A very hard scene.
Cate was really, really spectacular. Of course.
And Owen is just so good.
Holding his own with her.
It's a really, really nice little scene.
And again this was Jon Hutman, the Production Designer and Rogier
got to really design it and make it look lush and sumptuous.
The Black Forest.
We shot this across the street from the house.
Yes, this was not a set.
This was literally... The house literally. That's the...
The exterior of this is Mrs. Hanchett's house.
This was inside Mrs. Hanchett's house.
We just dressed it as Florence's house.
And the Florence exterior was separate.
There we get our first glimpse of Selena.
Renee Elise Goldsberry, who we'd seen in Hamilton and Altered Carbon.
If you were lucky enough to see her in Hamilton,
- Yeah. -...it's one of the great performances...
- Yeah. -...of Broadway history.
- She's incredible. - It was so fun to see.
The ham.
This was part of that opening scene,
where you guys came in,
and we sort of re-used it in the flashback and in the nickelodeon scene.
And then here we get a nice little moment of Florence's backstory.
I also love the music that Nathan Barr did.
It was fun finding all the little purple things, purple beads, purple glass.
- Yeah. - Her robe, you get your kimono.
- She gets her purple robe. - As a wrap gift,
I knew that she wanted a sewing machine,
and I got her a purple sewing machine.
I thought it was pretty thoughtful on my part.
It's very thoughtful. I feel like,
I didn't even know she wanted a sewing machine.
I feel a little bit, I don't know, left out.
You know what happened? Early on, we made a bet
that Monopoly... I said Monopoly is an American game to the core.
And she said, "No, it's a British game, my darling."
And I was like, "How much do you wanna bet?"
And she's like,
"I Will bet..."
She wanted a sewing machine.
- So I knew. I had this unfair knowledge... - That she wanted a sewing machine.
I won the bet, by the way.
But you still gave her the sewing machine.
It's the United States of America that came up with Monopoly.
- Right. Of course. - And my part of the bet was really dumb.
It was very Hollywood. I wanted special water,
delivered from Austin, Texas.
This special rain water that I had at this unbelievable hotel
called the Saint Cecilia.
And every morning they would bring you this pitcher of delicious rain water.
- That's what you wanted. - Somehow... I don't know how she did it.
She got me a case of...
- Of the rain water? -...the special Austin, Texas rain water.
Not now, Lewis, I'm late for gym.
- No, now. We gotta talk now! - What?
- Let go! - Where do you think you're going?
Here we have the bullying in the background.
The kids with the coonskin caps getting bullied.
Yeah.
That's like the three on one,
where there's one bully just like, pummeling three kids,
like, "Where're you going? You're not going to class."
Yeah, come on.
That was another thing is, you know,
bullying is something that parents are very sensitive about.
But, it is the '50s.
And we wanted to make the bullies, bullies.
I... I don't think... I think it sort of does a disservice to characters...
- Yeah. -...when you water them down
to the point they're not realistic 'cause you don't wanna offend anyone.
And, you know, they don't make up. They're not friends at the end.
- Yeah. - And when he does punch him he really,
you know, hits him in the stomach, the other kid laughs at him.
And it was interesting watching audiences.
- Kids were with it. - Yeah.
- It made kids root for Lewis. - Yeah.
You know, because he's not a wimp, he's an underdog.
But he does get bullied. When he gets his revenge at the end
-it's that much sweeter. - Yeah.
But that was actually a weird fight that we had...
- Really? -...was to keep the bullying.
Because people were like, "Well, parents don't wanna see."
It's like, of course, nobody wants to see kids get bullied,
but you gotta take audiences, I think in kids movies,
to that dark place.
Like in Pinocchio, when I was a kid, and he got swallowed by the whale,
I thought he was gonna die. When he got turned into
the jackass, the donkey on Pleasure Island,
I thought he was gonna be stuck like that.
Yeah.
So, you know, I think in the kids' movies,
the ones, you know... In Time Bandits, his parents blow up
-at the end of the movie. - Oh, man. Yeah. Dark.
So, you know, I think that kids can...
And that's the only reason that fairy tales are around
for hundreds of years.
I think that there's a way to do it
where you're not traumatizing kids. I don't think you should traumatize them.
But I do think that it's important
to let the story go into a very, very dark place.
This is my Hitchcock nod.
Of course, we're leading it, like, as if the fake birds are gonna attack,
but of course, the birds become the books.
So, yeah.
The book attack. This is Louis Morin.
Guys at Rodeo really did a great job...
- Yeah. -...with the books. You know,
really make them look very, very photo-real.
- You guys coming in and hands cut... - Look at the paper cuts.
- Yeah the paper cuts. - And...
- The slicing sounds. - Look at...
- Owen's intensity in that scene, man. - Yeah.
He was really...
And Florence, you guys acting, I mean, you're...
Dude, there was nothing there, either.
- There's nothing. - It was all just imaginated.
-lmaginated? - Imaginated, it was.
But dude, you know who I was just thinking of
when you were saying great bullies?
The great Amblin bully that comes to mind
-is Biff from Back to the Future. - The best Back to the Future.
- Biff was amazing - Dude, he was a real...
He was a real bully.
And you love watching the manure
get dumped in his car. I mean, bullies always have a backstory.
And not just like, bullying other boys but like, bullying the girls like...
- He was a terrible human being. - He was like
threatening her with, you know, God knows what.
- That's what makes him great. - Yeah.
And this is really fun.
The Ovaltine, the Captain...
And we actually did this authentic Captain Midnight decoder.
The language that's on the blueprints is really, really authentic.
Is it wrong? I just wanna dive in there and just
inhale all that delicious chocolate powder sauce.
I know. I get the same urge.
And here is the cameo by Ignatius BIanchett-Upton.
This was a fun scene to shoot.
This was a very fun scene.
Because we got to... We were out of the house.
- And we were in the candy store. - Yeah.
And that's Cate's son, Iggy.
Oh, my God. That's Cate Blanchetfs son.
Yes, Iggy. And he played it super weird.
- Like, this look. - He did it really good, yeah.
- He flies in. - He was not just gonna be an extra.
No. I was like, "Iggy."
This kid. This kid was great. Dylan Gage Moore.
Dylan was actually our...
Believe it or not, he was one of our alternates for Lewis.
And he was good and he was funny but he wasn't, you know,
-quite what I needed. - Yeah.
But I really wanted to give him a little bit so I was like, "Dylan,
"I got something for you. It's not the lead. It's a small...
"It's pretty thankless, but it's gonna be fun."
This is an important scene too to establish my
not really fully in control of my psychic powers.
The second. First we had the...
This is great.
One take.
Look at Cate's timing on this.
"We'll take the gumballs, too."
We'll take the gumballs, too.
There was such build-up
'cause there was gonna be a lot of cleanup
with the gumballs, but is anyone gonna get hurt?
No, they're gonna explain...
And you just... One take, done.
Oh, my God. We got it all.
That's 45 minutes to get all those balls back in the bowl.
In the thing and they just blew everywhere.
That was really fun.
I kinda got beaned by one of those gumballs too if I remember correctly.
- Yeah. - I think there was a ricochet onto my...
- Onto your head, but you guys held it. - On my temple.
What a way to go.
- If I had died... - If you'd died...
...on a bubblegum ricochet...
It would've been great. And here we establish the axe...
- It would not have been great. -...in the pumpkin. That'll pay off.
For the record, it would've been tragic.
It would've been awful.
And here, this is our, kind of our Saving Private Ryan scene...
- Yeah. -...where Chair's been torn to pieces.
- This is World War ll right here. - Yeah.
This is it. The house has been trashed, Chair's been torn apart.
He's torn the place to pieces.
And Chair is wheezing.
Chair's in a lot of pain.
I wanted people to feel worse about Chair getting ripped up
than anything else in the movie.
And you guys try to... This is...
And this is one of my favorite scenes, where he loses it.
- Yeah. - And I just love the way you played it.
Like I remember, he's... Jonathan blows up at Lewis,
but in the middle of it he just stops himself, realizing,
"I can't get too mad at this kid. This is completely my fault."
- Well, this is... -"I shouldn't have
"put him in this situation."
This is another one of the audition pieces.
- Yes. - Here.
- That's right. - And I remember being worried. I was like,
I don't wanna get too mad at him.
But I just really... I really let it go.
You're the one who decoded the blueprints.
No.
To me, it's that scene in Willy Wonka
when he's like, "Wrong, sir, wrong. You stole Fizzy Lifting Drinks."
Where you just see him...
- Yeah. -...you know, the guy that we like,
That's been with us the whole movie, that we identify with.
We wanna like, really you know,
-like a parent, you think. - Yeah.
That thing in your DNA of your parents yelling at you
that just hits you in that place.
But this is a... I love this scene.
I thought all you guys were really, really fantastic.
And Cate just being like
really disappointed but sort of getting caught in the middle and...
You know, it's so nice when you have three actors that are so good,
you can just kinda place the camera and let everyone do their thing.
But I like the steps and the escalation of this.
It's really one of your best scenes, Jack.
You never told me.
Oh, so this is my fault?
Yeah.
Then, what are you saying? What the hell were you thinking?
I just wanted Tarby to be...
And then when you realize that he's like, "I wanna... I miss my mom,"
it's just kinda heartbreaking.
And this was one of the things that Spielberg was very complimentary about.
- Oh, good. - He's like, "Make the movie scary."
But he's like, "Make the drama real
-"and really go for it with the comedy." - Yeah.
And in all those movies, whether it's E.T.
or remember when E.T. is on defibrillators and you think he's dead...
- Yeah. - Or Raiders of the Lost Ark
when you think Marion's dead, all those Amblin movies have that moment
where you really feel like all hope is lost, it's over,
the fight is beyond repair, these guys are never gonna make up,
he's getting rid of them.
It's like, 'We're a bevy of swans." He's like, "I'm sorry, kid."
You know, it's really...
- It's heartbreaking. - Yeah.
And then this next scene coming up,
what we call the Virginia Woolf scene. I really think...
Originally, it was broken up by some stuff across the street.
But the drama was so strong,
I think both of you guys, it's just absolutely the best scene in the movie.
Yeah.
It makes sense to go straight to this scene.
Yeah. I just couldn't. I didn't want to cut away.
Because the scene, the escalation, the build-up, and the layer,
the layers that you played, you really...
It's really, really spectacular.
I remember, Cate was getting really frustrated with herself this day.
- Yeah. - We were, like,
-in awe of what she was doing. - I know.
Then she just nailed it.
Did you enjoy doing this scene?
Yeah. This was a great day.
Because this is where we get the sense of your real personalities.
Like, they're not... You guys aren't playing around here.
It's the most serious scene because you're both...
You're not talking about the clock, you're not talking about Isaac,
you're talking about, like, very deep personal stuff in your past.
Ran away? My dad threw me out!
And what about your little sister?
She'd looked up to you.
It's really great.
And you're going to abandon her only child.
This was Cate's last scene.
Was this her last shot?
It's her last scene, yeah.
You're scared.
Yes, all right? I'm scared for Lewis!
This is great.
Well, guess what, genius?
That is the whole point.
I mean, I wish I had Cate here for the commentary on this.
I remember she was getting so mad
and it was like, you know, Cate's normally one or two takes.
We're up to six or seven, and she's like...
And we're like, "That was amazing."
She just gave me the "give me one more" signal.
And she did this take and we just couldn't...
It was like...
It was so good.
I mean, the whole... I was standing in the room watching it with you.
And it's just...
I mean, you're just watching someone who's...
I don't know, both you guys were so dialed in,
you had the characters and you really...
That scene was just emotional and intense and...
I mean, that's why she is who she is, though.
- Yeah. - There's a part of her
that always feels like she could do it better and it...
It's what drives her.
Yeah. And now we go back to the spooky with those glasses...
- Oh, boy. -...the reflecting ovals,
which is part of the book.
And this is great. This is where we have Colleen Camp,
who's just so unbelievably funny with her little dog.
Colleen always plays the comedy so well.
Giving the dog and getting her...
Getting her jacket and "Ooh, it's cold."
I love her little improv.
And that's the fun of the movie, is playing with these different tones.
You know, going from this very, very serious scene
to there's a zombie warlock across the street.
And, you know, originally in the edit, we saw Isaac a lot more until this moment,
but we kind of...
You know, we decided to, in the editing, save him until this moment.
And this is great where you guys go right back to the comedy
where it's serious, where you realize you're locked in.
And it's kind of refreshing.
You know, after you've had that intense dramatic scene,
you need that relief, you need that fun, that comedy.
And here he is.
The warlock himself.
Kyle MacLachlan in all his makeup glory.
Kyle had never had prosthetics like this done before.
- I just think he looks so fantastic. - Oh, my God.
- This delicious smile.
- And the dust. - It's so creepy.
He looks so good.
It was Adrien Morot, the makeup effects artist.
I worked with Adrien on Death Wish and he is just fantastic.
That's a great combination of acting,
special effects and special effects makeup.
- Yeah. -'Cause you saw that, like,
that steam coming out of his mouth when he first spoke.
Look at his ears. We got maggots coming out of the ears.
She dusts them off, they're coming out of his hair.
I think there's a couple more maggots that fly.
- I was like... - Oh, God.
And that's one of the things...
She loves the maggots.
She loves the old maggot makeout.
Yeah, it's time to reveal who she really is.
You see that we pop the eyes there. That was fun.
And this was... I really wanted something that was kind of Beetlejuice-y,
that was totally nuts.
That would be a transformation that looked painful and...
Now I see what you mean about the... Oh, yeah.
Here they go.
We actually had to have all the actors
kind of act this out.
And then the fantastic wizards...
- Oh, yeah. -...l believe it was Rodeo and Hybride
did these shots.
Here comes Renée, and boom.
See what we did with the eyes? That's something you do in DI,
just to pop them and that way you can tie in all three of them.
But, you died.
I love this.
Renée was fantastic.
And again, this was our opening scene.
But now, we're seeing it from the other side.
We're seeing it from Selena's point of view.
Her stunt woman was fantastic.
No doubt. It was so good.
- She's not done yet, either. - No, no.
Human.
There we realize that she was alive.
The chunk from the real Mrs. Hanchett.
That was a chunk from the real Mrs. Hanchett.
Lovely woman.
And then here comes Kyle.
I thought that they were just such a fantastic on-screen duo.
And now we have the double reveal.
That there's one more disguise in there that...
Dude, I love... I love what you did to his voice, too.
Oh, yeah.
We didn't want to overdo it.
I took a long time.
Now the reveal.
Dude, that's the scariest thing to me, when she transforms
-from person to person. - Yeah.
And no one realized her shapeshifting ability.
I feel like I hear bones breaking.
We had a lot of bone crackle.
It shouldn't be... It's very unpleasant.
It's not something that feels good to do that.
It takes it out of you.
I mean, Karen Landers,
you know, we spent a long time manipulating the voice
'cause if you went too far,
you know, you sort of lose what's great about his performance.
This is great.
Your jump here. And this scene always gets a laugh.
This is so ridiculous.
Cate is so funny, too.
- She was like... - Very graceful.
It's so good. I love this little look she gives.
So then, quip, fip, boom.
- Dang. - Right through the transom.
- Nice moves. - I wanted it to be like
Banlieue 13, District B13,
one of the parkour guys.
I like how she's just better at everything than I am.
Well, this is when her magic starts to come back.
I think I know.
I love this.
The emotion, the power of wanting to rescue Lewis.
And so, this scene that we're about to see, where you guys are chained up,
that was the very first day of shooting with you and Cate.
It was the first scene we did of the two of you.
I was like, "Jack, meet Cate."
And then I chained you guys up together back to back.
That's right.
This was great.
We actually had someone under there that ducked out of the way.
We tried to do all this stuff practically.
You know, having the strings, pulling you guys.
And this was fun, the reveal.
I like classic magic.
You know, putting the person in the cage, falling on the sword.
And the Houdini chains,
Houdini in the straightjacket.
I'm sure you'll remember my next trick.
And the telescope. This was like that...
It's kind of like the Space Jockey in Alien.
And Sebastian's lab in Blade Runner.
That was the look we were going for.
And the rat chewing on the top.
Little Time Bandits nod right there.
This was the first time we had...
It was one of the first things we shot, which was all you guys together.
That's right.
And this was fun.
You and Cate were great.
I love the little looks you guys give.
You're good to each other.
There must be some part of you that doesn't want this,
that isn't completely dead.
But that's the fun of the movie.
It's going from the dramatic scenes to a scene that's just so over-the-top
-nuts as this. - Yeah.
Oh, on the contrary.
And here, we get to the theme, the heart of the movie.
And this was actually Spielberg's idea.
Spielberg was, like, instead of just having a projector with the images,
is there something...
He said, "ls there something in the set that can show the images?"
Actually, we can have the telescope that can project,
and the effects guys really did a magnificent job with it.
Yeah.
And Steven's big thing was, "Why does he know this?
"How does he know the power of how to just turn back time?
"He can't just be some all-powerful wizard."
And then that's when we went to that classic mythology of the demon.
Yeah.
And, of course, when I told you I was...
Do you know what, I was listening to a lot of Tenacious D?
So Tenacious D completely,
-completely inspired this. - Oh, God.
There is the forked tongue, how about that?
That was actually cut in England.
You can only see that if you're in America.
In the UK, they cut the tongue.
- Really? - And the hand cuts,
in the...
They thought it was too satanic.
But the demon tongue,
and all this stuff going backwards,
that was completely Tenacious D-inspired.
I was, like, "I think Jack's gonna like this."
If we have, like, an evil demon with long claws and a forked tongue.
It's great. Azazel.
I love the way he did that line, "You reckless idiot, you summoned a demon!"
He gave me a wonderful gift.
The rat.
That rat was CGI.
They're so good, these guys.
Such an amazing... Here we go.
I love the name Azazel.
- It has an evil to it. - He is one of the...
He is an actual demon.
It's a legit name of a demon.
He's one of the 72 canonical demons.
Eric Kripke.
Did you go through all 72 and pick your favorite one?
Eric Kripke, who is our writer, who's the one...
This was his favorite book, and this project came to life because of him.
Eric Kripke wrote, I think,
so far, 272 episodes of Supernatural, the TV show, so he knows his demons.
He's, like, "It should be Azazel. For sure."
- That's cool. - Yeah, he knew it right away.
The key.
And this is one of those classic things
where you've got the guy underneath you, poking...
Poking the key and we just...
ls Florence gonna dig deep and pull out the magic,
but of course, we really learn now about losing her family,
and see the Holocaust tattoo,
and everyone can fill in the backstory.
We know what happened to her.
And this was the first thing, this fight.
I remember the first day of shooting with you guys,
it was, like, "Okay, now you break imaginary chains."
And then he falls, and a lot of this stuff was gonna be done later.
So it was just reactions.
This is a great... This is a great moment for her.
Yeah.
The indomitable...
-indomitable Florence Zimmerman. - Great way to...
Yeah, wake her sleeping magical powers.
This is great. The rat bites. Boom.
Saved at the last minute.
Yeah, and all the lighting effects were added after.
And this is... And this was one of the first things I shot with Cate.
I was, like, "I know you've heard this direction a lot,
"but now, use your magical umbrella to stop the cage from flying."
This is great. You got sizzled.
Yeah.
Boom.
He was blinded.
And they're gone, and they've got the key.
All right, now we're coming to what is...
Might be my favorite scene in the movie,
which is the automaton attack.
Again, one of the first things we shot.
Very intense.
And this is where you just go, "So creepy."
And those were real. Those were all really there.
Actually photographed.
- And they were creepy in real life. - Yeah.
So...
That's great. "Creepy."
Clock boy, this one.
Our first test screening, when these hands went up, some kid went...
He just started screaming.
But they really... I mean, hats off to our VFX animators.
- They brought them to life. - They really did.
But it was great, 'cause we could build them and photograph them in a real space.
- Some of it was really happening. - Yeah.
A lot of it was really happening.
And a lot of it you could just photograph as reference.
This thing, it's like that weird mask that Michael Palin wears in Brant.
Or Street of Crocodiles.
I think the one on the left is going, "Why won't you talk to me?"
This guy was very scary.
That was a real automaton!
That was from some car wash or something,
and we could scan it, and the animators
really brought them to life.
I remember this shot was, like, the big one,
getting the three of you guys being carried out.
And then we go right into a good old pumpkin attack.
I remember Cate's son Iggy
came to set the first day and saw the evil pumpkins,
and just looked at his mother, and goes, "Mom,
"this is the best movie you've ever made."
Totally definitive.
But I love the way you guys are arguing.
It's, like, too busy to even see what's going on behind you.
Except for this guy.
And you were really a great sport,
taking the face full of vomit. I remember saying to you,
"I think he might have to have a pumpkin puke in his face."
And you were, like, "They can't harm us."
Cut to...
You were brilliant.
One take that was not pleasant.
But you were really a champ about it.
Now...
Puking on the feet.
This is as disgusting... And there you see it crystallizes.
- Yeah. -"Some ungodly adhesive!"
I love that line.
You guys are...
The pumpkins were... This is one of those things,
it's just, like, a leap of faith that it's gonna look awesome.
And it doesn't look awesome until the very, very end
and they come in, but man, did these guys nail it.
- Incredible. - This! Here we go!
You're just so satisfied.
Finally, my powers have come to full fruition, as well.
And you get very braggadocio about it.
Here.
I exploded it with a psychic energy blast! It worked!
You're just so happy.
"Now I have the power!"
Yeah!
Dude, he gets cocky and...
There you go.
I love this. Then this was your idea.
You were just, like, "How would we clean up?"
it kinda follows that it's like our parental instincts kick in
to make our... Heighten our magical powers
as we come close to the climax of the film.
I like that. "Florence, you missed a spot."
That was you. You were, like, "How do we establish that Florence,
"now that her magic's back,
"she can just, magically..."
It's, like, the Wile E. Coyote. How are they clean in the next scene?
You were... You were thinking,
"This is not right that he's totally clean of all the pumpkin vomit."
And we had to establish that she used magical powers
to make my pumpkin vomit disappear completely.
Now that we know she has magical powers, we can do anything.
I remember this, where you were, like...
You told Owen... You were, like, "Wait, I'm...
"I'm not a warlock yet."
You were, like, "You had it. You had the inflection."
I think I was having an allergy attack, 'cause there were cats in the house,
and you really articulated it.
This is great. "I don't know. Could be."
This is... This is really funny.
You're, like, "I don't know about that eight ball."
Lewis, I don't know about that eight ball.
I love this.
Now if you recall,
I told Owen, "This is your magic.
"I can't direct you, you have to conjure this."
And he 100% came up with this himself.
And I said, "I don't wanna know what you're gonna do.
"We'll just... We'll just film it.
"We'll just move the camera in and out."
- Your reaction is great. - Yeah.
He knew exactly what he wanted to do with this scene.
He had it.
None of it... None of this I told him to do.
This is... That.
- All Owen. - Oh, my God.
You gotta love it, the confidence, the full commitment.
Yes.
To his own personal magic powers.
I was, like, "I can't tell you what to do with this, Owen.
"You have to understand what Lewis would do in this scene."
And that's why I think it's so great, is that it really is...
I don't know. It's just him.
It's a big... It's a big scene, because this is where our,
-"The Force be with you" power... - Yeah.
"Under the boiler."
This is great.
-...comes to full force. - This is so awesome.
And here are you guys now, the trio.
It's, like, you guys are all at your full warlock powers...
- That's right. Now we're ready. -...ready to do battle.
- The goggles come down. - Yeah.
"Shall we?"
Florence, this is great.
The way she just blasts these pumpkins.
Yeah, she definitely takes the lead.
Truly.
It's so much fun. And you guys are, you know...
I remember just acting and reacting to nothing as she's doing this.
And all the CG! artists really did a great job of
blasting this stuff later.
You... "Trick or treat!"
Splat in the face?
By the way, that key twirl? You could really do that.
- Yeah, I did. - You really did that.
- It was pretty damn... - That one I did pretty well.
- You did it really, really... - It was harder when it was raining.
- Yeah, 'cause it got wet. - Yeah.
- But this time it worked. - When it was dry, it was easier.
And here comes the griffin.
Everything is evil now.
The pumpkins are evil, the automatons are evil...
And there's no topiary lion to be seen.
Until now. This is my Evil Dead shot.
The POV with the leaves blowing.
And there he is.
Pounding the paw in frustration.
Oh, my God, but he's turned evil.
- He's turned against us. - He's turned...
I know, the whole thing is against you guys.
And this was fun. The fun with the automatons was, we actually were...
Those weren't CGI. We just had people underneath,
moving them around.
Holding them. We had six people on the floor,
walking around the automatons.
I love cheap gags like that. I'm obsessed with them.
I was like, "Let's have Cate Blanchett and a bunch of...
"And Jack and a bunch of dummies and just mannequins, move them around."
Still so creepy.
I love the... I love the purple gas.
Yeah, the purple gas was fun.
And this made a little Day oi the Dead thing with his face,
coincidentally, as we have him pop up.
I love this shot. This was fun.
The aftermath. Dead auto... Creepy automatons.
I love this. Now we're back in...
Now we're into making a classic haunted house movie...
- Yeah. -...with this kinda stuff.
You guys tip-toeing around.
Of course, the Came hand grabs the leg.
It was fun.
The guys had such a good time building these.
It was sad to smash them.
Florence, I really have to pee.
I think this Fred, my editor, Fred Raskin had ideas, like,
"I really have to pee!"
"Not the time, Jonathan."
And there we are, under the boiler.
And of course,
this is where Florence unexpectedly gets taken out by Snakespeare.
We think it's gonna be the three of them going in to fight.
- Yeah. - But“...
Due to Cate's shooting schedule, it's just...
It is only Jonathan and Lewis that go down into the clock room,
because Cate was unavailable.
Snakespeare!
I like this.
And I remember we had a line that was, "Et tu, Snakespeare?"
- Yeah. - But“...
But I thought, "She knows how to handle Shakespeare."
I think it works well though, just the two of us going in...
- Yeah, definitely. -...for the final battle.
Yeah, here comes the fireball wizard.
Yeah, because if Florence is there,
it's almost, you guys have too much powers.
And then, once you get taken out, then it really is...
It really has to be a confrontation between Lewis and Isaac and Selena.
Who actually... They kinda want him to join them.
Now we got the evil key turning.
The blood going into the key, the blood magic,
at midnight, just as the final gong hits and turns it to dust.
And now, that's it. There's no stopping it.
This set was insane. The clock set.
- Yeah. - I remember this.
This was one of the hardest.
It's literally moving pieces everywhere.
It looked like a big, giant, functioning clock.
Yeah. It was crazy.
So... And the gears were real steel.
Our VFX guys enhanced it,
so it goes down to the center of the Earth.
- Yeah. - That was the idea.
You guys were hopping--
You guys hopped, and then we broke the floor.
"I need protection."
And now, we get into
what might be arguably one of the weirdest,
most controversial things in the movie.
And that is...
You mean my favorite part of the movie?
Your favorite part of the movie.
This character. I just... We just...
I remember Adrien Morot made a baby for the movie Mother!
that was so real-looking,
I said, "Can you do that, but with Jack Black's head on it?"
And here, we have the cards protecting the face from...
Now, the only reason that my head and face were protected
-were because of the protection. - Because of the protection.
But of course, I should have thought of that.
I should have had a full-body suit made of protecting cards.
Right, but I don't think you knew
that this was gonna be a thing reversing time.
Right.
And so, all of this...
All of these gears are real.
And then, of course...
Uncle Jonathan? Uncle Jonathan!
Now, this was real.
We really built this baby.
That's the best thing I've ever seen, I'm sorry.
It...
The voices you did for this, that is your voice,
-doing the Jonathan baby. - Oh, God.
It's the weirdest thing ever.
And it was weird in person, to hold it.
You actually holding the baby was... It...
What is it... What is it like to see your head on a baby's body?
It was... It was one of those moments, where you're...
'Cause when you're looking into a mirror,
you're always looking at a 2-D version of yourself.
You're never really seeing yourself.
But when I looked at this baby's face,
I was really staring into my own soul.
It was very strange.
- Yeah. - Very odd. But...
I'm just very impressed with the baby's performance.
The baby was good.
- The raw emotions in that face. - Yeah.
It's never me!
It's always this doll!
The doll was good.
But I feel like I'm gonna get a lot of great acting credit...
- You should say that it was you. -...for this doll's performance.
I'm gonna say that, "Yeah, we put it on later with special effects."
Yeah, it was... It was all you.
No, it was a mix.
It was the baby could do a lot of expressions,
and then Louis Morin, our VFX supervisor,
we did some tests, and we realized we could with your voice...
This little, worried look.
It seems like the cards didn't protect my brain, though.
No, baby brain. We talked about that.
- It's a baby brain. - We talked about that.
We said is it baby brain or adult brain?
And we made the decision for baby brain,
because if it's an adult brain,
we thought you could direct him on what to do.
But if it's baby brain, then you're totally helpless.
But that was a discussion. It goes, "Is it baby brain
"or is it adult brain?"
It was, like, "No, it's baby brain Jonathan."
- Baby brain's just funnier to me. - Yeah.
- He throws it down there. - Oh, God.
And it gums up the works.
But this was something we did in the reshoots.
Seeing all the people in town, starting to see...
You know, and Monster Pajama Party, that one is just a film I wish existed.
But we took this footage of people and then we zapped them
and kind of filmed them turning into kids.
Very Big Top Pee-wee when they eat the hotdogs.
But now you start to get the sense of what's actually happening.
And then, you know, it's all closing in on him.
- The red storm and boom. - Yes!
It's the love of the parents. "Say goodbye."
It cannot be broken and cannot be crushed.
Quickly!
And they try to jam it, and here's where,
you know, Lewis really has to take everything that he learned,
the power of being weird, harnessing the energy...
It's really about taking what's around you and harnessing it.
It's an interesting metaphor.
I taught him that trick.
Before he electrocuted the Chair, but he's really...
This is one of my favorite moments from Owen.
"A little weird can do."
Here you go.
Then fires it, and boom, knocks them off and...
- They get zapped. - Oh, yeah.
- And turned younger. - Oh, dude.
He got zapped with a young zap on the way down.
See that? Through the clothing.
Turned into nothing.
Zapped. Not like Scott Baio Zapped!
- Yeah. - He got zapped by his own invention.
And the guys, you know, the gears grinding on the glasses,
as the final... The final moment.
This is one of my favorite scenes.
This is the last scene we shot with you before we put a goat in your trailer.
That's right.
- This Satanic goat. - Oh, my God.
That prank was the evilest, most hilarious prank
that anyone's ever pranked on me.
I was certain you were gonna know.
Owen was like, "We gotta do a prank on Jack."
-"We gotta do a prank on Jack." - Okay.
And I was like, "Let's put a goat in his trailer."
This was the last shot of the movie for me
and when I went back to my trailer after this,
there was a full-grown, living, bleeding...
Not bleeding, but bleating goat.
Staring me in the face when I opened my trailer door.
And I was terrified.
And also touched that someone went to the trouble...
- To put a goat in the trailer. - Of putting a...
And we had t-shirts that said "Bevy of swans," that were made up
that we gave at the beginning of the day
and we put it in your trailer. And then we had one
that was ripped up as if the goat had eaten it.
Good times.
This is Lewis's graduation party.
- This is it. - He is now one of us.
He is. I love this little moment.
I remember this was...
Cate's idea, you know, was, "Can I be a purple one?"
it's really emotional. I think the emotion is real.
I love you guys, the way you guys come together in a family.
- As a family. - Yeah.
You know, and Jonathan accepting that he's good enough to be a dad.
And Florence allowing herself to be a mother figure again.
- Yeah. - All of it.
And of course, here we are back at school.
One again, Lewis... Last picked in gym.
Think I want him?
Nobody wants him. Back to the bullies.
This is a great moment.
Lewis came up... Owen came up with these spells.
Ball to the face at a very nasty pace.
Bam, Wham. Boom.
I love the way the kids wave here.
One's like, "We want him." "No, we want him."
These kids are great.
Even Herman the polio boy on the right is waving.
See him? It's like... Froggy, all the kids.
And he's like, "Nah, I'm good."
And he goes to chat with Rose Rita.
Shout out to Brad Einhorn who did our props.
He did the drawing. Brad was amazing. He did the drawings in the bug book.
I thought these were really great.
- Yeah. - I love the two of them.
Really sweet, and that definitely sets up the sequel.
The movie is not out for another month,
so we don't know what will happen with the sequel,
but it would be great to continue with these two characters.
Rose Rita... There's 12 books in the Lewis Barnavelt series,
and Rose Rita becomes a very prominent character.
Okay, I don't know what Owen's saying, he's like...
"And then they have 10 gallons of ice cream,
"all in different tubs."
He's saying something totally crazy.
I love this. Look at him, James Dean all of a sudden.
Look at him playing it cool. James Dean...
That was great.
And now it's like, we wanted the moment, the pay-off of, like, now it's cool
-to have your parents show up in that car. - Yeah.
And boom, the thing explodes right in Tarby's face.
He's like, "Whatever."
And of course, this ending,
this originally was not the ending.
- We had you guys singing and a-dancing... - Oh, yeah.
...and running around, but, you know,
it felt like we're starting to have the six-ending problem.
- Yeah. You wanna have one good ending. - Here, it's just like...
Once you go in and like...
We have that as a deleted scene, of course,
but you see that the three of them perform together.
There's our stained-glass with Kris Kristofferson.
And Alfred E. Neuman.
I am looking pretty Kris Kristofferson there.
Watch his little eye twitch that he does.
I love this little...
Little Christoph Waltz from lnglourious Basterds.
And then, of course, our little nod to Tobe Hooper,
who we lost recently
during making the picture, so we gave a little shout out to him
by having Chair chasing the griffin with a chainsaw.
And it actually is a period chainsaw, by the way.
We found it.
And then he goes back and does a little Leatherface twirl.
A little nod.
Basically a children's movie
turning into The Texas Chain Saw Massacre at the very ending.
And now, this, Nathan Barr, our composer,
restored this silent-era organ from 1928.
You gotta love the backwards-going clock, too.
Yes, of course, the backwards clock. We gotta do that.
And the Edward Gorey-style credits, the little animation,
like, Edward Gorey animated the credits to PBS Mystery.
The little book with the hand.
I love that, so this is an homage to Gorey.
And the rat.
I love when you kind of recap in the credits,
all the little different things that you saw.
- Of course, the Georgia peach. - The Georgia peach. Gotta get a shout out.
But this organ scored many classic films
from The Sound of Music and Patton and Star Trek.
The goggletos.
Look, here comes Isaac popping out of the grave there.
Then the wizard, Mr. Wizard with the arm.
But this organ, it scored some other movies?
Yeah, it scored many, many, many classic movies.
And it had been boxed up for 25 years
and Nate Barr purchased it
and spent the last five years restoring it.
It has 1,140 pipes, it plays 20 different instruments.
It's not just an organ.
But we have a little feature on it.
We wanted to do a suite of all the different themes.
You gotta see this thing. It's the most...
It took up seven rooms at FOX and he built a studio just for it.
It's just three rooms of organ pipes.
And the sound, it really sounds like...
See, the griffin tamer, Griffin, Chair's hair and make-up.
By Griffin.
I love this animation.
Him walking around.
- Vote for Tarby. - It really captures his insecurities.
You know, first day of school. "Spells to find hidden things."
Tarby's presidential campaign ring.
- Yeah. - And look who's out at the right?
There's I993'-
Oh, yeah.
- Cate's son Iggy? - Cate's son Iggy.
- You got a cartoon version of him. - Everybody.
Yeah, there's cartoon versions of everybody in here.
That's nice.
And there are the plans.
The blueprints.
- Oh, yeah. - We gotta have griffin in there.
Andrew Eisen, who cut a lot of scenes.
We're like, "Andrew, you're totally cool."
I like that he's got some griffin poo.
-'Cause he's pooing. - That's a good animation.
And there we got, you know, good old rainbow cat.
Florence spinning.
But this was fun, taking the different themes of...
You know, we have the sound of the family,
we have the action of Jonathan with the axe.
Then we get into the mom's theme.
Why is there an ADR session happening?
'Cause the ADR's going on, 'cause it's right where the ADR performance are.
Right where you're doing your sax.
- Yes. - But the griffin isn't too happy with it.
He's still not pleased.
But, yeah, our guys at Filmograph, the title designers,
were just absolutely amazing.
They hand-did all the opening credits and...
- Yes. - I wanted to have that handmade quality
-with the... There's Snakespeare. - Oh, dude.
- And pumpkin barf. - Vomiting pumpkin.
All these little things, our favorite things.
- The attacking books flying about. - Yeah.
You can see all the artists that worked on it.
But, you know, this fantastic illustrator,
this young woman, she could really, really, draw them
and I was like, "We gotta add Florence and the Devil automaton."
That's not easy, either, being asked to do an illustration
in the style of Edward Gorey, you know.
- Yeah, of something from the movie. - That's an added level of difficulty.
- That's cool. - It's fun, we have our
-clock boy automaton, the flying books... - Yeah.
All this kind of stuff.
Folks, these guys are amazing at Folks.
And now we hear the music from the mother's theme
that starts to come in and you see the mom there.
Start to get into some of the family stuff.
It's that dress pattern that really
-sells the... Yeah. - That really says it.
But this is the sound of what it sounded like
when you were in a silent movie theater
and they had an organist that would play the score of the movie.
Totally. Dude, you know what that sounds like to me?
It sounds like the organ on the carousel in Griffith Park.
- Yeah. - It's like that old-school, old era
-organ, yeah. - And there's a lot of old-school
kind of stuff in the movie.
You know, we tried to do practical effects,
putting it period, it's like a throwback to the old Amblin movies.
We also wanted it to have its own defining sound.
It sounds like it's the size of, like...
Like it belongs in a gigantic cathedral.
Yes. Well, it does.
It's that kind of feel. Look, I animated my dog, Monkey,
-there on the right. - The cutest.
- Monkey was there on set. - The cutest dog of all time.
What kind of do is that, by the way?
She's a French Bulldog.
We're thinking about getting a doggie, but I don't...
I think we have to get a hypoallergenic.
That's why I got a Frenchie.
- Your French Bulldog is hypoallergenic? - Yeah.
I have bad allergies, that's why...
So, it's hair, not fur.
It's the hair, yeah.
It doesn't shed?
It does shed, but I don't get allergies from it.
The Frenchies are hypoallergenic.
Well, they're hypoaller-cute.
There's your pan'. Any final thoughts on The House with a Clock in Its Walls?
I'm gonna say we did it.
Mission accomp. Cranked it out of the park.
I'm hoping that it's wildly successful and we make three more.
How about we all take a bow?
And there's Azazel holding the Jonathan baby, on the left.
Azazel's holding the baby.
- Thanks, everyone. - Thanks for watching.
All 12 of you.