Don Coscarelli en David Hartman over Phantasm: Ravager

RDJ134 3 oktober 2016 om 14:10 uur

Way back in 1979 kwam de eerste Phantasm film uit en was een mix van science fiction, fantasy en horror. Door zijn unieke sfeertje en fans kreeg deze al heel erg snel een cult status en drie vervolgen, waarna het sinds 1998 stil werd rond om deze franchise. Maar er komt na alle jaren weer een nieuw deel aan en daarom had de website Collider dit interview met Don Coscarelli en David Hartman over deze film.


You really play with Phantasm's heritage of existing in a questionable space between dreams and reality in a beautiful way by leaning into themes of aging and dementia, how did you guys decide how much you wanted to lean into that aspect this time?

COSCARELLI
: I think I can start that off by saying that you brought that up beautifully with a point that I'd forgotten - that is that, I think from the get-go, we were really synchronized in that we were not going to shy away from the age of the actors. We have all gotten older and gotten grayer and you can only go so far where you're dying everybody's hair dark and trying to make them unlined faces. I think the breakthrough probably started very early with the concept that Reggie would finally have an opportunity with a really sweet, nice gal and he would sleep through it, not your typical action hero moment but right along with the Reggie that we know and love. And so I think this concept that Dave and I first got into was the idea of - which is a very current concept - what if Reggie, much like Mike in the first film, at least might be excused by an affliction like dementia? Which is another horror story that a certain percentage of our audience, all of us, are gonna face at the end of the day. [Use] that as the explanation why. But Dave was always insistent that we not really divulge which path we've chosen, whether Reggie was on a quest, or was he tilting at windmills, or was he in a fantasy dream of a person losing his mind to a terrible decease.

HARTMAN: You hit the nail on the head there, Don. The surrealness of the first film is all around the innocence of a young boy, and you have that as this catalyst for all these fears that we have. But now that character's seen so much, four movies, that character has lost that innocence, this character has been damaged and moved into a certain direction and he's got a goal. Being able to catch some of that innocence in things like Don said, dementia or Alzheimer's and what we all have to deal with in family members and stuff like that. I've had family members like that say some crazy things and part of me is like, "What if that's what they see? What if that is happening?" But it's still Don's movie, I keep saying it, it sometimes has more questions than answers, which I absolutely love. It's setting up these things that forces you to think after the movie.

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