hen Scott Derrickson signed on to co-write and direct The Exorcism of Emily Rose, he had no illusions that his film would be likely to eclipse a certain 1970s masterpiece that also centered around the possession and subsequent—ahem—exorcism of a young girl. So he didn't even try. While he holds the classics of the horror genre in high regard, he went in an entirely different direction on this production.
Although the film does have some horrific elements, most of them take place as flashbacks during a trial in which a former priest, played by Tom Wilkinson, is accused of criminal negligence during a ritual exorcism. Laura Linney (Kinsey, Mystic River) plays his defense attorney, opposite Campbell Scott (Singles, Roger Dodger) as a cynical prosecutor. The film is loosely based on the real-life case of Annaliese Michel and the court case surrounding the circumstances of her death.
In January, Science Fiction Weekly was invited to tour the set of the film and had a chance to speak with the stars and director while they were on a break from shooting one of the film's pivotal courtroom scenes.
Were you aware of the true story this is based on before you started? Did you do any research?
Linney: No, I knew nothing about it. There is a similar story that it is based on, but it is not a recreation of that story. There is a book that was written about the events, and I did read that and then just talked to [director Scott Derrickson] a lot.
Derrickson: I filled her in.
Wilkinson: As far as research is concerned, I didn't do any. I mean, if I can possibly ever not do any research, I won't [laughs]. What was interesting about this for my character is that it's the first time it's happened to him, the first exorcism that he's been involved with, and so I thought it would be quite interesting if you could just do it from the [perspective that] both my character and I were kind of beginners. So that's an interesting aspect of it. You allow the events to sort of happen to you in a certain sense, rather than controlling them, like an expert might have done. And I welcomed the idea of doing something that I had never done before.
Your character makes a decision to perform an exorcism. What did you believe was his motivation to make that choice?
Wilkinson: Well, I'm very glad that he does decide to do it, otherwise I wouldn't be in the movie [laughs]. I'd be passing by the window on a bicycle. What is crucial about it—and it doesn't really involve my decision-making process, what I feel about it—what is interesting about priests when they take on an exorcism is, they are not there personally. They are there as a kind of embodiment of the Catholic church. It's a Catholic priest who's doing it. So they have to be shriven, they have to have, you know, gone to confession. They have to have fasted. They have to, you know, be in a state of grace, I'm told, so that they can then become merely a conduit. They themselves are not there to sort of grapple hand-to-hand with the demons, but to act as a conduit from God through the Catholic church into the body and soul of the person who's possessed, and that's how that works. So in a certain sense, his private feelings—and for certain my private feelings—are kind of irrelevant.
Scott, how do you approach a film like this, with a subject matter that we've seen many times on film before?
Derrickson: If you're going to make an exorcism movie of any kind, you certainly have a burden to carry or hurdle to get over with [The Exorcist]. The subject matter is profoundly compelling, and I think that what everybody knows is that it is a real phenomenon out in the world, whether you believe there's anything spiritual to it or not. It happens. People get exorcisms. And there are lots of stories of lots of cases. And that fact alone makes it interesting. And what I wanted to do was approach the subject matter in a bit less exploitive way. You can't out-exorcist The Exorcist, and so you sort of have to almost go under it, in a sense.
How do you do that?
Derrickson: I certainly want the film to be scary, and I want it to be compelling to watch, but in some ways, I think, to really frighten a contemporary audience you just can't do that with special effects and sound and camera tricks and the manipulative tricks of the trade that were implemented there that were extraordinary at the time. That same sort of approach has been used in a million different horror films. And so I think that with this one, [that was] certainly my intention. We'll see if we pulled it off.
Campbell, can you talk about your character?
Scott: I play Ethan Thomas, who's the prosecuting attorney. I'm, in fact, acting on behalf of the people. He's a very kind of no-nonsense, intense character who does not obviously believe in this type of spirituality, but does believe that this young woman was harmed by the neglect of this priest. He probably doesn't really go for Catholicism. He's a very intense Methodist in the movie. And [writer Paul Harris Boardman] and Scott have made a very light but nice point of saying that he is in fact not just a factual guy, he's a religious guy, but he's a different kind of religious guy.
Laura, this seems like a bit of a departure for you. What made you decide to do it?
Linney: There were things about the script that interested me that have nothing to do with horror or with typical horror. The whole idea of people's personal demons, whether you're religious or not, whether that's depression or anxiety or stress or whatever, interested me. And there's a line in the script that deals with that. That's what I found really interesting. But yeah, I had very, very long talks with Scott. I had very, very long talks with Clint Culpepper, one of our producers, just to see where they were and what they were thinking and what kind of movie they wanted to make. And were they both on the same page? And was this something that I thought that I could contribute to in a positive way? And would I have a good time making it? So yeah, I was thoughtful about it, definitely.
Was there any one thing that finally convinced you to do it?
Linney: Scott. Talking to Scott. And his sincerity about wanting to make a good movie and wanting to be true to the story first. That went a long way.
Scott, were you aiming for an ambiguity about the possession, where you don't come out and say whether she was actually possessed or not? Was it difficult to find that balance in the exorcism scenes?
Derrickson:: Yeah, it's a real tightrope walk, that balance. And again, I don't know how well we've achieved that. I do know that it hasn't been terribly difficult. Like, I haven't been distracted by it because I think that there was so much rigor put into that in the screenplay. And I think that our actress, Jennifer Carpenter, who plays Emily Rose is so extraordinary in the role that it actually took a lot of that weight off of me, because I really reconceived how to do the entire movie at her callback audition, because she was so frightening. It was so surreal, just her in a room full of guys behind a desk. ... And what she was doing was so counterintuitive to watch, what she can do with her body, and the realism to it. And I had this terrible sense of "Gosh, how am I going to make these possession and exorcism scenes frightening? Well, what camera tricks can I use? How far can I go?" And then when I saw her I was like, "Well, you've just gotta turn the camera on and point it at her." And when she is doing things that are more representative of mental illness and something that's not so supernatural, it's really equally disturbing. And I think that's one of the things that's interesting about it. So she took a lot of the burden off me in that respect.
From a story point of view, there is a good amount of kind of paranormal things in the story, and so you're always trying to remember who's telling this story, and of course in that respect it was very influenced by Rashomon. That's a phrase that gets thrown out a lot, but just because something's fragmented it's not Rashomon. But when there's a same event that really is being remembered different ways, or being thought of as if different realities are being presented, it's incredibly interesting because memory does warp history in some regard. And so you get a certain range of freedom when you're telling a story like that, too, because you can go a certain distance and think, "Boy, we're really making this look supernatural." But then you're remembering, "Oh, but that's the priest-telling version," as opposed to someone else who's talking about the same situation from a much more skeptical point of view.
You've a couple of horror films now. Why do you keep coming back to the genre?
Derrickson: I love the genre. And this isn't even really a purely a horror film, it's a courtroom movie as well. It's got very dramatic characters, and I certainly don't have anything but really positive feelings about the horror genre in general. But I do think that there are sort of two tiers to it, and this one's sort of going to that second tier, which is great. And so far that's the movie we've been shooting.
So the other films you've done didn't quite get there, you're saying?
Derrickson: No, I think that for what they were, they were both sequels, and they were movies that were green-lit before there was ever a script. And they had their constraints and their limitations, and they were there to serve a very narrow purpose. And in the case of Urban Legends, there were a lot of producers and there was a lot of different input. I think that project belongs to a lot of different people, and whenever that happens you end up with something that sort of can lose its way a bit. But I think that didn't happen on this at all, and I'm very happy to have worked on those other films. It was a great place to start.
When you're making a horror film, you're dealing with certain expectations from fans.
Derrickson: Yeah, horror fans are rabid fans. I think the greatest misconception about horror fans is that they love gore. They love cinema, and they really love this kind of cinema, and they love the things that horror cinema can do that they can't get anywhere else, not in horror novels, not in graphic novels, not in anything else.
What do you think of the current state of the genre?
Derrickson: Well, I think that it's a very exciting time to be working with this genre, because it's beginning to branch out where it belongs. I really feel that—this is pure abstraction, but I don't want to be too abstract about it—but I really think that this is a genre that, historically, hasn't gotten the respect that it deserves. I don't know how else to put it. And I mean in cinema. But if you look back at the rest of history, literary history and history of the theater, the macabre and the horrific and the gothic, these are things that were so integral in all of the great arts. Cathedrals have gargoyles on them in Europe, but the churches nowadays don't have horrific things in them like they did back then. I think that there's something about cinema this century that, as it went on and special effects developed, it began to pander a little bit to the lower common denominator, and it's almost like now people are realizing, "Wow, you can really branch out with this genre." You can really get into ideas, and you can really get into characters and get into situations that are as provocative as anything you're going to find in any movie.
I look at The Others or The Sixth Sense or The Ring, these are all movies that have, I think, started to open up the possibilities of the genre. And I think that you can even be more frightening than those films and still have great characters. And the '70s gave the promise of that with Rosemary's Baby and The Omen, and those are my favorite horror films, and certainly The Exorcist. So I'd love to think that this is going to fall in that line, but it would be presumptuous to think that until it's done.
Do your spiritual beliefs change as you're working on a film like this?
Scott:: Yeah, I would think that happens. Yeah. I would think we wouldn't often admit it, but I would conjecture that that's part of the reason those of us who are actors became actors in the first place. There's something about not necessarily changing outwardly, but learning about someone's point of view that you would have never considered before, whether you're playing a military person or a priest or a lawyer. I mean, to me, this is the attraction, because suddenly instead of immediate labeling, which we're all very fond of because it cuts the fear down, you're suddenly looking at someone or something from someone else's [point of view]. Literally walking in their shoes. Now, you know, we joke around all day. It's an exorcist movie. Do we really believe this stuff? No. Late at night is probably when we really think about what you're asking about, and personally I think those things change as your life goes on, too.
Have any of you had anything close to a supernatural experience that might have informed your performances?
Wilkinson:: No. I once lost a glove and found it the following week [laughs]. I don't suppose that counts.
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