orror master John Carpenter has said that he made the The Fog in 1980 with $1 million and two fog machines. He's also said that it was an experience he wouldn't like to repeat. So when Sony decided to capitalize on the trend of horror remakes that have been sweeping the box office of late, Carpenter had no problem handing over the reins of the remake to British director Rupert Wainwright. The updated version of The Fog opened Oct. 14.
This time around, Wainwright had a lot more to work with. But though the special effects have been updated and the production is more ambitious in scale, the story is still based on the same simple idea. Like the original, the film is set in the quaint island town of Antonio Bay, where a dark secret has been buried for exactly a century. But on the anniversary of the town's founding, those sins will come back to haunt the current residents under the cover of a mysterious and deadly fog.
With a resume that consists primarily of music videos, intimate dramas and low-budget thrillers, The Fog is Wainwright's biggest film to date. Fortunately, he has a cast of talented actors to back him up. Smallville's Tom Welling stars in the role originated by cult horror-film staple Tom Atkins. Like Welling, most of the cast is significantly younger than their previous counterparts. In the Adrienne Barbeau role, Selma Blair is lighthouse-bound radio D.J. Stevie Wayne, while Maggie Grace of Lost takes on the character played by Jamie Lee Curtis, who has a slightly different relationship to the town in the update.
Last May, Science Fiction Weekly was invited to visit the set of The Fog in Vancouver, B.C., and got a chance to speak with Welling, Blair, Grace and Wainwright, who seemed to have a lot of fun with each other, both on and off the set.
What do you bring to the story that is new?
Welling: This version of The Fog is updated. It's more modern. The other one was great, but obviously, as you can see us all sitting here, we've taken the ages of the original characters and, like, divided them in two [laughter].
Blair: In my case, we added.
Welling: That's not true. No, I think this is younger. It's quicker. It's a little bit edgier, I think. And I think that all of us together are going to bring that to the film. I didn't really— You know, the character that he played, it wasn't anything that we modeled anything that I'm doing after. I think this film is taking its own direction.
Selma, you look a bit banged up. What happened to your face?
Blair: One too many. I'm a drinker and [laughter] ... What? Actually, this is from Stevie's accident. She, um ... gets in an accident. I'm a wordsmith, what can I say?
This happens in the fog?
Blair: Yeah. In the fog. She's in the fog trying to save the son. In the fog and coming home. Car. Inside. Stall. Hit. I can't talk about the rest. It's too painful. Was I not supposed to say that, Rupert?
Wainwright: No, that's good.
Blair: I'm going to look a lot worse by the end.
So, unlike Adrienne Barbeau, you get to leave the lighthouse in this film?
Wainwright: She has a much more interesting escape, but she barely escapes.
Are you happy you get to interact more with the others?
Blair: When I saw the original, right before I went in to audition, she really was obviously very isolated. I really love having the energy of other people around me; that kind of gets me going, for better or for worse. But, you know, that's what I'm used to and I love. So I was really scared and intimidated just being in a room by myself. So it was great when they had some scenes: "Wow, and you without your journal." I was very relieved. I wish we had more. I had I more. I wish I had more scenes with these guys, but it's great. Especially the kids. It's great to have that little kid.
What else has been changed from the original?
Wainwright: We've moved the ending out of the [church]. A lot of this movie is really about the heritage of the town. And before, obviously, the journal was found in the church, so it centered around a church. And here, one of the things that we really focus on is sort of the nexus of the past and the present. And how that past has come back, basically to destroy the present, because of what happened then. So the scene that we're doing right now, which you can see, is in the town hall, which is kind of like a museum to all of the things that these townsfolk are so proud of. It's a little like when you go to Monterey or Carmel. All you ever hear is "John stood there and Fred stood there and this toilet roll is precious because blah blah blah." And you're like, "For crying out loud." And that's kind of what this island was like. But in fact it's hiding a horrible, horrible secret that eventually comes out during the course of the movie.
Maggie, what about your character? How is it different from the one played by Jamie Lee Curtis?
Grace: Well, as Tom said, it's really a different movie from the original. There's significant plot changes. And, really, the character comes into the story with a very different [agenda]. She's got a lot of unfinished business in town and a history with [Tom's character] Nick. So she's very much more invested in the situation than before. She's part of this. She's also descended from the perpetrators of the crime, so to speak. So she's implicated in a much greater way.
Wainwright: She's from the town. She's left. She's coming back to the town for a variety of different reasons. And part of that is what is sort of a deeper reality to her character, which eventually gets involved in the world of the town.
There have been a lot of horror movies out lately. What are you trying to do to make it different?
Welling: I haven't seen any.
Blair: You haven't seen any horror movies? Remakes. I don't know if I have either. You should have cast someone else. This is so not my genre. That's more of a Rupert question, I guess.
Wainwright: It was interesting. I was talking to a friend of mine and he said, "I've always thought that was an excellent half a movie." And I nodded, because I didn't want to look stupid and not get what this profoundly intellectual statement was. And it sort of buzzed around my head for a long time. And I think that one of the things that you want to know more about at the end of the movie is, who are these guys? What really happened? What was this ship? All of those things that you're sort of tantalized with hints about, and by the end of the movie it ends in this very sort of odd way, with Adrienne Barbeau just going, "Well, something weird happened last night, and it could happen again anytime. Over and out." I don't think we've giving any more answers in this movie, but we're going to get a lot more into that whole strange event in the past. And how it affected the lives [of these people] and basically how the island got cursed.
How do you portray the story of what happened in the past? Is it just through exposition, or is there a flashback scene?
Wainwright: That's our story. We just thought ... No, I'm kidding. Yes, there's a flashback to that whole event.
Blair: A big book opens up.
Wainwright: Exactly. The words come alive, they dance across the page. [laughs]. There are elements from that past that start literally being washed up into the present. So weird things start appearing. A feeling like, "That's odd. What's this?" And these things, more and more appear, and it sort of gets very strange. And then you begin to realize that these two worlds are colliding.
The fog is pretty overpowering on the set. Have you had a hard time dealing with it?
Welling: Yes. They lace it with [fragrance]. On different days they put lavender. Sometimes sage. And it helps. It keeps the mood on the stage [laughs].
So it hasn't been a problem?
Blair: You ain't going to catch me complaining. I'm a saint. "Do you have a headache from the fog? Are you thinking of suing Sony? Is the fog scary in real life on the set?" Yes.
Has it been a challenge to make this as a PG-13 film?
Wainwright: It's beyond a challenge. Yeah. So there's a variety of the layers that work in the movie as well as scares, but there's a variety of other things that we can do now with CG with fog, so there's a whole variety of other things that we can do to make it scary and ominous and weird and surprising.
Welling: And even things you don't see, right?
Wainwright: Yeah, exactly.
With John Carpenter being involved as an executive producer, have you looked to him for any guidance?
Wainwright: John didn't really want to be that involved. I mean, I had a drink with him at Musso & Frank's, and he goes, "It's your movie now." And that was basically it.
Would you have wanted more guidance?
Wainwright: I don't think it was really an option.
How did you feel about it?
Wainwright: I felt kind of relieved.
For the actors, has this film been physically challenging?
Welling: Last week we did night shoots. You go to work when the sun goes down, and you go home when the sun's coming up. And the good thing about that is, you're kind of going against rush-hour traffic. The bad thing is you have this constant jet lag feeling, in a sense. And even when we would get there and we would leave, Rupert was still there before us and there after. And I don't even think he went to sleep last week, did you?
Wainwright: A little bit.
Welling: That's physically demanding on everyone, the crew, everyone. It's difficult.
Blair: Well, Tom's so tall, and I had a scene where I had to kiss him on the cheek, and that was, like, really hard. So it's been really taxing because I really wanted to kiss him on the cheek, but I just couldn't get up there [laughs]. No, it's been great for me, and I know Maggie has a little underwater stuff.
Wainwright: Selma's being modest. And I'll tell you about one of the scenes. Her car is crashed into, and it rolls down a cliff and it falls into the water, and she's unconscious because the car's rolled down the hill. And we go underwater with her and we don't know if she's dead or alive or unconscious. So we had this car that is 20 feet underwater, and we were like, "Well, I guess maybe we'll get a few shots of her and we'll do the rest of it with a stunt car. Maybe we'll just get a pop here, a pop there." And she was underwater non-stop for, I guess, 11 hours. Inside the car, underwater, with no breathing thing, with a safety breathing person sort of way off-camera, with her stuck with the water level rising, but getting in the last grasp of oxygen. We couldn't believe it. We were watching the playback on set going, "We can't believe we're doing this to her." But it was so cool, we kept on doing it to her.
Blair: No, I really loved it. It was great fun. There's such a great safety team on this movie, as there are in all movies. But they've been great. ... Maggie, you have a little bit of underwater stuff, don't you?
Grace: Coming up. I have yet to shoot it. Mostly for me it's just [shooting here at night]. And I'm shooting Lost for a while as well. So going back and forth to Hawaii and going from days to nights.
Welling: Now Maggie's being modest. The first day that we worked together was on a Saturday, and I'd worked on Smallville all night the night before. I get to set that morning, you know, "Oh, it's so early." I'm like, "Are you still working?" She's like, "Yeah, I flew in this morning." I'm like, "Really? From Hawaii?" She's like, "Yeah." And I go, "When do you go back?" She's like, "In about three hours." So she came in literally for like the work day, and left, and went back to Hawaii.
Grace: But I'm going to Hawaii.
Welling: Rub it in.
You all seem to have a good sense of humor off the set. Is there going to be anything funny in the film?
Blair: I have nothing funny. Was I supposed to be?
Wainwright: You're not supposed to be so intentionally funny. You were trying to act, and we just have to kind of ... No, she has her own sort of wacky little [asides]. She goes off on her own tangents.
Blair: I have no idea what you're talking about [pulls out a fake breast from her shirt and tosses it at Wainwright]. That's the Adrienne Barbeau part of the role. I'm just speaking out for flat-chested girls across America. [Laughter.]
You said this is not your genre. So what drew you to this role?
Blair: It was actually [whispers] Rupert. I really think Stigmata was gorgeous. I really thought it was a really stylish, beautiful film and quite spooky. What I saw of it. I didn't see the whole thing. But yeah, and then I read the script of The Fog and I actually thought there was a quiet, stylish element that was there. I'm afraid of horror movies. But I don't know. And Tom. I'm a fan of Tom's. And now Maggie. Wow, making friends. What's wrong? Are these not the right answers?
What about the other actors?
Welling: What drew me to this role? I think it was The Fog, the original Fog. Rupert. I was a big fan of Rupert's. John Carpenter. The script was fun. I knew that visually Rupert would bring a lot to it. I found the script interesting because I wanted to do it, and I wanted to do it because I thought it was interesting.
Grace: Some films in this genre sort of clunk down characters in a situation, and we're expected to be really invested in them without really knowing who they are. And I liked that the script certainly made an effort to explain who these people were and why the cared about each other, and why we should care about them. Yeah. She drives the movie.
Blair: Who drives the movie?
Grace: We all do.
Blair: It's a joke.
Grace: It's a stronger female role, and you don't come across that a lot, someone that actually gets involved with what's going on, and isn't being dragged through a horrific circumstance crying all the time. She does have to sort of figure out what's happening.
Welling: But again—I've said this before, this is not the first time I've said this—but don't let the title fool you; this movie's about the fog.
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Alexander C. Irvine
