From director Eli Roth and writer Eric Kripke, and based on the novel by John Bellairs, the family fantasy film The House with a Clock in its Walls follows recently orphaned 10-year-old Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro), who goes to live with his rather eccentric Uncle Jonathan (Jack Black) in a creaky old house full of all sorts of magical wonder. As Lewis discovers a hidden world of magic, mystery and the supernatural, and gets to know Jonathan’s best friend and neighbor, Mrs. Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett), he also accidentally awakens the dead, wreaking havoc in his new but otherwise sleepy little town.
At the film’s Los Angeles press day, Collider got the opportunity to sit down with filmmaker Eli Roth to chat 1-on-1 about how he came to make a family fantasy film, finding the right child actor to center this story around, the delightful team-up of Jack Black and Cate Blanchett, just how much of a perfectionist Blanchett is, attacking pumpkins, creepy automatons, and where he hopes to take his career next. He also talked about why he doesn’t think it’s right to share his vision for The Meg, what makes a successful scary/horror movie for him, and the stand-outs that he’s seen, in recent years.
Collider: I really enjoyed this!
ELI ROTH: Thank you!
Jack Black and Cate Blanchett are the buddy comedy duo that I had no idea I wanted, and now I feel like my life is complete with.
ROTH: I know! They’re the on screen duo that we didn’t realize we all needed.
They’re ridiculously delightful! When did you realize they were going to be that great together?
ROTH: Well, you just have an instinct, as a director, for who would be a fun match, and I think Jack Black is one of the most under-rated dramatic actors out there. He’s like our Robin Williams. If you look at Robin Williams, he could win the Oscar for Good Will Hunting and do Dead Poets Society, but also Mrs. Doubtfire. And Jack can do Jumanji and Bernie and The Polka King. He really has that range. And I think Cate is hilarious. I thought she was so funny in Blue Jasmine. I’ve loved her for a long time. She was so good in The Gift. She just has almost no inhibitions, and is so funny and so cool. She has this playful side to her that I think she really wants to let out. If you read the book, you get this idea that there’s just no one other than Jack Black and Cate Blanchett. And then, you put them together, and suddenly they are this unbelievable screen duo. It’s like William Powell and Myrna Loy, where you just feel like they’ve done 30 movies together. They’re the oddest couple, but it makes sense because Cate brings out the best drama in Jack, and Jack brings out the best comedy in Cate. They both wanna step it up for each other, and there’s such love and respect between the two of them. They’re the same age, and have close to the same birthday, so we all have the same base of references. I like to say that they’re three grades older than me. I got to be a freshman working with like the cool seniors, or the theater kids.
Did you have a moment on set, watching them work, that stands out the most?
ROTH: Yeah, for sure. I remember Cate’s last day, we had to film the fight between the two of them in the bedroom, where Jack is just so pained about admitting that he’s scared to be a father, and Cate’s calling him out on it and going, “You’re terrified!” She lost her child and she’s like, “I would do anything to have that job of being a parent. The job is being scared and doing it anyway. That’s the whole damn job description.” Suddenly, the movie switches and there’s this Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? moment where they drop the shtick. You’ve been seeing them teasing each other, the whole time, and always seeing who can come up with a better insult, but now, it’s this real, raw, honest, painful moment between two friends who love each. She feels let down by his cowardice. There’s this incredible dramatic moment that the movie just detours into, and I stood there in a room and watched them. They were so good. You didn’t really have to do many takes, but I remember Cate was getting frustrated. It was her last shot and she was getting in her head, and she was like, “It’s not there!” She was getting really mad. I was like, “Cate, no, you’re nailing it!” And she was like, “No, no, no, you’re lying to me!” And what do you say? Do it better? You can’t! So, I just watched her. I remember, she did take seven, which is rare for Cate. I had tears in my eyes while she was like, “I would do anything to have that job description and to have my little girl back. Jon Barnavelt, you’re a coward!” You could hear a pin drop. And then, Cate just looked at me and shook her head and said, “That was terrible. I need another one.” I was like, “What? Are you kidding me?! That’s your Oscar clip, and you want another one?” She did it again, and did it even better, and I was like, “I’m not letting you do another one ‘cause that was so damn perfect. We’re moving on!” She was mad and I was like, “Cate, are you kidding me?!” She’s just that level of a perfectionist. She’s such a brilliant actor and she always just wants to bring it. That scene is a beautiful scene in the movie. It’s so simple. There’s no music, no special effects, no magic, and no scares. It’s just two actors, at the top of their game, and you really see what a brilliant, dramatic actor Jack is, in that scene.
When people hear your name, they think of horror and blood and gore, and not kids’ fantasy and family movies.
ROTH: And that’s okay.
So, how did this happen? Is this something you’ve been wanting to do for a while?
ROTH: Yeah, definitely! Look, I understand that I’ve certainly branded myself and marketed myself that way, so I understand why people would think of me that way, but think about my favorite directors, like Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, and look at their early movies and where they went in their careers. I remember when I thought, “Wow, Sam Raimi is doing Spider-Man! I wanna see what the guy who did Evil Dead will do with Spider-Man.” And I wanted to see what Peter Jackson, the guy who did Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles, would do with The Lord of the Rings and how he would apply that sensibility to the fantasy genre. So, I always looked at myself as hoping to have that kind of career trajectory, like Guillermo del Toro, Sam Raimi, Tim Burton and Peter Jackson. I’ve wanted to do a Terry Gilliam Time Bandits kind of movie and I said to my agents, “Find me a Time Bandits, otherwise I’ll just have to write something.” They were like, “He did Hostel. How are we gonna fund that?” But that’s where [Steven] Spielberg and Amblin come in. Steven loves Hostel. He saw it and got it and said, “Yeah, I completely get how this can translate.” The director of Jaws went on to make E.T. That makes perfect sense in his head. So, he really backed me and supported me. When I think back to my childhood, those violent movies that I’m known for now, I didn’t see until I was maybe 12 or 13, and they were on VHS at a sleep-over. The movies that I saw in the theater, when I was 9, 10, 11 and 12, were those scary Amblin movies that were everything to me, like E.T., Raiders, Gremlins, Goonies, Poltergeist, and even Ghostbusters. There were other oddball movies, like Time Bandits, where the kid’s parents blow up at the end and a guy gets turned into a pig. That was mind-blowing, as a child. I had never seen anything like it. And there were other movies, like Dragonslayer, The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, that were much closer to Grimm’s Fairy Tales, where characters die. They’re very dark stories that aren’t always funny, but those are the movies that were gateway drug movies. Those were the movies that got you into scary movies. Then, you move onto something harder. Now, everyone from the Amblin generation has grown up and has kids, and they want their kids to be into scary movies. What do they show them? They’re showing them Gremlins and Goonies. You can’t start your kid on IT or The Nun. You’ve gotta work your way towards those movies. The movies for kids now are superhero movies or animated movies. There aren’t PG scary, fun fantasy adventure films, that are like going through a haunted house, where it’s scary and fun, but at the end, kids are laughing and they go, “Okay, I wanna do that again!”
One of the great things about Amblin movies is that there’s generally always an ordinary kid who has to do some extraordinary thing. How was it to find that kid, and were you ever worried that you wouldn’t find that kid?
ROTH: Making a movie is a faith-based system, and you have to have faith that it’s gonna work. We had the movie, and then we had to get Cate and Jack. We got Jack, so we had to get Cate. We got Cate, if we could start in October. And then, we had to find a house. So, we found the house, but then we had to find the kid, so we started this massive kid search. You start seeing kids in L.A., and they’re very polished and perfect, but they don’t speak like kids. You need someone that has that vulnerability. There were kids that were great actors, but 10 is a weird age. There are some kids that you don’t feel as scared for, and a 12-year-old kid is a little bit bigger and is not gonna be scared. Maybe he can act scared, but you don’t feel that vulnerability. I remembered watching an interview with Spielberg, where he said that when Henry Thomas walked in the room for E.T., and he just knew. Our first day of casting in Atlanta, Owen Vaccaro came in and I was like, “That’s the kid. For sure, that’s the kid.” He’s funny, he’s great dramatically, he looks the part, he’s sweet and you like him, and he’s an outsider, but you root for him. He couldn’t be a pathetic kid that we’re stuck with. He couldn’t be a whiny or annoying kid. He’s just really, really funny and engaging, and you believe him and feel for him. He carries the movie. He’s gotta hold his own with Jack Black and Cate Blanchett, and he did. He’s a genius. I knew that we could put the entire movie on his shoulders, and he would be great.
I also loved the nod to Halloween because that’s my favorite holiday.
ROTH: Me too!
It’s the only holiday I really even care about, at all.
ROTH: I’m the same.
How fun was it to put in those moments with all of the pumpkins?
ROTH: I had seen so many fantastic images of houses tricked out with pumpkins, and just to have them all and to get to blow them up, and having the attack, was so much fun. We shot that in Georgia on Halloween. It was a weekend where all of the neighbors were going to Halloween parties, and we were shooting nights and people start coming back from the parties drunk. They were dressed like zombie nurses or creatures, and they showed up on the sidelines to watch. It was very, very funny. When we were filming with all of those pumpkins, Cate’s son Iggy, who’s 9, showed up, and there were all of these evil looking pumpkins spraying vomit. He went, “Mom, this is the coolest movie you have ever made!,” very definitively.
The automatons were both creepy and amazing!
ROTH: Those automatons, man. I love creepy automatons! I said that to Steven. I was like, “I wanna have a scene where the automatons attack.” And Steven said, “I love automatons! I collect automatons! My kids won’t let me put them in the house because they say they’re too creepy.” He has them packed away in crates. He has a warehouse with crates of automatons. I said, “Can I put them in the movie?” And he was like, “Really You’d want to put my automatons in the movie?” And I was like, “Of course, Steven Spielberg, I’d like to use your automatons.” There’s a history with magicians and automatons, and I thought, “What if they just came to life and attack? That could be one of those signature scenes.” Our art department was so into building the automatons. They’re all horror fans who are tatted up, and they wanted to have a real satanic looking one. We named all of them. I sat in the room with those automatons and I thought, “I just wanna live here!”
It’s great how automatons just freak everyone out.
ROTH: Yeah, it’s one of those universal fears, of dolls coming to life. I sat with Steven and I talked about the Poltergeist clown scare and he said, “Oh, it was wonderful! We shot it at 12 frames a second, and I put it in reverse. I pulled the string around the neck, and we had to reverse it.” He told me, “Eli, make it scary. Really make it scary. Kids love to be scared, just as long as they know where the exits are.” With that pumpkin scene, I said, “What if they attack and they’re vomiting all over them? It could be hilarious!” And he said, “No, make it scary. Make that pumpkin attack scary. Make them real.” I thought about Gremlins because Gremlins is funny, but they will kill you. That scene in the kitchen is no joke. You better put them in a blender or a microwave ‘cause they’re gonna kill you. That’s what I wanted with the pumpkins. And when the griffin or the automatons attack, all the danger should be real.
So, where do you go from here?
ROTH: I am a big believer in the universe putting you where you’re supposed to be, and that the right thing will come along, and I’m just open to seeing what happens. I have ideas. There are 12 books, which is a lot of material. I love the book series, and so does (screenwriter) Eric Kripke, and Jack and Cate. All of us would love to do another one, but that’s really up to the public, at this point. If people see it and the movie works, then that’s a no-brainer. It’s interesting, Jack told me that when he made School of Rock, shutting out all of the foul language forced other parts of his humor to come out, and I think that the restriction of doing it in a PG setting opened up the Monty Python chambers of my brain, the Terry Gilliam side, the Tim Burton side, and the Del Toro side. I had to express myself differently ad I had to scare differently, and it made me think in a completely different way. I wanna push myself. If I’m gonna be a director, at that level, I have to keep challenging myself and pushing myself. If you look at Gravity, you don’t expect [Alfonso Cuarón’s] next movie is gonna be Roma. Those are the directors that I admire.
You were originally signed on to direct The Meg. What was your vision for that?
ROTH: Here’s the thing, if you give the full story of what happened, or I say, “That was my idea,” or “That was my design,” then I’m just insulting another director. It’s Jon Turteltaub’s movie. When you’re removed from a movie, you make an unwritten agreement to stay quiet about it, instead of saying, “Well, I thought of that, that, and that.” It just seems like that would be bad sportsmanship. I will say that working on The Meg, I got to work with some fantastic people. It didn’t work out, but I’m thankful that it didn’t work out because I got to do The House with a Clock in its Walls. For whatever reason in the universe, I was not supposed to direct that movie, I was supposed to direct this one. I don’t know why, but this is where I am, and I’m thrilled to be here.
As someone who is not just a filmmaker, but also a fan of horror and scary movies, what has to be there for it to be successful for you, and are there movies that really stand out for you, in recent years, that you had nothing to do with?
ROTH: Yeah, there’s a lot. For me, I always respect movies that are creative on a low budget because I know what that takes, and the hardest thing is good writing. You don’t need money to write, to have great writing, but you need great ideas. When I watch a movie like The Endless, and I see what (directors) Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson were doing, I’m like, “Oh, my god!” Right away, I went and watched Resolution, and then, right after that, I watched Spring and I’ll probably go back and re-watch The Endless. That’s a great example of a movie that [Justin Benson] just wrote and made. It’s in a few locations in the woods, mostly shot in daylight, and I can’t stop thinking about it. So, that really impresses me. It’s just smart writing and directing, and they did it themselves. I have the utmost respect for that. I also liked Hereditary. I know people have problems with the pacing issues of the film, but I really loved the idea and I thought the scares were fantastic. It was wonderfully creepy. And then, there are other films that I’ve seen that I don’t understand why they were so overlooked, like The Autopsy of Jane Doe, André Øvredal’s film. I loved Trollhunter, and The Autopsy of Jane Doe was fantastic. And then, there are the hits, like Get Out, that really just blew me away. I’m always discovering new movies. I watched a movie last night, called The Pajama Girl Case, which is a giallo from 1977, with Ray Milland. It’s this really interesting detective story and the way it unfolds is really, really clever and interesting. I’m always looking for new movies to watch, and trying to find that gem that I missed. For me, recently, that was The Endless and Resolution. I love those films.
The House with a Clock in its Walls opens in theaters on September 21st.
