QUESTION: This is a movie with some religious overtones.
JOEL SILVER: Yeah, well, it’s kind of Old Testament, but I think it’s a fun movie. It’s a supernatural thriller, but if you think, what’s one of the first horror stories? I guess it would be The Plagues (laughs). There are a lot of horror stories in the Bible, but this is a good one. So I mean, I think that it’s like an original tale, and I think we found a good way to tell it and to show it and I think it’s a fun movie.
QUESTION: Were you surprised at how scary little AnnaSophia Robb could be?
JOEL SILVER: She’s terrific. She doesn’t say almost anything in the whole movie except toward the end of the picture but she does it all in looks and she’s a very talented girl. She really sells that little girl very well.
QUESTION: What happens when you’re in, in the middle of shooting and you get a call saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got to close down the set because there’s a storm coming in?’
JOEL SILVER: Yeah, they let us know it was coming, and the crew left. We evacuated to Austin, Texas. The event itself was quick. It was like two days, but it was the aftermath that kind of kept going, and is still going, and dealing with a lot of the people who were working with us, who were local – because there was a very aggressive film business in Louisiana – a lot of the people that were on our crew lost everything with their families. They lost everything. So, when we came back, we didn't know what to do, but they really hoped we’d stay and finish the picture, so we did. And they stayed with us. We were able to keep going. Baton Rouge wasn’t hit that bad. New Orleans was hit much, much worse. We were in a little town called St. Francisville that was pretty okay, so we were able to finish the picture.
QUESTION: The film deals with scientific and religious beliefs, and that is something that goes on every day in the world, don’t you think?
JOEL SILVER: Well, her job as a debunker is an interesting occupation. We’ve met people who do that for a living as we’ve researched the movie, and somebody may say, ‘I saw the Virgin Mary in my egg salad sandwich; she’s there, I saw her,’ and you’ve got to find a way to prove that maybe it really isn’t what you saw. But sometimes there are much more serious things that occur and people really believe. At the beginning of the movie, she says, ‘I've been through 50 of these things, every time there have been scientific explanations.’ But in this story she comes upon a town where she can’t debunk all these things that are happening, so it’s interesting ideas, an interesting story. How do I feel about it? I don't know. I mean, I'm kind of a pragmatic guy, but you know, I like good stories, so anything’s possible.
QUESTION: How do you professional debunkers feel about being debunked in this film?
JOEL SILVER: (laughs) It was okay. It was a good story. The guys wrote a good script. With these kind of movies, it’s hard to find things that are fresh and are original and I think it’s pretty fresh and original, so that was our intention.
QUESTION: Do you think the key to a good horror film right now is that twist at the ending, the idea that you have no idea who the villain is until the very end?
JOEL SILVER: (coughs) Well, I think that going back to the Bill Castle movies, they have always tried to put twists in these kinds of films, and that’s always been an idea. We look at The Sixth Sense, it’s brilliant when you don't see them coming at all, but I think we try to do that. Sometimes we can pull it off, sometimes we can’t. As I've seen, there was the response of some of the people that have seen the picture the last couple days, some of them said, ‘I didn't see it coming’; some said, ‘I saw it coming.’ It’s hard to try to figure it out, but I think we did a good job.
QUESTION: Is Dark Castle a tribute to William Castle?
JOEL SILVER: Oh yeah. When I started the project, started the company, about seven years ago with my partner at the time, Bob Zemeckis, we did it as a kind of homage to our association with the great William Castle. We like Bill Castle.
QUESTION: With this film, you don't revel at the gore that’s in so many horror movies now.
JOEL SILVER: This movie is not designed as a slasher film. I have done slasher films, I like slasher films, but this one isn’t like that. This is a different kind of picture. This is more of a thriller, and I think on that level it works pretty well.
QUESTION: Can you talk about the visual sense Stephen Hopkins brings to this film?
JOEL SILVER: He’s a very talented guy. We worked together many, many years ago. We did Predator 2 together. I liked working with him, and he did a couple of Tales From the Crypt episodes for me when I had that at HBO. And I’ve always liked him, we’ve always been friends. I’ve always tried to get him to work with me again, but he kind of worked his way through 24 and did Peter Sellers, and he was looking to do something like this. And he liked Hilary. They met each other, and they thought it’d be fun to work together, and it came together very quickly. I just think he has a great visual sense. He has a great sense of tension. I think there’s great tension in this picture. That’s what 24 has. What he brought to it was a good sense of plotting and how he tells a story. He has a great sense of character. I think there are a lot of good characters in this picture. So, I think he’s a talented guy, and I like working with him.
QUESTION: Back to the film’s theme, do you believe in miracles?
JOEL SILVER: Well, yeah. I mean, The Matrix was a miracle for me, so, yeah, I believe in miracles. It’s exactly how you characterize it but I believe in things happening that you don’t expect, and sometimes happening for the good, yeah.
