Claustrophobics everywhere are surely stoked for Friday's release of Drew and John Erick Dowdle's DEVIL, a horror film in which five strangers find themselves trapped in a high-rise elevator. The action cuts out occasionally to a control room where a detective and security guards confer over the strange goings on in the stalled lift (evidently, one of the five is the devil his- or herself), but, for the most part, the audience is thrust into the tight confines of an elevator for what is hopefully a suffocatingly intense ninety minutes. I say "hopefully" because I've yet to see the film myself. Universal (perhaps at producer M. Night Shyamalan's behest) opted to hold DEVIL from the press so as to keep the film's big secret from getting spoiled. If I were reviewing the film, this would be a nuisance. But since I was only planning to interview the filmmakers, it wasn't such a big deal walking in cold; even if I had seen the movie, I doubt I would've blown twenty minutes discussing the surprise ending. Capone posted a great interview with the Dowdles earlier this week, some of which covered the strangely disastrous BNAT reaction to THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES, the duo's first film which has yet to be released by MGM (all of the studio's finished movies - e.g. CABIN IN THE WOODS and the RED DAWN remake - are on ice at the moment). Since I wasn't at that BNAT (Harry had a hit out on me at the time because I was writing for CHUD), I was more interested in discussing actual filmmaking craft with the Dowdles - especially since they shot DEVIL with legendary cinematographer Tak Fujimoto (BADLANDS, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, THE SIXTH SENSE, etc.). Thankfully, the boys responded with a multitude of anecdotes and technical insight. Seriously, if you've any interest in the process of making a movie, there's some must-read stuff in the below transcript. We also talked about the marketing of DEVIL (and their previous film, QUARANTINE), how they hooked up with Shyamalan, and their next movie (a Cambodia-set horror/thriller called THE COUP).

Mr. Beaks: Everything's a tease with this movie - which is kind of fun. I like that there's something being withheld. Do you have much influence in the marketing of your movies?

John Erick Dowdle: I always feel like we don't, but then we realize in retrospect they listened to certain things. But in QUARANTINE they showed the last shot of the movie in the trailer, and we were like, "No! We need to not do that!"

Drew Dowdle: They showed the last shot on the billboard.

Mr. Beaks: (Laughing) That was interesting. Because horror fans who'd seen REC were like, "If that's what I think it is..." I still don't understand why they did that.

Drew: They took a different approach. I think they underestimated how many people had seen REC. They were like, "Ninety-nine percent of your audience has not seen REC. We're not too worried. It's okay if a few genre guys know."

John Erick: And we were like, "It's not!"

Drew: That one was a little painful, but at the end of the day I guess it worked. On [DEVIL], we've never been involved in a project that's so secretive. It's kind of fun, I've got to say. It makes for a pain in the ass in preproduction when you're trying to hire actors, and everyone's got to sign an NDA and get a hard copy [of the script] and return it. It's a nightmare from the producer side of things...

John Erick: But it's fun being in on the secret.

Drew: Yeah. Like with INCEPTION, I was like, "What is it? I've got to know!" It really worked on me.

Beaks: How did you get involved in this project? I know Shyamalan has said he was a fan of your work, but it sounds like they were looking at several up-and-coming horror directors. Did you feel like you were auditioning?

Drew: A little bit.

John Erick: Apparently, he saw THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES and liked that. Then he wanted to see QUARANTINE to make sure we could do something fun, that was good for the general populace. He asked to see a copy of that before it was in theaters. So he watched it, loved it, had us fly out the next day, and offered us the job on the spot.

Drew: We got the call the day before. They were like, "You've got to get on a plane tomorrow to go meet Night." We were like, "What's this about?" They said, "It's about THE NIGHT CHRONICLES. He'll tell you when you get there." But when we got there and talked to him for an hour, it felt like it was really ours to lose. He really made the decision based on THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES, but then QUARANTINE was another data point. It really was ours to lose as long as we didn't show up drunk or crazy.

Beaks: (Laughing) When you first heard the concept, were you already thinking, "Okay. Confined space. Characters at each others' throats. Let's look at LIFEBOAT, NO EXIT--"

John Erick: Nice! I actually read [NO EXIT] for the first time during preproduction. Or during the script stage.

Drew: Me, too. And we referenced LIFEBOAT like crazy.

Beaks: So you were already thinking, "How do we keep this visually interesting?"

Drew: Totally.

John Erick: I remember during prepro, everyone kept saying, "How are you going to keep the elevator interesting?" And we were like, "People are dying in there. It's going to be interesting." It was the security office that was going to be difficult. But both of them ended up being really exciting. One thing we did in the elevator was try to shoot everything subjectively. Basically, any scene in the elevator, we'd pick a character... [demonstrating with Drew], let's say this is Drew's scene. We'd start with a close-up of Drew, and then show what he's seeing in the space. We kept it really simple. You feel like you're this character for this scene; you're in the space with them, and you're looking at people as they look over their shoulder at you to make sure you're cool. In doing that, it puts the audience in that elevator and makes it feel really visceral. We tried to do things where you could justify using that point-of-view kind of style.

Drew: In terms of the script, Brian Nelson had just been hired a couple of weeks before us; he was just putting pen to paper when we were hired. When we first sat down with him, one of the things we wanted to bring from the treatment in [the elevator] was really honing what we called "the spotlight of suspicion". And usually the person we're shining the light on, the audience will say, "Well, it can't be this person. It has to be one of the others." As we move around, it becomes a really fun game. We didn't want it to feel like five people bickering and yelling at each other every time we're in the elevator; we wanted the story to make really sharp turns in that elevator. And, at the end of the day, we feel like it really did.

Beaks: Because you have the guys in the security office, the need for this might've been mitigated, but... did you try to make someone in the elevator more sympathetic than the others, while someone tended to be more villainous than the other four?

John Erick: We tried to make everyone in the elevator sympathetic villains. They're all dodgy in their own way; they're all doing things we can simultaneously understand, but it's wrong. In this situation, when people start dying, are you going to try to calm it down or start looking for your own way out? It was fun trying to make the characters do really justified things. And in going with the subjective style, and really getting to see who these people are in these scenes... when crazy stuff is happening, half the time, we're looking at one person's face reacting to it. This gives you a real empathy for these characters. We tried to keep them relatable.

Drew: That was the thing. On one hand, keep them relatable and likable, but on the other... there's a reason they're there. It's a really tricky balance, but we really spent a lot of time in scripting, production and editorial trying to strike that balance.

Beaks: Was there ever a thought to have more backstory with the characters inside the elevator? Did you consider doing flashbacks or anything like that?

Drew: We did talk a lot about that. We really wanted to do that, actually.

John Erick: We actually even wrote scenes, but we just didn't have the money to do it. At the end of the day, you sort of have to trust the film gods. [Flashbacks] may have slowed the film down; they may have given you too much information about these characters. The fact that all you know about these characters is what you learn in the elevator is pretty cool.

Drew: We have two simultaneous investigations: we have the people in the elevator learning details about each other, and then we have Chris Messina and the security guards watching the monitors, finding clues, and learning things about these people from the outside. We had plenty of areas to figure these people out. But we did love the visceral nature of the flashbacks we wanted to shoot; I thought it would've been really, really great.

Beaks: I really like the idea of using the subjective camera in the elevator. Did the camera operator have to learn how to "act" as each character?

John Erick: Absolutely. He has to almost play the role. He has to get in character, read the script, and know what that character is saying. We'd always shoot the close-up first, so while the whole scene is happening, he'd be standing there watching that person, observing where they're looking and what they're doing. Then when he flipped around, if they're looking over there, he'd nail it. We had this amazing camera operator: Candide Franklyn. He's really remarkable. (Standing up to demonstrate) He had this rig that would sort of hang the camera [at his midsection], because he's super tall.

Drew: He's, like, six-six or something.

John Erick: He had to have this thing he could hang in front of him as if it was looking from this height or that height. He could raise or lower it depending on whose scene it was.

Drew: It was almost as if he was telepathic with the characters, too. He would follow their look, and... it was almost as if he was leading their eyelines at times. It was amazing. You'd go through the scene once, and he'd have it nailed. He was a huge asset.

John Erick: We actually had to push him to always be a little late to the action: something happens over here... (Brief pause) and then we look. We almost had to train him to think like a person in the space, like "You don't know what's going to happen, so be a little late to everything." From doing QUARANTINE, it's such a fun device. People don't use it enough. People are so often, "Cut to the thing as it happens!" But if you're a little late, it taps into that reality button.

Drew: With eyelines, he was really helpful, too. With that tight of a space, sometimes the eyeline was literally on the edge of the lens. We'd be sitting at the monitor going, "Is the eyeline right? I can't tell." And Candide, if there was even a two-degree variation of eyeline that wasn't right, he would flag it. He was really, really good.

Beaks: Did you ever have a diva-ish actor moment with him, where he was like, "You know, I don't think my character would move like this"?

John Erick: (Laughing) I don't think we had that [on DEVIL]. But on QUARANTINE, we had Steve Harris standing next to the camera guy as the voice of the cameraman, and he'd say things like, "I wouldn't go over there if I was the cameraman." (Laughs) Steve Harris was doing that constantly. "As a cameraman, he's not going to go in there." So we'd be like, "Okay, where would he go?" (Laughs)

Beaks: I'd like to talk about shooting this film with Tak Fujimoto. That must've been incredible. How was it working on something like this with him, which might be a little smaller than he's used to?

John Erick: He was awesome. Going into it, we'd heard, "Sometimes he can be difficult." He's a man of few words. One of our producers quipped, "He has an allotment of thirty-five words a day, and if he goes over it, he just stops talking."

Drew: (Laughing) And that's pretty accurate.

John Erick: But within that, he can communicate a lot if you're just watching and observing him. He's, like, seventy, and at first he was this... quiet stone of a man. But by the end of location scouting, he was telling us all these stories about all the times he had to apologize to actors for doing crazy stuff. He has this really high-pitched giggle. So we broke through, and by the end we had a really great time with him. He can light stuff in ways that are just mind-blowing. When you're on set, and even in the film, everything is under-lit in this really bizarre way. It's such a cool thing to be able to light in such a stylistic way that seems dramatic and natural. The light is always coming from the ground, and he just bounces it off everything. And yet he's quick. He also knows what's going to happen in editorial. There was one scene where I was like, "Tak, that was the most beautiful shot." And he said, "You'll cut it." I'm like, "No, I won't!" And he said, "Trust me, when you're trying to get it under ninety minutes, you'll cut that shot." And he was right.

Drew: He's a machine, too. We had a couple of nights where we're shooting at 3:30 in the morning. I'm looking around, and I'm like, "Tak is the least tired and the most alert." He's an absolute production machine. He's really warm, but he has a really professional, serious tone on set. We're such natural goofballs that Tak is a nice counterbalance to that. He's got a whole series of sign language, too. When he sets his light meter like this, that means he's ready. And if he does this (Makes a very subtle gesture), that means "Hurry up!" You get to learn his sign language over the first couple of weeks. We'd love to work with him again.

Beaks: Does working with someone like Tak expand your visual vocabulary?

John Erick: Absolutely. He'd come in and say, "I was thinking. You should think more about the vertical axis." Things like that. And we'd be like, "He's right. We should get low. We should get high." He started in the Roger Corman world, and he loves talking about that. He'd always say, "Roger was the smartest guy. He'd always sit you down and say, 'The eye is the most sensitive organ we have, and it gets bored really easily. So constantly move: get low, get high, do things to spark it.'" [Tak] loves teaching, which is awesome because he's shot so many perfect films. It was really helpful. There were moments where he'd say, "You need a close-up. Trust me, you need a close-up right now." I'd be like, "No, we don't." And he'd say, "Do it for me. Shoot the close-up." And he was right. When he really pushes you, there's a reason: he's right. And you could say something like, "I really wish this scene was more ominous." And he'd tweak stuff really quickly, and suddenly it'd be more ominous. He could translate adjective to visual.

Drew: He never breaks a sweat. It feels like he's always in charge all the time.

Beaks: What kind of a devil are we dealing in this movie? Is it a Christian concept of the devil?

Drew: Not so much, no.

John Erick: We tried to stay away from that. One of the things we talked about in prepro was "What's the devil to us? Is it just a dude with horns who makes people do bad shit?" The best we came up with was that the devil is that thing that divides people; it's the thing that isolates us all. The lies, the secrets... those things that tear you apart from the rest of the world. We wanted to explore that devil; the idea that the devil turns people against each other.

Drew: "The devil is the addiction that makes me not want to see my brother or my mother." "The devil is the affair I'm having on my wife that makes me spend way less time with my children." It's the secret you can't divulge that destroys the relationships with the people you truly care about. Every religion has some supreme evil, and we wanted it to be something that crosses all religions.

Beaks: Where do you see the next few years of your career going? Do you anticipate sticking with the horror genre? Do you think you'll be able to make bigger films than DEVIL with, perhaps, an R rating?

John Erick: So far it's been pretty good. The studio really wanted QUARANTINE to be an R-rated movie.

Drew: There was no way that was going to be PG-13.

John Erick: And with DEVIL, you'd be struggling to make DEVIL an R-rated movie. It just didn't seem right for the concept.

Drew: We never wanted to make DEVIL R-rated. The story didn't call for it. Our next film is going to be R, though.

John Erick: The next film we're hoping to get off the ground is called THE COUP. It's a family-in-peril movie where a husband, wife and their two little girls go to Cambodia, and a coup overthrows the government and starts killing foreigners. Not speaking the language, not knowing anyone there, they have to get out of the country. That'll be a pretty hard R.

Drew: It's a very intense thriller. Some of the scenes are as scary as anything we've done. It'll be one foot in horror and one foot in thriller. We love the intense experiential movies, where you can feel like you're in it. Films in this genre tend to have more opportunity to do that; there's more experimentation.

John Erick: You can get kind of artsy and do weird, tweak-y things in horror. In any other genre, they'd make you pretentious, but as long as it's scary, it's cool. But we'd love to do a little bit of everything in time, as long as it's intense and experiential. I could seeing us doing a drama, but it would be a drama that had a kick to it; it wouldn't be a weepy-person drama.

Drew: It wouldn't be STEEL MAGNOLIAS.

John Erick: No. It wouldn't be STEEL MAGNOLIAS.

Beaks: Why do you think experiential horror has become so popular?

John Erick: I think people love feeling a part of things. Marketing now has to lure people in. There's that Ain't It Cool News factor. People love talking about things and feeling personally a part of things. I think the experiential film, to make it feel like a home movie or something your friend shot on a camera, or that's visceral and places you in a space with the characters... people love that. People love feeling a part of a film, and not just watching something's that distant from them. The closer it is, the more it connects.

Drew: From the filmmaking and marketing perspective, it's all very different than it was fifteen years ago. People shoot footage on their phone now, so everyone feels very much like a filmmaker - and everyone is to a certain extent. So providing people with films that they feel a part of, that feels real to them, is fun.

DEVIL opens in wide release this Friday, September 17th. Faithfully submitted, Mr. Beaks