From the Set of Carrie: Interview with Director Kimberly Peirce
As it turns out, Peirce is a fairly small woman who talks quite quickly and enthusiastically about the project and it became obvious to us that she brought a great energy to everything she did including this great on-set interview with the visiting journalists.
Q: Since this is a movie that’s already been made and it’s based on a book, how are you going to surprise people?
Peirce: I think it’s always a challenge when you’re telling a story that people know but there are two things. One is that you definitely have to have surprises and changes that keep them interested, that you take them down roads they didn’t expect and give them suspense and surprise. But hopefully if you do really good storytelling, there’s still something there for the people who maybe have seen these moments before. There’s a reason we go back to stories that we love so even if there is a familiarity, if you do it in a different way, and hopefully if you do it well enough, you actually feel the satisfaction of that anticipation being given back to you. I think it’s why we’re able to always do comic book stories and origin stories. Why is it that we can keep retelling these great stories over and over? Hopefully it’s because it hits something so universal and so primal inside of us that we actually yearn for that same story over and over. But told in a different form and updated and modernized.
Q: Can you talk about your take on the remake and how you approached it? What was your pitch for it in the pitch meeting?
Peirce: When I heard about the project I was not suspicious really, more like not sure. I’m actually friends with (Brian) De Palma; we’ve hung out a ton. Years ago we were quite close, but he’s living in Europe. When the idea first came up I thought, “I love Brian. I love Brian’s movie. I don’t know why I would do that.” Then I had some really exciting meetings with the studio. Then I picked up the book and I actually read it cover to cover three times. I had read it when I was younger, but to read it being older it’s like “Wow!” That thing is a page-turner. It’s pure pop. It’s totally fun and exciting so I think the first thing was, just in rereading the book, it just completely grabbed me and it was exciting. Then I was like “Oh, now I understand why they thought of me for this” because at first it wasn’t so clear. Not to say that you tread the same territory but these are issues that I’ve written about, I’ve filmed before. As I was reading it, and the pages were turning and I fell so deeply in love with Carrie again that it was like regardless of whether there had been another movie, even if it was a movie I loved and respected, this is a story I would make a movie of. I think that’s the first point.
The second point is that I don’t really like to think of it as a remake, even if it is. I like to say “Okay, what’s our movie going to be?” With all due respect to De Palma, ’cause he’s brilliant, I love him, what I did see was an opportunity to do something different. Not better, not worse, just different. I feel like in some ways, the book has a more expanded canvas so a lot of the characters are more fleshed out in the middle and a lot of that movie, it rises and it falls. What I saw in the book–putting the original film aside–was a chance to really develop Chris as your villain. Who is Chris? Why is she going to pick on this girl? How does that escalate? What I love about our Chris is that she’s totally right that her life is getting totally F’d up because of Carrie White, so I made sure to make it that you really saw things through Chris’ point of view.
Q: Carrie is one of the more iconic female roles in the horror genre. What was it about Chloe that made her a perfect candidate for this new story?
Peirce: Well, it’s fascinating. When I met her, I said to her “You’re very young.” Which was very good for the role, because it’s very age appropriate, right? It’s about a high school girl and she was young. And I said, “What’s interesting it you’ve done mostly younger roles, but this a role where you actually have to be a young adult. You have to be a young woman.” And I said to her “You actually have to go through something that you probably haven’t gone through yet in your young life.” She hadn’t been to prom, she hadn’t done certain things. And I said, “So we need to set off a teenage rebellion in your life.” And I actually said “You need to move out of your house.” And she was like “Okay, Kim. I’ll do it.” She couldn’t do it. There was one moment on set where I said to her, “I think you’re a little too old” and she said, “Well you told me to grow up!” I was like, “Yes I did, I did but now for this scene we have to dial you a little bit back down.” (laughter)
Q: Following up on that, Chloe has much more of an assured personality than Sissy Spacek did at the time, at least of what we’ve seen so far. How does this mold the character?
Peirce: That was a huge challenge. When I first met her, I said “We’ve got to beat that little confident person out of you. The truth is that you’re walking the red carpet, you’re working with Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton, the world loves you, your family loves you- that’s great for you as an individual and you’ve got to hold on to that. But for this movie, we have to take all that confidence and security and personality and we have to put it over here. We have to take a hammer and we have to crack that, and then we have to make you sheltered, scared, a misfit, unusual, you’ve been beaten by your mother.” I feel like it’s okay to share this, but I had her go to homeless shelters and had her really go deep inside the characterization to experience the fear, the humility, to really go on the journey. We did that, I don’t know, for two and a half months. She did it in LA, she did it here and we always were trying to make sure we showed respect to the people that were helping us. But for her to really see the other side of life, because I felt like that was essential to the character. That lack of confidence, it’s everything. If you have a little alpha there, you’ve lost it.
Q: Margaret is very different in the book and in the original film. Can you talk first of all about working with Julianne and then how your different take on Margaret will appear to us?
Peirce: Yeah, a couple things. Having read the book three times coming in, it was “What does it mean to create Margaret right not only in general but also, what is it to create her in the modern world?” So that meant that we had to make an authenticity to the religion, because religion is a really prime force in our country right now. So it’s very interesting to pick Julianne after doing what she did, the research that she had done. She’s just such an honest, and well trained, and worked out actress that she really made sure to do her research and make it real, so it was completely about making her an authentic character at each point. Now, cut to Julianne who come on, guys. You get to work with Julianne Moore. It’s great.
Q: Are you going to get her another Oscar nomination?
Peirce: We should be so lucky. She’s a great joy to work with. I’ve worked with a lot of young actors who have crazy, massive talent. So here’s somebody who, not to say that she’s older, but she has crazy massive talent but she has a ton of experience. So it’s really fun having an adult come to set and say, “I’m not going to say that line.” I’m not used to that, you know what I mean? I’m like “Well, why not?” And she’s like “Well, because blahblahblah.” Okay, that’s fine. It’s just wonderful that somebody has run all the options and thought about it and has a very decisive choice about it. Sometimes when you’re dealing with somebody who’s done as much homework as they’ve done, and has their own take and comes in partly with their performance, you’re saying “Look, these are the circumstances, this is your objective,” and she just looks at you like, “What are you kidding? You think I don’t know that?” And then you just say “Sorry, I’m just testing you.” So there’s a little bit of that. She’s covering ground she knows, but every now and then you give her something and she’s likem “That’s a good idea.”
Peirce: Yes, yes and yes. Again, let’s give all due respect to De Palma and put him over here. We’re not saying “Mine’s deeper, mine’s better.” Let’s just say, in reading the book, what I fell in love with was this mother-daughter story that was so amazing and so profound. What is a mother? A mother is somebody that’s willing to sacrifice themselves for a child. And that’s really what Margaret is. Margaret loves her daughter to no end. There’s never a moment in the book or the movie where Margaret is not acting out of love and protection of her daughter. Of course, she does it in a way that ends creating a series of events that sets in motion another series of events. So yes, absolutely for me that mother-child relationship is really at the heart of the movie. I would say it’s the spine, but I don’t want to take away from Chris and Carrie and Sue and Carrie. But yeah, there was a huge opportunity with both those actresses that I have with the fundamental storytelling and the journey that Carrie and Margaret go on. We’ve been able, like the book, to kind of take this story farther because we get into the town destruction and the house destruction. There were certain reasons they couldn’t do that back then, but because we can, it just means we can tell that full arc of the story.
Q: Are you using Carrie’s telekinesis more like in the book and how does that lend itself to the storytelling?
Peirce: Well, we are using it as it is in the book, which is more. The thing that’s amazing about the book is with the blood comes the powers. These are powers that Carrie has that are leaking out. At first she doesn’t understand that she has them. Then in the middle part, she has them more and more. She starts to look at them and think, “Oh, maybe I can use these for good. Maybe I can have fun with them.” Then she starts to realize, “Oh, these are things that could hurt people and I don’t want to hurt people with them” so she’s trying to refuse using them, and in the end they leak out. What I aimed for was to try to write more of an arc for those powers so it is in some ways a superhero origin story, but her being the kind of superhero that Carrie is. That was something that I saw in the book. Wow, you can complicate Sue, you can complicate Chris, you can complicate the powers and you can grow them, so I think in that way, you can get a full arc.
Q: How gory does the movie get? Are you doing the deaths practically?
Peirce: You try to do as much as you can on set, because practical is cool and practical looks great until you get to a point where the reality is you look at it and on set, somebody says to you, “You know, you can use a real squib and have three hours of clean up and lose five shots or we can do that blood explosion in post and you can get those five extra shots.” It’s not because you don’t love practical and you’d rather not do it old school but in the end you’ve got to tell the story. There’s a number of old school special effect in here that are fantastic, but there have definitely have been times where went digital and you’re not going to tell the difference I don’t think. And I think it just serves the storytelling, because that’s just the era that we live in. The reality of technology is such that, on the budget that I have, I have access to essentially a mini techno crane. I have it living on set every day. A couple years ago it would have been like “When are we going to rent the crane?” “Well, we get it for three days.” “How long will it take to build?” “Well, it’ll take 4 hours.” Now, we have a remote head, we have a techno crane. Steve Yedlin, my DP, is obsessed with this stuff. He knows all about the new technology and what it allows us to do is, that crane lives on our set. We’re allowed to move that gib arm and fly and do shots that you simply couldn’t do. Also, with lockoffs and the way digital is, we have amazing visual effects. Again, stuff you couldn’t have gotten two years ago.
Peirce: A lot more of that relationship is in. That’s a great question because again, I deal with a lot of sexuality and I deal with a lot of violence in my movies. I’m interested in it and the goal is never be exploitative. The goal really is: How deep can you go? How much can you show? How explicit can you be? But never cross the line of exploitation. It’s something I’m thinking about when I’m writing a script. It’s something I’m thinking about when I’m filming. But sometimes in the filming you say “Let me go a little too far so I can find where that edge is.” So that in the editing room I can pull it back. I think you’re asking that question every day. You’re always saying, “How much is too much?” I think you cross the line in order to come back from the line.
Q: Can you talk about the tone of the horror elements of the movie and how you want to make that stand out in this version?
Peirce: Well, I take a real page out of Stephen King, who I love, who really talks about horror and humor and how you move between the two. I think that as much as I can, I want it to be creepy and horrifying but real horror in the Kubrick sense. I absolutely love Kubrick, because it’s so scary and it’s so weird and it’s so real; but it’s so art directed and so surreal. I’ve done a war film and I’ve done a rape film, that stuff is terrifying, but it’s real. I was like “Okay, that’s here, but this is something else. This is entertainment, this is horrifying, and it’s humorous.” So I think that’s the bend that I’ve been going on.
Q: Would you have made this film if the studio asked you to make it PG-13, or did it always need to be R?
Peirce: It always was R in my heart. The funny thing is, I can’t tell that you that I know the difference between PG-13 and R.I know the difference between R and X, ’cause I’ve gotten an X and I had to fight it down in the documentary “This Film is Not Yet Rated.” So I don’t know the difference, someone would have to teach me. I just wanted to be authentic and real and be able to go the distance.
Q: I want to ask about teenage bullying, which is a pressing topic these days compared to the 70s. How do you feel this film is going to relate?
On the next page, you can read an interview with producer Kevin Misher…
