As part of an American Film Institute series at the ArcLight Cinemas, the screenwriting team of Scott Derrickson and Paul Harris Boardman answered questions after a preview screening of their film THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE, which opened in theatres today. The film has garnered attention because it claims to be based on a true story; but in fact, Derrickson and Boardman admitted that they used the bare outlines of an actual case as a structure to create a RASHAMON-like courtroom drama in which different characters present their interpretations while leaving the conclusion open enough for viewers to draw their own conclusions.

Boardman, who also produced the film, began by explaining that he and Derrickson got the idea while researching another project, when a New York police officer (who also styled himself as a paranormal investigator) played them an audio tape of an exorcism.

PAUL HARRIS BOARDMAN: It was very scary, and told us a little bit about the story related to that. When we got back from the trip, we started researching and found some public domain things, articles and eventually a book that was out of print. That was our jumping off point for this. After we got into it, we ended up fictionalizing it and turning the story into something [else]. We took certain dramatic license with it, but we took the basic events and the basic structure of that case as our inspiration.

SCOTT DERRICKSON: Once we decided to tell the story, in the real case I think it was the idea of a girl having died and a trial following an exorcism that presented obviously what we tried to do in the movie, which was to combine two genres of film. That was what excited us about doing it initially—to see if we could make it work, to blend two genres that we love into one film.

BOARDMAN: We both thought right away that the courtroom was a great arena for debate. We like the film RASHAMON. People talk about ‘RASHAMON this and that,’ for all these movies, whenever there’s multiple points of view. In this case it’s actually much closer to that structure, where you present evidence. By doing that, you get to look at something in several different ways. That was something we wanted to do from the beginning. We decided pretty early to start with her dead and go backwards—sort of the SUNSET BOULEVARD approach. It’s an interesting challenge for a film, because you can have a character who’s already dead but you have to be interested. [helped make film different from EXORCIST]

DERRICKSON: We tried to put at the center of the movie the question of why did she die, and what is the truth behind this phenomenon? And ultimately to not answer it.

BOARDMAN: We have a Scully-Mulder approach to this material, with me being a little more the skeptic and Scott the believer. We approach it and try to be very fair and even-handed to both points of view, to our points of view. That’s how we approach it analytically.

In order to get up to speed on their subject matter, Boardman and Derrickson found it was necessary to delve deeply into research.

DERRICKSON: It wasn't until the initial excitement had passed that we realized we didn’t know a lot about exorcism and possession; we didn’t know a lot about courtroom procedure either. So there was a tremendous amount of research. I read maybe two dozen books on possession and exorcism, from a variety of perspectives, from skeptical psychiatric perspectives, Catholic perspectives, Protestant perspectives. It didn’t matter what the perspective was; the material was incredibly dark and deeply disturbing. To read so many of those books in a row, that was the only time I felt a little weirded out."

BOARDMAN: He actually took all the material, brought it to me, and said, ‘Look, this doesn’t bother you quite as much as it bothers me. I don’t want it in my house.’

DERRICKSON: All my exorcism tapes are in his garage!

BOARDMAN: I’m Hell Central now!

DERRICKSON: It was interesting. I was surprised at how many documented cases are out there, how much information is available about this subject. We viewed videotapes of real exorcisms. The whole 3:00am thing—there was a number of books that talked about this idea that 3:00am was the demonic witching hour. After I read that, I kept waking up at 3:00am—exactly! It started to freak me out a little bit; that’s why it ended up in the script. For me, that was the only strange thing that happened, and that was during the research phase. Once we got into the writing, then it became creative and fun. Making the movie was real positive. We don’t have great mythological stories about the “Curse of The Exorcism.”

BOARDMAN: That 3:00am thing is a perfect example: Is that the power of the Devil or the power of suggestion? Or is it both? It was working on him, on some level.

DERRICKSON: There was one guy in New York who has this vault of stuff. Of all the things he showed us, the one Paul and I found most compelling was not a videotape of an actual exorcism or had any paranormal phenomena. It was a tape this cop had made, interviewing an Italian family in New York who were having all this demonic activity in their house. He interviews them separately, like a police officer, to see if their stories match up. It was probably the most disturbing. The level of fear that these people had, all of them—you could feel how terrified they were. By the time it was over, all you could think was, ‘They’re not lying.’

BOARDMAN: It was actually very striking for me. My angle is, even if I don’t believe necessarily in demonic forces, I think it’s cavalier to dismiss people’s beliefs when they have real credibility about what they feel and what they believe. It’s a character study: What makes someone that afraid? You see this girl who’s terrified, and she didn’t seem coached to me. I thought, ‘That terror is very real.’ So however you examine that, our character is going through that kind of terror. That’s an incredibly empathetic character for me.

Structuring the story as a courtroom drama was one way to avoid the inevitable comparisons to THE EXORCIST -- and also to avoid any semblance to the coutless terrible movies that followed in its wake (which includes everything from BEYOND THE DOOR to THE EXORCIST II).

DERRICKSON: In cinema, you have to be crazy [to make an exorcism film] after THE EXORCIST. It’s my favorite horror film; I think it’s the best horror film ever made. You’re not going to make a better movie than that. People who tried to imitate that movie have pretty notoriously failed. It’s daunting. Why it’s not more a topic of discussion in popular culture, I don’t really know, because it happens more often than you think, in both Catholic and Protestant churches.

BOARDMAN: For better or worse, that is the shadow of THE EXORCIST. It was actually a very good film. A lot of people remember the state of art of shock special effects at that time, like pea soup or the spinning head. That’s what people relate to, and they relate to this slew of films that came since then that try to out-exorcist THE EXORCIST. In some ways, what we’re trying to do is show more respect to the people who do look at this more critically. When you look at all these true-life cases, whether you believe in possession or not, there are very valid, credible cases. We found that to be very frightening. We try to go back to cases we’ve read about and stay close to what has been documented.

DERRICKSON: For me the singular challenge wasn’t the creative element of moving back and forth between courtroom drama and horror; that was hard, but I think the biggest challenge was how to take the subject matter seriously and somehow give it some kind of even-handedness, knowing that people would want to see that scary, crazy stuff happen. So part of the challenge was trying to give all of that and make that interesting and realistic, but also try to be even-handed with the ideas. Paul and I really do have different views of the world, and we wanted to pay respect to both of those ways of looking at the world. The goal was to make something entertaining and scary, and also give people something to dialogue about when the movie was over…to just get some questions on the table without popping in an answer or trying to persuade an audience how to think about these things. It’s not easy to get into a conversations possession—at least no intelligent ones.

BOARDMAN: We’re both disturbed by the fact that religion has become very polarized and politicized in this country. Religious ideas and the examined life and this questioning what life is all about, are very personal. We wanted this film to cast a wide net, so that people could come at it from all sorts of points of view: mine, his, and various others. It has been gratifying in preview screenings that different people find the film stimulating and challenging.

Although THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE eschews projectile vomiting, levitation, and rotating heads, it does work up a good head of steam as a horror film. In fact, according to Derrickson, the film narrowly avoided an R-rating just on the grounds of its disturbing intensity.

DERRICKSON: Watching Jennifer Carpenter work herself up into hysteria [as Emily], I think everybody got very energized. We actually got an R-rating on the film when we first submitted it to the MPAA. I think we cut less than, maybe, ten seconds out to get a PG-13: little things here and there, like the autopsy photos were in color; we had to make them black-and-white. They were all relatively painless. One of the things we had to cut was in the barn exorcism. When she first sits down on her knees and growls at Father Moore with hatred -- when we shot that, her face contorted so severely, it was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. I was sitting next to Tom Stern, our director of photography, next to the monitor, and he kept saying, ‘Oh my god! Oh my god!’ It kept getting worse, until she looked like an alien. Finally, the scene was over and I yelled cut. Steve Campanelli, the camera operator, put the camera down—it was a hand-held shot—and walked over to the monitor. He was white. He said, ‘Did you see that? Did you see that? Do you know what was going through my head? I thought, she just became possessed—we got to get out of here!’ It was so great; that was one of my favorites. That was hard to cut. The MPPA was like ‘It’s too disturbing.’ I remember arguing with them: ‘So, if I had a worse actress, I wouldn’t have to cut this. That’s what you’re telling me.’ No make-up effects, no special effects. It will be on the DVD, I’m sure.

The fact that THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE takes a serious approach to its subject matter is not an indication that Derrickson is afraid of the horror genre label; in fact, he is quite a horror fan.

DERRICKSON: I think the horror genre needs fresh air. Luckily, Asian cinema has given it a boost that’s kept it going.

BOARDMAN: Scott was really fascinated with Dario Argento’s films, in terms of the cinematic qualities, particularly SUSPIRIA.

DERRICKSON: I actually showed SUSPIRIA to Tom Stern. His response was ‘Well, it’s total crap, but he had a really good idea.’ Which kind of made him excited. I don’t think SUSPRIA is total crap, but I thought [Stern's reaction] was interesting. What he thought was a good idea was the idea of trying to combine bright saturated colors with beautiful art design and untypical aesthetic beauty in a horror film. That inspired him to do something that was interesting and scary, rather than going the typical Gothic route. It’s very funny. The studio really wanted a campus that was Gothic. We’ve seen that in every horror film ever made! We ended up fighting that; we went for a very modern [approach]. It did my heart good on the set when Tom said, ‘Why don’t we Argento this window over here?’ It made me so happy!

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