Osgood Perkins explained one of the little mysteries of his film Longlegs during a talk at the Chilliwack Independent Film Festival — and gave an example of how a film can change in crucial ways during editing.
Perkins shot the recent Nicolas Cage horror hit in Vancouver, near Chilliwack, and one of the film’s editors, Graham Fortin, is from Chilliwack. Perkins has shot two more projects in British Columbia since making Longlegs, which made him a perfect guest for the festival.
Following an opening night screening of Longlegs and Q&A with Perkins on Friday night, the writer-director also gave a follow-up talk on Saturday where he fielded audience questions on a wide range of subjects.
The most interesting question: Who calls FBI Agent Lee Harker at a crucial moment in the film?
Obviously, Longlegs spoilers follow.
So… Who Called Agent Lee Harker When She Wakes Up in the Basement in Longlegs?
Short answer: “It’s the devil,” Perkins said Saturday, to the ohhhs of the Chilliwack audience.
The call comes at a crucial moment in the film. Harker (Maika Monroe) wakes up realizing her mother, Ruth (Alicia Witt) has been helping Longlegs (Nicolas Cage) kill families since her childhood. In order to save Lee, Ruth agreed to pose as a nun and place demonic dolls in the homes of Longlegs’ targets. Longlegs has also, creepily enough, been living in their basement.
When Lee awakens in the basement, she answers a phone call: A scary voice reminds her that the daughter of her supervisor, William Carter (Blair Underwood) has a birthday. She realizes Longlegs is targeting Carter’s family, and races to their home.
But that wasn’t always what Perkins planned, he told the Chilliwack crowd.
Perkins, who both wrote and directed Longlegs, said he always sits in with his editors during the editing process. The inclusion of the devil’s voice came in response to a suggestion from the second Longlegs editor, Greg Ng.
“Here’s how film editing works,” Perkins said. “In the script and as we shot it, she’s downstairs, she’s sleeping, she wakes up in Longlegs’ bed: gross,” Perkins said. “And she realizes, Oh, my God, I’m in the basement. Then she comes up the stairs: Oh my god, I’m in my mom’s house. Oh my God, he’s been living in my house this whole time.‘”
So she goes to the phone: “Gotta call the cops and get help — oh, the phone is dead. That’s how it’s written, and that’s how we shot it,” Perkins said.
“And one day, we’re looking at it,” Perkins recalled. “And just out of nowhere, Greg says, ‘What if the phone’s ringing?'”
Perkins said his initial response was “What?”
But the more he thought about it, the more it made sense: What if the phone were ringing?
“So what we’re able to do then is bring her, with a ringing phone, up the stairs — bring her to the ringing phone. Reveal the house with the ringing phone. Oh, she’ll pick it up,” Perkins recalled.
And then, when she answers the phone, he knew: “Let’s put the devil on it.”
He had five different people try to do the devil voice, he said, and “picked the one we liked the best.”
He said the change in editing was an example of how a script is not the same as the final movie. He offered a metaphor in which a large sign with an “H” means hospital — but isn’t the hospital. It just leads to the hospital.
“Like you’re driving down the highway and you see the H by the side of the road — hospital. The sign is not the hospital. The sign is pointing to where the hospital is. The script is the H sign that’s pointing to the eventual movie,” Perkins said. “It’s getting people in one place at one time. That’s what the script does. It gets everybody to the spot. Then when you’re there, you shoot it, and it changes into something totally, totally different.”
Main image: Maika Monroe in Longlegs. NEON.
The Chilliwack Independent Film Festival concludes today.