The Blair Witch: The First Viral Hoax (with David Sims)
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Let's start with something kind of fun here. Fun question for you, which is, did you have any local urban legends that you are like obsess with as a kid growing up?

Oh, man, that's a great question. I'm trying to think why group in new york city so fill answers no of heart from like abandoned subway stations, which I was obsessed with.

Yeah like more people, right?

Yes, like especially because I lived between eighty six and ninety six three stations. There is a station, ninety first street, that is closed, but still there. And you can see IT on the train if if you look really hard as you go buy IT, it's like graffiti veit station. So used to think about people who lived in IT. It's probably a closest yeah.

I think that works. I grew up in near salem, massachuset. So I had one a lot of the .

that's that's always .

yeah I grew up like grounds zero for that kind of stuff. But did you ever also like a kind of experience of thing growing up? Or like you would hear a thing from somebody who heard a thing from somebody like that, they very early, like elementary school, like telegram, telephone about this kind of stuff.

Two things immediately come to my one obviously is is a well being dead is a key in, or cl, who is dead?

Oh.

one of them, I think, was kl. There was like just people be like kl died, did you know that? And i'd be like he did be he's he's dead.

I I don't know where that came from but that was like a classic kind of pre internet subtle like you wouldn't check IT you were just sort really okay. Um there was an abandoned local version or small. There was an abandoned building next to my elementary school just, you know, whatever, a giant burned out building. And we all the time we talk about how we had gone into IT and seem crazy things none of us had ever done this.

okay?

And we were clearly like feed each other with like lies. They were like eight years older, whatever. Yeah, I went in there and this is what I saw. You know? I don't know why that started exit that we looked at this building every day.

I I was not a very like environment, adventurous Young person didn't really like going outside. So my version of this was, like, in poker, red and blue, there was like a series of actions you could take to activate, like a secret town.

Yeah yeah.

Like haunted poker, like that was unt you .

ever get missing? No, never get.

I ruined. I ruined the game that I beat with, like a ninety six poker capture with a missing note, which was where anything.

Way back before our current era of this information and this information and conspiracy of series, in one hundred and ninety nine, two Young filmmakers, David myc and adora sanchez, created their own urban giant basically, and kind of fool the world for a little bit. They made a story that was bigger than the movie theater IT was showing in a IT spread, literal panic all over america.

And IT kind of gave us this incredible snapp shot of what our like entire ult lives would be like now. And i'm talking about the blair rich and with us today on panic world is a potater I mean massive reno. I'm so excited that you're on the show. Welcome David sims from the backchat podcast, a one of my favorite film reviewers.

welcome. Hello, thank you. That's very silly of you, but it's very nice to be here and very excited to talk about this thing. Yeah, I have no idea if we would ever talk about.

I think I was worried. I was worried if you guys were ever going to talk about IT. So IT is the twenty fifty anniversary this year of the movie, and literally the week were recording.

This is is the twenty versy. Yeah, yeah. The state is.

IT was oddly a summer release. Yes, yes. IT was. And the sort of set the stage here, ah IT is the story of three film kers who go missing in the woods in your burke's film maryland have there done to you Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard and for a while people did think that this was real but to start, um can you tell me about your experiencing the movie for the first time? Yeah when did you actually .

see this in theatres? I was thirteen years old. This films rated fifteen in britain lived in briton at the time. I guess I was just raided fifteen for swearing. I guess that the only .

actual content in the family stuff.

yeah, there's some cup, but I don't think that's but yes, but remember, I had to sneak in ah and IT completely got me so I was right at the age where I know you might relate to this. I don't know this was a movie. You actually would end up seeing you to sleep over with a bunch of people where you loudly market at the whole time, right? Because it's like, yeah, these dogs.

This movie is not scary. It's just people running around the words, yelling at each other, blab ba ba, right? That I feel like is a lot of people in my generations experience of watching the blair rich project, and like, I think older people had the Morgan experiences with that.

I don't know what future generations, the experience they have with those, but I went inside IT in and IT completely got me. I was like, they're dead. That's IT like I was. So in IT, I maintain this is basically the scarious movie i've ever seen in some elemental way of just like I remember that you know that viewing experience very profoundness and now I was impressionable.

That's so interesting. I I was pray IT and I when I came out, and I and I didn't see IT right away. I saw as a teenager after, like everything, a pass.

But I was a huge horn movie fan. I remember thinking IT was sound cool because I like to our movies. And then by the time I was able to see that, I already knew IT wasn't real and i'd kind of like lost interest. But then when I finally did see that, I actually really liked IT, like I I do and I liked IT. Again, we watching IT for this episode.

Actually IT kind of holds up. I think that holds up tremendously. I am, but I meet you. I think that is an important movie. The fact that IT has never really been recaptured quite in the magic has never been recaptured quite in the same way like found became a thing again years later. I'm not saying like people haven't made good found footage movies but .

but IT wasn't like that.

The thing we're right where people going in being like I think they found some footage versus like, oh, this is like a movie that's pretending to be found for you know like you're never gonna that again, right?

I don't think, well, I do have a modern kind of example, someone like this that did get me, but we'll get to in a second. So let's start with the original. So we've got danger amErica and at water sanchez. They're staying at the university of central florida in the nineties, and they're like, large, upset that movies, like hour movies, weren't scary at that point, which I think is accurate. Like by the late nineties, IT was, like the franchise, a vacation of horror, kind of arty taken effect, right?

I would agree with that. I would save that the blockbuster hr is largely secs and that you know loses its you know now when you think about like, okay, well, what's the actual good horror r of the nineties? There's stuff you can surface, but I also think there is kind of like a goodness to nineties hour.

There is like sort of the same remy you leftovers. There's the Peter Jackson stuff like there's the stuff worth very theatrical and silly and fun and then there's like these self power slash or stuff and then there's no yeah, you're right. It's kind of an odd time for her.

In fact, the filmmakers were player which said that they were largely inspired to make the movie because they wanted them. They could actually scare them. And this was indirect response to them watching nine year and down three six, which is the win with the cameo from rose and bar.

And tom aren't all right where it's like it's that's fridley dead, I believe, which is the first truly bad nightmare movie. I really like the nightmare series. Know how you feel about IT.

and I watch pretty quicker.

Fan, I, I love that guy.

What a guy. I love that. I like what he does.

The joke. He's like the joker of your dreams. It's the good at best.

but like nightmares one to four. I'm all in on five, the seven. Hopkins, we am like still fun starting to feel a little, you know, little stretch then and then fried y's dead IT falls off a Cliff is like, is no offence to that film is pretty terrible.

right? And we knew the franchise .

dead people sort forget, like friday does that is kind of IT everything after that is weird meta shit.

See, I as a kid, I like new nightmare because I was stupid. And I was like, this is really deep.

This is a really fast name .

where good you're not. I remember fine. So yeah. So let's go back to to player with here. So the week publishing oral history about the movie, and this quote comes from that it's from at water, sanchez, and it's about how they came up with the idea behind the movie, Edwardo says.

The idea is somebody doing some kind of filming in the woods and then coming up with a really creepy house and going inside IT in finding all kinds of setanta ituen, isc stuff, candles pentagram, that kind of basic c tanning stuff. Maybe something is happening in this place and we shouldn't be there, but then the camera continues and I can't stop and you're stuck with these people fun, which I think you watch the movie. And again, that is that is the whole idea.

Um they pick the name because Edwardo sister went to a blair high school and they originally we're going to do documentary inside of a traditional movie, but then they scrap the idea. But what is your sort of Simon lest way of explaining the law of the blair witch in this movie? Like how would you describe what is actually happening in this movie from a law perspective?

okay. So you're talking about the law, the intern, the films.

internal law, the internal is.

obviously this is the footage of some student filmmakers who went out to maryland burkett bill maryland, which is a real place, right? But they are pretending used to be .

called blair, but just so are really yeah and .

has those classic thick fucking spooky as maryland jersey woods right where it's like thick trees I mean, not a part of the world. I'd like to be, to be clear, probably partly because of this fucking movie sorry, I A you .

can swear on .

the show yeah and they the the lore of the film, which i'm kind of obsessed with, this basically like spooky stuff, has happened here since. Like, you know, kind of a pioneer of patriotic, right?

Like, you know, there was most recently, and most disturbingly, in the forties, there was a local hermit who abducted and killed some children called ruin par and said that, you know, someone made him do IT the far has made him do IT whatever he would make the kids face the wall while he did this. But then there's also other spook. Ky, kind of classic, like you said, you're from salem, right? Like no more in that vain of, like, you know, I went out in the woods one day and I saw a woman floating above the ground and won't touch .

the ground. yes. yeah.

And back in one thousand, nine centuries, some men were killed out here on a place called cough in rock. The names are so good.

It's so good, I think is like watching again when I was really struck by was how the movie never says like, okay, this is the law that's important. So the whole movie, you're sort of not sure if you're the enhances, if it's like a delivery situation, if it's like a seal killers goes like there's no attempt at explaining what's happening in this movie and IT works.

I guess I mean, the and you might the only thing I know that is intriguing to me is that day and you might want to tell me the way I am. Not sure you know how much you want to drive the car here. But like that, they added the kids facing the wall thing.

They did one extra interview of filming to put that in there because they came up with that for the ending of, like one of them facing the war, and they were. We need just one tiny explanation for this. Other audiences understand who what that's referencing.

They will talk about that.

But yes.

will talk about IT. But no, no, god, you did. Because, like watching, you know, this weekend, I remember that seem really bothering me actually at the time as a kid watching and I was like, oh, that is like actually an an a nerving weird thing. And I don't like looking at that.

H, yeah, it's fathered you in the right way. Sure.

in the right way is what i'm saying. Yeah, yeah. yes. So they make like a short version of this, and they show up to an end film rep name, john pearson. He responds to by saying, I can't believe all of this. I've never heard about IT, which is like that.

What you want to hear does that, is that view of this short thing they made, or is that lost of time?

So he then gives them ten thousand dollars, and they incorporate the footage into an I, F, C, T, V show in nineteen ninety seven called split screen. So IT was showing on the very .

early ifc and yeah .

you would ask you put screen you have okay.

yeah because that was like I fc would just have an interviewer Spike ly on there, whatever. IT was just kind of like their thing.

Okay, yeah, so maybe you remember this, this was this is I think like a pivotal moment in like the blair, which like I rl law, which is that he was being used to experiment with a new interactive part of the show based on the shows website. So what they would say was like, do you think this is real or not? Go to our website and let us know which was a new idea.

Okay, no, I didn't know that. I mean, that make sense. So that, right? People were like, what should we use internet for? What is website for? Is that for? right?

So how much do you know about like the casting in the planning of of the what they would call method film making of the blair witch? Like are you from with any of IT?

Or I know they posted essentially casting call and they did just random improve with with the folks that's really all I kind like like IT wasn't like they were like OK so you're in the woods, right? That they were more just kind of like doing improved games of like here's a .

prompt go yeah so according to have done here, ah the flyers said the shoe will be gruelling. Ling, we don't care about your comfort, but we do care about your safety and the entire thing will be improvised.

Um I would just say no, just I don't know.

I don't know he responded with, uh, game on that sounds amazing. He would not feel this way years later get there. Um and so the first one to be cast was josh um who at the begin the movie I actually really and I think he's the top of my ranking like he goes that he was cast first because he came in with a camera and the company he knew how to Operate a camera .

right like that was that was part of IT right um and apparently .

when mike came in they gave him the prompt you've just serve ten years of a twenty five your prison sentence. Tell us why you should be due for parole. And then he said he tried to channel Morgan freeman and shah and redemption and tell he got cast.

Do you, I hate to be, I hate to be power drinking any of these actors who basically just suffered and somewhat had their lives room by this movie. But would you put him bottom?

Okay, in germans of acting, I think mike is my favorite. I think I I think I believe mike is a real person the most I would put either next because I don't like her and I don't think you're supposed to like her, which is like unfortunate part of the nineties phil making process here like it's all inge on them not liking her essentially because he is a woman who wants to like make a documentary .

yeah but people around which is how .

do are you right exactly um oh and for the record her answer to the the nine year prison sentence prompt was that he said I don't think you should know that was her little answer and they thought, oh, that's pretty nice.

Oh, right. I have her top. I weirdly have. I mean, I think it's an iconic performance in a way.

So you know, just like with that, a lot of this stuff it's like, is that a little accidental? Is that a little bit being created by the atmosphere they're creating? I don't know. I weirdly loved the size I channel original mini series taken. Did you ever watched that?

I've never heard of IT.

IT was an event series back in the day when sort of the size channel had. Event series was like a ten episode kind of classic X X files about like the roswell crash, and then like imagining a sort .

shows up and it's got .

a zillion an actors you would recognize. Now she's sort of the lead of IT. SHE has like one of the most pivotal roles in IT and she's kind of good.

It's kind of like this performance. It's very nervy. O, K, I have always ort of been like, you know what know either gets a bad wrap basically. But I kind of agree with you on josh and Michael being the most realistic feeling guy in a way just again .

that just like a guy, josh is kind of uninteresting until he snaps and he he becomes kind of the clothing to a villa in IT. Although my I guess you could argue also of villica destroyed the map, I guess what i'm saying is like, what is nice about this movie? Is that no point that I have the same feelings about anything that was going on? Like my mind was constant changing.

I was like, all right, that's interesting. And I feel like that is an effective thing. And I will say I was you kind of mention like, I don't know how much of what heth's doing was like on purpose, but this what he says, having done here in the oral history, says someone who's going to her character was gonna a be able to stay on camera when they're dying.

And it's not a person you really want to spend a lot of time with. It's this person who is obsessive. And I think they were hoping for someone kind of pretium, but they couldn't find a woman like an engineer who was willing to go, who was willing to be that kind of terrier. And in retrospect, that kind of understand why. And I do think that works like the fact that she's like constantly, compulsively filming everything is the only internal motion of the movie, I would say .

um and of course, this is the number one issue of any fan footage movie is the to what extent do we explain why the cameras are still on? Like how much like sort of background network do we need to do to just sort of get audiences on board versus should we just like let them agree with us? Like IT looked at camera's, ran, where can I tell you? And I think player, which IT is obviously the most dramatically effective version of that because they're filmmakers and because of her personality and because people, you know, john might do eventually being like, why are you filming me? Like we're having a fight right now. Why are you bring this on camera?

It's the central tension. Like the second half. The movie is like, just stop filing, which very millennial quote quoted. Actually.

I would say yes, right? I mean, I feel like clover fill is the worst, right? I mean, i'd like clover field a lot as a movie, I think at me so kind of an important object. But cloverfield has the most. Like I going to try and film this, you know like where they have these lines, really I shut up, man.

You mean T J.

Miller N. T. J. Miller.

Um so a couple more notes about the production is because I do you think it's baking .

up production is because yeah the team point the term method .

filmmaking and i'm going to quit a greg house one of the producers on the blanket is uh from an article the ringer data IT. So he describe as this I had gone to the army's sr. e.

school. He says he stands for survival, evasion, resistance and escape. You go through this four day escape and evasion thing with guys chasing you around and stuff, I knew they weren't going to kill me, but the same time I was terrified.

That kind of Sparked the thought of, well, why don't we apply this total emerge scenery o to the actors if we physically and mentally abuse them enough in the process of getting them up to these intense moment at the end, then they would be able to tap into emotional places they would would otherwise be able to tap into. Sounds pretty ool me, right? Yes, I feel like that's fine.

Do you guys want to know, saying about greg hail that I just looked up? Yeah, he has an extensive clown doll collection. There are sixteen clowns.

really? Yeah, apparently very good. We will not. You know, that is is because he's able to reach emotional places that other people can't, because he's concerned, merged versed in psychological tournaments.

Y make that boy everything you hear about this movie. You're just like, these people should be in jail.

Everyone should be in jeff for this movie here. So they had them completely isolated. They harassed them at night.

They would then let them sleep. They basically did IT like naked and afraid style. And they were giving them less and less information about what they were doing. And so by the end of IT, uh, eda sanchez says they were down to a power bar and a banana for the last two days per day each.

That's so crazy. Car, I think he was eight days, right? They did eight days of the 就是 maybe even less is that maybe eight days was the entire shooting schedule。 So there is a couple days of them in the town talking people who are like, member, like five days.

I think IT was five here.

I would, I mean, I guess I not committed to the craft, but I would just like to lose my mind. I would just go punch somebody. I like, you're giving a sandwich.

Es, like, this is stupid. I can act. You don't need to do this to me, but maybe it's why I don't know. I'm not trying to justify directors sort of somewhat torturing and underfeeding their cars, but I mean, maybe IT is part of the magic.

Well, I do think that speaks to a attention that I want to talk about there. The number of today, which is sort of can you can you make a viral sensation like this without IT being at its core, somewhat exploitative, like there has to kind of be an issue here in one of the big problems with the way the blair which was created was they use their real names.

Yes, which is that the crazy, the objectively, the crazy st thing they did? I don't know why they did that.

Like, well, I would come in handy later, which we will get to, but do you know you kind of talk about like other types of method, like clover field and safety? Are there other movies before this that you can think that would inspire this idea? Like, like, what are what are the peers of blair, which in terms of like crazy shooting.

like this h in terms of crazy shooting is interesting, because I that I know less about, I know they are inspired, but what is called the legend of boggy creep, I think that that was called, which is like an iconic early seventies version of this movie, of, like a ducky drawn, a fake docker draw. I feel like that used to be how you would do IT right, do the fake documentation you kind of make the footage seen, you know, A G C, and you know, if that's a cool movie, i've seen that movie. Um but that is nothing like this and .

I like holocaust had someone .

the movies were it's like but the whole thing with accountable holo us, which is in my .

opinion and watch .

table you like I know people stand up for yourself is like that movie. It's all lw right? It's all you you know ninety percent of people who talk about IT at back in the day had not even seen IT.

It's just the movie you know was so disturbing that people were like it's real and it's bad. It's illegal to watch this movie. I don't know what you're experience with capable holocaust is, but when I was a kid, dom and nineties people had actually seen candidate holocausts because I didn't know old genius who passed her on video tapes.

I just knew other teenagers who would be like, yeah, that's the movie. That's illegal because it's rail, or at least people thought I was. And you would see like a one picture of IT and freak out in college.

We are of a human magazine, and we had this thing on sunday's sexy violence sundays. And so we were finally the most blocked up movie and watch them. So I was like a video drone, a serbian film, one hundred and twenty days. Assad, like all the classics, right? We never did capable holo us because I just didn't want to watch, like animal cruelty on camera.

He is funny. How read the animal cruelty of IT is what pains are people, right? More than, like all, you know, all this horrible .

fake torture. I T fine, I can want host and stuff know. IT was just too much for me to across that boundary. But we did watch a lot of movies similar to this, which we're like know the ones where you get the viral story of like the snuff film, they have got caught the border and the director goes to jail and like all that stuff.

Um should we but I think have you ever seen the last broadcast? I've never seen the last broadcast.

which I got the one I did see.

Let's see how it's the one that's about the jersey devil and it's sort of has a soda documentary approach that similar to blair, which and IT came out before IT and at the time there was a little bit of flight oh, you know, they ripped this off and then people actually would watch the film would be like, no, they didn't make IT up like OK. It's not nearly as kind of like whole. You know the sort of the. The last brought the this sort of storytelling approach is not quite as good, but i've never seen that. I've often wondered if I should ever check IT out.

I have never seen IT. No, I did. The close have seen something to like blow, which was one of those viral, like fake in a films where like, it's like a bunch of people put on pig masks and like torture someone in a basement and then they they like break half with you to go to Dennis and they're like a bunch of jug s that they like torture ics, someone basement I remember what the movies called, maybe someone listening does, but IT wasn't good. I didn't enjoy IT.

There's also there's that movie thesis, the the spanish movie, which is one of the more disturbing movies i've ever seen that's about like a snuff film. You there's that genera of nineties horr that's like movies about snuff film, right? Like I heard you can find snuff films if you look like obviously eight millimeter or being the sort of hollywood ized version of that which had come out really a couple years before, right? What I was at one thousand nine hundred ninety nine might .

be the same year. Yeah, same year. It's the same year yeah. Because like I feel by the end of the nineties, we had become obsess with like like analog horr wasn't a terminal, but like everyone was going to crept out by by recordings of stuff.

No one hundred percent like the creepy law of, I found a weird canister film in a box, in a basement, in a weird play. What that's cool, it's so cool, mister, the bloom house movie is like jacked up version of that promise.

right? So like I said, I love horry movies. And sinister has so many jump scares that I was actually physically exhausted by the end of bit like I was. I literally at the scream like, fuck you.

Enough of this. I would agree that I think sinister like which is a Scottish and film he's a filmmaker I am like wildly in and out on yeah I don't know if it's his fault or if I was just kind of like the peak of that bloom house moment where somebody be a Jason blum bia derrickman is like we just need to actually rattle everyone every five minutes. We can't just rely on atmosphere.

And it's like the atmosphere minister is good. The cast is good. If they just chilled out a little bit on the cheap jumps, that would maybe be a great movie. And it's said it's kind of stupid, but it's got it's gots of stuff.

So one of the interesting things about blair, which in terms of like the the larger analog horr trend, is that IT was one of the first movies to like really lean into you in the internet. So like obviously the before obviously what we mentioned before about um IT using like the I fc website was that kind of novel at the time. But I also had its own website. Are you familiar with the blair which when you .

see that's what i'm here for, that's i'm here to discuss yeah .

let's kit enough with the reading from a heather's diary that was on the website. Shall we grant you know what I don't like when you overproduce our episodes, but I will let you do IT again because it's spooky season. Let's get creepy with this.

Okay, like at the scene, give give me a little back in track. Early entry to the woods at the end of the week. Three days of odds.

Mystical three. P. S. Still burp in the chimp junger.

I eat a cheese, okay? Ten, seventeen. Their trust is essential.

Mutual surrender, like the devout t boy bonding. I am definitely out of that. Must stop worrying about being the pitchy boss lady. They need to know that I am in charge and that I have the city to be. So note to self, that means no waffling.

Once in the words, ten, twenty two, filthy, stinky, exhausted, like me working from home, and right, I have no energy to right at night, like I thought I would. Mike started to fight with me today about not knowing where the cemetery was. I knew where I was.

We are is, we are next to IT now. And thirsty, parched, actually, my shoulders in necker, unspeakably sore. But I think we have good footage.

I'm putting a lot of trust in josh. Sometimes they're so easily confused after things are going badly. The screws, udi lts, whatever they were today were disturbing.

I got the mall on both sixteen and video plus I cut one down. I shouted, have the guys free debt a bit when I did IT. But I want to be able to look at IT objectively.

When we get out of here, we will laugh about this someday. Ready after we, i'll have a bath, a beer, a big meal in well, it's faced at this point a little nicky ouldn't be badly either okay, good night, please god, or whatever. Get a sad of here. Pretty good actually.

I know it's gone now, right? I mean, I know you can like you can find IT with relatively on the internet archive, the way back machine, whatever, right? But like IT for so long was just up. Do you remember do you know the data was taken down? Is like maybe like twenty twenty years.

something that was relatively recently. And I have to wonder if IT was tied to like the looming twenty five university, which is kind of stupid, like why won't you keep IT up for that? But IT is no longer with us. unfortunately.

I saw the bay wood product in one thousand hundred and ninety nine, and I probably thought like another time on home video shortly there after, and you know, whatever i'd seen, like two or three times in my life, and then I remembering, like two thousand eight or two thousand and nine being like hot. The website, if you like, a look at the website, once in the website is so famous to its the law of its marketing and all that. Wonder if it's still there. And then I found IT and IT was one of the most reliable things I would do to go spoke myself just for fun is go look at the blair witch website, which I did so many times.

That's awesome.

IT was so simple, right? IT was so effective. That was basically just like the mythology. So they would like layout for you, like all the stuff we just set up.

I like rest in power and coffin rock and all that shit with some grainy little pictures. IT was so simple. IT was so easy to navigate because I had to be right for like, a dialog era.

And then IT was like, here are the filmmakers and here and I just had these creepy fake pictures they're so cool of, like, their car all fucked up. That was found later, right? Like their tapes and their canisters all covered in dirt.

So they had shot scenes that weren't in the woods, and they took some most claps and put them on the website, for instance. Here's how ther's mom being interviewed here. Let's listen. Thanks for let me some of your home today and in the past, you voice some of your concerns publicly about the share craven's handling with the case of of your daughter mother to the missing filmmakers.

Would you like to elaborate little bit of this? Well, to anybody who is watching this site, I hope you're never run my situation and you never have to depend on share of cravings to help you out. They've even .

initiated that .

these types .

and and videos .

that are my daughter and her friend, our hopes that they make this stuff up.

you don't see this shouldn't movie, right? So it's just like brilliant, like brilliant, brilliant, brilliant viral marketing. And I would rattle myself about IT to this day.

So what's crazy is that actually started very organically and like going to very like very online way. IT was the webster was created because I fc didn't want to deal with the comments on the split screen webs site anymore. IT was like getting too much, and we found so our researcher, adam, found a couple old posts, the initial blair, which comment section on the fc sites.

So I am going to read a couple to you here. So here's one, is there any new info on what happened to the three film kers? Or is this just going to remain one of those unsolved mysteries? Actually, the whole story would make a brilliant film attention, all independent filmmakers.

IT makes me angry that i'm being sucked into something that ultimately terrifies me, yet threatens my intelligence. I just got to see some of the missing footage for the first time, and some of IT absolutely took my breath away if this whole thing is a fake. Bravo the filmmakers.

and shame on me for being such an idiot. You mean.

have been so happy here. Here's the one. Open your eyes, blair, which is a hoax. I hesitate to post this, since this prank promotional scheme is already garnered way too much attention, but I am so just made that so many people are buying into IT that I feel compelled to point out a few things and then they based just like say that a budget if IT doesn't look real, including like news clipsed inside the footage and stuff, right? I mean.

obviously, if if you tried this today would be pretty easy to be like. I think if a bunches of film kers, like died in the woods and then their car was mysteriously found, like that would have been in the news, rightly are not like. So IT would get to spell immediately, and it's like the internet and exists CT.

But I was hard to, you couldn't just like google and like a plumb around for local news. IT was impossible to know, right? I'm going to say impossible. I going to use the word impossible.

I would say I was impossible. I would also argue with you and say that this thing still this type of thing does happen. I think like i'm on several separates for unexplained mysteries.

And like I do think like in the tiktok age, we have kind of come around to a new problem, which is that like you cannot go look to see if three filmmakers disappear and you can see if the news covered IT. But a lot of people like don't read. So they're just like way, I didn't see a video about this, so you must be IT must be real. And I I think you could probably trick jane.

easier to trick people and harder, like even if you just try to trick people and lots of people just immediately, like, now this is fake. I did three clicks and I figured that out there would still be fifty percent of people who like anana man, like, see that picture of a dirty film. Canister looks real to me.

exactly, exactly. And I do think that, like, maybe if IT wasn't totally planned, the filmmakers were tapping into this thing online in the nineties that was very new, which like, I don't know, do you think it's very to say like the x files kind of invented like the way like TV fenders were talking online. You feel like that's yes.

without a doubt, right? Is there any? Is there even? No, it's expose exposes the original.

I am going on use net, or alt T, V, or whatever. The hell was like those things like to discuss theories with my friends. Obviously like star track.

star wars, but stacks like.

like, like star trek was like communities found each other over their love of star trek, but they didn't get together to discuss theories. They just got together because they loved star track as as people coming together being like guys, I think I know what's going on or I have laid out every piece of the ten general evidence theyve given us. It's the most prototype version of that. And and I feel .

like like to blair, which like the x files was in conversation with those fans like like the lan garment characters are essentially just like message board users of like watching the ex files in its own show. And so I feel like the fact that like the blade, which is like creating you know this internet law that people can pour over and fight about like that was very new that he really almost never been done before.

I I would argue right um and they thought that you know IT would be fine. I would just like help the movie do really well um and IT turns out what they are actually doing was releasing the curse of viral marketing on the world forever. And we're going to discuss that right up for the.

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Now do you know about the blair? Which safe word, if you, about this? That no. okay. So so they basic had no plan other than like scraps of paper.

They're feeding them in a general idea of like some law that they were gna reference. So there were two safe words, one for the crew was bulldozer and one for the cast was toko. I think the .

toko thing rings a bell that that mean like they just had to scream toko at the top of their lungs if they were feeling like too freaked.

Doubt yeah, which I think sounds fun, but that's nice. One clever thing they did do was give almost all of the internal method gy to heather exclusively oh.

that makes sense that she's kind of the creative driving force and the other joo like and no, man, i'm i'm just chilling because that is their vibe in the especially the first act of the movie so we can work on camera like whatever you know, this is fun. They're just like two guys that .

would be like working at a VP store right now and they're just we're going to help for the weekend. sure. They also like borrow the equipment, which becomes like a fun detail later that they have to like return IT on time like it's all very naturalistic, I think in a good way. How would you sort of like sum up the like the opening interview vibe? Like I don't know about you, but I often times got confused about what was real, what was in in like the first half hour of the movie.

Um we you buy real. What do you mean? guess?

Okay, like the thing that treat me up, what is r which is real? No h the thing that like really bother me was like a it's when they started telling the history of the town yeah and like, I don't know enough about maryland to know like what that was. So I just like, again, like that could be true.

Like, sure. Like this could be like, coffee rock could be real, I guess that I group in your salem. Like we got spooky shit. Like IT could be real, I don't know.

And and then I also like still couldn't remember to this day like was the blair which like an an old urban legend that art existed. IT was like a new piece of content for this moment and he was new. IT is hard to keep track.

I would say I agree and I feel like here's here's my thing about player, which as cinema, I think it's brilliant to cinema. I think it's I do think it's worst sort of uh, whatever quality uh, sort of file making issue is the exposition dumps. I hate to talk like an internet d about the catch project like because that's the only time you feel the movie slipping out of the whole found footage brilliance a little bit of just like h wow they just like the first IT feels like all the first guy they found is like, oh yeah, remember rest in part. Let me tell you what happened.

Know, like it's so hard to avoid with this talking heads stuff the feeling of IT being a little scripted because all of the interactions between the filmmakers, between heather, john, Michael, feel, do feel completely impervious, right? There must have been no script for that stuff at all. IT does not. Bunch of idiot s talk and idiots, I say in a in a nice way and they .

weren't um they weren't actors, in fact. So here I want to show you a clip. You proba remember this from the movie, but there's the really good scene where the woman is talking and the kid puts the hand, their hand, over her mouth.

The be sure about that. I ever heard the two men were out hunting, and they were camped near the cabinet or something that shit supposed to home, and they disappeared off the face of the year. Really OK.

I'm just tell a scary story, but it's not true, not true. And it's so good, right? Like it's such a good .

that has to be fake. I really not enough fake, but that has to be just like a genuine little detail. They caught that so cool of the kiko. No, I like it's just creeping like it's it's awesome.

IT is awesome. And in fact, years later, check this out and show you a copier. Um it's time stamp to where you want to be. So if you click this link right here, okay, that is the woman and her daughter who's now all growing up wearing .

a corn hook. 快。 I'm 快。

Yeah, we came up on the train and and we were in there and nobody would talk to them, and nobody would help them. So i'm a teacher, and I felt bad for them. So the teacher in media and I went to her and I said, yeah, you help you, i'll be on camera.

然后 SHE goes， really, really, you'll let us film me out of the area. He said to me, what do you know about the blair witch? You heard of the blair witch? I said nothing.

It's not. And he looked like, he went like, this looks so restful. And I thought I felt bad for. I said, you know what doring that? I just ask your questions.

I'll make something up because really I said i'll make and I just literally made up everything on the spot. I mean, I was helping college kids with the project. What you're actually witnessing in her is a panic contact and had some serious anxiety when he was a child was trying to get you to show SHE grabs your best.

No, which is very good. I K, she's doing thinking, god, she's ruining the film for these kids. What can I do? What can I do? So I tried to work IT in so that I would work. That's when I said i'm just telling the scary story. It's not trying with her my.

uh, well and he looks that, you know what, I guess there is something that old. He looks the same, but they have her daughter's cool another and SHE doesn't give a shit she's like.

And was, I guess, just for which, to be clear, this interviews .

from a to grow make sense if they had just stayed frozen in time forever for had have a court held having a corn hole now is kind of a cool choice.

Yeah, I mean, he is also like maryland.

like that makes sense to me. So if a jensie kid finds corn, i'm like, great. They have fun with that.

We all exactly, exactly. So like after they leave the town is when know the movie actually starts yes.

I would say about the movie is eighty minutes long and I would say the first twenty or the ramp up and it's I think that the bible lady talking, she's kind this sort of old woman who's were counting seeing the blair witch and she's holding a bible like that. She's kind of sort of touched enough like SHE feels unsettling in a way. Yeah, everyone else is a little more.

You know, you got somebody to put on a planner. sure. A local towners know that. Oh yeah. Well, coffin rock, you know, it's fine.

I like the two Fisherman. I think they are fun and and I think, you know, I I think I mentioned this already, but like the fact that there is all this exhibition being dumped, but they're not at any point telling you what is gonna be important, nor are they even signaling IT by like putting a real actor in that there's no moment, right.

exactly, if they were like, but don't you knock over any rocks up there, right? The movie would truly suck like, IT would that would be so devastating to the film if at any point they were like, and they say you would bond twins together in a strange symbol like the fact that they're basically just like, I don't know, man, we don't talk about IT much, but this town definitely has weird vibes and spoke y stories associated with that. What you will now .

when they enter the woods, though, is when the camera starts to move a lot. Did you get nauseous watching this?

So no, I know. I would say no 啊。 Now I was trying to remember I feel like a hit a lot harder in the theater, like it's because the image is so large and maybe because I was less used to IT.

Am I more used to this now just because I watch tiktok and people are always swing in their dg phones around? Like, is that what I did? I don't know.

I was kind of surprised by the lack, like I you know, obviously, I knew that there was no digital video in the nineties, but I was shocked by how little fidelity there was. What I think that the motion was easier to deal with, like my eyes were just, I get, this is just shapes and images that I can deal with this, which may be, i'm trained.

I was really trying to clock how much I was going to bother me, didn't bother me at all. And we watch very IT felt very natural. But I felt like time I kind .

of cut up to in an interesting way. Yeah so here's an interesting of thing about the canisters, by the way, because you mention this and this, where start using this stuff when to get into the woods. So hether dona, who said each of the film canisters would have our initials on them and they would a include their instructions for each scene. Often times those instructions were conflicting.

Everything you hear about this movie sounds like someone describing a movie that famously, what was that was never made with the collapsed, right? It's they are trying everything.

It's like they're trying the worst kind of weird improve slash, basically like an extended game of mafia flash, a stands prison experiment, right? And that's why always wondered because IT again, IT was a week of filming, right? Like did they exaggerate this a little bit because the movie became such a hit? Like to the extent to which they were fucking with everyone's brains and setting them against each other and all that, I don't know.

You know who could remake this movie? You know who could do a really good remake of this movie? Tell me, mr. Beest, he would kill IT.

That's what he does. He puts people in the woods and tortures them, right? I don't know much about mister beast. I just like I just see like images of his Greening face and then like some horrifying .

you know a he's like jigsaw is he he's a slightly more brand safe jizo. So this was when the actors themselves came up with the talk of safe word because they realized that they are being fucked. Well, so they're like, yeah, they would they would be like basically whispers to which are like toko.

And then they would kind like come together to figure what was going on. And at the midway part of the movie um is when we get the map scene, which we kind of our reference. But here here he is just just so you have IT. The map scene to me is the moment where the movie, I think if IT was not made in such a specific way would break because it's like the one piece of thing that feels like a plot point.

The up because mike essentially kicked IT into the greek in a rage because they have been walking in the woods.

friend and if mike wasn't just such a guy, I would be like, this makes the movie but he's just he's that kind of guy like he's just is the also the same guy that find cigarettes at the end and like excited about the cigarette so I just feels like everyone knows mike.

I I think the the loud thing that film is doing in its first hf hour is setting up the law of the blade, which that the woods will be spoke y for good. The quiet thing that is doing is what you say, setting up the internal dynamics of heather is quite driven. And to the point of being annoying, to the point of being like, come on, guys, we're going to crush IT tomorrow and you're kind of going relax.

But the other guys are quietly more annoying in that they are barely like paying attention. They can I earn IT. There's that little scene where I think it's josh is like, I think I fucked up that last thing we shot because I like, don't know meters and they have like a two minute conversation about that the lens has feet and beaters on IT or not that you know when you're a thirteen year old watching this movie a slumbers party or like, but this movie is boring, right? And then but just imagine watching IT at sun dance. I wish I could just like APP myself to sun IT and watch IT with that like first crowd where you're kind of like, this is so mundane to be like, how could this not be real, right? Like.

that's what I was struck by as an adult watching. Yeah, I was like, I was like, how did you do this in, in fact. So we have a few more details about how they did this. So one, they were using a GPS unit, was preprogrammed every day to lead .

them in different directions. What what was this? I've read that before that they had a GPS unit was like with this is like a very gene, nineties.

I think so like a satellite, like a like a map set, like a set map kind of thing yeah. And at night they would not tell them how they were gna spoke them so they would like shake the ten, and then they would play audio clipsed of little kids running around. And they just like psychologically tortured them for several days in a row.

But obviously, it's like these people, these actors know we are filing a heart movie. They're going to do this to us. We need to get us freaking out on tape.

But yes, then there's also the side of them like they're tired. They're in the woods. SHE is being yelled at them from a mysterious like you know right like it's it's weird times yeah and in fact.

josh said that like they weren't scared by any of the nigh stuff. They were actually just really annoyed, which I do think has like like unexpected positive benefit because by the time they're fighting with each other, like I became on come from watching IT because IT doesn't really feel like they're having fun anymore, which adds to IT I .

would argue. I I again agree um I however am terrified IT is so I when can we talk about do you go camping? I hate camping. Anyway, i've done IT but I don't really you know i've been done IT in years but like I don't never want to go camping again and every my watch player, which i'm like, I would be such a baby now at the least like twig snappy sound, right? Like I I would just immediately go to pieces at night in the woods.

I don't like camping in a tent like I have to go do IT, even like at a music festival later this month. And I don't really want to do that because, like, I don't enjoy sleeping outside. I enjoy the woods as to to a point, but I don't want to like sleep on the ground.

I want to do that delivering on and love walls, love plumbing.

Things like to walls are goat.

That's what i'm good shit.

mr.

Was great from my gilgan mesure, whatever that I rock.

So as you say, they film for eight days.

seven and gilet.

No, no, ignoring .

Carry on. They feel free.

You gilgames sh the first.

I said gilgames sh, which is a character in a babo ian story .

member epic, because we can, we can believe IT josh is removed from the gang. So way OK so way.

How do do you know how that worked? Like they just sort of came in in the daytime and they are like, right, josh, come with us and then they just took into danny and they were like, you're all done like what happened?

Ah so bistre piece came down in a helicopter IT was like you win ten thousand dollars at a deadly meal someone .

who's like eating someone else's human liver.

right? Yeah exactly. Um so judge says in the oral history that day, my note said when everybody goes to bed tonight, stay, wake and once you're sure they are asleep, leave the tent.

If anybody wakes up, tell them you're going to take a piss that's all I knew. I just wait to let you sleep. Got up and walked out and then when the members of the crew found him with flash sides, they said, your dad, dude and then they took him to tennis.

This they weren't that I can't have been very deep in the woods, right? Just .

logistically .

IT would have been a huge we asked to like go to them every night if they were. So they must have really been just a little bit in there to be able to, like, get him out that fast, okay? Or anyway, fascinating, okay.

yeah. Did he if i'm here, i'm like, can I hang out with you guys now? Can I see what you've been doing with us? Like, can I be on this side of things?

I think what's crazy, imagine like they're not watching them. They're like checking in with them every night, but there's no like monitors.

It's not like there not think that I guess are they know I know that they would like drop you the tapes to them, but I don't know, I don't know when.

So the only thing that really seems to have gone wrong is there's this one scene at night where the crew had this guy dressed up in all way, I guess, to be the witch like a goes or something. Anyway, he's doing spooky stuff here on the tent, and this is the scene where I had her scream. She's like, what the fuck is that? But it's not on camera.

So what what happened is the person who was dressed on White, being spooky, fell in in the water and had to be 你。 That's funny so this is like I literally point at the screen yesterday when I was watching this being like, oh look it's the scene um which is when either does the final monologue that uh famously gets uh parody in scary movie one of the great movies of all time. So this this is headers monologue to the camera that one of the few times that they they fully do a cell phone, which I think is really interesting actually.

To mix mom and judge his mom and my mom. I'm sorry, everyone. I was very nice.

So so sorry, this is kind of wear the reality. The movie blends a bit because people think that they're being tormented in the woods and that's why they're stopping and screaming. But hair has always maintained that, no, they're acting SHE got to a note in the canisters that day that says you realized you're not, you're gonna die.

So you got to say what you need to say to make a mense. And here's that either has to say, reflecting back on that scene. But we are actually in a car that day.

We drove for an hour or so to a new location. So I got to actually goofed myself up a little bit. I was so proud of that moment because it's everything you're not supposed to do as a film access.

The snap was flowing and IT was unflattering and IT was just true and ugly and messy and sloppy. And I don't think people get to see that very often a real good, ugly cry on screen. Well, tiktok had been invented. So yeah, she's right. Mean.

she's absolutely right. And IT is so pivotal to the movie, obviously. Ly, I mean, why they put IT on the post or everything but IT is so funny to think about the most iconic image from the film may be barring the twig stick stuff yeah is something she's just like pointing the camera at herself yeah like that.

That's why I just keep wondering about in terms of how this film was court and court directed. It's like they're not there, right? Like they're not really, which I guess that makes sense in a way that these guys never know offence amounted to much like they never made another movie that broke through in any way. Neither of them I know they broke up like but A I wonder how much of the creative brilliance of this movie is them versus these actors out there in the woods kind of just being as real as they can. But then I also, of course, these directors shifted through a zillion hours of footage and like, made this movie, that's that's what .

I was thinking about, actually, what I was talking like the editing of this movie, if IT had been any different with network. I had a real profound appreciation for the editing. I thought like as and what says like a form of journalism, like they were, they kind of nail IT.

And I don't think the passing never really drags. No, like, I don't know. It's well done. But before we get how they piece this home movie together, we have one more big scene to discuss my favorite scene, the wall scene. Um and and IT does kind of prove your point about like this being kind of a series of happy accidents. Yes, do you know why mike is staring at the wall?

The end what you when you ask me that question, do you mean, do I know why in in within the universe the film, he.

no, no, in real life, what do you know why he's doing that? No.

I do not. I do like and I right. What is the true? Because they hadn't figured out that that would be part of the Lorry yet. So why is he doing IT is .

what was the random choice there? His instructions from the directions were to hide. So how there was never supposed to see him there. But they caught up on camera. They kept in the movie and it's one I mean, I think it's one of the creepers I ever seen, okay? And they they caught on camera like, but IT looks I mean horrific.

And so they kept in the move does it's such a cool image and right and so and right. And obviously they didn't have anything in terms of the the the run par would make people look at the wall that back.

right? Yeah, yeah. They went back and hired an actor and the the actor who does the rest in parm monologue stuff that is IT was added to make that and seen makes up because they're like the images, creepy.

We should keep IT. And that they tested the film without that. And audiences didn't even hate IT. But we're kind like why I was he looking at the wall like they would did ask the question, yes, yeah.

the bunched yeah and like that scene would not work earlier in the film either the magical realism of the movie ramp s and ramps and ramps and such a natural way by the end, when there's like a guy having a never break down in the corner of the right, IT still works. Like IT still works. Twenty five years later, when I watch IT, I was, yeah, I believe this. sure.

Can I go to that house does not exist. I don't know. Does the greeks house did IT roll.

So this is this old house out in the sort of the woods of marland up that deep into the woods, but it's in there. And they use IT. And then the dam said to maryland, demolish IT. demolish.

They said they .

were going to demolish IT. And fans started being like, no, like, save the greek house and they started like taking donations to something. And maryland was like, maybe and then they're like to mosh is fooling place like .

and they did well rude okay so after they wrapped um ever sanchez said according to the oral history said we're nobody's we have no track occurred, but we're doing something right now that spilled berg could probably never do. We don't have anything, but we really are doing something here. That ugly.

One of the greatest filmmakers that ever lived will probably never experience. IT was the only thing we had. We were broke, we had no money. But we're like at least we're doing something unique a bit much .

but like fair yeah fair I do .

think ready player one would to work Better as a found footage like horror movie. I think what a looked Better.

I stick up her ready player one, not just the movie, not the book. I know. Yeah, yeah.

But do you think that do you think that's like a fair way to kind of, uh, I think about the production of this, like they did do something new, did work.

And the only thing that's weird is that if I feel like I actually hasn't been done that many times since, like we've made plenty of found footage of sense, but not like this, right? Like no one's ever really try, I guess, because it's a weird magic experiment to try to recreate. I don't know.

I'm surprised also hasn't spread to like newer medium, like video games like i'm surprised no one is done like the hunt. Well, actually do you know about doi doi literary club? I do o okay, so yes, so doka dokey literary club is a very successful in game that does a version of this idea where it's like an enemy dating simulator.

But then IT starts to corrupt itself and you actually have to go into the files directory to delete files and IT starts so like, like infect your computer like a vitreous, as IT gets a creeping and creepy. So like that would be kind of an example of how you could do this, I think, beyond film. But if I think you're right, IT is strange. Knowes ever try to do this this way again?

Um have you replaced the blair? Which video games I never have, and they always seemed cool, but not that good.

Well, this is the problem with the law of the movie, which is that he doesn't really matter in the original because it's throwing about your stuff at you. So when they try to make equals and prequel, I don't really care. I I could not tell you what the blair, which is. And IT doesn't .

really matter. They maybe like pcc wrong games in the nineties. And I remember that mostly like you walking around in the woods in various times, like one is called rest in par, one is called cough in rocker. You know, it's kind of I like, but ah I remember their views must see being like these short, like they're not like maybe make this one game, not three anyway, they are played them up one day.

Yeah I mean, I honestly think the movie works Better if it's not supernatural, like if it's just towns, people fucking with these people so they go insane and like accidentally kill themselves in the woods.

That's interesting.

I think there's a version you can watch we're like that is what .

happened and that sort of bare, which two is bare, which to the o sae uh, equal, directed by a documentarian, joe berlinger, is about people who see blair, which one? And they are like, wow, and go to the woods to try and figure out what happened. And then something crazy happens to them. That mayor may not be related, might just be them all. Losing their minds is good.

Good, right?

The issue with the movie is that it's not good when I describe, but people are like, that sounds brilliant and i'm like, yes, yeah, that's what artists entertainment thought and that's what job Linda thought everyone was like, this is such a cool idea and then he made this movie that apparently was quite odd and interesting.

And some producer or someone just freak out was like, what the hell just can we put some my blood in this? Like what's going on? And they sort of recut ton .

role in the movie anyway. Oh, wow, yeah. Turn turn the original switch into like a ring style thing is actually that great?

That's what that's what they should. And then of course, there's the other wind garb movie that's a huge bomb that's like a legacy qual that's like really .

just just above what they I got to do is weight like forty years bringing her her back as like the jammy their curtis rule and then they can like, shoot to blair with a shock on, and like, you know, have a fight to predator. Yes.

I do blaye, which should just be in math for others. That's right.

I think the blair, which should fight the predator, which would be actually really sick.

do you want you want to .

know what they did after they read film on this movie?

Because they do what they go back to danny, what they do?

They back to danny.

right? Slams for everybody.

grand slams.

And we're going to talk about like five hundred box like this, like this is meaningful in terms of proportion of our paycheck. Talk about all .

that mess. Ss, right after this ad, hopefully from Dennis.

Hey, panic listeners, this is ryan Brown. C, I know you love stories that can be growth unhinged, and I know a perfect place to do that risk. It's the show where people tell true stories. Theyve never thought they dare to share. Listeners say the show makes them burst out laughing and crying, good crying, surprising honesty. And the most job drop in moments that are strange of infection, like the one about the guy who cooked and serve his own leg to his friends as talk S I saw those photos once, and they have never left my mind, never said, because IT looked kind of good.

Or the woman who have found out that the person who was sharing erotic fancy with online was her dad, oh, H, I wish I had that kind of relationship with my dad, where the couple who discovered the best way they can show their love for each other involved, well, actually, well, activities we Normally save for the toilet. Hey, whenever keeps the marriage alive, if you think you ve heard at all, just wait to hear risk available now on the autism APP. Whatever you get your podcasts.

Alright, so there in the woods for eight days they had about twenty hours a tape um and in the editing is when they made a bunch of like massive decisions so that they were planning on doing only fifty percent found footage. That's when they pivoted to one hundred percent. They added the world facing stuff. And then they fought, almost not stop about the final cut of the film day and night, until IT was released.

The two directors follow myron sanchez .

exactly 啊。 Either was very upset with IT because he looked bad and socially couldn't put IT in her film. Real like get look professional.

just like, truly this this digital shit looks so terrible like i'll clash with the rest of my real yes, right?

He said that he looked like I went out last weekend and shot IT with my friends. Well, Michael said, saw one version that really dragged, and that the final version had much Better passing interest. So this is where the marketing campaign starts.

One of the producers, Kevin j. Fox, went into the editing room and told them to make copies to show of friends, and IT starts getting passed around. This is now what we would call IT going viral. And that's how one of the versions of the movie ended up on a very early, like, pacy .

website. I I did, I guess, know that is. And it's not the finish version of the movie.

No, it's an on finish version, which probably helped honestly, I to add to this like mythos IT then becomes very popular as a talking point on on radio stations. Do remember those. They're kind of like tiktok, but like in your car.

yes, I do remember this.

And one like after one bump of radio buz, uh, the black wich website went from ten thousand visits to sixty thousand visits.

H that's .

a huge one.

Today was the only one cause of this IT .

was like a wave of like you got hear about this thing, you know, like in the leader to the movie, this is precedence. But, uh, you mention like the screen of dance. Do you know what they did as a prank for that screening?

Have you heard about this? No, tell me.

They listed them all as missing, presumed dead on imb before I was screamed at once instance.

This will never be allowed. They are like.

right? You could .

never do this now, yeah.

in fact, they couldn't really do IT because, um, they are. This is nuts. So they put up flyers saying that they were missing, which turned out to be really badly.

And they got trouble for IT because the T. V. Executive had been kidnapped at the time. IT ended up that he was fine, but they had to take the fires down because IT, you know, IT was import taste.

So i've seen the flying. I've seen, I think it's on their website, on the wikipedia, whatever, right? Like one of the the picture of josh is so bad because his cap is covering like most of his face.

Here i'm going it's almost unrealistic. And I come on, guys. We're trying to, you know convince people this is a real fire here i'm sending you to you.

There you go. Um but I can but then you can find other ones that are Better. I don't know. It's so cool that they .

did IT looks .

so real that .

IT looks yes, I think I think that IT every single thing about the marketing, about the the filming IT just feels like why would anyone make this? Because it's kind of boring. But because it's kind of boring, it's exciting.

It's such a weird emotional clash. Here's a question for you as someone sort of more versed in, let's say, the game of box offices. So blair witch was made for thirty five thousand dollars, and its distribution rights result for one point one million to artisan. How big of a deal is that in ninety nine?

huge. I mean, so, okay. So the most famous when is god? What is that movie called the wall image may see Stephen on movie do you know what I am talking about?

Happy text. Happy texas. Happy texas. Yeah yeah. Happy texas was at the same sun, right?

Um and that was that is one of the most famous sunday and acquisition bedding wars for a movie that then comes out and something like why was anyone worked up about this movie? It's like super mediocre. Like I don't understand.

Classic what they call festival fever that was supposedly mr. Max claim ed, they acquired IT for two point five million. Some people said that was way more, but that was like, you know, the absolute peak of height.

I would say one point one million for nineteen ninety nine seven is is a chunk of change. That's like a lot of money. You can buy a movie for that now at sound, it's like and IT wouldn't be seen as that crazy wouldn't be. You're not buying one of the hit s of the festival, but you're buying like a real movie you could release. So i'm sure everyone who invest in this way, we is already happy because theyve been made whole, essentially like, that's IT.

You did IT right? And then the movie is the .

purpose of a micro budget. Indo, you got your money back and then some, and then maybe you'll make a little bit more on home video or from, like the Angela axy hanner that's like that sort of like a model of a ninety in the movie .

and then the movie makes two hundred and forty eight point six million dollars at the box office, which is like, that's a lot for the nineties.

That's big. great. Yeah, it's crazy.

I mean, have we had something like that sense?

I mean, there's like stuff like the my big fec requesting that .

oh yeah that that .

is a phenomenon and like any other that so bizarre to consider in retrospect because the movie is incredibly ordinary. But the only thing that's weird about my big factory quality is that IT open, slow, and then just chuck away for eight months, right? Bear, which project is a little more standard.

They put IT out a limited release in a dozen, couple dozen theatres. The hype was massive. They did there for two weeks, and then they put IT on a thousand screens and IT opened to thirty million dollars, which is crazy.

That's like a twenty six thousand dollar screen average. I realized not even living to this a box office here, but that is really hard to do with a fairly wide release. So then they expanded IT to true wide release, like twenty five hundred screens.

And then IT behaved like a Normal hit movie like IT. It's not like you like IT made tons of money, but like IT, IT Operated in a more traditional wake, like, you know, IT IT made money IT open big. And then the numbers go down and end up with a very, very tidy amount of money. It's just that they cost a million bux verses forty million.

yeah. One stat on AMD bses. For every dollar they spent, they made close to eleven thousand dollars.

I had fucking old. So are they rich? This is my question.

Who's there not? Who the fuck .

is rich? Because, like, art is, entertainment doesn't exist anymore. I've never heard from the directors again. Like, who gets this money?

I am also curious about this because the cast has been like very vocal like this this year and how they got nothing. But one interesting detail before I kind of move passes, which is that IT is IT is understood that about fifty percent of early audiences believe that they were seeing a real documentary.

Yes, totally.

Artisan producers really doubled down. They even ran a documentation on simple phi. And here's a clip from the trailer. The blair, which project the most intense attract experience of the summer, has found the most frightening investigation on television. I don't seeing the last few days of my brother's life on video five five percent the other sensor investigation because of the blair .

rich I remember yeah that was yeah that was right .

he was effective. He was .

spooking um you know you guys know in my child I tried to do that .

right with .

what um he made a movie called the buried secret of hand make IT I guess but he commissioned the bed secret of A N right shamoon I think before the village came out.

Okay.

that was basically like a fake markets tary about how m night someone himself had died as a child by falling in a frozen lake or something briefly and then would like hear voices and IT john I deposited, among other people, there's like talking head interviews with people from mi chamblin s life and also just from hollywood pretending that he is magic. And then they air IT on sideline, and then I had to apologize and be like, this is fake, if I like so good.

that rules everything we should. The next, the guy I thoughts about guy and I .

love you crazy. The vice .

present of marketing for time said on the internet, it's easy to establish your own reality. That's what makes you so much fun. And so all of the online marketing was basic being like this is real, which is great that known and ever tried this sort of thing again, like it's great that we don't there's no adverse consequences socially from doing something like this, making a done of money, convincing someone that something is real.

you know, right? I wish I could remember Better when I said of when I was widely understood that the whole thing was fake. Like I just wish I had that time mind more sorted in my head.

I feel like a lot of IT has passed into myth for me. I'm not sure. I don't know.

Uh, a friend of mine actually he he posted this on x like this week where he was like twenty five years ago today I walked out of a theater with my district friend who was truly upset. We watched three kids die in the world in new jersey. I didn't know how to explain him that he was fiction. He's now the biggest mega guy I know and apparently he's like super into cute on and was like celebrating the trump um not dying event with A A bottle of trump wine on facebook. I was getting all these details yesterday.

So hi hey IT IT is a straight .

line I think um you are asking about like who made money on this, which is not super clear but we do know who I got screwed um so either said that a basic room into career her mom was receiving condolence cards being like sorry for your loss an executive producer for the film, Kevin fox um introduced her to somebody and he like could not understand that he was dead because he he saw the movie, just assume that all those people were dead.

He also want to rise, which is like, I mean, those things suck anyways. But I SHE doesn't deserve a reality for this. I mean.

nobody does, but of course not. And it's a perfect example of why the razz suck. They have their worse now even but of that kind of like group y bully, think of like, oh, everyone's turned on this.

We we should rag on her too and it's like. You're talking about someone who is basically an unknown person you know I like and you're literally just doing this because IT seems fund abli her, right? Like that's how IT always feels to me with the raises. And it's a little easier when you're main front of like some fatuous actor who's self important and full themselves. You know like it's like you leave them.

The movie doesn't work without her .

even of course she's good. Beyond that is like you're off but like it's just then making fun of her. Yes.

SHE said that SHE got all kinds of comments about like her, her look and her body. Know people telling you that he should have stopped and put my on, uh, you know that he wasn't dressed right, crazy stuff. You asked about the money, so the directors got a big payout, but they saw the rights to artisan. And they also have gone on record saying that they did not like how IT was promoted as being. They did like the c, the K, V aspects of like the promotion.

And I understand that and they can even be told like, hey, but you're gna make a change. They must make something in residuals. I truly don't know.

I would love to know like that. That is like a hollywood forensic project. I would love someone to do like the player which project made two hundred and fifty times its budget. Where did the money go? Like where is IT .

who IT is fascinating um in two thousand, when they released player, which two the three actors suit artist uh and they reached a three hundred thousand dollars settlement, paid each of them over several years. The investors earned and estimated thirty five million to forty million .

dollars from dam that. The other thing I want to go back in time and invest in the blade project and then go to the sum. That sounds great.

I would like to as well. I also would like to understand like, could can you make something like this in a way where people don't get screw over, include like like is there a way to create a all sensation like this and not sort of be exploding .

someone I know I don't think so. All that, all the rules of treating people fairly, which are already, you know, sometimes posted, I think kind of go out the window if you're making a micro budget and like there's a lot of union protection or anything like that. I don't know enough about this to really speak with expertise, but I don't think, you know, I would always train towards people get skirt like how tense ago.

I think so too. I think you can kind of feel IT. And like when you have a hit like this, like any any kind of viral landscape, there is like this feeling of like you've done something kind wrong here and it's working.

Like there is that driving force of IT, which I think is a lot of this promotion by in the bay which falls in that category? Like you're kind of pulling one over on people, right? Have you heard of marble hornets? Of course.

I watched every episode of marble hornets so .

um four for the audience who might not know marvel hornett can you describe broad strokes marble hornets because I think it's the closes that a modern I A version of this has come to hitting .

IT IT was a youtube series that end for, I want to say, like five years, right? Two thousand, two thousand somewhere around there that would be a new episode, usually only a couple minutes long, like possibly as short as like fifty seconds a once in a while there would be one. There was more like five to ten minutes, and then eventually IT got, you know, much more intense and very long and all that. But that's like a sort of, I found footage, I think, about a guy who is trying to just make a movie with his friends called marble hornets. Great name yeah and then like something went wrong and his friend had disappeared and left a bunch of of tapes with him and he would start uploading these tapes being like here's another tape where and it's it's slender men like it's luder man ah what was .

so clever about IT, at least in the beginning, because I kind of fell off of IT, but when when I first watched IT was really creeping me out, was that you had to navigate youtube to different channels to find where they're uploading different pieces of content. So sort of like your the editor of blair witch, like it's putting IT on the audience. So i'm like going through and finding is like essentially haunted youtube channels that are uploading stuff in semi real time and IT actually scared the shit out of my really no .

made me marning was scary. I think partly the classic also just you're you're wired in, right? You're listening to IT on your headphones probably.

And IT would startle me in interesting ways. Marvel hornets rules is marble hornett hold up in my memory. I kind of went up its own as at a certain point, no offence to the good boys of marvel hornets but .

like there's a moment where like aliens like there's a one where aliens show up and the episode starts ting longer and you conduct their production budget couldn't like meet the the the realism sure they needed to hit you know yeah but the beginnings are creepy because it's like a kid recording himself and is bedroom being haunted by sunder men like IT rules in rips? So okay, do you have any sort of last thoughts about the blair which impact like you're mentioning clover field? Like has there been anything like this sense?

The Normal activity is probably .

the closest. But skinner's too.

maybe indian was an indian IT like activity made hundred, two hundred success story. Like, these guys made this movie for nothing. IT had a really simple hookey premise. IT had a really simple visual style of, like a static filming, a bad, and IT became a sensation and spd a franchise and all that stuff cool. But the thing about paranal, my activity is IT had a more traditional marketing campaign.

IT had this recover kind of grassroots angle of, like we showed this movie to a bunch of kids in a college town and hear them screaming at IT, like, you know, filming the audience, and like, you demand, you should demand this movie too, you know. And then they give you a wide release after a month. There are.

So, and IT became a big hit. I didn't have the hook of this is real, right? By that point, the found footage premise is accepted and is a cool way to tell a story.

But no one sitting in that theater, being like these people got performing activities. I guess you can kind of a fool yourself into thinking that if you want to have fun with that, okay, before blairite project, right? Your most famous found footage movies is just a few.

It's the kind holocaust by dog is another one I yeah. And then like after, you would think there would be an immediate boom. And instead, the only found footage movies are like true, like garbage in the hour, crap that nobody has ever heard of, like incident at lock next IT, like shit.

That s just like, people don't know what that is. Until paranal activity, which is eight years later, that seems to finally shake hollywood into life. And then you get, you know, that movie rec and you get clover field and you get on, which is a real, you get district nine, right? Which is like, let's do found footage is a sifry movie, you know, whatever, romero diary .

of the dead.

and get dial the dead, which is pretty spooking for that on the moon and then you eventually get V H. S, which is basically like, let's just make franchise short films of, like, what if you found creepy tapes in your house? Like just like let's take IT all the way IT exhausts people a certain point like I just become like, yeah you know i've seen a million of these .

yeah because they are kind of follow the same pattern. I mean, what is interesting to me is the long legs, uh, promotion that's currently happening where they're like or which is kind of this idea like the movie is so scary like it's are you throw up to shake your parents are so scared and I do wonder if that has like a kind of a troll to the blair, which where it's like instead of you are going to go in there believing this is real, you're going be so scared to wonder the matter.

It's really like you're going to over yourself.

You're gona throw over yourself like like a scare little animal because .

people kept asking me after I saw long legs, if I throw up, did someone throw up with this a story that someone threw up watching long legs?

no. So one, they recorded the heartbeat of the actors seeing nicless cage for the first time.

which about that fucking rips? Let's go. That's actually William castle.

Like that's fun. Great marketing cave. It's pretty good. Unfortunate the movie was absolute dog shit and i'm still mad about IT weeks later. Okay, I hate that movie so much. The thing about the throw up is from what's the whole movie from the perspective of the slashers?

Uh, in a violent nature, which is, yeah, I had a good time.

Apparently they recorded the audio of an audience member of vomiting during, like, a very grizly scene in that movie.

I know the scene there is a lot of wet squaring .

in the audio clip, and I listen to really.

really, really gross, know it's one of those things that I post the letter box review calling that that seen really gory. And now everyone's in my bucket mentioned going, who was that go? You can never call a movie scary. Everyone goes in being like, if this does not suck me into another dimension of fear, IT is overrated. And being scared is such a specific experience that relates not just to your own personality, but just like the situation you're in.

When you're watching a movie, I was so pissed watching smile, I find them like, right? I am a watch smile. And I was like, this sucks.

S this is scary. All this is just like basic. Nothing will be as scary as when I was eight years old. Watching event horizon for the first time is sleeping over. And like that, I just have to .

live with for the rest of my life. That's fine. That that is what IT is, I guess.

But I do have to wonder if like the the the emphasis from like studios neon and eight twenty four, like this movie is going to fuck you up forever is because they can't recreate the this is real. So they're like theyve sort of spd IT where it's like the movie is fake.

but it's so film technology to hards are imaginable. Yes.

this is we went to help. We record. We literally made hell, and you're going to go there for now and a half.

Uh, congrats. Which, you know, I would watch that actually. So I think think that is actually.

we've got here. They work, baby.

right? Let's read this up. I wants to leave us with this quote. So this is from the producer Kevin a. This is from Kevin fox.

And he said, were we the harbinger of fake news? I hope not. I don't know what's harmless or harmful anymore. I've lost track of everything, but that's what you do, right? You slowly rode the trust factor, which is an incredible quote, because you starts out being like I don't think because like the destruction of reality, but I don't know anymore because I destroyed reality.

I just, yeah, it's a bummer that people's lives were sort of, you know, locky ruined by this movie because I love you so much as a perfect little like piece of film history and viewing experience and all that. But I hope someone's happy, I guess, is the way to think you like. That's why i'm going asked about the money.

I hope somebody I mean, that sounds like producers made the most money out of IT, which is a real ship. The producers that kind of exploded the whole thing to make of our marketing campaign. But like I would like to start chopping this movie up in the ninety second clips and putting them on tiktok without any context because I think could I actually do very well. I think there's A A huge segment of gensec that does .

not know this move exists. Well, bring IT to them into two psychotic c eclipse. I think that could be done right? Just start posting the videos being like, hey, this, this is some weird footage. I found what guys .

I just found this, yeah, you guys, guys know about this. Thank you for coming on this this very spooky episode of panic world. I assume everyone knows where they can follow you online, but just in case where where can people send letter box based harassment to you interact?

I am David seems on x, but I don't use that. I can think anymore, I guess I guess I want a blue sky too but I am on letter box. I'm also David all sims and I have a pocket copying k check uh about movies that you can listen to and should listen to um if this is halloween, we're doing David linch right now um where we do directors.

photographers and yeah how far in advances you .

guys record quite far quite for my friend unless I guess it's hard to get and and and I feel created at the atlantic and you can read all my stuff there.

Well, thank you very much. Has been great.

Thank you.

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