Late Night Classics – Popcorn

The horror genre has always been a gimmicky one when it comes to the marketing department, and there was one man who was a pioneer of making a trip to the theater a fun and interactive experience - William Castle. He was a master of promotion who pulled out all of the stops in the innocent era of the 50′s and 60′s.

Three of the most popular ploys that William Castle used were: hand-held joy buzzers attached to the underside of the seats [The Tingler], an inflatable glow in the dark skeleton attached to a wire that floated over the audience during the final moments of some showings of the film [House on Haunted Hill], and a certificate for a one thousand dollar life insurance policy from Lloyd’s of London that was given to each customer in case he/she should die of fright during the film [Macabre].

Unfortunately for me, being born in 1971 means I missed the boat on a more unpretentious time for cinema, one where audition participation wasn’t individuals giving a running commentary or texting. Two films waxed nostalgic and captured the spirit of that bygone era: Matinee and Popcorn. Actress Jill Schoelen is no stranger to horror fans, having appeared in The Stepfather, Curse II: The Bite, Cutting Class, The Phantom of the Opera, When a Stranger Calls Back, and my personal favorite – Popcorn.

Jason Bene: You weren’t the original lead in the film. Three weeks into the shoot you replaced Amy O’Neill. Why were you brought in at the last minute to take over the role of Maggie?

Jill Schoelen: Amy was the girl from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. To be honest with you, I don’t really know that much about it. This is all I can tell you. I did read for the part and I was somebody’s first choice. I don’t remember who. Somebody in charge wanted her and somebody in charge wanted me. We are obviously two very different types. I just forgot about the film and went off and did a movie called Rich Girl. I was just finishing wrapping Rich Girl and on the last day of filming I got a phone call saying they wanted me to do this other movie. I literally jumped on a plane and went over there and started work. My very first shot was the scene in the beginning of the movie where I’m laying in bed and I wake up in the morning. When they were filming that I was so tired because I had arrived in the middle of the night. I had actually fallen asleep while they were filming it and the director had to wake me up.

Jason Bene: Wasn’t the film shot in Jamaica?

Jill Schoelen: It was shot in Jamaica and I got no notice. I got on a plane and got to Jamaica at ten or eleven o’clock at night. I had my assistant with me, but then I had to do wardrobe fitting. I had to work at six o’clock the next morning and my wardrobe fitting was until about two or three in the morning. Then I had to be in make-up by six. They had shot a lot of the film, literally weeks worth. They replaced the director and the leading actress. The entire film was shot in Jamaica, and then maybe a month or two later they flew me to Toronto and they reshot a few pieces of the film at a theater. There was a ton of ADR. That’s why some of the lines seem akward. You have to put the time into ADR and do it properly. I love to do ADR, but still, you have to get it right. In Jamaica, I am sure they have improved their film productions. They had just done Cocktail with Tom Cruise and all of the local crew talked about how they all worked on it. That was their big movie. Now there is a ton of production in Jamaica. They were really not up to speed and the sound was really poorly done. They had horrific sound problems and much of the movie had to be ADR.

Jason Bene: Do you have an idea why they replaced director Alan Ormsby?

Jill Schoelen: From my undertanding I was his first choice, then they fired him and brought me in. I was not the leading choice of the producers, and yet, they ended up using me. Maybe if they just hired me from the beginning he would have never been fired.

Jason Bene: Did you ever meet Alan Ormsby? What was your working relationship like with the new director, Mark Herrier?

Jill Schoelen: Mark was great. I met the other gentleman at the audition. I seem to remember shaking hands with him or something. If memory serves correct, I do remember being told I was his first choice, and the irony is they let him go, and then they let go the girl who was his second choice.

Jason Bene: Bob Clark was one of the producers of Popcorn. He and Alan were good friends going back to the movies they did in the 70′s, Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things and Dead of Night. He is listed as an uncredited producer. How involved was he on the project?

Jill Schoelen: Bob was involved with a lot of other bigger pictures like Porky’s. He probably uncredited himself. He was there every step of the way. I have very fond memories of him.

Jason Bene: Sadly, we lost him a few years back in a tragic car accident. He also directed the original Black Christmas.

Jill Schoelen: I think you are right, with Margot Kidder. He was very unassuming and didn’t have any kind of Hollywood air about him at all. He was like somebody’s uncle.

Jason Bene: How excited were you that Dee Wallace Stone was going to be playing your mom?

Jill Schoelen: I was excited about that because I am a numero uno fan of E.T. I love E.T. and just feel that movie changed my life because it was so connected to this message. I had a good friend in that at the time, Drew Barrymore. She and I had done a movie called Babes in Toyland with Pat Morita and Keanu Reeves. We had spent a lot of time together in Germany. I got to hear stories from her and her mom’s point of view. At the top of my list were The Wizard of Oz and E.T. It was a thrill to work with Dee from that point of view.

Jason Bene: You and Dee both have a large amount of genre credits on your resume and were both labeled horror actress at the time.

Jill Schoelen: [Laughs] When I came onto this movie I was in my own world at the time. It was a different movie for me because everybody else knew each other. Of all of the movies that I had worked on, Popcorn was probably the one that I did not interact that much with the other actors. I just kind of showed up and then went back to my hotel room. They had already made friends and had their buddy system. I did hang out with Tony Roberts. The people I hung out with were the local people. I got into the Jamaican culture. I was working more than anybody because they had all done there parts and I was playing catch up. I was brought in halfway into production. It was a strange experience because I have scenes where the other actors are talking back to me and their responses are the work they did with Amy and not necessarily with me. Sometimes even for close-ups they wouldn’t even need the other actor because they just put me in like a piece of a puzzle. I haven’t seen the movie in years and I have probably only seen it once or maybe twice. I do remember one specific wide angle shot with the same wardrobe, but clearly the girl that was in my outfit has blonde hair and it’s in the movie. It’s a scene where they are all at school.

Jason Bene: Were you aware of the films of William Castle?

Jill Schoelen: Yes. I remember very clearly when my parents would go out for the night and we would stay up late and watch television and the only two stations were Channel 9 and Channel 13. That’s the part about Popcorn that I think is so brilliant. The jewel part of the movie is the film-within-a-film that captured and poked fun at those movies from the 50′s.

Jason Bene: People love Popcorn because it was unheard of for a modern horror piece to embrace the classic themes and styles that just aren’t around anymore.

Jill Schoelen: I think the movie is extremely unique, but it seems like a lot of my movies haven’t been seen by a lot of people. Heavy genre people have seen them. I wish more people had seen Popcorn from that point of view because it really had that fun, different element to it. It is not indicative of horror movies today. It had a unique quality about it.

Jason Bene: Did the idea of a masked figure hiding in a theater and stalking you give you a case of déjà vu? That parallels The Phantom of the Opera adaption that you starred in with Robert Englund.

Jill Schoelen: I’ve never looked at it like that.

Jason Bene: Did Popcorn receive a theatrical run?

Jill Schoelen: It definitely did. There was a new independent company that was trying to compete on some level with the big studios and it was called Studio Three Film Corporation; they picked up two of my movies, Rich Girl and Popcorn. They each came out in a couple thousand theaters across the country. They were put out a couple months apart. That is something that I should feel grateful for that all of my movies went theatrical, whereas a lot of horror films went straight to video. All of the big ones got big releases. They just didn’t do big box-office. Horror in the late 80′s was not that popular. Everything is timing and everything is hills and valleys. What goes around comes around. Wouldn’t you agree that wasn’t a huge box-office time for horror?

Jason Bene: There are a lot of different theories that fans have, but what I believe happened was by the late 80′s there had been too many sequels to the major franchises. Characters who were once scary were now funny and people got tired of it. That carried over into the 90′s and horror didn’t find its footing until Scream re-energized it in 1996. Half of that film was for horror fans and the other half was for people who enjoyed Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox from their television work. Horror fans weren’t the only ones who went to go see it.

Jill Schoelen: I agree with you. The cast really brought people to see it who wouldn’t normally see that kind of film. I just thought it was silly. That mask was silly.

Jason Bene: If I were to take a poll on what movie of yours that fans would most want to see a retrospective on, I am fairly positive Popcorn would win hands down.

Jill Schoelen: You know what film fans consistently say they like without fail? When a Stranger Calls Back. I can’t tell you how many people say that it is so much better than the first one, but almost nobody has seen that movie, Jason.

Jason Bene: I finally got around to seeing it last year because so many of my friends said it was better than the original; a movie that I didn’t really like at all. The first twenty minutes of When A Stranger Calls Back are so suspenseful because I had no idea where the killer was and how is it he could be in two places at once. At the end where he is camouflaged against the wall is a humdinger.

Jill Schoelen: Wasn’t than an incredible make-up job? That was real. What they shot was not fake. They shot that so he was painted like the wall and you could really not tell the difference. That’s how good of a job they did. It is one of my favorite performances on film. That film was super intense to make. They took it very seriously. It was made when all of the movies were being made by Showtime and HBO. They went through a little period were they were really trying to make movies. It was made  specifically by Showtime for Showtime. The bad news is because of that, if you didn’t get it right about that time, the movie was gone. It never plays on cable. It is so suprising to me that you weren’t a fan of When a Stranger Calls?

Jason Bene: I saw it at an age where all I wanted was blood and guts and it was more about suspense. It lived off of that “there’s somebody in the house” line. In one of the rare occasions, the sequel is much better.

Jill Schoelen: It suprised me that so many people constantly say that because I love the original, and my level of horror that I like is much more on the suspenseful side, much more ethereal and suspenseful as opposed to blood and guts. The Phantom of the Opera is a perfect example. They took this incredibly gorgeous film with cinematography that was stunning. The costume designer, John Bloomfield, went on to become an Academy Award nominee for his costumes. They took this beautiful film with this incredible story of good and evil and went far too much into the blood and guts. It cut out a genuine, crossover audience that would have loved to have seen the movie. And I think for true horror people, it was too beautiful, too glamorous, and too real. I don’t think they should have made it so much that way, but that’s just my personal little opinion.

Jason Bene: Can you believe it has almost been twenty years since Popcorn was released?

Jill Schoelen: [Laughs] Do we have to say that out loud? Everything for me was twenty to thirty years ago.

Jason Bene: Fans will appreciate hearing from you about Popcorn because I have never seen an interview with you about it.

Jill Schoelen: They didn’t have the budgets because of the way they were released. They put the money into the advertising with commercial time and posters. I remember Rich Girl and Popcorn were on the side of every bus and on the back of bus stops. I remember seeing it everywhere. We did no PR for it. They didn’t set me up to do anything. Isn’t that bizarre? In my entire career of making movies, almost nobody did anything with the horror magazines. Nobody ever asked for an interview. It was just a different time. I was a little popular. I did other genres. I did Billionaire Boys Club and that was nominated and won for Best Mini-Series. I was in Hurly Burly with Sean Penn. Sean also wrote and directed another show called The Kindness of Women in Los Angeles and I starred in that. I was popular at the time. I would go outside of my house and there would be the photographers at the bottom of my driveway. Everywhere I went my picture was constantly being taken. No interviews from horror magazines. They never asked for an interview.

Not only is Jill Schoelen a marvelous actress, she is an accomplished singer as well. Her Jazz Vocal music CD, Kelly’s Smile, was released this year and is available for download at iTunes and CD Universe.