Directors Meir Zarchi and Steven R. Monroe talk I Spit on Your Grave

Recently at this year’s Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, I had the rare chance to not only interview director Steven R. Monroe about his remake of one of the most controversial films of all time, but I also was able to interview Mier Zarchi, the writer and director of the original I Spit on Your Grave (also known as Day of the Woman, who also serves as the executive producer on the remake). After viewing the upcoming remake at the film festival, I was lucky enough to ask both directors in depth questions about both of their infamous films and gut-wrenching experiences on the sets. Read on to find out more about their attraction to the revenge sub-genre and their shocking personal anecdotes from the set.

*Warning: Spoilers Ahead!*

Serena Whitney: Steven, what was your first reaction to the original film? You had said at the screening you had watched it at such a young age.

Steven R. Monroe (Director of the I Spit on Your Grave remake): I grew up in the film industry. Both of my parents were in the film industry and so is my sister. I mean, I saw Clockwork Orange when I was ten. (laughs) If the film I was watching was good, I became dramatically and cinematically involved in it. The original I Spit on Your Grave did all that to me and it just kept following me around several days afterward.

Serena: Meir, what initially made you want to make such a controversial film?

Meir Zarchi (Director of the original I Spit on Your Grave): I happened to witness a girl after she had been raped and she came out of the bushes bleeding, muddied, dirty and totally naked. She was also shivering and had a broken jaw. I took her to the police and the police had treated her like she was just an item on a shelf.  While I was saving her, my daughter was with me and she was 8 years old at the time and a friend of mine was there as well. We insisted to take her to the hospital after the police station and she was there about a week. Her father wanted to give me money and I said, “Absolutely not!” I did what I had to do. He sent me a letter saying thank you and to tell me she was doing better and she was starting to eat and that the police were continuing to look for the culprits and that was the last I heard from that situation.

Serena: And that was what inspired you to write and direct I Spit on Your Grave?

Zarchi: Yes, you read these horrible things happen everyday in the paper, but if you’re lucky, you don’t face it. I had an 8 year old daughter at the time. The girl who was raped was 18 or 19. I kept thinking, ‘what if that happened to my daughter?’ That was the catalyst. I just kept thinking about the revenge. If it happened to my daughter, my sister or my wife. I kept thinking how I would go about getting satisfaction. And there you are.

Serena: It’s a very heinous crime because the punishment hardly ever matches the crime and it happens so often. People actually want to see revenge happen as it unfortunately hardly ever happens in real-life.

Zarchi: I can tell you a little case in which it DID happen. A woman named Isabella was raped by three or four people that she knew. She took a shotgun and went to all of their homes and shot them dead one after the other. She went to prison for about twenty years and a lot of women were saying, “Get her out! She did it in self-defense!” They eventually reduced her sentence. Google it! Find out about it!

Serena: I will.  Both films are very similar and yet different in many ways. Steven, was it your intention to focus more on the revenge angle in the remake rather than focusing on the humiliation of the protagonist?

Monroe: No, that was decided by the producers and the distributors. There was an overall feeling that in this day and age that we could certainly push the [revenge violence] a lot farther and I think there was an expectation that the audience would want more of that.

Serena: People always say they’re desensitized, but I don’t agree. I think we are a little desensitized to gore, but not to subject matter. I think films in the seventies got away with a lot more.

Monroe: I agree. We just have more cinematic effects. (laughs)

Serena: It’s such a notorious film. Did you have any doubts taking on such a challenging project?

Monroe: I didn’t have any personal doubts at all as far as directing the film. From day one I had concerns about the fans. It was a very thin line to walk. I wanted the fans of the original film to be satisfied and the new fans who never seen the original to be happy too. It was a really big juggling act. It was more of a concern than a doubt or fear. I was just making sure there was always a focus kept on that, because I had done a few other horror films and I learned out of all the genres, horror fans are the toughest to make happy. They want to go in hating the film and you have to win them over. People don’t go in saying, “This is going to be great!” They say, “This is going to suck.” (laughs)

Serena: There is such a negative stigma towards remakes especially in the horror community.

Monroe: Absolutely!

Serena: What would you say made you confident enough to re-tell the story and try to make everybody happy?

Monroe: If you don’t have the confidence in yourself as a filmmaker, the film is going to suck. So, if you don’t have confidence especially as a director, you shouldn’t be directing. It’s like what my wife says, “I can see you on the set and you’re confident and then you get home and you can’t even find your car keys.” Confidence is something that is bred into people and definitely with people who grew up in the film industry like myself. So no, I never lacked the confidence to re-tell this story.

Serena: This is a question for both of you. What were the most difficult scenes to shoot in both versions of your films and how did you get in the right mind frame to shoot them?

Zarchi: For me, it was the rape on the rock.

Serena: That part is always embedded in my head.

Zarchi: Me too! I was on the set and thinking I must be crazy. I couldn’t even look at it. I had one shot where they put [Camille Keaton] on the rock and just as one of the men penetrates her from behind, we had a beautiful shot of her face and we slowly moved the camera upwards towards the tips of the trees and trees were swaying below and we hear screams from below. I had the choice to shoot it like this and cut back to them after the man pulls out of her or leave the camera on them all the time. The shot with the trees and hearing the screams in the background was much more frightening than seeing them rape Jennifer. It was too chilling. It was much more stronger not to see them. I should have left it in.

Monroe: Well, Tarantino did it in Reservoir Dogs. Maybe he stole your shots. (laughs)

Zarchi: So, we didn’t take the first take and I said to Camille Keaton to walk towards the forest and to fall down on the rock and to bump her head against the tree. She told me, “You’re crazy! I’m not doing that! I’m going to hurt myself. You do it! Show me how you do it, but you have to be as naked as I am!” So I started to take off my clothes and everybody is laughing and when I was about to take off my underpants, she said, “NO! That’s enough!” So I did it. I fall against the rock and bumped head against the tree trunk and then she finally agreed to do the scene. So THAT was difficult.

Monroe: The whole shoot was difficult for me! (laughs) Emotionally, the rape scenes were incredibly difficult to do. To me, the Jennifer character is anybody’s wife, daughter, sister and mother. As a director, when I’m dealing with trying to put these scenes together, I’m watching these takes, or I’m blocking these takes or I’m trying to talk to Sarah [Butler] about where to go with her character or thinking about my wife. After the first rape scene [in the remake] and the first take, I thought it wasn’t going to get much harder than that. [The first take with the Matthew rape.]

It took everything out of me throughout the whole five minute take to stop myself from yelling ‘cut.’ I wanted to yell cut and get her the hell out of there. I thought that was going to be the worst of it until we did the first take of the second rape at the fishing hole. Sarah [Butler] was okay with shooting the scenes and I use the word ‘okay’ very lightly. We did the first take which started with her getting head dunked in the puddle all the way until the end of the scene. I yelled ‘cut’ and she jumped up and ran off and the wardrobe people put a robe on her and I ran down to where Sarah was and she grabbed me and started crying hysterically for fifteen minutes. She’s absolutely brilliant because after that was done, she turned to me and said, “Sorry about that. We need to go again.” (laughs) The same thing happened after the first assault scene when Jeff Branson grabbed her by the teeth and pulled her down and you could see the veins popping out of her head and tears running her cheeks. It took a lot out of her.

Serena: I recently read in Carol Clover’s Men, Women and Chainsaws that statistically the original film was rented out nine times out of then to men under the age of twenty-five. Do you think your version of I Spit on Your Grave will be more receptive to females?

Monroe: I think it will be because of the times and I don’t think it’s because there’s anything we’ve done in this version that’s different that will make women go, ‘Oh, this is a film more for us!’ Obviously, the revenge is more and I think female viewers will get more of an emotional release from those scenes. The times are different. Women are allowed to think differently and women are allowed to react differently than they could even thirty- five years ago. I don’t think you could find more than a handful of female horror fans thirty years ago and there are armies of them and that is great!

Serena:The character of Jennifer is portrayed very differently in the remake. The original version she lures men to their deaths through her sexuality. In this version, she doesn’t even bother to waste time on that. She stalks them and traps them. How did you avoid using her sexuality as bait?

Monroe: That was a choice made in the initial draft and it just kind of stayed.

Zarchi: Yes, it was not our decision for the initial change, but did you like Jennifer luring men in the original or did you prefer Jennifer in the remake? (smiles)

Serena: I liked both portrayals of the character actually. I think it made sense in the original to seduce her assailants. She had to use what she had. (laughs)

Zarchi: Exactly!

Serena: How did you react to hearing about the fainting that took place at last night’s screening?

Monroe: I couldn’t believe it! I was far more concerned about the man and hope he’s okay.

Zarchi: What? Somebody fainted last night? Wow!

Thanks to Steven R. Munroe, Meir Zarchi and ANCHOR BAY ENTERTAINMENT (here) for setting up this amazing interview. Watch out for my review shortly and make sure to catch the unrated version of I Spit on Your Grave (2010) in theatres this October!