Hey Mike! Can you tell us your experience getting HUSH made? I know you’ve talked about how you and Kate both risked a tone making that film for a multitude of reasons & and that people like Blum and Macy were taking a huge risk + I think you stated that if it went bad, you thought it would be the end of your feature career. (Not trying to quote you or anything, but just jogging from my memory of podcasts you’ve been on). Would love to learn more about that awesome film!
Thanks!
Welp, the thing about the WGA strike is that this is where all of my writing energy is going, so get ready for a LOOOOONG post!
THE SHORTEST PITCH OF MY CAREER
Back in the fall of 2014, my career was in its infancy. Oculus had only just come out in April, and while Before I Wake was complete, it wasn't yet released (it actually wouldn't be released for several more years, and that's a whole other story). So I only had Absentia and Oculus under my belt, and as far as in the industry was concerned, I had only made one "real" movie.
Kate and I were dating. She played Marisol, the primary "mirror ghost" in Oculus, and we would often talk about how and if our growing relationship would work if we continued to collaborate professionally. Was it possible to strike a balance there? We loved working together and we loved being together, was there a way to really do both?
One night we were out on a dinner date (I'm almost certain it was at Delphine in Hollywood, but I'm not 100% sure [Update: Kate proofread this post and says it was]) and we got to talking about independent films. About Absentia, which she had seen before we worked together on Oculus - about how sometimes, when there weren't opportunities out there for you, you had to roll up your sleeves and make your own.
I was a director who only had one "real" movie released, my second film was trapped in limbo, and I was terrified I wouldn't get another chance. Kate was a struggling actor who was not considered for any big roles. We were both struggling financially, both lived hand-to-mouth, were mired in debt, and wanted something to truly break us into the industry we'd fought to be a part of for so long. The question kept coming up - how do we take control of our careers?
Kate talked about her affection for Wait Until Dark with Audrey Hepburn, and I talked about my desire to curb my reliance on dialogue and explore purely visual storytelling, like Brian Henson's masterful episode of Nightmares and Dreamscapes, or the iconic episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which was titled "Hush").
I told her about an idea for a scene that I had, something that had been itching at me for a few months. It wasn't a full story, just quick vignette: a character is cooking in a kitchen. In the background, we see someone else slam up against their door, banging on the glass and begging to be let inside, but our protagonist can't hear them - perhaps because they're deaf, perhaps because there's some kind of supernatural interference. Behind them, we see a ghastly thing form out of the shadows (I'd thought maybe this was a story about a demon, or a maybe a witch) and kill the poor victim against the glass while our hero goes about their business, oblivious to the danger. And as the poor victim's body fell, the horrible creature would turn its attention to the oblivious protagonist in the kitchen.
We kicked the idea around over our meal, and at some point Kate asked if the scene would work in a slasher model, and the figure was a man in a mask instead of a supernatural entity. Then, believe it or not, we started talking about Die Hard. By the time we ordered desert, we had the basic structure of the movie scribbled down on a napkin, and I remember stepping up from the table and calling my Oculus and Before I Wake producer Trevor Macy from the restroom hallway to tell him about it.
The movie would be called Silence. It would be our version of Wait Until Dark, only instead of a blind character (played by Audrey Hepburn), Kate would play a deaf woman living alone in the woods who found herself stalked by a masked killer. We'd try to shoot the movie with almost no dialogue, and we'd write the script together from start to finish. And Kate would star.
That's why this movie existed at all... as a vehicle for her. Because we believed that if no one else will cast you as the lead of their film, you should create your own opportunity.
(Now, it's worth mentioning here that we later took some heat for not casting a deaf actress to play Maddie. Honestly, it simply wasn't something that had occurred to us at the time - before Maddie was ever conceived as a character, this movie was a vehicle for Kate. That's the only reason it exists. We created it together specifically to launch her career as a leading lady. No one else was ever going to be considered for that role.
In the years that followed, we've listened to the criticism. We meant no offense, and actually - naively - thought we were doing something positive for representation by creating this strong, deaf protagonist. We hired and collaborated with a deaf consultant throughout the process, who was happy to work with us and thought the character was really exciting. Kate studied ASL for months, and we believed we were doing something good for the deaf community. We were surprised by the criticisms, and forced to reexamine the whole thing after the fact.
If I had to do it over again, I would still cast Kate - again, the whole point was for her to help create her own breakout opportunity - but we likely would have conceived the character differently. If we made the movie today, Kate would still play Maddie Young - we just might have made her able to hear.)
Because this was designed to be a starring vehicle for Kate, and a very experimental movie for me, we knew we'd have to do it on the cheap. Kate's only feature film credits at this point were her small part in Oculus and some roles in smaller Indies. But she had co-created this movie, and her casting was not negotiable - it just meant we'd have to make this as inexpensive as possible.
Trevor Macy had produced Oculus and Before I Wake and we'd had a great experience together (he would eventually go on to produce everything I've made since Oculus). At this stage in the relationship, though, we'd had two successful creative experiences, but only one movie had been released. Fortunately, he liked the basic pitch. He wasn't sure he'd want to be the only person on the hook for a movie like this, and he echoed that he'd support Kate in the role only if the financial risk was mitigated, but he was on board.
My next call was to Jason Blum. Jason had come aboard Oculus at TIFF and helped get that movie distributed, and since then we'd talked about a few potential projects (we'd make Ouija: Origin of Evil later this same year). I went to Blumhouse with my hat in my hand to pitch Jason on this idea.
The pitch was simple - Wait Until Dark with a deaf protagonist, high suspense and almost no dialogue. I said it was for Kate to star, and for us to co-write. He didn't balk at that either, just said "well that's okay but you know it's gotta be for a certain price." I agreed, and told him Trevor had said the same.
"Great, let's do it," he said, and got up. It was the fastest pitch meeting of my career - I think it probably still is. I was in there for less than five minutes.
He stopped in the doorway on the way out. "Wait, buddy - tell me one thing. Does she live?"
"Of course," I said.
"Great, let's do it," he said again, and he was gone. He would co-finance with Intrepid Pictures, and Jason and Trevor put their heads together to sort out the details.
When they called to commence us on the script, Trevor had other news. "Martin Scorsese is making a movie called Silence, by the way. You're gonna need a new title."
WRITING HUSH
Kate and I started writing immediately, but it was one of the most unusual writing processes I've ever experienced. By this point, we had just moved in together and were sharing a small rental in Glendale. We spent the first few weeks role-playing various scenarios. I'd go outside, Kate would lock the doors, and I'd look for different ways to get into the house or to mess with her, and she'd react and look for things she could do inside to gain an advantage.
I can only imagine how this looked to the neighbors.
We'd then sit together and write down what worked and what didn't, and started cultivating a list of strategies and set pieces that would become the building blocks of the movie.
Once we had a solid outline and had identified about a dozen set pieces that we thought would be exciting, we decided to get out of the house to do the actual writing. This led to two writing trips: the first as a "staycation" in a hotel in West Hollywood, where we locked ourselves up for about a week to generate the first draft.
The script was very unconventional to read. It came in at a little over 70 pages and read almost like an instruction manual. Because there was so little dialogue, each scene was written as a basic blocking. There wasn't much use for prose - this was just action.
There was a little fun bit of trivia at the start of the script, where Maddie's character is writing a book. We didn't know what to do for that, as we'd have to hear portions of it read aloud in the movie, so I opted to use the manuscript for an unfinished novel I'd been trying to write for years. I'd also tried to do it as a screenplay, and even a TV pitch. It was called Midnight Mass, and I figured I'd probably never get to finish it, so might as well give it to Maddie Young.
Her novel, Midnight Mass, and her characters (Erin and Riley) would fill out the early scenes. (I still get a kick out of seeing Samantha Sloyan, who would later play Bev Keane in Midnight Mass, holding the book, talking about how much she loved Erin and Riley. Bullshit, Bev.)
The script was well-received by Trevor and Blum, and there was a suggestion that we might want to open up the story at a certain point and involve another character.
We decided to take a field trip to do this next pass on the script. So in November 2014, we went to the Stanley Hotel in Colorado, and stayed in the infamous room 217 - the same room Stephen King stayed in when he conceived The Shining.
It was a wonderful and inspiring place to write, and we came out of it with a finished script. The new character we added was Sarah's boyfriend, a neighbor, who comes to Maddie's place looking for her. It results in a scene inspired by the scene in Die Hard when John McClane meets Hans for the first time.
We named the character "John Stanley" - a combination of the character John McClane, and the Stanley Hotel. Michael Trucco would play him in the movie.
The most controversial part of the script was a lengthy sequence in which Maddie imagines several possible outcomes, and we see them play out as she talks to herself in her own mind. There was concern from the producers that this would knock people out of the movie.
I fought hard for it, not only because it was a great sequence, I thought, but because it was also a test run for the very narrative device that I wanted to employ if I ever got to make Gerald's Game, which at this time was a dream project.
The compromise was that we'd shoot it both ways, protecting a version of the movie where we never venture into her thoughts.
We never did get around to filming that other version. ;)
The great John Gallagher Jr. tries on his mask for the very first time
PRODUCTION
Production begin in March, 2015. We shot in Fairhope, Alabama. This was also where we shot Oculus and Before I Wake, so I was very familiar with the area. The cast and any non-local crew stayed at the Grand Hotel in Fairhope, which was under construction at the time, so I remember it being really damn loud.
We cast John Gallagher Jr to play The Man, and John was delighted for a chance to play a bad guy. People often ask me if there was a backstory created for this character to explain his motivations - there was, and Kate, John and I are the only people who know it. I like it that way.
For Sarah, Maddie's doomed neighbor, we cast Samantha Sloyan. She and Kate were best friends, and Kate really fought for her. It was my first time working with Sam, and I was so blown away by her talent that I remember telling Trevor we'd be working with her again as soon as possible. Later, she'd play Leigh Crane in Hill House, and then show the world what she could do as Bev Keane in Midnight Mass. But for now, she was only here for a few days to get brutally murdered.
Sam, John and Kate - right before we cut all of John's hair off.
We had a shoestring budget, which was expected, but still quite the challenge. We shot the film sequentially, which was a new experience for all of us. It meant our first day was a daylight shoot, our second was a split, and then we were only shooting nights.
Crew call was about an hour before sunset, and we knew it was time to wrap because the sun would rise and it would be impossible to carry on. We got as far as we could each night, and we shoot six day weeks... so it ended up being an 18 day shoot, six day weeks, night for night.
It was absolutely surreal and disorienting.
The exhaustion was very real. We'd shoot all night with no sense of time, and then the sun would rise and we'd trundle back to the hotel, where we'd collapse all day while trying to drown out the sound of the construction. Then the alarm would go off in the late afternoon, we'd trudge out of bed, and head back to set.
This was particularly tough on Kate. She was in every single scene, just about every single shot, so she never got a single break. And we were shooting so fast, she would finish a set-up and just sit down on set for five or ten minutes while we set up the next one. It was relentless.
She also did her own stunts. We couldn't afford a stunt double, so everything you see in the movie is Kate. As the shoot went on, it took its toll. A lot of the exhaustion and bruising you see on Kate in the movie is very, very real. This movie kicked the living shit out of her.
Michael Trucco as "John Stanley"
The set was REALLY cramped, and our stunts were very low-tech.
This might look like a domestic dispute, but we were just blocking the final fight while John was getting his contacts put in.
This was the slate for the very last shot of the movie, an MOS insert shot (very anticlimactic). Kate asked to hold the slate. And you can really see how exhausted she was.
We packed up and got ready to return to LA. A lot of our crew already knew what they were doing next - another low budget movie was coming to Fairhope, and Blumhouse had loved a lot of our crew. Just about everybody was going to roll over to the next Blumhouse movie, also shot on a modest budget, and by a first time director. The gang at Blumhouse had been very impressed with what we had done on such a low budget, and how efficient and talented our crew had been. They hoped to move a little of that luck over to this new film, and support its burgeoning director.
That movie was Get Out, and that director was Jordan Peele.
As a huge chunk of our crew buckled up for that movie, we wished them well and went home.
POST PRODUCTION
The movie edited very quickly - we didn't really have many options. In fact, I'd been editing while we were shooting, doing a rough assembly to make sure we had everything we needed. By the time Michael Trucco showed up on set to play John, he asked if he could see pictures of Sam Sloyan (who played his on-screen girlfriend), as they'd never met, and Sam was already back in Los Angeles.
I told him I could do better than that - I let him watch the assembled edit of the movie, just about up to his entrance.
It was a good thing post was so fast, because we dove immediately into prep on Ouija: Origin of Evil for Blumhouse. I'd spend all summer prepping that movie, and shooting all fall while Hush tried to find its way to a distributor. Because we shot Ouija in Los Angeles, I could easily attend some of the test screenings we were having for Hush. It tested through the roof, and the audiences were bombastic at the end. I really thought we had a theatrical hit on our hands.
THE COLLABORATION OF MY LIFE
Having not only survived creating a movie together, but truly enjoying the experience of collaborating in all aspects of our lives, Kate and I figured we absolutely had to get married. Just about a year after we wrapped, we did.
Trevor Macy, producer of Hush and now my partner at Intrepid Pictures, officiated our wedding in February, 2016.
AFTERMATH
In March 2016, a month after our wedding, Hush had its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival.
Jason Blum, Kate, me, and Trevor
I'll always be a little bummed that we sold the movie to Netflix. I've been fortunate enough to see this movie in a packed theater on just a handful of occasions, and it was such a wonderful theatrical experience. You can hear a pin drop for long stretches, punctuated by bursts of applause as Maddie claws moments of victory out of her situation.
But man, that little movie did everything we ever could have hoped it would. Kate's performance got excellent reviews, as did the movie itself. It remains my highest rated feature on Rotten Tomatoes, sporting a Certified 93% Fresh rating.
When it came time to cast The Haunting of Hill House, I wanted Kate to play Theo Crane. And I know for certain that if Hush did not exist (and had it not performed so strongly for Netflix), they never would have let me cast her.
Hush was, in every way, my last truly independent film. It was the closest I've felt to making Absentia. Kate and I had dinner one night, a spark was lit, and we had to will this little movie into existence every day for two years.
For the last seven years, it's been available on Netflix. Their license agreement ran out in April this year, and we decided to take it somewhere else, based in no small part to Netflix's (unimaginably short-sighted) refusal to support physical media releases. The idea of this movie vanishing forever into the bowels of Netflix's content grinder was just a little more than I could handle. We are exploring our options for a new distributor now, and will announce our plan shortly. But I look back on Hush with an enormous fondness. It was one of the most difficult shoots of my life, strictly logistically speaking, but it was driven by passion, determination, and total collaboration with my very best friend in the world.
I’m truly obsessed with all of this 😻 so much info that I did not know and just makes me respect the absolute, raw talent of Kate and Mike even more! HUSH was an instant favorite of mine and Kate also instantly became a favorite actress; Hill House and especially Midnight Mass really cemented that for me. She’s just talented beyond measure imo 🖤🖤🖤
