Rob Zombie: Halloween Studio Meddling Was 'Psychotic'

Well, the Rick Baker scene, when he transforms into the werewolf in the chick's apartment, when he's in the nurse's apartment for the first time, and he's like, I'm fucking burning up! His back is popping. And it's like bright. It's a bright lit apartment. That's what makes it weird. Yes, the hand strip. Fucking wild, man, to this day. So weird. And then he tried to kind of recreate the actual makeup style werewolf with the Wolf Man with Benicio del Toro. Yeah. But it just wasn't there. The movie wasn't there. Just wasn't quite good enough. But there's one fucking badass scene where it becomes the Wolf Man when they're in the insane asylum and they're doing tests on him. Do you remember that film? I don't remember that film that much. I hate saying things because this was my thought at the time. I remember watching it thinking, Benicio del Toro seems like he doesn't want to be in this movie. Which is such a stupid thing for me to say because I don't know what the fuck he wants. Because I think he's a brilliant actor and I really like watching it. But it just had that feeling. I don't know what it was. And I've talked to people connected with that movie and I don't think it was a great experience for people for some reason. Maybe there's a lot of meddling. Probably a lot of meddling. Is that something that's a difficult thing to manage or do you not have to deal with that anymore? I had to deal with that a lot when I made the two Halloween movies for the Weinstein Company. Of course because they're this gigantic franchise. Well there was weird meddling. It was just kind of psychotic meddling. How so? Just weird. My phone was ringing all the time when I'm on set working and it'd be like, we think it should be this. I'm like, well while you're working? Yeah, well if I did that then everything we shot doesn't match. And it makes no sense. It's just like. They're doing coke and just coming up like this. I don't know. It's just weird thoughts all the time. But I mean a lot of times I don't want to name all these names of people but I remember working on one movie that never happened and whatever was the number one movie from that weekend was exactly the notes I would get for what we were working on. And I swear to you because it was around the time of private parts. And private parts was number one. I go, I guarantee you when I walk into the office they're going to say, can we get Howard Stern in this movie? And they did. No! Yes, it didn't matter what it was. If it was Starship Troopers, they'd go, can we get giant bugs in this movie suddenly? It wasn't the Halloween movies. It was another movie that never actually happened. And you're just like, this is insanity. The uncreative executive that wants to be creative is, that is a classic story in Hollywood. I mean that's really like a villain in a film about a guy trying to make a movie. Yeah, I mean I always thought, I will give credit for things. I remember working with Bob Weinstein and I always thought like the first thing he would say was spot on. Like they love movies and they have a good sense of movies. And he would say something, he'd be like, ah, that happens between the second act and the third act. It's a bunch of bullshit. It doesn't work. And you'd go, yeah, you're right. It is. But like when he went to the next level of the detail of what's wrong with it, it's kind of like someone going like that joke's not funny. Here's how it would be funny. And you're like, no, no, no. The first part of your sentence was all, I don't need you to tell me how to make it funny. And that's what happens. Like when you, I don't do them anymore, but back when I would be forced to do test screenings with an audience, you could just sitting there, you'll know, you know, okay, they're bored during this part. It's boring or they're not laughing. It's supposed to be funny. I don't now need that kid to get up and explain to the studio how to save the picture because he watched a movie once. So the process is like half good and half insanity.