Jackie Earle Haley and Freddy Krueger
From Hollywood Reporter; Source – Rueters
A vivid imagination has always come in handy in Hollywood, but these days it’s re-imaginations that are running wild.
For Samuel Bayer, who rose to fame directing the Nirvana video “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” dreaming up the new “A Nightmare on Elm Street” was the ticket to launching his feature directing career.
“Nightmare,” opening April 30 through New Line/Warner Bros., stars Jackie Earle Haley, an Oscar nominee for his supporting role in “Little Children,” as iconic slasher Freddy Krueger.
The role of Freddy was originated by Robert Englund, who starred in Wes Craven’s 1984 original, five sequels and 41 episodes of the late ’80s TV spin-off “Freddy’s Nightmares.”
“Everybody knows who Freddy Krueger is,” Bayer explained. “To reinvent this stuff for a new generation is truly exciting.”
Director Samuel Bayer
Casting the right Freddy was essential for the new film to work. When Bayer came on board in early 2009, the only actor he envisioned for the role was Haley. Bayer had admired his work from 1976′s “The Bad News Bears” through recent hits like “Watchmen” and “Shutter Island.”
“There was an audition tape he’d made for ‘Watchmen’ that I got my hands on, which just blew my mind. That was really helpful in deciding that he was the right guy for the job.”
In fact, he adds, Haley stole that movie: “He was the one character you really remembered and that you had empathy for.”
It’s remarkable, he said, how quickly “Nightmare” came together, considering he’s “someone who has been locked in development hell for so many different projects in the last decade.
Fifty days of shooting began in late April 2009 in Chicago with a budget Bayer puts at about $30 million. He treated “Nightmare” like a much bigger film, observing, “We really approached the movie very ambitiously — whether it’s the stunt work or the number of locations we went to or the sets we built.”
So it was a tough shoot, but he says that wound up working to the film’s advantage.
“When we were shooting at 5 o’clock in the morning in an abandoned factory we’d been shooting in for two weeks and nobody had slept and Jackie’d been wearing the makeup for 18 hours, there was a lot of pain involved. And that pain, I think, translated on the screen.
Was his background in music videos and commercials helpful in directing his first feature?
“I feel like a virgin that’s finally had sex and I can finally talk about it,” he laughed.
“In music videos and commercials we have a very, very fast turnaround. From start to finish, it might be two to three weeks, including prep and post. This was a year of my life and nothing can quite prepare you for how much focus it takes to see a project all the way through. It’s a different mindset.”
