In Burying the Ex, which opens in select theaters this week, Anton Yelchin has remained in an incompatible relationship with Ashley Greene longer than he should have, mainly because he doesn't want to hurt her. "That's a situation that a lot of people can sympathize with," says director Joe Dante (above, right), who first read Alan Trezza's script some seven years ago.
Explaining why he wanted to make the movie, Dante notes: "You're already going in with something the audience can relate to, and then because the characters are very likable, you're encouraged to root for them. Then when his girlfriend dies, he feels terrible.
"And then he meets another girl [Alexandra Daddario, above, also recently seen in San Andreas] who he likes very much, because she's just like him, she likes all the same stuff he does. And then the other girl comes back. And that struck me as an interesting premise. I can almost see it being Cary Grant in the '40s."
Dante first gained notice in the horror field for 1978's Piranha, a smart and funny take on Jaws, set at a summer camp and featuring fierce fish with razor-sharp teeth. In 1981, The Howling scored big, not only for the great practical efforts work by Rob Bottin, but for its darkly comic yet intensely frightening treatment of werewolves in the modern day. After dipping his toe into television by directing two episodes of Police Squad!, he helmed a memorable portion of the anthology film Twilight Zone: The Movie, which introduced him to producer/director Steven Spielberg.
That led to 1984's Gremlins, perhaps his best-known movie for its seamless fusion of comedy, horror, and the sheer pleasure of storytelling. In the three decades since, Dante has remained incredibly busy, building an impressive body of work that has encompassed films ('the Burbs, Matinee), television (Masters of Horror), and the Internet (Trailers From Hell, which offers audio commentary on movie trailers by Dante and other filmmakers).
Although he acknowledges the challenges of today's marketplace, a recent conversation revealed that Dante is resilient about getting his type of movies made...eventually. As to Burying the Ex, he liked that the script featured "two strong female characters, which are sometimes in short supply in a horror movie."
Many horror movies seem to focus more on something horrible happening, rather than on the characters.
"I think the characters end up being your conduits to your audience. Everything they experience they experience through the eyes of the cast. That's one of the reasons the casting is so important. Any director will tell you, I think, that the key to a succesful movie is casting the right people. And in this case, these were the right people."
How difficult is it to find strong characters in scripts, whether male or female?
"The phrase in Hollywood is 'fem jep,' the girl running away from the guy with the knife. We've seen plenty of that, particularly when she falls down. Those kind of stories don't interest me that much. I don't feel the need to tell that story."
Throughout his career, Dante has often mixed horror with comedy, usually revolving around romantic or family relationships. His terrific horror thriller The Hole -- available now on Netflix -- begins in a pleasant neighborhood where a family has recently moved, for reasons that are not initially revealed.
"That picture was a little bit tricky because it was supposed to be a family horror film. But the premise is child abuse, and how far to go with that, how much to suggest, and how much to show. It was a big issue for the producers while we were making the movie. They were a little bit afraid of it. It was their project! They came to me with it.
"But I said, 'If you're going to do it, you've got to do it.' You have to have the integrity to say, 'OK, this is what my movie is about, and you have to go to the place that it goes.' I think that's true of any project.
"The horror elements of it, no matter how grim they are, have to be respected. The situation is already absurd, most of the time, in a horror movie. You have to buy into it. And then it's so close to comedy. I believe you can't have one without the other. I think a lot of comedy is funnier the darker it is."
As revealed in the Trailers From Hell online series, Dante has a great passion about classic horror films that played with the formula, such as James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein, and readily acknowledges their influence on his work.
"In The Invisible Man, by the same director, you're encouraged to laugh at the Invisible Man as he runs around without any shirt on and just a pair of pants, and while you're laughing, he [takes somebody's head off]. That's not so funny. I like those contrasts. I think they complement each other."
Growing up in New Jersey in the 1950s, young Dante was an avid moviegoer.
"When you're a kid, you're attracted to things that are strange, weird, and scary. That's why Halloween is the most popular holiday. When I was a kid, I would go to these movies, and then I would come home and have nightmares, and my parents would ask me, 'Why do you see movies like that?' I couldn't help it!
"We watched the package of horror movies that were on television, which was the first chance that we got to see them, because they didn't play at theaters anymore and there was nowhere else to see them. And there were no magazines about them, until Famous Monsters of Filmland. And so it was a heady experience of discovery.
"I wish I could tell you what the appeal was! I liked that there were things that can't happen in real life. Like King Kong (1933). Kids watched it over and over and over. Imagine what it was like in '33! Wow! No one did anything like that. That kind of fantasy influenced a whole generation of kids.
"That's where you got Star Wars and that's where you got Jaws. These were all based on the movies that were, at the time, viewed as simple genre entertainment. Raiders of the Lost Ark was based on a serial, which was considered a low type of entertainment. Jaws was basically Creature From the Black Lagoon."
Nowadays there's more emphasis on the effects and what's realistic and what's not realistic. Does it need to be realistic to be an effective horror movie in today's environment?
"You can do anything now. Taste is no longer an issue. However, I think the less you show, the better. You end up with things that are much more terrifying.
"I think the movie that did the most effective job of turning a horror movie on its head was The Cabin in the Woods. It appealed to the audience on a certain level, by showing them what they wanted to see, and then turning it around and saying, now we're going to show you some other stuff too. I thought that was very clever. Of course, that sat on a shelf for three years. It's harder now than it used to be. The kind of movie I make is harder to get financed."
It's frustrating to see movies like yours, that translate very well to audiences worldwide, not getting the chance to be seen widely by people in theaters.
"It's been a complete sea change."
Burying the Ex opens in select theaters on Friday, June 19.
