'Urban Legends' Director Happy To Get Gory
John Ottman Makes His Directorial Debut With 'Final Cut'
How so? Ottman packed a scary jolt followed by a triple dose of good old-fashioned nauseating gore into one scene near the beginning of the movie.
"I figured if blood's what they want, if gross-out's what they want, then I'm going to go for the jugular," Ottman told about the scene, which features ice, a dog and a human organ. "To tell you the truth, it was a guilty pleasure because I loved shooting it, and I loved watching it because it's so over-the-top."
Instead of making his film a continuation of the first "Urban Legend" (1998), Ottman wanted to take the sequel in a new direction, with a brand-new cast, including newcomers Jennifer Morrison, Matthew Davis and Joseph Lawrence (of "Blossom").
The sequel takes place at fictitious film school Alpine University, and centers around a group of film students working on their thesis film. As the competition for the esteemed Hitchcock Award grows, so does the body count.
When the film first went into production, Ottman was content that the film school aspect would differentiate his film from the first "Urban Legend" and from other teen horror flicks in recent years. So imagine his horror at finding out that "Scream 3," which came out as Ottman was going into post-production, also featured filmmaking as a subplot.
"I immediately went to go see ("Scream 3") and, fortunately, it didn't revolve around filmmaking and pull off the 'what is real and what is not real' aspect like we did. So we had more fun, I think, with that aspect," he said.
And if the "Scream 3" filmmaking similarity wasn't enough to jar Ottman, he then had to then deal with teen horror-film spoof "Scary Movie."
"'Scary Movie' scares me in one way because it just came out and it does make fun of my movie, because my film is the (type of) follow-up film that they're making fun of," Ottman said. "But it's good in a way that it made a lot of money. And I think that helped convince Columbia to put money behind promoting my film because they see a market."
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"Because it's what I was offered," he told matter-of-factly. "I think I responded the way you do when you get socks from your grandmother at Christmastime; you're not exactly sure how to respond. In one way, I was being handed a picture. In another way, I was worried because it was a teen horror movie as my first movie, and a sequel on top of that."
But Ottman managed to infuse the film with his own personal touches, to give film audiences something different to look at. One example of this was his choice to film at Peterborough, Ontario's Trent University, a modern campus with hard edges, high concrete walls, and narrow dark corridors; a refreshing and creepy alternative to the gothic look often used in horror films.
"I saw immediately how (the Trent campus) could look at night if we lit it certain ways because of the hard edges and the strange architecture it had," he said. "The only drawback was that there was no bell tower at the university, which we needed for the script. So we ended up finding the funds to build a temporary tower there."
Ottman's not sure what project he'd like to tackle next as director. He worked as an editor and score composer on "The Usual Suspects" and "Apt Pupil," but admitted that doing triple-duty on "Urban Legends" was a stretch. He says that he just wants the script for his next project to be a solid one.
"As a composer, you can choose some dog of a film, spend two months on it, write a great score, and walk away from it liking your work even though the film may not be good -- and you've had a two-month investment," he said.
"But as a director, you better love what you're doing because you're going to be hating your life in six months. And it's a year, or more, process. So, in that regard, I'm really terrified to go meet on any scripts I've read because they just haven't really got me totally excited," he said.
For now, Ottman just hopes that his first film will excite audiences in theatres.
"I think it's a pretty wacky movie," he told . "Our mission statement with the film was we wanted it to be fun. We wanted people to walk out of the theatre saying that no matter what they thought of it that it was a fun experience."
