How to HORROR with Horror Legend Jeffrey Reddick

Since the 80s, New Line Cinema has been known as "The House that Freddy Built." Ever since the first A Nightmare on Elm Street inspired a young Jeffrey Reddick, this kid from Kentucky has been at the center of one unexplained cinematic event after another. Wherever he goes, horror follows. Death follows. And sometimes a substantial box office gross for ticket sales.

And yet nestled within that cocoon of terror is a proud gay man of color. After a brief stint in small roles and a summer at the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts, Jeffrey’s agent told him that while his type was “an ethnic Michael J Fox,” studios didn’t want an ethnic Michael J Fox. And so he poured his passion into writing, creating the Final Destination franchise and ushering legions of fans into a new paradigm of horror.

Join us for this exclusive interview in which we discover the X-Files episode that became Final Destination, how the audience’s response to Scream changed Final Destination forever, and why Jeffrey Reddick sees hope and success for today’s diverse breed of horror hounds hoping to make their first movie and follow in his blood-soaked footsteps.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

STEPHENIE MAGISTER: One of my first questions for you—do you prefer Jeff or Jeffrey?

JEFFREY REDDICK: Jeffrey makes me feel young. My mom used to go “Jeffrey!” all the time, so Jeffrey’s good.

STEPHENIE: How are you doing now that the WGA strike has resolved? What’s next until SAG-AFTRA closes a deal?

JEFFREY: Things are picking up again in Hollywood. Slowly but surely, because the actors are still striking, so we're still out there supporting them. I don't think that strike is going to last particularly as long as ours did, but it'll take a while for everybody to get back on course.

STEPHENIE: As long as that next Final Destination movie is back on course…

JEFFREY: I'm really excited. I feel like this studio got an A team together for the new one, so I'm very happy.

STEPHENIE: How did Final Destination evolve from an episode of The X-Files into a feature film franchise?

JEFFREY: I was trying to get a TV agent at the time. The X-Files was one of my favorite shows, and so I was trying to think of a spec script to write. I had the premonition idea, and people getting off the plane, and death coming after them, but I hadn't figured out what story to put it in yet, so [The X-Files] gave me a context to put the story in.

That story featured Scully’s brother. He had the premonition of a group of adults getting off the plane, and they started dying. Everybody in the script thought it was her brother doing it, so by this point, Scully was having a crisis of faith, because she's like, “My family members keep dying.” So she was quitting the X-Files over the manifestation.

In that version, death couldn't come back and just kill them, but what we learned was that there was a Sheriff who’d been shot and flatlined at the same time the plane crashed, so when the sheriff came back, death kind of came back in him and was the one killing everybody.

STEPHENIE: How did adapting your X-Files idea into a feature film help you become a better writer?

JEFFREY: It's interesting because it's indicative of the writing process. You start off with an idea and you workshop it to death.

When I sent that idea to my friends at New Line Cinema, they were like, “This is a great idea. Don't send it to the show. This is a great idea for a movie.” So I took that idea and worked with a couple of producers—Craig Perry and Warren Zide and Chris Bender—and we just developed it as a feature-length story.

Originally it was all going to be adults, and then Scream came out and New Line Cinema said teenagers are hot again, make them all teenagers. You always want to stay true to your story and your concept, but also if you're working at a studio, you begin to understand the market and hopefully be able to hold on to what made your story authentic.

STEPHENIE: In a recent interview, you expressed gratitude that for Final Destination 6, the filmmakers called you to make sure the next installment honors the core elements of the franchise. What do you see as the essential elements of a Final Destination movie?

JEFFREY: I told them there's a couple of things. I'm very tapped into the fans and what they love about the franchise. It's not about the actual kills themselves.

First, when you're writing a Final Destination death scene, it's about this suspense building up to it. You don't know where it's all going.

Second, I did tell them Tony Todd is crucial, in my opinion, and should never not be in a Final Destination movie, which they were in complete agreement on.

And third, I never wanted to have a film where all the characters die at the end. The later films started going with “everybody gets killed at the end,” so I said I would really like to kind of reverse course on that. My thinking is that you can't cheat death, but you can prolong life.

Plus the business side of my brain goes, “At some point we're gonna wonder why we’re going to want to see a movie where we know everybody's going to die at the end.”

STEPHENIE: Let’s shift back to the beginning of your career. As a teenager, you sent a proposal for a sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street to Bob Shaye at New Line Cinema. It was never produced, but Bob gave you crucial feedback. He said, “You have imagination, but you lack structure.”

What would you have said to yourself if it had been you reading that script instead of Bob?

JEFFREY: I think I probably would have said the same thing. He said I had a fertile imagination. At that point, I was just so happy he wrote me back, I didn't even take his feedback as negative. I was just like, “All right, my imagination is fertile!”

STEPHENIE: What about when you’re the person getting a letter from a new writer?

JEFFREY: I make it very clear that my career experience is so different. There was another Jeff that worked out of the Los Angeles office—I worked out of the New York one—who had read my story, and so he pulled a Bob Shaye on me, but like fifteen years later. He was just very insistent, he called me up after he got hired at New Line, he's like, “Yeah, I read your story, and I pulled [the same move] with Bob, and my name's Jeff as well.”

STEPHENIE: How else has the studio system evolved during your career?

JEFFREY: You know, I have to say the difference between now and then is that back then, New Line Cinema and most other studios were run by film lovers. Especially New Line. I mean Bob Shaye eats, breaths, and sleeps film. He was a passionate film lover, and he took a chance on making A Nightmare on Elm Street. They call New Line Cinema “The House that Freddy Built.” And then when I got there, the studio was taking creative chances all the time. And not even chances, just being original.

STEPHENIE: What are some of your favorite examples?

JEFFREY: They made Blade, which is actually the first Black Marvel superhero movie. Everybody back then said nobody's going to pay to see a Black superhero, but they made Blade. They were like, “If we make a good film, we can market it and bring the audience to see it.”

Now we've had a lot of business and tech people getting on the boards, and the companies are merging, and so everything is so numbers-driven now that you don't have those passionate film lovers running most of the major places. A lot of these studios, now they are legally obligated to their shareholders, so if they don't make a shareholder profit, they get in trouble. So even if they want to really be open to creatives, they don't have the option.

STEPHENIE: What hope do you see for modern filmmakers outside the studio system?

JEFFREY: A lot of that is going to be picked up with creative communities around the US and around the world. There's a lot more opportunity to make your own content. You can make a movie on your iPhone. The technology is great because it opened doors for people.

Start off like all the filmmakers that have longer careers. Learn through trial and error, especially since you have the technology now to make something on your phone that they can show in a theater. Use that technology to learn and figure out who you are as a filmmaker and a storyteller. Use the energy you have and that optimism you have when you’re young to grow and soak in as much as you can by watching movies or reading scripts or books.

STEPHENIE: What do you see as essential elements of a horror story?

JEFFREY: I think the biggest thing is making sure you care about the characters. With that first Final Destination, Devon Sawa delivers such a great performance in that role. Just bringing so much emotional depth to the film.

If you don't care about your leads, then you don't really care what happens to them, so I think that's the biggest ingredient. Really making you care about what's going on with the lead characters.

STEPHENIE: What else should fellow horror hounds keep in mind?

JEFFREY: Look at what it is about this story that's going to connect with people.

So obviously with Final Destination, we all have a fear of death. That's a universal fear. So that's what I tapped into with that one.

With A Nightmare Elm Street, Wes Craven tapped into the fact that we all have to go to sleep at night. And so he created a killer that you can escape during the day, but you have to sleep sometime. That’s crucial to telling a good horror story.

And then I think once you do that, that's what I love about the genre, you can have everything from this most straightforward slasher movie to an M. Night Shyamalan twisty supernatural or sci-fi movie. There's so much that falls under the umbrella of horror, in my opinion, so I love that you can also just have fun with it. You can try new things. You can muck with the formula like Barbarian, which came out a couple years ago and did a great job. Had a hard time getting made, because it didn't follow the traditional three act structure, but what a great movie.

STEPHENIE: How does the horror genre help us process awful things in the real world?

JEFFREY: Horror films are a good release for people for whatever anxieties that they have. Just like with comedies, you can go into a theater, and you can laugh with an audience in a very communal experience. With horror films, you go into a theater, and you get tense, and you can yell and scream, and you know it's safe at the end of the day, so you can get a lot of the negative kind of stuff that you're holding inside out and release that in a theater in a very safe way. I think that's why horror films just kind of cut across every demographic that there is.

STEPHENIE: Jeffrey, just a few fun questions to finish up. What is a sound you love?

JEFFREY: Babies laughing. I freaking love babies laughing.

STEPHENIE: What is a sound you hate?

JEFFREY: Baby's crying. But also Freddy Krueger's nails against a chalkboard.

STEPHENIE: What book, movie, or music would you take to a deserted island?

JEFFREY: If I could take one book, it would probably be a religious book. Probably A Thief in the Night, which is about investigating the origins of my [Bahá'í] faith.

STEPHENIE: To close us out, Jeffrey, how would you like to be remembered?

JEFFREY: I would like to be remembered as somebody who, this sounds so cheesy, but somebody who made the world a better place for the people that knew him or knew of him. Somebody who left the world a better place than when he arrived in it.

I'm sure I'll regret saying this—because some internet sleuth will find somebody who hates me—but you would be hard pressed to find somebody that doesn't like me or has something super negative to say about me. Sometimes I ramble too much in interviews but…

STEPHENIE: That's gonna be the headline: “Jeffrey Reddick dares you to find somebody that hates him.” It'll be the challenge that goes viral within days.

Watch the full interview with Jeffrey Reddick here (and below)!