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“Jeepers creepers, where’d you get those peepers? Jeepers creepers, where’d you get those
eyes?”
The old Johnny Mercer standard takes on sinister new meaning in JEEPERS CREEPERS, a
fiendishly terrifying thriller written and directed by Victor Salva (Powder). Newcomers
Gina Philips (Ally McBeal) and Justin Long (Galaxy Quest) star as a brother/sister duo
whose spring break drive home turns into a heart-pounding race for their lives against one
of the most unsettling creatures ever imagined.
Writer/director Victor Salva was a natural to bring Jeepers Creepers to the big screen –
he’s a passionate, lifelong connoisseur of horror films. “My brother and I would watch
Creature Features with Bob Wilkens,” he says. “We’d watch The Creature from the Black
Lagoon and Dracula and Frankenstein and all the old monster movies. Those were the kinds
of movies I joyously made in high school, never thinking of making any other kind of film.
Their power came from suspense and the shadows on the wall. Even though Jeepers Creepers
has a few graphic moments, I tried not to predicate it on gore, but rather on suspense and
images that would be hard to forget – not because they’re graphic, but because they’re
unnerving and indelible.”
The film was written in 1999, says Salva, “after a summer of watching The Blair Witch
Project and The Sixth Sense. I thought, ‘Now is the perfect time to write my monster
movie.’ I had heard a true story about a traveling couple brave enough to investigate
something mysterious they had driven by; it turned out to be something quite horrendous.
I added the supernatural elements, changed their ages, and thought, ‘This would be a ride
I’d like to take, a really good roller coaster ride you think could actually happen’.”
“Horror movies are visceral,” says Salva. “They’re about affecting your conscious and
your subconscious. I didn’t want the characters to be Hollywood clichés. I wanted their
lives to be bumpy and crappy like all our lives, so we get into the reality of it. Then
we have this big force come in and up the stakes.”
Salva wrote the screenplay very quickly and was surprised by how fast it attracted
attention. Recalls Salva, “Within a day of sending it out, I had three people interested
in making it (two studios and an independent), which I’d never had happen with a script.
I was ready to jump on the first one but my manager reminded me it would be a faux pas not
to show it to Francis Ford Coppola, who had produced my very first feature. He has always
been my great supporter and I can’t say enough about him, but I was almost embarrassed to
send it to Francis – it felt to me to be way too commercial for Francis. But I wound up
sending it to him, and he surprised everybody by saying not only did he want to make the
picture with me, but that he wanted it to be the first of his slate of pictures for United
Artists. That totally flabbergasted me.”
For Salva, having his mentor Coppola and American Zoetrope behind the project was a dream
come true. He was given freedom to create the movie he wanted. As producer Tom Luse
recalls, “When Francis visited us here on set in Florida, he talked about how Victor was
the perfect person to begin this new slate of films for American Zoetrope. Victor is a
creative force unto himself. He’s a writer, a director, he has his own special vision of
the world, and that’s what American Zoetrope is all about – working with creative people,
giving them the freedom to make a show within the bounds of budget and schedule, but
giving them room to breathe and not feel like there’s somebody watching them all the time.
Those have certainly been my marching orders from Francis – to allow Victor to surround
himself with other creative people and create his movie, his very personal vision of
terror. That’s a great thing, and certainly not the case with many studios.”
In terms of casting, Salva wanted to cast fresh faces, not teen stars – he wanted actors
that audiences would come to without a lot of preconceptions. He ended up with a fresh,
talented cast that was a pleasure to work with. Says Salva, “I got people who really
inhabit the characters and came up with really good suggestions. They helped the story
grow and change into something even more authentic.”
Philips did a great deal of preparation for the part. “It was very important for me to
know what happened to my character,” she says. “Not just five minutes or the week before,
but I actually went as far back as when she was five years old. I just wrote about it,
what I thought her relationships were with her brother and parents. That way, everything
I’m talking about in the film has a little more weight to me and I know what I’m saying.
I know who Trish is. No matter what’s thrown at her, I don’t have to think about what she
would do in a given situation. I know what she would do.”
Finding the right actor for the all-important role of Darry was crucial. Recalls
Salva, “The only thing I’d seen Justin in was Galaxy Quest, but he really does an amazing job in
that film. We were pressured to take bigger names (of lesser skill, in my opinion), but
thanks to Francis we had the autonomy to hire whoever we wanted, which is rare. We went
with Gina and Justin. I love that these kids are just breaking through. I was thrilled
that we got fresh faces, and really, really gifted ones.”
For newcomer Justin Long, a graduate of Vassar College, getting the lead in Jeepers
Creepers was a tremendous surprise. Says Long, “I loved the script, but when I read it I
figured they’d go with someone more well-known. I went into the audition feeling super
confident because I didn’t think there was any chance in hell I’d get the part. I’m just
so glad that it worked out.”
Salva was thrilled to get one of his favorite actresses, Eileen Brennan (Private
Benjamin), to play the Cat Lady, a role he wrote with her in mind. “I never thought she
would do it because I didn’t know what her attitude would be about the material. It’s so
rare for a writer to actually get someone they’ve written the part for, because it’s
always the chaos theory getting a cast together at the right time at the right place.”
As someone with three cats of her own, Brennan really identified with the Cat Lady. She
readily admits, “I could very well end up that way. I really mean that, because I just
couldn’t live without cats. I could not and would not want to. They are the most
interesting animals. Cats are something to watch and learn from. And they’re very
comforting – like a baked potato. I’m having fun doing this role, which is a bit
outrageous. But it’s real. I love the life of this person.”
Casting the actor who would play the evil Creature was a formidable task. Although the
creature has only one line in the film, he is a constant presence – sometimes human-like
and other times completely transformed into an eerily otherworldly monster. As written by
Salva, one of the creature’s most unnerving habits is to sniff his victims to determine
their desirability, like a wine connoisseur sniffing the cork of a rare merlot. As a
result, explains Salva, “It was the most bizarre auditioning ritual ever. We felt that we
needed men to come in and sniff us and try and eke out something delicious in one of us.
I’d love to edit a tape together of all these auditions, because some of them were
hysterical and others were truly chilling. Jonathan Breck, a well-known theatre actor in
Los Angeles, shaved his head for the audition, so he walked in completely bald-headed and
his eyes just kind of burned out at you. He was very intimidating. When he came in and
did the “sniff test” as we called it, we were scared. Really scared. And we were
intimidated. He immediately went to the top of the list, and he’s done a fantastic job.
Not only did he have the physical look for the creature, but the mindset as well.”
Recalls Breck, “My agent called one day and said, ‘They want you to come read for this
character,’ and I said, ‘Send me the sides.’ They said, ‘Well, there aren’t really any
sides – we just have a character description.’ So they sent me a couple pages of
character description, and I had a little bit of time to think about how I wanted to play
him. It was really intriguing because he has some animal qualities and some human
qualities. It was a lot of fun to fill in the pieces and put the character together.”
Says producer Luse, “Jonathan was dedicated. We shot in late summer around Ocala,
Florida, and it was humid, with temperatures often in the nineties – the costume he wore
covered his entire body and could be very, very uncomfortable. I never heard him
complain. He was more than willing to do it. He spent up to six hours putting it on and
an hour to get it off each day without complaint.”
Breck credits the special effects crew with getting him through the ordeal. “They’ve done
enough of this that they know there’s a human in there. They need to keep fluids in you,
keep a fan on you. Any break I ever had they had a fan on me, they had liquids in me, and
that saved the day, really, because if I didn’t have a crew that was so conscious of what
was going on, I would have been in trouble. They’re pros.”
Makeup special effects designer Brian Penikas was involved in the decision to cast
Jonathan Breck as the creature. Says Penikas, “He had a lot of charisma and I thought he
had a great look. I knew his facial structure would certainly give the creature an
interesting look. Once Jonathan signed on, the producers sent him to our lab in L.A., and
we did a series of body casts, head casts, hand casts and foot casts. We pretty much took
molds of every part of Jonathan that we knew would be covered with creature suits or
makeup pieces. From those casts we created sculptures that were custom fit to Jonathan.
Then, once the sculptures were approved, we had to go through a series of mold-making
processes to give us our production molds to start fabricating all the parts for the
makeup and suits. For the creature, we built five complete suits and about ten masks,
both stunt masks and masks that Breck wears, as well as numerous prosthetic appliances we
used for the days when we shot close-ups.” Brian, who arrived on the Florida set with a
crew of five, says, “We brought almost our entire facility from L.A. to Florida so we had
the capability of continuing to manufacture pieces and parts as we needed them. Because
shooting and locations and weather patterns often require we change the initial shooting
schedule (which can put us into shorter supply), we brought the whole lab with us and we
were manufacturing while making the movie.”
Despite the sophisticated effects, at its heart Jeepers Creepers is a character-driven
film that takes the audience on a horrific emotional journey. Says producer Luse, “I
think this is a movie that will hit an emotional chord with audiences and resonate inside
them. Some movies are just kind of like an amusement park ride, a roller coaster or
Ferris wheel. This movie is deeper – it takes us to a place inside that is primitive
where primal fear exists.”
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"Jeepers Creepers !!!"
