Interview (Part 3): Eric Heisserer (2012, 2014 Black List)

This weekend, the horror movie Lights Out rolls out in movie theaters across North America. Starring Teresa Palmer and Maria Bello, directed by David F. Sandberg, the screenplay was written by Eric Heisserer. I thought it was a good opportunity to reprise a 2013 interview I did with Eric and reach out to him with some questions about Lights Out.

Today in Part 3, Eric digs deeper into his movie Hours and answers another question about Lights Out:

Scott: You made some key changes from the short story to the screenplay. For example, in the short story you wrote the husband and the wife “wanted a child so much for so long.” In the script they’re ambivalent about that, in fact the protagonist Nolan has decidedly mixed feelings. Why did you make that change?

Eric: That’s a good question. When I began working on this script, I found Nolan’s arc as a father, and it wasn’t someone who had been wanting to be this for so long. It was someone who discovered that he was going to be a dad, and whether he liked it or not, whether he was ready or not. And of course he loves his wife Abigail and has been completely in love with her since he met her. So, anything that comes out of the both of them, he knows he will love. But it’s an experience that he’s not sure he’s ready for.

It helped me to form his arc. There’s a line early on in the movie when he’s learned that Abigail has died, but the baby survived. And he says to the baby, “I don’t know you.” Which is to help the audience extrapolate that he’s lost the person in his life that he knows loved him, and loved him unconditionally. And now he’s with this little person who may grow up to love him, or…you know, the future there is murky.

He’s worried that he got the raw end of the deal. But over the course of the film he really bonds with his daughter, and learns what it is to be a father, and accepts that he is ready, that he does have what it takes. And that he really hasn’t completely lost his wife Abigail as long as this girl is in his life. The last line of dialogue in the movie is “I know you.”

Scott: You have a line in the script early on, where Nolan finds his wife Abigail, her body, and he says, “I don’t want the baby now, I want you back, I want you.” And so, by making that change from the short story, it’s like you lengthen the emotional distance, the psychological distance, that Nolan has to traverse. What do you think really appealed to you about this unique situation that Nolan found himself?

Eric: What appealed to me is that it’s a polarizing issue. Therefore I feel like it’s something that is worthy of exploration. Of all the fathers who’d read the script — whether it’s friends, or people in the industry, family members — I could split down the middle the two groups. The men who said, yes I absolutely know where Nolan is coming from, and I would be just as devastated and nervous and angry. And the other half that said, you know, I would absolutely never have any anger or ill will towards my child, the bond there is stronger than any of that.

Part of that I think comes from where the emotional connection lies. But I knew this was a character choice that isn’t often explored in movies or TV, of the reluctant parent. So that’s what appealed to me about it.

Scott: Much of the story, the only characters are Nolan and his baby daughter, who of course, can’t talk. What were some of the specific challenges you faced in sustaining the narrative with what is essentially a single‑character driven story?

Eric: I tried to look at it as realistically as possible, and come up with a long laundry list of things that a man would do in this situation, and that gave me plenty for Nolan to do in terms of action. But it also meant that a good deal of this script would be dialogue‑free. The thing I like about it though, is how it’s more designed as a play. The theater has done stuff like this for a long while, that there have been one‑man shows for hundreds of years. And this is a cinematic version of that, a cinematic execution of just a man alone in a room keeping his infant daughter alive.

The monologues that I’ve built in — where Nolan is talking to his daughter — is a way of therapy, a way of bonding, and just to try and prevent himself from going crazy. They’re soliloquies, really, that tell the story of Nolan and Abigail.

Scott: You made an interesting narrative choice, where you used physical objects with symbolic meaning, like photos, engagement rings, wedding bands, which Nolan shares with his daughter. What was the inspiration to use these objects as a sort of talisman?

Eric: I had friends that had a baby during the course of writing this, and I learned the husband receives the wedding and engagement ring when his wife goes in to have the baby, and so my friend was holding on to them in the waiting room. I saw a photo on Facebook of him just holding the rings, and it was such an evocative image.

That little seed grew into what other things would Nolan have on his person to help tell the story visually of his relationship with Abigail? Once I traveled down that road I realized I had all of these icons that were really story devices to share with his daughter. What better place for them to end up than the glass of the incubator? Pointed down so that his baby girl could see them?

Scott: In effect, this is a contained thriller, so it’s interesting another choice you made was to use a couple of flashbacks and even a delirium fantasy involving Nolan and his wife Abigail. What was the inspiration behind that?

Eric: I think you’ve already touched on it. It was to get the hell out of the hospital for a few minutes and just give the audience a breather. I thought, what better way to break up the monotony of this otherwise small story than to go outdoors or a lush environment with some new set dressing to look at.

Scott: The story is inside the hospital for almost its entirety, yet it’s very much a hero’s journey, isn’t it? The hospital is this new world. The death of his wife is like a Call To Adventure. He meets various allies and enemies. His ordeal, resurrection, return home. Were you at all conscious at all of the idea of the Hero’s Journey when you were writing the script?

Eric: No, I think that structure sort of snuck up on me. I guess I’d gotten to the end of the script, and had begun prepping it to figure out, as a director, what scenes I needed to hold on to and what I could shave away that the Hero’s Journey popped out at me. It was a great benchmark to see what worked or what didn’t with the story.

Scott: I’m going to put on my Joseph Campbell hat and throw out this analysis for you to see what you think. The hero Nolan enters the hospital. That is equivalent to venturing into the cave. And there he confronts the ‘dragon’ which is represented by the physical enemies he confronts as well as his own fears, “Can I be a good father?” to save the damsel in distress, his daughter. Does that resonate at all with you?

Eric: Yeah. [laughs] That’s pretty much it! It sounds simple now that you say it.

Here is my another question to Eric about Lights Out and his response:

Scott: Being afraid of the dark is a near universal human experience, especially as children. Was that an impetus to include Martin, a youth, in the story or was there something else going on in your creative process?

Eric: Martin was part of David’s early architecture, and why I was so eager to keep him, and defend his role against any naysayers, was because too often children in horror movies are the “creepy kid.” Here we had a boy who had to grow up too soon and try to play surrogate parent to a mother he knows is mentally unstable. There’s a lot of nobility in that. It makes me instantly root for him as a character. I don’t see enough nobility in horror, personally. So I liked writing him.

Here is a comment by the movie’s star Theresa Palmer about her reaction when she first read the script:

Tomorrow in Part 4, Eric talks about the challenges of directing his first movie and the script he wrote “Story Of Your Life” which made the 2012 Black List.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Eric is repped by UTA and Art/Work Entertainment.

Twitter: @HIGHzurrer.