LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 28: (back LR) Gillian Jacobs, Kiana Madeira, Olivia Scott Welch, Julia Rehwald, Ryan Simpkins, Ted Sutherland, Sadie Sink, Leigh Janiak, Phil Graziadei (front LR) Benjamin Flores Jr., Emily Rudd , Jeremy Ford, Darrell Britt-Gibson and McCabe Slye attend the Los Angeles premiere of Fear Street Part 1: 1994 on June 28, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jesse Grant / Getty Images for Netflix)
Phil Graziadei has just taken his big break.
The queer screenwriter made his film debut with the film Honeymoon in 2014. The film, a story about a haunted newlywed couple on their honeymoon, earned him high marks as a writer. The film also marked his first major collaboration with his longtime creative partner, Leigh Janiak, who directed the film. The couple have been close friends for decades.
Now Janiak and Graziadei are stepping into the big leagues, diving into the horror genre again with Netflix’s Fear Street Trilogy. The films – yes, all three feature films – adapt horror writer RL Stine’s Fear Street book series into an epic tale of rival cities, cursed lovers, and a satanic curse. The films arrive on Netflix from July 2.
Part 1: 1994 follows the story of Deena and Sam (Kiana Madeira and Olivia Scott Welch), a lesbian couple confined to rival towns of Shadyside and Sunnyvale. When a supernatural killer unleashes fury on Shadyside, the two fight to survive … and discover the trail of something even more dangerous. Part 2: 1978 tells the story of teenagers struggling with the same evil in a summer camp. Part 3: 1666 reveals the true origins of evil in Shadyside and a battle through time to end an evil curse once and for all.
Call it Lord of the Rings by RL Stine.
We sat down with Graziadei, who co-wrote the screenplay for parts one and three, and co-wrote the stories for all three films, to talk about condensing a sprawling book series into three films, why he chose to focus on queer tracks, and the particular connection between the LGBTQ audience and the horror genre. Fear Street Part 1: 1994 debuts on Netflix on July 2, 2021. Fear Street Part 2: 1978 debuts on Netflix on July 9, 2021. Fear Street Part 3: 1666 debuts on Netflix on July 16, 2021.
This trilogy is therefore only your second film. Or, at least, your second, third and fourth films.
I know, it’s pretty wild. It is also my first feature film in the studio.
How do you do without a real indie with Honeymoon to a trilogy of big budget movies?
We were really lucky. With Honeymoon, we started walking straight into studio projects. People were excited about this movie. We worked on a bunch of other things, but unfortunately none of them saw the light of day. But it was only a process for us. It has also been five years since Honeymoon, so it wasn’t like it was overnight.
FEAR STREET PART 1: 1994 – (LR) KIANA MADEIRA as DEENA, FRED HECHINGER as SIMON, BENJAMIN FLORES JR. as JOSH, JULIA REHWALD as KATE and OLIVIA WELCH as SAM. Creation: Netflix © 2021
Now let’s say the Fear street series written by RL Stine is much longer than a simple trilogy. How did you go about distilling it in a three-film structure?
You know we took Fear street as a starting point. There’s a lot of good stuff in there, but Stine himself says he’s never really tried to tie things together. It would have been too hard and too restrictive. I think the series really focused on the pleasures of gore in all of its endless repeatability. For us, by coming to make three films for a relatively close release, the format of the Fear street books is really conducive to a traditional horror franchise. Because we were approaching this with a different setup in mind, we felt we needed to tell the story in a different way. So we tried to do things to close a chapter in each movie, but feeling like there was something more, you want to come back.
What’s interesting is that you and Leigh also set the tone and design of each period to match the horror movies of the time. 1994 is very much in the vein of Scream. 1978 looks a lot like Friday the 13the. 1666 does not exactly fit a contemporary genre, although tales of witchcraft and demons were common at the time. It really takes a page of american horror story in that it combines the casts of the two previous films into one.
Mmhmmm.
Why this approach?
It all comes from me and Leigh. I guess the idea was — we designed these stories as an allegory of systemic oppression. Which makes them really dry. They are not. They are funny. All of the decisions we made in terms of the structure of each individual film and their place in the trilogy flowed from that.
So have you consciously decided to deconstruct the different periods of horror inside of this?
Ah yes, 100%. It was part of the joy, especially for Leigh as a director. It is a total playground. There are three things you can do that have such distinct styles. And again, how do you keep the audience coming back for more? You can’t give them a recycled permutation of the same idea. The pitch changes were therefore quite large.
Also, for my part, commenting on horror at different times is very closely linked to queer representation.
How? ‘Or’ What?
Well, horror has a complicated legacy with queer representation.
Yes.
Basically, for 100 years of horror movies, the only way we’ve been able to see ourselves represented on screen has been as tragic victims or as monsters. So by taking these movies we knew we had the space to do something with social impact. So by focusing on a queer love story, we were able to show how things turned out and how these cycles repeat. Most importantly, we show that it doesn’t have to be. We don’t have to be monsters.
FEAR STREET PART 1: 1994 – (Pictured) BENJAMIN FLORES JR. like JOSH. Creation: Netflix © 2021
Although sometimes it’s fun to be a monster.
Of course, there is a lot of power there. You have nuanced the representations of homosexuality in horror and embracing this power, this monstrosity. But at the same time, in the end, if it’s all do you see on the screen who owns this lens? Gay people don’t need movies to tell us how society sees us. We know.
Truth. And you kind of hint at it, but horror and gay people have a weird relationship. There are great queer horror writers and filmmakers and a huge fan base. Do you feel that the end you mention there – whether we are victims or monsters – is the source of the fascination?
Yeah, well, I mean, I think it makes sense that a bunch of people forced to live their lives in the shadows would see themselves hiding in the dark corners of horror movies. Homosexuals are used to looking for bits of ourselves in subtext. Our survival depended on the absence of any concrete trace of our queerness. In that sense, the queer love of obscenity and horror is a natural match.
Related: The Spirit Behind ‘Penny Dreadful’ To Tackle A New Level Of Horror: Conversion Therapy Camp
There is a lesbian relationship at the center of this story – the three stories, really. Was it in the books? How did you go about developing this?
the Fear street books, like everything, are a product of their time. So the short answer is no, there is no overt queer portrayal that I’ve seen, although I haven’t read all of them. But one thing we do have, because books have an amazing fan base on the internet, there are these amazing blogs that catalog the trends in every book. One category they cross is the homoerotic subtext. So for us, it was an opportunity to make this canon.
I like this.
Honestly, I’m a lot like you. When I was a kid, I didn’t read these books. Most of them were aimed at teenage girls, so I was always terrified that if I picked up the book and someone saw me reading it before the band rehearsal or elsewhere, the times I got there. called “f * ggot” would explode exponentially. My life would be over. So seeing them again as an adult was a change back to that kid who was afraid to pick them up from the bookstore and see that again.
Fear Street Part 2: 1978 – (LR) TED SUTHERLAND as NICK and SADIE SINK as ZIGGY. Creation: Netflix © 2021
Did giving the story a lesbian relationship as the focal point make the series harder to sell?
We’re fortunate to be working at a time when some studios think it’s cool to make queer content. Our producers in Chernin have therefore been very supportive. I also have to say how grateful I am that Netflix wanted to take these movies and bring them to the world. So it was not a hard sell. And RL Stine himself has been very supportive. I don’t know if you’ve seen what he said about the books and this adaptation. It’s very speaking “Street of fear is for everyone.
It’s hard to discuss the twists and turns of some love stories without revealing anything. What I will say is that the show reminded me Them, an Amazon series that also has a queer creator. Both focus on the idea that the fear and hate we endure today is the past that intrudes on the present. Was that a conscious statement on your part with these films?
I hope it will pass in the film. There are times, for example in 1994, when Deena and Sam are talking. They say, “We were together one night and the dead are trying to kill us.
A fairly literal interpretation. And that’s the ultimate horror of the film: the idea that we can’t escape the darkness of the past.
Yes, and that’s rooted in the queer relationship. And we’ve tried to do it on all levels in terms of representation in all of the movies. All of our characters are strangers, and they’re never punished for the things that make them different. Each of them has a character reveal moment where the way they try to overcome whatever is thrown at them is through their experience as outsiders.
It also makes the characters fun. We like to identify with strangers. Now, delving into his work, …
