Ahead of its premiere on Amazon later this month, I caught up with screenwriter Jenna Lamia to talk all about Grady Hendrix adaptation; My Best Friend’s Exorcism.
Were you a reader of Grady Hendrix’s work before getting involved in My Best Friend’s Exorcism?
Yes, I had read Horrorstor and really enjoyed that, and then when I read MBFEX, I was totally blown away by it.
What was your approach to adapting the book?
I read the book the first time just for pleasure — before I knew I would be adapting it — and that was lucky, because I had the chance to simply enjoy it, and to note what parts of it really stuck with me as a fan. So when I came back to it with the intention to adapt, I already had certain vignettes that I knew I’d do anything to keep in the movie. (Gretchen’s projectile vomit at school comes to mind, but even smaller details like Abby and Gretchen sniffing their Swatch watches, and Abby’s ET birthday party at the roller rink.) So the first draft I wrote was a real joyfest of all those awesome moments from the book. Grady is a genius with dialogue and I took as much of it as I could. For instance, I think the first pass at the scene where we meet the Lemon brothers at the school assembly was pretty much a cut and paste, with a few added stage directions. I knew I couldn’t cover the entire scope of the book in a movie under two hours (and with a limited budget) so I chose what I felt were the most pivotal moments from Abby’s friendship with Gretchen, then laid them out in a three-act structure, keeping some of the classic rules of horror in mind. (I.E. much in the same way the third act of “Jaws” is all Brody, Quint and Hooper on the boat VS. The Shark– I knew the third act of the movie was all going to be Abby and Lemon stuck in the lake house with the demon, I.E. the exorcism.)
How much did you and Grady collaborate on the story?
Well, Grady wrote the book. So ultimately, he conceived of the story. But we didn’t collaborate a ton on the adaptation, and that’s fairly standard procedure. He read some of the early drafts of the script and offered his feedback, which was very welcome and which I did my best to incorporate given the limited scope of what we were going to be able to shoot. But after that, so many other voices and considerations come into play; ones that have more to do with budget and timing than artistic considerations. I think Grady trusted the process and I have heard from his “people” that he is happy with the finished product, which is all I could ever hope for.
How hard is it to know what to keep and what to cut when adapting a novel?
It’s incredibly hard when the novel is as good as this one was. If I had an unlimited budget, I would have included a lot more things that were in the book. For instance, I mentioned Abby’s E.T. birthday party at the roller rink… It was in the early versions of the script. It was, in fact, the opening scene. I absolutely loved how young Gretchen gave Abby a bible as her birthday gift, and Abby ran and hid in the bathroom stall, and Gretchen crawled under and they bonded for the first time in that stall. I wanted to do this thing where an older girl at the rink, a teenager, skated in, and was changing her maxi pad in the next stall. The girls saw drops of the blood on the floor (harbinger of things to come!) and giggled and got creeped out. The reason I loved this so much was I think the whole “exorcising a demon from your best friend” journey that Abby is on, is in many ways a metaphor for female puberty. Friendships are everything at that age. And when someone you love dearly starts acting differently, joins a clique, starts dating, and caring about being popular– and leaves you behind– it can FEEL like they are “possessed.” I really wanted to explore those themes and I thought starting with them as children, before puberty has them in its grips, would be a good way to do that. But when we got our budget nailed down, it soon became clear that we weren’t going to be able to hire minors to play Abby and Gretchen as kids. We weren’t going to have enough shooting days to go to the roller rink either. I’ll just say… there was A LOT I would have liked to be in the movie that didn’t end up in the movie. And that ALWAYS happens. I’m sure fans of the book will feel that, and I just hope they know I feel the same way. These decisions were not made capriciously. You add Covid on to all of that– and the budget and shooting schedule were greatly impacted. Luckily, the director, Damon Thomas, and our producer, Chris Landon, had a lot of creative suggestions for upping the creepy quotient and shooting the horror set pieces without breaking the bank.
80s nostalgia is huge right now, do you feel My Best Friend’s Exorcism will please the same people responding to this?
It better!
What was the initial conversations with Damon Thomas like?
As I mentioned above, Damon was really smart about finding ways to keep the script scary without a huge special effects budget. He came in and right away knew he wanted to keep the audience guessing for way longer about WHETHER or not Gretchen was even possessed, or whether this was all in Abby’s head. I thought that was brilliant.
Did you get the chance to spend much time on-set?
Sadly, I did not get to go to set at all. They shot this during Covid lockdown, before there were even vaccines. It has been a very strange experience for me, because I typically write and produce TV shows, and am on set for the duration and in close contact with the directors. Typically, I get to weigh in on how things are shot, the tone, and I will occasionally ask for more takes if I feel we haven’t gotten something… So this was like handing a newborn over to a group of strangers and hoping it grows up OK! I’m sure that’s what Grady must have felt like handing his book over to me, which is why my top goal in adapting it was to come up with something he likes. Luckily, we had a real gem of a guy in Damon, and it looked (from afar!) like a good time was had by all. I know the actors are totally brilliant, so I’m looking forward to seeing how it all came together.
Are there any recent horror or genre novels that you would love to adapt for a future project?
There are! But If I told you….
My Best Friend’s Exorcism hits Amazon on 30 September 2022.
Bloody Flicks 