What do you remember about getting cast in I Know What You Did Last Summer? In honor of Vulture’s Horror Month, and the world’s horror year, I called up Watson, now 72, to hear his memories of getting paid to scare the shit out of 1997’s most famous young actors, the conversations he had with his “psychotic” character, bonding with Sarah Michelle Gellar, and accidentally freaking out Brandy while filming the sequel. But the man who plays him, career character actor Muse Watson, insisted on bringing much more to the part. (In this way, I Know What You Did Last Summer again reflects its early 21st century novelistic predecessors by suggesting that all things are connected, revenge is both inevitable and natural, and there are no coincidences.) The fisherman, whose name is revealed to be Benjamin Willis, is written on the page as little more than a looming, gently campy symbol of retribution and karmic justice. Eventually, we learn that this fisherman is, in fact, the man who the teens hit that fateful evening - it turns out he did not die, but was actually on his way to murder somebody else who had previously murdered his daughter. This mysterious person’s identifying characteristics include, and are limited to: a penchant for hand-writing rude notes on bits of paper, and a tendency to dress exclusively like a fisherman, roaming around town in boots and a raincoat and a little hat, wielding a hook and murdering youths. After a post-graduation night of virginity loss and whiskey swilling on a local beach, the foursome (who are named things like “Barry” and “Helen”) hit a man with their car, dump his body into the sea, swear never to speak of it again, and blast off in separate directions … until, one year later, a mysterious person begins taunting them with knowledge of their crime. The film, like so many turn-of-the-century American bildungsroman before it, follows the trials and tribulations of a quaint fishing village, specifically four archetypal teenagers therein: The intellectual brunette who just wants to get out of this small town and see the world (Hewitt), the beauty queen with very long hair (Sarah Michelle Gellar), the drunken rich football player whose star will burn hot and fast before he makes it to the field (Ryan Phillippe), and the smart young man who will nevertheless fail to transcend his station and unconsciously reenact the sins of his father (Freddie Prinze Jr.). 1 for three consecutive weekends until it eventually made $125 million. In other words, it is the platonic ideal of late-’90s slasher films, fast-tracked into theaters in 1997 after writer Kevin Williamson’s mega-hit Scream, to sit at No. I Know What You Did Last Summer opens with a goth-metal cover of “Summer Breeze,” ends with Jennifer Love Hewitt flouncing around a college dorm in a towel asking her boyfriend to “ravage” her, and is punctuated by hot teens sulking and screaming into the ether in equal measure. Photo-Illustration: Vulture and Columbia Pictures The career character actor on getting paid to scare the shit out of 1997’s hottest young actors and the personal conversations he had with his “psychotic” villain.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |