The Big Picture

Collider’s Steve Weintraub moderates a Q&A with director Joshua John Miller and writer M.A. Fortin for an early screening of
The Exorcism
.
Miller and Fortin discuss working with star Russell Crowe, the casting process, challenges on set, and the elements they fought to keep in their film.
The duo also reveal how Quentin Tarantino may have saved the movie, how it changed throughout production, and what’s next for them.

Tales of cursed sets aren’t in short supply in Hollywood, but it wasn’t inexplicably tragic deaths that plagued The Exorcism. According to director Joshua John Miller and co-writer M.A. Fortin, the duo behind The Final Girls script, their set faced a number of challenges — religious trauma, COVID, a fire in Australia, and “crazy stuff happened that just kept happening” — that nearly led its director to give up. What ended up saving the production of this Russell Crowe-led horror, however, is nearly stranger than fiction.

While religious horror films are not new (The Exorcism now joins the 2024 roster alongside Immaculate and The First Omen and Late Night With the Devil), Miller and Fortin’s take on the genre is a unique perspective from its genesis. For starters, the meta movie-within-a-movie aspect was championed by Scream creator Kevin Williamson, who serves as a producer for the film. On top of that, Miller tells Collider’s Steve Weintraub, “My responsibility as a filmmaker is to be an archivist,” referring to his love letter to his mother, Susan Bernard (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!), who was “a scream queen herself,” with The Final Girls. As it turns out, The Exorcism is also a nod to his father, Jason Miller, an actor best known for portraying Father Karras in The Exorcist.

During the Q&A, Miller and Fortin discuss the hurdles they overcame throughout production, from casting to post. They talk about fighting for the lesbian couple at the center of the movie, played by Ryan Simpkins and Chloe Bailey (you’ll never guess what kind of backward note they got on that), what it was like pitching the movie to Russell Crowe, his involvement in the casting process, and why Miller nearly gave up on the whole thing. They also reveal how a call from Quentin Tarantino saved The Exorcism and what’s up next for them, including a special Marilyn Monroe project.

You can watch the full Q&A in the video above or read the transcript below.

The Exorcism (2024) A troubled actor begins to exhibit a disruptive behavior while shooting a horror film. His estranged daughter wonders if he’s slipping back into his past addictions or if there’s something more sinister at play.Release Date June 7, 2024 Director Joshua John Miller , M.A. Fortin Runtime 93 Minutes Writers Joshua John Miller , M.A. Fortin Studio(s) MiraMax , Outerbanks Entertainment Expand

COLLIDER: You’ve acted before, and I believe your first role was on The Greatest American Hero.

JOSHUA JOHN MILLER: [Laughs] Yeah, it was. A man opened my shirt and had to heat me up with his hands to save my life because I was dying of hypothermia. I don’t remember anything other than this man touching my chest. It may explain things. I don’t know.

You also did an episode of Family Ties and Highway to Heaven.

MILLER: Yeah. When you’re a kid actor, it’s like, does everyone want to remember everything about their childhood, and does the whole world get to see it? But I think the greatest thing about that experience on Highway to Heaven was working with Michael Landon. That guy was a mensch and an artist. If you wanna learn about how to work a crew, you study how he treated those people and worked with the crews for decades from one series to the next. It was really something.

Talk a little bit about the genesis of how this all happened, where it all came together.

M.A. FORTIN: It originated from a conversation with Kevin Williamson where Josh and Kevin were discussing. Kevin was a champion of the first movie we made with director Todd Strauss- Schulson, who’s in the house somewhere, called The Final Girls. Kevin really wanted to nudge us into finding a different kind of meta way into something, and he brought up exorcism movies. At first, we were like, “Blah, no,” because overall, except for the big daddy — The Exorcist — we were kind of like, “Well, I don’t know, they’re so kind of, to overuse a word, patriarchal and kind of Catholic propaganda. We were like, “Eh, maybe.” Then the more we discussed it, the more we were like, “Well…”

MILLER: I think what really got us excited was, wouldn’t it be interesting to stop always seeing women being possessed and men having to save women? How about if a man’s possessed and he has to be saved by two lesbians?

FORTIN: Because when we conceived of the idea in 2019, every time we looked out the window –– exorcism movies historically are always about women being these vectors of influence, and they’re going to be taken over by malevolent forces and a big strong man needs to save them — we were like, “I don’t know, men seem to be having a lot of trouble right now.” Even sometimes people we knew, sometimes extended family, we would see people that we thought we knew that were suddenly behaving in ways like they’d been, I don’t know, taken over. Suddenly it felt like the idea maybe held water.

MILLER: This has been an elongated process getting this to the screen for various reasons, and I think there’s also a little bit of the first TV show that we created, Queen of the South. It was one of those situations where it was a very tough experience, and I think that was definitely an inspiration for the challenges of trying to bring something to life. That whole experience was tough. I think there were a lot of demons involved in trying to make that project come to life and having to slay a lot of demons. So, I think some of that was definitely a way that we wanted to sort of purge, in a creative way, what our personal experience was because Mark and I are also partners in life, not only just as writers. It was a purging of sorts, the genesis of it.

I’m always curious how things change from inception to what people see on screen. What were some of the big changes that came along the way, or was what people watched tonight very close to what you guys came up with?

There’s a lot of filmmakers in the house tonight. I think we would all agree that, “Is it ever really the same from the beginning, the inception, to the end?” I don’t know. At least in my own experience, I feel that it transforms and shows you what it wants to be. My writing teacher always says you can’t dictate to the page, the page will dictate to you, and you follow that, and you keep that an organic process. So, I think that was the way with this film, except, as you know, making movies is so collaborative, and you have a studio system like Miramax that has very particular infrastructure of what kind of movie they expect. It was sometimes a challenge to fight for your vision and what you want. It’s always the case where somehow people suddenly realize they don’t wanna make the same movie after you’ve already shot it.

I’ve never heard that. That is crazy. [Laughs]

FORTIN: First time ever.

MILLER: I have a great friend, a DJ, and everyone knows what a great advocate he is for directors. He says, “If you can just have that first meeting where you really clarify what you wanna do with everybody and just be specific so that everybody knows so that you can avoid that future volcanic experience that happens.” It’s a good lesson. And [don’t] be afraid to walk away if it’s not.

What do you think would surprise fans to learn about the making of the film?

FORTIN: David Hyde Pierce rules. He is not only the nicest guy but a consummate professional and talent for eons. In preparing to play the role of an 80-year-old, he wore weights on his ankles every day. He found a church in Wilmington where he would go practice playing the organ. The man is method. But you know what else it is? We didn’t know about a number of these things until later, and he’s like, “Oh, yeah, it’s just something I do.” I was like, “Oh, you don’t make a show of it.” He was like, “No, no.”

MILLER: David, I would agree, is extraordinary. What people may find interesting, that I think was an experience for many of us, is there are some pretty dark themes in this and some heavy stuff about trauma and childhood trauma and the Catholic church, and I think a group of us who were producers and actors and writers on the whole project, we are all a bunch of really hurt guys who have gone through a lot. We all went to war together emotionally, so it was a much more challenging experience being in the process of making this than we expected. I think it was just because we’re all, like, probably heavily triggered constantly. Movies are hard enough to make, but I think there was a lot of emotional angst for everybody.

Do Lesbians Really Exist If “the Sex Isn’t As Explicit as ‘Euphoria’?”
“I guess we had a bone to pick.”
Image via Vertical

I’m fascinated by the editing process. Talk a little bit about the assembly cut versus what people see. What was it like in the editing room putting this together because it’s ultimately the final rewrite?

MILLER: That’s true. I definitely agree with that. It’s like I was saying earlier, it does constantly change, and a lot of the changes were the battles to fight for things. One of the things that was really a struggle was, at one point, there were certain notes that we were given, such as, “Why do we need the queer storyline between the girls if the sex isn’t as explicit as Euphoria?”

Wow.

MILLER: We’re like, “Wow, that’s really misogynistic in 2023/24.” We’re like, “No, it’s not about that. We’re gonna keep this queer storyline, and we’re gonna keep this relationship between the two women.” We really fought for that element of the film to remain, as well as other big thematic issues.

FORTIN: Faith is an enormous aspect of so many people’s lives, and it can provide so much comfort, and it can be such a grounding force in their lives. At the same time, growing up gay in the ‘80s, it was not an awesome time to have the religious right on your television. I guess we had a bone to pick. So, having Lee and Blake be queer and, essentially, quote-unquote part of God’s plan and not have that excised, that was, for us, a major hill to die on.

Did you end up with a lot of deleted scenes?

MILLER: Oh, for sure. One day, maybe, in the director’s cut. Also, Russell Crowe is one of the most intimidating people I’ve ever met in my life, and I don’t get intimidated. I grew up in Hollywood. I’ve been around famous people and met them, or they’ve been in my family, and holy moly… The first day he showed up on set, he rode up on a bike — not a motorcycle. He was biking, smoking a cigarette, dismounted his bike, and walked slowly towards me like he was in slow motion. He moves like his persona and Gladiator and his movies. That’s just how he enters a room, how he leaves.

FORTIN: He sat down, and it was like the energy was like, “What’s all this then?”

MILLER: [Laughs] These are exactly his first words, basically. What’s amazing about him, though, is that because he brings that formidable presence, he challenges you to always constantly be your best and he wants you to pay attention to each specific detail. After every take, he’s like, “Did you get that?” I would say, “Yeah, pretty much.” He’s like, “No, no, no. What do you mean?” “Well, there’s this one light that was a little off.” He’s like, “No, no, no, every detail counts. It’s the most important. Just tell them you need another take,” which, of course, producers don’t want to hear. That was an unexpected experience with him. It’s because he loves film, period, and he’s really passionate about it.

Russell Crowe Championed for Ryan Simpkins
Image via Vertical

How did you get him in the movie? What was it like pitching? Did you send him the script?

FORTIN: [Laughs] It kind of happened, not by accident, but he was sent the script, and then all of a sudden, it was like, “Oh, Russell wants to have a conversation.” We were like, “What?” I remember the first conference call, we were in an office with Kevin, and there was just silence on the phone, and we just hear finally, “Hello.” The conversation went well, obviously. At one point, he essentially said something along the lines of, “Oh, this is unusual for me because usually, in movies, I like to drive the bus.” We muted it, and I was like, “How do we explain that in a possession movie, you are the bus?”

One of the things about Russell is that I would imagine he attracts other people who want to work with him, so once he got involved, that all of a sudden opened the door to so many other people.

MILLER: He didn’t even say yes yet. He wanted us to go visit him on his farm in Australia two weeks before the movie started, which was like five airplanes. I don’t like to fly, and it was like five different flights.

FORTIN: I think it was, like, 30 hours.

MILLER: A 30-hour trip to get to some rural farm. I didn’t know what was gonna happen at that farm. I was like, “Where are we going? What’s gonna happen to us? He’s kinda hot. Okay, let me see.” I was scared.

So how did that open the door, or did you already have everyone else?

MILLER: He was very collaborative. He just wanted to be part of the process of choosing everybody of the actors that we were looking at for all the other roles. He was additive in the sense that, obviously, he attracts a lot of talented people to wanna work with him, so that was a given. But we also wanted to include him in the casting process.

FORTIN: He was a huge champion of Ryan Simpkins early on, who was coincidentally pretty much our favorite from the jump.

MILLER: And Adam Goldberg, who he had done A Beautiful Mind with.

FORTIN: I think David was the last puzzle piece, and wow, we lucked out.

Image via Vertical

Which shot or sequence during the filming or during the editing was the real pain in the ass?

MILLER: The whole movie. I would say the final exorcism because every exorcism movie has to have an exorcism at the end. There are these tropes you have to go to, and I think that that was one of the big ones because we didn’t have a lot of time.

FORTIN: I remember, also, the party sequence.

MILLER: Oh, yeah. Don’t ever make a party sequence.

FORTIN: Don’t ever write a party sequence.

MILLER: Cut that out of your script right now if you’re writing one.

FORTIN: Right now. Go home and do it because it is a hell I would not wish on my worst enemy. [Laughs]

MILLER: We can’t even say what happened. It was too crazy.

One of the things I really like is you have the opening where you are in a sound stage and you built this house. Talk a little bit about making a movie within a movie.

MILLER: When I was a teenager, there was a history of film textbook, and on the cover of the book was a production still from The Diary of Anne Frank, the set. It was a bisected set just like you see in the opening of this movie, and that image has always stayed in my imagination as to how enchanting it is to look at life being recreated within a world within a world. What we wanted to do was make sure that the film that was within the film felt enchanting and felt haunted. The dollhouse should be a character in the movie, and that’s what we tried to create. So, that was always a really important part. There were times where they were like, “We shouldn’t build it. It’s too expensive. Let’s not do this.”

FORTIN: “What if it was one floor?” And we were like, “So, a set?” [Laughs]

MILLER: Exactly.

The line producer or someone must have been like, “Are you sure?” It’s a really nice set.

FORTIN: [Production designer] Michael Perry is a genius.

MILLER: Yeah, Michael has stories. He should be up here, too. But I think that that was worth the battle. I always love that shot. It’s my favorite shot. At one point, it wasn’t gonna be in the movie, that opening shot — that was another thing we fought to get back in the movie. You pick your battles, right? But that was one of the ones that I’m really glad that we stuck to because it’s so easy to write it off. It’s just easy in the budget and stuff.

I can’t believe that was even debated not being in the movie.

MILLER: There are a lot of writers and artists in this room, and nothing’s a surprise, right? Everyone’s rushing and everyone’s sort of not thinking straight when you’re in that kind of rush. Part of the challenge of the movie was, also what happened during the filming is that there was a big fire in Australia at the time and it was coming close to his farm and he had to leave. So we had to shut down and rearrange the whole thing. I mean — cursed movie. There’s a history of cursed movies. This movie wasn’t cursed necessarily by demons, but crazy stuff happened that just kept happening.

FORTIN: Also, this thing called COVID.

How Quentin Tarantino Saved ‘The Exorcism’

Who did you show it to that gave you the best feedback or notes that impacted the finished film?

MILLER: Well, I have an interesting supernatural story. There were some interesting woo-woo things going on, but there was a moment a year ago where you have that moment of, “I just can’t do this. I just have to give up, and I have to walk away from this movie.” We were in the editing process, and I was struggling with my place in it, and I was like, “What do I do?” The phone rang, and it said “unknown number.” I was like, “Okay, it’s someone famous, obviously.” “It’s Quentin! I just watched a movie with your mother in it, and it’s this movie about the making of a movie, and I have to talk to you about it! It’s the greatest movie I’ve ever seen and no one’s ever seen it?” And I thought, “Okay, Quentin Tarantino is calling me out of the blue to tell me about a movie that he loves that my mother stars in that’s about the making of a movie.” And I thought, “This is my mother coming through to tell me, ‘Don’t walk away from the movie.’”

FORTIN; Your mother fully arranged that.

MILLER: I’ve even said this to him. So I said to the studio, “No, I’m gonna stick with the movie and let’s finish it.” I know this sounds like crazy LA stuff, but I believe in it. I said to him once, “I feel like she sent you to me.” And he’s like, “I know! Do you think she’d like me?” I’m like, “Yeah, she’d like you, and I know you’ve probably seen her in Playboy and all her movies.” What’s really interesting about this is — and this is Quentin, I guess with a wink — this weekend when the movie opens here, he also programmed at midnight one of his favorite movies, Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, which my mother is one of the leads of. She made this when she was 16. What’s really spooky is that the movie opens on Friday the 21 which, this is heavy, but here goes, it’s the five-year anniversary of her passing. So, it’s sort of this strange confluence of things happening that are related to her. If you don’t like the movie, watch out, she’s gonna come for you.

Image via RM Films International

I said this before the movie started, I’m gonna say it again, I really wanna give Quentin a huge thank you for letting us screen this tonight and also for the Vista Theatre and everything he’s doing. I just read about Quentin in Paris saving a theater. I just fucking appreciate what he’s doing.

MILLER: Hanging out with him and getting to become his friend and him embracing you as a fellow film lover is so infectious because you just start to believe that anything’s possible. With the passion to create things, you don’t take no for an answer. You levitate around him when he talks about film. Thank God he has existed in the world to educate us all about all types of film from all parts of the world and create spaces like this around the world so that hopefully we can all continue to do these amazing experiences of being together. So yes, thank you, Quentin, wherever you are.

Related What Would Quentin Tarantino’s ‘The Movie Critic’ Have Been? Tarantino’s final film was a dream project, until it wasn’t.

AUDIENCE: What was the thought process behind the title?

MILLER: To be honest, that is not the original title. The original title of the movie is The Georgetown Project. There are concerns that that title may be too ambiguous, et cetera, et cetera. But there’s certain concessions you make. What should I say?

FORTIN: Some things you control, some things you don’t.

AUDIENCE: Did anything scary happen on set?

MILLER: Every day. [Laughs] Waking up was scary.

FORTIN: It’s a school night and I feel like people have to relieve babysitters and stuff, so I don’t know. [Laughs]

MILLER: Nothing horrific happened, thank God. It was, “Well, how’s Russell gonna feel this morning? Oh, he’s called you to his trailer. Uh oh.” It’s like going to the principal’s office. But nothing bad at all in that way, thankfully. Knock on wood.

What’s Up Next for This Duo?
Image via 20th Century Studios

What are you guys working on now? What are you allowed to say publicly?

MILLER: They’re brewing, but I also write books, so I’m finishing a new novel. We’re working on developing a possible prequel to Queen of the South as a new series and also a couple of movies.

FORTIN: There’s a coming-of-age horror story that’s about manners.

I’m very curious about this. Is there anything more you want to say about that or is that the tease?

FORTIN: Not yet.

MILLER: One other thing we’ve been thinking I would direct is there’s a book coming out about my grandfather. He was a glamour photographer. I’m realizing that a lot of the stories that I wanna tell, or my responsibility as a filmmaker, is to be an archivist. I see myself as someone who’s documenting things and trying to carry on legacy, like writing this love letter to a classic horror film like The Exorcist or The Final Girls, which is an homage to my mom being a final girl and being a scream queen herself. In the tradition of continuing to document family stories and legacy, I wanna do a very small film, maybe even on 16-millimeter. I wanna do the story about Marilyn Monroe and my grandfather and this fateful weekend they had in 1947 when she wasn’t Marilyn Monroe, she was Norma Jean. It’s this character study of just following them for that weekend that is gonna be part of a beautiful photobook of all the pictures he took over that weekend.

What’s crazy is that’s true.

MILLER: It’s a true story, yeah. He also took the iconic flying skirt picture of Marilyn on the set of The Seven Year Itch. But he knew Norma Jean when she was 20 and he was 30 at that time. He bumped into her coming out of the dentist, and she asked him if he thought she could be sexy and if he would take some sexy pictures of her. And yeah, the rest is history. So, that’s something we’ve been thinking about too.

I definitely think that that’s something to pursue, for sure.

MILLER: He was a Jewish immigrant. He had just escaped Nazi Germany and came here, and he had grown up in an orphanage. He was also in an orphanage, so they both really connected on that, that they both had lost their homes in a way.

When you guys saw the shooting schedule in front of you for making the film, what day did you have circled in terms of, “I can’t wait to film this,” or, “How are we gonna film this?”

FORTIN: How long was the schedule for the opening with Adrian [Pasdar]? It was very short.

MILLER: We had to keep cutting days, so you see the days disappearing and then you have to adjust and figure it out. I think the most exciting and terrifying day was the morning I woke up, and we were walking downstairs, and you’re like, “Holy shit, it’s really happening.” I think everyone understands that feeling. You kind of feel like all of a sudden, in that moment, you’re like, “I don’t know how to do this.” In that moment, you’re like, “Wait, I forgot everything I learned. Everything.” And then you just keep moving forward. Even though there would be scheduling challenges, we had to think about that, but I think there were parts where we tried not to let that be too oppressive and just focus on the story as much as we could and hope that the producers would be willing to give us more breathing room to have more days. It was always like, “Maybe they’ll give us another week. Maybe we’ll get another day.” You just keep pushing, and if you keep sending them footage, sometimes you actually get that extra week or that extra day.

The Exorcism is in theaters now. Check out the link below for showtimes.

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