With Disney’s Steamboat Willie entering public domain, there have already been a few horror iterations. Screamboat is the most faithful to the original animated short, with a group of late-night revellers and ferry workers facing the ire of a resurrected, pissed-off mouse. We caught up with co-writer/director Steven LaMorte to find out more about his homicidal rodent…
STARBURST: Other than Steamboat Willie being in the public domain, what was it that drew you to Screamboat?
Steven LaMorte: I’ve always wanted to make a horror film on the Staten Island Ferry. I’m a lifelong New Yorker. I grew up in Staten Island. I’ve taken that boat at least 10,000 times in my life. After the success of The Mean One, our last adaptation of a popular children’s character, I knew I wanted to make something different. I didn’t want to start with a character and slap them into something where it didn’t belong, I wanted to go with a story that I was really excited about. There’s something about being trapped on a boat with a monster that’s always intrigued me, and where better to set the miniature murder mouse’s killer comedy rampage than on the Staten Island Ferry with the backdrop of New York City! Once the idea came together, I started doing some research, and I saw that Steamboat Willie was going to go into the public domain, and that the Staten Island Ferry used to run on Steam, I said, this is a matchmaking heaven. We have to make this movie!
Did you use an actual ferry?
The whole film was shot on an actual decommissioned Staten Island Ferry. The main thing kept me from making this film for the last 10 years that I’ve had this idea is that there were no privately owned Staten Island ferries, or any commuter ferries in the New York area. I was very fortunate to be able to film on one. Most of the film takes place on a decommissioned boat that was docked, although it did move! If a large freighter from China came by, the whole boat would start to shake and move, and so we’d get seasick, even though we were technically still on land. Some parts of the movie were shot on actual Staten Island ferries, real working, functional ferries, to help us get the vista shots and to help us make the whole movie feel like we really are on the boat. There were a lot of late-night ferry rides making this movie.
At what point did the animated sequence come into play? Was that always in the script?
It was the animated sequence was always in the script, especially when you consider Steamboat Willie is an animated character, and our version doesn’t look exactly the way the way the cartoon looks. So I felt like we needed something to explain what happened to Willie, to take him out of his animated realm and into the real world. What better way to honour the most iconic animated character of all time than with an animated flashback? We’re still an independent film, but it allowed us to open the film up and expand the scope by making the flashbacks animated. Now we could do shipwrecks; we could do big waves. We could do storms and a lot of really cool things that I wanted to incorporate into the film that were better left to the animators.
Which of the Posey brothers were cast first?
We started with Jesse Posey. He came in to read for the role of Pete, who’s the heart of the movie. He comes in, he works on the boat. He’s actually not the most heroic of guys, but has to grow into that role as the night progresses. He just brought a real fun charm and a goofy vulnerability to the part that I thought would be so much fun to watch on screen and someone you could really root for. Then once we started exploring the different other facets of the different characters that are in the movie, the different sides of New York, it became clear that there was a great opportunity to incorporate his brother, Tyler Posey – very famously of Teen Wolf – into the film. Tyler tends to play more stoic characters, the more traditional leads. It was really great to show this different side of Tyler Posey, let him be a little snarky, and have a little fun and get him to play a New York City worker. Having them both in the same movie is such a gift. It was a lot of fun, absolutely.
Do you have a favourite kill of the movie?
You know, they all sprung from my strange and unhinged brain, so I have a love for all the different ones. One of the ones that I think always has an impact – that people really seem to connect with – is the two members of the birthday brigade and the forklift. You think it’s going to be over quickly, and the fact that it draws out and they’re saying these ridiculous, crazy things, and the mouse is trying to hit the button. He’s trying to turn the key. It’s not even really about the kill. It’s about just torturing the audience; having them wait and wait and wait and then it pays off. It never fails to get a laugh.
If you could pick a character that is not in the public domain, who would you like to turn into a horror icon?
I had this idea for a Yogi Bear horror film. I think it would be really cool. I also think, if I wanted to do more Disney, you could do the Matterhorn Mountain, and do a Yeti or something like that. I think would be really cool. Maybe a horror version of Star Wars. That’d be pretty that’d be pretty awesome to go. There are lots of creepy crawly things in Star Wars that I think would make for one hell of a horror.
Maybe they’ll call on you soon.
Now that Disney owns Star Wars, I’m not convinced I’m on top of their list. That doesn’t mean that my phone isn’t on. You know, I’m happy to take whatever meeting and say whatever apology is necessary, for sure!
Screamboat hits Vue cinemas on April 2nd.
