The name Eli Craig might not immediately ring a bell, but all genre fans know Tucker & Dale vs. Evil—Craig’s 2010 horror comedy about a pair of good ol’ boys who accidentally get pegged as killers, in a movie that pokes great fun at every cabin-in-the-woods slasher trope imaginable. Craig’s latest candidate for cult-classic status is about to hit theaters: Clown in a Cornfield, a gory tale set in a small Midwestern town that’s terrorized by… well, see title.
io9 got a chance to talk to Craig all about clowns, cornfields, comedy, and why he prefers horror stories that weave surprisingly deep themes beneath all their splatter.
Cheryl Eddy, io9: Clown in a Cornfield has some funny one-liners (and a funny title), but it’s really more straightforward than subversive. How did you approach finding the right tone while steering it in a less comedy-forward direction than your previous films?
Eli Craig: I always am trying to surprise people, I guess, and it begins with the title—the reversal and surprising people. This film has these emotional elements that are deeper than both the title suggests, but also even the tone of the movie suggests. I love making movies that are kind of deep and don’t take themselves seriously at the same time. The title intrigued me; I had done a movie called Little Evil with both a clown and a cornfield in it. And I thought, well, now it’s time to put these two elements together.
There is comedy in this movie, but it really to me is like a horror action comedy. I broke out the comedy moments and took them away from the horror and the action so that they kind of stand almost on their own, so they don’t walk on each other. And it was a conscious decision because I really love action movies and I don’t want people to just think of me always as the really funny horror guy. But I think they might still think of me [that way] a little bit, so we’ll see.
io9: Clowns are a well-loved horror staple, but Clown in a Cornfield‘s Frendo has that extra layer of being a corporate mascot too. How did you bring both of those elements together to craft the character we see in the movie?
Craig: I love the backstory of Frendo being this corporate mascot who was the salesman for Baypen Corn Syrup in the 1930s and ‘40s and ‘50s for Kettle Springs. We wanted to design a clown that was sort of happy-go-lucky, but over the years had grown more sinister. There’s just this metaphor for America in there for me. This film is very Americana. It’s based in this small town in Missouri that had a boom time because of their corn syrup operation in the ‘40s and ‘50s, and now has kind of fallen into disrepair.
We wanted the clown to kind of emulate that. And the rage that comes from losing so much, from so much economic hardship, is built into the sinister grin of the clown. This is very much a film about this generational divide, and some of the anger that comes from Frendo toward the younger generation is really apparent in it.
io9: I was going to ask you about the generation gap that we see in the movie. You mentioned earlier that it was important that the movie was about more than just a clown killing people. Why was it important to you to make sure there was a foundation in place?
Craig: For me, I’m always looking for something that’s deeper. I’m weirdly kind of a thoughtful, deep person. Even with Tucker & Dale, maybe one out of 10 people go, “Oh wow, this is really a film about classism and social stratification.” I love absurdity with deep themes. I’ve always loved sort of existential philosophy and Theatre of the Absurd. And if I could combine the two and have a really fun, entertaining movie that you could look at twice and think, “Wait a minute, this movie’s actually about things that are deeper than are on the surface”—that’s always my goal.
io9: The movie has a sort of old tech/new tech theme to go with that—the kids making YouTube videos is a hobby the older people in town don’t understand; there’s also a perpetual lack of wifi or cell service, the main character is learning to drive a stick shift, etc. Was the rotary phone scene a genuine reaction?
Craig: Yeah, it really was. I was always thinking in this film about how to pit the old against the new, and that the older generation didn’t really know how to use new technology and the younger generation didn’t know how to use the older technology. All of these are things I came up with as we were moving along.
As far as the reaction that goes to the phone, so much of this was just figuring out—I had written something about it, but figuring out how it was gonna be organic on the day. How would they just make it feel natural and not like a joke? Because to me, I want all of my jokes to play as a very real reaction and not like somebody just had a funny line to say in a script.
So when Cassandra Potenza, who plays Janet, and Katie Douglas, who plays Quinn, ran up there, I was like, “Just try to work it out with the phone. Just try to figure out how you’re going to call out on this thing.” And they got the sense of it, so there’s a little bit of improv and a little bit of expectation that they’re not going to figure it out. So it just comes off very natural and real.
io9: We talked about clowns. But cornfields also have a long and storied history in horror. What do you think is the single creepiest thing about a cornfield? And what’s the biggest challenge that comes with filming in them?
Craig: Well, the creepiest thing about a cornfield is that they grow up taller than your head. And within about 30 seconds in a cornfield, you can get lost. The first time I shot a scene, just one night, on Little Evil in a cornfield, I had a crew member that wandered off to go to the bathroom and never came back. They just kind of got lost out there. And I learned a lot from that—that one corn stock looks like another.
So when we’re running through the corn, we could just be running back and forth through the same bit of corn, as long as it doesn’t look like it’s damaged. And we would run through, damage one section of the corn, then lay down that row and run through another section. And the most difficult part of dealing with all that is—well, multiple things. One is that corn is actually kind of sharp. It has these abrasive edges to it. So when the actors are running through it full sprint, they’re slashing through with their hands and little bits of corn can get in their eyes, and the husks and stuff. So there’s a joke in there where [Verity Marks’ character] Ronnie’s like, “Ow, this corn hurts!” It’s something I wrote because as we were shooting, people were like “Ow, this corn hurts!”
I wanted to put that in there just in kind of a funny way. And it’s muddy and there’s weather; sometimes it was like minus 10 or 20 degrees because we were shooting in Winnipeg. So there’s all that, and bugs—it’s gritty out there!
People sometimes view Hollywood as this bunch of prima donnas that are, like, catered to out there. But everybody on this film was so tough because it’s four in the morning, it’s minus 10 degrees, they have cuts all over their body from running through corn. And if you’re running through muck that fills up the soles of your boots; you can’t even really get any traction because all the mud sticks to the bottom of your shoes. So everybody on this was just so hardcore. You’d be surprised.
io9: The Clown in a Cornfield book your movie is based on has two sequels—would you consider making a sequel film?
Craig: Before I even shot this one, I read the second book and I figured out a tie-in from this movie that [went] into the second book. And then of course, when somebody has like three really good books written and has a series, and I just love Adam Cesare as an author, it’s exciting to think of what could come next.
io9: Awesome, maybe a crossover with Tucker and Dale?
Craig: I know—Tucker & Dale vs. Clown in a Cornfield. [Laughs] I think that there’s a lot of possibilities. I knew I had to grow my career out of the comedy horror world to get a chance to make more movies. So hopefully this will make people see that I’m more capable than just one thing. And then maybe I’ll get to do Tucker & Dale 2. We’ll see.
io9: I hope that does happen!
Craig: I figure maybe it’ll be my first feature film and my last feature film, Tucker & Dale 2, and we’ll all be shooting it—I’ll be an old man with the cane going “Action!” And Tucker and Dale [will both be] old men going through their sequel. [Laughs.] Or sooner, you know, who knows—if this movie does well, it’ll help me make more movies. So go see it!
Clown in a Cornfield hits theaters May 9.
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