Interview: Director BJ McDonnell Discusses Collaborating with the Foo Fighters, Old-School Special Effects, and Celebrating Rock and Roll Horror with STUDIO 666

Arriving in theaters this Friday is the rocking horror comedy Studio 666, which features the Foo Fighters playing “themselves” as they contend with the effects of being stuck inside a haunted house as they try to record their tenth studio album. At the helm of the project is director BJ McDonnell, who is no stranger to the worlds of horror or rock, as he’s helmed projects such as Hatchet III and directed killer music videos from Slayer to boot.

During a recent press day for the film, Daily Dead had the opportunity to speak with McDonnell about his involvement with Studio 666 and how he aimed to celebrate the timeless art of practical effects and the tradition of movies centered around specific bands as well with this film. McDonnell also discussed embracing the collaborative process on the project with everyone involved, his experiences directing Dave Grohl and the rest of the Foo Fighters, and more.

So great to speak with you today, BJ, and congratulations on the film. I know you’ve worked in horror and you’ve worked with musicians in the past as well. But how did the stars align for you for Studio 666?

BJ McDonnell: Yeah, I was working with the two producers from Sound City that, actually, were trying to get some horror things going. It was Jim Rota and John Ramsey, who are really awesome guys, but they work with Dave all the time on all his visual stuff, music videos, and documentary projects. Dave mentioned he wanted to do a horror film and that he wanted to meet with directors to do horror stuff. Jim said, "Well, you should meet BJ." Basically, he sent me the pitch, showed Dave all the Slayer videos that I did, and Dave was stoked on that. I took his pitch, what he wanted to do, and I wrote a look-book where I laid out my ideas of what I wanted to put into his ideas.

Then we just got together and I passed out my look-books, and we talked about the things that I liked that he wanted to do. He was super pumped about the things that I put in there. We talked about the horror films we loved, the directors we loved, what the vibe and the tone of this movie was that we were going to accomplish. That was it. Dave said, "Let's do this." He was super excited and got me excited, and away we went.

One of the things that is so great about the Foo Fighters is that they've always embraced a theatrical element to performing with their music videos over the years. From your perspective, did that make it a lot easier for you to work with them as actors since they already had extended themselves in that way prior to this project?

BJ McDonnell: It definitely helped out a lot. The fact that they've had the camera on them all the time; they're used to that. And especially the fact that their videos are so fun, and they always come up with these really good concepts to do these videos that are hilarious for the most part. What we really wanted to do with this movie is we wanted to keep this in line with the fun videos that they had done, but we wanted to make this an actual feature film, too. I think it was different because the guys' music videos are not too hard because it's just mostly imagery that you do, and you can say, "We're doing this," and you go from here.

But when you're doing a movie, you have to make sure that your actors have the emotions of what's happening in a scene. And as we all know, when you're making a movie, you usually don't shoot it in chronological order, either. You might shoot the ending first, or you might shoot the middle of the movie first. So it was very important that I had to make sure they knew what had happened before and remind them of what just was going on with a certain character over here or what they're about to see, or those kinds of things. So that was a bit different for them. But all in all, I just told them to be themselves because they're not creating a character, they're playing themselves, and the best way to do that is to just be yourselves.

You’re somebody who’s had a lot of experience with the camera and in making sure everything looks right. And when I think of a horror movie, especially now that I live in Los Angeles, you don’t necessarily think of a big house in Encino as the prime location for a scary movie. I was wondering if you could talk about approaching the aesthetics of Studio 666, because I think you did a great job of taking this very innocuous space and turning it into sort of this never-ending nightmare that just keeps unfolding the further you get into the film.

BJ McDonnell: I think the layout of the house alone, it's just a very strange house. It's not your average house in a yard. It was on this hill that had these weird statues and just weird stuff all over the property. It wasn't your average house. And that's where Dave actually got the idea because he picked that house to record Medicine at Midnight. That's where they were recording the album.

Wait, so that was the real recording house for Medicine at Midnight?

BJ McDonnell: It is exactly that. When I first met Dave, they were still in the house recording there, so all their gear and everything was in there, and they were still doing the album. They pretty much took the mixing board and everything out of the house almost a week before we started loading in all of our stuff to start trying to set dress the house and do everything for the movie. So we enhanced the way the house looked and tried to dingy it up a bit and add some elements to it. But other than that, the house was a very strange place. It's weird. Where it is in Encino, there are all these mansions everywhere, and then you go to this house that has a statue of a dragon with a crystal ball coming out of the ground, and it's something that was built at the house. It's really strange.

There are so many amazing effects gags in this. How was it working with Tony Gardner and his team at Alterian on Studio 666? I really loved how you guys just seemed to totally lean into going practical as much as humanly possible here.

BJ McDonnell: That was something we talked about. We wanted to keep it as practical as possible because we wanted to keep that '80s horror film vibe. And Dave has worked with Tony on his music videos. I've also worked with Tony on movies that I was shooting as a camera operator and things that I've directed. My wife's also a special effects artist, so we all know each other. We're all kind of connected as a family in that way.

We also asked him, "Hey, what kind of kills would you like to do, Tony? You always get these scripts, and it's already pre-planned. What are the kills that you've always wanted to accomplish as a special effects guy?" And we just listened to a bunch of things he wanted to do, and we picked out our kills based on what he wanted to do. It was great.

Jumping off that idea, do you feel like being that open to collaboration on Studio 666 gave you guys the chance to push things in ways that maybe you weren't thinking they were going to go when you guys first embarked on this project?

BJ McDonnell: I think collaboration's the most important thing you do on a film. I don't think that it's one thing where it's one person's sole idea to do something. And if you let people come up with the ideas with you, of things they want to do, it's almost like you're going to get people more excited about the project they're working on. And that's not even just with all the special effects stuff. With the camera people, I could have easily been like, "All right, I'm going to operate a camera this way." But I had to let go of that because I needed to make sure I was focusing on the performances of our actors. Of course, that's a hard thing for me to let go of, but watching the camera operators we had come in bring their ideas to the table was great. Same thing with the wardrobe, the beauty effects, and the set design. It's all about collaboration, in my opinion. And that's where you're going to get better stuff if you have assembled the right team.

Before we go, I wanted to ask about getting to make a fun horror/rock mash-up here with Studio 666. I’ve always thought that horror and rock and roll make for really great bedfellows, but it's been a while since we've had something that's brought these two worlds together. Was it fun for you to be able to do that then, considering all of your experiences working in horror, and also working in the world of rock as well?

BJ McDonnell: Oh, yeah. That was something else that we talked about when we first started working on this. We wanted to try to recreate something that we don't see anymore—the old band films. Not that they were horror films, but there used to be bands like The Beatles, The Monkees, and KISS all making movies at one point. So I thought Studio 666 was a great way for us to bring this back. It wasn’t just like, "Oh, there's a band guy and the singer of this band is starring in this one film." No, make the characters the entire band. And rock and roll and horror, I think, have always gone hand in hand. It's like I always say, the imagery of a lot of metal bands and posters, like Slayer, Danzig, The Misfits, bands like that, they always have a horror vibe to a lot of that imagery. So I thought this just all worked well together.