Ep. 31 - The Blair Witch Project

[Gina 00:10] Shall I?

[Kathryn 00:12] You shall. Gosh. My gosh, Cinnamon. Did you see that? She just fell off the table. There's a microphone there. So she like went to step and like missed because she was trying to skirt the microphone. Yeah, everyone saw that. I'm sorry, but everyone saw that.

[Gina 00:17] Yeah! There's something about when cats are clumsy, it's so funny.

[Kathryn 00:33] Well, it always makes me like, nervous, not to be dramatic, but like she's so not clumsy that whenever it happens, I act like I'm like full on helicopter mom, because she gets so like, like, my goodness.

[Gina 00:40] Mm. Hahaha!

[Kathryn 00:49] Sorry. Okay, hi!

[Gina 00:50] Hi, hello. Welcome to I Scream You Scream. I'm Gina.

[Kathryn 00:55] I'm Kathryn.

[Gina 00:56] And this month we're sharing stories about mass hysteria while we eat some Neapolitan ice cream. As a quick reminder, if you enjoy the show, we would be just tickled pink if you could leave us a five star review on whatever platform you're using. You can do it right now while you're listening, or you could do it later. You could do it whenever you want, but ideally right now. I'll give you a kiss. Anyway.

[Kathryn 01:20] Do it right now. He could have already done it already by this point.

[Gina 01:26] Grab a spoon and let's dig in. I have something to share. For dinner Tom is getting pizza from a place that allegedly does New York style pizza. Allegedly. It's apparently very good. It's called Five Boroughs. It's in Winchester. So cute. Yeah. I will edit that name out if it turns out to be bad. But I'm so fucking excited because.

[Kathryn 01:32] Me. That's a cute name. But leave it in if it's good.

[Gina 01:56] Yes, like you and I have talked about this before. You can't find good pizza here. Like you can find fancy pizza, but you can't find like the good kind of greasy shitty pizza.

[Kathryn 02:01] Yeah. Yeah, you just unlocked a memory. I texted Tom about pizza this weekend. Yes, I did and I completely, this poor man, I completely forgot about it. Yes, tell me your perspective because he told me that he like read it to you and I was just like, my God, I feel so bad.

[Gina 02:15] Yes you did! You. It was I think it was like the weekend or something.

[Kathryn 02:33] It was, it was when I was at the Roff House, which I also want to talk about today. But you explain your experience with it and I'll explain my side of the story, because it was so, yeah, go ahead.

[Gina 02:35] Yes! Yes. Okay. So yes, Kathryn was away. Tom and I wake up, it's like 7:30, 8 o'clock in the morning. I check my phone, I have some texts from Kathryn. All of a sudden Tom turns over and is like, Kathryn texted me asking me if I put corn on pizza.

[Kathryn 03:01] In like the middle of the night, it was like out of nowhere.

[Gina 03:03] Middle of the night, apropos of nothing, zero context.

[Kathryn 03:07] Let me tell my side of the story. So we, what happened was, so I was at the Roff house this weekend with the T.W.A.T.S. and the hosts of Quite Unusual Podcast. It was a splendid experience. I'm not going to go into like, so much detail today. We'll talk about it another time because I'm still processing the whole thing. But it was a great experience. And it was like, we were all just sitting around chatting, preparing to get going with the investigation. And we got on the topic of eating when you travel, like the things you experience as far as restaurant menus being different and like normal things that you put on things being.

[Gina 03:42] Mmm.

[Kathryn 03:50] Kim, one of the twats, was talking about how she had gone on a trip to, it was either, it was one, was either England or Ireland or something. She was telling this story about how she went with a group when she was a student, or I think that's true. Sorry if that's wrong. It was like one table kind of knew what they were getting into and they had prepared ahead of time and looked into things ahead of time and they ended up getting something that was like.

[Gina 04:16] You.

[Kathryn 04:17] What they were used to. And then this other table I think they ordered like a deluxe pizza or something like that. And here, corn does not come on a deluxe pizza. Like if you're gonna get corn on a pizza, it's like,

[Gina 04:29] You.

[Kathryn 04:31] Probably a Southwestern style specialty pizza or something, but that is just not normal. So she was saying that they were all really surprised that they got corn on this pizza because they weren't expecting it. And I started thinking of it and I was like, God, I feel like that would be really good. I'm imagining the texture of corn on a pizza and like the sweet and she was talking about kind of the sweetness that it added to the pizza. I'm like, man, that would be good.

[Gina 04:51] It is good.

[Kathryn 04:57] But it's hard for my brain to separate it from Southwest style flavors, because that's the only way in which that would happen here.

[Gina 05:02] Yeah.

[Kathryn 05:05] So literally in the midst of this conversation, because we were trying to figure out, you know, is that a normal thing that British people do on their pizza? Or was this a specialty pizza? Like that's what she didn't know. So I was like, let me ask Tom real quick. He'll know.

[Gina 05:05] Funny. You.

[Kathryn 05:22] Sent that in the middle of the conversation and never looked at my phone again. Like completely forgot that I even sent it and that was it. This poor man. Anyway, yeah.

[Gina 05:30] Well, Kim, if you're listening, it is not unheard of. It is kind of normal, but it's normally like with other stuff. You wouldn't see, or I don't know, maybe not never, but yeah. Like with chicken or like peppers and things like that. You wouldn't just get like corn on pizza. I'm sure some people do. I would not.

[Kathryn 05:33] Mm-hmm. So and that's how it was. Yeah. Yeah, it was like on their deluxe, right?

[Gina 05:36] Yeah.

[Kathryn 05:37] Yeah, food's weird. Anyway.

[Gina 05:39] Food is fuckin'. We are returning to accidentally becoming a food podcast. It's been horror movies recently. Now it's food.

[Kathryn 05:58] Yeah, it's been a while since we went real hard with it. It has been horror movies, but we don't need to banter about horror movies because we got a whole hour. Should I just go for it?

[Gina 06:06] Mm-hmm. I cannot wait to jump in. I'm really excited about this. I have never seen Blair Witch Project. I think that's what it's called. I know teeny tiny little bit about it. I cannot wait to hear you tell this story.

[Kathryn 06:24] A documentary aired on Syfy Channel, and it was about the little known legend of Elly Kedward. As the story goes, there was a settlement in Maryland called Blair, which first made a name for itself in 1785. It wasn't very big. Everyone knew everyone else. It was a settlement. So they were all basically just one big happy family. Everyone was in everyone else's business. In the settlement, there was a woman named Elly Kedward and she was a little strange, which was not a great thing for a woman to be in this particular time period. She mostly kept to herself, but she was known to really love children. Despite this, her strangeness made people uneasy. They didn't trust her, they just got like bad vibes from her. Several children in this settlement would go on record saying that she had lured them into her cottage so she could steal their blood and use it for witchcraft. Yeah, so this was never proven and there was no evidence of this ever happening, but it was 1785, which meant legal proceedings were shady at best, as we know. So she was officially found guilty of witchcraft, which meant that she was sentenced to be exiled in the frozen woods. It is said that she was taken deep into the Black Hills forest, tied to a tree and left for dead. Yeah. Huh. Yeah. And this is like right outside of town. They just like knocked her like to the curb, essentially.

[Gina 08:09] Catch me gnawing through that tree like a beaver. Fuck that.

[Kathryn 08:14] Right? Well, maybe. Because the townspeople carried on like normal. Even though she wasn't executed in front of them, there was no way or so they thought that she would ever survive the winter tied to a tree or just in the woods by herself. So they were like, all right, cool. We're done with Elly. We don't have to worry about her anymore.

[Gina 08:17] Poor woman.

[Kathryn 08:37] Nothing strange happened after she was gone and they just kind of went back to normal life until the following year. One day a child who had originally accused her went missing and then another, then another, then another to the point where so many of her accusers had gone missing that the townspeople kind of went into their own little panic. Everyone was like, okay, something's happening. She's coming back. The witch is back, what do we do? What they ended up doing was they just packed up their shit and they bounced. They just got the fuck out of Blair, right? Exactly. So they moved down a little ways away from where they currently were, still on the, I think it was on the other side of the Black Hills forest.

[Gina 09:16] I respect that man. Yeah

[Kathryn 09:30] And they created a new town called Birkittsville. Even though they got rid of her, they up and left, everything kind of went back to normal, but the legend of the Blair Witch did not die. In fact, some would argue after they moved, the legend only gained traction and would kind of grow as the centuries would, you know, continue. Strange occurrences continued in and around the Black Hills Forest that surrounded Birkittsville. Example, in 1825, a young girl named Eileen fell into a creek and drowned. The weird thing is the people who had been with her when it happened swear up and down that she didn't just drown. She was dragged in and pulled under by something in the water. Then after that, the area where she drowned would randomly flood with no explanation. And then in 1886, another child went missing. Her name was Robin, and she was gone for several days until eventually a search party went looking for her and everyone was panicked and everyone was like, she's vanished without a trace. She just like wandered off. And then eventually she just came back home with, you know, there's not a scratch on her and her family was confused, asked where she had been and she told them that she had been lured into the woods by an old woman whose feet never touched the ground. Very spooky. Yeah. Yeah. So even though Robin had returned home, her search party did not.

[Gina 11:00] Hoo hoo!

[Kathryn 11:11] A search party went out for the search party. They needed to go looking for them and they were eventually found. They were at a place in the woods that is referred to as Coffin Rock and they had been ritualistically bound together, disemboweled and marked with strange symbols. By the time people came back to get them so that they could, you know, give them a funeral and all that, their bodies had vanished.

[Kathryn 11:40] In October of 1994, three film students, Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams, ventured into the Black Hills forest to investigate the Blair Witch legend. They were doing this for a documentary project for their school. They wanted to set out and see if they could find her, see if they find any townspeople that had experiences with her. They basically just wanted to create their own documentary about this legend that so many people in the area were familiar with. So they started in Burkittsville and they interviewed a ton of locals, just asked about alleged witch sightings, child disappearances, and just any strange information that the locals had about this myth. By the time these students were doing this documentary, a lot of people in the town were just kind of brushing this off as a myth. They didn't want to talk about it. They didn't want their town to be known for this. They just wanted to stay out of the forest and let the legend die. Basically, they didn't want people poking around. Other people didn't want people poking around because they did believe in the legend and they were like, you need to not go into these woods. It's dangerous. The witch is real. Don't mess with her. Go home. Like that was kind of the vibe of the people they were interviewing. So the students didn't listen. They of course continued on. This is the exact type of footage they wanted to get. This is a school project. They're like, this is gold. They're going to get an A, you know?

[Gina 12:55] You.

[Kathryn 13:17] They planned to go hiking in the Black Hills Forest to see if they could find any proof of her story. And they planned to only be gone for two days. One day to interview the people and head out into the woods, camp out for a night, hike around for another day, get back to their car, go home, do their editing, be done with the project by Monday. You know, it was going to be real quick and dirty. Heather, Joshua, and Michael went into the woods and they never came back out. A year later, the film equipment that they had been using was discovered under an old abandoned house that was much deeper in the woods than the original route they had planned out indicated they would be. So they got way off track of where they were supposed to be. The footage they captured on their equipment showed basically their slow descent into confusion and terror and basically they just started losing their shit. It appeared to be caused by unseen forces that stalked them throughout the woods.

[Kathryn 14:26] Five years later in 1999, the same year that this documentary was made about the Blair Witch and their story, found footage was released to the public for the entire nation to witness basically their descent into madness. That found footage would be called the Blair Witch Project, which we now know as a major motion picture that was written and directed by two men named Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez and it is 100% fiction from start to finish. So this is the story of the Blair Witch Project. The documentary that aired on SyFy was 100% fake and was basically created as a marketing tool for the movie.

[Gina 15:16] My god, that's genius.

[Kathryn 15:18] Yeah, yes, it is genius. So genius that not everyone knew it was fake. The studio's head of marketing, John, I think it's Hegeman, Hegeman, Hegeman? He was extremely intentional about making it seem as real as possible. They put months and months and months of effort into creating this entire world in which the story of the Blair Witch was real. And everywhere you looked, no matter where you fact-checked, it would appear as if the Blair Witch was real. You had no reason not to believe that the story wasn't true. The film was originally screened at Sundance in January of 1999, so at the very beginning of the year. And people were really intrigued by it. They were really intrigued by the concept. Found footage was not really, there's gonna be some debate on this, but it wasn't really a new thing. There were found footage movies that existed well before this, especially in the horror genre. But because of the marketing world they created, which we'll of course go deeper into, it was presented in a way where people really questioned it. They really genuinely weren't sure whether or not this found footage was actually found footage or not.

[Kathryn 16:41] So even at Sundance, they did the best they could to make it seem as real as possible. So it was submitted in the independent narrative feature category. So it was not listed as a documentary because it wasn't a documentary. It was a feature film. But they did everything they could at the festival to basically hide the fact that it was a feature film. So any marketing material that they passed out like pamphlets or flyers or whatever at the festival made no indication that it was a feature film. They 100% made it seem like it was real. Really the only place where they indicated that it was a fake story was the category in which it was submitted, because they had to. They can't lie to the festival people. And many people at the festival admitted to other festival goers or journalists or whatever that they needed to double and triple check to make sure that it was submitted in the right category. And that was if people were even paying attention to the category at all. A lot of people were just there for the vibes. People don't always pay attention to that type of thing. People were fooled basically, right from the beginning.

[Gina 17:53] Yeah.

[Kathryn 18:02] So that was the vibe that they had at Sundance and it got very popular right away at the festival. After Sundance, they started to roll it out extremely slowly and it started with an extremely limited release in only 27 theaters across the US, which is a very small number if you feel like how many cities there are in the United States, only 27.

[Gina 18:23] Yeah. We got 50 states.

[Kathryn 18:28] Yeah, exactly.

[Gina 18:29] Yeah.

[Kathryn 18:30] That's a very small number of movie theaters. This is kind of where the Blair Witch Project became the way it became what it was. This is kind of where that starts because they relied so heavily on word of mouth when it first got started. It speaks for itself. Imagine you're a teenager in the summer of 1999, you hear from a friend of a friend of a friend that some kids died in the woods a few years ago. People found their cameras and now you can go see that camera footage. All you have to do is drive an hour and a half away to the nearest city that's playing it. Like this is a movie in and of itself. You know what I mean? This is like a teen slasher flick in and of itself. That was how they marketed the film. They allowed people to tell people about this movie and that's how it spread.

[Gina 19:32] That's so genius for like the movie that it was. I do want to clarify for anyone listening. Kathryn and I both work in marketing. So if we seem like we're extra nerdy about the marketing side of it, this is why.

[Kathryn 19:43] Yeah, I forgot. Well, yeah, and it is, I think this whole movie, I don't even think you need to be into weird marketing strategies to appreciate this one because this is like an objective, this had never been done before. To think of all the little things that you could have missed, you know, if you just, I don't know. There was a sense of, what's the word I'm looking for?

[Gina 20:09] Scarcity?

[Kathryn 20:20] Scarcity and it was almost taboo. Like, do you want to go and see this footage of these three kids dying and their last moments? It was that. Because people didn't know. People in Hollywood knew, but it wasn't spread throughout America yet that this wasn't real. So it was kind of a slow burn, you know? It happened slowly and quickly at the same time. That'll make more sense by the end of this. But when you rely on word of mouth, things get spread and things get lost in translation. It really wasn't until people saw the movie for themselves that they knew this might be a feature film, because there's like makeup artists and production and all that. So for the whole time it was rolling out, people were like, we got to go see this thing. We got to go see this thing. Did you hear about the kids? It was like its own little urban legend for like the summer of '99. That in and of itself markets itself. Who wouldn't eat that up?

[Gina 21:21] Such a vibe.

[Kathryn 21:28] But here's the thing. I must talk about the internet because I'm telling a story that took place in the 90s, as is tradition. It was 1999, so the internet did exist, but also the internet was shit. It was not the internet we have today. But even with the power of the internet, this is one of those things that they thought about. They used the internet to their advantage and they created a website called www.blairwitch.com, which sadly has since been archived and is not accessible even through the Wayback Machine and it makes me so sad. So if anyone at Lionsgate has screenshots of this website, I would love for you to send them to me because I want to see what this website used to look like. But that URL does redirect to Lionsgate now, which is annoying. I'm so sad.

[Gina 22:03] Mmm. Mmm. Hmm.

[Kathryn 22:21] Anyway, so let's say someone is like, I don't know, this sounds a little sketch, I don't know if this is real. They go to the website to see what's going on. Maybe they're expecting to just see showtimes or information about the actors or whatever. No, what they're going to find is fake historical documents that pertain to the original story about Elly Kedward, fake interviews with townspeople, both from the old school days and the newer ones. Basically the people that were in this documentary the students were trying to make. They'll also find fake police reports on these missing kids.

[Gina 23:06] My gosh! Wow. I want to visit this website so bad.

[Kathryn 23:11] I know, I'm so, screenshots have to exist. I just know they do. I just, I don't know who or where. So if you have them, please, please let us know.

[Gina 23:16] Somebody has them.

[Kathryn 23:23] Yeah, like I said, this was a slow burn. Even people who assumed it was fake, when they went to fact check or prove to people that they didn't believe it was real, all the information they were getting indicated that it was in fact real. So it got to a point where people were like, my God, maybe this is real, you know? And they started to believe it.

[Kathryn 23:45] As part of this facade, the actors were instructed to basically stay out of the public eye as much as possible during production. They did make appearances at Sundance. The actors were there, but they weren't part of any official film panel discussions or anything like that. It was just the director guys. So similar to the discussion that we just had about Ghostwatch, one of the reasons this succeeded so much is these kids just looked like kids. They were just your average high school kids. It was two guys and a girl. And they looked like just your neighbor down the block. So you couldn't, to this day, if you showed me a picture of either of those boys, I'd be like, I think they look familiar, but I don't know. They're very nondescript. I would recognize her, but it's because she was a lot more infamous. We'll talk about that later. But they just look like people. They did not look like actors. This was their first role for, I think, all of them. If not, nothing big. They were not known actors. That was also very intentional. The casting people were like, we need to find people that haven't made a name for themselves yet because that's not going to fit our story. We need to have people that people will think were just average high school students because at the time they kind of were.

[Gina 25:10] Yeah. If you have Sylvester Stallone playing a high school kid in a found footage movie, it's not going to work.

[Kathryn 25:18] Right. Yeah, exactly. So if anyone saw them at Sundance, it was either not enough people for word to spread or they just didn't notice them or didn't know who they were, didn't recognize them or whatever. And then just as a little cherry on top, their names, the real actors' names were their names in the movie and they're listed in the credits as themselves. So it's like they did literally everything to make it as real as possible.

[Gina 25:45] Okay, all right, yeah. Smart.

[Kathryn 25:53] Yeah, they aren't. I mean, they went so far as they really are not even, they're not really even acting that much. And I'll go into this more at the end, because there's definitely a lot of debate on that. But the goal was for it to seem like they were just three kids lost in the woods. And they succeeded in that because that is actually how it was filmed. The three actors were just given cameras and they just camped out in the woods for like a week and a half. Well, it was at the beginning. But like, you're out in the woods. I think it was like eight or nine days they were out there. You know, the crew would be out there during the day and they'd be working with people for some of the time. But other times it was literally just them. So as the movie progresses, you see them getting very frustrated and annoyed with each other. And that's because they had been with each other for over a week and they were fucking cold and tired and hungry and annoyed with each other because they'd been out there for a week. And it kind of created this weird sense of even for the actors, the lines of reality were getting blurred because it's like, here's me as myself, that's my name, in the woods with these two other people who are driving me nuts. And then I like die at the end. Like it started to be like their reality was kind of getting distorted. So it kind of was a little fucked up. Like it wasn't, they weren't being tortured or anything. It wasn't anything unethical.

[Gina 26:53] That sounds like so much fun! No.

[Kathryn 27:11] But that can kind of fuck with you. Like, they made it feel so real. And aside from the fact that the story of the witch is fiction and they didn't really go missing or die, everything else actually was real. From the actor's perspective, it kind of was. It kind of was real. This really was their real story for a week and a half, basically. So I will say another thing, detail that they didn't leave out is, like I said, they were all very new to the industry, but they all were working actors, so they all had IMDb pages. Their IMDb pages were updated to say that they were missing and presumed dead.

[Gina 28:24] My god, IMDb existed back then? Wow! They thought of every little fucking thing. Damn.

[Kathryn 28:36] Mm-hmm. Yeah. They thought of literally everything. And there are things that I can't even, I am forgetting or whatever. They thought of literally everything. All of this stuff, this world was created. They created this world that if you found yourself in it, the reality in this world is these three kids are missing and presumed dead because that is the message that is being presented. If a distant family friend or relative or whatever who hasn't seen these kids in 10 years is watching TV, sees a commercial for this and is like, my god, I can't believe it. What the F? Is this real? They're going to go to blairwitch.com or IMDb and see that it is real. Yes. And that literally happened.

[Gina 29:00] Yeah. Shit. I didn't even think about that. Fuck.

[Kathryn 29:18] That actually happened. Heather's mom said that in the post-production period where word is starting to spread, trailers are starting to get released, and the trailer is just 100%. There was no indication that it was fake. That's the first thing that most people are going to see about it. She said that multiple people, she got condolences and sympathy cards. RIP Heather, because they genuinely thought it was real.

[Gina 29:47] Wow. I mean, artistically, that is impressive to build a world that big and convincing. Don't know how I feel about it morally, but artistically very cool.

[Kathryn 29:54] Yes. Yes, exactly. And the public also agreed with you. Because you can only keep up this kind of charade for so long. Like I said previously, the more people started to see this movie, the more people realized in the theater, oh my god, there's a whole production team. These kids are actors. You know, it took seeing the credits for a lot of people to understand, okay, this is 100% not real. A lot of people suspected it wasn't, and a lot of people didn't buy into it at all. This was not like the nation wasn't in a frenzy, but so many people were at least considering the reality that it kind of became the reality, at least for that summer. So again, it took people actually seeing it in the theater. Then word started spreading like, hey, we've been fucking had. These Hollywood assholes were trying to trick us. Yeah, they think we're a bunch of idiots. So at that point, once word had been spread and once people started to see this movie, the actors were allowed to basically come out of hiding and join the marketing buzz.

[Gina 31:02] We have been had!

[Kathryn 31:19] So at this point, the presumption was that, okay, ha ha, this movie was made, it was successful, now here we are, this was our breakout role, like come on Hollywood, I'm ready for my next gig. That's not what happened. Blair Witch Project was a huge success. There's absolutely no disputing. To this day, it's like one of the highest grossing movies. I don't think of all time, but definitely horror movies. Any bare bones movie like this is going to gross a lot because not a lot of money gets put into it. It was filmed for less than $60,000 and it grossed roughly $250 million.

[Gina 32:04] Holy shit! In 1999? Holy fuck.

[Kathryn 32:09] In 1999. That's a quarter of a billion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, so much money. Yeah.

[Gina 32:19] That's wild.

[Kathryn 32:21] Of course other movies have made more than that, certainly. But for such a low budget and the way they made it and the era in which it was made, that is an astounding number. It is a household thing. Whether you've heard of this movie or not, you've seen spoofs of this movie.

[Gina 32:26] But it's like a household name. Like everyone knows Blair Witch.

[Kathryn 32:46] So it is indisputably a successful film. But emotionally, there were mixed reviews. Some people were in awe of the marketing strategy, like you were saying. They thought it was so cool, brilliant, innovative, and nobody had ever experienced something like that. It was just the most creative thing anyone had ever seen. Others were horribly offended by it because they were like, these people think we're idiots and thought that we would fall for this. Keep in mind, and this is an important part of this whole mindset, this was around the millennium, the turn of the century. This was peak machismo douche-bro era, right?

[Gina 33:32] You.

[Kathryn 33:36] Enter the douche bro. If you ever think things can't get worse, just imagine a douche bro. Not only that, not only was this peak machismo era, but this was also a horror film, keep in mind. And millennium douche bros fucking love horror. And if you don't make your horror films exactly the way they want it, they're going to tear you apart and they're going to talk a lot of mad shit and they're going to make sure that you know that you suck. And that's exactly what they did. I'm kind of like talking in circles here, but the vibe around the millennium was kind of go big or go home, especially when it came to moviemaking and horror films specifically. And not a lot happens in the Blair Witch.

[Gina 34:36] Your worst nightmare.

[Kathryn 34:50] I think for me per spoiler, I love this movie. It is one of the scariest movies to me because the whole thing is just getting lost in the woods. Like that's fucking terrifying. That's literally my worst nightmare. I think this movie is horrifying. Do you want to know? I don't have this in my notes anywhere and I don't know why I didn't put this in. I'm interrupting myself right now, but.

[Gina 34:53] Abso-fucking-lutely you can. Please do.

[Kathryn 35:14] Can I tell you how I learned about this movie? Just to paint a picture why I am fully Team Blair Witch and Team these actors and Team Heather specifically. I never even saw it until I was an adult because I was too scared to watch it because the first time I ever heard about it, I was nine years old and I was at a bonfire with the Girl Scouts. And we were like in the woods—we were not in the woods, but we were at one of the girls' houses. She had woods that are like—she's also like in a fucking subdivision. So it's not like we were in the wilderness at all. You'd have to walk ten minutes and you'd be like at the school. So like it was not in the middle of nowhere. But to me I was like it's dangerous as hell because there's trees everywhere. So we're at this bonfire and someone—there were a couple girls who had older sisters and it was like, so they knew all that kind of stuff from them. They were like teenagers. And one of them started making one of those stick figure people. Have you seen those? That's like one of the images of the film. They're literally just humans made out of sticks.

[Gina 36:01] I think I know what—yeah, yeah, I can see it in my mind's eye.

[Kathryn 36:06] Well, we'll use it as one of the images that we share. It's like one of those iconic—you see that and you know it's a reference to the Blair Witch. So you've definitely seen it before, 100%. So she started making one of those and like making fun of the Blair Witch. And I was like, who's that? Like, what are you talking about? And she explained to me that these kids went missing somewhere out in California, which wasn't true. It's like wrong side of the country. But she's explaining it all to me as if I'm an idiot for never having heard. And I'm sitting there like, why are we in the woods right now? We are not safe. This is dangerous. We're thousands of miles from the woods in which this took place, but I was like, get me the fuck out of here. So that was my experience with the Blair Witch. So all of this is to say, I think it's a horrifying movie. But I think part of why it's horrifying is exactly what we were talking about last week—nothing big happens. That is, I don't want to say objective because the end does kind of get a little nuts, but it's not even as nuts as Ghostwatch gets. Like it's very gentle and very—it's such a slow burn. But that is specifically what makes it feel real. Because you wouldn't find anything crazy on found footage like that. It's just like this atmospheric ghost story, basically. Which—those are—I find those terrifying. It's like what you can't see is what's so scary. That very real vibe. But that vibe wasn't what the douche bros in 1999 were into when it came to horror. This was kind of the beginning of like torture horror era. So like Hostel, Saw, like those very big graphic gross, like in your face, don't want to watch it in 3D type of gory movie, which is the opposite of what the Blair Witch Project is. Compared to this bigger, badder, louder, gorier kind of vibe, this movie was boring for all intents and purposes. Like once you saw it, it was like, is that it? Nothing even scary happens, you know? As a result, the actors were just ripped to shreds. It was offensive to people that they were in this movie.

[Gina 38:37] I think that sounds silly. And they're just kids working. Leave them alone.

[Kathryn 38:41] They're just kids. And it's like, this movie did so well financially, but I think if it came out now, I think it would have done so much better emotionally. Like that vibe is in now. People appreciate that so much more now than they did. It's very similar to—did you ever watch The Witch? That one with—

[Gina 38:53] Yes. Yeah. No, but it's on my list. I, cause I just watched The Northman, which I think is the same director.

[Kathryn 39:09] Yeah, so The Witch is—I mention The Witch because it's very similar. The whole thing—well it's not very similar—but as far as like a slow burn, it's just this family. And that's it, that's the whole thing. It's just this family living their lives, but creepy things slowly start to happen. There's a little more gore, which is funny because there's not much, but it's just the same kind. You feel like you're alone in the woods and you feel—it's that feeling. It's that creepy, slow burn feeling. And that's kind of what we're doing now in horror. I love that. That kind of stuff sticks with me.

[Kathryn 39:39] Anyway, yeah. So the actors had a hard time finding work after this. Joshua Leonard, who is one of the guys, he's still acting, but to this day, if you Google, "What happened to Joshua Leonard?" the first snippet that pops up is the Wiki fandom that says he died in the woods in 1994. So like to this day—well, and it's not like no one's trying to trick anyone anymore—but it's still like, I love that anecdote because it's still, who are you talking about? Are you talking about the actor? Are you talking about this character that he played? The character did die in the woods in 1994, you know? So it kind of was like, we're still kind of stuck in that weird reality that accidentally was created. Yeah, isn't that bizarre?

[Gina 40:11] It's still there? Oh wow. Yeah. Part of—

[Kathryn 40:29] Yeah, so he is still acting, I believe, to this day, but he's never been in anything even remotely close to this movie's success. Michael Williams, the other guy in the movie, did continue for about a year and a half, and he just couldn't find anything so he ended up just working at a restaurant before leaving Hollywood altogether. And then Heather Donahue was unsurprisingly the most targeted by all of this.

[Kathryn 41:10] Not surprised at all. Disappointed but not surprised. Yep. She won a Razzie that year for worst actress of the year.

[Gina 41:23] Not surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised. Yeah. Jinx.

[Kathryn 41:28] Which is a fake award. We're all gonna make fun of the Razzies unless we ever win one. Then it's a totally real award and we deserved it. But yeah, it's a stupid thing in the first place. But that was the vibe. That was the message that was being sent about this movie. And it was because of her big final scene, you know, where the camera's like looking up her nose and she's crying and, you know, apologizing to her mom and saying that she loves her family because she knows she's gonna die and blah, that was why people were so like, what the fuck is this? Because that was the big climax and you're just watching this woman cry on screen. But the implication was the darkness around her, the witch was there, you know? So despite the fact that that is one of the most spoofed and replicated shots in cinematic history, people were still like, fuck you for this, which is just bizarre to me. Yeah, just absolutely wild.

[Gina 42:16] Maaan. Because how old was she when they were filming this ish?

[Kathryn 42:24] She was young. Knew you were going to ask this, and I meant to Google it, but I forgot to. Let me.

[Gina 42:28] Well, it's impressive that a young actress in one of her first roles could carry a scene like that so convincingly, because that's—

[Kathryn 42:36] Right? So she was born in 74, so how old would she have been in 99?

[Gina 42:44] 25, you got it. It was 25, we knew it all along.

[Kathryn 42:45] All right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, she wasn't—I mean, that's young. That's not young in Hollywood though. Especially in—yeah, so still young for sure. And especially for one of your first roles, if not your first role.

[Gina 42:53] That's true, especially in 99. Yeah. And there's not another actor on the screen to like play off of and to help build the emotions. It's just you driving it. Wow. Kudos, Heather. You deserve it.

[Kathryn 43:11] Mm-hmm. And 100%, justice for Heather. This is a big one that I get really passionate and worked up about this one, big surprise. But I genuinely—like this is the part of the story, everything else about the story is so fun and interesting to me. But of course, like no shade to Michael and Joshua, because they were also not treated well. But justice for Heather. I want a tattoo that says Justice for Heather because I'm so like, fuck the way she was treated. It's so awful. That scene was hard. Like speaking for her, guarantee that was like—that is an impressive thing. And especially since that would have been one of the shots where the crew was there because, you know, of the lighting and placement, like that wasn't going to be just one of the ones that she's just operating the camera by herself.

[Gina 43:42] You.

[Kathryn 44:03] So imagine a crew of people hitting you at that angle and you have to like be on, have a breakdown and like you're apologizing to your parents for like dying in the woods and then your mom literally is getting condolences from people. Actually, like that is a mind fuck.

[Gina 44:08] Ugh. You have an emotional breakdown. Yeah. Yeah, that is a mindfuck. I hope they all got free therapy. I hope the production paid for it. Okay.

[Kathryn 44:23] You know what I mean? So these kids—well, they—let me—we're not done yet because they fucking didn't. So these kids were just absolutely annihilated. You know who wasn't annihilated? The producers and the directors. They fucking made bank. They were out having fancy dinners while these kids were in the woods shooting their movie that would gross them $250 million. So for the week that they were—over a week, I'm gonna say week and a half, it was eight or nine days, I don't remember—for that week of filming, each actor was paid $1,000.

[Gina 45:10] What? Their budget was 60K. They gave three of that to—yes. And then they made—that doesn't seem right. That doesn't seem right.

[Kathryn 45:37] Whether it's normal practice or not, that's not right. Which also I'm confident that's not. Like if Meryl Streep was in that movie, she would not get $1,000. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? Mother Meryl, are you kidding? So Joshua would later in an interview say, quote, it's been rough and there have been huge aspects of trauma.

[Gina 45:47] Can you imagine? I mean, she would have fucking killed it.

[Kathryn 46:03] Nobody has ever stepped in from the studio side to say, "Oh man, that must have been really hard. Maybe we can pay for the therapy bills you've been paying for over 20 years." So he literally addressed what you said. In 2004, the actors did sue the studio for inadequate compensation and they got a settlement of $300,000. I don't know if it was $300,000 to split or if it was $300,000 each. I tried to—the none of the articles I found specified that. So if anyone knows, please let us know because that's still a small percentage of $250 million. But I am curious how badly they were cheated because this settlement prevented them from ever receiving any residuals from the film.

[Gina 46:49] It's still not enough. Yeah.

[Kathryn 47:02] That was part of the agreement. So fucked. Yep. So like I said, Joshua does continue to act, Heather and Michael left the industry entirely because of this movie. It was a combo of not being able to find work afterwards because of the public's reaction. Studios didn't want to book them because they didn't want people to be mad that they were booking the Blair Witch kids.

[Kathryn 47:29] And also not only that, it was also just stress and trauma. Even if they were getting work, they were so scared that they weren't performing well. So they just left. They—I don't want to say they couldn't handle it because I'm not blaming them—but it was just—they had to leave. They were basically forced out of Hollywood. Michael went to school for counseling and as of the last information I could find on him, works as a guidance counselor, which I love. And he also teaches acting classes on the side and directs school plays. Which I'm like, can all actors do that in their retirement? Because I love that.

[Gina 48:05] I love that for him. Yeah.

[Kathryn 48:11] So Heather's trauma was definitely the most talked about because she was the most talked about, of course. She was the one people were ripping to shreds. She kind of carried the brunt of what people were channeling toward all three of them. In 2008, she left acting entirely. She held on for a long time, but a lot of it was just really low budget and not anything—like she struggled that entire time. And I wish this is like where her story ended because I love this. She moved to Northern California and opened a medical marijuana farm.

[Gina 48:49] Hell fucking yes, Heather. Hell yeah.

[Kathryn 48:50] Which like I fucking love. But then other bad things happened. I wish that that was the end of it. But in 2016, they decided to make a sequel to the Blair Witch. So they had to contact these actors to get permission to use their names and likeness in this new film because it was their real name. It was really them. So legally they had to give permission. So they did. And Heather would say that it was like one of the most difficult decisions that she ever made. And she never explained why she decided to do it. And I don't think it really matters. She doesn't have to explain herself. But she did say that this movie felt like a weight that she had been forced to basically drag around. That sequel was kind of just a reminder that her name and image belonged to someone else. And that was just traumatic in and of itself. She did develop an issue with alcohol and she just kind of wandered around for a few years and like was kind of going through it until eventually she did settle in Maine and she ended up getting sober and she changed her name. She legally changed her name to like separate herself from it. And she's just been living a quiet life in Maine for the last several years. So like I am happy it ended there.

[Gina 50:34] Thank God. Okay. I was afraid you were gonna say that like—

[Kathryn 50:40] I just love the whole vibe of her like fucking off to a marijuana farm, but I am happy she fucked off somewhere, like in a good way.

[Gina 50:44] Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. And Maine is gorgeous. Lobster rules for eternity, Heather. We'll go there someday. I hope—yeah, I hope she's stoned as shit, catching lobsters. That's all I know about Maine.

[Kathryn 50:59] Mm-hmm. Yeah, and there hasn't really been anything reported on her in a long time. She doesn't do much—I don't want to say she doesn't do much, I don't know what she's doing, that's the point. She doesn't do much publicly. And yeah, that's kind of it. That's the story. I've been wanting to do this story for so long. Gina knows this. I talk about this all the time. I just think it's so fascinating and so interesting.

[Gina 51:04] Good.

[Kathryn 51:27] But when I first decided to do this for this episode, I was kind of back and forth because originally my focus was on the fear. Like the fear was the mass hysteria. I was like, I don't know if there's going to be enough. Like there's not that much information on it. It's just a marketing strategy. I don't know if I can fill a whole episode with it. But as time went on, it kind of became clear that the case of mass hysteria in this instance is two-sided. There is that side of the fear and the people who thought that this was real. But the second, and in my opinion more prominent and important to the story, is the hysteria people experienced when they were angry about it. Like the actual backlash itself and the experience the actors had as a result, which is so annoying because they had nothing to do with the marketing strategy at all. I've already forgotten the name of the guy who was head of marketing. Like that's how irrelevant he was to this whole thing, but he was driving the entire thing. That just—it's like that's the shit that happens. You know what I mean? Like that's how it goes.

[Gina 52:23] Mm. And it's so—yeah, it's so—it's almost like an I told you so. Like I wish we had a time machine so we could go back to 1999 when douche bros were being douche bros and we could be like, hey, in 2025, everyone fucking knows this movie. Like I have heard it referenced as like something that revolutionized scary films. And you do see it referenced everywhere. Like I'm scared of literally everything and I know about the Blair Witch Project and I can recognize like nods to it when I watch things.

[Kathryn 52:55] It did. Every sitcom, every adult cartoon, everything spoofs it. Everything spoofs it. And it was—that was the—again, it wasn't the first ever found footage type of movie, but it did popularize it. And it is to this day the most successful. But yeah, any found footage film that has been made since then, you can see elements of Blair Witch in there. The movies that were made before that followed a very different formula, very different filming style, a very different structure. Everyone you see ever since 1999 follows what the Blair Witch did.

[Gina 53:36] Hmm. Okay, I do have a question because we have so far. Wait, sorry, am I like steamrolling? Is there anything else you want? Okay.

[Kathryn 53:47] No, no. Literally the last two bullets I have are Heather deserves an apology from all of us and this is a good movie. Those are my last two things. Yes. You could, you could watch this movie. It really isn't—yeah, yeah. You could, 100% you could. It's just—it's only scary.

[Gina 53:56] Yeah. I definitely agree with the first one. I haven't seen it, so I don't know about the second one. I have a feeling. That's what I was going to ask you if you think I could. It seems like something I could handle. OK.

[Kathryn 54:14] Imagining yourself in that situation, which is what I do with every movie. So that's why I'm scared of everything. But it's fine. Yeah, it really—I don't disagree with the douche bros that it's not that scary. But I do disagree with the assumption that because it's not scary, it's therefore not good. Like, that's just bullshit.

[Gina 54:16] Yeah, empathetic Libra. Yes, important, yeah. So, so far we have cast Meryl Streep, we've cast Sylvester Stallone, who's the third? Who do we need? Danny DeVito? There's a fucking witch! Every movie ever? But it's about 60. If we multiply that by a thousand, we're cooking with gas, baby!

[Kathryn 54:43] Yeah, who would be the third? Wait, can we make that movie? How many dollars do you have? What's our budget? Okay, yes. Wait, 60. Not 60,000, we're rolling with 60. Excellent, I'll throw in a, I'll put a five on it.

[Gina 55:04] 60, preferably like five. But what if we did it like Space Jam style where Sylvester Stallone and Meryl Streep are real, but then Danny DeVito is Phil from Hercules.

[Kathryn 55:22] Yes! Wait, let me see.

[Gina 55:23] Full circle. He's coming back in every episode.

[Kathryn 55:25] Oh man, it's different now. For the longest time, I was just checking. For the longest time, the original Space Jam website was live, but it's now got the LeBron movie. Oh wait, no, you can—oh my gosh, wait, there's a button. You can go to the 2021 site or the 1996 site. Oh good, okay, so that still exists.

[Gina 55:27] Thank—I know, the website? Mm-hmm. I'm so sad. Can you still get to it? Hold on. We lost?

[Kathryn 55:50] Okay, see this is how you do it.

[Gina 55:53] Yes.

[Kathryn 55:54] Blair Witch, get on it. So I will say, so Blair Witch was an independent film. Whatever production company that was must have been bought by Lionsgate, because it wasn't originally, it was not originally in the Lionsgate— I just said that word. It wasn't originally in—oh my God, I almost did it again. Why do I keep trying to say—a lion—how do you say this? A—oh my God, I can't speak. It wasn't originally a Lions Gate film.

[Gina 55:56] Yes, please. Okay.

[Kathryn 56:22] Thank you. Oh my God. I'm gonna get a Razzie for that one. Anyway, so yeah. So that's the story. I think it's wild. It's definitely an eye roll. Like that could have been handled so differently. Like that's such a good marketing strategy. It's so annoying that—

[Gina 56:29] Got there in the end. Yeah.

[Kathryn 56:52] People were mad about it, but I'm not surprised people were mad about it because of the era it was, you know? People just took everything so fucking seriously.

[Gina 56:57] I'm not surprised people were mad about it. I'm so disappointed in what they were mad about.

[Kathryn 57:03] Yeah, I know. And how they expressed it and who they blamed and how they blamed them and what they say. It's just like—surprised. Yeah, I know. I will say, in the spirit of the woods being very spooky, I do have a listener story about the spooky woods.

[Gina 57:07] Yes. And who—yes, exactly. My God. Grow up. 1999. Pour moi, it to me my love.

[Kathryn 57:27] Poor you. I don't know how to say—how do you say for you? So this one is about how the woods can be a spooky place. The woods can be a spooky place, and I don't just mean at night. When I say woods, I'm not referring to the copse of trees at the dog park, though those can also be scary depending on the situation. I'm talking about sitting alone in the dense wilderness when there's nothing to see but trees for miles and miles without even so much as a hiking trail to break them up. Imagine you're sitting on some fallen logs with your back to the tree trunk and just looking at all that nature has to offer. Like a fog rolls in, layers to obscure objects in the distance. The trees in the woods can also make you see things that you're sure couldn't possibly be there. Think about the tall tree trunks, ancient branches crooked and twisting over themselves, leaves scratching against each other, tangled vines, new trees no bigger than a pencil, rocks and boulders, deadfall and windfall creating a mess of shapes your brain can't even keep track of. As well as rolling terrain covered inches deep in pine needles and leaves. Throw in a small creek from runoff in the hills to cause weird reflections. Add in a few shadows caused by the sunlight trying its hardest to push its way through. Sit long enough and you'll start going mad. You'll see things you know aren't there—they are. I've seen deer that weren't actually there staring back at me, their shape twisting and distorting into something else entirely. Bigfoot, a wolf, a witch. I've even been sure I saw a car and all sorts of things. Sit long enough and you'll find Waldo somewhere. Now close your eyes and listen. On a windless day, it can be so quiet in these woods, you can hear your own blood pushing its way through your veins. Your ears are so desperate to hear something, they will start to throb so it sounds like you're trapped in a wind tunnel. Then you hear a faint, almost disarmingly gentle scratching sound. It's just a mouse, you'll tell yourself, burrowing under some dead leaves. But then you hear something crunch—a footstep—but there's no one around, you're sure of it. It could be a squirrel hopping from one tree to the next, or an acorn falling from a tree. You hear the sound of a bat knocking against something solid and realize it's just a woodpecker. Someone screams in response. Then you decide it was just a blue jay. These sounds are natural. You're sure of it. As the wind picks up, leaves will rustle and branches will scratch against each other. They moan and groan. They crack and sometimes they even speak to you. As they creak and snap, you swear you hear voices. Just a single word here and there, but you know that they're talking to you. There's no clear escape no matter where you are. Trees do not grow in orderly rows. Those scenes from movies in which someone is sprinting through the woods flat out like an Olympian doing the 110 meter dash—fiction. There's no flat terrain here. No matter where you end up, you're trapped. Get the picture? Now imagine the sun has set. There's nothing there that isn't there during the day. At least that's what you tell yourself. But can you be sure of that when you can no longer see what's making all those noises? Some nights there's no moon and your visibility is zero. Others, the moonlight fights its way through the trees the same way the sun did, and you're able to make out objects quite well. That deer you imagined in the sunlight is still there, though this time it's surrounded by shadows, impossibly even made of shadows itself. Don't be scared. Just stop, take in a breath. There's nothing there in the dark that wasn't there before. Or is there? Can you ever actually be certain there isn't something just lurking right beyond those shadows?

[Gina 61:38] Okay, immediate thought. That was beautifully written.

[Kathryn 61:41] 100%. Yeah, yeah, it was beautiful. Yeah.

[Gina 61:44] That was very good. That was so creepy. And what a perfect ending to Blair Witch, because now it's like we are the ones in the woods.

[Kathryn 61:50] Yeah. We got this a little while ago. This is from my dad. But the episodes have been so long, I had to tell him, like, I promise we're not hiding it. I'm not reading it. We just—we haven't had time. So I was looking at the schedule and I was like, okay, which one can we make shorter? And I was like, wait, that's gonna be a short one anyway. And it's perfect. So it kind of worked out, but you know. Yeah, so just as a reminder to our listeners—

[Gina 62:03] Perfection.

[Kathryn 62:18] We would love your stories. It does not have to be anything like—this is literally just about how scary it is sitting alone in the woods, you know? So yeah, if you have anything, if you have ever been in a haunted house or if you've just ever been in a house that you thought was weird, if you've ever been to a cemetery, just let us know. We just want to hear your experiences. Yeah.

[Gina 62:27] Mm-hmm. Stories, haikus, knock knock jokes, dream journal entries.

[Kathryn 62:45] But yeah, that's all we have for you this week.

[Gina 62:49] Well thank you so much. That was phenomenal. I'm gonna go eat some maybe good pizza and watch the Blair Witch Project. I will—I don't know—maybe. I will, I don't know if I'm going to do it today, but I'm going to do it.

[Kathryn 62:55] Yeah, you have to text me about that. Are you watching it? Are you gonna watch it? You should, you should watch it. You too, but it's okay if you don't. But watch it soon because I—

[Gina 63:08] I'll ask Tom, if he's in the mood to watch it, we'll watch it. Alright, well, till next time, little spoons. Keep it cool.

[Kathryn 63:16] And keep it creepy.