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In This Issue

• loving miss maple
• iTouch [Myself]
• Babies Compete for Brangelina's Affection
• Toshing It Around with Daniel Tosh
• CCSC Proposes Species-Neutral Housing
• "Frozen" Director Warms Up to The Fed
• The Belgian Corner
• Extension Emails: What I Wrote vs. What It Meant
• Ergonomic Sex Tips for the Female Engineer
• the morning after
• hipster in cc
• They Watch
• Letter From the Feditors
• The Staff of the Federalist

Writer/director Adam Green likes his scares, and he doesn't like to fake them. His cult slasher film "Hatchet" was notably filmed without any CGI. And his newest flick, the nail-biter "Frozen," proceeds from an elegantly simple and terrifying premise: three skiers are stuck on a chair lift, several yards above the ground, while the slopes close down for the week.

I spoke with Adam on the phone last week to talk about life, the movies, and the various ways he'd like to scare the living shit out of people-if they'll just give him the chance.

The Fed: Just so you know, The Fed is kind of the alternative/satirical newspaper of Columbia. So this interview might get a little unorthodox. Just thought I'd warn you.

Adam Green: That's fine. Honestly, I don't think I can take another interview where they ask me if it was cold when we filmed "Frozen."

The Fed: No. No, I won't be asking you if filming a movie-a movie called "Frozen"-on a ski lift, in the dead of winter-was cold. I won't be asking you that.

AG: (laughs) All right, good.

The Fed: When you make a film, what's your ideal audience?

AG: It depends. With a thriller or a horror film, you want an audience that's actually receptive to being scared. If people go in very defensive, then they spend the whole film knowing what they're looking at, saying "that wouldn't happen." It's like keeping your eyes closed on a roller coaster. I want people who love being scared.

The Fed: "Frozen" seems like a departure from your other (mainly slasher) films. Why the change?

AG: You always want to do something different. Although, even as I say that, I just finished principal photography on "Hatchet 2." But, yeah, normally, I would say it's unbearable to keep doing the same thing. It's like, I love Cocoa Pebbles, but if I had to eat Cocoa Pebbles every single morning, I would lose the excitement of opening a new box of Cocoa Pebbles. But then, you see, you take a break from slasher films for a bit, and then suddenly it becomes very exciting to kill two people at once with a chain saw.

The Fed: What advice do you have for young filmmakers? Not just artistic advice, but also nuts-and-bolts stuff, like fundraising, getting a script written and then made, and whatnot.

AG: Honestly, if you have a fallback, if there's anything else you're considering doing with your life, do that. It sucks to hear that from someone who's had success in the industry. But it's just not fair. You see great scripts that don't get made. Movies that just completely disappear. Meanwhile, total crap films get these 20-million-dollar marketing campaigns. It's like sitting in Vegas, playing the slot machine with your life.

But...if you are going to be a filmmaker, then I'll say this: If you're shooting a movie at three in the morning and craft services comes by with tea and coffee, get the tea.

Write something because it's killing you not to write it. It has to make your eyes tear up and make you sweat. I don't believe what they say in film school-that you have to force yourself to sit down and write for four hours a day. All that's going to happen then is your going to make yourself miserable.

Your producer must bring money to the project, or know the people who can get the money.

Also, always remember this: Everyone, from studio execs to rich dentists investing in your movie, only knows what other people tell them. With Frozen, we showed it to critics first-before the distributor. And we had a distribution deal pretty much from the word go. But without a critical appraisal, no one knows what they're looking at. You don't want them going in cold.

The Fed: Okay. Here comes the weird part of the interview.

AG: Okay.

The Fed: One of the early reviews for Frozen said it will "do for skiing what Jaws did for swimming." I was just wondering how you would "do-what-Jaws-did-for-swimming" to other sports. So I'm going to give you a sport and you need to give me a horror movie plot.

AG: All right, hit me.

The Fed: How would you "do for golf what Jaws did for swimming"?

AG: Rabid gophers. They mutate after biomedical waste from a nearby plant is disposed of. They begin to attack the golfers.

The Fed: Caber tossing.

AG: What's that?

The Fed: It's like...horseshoe...kinda, but played in the Scottish highlands with big giant wooden poles, about the size of a telephone pole, called "cabers."

AG: Ah, got it. Guy gets cabered into a tree and forgotten about. The caber happens to also poke a bee's nest and honey pours all over him.

The Fed: Wonderful. Croquet?

AG: The mutant gophers from the golf movie return. But this time... it's croquet.