She decided to start a production company. We met, and she told me about her company. I felt ready to jump into it. Having a little bit of money helped us option material that we really liked. Neal Jimenez Screenwriter : There was a news story about a kid who dumped a body and took his friends to see it. Most of the characters were based on people I had gone to high school with. I thought it spoke to a mood that young people were feeling at the time—feeling detached from things and wanting to zone out.
I entered a screenplay contest that was judged by fellow students. One of them was doing an internship with a production company that [producer] Amy Pascal was involved with. He gave it to her and she gave it to the person who became my agent, who gave it to Midge and Sarah. Sanford: We thought the script was really good.
If somebody had pitched us this idea in our office or at a lunch, I don't think either one of us would have responded so positively to it because it was so dark. But it was already written, so we could see it on the page and imagine it as a movie. We were fans of Tim's, so we sent him the script. Hunter: I was dubious.
I didn't want to do another teen picture. But the script was so incredibly good. I called them back instantly and told them I had to do it. Sanford: Tim said, "My agent's gonna kill me, but I want to do it. Hunter: There was another director in the running, and I really lobbied hard for it. Sanford: I remember somebody saying, "I read the script and I think it's really good, but it's very disturbing and I couldn't get it out of my mind.
Hunter: As part of my lobbying campaign, I said I'd make it for a million dollars. All of the sudden, it was possible to submit it to a number of young indie companies that were popping up at the time. Sanford: Hemdale were a small company that made some very good movies, like Salvador and Hoosiers. They really responded to the script and said they would finance it with Tim as the director. Hunter: It was in pre-production four months later. We were trying to make it as inexpensively as possible.
Carrie Frazier Casting Director : They had to hire someone like me who needed the job but wasn't looking for a big paycheck. The first time I read the script, I loved it. I thought it was powerful and weirdly funny, and it had a darkness that was rooted in reality in a way that I hadn't seen before. Hunter: We set up shop in an old film production building on Victory Boulevard in the Valley. We didn't have money to offer it to any of John Hughes' Brat Pack crowd, so we auditioned dozens of young actors.
Skye: Every teenager in town who was acting was excited about [auditioning]. My mom's friend took a picture of me for LA Weekly , and the casting director saw it. My brother came home from school and said, "You want to audition for this movie? The casting director asked about you. I never did well in school—I was in Hollywood High, I was ditching classes. I didn't want to go [audition] because I was terrified, but I pushed myself to audition and I got it. Roebuck: I put on a costume, and KY jelly in my hair to make it look greasy.
On the way to the audition, I stopped by a by my house in Hollywood, bought two beers, and put them in my coat pocket. When I walked into the room, I sat in the corner and popped open the beer, and Tim grabbed his camera and started shooting. I think he was seeing something in that moment that was unique, different, and real. Frazier: When [Keanu Reeves] came in, he hadn't done anything and wasn't being represented by anybody.
He was what's called a hip-pocket client, meaning they didn't know if they wanted to sign him—they were just testing him out. He walked in the door, and I went, "Oh my god, this is my guy! I was over the moon about him. Apparently, Harry Dean Stanton passed on a lot of scripts and gave them to Dennis. Hunter: I initially hoped that John Lithgow would play it, but it was too dark for John—he wanted no part of it. We had some reluctance that it might be typecasting for Dennis, but ultimately we wanted him very badly and we needed Hemdale to come up with a little extra money for him.
He was brilliant, but also a well-known wild man who never stuck to a script—he'd ad lib and be quite disruptive. The thought of having Timothy Carey in the picture finally convinced Hemdale to come up with that small amount of money to pay Dennis to do it. Sanford: I think Crispin Glover came in [to audition] with a wig and an outrageous take on the part. The script was written by a 21 year old Neal Jimenez who based the characters on friends he went to high school with in Sacramento.
He saw the newspaper story when he was visiting friends and turned the script into his Santa Clara University teacher. Hunter also co-wrote the dysfunctional youth classic, Over the Edge , that Dillion debuted in. With all its black humor, the film is so eerily reflective of how people have become so desensitized to death as a form of entertainment.
The act of her murder isn't even shown, only how these kids absurdly process their friend's murder. Tinges of prior influences from Rumble Fish and The Outsiders could be felt in a more adult lens. It plays out like another typical day in bleaks-ville trying to find the next joint. The story of a group of friends who remained quiet after one of their own shows them the body of a girl he murdered was ripe for sweeping commentary on a new generation, the hardening of our collective heart—and hell—the fall of Western civilization as we know it.
Will these kids, addled on pot, arcade games and heavy metal, usher in a wave of amoral nihilism? Is there anything upstanding folks can do about it? Conrad reportedly ran with a bad crowd, a group at school who called themselves The Stoners, and she frequently ran away from home. After hiding the body, Broussard told several classmates about his crime—many of whom did not believe him, and to verify his act, Broussard guided groups of kids to the body as proof.
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