In the newHalloween, shes the one hunting Michael Myers.
Welcome to the age of big-box-office post-trauma horror.
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The crowd went nuts.
And right now Jamie Lee Curtis is there to lead the troops.
I can vouch that Curtis is a ready hugger.
And it doesnt seem like a non sequitur.
So its all uphill, really.
Others say they help free us from fears we dont always know we have but deform our lives anyway.
Most people think its healthy to be allowed to scream in a controlled environment.
activates our fight-or-flight mechanisms, which is actually preferable to continuous, gnawing, ulcer-generating anxiety.
It said to black people who suspect that all white people are racist, Hey, youre right.
Black people can watch white people squirm.
Or maybe its individually they might be evil, but collectively theyre good.
is nonetheless a stirring call for good people to unite and resist.
How about the strain of horror that also affirms religion in times of widespread disgust and loss of faith?
It won a mess of Oscars.
She did see the movie on her 15th birthday.
She slips it into my suitcase to read on the plane home.
To paraphrase Noel Coward: How potent cheap horror movies can be.
Consider the first real slasher picture, which rocked the world when Curtis was barely a toddler.
Alfred HitchcocksPsycho(1960) invaded our safe space while also reminding us insult to injury!
that we, the moviegoers, were voyeurs in sinful complicity with the killer.
A psychiatrists explanation for Norman Batess psychopathy was stilted and unhelpful.
Norman and we were unpurged of our poisons.
Curtis is an odd agent for the genre.
Despite her fascination withThe Exorcist she still likes to blurt, Your mother sucks cocks in hell!
she doesnt like being scared.
IfHalloweenwas my dish that I brought, Im very proud of my dish, she says.
I make a greatHalloween.
But she still cant quite believe that I have flown cross-country to talk about this movie.
It was always illegitimate, she says.
I did not go to acting class.
I did not go to film school.
I did not study with great teachers.
She barely saw him.
She loved her mom but never felt she knew her.
She was sent to the elite Connecticut prep school Choate Rosemary Hall and felt desperately inferior.
She just did.)
And while theyre opposites in every way, she says, they fit.
We are what we call a syzygy.
But on with the self-deprecation: I never was pretty.
My teeth were gray because my mother took Tetracycline.
When I show her my own gray, ridged Tetracycline teeth, she says, You dont smile.
I didnt smile my whole life.
I had caps put on when I was 20, but I have gray teeth inHalloween.
ME: I heard you say in an interview that you had no discernible talent.
JLC: I dont.
Actually, she does.
She learned the more she splayed them out, the funnier she was.
But she never thought of her legs as the problem.
It was her eyes or, more precisely, the circles underneath them.
I always look like I havent slept, and that was my whole life, she says.
The impact was electric.
She also thought it would be great marketing.
(For the firstHalloween,she thought of Let Us Prey.)
And she knows that thisHalloweenhas irresistible hooks.
No, he hasnt readMen, Women, and Chainsawseither.
He didnt expect it to cause a sensation.
Actually, Carpenters intentions were subtler.
I mean, its incredibly romantic.
Its a romantic version of what Michael saw with his [older] sister.)
Is that a hint that Michael has sprung from Lauries unconscious?
Its not quite Shakespeare, Carpenter tells me, but the two of them are repressed people.
Hes a repressed killer, shes a repressed young lady.
Basically, you’re free to project anything you like on Michael.
Hes wearing a William Shatner mask from a five-and-dime store, painted white and with the eyes widened.
So hes a whiter shade ofCanadian.
Thank you for telling me that.
Thank you so much.
But thats the beauty of the new movie.
Michael, wed learn, was captured that Halloween night in 1978.
Shes not even Michaels sister anymore!
They cleansedHalloweenof all the layers of crud!
I tell Carpenter, who didnt care for the sequels either but squirms a bit at the language.
But Im right as P. J. Soless Lynda inHalloweenwould say totally.
In the newHalloween,Curtiss Laurie is a twice-divorced, bespectacled grandmother with a long mane of gray hair.
Shes not running from Michael; shes waiting for him.
The state cant help her.
The state took away her only child, deeming her unfit.
I think she went to school the next day.
The shoot in Charleston, South Carolina was emotional.
From the moment I showed up on that set, I started to cry, she says.
Al Qaeda claimed responsibility.
Every single scene I did, I had to hold back crying, every single scene.
I didnt know where the fuck I was, I was isolated like Laurie.
I was a bit of a freak.
The final day she shot made it worth the pain.
Its not really spelled out, and I kept saying to David, What are we going for?
It was an emotional day anyway.
We were saying good-bye to each other.
Does Jamie Lee Curtisbelieve in the bogeyman?
No, I do not.
I crave it in relationships.
I crave it in my work.
The subject comes back to horror films, their illegitimacy, and how quickly theyre dismissed.
It breaks your heart, she says.
The irony is that in those movies I am smart, intellectual, brave, romantic, and chaste.
Now Curtis has found her equilibrium.
