‘The Blair Witch Project’ With Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan
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The Rewatchables is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find The Watch with our friend Chris Ryan. That's right. Still making that, huh? Slow horses.

Slow horses industry. I know you've gotten caught up recently. Yeah, I'm a big Rishi guy. I know you are. It's my guy. When he lost his mind gambling for a night, it brought me back to the late 90s. You don't understand. This guy Bill said million dollar picks. He said the Eagles were a lock. You could also see our in the big picture.

Maybe on some basketball podcast this fall. Who knows? You never know. I was on the Ringer Fantasy Football Pod, Bill. You can't stop me. Yeah. My name is Bill Simmons. We're about to do the weirdest movie I think we've ever done on the Rewatchables. The Blair Witch Project is next.

In October of 1994, three student filmmakers arrived in Burkittsville, Maryland to interview locals about the legend of the Blair Witch. All I'm saying is that you got us lost. I know we're not lost. Oh, you knew that yesterday, too, and you knew that twice. We'll go more or less this way. One year later, their footage was found, but the three were never seen again. I ain't gonna die, Paul. All right, CR, I don't know where to start, but I'm gonna start here.

Most ripped off movie gimmicks of the last 50 years. I made a list. Superman with Christopher Reeve, comic book heroes, just creates this whole, we'll do a big thing. We'll get Gene Hackman as the villain and we'll blow it out and we'll promote the shit out of it. And we get, that becomes the blueprint. 48 Hours, Buddy Cop. These guys don't like each other. There's going to be some jokes. At the end, they'll get along. People rip that off for the next 40 plus years. Die Hard.

Becomes diehard in a blank. Yeah. Fatal attraction. Blank from hell. Halloween. There's a boogeyman killer. He's unstoppable. She's going to go to this camp and kill people. When Harry Met Sally. The modern rom-com. Oh, these two, they're not meant to be together. Oh, maybe they are. Oh, they made it at the end. The will they, won't they? Animal House. The body comedy. These guys are just trying to get laid. Let's do that for 10 years.

And then the Blair Witch Project, which was made for like 10 bucks and created this whole new form of horror called found footage that is still going 25 years later and is one of the most influential movies, not only the last 25 years, but you could really argue the last 50. It makes no sense. And I know you like this movie because you wanted to do it, but how do you even explain this?

the right movie at the right time and the right way of making a movie and the right way of marketing a movie and just capturing the power of the nascent internet and allowing people to feel like they were participating in the movie

In a way, and that might be its greatest legacy. Now, even this many years on, I think there are some films that have done found footage better, have been more creative with found footage. Obviously, they've got the Paranormal Activity franchise that has gone on to probably more financial success than the Blair Witch franchise. But in terms of being the right movie for the baby steps of the internet, this was lightning in a bottle.

Horror movies are effectively dead, except for there's that new post-screen model with I Know What You Did Last Summer, Halloween H20. It's usually like kids in high school and the faculty. So we're doing those. Like Jason and...

Freddy Krueger, they're on their last legs and there had been no innovation at all. All right. Normally we bring him in at the end of the podcast, but I have to bring Craig Horlbeck in now, our producer. Oh, okay. Yeah, you're coming in now. Craig, this movie comes out in January 1999 when you were a young pup. I think you were like five years old, four years old, whatever. Yeah.

Do you believe that people actually thought this was a real movie and all these people died in 1999, that that was a thing that really happened? Yes. And I think if you look at the amount of conspiracies that are going on now when we have the internet everywhere, I think it's even more believable that people back then seeing this footage would have thought this was real. So I think 100%. So the backstory...

They put out a website. When did they put the website out, CR? The website and the doc came out before. So this movie premiered at Sundance in January and then came out in theaters in the summer. But the website and the Curse of the Blair Witch sci-fi documentary came out like a month before that. So there was this huge buzz coming out of the internet and off of the doc. Yeah, so I'm on the internet right in my sports column back then. I think I might have still been AOL only at this point. The internet...

Who's our guy from heat? What was his name? The internet was all out there. She's got to know where to grab it. Yeah. Got to grab it. And they do this Blair witch website. And it's so early in the internet. People are like, what the fuck is this? They, they found these videotapes in the, in the woods of these people getting murdered. And now this is going to be the movie of this. So I was dating my future wife for, uh,

six, seven months. Not as fun as the Craig and Liz love story, but a good love story nonetheless with some fun stories behind it. But

So we go to this and it's still early in the internet where we don't know if it's real or it's not real. And we go opening night because I'm a huge horror guy and I'm super excited. Can I stop you right there? Yeah. Just out of curiosity, which theater in Boston? Kendall Square in Cambridge. Bill, we might've been at the same screening, man. Oh, shit. Yeah, I was at Kendall Square opening weekend. It's very possible. We went that Friday night and the movie ended-

And people, one of the few times in my life, people just sitting in their seats and we were so freaked out. Craig, we were on the theater and we just thought we watched like a snuff film. Yeah.

And there was no way to research it after the fact. It was not like now where you'd be like, oh, I'm going to Google it. Oh, they did this. Oh, here's, and it bothers. Like, we literally thought it was real. Did you think it was real, CR? Yes. Well, okay. I think I thought it was 80%. Like, I didn't think that they would be showing us a snuff film.

But the 20% that was like, maybe they just did was much more passionate than the 80% that was cynical about it. If that makes sense. You know what I mean? Like I knew better, but I was like, God, that was convincing. But wait, so was the marketing of this movie, this was, this is real or did they just kind of not say that? Not only was the marketing of the film, this is real. The actual,

were not part of the promotion of the film. Very smart. Like, very specifically until after it had become a phenomenon, that's when they started appearing on, like, The Tonight Show and they dropped the pretense that it was... that it was a real, like, this was found footage. But leading up into the release, there was a...

a pretty plausible sensation that this was these people who had gone off into the woods and they found their footage. And yeah, one out of every five people... Maybe one out of every three people you talked to be like, yeah, it's not real. They just did this whole elaborate scheme to show...

like the background of the story, but it was pretty easy to buy into this because like Bill was saying, you basically were on dial up. You were probably using like university computers or whatever. You only knew your friends that you were friends with. It's not like you could check in with whoever. And crucially, Craig, like because of that and because of like the era that it was, most people probably came from an area of the country that had something like this.

And it might've been bullshit, but I had, you know, we have the Pine Barrens in the Philadelphia area. It's like the New Jersey devil. I'm sure Bill had something in Massachusetts and New England. I have it right now on the third floor of my house. But everybody had like a- The local town myth. A suburban legend, basically. Yeah. So the guy who played Mike in the movie, there's a really good oral history about this movie that came out, I think, in the 15th or 20th anniversary. And he said-

The internet, Michael C. Williams, the guy I played Mike, the internet was new. So if you think back, some of the things you read on the internet, you go, oh, that must be true. I saw it on the internet. Just like when newspapers came out, you believe what you read. And they figured out a way to market this movie where it was just, I didn't have my conspiracy bill did not exist in 1999, except for the JFK assassination. So you saw this, you're like, wow, I want to see that. Found footage.

People were murdered in the woods. It might be the most 1999 movie ever made because if it came out any year after this, it would be less and less believable. Well, so think about in 1993, The Crying Game came out. And the whole thing about that was there's a secret. And you just like, don't tell me the secret. I don't want to know. And the secret turned out to be the Jay Davidson character. Then Usual Suspect, same thing. Then Sixth Sense, which was the same year as this movie,

Same thing. In your generation, is that possible to keep a secret with a movie like that? I would say it's impossible. I'm trying to think of an example of anything related to that, even if it's not in movies. A TV show? You can keep the series finale of an episode secret, but other than that, definitely not something like this where people thought it was a snuff film.

Marketing has changed so much now that I would say, if anything, they are so hyper aware when they have a twist that they almost... When I get PR emails about TV shows, for instance, I don't want to, I guess, spoil it for the people who haven't watched Succession, but something happens in the last season of Succession. We were not told explicitly that that happened previously.

But we were told that the episode that it happened in was very significant and that we should like, please not spoil it for other people. And so immediately you're like, well, what could it be? Right. Right. Game of Thrones was the last property that like effectively. But that was a very interesting experience because you had like an entire strand of the

audience that actually did know what was coming. And so they were actually, I found to be the, one of the great examples of like, honestly, audience generosity was people like Mal and Jason who were like, yeah, obviously like I know red wedding is coming, but I wouldn't want to spoil that for anybody. And it was awesome that way. Hmm. Well, I'll tell you this. It's one of the most masterful marketing campaigns I can ever remember. It got me to go opening night.

the mystery around it. Then when you knew it happened, leaving the theater, still not knowing that night and still not really having a way to research it. And then, I don't know, CR, when did we kind of...

finally realized this was real. They started doing interviews like... I think weeks after. As it became a sensation. Weeks after, right? Like three to four or five weeks later? Yeah. I don't think it was very... It wasn't like this, like, we have to find Heather. You know, I mean, like, it was... I think actually also, like, fairly shortly after...

See our lead though. We have to find Heather. He was in the woods in Baltimore. They had to keep the actress in like a, like a room. But they did. Yeah, they did. Like they were, they got mad at Josh Leonard for being in an indie movie because they were like, you're going to screw up the premise of our film. If people can see you in like some nascent, like early mumblecore movie in soon, you know?

Now we just have like Mr. Beast buries himself alive for seven days and you tune in to see if he makes it. That's the closest thing we have. Right. Well, the other piece of this is in the movie theater, it was so much more terrifying. There's no way to recreate it in your house.

You could turn all the lights off in your house. You could make it as quiet as possible. But when you're in a movie theater with a 50-foot screen and it's dead silent and people are terrified and you get hit the last 15 minutes of that movie, I was about as scared as I... I can't remember being more scared in a movie theater. Can you, Chris? No, this is the single most frightening movie theater experience I ever had. So the two scariest movies I've ever seen are this...

and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I saw this like in Kendall Square opening night. All it was was like, is this like a documentary? Like, have you guys heard about this movie? Like, because even with Sundance stuff, like it's not like we were reading movieline.com or something. It wasn't like I was like on the net every day reading about movie news and having things explained to me. So you're just kind of like, this sounds like it's going to be a really big deal. Let's go see it opening night.

I saw this one and then Texas Chainsaw. I watched it like one in the morning in an empty house, like moving into a house in Mission Hill in Boston. And I'd never seen it before. And I don't think I slept for like the rest of the week.

My dad, there was this place, God damn, it was somewhere in Boston. I can't remember what part of Boston. And they would show movies and they had food and there would be older movies, right? And it was a little like the model for what Alamo is now. Like pre-Alamo, okay. Yeah, early Alamo. And you could go and we went and we saw a couple movies there, but one of the ones we saw was Texas Chainsaw Massacre. So I was probably like 13, 14. I can't believe I've made him go to movies like this, but yeah.

But it was the same thing, like at the end of that. And I just knew it was scary. And I just knew the guy holding the chainsaw at the end and I didn't know anything else. And same thing where you left and you're like discombobulated. It was so freaky. And I don't know if there's another, even Halloween, which is a masterpiece, but it's so stylized though. Yeah. It was more cool. You're like, oh man, I like what they did. Like it wasn't like this where you're like, oh my God, this guy's out there. We got to get him.

So I don't know. Last year, or maybe it was, yeah, about last year, I went on a trip to like kind of rural Oregon. It was me and my wife and then her friend and her friend's family. And she has like three daughters and two daughters, like they were 14 and 12 at the time or something like that. And we watched Blair Witch for the first time. Oh. And it was like late at night. We started at like 11 and

And it was really kind of a spooky watching experience. And at first, the girls were like, this is cringe. This is so fake. This is so fake. And then as it gets going and as...

Yeah, the switch goes off in this movie. When they discover like the dolls and when Josh disappears and all this stuff is happening, you could see them on their phones, like Googling, like, is this real? Did they die? And I was like, it still works. Yeah. It still works. Like after all these years, it can still freak people out if it catches them unaware. So Craig, you watched it this morning for the first time, but you knew the premise, right? Because he's a coward and he didn't watch it at night. I watched it at 7.30 AM this morning.

This morning, no. To be honest, I generally knew it was kids going into the woods in search of something supernatural. That was it. All right, so we'll spoil you should we do this at the end, but did it work for you? I think it's hard. Because you've seen 25 years of found footage movies at this point. Well, actually, you're not into scary movies, though. I'm not, but I can understand why this was such a big deal in the moment. You know what? I actually found this movie quite palatable at 7.30 a.m. Yeah. Yeah.

Good luck having a nice strong cup of coffee. Yeah. Josh! Josh! To be honest, I think the horror actually was a little milder than I expected. Yeah, but you didn't set the mood right. I mean, 7.30 in the morning, you want to watch this at night in a dark place. It's a 10 p.m. start, man. Did not want that to be my nightcap. I'm just saying, I mean, they don't really show a lot in this movie. What would Mike Tomlin say about this, you know?

Mike's right. Tomlin Tomlin's playing in the preseason. He's doing two a day still. That's not my style for horror movies. Tomlin's just grinding out a 13 to six win with a horror movie and that's it. Um, but yeah, to be honest, I, I was surprised at how not scary this was to me. I think we're desensitized now and things are so heightened. He's not wrong because as they kept innovating on the found footage thing, um,

people did better versions of this movie. Oh, they added special effects. Yeah. I think the charm of this movie is just the story behind it, which we're going to tell. But I think it's also very specific, probably for people who saw it in the theater, but also people around me and Bill's age were like the, the three characters are so relatable and

And so like, you just knew people like that when you were in college or like out of college. Definitely knew the girl. There's like that, that she existed a hundred different ways. Josh's car. You knew guys like Mike who lived with his mom. Everybody's smoking cigarettes. Everybody's eating shit. Like,

And it still haunts me a little bit, like how much it feels like it. I think that was part of the appeal is like the idea that it could happen to you because it was happening to people like you. Right. Did this movie lose its shine for you guys after you saw it the first time? Like, would you consider this a rewatchable movie? No, it only improves over the years for me, honestly. Really? I had a cycle with it. I really liked it as a rewatchable. And then I didn't.

Because it's really like, especially first 30 minutes, once you've seen it a few times, not really that rewatchable. And then there's like a 20 minute section where people are just screaming, but the ending's amazing. But then my son, Ben Simmons got into it and then it had another life with my kids. And it takes you back to how you felt. Yeah. Yeah. And he was just like, even last night I was watching it and he's like,

I'm going to come in for the last 25. Like it was like, it's just, you know, they know how to do it. So that guy, Dan Myrick, who was, was written by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, who also directed and edited the whole thing. Myrick said,

It was kind of, to our surprise, embraced wholly by the press. And we fooled, if you want to call it that, a large swath of the public who thought it was real. We do interviews where people ask if the story was real. And I'd say, didn't you see the cover of Time Magazine? Didn't you see the story in USA Today? It's obviously a movie, right? But if you wanted to believe it was real, it allowed you to do that. That's what I was kind of saying. There was a part of me that was like, how amazing is this that we have...

This last bit of magic still exists where that might have been the case. Now, you can feel ethically dubious for watching three people get murdered by a witch, but I was into it in 1999. Yeah.

Totally. Can I tell you a little bit, like, I do want to ask, because you were talking about the things that were so influential and tropes and kinds of movies, and there's like kind of nascent, there's sort of some found footage stuff that comes before Blair Witch, like there's this movie, The Last Broadcast. There's a couple of things out there. There's a Cannibal movie, right? Yeah, Cannibal. But like,

Like, I think that it ultimately, what this movie's huge influence is for me as well, especially over the last day or so, like going through the documentary and the website that they had put up and Heather's journals that they published and all this stuff is it kind of feels like where Lost came from, where you could watch Lost and just kind of like watch it superficially and be like, I wonder if they're going to get off the island. I wonder why there's a polar bear here. Or you could lose yourself in reading about Lost and

and read these super long recaps and go to all the message boards and find out all the biblical allusions in it.

And I think that was the coolest thing is that the reason why Blair Witch remained so present in my life is because every few years there would be some cool archived piece from the original press run or from the original sort of viral marketing campaign. And even now, the Reddit board is pretty good. You look at the Blair Witch Reddit board, I'm like, some good content on this thing. Right. YouTube really helped. All of a sudden, the deleted scenes were on there. There was...

a DVD that had a bunch of stuff. There's a Blu-ray that had a bunch of stuff. There's like the scene when they all drink together in the hotel. Yeah. It's like a super long version of that. You're right. It created this little weird world around the witch and this backstory of these murders and people were into it. And I really feel there's three things that I feel really 1990s to me. One is

that you could get away with this movie and make people think it was real. Two was just people with cameras. Yeah. I mean, I identify, I was the guy with the camera in college, you know, videotaping dumb shit. But just the concept of, yeah, let's go here and I'll bring the camera and we'll just kind of fuck around and shoot stuff. We did that all through the nineties. I don't know if now people have iPhones. I don't know if that works the same way. So that that's the second piece.

And then the third piece was what you said earlier about you just kind of knew people like that. They're very specific to the 90s. These people somehow don't make sense in like 2015 or 2024. And I don't really know why. I can't explain it. It felt very much like, you know, if you weren't in New York,

at NYU film school or in Southern California going to film school out there, but you were interested in movies and you were interested in making movies. Like this was a very... You need to think outside the box. But it was also a very relatable setup that there's this woman, Heather, who's like kind of like really wants to be a doc maker. But then like this guy, Josh is like, I just want to kind of be involved in this, but I don't really have a ton of...

hustle so i'm just kind of like i'm just like the cool guy who smokes and has a girlfriend and stuff are we gonna have enough cigarettes for the trip yeah and then like they obviously get mike from basically like a bolton board ad you know like and and that kind of way of meeting people and the way of where you kind of had to band together just really really makes a lot of sense watching still now and the other 90s piece is just where documentaries were at that point

So like Paradise Lost came out a little while earlier and became a little mini phenomenon on HBO with Mark Byers and the missing kids. There ended up being multiple sequels, but documentaries were the 1.0 version of documentaries really started with hoop dreams started to take off where it could be like, I took my camera. I went here, I filmed stuff. I edited it into something. Here it is. And that really feels perfect for that era too, the way they did this. Cause this is what you did. The cameras were a little too big.

You had to lug them around. You didn't even know if there was going to be any upside or benefit to it. And you just kind of filmed shit and hoped you captured something. So-

I just don't know what this looks like now. It'd be complete. They'd all have iPhones. They would have researched the area completely. They would have been doing TikTok or Instagram reels as they're doing it. They would have Starlink GPS. They would never be lost. You know, yeah. I mean, I think that... That's a good point. Even the idea of getting lost in America. I mean, she makes a couple of jokes about how it can't happen anymore and the Maryland woods aren't that bad. And obviously, like...

Something more mystical is at play here rather than just them walking in a circle. But yeah, there's that. There's the idea that... I mean, one thing that's so interesting about the way that they perform this movie is that...

You mentioned how everybody had cameras back then, or there was always like someone who had a video camera, but everybody was really aware that they were on camera. Yeah. So now I feel like when people are- Yeah, you're almost like performative, but not really. Yeah, I feel like people are filming with iPhones now and nobody even really notices that they're on camera. But back then it was like all of a sudden everybody kind of had to address the camera and pretend like they were in a documentary when they were being filmed. So there's something very specific about that. We'll take a quick break. A lot more to discuss with this movie.

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than other platforms. Start converting your audience. Claim $100 credit for your next campaign at linkedin.com/rewatch. LinkedIn, the place to B2B. Terms and conditions apply. Coming back. So Myrick and Sanchez, they were film students. They decided basically

Let's make a horror movie for us. It was like Derek Quivinov when we did Calderon's Revenge on the rewatchables. It was a one for us. In some ways, we should have dedicated that episode to those Blair Witch filmmakers. We should have. My apologies to those guys. Really following their spirit. So they were talking about stuff that scared them. They rented a bunch of documentary style type movies. And they said the legend of Boggy Creek, Ancient Astronauts.

And they were like, could this work? They created this whole Blair Witch thing. They had a 35-page outline. But they said they were more influenced by that Leonard Nimoy show, In Search Of. Which, by the way, a show that I really liked. Or be like, this week, Bigfoot. Does it exist? And Leonard Nimoy would be creepy. And they said...

if there was footage of kids in the woods and then people analyzed it after, but it was way more of a, there's some footage and here's the documentary of anybody, everybody analyzing what happened. And then Sanchez said, it started becoming obvious. The footage in the woods was the best part. The producer, Greg Hales, like it's so obvious now that that was the movie, but at the time, you know, it took us a while to get there. And they basically just event, they kept editing it and they eventually figured out somebody had the voila moment of,

wait a second, what if the entire movie is the found footage? And then that's it. And that 25 years later still works. I guess in, in, in the way you're telling it, it's like the curse of the Blair witch, which was this documentary that the same filmmakers made and put up on the sci-fi network on cable, uh,

Yeah. Was kind of what their original idea for the Blair Witch Project was. That was like half of the movie. Yeah. And they were going to send these actors out. And so it's worth mentioning, like, so they basically hire these actors saying like a fully improvised movie shooting in a heavily wooded area for about a week. They get Josh Leonard and Heather Donahue and, you know, they bring these people on.

They give them an outline that's like 30 pages long. That's essentially like you have to, this has to happen. You have to be here. You have to do this, but these people are shooting it. Yeah. And originally they were like, we're just going to do a bunch of like 16 millimeter scenes out in the woods. And that'll be part of this documentary that we're also making. And then the camcorder got added in eventually as like a, an, a character almost in the movie.

And so, yeah, I mean, like it's a crazy what if is like, what if they never made this decision? Right. I mean, the curse of the Blair Witch is arguably like creepier than the movie in some ways. But when you're, but like the movie, you can just take or leave. You don't need to know a lot about Burkittsville to watch the film. Yeah. It's 44 minutes, the curse of Blair Witch. You can find it on YouTube. It's easy to watch. I think it's on Tubi actually. Yeah. And it's just a blown out version of the first 12 minutes of the movie.

So they create, it's a, the, the legend is Rustin Parr, a hermit lived deep in the foot in the forest, abducted six children. But then we get the, I think the fishermen give us the crucial point that this guy murdered all the kids in the basement, but he would murder them two at a time, put one person in the corner, murder the other one, which is just fucking creepy and weird.

Another one was about a kid went missing in 1888. So they have that. There's an old woman whose feet never touched the ground. So they're planting all the seeds in the beginning of the movie.

So you kind of have to remember as you're watching it the first time, like, okay, I got this, I got this, because it's all going to come back. But here's the thing. You can watch this movie, as I did probably most of my life, and not really even be paying that close attention to the first part, because you're just like... The point is, is that the woods are cursed. Yeah.

That there's something out there that's bad. And like it's over the last couple hundred years made people do these murderous acts. I mean, there's like a whole thing with this woman named Ellie Kedward, who is, you know, this Salem witch-esque character who gets convicted to die of exposure, but then apparently haunts the woods. She's manipulating Rustin Parr. Like there's all this stuff you can read about it, but really what you need to know is that these woods are evil and these people wandered into them.

Are you an Evil Woods guy in general? Not a fan. Not a fan. Not a fan of Evil Woods at all. Really spooks me. You're a big hiking guy, though. No. That's one of the things I hate about Los Angeles is people want to go for a walk. I'm like, not really. I thought you liked Portland. You like being outdoors. I don't mind being in the outdoors. It's because of this movie. It's more hiking for you. I like using the outdoors as a recreational area, not as an aimless walking area.

I love when we find little CR tidbits. Hiking sucks. My column. The other thing they did was they, so they have these actors and they decide they're going to fuck with them. And the actors know they're being fucked with, but they also don't a hundred percent know they're being fucked with. And they're not being fed a lot and they're getting sleepy. And the Greg Hill, the producer said he'd been through survivor school when he was in the army. And I thought,

We could run the actors through a storytelling survivor school obstacle course where they just had the GPSs in the woods, but then we could fuck with them and then we would have their reactions to what was happening. And there's stuff that I didn't...

I knew a lot of this stuff, but there was doing the research for this pod. Like I didn't realize there were times when they were just fucking with the tent and the actors really didn't know what was happening. Cause none of this was in the outline. Yeah. It wasn't there. Like also like something about like one night they had the art director of the movie, like run around wearing like all white and like ran and like ran through the night and like just to freak them out. Now in the 2020s, I feel like,

multiple lawsuits and violations probably would have happened. Yeah. Right? I think so. I was triggered on my camping trip for the student film I was shooting. That guy, Mike...

Played by Michael C. Williams. He said the only direction they gave him was they wanted me to be the one who was more scared. They didn't tell me anything. They didn't want me to change who I was. The whole idea was be as close to yourself as possible, but you're the super scared one. So it was cool. They had that. Then they're building the website at the same time.

And that became a destination thing. It goes to Sundance, becomes that guy, Joshua Leonard says, that was the first year I heard the term buzz film. All of a sudden we were the buzz film. And Sundance, they had to schedule extra screenings because people were going nuts for it. And then that was it. So this movie, the budget was probably around $500,000, maybe a little bit higher, different estimates. It made almost $250 million. Wow.

It was the 10th biggest movie of 1999. Apparently has the best budget to revenue ratio of any movie ever. Yeah, I was wondering if it was this or Paranormal or what it might have been. But this is... It's astonishing. It's like a personal fortune. I'm even wondering, what did $500,000 go towards? I don't even... I didn't... I thought it was even less than that. Yeah, there was... They had to...

They had to do the Gilligan's Island theme song, like stupid stuff like that. Oh, they had to pay for that? They paid the actors. The budget is between $200 and $750, yeah. Yeah. That's still a hell of a return. Roger Ebert. Do you know the answer to this one? I didn't. I didn't want to look it up. What is it? Our guy. What do you think Raj gave this? I think he thought it was stupid. Four stars from Raj. Our guy. Yeah.

He said it was an extraordinarily effective horror film at a time when digital techniques can show us almost anything. The Blair Witch Project is a reminder that what really scares us is the stuff we can't see. Wow. The noise in the dark is almost always scarier than what makes the noise in the dark. Welcome to my life and my house.

What was that? Do you want to talk about it? Do you want to talk about your ghost? I'm going to end up like Josh. I'm just going to disappear one day and my wife's just going to get my shirt with my teeth wrapped up in my tongue. She's going to find a Celtics t-shirt with your teeth in it. Yeah, with my teeth, my tongue, and a finger. It's like, Bill's gone. He's not coming back.

Let's do most rewatchable scene, which is brought to you by Paramount+. A mountain of movies awaits on Paramount+. That means a mountain of heart-pounding action. Blockbusters like Top Gun, Maverick, Mission Impossible, Fallout, and Gladiator. Three movies we've done on the rewatchables. A mountain of jump scares with thrillers like Scream 6, Smile in a Quiet Place, Day One. And a mountain of fun for the kiddos with family favorites like If...

Paw Patrol, the movie, Dora, the Lost City of Gold, and Blair Witch Project 2. No, I'm kidding. Discover something new every week on Paramount+. Okay, CR, we've done, I think this is our 357th movie. Is it? Maybe more, something like that. Impossible to come up with rewatchable scenes. I just listed a couple. I like when they're in the hotel room getting drunk.

I like when they get awakened in the middle of the night in the fucked up forest after the day, the same night she got knocked over the rocks and it's like, oh, this is bad. The second time they get woken up when he's like, I don't think it's a fucking deer, man. And their pile of rocks outside the tent. And she's like, those weren't out here yesterday. That part's good. The three files for the three campers. Yeah.

We're obviously not wanted out here. Let's get the fuck out. Heather loses the map, leading to Mike revealing he dumped the map. Get the fuck off me, man! What the fuck are you doing? Get the fuck out of my mind! The map doesn't do shit! Not to you, but I do! I'm sorry! You are an asshole! I'm sorry! You are a fucking asshole! The map wasn't doing shit all day! If we get hurt or if we die out here, it is your fucking fault! You are the fucking

They find the crazy part of the forest that's fun. This is no redneck. No redneck is this creative. It's so funny. That's such a good line. Woke up screaming in the middle of the night is another one. First night after Josh disappears. So they said, apparently...

Josh didn't know he was done. And the initial plan was to have Mike disappear and it was just Heather and Josh left. There's a lot of stuff in the research that Heather and Josh, it was not a great eight days for them as a tandem. Okay. And there was a lot of arguing and they made the decision to,

let's pull Josh out instead of Mike. So Josh said, he got a note. When everybody goes to bed tonight, stay awake. Once you're sure they're asleep, leave the tent. If anyone wakes up, tell them you're gonna take a piss. So he waited, got up, walked out of the tent. And he said, Ed and Dan and Greg, they're waiting for me with flashlights. And they said, you're dead, dude. And they took me to a really nice meal at Denny's.

And the other two woke up the next morning and Josh was gone. And that was all like authentic reactions where they're like, where the fuck is Josh? And I too, in 1999 was like, man, I'd love a real nice meal. Yeah. I don't know why they didn't invite you. When do we do grand slam breakfast hour? Uh, Heather finds the finger, tongue and tooth wrapped in Josh's shirt. That's I guess the scene Heather's confessional is the most famous scene from that movie. And then, uh,

So it's either the confessional or when they find the house and the whole ending, right? So I do want to give a special shout out to one scene that I don't think you mentioned that then created, and this is pretty rare. It's got to be a really good horror movie for it to create a phobia or an anxiety for you. Okay. When they come across the same log. That's the tree we crossed. That tree is down. That's the same one. Oh, God! No.

Oh, no. You've got to be kidding me! This is a joke! No. This is not funny! Mike, just please stop. Please, please stop. Please stop. Please stop. No, no! No. No, Mike, it's not the same log. It's not the same log, Mike. Look, it's not. It's not the same log. It's not the same log.

After they've been walking for 11 hours. Deja vu with the log. You've got to be kidding me. And she's just like, it's not the same log. It's not the same log. And she's just like, I can't fucking... They walked for 10 hours in a giant circle or through another dimension. I am...

petrified of that idea of getting like lost in the woods and being like we're walking we're walking straight and we come across the same thing that we've started at that is actually like weirdly like a huge phobia for me but the most rewatchable scene is just the last 15 minutes let's do rewatchable scenes today's most rewatchable scene is brought to you by Paramount Plus I'm Matt

I was kidding. I was making believe we went backwards. I thought you would get that joke. It's not the same ad read. It can't be the same ad read. Where are we? Where's Craig? Where's Craig? So what's your answer? The last 15 minutes. Like just the house. Yeah. The confessional is great. It became the most kind of talking point. It was the commercial. It was the most parody thing in the movie. It's the most memorable scene.

The ending is the best part of the movie. There's a school of online discourse that suggests that the video that Heather leaves is her confessing to being partly responsible for it, which I never read it that way, but I thought it was... As the years go on, people read this movie in all these different ways. Partly responsible for what? Well, if you read the...

I like that you're a Blair Witch Head. I'm just a... You're really in there. Bill, I'm just a guy. Bill, I'm just a guy who reads Heather Donahue's journals. So I gotta ask. Heather's journals give you a different sense of the character. She definitely has a lot more awareness about the dangers of what they're about to do. Yeah. And a lot more ambition about confronting those dangers. Yeah.

And I think people like deduce from it that maybe she like drove them there or a certain point in the experience became possessed by the Blair Witch. I don't, I don't read it that way, but it is out there. She says, it's out there. I just grabbed this stuff and bring it. You know, she says, it's my fault. It was my project. I insisted. I insisted on everything. Yeah. I insisted we walk South. Everything had to be my way. This is where we've ended up. And it's all because of me that we're here now. Hungry.

Cold and haunted. We're going to die out here. The ending. Josh! I'm getting downstairs. Come on! Come on! Josh! Josh? Josh, is that you down there? Josh? Josh?

Yeah, man. Mike in the Corner is just the fucking best. It's so good. It's one of the best ideas anyone's ever had for a closing part of a horror movie. And what's great about it is some people don't even get it when they're watching it. Yeah. Because you have to pay attention to the other part of the movie. I got it right away. I'm sure you remember this in the theater, even if we weren't in the same screening. Yeah.

Like 350 people being like, what the fuck? Well, because she's shrieking, screaming for a minute. And that was unsettling. And then that shot of him just facing the other way. And it's like, oh no. Yeah. And then thump. It's as good as it gets. Cut to black. No epilogue, no like...

authorities were never able to find their bot is just like, bang, this is it. And that's, and that contributes to the idea that it is like found footage because it's kind of like, Oh, there's no like cool, happy ending where somebody came in and was like, but don't worry because Josh was later found, you know, it's, it's, it's dark. I gave up on Josh when I saw the finger tooth in his tongue, but other people might've been holding on.

Yeah, it's brilliant. The house is brilliant. I mean, if you're going to nitpick, you're almost like we could have maybe done 15 more minutes in the house of there are five or three or find the house before or the house is such a good character. It's it's I wonder if they wasted it just having it at the tail end.

I'm sure there's lots of practical considerations that went into that where it's like, with the equipment that they had, could they effectively shoot an interior at night? And what was the deal with running up and down the stairs? But that's the thing. This was made by the people that you see on the screen. What was the movie set in Russia that was a found footage movie with the creepy building? And it was near the Chernobyl. It was like the Chernobyl...

Chernobyl tapes, something like that. Chernobyl diaries, I've seen that. That's a scary one too, yeah. I think the found footage, I watch all of them. Most of them are bad. It doesn't matter. Well, I saw the first paranormal activity in the theater. I think I was on a, it was at my book tour in San Diego.

I want to say that. I want to say I saw it in San Diego for some reason. Same thing. It's fucking, when these found footage things go off the rail in the last 50 minutes, it's terrifying. Anyway, that was today's most rewatchable scene brought to you by Paramount Plus. From action blockbusters to thrillers to favorites for the whole family. Find something new to watch every week. A mountain of movies awaits on Paramount Plus. Plans start at $7.99 a month. Start streaming now. Let's take one more break.

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All right, CR, what is the most 1999 thing about this movie other than stuff we've already discussed? Would you go with Heather's 1999 look? All the things we talked about at the top, or do you have a specific thing we haven't mentioned yet? Because I have one thing. Josh's car is very 1999. Even if it's not a 1999 car, it's like the kind of car that a broke college student would be driving in 1999. It's like a Celica. Yeah. Yeah.

The cigarette butts like between the seats. Yeah. Just even the way Josh talks, like when he's just like, I want mashed potatoes and a piece of ass. Like this is a very 99. He's like the guy that at one in the morning, he's smoking cigs. He's like, I think Courtney Love killed Kurt Cobain. And you're like, dude, can we go to bed? Here's the most 1999 thing. One of the video cameras used by the actors was,

They bought it at Circuit City. Yes. Filming was completed, and then they returned the camera for a refund to help their budget. They bought the camera at Circuit City. There's no more 1999 fact about this movie than that.

I feel like every story I hear about people making their first feature and maxing out two credit cards to pay for it, it always is like, oh, and then I made Sex, Lies, and Videotape, so it all worked out great. Yeah, how many bad ones? I want to know the oral history of dudes who were like, I still have a poor credit score because I tried to finance my Terminator sequel with a Discover card.

That was us with the take on her one. That's right. We funded it with whatever, sir. Best buy with Marriott Bonvoy points. What's age the best horror movies where the kids are clearly asking for it. Don't go in the fucking woods. You knocked over the rock pile.

Like, why would he? Oh, oh, cool. Look at this. Let's stay here today. I think it's an Indian burial ground. Get the fuck out. What are you doing? All of them deserve to die. All of them. They just should have been like, honestly, it should have been like, we're not going further than like 15 minutes from the car. Yeah. You know, like, it's just like, this can be like, we can get some scenery. We are not going in the woods.

The Curse of the Blair Witch documentary for what's aged the best. I'm glad it exists. I got a question for you. I just got to ask this because we were talking about going into the woods. How soon after starting the adventure do you start questioning Heather's navigation skills? Oh, immediately. Yeah. Yeah. Worst hike partner ever. Also, not hard to figure out. The sun's going that way. It came up this way. It's going that way. I think that's how she was navigating and she wasn't really using that old map.

What saves the best? Making one victim stand in the corner with their back to the second murder. I don't know how you come up with something that creepy, but congrats. Because that's about as creepy as it gets. You admire the discretion. Little Bobby, you stand over there. I'm going to kill your brother. What is a creepier horror movie gimmick than that? I know. Standing in the corner. Don't move. You just have to stand that way. And you're just listening to the other person get murdered. It's fucking terrifying. It's up there with like...

The girl from the ring as like one of the scariest, like single, like seconds in a movie. Yeah. Or poltergeist girl, go just being in the TV. Yeah. We've had some good horror stuff. So another one, um, you mentioned this, the walking around for the same day and ending up in the same spot just as a concept is pretty brilliant. Kudos to them for that.

They all signed a release granting the production permission to, quote, mess with your head. So when you watch this movie, the tent attack and a couple other scenes, they genuinely don't know what's going on because they don't know if where they are is a haunted place. Yeah. I also think one of the things that's aged the best is...

The group dynamic in relation to how fear jumps from person to person, it's pretty rare that in a group, all three people are feeling the same thing at once. So Mike will be freaking out and Heather will be kind of angry at him, but Josh will be trying to make peace. Or Josh is freaking out and Heather's angry at him and Mike's trying to make peace. Or Mike and Josh are going crazy and Heather's trying to make peace. It's like they always have...

this really precise internal dynamic to their group. It's really, really well observed. No music in this movie other than... Except for Josh's car. Rock songs. But once we get in the woods, it's just we're silent the whole time, which is a great choice. The trailer was really good for this, and so was the poster. Both super effective. I mean, the poster was also like a missing poster of Heather, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then...

Some of the stuff, the actors, and we'll talk about the what's the worst piece of it too, but how this movie became a huge phenomenon and how dumbfounded they were by it is really interesting. Just the concept of becoming famous overnight in this completely improbable way. And also early doors, early stages of people...

Not being able to separate the actor from the performance. Right. And starting to get like mad at Heather and like how she felt like she and like people, people really invading their privacy in a fucked up way. Yeah. Like Heather said, I had this overarching wish that the movie would have just made 7 million. That would have been a really great sweet spot. I was just in this position where I was the face of this thing that kind of blew up and I was utterly unprotected.

Josh said, to completely honest, so much of an experience like that happens in a blackout when your life changes that drastically. You don't even understand how crazy you are until you have the opportunity to hindsight. It was a tidal wave. It's really like one of, I don't know if there's been another movie quite like that. You've had movies with actors, right?

You've had movies where actors could then have a career after the movie, like swingers. Be like, oh, Vince Vaughn, what's his next movie going to be? These three were all supposed to be dead after the movie. Yeah, I mean... And kind of had to play dead like a dog even after the movie came out. And then it's like, okay, everybody kind of knows now. And then their careers were done. There was also like that feeling with the indie movie scene...

You couldn't do this on Netflix, is what I guess I'm trying to say. You couldn't be like, oh, this is on... Netflix would immediately feel liable for misleading people or for whatever. Like...

Their overnight sensation, it wasn't like what happens with like Stranger Things where nobody knows who those kids are. And then the next weekend, they're like super world famous. Right. This was like legit people being like, so are these people dead? Are they alive? And then when they're not dead... They're kind of mad at them. Yeah, like a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Weird.

Any other what's aged the best? No, we covered a bunch of it. It was just like capturing that moment when handheld video is really starting to blossom in social circles and just how well drawn the characters are and just how knowable they are. The Fortune 3 Clap Award for most gif-able moment is the same winner as the Great Shot Gorder Award for most cinematic shot. Heather's confessional.

They just go for it. It's so creepy how close, like we're like inside her nostrils basically. There's like spit and phlegm and her tears and she's just so scared. It's really smart how they do it. What would you have? I mean, the only competitor would be Mike standing against the wall, but that's like three frames of shot. Like the Heather thing is the correct answer.

Den of Thieves, Benny Hanna Award for scene-stealing location has to be The Evil House at the end. Witch House, for sure. Unbelievable. Big Kahuna Burger Award, best use of food and drink. Are cigarettes eligible for this category? They are, and I would like to shout out Mike for finding the couple of Lucys at the bottom of his pack. That's true dedication to smoking cigarettes. It's just like, I know I have one somewhere here. The Butch's Girlfriend Award, weak link of the film, other than...

The motion stuff, which I think has gotten better over the years. In 1999, we just weren't used to that. But I think now there's been so many things like that, your eyes kind of get used to it. It's just really hard for me to accept how they got this lost in the woods. So what you said about how they entered a different dimension almost has to be the answer. Or they're possessed by some sort of spirit that's just telling them to do this and they don't realize it. I go along with the idea that for the first third of the hike...

Heather is kind of being loosey goosey with navigating and is really what she actually wants is to come across some really fucked up stuff. She doesn't care about getting back in time. Yeah. But in her journal, she's like, we have to get home. We have to get home. We have to get home. I think once Josh accidentally knocks over the pile of rocks, they can't leave. Oh my God. I think that trips something and they can't leave.

So they're walking around and the spirits just Jedi mind tricking them to stay at. I wish it had been explained with more clearly, but whatever. Do you have a different weak link of the film or no? No. I mean, I, I think that, um, I think that the setup for horror movies is usually like my favorite part of horror films because that's where you sort of get to know the people. Um,

and the Blair Witch like there's a lot of interviews like uh it's it's somewhat repetitive I think yeah if if I had like 10 more minutes in the woods and 10 less minutes in town I would be fine and but but like that's also because you have the Curse of the Blair Witch which has all that stuff essentially I do love the the one with the mom with the baby who's like trying to cover her mouth though yeah that was good I had her lit coming up later in different category

What's aged the worst? Big fat handheld cameras. Dat machines that you have to lug around. Yeah. And by the way, those were like the new sleeker versions. Cause the one, like the one I had in the late eighties, you're, you're like separating your shoulder nostrils in HD. Poor Heather's nostrils says the TVs have gotten better. Not hasn't been great for like going way. You can almost see her brain. Um, here's my big one.

No fun, no super fun scene in the first like 25 minutes to make me care about the characters more. I actually think the drunk scene could have gone longer. Maybe it wasn't good. Or some argument where they're arguing about some sort of pop culture thing or a sports thing or just something where they could connect a little bit before it gets scary. It's definitely missing.

one or two scenes, right? We're like, oh, I like these. These three are a fun hang or, oh, these three are interesting. It just doesn't have it. But I think if they had done too much Gilligan's Island stuff, it would have dated it more. You don't think they should have done the Tarantino? I think it's fine the way it is. You know what I like about Amsterdam? What? They're just like...

You have any what's aged the worst? I mean, number one is that Josh and Mike missed the Juan Dixon and Steve Blake NCAA tournament run. Yeah, they really would have loved that.

It's a likable barely team. Um, you know, it's just exactly, uh, but for real, the, um, the three actors got fucking jobbed. Like, yeah, there's a lot of different. Yeah. There's a lot of different accounts of this. And, and this has become even a bigger thing now because in 2016, I think, or 18, they did Blair witch, which was the reboot. And now Blumhouse has the rights to it and is going to do it again. Um,

They did not really participate in the fortunes of this film. Yeah. So the backstory, they agree to make it. It's made for no money. The guys who paid for everything sold it for 1.1 million to Artisan, which was some studio.

Artisan then goes... See, it's basically an indie deal, but then they go and they make 248 million bucks from there. They didn't have any points in the movie. They didn't get bonuses for certain thresholds. And they basically... Not only did they make no money, then they had no career after because everybody thought they were dead. Their lives got turned upside down. Yeah. So...

It's this cool thing to be in the movie, but somehow they got nothing out of this thing. They made $248 million. And I think it would be one thing if they were like in a James Cameron movie and they like are just walking across the frame and James Cameron is doing everything. They're literally doing everything in the movie. Yeah. They're like shooting it. They're coming up with the, they are the characters in a lot of ways. And they're, they're doing, I mean, like, obviously it's a collaboration, but I don't think that they ultimately got paid fairly for their work.

And it's still going. There's a lot of stuff that you can really deep dive it. The other part, that's a what stage is the worst. So you said how Blumhouse owns it now. Jason Blum, who's we've done stuff with, he's been on my pod a bunch of times. He was working at Merit Max at the time, passed on the movie, could have bought it, did it. Huge mistake became, he just didn't think it was going to be a hit. And then what happens? Eight years later, he makes Paranormal Activity. It's like, I fucked up. And then does a better version of Blair Witch, basically.

I have that in what stage the worst, just because I think that's a loss for Blum. Let me ask you this. How many of the sequels have you watched? Are you Blair Witch complete? I definitely saw Blair Witch 2 on cable when it came out. It was awful and I hated it. And I haven't done any of the sequels. It's over here. I like the original and that's it. The Adam Wingard reboot is pretty bad, except the climactic...

Their version, its version of what happens in Blair Witch Project is one of the most physically taxing, like fucking crazy horror scenes I've ever seen. Really? Oh, maybe I'll just watch that. There was, we were supposed to see the Blair Witch. Here's the Woodstage of the Worst. And the cameraman fucked it up the one time they actually had it when Heather was like, what the fuck is that? What the fuck is that? That's what I was wondering if that's what that's supposed to be. And that's the guy running around in white, I think.

And then those guys got kind of fucked on the sequel to my wreck and Sanchez. They, they just wanted to pump it out as fast as possible. They got, they, and the guys were like, can we have some time? Can we have time to create a new one? And they were like, no, it's got to happen. Sanchez said, uh, pick a release date, start working on the movie. There was a fuse tied and whether you're ready or not, that bomb was going to go off. And those guys were like, we're out, we're not doing it. And, uh, they made it anyway. And it was terrible.

Another what's aged the worst. So Heather Donahue changed her name to Rehunts. She retired from acting. She became a medical marijuana grower, changed her name, and just seems like really scarred by the whole experience that she was known as Heather from this movie.

and really regrets it, regrets using her own name and did not have a great experience with the movie. Yeah, I mean, there's a variety piece that's kind of like 25 years later with these folks or 30 years later with these folks and you can tell it's still with them. They're still better, yeah.

The Ruffalo Hannah Rubinick Partridge Overacting Award. They knew and they let it happen. Don't you call me lady. I come in here. I give these things to you. Give me all you got. Give me all you got. I treated you like a son. You fucking stabbed me in the heart. Fuck you. Fuck you.

All three? I don't think you can give it when you're being terrorized by a spectral witch. Is there really anything that's overacting? So I have Mike before they realize they're being terrorized when he's just getting super aggro. Oh, yeah. And he kind of dials it up a little bit. It's like, all right, it's early, Mike. Settle down. Have a cigarette. You haven't even found the same log yet, Mike. Yeah, come on, buddy. Was there a better title for this movie? The first title was called The Blair Witch Tapes. Mm-hmm.

How about this? Why didn't they just call it Blair Witch? That's what the reboot winds up being called. For a while, its codename was The Woods, which is pretty good, but also pretty general. The Blair Witch Project went towards the idea that this was like somebody was putting together this footage as a project and contributed to the weird kind of like, is this real? Yeah.

Can you dig it a word for most memorable quote? Does this movie have a memorable quote? I think no redneck is this creative is up there. Yeah, you're right. That's good. All right. The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. Hottest take a word.

We've alluded to it. I just don't think you can actually truly understand this movie without watching Curse of the Blair Witch. And in some ways, Curse of the Blair Witch is almost better. That's the hottest take. Curse of the Blair Witch is almost... Just go better because that's the hot take. I would love to see an assembly of the Blair Witch movie with the Curse of the Blair Witch and have it be like two and a half hours.

My hottest take. I think this is one of the most fucked up franchises we've had. There should have been 10 of these. I just don't understand. Why did they rush out the sequel? Why did the next one take so long? How'd they fuck that one up too?

The blueprint of like Blair Witch Woods, people going back. Maybe there's a cousin of the Blair Witch in California. Like this just should have kept going and going. I don't understand it. Well, because then they're also, they gave all of the opportunities to,

to tell like the original stories, right? Like there could have been the, the crucible version of this with the original witch. There could have been the 1940s. Totally. We could have, could have been like Yellowstone. Yeah. I think, I think this is a multi-billion dollar franchise. Ripping Beth, hanging out at the witch house. Let's go to 1880s, man. Hey, guess what? There's a fucking witch. I don't know. I just feel like they really missed it. I can't believe they fucked it up that badly. Yeah.

Casting what ifs, so there are none. They did a whole improv process to find the three actors and that was it. They wanted people that could think on their feet. Heather said that they asked her to improvise and the improv was, "You've been in prison, you've served nine years of a 25-year sentence, you're up for parole, why should we let you out?" She said, "I was the only person that said, 'I don't think you should.'" They were like, "Cool, you've got the job." Who knows if that's true.

Best that guy award? Everyone in the movie? Yeah. I mean, you can't really have a that guy for this movie, I don't think. I do a Dion. What a fucked up Rewatchables pod this is. Dion Waiters I have, though. The mom who covers her mouth? Or the two fishermen? I like also Ed Swanson, the younger fisherman. I like him. It's always good when somebody's about, and a bunch of movies have cribbed this.

somebody's about to take that last step to go to the place you're not supposed to go. And they're like, don't fucking do it. It's like, don't fucking, it's usually like some guy who's working at the last gas station. He's like, you kids will never learn, you know, it's a fisherman or like there's some auto mechanic who's helping them with gas or whatever it is. Recasting couch director or city. So what if they got three actual 1999 actors? Yeah.

and made the movie with three real actors. Like Affleck, Damon, and Paltrow or something? I had Michelle Williams, Heath Ledger, and Jake Gyllenhaal. It's just early Brokeback. It's like the Brokeback. Oh, I like that. I like that. But all of them were acting and they were all young actors in the late 90s. In this version of your Brokeback Witch Project...

Brokeback which project? Is Michelle Williams' character kind of like, why do you guys keep getting your own tent? What's going on here? I brought one tent. Why'd you guys bring another tent? Michelle Williams as the lead would have been really good, especially at this point in her career. But this movie doesn't work if you're like, oh, it's Michelle Williams from Dawson's. You're right. All the people from this movie became the person. All right, one more break.

Coming back, Tony Romo, Chris Collinsworth, or somebody else for the director's commentary of the Blair Witch Project? I mean, we got to keep our hot streak going. We got to get Belichick back. You want to keep him back? I thought you might do Van Pelt. Josh knocked over that pile of rocks there. It's just a mental error. Can't have that. Can't have that. Now he's going to get slime on his clothes and they'll find his tongue in a t-shirt. I don't think when they keep...

ending up at that log, I don't think they realize they're in another dimension at this point. Yeah, I mean, that's just, that's mental mistakes. You gotta work on that. You gotta know where you are. You can't, I think when Mike lost the map, that was a huge moment for them because you don't have a map. Reminds me of when Scott Pioli lost the map once. Yeah.

When I was working with Nick Saban in 1989, we had a map of our plays and Nick Saban lost it. Couldn't do it. That was it. Couldn't have it. Map was gone. When are you going to break out Van Pelt? I can't wait for that one. Heather, I'm just a guy in this tent with you right now and I got to ask, do you know where we're going? I'm not nearly as scared as you. I've never been that scared, but I still got to ask, do you regret going in the woods? Yes.

Half-assed internet research. Heather Donahue's mother received sympathy cards from people who believed their daughter was actually dead. That happened. Jesus Christ. The shoot was eight days. The actors never knew the Blair Witch was fake.

Thousands of people have gone to Maryland hoping to find the Blair Witch legend and were sadly disappointed because they had the closing credits. They had to tear down that house because fans kept going and trying to break off pieces of it as memorabilia. Yeah. And so they had to demolish it. My half-assed internet research truly made my day, so I got to share it with you. So there's a theory online that Mary...

the crazy lady that they visit in the beginning of the movie is the witch. Oh. And that she is basically like not in her witch form when they see her, but that that's why she has like the little sort of voodoo-y ties around her fence that keeps it locked. And that when Heather is running around filming the rocks in the beginning of the film in the forest, she says something like, what was the Bible quote that Mary told us?

about the rocks. And so as people on Reddit basically have found this quote that they think it is, which is from Genesis. Oh, Jesus. I know. I'm going to break out some Genesis. This pile of rocks and this one special rock both help us to remember our agreement. I will never go past these rocks to fight against you. And you must never go on my side of these rocks to fight against me. And it's essentially like they pass the rocks and that's why the witch comes out.

So you think these filmmakers were smart enough to... I do. I do. Wow. Great job by them. It's a great Easter egg. I didn't know that's a theory. Yeah. And Josh knocks over the rocks. Josh goes first. Have you thrown that theory at Ray Hance yet? I haven't. I haven't. There's a lot of stuff about Josh and Heather not getting along for people who care. The house used as the Rustin Parr house...

which you mentioned was called the Griggs house located in Patapisco Valley state park, 50 miles East of Burkittsville built in the 1800s renovated early 2000, early 20th century. It had been abandoned, vandalized and was decaying for several decades. And somehow they were able to film in there. And then eventually now it's gone. And then Josh's camera, which was a CP 16, uh,

about 10 years ago, sold on eBay. What do you think they got? It's 30 grand. 10 grand. Okay. That's it. Apex mountain. Everyone in the movie. Yeah. And the director. Literally everyone. Sundance. I don't know. What is the apex mountain for Sundance? This is pretty good. This movie became a top 10 movie and a phenomenon based on a Sundance screening. So sex lies in videotape is a huge Sundance movie, right?

Yeah, that kind of creates Sundance. Yeah, so I wonder if that, what kind of functions in that sense. Would you say it's Apex Mountain for viral marketing? Yes. Good call. Found footage movies? Probably Paranormal Activity, right? Because that leads to nine Paranormal Activities. But it's this invents it, you know? Orin probably doesn't do that franchise. Do you think it's Apex? Witches. Mm-hmm.

I think Wizard of Oz probably for witches. Fair. Do you think this is Apex Mountain for Cal Ripken getting mentioned in films? I'm going to say yes. How about Staring in a Corner right before a murder? Apex Mountain? Yes. Artists and Entertainment acquired this movie for $1.1 million and $2.52 times it. I'm going to say Apex Mountain for them because I can't think of another movie they made. The great film investments of all time. Could have floated some to the cast. Cruise or Hanks?

Why not both? Why not both as Josh and Mike? No, got to pick. I was thinking Hanks as Mike. Young Hanks. Like 1981 Hanks. Yeah. It would be really funny if 1999 Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks were the fishermen. Like Magnolia Cruise. They were the fishermen. Cruise is doing the Jerry Maguire stuff. Yeah. I'm just going to freak out. I'm in the woods.

Racehorse Rock Band. So we have Hanks as the winner for that? Sure. Because we're keeping score. Craig keeps score. Racehorse Rock Band wrestler, fantasy team name. Coffin Rockers is pretty good. Oh, Coffin Rock is a good one, man. Or Coffin Rockers for a fantasy team or Coffin Rock. Coffin Rock's good. Picking Nets. I said earlier, why would you stay near the Indian Burial Ground?

super just anyone listening Indian if you hear the words Indian burial ground out just done don't fuck with it how did they have this much camera battery they charge it at Heather's the day before I wonder I mean every they're there for six fucking days those cameras where you chew up the battery in like three hours and she's filming constantly I think that's a legit nit to pick it's beyond a nit pick two cigarette questions

Why didn't they have more cigarettes? And then why did it take Mike so long to dig through his pack to make sure there weren't more cigarettes at the bottom? I feel like CR is cigarette smoking peak. The bag's upside down within three hours and you've gone through every crevice of it to make sure there's no cigarettes left. Mike's just like, hey, I found some more butts. It's like, what? That's what we call a carton trip. Somebody's got to bring a carton.

How long is a carton trip? It's just anything longer than two days. And it's like, we don't know where the next convenience store is going to be. There's not going to be any outpost where we can do this. What else are we going to do while walking around the woods? All of them smoke, right? So that's at least 15 cigs a day for three people.

They're going to be in the woods for four. I think Mike was closer to a pack because when they pick Mike up in the morning, he's burning one when he's saying bye to his mom. Mike might have been a pack and a half a day. That goes to a larger nitpick that I had, which is with all due respect to Heather as a documentary filmmaker, the camera equipment goes first. I'm not lugging this stuff around. Once we know we're dying, let's try to get rid of this shit. I'm moving a lot quicker that way.

You know, I should have mentioned this in What's Aged the Best, and my apologies for not doing it. Movies where cigarettes are a huge part of the plot, I just really miss. I just don't think you could do this now, where it's like one of the three biggest dramatic forks are the fact that they're finally out of cigarettes. Yeah. What would be the equivalent now? Now it would be like, you know, vape? Yeah, like I ran out of Zin.

It would probably be phones if you didn't have your phone. Oh, yeah. Your phone battery would be dead. I can't go on TikTok. Any other nitpicks? Do you think that... There's an interesting conversation that happens in the movie where Josh is like, my girlfriend is going to get worried soon. People are going to notice that we're gone. Yeah.

Do you think that it's a nitpick that it wouldn't happen sooner? Or is it like that's a very 90s thing that it's like, oh, have you seen Bill? No, I haven't seen him in like a week. That was a 90s thing to me. Yeah. Yeah, he said he was going to be back Tuesday. It's Thursday. Ah. You know Bill. He probably stopped somewhere. He's looking for smokes. Probably found a diner. Yeah.

Sequel, prequel, prestige TV, all black cast are untouchable. Prequel was sitting there to do the Yellowstone model. There are multiple prequels. The Rustin Parr story. Yeah, really such a miss by fucking Artisan. They made so much money from this movie that I fuck it. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Sam Jackson, JT Walsh, Byron Mayo, Harling Mays, Evil Laffer, Ramon Raymond, Philip Baker Hall, our new entry just for this, Private Hudson from Aliens.

She tore down the voodoo witch, man. What the fuck are we going to do now? I had, I had Byron actually. Heather, Josh, Mike, you know what helps me after a long day of hiking through the Maryland woods, looking for a mythological creature, getting in a rented tent for three and turning on the camcorder and seeing what happens. Let's make a movie.

Let's get rid of two of those three sleepy bags and go to town. Oh my God. This would be a good Byron movie. It's day four. I know we're feeling a little gamey. I love your scent, Mike.

Just one Oscar who gets it, nobody. I mean, if you could give an Oscar to the marketing department or the marketing campaign, I think that would be good. Did they have that? They do not. Marketing would be good. Probably unanswerable questions. So this is a passion point for me. If you're this lost in the woods, climb a fucking tree and see where you are. My wife and I were talking about this last night. There's got to be a tree you can climb and see how high you can go so you can see...

the surrounding areas because they, unless they hiked for 30 miles. But what if you get to the top of that tree and all you see is trees? Then I, then I know we're not near anything. Then you just throw yourself out of the tree and die. Yeah. Then it's plan B. Start setting trees on fire. So the, Oh yeah. Yeah. Just, just kill miles and miles of wildlife to get saved. No, I don't, I don't, I don't know when you climb to the top. Whatever it takes to see that Terps run. You gotta do it. You can't miss it. Uh, uh,

Did Mike lose the map because the spirits possessed him? Unanswerable question. I never thought about that. I thought he was basically like, wanted him to kick the map away. I thought it was supposed to be more like Mike is hungry. Mike is tired. He does something really fucked up and then doesn't cop to it until the absolute last minute. Who found the camera stuff? How long did it take?

I would assume in the documentary, it suggests that there's search parties. So eventually, the authorities find it. Okay. Any other unanswerables for you? How much did Heather know about where she was taking them in the woods? Because she obviously knows Coffin Rock. She knows that there's supposed to be a cemetery. She obviously knows there's supposed to be a house somewhere since that's where the Rustin Parr stuff happened. So in the journals...

There's just a sense that she's like, I mean, she's very like keyed into some intense writing in the journals, but there's a suggestion that she's like a little bit more aware of the dangers and where they're going than when she's alluding to in the film where she's just like, I know where we're going. I know where we're going. Don't worry about it. We're going this way, you know? And so that's an interesting and ambiguous part of the movie. So was Heather evil? I don't think so, but I think she knew more about the mythology of the area than she was letting on. Maybe she was deep down a witch.

Best double feature choice. Would you go paranormal activity? It's like the 1.0 and 2.0 version of this. Well, I mean, honestly, the curse of the Blair witch is the double feature. Oh, good call. Okay. The Indian reds want an air word. What happened the next day? Well, in this case, what happened in the next 15 minutes? How long did it take for Mike to die? Did he die? Or did he die? Cause the legend was you killed the other. Later. We'll talk about the Cowboys. Um,

Now, the legend was he then has to die next. So you just probably admit it. I didn't understand. That is one thing that you kind of have to consider. So Josh gets his tongue and teeth ripped out. So the Blair Witch is imitating Josh. I suppose you just assume Josh is dead, dead. But it's not killing in pairs if it's three. So is Josh still there as a spectral kind of emissary of the witch? I don't really know.

Josh had to go because he kicked the rocks over. Yes. They slimed his thing. They're fucking pissed about it. Yeah, he gets marked. Yeah, he got marked. That's what happened. What piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie? Obviously, the camera because it went for 10K. I don't know what else. It's like, oh, cool. It's a slime sleeping bag from Blair Witch. Heather's Journal. Heather's Journal is a good one. Yeah. Mike's Last Cigarette.

An empty Mike's cigarette pack? Like a kind of crumpled up Winston. Could you tell what he was smoking? I was looking for that. I couldn't. They really hit it. I smoked Winston Lights at the time, so I associate it with Winston Lights. You think he was a cheaper cigarette guy, or did he splurge, or was he a Marlboro Reds? Let me just plow through these. Like a Carlton guy? Yeah.

I was thinking probably maybe camels for him. Not the camel lights, just the... Oh, unfiltered camels? Yeah. Oh. The Coach Finstock Award Best Life Lesson. Don't fuck with witches, burial grounds, or the woods. I think it's a good way to proceed through life. Those three things. Just don't leave eye shot of the car. Who won the movie? Sadly, probably Artists and Entertainment.

They 250 tuple time their investment unless you want to go with the filmmakers. It definitely wasn't the three actors. The filmmakers, but I'm going to include the actors just because they also were part of the filmmaking process. But to basically revitalize, if not fully popularize, the found footage horror thing that's still going strong today. I think we won the movie because we found out about your fear of hiking in the woods.

Especially just getting deeply lost in the woods is not, I couldn't handle it. Is that your number one fear? Feels like this should be a ringer. This should be, what are they called? A ringer reality show? A ringer retreat? We have to do like trust exercises deep in the woods? CR faces fears. You and fantasy? We have to get like in a shark cage together. 10 miles into the woods with no phones? Craig, any last thoughts?

I don't feel like Craig's going to recommend this movie to anybody. Well, I just think it's hard. I'm jealous. I couldn't experience the phenomenon and, or, and, and honestly, there will probably be nothing like this that I could experience or did experience in my life. So it's just a bummer. We have too much paranormal activity. Have you seen the first paranormal activity?

Yeah, but you didn't think it was real. Yeah. Right. So even if it's a really scary, effective movie, there will be nothing like this again. And I can't even think of anything similar. It's just like Apex Mountain for you had to be there moments. I don't know. Oh, that's good. I like it. That's it for the Blair Witch Project. Thanks to Chris Ryan. Thanks to Craig Korlbeck for producing. Thanks to Jack Sanders as well. You can watch this podcast on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel. And we will see you next week.