GEEKchocolate

AQ - This is kind of a simple question, but I really want to know, why did you choose to shoot this in black and white. Yes, there’s the very dark moments with Hero and Claudio, but then there’s also the really light and funny and comedic and romantic parts as well.

JW - There are light and funny and comedic black and white movies. When we conceived this, when I finally figured out why I wanted to shoot this particular play, it was really as a noir comedy, and I talked about this with Kai [Cole, Whedon’s wife] and when I said it feels like maybe it should be in black and white, and she was like “No that’s dumb, it’s got to be in black and white.” She was very firm on that because it led to the visual coherence. And the influences that I was thinking of, like I said, noir comedy, except I couldn’t think of one, and then I sort of went through, and the first two that popped in my head were The Apartment and Unfaithfully Yours by Preston Sturgess, which are both very dark movies, when most films weren’t at that point, but both very funny and both very romantic, and I thought, well, it feels like this will help.

And then we got to the practical considerations. One, our lighting package went behind the Earth every night at five, so we had to augment it, not having to worry about the colour temperatures match helped a huge deal. Not having to worry about somebody’s costume being a hideous colour, considering most people were bringing their own, was a huge deal. And also the walls of the house are quite light, sort of a cream colour, and I couldn’t really paint the entire house to fix that, and the way people’s faces stand out against it was different in black and white, so those things would all crowd in there as well to make me decide to be an artiste.

AQ - You’ve developed a reputation for effectively killing off many of your beloved characters. I was just wondering if you ever considered putting your name up on the whiteboard in Cabin in the Woods next to Merman or Redneck Zombie Torture Family as a potential killer?

JW - I’m never going to dodge the death thing. And neither are any of you… Drew [Goddard, co-writer and director] has never said it, perhaps Kevin was based upon me.