Disturbia
DJ Caruso on Disturbia
"I think the jumping off point when Spielberg called was, 'We're going to take this, we're going to pay homage to Hitchcock but I do not want to remake Rear Window,' said director DJ Caruso. "So it was definitely the jumping off point, sort of update this concept of the boy locked in his house being the voyeur, but beyond that, we tried not to do anything else that would feel too Rear Windowish. I did as a director pay some homage to Hitchcock because he's one of my heroes obviously."
Troubled teen Kale (Shia LaBeouf) is trapped at home under house arrest. Confined to the house, he sees suspicious activity at his neighbor's house and enlists his friends to help catch a killer. But he's stuck at home.
"That's what I embraced because I thought, 'What a great opportunity.' The initial screenplay was not all from Kale's point of view. It jumped from newsrooms to this room to this room. The one thing I said was, 'I want to embrace that challenge of doing this all from his point of view.' Obviously, like Hitchcock, about five or six times we break that. But that to me was the directorial challenge and I remember reading Hitchcock saying <B>Rear Window</B> was very liberating for him because his whole life he's been a voyeur and as a director, that's what we do. We spy on other people's conversations and then we project them up on the screen so everyone else can see them. So I embraced that. I thought it would be great because as a director, I feel like a voyeur."
That's a good warning. If you ever see DJ Caruso walking by, better keep things to yourself. "When I'm in a supermarket, I'm listening to people's conversations. When I'm at school, watching my kids' teachers teach, I'm kind of watching the way things happen. I've always felt like my whole life, I've been an observer, even from a very young age and I think that's what kind of makes me a decent filmmaker, a filmmaker who's getting better, is you have to really listen and observe and be a voyeur because that makes you a better director."
The nosy teens of Disturbia use their video cameras and camera phones to track their neighbor's activity. Those are all elements unavailable in Hitchcock's day. "The video camera that Kale's using is a $450 Panasonic camera that we bought at Best Buy. When you go to digital zoom, you can zoom up to 750mm on a camera that you buy at Best Buy. So literally from 620 feet away, I was operating that camera, I'm going right up David Morse's nose. Taking a photograph via cell phone in the hardware store and sending that back to the computer, three years ago we would have to have half a page of dialogue explaining what we're doing. So I felt that I could use those tools to help almost in a way. In my opinion, we're still actually coming from Kale's point of view because he's the anchor of that scene."
The thrills became so intense that Caruso actually had to battle the ratings board for a PG-13. "What happened was we were rated R twice and what happened was my conversations with the ratings board were, because I had never made a PG-13 movie so I did my homework. From The Lord of the Rings to watching movies like The Grudge, I was trying to see what are the rules? Because I've never even come close to making a PG-13 movie. So I watched it and I thought I was really policing myself because I promised Dreamworks I'd give them a PG-13 movie so I was really careful with blood and what we not see. But we were rated R because I was told by the ratings board that our movie was too based in reality, that this could really happen. And that made it scarier. So I said, 'If it was a ghost next door?' They don't really give you direct answers but I got the impression, because I was watching The Grudge and they're ripping people's jaws off, I think because of the intensity of what happens in those last two reels that that was probably it. I did make some trims and some small things and changed some words. I'm telling you, we got a PG-13 and I was happy because it does play so much better to that audience. I do feel like, particularly people who grew up with Shia, this might feel like their first R movie experience."
Disturbia opens to theatres on April 13th.
For the trailer, clips, movie stills and more movie info, go to the Disturbia
Movie Page.
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