By KEVIN HOOVER
It’s been nearly a hundred years since the Steamboat Willie iteration of Mickey Mouse toe-tapped his happy-go-lucky persona into the pop culture zeitgeist. Despite having appeared in a pair of silent films prior, it was the black-and-white adventure of a whistlin’ boat captain set to sound–an innovation in filmmaking way back in 1928–that defined this particular work as the rodent’s origin story.
Decades of evolution to both the beloved character’s design and personality would lead to the copyright-locked version of the mouse whose black plastic caps with oval ears we’ve all probably donned at one point or another. But alas, horror’s recent obsession with reimagining the public domain variants of our beloved childhood characters as villains has sunk its teeth into the Steamboat Willie property. A wave of such films is on the horizon, the most prominent being director Steven LaMorte’s SCREAMBOAT. Co-written by LaMorte and Matthew Garcia-Dunn and starring David Howard Thornton as the rabid rodent who doesn’t realize that world around him isn’t a paintbrush rendition, the gore-soaked horror comedy hits cinemas for a limited run through Iconic Events beginning April 2nd.
LaMorte and SCREAMBOAT star/producer (and LaMorte’s wife) Amy Schumacher invited RUE MORGUE to be their guest for a chat before the film’s premiere.
SCREAMBOAT is your second deconstruction of a cherished animated property–the first having been The Grinch in The Mean One. What led you to taking on Steamboat Willie?
Steven LaMorte: I’ve always wanted to make a horror movie on the Staten Island ferry, as I’m from Staten Island. I’ve taken the ferry back and forth thousands of times, especially when you consider I went to college in Manhattan. In film school, I was thinking, “You know, Murder on the Orient Express, you could just get off the train–pull a lever or tuck and roll.” But the ferry is a commuter boat. Once it’s off, there’s nowhere to go. You’re stuck. Post The Mean One, we knew that we wanted to do something else that was another adaptation of a childhood character. We started looking and Amy said, “What’s something you’ve just always wanted to make? Don’t worry about adapting a character.” And I’ve always wanted to do this Staten Island ferry slasher or what have you. So, once it became clear that Steamboat Willie was going into the public domain, we said, “How do we make this work?” Obviously, he’s on a boat and the Staten Island ferry used to be powered by steam back in the day. It really was the just the perfect melding of, I think, a cool story, a good idea and a familiar character that we could adapt and have people connect with because people love Mickey Mouse. I don’t know that there’s a lot of Steamboat Willie fans, but when they see it, they think Mickey Mouse and when they think Mickey Mouse, they think whistling. They think toe tapping. People might not be associated with the name Steamboat Willie, but they definitely love this character and that’s something that we’re trying to honor and tap into.
You guys are a husband-and-wife team, and even though you had a co-writer, I envision dinner time conversations about how brutal and dark you can go with this film.
Amy Schumacher: We walk our neighborhood talking these about these things. He would get stuck on a scene or in coming up with a concept, and we would talk through all of it. We knew right away that we wanted to make sure that we were honoring the IP. We both love Disney, so when we started thinking about ideas, we discussed making him (Screamboat Willie) small and how we could possibly do that. We also rode the Staten Island ferry back and forth walking around, looking at what could be weapons or places that Willie could get into.
SL: We really developed the film together, so even before we had a second writer on board, Amy helped me with pitching ideas. Even though she doesn’t have a writing credit, there’s as much of her DNA in the film as mine.
SCREAMBOAT star/producer Amy Schumacher and director Steven LaMorte
Aside from the obvious, there are few other throughlines to Disney works sprinkled throughout. What was hands-off as it relates to the character?
AS: We spoke with a lawyer before we even shot a frame of footage, and in the writing process and development of the characters. Poor David Howard Thornton doesn’t get to speak, but Willie doesn’t speak either; he whistles. He always has to have his hat on. If not, he’s Mickey Mouse. And Mickey Mouse isn’t in public domain. Having done The Mean One, we have a better understanding of stuff like that. Also, Willie whistles a lot of songs that were all public domain.
SL: We like to look at it as a loving homage, poking fun at something we dig rather than just ripping something off. And I think we’re careful not only to honor the things that we’re trying to reference but also to not deviate from the rules because we want the movie to be seen by as many people as possible. We really wanted to make something that is a fun, scary, silly time at the movies.
At this point, David Howard Thornton has worked with you about half as much as he’s been playing Art the Clown. And we know David likes to immerse himself in his roles, but the Steamboat Willie cartoon was a one-off. How does he get into this character when there’s not a lot of material to reference?
SL: David’s been a Mickey fan forever. His first stage performance as a youngster was as Mickey Mouse. He loves doing the voice in public–even though we keep asking him not to! He did a substantial amount of research. He made sure to look at the original animation and the performance and tried to capture those things. He was sort of leaning into that vaudevillian, Charlie Chaplin, playful performative nature. And we designed the suit and the makeup around the idea that he was going to be able to do that, because as soon as you bolt somebody into an immovable suit or a mask that he can’t work through, the role becomes very challenging. We wanted to make sure that he could play and dance around. Thankfully, he’s got a lot of experience clumping around in giant shoes, so his big Mickey feet, which got shrunk down, was something he was very familiar with. And a lot of it came forth naturally, because he had been sitting with this idea for almost a year before we started shooting.
AS: It took maybe three to four hours to get into the makeup and wardrobe. Once he’s in it, he’s locked in it all day. He’s so brilliant at taking the outfit that he has on and seeing what he can physically do. From my perspective, it looks like he sees physically what his limitations are and then pushes them to the limit as much as possible. He looks at himself in the mirror wearing the prosthetic and then sees how he can make it move. He learned halfway through day one that if he did some breathing technique within the mask, he could make the whiskers move. We didn’t expect that was going to be possible and it was just brilliant of him.
To differentiate the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey from later iterations, in a word, it’s this: mischief. And that mischievousness is on full, bloody display in your film—this is a gorefest. Were your effects all practical, and if so, who built them?
SL: All our gore gags are practical. We went through absolute mountains of blood because there’s something about the way that it flows and hits the light that you can’t replicate. There’s a certain unpredictability when blood is spraying that gives the film life, even though we’re recreating death. Most of our gags were done by Quantum Creation FX. They’re the same team that built both David’s puppet stand-in and the creature suit. They have a whole other side that makes these amazing gore gags. We had body parts that could bleed and shatter. All of that was done practically in camera and at a level where you really look at it. It’s insane and preposterous to see a character die. It looks like it’s one person and a mouse. But It’s a torso. It’s a guy pumping blood. Both of his hands are two different actors operating his hands. Then you have the puppeteer running the mouse. Then you have the person that’s twisting the torso to make it jiggle. And then you have David 30 feet back and all these things come together. When all of this comes together, you just see one guy bleeding cartoonishly, and you would never know that outside of the frame, there’s like four technicians working really hard.
Our movie is a horror comedy, so we wanted (the kills) to be over the top. We wanted there to be so much blood that it was funny. I went with this idea that Willie doesn’t know that he’s real. He thinks he’s a cartoon character and that everything is a cartoon. When he’s running around doing these mischievous things and getting into trouble, he doesn’t realize that people bleed because that’s not in his world. In his mind, blood doesn’t flow like that.
Seeing as now you have two of these iconic animated character-driven properties in your stable, are you building out your own twisted universe?
AS: If the success of this movie is what we hope it to be, then we will get to make a second one. But my hope is that the sequel then launches a universe of Steamboat Willie films.
SL: There are lots of stories left to tell on the Staten Island ferry.
To find a participating theater and buy tickets for SCREAMBOAT, visit Iconic Events.
