Jennifer Love Hewitt says a child who gained a contest directed her in an iconic second. However nobody else who labored on the movie remembers it that method.
Photograph: Sony Photos Leisure/Youtube
In 2018, Jennifer Love Hewitt relayed a curious little bit of trivia about I Know What You Did Final Summer season. As she advised it, the infamous scene by which her final-girl character, Jules, addresses her stalker by twirling round and screaming to the heavens was conceived by … a baby. Particularly, a baby who gained a contest to contribute to the movie. Right here, let Hewitt inform the story, per Us Weekly:
“That scene was truly directed by a child who gained a contest to come back on and create a second for the film, and it turned the largest a part of the film. I don’t know the place he’s, however he was like, ‘I need her to face on the street and switch round and simply scream, “What are you ready for, huh?”’ I used to be actually like, ‘Are you kidding me proper now? That is what I’m gonna do? OK. This was an amazing concept — yeah, let’s have this man are available in.’ Then we have been doing it and it was wonderful.”
She’s proper, after all. The scene type of was an amazing concept. Not as a result of it’s excessive artwork — it’s ridiculous (no complaints right here) — however as a result of it’s such a memorable relic of the late-’90s and early-2000s slasher boom, when profitable releases like Scream, City Legend, and Jeepers Creepers toyed with the subgenre’s tropes. By comparability, I Know What You Did Final Summer season was simple, buying and selling its counterparts’ meta humor for a standard hack-’em-up that handles Hewitt’s melodramatic outcry with utmost gravity. Props to that child, whomever he could also be, for arising with one thing legendary sufficient to advantage a Scary Movie parody and a everlasting place within the millennial hive thoughts.
Or not?
I’ve been making an attempt to dig up particulars about precisely what led to I Know director Jim Gillespie handing the reins to a minor, and in response to the person himself, he did no such factor. When contacted, Gillespie and cinematographer Denis Crossan each politely refuted Hewitt’s anecdote. There was no youngster labor on their set, they stated. Actually, the scene was already in Kevin Williamson’s script earlier than manufacturing started (Crossan despatched me a PDF of the screenplay). Crossan recollects having to order a crane throughout preproduction to seize the overhead shot of Hewitt yelling. The entire thing, he stated, was storyboarded and deliberate out nicely prematurely.
A web page from the I Know What You Did Final Summer season script.
Photograph: Kevin Williamson
And as Gillespie identified, I Know What You Did Final Summer season wasn’t a very high-profile undertaking throughout its making, though it was based mostly on a well-liked young-adult novel. The film was fast-tracked after the success of Scream a yr earlier, and it starred a quartet of up-and-comers who have been nonetheless on the cusp of megafame. Why would Columbia Photos stage a contest for a film nobody was paying a lot consideration to but? And are we to imagine this younger man learn the script beforehand and conceptualized the scene out of complete material?
So, with all due respect, what’s Jennifer Love Hewitt speaking about? Along with her and Freddie Prinze Jr. reprising their roles for the new sequel, opening in July, inquiring minds wish to know. Possibly she was conflating the sequence with one thing from I Nonetheless Know What You Did Final Summer season, by which Jules and her roommate, Karla (Brandy), win a trip to the Bahamas by way of a extremely doubtful radio contest. Maybe Hewitt is mistaking it for some wild plot from 9-1-1, the identical digits it’s best to dial when requested to shriek your head off for a seventh-grader. Or perhaps, as Crossan steered to me, it’s all simply “a little bit of enjoyable nonsense.”
Earlier than reaching out to Hewitt, I wished to assemble as a lot data as doable. Producer Stokely Chaffin stated, “I can reply heaps and plenty of questions concerning the difficult origin of the unique, however I’ve no recollection of that ever taking place. I suppose I might be mistaken, nevertheless it’s not one thing that Jim looks as if he would do when directing his first function.” One other producer, Erik Feig, additionally couldn’t corroborate Hewitt’s recollections. Peter Guber, the top of Mandalay Leisure, the manufacturing firm that arrange the unique films, responded, “Know nothing of it, sorry.” I additionally couldn’t discover point out of a contest in any of the movie’s press protection.
Subsequent, I turned to a few the oldsters behind I Nonetheless Know, the sequel that was accelerated into manufacturing and launched a bit over a yr later to capitalize on the momentum of its $125 million-grossing predecessor. Vernon Layton, the film’s DP, doesn’t recall something a couple of miniature John Carpenter holding a bullhorn. “One of many youngest was the director, Danny Cannon, and there’s no method he would have allowed something like that,” Layton stated.
Folks I contacted alongside the way in which made certain to reward Hewitt. Nobody wished to embarrass her for misremembering (or making up?) this extraordinarily particular element. “She’s beautiful to work with,” Layton stated. Gillespie known as her “a really particular particular person.” However how do I deal with the unsolved thriller?
It’s not {that a} contest winner has by no means contributed to a film. One fortunate fan bought to submit a line of dialogue for Transformers, and a younger Make-A-Want recipient provided a line in Thor: Ragnarok — however these have been super-hyped blockbusters based mostly on IP focused at kids, not R-rated slashers the place Sarah Michelle Gellar watches a man with a hook homicide Ryan Phillippe at a magnificence pageant. That’s a part of what makes this all so intriguing: Past being enjoyable film lore, it’s an anomaly that grows weirder and extra irresistible the extra you consider it.
With all of this in thoughts, it was time to return to the supply. Sadly, a number of emails despatched to Hewitt’s publicist went unanswered, as did two despatched to her supervisor. I reached out to the Sony reps dealing with press for the brand new I Know What You Did Final Summer season, however no response there both. Possibly Hewitt was pulling our leg, just like the many fictions Robert Pattinson has fed to journalists, or the time Dakota Johnson said she loves limes, and now everybody in control of her publicity is colluding to maintain the hope of this anecdote alive. So, Jennifer Love Hewitt, should you’re studying this, get in contact. We simply wish to speak. What are you ready for, huh?
