![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() He forces Finney to literally fight for his life by turning a disconnected phone into a much-needed lifeline, which shows him he is stronger and smarter than his kidnapper. Derrickson’s way of reckoning with his childhood trauma is far less cuddly. The Black Phone is certainly not E.T., Spielberg’s seminal 1982 sci-fi movie, which was the director’s way of working through his parents’ divorce. “I grew up on those Spielberg movies, but his way of looking back at preadolescence is just very different from anything I would do.” Instead, he pulled what he calls a “reverse Amblin” with the supernatural horror movie, referring to the production company founded by Steven Spielberg. “Bob Dylan said, ‘Nostalgia is death,’ and I tend to agree with that,” he says. In bringing a 1970s-era story to screen, Derrickson fought any urge to fetishize the era. “It’s always a way of dispelling anxiety and fear, never creating it.” ![]() “For me, making these movies is always a cathartic experience,” he says. “I think you have to have a sensitivity of what an audience can tolerate without really being turned off or turning on the film itself.” Instead, he wanted to show the resiliency of children by confronting some of the real horrors of his own adolescence through his young characters. “There were things in my childhood that were too dark to put in,” he says. While The Black Phone deals with the trauma of childhood, Derrickson knew he didn’t want to go too far with the violence. Bummer.’ You know? And then we went and played Nerf football,” he says. “But I didn’t have it the worst.” He remembers a friend of his showing up to play with “red bleeding welts on the back of his leg.” The boy’s dad had whipped him with an extension cord. The youngest of the 13 boys that lived on his block growing up, Derrickson recalls omnipresent violence. It wasn’t until nearly a decade later that Derrickson realized he could use his own middle school experience growing up in Denver, Colorado, in the late 1970s to expand the 30-page story into a full-length feature. ![]()
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