In The Exorcism, Russell Crowe plays an actor and recovering addict terrorized by demons, personal and otherwise. His character, an actor on the set of a fictional horror movie, also happens to be terrorized by a cruel director (Adam Goldberg), something with which director Joshua John Miller has a lot of experience.
Joshua John Miller, who co-wrote The Exorcism with M.A. Fortin (The Final Girls), pulled from personal experiences when creating his psychological family drama meets possession horror story. It’s hard not to see the parallels between the director and Crowe’s character, Arthur Miller, an actor struggling to find his footing again when he lands a role as the priest in an exorcism horror movie. Joshua John Miller, the son of late actor Jason Miller (The Exorcist), started his film career as an actor at age eight and amassed notable acting credits that include Halloween III: Season of the Witch, River’s Edge, Teen Witch, and, of course, Near Dark.
That tenured, decades-long experience left Miller with a lot of memories and experience to pull from when creating The Exorcism. So much so that it makes Goldberg’s vicious character feel even more barbed. When speaking with Miller and Fortin about the film in a recent chat, Miller candidly revealed more about this aspect of the film. More specifically, as ruthless as the fictional director is toward protagonist Anthony Miller, it’s a character rooted in reality.
Miller explains, “I think that it’s completely normal. I mean, when I was a kid on Broadway, I worked with a famous playwright who was brutal to me – I was 15- and would just terrorize me.”
Joshua John Miller in ‘Near Dark’
“But then the opposite side, I got to work with Kathryn Bigelow, who was the most intelligent, cool human being I’d ever met for Near Dark,” Miller continues. “She treated me like her own sibling and looked after her cast, who all had just come off of Aliens, as a family. She took us to dinners and created this whole familial dynamic. So, we all really felt like we maybe had been living together for 500 years. She knew that I was scared and that I was the outsider coming into the gang because all of them had just spent what, a year on Aliens together and just wanted to make sure that I felt like I was seen. That my ideas were always listened to and that I wasn’t sort of stampeded on by the older actors.
“She looked after me. We’ve always had such a great deal of affection for each other, even to this day when we run into each other. So it’s bittersweet in an industry that attracts a lot of narcissists and sociopaths.”
Miller also pulled from The Exorcist for an intense scene between Crowe and Goldberg that sees Goldberg resort to low blows and the threat of violence to elicit a performance from his actor.
“That scene with Russell and Adam was kind of very inspired by something that happened on set [of The Exorcist],” he explains. “There was a light that fell, and Billy Friedkin, who, rest in peace, is one of my favorite filmmakers, was a strong personality. I’m going to tell a story, an anecdote about the last scene in The Exorcist. Oh God, I don’t know if I have all the details right, but whatever. I’m really close friends with his son. He’s not going to be mad at me. When my dad is at the bottom of the steps in Georgetown, he’s dying. Now, maybe this is already known. I’m pretty sure Billy wasn’t getting the reaction out of Father Dyer when he was looking at my dead father on the ground. And Billy slapped the actor. So, when you see him performing last rites, and you see that hand tremble, it’s because he just got whacked.”
That anecdote and Miller’s personal experiences not only speak to The Exorcism‘s story and characters, but how he wanted to foster safety on his own set.
Sam Worthington and Adam Goldberg in ‘The Exorcism’
“It’s really different if you consent to that kind of method acting; you have to consent,” Miller tells us. “It’s when it’s done without consent that’s the problem, right? If you’re like, ‘Bring it on, give it to me, hit me. I need it. You know, hit me!’ No, but you see actors who are working that way. I mean, look, we had an intimacy coach for the attack of Ryan when Russell attacks her physically. And that was a tough day on the set for everybody.”
“Some actors feel it interferes with the organic process,” Miller continues. “Knowing that there were young women on the set was like a no-brainer for us. I wanted five intimacy coaches there. Look, I’ve had my own traumas, and I think that anybody who’s been through those kind of things understands that there was never enough safety to create for people in the world who have survived situations like that.”
The Exorcism releases in theaters on June 21, 2024.
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