O.C. Native Takes a Stab at Directing Slasher Film

Stepping in as writer-director of the latest installment in the bloody “Friday the 13th” series would not seem to leave a lot of room for creativity.

After all, the formula seemed fairly set after the first seven chapters in the lucrative string of horror flicks: teen-aged campers at fictional Camp Crystal Lake get picked off, one by one, in grisly fashion by an ax-wielding, hockey mask-wearing monster named Jason. The series had grossed more than $200 million, so why tinker with success?

But Rob Hedden, writing and directing his first feature, found the producers more than open to a few new twists. One of his ideas was to put the kids on a cruise ship this time around, with Jason aboard, of course--Hedden imagined it as a cross between “Das Boot” and “Aliens.” He also suggested taking Jason out of the woods and setting him loose in a big city.

Surprise, surprise--the producers liked the ideas so much they told Hedden to combine them. The result is “Friday the 13th Part VIII--Jason Takes Manhattan,” which opened Friday.

“The nice thing was, they really didn’t have any preconceived ideas about the movie,” said Hedden, 35, a Laguna Beach native who now makes his home in Studio City. “It was very refreshing.”

While it was “brave” to take Jason out of the familiar confines of Crystal Lake, Hedden said it was high time to move on. “How many times can you kill teen-agers in the woods? It’s been done,” Hedden said. In the film, a class of high school seniors takes a graduation cruise to the big city, only to have their fun spoiled by the persistent Jason.

Early reviewers have expressed more fondness for the tongue-in-cheek advertising campaign than for the movie itself--Times critic Chris Willman called it “a real dunghill of a major motion picture”--but the film brought in $6.2 million in box office business on its opening weekend. Hardly “Batman”-size returns, but “Friday the 13th--Jason Takes Manhattan” cost only $5.1 million to make (the most expensive film in the series so far).

Besides changing the setting, Hedden said he placed a little more emphasis on suspense and a little less on gore. “For me, this is a personal taste. I prefer suspense over gore,” Hedden said. He also attempted to add a little more story to tie together the typically graphic killings.

“Since I come from a writing background, I think the first thing you have to do is tell a good story,” Hedden said. “The story propels you through all the effects and the violence.”

Hedden downplays critics who say slasher movies foster real-life acts of violence. “It’s not fair to blame violence on these movies,” he said. “He (Jason) is 30 years dead. . . . You can only take these movies so seriously.”

Kids, he said, just like to be scared. “People who come to these movies want to be thrilled. . . . This movie is meant to entertain kids and not to add major social comment about the world.”

While this is Hedden’s first feature-film assignment, he has been been making movies since childhood. At age 12, on a vacation in Mexico, he made a Super-8 stop-action film about a giant piece of seaweed that terrorizes his family and friends. “I guess that was my first horror movie,” Hedden said. “The warped mind started working at an early age.”

He continued making movies through his years at Laguna Beach High School and while studying music and photography at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. Finally, he decided to make a career out of his longtime hobby and transferred to the film department at the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara.

The day after graduating first in his class 12 years ago, he sneaked onto a studio back lot to watch the filming of a “Rockford Files” episode--and instead of getting kicked out, he said he was invited back by star James Garner and the show’s director.

After 1 1/2 years of hanging around sets, Hedden started writing for studio advertising and publicity, and later graduated to working on documentaries. Among other projects, he wrote and directed a documentary on the making of Terry Gilliam’s controversial film “Brazil.”

He wrote episodes of the television show “MacGyver” and later wrote and directed episodes of the “Friday the 13th” TV series. “I guess they must have liked my work,” Hedden said, because that’s what led to the assignment for “Jason Takes Manhattan.”

The movie, filmed mainly in British Columbia, was finished only a week before the scheduled release date. Hedden said he has several follow-up projects in various stages of development, but after seven months of 18-to-20-hour days, his first priority is to take the family--wife and two young sons--on a long vacation.

“Family comes ahead of everything,” Hedden said, adding that his destination is Hawaii--not Manhattan.