Jamie Lee Curtis calls 'Halloween: H20' a 'paycheck' movie. Here's why she still loves it.
While it might seem like the 2018 edition of Halloween is taking the franchise on a completely new path, it’s actually following some familiar footsteps. In 1998 the clumsily titled Halloween H20: 20 Years Later marked the long-awaited return of Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode. Like the just-released Halloween, H20 jettisoned the plots and developments of previous installments and also transformed Strode from victim to avenger of the trauma inflicted by Michael Myers.
So while the new Halloween isn’t in uncharted territory, the latest sequel has done what H20 didn’t, executing major plot changes in a more rewarding way. Even Curtis herself has acknowledged the shortcomings of the 1998 sequel, describing it as a “paycheck” movie. That doesn’t mean she isn’t a willful defender of the movie, however, as we found out when she chatted with Yahoo Entertainment.
“I loved H20,” Curtis said. “There are a couple of great moments in that movie. It’s not a perfect movie and, yes, it was a payday movie for sure for me. But I really suggested we do it, and it was my suggestion all those years ago, because what was special was to me was that I was still in show business, [original cowriter and director] John Carpenter was still in show business, and [original cowriter and producer] Debra Hill was still in show business. Here we were, these three people 20 years later still in the game. And I thought that was worth celebrating. Then it kind of turned into something else and that’s fine.
“I just don’t want to denigrate it because, by the way, nobody goes into a movie just to make money,” she continued. “Because you still spend eight weeks with 120 people every day working very hard to create something. And it is a creative medium and as much as it is a financially beneficial medium, it is a creative one.”
So why isn’t the new version, co-written by David Gordon Green (who also directed) and Danny McBride, a “paycheck movie?” Well, Blumhouse movies (such as Get Out or Insidious) have famously small budgets. Curtis thinks that helped the new film recapture the spirit of the original.
“I didn’t get a paycheck,” Curtis told us. “Seriously. Nobody did. The beauty of working for Blumhouse is that Jason Blum and his company believe in directors. That’s the model that works. That means nobody gets ‘paid.’ It’s made [with] a very low budget, it’s made quickly. And it’s very similar to how we made the original Halloween movie, so in that way [the new movie is] very reminiscent of it.”
Watch the original Michael Myers reveal what happened to his original mask:
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