Michael Myers is an intimidating guy. That big, hulking visage. The creepy mask. For fans of the horror franchise, and even people who just see that look, he’s the stuff nightmares are made of.
Even, it turns out, if you’re Danny McBride, the actor and writer who along with David Gordon Green and Jeff Fradley wrote the script for the rebooted Halloween movie. In a delightful story for Entertainment Weekly, McBride recounts how, being a huge horror fan growing up,
Myers had an outsized effect on him — so much so that, when James Jude Courtney, the actor and stuntman who plays Myers, showed up on set in costume, McBride kind of freaked out.
“That day, they were testing the mask [with] James for the very first time,” said McBride. “They weren’t even shooting with him. They had brought the mask onto set and were doing lighting tests inside the house. We creeped in early to see that… and there he was at the end of the hallway, just sort of lit from a little bit of light coming in from a bedroom shining on the Shape standing at the end of this hallway, just looking at us. We were all like, ‘That’s incredible! I don’t want to go back there. I know what happens when you go back there!’”
Presumably, McBride did eventually meet with Courtney. But it was not that day. Truly, we commend him for his bravery.
The new Halloween opens in theatres October 2018, and we thought it was pretty rad.