Marti Noxon

There are a few female writers who make a lasting impression on a genre, particularly on the horror or sci-fi persuasion. Screenwriter Marti Noxon has been one of the it-people in town when it comes to adding some nice spice onto any script she writes. She’s better known for her writing on a couple of television series including "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" but has only began crossing into feature films just recently.

"Fright Night" is Noxon’s second time adapting a known property, the first being "I Am Number Four." After dipping her feet in the adaptation waters, she talks to us during the set visit about carefully rewriting the known property, vampire films nowadays and her own take on 3D.

Latino Review: How did you keep the heart of "Fright Night" intact in your script? It had a lot of heart in the characters, you loved every single person in that script. How do you translate that?

Marti Noxon: It’s funny cause that would be the heart of why I got the job. Other people had come in and talked about vampires while I had come in and talked about the relationship between Ed and Charlie and also about the relationship between him and Amy. I was much more interested in the stuff that I had always felt like I wanted some filling in on in the original movie. I had a lot of questions and I loved the original movie for just that reason. Certainly my training on “Buffy” was all about character, what’s the story you’re telling, what’s the theme and what’s the relatable thing for the audience. I feel like, oh yeah, I know what that is. I felt like there were a lot of seeds in the original movie that hadn’t been fully exploited. And the great thing about DreamWorks was that they were really committed to making a movie with a real first act. I feel like because of that decision, that’s why we’ve drawn like Craig Gillespie, Colin (Farrell), Anton (Yelchin) and all these amazing actors because we wrote a character movie that also happens to be a really scary. I think because probably, I wouldn’t say scarier than the original but because time moves on, it affects some of what they are plus I think it feels just a little more real. But that was exactly where I was coming from.

Latino Review: Can you talk a little about some of the changes that were made. For example, Peter Vincent is now a magician instead of a television show host. Why did you guys change some of the characters this time around?

Marti Noxon: Again, it’s however many years later, and there’s not really, I mean — the people who were watching that movie had a very strong point of reference for Peter Vincent being a TV horror movie host. There are few still out there but it’s few and far in between. So we were trying to think of — I was really inspired by the idea that Penn & Teller have this amazing supernatural collection. And I was like, well, who can be a real asset? It has to be set in Vegas, specifically because I have been thinking about that for a long time, having spent some time there during the election. I was out in Park County and these various places and I thought where better for a demon to hide out than in Vegas? It’s a transient population where people sleep all day and party all night. Nobody would notice if people just went missing, you know? I’d already been thinking about Vegas and it was a natural — I knew about the Penn & Teller museum and I was like okay, we’ve gotta make him like this but can’t be cynics like Penn & Teller.

Latino Review: When it came to changing parts of the original, did you feel the need to keep certain scenes from the original in there?

Marti Noxon: With this movie there were some classic sequences that we knew we wanted to take a different turn on, reinvent, but reference for sure. There are a couple of key moments in the film that I wanted to change in order to surprise people. There’s one moment in particular where I think that if you know the original movie, you know what’s gonna happen and it doesn’t happen.

Latino Review: Can you tell us what it is?

Marti Noxon: I can’t tell you. I hope that people who love the original will feel like there’s enough of the original, but we definitely reinvented.

Latino Review: Can you talk a little bit about the film being in 3D and what’s your own opinion on using 3D?

Marti Noxon: It’s interesting because I feel like the culture around 3D, particularly the directors, is really changing. It’s gone from feeling like you have to have these giant pop-out moments for the audience, like "Wooooahhh," to feeling it more as an atmosphere. There are many opportunities in the script for real 3D moments, but we didn’t say "Ok, Jerry’s gonna like leap towards the camera at this moment." It was much more like "Where is it natural in the movie to have that?" We emphasized it, but it gives a much more immersed feeling to the whole movie. The whole time you feel like you’re in it. It’s beautiful, I mean just watching it on the screen, it’s incredible.

Latino Review: How much effort did you put into how the vampires were gonna be in this while paying homage to the first one?

Marti Noxon: I had a specific take on it, and of course the people who designed the creatures and the look then took that and expanded it. It’s hard because everything has been done. One of the great things about the original movie was how great some of that design was. I think we sort of modernized that, I don’t think we tried to create an entirely new vampire, but we definitely had a theme for the vampire. One of the first things that happened when I worked on the movie was they said "Yeah, we’re just kind of thinking that this vampire is more like Jaws." So you’ll see some sort of almost shark-like elements in the design.

Latino Review: As a writer, how do you avoid the Buffy comparisons? How do you break Buffy-speak? Do you find yourself falling into writing the characters like that?

Marti Noxon: Yes and no. I would say part of the reason why I survived the Buffy experience was because of my ear for that. I mean, it’s not nearly as stylized but it’s funny. I went back recently and watched some Buffy because I was doing some lecturing and I was like "Wooow! We were giving The Gilmore Girls a run for their money."What’s so funny is that I was so critical of other people’s highly stylized dialogue because it’s so unreal. I went back and watched a couple of episodes and was like wow! Nobody ever speaks about spin, you know. The goal in this one was I think to more create a language for the teenagers that felt authentic, and they’re more clever than I am for sure. It takes me longer to make up their dialogue than my own words.

"Fright Night" arrives in theaters everywhere on August 19th, presented in 2D and 3D. Keep your eyes out for even more interviews from the set visit here on Latino Review.