Fangoria Magazine And Friday The 13th: Issue #12, Friday The 13th Part 2
In issue #12, Fangoria interviews Director Steve Miner about his feature directorial debut and the challenges that went into making a sequel to one of the most successful independent films of all time. Miner explains that the biggest challenge was losing most of the original crew members from the previous film since Paramount and Georgetown Pictures wanted to fast track a sequel immediately, those crew members had already committed to other projects. The article also touches on the fact that Miner was able to get Betsy Palmer to return.
Another coup for Miner was his success in signing Betsy Palmer for a return appearance in the sequel, despite the letter writing campaign stirred up by Chicago critic Gene Siskel, who encouraged his readers to write to Betsy Palmer at her home town to express their shock at her participating in such a film. The scene that features her cameo appearance is one of the best of the entire movie.The article also dives into the special effects and how Tom Savini was unavailable for the blood and guts of the death scenes due to his work on The Burning, so Steve Miner enlisted the help of Carl Fullerton to create the spectacular demises of the new victims of the franchise. Of course, most of that work was never seen due to the MPAA, and that is touched upon in the issue as well.
One solution to the possible MPAA problem was to release Friday The 13th Part II without a rating. But while small distributors can afford to release their films without the MPAA’s approval, Paramount Pictures cannot, since it would cause them political problems with their other, larger budgeted productions.
A major is always much more effective in releasing a movie,” answers Miner. “They have the money for advertising and the ability to line up an incredible number of theatres. But I guess it’s too early to say. My answer would really have to be based on how much we have to cut in order to get the ‘R’ rating. It would obviously be a shame if whatever trimming we have to do ends up hurting Friday The 13th Part II. It would be sad not to release a film in its most effective form. But Paramount has brilliant marketing and they’re the best people to distribute this picture. We’ll have to wait and see.There are some great on set pics in the issue for the film as well, so this is highly recommended if you can get your hands on this issue of the magazine and enjoy it in a retrospective look at one of the most adored films in the franchise. Big thanks to Gene at DecayNY Entertainment for high resolution scans.
