Exclusive: Author Grady Hendrix Talks New Book "The Final Girl Support Group."
Grady Hendrix holding what might be the skull of Pamela Voorhees
It’s not every day that one of the biggest voices in literary horror sits down to talk about their work. Luckily, bestselling author Grady Hendrix took some time out of his day to discuss his new novel. “The Final Girl Support Group” follows survivors of slasher film-like scenarios as they’re hunted one-by-one years after the incidents that branded them “final girls.” Characters have names that reference the actresses in their specific films (ie. “Marilyn” escaped cannibals like Marilyn Burns’ character in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”). As a fan of slasher films, I was as thrilled to read Hendrix’s book almost as much as I was to speak to him.
The book is the latest in a line of genre crowd-pleasers like “We Sold Our Souls,” “My Best Friend’s Exorcism,” and last year’s “Fright Night” meets “Steel Magnolias” vampire novel “The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires.” Hendrix was generous with his time, so it was easy to veer into other topics, such as Wes Craven and the War of 1812.
Lowell Greenblatt: When I started to read [Final Girls] I noticed there are a ton of Easter eggs, but they’re not distracting like Easter eggs can be. If anything, they help flesh out the characters’ rich backstories. How did you go about bringing these characters into the present?
Grady Hendrix: Well, I can't really write a character unless I really have an extensive understanding of them and for me, a lot of that is writing their backstory and life history. For Marilyn, it was very much trying to move on and put it behind her. She thought she wanted to be a local television personality and do the news, but then the Hansons [cannibals who terrorized her previously] found her again, so she moved out to LA and met and married her husband. Heather dropped out of sight and drifted for a few years. Dani immediately moved out west to be a horse handler, but ultimately got too claustrophobic around people to make that stick. Adrienne was really consciously building her career since her encounter at Red Lake. She found a lawyer to help shut down the films being made about the massacres, then built an empire helping other people. Those are the basics for them.
We’re experiencing a big resurgence of the final girl with 2018's “Halloween” as the most popular example. Have you seen it?
I liked it! I get why they wanted to ignore all the previous installments. It's a smart thing to do as a hook. For me, I really feel like the Laurie Strode story is “Halloween” and “Halloween 2” [as one entry], “Halloween: H20,” and “Halloween 2018.” that are sort of the Laurie Strode trilogy. One of the things that I think you lose when you ignore “Halloween 2” is that Michael doesn’t kill many people in “Halloween.” The fact he keeps coming after her in part 2 is I think where his reputation for relentlessness is seeded. Yes, he’s relentless in the original, but not in the most efficient fashion. Part 2 is a weaker movie, but it’s way more horrifying. He's killing nurses, cops, and first responders. It’s just so grim.
“Halloween 2” gets maligned, but I always thought it was there to show the “Halloween” rip-offs how it’s done. Your book even makes a point to bring up “sequel situations” where the characters’ plight doesn’t end after their first encounters with a slasher. Was it important to show that aspect of these survivors?
Women are attacked and traumatized every day in ways that make “Halloween” look like kids’ stuff. What makes the final girls unique is that there's always a sequel. There’s a relentlessness to it where it happens again. When that's the case, you’re presented with a world in which you’re never safe. Women live in a world in which they’re never safe, but final girls live in a world in which they’re never safe from one particular monster. There's something very personal and very terrifying about that. Like, there is always a bogeyman with your name on it somewhere out there waiting for you to lower your guard. Even if you kill him, as is the case with Lynette, you know his brother is waiting to pick up the slack. That happens in slashers all the time. A family member will step in like Jason Voorheers or Ricky Caldwell.
Throughout all your books, you love to put all of your characters in seemingly-impossible situations, and this book is no exception.
One of the things that I really wanted to do with the book is to get back a little to the spirit of the early days of final girls. I feel like these days when you see “Hide and Seek,” “You’re Next” or “The Hunt,” these women in these situations are really badasses from the word “go.” They’re smart about weapons and survival and they make smart decisions. With the original final girls, certainly through the 80’s, they weren’t surviving because they were stronger, smarter or better-prepared than anyone else. They survived because they simply didn't quit. They just kept going and didn’t give up. It showed this sort of resourcefulness in the face of really overwhelming odds. They didn’t start with weapons or any of that stuff, and I really wanted to get back to that. So it was really important to me with Lynette, that as weaponized and trained as she is, every time she tries to use that training, every time she tries to pull a gun or fight back, all she does is make things worse. That was really really important to me because I wanted what saved Lynette to be a refusal to quit, and her relationship with the other final girls, not some particular ability to sharp-shoot.
Speaking of their relationship, I like that section where they go find Dani’s wife, Michelle to make sure she’s okay even though she’s dying of cancer.
I really had to fight to keep that section, actually.
Really?
Yeah, because a lot of people reading the book in my first round of readers really didn't get it. It felt like such a digression, but it’s not really. It's sort of the heart of the story, twofold:
One is that these women care about each other, and that's something I think guys have a hard time wrapping their heads around. I'm not saying that only women can do it, but if you're going to gender heroism or courage, then the female version of it is a lot more about putting yourself at risk to save someone else, or even to do the right thing by someone else even if you don't necessarily save them. Whereas I think for men, saving the day is sort of the priority, not really for any specific person but more of a sort of generally saving the day.
The other important thing really wanted to do with that, which Lynette actually says, is that death is really not pleasant. The death we see in movies, even in sudden accidents, is sanitized. Death is a long, drawn-out, deeply physical upsetting process. That's what these women are fighting for: the right to die naturally. So as unpleasant as what's happening to Michelle is, that's what they're there to do. To make sure that they all get a chance to die like Michelle.
WARNING: SPOILERS FOR ‘THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP” AND “WE SOLD OUR SOULS” IN THE NEXT SECTION.
Actually, when I was doing copy edits on the book, I spent a long time trying to think if I was gonna change that. I still get hate mail from people to this day about the dog dying in “My Best Friend's Exorcism,” but the cruelest thing to me is the fact that Michelle and Dani aren't together when Michelle dies. It's the one thing they promised each other for years. When you get to the end of the book, Lynette has sort of been freed from this perpetual adolescence that she's been stuck in since her trauma happened. Marilyn and Julia certainly are moving on. Adrienne’s dead, which is probably the worst outcome, but Heather is off licking her wounds because what she did to save Lynette took a huge toll on her. That's why she disappears at the end. Not because she's a flake, but because she's not in good shape. Dani is wrecked and in my mind, is going to take a very long time to be okay again because she wasn't there for the love of her life.
That's one of the things that I think is very tough about being alive. If we're living a relatively normal life, we spend so many years living for someone else, right? A spouse, a partner, kids, whoever, but ultimately we're alone. One of you will die before the other. You or your children, you or your partner, and there's something really cruel about that. I feel like people are a little bit like dogs in the sense that one of our great strengths is that we're social creatures.
Not to make it too much of a bummer, but that whole thing was important to me. It was also hard to leave it like that. I really like Dani. To me, she, Adrienne and Heather are sort of the heroes of the book and I hate leaving a character worse than I found her.
Going back to Heather, I had so much fun imagining Heather Langenkamp as “Heather DeLuca.” I’m a massive fan of “Nightmare on Elm Street” and the character of Nancy. I was certainly imagining Danielle Harris, Marilyn Burns, and others as their final girl counterparts.
Well the character of Nancy in “Nightmare on Elm Street” is much more of an “Adrienne.” She does the group therapy sessions for the kids in “Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors” In “New Nightmare,” she’s with the partners running the special effects company. She very much has a relationship with the franchise, but Heather DeLuca is really different from Nancy Thompson. She's sort of the “bad” version.
Absolutely. The Heather you wrote would be a patient in Westin Hills with the other kids in “Dream Warriors.”
Oh yeah. The worst thing for Heather is that one really believes her because how can someone kill people in their dreams? That's just not possible.
That reveal you wrote in the barn where Lynette realized Heather was telling the truth was fascinating. It speaks to the idea that a lot of abused women coming forward aren't believed, but the truth is so horrible you can't even put it into words.
You know, I never really made that connection until you just said that but you're absolutely right. I mean one of the issues with Harvey Weinstein is that no one believed it was that bad. That it wasn't just that he was harassing women, but he was actually raping women and he had a whole network to groom them AND a whole security team he paid the silence them, and would go so far as destroy their careers. I mean it's so monstrously over the top that no one believed that scale. That's definitely the situation with Heather.
The ultimate fates of Heather, and I think to an extent Kris from “We Sold Our Souls” speak to a general trope that I love in genre fiction: the character who survives but doesn’t stick around. Who survived what they had to and just bolts. How did you decide that that’s where you would leave both characters?
With Kris from “We Sold Our Souls,” there were different endings. One where she lived, one where died, and then I realized that the real ending if you're a rockstar is to be a legend. Especially when no one knows if you're alive or dead. Where Kris is a mystery for the rest of her life. She’s so much more legendary and heroic in that role. People are inspired to pick up a guitar and she makes them better. To me, that's something that gets Kris out of the trap of her life, which was the best possible outcome.
Then for Heather, the real reason she is able to save Lynette is because she steps into a dream and steps out of it at the right moment. That’s why the last time we see her, she's going to sleep in the panic cabin. It’s a really really hard thing for her to do and something she never wanted to do again. Dreams happen in a fraction of a second, but they feel much longer. Heather’s experience is a very long process that brings her onto the radar of [her slasher] The Dream King again and actually subjects her to a lot of awful shit. She’s just a wreck and will be gone for a few years off the map just licking her wounds.
Well, I hope she's okay wherever she is.
Oh she’ll be fine. [Laughs] Heather’s indestructible.
Since you touch on sequels in the book, have you thought of writing one to “The Final Girl Support Group?”
I never want to do a sequel but this is going to be a series on HBO Max and they really need to expand the story. The book is really season one and that's definitely a conversation that's happening right now. I was very lucky with the team that’s doing it.
Were there any ideas that didn’t make the book or even any final girl concepts?
Almost none. Strangely, this book has always been a very short one. I looked back at the first draft which I think is from January of 2014, and the basic story beats are there. Stephanie came in much later, and the setting of the ending and all that stuff really came in at the last minute. There was an earlier version of that at Dr. Carol’s wellness retreat. A lot of the rewrites on this book were sort of unpacking moments that I went by too fast and really had to sell emotionally and have them land. That was really the rewriting process.
The only thing that got cut is the very end of an earlier version, Lynette visits Billy Walker in prison to just sort of have closure with him, and he doesn't recognize her. To him, his final girl is 17 and he just thinks she's some old hag who’s there to give him a test or something.
I love the ending the way it is but that’s a great moment.
Yeah, it's a moment I really liked, but the Stephanie moment made so much more sense. I didn't want to double dip on that. It’s much stronger if she goes to prison just to see Stephanie.
END OF SPOILERS.
We didn't even talk about your screenwriting with Ted Geoghegan but my wife and I really enjoyed “Satanic Panic” and “Mohawk,” which was very compelling.
Bloody ‘80s fun with friendship and pizza.
Well you know it's interesting. I really loved the War of 1812 and I had like six weeks to write that script. I really wish someone would do a War of 1812 [TV] series 'cause that war was so bizarre! Everything from Canadian dairy farmers sending the president a giant wheel of cheese in the summer to try to establish peace, that they couldn't put anywhere, and it was so big and it arrived at the White House in summer and turned rancid, to wild pigs eating corpses in towns after battles in upstate New York. It's just the weirdest war.
So “The West Wing” didn’t just make up “Big Block of Cheese Day.”
Yeah, it's also weird because the British actually conceded to our demands before the war began. We just didn't get the message in time. The war was over for three weeks before the Battle of New Orleans which is America's only sort of unqualified victory in the war. So the beginning of the war happened too late and the end of the war happened too late.
Yeah, the War of 1812 was always one of those weird “other” wars they glossed over in high school. Let’s shift gears a bit and let me ask for every story about being an extra in “Scream 2” that you are willing to tell.
[Laughs] It was such a weird shoot. I think we shot Omar Epps’s death on a soundstage, although I do have a really strong memory of him shooting backroom scenes with him but I think it might have been when he's waiting to go in or walking in. I think the interior of that bathroom was on a soundstage. I'm not gonna swear to it, but that's my memory. I think my wife* and I were released before Jada Pinkett Smith’s death scene. I think they just shot that with like a few people there for atmosphere and her up in front of the screen alone. They did shoot the reverse of her reaching out to the crowd with everyone there, but all the gore effects were done after so they didn’t mess up the theater screen. That was really important. We were allowed to throw things, just not at the screen. Everything else in that scene, including lobby stuff we shot in about two or 3 days. It was a really fast shoot. I remember we shot some things without sound, so we’re all being rowdy silently, which was very weird. to be like throwing things and acting like you’re screaming with the mask on, but not making any noise.
I also remember that one of the extras who sat next to me kept complaining about how bored she was. The only thing she brought to read was a copy of TV Guide, which didn't make any sense. I also can't imagine them shooting that scene now and having to lock down everyone's phones.
Pity the PA that had to clean that soundstage…
I also think I really have re-evaluated Wes Craven a lot after his death I went back and re-watched “New Nightmare” and the “Scream” franchise and I gotta say, I think when we talk about great horror directors, we tend to focus on people who are very strong visual stylists like John Carpenter and David Cronenberg...
Oh, Craven was an “ideas man” more than anything.
Yeah, and he's also very much a journeyman kind of director. He doesn't do a lot of tricky obvious stuff. He’s a lot more like Spielberg in a way. His filmmaking is actually pretty sophisticated, but it's not showy. You look at “Last House on the Left,” “The Hills Have Eyes,” “Scream, “Nightmare on Elm Street,” all completely iconic movies. “Last House,” and “Scream” really changed the genre radically.
Also, “Nightmare on Elm Street” changed slashers.
You know, as much as I love “Nightmare,” slashers were already a thing. Do you know what I mean?
Ah yes, I see what you mean.
It didn't reinvent slashers so much as it did a new kind of slasher. I feel like “Scream” really kind of reinvented slashers. But you look at those and even his “B-list” stuff like “The People Under the Stairs” and “Red Eye.” They’re all really accomplished and smart movies. I just feel like Craven really needs to be re-evaluated as the amazing and influential director that he was.
I've said this before, but even his misfires are interesting. Like “Shocker” has it’s fans. I’m not one of them, but you watch it and you can see Craven is swinging for the fences just as hard as in his best films.
Absolutely.
Even his last original script “My Soul to Take” isn’t great but the ideas are fascinating. It’s begging to be remade.
Oh I’ve never seen it, I have to check it out.
The dialogue’s a little clunky but it’s worth a watch for sure.
And also, re-watching “Scream,” I now put that movie now up there with “Jaws” or “Aliens,” or the 1978 “Invasion of the Body Snatchers in that it's pretty much a perfect movie. There’s nothing extraneous. There's nothing you have to apologize for. There's not a moment that doesn't land. It's a radically perfect movie.
Yeah it's tight as a drum. I always thought a lot of those later knock-offs missed that it’s a great movie FIRST, with the self-referential humor being secondary.
And it's really ambitious! The shot where Sidney’s walking into school for the first time and then after they dismiss school early, and everyone is talking about the party, those are both one-take shots. It's like a full minute for both of them. The second one in particular they're walking into the sun, which is really hard to pull off. Even if technically you don't even notice. I didn't even notice those shots the first time.
One last thing, I think he also does something really really smart with “Scream.” I think some of this is also Kevin Williamson: a lot of movies make a mistake where they kill off a character really early to be like “See, anyone could die! You don't know who's gonna be next.” I always feel like, “well yeah I did, actually. I could pretty much tell you in order who's next,” but ''Scream” does a thing where they let the characters get away and fight back. To me that adds uncertainty where it's like well Drew Barrymore almost got away. Neve Campbell’s gotten away more than once. Like maybe it is possible for Rose McGowan or any of these characters to get away from the killer.
She even hits him with bottles and he just goes down.
Yeah, Ghostface will go down and sort of the clumsiest of all slasher killers. By the time you get to “Scream 4,” it’s like wow, this guy takes some hits! [Laughs] He trips over a lot of furniture.
One last thing. I love Adrienne King, who also reads the audiobook of “Final Girls. ”I love Betsy Palmer, and the two of them made the original “Friday the 13th” for me.
Oh, I agree!
Well, I need help with something and I know I'm not alone. I’m not a big fan of the original “Friday the 13th” beyond them and the last 20 minutes. I know it's beloved. Can you sell me on it?
I actually prefer “Friday the 13th part 2.” It’s sort of the perfect movie in that franchise.
A lot of [the original] was improvised and it has a lot of charm. The last 20 minutes with Betsy and Adrienne are fantastic, but I’m not a huge, huge fan of it. I think despite the troubling history of “part 2,” I really do think it’s the perfect movie in that franchise. BUT, you can't have “part 2” without the original.
That’s true. And the Cliff Notes version of the original is in the sequel.
It’s the only reason Adrienne got paid for “part 2.”
Wait, really?
Yeah, they didn't pay her for work. Her manager, who was her mom at the time, sort of strong-armed them into paying Adrienne a fee to use the footage from part one and after they shot her scene, they just never paid her. That footage is the only money she's ever seen from “part 2.”
Wow.
Adrienne’s been really really phenomenal. I actually sent her the book to get a blurb because “part 2” is so iconic to me. It's really the first slasher I encountered. I wasn't allowed to see R rated movies so I actually read about it in Fangoria. I was so blown away that this character who survived the first one goes through all this stuff and just gets casually knocked off at the beginning. So I wanted to get a blurb from her for the book. I sent it to her and she really flipped over it. She told me a lot of stuff about her history and her relationship with “part 2,” which isn't super-savory. And when they were looking for an audiobook narrator, they were sending me all these people who are fine, professional narrators but I just wanted more color in that performance. I got Adrienne to do an audition, and it was really great. So we got her on board to do it and she really nailed it. She's been a really fabulous person to have been involved with this and she’s really taken to the book in a very personal way that I'm really grateful for. I had a little trepidation because sometimes when someone really connects with something, I get very nervous. But she's been nothing but fabulous with this book and a real asset.
I heard you on a podcast saying that “The Final Girl Support Group” came from seeing Nancy Thompson appear in “Dream Warriors” to help survivors of Freddy Kruger. I hadn’t seen the original at that point, so when she first showed up, I had no idea who she was, and it really made me pay attention as an audience member. So when you mentioned that moment, it particularly resonated with me and I think your book really honors that idea.
That moment was huge for me, too. It was my first “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie and I didn't know who she was, but I was aware she was the final girl from the first one. I got some of that impact when I saw it, but it was really years later re-watching it when it really landed for me. I never really liked “New Nightmare” when I first saw it, and then I re-watched it last year. By then, I'd seen all the “Nightmare” movies, and it made so much more sense to me and had so much more impact on me.
That one hits so much differently when you’re older.
Everything in that movie is so smart. You know, it's not the filmmakers’ fault that I hadn’t seen all of the franchise [Laughs].
*Amanda Cohen, who was also an extra in the scene and has since opened NYC restaurant Dirt Candy.
“The Final Girl Support Group” is out now wherever books are sold, along with Grady Hendrix’s other works. Read more about Grady Hendrix at http://www.gradyhendrix.com/. Interview edited for context and clarity.
