Iain Softley on shooting in New Orleans: “It was a significant thing to enable me to get my idea for the way I wanted to make the film. I always wanted to make it as a location film. Part of what appealed to me about this is that it’s location-specific. It’s about a real place that has a particular belief system that you don’t get anywhere else in the world.
…Obviously the accepted wisdom is that it’s more economical to shoot in a studio. You don’t have to do the night work at night. You don’t have to haul great equipment with cranes and lighting gear an hour and a half across country. But I had this feeling that I wanted this film to feel very authentic and have an almost like a documentary feel to it… not to be gothic-y in any way.
I spent a lot of time [in New Orleans] and I wanted to reflect that. We couldn’t initially find a house down here that was suitable. It was Kate [Hudson’s] pregnancy that actually gave me the extra time to find the place. And when I found it, it was like, ‘I have to shoot in this house.’ What really helped that decision economically was that tax benefit that the State [of Louisiana] was able to offer us.”
On battling giant mosquitoes (aka Louisiana’s state bird): “The mosquitoes were a real challenge through all of it. Particularly since were shooting splits; we would often do a short scene before sunset. Then, of course, that hour when the sun goes down you hear these sounds and see clouds of mosquitoes.
Everyday there would be on display different techniques in the combat of mosquitoes. People who were the virulent anti-smoking members of the crew were smoking massive cigars to ward off the mosquitoes. The crew also put their faith in having Bounce dryer fabric softeners under their hats and they had them across their necks. There’s a local brew that some of the local crew gave us that’s a citronella mix.
But the best solution — which wasn’t available to the actors — was something our cinematographer Daniel Mindel got a bulk order of online, and that was mosquito suits. He’d used them when he was in Africa, and we all went around like bee-keepers. At first people thought, ‘Well, that’s crazy.’ And by the end of the shoot everybody, at sunset, was wearing these. Except the actors.
Kate was such a trooper. The scene in the swamp where she’s kind of paddling through, she was looking at us on the boat covered [from head to toe] and spraying ourselves, smoking cigars, and… [laughs] And she was getting absolutely bitten to death.”
“The Skeleton Key” involves hoodoo and voodoo. Did anything weird happen on the set?: “Yeah, the crew said that whenever we did those scenes the cameras kept breaking. This is what we believed. My DVD crew… this friend of mine is a very unexcitable, rather dour Englishman… and he said, ‘Something very strange happened in that house while I was filming yesterday.’ He was in there on his own in the actual house by the bayou, and he was walking up towards the attic to get some shots for the DVD. He said, ‘I heard somebody following me, and I turned around but there was actually nobody there.’ He carried on, and he heard footsteps again, but when he turned around they’d stop. I’m glad that was him and not me.”
Iain Softley on his familiarity with hoodoo prior to “The Skeleton Key:” “Not at all. But in retrospect I went back and listened to all those songs and realized there were all these references. I kind of thought, at first, that hoodoo and voodoo were sort of similar and that one was another word for the other, or sort of an alternative. Then I was aware in common parlance of hoodooing — it just means you’re kind of working spells.
I was reading ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ with my daughter the other week and the character Boo Radley refers to them finding these effigies and coins in the trunk of a tree. That’s an authentic hoodoo ritual. And one of the kids turns to him and says, ‘I don’t believe in any of that hoodooing.’ So it’s the kind of stuff I’d heard, but never actually specifically worked out what it was.”
Director Softley shares his beliefs: “I think I’m somebody who isn’t aware of the degree to which I do believe. I would always say that I’m a rationalist and a skeptic, but one of the reasons I realized I’m so interested in this music is that it’s kind of the appeal of the occult, in a broad sense, of what’s hidden…and sort of the spirituality. The idea of some kind of magical, shamanistic thing. I mean, you know, that’s how music has always worked. “
