Last Friday-Friday the 13th-marked an auspicious date for Rachel Talalay. It was the day her debut film as a director, ”Freddy`s Dead: The Final Nightmare,” opened at theaters nationwide.
While the number of women directors in Hollywood remains small, the percentage of those directing horror films is even more miniscule. But Talalay, 32, and a Chicago native, has a special relationship with the film series starring the frightening Freddy Krueger character. She has worked on every entry in the ”Nightmare on Elm Street” series, even producing several installments of the series. To help clinch the assignment to direct
”Freddy,” Talalay even wrote the story from which the screenplay is adapted.
”I wanted to do a `Nightmare` because I know it so well,” she says. ”I am not a horror film fan, and I had no desire to do a slasher movie. This is about kids facing their deepest fears, and it addresses the theme of teenage rebellion.”
Talalay, who grew up in Baltimore, earned a bachelor of arts degree in applied mathematics from Yale University, and got her start in the film industry through one of the town`s most wellknown residents, director John Waters, who took her on as an unpaid production assistant during
”Polyester.”
She went on to do production accounting, line producing, assistant directing and now is a vice president at New Line Cinema. And her association with Waters continues. She produced both ”Hairspray” and ”Cry-Baby” for him, and the two are conferring on his next project, which she will also produce.
As for directing, Talalay says she is looking for another opportunity, and one not likely to be in the same realm as ”Freddy.”
”I think if I stay in the horror genre, I`ll get roped into lots of makeup effects. I love working with special effects, but I used mechanical and optical, rather than makeup. I like the gore to be judicious.”
