Disclaimer: There are spoilers featured in this interview. Tread cautiously.

One could call BJ McDonnell a jack of all trades. Director, camera operator, and overall badass, BJ has directed such films as the third installment of Adam Green’s Hatchet franchise, as well as directing music videos for the metal band, Slayer. In his latest film, STUDIO 666, he combines his love of horror with that of rock culture as he births a wild horror/comedy starring the legendary Foo Fighters.

In STUDIO 666, Rock & Roll Hall of Famers Foo Fighters move into an Encino mansion steeped in grisly rock history to record their much anticipated 10th album. Once in the house, Dave Grohl finds himself grappling with supernatural forces that threaten both the completion of the album and the lives of the band.

Recently, Nightmarish Conjurings’ Shannon McGrew chatted with director BJ McDonnell where they discussed everything from collaborating with the Foo Fighters, his love of 80s horror, and THAT surprise cameo.

Hey BJ, thank you so much for chatting with me today! Correct me if I’m wrong, but did the story for the film come from Dave Grohl himself? And jumping off of that, how was it working with the Foo Fighters on this project?

BJ McDonnell: He came up with the idea for it and we had two other writers Jeff Behuler and his wife, Rebecca Hughes. They’re the ones that actually wrote the script with the pitch Dave had. We all kinda got together and threw that together with ideas that I had wanted to do, ideas that Dave had, the ideas that they wanted to create in the script also with the kills that we did. It was a big collaboration on that end. I worked with a bunch of bands in the past doing a bunch of different stuff and you never know what you’re quite going to run into when you work with band guys. But honestly, the guys in the Foo Fighters made me feel like I was almost their friend from day one. And they did that with the crew and everybody else. It was just a really wonderful experience to be around, everybody was having a good time and accepting of everybody. It just made the whole experience so great.

Everyone seemed to be super stoked about this project and looked like they were having so much fun. When you were coming up with the look and feel of the film, there was an 80s vibe to it. Was there where you pulled a lot of inspiration from?

BJ McDonnell: I wanted to take the 80s horror stuff that I grew up with, the movies that I actually love, and the directors that I loved watching, like their work, but I also wanted to integrate the new school film, like the way movies look now. I wanted to make sure that our movie looked dead serious. Like, it’s a silly movie and we love it, but I wanted to have a certain tone and a look to the movie that I wanted to create. I felt like we did a good job with that because sometimes these movies….comedies can be a little too brightly lit. I wanted to make sure that when it’s funny and we’re in a light area, it’s light, but when it gets dark, we go dark. We go straight horror film.

STUDIO 666 has a banger of a cast. That being said, can we talk about the special cameo from the horror maestro himself, John Carpenter?

BJ McDonnell: Me and Dave specifically talked about John Carpenter in the pitches. When I was in kindergarten my parents didn’t really regulate what I could watch. I guess that was that generation. They just didn’t care. So I was so obsessed in kindergarten with Escape From New York, I always had that stupid theme song, it’s not stupid, it’s amazing, in my head as a kindergartner. I was so obsessed with this John Carpenter movie.

Then I started seeing more of the films that he did so it had a really big impact on me. I may not be getting the story straight, but I believe [Carpenter] took [composer/musician] Daniel Davies on tour with them on the road and he was helping out with doing stuff for them. When we talked about it Dave [Grohl] was like what if we try to reach out and get John to make us a song or do the score. And I was like if we can do it, let’s do it!

So we reached out to him and John remembered that Daniel helped [him]. And not only did he write our theme song for the movie, we then asked him if he would come on in a bit part. It was amazing when we got him there because honestly, I’m very into planning and what we were doing but when John got there, there was a part of me that goes, how the hell am I supposed to direct John Carpenter?

When he left it was almost like this weird feeling like, oh my god, I can’t believe that this happened. But then I thought about it and was like, well, this is life coming full circle, the kindergarten me listening to the “Snake Pistol” song. When we said it was a wrap on him I walked back to the house listening to the freakin Escape from New York theme in my head and almost passed out.

Touching upon the comedy aspect again, you have a lot of comedic geniuses in the film such as Will Forte and Leslie Grossman. Additionally, you also snagged up-and-coming actor, Jenna Ortega. How did they all come together for this film?

BJ McDonnell: I was a camera operator on MacGruber and that’s where I met Will. I got involved with doing other movies and Will kept popping up, and we all became friends. So he was one of my big picks to bring onto the job. I was like, “Dude, come do this movie. We are working with the Foo Fighters. It’s going to be amazing. We don’t need you too long. I know you’re busy. Can you just be this one person, this one part?” and he was like, “Yeah man, let’s do it, it’s gonna be awesome!”

Leslie Grossman, I worked with on “American Horror Story” and she was fantastic. I knew right away when the character came up that she was going to be great because she can be really funny, but she can go really sinister too. And I love that about her. It was really great to have her on board.

We got lucky with Jenna [Ortega]. It was funny because me and Adrienne, my wife, we watched all these audition tapes and… I wanted to open this movie where no one expects this movie to open. We saw her performance in “You” and I really wanted a strong actress to open the movie that could actually play the emotions like she does. And she took off. I hope we get the chance to work together again because she was fantastic.

One of my favorite aspects of this film was the use of practical effects, especially surrounding the kills. Was it important for you to execute those with as much practical work as you could?

BJ McDonnell: It was very important for me to be as practical as possible. When we talked about 80s movies, I come from the world of like what you see is what happens. I think if it gets too CGIish, it feels a little too fake like I’m looking for my controller for the PlayStation. I also love the craft of people making molds of people and the scars and the slice throats. I think it’s an amazing skill, a skill that’s so hard. We were really hell-bent on making sure that we kept this as practical as possible. Obviously, there’s a little bit of enhancement here and there but everything we did there was always some kind of practical something happening there.

Tony Gardner and the guys from Alterian and Adrienne were doing a bunch of that stuff too, which is always great when your wife’s there. The Slayer videos that I’ve done are the same crew as this. Tony and the guys knew Dave already. A lot of the kills were mostly Tony’s ideas. It was things that he wanted to create that he had not been able to do. It was basically like what kind of kills have you always wanted to do. So we got a batch of things that he wanted to do and we’re like all right, we’re going to pick a bunch of these out of the basket, and here we go!

Speaking more directly about the kills, do you have a favorite one? Mine is definitely the chainsaw kill in the bed.

BJ McDonnell: I love that one too, it’s actually really great. My main goal in that was to beat the amount of blood from A Nightmare on Elm Street, the one with Johnny Depp. I wanted that so bad. Obviously, we didn’t have an upside-down set and all that stuff, but we had so much blood in that scene that at the end of the day, and I’m not even kidding, there was a river of blood going down Encino. As I was going to my car, I wondered what the neighbors were thinking when they walked out and saw this, because it was a serious river of blood. It was insane.

You referenced A Nightmare on Elm Street, so are there any additional horror Easter Eggs that fans should look out for?

BJ McDonnell: There’s everything from Raiders of the Lost Ark to The Exorcist to The Burning to even The Fog. There are certain characters that you see in the movie that I wanted to kind of feel that way, too. There’s a lot of Easter Eggs in there, I mean the book… It’s the Necronomicon. If you’re going to make a book it’s going to be the Necronomicon, but ours has a little bit more of a twist to it in our version than the other versions. But you can’t beat [the original Necronomicon], it’s a masterful piece.

STUDIO 666 is now available in theaters. Stay tuned for more information regarding Digital and On-Demand offerings. To learn more about the film, check out our review!

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Shannon McGrew

Founder/Co-Owner at Nightmarish Conjurings

Shannon is the Founder of Nightmarish Conjurings and a lover of all things horror and haunt related. When she's not obsessively collecting all things "Trick 'R Treat" related, or trying to convince everyone that "Hereditary" is one of the greatest horror films ever made, you can find her designing interiors for commercial restaurants. An avid haunt fan, Shannon spends the entire year visiting haunts and immersive experiences throughout the Southern California area and hopes to one day design her own haunted attraction.

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