It's January.  Months since I've had a moment to write. 

This fall, Freddy decided to make an extended visit to my street. Out of nowhere. Isn't that just like him? One Friday in October, my son fell down in a subway station in Europe after suffering a seizure.  MRI's showed a brain tumor.  Tests revealed cancer. In all honesty,  Jude's words,  "You just have to face it, man" were the first to go through my head as I sat on the airplane to fetch my son.  Jude's mantra of strength would pop into my head time and again.  Her words lifted me up through what has turned out to be a season of wrenching fear and then steady determination.

There is this other thing Jude said in the film - describing Freddy - "It's this uncontrollable force, trying to destroy a life."  I heard those words too - describing brain cancer to a tee.  If you had told me that I would actually think about I AM NANCY and Nancy Thompson at these low moments of my life,  I would have told you you were crazy. But I did. Incessantly. The comfort that folks had described to me, the realization that Nancy had a power to inspire them, actually proved so to me - just when I needed it.  At night, I reminded myself that I could face it, that I had to face it. I would Be Nancy with all my heart.

Wes Craven's speech in the last part of his I AM NANCY interview is very eloquent and filled my head at other important moments of our family's ordeal. He describes the way Nancy faces her fears. As opposed to the others in the film, Nancy doesn't, as he puts it, "go out a door" to escape the reality of Freddy's evil.  This strategy is the key to her survival.  "Fear is one of the great evolutionary catalysts. It goads us to the next levels. Two people have fear - one person runs away and one says, 'O.K. - How do I deal with this?' Not necessarily going straight at it, maybe going around it, maybe trying to educate yourself first." This point is so important.  There are a lot of bad things in the world. We must not run away; but, we can't attack them all with brute force either.  There are other ways to combat deadly foes.  Modern medicine is all about that.

I have often asked myself why Arlene and I spent so long making I AM NANCY.  What was its purpose? In retrospect, the documentary outlined a strategy for all of us. The movie pointed out an attitude - a personal philosophy that we can hold onto.  For me, the folks who helped us put that attitude into words are the best parts of the show. The philosophy is quite simple - when Freddy appears,  there is a powerful way to be.

What I will add to this simple philosophy is that getting through your fear diminishes its power for the future.  Again, Wes says it beautifully in the film. "Once you're past the fear and you're comfortable with it, then you can do something much better than you could before." I am beginning to understand this part of it. My fear is just now receding. I hope Wes is right.

The best news of all is that my son has had a very strong recovery. He intends to go back to college this quarter and continue his work there.  His incredible doctors "cut the evil out of him" and he has responded well to all his therapies. To the unknown future on my personal Elm Street, like Jude, I say "bring it on."

The most challenging part of putting out I AM NANCY has been giving interviews where I talk about the movie. I am afraid that by now I sound like a broken record.  You've heard how much I loved interviewing the fans, how grateful I am to Arlene Marechal for putting the footage together so beautifully.  How fun it was to interview Wes and Robert.  How it took a year to edit. There are only so many ways to say it all.  I feel like it is tough to sound fresh each time. But, truth is I am just as excited about I AM NANCY as I was the day we released it.  I'm just  asking for a little understanding from my wonderful fans who make a point of listening or reading all of the blogs, podcasts, interviews.  If I start sounding repetitive, sorry.

With all this talking, there are a few new things that I have been discovering about Nancy.  My ideas about her are actually evolving as I ponder some of the great questions my interviewers have thrown at me.  Today, the question I am really trying to ponder is this. Is gender as important as people would have you believe in Nightmare on Elm Street?  All the talk of Final Girls is kind of wearing me out. I decided to ask this crazy question.  If Glen and Nancy's characters had been switched would it have been a similar movie? What about if Freddy had been a woman? I don't mean to make you laugh but it seems more important that Freddy and Nancy are of the opposite sex than what sex they are.  Is it really important that the Nancy role be a girl?  In I AM NANCY (available on DVD!) Wes says he wanted to "get away from all boy heroes;" but, could he have written that character as a boy and still make a similar film?  Indeed, I have always felt that Nancy is one female in horror that was not primarily there to be sexually objectified.  This aspect of Nancy sets her apart from a lot of other horror scream queens whose alluring and overt sexuality is central to the action.  Try to imagine what the bathtub scene would have been like if Glen was there instead of Nancy.  It certainly would have had much different sexual overtones. But what if Freddy had been a female character?  Freddy (Fredericka!) would have been just as scary no doubt.  But would she have become as popular? After having long talks with Mark Patton about the reception of Nightmare 2 as "The Gay Nightmare" - I believe that it's role and interpretation has been revised as our society embraces gay relationships in general.  There was no talk about the Male Killer and Male Victim scenario as inherently gay back in 1985 (I sadly think they wouldn't have made that script if anyone had thought about it that way.)  Certainly looking back on it now we have filtered its message through new openness and acceptance of gay and straight human sexuality.

But in my view, Jesse is another teenager - a boy this time - who is Freddy's next victim.  Where Wes wanted to get "get away from all boy heroes" - the second Nightmare flips the hero's gender at a time when America was on the verge of it's social revolution.

Getting back to all this talk about Final Girls. I think I want to rename Nancy, Jesse, Alice et al. the Final Teenagers.  Nancy is emerging into a woman in the film. Jesse into manhood. Same with Alice. All are moving from childhood to adulthood in a world that is extremely fast moving and changing. All of their rites of passage will be the ability to fight Freddy. Maybe people have come to expect a female protagonist when the antagonist is male. But I don't think so.  Men are often vulnerable to evil monsters in film but recently, they are rarely the last ones standing. 

Here's the last thought I've had. Perhaps it was the insurmountable generation gap that started to really explode during those times that informs so much of NOE.  The internet, technology, the explosion of teen culture, the breakup of the nuclear family and all things youthful in general took over our American planet starting back then and I feel that is the biggest dividing line in Nightmare on Elm Street.  The parents want to be good parents but they can't.  They can't relate to their children.  On the outside it looks like a decent American neighborhood,  but the gap between the American Nightmare and the American Dream is palpable.  It is Freddy who takes advantage of that gap and wreaks havoc on the teenagers who just wanted to be friends and go to high school, play football, watch the Miss American, pageant, drive a classic car, have sex and eat hamburgers. Now doesn't that sound like the American Dream?

Let me give you a rundown of  my July weekend in Indianapolis at Days of the Dead Horror Con that featured the Midwest Premiere of I AM NANCY!!  There were two things I was looking forward to. Naturally,  I am always excited to watch the movie with fans.  Their laughter makes me indescribably happy.  (Though, I am getting a bit weary of that tattoo gun in the first act.)  But just as a mother will watch her child perform the same song, dance routine or karate moves over and over again, that's exactly what I'm like watching I AM NANCY.   I probably even mouth the words to my own lines. I sing the words to the songs and tap my feet.  I totally wince when I see the glitches that perhaps only I notice.  I'm like a terrible stage mother watching my kid performing for a crowd.  You just think she's the greatest thing since sliced bread. You favorably compare her to everyone else around. You make mortal enemies of anyone who doesn't love her as much as you do.  (Not really )

In any case, you love your baby, warts and all.  And I do love I AM NANCY.  When the convention promoter suggested I just needed to quickly introduce the film and then could go back to my table in the main hall,  I could think of nothing worse than being deprived of the chance to watch the film again with a fresh crowd of Freddy fans.  I took my seat and sat back and had a ball.  At the end of the screening, I found myself at the back of the room and felt sincerely obligated to shake everyone's hand and thank them for watching.  Kind of corny perhaps, but I really meant it. Most people came out smiling - falling right into my diabolical plan to entertain them.

Which brings me to the second thing I was really looking forward to in Indianapolis.  One of my most ardent fans (who might be the best COS PLAYER taking on the role of Nancy) was going to be there.  This lovely young woman named Diandra, has dedicated herself to recreating Nancy down to the finest detail.  Naturally, she has a gray streak - permanent - and an amazing set of pajamas she had made that are fantastically realistic. She was hard to miss when I walked into the convention hall, standing next to her dad, whom she had persuaded to dress as Lieutenant Thompson. So they kind of stuck out. In the most adorable kind of way.  I know it took a lot of guts for her to introduce herself to me,  but she's made a life of being NANCY-like. So she quickly faced that fear and squeezed me tight. Little did she know that  I had been taking note of her, and I was anxious to meet Diandra (aka #NancyTOfElmstreet) myself.  She had organized a Nightmare on Elm Street Art Contest and more importantly helped form a really great group of  women (#TeamNancy, Team Nancy on facebook) who have bonded over their love of Nightmare on Elm Street and all things Nancy.  I glimpsed into their world of support for each other and realized that forming lasting relationships with people far away is the best thing about the internet.  Jude, Michelle, Amanda, Diandra and Kristen -   I'm really glad that we have had great opportunities to get to meet in London, Indianapolis and good ol' LA.

Getting ready for Days of the Dead, I wanted to make sure to have a Just the Ten of Us photo. I am often caught unprepared when Just the Ten of Us fans want a picture of the Lubbocks. I now know the secret that you all have split personalities - Lubbock Babes and Freddy Krueger. An interesting mash up to say the least!   So, I looked through my files. Nothing.  I went online and every file was too small.  I decided to call Mike Sullivan, one of our producers and ask him.  While he has drawers full of Growing Pains stuff (he produced that show too) he only had one photo of Marie.  Wearing her sweet little cashmere sweater, her hair pulled back and her cross, I just smiled to see the photo that captured so much of Marie. Mike continued to pull out what he could find.  Out came the script "Rock around the Clock" - was that it's title?  Where the Lubbock girls record a song at the mall for their dad's birthday.  That script launched the Lubbock Babes illustrious singing career. I flipped through it and landed on this line where the girls are trying to pick a song. "We should pick a song that honors the Lord."  Don't you just love Marie in all her earnestness? In the end, they ended up singing "Rock around the Clock" and Marie can be seen busting out some pretty classic dance moves. Marie was so pure and true, always struggling with what was right, modest and proper when she had to watch her slutty sisters committing all kinds of sins of the flesh. Her struggle became a wonderful comedic angle for so many of the scripts.  Too bad it ended so soon.  The Lord must have other purposes for that time slot. 

Weirdly enough,  I know a lot of folks who love A NIghtmare on Elm Street and also love the 80's TV sit-com "Just The Ten of Us." (Honestly, could you find two more different shows than Nightmare on Elm Street and "Just the Ten of Us" if you tried?) I played Marie -  the eldest daughter - very spiritual in her very wacky way and by the end of the second season wanted to become a nun. Oh, what crazy adventures she would have had if the show hadn't been canceled.

2 weekends ago I went to dinner to celebrate JoAnne Willette's graduation from college. You'll remember that she played Constance Lubbock on "Just the Ten of Us"- the poetic, intellectual drama queen. So now, 20 years later, she got her degree in Film and Television. From UCLA at that. Perhaps she took a little longer than most students to get that diploma but there's a time for everything.  I think she's my Nancy of the Week. Persistence and a fighting spirit.  You go girl!!

To all of you graduates out there.  Congratulations to you too.

What's my Freddy today? That there's only 24 hours in a day.

This is the fourth and final installment of my essay about the making of the bathtub scene in A Nightmare on Elm Street.  Hope you enjoyed it!

(Cont'd)

CUE JIM DOYLE!   On the first few takes the glove doesn’t come out of the water far enough.  Of course, I can’t see any of it, my eyes are closed - eyelids extremely calm. I think I actually took a nap in there during this part. Wes directs Jim to have the claw come up at a better angle for camera.  Not a sound on the set, but Wes’ voice talking us through, Jacques discussing the camera and our sound guys, Jim and Greg, casually figuring out how to make my scream sound the best in there. Thankfully, the assistant production accountant is being quiet as a mouse.

Then the best POV – from the end of the tub towards my face. The water by now is getting cold. Bubbles smaller. The glove emerges unexpectedly between my legs. Then vanishes when mom knocks on the door. It rises again, slowly, menacingly, then a pause and a small shiver. Jim is doing this blind.  He should have won an award for that day.  Cramped and uncomfortable, he does that move just right over dozens of takes from every conceivable angle.

For the next set-up Nancy suddenly gets pulled under the water completely. What I like best about this part of the scene is when my little hands flail above the water desperately - first trying to grab the edge of the tub,  then, just banging on the side of it to get Mom's attention. Jacques shoots from above, leaning on a ladder. This shot definitely requires more bubbles.  If I remember it right, Jim holds me down so that I can do all that stuff with my arms and not buoy up. But, why can't I remember that exactly?  I certainly remember the part where our producer, Bob Shaye walks over and tells me that a member of an exclusive German skin magazine was just captured in the catwalk above my head taking pictures of me! Yes, naked. Maybe its not so bad, this lo budget horror movie is going to need all the help it can get. 

Getting back to Nancy, though. Nancy is a fighter – one of the best fighters horror movies have ever seen, and she starts banging on the side of the tub with her hand. She attracts her mother’s attention, who wakes her from her Nightmare with an insistent knock on the door and a show of MacGyver lock picking skills.  Marge rushes in, just in time to help Nancy out of the tub (naked!!!)  and into her robe. Nancy recovers her composure as she tightly cinches her robe around herself at last. Last shot, Nancy takes her bottle of Stay Awake from the cupboard and decides to take charge of her life and fight Freddy.

For my part, the bathtub scene is done. Later that summer, Jim Doyle and a really pretty girl with considerably less modesty than I have, shoot a dreamy insert shot from an underwater point of view to add another crazy dimension to Freddy’s bathtub from hell. Put together with the music, the bathtub scene from A Nightmare on Elm Street is a truly classic scene and definitely my favorite. Unique, memorable and scary as hell. Sweet dreams.

copyright 2011 heather langenkamp

This is the third installment of my essay about the day we filmed the bathtub scene in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

(Cont'd)

The Assistant Director has whispered “CLOSED SET” a couple hundred more times. The craft service guy and assistant production accountant have sneaked in the side door by now, so I demurely take off my robe and climb into the nicely heated water.  Wes Craven and our superb Director of Photography Jacques Haitkin, are ever so gentlemanly – turning their heads to the side to allow my modest entry. The first assistant cameraman is Anne Coffey, whose gender is a great comfort to me and then, of course, there is my main ally in a delicate scene like this, Kathy Logan, the ever so trusty and witty make-up artist who will crack timely jokes to ease my nerves.

At last, I’m in the tub. My ass balanced on a 2" by 4". Water warm. Bubbles fluffy.  But, it’s tight in there. Jim’s 6’3” frame is crouched at my feet. Oh, and I forgot to say he’s brandishing the Freddy Glove - so evil and sublime. The old stiff leather, the welded blades, the way they click when Freddy flourishes his weapon.  The Freddy glove is a thing to behold; but, at that moment it is very close to my unmentionables.   Other villains kind of just grab something from their tool sheds, but Freddy handcrafted his own diabolical  finger-knives! A real SLASHER movie. We could hold our head high.

Ronnie Blakely throws her lines from off camera. “Don't fall asleep in there. I made you some warm milk!”  “Milk.  Gross,” I reply disgusted.  Squeeze the washcloth. Oops! Bubbles wandering away from me. Getting smaller. Dissipating. Help. Now the rhyme. “One, Two,  Freddy’s coming for you, three, four better lock your door…” -  the evil rhyme to protect me from the child murderer. Really, Wes, what teenager recites nursery rhymes in the bathtub? But, it's that kind of thing that makes Wes' movies so terrifying. Teenagers and nursery rhymes.  I knew that singing the lines would make the rhyme easier to say.  Earlier in the week, my boyfriend helped me put the tune to music in a minor key.  Now, back in the tub, Nancy sings and gets sleepy; her eyes flutter closed. Just so you know, acting asleep is very challenging. Wes repeatedly urges me to relax my eyelids so they won’t wiggle. Before long, I am dozing off. 

Copyright Heather Langenkamp 2011

This is the second installment of my essay - Nancy's Lament that describes the day we did the bathtub scene.

Nancy's Lament  (Continued)

Ronnie Blakely played Marge Thompson, Nancy's dear mother. She and I were the only ones on the cast list the day of the bathtub scene. My car’s pesky alternator wasn’t stressing me out half as bad as the fact that I had to be naked that day.  There’s a different vibe on set when you’re getting naked. “Closed set” whispered from every corner and printed loudly in bold, black letters on the call sheet.  “Essential crew members only!”  And who exactly gets to say who’s "essential"?  It wasn't me. It seemed to be an amorphous self-regulating multi-national organization.  I figured that with the right powers of persuasion even the assistant production accountant could make a case for his essential-ness. What if someone needed to write a check just as I'm slipping out of my robe into the tub? When they say film is a collaborative medium, it’s especially collaborative on days where performers get naked so everyone can stare at the zit on the lead actor’s backside. All I could do was pray that my least favorite crewmembers were non-essential.  My mind was bursting with other pertinent questions, too. What exactly is body make-up? Who puts it on you? And with what? A sponge? A brush? A trowel?  Is it waterproof?  Will I wear a special undergarment? And, how the hell is this all going to work in a tiny bathtub? I probably should have locked myself in my trailer for a day or two to calm down. But I didn’t even know you could lock yourself in your trailer. I hadn’t learned any of those diabolical tricks yet.

Actually, it didn’t matter, because we didn’t have trailers that day.  We filmed most of our scenes at an old decrepit sound stage that had once been owned by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez -  Desilu Studio.  By 1984, it had been totally stripped of that glorious, romantic past and been renamed Renmar.  And like most of Hollywood in the 80’s, the cast off studio had been sadly neglected. So, it was a great place to shoot a horror movie. Empty, dark and petrified. The cast were housed in dingy dressing rooms on either side of a narrow hallway. My dressing room had the following: an angular couch with nubby, olive green fabric; a mirrored table with cigarette burns and peeling formica, a chair with a perky spring waving from the bottom, a brass hook on the wall and a dirty scalloped shag carpet. If I had been a more imaginative teenager, I would have dreamed Lucille Ball retired there after another heated argument with Desi, her ostrich feathered peignoir billowing around her.  Where she brushed her equally unruly hair and practiced her Vitameatavegamin speech.  But I was preoccupied, working myself into Wes Craven’s bizarre nightmare with a group of young filmmakers that believed wholeheartedly in the movie we were making on a bare bones budget. I couldn't let them down with a panic attack at the wrong moment.

Next, I see a tall man pacing around the set in a wet suit, scuba mask, and an oxygen tank on his back. From the pieces of stringy hair sticking out from the straps, I surmise it is Jim Doyle with his answer to the Horrormeister's Quiz of the Day.  Nancy, Freddy, claw, scuba diver - all together in the tub.   I bravely grip the lapels of my robe – underneath, I sport a skin-tone, strapless, one piece undergarment - something your old aunt might wear as a girdle. What's to be embarrassed about? Wes Craven shows me how Jim and his men have constructed a bathtub with no bottom that is perched on a tank full of water that is tall enough for a short man to stand in. Jim tells me there are a couple of narrow boards on which I am supposed to sit as I lay back into the tub.  My feet rest on his shoulders while he wedges himself at the end of the tub beneath me.  At this juncture, my concern are the bubbles, the water temperature and the list of “essential” crew members. I have been assured they will be plentiful, warm and limited, respectively.  Feeling that need for a fig leaf,  I ask for a washcloth.

To be continued....

All Rights Reserved Copyright 2011 Heather Langenkamp

I have been doing some interviews to promote I Am Nancy and I am frequently asked what was my favorite scene to shoot.  It is hard to pinpoint just one scene because honestly, it was a blast making all three of the films. There are dozens of scenes that stick out in my mind.  But I did take some time a while back to write an essay on the bathtub scene and everything I could remember about it.  I did this around the time the remake was coming out and I wanted to really look back and remember those days.  So for the next few blog entries I am going to post this essay.  I hope you like it. 

NANCY'S LAMENT

Perhaps you’ve wondered if it’s ever advisable to be naked, straddling a man in scuba gear.  I can tell you, if it’s 1984 and Wes Craven is directing you in A Nightmare on Elm Street, then it is, indeed, very advisable. And it certainly helps if the man crouching under you with the scuba gear happens to be  a guy named Jim Doyle.

In a movie that defined 80’s horror, Wes Craven dreamed up Freddy Krueger, his burns, the hat, the striped sweater, the Elm Street kids, and their deadly nightmares but on that film, we all depended on Jim Doyle to report to set with the answers to each day’s Horrormeister Quiz.  Jim Doyle, our Special Effects Coordinator, was the handyman/plumber/seamstress/welder of our little horror movie that could.

Back then, Jim Doyle had greasy hair and a pocked face that lit up with a wild, toothy smile.  He had the twinkly eyes of a kid who just figured out how to cross his erector set with his chemistry kit.  He was enthusiastic and earnest, with the ingenuity to improvise with stuff like Spandex and scuba gear. For no good reason, I trusted him. The way you trust a tow truck driver in the middle of the desert who’s going to deliver you and your car back to safety.

Jim Doyle had a panel van - one that a girl like me would normally steer clear of. But inside it, like all mechanical geniuses worth their salt, he had every sort of strap, snip, glue, rivet, wrench, spring, tackle, trigger and other assorted thing that would be useful to create special effects.  Did he have a workshop somewhere?  All I remember is a dark room with a bare bulb off to the side of our movie lot where he got stuff ready.  I remember standing under that bulb being fitted with a harness one night.  “Now, Jim, how high off the ground are we talking?” “Not too high.” That’s the kind of conversations we had.  Worried questions from me.  Gruff assurances from him accompanied by that grin.

Most days, I got to work in my ‘70 Alfa Romeo Berliner with the bad alternator. The car resembled an oxidized eggplant with cracked beige leather. It appealed to the part of me that hadn’t even heard of Alfa Romeos until I saw that one.  As much as I loved it, the night before we shot the famous bathtub scene, the battery was dead. Naturally,  Jim was around - working late to get ready for the big scene.  He had cables.  After getting the car jumped, I gave a lift home to Nick Corri since the buses in Hollywood didn’t run that late.  Like our characters, Nancy, Glen, Tina and Rod, we all weren’t getting a lot of sleep in those days.

To BE CONTINUED...

Copyright 2011 Heather Langenkamp

I got to spend two days with my Nightmare friends, Lisa Wilcox, Ken Sagoes, Toy Newkirk, Rodney Eastman and Tuesday Knight at Weekend of Horrors at the LAX Marriott.  The best part for me was getting to show some excerpts from I AM NANCY to a big group of people.  Many of the fans who are featured in my documentary were there and I was able to thank them again in person for their important contributions to the picture.  I also got to meet in person Jamie Coon who wrote the really bitchin' theme song for I AM NANCY.  Two years ago,  she met my director, Arlene Marechal, at the Weekend of Horrors Show and said, "Hey,  I'd like to write a theme song for your movie.  Arlene said, You Go, GIrl!"  A week later we had the song in our inbox.  Not expecting that much in such a short time, we played it and instantly fell in love with the tune and the lyrics!  Needless to say,  a lot of the movie fell together just like that. It was great to meet Jamie and I think she's putting the song on itunes as we speak so buy a copy for your Nightmare play list. 
I also wanted to say that I met some very interesting people this past weekend.  One very interesting fellow was in the Air Force and had the awesome job of being a flight attendant on AIR FORCE ONE!  Isn't that a cool and curious way to pass the day. "Mr. President, would you care for some Dijon mustard on that cheeseburger?" He invited me to tour the plane next time I'm in DC.  I will definitely make it there.
I also met a very special young lady named Whitten who might be one of my biggest fans in So Cal.  She is dreaming of becoming the female Stephen King.  She had a great fire in her eyes and when she told me she had Cerebral Palsy and "she hated it."  I could feel her Nanciness leap across the table.  Whitten, you inspired me, Saturday.  I hope you liked, I AM NANCY.