Arrow Books’ ‘THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT’ Encapsulates Filmmaking and Film Marketing History From All Angles

I turned 18 years old in April of 1999. In May of 1999, the latest Star Wars movie was coming out. An event so many fans have been waiting for and was previously hyped up by the theatrical release of the Special Edition versions of Episode IV-VI. Being a movie buff, I decided that I would apply for a job at the local movie theater which just recently opened in time for Episode I: The Phantom Menace. The theater apparently realized how understaffed they were thanks to crowds of The Phantom Menace and I was hired pretty quickly. I worked that summer and would come home to read the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly and also gather movie information on America Online via news, chatrooms and public forums. While I can’t remember where I first heard about The Blair Witch Project, I remember hearing about its impact at Sundance and the late night negotiations of the Artisan acquisition. I went to the website numerous times and enveloped myself into the history of the Blair Witch. I knew the film was fake but my imagination took hold and I got lost somewhere in the mythology that the filmmakers created. I told my felllow concessionists about the film in between rushes, by passing along “information” that I heard from Sundance saying it was one of the scariest films of all time. By doing this, I was contributing to what was probably happening everywhere, I was creating the word-of-mouth viral marketing that we would later have defined for us. Back then, it was just called “word-of-mouth” marketing.

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The theater finally got the release date from Artisan Entertainment and it looked like we would give the film a couple of weeks after it premiered on both coasts in the United States. My mother and I were both excited about the film and would read anything that was published about it. Opening night came and my mother and I already got tickets for the 7 o’clock show. To this day, The Blair Witch Project is the only film that got so intense at the end that it made my heart skip a beat. The screen went black and Antonio Cora’s haunting sound effect-laden theme started playing as the credits came into focus. I tried to catch my breath and move. Before I could, a guy behind me said “That’s it?! That sucked!” My mom and I let out a laugh and looked at each other knowing that the film didn’t suck for us and I couldn’t wait to see it again. I ended up seeing The Blair Witch Project five more times (thanks to working there) in the theater during it’s run from that late August night to October. Over those two months, I saw all the different effects the film had on different people. There were definitely people affected by the film like I was. There were also people who had to leave in the middle of the film because they got sick watching the film thanks to the motion sickness. The most vocal group were the patrons that wanted a refund because they vehemently hated the film. “How in the hell are you going to have ‘Witch” in the title of your movie and not even see her???” yelled one guy coming out into the lobby. Still, to this day, the film divides audiences and I will be the first to agree that it is a film that best works if you were watching it in a dark theater in 1999.

A lot of personal stories that are similar to mine in Russ Gomm’s book come from filmmakers like Joe Lynch, Jake West, Johannes Roberts and Joe Berlinger, who directed Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. Intertwined with these personal tales is documentation on the making-of The Blair Witch Project. How the “Haxan Five” formed and the initial genesis of the film. The book is a nice and brief sample of how a classic was made.

For hardcore Blair Witch fans, you may not find a lot of new information in these pages, but there is some great material found in this small 100+ page book that can either be put on your bookshelf or on your DVD/Blu-Ray shelf (the book is about the same height and width of a Blu-Ray disc). For someone like me to ingest so much behind-the-scenes information after its release as well as saturating my brain with the mythology that Eduardo Sanchez and Dan Myrick came up with, reading this book was a nice reminder of the feelings I felt in the early 2000’s and sparked the feelings I felt when I first read the content that was put out around the film’s initial release. There were definitely some things I still found out about while reading this book so it wasn’t just a regurgitation of information that most Blair Witch fans know about – think of it as a brief summary documenting this moment of time.

Now, the question is when can we see Russ Gomm’s documentary, The Woods Movie – which documents the making-of by incorporating footage shot by the filmmakers while they were filming The Blair Witch Project?