Happy 57th Birthday, Daniel Myrick! Born today in this American editor, screenwriter, film producer and film director is most famous for making horror films.
Born in Sarasota, Florida, Myrick, years later, studied at the University of Central Florida School of Film. This was in the early 1990s.
While enrolled there, Myrick collaborated with a handful of future horror cohorts.
These included Cuban-born American film director Eduardo Sánchez and American movie producer Gregg Hale. Together, they worked on a trilogy of short films.
During this time, Myrick supported himself by working as an editor and cinematographer on a number of Florida-based music videos and commercials.
While film students at the University of Central Florida, Myrick and Sánchez were inspired to make a new kind of horror film.
This was after realizing that they found documentaries on paranormal phenomena scarier than traditional horror films. The two later decided to create a film that combined the styles of both.
In order to produce the project, they, along with Hale and American film producers Robin Cowie and Michael Monello, started Haxan Films in 1993.
The namesake for the production company is adapted from Danish film the film by Danish director, screenwriter and an actor both in film and on the stage Benjamin Christensen.
This was his 1922 Swedish/Danish documentary-style silent black and white (Sepiatone) drama/fantasy horror film 'Häxan' (or 'Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages').
It was also in 1993 that Myrick and Sánchez conceived of a fictional legend of the Blair Witch. They eventually developed a thirty-five-page screenplay with the dialogue to be improvised.
A casting call advertisement in Backstage magazine was prepared by the directors.
After casting, the roles had been given to American writer and now retired actress Heather Donahue, American actor Michael C. Williams and American actor, writer and director Joshua Leonard.
The film entered production in October 1997, with the principal photography taking place in Maryland for eight days.
About twenty hours of footage was shot, which was edited down to eighty-two minutes. The horror feature would later turn out to be the film for which Myrick is best known for co-editing, co-writing and co-directing.
This was the 1999 American black and white/color supernatural mystery/psychological horror film 'The Blair Witch Project'.
Premiering in the midnight movie section at the 21st Sundance Film Festival in January 1999, the film was heavily credited with popularizing the found-footage technique which was later used by similarly successful horror films.
These includes Israeli American film director, producer and screenwriter Oren Peli's 2007 American supernatural thriller/independent horror film 'Paranormal Activity' and the 2008 American found-footage sci-fi/thriller monster film 'Cloverfield'.
Although a sleeper hit, 'The Blair Witch Project' grossed nearly $250 million worldwide on a modest budget of $60,000, making it one of the most successful independent films of all time.
Because the filming was done by the actors using hand-held cameras, much of the footage is shaky, especially the final sequence in which a character is running down a set of stairs with the camera. Some audience members experienced motion sickness and even vomited as a result.
'The Blair Witch Project' also ranks 123rd on the list of films that most frequently use the f word. The film drops the f-bomb one hundred and fifty-four times during a running time of eighty-six minutes. This means that the profanity was used 1.79 times a minute.
The found-footage technique of 'The Blair Witch Project' received near-universal praise. Although this was not the first film to use it, the independent film was declared a milestone in cinematic history due to its critical and box office success.
Roger Ebert gave the film a total of four stars, and called it "an extraordinarily effective horror film".
He also went on to say: "At a time when digital techniques can show us almost anything, The Blair Witch Project is a reminder that what really scares us is the stuff we can't see. The noise in the dark is almost always scarier than what makes the noise in the dark."
American film critic and journalist Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine called it "a groundbreaker in fright that reinvents scary for the new millennium".
Later on, 'The Blair Witch Project' won the Award of the Youth for Foreign Film (Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez) at the 52nd Cannes Film Festival in May 1999.
The following year, both filmmakers won the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award at the 15th Independent Spirit Awards on March 25, 2000.
That same day, Donahue won a Razzie for Worst Actress at the 20th Golden Raspberry Awards. The film was also nominated for Worst Picture, but did not win.
The following year on July 30, the 2000 American direct-to-video comedy/parody film 'The Tony Blair Witch Project' was released.
The film had been shot, written, produced and directed by American visual effects artist, camera and electrical department and cinematographer Michael A. Martinez.
The film currently holds a 2.4/10 rating on IMDb, and was once placed on the IMDb Bottom 100 list for a time.
Later that same year, the 2000 American psychological slasher/thriller horror film 'Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2' was released.
Unfortunately, 'Book of Shadows' was not as surprisingly and staggeringly successful as its predecessor. It currently holds a 3.9/10 rating on IMDb, and was also once placed on the IMDb Bottom 100 list for a time.
Ebert, who gave the first film four stars (out of four), gave 'Book of Shadows' two stars, calling it "a muddled, sometimes-atmospheric effort that could have come from many filmmakers" and "not a very lucid piece of filmmaking".
Despite being distributed by Haxan Films, Myrick nor Sánchez had anything to do with the making of 'Book of Shadows'.
Development of another installment began in September 2009, when Myrick and Sánchez announced their intent to produce a third Blair Witch film.
It would be a sequel to the first film, and would potentially contain the actors from the first feature in some context, and would not reference any of the events from 'Book of Shadows'. '
In 2011, Sánchez remarked that further development on a sequel depended on getting Lionsgate to approve the idea and for his and Myrick's schedule to match up.
The film eventually went into development hell. By January 2015, a third Blair Witch was still in talks. Sanchez stated that the film was "inevitable".
Initially, the film's connection to the Blair Witch franchise was kept secret, with the film having been shot under the fake title, 'The Woods'.
In July 2016, it was revealed at the 2016 San Diego Comic-Con that the film marketed with the faux-title The Woods actually turned out to be the sequel 'Blair Witch'.
Later that year, the 2016 American found footage supernatural thriller/horror film 'Blair Witch' was released. 'The film is set seventeen years after the disappearance of the filmmakers in search of the Blair Witch.
It follows a young man named James Donahue (James Allen McCune) and his friends as they venture into the Black Hills Forest in Maryland. This is to uncover the mystery surrounding his missing sister.
Made this time under the production companies Vertigo Entertainment and Snoot Entertainment, the third installment of the series is more of a continuation of the first film than of the second.
Also known as D.R. Myrick and Dan Myrick, the filmmaker, after laboring as a production jack-of-all-trades, had struck independent film gold on his first try as one of the co-creators of the phenomenally popular no-budget horror film franchise.
Myrick has been active from 1997–present.
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