WEEHAWKEN, N.J. (AP) - Some families go trick-or-treating for Halloween.
Norah and Matt Mayers make a movie.
Each Halloween, the father and daughter from Weehawken offer their own take on a scary film for the haunted season. Norah is always the star, and Matt is the director and co-star.
This year’s pick: Stephen King’s “It.”
In the resulting short film, titled “That,” Matt plays Pennywise the evil clown. Like King’s demonic joker, he holds a cluster of red balloons. And forget dressing up for one night: this dad showed his dedication to the part by shaving his beard to make way for face paint.
It’s all in service of adapting horror in a way that’s not too gory or scary, Matt says. Plus, it’s really just the ultimate father-daughter Halloween project.
Bill Skarsgard played Pennywise in the recent film “It Chapter Two” and the 2017 movie “It.” Tim Curry portrayed the maleficent clown in the 1990 miniseries.
Matt, 40, says that since the recent films are not appropriate for Norah, 10, to watch, they saw the Tim Curry adaptation of the 1986 King novel, and formulated their version by combining elements from both takes.
He writes a script and storyboards each film before several days of shooting and editing.
“I had a lot of fun,” Norah, who plans to be a gothic doll for Halloween, tells NJ Advance Media. “This is the first one where he had jump scares.”
It’s also the first film in which the cast of characters incorporates other children from the neighborhood.
For the Halloween shorts, Matt and Norah work under the banner Mayers Family Films. But Matt is also a professional filmmaker and has a production company, Mayers Films, with his brother Ryan. He normally works on commercials, advertising campaigns and documentaries.
“This is our third year doing it,” Matt says of the father-daughter Halloween tradition. He always tries to teach Norah a little about filmmaking in the process.
“She’s really into sci-fi and horror,” he tells NJ Advance Media. “I’ve grown up loving horror films. It’s my passion.”
It just so happens that he was reading King’s novel before he staged a compressed version of the film with his daughter.
“Every year we try to make it better than last,” he says.
In the four-minute film, the Mayers emulate the look and feel of “It,” setting their version Weehawken instead of King’s fictional Derry, Maine - after, all, Matt says, in “It,” the town itself acts as another character.
In one scene, Norah hears her name being called from a storm drain in a recreation of the famous scene from the story, albeit with a less gruesome result. Matt’s Pennywise appears in the drain, thanks to some digital effects.
“It’s our way to pay homage,” he says.
Matt and his wife, Stephanie, a publicist and agent who represents family-friendly entertainers, have lived in Weehawken for 13 years. They have two daughters - Norah and her sister, Hannah, 4 (who gets an assistant director credit in one of the films).
In the latest short film, local kids are hounded by Pennywise and find him in a book about Weehawken history.
“It’s fun and it show the kids the process of movie-making,” Matt says. “They really get into it.”
Previous Halloween efforts from the family have included a Freddy Krueger-themed romp (“A Nightmare On Norah’s Street,” co-starring Stephanie Mayers) and a “Night of the Living Dead”-inspired short (“Norah of the Living Dead”) that ends up being a “Star Wars” mashup.
“The one that we made this year is my favorite one,” says Norah, who watches intently as her father edits each film.
He recently hosted a screening for the child actors and their parents, and has been generating good local buzz after posting the short film on social media Thursday.
“It’s time-consuming, but it totally paid off,” he says. “People expect them, they’ve been waiting for them. We have a fan base.”
Online: https://bit.ly/2PgkxBM
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Information from: NJ Advance Media.
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