Heather, Josh and Mike are leaving the woods for the stage and the big screen.
Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams, stars of the groundbreaking 1999 found footage horror blockbuster The Blair Witch Project, are on the road with the film for a series of screenings followed by moderated question and answer sessions. They’ll be at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood, New Jersey on Friday, Oct. 30, with The Pop Break contributor and veteran entertainment journalist Alex Biese (the writer of this article) serving as the evening’s moderator.
The rare reunion brings Donahue, Leonard and Williams together to reflect on the phenomenon that transformed horror cinema. The Blair Witch Project follows three student filmmakers – named Heather, Josh and Mike – lost in Maryland. Crafted on low-budget cameras with improvised dialogue, the movie blurred audiences’ perception of fiction and reality to become a box-office hit.
For Donahue, embarking on this tour was not part of a grand plan. Living these days off the grid in Maine, she admitted in an interview with The Pop Break that she was unaware that film screening/live Q&A events existed.
“I had never even considered that this was a thing that people do,” Donahue said. “I had no idea there was like a world of screenings followed by Q&As that people did, so it wasn’t a strategy on my part. I mean, I literally live in an off-grid cabin in the Maine woods, so I don’t even know what’s going on in the world anymore for the most part, and I really like it that way.”
Reuniting with her co-stars on the road has proved a welcomed change of pace.
“When somebody calls me and says, ‘Hey, do you want to do this fun thing?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, of course I want to do a fun thing,'” Donahue said. “And we’ve been having a great time, because for me, getting out of the woods every once in a while and shaking the dust off the hermit is like not a terrible thing to do.”
Connecting with moviegoers has offered a contrast to the initial reaction the film received.
“It’s great to see how people’s impressions of this movie have changed so much over time,” Donahue said. “I had some really pretty violent haters when it first came out, and now anybody that’s still interested in it is interested in it because they really love it. So there’s an incredible kindness and appreciation to it now. That’s really healing, actually, to receive after the way it was received when it first came out.”
Much of that backlash stemmed from marketing that framed the actors as missing or deceased.
“We didn’t understand how the movie was going to be positioned,” Donahue recalled. “So it was a surprise for us to find out that we were supposed to really be dead and that we were going to be positioned not as actors. … Here we were thinking that, ‘Oh, this little indie that we made, this little punk rock indie actually got into Sundance.’ And so you get excited about that, and it turns out because the studio has decided that you’re dead. That was like a very difficult thing, especially when you’re young and hungry and proud of the work.”
As Variety reported in April, up-and-comer Dylan Clark is set to direct a reimagining of the film for Lionsgate, with Leonard and Williams on board as executive producers. Donahue sees the enduring DIY legacy of The Blair Witch Project alive in digital creators today.
“If you look at Dylan Clark, who’s making the reboot now, shooting now, he’s a YouTuber. To me, maybe that’s the part of the ‘Blair Witch’ legacy that I’m proudest of, that it showed that you can make things on your own terms, and if you make something that people respond to, then it will find its way. Your good work can find an audience.”
