ComingSoon’s Tyler Treese spoke with Impractical Jokers star and novelist James Murray about Don’t Move. Murray discussed adapting his novel to a film, his small cameo, plus the chances of a new Impractical Jokers film. Don’t Move is out now in theaters.
“A church group’s annual retreat turns deadly when they wander into the wrong part of the Ozark wilderness, and something starts picking them off one by one. Suspicion falls on Ricky (Russell “Russ” Vitale), the troublemaker of the group. But the real threat is far worse. Deep in the forest, wrapped in a labyrinth of webs, the group is pursued by a terrifying prehistoric arachnid that hunts by vibration. When every step could be their last, they only have one choice: Don’t Move. It’s up to Megan (Lyndsy Fonseca) to hold what’s left of the group together and get them out alive,” says the official synopsis.
Tyler Treese: James, congrats on Don’t Move. It has to be so exciting seeing your novel become a film. How was the actual adaptation? What were the biggest challenges in going from book to screen?
James Murray: It’s been a wild week, by the way. We had our New York City premiere on Monday, Tuesday, Kansas City, Wednesday, Los Angeles at the famous TCL Chinese Theater. Then I popped into movie theaters all around L.A. yesterday. Right now I’m in Dallas. I’m popping into six movie theaters tonight, six movie theaters tomorrow in Houston, eight movie theaters on Sunday in Detroit. It’s wild.
What was it like? Crazy. The whole week’s been crazy. The whole making of the movie was just so wild, man. To go from characters and storylines that we created out of our heads and sold to a publisher six years ago to see it on the big screen, and obviously it opens nationwide today, it was wild.
The process was actually not—adapting the book to a screenplay was not as hard as I thought because by the time you get a book into book form and it’s on sale across America in bookstores and airports and on Amazon, it’s been honed for months and months and months. Every line of dialogue poured over by myself, my co-writer, the publisher, our editor as well. The polished, finished book that gets printed is very polished material. We were able to adapt the screenplay fairly quickly.
We knew the characters so well. We knew their voices so well that the dialogue almost perfectly translated. We had to make things more visual for screen, of course, because we don’t have the reader’s imagination. We have to trim a 500-page book down to a 105-page screenplay. That was a challenge, but it was a fun process.
Then making the movie was wild. You rely on the people that are on your team. We got a great director, another great producer with me, and the whole cast came together and just added something to the movie that is just not in the book. The movie has a lot more heart to it than the book has.
The book is effing brutal. Some of the kills in the book are pretty outrageous, and it’s just like slaughter, but the movie has a lot more heart and you root for these people to survive.
I did want to ask if there were any elements or changes to the adaptation that really resonated with you. It seems like the film having a bit more heart is what stood out about this.
Yeah. You really, really care for the characters, not just our leads. In the book, I think you care for the leads as well, for sure. We wrote them very carefully, but the other characters in the church group in the movie, you really care about them too. They all have their backstories, their relationships with each other.
Also, the Wriggle is so funny. Tom Cavanagh is hysterical in the movie. The choices they made as actors are really funny for the characters. That layer is not in the book at all. The book’s not funny, even though I’m on Impractical Jokers. It’s fairly brutal. That was another layer to the movie that’s just not present in the book.
Then we did have to change some things. We couldn’t afford the opening scene of the book, which is a rapid-fire scene in a carnival on one of those swing chair rides. The CGI alone would be like a million bucks. We didn’t have it.
I had to rewrite the beginning of the movie to be something that would be still tonally the same and would lead to the same conclusion, the same result, which is that our lead character loses her family in this very tragic, preventable way.
What we did to make it affordable was we slowed the whole thing down. We moved it to a haunted house in a carnival. We only go one or two miles an hour in those cars around the bends and twists and turns and go through the double doors at the end. We just set a very simple premise.
What if a fire ignites at the end of the ride, those double doors you go through? You’re slowly, at one, two miles an hour, going toward a wall of flame. What we did was we slowed the tempo way down in the movie, which makes it twice as scary, weirdly.
I think it was a pretty ingenious solve for a financial problem of CGI. That’s what I loved about it. There’s no way we could have done the beginning of the book practically. No way. It’s a chair swing ride that goes off the rails and flies. You can’t do it practically, but the haunted house was 100% practical.
That was a real haunted house. Then we rebuilt the haunted house in a giant warehouse and lit it on fire. The actors on screen, they’re moving toward a wall of flame. We had stunt people on set that we’d lit on fire. That wasn’t CGI. They’re on fire, which is so cool. We would never have been able to do that if we used the original beginning of the book.
We also see you in the film. You have a little cameo.
For like a second.
Did you ever consider having a bigger role in this?
No. I wrote the book. I know the characters so well. I know my strengths and weaknesses. I don’t fit any of the characters of our own creation. I don’t think in any of our books I would.
I think there are characters I relate to and I model after my outlook on life and things like that. When we create these characters and stories, I always picture different people. It was never even a discussion for me.
I did give a critical role to Q from Jokers. I gave him the most important line in the movie, the turn of the movie, where the movie is horrifying in the beginning. Then you meet the characters. It settles in, becomes funny, endearing.
Then I gave Q the turn where the characters in the movie realize the situation they’re in. It’s his line, “Are you sure you’re in Davey’s Canyon?” We have this great drone shot that rises up from the helicopter. The park ranger helicopter flies over the forest, over mountains. The church group is way off course. They are nowhere where they think they are. They are in the wrong damn forest. I gave him the most important line in the movie.
You’ve written some other books like Awaken, The Stowaway, Area 51 Interns. Do you think any of those would make a great film?
James Murray: That’s the way we write them all. We write with the intention of developing them and selling them and making them into movies or TV shows. I’m now pitching Area 51 Interns as a TV show.
Then the next one is my newest one, You Better Watch Out, is a serial killer thriller with a great twist. It did really well. The publishers asked for a sequel to it because it did really well. The twist is so damn good.
That one we want to film next year. I go back to work on Jokers when I’m finished filming the next season of Jokers. Then we’ll shoot You Better Watch Out.
Speaking of Jokers, you guys did a movie back in 2020. Would you ever be interested in doing another larger-scale type thing like that in the future?
James Murray: I’ll tell you what. It’s so interesting, that question. We’ve been talking about it. That’s all I’ll say. It has come up in conversation again very recently.
I’m not going to say yes, but who knows? We weren’t even talking about it for six years. Now, only the past few weeks, the guys are like, “It might be fun to do a movie again.” We’ll see. Maybe.
My last question for you. I saw that you were an extra in Private Parts, the Howard Stern movie. How did that come about? I would just love to hear that.
Dude, I was in college. I had aspirations of being an actor before I said, “I’m not going to succeed this way.” In my college class was Bradley Cooper. I’m not joking. He was in the same grade as me at Georgetown. Other famous comedians, Mike Birbiglia, John Mulaney was a year older than that. Well-known people.
I was just like, “I don’t look like Bradley Cooper. I’m never going to succeed.” I did try to be an extra in a movie. I was cast as an extra in Private Parts, the Howard Stern movie.
For some reason, where they positioned me in this long tracking shot where Stern is walking through his college campus, I just so happened to be next to him for like 30 seconds on camera. There’s 500 extras. I happened to be right next to Stern for like 30 seconds, this long tracking shot.
People started recognizing me on campus sophomore year of college from the movie, which is wild. I was just an extra, but yeah, that was my first movie appearance.
That’s incredible. You’re really full circle. Now you have this coming out. Congrats on Don’t Move, and I can’t wait to see what else you do. It’s really cool that you have these creative endeavors.
Anybody watching, we’re an indie movie. It’s up to you to support indie film. It’s a great date-night horror movie. You’re going to love it. You’ll laugh, you’ll scream, you’ll feel heart in the movie as well. So get your tickets at dontmovemovie.com anywhere across America. It opens today.
Thanks to James Murray for taking the time to talk about Don’t Move.
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