Thing of the Day #92: Blair Witch Project

Today’s letter:

Dear Thing of the Day,

Is the Blair Witch Project real?

- Jamie

When I was a kid my mum told me that once some film students went in the woods to shoot a documentary about the “Blair Witch.” The students disappeared but the partial documentary was recovered.

I later learned that this was a hoax. There’s no such thing as the Blair Witch (nor the town of Blair) and the “film students” were actors. The Blair Witch Project was simply a 1999 horror movie.

But it’s surprising how deep the hoax goes:

1. The actors genuinely spent eight days camping in the woods filming themselves.

2. The crew left them as alone as possible. Supplies were left in milk crates at drop points.

3. The movie wasn’t scripted. The dialogue was almost entirely improvised.

   1. The ending with Mike standing in the corner was written days before it was shot.

4. The actors used their real names.

   1. The star Heather Donahue said she regretted this because she had trouble finding new roles because of it.

5. Some of the townspeople interviewed at the start were real people from a nearby town. Some of them were planted actors that the main cast thought were real.

6. The cast was gradually deprived of food while in the woods to make them cranky.

7. They were also progressively sleep deprived by the crew playing creepy children sounds from a boom box outside their tents during the night

   

8. While in the woods, the cast were given daily instructions for each of their characters on messages left in milk crates left by the directors. Each actor had private instructions, so they couldn’t predict each other’s behaviour.

9. In the scene where they find a bundle of teeth outside their tent in the morning: Those were real human teeth! From a local dentist!

10. The scene where they see the creepy house first time is the cast’s genuine reaction to seeing the house for the first time.

11. In the movie, one of the characters mysteriously disappears during the night. In real life, that actor actually snuck off in the night as per instructions without the other actors knowing this would happen.

12. Production was influenced by military training where experienced soldiers role playing as enemies and hunt a trainee through wild terrain.

13. There’s a scene where the main character runs away from the (off-screen) art director wearing long-johns and a pantyhose over his head

    

14. The crew made a site asking for information about the missing actors.

15. The crew distributed "missing" flyers for the cast.

16. The cast’s parents got condolence calls.

17. Some people even thought that the “hoax” thing was itself a hoax, and that there were new actors playing the original actors to cover up a snuff film.

I think the actors must have genuinely gone a bit crazy from all this.