Last year, I had the chance to visit the shooting of the next horror film of Blumhouse “The Woman in the Yard”. It took place in a university town called Athens, in Georgia, about an hour from Atlanta, give or take. What I expected to meet during this visit is a behind-the-scenes knowledge of the return of Jaume Collet-Serra to the kind of horror. What I did not expect to discover is how Todd Phillips was responsible for an almost total ban on filming at the University of Georgia which lasted more than 20 years.
Phillips is best known as the director of the Hit Smash of $ 1 billion “Joker” in 2019. His first genre foray was “old school” from the 2000s, which was his debut as director. He had previously made a documentary on Phish entitled “Bittersweet Motel” and an unrealized HBO documentary entitled “Frat House”, but it was his party to go out as a filmmaker.
During the Set visit, we spent most of our time at the Studios of Athena, a production installation of the time, just outside Athens. “The woman in the courtyard” was one of the first major productions to use the installation. Addressing Joel Harber, president and chief executive officer of Athena Studios, he revealed that they had a good relationship with the University of Georgia, which is essentially at the heart of Athens.
“Thanks to this relationship, we have a breakthrough to be able to obtain productions on the campus if necessary. It is therefore something that has been relatively closed in the past 20 years,” Harber explained to me and to the other journalists present. So why was production closed on campus for more than two decades, exactly? “When I was at school there, there was a film entitled” Road Trip “which was filmed there,” he added. “Road Trip” was the culprit.
The University of Georgia was not delighted with road trip
For those who may need a refreshment, “Road Trip” focuses on Josh (Breckin Meyer) who films his affair with another girl and accidentally post him to her girlfriend. After making his mistake, Josh and two of his university friends go to a 1,800 mile road trips from Ithaca, NY, in Austin, Texas, to save his relationship.
Despite being the first narrative characteristic of Phillips, he had the support of a large studio in DreamWorks and a decent budget with which to work. As Harber also explained, he also had full cooperation from the University of Georgia:
“They said to themselves:” Yeah, of course, film anywhere. If you want to enter the stadium, you want to do that. “They were everywhere.
The film was a success, which caused a little seen DTV series entitled “Road Trip: Beer Pong”, but it was also a game of adolescents on the side, filled with sex which is not exactly the kind of thing that a prestigious school generally wants to be associated. “I don’t think it gelled with the image they wanted to project,” said Harber. “So they mainly put an iron door and said,” You can no longer come here. “So there have been very few tours on the campus since then.”
Phillips continued to have a great career, more recently achieving “Joker: Folie has two”, which was a large commercial bomb. It may mean that he will come back to listed comedies R for a change of rhythm. As for the Harber and Athena studios, they actually worked with the University of Georgia to make filming on the campus again possible by directly involving the students of the school:
“We worked with UGA to try to relax them. And then do a part of this shoot to involve the students and it’s like” hey, do you want to film on the campus? We need 20 helmets and students in the video village and we want them to be part of it. “And that’s what’s going on right now.”
“The woman in the courtyard” will be released in theaters on March 28, 2025.
