If I had to make my top ten list for 2007 right now, there would be a lot of movies up for consideration, but there are only two that would be immediately added to the list: Paul Verhoeven's Black Book and William Friedkin's Bug. Even though it didn't find success at the box-office -- it opened against Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End -- Bug is a splendidly-acted little horror-drama about the perils of paranoia and the effects that lonliness and isolation can have on a person's judgement. It also contains one of the best performances Ashley Judd has given in years, without question. If you missed it in theaters like most people, then you should really give it a chance when it arrives on DVD on September 25th. The specs of the DVD have recently been released, along with the cover art seen here.

There's not going to be an avalanche of extras on the DVD, but there will be an audio commentary by Friedkin, along with two featurettes. One is called Bug: An Introduction and the other is A Discussion with William Friedkin, which I guess is exactly what it sounds like. I think they could have gotten a little more creative than this-- I'd like to see some extras that compare and contrast the stage production with the film, and maybe some interviews with Tracy Letts, the writer of both the play and the script. Oh well -- guess you can't have everything, right?

The cast and director of Bug recently assembled at a Manhattan hotel to answer some questions about the new horror-drama, which I saw and praised on this site. Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon star as two small-town Midwestern people whose lives intersect one night at her trailer-park home and the match-up creates a sort of perfect storm of paranoia, discomfort, and ultimately, terror. She fuels his pre-existing fears about being followed by a shadowy government agency, while he perversely fills for her a deep-seated need to be taken seriously and to be listened to. It's hard to explain the movie any more specifically than that -- you have to see it. William Friedkin had the press eating out of his hand, photographers wasted everyone's time by insisting on, like, ten minutes of posed photos, and Judd talked a lot about her process of mental preparation. Here is a sampling of the various questions and answers asked by all the assembled journalists -- enjoy.

Ashley Judd

Was it an easy decision, for you to sign on for this one?

AJ: It was very easy for me to decide to do Bug. Billy had been good enough to send the script to my agent. Bug also had in common a producer who was producing Come Early Morning, which was the film I shot right before Bug. So there was a streamline simplicity to the process. Of course, Billy's wife was my mentor early in my career, provided my big break in Hollywood, so it seemed like there were a lot of auspicious things that were coming together around the script.

I really loved Billy's response to Michael. He was very clear and impassioned and firm that Michael was the actor for the film, as he had been unabashedly the actor for the play. I was really impressed with how Billy was just not willing to negotiate around that, and helped me be very comfortable talking with the financier of the film about how Michael was also who I would want to play with in the movie, so there was a lot that I really liked. There was a good backbone and positive energy surrounding the project, and my agent, when she sent the script to me to read, she said 'you might not want to go there' and immediately that intrigued me. I don't think she was intentionally using reverse psychology, but that's the affect it had and I think I became willing to take the part on before I had in fact read it. There's a part of me that gets really competitive with my own creativity, like 'Oh, you think I can't do that? Really ... '

Did you feel you were coming to the part at a disadvantage, with your co-star having done the play?

AJ: I felt I was at a real advantage, because Michael clearly knew the material inside and out, had a very well-developed and evolved relationship with the material. Billy had seen it, he responded so passionately, and we began acquiring the rights, and there was a tremendous and respect there, and I felt I was able to just slipstream in there.

"I am the super mother bug!" -- Bug


In many ways, Bug may represent the apex of Ashley Judd's curious career. She's always been something of a green-screen actress without the green-screen, relying on some kind of method to dig deep and come up with seemingly heartfelt, emotive performances in routine thrillers where the surroundings don't warrant that kind of effort. (I'm looking at you, Kiss the Girls.) Judd's motivation is always in her head, which makes her naturally primed to take on a character like Bug's Agnes White, a lonely, small-town waitress who was frozen inside her own emotional headspace years ago, when her young son disappeared out of a grocery cart. She now spends her days being lusted after by the lesbians at a honky-tonk dive where she works, doing drugs, counting up crumpled dollar bills and bracing herself for the unwanted return of her ex-con ex, who has more than one screw loose. "You tried to kill me," she reminds him when he finally washes up on her doorstep. "That was a rough one, yeah," he replies, without trying to be funny.

I've seen the same marketing you have, and I'm not going to comment on whether, at some point during the film, a swarm of giant bugs may come to attack poor Agnes. I will suggest, however, that deserved Oscar nominations for Judd and director William Friedkin may be thwarted by an attempt to make this film sound like it belongs on the same shelf as Blade: Trinity and Silent Hill. Bug is a horror film, for sure -- one that will leave you bug-eyed -- but not one that pins its hopes on special effects. Instead, it uses a horrific set-up to explore some nimble issues, like how emotional vulnerability can weaken you, impair your judgment and make you not only accept the poor logic of others, but actually become a participant in their delusions. If you have nothing in your life, will you grab onto anything? Sociologists have been asking a variant of that question forever, and it's refreshing to see a movie taking a whack at it, with some success.

Now here's a clever little marketing trick from the fine folks at Lionsgate Films: the studio has confirmed to us that if you decide to go see their Ashley Judd / Michael Shannon thriller Bug when it opens on May 25, you'll also get to see the first five or so minutes of Eli Roth's Hostel: Part II. Since they feel confident enough to let this intro stand on its own, there must be something pretty major that happens to start things off, but we wouldn't expect them to give that away. It seems like Hostel and Bug have different target audiences, though -- fans of suspense and fans of bloody mayhem -- so if you're going to see Bug because you like William Friedkin, gritty psychological thrillers or surprisingly intense acting performances, you might want to skip the pre-show appetizer of splat.

If, on the other hand, you feel that "psychological thriller" is just another sub-genre under the almighty banner of Horror and you have a stomach for Mr. Roth's patented brand of knife-twisting nastiness, then you'll be pretty psyched to catch the early footage. Again, no word yet on what sequence we'll be sloshing through, but considering the marketing techniques employed by Mr. Roth and his Lionsgate pals, it'll probably be something dark and sticky that cuts out just as it's getting to the good stuff. I don't know if the free appetizer will help sell all that many extra Bug tickets, but I guess it couldn't hurt either. Ryan and I have seen Bug and we both definitely recommend it, but the only thing it presumably shares in common with Hostel II is a distributor. As a random footnote, after the recent press junket for Bug, Ryan ran into William Friedkin in the elevator and asked him if he had ever watched any of the Exorcist sequels. His response -- "Why would I?"

With Heat being one of my favorite films of all time, I took the opportunity at yesterday's press junket for Bug to ask Ashley Judd if she was keen to ever work with Michael Mann again, to which she replied "I would love to work with Michael Mann again. He is a really neat, committed and very inspired filmmaker. Also a really nice guy -- my husband and I are really fond of him." I also inquired as to who she'd like to work with after Bug, and to that she said "Wayne Wang and I are talking about doing something together again, which I'm looking forward to." Wang directed Judd in 1995's Smoke, and the project she's referring to, I'm guessing, is Wang's upcoming romantic comedy Good Cook, Likes Music, about a slacker who sends away for a mail order bride and gets some life-changing woman of his dreams, or something like that. Sounds like Judd alley, no?

Judd also confirmed that she'll be appearing in Crossing Over, and had this to say about the project: "I'm getting ready to work with a guy called Wayne Kramer, and I'm really excited about that. He's a South African who immigrated to the United States a while ago, well over a decade ago I believe, perhaps longer. He's directing a script he wrote called Crossing Over, which looks at immigration issues, and I'm looking forward to that. He's put together an amazing cast. My scenes will be with Ray Liotta and a young African girl whom I've not met yet -- I'm looking forward to that. Sean Penn and Harrison Ford are also in the movie, so that's gonna be neat." She also said she's in talks with a first-time director about a project that involves human trafficking and slave labor, but no further details. Expect a full report from the junket soon.

• The original cut of William Friedkin's The Exorcist, a true classic in every sense of the word
• The extended "Version You've Never Seen" (which is a lie because I have seen it)
• John Boorman's frankly horrible Exorcist 2: The Heretic
• William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist 3, which has its fair share of supporters (one of whom is not me)
• Renny Harlin's Exorcist: The Beginning, which kinda stinks
• Paul Schrader's Dominion: A Prequel to the Exorcist, which (no kidding) might be the worst movie title I've ever seen