I know at one point after Cabin fever Eli Roth was attached to this, what happened with his involvement and also what is your dialogue like with Stephen King?

Lorenzo di Bonaventura: Well, Eli was attracted to it right away.  Eli’s take we could not set up anywhere and so he fell out and it was a little while later that Dimension bought the rights to the short story and Greenberg came in and Scott and Larry followed them then Mikael.

What was Eli’s take?

Lorenzo di Bonaventura: it’s too bloody to say it out loud.  It was madness, an entirely different movie actually.  He has such a love of the most bloody parts of the genre that I think it scared everybody at the time.  To go through some kind of transition like that, what’s very fortunate about it is some of the most interesting aspects of the story which is mental disintegration as opposed to any sort of physical degradation going on, we thought that Mikael and John the writers could bring to the table on that.

What about Stephen King?

Lorenzo di Bonaventura: Stephen pretty much lets the filmmakers make their decisions. He’s not a guy who is looking over your shoulder constantly.  He’s very clear that there’s a difference between the written medium and the movie medium. As such, a lot of novelists don’t understand that. And, that’s why you get in trouble trying to adapt things. What’s great is he completely got that and we were able to show him the movie three or four weeks ago and, fortunately, it lived up to the short story for him.

John Cusack: There is something about his stories that are so rich that I think he gets really undervalued as a writer, like I said because we were going through the script and we'd get in a room and there'd be a certain kind of logic that you have to play out and you have to kind of keep going. And so we kept going back to this 30-page short story just to see what did he write? And there was always stuff we could pull from, just little details or lines or turns of phrases or descriptions. It was amazing. It was like this 30-page piece that was like a bottomless well of stuff.

What is Olin?

John Cusack: The guy's think Olin's evil and the girls think he's not, which is interesting. All the girls I've talked to said, 'no he's a good guy. He's trying to help you out.' And the guys are like, 'no he isn't. He's the crypt keeper. He's the one who set you up for all this.'

Sam Jackson: Hopefully, I can be the cryptkeeper for the next three incarnations of this film. '1408 Returns.'

Mary McCormack: '1409.' '1410.'

Sam Jackson: Yeah. That's right. '1408 Junior.' Junior suite.

You’re a mom with a couple of daughters.

Mary McCormack: I am.

Did that make it harder to imagine a dying child?

Mary McCormack: At the time I had one, so it was easy. No. Two ups it. No. My second one is this big but she was not around then. My first was. And yeah it's hard but helps I think. I mean I think every actor uses their life and their relationships and to sort of act as their emotional life and so yeah.

Did you go home and hug your daughter?

Mary McCormack: A lot. But at work she died a horrible death.

I was wondering about your take on how almost comparatively elegant, quant, I don’t know what words to use for a traditional kind of scary horror movie these days in this world of torture porn and all that graphic stuff?

Sam Jackson: Torture porn? Really? I want to see it now! Is that like Asian cinema or something? What is it? Asian extreme, gonzo? What is it? Who’s making that?

Lorenzo di Bonaventura: I hesitate to put any genre into any sort of a box, and I think what this movie does versus what Eli has done in those movies is two totally different experiences. I hope that the genre is big enough to do all of that, and that’s when you have to, you always want the fans to show up on opening weekend, but this movie is trying to go beyond a call to the extreme, to elicit a reaction. It’s going towards the subtle or the nuance or the emotional and we need the audience to come and support us in doing that; and that’s the only way we’re going to decide how wide and how broad the genre is if the audience keeps showing up. That’s going to be our challenge. It’s funny, some people have talked to us and said that this isn’t as scary as that or that isn’t as smart as this and they’re really in a way two entirely different movies. And so I look at them as the exist in two different worlds as opposed to living in the horror genre.

Sam Jackson: Cause is The Eye torture porn? No? What’s torture porn, Hostel? This new one, Capture?

Takashi Miike type stuff.

Sam Jackson: Oh, yeah! Yeah, Ichi the Killer? Oh yeah. Ôdishon, is Ôdishon torture porn?

Yeah.

Sam Jackson: I love Ôdishon; that’s an awesome movie. It’s a good date movie! It’s a movie who hasn’t had a date in a years and makes a bad choice.

John Cusack: What’s is the Danish director who did the movie about the two guys who combine the –

Funny Games?

John Cusack: Funny Games, right? Michael Haneke. But Haneke is gory, but it wasn’t gory until the very end, so what made that movie so terrifying was the tension that it kept up and created the whole time. I think if you do a movie like this and you do it with the guy you’re talking about, I don’t know if it becomes as interesting because where do you go after the first 25 minutes of blood, guts and gore? I don’t know how you sustain tension that way.

Sam Jackson: Ôdishon is like that; nothing happens really until the end, and then it’s kind of like, ‘damn.’

John Cusack: And this has its share, we’ve seen this with an audience and they go, they jump too. So it’s really two different deals.

Sam Jackson: Every generation jumps for different reasons; people used to jump for Vincent Price, now they’re jumping for different shit.

Like the tingler.

Sam Jackson: I remember that under your seat, trying to make you think something was there. Or like the ghosts on haunted hill when they ran them on wires in the theater, you were like, ‘Awwwww, common!’ But then, it was innovative and awesome, and common…kids are so movie savvy now. The thought that 15 years ago, people were making snuff films, people were like, ‘oooh, ahhhh’ and now we’re watching them – you go to the movies and watch them. Kids are special effects savvy; they’re making their own slasher films in what, sixth grade on Photofinish, or whatever.

John, are you going to make a cameo on Entourage?

John Cusack: I haven’t gotten around to that.

Sam Jackson: He was in Smokin’ Aces.

John Cusack: No I wasn’t.

Sam Jackson: Yes you were.

John Cusack: Ok, sure. I’ve been gone; I went out of the country working on this and other things so I haven’t been around. But sure, why not.

John, what were the challenges for this role?

John Cusack: I think once we – it was a relief to do scenes with these two (points to Mary and Sam) but after a while when you’re in the third act and you’re trying to keep trying to top or keep the tension or keep the stakes raising, it required a lot of wattage, I guess, cause you had to keep putting out. So Lorenzo and Mikael and I would really try and figure out the logic of the inside of the room, and once you figured it out, you actually do it with no one to cut away to. That was a challenge. And then doing the end, it really kind of let it, going along with the dare, the room setting – you’re going to find what you’re bringing with you. You’re going to go through nine circles of hell, but each one of them is going to have a piece of your life and your past, and you’re going to have to confront your demons in it. So by the end of the movie, you sort of knew they were going to bring Katie back, the daughter back – and it was, ‘Are we going to go here? Are we going to go this dark?’ And we sort of had to, but that was kind of dark, that was a dark place to go – when you saw that little girl walking on the broken glass; that wasn’t a fun day on set. It’s all pretend and we’re just making a movie, but it’s still – that was challenging.

How would you describe the line of ‘men like him and women like him’ talking about you?

Sam Jackson: I guess that means we’re ok with the human race.

John Cusack: They got the demographic.

Sam Jackson: I don’t know, really? People do studies about stuff like that?

Lorenzo di Bonaventura: (shakes head) Oh yeah.

Sam Jackson: Really, that’s bizarre. I just assumed people like me because they come see your movies or they don’t or they won’t come and see them. I don’t know how you classify that. I just think when you approach the work honestly, and people appreciate what you do and the sincerity and the effort that you put into giving them something that’s real and not acting down. I try not to act down to people, I just try and act as normal as I can. When audiences have an opportunity to see the things you’re doing that makes sense to them, or they see things that make sense to who the human beings are or people that they know who act that way. And they appreciate it in another kind of way and I appreciate you as an actor for being honest with them.

So you don’t see it that way?

Sam Jackson: So I don’t see it what way?

They way you see it, you just see it the way you see it.

Sam Jackson: I know what I want to see if I’m an audience member, so I read scripts as an audience member, number one. I always see a script and say, ‘Do I want to see this?’ Or number one, ‘Would I pay my money to go see this?’ Then, ‘Would I pay my money to see it with me in it?’ And if the answer is yes, then I do it. So I approach things as an audience member; my wife says that to me all the time that I have a bad habit of watching myself do something. She used to claim I was a bloodless actor cause I would stand there and do stuff on stage and I would kind of look at the audience and see how they were reacting, cause I wanted to see what I thought I was doing. But, I still tend to think of myself as an audience member, so when I’m doing something, if I do go to the monitor and look at it, I look at it like I paid my money to see it. And do I believe that and does that fit in with what I’m trying to do in terms of the context of the film, and am I happy with it. But most times, I don’t even go to the monitor; you can offer it to me, but I’ll usually wait and watch the movie.

What wouldn’t we want to see you in?

Sam Jackson: A dress.

John Cusack: You’ve got Rudy Giuliani; that’s the Giuliani thing.

John, are you still attached to Cosmic Banditos and the remake of Better Off Dead?

John Cusack: Yes, no. Cosmic Banditos is something we’re developing, although John From Cincinnati seems to have stolen our thunder – it looks like that way. All these scripts are floating around and then it ends up on HBO, so that’s the show when you develop something. And I heard about that (Better Off Dead), but I don’t know anything about it.

John, what about the ‘women like him, men like him’ thing?

John Cusack: Sure, I think people respond to – kind of echoing what Sam said is they respond to something personal about you. So I don’t know if there’s another actor who reminds me of Sam or another actress who reminds me of Mary, so you don’t have to play the same character all the time, but if you access something about yourself that you think is true, you’re not trying to be someone else and you’re not trying to be some cookie cutter version of someone else and people respond to it. That’s probably it, or maybe its women and men like you if –

Sam Jackson: You’re not too cute and you’re not too ugly

John Cusack: Not too cute and not too ugly.

Sam Jackson: Not too threatening

John Cusack: If you’re really too good looking, guys won’t like you cause the girls are going to –

Sam Jackson: Wow, he’s like an ordinary guy.

John Cusack: Yeah, you have to be perfectly average.

Sam Jackson: Interestingly enough, yeah.

Can you talk about the Paris Hilton situation?

Sam Jackson: What?

John Cusack: Yeah, I’ll talk about it. I think all heiresses should be put in prison on general principle.

Sam Jackson: Oh….not my daughter, no. My daughter’s an accidental heir, it’s only because of what I’ve done.

John Cusack: No, no, no; I’m talking about old money.

Sam Jackson: Oh, old money, alright.

John Cusack: I’m Irish-American, so I’m anti-royalist. I intransigently don’t trust the monarchy, so any heiress should have to do prison time – mandatory prison time.

Sam Jackson: This story is way bigger than it needs to be, really, for real. That’s just the truth; just way bigger than it needs to be.

John Cusack: It’s only sad in the context of that it’s taking up – to me, I’ll tell you, fuck. It’s sad to me cause it’s taking up air time when habeas corpus is suspended and no one else is doing anything about it.

Mary McCormack: And Scooter Libby was just sent to jail.

John Cusack: Habeas corpus, it’s the foundation of our structure, right. You have to face your accuser on all your rights and all your rights stem from that, right? The Bush administration is taking away habeas corpus and people are talking about Paris Hilton – that’s America.

Do you think Paris and Scooter should be chained together?

Mary McCormack: That’d make a cute couple – now there’s a reality show.

Sam Jackson: Yeah.

Mary McCormack: Nicole Richie’s out of luck. That’d be a real punishment.

John Cusack: That is a fascinating and grotesque story, isn’t it.

Mary McCormack: Just because it happened the same day, they were both arraigned on the same day.

John Cusack: They were both? Another one was arraigned?

Mary McCormack: No, I just mean Scooter –

Sam Jackson: No, Scooter and Paris.

What’s an inner demon that each of you have that you’d be terrified to come out in that room?

Mary McCormack: I’m a classic girl, I can’t do bugs, no bugs for me. I mean, real demons are much bigger, sadder things like family safety and all that. But in terms of just shallow demons, it’s bugs for me – no bugs, no bats.

John Cusack: Yeah, shallow demons would be rats; big demons – but it hasn’t happened to me – but if I was responsible for someone else’s death and if something like that would have happened and I’d be haunted by that person, that would be my worst fear. If I did something to someone, that would be the worst thing that I’d be responsible for death. And on a shallow level, just rats – I hate ‘em.

Sam Jackson: Um…

Lorenzo di Bonaventura: It’s not snakes…

Sam Jackson: Not working –

John Cusack: You won’t have that problem.

Sam Jackson: The phone stops ringing, ‘damn.’ And on a really deeper level, getting older is one of those things that – there are certain things I used to know, and I don’t know anymore and I’m disturbed by that cause Alzheimer’s runs in my family and when I walk in a room and I don’t know why I walked in there – it’s really starting to fuck with me. So I’m having that issue, but I’m doing more crossword puzzles.

But you have a gun.

Sam Jackson: Yeah, exactly. I’ve got a gun, so I don’t worry about it.

Mikael Håfström: I don’t know, I couldn’t even tell you, this is a PG-13 film. But I think the question sums up something quite interesting – that’s what 1408 is about. It’s a personal journey and you walk in the room with you or you or even you (points to people in the room), you will have a totally different story; and I think that’s what he talked a lot about and I think that’s a lot about the room. And also that’s exactly what the question was – if I had been in 1408, what would be the demons I would have to stand up to them. And we all have them, and sometimes in life we have to approach these demons and take another step in life, or whatever, it’s a private thing to me, personally. The way I saw the room, that’s what it’s about or not – it could be very real.

Mikael, what’s it like going Hollywood?

Sam Jackson: Woahhhhh.

Are you going to do more movies here?

Mikael Håfström: Well, the weather is much better here, which is not a bad thing. I think the good thing for me is having that possibility that I can choose what I did for a profession. Sweden is a small country and I have been working there, and there have been ups and downs; I had the fortune of doing a couple films in this country. And I had stopped planning anything a long time ago, because life takes you places; being here, working with these people – it’s an amazing adventure for me, obviously. That’s what’s next, I honestly don’t know. I’m sure something will transpire. But yeah, it’s about material, it’s about finding the right material, obviously, and the right people – Sweden, here, wherever, let’s see what happens.