Hard Candy director David Slade: like any other existentialist nihilist
Hard Candy opens Friday on the coasts, and Scott Macauley touts his interview with director David Slade, from the upcoming issue of Filmmaker. I had a spirited talk with screenwriter Brian Nelson and co-star Patrick Wilson, and I hope to post that soon. But Slade’s talking the good talk here: “I would say this film asks you to acutely evaluate what your prejudices are…. Your prejudices toward sexuality, where you personally draw the lines of pornography, what you deem acceptable and what you don’t. 
The film’s two characters are monsters. The only thing redeeming about Hayley is that she’s at that uncertain age where passion drives her life. Morally, she has no redeeming features. The only thing that allows you to identify her as a human being is that she is doing what morally should be the right thing, but she’s going so far over the line. In a world where we’ve see so many monsters… [t]he one monster left could be a pedophile, because crimes against children are the worst crimes of all. So, Jeff is the scariest monster human society has left. And this character was beautifully written by Brian, because here you are identifying with someone who morality and society says you can’t. So there alone, you question your prejudices. Another thing that really attracted me to the screenplay was that Brian Nelson had managed to [construct] arguments and put them into the words of human beings who talk in a way that people talk. That’s such an astonishingly hard thing to do… Politically speaking I’m a solipsist—I believe I’m the only one who exists in the world and no one else is around! Or, like any other existentialist nihilist, I have poor politics. But I abhor conservatism in the non-political sense, and so the film is something that gets a hold of values, goes “wham,” and says, “Now put them back together.”
This movie made me sick. I was completely disgusted and evaluating the reason why I was watching it. I don’t understand why anyone would be compelled to make a movie of this nature. David, what the hell where you thinking??????????