It is the Fourth of July, and Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) has just earned the coveted Croaker Queen beauty contest, to the delight of her boyfriend Barry (Ryan Phillippe), a wealthy, cocky, handsome jock; her best friend, the smart and ambitious Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt); and Julie's boyfriend, Ray (Freddie Prinze, Jr.), an ambitious working class young man. In the Fall, Helen will go New York to pursue her dream of becoming an actress; Ray is heading there too, to become a writer. Barry and Julie are off to Boston, he to play football and she to pursue law. With high school behind them and knowing that the fall will separate them, perhaps forever, the four friends make a pact to always be there for each other, no matter what happens. That night, the four celebrate, partying at Oscar's Oyster Bar and driving out in Barry's new BMW to an isolated and romantic beach. After regaling each other with scary stories about what happens to trysting teens in remote places, and reveling in each other's company, they realize it's time to head home. Barry's had way too much to drink, and Ray insists on driving them back. Barry's antics in the car, tossing cheap bourbon around, leads to a crash on notorious Reaper's Curve - they�ve hit something large in the middle of the road. It's a man.
The accident quickly shatters their party mood. Scared and confused, they struggle with each other and their consciences over what to do with their victim, knowing that calling the police, with their alcohol levels up and the car covered in booze, will undoubtedly lead to a conviction for vehicular manslaughter -- meaning no Boston, football, law school, or New York dreams come Fall. They finally make an uneasy decision to hide the body in the ocean, keep the secret to themselves and continue on as if nothing happened.
A year passes. Julie has gone to Boston but has not become the college success she expected to be. Back home for the summer, Julie's mom hands her a letter that has just arrived. Inside is a single sentence - "I know what you did last summer." Someone outside their circle knows their secret -- a clever and vicious tormenter who seems to know their weakest points, their deepest insecurities, attacking them where they are psychologically most vulnerable. Someone is determined to make sure that these four golden teens do not get away with their crime.
The Story
"It's about secrets and how they can kill us," says writer Kevin Williamson, describing I Know What You Did Last Summer. "These are four incredibly bright kids who are all growing up and coming of age and then something terrible happens. They have a choice to either come clean and tell the truth, or cover up and lie. Of course, they make the wrong choice. But most of the people in the audience will probably think, 'I'd do that too.'"
Says producer Eric Feig, "I think the story taps into a real sort of primal issue. These kids are the best and brightest of a small town. These are the kids who are going to get out, go to the big city, have bright futures ahead of them. And then, suddenly, this accident happens. They discover the psychological implications of their decision - the fact that you can't do something like this and not have the consequences come back to haunt you. I think that most kids their age don't realize that in one moment, you can change your life forever. And in the film, that one moment changes them for the worse and, together, they have to rally round and work through it together."
Scottish filmmaker Jim Gillespie makes his American feature film directing debut with I Know What You Did Last Summer. "What's so amazing about Jim," says Feig, "is that he understands the language of the psychological thriller and also how kids work together. In a way, my favorite thing Jim said about the movie was that its core is this issue of the accident, this body on the side of the road - what do you do? What would I do if I hit a body on the side of the road and no one saw me and I could get away with it? This is an old-fashioned morality tale - everything from Chaucer to Dostoyevsky hinges on that kernel."
The Locations
Recently chosen by Entertainment Weekly as one of the 50 most creative people in Hollywood, I Know What You Did Last Summer is Kevin Williamson's first film following the enormous success of his first produced screenplay, Scream. A native of North Carolina, Williamson set Last Summer in a town close to his boyhood home of Oriental - Southport, an idyllic seaside fishing village. And, unlike the overwhelming majority of films produced today, I Know What You Did Last Summer was actually filmed on location, in Southport, 35 minutes south of Wilmington. Williamson was pleased with the choice: "Southport is this incredible, idealistic place to live. It's the type of environment where the viewer will say, 'God, I wish I lived there.' The film is about a perfect town and four perfect kids - and then their lives go to hell. We wanted people to say, 'How could it happen there?'"
Producer Feig agreed on the importance of shooting in Southport: "The town is incredibly important, like Amity in Jaws or Bodega Bay in The Birds (where we actually shot a few scenes.) Production designer Gary Wissner, who is responsible for the look of Seven and Millenium has a strong eye and really grasped the underlying claustrophobia of the town and, after the incident, the town suddenly seems not so quaint but a little bit ominous."
The sleepy town appears in the film as it does to its year-round residents - a 200-year-old, Norman Rockwell-like fishing village, situated on the Cape Fear River. One of the area's most beloved traditions - the Croaker Festival (named after the local fish) - made its screen debut in the film. An annual festival of parades, contests and good eating, the Festival was, for Williamson, "the perfect symbol of the most picture-perfect summer imaginable. It was important for the characters to have an ideal external life so that it would contrast greatly with their tormented internal life."
Because of its proximity to the booming East coast production hub of Wilmington, N.C., the producers were able to take advantage of the 900 local film technicians and resources for production equipment.
The Characters
The filmmakers were thrilled to attract the attentions of four of the hottest young actors working today. "We got the very best actors," says Feig. "Everyone is going to identify and say, 'O.K., I get that.' Each one of those kids, each one of their reactions, could be me under those circumstances." And all the cast members were very close in age to the characters they portray. Says Hewitt, "We are people this age that are going through these same things on a different scale every single day of our lives. So we don't have to think about what it is to feel that way."
The moral center of the film is Julie, played by Jennifer Love Hewitt, known as "Love". Says Feig, "She is really the soul of the movie in that she's sort of the good spirit - she wants to call the cops; she wants to do the right thing." Hewitt describes Julie "as the all-American girl next door. She's very brave and incredibly strong. She's the sort of girl who seems to have it all together, but underneath doesn't as much as she seems. She's the type of person that finds her strength giving security to other people's insecurities, like her best friend Helen and her boyfriend Ray."
The moment of the accident is Julie's turning point. Says Hewitt, "Suddenly you're standing with three people you've known your whole life and suddenly you know absolutely nothing about them. They're just strangers, and you're on this road with a dead guy and a bunch of strangers who can't tell you what to do. You don't know where to run, you don't know whether to stand there, and Julie takes the logical position - we have to go to the police." Her friends, however, talk her out of it, and, continues Hewitt, "Julie sort of loses Julie that night. She becomes somebody she doesn't like. And she feels betrayed and Ray, the one she loved, suddenly she can't trust him anymore, and now she's really, really alone."
For Hewitt, doing a scary, psychological thriller was a tremendous challenge: "I'm one of the biggest scaredy-cats ever and I can't go see movies like this because they scare me too badly. But that intrigued me and made me decide to do the film because not only was I getting to play a great character and work with terrific people, but I was going to get over one of my biggest fears by facing it head on. Everything Julie learns in the movie, I learned with her - as she sort of gets over her fright and grows strength, so do I."
Sarah Michelle Geller, who plays Helen, the smart but insecure beauty queen, was attracted to the film by the complexity of its characters. Says Geller, "I loved the script. When you're a young actress, it's very rare to find characters our age that are this fully developed. These are four really strong, intelligent characters who go through transitions that are really human. And for me the character of Helen was a real departure, and it was something I really wanted to do."
Ryan Phillippe plays Barry, the golden boy whose life is shattered by his mistake. Says Feig, "Instead of just giving an all-American-football, stilted performance, Ryan brings so much heart to the part. You actually see underneath his veneer into a much more complex character, with a lot of different motivations." For Phillippe, the most compelling aspect of the story "was the deterioration that takes place amongst these four teenagers who are affected by first the incident and then the terrorizing. It's rare to have a character like mine that starts out with everything and then you take him to a point of just disconcerted misery, just lost and having to bury that underneath all the bravado and conceit he can muster. These people start out so wonderful and end up becoming shells of their former selves."
Freddie Prinze, Jr. plays Ray, "a kid from the wrong side of the tracks," say Feig. "Among the four of them, he's the one who doesn't have the money to get him out of trouble and, at this crucial moment, we find out what the others really think of him and how he thinks of himself in the group. Freddie brings the character a sort of moral uncertainty. You understand that he is a guy who's trying to figure things out."
For Prinze, getting the script from his agent was a shock. "When I was in fourth grade in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I read a book by Lois Duncan called 'I Know What You Did Last Summer'. I read this book and was terrified for a month and didn't want to sleep or anything and then, suddenly, ten years later I opened a script and the title, in big, huge, frightening letters said I Know What You Did Last Summer. I had the biggest flashback and, after I read Kevin's terrific script, I really wanted to do it."
Continues Prinze, "Ray is an outsider. He doesn't come from money; he has to work hard for everything he gets, and he's genuinely a nice guy who's just trying to fit in. He dearly loves his girlfriend Julie and these are her friends. One of the things that attracted me to the character was that in the beginning he's this nice, wholesome kid and in that one year after the incident, he becomes a man."
For Williamson, the film's stance against drinking and driving is vitally important. 'Drunk driving plays a large part in the character's downward spiral. It is very apparent that the entire nightmare the characters experience could have been avoided if they hadn't been drinking. The lead character ultimately learns about responsibility and that she can change from her past actions and do things differently in the future."
Cast Biographies
The multi-talented JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT (Julie James) is just about everywhere you look - and listen - this year. Known as Love to family and friends, Hewitt currently stars as Sarah Reeves, on FOX Television's Golden Globe-winning series Party of Five. For her work on the show, Hewitt was recently honored with a 1997 Hollywood Reporter Young Star Award nomination as Best Actress in a Television Series.
Besides her lead role in I Know What You Did Last Summer, Hewitt will be seen later this year in the independent film Telling You, written and directed by Robert DeFranco. In addition to acting, Hewitt is a gifted vocalist with three solo albums to her credit. Her first CD, "Love Songs," was released in Japan in 1992 - singles from that album have been released in England, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. She made her Atlantic Records debut with the dance-oriented pop album "Let's Go Bang." Her latest Atlantic recording, "Jennifer Love Hewitt," hit stores in September 1996 and features the singles "No Ordinary Love� and �I Believe In..." Also included is "It's Good To Know I'm Alive" from the soundtrack of House Arrest, in which Hewitt co-starred with Jamie Lee Curtis and Jennifer Tilly.
Born on February 21, 1979, in Waco, Texas and raised in nearby Killeen, Hewitt became a member of the Texas Show Team at age nine, accompanying the troupe on a tour of Russia. She arrived in Los Angeles on her tenth birthday and began appearing in commercials. Hewitt made her television debut singing and dancing her way through two seasons of the Disney Channel's Kids, Incorporated. She was also a series regular on Steven Bochco's The Byrds of Paradise (ABC), the Chad Everett adventure series McKenna (ABC), and the Matt Frewer sitcom Shaky Ground (FOX). Her additional feature film credits include Trojan War and Sister Act II: Back in the Habit.
Hewitt was selected to be the 1996 spokesperson for the Sears & Seventeen Magazine Peak Performance Scholarship Program, which encourages self confidence and achievement in young women. In addition. she has hosted a series of specials for MTV on teenage issues entitled "True Tales of Teen Trauma" and "True Tales of Teen Romance." She resides in Los Angeles.
Determined and accomplished are two words that describe young Emmy winning actress SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR (Helen Shivers). A veteran of television, theater and film, Gellar is now starring in her own television series, the popular and critically acclaimed Buffy the Vampire Slayer, currently airing on the Warner Bros. network.
Gellar�s career spans nearly fifteen years - quite a feat for a woman of twenty. Her other feature film credits include Funny Farm, Over The Brooklyn Bridge and High Stakes. She won an Emmy in 1994 for her role in the ABC daytime drama All My Children and starred in the telefilm An Invasion of Privacy and the mini-series A Woman Named Jackie. Her theater credits include "Jake's Women" and "The Widow Claire."
Gellar recently wrapped filming on the feature Scream 2, which is scheduled for release in early January 1998. Originally from New York, Gellar currently resides in Los Angeles.
RYAN PHILIPPE (Barry Cox) is a young actor to watch in 1997. He was seen this summer in Greg Araki's coming-of-age film Nowhere and has completed filming on the feature films Homegrown and Little Boy Blue.
In the action comedy Homegrown, Phillippe stars with Billy Bob Thornton and Hank Azaria - three mellow pot farmers who inadvertently get involved in a mob plot. Little Boy Blue is a dark comedy from Lakeshore Entertainment which co-stars Nastassja Kinski. In the film, Phillippe stars as a young man who makes a horrific discovery concerning his dysfunctional Texan family.
Phillippe is best known for his role as the timid 'Gil Martin' in the Disney feature White Squall where he co-starred with Jeff Bridges and Scott Wolf. He recently completed filming the feature Studio 54 for Miramax. Phillippe resides in Los Angeles.
FREDDIE PRINZE, JR. (Ray Bronson) was most recently seen co-starring in To Gillian On Her 37th Birthday starring Peter Gallagher, Claire Danes, Kathy Baker and Michelle Pfeiffer. Prinze also stars in Miramax's upcoming The House of Yes, co-starring Parker Posey, which screened in competition this year at the Sundance Film Festival. Prinze was also seen in the ABC television movie Detention, Siege at Johnson High co-starring Rick Schroeder and Henry Winkler, in May 1997.
After graduating high school, Prinze left his hometown of Albuquerque and moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as an actor. Prinze began his work in television series and soon starred in the ABC Afterschool Special Too Soon For Jeff.
Aware of his late father's success as an entertainer, Prinze too felt the calling to perform. Throughout his youth, Prinze acted with the Albuquerque Children's Theatre and the Duo Drama Company. Besides acting, Prinze has a long-long love of the martial arts and also enjoys computer animation and games.
Crew Biographies
Born in Newbern, North Carolina, screewriter KEVIN WILLIAMSON�s first script to be sold was Killing Mrs Tingle, a black comedy that will be produced later this year for Interscope. His next original script, Scream was inspired by his childhood fascination with horror movies and became his first produced screenplay. Williamson has also ventured into the world of television, his first production was Dawson's Creek for the Warner Bros. network. He will make his directing debut with The Faculty, a sci-fi thriller which he also penned. In addition, he has just completed work on Scream 2.
Scottish filmmaker JIM GILLESPIE (Director) makes his American feature film directing debut with I Know What You Did Last Summer. Gillespie began his film career in 1983, as a production assistant on Michael Radford's Another Time, Another Place. Working his way up the ladder, Gillespie was soon directing for Scottish television (The Folks Who Live on the Hill, The New Scots) and wrote and directed two series for the BBC (Cardiac Arrest, Ghostbusters of East Finchley.) Gillespie also wrote and directed the short film Joyride for BFI/Channel Four.
NEAL H. MORITZ is co-owner of Original Film, a feature film commercial and music video production company. He received his undergraduate degree in economics from UCLA and his graduate degree from Peter Stark motion picture production program at USC. Moritz's first feature was 1991's highly successful Juice. Soon after, he produced the feature The Stoned Age as well as two movies for HBO; Blind Justice, a western starring Armand Assante and Elizabeth Shue, and Framed, starring Jeff Goldblum and Kristen Scott Thomas.
* This is an edited version of the production notes compiled from available sources. [The introductory synopsis may not be part of the official production notes]
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