(Note: As the film progressed, Kevin was getting nauseous from the jerkiness of the hand-held video-camera style used in the film. We start the transcription at the moment they reach the car for the ride home.)

K - What was really interesting about that was you hear everybody in the audience going, 'Was that an ear?' (Suzanne laughs.) Some people were going, 'Are those intestines?' And it's like everybody's like going, 'What IS that thing?' But, you know what? Really, you're not supposed to look at the bloody thing.

S - See, I caught the fabric right when we saw the bundle. I went, 'Oh shit. That's his shirt!' Because I saw it wrapped around there and went, 'I don't even want . . .' She says she's gonna move it, and I'm like going, 'No. Please don't move it! I don't want to know what's underneath there.' And then when she starts to open it up, and I'm like going, 'This is not a good thing to be doing. It looked like a present wrapped for you. I don't think you want to open it.' (Pause) But I can see why it's, like, such a big hit with everybody. I mean, it is! It's a scary movie, and it's scary without any special effects, without anything other than people in a forest, and a lot of nighttime shots. Those nighttime shots just about had my stomach twisted into a knot.

K - Yeah. I . . . I uh, . . . I wish I could really talk about it without being biased, but, uh, considering how it was making me feel physically, um, so I can't . . . Because I was so concerned with getting nauseous by the quick camera movements, I don't know exactly how scared I would've normally been.

K - It was pretty good, though. I can't say I was scared cuz stuff like that doesn't . . . I don't know what 'scared' is when I see movies. I know what 'startled' is. If you can equate that with 'scared,' fine. I've been startled in a movie. There's this heavy sense of dread, heavy sense of . . . I can't say 'fear,' but . . .

S - Okay. Yeah. Now I got it. (Pause) Well, now I'm even more creeped out, cuz I didn't understand that ending. Now, you've explained it to me, and I don't like it. It scares me now. (Laughs) It's like, oh shit! I didn't quite catch that! (Groan.) But, um . . . The one thing that really got to me was the fact that because you're seeing through this hand-held camera, it's like, y'know, normally in a scary movie, you're usually watching somebody walk into a door. So, you're expecting something to jump out at them, or something at that person, but not right at YOU. And that's what I . . . Because of the hand camera, I kept thinking something was gonna be jumping right out at ME.

(At this point, the car stops somewhere, and Kevin suddenly feels extremely nauseous. He stops tape, apparently throws up on the pavement, and continues recording. We pick it up minutes later at around 12:56am 7/31/99)

S - Yeah. But, something I said earlier that didn't catch on tape was that I thought that the editing between the two . . . the black and white and the color film . . . was really good! I really liked the flipping back and forth. Cause it kinda like kept taking you from reality to unreality and back and forth and stuff like that so it was pretty trippy. Cause it seemed like the black and white was real and the color was not real for some reason. Because the black and white seemed, I guess, creepy and dark and dingy and . . .

S - Right, but it's just that I think that it . . . To me, it seemed like when they make the comment in there that . . . when Josh says to Heather, "I know why you like this camera so much. It's because, looking through it it's not reality. Nothing's real.' And I liked that because that really kinda felt the way I did because whenever I saw black and white, I kinda got creeped out, because I thought, "Oh God. Something horrible is gonna happen." And when I saw color, everything was fine. I mean, it seemed to be like, well everything's okay. "Okay, I can see the green of the tents, so everything's fine." Y'know? But when all you can see is black and white you're going, "Okay. Is this night? Is this day? What's going on here?" I liked the juxtaposition between the two, flipping back and forth all the time. It kinda kept you tottering. You didn't know where to be.

K - I mean, a lot of jostling and moving around and I mean no one was paying attention to the trailers, and toward the end when they saw that bundle of twigs bunched up in front of the tent after Josh is missing, and, I mean, it's like DEAD SILENCE. You coulda heard a pin drop in that room.

S - Um, and along those lines, one thing too that, what I thought was good about the movie is that because it didn't have anything jumping out and scaring people, you didn't have the "scream factor" in there, which does have a tendency to detract from the movie because if everybody's screaming, then you might miss something. So, it was like, you couldn't really miss anything because nothing quite jumped out. Nothing jumped out. I kept seeing things down in the corners of the camera. There was nothing there, but I just could swear . . . "I see something down there. Don't pan back over that way! I don't wanna see that thing again!" Even though there's nothing there, y'know? It's just the way a rock was shaped.

K - I can see a sequel to this as that article mentioned (Entertainment Weekly magazine mentioning the success of the film) only because I think that there's a lot more potential for doing a basic documentary-style film, and I think that there are a number of things you could do without having, like you said, the normal "figure-jumping-out-of-a-closet" routine. Uh, it's like, having the audience look at one side of the screen, or expect something to come out one side of the screen, and it comes on the opposite side of the screen. There are a lot of weird things that they could do. They could . . . It's like when they found those twigs, those bunched up figures that kinda looked like, well they looked like this (holds up magazine ad showing Blair Witch logo) like a cross, or maybe like an effigy or something, or a voodoo doll made outta twigs. It's like they look at that and they're like going, "What the fuck is that?" It's interesting. One of the reasons why I wanted to see this is to me one of the scariest moments in the last 15 years was the scene in Aliens where all you're seeing is video images from the headsets of all the Marines, and when the aliens start attacking, all you hear is this violin sound going down in pitch, and that guy, I forget his name, the Lieutenant looking at all of these video monitors as people are shooting off shotguns and screaming . . . One guy's headset goes off and his vital signs just go flatline . . . just chaos . . . and you really not seeing much.

S - Well, that's why I always go back to the original, "The Haunting," because there's nothing in there! There's no special effects in that whole stupid movie. It's all just sound and imagination, and I do like those the best. Those are also movies that scare me, but at the same time leave such an indelible impression on me that I'd want to see them again, but not, y'know, like "The Exorcist" creeps me out so bad, I can't even watch the movie again. Whereas, like "The Haunting," I could see over again. I could see it again. And I could see this movie and just kinda go like this (peeking through her fingers, covering her face) and hide a little bit, but still love watching the movie. It's not so creepy that I can't possibly be in the same room with a box (video box of the film) anymore, y'know?

K - The first time, you don't know what's going on, you don't know what's happening to them. Even after the end, you still don't what was happening to them, but you know that they pretty much all died. My interest in seeing it another time would be to see the acting and how they interacted with each other. Cuz I was actually watching that and I found it very effective. I don't know how they did it. I'm just guessing: They probably had all of the cameras off and said, 'Let's try this. Let's say that we've been walking for a long time, and uh, and now we don't know if we were actually going in the direction we thought we were going,' and then, take it from there. (Laughs.)

S - As far as the interaction between them, what I thought was really funny is that I could totally relate to when Heather was screaming at the guys at the top of her lungs . . . She sounds just like me when I go off hysterical, when I go completely go off in hysterics. Cuz they all played 'hysterical' really well. I mean, you could tell that they were just going off the deep end. That was really great.

K - I'd like to know exactly how much was improvised. Like for instance, they kept on referring, like that one guy, what's his name . . . Josh? Y'know, the long haired guy? He was saying, "If I don't go back home, my girlfriend's gonna be looking for me. We can't turn in the DAT, I mean, we're just gonna accept the fact that . . . we're fucked." (Both laugh.)

K - And I wonder if that was improvised, if they just said, "Okay. Let's make it so that we have responsibilities, and that tomorrow we have to be back. And let's say at this point, we realize that we're not gonna be back by tomorrow. Which means we're probably gonna have to pay more money for the rental of the camera and stuff like that. I would love to see on the Independent Film Channel an audio commentary of the actors who did this to see exactly what was improvised and maybe whether or not they came up with certain scenes right before they started shooting.

K - I guess a second viewing is nice in the sense that, when you see "The Usual Suspects" for the first time, you don't know who Keyser Soze is. The second time, you know who Keyser Soze is, and it's interesting to see how everybody relates to that one character.

K - Yeah well, I mean, obviously at the beginning when Heather is going through all of the books, she goes through wilderness survival techniques, and you're like, 'Oh yeah! Right!' Automatically I'm going, 'Oh. That's foreshadowing.' I thought I was a very interesting touch to have both of the guys distrust Heather for losing the map, and then that one guy saying he kicked it in the creek.

K - And all of a sudden everybody's agreeing to be calm and civil and then when [Mike's] at his wits end, he just admits that he did that and he's laughing as he's saying that thinking it's one big joke, and then they all beat the shit out of him. Oh, man. That was a nice touch. (Pause) I did get the sense that people at the end felt gypped.

K - I don't think so, cause I think a lot of the . . . See, this is my opinion. I think a lot of people who aren't avid moviegoers . . . I mean the kind of people . . . See I guarantee you, maybe 9 out of 10 people outta that audience might not have ever been to that theater before. (A theater that runs mostly art-house films.) I'm just guessing, because that's just not the kind of theater that most people their age (late teens/early twenties) go to. I think it was . . . I think they were there because of the hype, because of the advertising and the marketing and what not. Which was a good thing, but they want . . . It's the difference between reading a book or watching TV. The mentality I'm talking about is the mentality where you're watching TV and you don't care about the book because the TV gives you the instant gratification.

K - The book gives you a build-up, and maybe not really an instant gratification because you don't finish a book for days. I think it's part that, part short attention span that causes them to go, 'What? No fireworks at the and? No big, bloody Freddy Kreuger massacre at the end? I want a payoff!' See, I thought there was a payoff.

S - Well that's why I liked the people right behind us. They all had the right reactions. Cause there was two girls that said, 'So, are you spending the night with me tonight? Are you spending the night at my house?' Perfect reaction! Now the girl is like, 'I am NEVER gonna go see a scary movie again!' Perfect reaction!

K - It was like an instant release. Everybody reacts to death differently. Everybody grieves in a different way. Some people grieve by playing music, and other people grieve by putting on a black suit and a black tie and going to a funeral. What is telling, . . . and I'm not talking about the people who immediately shout things like, 'Oh, that SUCKED!' right after the end. Those who didn't think it sucked, and who were genuinely affected by the emotion of the ending, their first reaction is telling of their own personality. How they took something like that.

K - Are the three actors in "Blair Witch Project" going to end up like him? In terms of [having] no career after "Clerks?" I mean, I think he was in . . . actually, the only thing I've seen that guy in was an ad in Film Threat magazine. He was advertising some kind of independent film festival of some sort. I don't even know. But, are these actors from "Blair Witch" going to actually have a career after this or are they just gonna be known for this?

S - Who knows? I really liked the girl a lot. I thought she was really, really good. There was something about her hysterics and her crying and her sort of stupid upbeat attitude when they didn't need an upbeat attitude . . . I don't know. I just really liked her reactions to everything a lot.

K - What I found interesting is, of the three, she had the most drastic change of attitude, mood, and whatever. She was the most up of the three at the beginning, and she was probably the most effected of the three . . . well, aside from the guy who gets KILLED before the end, she has the most, I guess, profound emotional reaction to what's going on.

S - Yeah. I'm just, like, going 'Wow! That was real!' And then, when she hears the stuff you can see the wrinkles in her forehead go like this (throbbing) so you can tell her whole expression changed by this one quarter of her face! I mean, that's it! You know? You see this absolute horror go in her face just by a few little wrinkles in her head and the way her eye opens up a little further.

K - Very nice. Very nicely done. What that does is that's going to inspire so many more people to do . . . actually, it's gonna inspire some people to do knock-offs . . . In fact, I'm gonna start work on the "Blair Witch Satire." Right now! I don't know what I'm gonna do, but . . .

K - (Laughs) The Phantom Menace! No, but I say satire because this is the kind of movie that's . . . Not satire. Parody is what I meant to say. When you do a parody of something it's something that's well known in the public eye. It's like you don't do a parody of something that no one's ever heard of because no one will get the references. It's much easier to do a parody of "Titanic" or "Star Wars" or anything that's made a bazillion dollars than it is to make a parody of a movie no one's ever seen. Or never heard of. And I guarantee you somebody's working on a satire right now. (2 weeks later, CBS and ABC aired commercials spoofing 'Blair Witch" to advertise fall shows.)

S - It was the way she (Heather) was reacting that was really getting to me. She totally had me! I was in her body, walking with her through the whole damn thing. Like there's one part where somebody runs off, and I'm like going, 'Oh shit. Where'd that guy go?' Y'know? That's all I was, is I was in her eyeballs the whole, entire time. So when she, at first, was going, "That's not the same [log]." And I'm like going, "No it's not. It looks different. It looks like the first one you crossed. So this is good! You've found the way to the car!" Then, I'm thinking this, and all of a sudden she starts going, "It is the same one," but I'm like going uuuuGGGgggGGgghhhhh! You know? And that's what bothered me. It was more her reaction. It did bother me that they just gone around it. They'd crossed this one and somehow they got back over the river again.

(At this point, the tape mysteriously cuts off. There are 15 unaccounted-for minutes when it resumes again abruptly. We will reveal PART TWO of the infamous LOST TAPE at a later date. Keep watching this site for further updates on the whereabouts of the two missing moviegoers.)