No one likes getting phone calls anymore. But for Mr. Harrigan’s Phone protagonist Craig (Jaeden Martell), it’s a little spookier than a minor inconvenience. When his elderly friend, Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland), passes away, Craig continues to get mysterious texts and phone calls from the old man’s number. Making it even creepier: The calls are accompanied by Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man.” Soon, people start to turn up dead. When we put it that way, you’d prefer an unknown number calling you every once in a while, right? 

John Lee Hancock (second from left) with his young Harrigan’s cast.

Hancock (in mask) explains the horrors of high school.

But the film isn’t all jump scares and frights. For writer-director John Lee Hancock (The Highwaymen, The Rookie, The Blind Side), adapting Stephen King’s novella was an opportunity to tell a story about a young boy becoming a man and the odd bond he shares with his dying billionaire employer. With the help of King himself and a cast led by Martell and Sutherland, Hancock made a film that has much more in common with King adaptations like Stand by Me than it does with The Shining. In another installment of “Director’s Cut,” Hancock sat down with us to break down the forbidding atmosphere — and sinister smartphones — of Mr. Harrigan’s Phone. 

Hancock with actor Jaeden Martell in a very Stephen King setting.

Your filmography has its moments of darkness and whimsy — you’ve made some movies like Saving Mr. Banks and others like The Little Things. This one feels like a fusion. Did you have a mood board or other movies you were looking at as influences?
A little bit, but that was more in terms of how we wanted to photograph it. It does have kind of a slight tonal shift, and so you wanna make sure that you build a foundation for that without anybody knowing it’s there so that it can still support [itself] once there’s a tonal shift. But I was drawn to it for the characters, just like everything you do. And also, some of the themes and things like that, that I thought would be a good challenge.

Donald Sutherland and Hancock

You’ve spoken about how stressful it was to write a script that Stephen King was going to be looking at. How did that go?
It was better than I ever could have dreamed. The start was [producer] Jason Blum calling and saying, “Hey, you know, there are a bunch of entities that are going after this novella called Mr. Harrigan’s Phone. We were thinking about going after it too. I wanted to see if you’d be interested in writing and directing it.” I read it and really enjoyed it, and didn’t have any answers yet. I knew it’d be a tough adaptation, but I thought it was probably worth trying. So we put our name in the hat. And then I wrote a letter to Stephen saying, “You know, I think it’s a tough adaptation, but here’s what I’m drawn to about the story. Here are the themes that I’m drawn to. Here are the memories it gave me from my own childhood.” Just to maybe give him a nudge to see that I really cared for it a lot. 

And so I emailed that letter to him and within about 15 minutes, got an email back saying, “Hey, John, thanks for the kind words. Let’s do this thing, Steve.” And from that point on, we’ve emailed and called a whole lot. 

Hancock and Martell

What kind of influence did he have on the finished film?
I wanted to keep him involved because he’s the source. This was in his mind’s eye. He created it. So I’d be foolish not to rely where I could on what he was thinking when he wrote certain things, whether it’s a location or a person’s name or anything.

So he was very helpful, but also really giving me the space to write and do something that’s different. It’s not a novella, it’s a movie, and they’re different mediums and have different things you have to accomplish. So he was very respectful in that way. I kept him in the loop all the way during prep through locations. Like, “Here are two different locations for Howie’s Market. When you wrote Howie’s Market and created it, which one of these seems the closest to that?” And he would say, “You do whatever you think is best, but I like the one with the red canopy.” I was like, “So do I.” He’s just great. I would send him pictures, whether it was actors or whether it was locations or whatever when we were shooting. Just keeping him in the loop, because I enjoyed that connection and I enjoyed his responses. And that continued on through post-production. And then, you know, thankfully he loves the movie.

Martell’s Craig getting bullied by Cyrus Arnold’s Kenny Yankovich

That’s a good thing. He doesn’t even like The Shining, so you must feel good about that.
I showed him an early cut of the movie and he really loved it, but then he surprised all of us with a tweet that was over the moon about it. So my phone blew up the day that came out.

Martell and Sutherland lighten up between takes

You’ve got a great cast here, but it really all revolves around Jaeden and Donald. What made them right for these roles?
I think, first and foremost, they’re both really, really talented. Every actor brings something to a role based on what you’ve seen [from] them in their past. You can call it baggage, but that has a negative connotation. I think there’s good baggage too, stuff that we know about this person that fits this character. And I think having watched Donald over the decades and grown old alongside him, there’s a familiarity, but it’s not a bad one. And it’s not like, “Oh, I’ve seen it,” because this is a different kind of role for him, even though he’s been great in horror movies and great in every movie. He’s just a really fine actor. He told me early on, “I don’t want to scare you, but this character, Mr. Harrigan, is closer to me than any character I’ve ever played.” And I didn’t lean into that too much. I went, “That doesn’t scare me.”

With Jaeden, I knew that he was going to have to carry the movie, that it was his movie. And that’s a lot to give to a young actor. However, with Jaeden, he’s been acting for a long time. I loved him in St. Vincent. Rian Johnson is a friend, and I called Rian and said, “Talk to me about Jaeden Martell; you cast him and directed him in Knives Out.” And he said, “He’s fantastic. Just hire him. This guy is so, so good.” And he is. It’s almost like he’s lived 20 lifetimes. He’s an old soul. He’s very wise and he’s very, very talented. Donald, after one day, came to me and said, “Wow, Jaeden is a really, really fine actor.” And he is. So at the end of the day, it’s two really fine actors. Put them in a room together and see what happens.

Colin O’Brien as the younger Craig

Martell older, wiser and still hoping to cash in on a scratch ticket

I think there’s something very compelling about May-December friendships in movies. I always think of Doc and Marty in Back to the Future. What do you think is compelling about that kind of relationship?
I think we enjoy when people find a way to get along and they’re from completely different walks of life, have completely different likes and dislikes. We like to see the chess go on between them, for them to become paired at the hip. And in the case of this, it takes us a while to figure out what it is, but pain and loss doesn’t know an age. If you’re an 8-year-old boy who loses his mom, it doesn’t matter. You’re still gonna feel that pain and loss when you’re in your 80s. And so the fact that they have this shared sadness cast a little bit of a shadow around their lives. 

It’s one of those things, we, the audience, understand. It’s never said, but we understand the bond is so strong that it goes beyond just like, “Hey, we’re best friends.” It’s kind of like, “I’ll do whatever you ask. I’ll go to the mat for you. I will die for you if I have to.” And I think they develop that kind of bond and it’s enjoyable. I also think we think of somebody in their 80s as the cute older person or something like that. And I love the fact that he’s irascible and doesn’t suffer fools and treats [this] boy the same way he would treat a 30-year-old man — “I hired you for a job. Do it.” Different people finding a way to come together is always good.

Martell receives an incoming call…from beyond.

This is a very recent period piece. What was it like making a movie set so recently, but in such a different time?
I like making a period movie. It’s difficult to do, I have to say, because when it comes to cars and things like that, it’s easier to do a 1930s movie like I did for The Highwaymen, you know? Because the car that drives up is gonna stick out. You’re gonna go, “Whoa, whoa, that’s the wrong movie.” Some of these things, when you’re talking about 2003 and then 2008 to 2012, you have to be a little careful with it. I wasn’t around in the 1930s, so I’m relying on pictures and people’s stories and things, but this is something where I go, “Oh wow. I haven’t seen a hat like that in a long time, but I remember it well.” So it’s kind of fun. It’s just a little trip down memory lane without going back to a time you weren’t around for. 

Sutherland’s Mr. Harrington tries to make sense of his new iPhone

What did you want to say about this era, the introduction of the smartphone?
Well, I think King said he wanted it to be not just smartphones, but kind of the time of the original sin, if you will, with the iPhone 1 coming out in 2007. And trying to see what this was like and how it changed the world. It wasn’t very many years after that when everybody had smartphones, and the rarity would be someone who didn’t have a phone that they carried around in their pocket. And I think just to see how that kind of thing could explode is pretty fun. But also the fact that it’s not just an anti-technology screed where those young people stare at their phones all day. 

Instead, it says this can be addictive. You can also give it to an 80-something-year-old billionaire who lives by himself in a house and watch how fast he gets addicted. It’s not saying technology is bad, it’s saying technology is both good and bad. It depends on how you use it, like most things. 

Mr. Harrigan’s Maine estate

Mr. Harrigan’s mansion is such an imposing location; I particularly love the conservatory that he sits in front of. Was that a set or did you find that house?
Found a house. In the script, there’s no conservatory, of course, there’s just a study. And in my mind, I pictured a certain size room. So it could be grand, but also to give you enough room to put the camera in there and to have a lot of leeway with the camera. But we looked at a lot of mansions. When you talk about American mansions, it’s a fictitious town in Maine, so it had to kind of fit with the trees and the foliage and the seasons and all that stuff. So we knew we were looking in the Northeast. We looked at mansions in Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Connecticut. And a lot of them were just too grand. They were too showy. They looked like, “I made an American Versailles here, aren’t I rich?” And it just didn’t feel like Mr. Harrigan. There was nothing kind of ominous about them. When we came to Lockwood Mansion and looked at that, there’s something. It’s not scary. It’s not like a haunted house–looking place. It’s a beautiful building, but there’s something just a little off about it, the architecture of it. And so I liked it for that reason. And then we went inside, and it had one big room after another. It’s a massive place. And we walked around and found that room. 

And when I saw that conservatory, I was like, “Oh my God, I think this is it.” I just love putting Mr. Harrigan backlit by the conservatory, always having him sit there in the chair, because it almost looks like he’s either God or the devil, one of the two. There’s something about that that’s just so kind of regal in sitting there. 

Martell puts himself in Mr. Harrigan’s shoes…or, in this case, chair

It’s the chair too. I don’t know how many chairs you looked at, but it has this very big devil horn sweep.
We looked at lots of different chairs. I would have Donald come, and some of them were too low and comfortable. And so what we had to do for that one was we found a chair that we liked, but that needed to be built up. We made a chair based around the one that we just had. It’s almost a mid-century modern attachment to an old mansion. And I just kind of like that for Mr. Harrigan, and I’m not sure why, but he was comfortable in the chair and he looked good in it, and it looked formidable too.

🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐

Listening for a ring tone six feet under

At the end of the movie, Craig is responsible in some way for the death of two people, via Mr. Harrigan. Where do you see his life leading after that experience?
I think when you see him throw the phone, it’s not as though a weight has been lifted. It’s “I’m doing this to cuff myself lest I ever be tempted to do this again, now that I know for sure that I have this power.” Because he never quite does it. The audience sees things that he doesn’t know yet. We see Kenny Yankovich and we know; he goes, “Oh, it’s just a tragic accident.” And we see the shoe polish. We know the connection. So we know something that Jaeden doesn’t, which puts us ahead of him as he’s catching up to it. And little by little, the paranoia is rising in him to the point that he realizes he has to know the truth when Dean dies. Because he’s put a call in and he’s done it out of anger. But then as soon as he does it, it’s like, “That’s not gonna happen. That’s not gonna happen.” And then when it does, he has to know the details.

It’s almost like he needs to go back to the scene of the crime to see if he left any prints. So I think when he throws the phone, he’s getting rid of it forever. But I think the look on his face as he stumbles away from the ledge tells us he’s gonna be haunted for the rest of his life. Now do I think it’s gonna inhibit him from maybe having his own family or something? No, I don’t, I don’t think so. I think it’s one of those things that he’ll always carry with him though.