take a deep breath man.. It's just a
movie with clever marketing..
During an exclusive interview with Summer in November by her official website, she was asked about the Sessions.
Q: Moving on to Serenity the film had an incredibly innovative marketing campaign and part of that was The River Tam sessions which were incredibly haunting. How did you get involved with that and what was it like to portray River at such different stages of mental deterioration?
A: It was very exciting for me to be involved in that. I was in Texas and I was getting ready to go to Louisiana to shoot Mammoth, although we didn't end up shooting there. Joss called me and said 'Where are you? Can you come back for the weekend? I have this idea but I need to write it!' I was thrilled and I felt it was really important for people to see River before anything happened to her, when she was happy and full of hope.
I loved doing it. It was just Joss and me and it's a really special memory for me. I thought the script was very haunting. I remember when I was trying to memorize it, I hadn't been in my LA apartment for a month. I was lying in bed trying to memorize the dialogue that I was going to shoot the next morning. I couldn't sleep that night going in and out of bad dreams and talking to myself. I got scared from trying to prepare for those emotional scenes. It was a hard night to get through, the words were powerful.
Q: Plus you got to stab Joss with a pencil!
A: I know! That was so funny because the camera was very tight on Joss and I was having to lean out of the shot and Vickie, who is one of my dear friends who does my hair and did my hair for the feature, was pouring all the fake blood. It was all very makeshift. It felt like we were making a home movie in the garage. It was really fun!
I love the way Joss chose to do it (the viral marketing campaign). I thought it was brilliant- really fun. Because we had to wait so long for the movie to come out after we shot it, it was a nice little snack for the fans to tide them over.
