By Jenny Halper

British Screenwriter Niall Johnson makes his Hollywood debut with White Noise, a thriller acquainting audiences with EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon), which presumably allows practitioners to contact their dead loved ones via electronically transmitted messages. Michael Keaton stars as Jonathan Rivers, a successful architect with a beautiful wife (Chandra West). When his wife dies in a car crash, Jonathan receives a visit from loner Raymond Price (Ian McNeice), who introduces him both to distraught widow Sarah (Deborah Kara Unger), and to EVP. As the initially reassuring messages Jonathan and Sarah receive become increasingly menacing, they realize their own lives may be in jeopardy.

Johnson is currently hard at work directing an all-star cast (including Kristin Scott Thomas, Patrick Swayze, and Rowan Atkinson) in Keeping Mum, which he co-wrote with novelist Richard Russo. He took time to chat with DVDFanatic.com about his work on White Noise.

DVDFanatic.com: Did you originally conceive this as a horror movie or a love story? It’s a little bit of both…

NIALL: They were always together, but the thing that inspired me to move ahead with was the underpinnings of a love story. Without the underpinnings of a love story, the horror doesn’t have the same reality. And then the horror- the supernatural side of the story- is always there, there’s always the idea that this guy’s grief blinds him to the warning signs. And the grief is so great because of the relationship that he had. I think when I first had the idea of shaping it into a script, there was more love story. But it became a ghost story, definitely- there couldn’t be one without the other.

DVDFanatic.com: Was there more of a relationship with Sarah?

NIALL: Yes, there was…no, scratch that, there wasn’t really love, but there was definitely a coming together of two people who are sharing the same experiences. But, as with any script, when you work on it, you realize some things aren’t going to…there’s a subtle way of sometimes shrinking back. But there was never a move on my part or the producer’s part to make them have a relationship at all. Didn’t want to do that. They didn’t need a relationship for them to have a friendship.

DVDFanatic.com: When did you first hear of EVP?

NIALL: I didn’t know there was such a thing as EVP when I had the idea for white noise. I was working on the story outline for white noise, and I only heard about EVP when I was starting to write the script, bizarrely enough. I’d read all sorts of stories about people who were taping the dead, and one of them was William Peter Blatty writing in the introduction to his book about the making of The Exorcist. He talks about himself, when he was at Jesuit College, and a friend of his, who recorded the dead. And I read that book about twenty years ago, and it just sat in my brain, and I started to do a bit of research, at the point when I had already decided what story it would be, and I thought, I’d better look into what these people do, who tape the dead. But when I came across the thing that’s called EVP it was a completely a surprise that there was this massive underground movement in connection to EVP.

DVDFanatic.com: The bonus tracks have footage of real EVP practitioners. Did you get a chance to meet with any of them?

NIALL: The first meetings I had were with clairvoyants and mediums. I wanted clarification on their take on it, because that’s key to the story, the idea that Keaton’s character is dabbling, is meddling. And the research I did was more in tune with the – that face this guy. So my meetings were with clairvoyants, who were saying- “don’t mess with that. It’s like a Ouija board. You’re cutting out the middle man.” The thing about clairvoyants, they say “we protect you, because we ask for protection from our spirit guide. If you’re going to make direct contact, you’re meddling, that’s danger. And that was a kind of slant I was taking. The EVP people I met- I met them, actually, after I finished the first or second draft of White Noise- which was kind of tweaking the technical side of it, to correspond…and that’s where I learned that there was phenomenon called IVP, which is like a sister phenomenon to EVP.

DVDFanatic.com: The film begins and ends with footnotes explaining facts and statistics relating to EVP. What sort of dramatic license did you take?

NIALL: I suppose- the dramatic license I took- this is in Raymond’s speeches in the script- was that the dead would talk to you about anything, like conversations in this life about anything, and they’d say sometimes they want to talk about how they died, sometimes they want to talk about you, sometimes they want to talk about your ancestors that died, sometimes they want to talk about the future. That was the key. Because if you go to a theater experience where a clairvoyant stands to the front of the theater and picks on the person in the back row, her dead uncle, and they’re talking about messages from the dead, about the future. And the angle I took with EVP is that it’s just like a Ouija board, it’s just a form of direct communication to the dead, and therefore you might hear about things that haven’t happened yet, just as you might hear about things that happened, and you might hear about things dealing with you- not just things dealing with them. That was dramatic license, one part of what EVP can do.

DVDFanatic.com: Did you write White Noise with Michael Keaton in mind?

NIALL: No, but he was an exact fit, because I wanted an actor who looked distinctly older than the young leading man type. I wanted this to be about mature people, and he had a life, things go on in their lives, are at a good place in their lives now and it all crumbles around them. He was exactly the type that was in my head. But I never allow myself to get too fixed on a particular actor, because that’s a bit dangerous. (Laughs).

DVDFanatic.com: This was your first US film…

NIALL: Correct. I’d done English films.

DVDFanatic.com: Have any nightmares about what the studios might do with it?

NIALL: Yeah, of course, I know for a fact that even with some of the London based producers, when I was first developing the story, when I spoke with them, they were like, “the end is a bit risky”…and the great thing about Gold Circle and I must say this, its an American company run by a Brit…Gold Circle really responded to the bleakness of the story. There was only one way the film could end. And it was a massive reassurance, a massive reassurance. Keaton’s not a hero- he’s a man in the wrong place, at the wrong time, reading the wrong signs, not really the ghost is telling him about the future. It was very encouraging that Gold Circle saw that.

DVDFanatic.com: How did you come up with the title? When I first heard there was a movie called White Noise starring Michael Keaton, my mind jumped to the Don DeLillo novel…

NIALL: I’d never heard of EVP when I started the film, and, to be honest, when I first came up with the title and the idea, I’d never heard of the Don DeLillo book. But the title was so perfect, I just thought, what do I do? It’s always been called White Noise, that’s what it’s about. And also, the script, for me, was not about EVP. It’s about a man, and EVP is one of the tools he uses. And White Noise works because white noise is a massive sound that builds up to either something or nothing. You can have so much white noise, but white noise is just a collection of signals, you have to decipher them. You tape white noise, and that’s how you hear the dead, but it can build up to such an extent that you can’t hear the thing you should hear, because of all the other stuff that’s going on, and that’s exactly what the film’s about. So it’s a perfect metaphor- that’s why I couldn’t- I know that it’s a novel, but it’s just perfect for this. (Laughs).

DVDFanatic.com: OK, one more. What’s your favorite DVD and why?

NIALL: My favorite DVD? Not my favorite movie, but my favorite DVD?

DVDFanatic.com: How ‘bout both?

NIALL: "Once Upon a Time in the West." The story’s beautiful, the pace is beautiful, it’s uncompromising because there are characters that you can absolutely believe in. And it’s my favorite DVD because when it came it was the full version, they had all the extras, and probably after that my favorite DVD is "The Godfather" collection, because there’s so, so much on it.

White Noise was released on DVD on May 17th. Bonus features include deleted scenes, Hearing is Believing: Actual EVP Sessions, Making Contact: EVP Experts, and Recording the Afterlife at Home Guide.