As Wim Wenders prepared to unveil a 4K restoration of his classic 1987 fantasy film Wings of desire In November 2018 in New York City, Scott Derrickson had to be there.
The German author is not only “a mentor in filmmaking and one of my closest friends,” but also the godfather of Derrickson’s two sons, Atticus and Dashiel. When the former was born, Wenders was the first guest to visit the family in the hospital. It made sense that the then 14-year-old Atticus and his director father left their home in the Thousand Oaks neighborhood of Los Angeles to board a plane to the East Coast and attend the presentation at New York's Quad Cinema.
“Wim always had problems with the color of the black and white balance – both on the VHS, certainly on the DVD, but also with the copies – and with the right tone for the footage, which was a little sepia toned. “He was always very frustrated that he couldn't control the film to make it look exactly the way he wanted it to look,” recalls Derrickson, a veteran filmmaker who knows the difficulties well, having built an impressive resume for Marvel's created superhero blockbusters Doctor Strange and a number of high-profile horror films such as The exorcism of Emily Rose, Sinister, deliver us from evil and more recently, The black phone. “They had re-digitized the film using a complex process and there was this really wonderful technical presentation. We saw the film and it was really wonderful.”
However, a beautiful weekend of reflecting on the art of cinema and the work of a beloved mentor ended in tragedy when the 2018 Woolsey Fire devastated the West Side of Los Angeles, destroying the Derrickson family home and all their belongings and took good things with him. The tragic fire ultimately destroyed more than 96,000 acres, 1,643 buildings and killed three people. Miley Cyrus, Shannen Doherty, Neil Young, Gerard Butler, Robin Thicke and writer-producer Chris Kelly were among those who also lost their homes in the catastrophic fire.
“The only things I had after that fire were the things I had in my carry-on for that weekend trip. That’s it,” Derrickson said by phone last weekend from Toronto, where he is nearing the end of production Black phone 2. “The worst thing I ever experienced was when my son cried in New York when he found out everything had burned down. His room at home was an incredibly important space for him, and all the things he had curated were not only symbols of memory that he wouldn't get back, but also specific memories of that space. Everyone reacted to it differently; People grieve differently.”
It's a lesson Derrickson learned over the months and years of surviving a fire disaster and picking up the pieces. It's also something that dozens of Angelenos will face in the wake of the unprecedented wildfires that ripped through the Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Altadena and surrounding areas last week, marking a historic disaster that is still unfolding. The largest and most devastating fires, known as the Palisades and Eaton fires, have killed 24 people and devastated 40,000 acres in the Los Angeles area as of press time. More than 12,300 structures were burned to ashes.
“When an individual, a couple or a family loses their home, it certainly comes as a shock. The real tipping point between the two groups of people who lose their homes is those who are well insured and those who are either very poorly insured or not insured at all,” Derrickson explained. “I was lucky enough to have really good fire insurance so it didn't create a financial burden like it will for people with poor or no insurance. This is a nightmare I can't really speak to, but of course it can be life-changing, ruinous and just plain terrible. My heart goes out first and foremost to the people in this situation.”
For everyone, the immediate challenge is where to sleep. Friction often occurs.
“What a long process it is to be relocated. “It just feels like it's taken so long and you're living in a hotel or with family members, which isn't fun, especially when you're a family because it's very close,” he said, adding, that they were lucky Find comfort at the Four Seasons for a while before securing a rental. “Our children went to school, so we had to rent a house. But with displaced people there can be a kind of morbidity because one day you have a home and the next day you're homeless or have no place to call home. It's a long job dealing with insurance companies and finding a temporary place to live, and perhaps another one to live in long-term. All the time you feel the shock that everything you owned is gone.”
Derrickson and his family signed a long-term lease in a home previously owned by actor Kevin Sorbo. “I don’t mind saying publicly that I didn’t like his presence on Twitter and him as a landlord. We lived in that house for, I think, nine months and hated it. I hated it. It wasn't our home. It wasn’t a place we liked aesthetically and it wasn’t a place anyone wanted to be.”
It wasn't widely known at the time, but Derrickson and his wife Joyce had separated before the fire, which further complicated the difficult time. (He has since married Maggie Levin.) “The timing was really unfortunate in that respect and it became a dark, difficult and somewhat depressing time,” he said, adding that everyone in his family dealt with it in their own way. “What I didn't know then, what I know now, is that the loss of a home puts an incredible strain on a couple's relationship and on the family [if you have children]. Everyone grieves the loss of their home differently. My two sons and my ex-wife, all four of us, experienced the loss of this house very differently.”
However, he did not grieve over the loss of his possessions. “It’s just my nature. It's not a character thing. I'm not a very materialistic person by nature. I actually felt kind of relieved and thought, “Oh, great, I got rid of all this stuff.” I was the person who suffered the least. There's nothing special about me, it's just the way I am. I didn't miss all the clothes. I had a lot of movie posters that I loved and sometimes I thought about them.”
A professional writer and director whose work dates back to the late '90s, Derrickson also lost all printed drafts of every script he ever wrote, which were in a single pile in his office. “The vast majority of them are just gone forever. I don't have them on hard drives due to updated computer systems and such. I lost a lot of movie memorabilia. I collected a lot of great stuff, had a huge DVD collection and a huge collection of classic movie posters, some of which were unique. But that's just stuff too. My family was fine, my family was safe. So I just never really mourned that stuff.”
But there is one thing that still weighs heavy on his heart. During the Doctor Strange During his press conference and media tour, Derrickson wore something homemade: a charm bracelet that his then-12-year-old son put together from items inspired by memories shared as father and son. “It was beautiful and really artistic,” Derrickson said. “It was really sentimental because Dashiel made it for me and worked on it for an incredibly long time. That's the only thing I've lost and what I still think about. I’ll never get it back.”
In the days since the Los Angeles fires began, Derrickson has reached out to other industry insiders and close friends who have lost their homes, offering a listening ear or advice if needed. One of them is Miles Teller, who stars in Derrickson's new film alongside Anya Taylor-Joy The gorgewill be released on Apple TV+ on February 14th. “I sent him a message letting him know I was there and I know what it’s like.”
Words of comfort can help. Derrickson still thinks about something Wenders told his son this weekend in New York City. Following the screening of Wings of desireThey joined a group for a meeting at a hotel to celebrate the restoration. “Atticus was very upset that day and visibly in some sort of dejection. “Wim is not a person who uses many words, but when he speaks, he says very meaningful things,” Derrickson said. “I will never forget that. We got up from our chairs to leave and Wim called out to Atticus, who turned to him. Wim said: “Keep your memories. Nobody can burn them.'”