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Eventually, the idea that she does it on purpose to explain what’s going on to her daughter, because she knows she’s going to die anyway, because of her cancer, unlocked the ability to do an FD death that you hadn’t seen before: someone knows the Rube Goldberg is coming for them, and uses it to communicate urgently to their loved one.
Another great example of how complicated it is to build these set pieces is that, originally, it was going to be the fire extinguisher that went flying through her head, because we’d seen videos of fire extinguishers [where] someone drops it and it takes off like a missile. We were going to have it roll across the porch, but then we realized that a fire extinguisher doesn’t roll… So, the entire movie, we were like, “We should do this.” Then you get the actual object and you’re like, “Wait, this object does not do that.”
The weather vane was a great detail, because not only did it mirror how she died at the Skyview, it also is something that’s moved by wind. Wind is, of course, the early warning detection system of Death. All those different ingredients came together for how she dies.
To Kaitlyn’s credit—who plays Stefani—we had to explode a huge amount of blood right in her face to give you that shock of a person’s head getting exploded right in front of you. What you don’t see in the movie is that they have these air cannons that shoot blood out of them. But when you shoot it, it makes the sound of [fart noise].
Here’s this incredibly dramatic moment where she has to be super serious, but right before that, she heard this silly fart noise. But she stays in character, while also having blood in her eyes and mouth, so it’s a big testament to her acting in that moment.
