In 2018, Jennifer Love Hewitt relayed a curious bit of trivia about I Know What You Did Last Summer. As she told it, the infamous scene in which her final-girl character, Jules, addresses her stalker by twirling around and screaming to the heavens was conceived by … a child. Specifically, a child who won a contest to contribute to the film. Here, let Hewitt tell the story, per Us Weekly:
“That scene was actually directed by a kid who won a contest to come on and create a moment for the movie, and it became the biggest part of the movie. I have no idea where he is, but he was like, ‘I want her to stand in the street and turn around and just scream, “What are you waiting for, huh?”’ I was literally like, ‘Are you kidding me right now? This is what I’m gonna do? OK. This was a great idea — yeah, let’s have this guy come in.’ Then we were doing it and it was amazing.”
She’s right, of course. The scene kind of was a great idea. Not because it’s high art — it’s ridiculous (no complaints here) — but because it’s such a memorable relic of the late-’90s and early-2000s slasher boom, when lucrative releases like Scream, Urban Legend, and Jeepers Creepers toyed with the subgenre’s tropes. By comparison, I Know What You Did Last Summer was straightforward, trading its counterparts’ meta humor for a conventional hack-’em-up that handles Hewitt’s melodramatic outcry with utmost gravity. Props to that kid, whomever he may be, for coming up with something legendary enough to merit a Scary Movie parody and a permanent place in the millennial hive mind.
Or not?
I’ve been attempting to dig up details about exactly what led to I Know director Jim Gillespie handing the reins to a minor, and according to the man himself, he did no such thing. When contacted, Gillespie and cinematographer Denis Crossan both politely refuted Hewitt’s anecdote. There was no child labor on their set, they said. In fact, the scene was already in Kevin Williamson’s script before production began (Crossan sent me a PDF of the screenplay). Crossan recalls having to reserve a crane during preproduction to capture the overhead shot of Hewitt yelling. The whole thing, he said, was storyboarded and planned out well in advance.
A page from the I Know What You Did Last Summer script. Photo: Kevin Williamson
And as Gillespie pointed out, I Know What You Did Last Summer wasn’t a particularly high-profile project during its making, even though it was based on a popular young-adult novel. The movie was fast-tracked after the success of Scream a year earlier, and it starred a quartet of up-and-comers who were still on the cusp of megafame. Why would Columbia Pictures stage a contest for a movie no one was paying much attention to yet? And are we to believe this young man read the script beforehand and conceptualized the scene out of whole cloth?
So, with all due respect, what is Jennifer Love Hewitt talking about? With her and Freddie Prinze Jr. reprising their roles for the new sequel, opening in July, inquiring minds want to know. Maybe she was conflating the sequence with something from I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, in which Jules and her roommate, Karla (Brandy), win a vacation to the Bahamas via a highly dubious radio contest. Perhaps Hewitt is mistaking it for some wild plot from 9-1-1, the same digits you should dial when asked to shriek your head off for a seventh-grader. Or maybe, as Crossan suggested to me, it’s all just “a bit of fun nonsense.”
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Before reaching out to Hewitt, I wanted to gather as much information as possible. Producer Stokely Chaffin said, “I can answer lots and lots of questions about the complicated origin of the original, but I have no recollection of that ever happening. I suppose I could be wrong, but it’s not something that Jim seems like he would do when directing his first feature.” Another producer, Erik Feig, also couldn’t corroborate Hewitt’s memories. Peter Guber, the head of Mandalay Entertainment, the production company that set up the original movies, responded, “Know nothing of it, sorry.” I also couldn’t find mention of a contest in any of the film’s press coverage.
Next, I turned to a couple of the folks behind I Still Know, the sequel that was accelerated into production and released a little over a year later to capitalize on the momentum of its $125 million-grossing predecessor. Vernon Layton, the movie’s DP, doesn’t recall anything about a miniature John Carpenter holding a bullhorn. “One of the youngest was the director, Danny Cannon, and there’s no way he would have allowed anything like that,” Layton said.
People I contacted along the way made sure to praise Hewitt. No one wanted to embarrass her for misremembering (or making up?) this extremely specific detail. “She’s lovely to work with,” Layton said. Gillespie called her “a very special person.” But how do I deal with the unsolved mystery?
It’s not that a contest winner has never contributed to a movie. One lucky fan got to submit a line of dialogue for Transformers, and a young Make-A-Wish recipient supplied a line in Thor: Ragnarok — but those were super-hyped blockbusters based on IP targeted at children, not R-rated slashers where Sarah Michelle Gellar watches a man with a hook murder Ryan Phillippe at a beauty pageant. That’s part of what makes this all so intriguing: Beyond being fun movie lore, it’s an anomaly that grows weirder and more irresistible the more you think about it.
With all of this in mind, it was time to go back to the source. Unfortunately, multiple emails sent to Hewitt’s publicist went unanswered, as did two sent to her manager. I reached out to the Sony reps handling press for the new I Know What You Did Last Summer, but no response there either. Maybe Hewitt was pulling our leg, like the many fictions Robert Pattinson has fed to journalists, or the time Dakota Johnson said she loves limes, and now everyone in charge of her publicity is colluding to keep the hope of this anecdote alive. So, Jennifer Love Hewitt, if you’re reading this, get in touch. We just want to talk. What are you waiting for, huh?
