"I think it smells of sour grapes." -- John Pierson, on Avalos and Weiler's claim that The Blair Witch Project was changed by The Last Broadcast, The New York Post, 8/3/99

"Pierson, who has seen The Last Broadcast, said he backed Blair Witch because he believes it is a better movie." -- The Philadelphia Daily News, 7/16/99

"He never had a choice because we never gave him our movie," says Avalos of the man responsible for the success of The Blair Witch Project. "John Pierson's the guy who's the troublemaker on their side. He's the guy who's making up stories and is out of control. He's like a loose cannon, you know?" Avalos is referring to Pierson's recent statements to the press regarding The Last Broadcast, in which he implied the two directors were bitter over his support of what he deemed the "superior" film. "He's their worst enemy, I think," adds Avalos. "Because he's just saying stuff that sounds so uncool. He's just trying to be insulting to us."

While Sanchez and Myrick have discussed at length the October 1997 shoot that would result in their verite-style movie, what is rarely mentioned are the events that enabled them to film Blair Witch in the first place. "We came up with having the film be completely real from beginning to end," says Sanchez of the film's inspiration in 1992 (or 1993). Four -- or maybe three -- years after the film's inception, Haxan had, in a way, completed their goal: they had compiled a work so intensely realistic that their investor, John Pierson, "fell for it hook, line and sinker." An impressive achievement, it would seem, until one realizes that the time between the beginning and the end of the three-to-four-years-in-the-works Blair Witch was a mere eight minutes.

By what he described on the website for his company, Grainy Pictures, as "a very happy accident", Pierson discovered The Blair Witch Project while shooting the Split Screen segment "Gatorlando" at the Enzian Theater's Florida Film Festival in June of 1997. In need of a DP, Pierson contacted the Enizan's Mike Monello, a Haxan partner and Blair Witch producer who recommended fellow Haxan filmmaker Daniel Myrick. After the segment was finished, Pierson, an independent film legend known for kick-starting the careers of such notables as Spike Lee and Kevin Smith, agreed to look at a trailer presented to him by Myrick. Excited by the footage, Pierson eagerly asked to see the rest of the movie -- only to find there wasn't one. Blair Witch, it appears, was a marketing hook before it was a feature film.

Nonetheless, Pierson saw potential, and after a "strategy session" held that summer, Grainy Pictures decided to invest $10,000 to produce the actual film as well as two Split Screen promotional segments which aired in August 1997 and April 1998. Despite the lack of an actual film, publicity abounded: "Split Screen's First Season Ends With A Cliffhanger" informed the headline to an indieWIRE story which ran exactly two weeks after the web magazine’s first mention of Broadcast. The documentary-style "cliffhanger" went on to frighten many who saw the segment, but few were as affected as Avalos. "It was just too weird," the filmmaker recalls of his first viewing of Blair. "It was like, what's going on? They're walking through the woods in Maryland? Looking for a witch? That could be our movie!

"I was just about to go to Europe to meet up with Lance in Belgium," Avalos continues. "And I was calling him and telling him and flipping out, saying, 'You're not going to believe this.' But then we were like, 'Well, you know, there's no point in getting pissed or whatever. We'll just forget about it, because our movie was finished.'" The segment, which was produced by Hale, Myrick, and Sanchez with camerawork by Stefanie DeCassan, showed a different view of The Blair Witch Project, one which bore great similarity to the trailer for The Last Broadcast available on the latter film's website. Much more rooted in documentary form than verite style, the segment ended with Hale, Myrick and Sanchez pondering what could be on the film and video tapes in the "muddy duffel bag" found where the filmmakers -- Blair stars Heather Donahue, Mike Williams, and Joshua Leonard -- "disappeared." As it turns out, one year later they'd still be wondering.

Blair began shooting what would be referred to as "Phase 1" of their footage on October 23, 1997, and wrapped eight days later -- at least, until they began the process all over again in the summer of 1998. Meanwhile, the completed Broadcast was becoming more and more well-known, landing Avalos and Weiler in a Wired magazine cover story about the 25 people most likely to transform the entertainment industry. The Last Broadcast was doing so well, in fact, that it had gathered interest from the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, which planned to premiere the movie in their midnight slot -- until the film was suddenly rejected at the last minute. John Pierson is and was then a member of the Sundance committee. The Blair Witch Project went on to premiere in the midnight slot one year later.