that she and Corey Feldman clicked, but Corey was informed by his mother that the producers had concerns that he was too small to look believable in finishing Jason off, but got the role after showing them his prowess in wielding the machete. According to director Danny Steinmann, the casting for Tommy in A New Beginning went on till the eleventh hour: "I went through fifty Tommys before we found John Shepherd. We didn't get this Tommy until the last day before we started filming. We were panic-stricken. Everything hinged around this kid being sensitive and believable. If we had gone with the Tommy we were about to settle on, the picture would have been unreleasable." For Jason Lives, actor John Shepherd did not reprise his role from part 5 as he chose to abstain from it for personal reasons: "I was at a crossroads in my life where I was trying to decide - do I really wanna pursue acting or, you know, is this the best use of my time and talents? So I made a conscious decision on part six: 'You know what, I'm gonna pass on this'." Jason Lives' writer/director Tom McLoughlin claims to not have been aware of why producer Frank Mancuso Jr. chose to not bring John Shepherd back for the role for Jason Lives, but the latter states that he rejected the role indirectly by telling his agent to demand an extravagant salary for his continued participation. His replacement Thom Mathews had not seen A New Beginning until after he was cast, and claims that he thought the film was awful and wondered if he had made a mistake, but liked the script for Jason Lives so much that he decided to play the role anyway. In an interview, Mathews discussed his preparation for the role, stating: "...I didn’t really feel a lot of pressure. I really liked the script a lot, Tom (McLoughlin) did a great job and it spoke to me. I knew what I wanted to do. It was probably the closest character that I’ve played to myself. I had a great experience and going to just outside of Atlanta and shooting for six weeks. It was a blast." "When I saw Part V, I wasn’t thrilled and I was kind of scared. After I was hired, I started to do research and I looked at Part V and thought…