John McNaughton’s “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” was made back in 1986, but it did not get a theatrical release until 1990. All these years later, it remains a very disturbing look at a murderer lacking a conscience who essentially kills at random. For those who’ve seen “Henry,” you know how unnerving it gets, and the fact it got released at all is amazing.
Michael Rooker, who plays the Henry of the movie’s title, appeared at the Egyptian Theatre back in 2011 to talk about audience’s initial reaction to it. Neither he nor anyone else involved in its making believed it would ever get any response whatsoever. They filmed what they thought people wanted to see, a scary movie, but this was no average horror flick like “Halloween” or “Friday the 13th.” “Henry” involves real life horror, the kind we often do not go to the movies to see. And in the end, what’s scarier than real life violence?
Chuck Parello, who would later direct “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Part II,” managed to get the film screened at the 1989 Chicago Film Festival, and this later led to it being shown at the Telluride Festival. Rooker recollected about the first time he saw “Henry” in a theater, and he said there was around forty people in the audience. There were not a lot of sounds coming from them, and no laughter. This led Rooker to say that, after you’ve watched “Henry” twenty times, you begin to see the humor in it. For the record, I completely agree with him on this.
“Henry’s” most disturbing and controversial scene comes when Henry and Otis (Tom Towles) do a home invasion and murder an entire family. We watch these two as they view the video they shot of them killing each member, and Otis finds watching it once is not enough. After this scene ended, Rooker said more than 60% of the audience left after this scene, and they all left at the same time. Many of them were vocal about what they had witnessed:
“Fuck this shit!”
“This is bullshit!”
“This is what cinema’s coming to?”
Rooker was sitting with the producers when this happened, and he freely admitted how they all loved the response “Henry” was getting.
People came out of the film stunned and silent, and Rooker remembered seeing one guy walking out of the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles with his hands shaking. The actor also said a friend of his yelled at him because the film made him think “those thoughts.” There were no car chases, no gratuitous violence, and the violence shown in “Henry” is mostly minimal. Many of the murders Henry commits are never shown but heard as the camera circles around the bodies of his victims as we hear them take their last breath over the speakers. It ends up leaving a lot of room for imagination as you can’t help but think about what you didn’t see. Sometimes it is what you don’t see which is the most frightening thing of all.
But the most memorable incident for Rooker happened when he arrived late to one screening. As he headed into the theater, a woman, who was not walking but running out of the movie, ran right smack dab into him. When she realized who he was, she screamed and raced to the women’s bathroom. The ushers and producers had to come out and calm her down, saying to her over and over, “He’s really an actor. “
“Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” is seriously disturbing, but for good reason. Unlike other horror movies which revel in blood, gore and vicious fantasies, this was one which dealt with horror of real-life viciousness. Every once in a while, you need a film like this one to remind people of the ugliness of violence, and to make us realize we are not as desensitized to it as we may think. If “Henry” didn’t cause a good portion of moviegoers to walk out, then the filmmakers would not have succeeded in making this point clear.
WRITER’S NOTE: This article is about a screening which took place in 2011.
Actor Michael Rooker appeared at the Egyptian Theatre for the 25th anniversary screening of the film in which he made his acting debut, “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.” Even with the passing of time, it remains as infinitely disturbing as it did when it was first released. Rooker discussed how he got cast and of what went on during its making. He also told the audience this was the first time he had seen the film since it first was released back in 1986.
Rooker said he started out as a theatre actor in Chicago after graduating from the Goodman School of Drama. At the time casting began for “Henry,” he was in a play called “Sea Marks,” and the director was doing the prosthetics for it. Rooker said he didn’t care if the screenplay was good or bad because he just wanted to do a movie. Doing “Henry” was a test for Rooker to see how working while shooting out of sequence would work for him.
For research, Rooker said he read several books about serial killers which were written by doctors, but he found them to be “mostly crap.” He ended up getting more from the Texas Rangers who interviewed the man this film was more or less based on, Henry Lee Lucas. Also, the director, John McNaughton, asked him and the other actors to write character sketches. Rooker said he did not want to do that though because he did this endlessly in college and was now “sick of writing stuff down.” Instead, he recorded an audio tape of himself speaking in character.
During shooting, Rooker said he tried staying in character all day long. This led to a lot of strange times on set as actors and the crew were not sure if they were talking to him or Henry. McNaughton also got him a room for him to hide out from the actors and crew, and it was filled with mirrors which Rooker later covered up with trash bags. He stayed in the room all day until he was called to set.
The budget for “Henry” was a mere $120,000 according to Rooker, and the guy selling him cigarettes towards the film’s end was the one who financed it. Being an independent film, the filmmakers had no permits and had to hide whenever the cops were in the area. Once they were gone, the crew went right back to filming. They did, however, get busted during a pivotal scene in which Henry is shown throwing a body into the river. While shooting, four police cars came out of nowhere, and one policeman got out and asked, “Are you throwing bodies into the river?”
Once they looked in the bag Rooker was about to hurl over the side, they started laughing uncontrollably and ended up leaving the crew alone.
“Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” opened up a lot of doors for Michael Rooker, and it even scored him a role in John Sayles’ “Eight Men Out.” His terrifying performance is still embedded in the minds of so many who dared to view it either on the silver screen or on their own television sets, and they still cannot get it out of their heads. Since then, he has had a great career which has allowed him to play both good and bad guys with relative ease. Michael still has many great performances left to give, but don’t count on him doing a “Henry” sequel unless he can be convinced it can be turned into a musical.
WRITER’S NOTE: This article was written back in 2012.
It has been two years since we saw him in “I’m Still Here,” the mockumentary on his alleged retirement from acting and bizarre transformation into a hip-hop artist. Now, thankfully, Joaquin Phoenix has returned to acting in Paul Thomas Anderson’s cinematic triumph “The Master.” Justin Craig of Fox News calls Phoenix’s performance “brutally physical,” and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone says the actor gives “the performance of his career” as Freddie Quell, a deeply disturbed World War II veteran. Just watching the various movie trailers for “The Master” reminds us of how emotionally raw Phoenix can get whenever he is onscreen, and it is both amazing and scary as there is no doubt as to how far he will go in preparation to play a character.
It turns out Anderson had Phoenix in mind when he was writing the role of Freddie, and he admitted to being amazed at Phoenix’s acting abilities and of his discipline while on the set.
“He’s like Daniel Day-Lewis in his level of concentration. He just got in character and stayed there-for three months he didn’t stop. Joaquin is very unpredictable. A lot of the time I didn’t know what he was going to do,” Anderson said.
Phoenix himself only says so much about how his preparation for a role as he compares actors to magicians in that they “don’t talk about how their tricks work, because people would go, ‘Oh, that’s all you do?'” He did say, however, how Anderson set up two cameras for certain scenes between him and Philip Seymour Hoffman who plays the charismatic Lancaster Dodd. This allowed both actors to “be in the moment and not be worried about shooting the one side and then re-lighting and shooting from the other side.” Phoenix described this as making a huge difference for him while portraying Freddie.
There is also the story of how Anderson showed Phoenix a video of a monkey falling asleep and told the actor the monkey was him.
“Paul called me Bubbles on the set,” Phoenix said. “Bubbles was Michael Jackson’s pet monkey, and I was Paul’s pet monkey. The key to Freddie is an animal, just pure id. For the scene where he’s arrested and put in jail and all that, I just watched videos of wild animals that get into suburbia. If you’ve seen video of a deer or a bear that finds its way into suburbia and the cops have to tranquilize it, it seems as if the brain stops working. If they’re cornered, they’ll slam into walls, or one leg tries to go left while the other is going right. Its complete fear and chaos. They can’t control themselves at all. That was the key to Freddie. And Paul certainly called me his pet monkey.”
While Phoenix still says he experiences problems with acting, it does look like he has rediscovered his love for it in “The Master.” Hearing him talk about being an actor shows how much he has struggled with his gift to where he had to rediscover a whole new way of doing it.
“Part of why I was frustrated with acting was because I took it so seriously,” said Phoenix. “I want it to be so good that I get in my own way. It’s like love: when you fall in love, you’re not yourself anymore. You lose control of being natural and showing the beautiful parts of yourself, and all somebody recognizes is this total desperation. And that’s very unattractive. Once I became a total buffoon, it was so liberating.
“I’d see child actors and I’d get so jealous, because they’re just completely wide open. If you could convince them that something frightening was going to happen, they would actually feel terror. I wanted to feel that so badly. I’d just been acting too long, and it had kind of been ruined for me. I wanted to put myself in a situation that would feel brand-new and hopefully inspire a new way of approaching acting. It (“The Master”) did do that for me.”
As Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officer Brian Taylor, actor Jake Gyllenhaal finally gets to play a cop for the first time in “End of Watch.” Written and directed by former South Central Los Angeles resident David Ayers, the movie follows two young police officers played by Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena who are marked for death by a notorious cartel after they confiscate money and firearms from them. Although it was shot in 22 days on a budget of just $7 million, Gyllenhaal did not skimp on the details and went through a seriously intense preparation which extended far beyond him simply getting a buzz cut.
Gyllenhaal underwent five months of serious training with the LAPD, and this included going on 12-hour ride-alongs through various crime-ridden neighborhoods. These ride-alongs had a schedule which started at 4:00 p.m. and went through to 4 a.m., and he went on them as much as three times a week.
“On my first ride-along in Inglewood, someone was murdered. We were the second car on the scene,” Gyllenhaal said of his experience. “That was definitely a wakeup call. We were involved in stolen vehicle chases. You see domestic violence, disputes that turn violent. You really see your city differently after that.”
Gyllenhaal admitted to getting a little nervous at times as he and the police rode up on crimes involving domestic disputes, attempted murders and stolen cars. The actor pointed out, however, that he was with some pretty amazing officers who made him feel very protected in such a dangerous environment. In addition, he went to a dojo in the mornings for fight training and also got a lot of exposure to weapons and tactical training as well.
“We did training with live ammunition and training with the SWAT Team a few times a week for six-hour sessions,” Gyllenhaal said. “We had to learn tactic exercises and moving exercises with live ammo and then we did fight training in Echo Park. David Ayer, our director, his best friend has a dojo, so we trained there in MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fighting too. Eventually, after getting the crap beaten out of you and being on the street, you start to actually come into the role and feeling like you really can play the part.”
But one of the most interesting stories regarding his preparation to play Officer Brian Taylor involved him getting shot by a taser.
“I did get tased. We were at the police academy, and they asked us if we wanted to try it out and me being me said, ‘Yeah, of course, yeah!’ Actually, they gave us a choice between pepper spray and being tased,” Gyllenhaal recollected.
When it came to choosing getting tased or pepper sprayed, Gyllenhaal’s decision proved to be a well-informed one:
“Pepper spray is long and painful, it lasts for like 45 minutes and the taser just lasts for five second,” Gyllenhaal said. “But afterwards it’s actually kind of relaxing. After you’ve had thousands and thousands of volts of electricity going through your body.”
It looks like Gyllenhaal’s preparation for “End of Watch” has really paid off as he is getting some of the best reviews of his career. It is clear playing a police officer has had a tremendous impact on him as he talked of the stigma cops constantly deal with when they are out on the street in uniform. He has also gone on to say how the experience of making this movie has completely transformed not just his idea of law enforcement but of Los Angeles as well. When all is said and done, watching this film will do the same for the audience.
WRITER’S NOTE: This article was written in 2012. Philip, you are still missed.
Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman remains one of the best character actors in movies today, and his role as Lancaster Dodd in “The Master” is yet another brilliant performance on his never-ending resume. The movie reunites Hoffman with filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson who has cast him in five of his six movies. From the gay and painfully timid boom mike operator in “Boogie Nights” to the infinitely angry mattress store own Dean Trumbell from “Punch-Drunk Love,” Hoffman has gone from playing one unique character to portraying one who is the complete opposite, and makes one wonder how he goes about preparing to play each role he takes on.
In an interview with Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers, Hoffman made it clear he was not out to turn Lancaster into some sort of bizarre human being with scary ideas.
“The thing is that this character needs to be as accessible as possible,” Hoffman said. “That when you meet him in the film and then when you get to know him in the film that you don’t judge him so much. I think we (he and Anderson) succeeded in that you actually take him in. He’s a real person, and you can almost see how he’s brought so many people close to him or been so successful. You could see how he can function in the world. You know he’s not too idiosyncratic or too eccentric even. He’s full of passion for his ideas, and some of his ideas are really good ones.”
Hoffman said it was those things he and Anderson wanted to concentrate on as opposed to the “oddity” of the character. When it came to Lancaster Dodd, he never looked at him as the head of a cult or even a religion. In his mind, the character was really the leader of a movement and not a fraudulent person.
Of course, much has been said about how “The Master” was inspired by L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology to where many are already nauseated at hearing this said over and over. When talking to the Wall Street Journal’s Rachel Dodes, Hoffman tried to clear up this issue as best he could:
“The idea that L. Ron Hubbard and that movement (Scientology) was the basis for some story in the film is accurate, but it’s really not a film about that, so it isn’t accurate enough for me to play L. Ron Hubbard. And so, I didn’t,” Hoffman said. “It wasn’t enough of that kind of story to do that. So, I wanted to think about other people because it was a fictional thing and the character is a very fictional character. So, I thought about other people who had that kind of charisma and moved people and people followed them, and what that meant for me. I steered clear of anything having to do with ‘The L. Ron Hubbard Story’ because it’s too specific and the film wasn’t going to support that, so I thought it would be confusing.”
From there, Hoffman was a bit cryptic as to what individuals he based Lancaster Dodd on. Dodes told him she heard Orson Welles was an inspiration for this role, but Hoffman said he never tried to emulate the “Citizen Kane” actor and director in “The Master.”
“It’s like when you are thinking about something, a lot of ideas go through your head, and references go through your head but ultimately you are just looking for something in yourself. There are certain behaviors, the way people sound. I didn’t really try to play anybody if that’s what you’re looking for.”
Like his co-stars Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams, Philip Seymour Hoffman is getting serious Oscar consideration for work in “The Master.” The fact he already has one Academy Award for “Capote” doesn’t seem to matter to anybody because the general feeling is he will get a second one at some point in the near future. Whether he does or does not, it is for certain we can expect many more great performances from this actor as his attention to character remains impeccable.
While Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman are getting some of the biggest raves of their career for their work in “The Master,” Amy Adams proves to every bit as good as Peggy Dodd, the wife to Hoffman’s charismatic leader of “The Cause.” From the outset, this looks like yet another role where Adams gets to be all sweet, but as Peggy, she proves to be tough and hotly determined to further her husband’s work and silence every single doubter who ridicules his beliefs. While the male characters revel in the effect they have on others, it is Peggy who exerts the most control over the people around her.
Peggy has been described by many as being a Lady Macbeth-like character as she is able to manipulate her husband into doing things he might not otherwise do. That this character cannot be mistaken for an easy pushover appealed greatly to Adams as well as the challenge of acting against Hoffman, whom she adores.
“It was fun to get to go toe-to-toe with him as a person of power,” Adams said. “In some past roles I’ve been a bit more submissive, so it was great to get to overpower Phillip in ‘The Master’ – because that’s the only time that’s ever going to happen in my life.”
Still, the role proved to be emotionally demanding for Adams, and she talked with Stephen Schaefer of the Boston Herald about why this was the case:
“I had to lose myself in a character to which any similarities I had were not similarities that I want to bring out of myself,” Adams remarked. “To lose myself in a character like that, well, it doesn’t feel as good at the end of the day. Let’s just put it that way.”
Of all the characters in “The Master,” Peggy proves to be the most mysterious as we never get much of a backstory on her or discover how she first met Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman’s character). In an interview with Scott Simon on NPR’s Weekend Edition, Adams explained how she went about playing Peggy and of what she brought to the role:
`”I tend to try to fill in the blanks as much as possible for myself,” Adams said. “One of the things that I really thought about was a long time ago I read a book called ‘The Feminine Mystique.’ In ‘The Feminine Mystique’ she (author Betty Friedan) talked a lot about women’s roles in World War II and sort of how that translated post-World War II. Their roles were a little less traditional than they’d been before, and then when the men came back, they sort of went into the background again. And I saw my character as somebody who was very focused on education, was very educated, very smart, but given the climate, felt like she was more powerful behind a man than in front of a man.”
Adams also made clear how Peggy is a true believer and not a blind follower like some might suspect her of being. Throughout the movie, Peggy does see the positive outcome of her husband’s philosophy, and she defends it without question. This leads her to be very hard on Phoenix’s character of Freddie Quell whose doubts and violent ways typically get the best of him.
While Amy Adams may still seem to us like America’s sweetheart, she has defied that image to give us some hard-edged characters like the one she played in “The Fighter.” “The Master” is the latest example of just how far her range as an actress goes, and hearing her talk about the similarities between her and Peggy shows there is more to her than her image suggests:
“I can be really steely, maybe not to such effect, but I’m definitely not always warm and cuddly and sunshine and lollipops, so it’s nice to sometimes get to bring that to a role. Although I do love playing characters with a sunny disposition, it just takes a little bit more energy some days.”
DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS, Nick Nolte, Mike the dog, 1986, on all fours
WRITER’S NOTE: As the first paragraph states, this article was written back in 2011.
As great as Nick Nolte, Richard Dreyfuss and Bette Midler were in Paul Mazursky’s “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” they were almost completely upstaged by Mike the Dog. If there was ever an animal in movie history that deserved an Oscar, it was Mike. Forget Benji, Rin Tin Tin, and Lassie, Mike had them all beat in portraying the nasty and incredibly neurotic Scottish border collie Matisse. His reactions to his owners, the Whiteman family, and his affection for Nolte’s character of Jerry Baskin made him as much a character as anyone else in this classic comedy. Mazursky and Nolte were enthusiastic in telling stories about Mike when they appeared at the Aero Theatre on August 14, 2011 for this movie’s 25th anniversary screening.
One memorable scene had Nolte on his knees trying to get Matisse to eat his dog food by eating it with him. Determined to see this through, Nolte said he went to a nearby grocery store and bought all kinds of dog food, mostly of the meat variety. When he started dispensing it into different bowls, however, he noticed that to the side there were other dog bowls filled with peas and corn. Nolte went up to Mike’s trainer, Clint Rowe, and asked why these bowls were out. To this, Rowe replied, “Mike’s a vegetarian.”
OOPS!!!
Mazursky had even more stories to tell about Mike and the big star he was. Reminiscing about an Air France jet he flew on to Europe, he saw Mike sitting in first class and reading a magazine (he didn’t remember which one). People ended up making their way up to first class just to see him. Things got even more bizarre when Mazursky got off the plane as there were photographers out in full force at the gate. Mazursky said he greeted them kindly, but they instead went right past him to shoot pictures of Mike.
Things eventually reached a final straw when Mazursky went up to his hotel room and found he was not in room 704, but 804. Guess who was there to greet him when he opened the door? That’s right, Mike. At this point, Mazursky looked him dead in the eye and said, “Out!”
Mike complied and ran off.
Mike went on to play Matisse in the short-lived TV version of “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” and also appeared in various commercials. He has since passed away and is hanging out with Spuds McKenzie and the Taco Bell Chihuahua in doggie heaven. Still, his talent has never been lost on anyone who watched him in the 1986 comedy, let alone those who helped make it. Even during dallies, film editor Richard Halsey kept telling Mazursky:
WRITER’S NOTE: This article was written back in 2012.
After playing an escapee from an abusive cult in “Martha Marcy May Marlene” and a young woman terrorized at her vacation home in “Silent House,” actress Elizabeth Olsen finally gets to lighten up a bit in the comedy drama “Liberal Arts.” In the movie, she plays Zibby, a 19-year-old college student who ends up falling for 35-year-old college admissions officer Jesse Fisher (Josh Radnor, who also wrote and directed it) over their love of literature. Critics have called Olsen’s performance in “Liberal Arts” enchanting, radiant and luminous.
Having seen Radnor’s last directorial effort “Happythankyoumoreplease” which she really enjoyed; Olsen was very interested in working with him on “Liberal Arts.” Her audition for him consisted of reading through every single scene their characters had together in the movie. She recalled it being a lot of fun to “just sit on the floor and read through the scenes with him,” and she really liked the way he wrote Zibby’s dialogue.
For Olsen, the role of Zibby offered a nice change of pace as she had just finished her third psychological thriller. In this movie, she got to play a character who is wise beyond her years and excited about being alive. It also gave her the opportunity to play someone whom she felt was closer to who she was.
“I just always wanted to rush things, grow up sooner, couldn’t understand why someone older couldn’t make a change,” said Olsen. “There’s something really honest and great about her. Also, I wanted to say those words really badly. The words on the page were so much fun to say out loud. That’s a really simple thing to say about wanting to do a script, but I feel like that rarely happens.”
Olsen herself is still a college student at New York University, and she still has a couple of more classes to go before she graduates. Like Zibby she shares a love of learning, and this love came to inform her character deeply. To hear her talk, Olsen has always enjoyed reading literature like Zibby does.
“I went to a really great high school and I took a few AP classes in literature and language and things like that,” Olsen said. “The only type of writing I like to do or enjoy doing is academic writing, so I’m already inherently that type of person. I’ll still remember that my senior year of high school I wrote an essay on Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ that I’m still proud of to this day, so I’m already kind of a nerd when it comes to literature and theory. I wish I could have more of that in life, but I don’t because I’m always reading scripts or things to prepare for movies when I’m reading.”
Elizabeth Olsen not only has college graduation to look forward to in the near future, but she also has some exciting movies in store for her including Spike Lee’s remake of “Oldboy.” She has given us a number of wonderful performances so far and, after watching “Liberal Arts,” it is clear she still has many more to give.
WRITER’S NOTE: This article is about a press day which took place back in 2012.RIP Cicely.
The great Cicely Tyson has worked only so much in movies over the years as she is strongly determined to play only strong and positive images of African-American women. In Rob Cohen’s “Alex Cross,” she finds a very strong character in Regina “Nana Mama” Cross, Alex’s grandmother who helps keeps his children in line when he’s not around. At a press conference which took place at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, Tyson explained why she took on this particular role.
Upon meeting James Patterson, author of the Alex Cross novels, he said out loud “we finally found Nana Mama.” Watching her in “Alex Cross” makes this crystal clear to those who have read Patterson’s books. While Nana is Alex’s grandmother, she’s really more of a mother to him as we learn how he lost both his parents at an early age.
When asked if she would describe Nana as feisty or cantankerous, Tyson said “she’s all of that and more.” But she also sees the character first and foremost as being a mother.
Cicely Tyson: To me it is the most important feature in her personality. Then add to that fact that if anything ever happened to her son, she would not only be grandmother but mother to his children. So, I was torn between his love for the work that he chose and the fact that any day he could not come home to me or his children. So that was extremely difficult for me.
It is the danger of Alex’s work which leaves Nana Mama is constantly on edge because there’s always the possibility he won’t come home one day. Tyson said Nana knows the facts of how not only Alex’s life is in danger, but also her own and his children’s.
Tyson had previously worked with Perry on several of his movies, and when Cohen offered her the role, she told him anything with Perry interested her greatly. When asked what it was like working with him on “Alex Cross,” she talked of how he heard him say time and time again, “I can’t believe I’m in a scene with Cicely Tyson,” and he at one point told Cohen he didn’t know how to act around her. In turn, she responded that she could believe she was doing a scene with Perry.
Cicely Tyson: We both had the same anxieties about working in this particular capacity with each other.
When it comes to choosing roles, Tyson made it clear she never takes anything offered to her at face value.
Cicely Tyson: I have always maintained one way of selecting a role that I play, and it’s through reading the script. If my skin tingles, I know it’s for me, and if my stomach churns it’s a pass. That’s my way of deciding.
When asked what made her skin tingle about playing Mama Nana in “Alex Cross,” Tyson said it was working with Perry.
Tyson said she would definitely love to reprise the role of Mama Nana if “Alex Cross” is successful enough to generate a sequel. Despite its somewhat middling opening weekend at the box office, a follow up does look to be in the works with Perry returning as Alex. Tyson herself looks to work for as long as she is able to, but did she admit there is a certain play she wants to do. Now she wouldn’t say which play, but she is intent on retiring once she does it. While she never expected this opportunity to happen, it is now a possibility she will do this play sometime next year.
From “Sounder” to “Roots” to “Alex Cross,” Cicely Tyson has given us one unforgettable performance after another. Here’s hoping she doesn’t retire just yet.
The latest “Wrong Turn” installment is now available for all to watch, but while some of the filmmakers remain the same, almost everything else has changed. Directed by Mike P. Nelson, this film acts as a reboot of the “Wrong Turn” franchise as we follow a bunch of young adults who are going on a hiking trip up in Virginia. But instead of running into bloodthirsty cannibals, they run into a clan of self-sufficient people who have lived in the mountains for years and do not take kindly to outsiders. What results may seem like another horror slasher extravaganza, but unlike its predecessors, it is grounded in a reality we all know and understand, and this makes this particular reboot stand out in the overcrowded horror genre.
Among the young adults in the cast is Dylan McTee who portrays Adam Lucas, the loudmouth jerk of the group who never knows when to shut his mouth. But while Adam may sound like the typical clichéd you find in the average horror film, McTee invest this character with intelligence, thoughtfulness and a physicality which is on full display throughout. Born in Los Angeles, California and a graduate of USC, he played Wyatt Long in the CW show “Roswell: New Mexico,” and he also co-starred in “The Wind,” a horror film which belongs on my “Underseen Movies” list.
I spoke with Dylan about the making of “Wrong Turn” and how it differs from the average film, and we also discussed other things like training at USC and why he is so inspired by Daniel Day Lewis’ acting.
Ben Kenber: How familiar were you with the “Wrong Turn” franchise before you got cast in this reboot?
Dylan McTee: I was, and part of the reason why I wanted to do it was because it (the first “Wrong Turn” film) was one of the first horror movies I ever saw. As a kid, I remember watching it with my older brother who had, obviously without my parents knowing, had turned it on. It scared the shit out of me for months and probably messed up my brain for maybe the good, right? Because I’m in the new one (laughs).
BK: I had talked to Adrian Favela recently and he said he also saw it when he was a kid and it messed him up pretty good.
DM: Yeah. I think a lot of us were the same age as kids when the first film came out, so we were given a too early exposure to it.
BK: Well, its better seeing the original “Wrong Turn” at a young age than the original “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
DM: Oh yeah, that was on too. I saw all of them. I watched “The Exorcist” when I was way too young. Way too young.
BK: As the movie goes on, we learn Adam and the other young adults are not all they appear to be and prove to be more intelligent than they appear on the surface. They are more complex than I expected. Did this aspect appeal to you?
DM: Yeah, of course. Certainly, there are archetypes. This isn’t like a character drama or anything. This is still a pretty classic horror slasher film, but you are very right. I play Adam who is definitely the difficult one and why I wanted to play him was because of the fact that he is the guy who, whether or not it is socially right to do so, says the truth or at least what he believes to be the truth, and he’s not afraid to fight about it. That’s sort of what the film is about. At its heart it’s a fun, fun slasher just for you to have fun while watching, but it is also sort of about social issues that we have today like division. I think that we’re all quick to judge, and in the universe of this film that is exactly what gets you killed. I think that was really fun to explore.
BK: In other interviews, you have said you are attracted to very challenging roles which explore the darker side of humanity, and we definitely get to see Adam’s dark side when he is forced to defend himself in the worst way possible. What was it like portraying that?
DM: That’s so true. I love playing the darker side of humanity for sure, just like playing the joy and all that. Adam was a particularly interesting character because he is so erratic. You don’t really quite know what’s going to happen next to him. He is deeply selfish and violent, and then he is caring and comforting, and then he lies and then he tells the truth, and to me that’s exciting when you don’t know what’s going to happen next with someone. But at the end of the day, obviously it can be argued that he is not the best person. I love to think there is a part in all of us that is deeply just mental and is willing to fight and violently fight for those assumptions we have of others. That’s, in my opinion, the lesson. It’s the weaker route to take. It’s harder to take a step back and say, well where are these people actually coming from? Where am I coming from? It’s much easier to just assume something about someone, and then that’s the job, right? At least my job in this film was to show this aspect of humanity which unfortunately we all have.
BK: Yes, we do make assumptions about people even when we shouldn’t, and this is what gets the characters in trouble.
DM: Yeah, so I really like that (Alan B.) McElroy added that. He is also the screenwriter of the original film, and I am glad that he brought that in.
BK: It must be nice to work with writers and filmmakers like McElroy who are working to freshen up the genre if only by a little bit.
DM: Yeah. This is my third film ever, so I am not going to pretend like I’m some sort of veteran. In many ways I’m starting out, but this was definitely a different experience and definitely my first experience where I realized the horror genre has really changed. I find the audiences are more sophisticated than ever before. If you are going to go about rebooting something that people like, you need to push the envelope. Sure, there’s gonna be people who are upset that maybe Three Finger is not in this iteration, but I just really respect the fact that we just did something no one is expecting really. I think that’s fun to watch, and to me that’s worth it.
BK: Another movie you were in which I really liked was “The Wind.”
DM: That was a cool movie.
BK: That’s kind of a wilderness movie as well. Were there any similarities for you in filming “The Wind” and “Wrong Turn?”
DM: Oh god, they were so different. I had a fairly small part in “The Wind,” but the characters are just opposites. In “The Wind” I was a very subdued and quiet, late 1800’s city boy. In this one, I was, well, a very violent, fighting city boy, so there you go. They were both city boys (laughs). “The Wind” was very quiet, eerily so. This one is more running and trying to solve problems and action and movement and then just fighting for survival. So (they are) very different films even though they are in the same genre. But I love Emma (Tammi) and Caitlin (Gerard). They were just genius.
BK: Speaking of running and jumping, you and the rest of the cast did a lot of that in “Wrong Turn.” How physically demanding was shooting this movie for you?
DM: Incredibly. In any film, it’s how ever much you want to put in it, and for me, at least in my experience, I put in a lot. I want it to be authentic as possible, and really at the end of the day the only way to do that is just to do it. Obviously, we followed all of the safety protocols, but I was really dragged by a chain and I really fell down a hill. I am fairly equipped just from my own experience. I am a black belt in karate, I like fight choreography, I love all that stuff. It was actually something I looked for. So, for me at least, it was a huge part of the attraction to this role and this film really.
BK: I read that you studied martial arts. Which of them would you say you are proficient?
DM: Just Kenpo, a Japanese karate, and then I also do boxing and obviously some stage combat which is very like, I’m a thespian! (Laughs) But that’s not real fighting. And then at school I got in fights, but I’m not like an MMA guy. That would be cool. Maybe I will do that for the next role.
BK: You have said you are very inspired by the acting of Daniel Day Lewis. Is there any specific performance of his which you really like?
DM: One that really hit me was “In the Name of the Father.” There’s a scene where he’s talking to his dad in a jail cell, and just the way in which he lets it rip… He’s not afraid to look ugly. That’s just something I look up to. He just gives his heart and soul, and that’s what we want to watch. That’s so inspiring to me.
BK: Yes. There are many actors out there who just want to look cool onscreen, and then there are those who are more than prepared to dirty themselves up if the role calls for it.
DM: Yeah, totally. I think most of the actors that reach the top or the ones I look up to are aware of the fact that they are servants. It’s not about me. We are here to serve the story and to represent something that someone maybe is actually watching and saying, that’s me. There is a huge responsibility to acting in my opinion.
BK: You trained at University of Sothern California (USC). What classes did you benefit most from as an actor there?
DM: My favorite class was dialects. The fact that you could find movement and bring that to the voice and how you can watch videos of people and all the research involved of finding a certain specific southern accent or Northern Irish or Southern Irish or New York or Bronx and all these different things and just how you can bring it into your body. That was huge for me and so much fun. I definitely want to do more of that character stuff. I love that element of acting.
“Wrong Turn” is now available on VOD, Digital, DVD and Blu-ray. You horror fans be sure to check it out!
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