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Guillermo del Toro and Carlton Cuse talk about new FX series “The Strain”

“The Strain” is a novel, which spawned a trilogy from Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, which also are co-creators, executive producers and writers for the new limited series on FX. Emmy® Award winning Writer and Producer Carlton Cuse (“Lost”) is serving as Executive Producer/Showrunner and Writer.

“The Strain” is a high concept thriller that tells the story of “Dr. Ephraim Goodweather,” the head of the Center for Disease Control Canary Team in New York City. He and his team are called upon to investigate a mysterious viral outbreak with hallmarks of an ancient and evil strain of vampirism. As the strain spreads, Eph, his team, and an assembly of everyday New Yorkers, wage war for the fate of humanity itself.

Media Mikes had a chance to chat with The Strain’s Co-Creator / Executive Producer / Director Guillermo del Toro and Show Runner / Executive Producer / Writer Carlton Cuse about the new series and what we can expect.

Carlton, tell us how you first got involved in this project?
Carlton Cuse: I had read the first Strain novel as a fan of both Guillermo’s work, and also independently I knew Chuck Hogan, and so I was very curious to see what this collaboration would look like. And I was just intrigued by the subject matter. I had read the first novel when it came out in 2009 and really enjoyed it, and then basically about two years ago my agent called me up and said that there was some interest in doing The Strain as a television series and would I be interested in it. I went and met with Guillermo and I had a really good meeting, and I basically decided to get involved, for two reasons. One, because I had a lot of respect for Guillermo as a filmmaker and I thought, particularly in a monster show like this, that he’s one of the most imaginative guys out there in terms of creating creatures and worlds. And I also thought that embedded in the book was this fantastic opportunity to upend the vampire genre, as the vampire genre has sort of been overrun by romance, and that we had had our fill of vampires that we’re feeling sorry for because they had romantic problems. And it was time to go back to the conception of vampires as really scary, dangerous creatures, and in so doing that there was a way to kind of make a genre show that would be different than anything that was out there on the TV landscape.

Being a fan of the book series; what is your plan to incorporate the sequels into the series?
CC: Book one is season one, yes. We basically follow the narrative of the first book in the first season. The plan is that the show will run somewhere between three and five seasons, and as we work out the mythology and the storytelling for season two we’ll have a better idea of exactly how long our journey is going to be. But it won’t be more than five seasons, we’re definitely writing to an endpoint, and we’re following the path as established in Guillermo and Chuck’s novels. But obviously there’s a lot that’s also going to be added. The television show is its own experience, and there are new characters and new situations, different dramatic developments, so the show and the book can each be separately enjoyed. I think that the goal is not to literally translate the book into a television show. You want to take the book as a source of inspiration and then make the best possible television show that you can make. And I think Guillermo, Chuck, myself, all of us involved have basically said, okay, here’s the book, now how do we take the best stuff in here and then use that as elements and then make the best TV show we can. But we view the TV show as its own creation.

Scott Kirkland/PictureGroup

Guillermo del Toro: It was very clear from the start that we had the three books to plunder, but we also had the chance of inventing. We talked about milestones, that we want the milestones and the characters that are in the book to be hit, but with that it became very malleable. Carlton decided, I think very wisely in retrospect, it made perfect sense as a game plan to, for example, leave the origins of The Master, which we opened book one with for a second season, if we go that way, and, for example, bringing a set piece from book two to bookend the story of one character on season one. So, it’s a very elastic relationship that the series has with the book, but by that same token it’s very respectful and mindful of the things that will not alienate someone that likes the books. It should feel as seamless. And I think the decisions we have to understand when Carlton is guiding us through this new medium for the story, to trust and know that his decisions are guided by huge experience and a prestigious career.

Guillermo, how was the transition from feature films to cable television?
GDT: The transition came from both Chuck and I, it was very smooth in many ways because we had the chance to adapt the novels to comic book form with Dark Horse. And coming in we really sought Carlton’s guidance into this new form. I think there never has been an occasion in which our dialogue has seen anyone read the books and say, “This is not the way it’s in the books.” So that much was very satisfactory. For me as a producer and director, it was about having some of the quirks that come from a feature film. I asked FX to give us a long pre-production period so I could really plan out the makeup effects, the creature effects, the visual effects, all of which I have big experience with, in order to try to bring to the pilot a big scope feel to the series doing sophisticated effects and some set pieces, while staying on a fiscally responsible budget and managing. And from a director’s point of view it was the same on the pilot. I didn’t want to go back and say, can I get one day more? Can I do many extra hours? I wanted to fit in the sandbox what I was hoping would feel like a big pilot episode for a big series. And that pre-planning was crucial, but also adjusting the way I staged, the way I approach coverage, or storytelling, and yet not sacrificing anything. It was both some fiscal constraints, but creative absolute freedom, which was a huge thrill for me to get a phone call from John Landgraf before starting the series, saying to me, “We encourage creator content, we love Carlton, we love you, and we want you guys to do the most idiosyncratic, best version of the series that you can.”

Tonya Wise/PictureGroup

Can you tell us about the decision to do this as a limited series?
CC: I think that we’re moving into this new phase of television where I think audiences are really embracing stories with a beginning, middle, and end. And if you look at the success this season, for instance, of True Detective and Fargo, as well as the kind of incredible response that the end of Breaking Bad got, I think that you have to recognize that the audience wants to see stories that come to a conclusion. They want the full and rounded experience. And television has been sort of a first act and sort of an endless second act, and I think that the best television now is giving you a three act experience. And I think that that’s what we want to do with our show.
GDT: I agree with Carlton. I think one of the things that we made essential when we pitched the series everywhere, and certainly at FX, is we came in and we said we are not going to be extending beyond the—we presented two arcs, one that can fulfill three or four seasons, and hopefully the second or third book are complex enough that they can generate a fifth one. But we literally said it needs to end when it needs to end, and that was a central part of finding a home for the series.

Can you talk about the creature development for this show?
GDT: Yes. I’ve been obsessed by vampires for a long, long time, since I was a very young kid, and a very strange kid. I read about vampire mythology worldwide and I familiarized myself with the Japanese, Filipino, Malaysian, and Eastern European variations on the vampire, and many, many others. And I kept very detailed notes as a kid on where to go with the vampire myth in terms of brutality, social structure, biology, this and that, and some of those notes made it into my first feature, Cronos, some of them made it in Blade II, when I directed that, and most of them made it into The Strain. And designing them, we knew and we had it very clear that, for example, The Master needed to be hidden for at least half the season or more to not make him that accessible. I came up with the idea that this guy that has been alive for centuries and essentially is an apex of the Dark Ages in the middle of a world of imminent modernity. You have people with cell phones, jet airplanes, iPads, texting, Internet, all of that, and in the middle of it there is a 9 foot tall, hand carved coffin with a creature that has been alive for centuries. And it’s ancient, and that’s what makes it powerful, that it doesn’t care about any of the modern accoutrements of mankind that gives mankind such a false sense of security. And The Master needed to look that ancient, so we decided that he was going to become his wardrobe and that eventually when he reveals himself you have a second layer. So we designed the wardrobe, the cape and the multiple layers of clothes that are falling apart, because he has an accumulation of clothes over the 1800s, 1900s, 21st century, he’s just accumulating rags, and he needed to look like a lump, like a bunch of rags thrown on the floor, then come alive, and out of all these rags comes out this incredibly glistening and viscerally biological appendage that then drains the first victim. And that’s the way we started guiding the process of designing The Master. And the more we go into the season, the more you see of him and the more you discover layer after layer of that creature design.

What about FX made you decide the network was the right place for The Strain?
GDT: We had a fantastic first meeting, if I may say so. We had an incredible meeting in which the very head of the network and everybody in that room knew patently well and intimately the three books. And yet they were excited by Carlton, they were excited by the possibility of not just doing the books but where would Carlton take it as a show runner, they were excited about, okay, that’s the universe, but we see many more possibilities than that. That made it very unique in our eyes. And they celebrated the aspects of the series that were edgier, or less of a kind that we have seen before. The other thing for me that was unique is I’m a follower of the brand, I’m a big FX fan, and they give you time to find your footing. They give you time to establish, especially in a genre like this, you know you cannot just do everything at once, reinvent everything at once. You either reinvent the characters in a genre story, or you reinvent the generic traits with characters that you’re able to place in the normal canon of the genre and then little by little evolve those characters, and that needs time. And FX has been known to be supportive of series that find their footing and creatively allow them to explore anything from characters you’ve seen before that then transform into things that are new, or concepts that are very new that go to daring places. So, it made it a unique place for the show.

CC: I would just add to everything that Guillermo said, that again we were presenting them with a very specific business model about how we wanted to approach the show, that we wanted to have the show last between three and five seasons, that we needed them to spend a bunch of money up front to do the R&D and the work that was necessary to do the world building for our show, and they would have to spend money up front on writing a bunch of scripts. And they jumped in wholeheartedly and they embraced the way in which we wanted to produce the show, as well as our creative vision, and we felt incredible confidence coming out of our meetings with them that they were the exact right partners for us.

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Filed Under: Interviews, TV Interviews Tagged With: carlton, cuse, del, fx, guillermo, series, ...

Jeremy Lamberton and Todd Lincoln talk about their new documetary “Biker Fox”

I’ve spent a few weekend evenings in Tulsa, Oklahoma and the one thing that always catches my attention is the muscle-car atmosphere that takes over the city when the sun goes down. No matter where you drive, you can find parking lots full of car enthusiasts and their rides. Horror producer (and Tulsa native) Todd Lincoln and first time director Jeremy Lamberton have teamed up for the documentary “Biker Fox.”

The film tells the story of Frank P. DeLarzelere III, known to the good people of Tulsa as Biker Fox, a misunderstood motivational bicyclist, nature conservationist and muscle car guru. In helping spread the word about their new film, the two took time to answer some questions.

Mike Smith: How did you learn about Biker Fox?
Jeremy Lamberton: My first Biker Fox sighting was at a traffic light. He was on his bike, shaking his ass while staring at people in their cars. I pulled into a Taco Bueno parking lot next to an old bowling alley and he rode up next to my car and asked me if I was married. I told him I was (I wasn’t married at the time) and invited him to perform at Tulsa Overground. That night he told me about all the video he shot of wild life around his house and that I had to see it. Later that week he gave me an entire box of hi-8 and miniDV tapes. I watched everything. There were hundreds of hours of wild turkeys, coyotes, opossums, weed eaters, rabbits, lawn mowers, blue birds, bats and him hand feeding 50 raccoons. There were also tapes of him lecturing directly into the camera about the benefits of fitness and a healthy diet. Biker Fox and I started shooting together the next week.

MS: What made you decide to make a film about him?
JL: The footage he had already shot on his own was magical. He’s such a charismatic guy and it translated so well on video. But I didn’t think about it being a documentary until he started getting arrested. When trouble started swirling it grounded him and he became more genuine to his true character while shooting. And I thought it was funny that Biker Fox was continuing to preach his gospel of good health and happiness while at the same time his life was spinning out of control. He’s an indomitable being.

MS: Did you always intend to do the film as a documentary or did you consider doing a scripted feature film?
JL: “Biker Fox” was always meant to be a documentary. Or some kind of cross-genre film. Most of what happens in the movie you can’t make up. I don’t think his character would have the same impact if scripted. The spontaneity and what happened naturally is what made film special.

MS: Do you think that fans of your horror films will enjoy this film?
Todd Lincoln: Yes. Horror fans will definitely enjoy “Biker Fox.” Anyone who loves the unusual, the macabre, the dark arts and naturally occurring curiosities and oddities…. will appreciate the world of Biker Fox. While this is not at all a horror film in the traditional sense… it certainly could be seen as scarier than most. You will see blood. You will see violence. You will see killer raccoons.

MS: Jeremy, you’ve finally gone behind the camera. Was the experience what you expected?
JL: I’ve been making films for years but this was my toughest challenge. BIker Fox is a raw dog. I wanted the film to tap into Biker Fox’s psyche. Shooting with Biker Fox is like shooting a nature film. You can’t control it. You just hope to be rolling when something memorable happens. And Biker Fox has a tendency to perform in front of a camera. And he’s severely ADHD, so he’s constantly moving. He can’t sit still. The most effective way to show his true character – the character behind the character – was to make the film non-traditionally. So we set up cameras on tripods all over his house and in his shop and encouraged him to videotape himself. I would go to his house multiple times a week and pick up sometimes as many as 40 tapes at a time. He was shooting like crazy. Like video diarrhea.

MS: I’ve been to Tulsa and have observed their “muscle car culture” up close. What is your take on it?
JL: It’s crazy. The real collectors takes it very seriously. A lot of them too seriously. I’ve been to a few swap meets with Biker Fox. One time while looking at a guy’s 1967 GTO I put my hand on the car to look inside and he snapped his fingers and told me to never touch his car again. It doesn’t seem worth it. They spend all their time stressing over door dings and scratches. Seems like wasted energy.

MS: What do you have coming up?
JL: I’m working on a narrative script and producing a documentary called “Dreamland.” Also, Tulsa Overground make its return this August after a 7 year hiatus.

Leigh Janiak and Harry Treadaway talk about their film “Honeymoon” at Tribeca Film Festival

Director Leigh Janiak debuted her first feature, the horror film Honeymoon, this week at the Tribeca Film Fest. The film stars Rose Leslie (“Game of Thrones”) and Harry Treadaway (Showtime’s upcoming “Penny Dreadful”) as happy young couple, Bea and Paul. Their blissful honeymoon is interrupted when Bea is found disoriented in the woods one night, resulting in a terrifying personality change.

MediaMikes: Can you describe the idea of using something as happy as a honeymoon as your starting point?
Leigh Janiak: That’s where we came from when we started it. It was we’re going to take something really happy and seemingly beautiful and see what we need to do to it to really destroy it and watch it decay. And it was just like idea of how something so personal can become foreign and fall apart.

MediaMikes: Can you talk about your cast, because it’s mostly just the two of them throughout?
Janiak: They’re both lovely. It was the first time they’d both really done American accents to the full extent but I think that they did an amazing job, I’m completely blown away and you believe them. And you believe their love. They both have an incredible energy, they’re obviously extremely talented, but you never know chemistry-wise. We didn’t do a chemistry read before and it was kind of just like feeling their different vibes separately and it worked, thank god.

MediaMikes: Rose Leslie specifically has to undergo such a huge change in the middle of the film, did you discuss with her specifics about how her character is, I’ll say, pre- and post-op?
Janiak: We spent a lot of times with Rose just generally tracing her transformation and just understanding where she was hiding from Paul, when her character was trying to tell the truth but couldn’t do it. But it was really a scene by scene basis. And we did the same thing with Harry too by the way because Paul’s character transforms as well, just not quite so physically.

MediaMikes: Horror films tend to go either the way of the supernatural or the way of aliens, which one do you find scarier?
Harry Treadaway: I don’t know, like it depends! It’s also about almost what you don’t see, I think that’s what makes me scared. It’s sort of the emotions and stuff behind it that would actually get me scared. I think. Not aliens though, the other one!

MediaMikes: Ghosts?
Treadaway: Yeah!

MediaMikes: Coming up, you’ve got Penny Dreadful where you’re playing Dr. Frankenstein, what is the show bringing to this character?
Treadaway: That’s not for me to say…all that I’ll say is that it was, I mean, John Logan is you know a pretty incredible writer…Sam Mendes producing and then Juan Bayona who directed the first two is really amazing and we’ve got a cool exciting cast. And I’m just doing my little bit, really.

Here MediaMikes got into a little spoiler territory with both Leigh and Harry, so if you’d like to remain unspoiled, you can check out the trailer below, and keep an eye out for Honeymoon, which has recently been acquired by Magnet Pictures. For those of you who’d like some more gorey details head past the video.

Spoilers ahead…In the film’s climatic scene with now-transformed Bea, the long suffering Paul has to essentially birth a slimy alien entity from Bea. I asked both Janiak and Treadaway to talk about creating and performing this standout horror moment.

Treadaway: That was another night. Just another night…That was the fourth scene up that night and we were like ‘right, how are we going to do this?’ and we tried to do it the best we could. But it was uh, certainly one of the most unusual scenes I’ve probably done.
Janiak: My special effects makeup artist was this guy named Christopher Nelson and he’s been working in this business forever. He’s also incidentally the groom in Kill Bill Volume 2, super talented, he works on American Horror Story. I had put together a really extensive look book and it’s funny I actually referenced like a shower cord but I wanted biological material. And we looked at things like The Fly or Alien. We wanted that really tactile physical effect. And he created this thing and it was perfect and really disgusting and awesome. That scene took two nights to shoot so it was a very intense time.

MediaMikes: Why did you opt for the alien approach rather than supernatural for your feature?
Janiak: It was really just about making an intimate body snatcher movie. So I think that a lot of the horror is actually grounded body-horror and then there was this idea of, we wanted to give answers, the main thing for me is about this relationship falling apart but beyond that we wanted the answers of what’s actually driving these transformations. And that’s why it was the extraterrestrial thing.

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Filed Under: Film Interviews, Interviews Tagged With: festival, film, harry, honeymoon, janiak, leigh, ...

Erin Darley and Kai Winikka talk about their film ‘Killer Pizza’

“Jimmy and Sam are two college graduates who return home and find themselves working at a small pizza shop that pops up out of nowhere. It doesn’t take long for them to suspect that they’re working for two cosmic freaks with more sinister intentions than simply delivering pie. What is happening at the Killer Pizza shop? What is behind their secret recipe?”

That is the synopsis of ‘Killer Pizza’, the definitive feature-length picture about growing up, getting jobs, and surviving a Killer Pizza monster invasion.

Today I sat down and talked with the creative team behind the film: co-writer/director Kai Winikka and co-writer/producer Erin Darley. Both filmmakers live in Lawrence, Kansas and are graduates of the University of Kansas.

B.C. Allen: How was it that you two first met?
Erin Darley: When I was a Freshman at K.U., Kai was one of the Presidents of Film Works.
Kai Winikka: I ran a Cult Movie Night, once every month during my Senior Year, through Film Works. Film Works was an extra-curricular for freshman whom weren’t able to get into some of the production classes. It was more of a student-driven organization. Erin was a cult-film enthusiast, and it was always a big thing to get girls to show up. I always made more of a point to reach out to Erin since she was really into it. I’d tell her, “Ya know, we’re showing ‘Breakin’’ and ‘Jaws 4’, you have to come: bring your friends!”
ED: It was just a bunch of nerds coalescing, keeping each other motivated.
KW: It was a group of dinguses getting together to make movies.

BCA: What previous projects have you worked on together?
ED: “Porn & Pudding” was a thing. Everyone loved that. And that spawned a club. There is a “Porn & Pudding” club, and it was actually pretty serious. Kai is shaking his head because he is ashamed that I’m telling everyone this.
KW: That’s YOUR film, that’s not my film. (laughs) Our first real collaboration was probably
“Bustin’ Out”, where we both co-wrote and co-directed. It was for the 48-Hour Film Festival about superheroes, so naturally we made a Women-In-Prison movie. It was about a woman whose evil twin imprisoned her with a bunch of other women – whom were played by men — ED: Chicks with d*cks in chains.
KW: And there was an amulet that allowed her to shoot lasers out of her breast-icles.
ED: And then there was “Nanny Goat” which starred my sisters.
KW: And my basement in K.C.K.

BCA: What the origin of the idea for ‘Killer Pizza’?
KW: “Nanny Goat” was originally Plan A for the 48-Hour Film Festival, and if it didn’t work out, Plan B was “Killer Pizza”, but it was a lot sillier at the time. “Nanny Goat” did well and ended up winning the Audience Award. It was originally going to be about a babysitter, so naturally they order pizza; and of course the pizza ends up killing them.
ED: I always say that it goes back to standing there and deciding whether “Nanny Goat” was going to work and Kai just said, “If it doesn’t work out we’ll just order a pizza and we’ll throw it on your sisters and it will be eating them. And then at the end of the movie it crawls up to the camera, looks at the camera, and belches.”
KW: It’s come a long, long way from there. Although “Killer Pizza” is about a Killer Pizza and has Ron Jeremy in it, I’d like to say that this is a legit horror movie. It’s not campy at all.

BCA: You mention Ron Jeremy, how is it that he became attached to this project?
KW: I did a documentary in 2008 called “XXX in the Midwest” and Ron came to Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas to do a debate. So we waited in a long line afterward to meet him and he did the interview, had no issues, and signed the waiver like it was nothing. It left an impression, like he’s someone who is down for anything. He’s known as the hardest working man in show business, and he doesn’t say no, well, if it’s the right project.
ED: I came back from Colorado last year and Kai said that if I helped him write “Killer Pizza” then we’d get Ron Jeremy to be in it and we’ll put it on Kickstarter.com. So we wrote a part for him. And when we thought we were done with the script – which was three drafts ago – we knew it was time to contact Ron Jeremy. We sent him a letter, not knowing how long we’d have to wait to hear back from this guy. I went off to work, at a restaurant, and I was checking my e-mail obsessively, and he e-mailed us back within thirty minutes, and he said “Yes.” And I still have the letter, which started, “Dear Hedgehog,…”

BCA: What would be the biggest hurdle for this production?
KW: The biggest challenge I think will be the effects, that’s what I anticipate it being. There are a lot of them and they are elaborate; and there is a lot of testing that has to go down beforehand. And they can still go wrong, like on set, the day of. Also making sure we can make our day and keep the production sailing.

BCA: What makes you want to use practical effects as opposed to digital effects?
KW: It has more charm. There is more heart to it. I am a big believer in visual effects when they are combined with practical, but this movie doesn’t really call for that.
ED: I think C.G. is trying to be realistic, but it doesn’t always work. Regular effects don’t always look super real, but the suspension of disbelief takes care of a lot of that for us; but it’s more fun, I would say.
KW: It’s the heart. C.G. comes close, but not close enough.

BCA: Do you have a specific look you are going for with this film?
KW: It’s going to be a really dark film, so the idea is to go in and bring the black way, way down, and taking a lot of the color out. That idea is really appealing to me. The look of the film “976-EVIL” is the kind of look I am going for.

BCA: When was it that you started to write, or realized you wanted to be storytellers or filmmakers?
KW: In high school, a group of guys and myself were making “Jackass”-type videos. We were doing it every week, and then every day; and it got to a point where I was telling them they’d have to do it again because it wasn’t good enough, and my friends told me I was taking all the fun out of it. It grew from there.
ED: I made high school movies, too. But I didn’t discover my writing ability until college. I’ve just always done it as a fun, personal thing. I write poetry, and short stories. Screenplays are great, but there’s no one who is going to tell you that screenplays are literature. They are great if you think in terms of images. Screenplays are awesome if you think of a great story; you can just bang out a series of images and dialogue and say “That’s done.” And if you want to you can go back to it and add the prose later.

BCA.: What is the endgame for “Killer Pizza” are there any specific festivals you are looking at?
KW: I think the best festival out there for this genre would be Fantastic Fest. And of course, show it locally at the Kansas City Film Festival.
ED: I defer to Kai on that. I want to see this movie, and that’s all I am thinking about. I figure I’ll just make this movie to watch it myself, and then take it from there.

Killer Pizza is a feature-length weird horror film to be shot Summer of 2014 in Lawrence, Kansas.
Kai and Erin are currently crowd-sourcing the funding for “Killer Pizza” with a Kickstarter campaign.

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Filed Under: Film Interviews, Interviews Tagged With: darley, erin, film, kai, killer, pizza, ...

Joachim Rønning & Espen Sandberg talk about directing of “Kon-Tiki” and plans for “Pirates of the Caribbean 5”

In 1951 the film “Kon-Tiki,” a film detailing the voyage of famed Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, won the Academy Award as the year’s best documentary feature.

Six decades later a pair of Norwegian filmmakers decided to tell the story of Heyerdahl’s incredible 4,300 mile journey across the ocean on a balsa wood raft. The film became the first in the country’s history to receive both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe nomination as the year’s Best Foreign Film.

To celebrate the Blu-Ray release of “Kon-Tiki,” I sat down with directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg. I mention that it’s been Scandinavian Directors week for me, having just spoken to Renny Harlin a few days earlier. Hearing this they question me on Harlin and what he’s working on. Finally the interview begins and the pair talk about honoring Thor Heyerdahl, their national pride and how things are going on their next project, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales”

Mike Smith: This has been my week for Scandinavian filmmakers. I just spoke with Renny Harlin the other day.
Joachim Rønning/Espen Sandberg: (both laugh).
JR: How did that go?
MS: Very well. He’s really high on the “Hercules” movie he’s finishing up.
ES: Right, right.

MS: “Kon-Tiki” received an Academy Award nomination as Best Foreign Film. Obviously that’s a great honor personally but did it have extra meaning to you because it was a representative of your country?
JR: it was (pauses)…one of the best moments in our lives. (they both laugh). That’s all we can say. That morning, when we got the announcement. Because it is, in so many ways, the biggest reward you can get as a filmmaker. To be recognized in the US…to be recognized in the world…that meant so much for the film. For “Kon-Tiki” to have that when it goes traveling around the world, it really means everything for the film. And for us as filmmakers. We wouldn’t be sitting here in our production offices speaking with you if it wasn’t for that. Everything comes together.
ES: As for representing the country, absolutely. But that’s not really the first thing you think about (laughs) when you get that news. It was the first Norwegian film to be nominated both by the Oscars and the Golden Globes and that is a huge deal for our country.

MS: How did you get involved with “Kon-Tiki?”
JR: It was a story we’d grown up with. Espen and I began making films together when we were about 10 years old. We grew up in a small town. Thor Heyerdahl grew up in a neighboring town so he always had a presence in our lives. And he is the only Norwegian to win an Academy Award so as a filmmaker he was a huge inspiration.
ES: We always wanted to bring that story…the story of Kon-Tiki…to the big screen. But of course, it was such a huge endeavor. It took four years to finance. It was the biggest film production ever in Scandinavia.

MS: Thor Heyerdahl is probably your country’s best known figure internationally. Did you have any reservations in taking on his story?
ES: We always wanted to tell his story. It was just very hard to finance it. That was the big hurdle. We always wanted to do it.

MS: You’ve worked together for over two decades…(they both laugh)…do you split up the duties of directing? Do you direct together or do you each handle certain scenes?
ES: We basically do everything together, especially in pre-production and post production.
JR: It’s a very collaborative process and it’s the only way we know how to make movies. On the set it is divided somewhat. Espen concentrates more with the actors and I work more with the visuals. And that’s basically not to confuse the actors too much. We try to have one voice in accordance with them. It’s a very collaborative process and it’s how we’ve always done it.

MS: Have you ever had an instance where maybe one of you has yelled “cut” and the other one looks over and shakes his head? (they both laugh)
ES: No! You’d be surprised. Of course we both have different tastes but I think at the end of the day we both find common ground…what’s best for the scene and for the film.
JR: I think it’s actually an advantage to have two heads working. It’s a big deal for us to be unanimous. In front of everybody at least (laughs)

MS: You both are slated to direct the next “Pirates of the Caribbean” film. Can you give an update as to where that project is?
JR: Yeah! We’re in pre-production. We’ve been in pre-production for a couple of months and it’s inching along every day. It’s a dream come true, really, to be able to work with Jerry Bruckheimer and the Disney camp…with these actors and the rest of the crew. They’re the best in the world. It’s coming together. We have a fantastic script by Jeff Nathonson (“Catch Me If You Can,” “Rush Hour 2 and 3”). It’s really funny. And touching. It’s a true adventure movie and, in that sense, it reminds us of the kinds of movies we grew up with…the Indiana Jones films and stuff like that. Those films made us want to become filmmakers.

MS: That’s so cool. That’s almost exactly the same answer that Renny gave me when we talked about “Hercules.” He had grown up enjoying these films so much and finally getting the chance to make one is the ultimate honor. (they both laugh)
ES: That’s it exactly. We really feel great!

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Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright talk about “The World’s End”

This Friday sees the US release of The World’s End, the final installment of Edgar Wright’s “Cornetto” trilogy. It’s the third comedy following 2004’s Shaun of the Dead and 2007’s Hot Fuzz, to star Simon Pegg (also co-writer of all three) and Nick Frost. While the films are standalone stories across wildly different genres, they’ve been consistently hilarious variations on common themes. Hence, more comparable to Cornetto flavors—a British ice cream that found its way into all three movies—than narrative installments. The trio of Pegg, Wright and Frost sat down in New York to discuss the completion of the trilogy with this apocalyptic pub crawl.

The movie centers on Gary King (Pegg) who is dead-set on reuniting his old schoolmates, now grown men, in an attempt at completing an epic pub crawl they left unfinished as youths in 1990. He faces the most opposition from his onetime best friend, Andy, played by Frost.

How would you each describe the other’s characters?
Nick Frost: I would say Gary King is a forty-one year old man stuck sadly in…1990, it never got better for him than that night. I like to think about Gary in the space between then and when we meet him. What he got up to. And what I think is getting pissed on a kibbutz a lot, being like a rep in Portugal in like a resort, maybe traveling to Australia, doing the same thing there. You know, I think he did a lot of drinking and a lot of fornicating and then he reaches a point where he, he was just sadly empty. And I think where we meet him…that gear that he wears in the film, I don’t think he wears it all the time. He’s like a general who’s going to commit suicide on telly and he puts all his gear on. He puts his gloves on and his medals. That’s his last hoorah and I think he has a suspicion that he knows he’s not coming back.
Simon Pegg: As an addendum to that I think there’s a lot of parallels between World’s End and Scent of a Woman. Gary is like Colonel Frank Slade.
Andy is you know this guy who was, who had his heart broken by his best friend when he was very young and has never been able to let go of that anger about that. And he’s moved away from it. He’s excelled in his job, he’s married and had children, he’s created a life for himself. He’s a success in many ways, maybe not emotionally to a degree. We find out things later on. But he’s a guy who has been let down by someone he loves and hasn’t addressed that yet. So when we meet Andy he kind of seemingly Gary’s enemy, they’re not friends anymore but really what underpins that enmity is a deep affection which we eventually learn the truth about.

Lauren Damon: In both Shaun and Hot Fuzz Simon was the more straight-laced character at the start of the film, was that reversal of roles fun?
Pegg: It was yeah.
Frost: Yeah I mean those other roles, the central character is not always the craziest or the funniest even though Simon is incredibly funny, but this time it was. And it was always going to be Simon and I never look at it and think ‘oh why am I this again?’ It never feels like that. Its for the good of the film, but this was you know—Simon’s gonna laugh when I say this because I said it lots of but—[Pegg joins in in unison] We are actors!

The chance to play any different person or different character is what you want to do as an actor. And I’d kind of argue that Danny and Ed are very different characters. Ed is quite cynical and lazy and Danny is just a big, lovely labrador, you know? And so the chance to be a kind of hard knot and to be the kind of moral voice of the audience essentially at certain points in this film is a great challenge. And also I get to kick arse.

LD: And rip your shirt off.
Frost: That was the only thing I put my foot down. Edgar wanted me to rip my whole shirt off so essentially I would be topless for the second half of the film and I had to say no.
Pegg: Which was a relief because it was winter.
Frost: Well I’ve got quite a lot of tattoos so the coverage of tattoos would have been an issue. And also, it don’t look s’good!
Pegg: I beg to differ!
Frost: But it got cold it got up to minus ten at night when we were shooting.

All three men elaborated on the amazing stunt work in the film, choreographed by frequent Jackie Chan collaborator, Bradley James Allan:
Pegg: The important thing for us was that we, in all the fight sequences in the movie, we retained the characters. Often in films when you cut to action sequences, stunt performers have to take over and as such, the characters that the actors have created vanish slightly in favor of the action. What we really wanted to do was make sure that the characters were maintained throughout the action and that meant us doing it…And we always wanted it to be the case where it’s like we’re—particularly for Nick’s character—all this simmering rage that he has, all this resentment towards Gary, all this kind of dissatisfaction that he has with his own life it just bursts out of him like—we used to call him the Pink Hulk because he had a pink shirt on underneath—and Andy turns into the pink Hulk. And each of them have a different—like Gary fights one handed because he’s trying to protect his pint. Andy, you know, fights like a berserker. Paddy [Considine], because he’s a boxing fan, uses all these great big haymakers like a brawler. Martin [Freeman]’s always wriggling out of stuff—
Frost: Like a hobbit!
Pegg: Which he picked up from somewhere, I don’t know. So yeah, it was all very much there in the script.
Frost: Eddie [Marsan]’s the coward.
Pegg: Eddie hides under tables. Which is funny because Eddie’s pretty handy. Eddie’s got some good punches.
Frost: Yeah he is, he trains a lot to be a fighter.
Pegg: He’s a little East End boxer.
Frost: He does “Ray Donovan” so he spends a lot of time in the boxing ring
Edgar Wright: What we tried to do is not actually use like…If you have a scene in an action film and you have like there’s a waiter who looks particularly tall and muscly, you know that he’s going to go through a window at some point. So like you can kind of pick out, that’s a stunt man, that’s a stunt man, that’s a stunt woman. What we tried to do with this was have people you wouldn’t—when you see those five kids, you don’t expect it. They’re kids. And the lead guy is fifteen years old. So you don’t expect him to be in a fight. And then they do all of their own stunts… And that was something I said to Brad Allan, our choreographer. I did a scene in Hot Fuzz, I ended up cutting out of the movie because it didn’t really work, it was a scene where Simon arrested some kids and so I said ‘I really wanna do this fight scene, but do you think we could get teenage stunt men?’ He goes ‘Absolutely, we got circus schools, tumblers, gymnasts, martial artists…’ and so the kids in that sequence are from the ages of fifteen to twenty. And they’re amazing.

LD: Going way back to Lee Ingleby’s crew in “Spaced” [Wright’s 1999-2001 sitcom starring Pegg and Frost], through the hoodies in Hot Fuzz, do you just have a distrust of youths gathering anywhere together?
Wright: think a central theme is no matter how young you think you are, there’s always someone younger. That fear of being usurped by the people like are sort of like ‘Oh my god, that fifteen year old is gonna kick my ass!’ The emasculation of being beaten up by somebody younger than you, I think it’s that kind of fear. I think once actually Nick in London got mugged by a bunch of teenagers which is like an extremely distressing thing because hey, you know, you might be twenty-eight but these fifteen year olds…they’re are gonna kick your ass! And it’s just a horrible horrible thing. I think it’s just a part of the nightmare of emasculation of being beaten up by teenagers, people fifteen years younger than you.

At what point in working with Edgar did the word trilogy come up?
Simon Pegg: I think probably on the Hot Fuzz press tour when we realized we had been able to make two films and those films were in essence connected. You know, sort of tonal sequels in a way, in that they were not directly sequels—not the same character stories obviously—but they were definitely variations on a theme. And we figured if we could possibly be able to do it again, we could wrap it up as a sort of nice Hegelian whole. As a threesome as it were. And do it again. So we refined the ideas we had started on. It wasn’t like we set out to make the trilogy. We would never be so arrogant as to assume we would be able to make three films.
Nick Frost: I think one was enough.
Pegg: Yeah.
Frost: I think we thought, being British filmmakers we were lucky to make one, you know. [laughter] It’s true!
Pegg: We didn’t think it would come out there, let alone here.
Frost: We thought, if we could sell it to Lufthansa and they show it on the flight, we’ll be lucky. And you know, we get a chance to make Hot Fuzz and then that seemed the logical thing to do really.
Wright added: …The fact that Hot Fuzz was shot in my hometown so I’d had that experience of being back in my hometown very vividly. So it was very much preying on my mind and that’s where it starts to factor into this of the idea of the homecoming…But then we decided we would go off our separate ways and do separate projects and in a way I think we wouldn’t have written the same script six years ago. Because the nice thing is actually, not to get older, but to actually deal with that in movie. Shaun of the Dead, which we shot ten years ago is a film about he’s a twenty-nine year old about to turn thirty. And then in this film, they’re forty…I feel like when I watch a lot of the American “man child” comedies, sometimes I always think it’s kind of forced because there are people who–there’s that thing of being a big kid forever is always glorified– but never really scratches below the surface. In reality a lot of those actors are married and have kids and so I think it’s a good thing to do these movies and actually acknowledge that the characters are older. So I think in that way, me and Simon, it was great going away—it’s not like we didn’t see each other in six years, we’re like best friends– but it was the first time we’d written together in like five years.

Was it different coming back to write together after so long?
Wright: No if anything, I think it was easier in a way. I think out of the three, Hot Fuzz was the most difficult one to write. Because I think we realized that Agatha Christie is a genius and that murder mystery is really hard! We would have kind of the constant headache of trying to figure out the mystery plot…But the nice thing about this is we had the story, we had the plot and then like it was just like a huge outpouring of personal experience. Of like everything from our upbringing. Once you’ve got the story, I think the first thing that we did when we started talking about it was just start talking about personal experience. All of that stuff goes straight into the movie. So it is like, Shaun of the Dead too, but this one is definitely the most personal because so many themes of it are just straight from our experience. Everything from the sister [Sam, played by Rosamund Pike] is based on a real person…the bully is based on a really person. The experience of—I went back to my home town and a number of times after I’d left to live in London and I remember vividly one of the things that sparked the whole thing was going back to my hometown, going to a pub, and seeing your school bully, who didn’t recognize me. And I wasn’t sure whether he didn’t know who I was anymore or didn’t care. But the fact that he didn’t acknowledge me at all made me so mad. I didn’t want him to acknowledge me! And I certainly didn’t want to get into anything. But I was so mad because I was thinking ‘does he not recognize me, this guy?’ So things had just stuck. That’s something that happened like fifteen years ago, but it stuck with me. And so that’s what’s great about doing these films is that things you’ve been thinking about for a long time then just come flooding in. Then it just becomes like a whole like ‘this is the plot of the movie.’

Is this the end of the trio?
Wright: I think this, we thought would be nice to be a piece. It’s not like a trilogy in terms of they’re three of the same movie, it’s more like a triptych of three separate films that can be viewed separately or together. You know, separately they can be Kelly, Michelle and Beyonce, but together they’re Destiny’s Child.

LD: Who’s Beyonce?!
Wright: I don’t know! I don’t want to pick any favorites!

It might be a few years until we do another one. But this is not the end of us working together. Because we love working together so we’d like to do other stuff. But it might be something radically different next time.

The World’s End releases in the US on August 23^rd, you can read our review of it here.

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Eddie Trunk talks about VH1 talk show “That Metal Show” and new book

Eddie Trunk is the host of the popular VH1 talk show “That Metal Show”. The show recently kicked off its 12th season and is already shaping up to be one of the best yet. Media Mikes had the chance to talk with Eddie recently about the history of the show, what it’s like working with co-hosts Don Jamieson and Jim Florentine and shed some light on his new book.

Adam Lawton: How did the show initially get started?
Eddie Trunk: I had been pestering VH1 for a very long time and it was something that I brought to them. What some people may not realize due to the channel not be as readily available as it is now is that I had been hosting on VH1 Classics since 2002. Before “That Metal Show” I was doing all different types of interviews and VJ work for them. During that time I was always pushing to do my own show which would feature the music I loved and have guests on that I could talk with like I do on my radio shows. It took a long time to get them to come around to the idea. Finally in 2008 they decided to give it a shot and shoot a pilot. The show went through a lot of evolution as there were a number of different people attached to it on all different levels. Things eventually happened in that they came to me asking to bring in some other host and not just have me by myself on. They wanted guys that weren’t serious in an effort to mix up the chemistry. I had the perfect guys in mind. Don and Jim were friends of mine and they were often on my radio show. We brought them in, had a great meeting, shot the pilot and here we are 100 episodes later.

AL: Other than the recent move from New York to Los Angeles what do you think has been the biggest change in the show since its inception?
ET: The biggest was something that I had been pushing for since day one. The show started out as only a half hour and after the fourth season we went to an hour. Coming from radio I loved the time you have where you can just sit and talk to someone. TV is completely different and it’s hard to make that change when your show is only a half hour. When it really comes down to it the show is 21 minutes because of commercials. It was agonizing for me for some time trying to fit everything in to that time frame. Once we switched to an hour things felt much better to me. The only thing now is that with it being an hour I want it to be two hours. (Laughs)

AL: Can you tell us about the idea of bringing in guitarists, bassists and drummers to perform during the show?
ET: The ultimate goal is to have a band play one day but we can’t do that because we just don’t have the budget. We simply cannot afford to bring on an entire band or pay the publishing which is very expensive and a lot of people don’t realize that. We try and work around that buy just bringing in single musicians to do some shredding and stuff. We have had drummers, bassists and predominately guitarist as they lend themselves to the gig a little more. This season we split things down the middle with four shows being with a guitarist and four shows being with a drummer. We have a lot of fun bringing those guys in and it’s a great opportunity to showcase sometimes the little lesser known guys. For example Richie Kotzen has always been a favorite of mine and in America he is barely known. To have him featured on our show has been great as lots of people have been emailing me for more info on him.

AL: In the shows 12 seasons has there ever been a guest that you thought would never end up on the show but actually did end up being on?
ET: Steve Harris from Iron Maiden was tuff. He doesn’t live in American and the Iron Maiden camp is extremely protective of their brand and how they do things. I have always had a great relationship with them but in order to get everyone on board the stars have to align themselves. The season that Steve was on ended up being a last minute score for us because Steve had just announced he was going to be doing a solo album and the band happened to be in Los Angeles. I went to their manager and just asked to have him on. Steve ended up coming down and having a blast. We hope to have him back one day. They guys who don’t live in America are a challenge logistically. Tony Iommi was another one that I was really excited to have one.

AL: What is it like working with Jim and Don behind the scenes?
ET: Things are the exact same as you see on the show. We all bust each other’s balls. Those guys as stand up comics are going to be a little better at it than most people but it comes with the territory. Their role is to throw things a little off balance. Behind the scenes we all put a lot in to the show. As a co-producer the show is kind of my baby so a lot falls on me to sort of be the referee and also to get the guests as I have a lot of history with most of them. Don and Jim work hard as well coming up with concepts and we are all very much involved as it’s a team effort.

AL: Besides the remaining shows for this season what else do you have in the works?
ET: I just completed my second book which is the follow up to “Eddie Trunk’s Essential Hard Rock and Heavy Metal Vol. 1”. I just found out that Vol. 2 will be coming out on September 24th. The book is an exact sequel to my first book. The format and everything is the same except that there are 35 completely different bands in this one. I am really excited for that to be happening. I will also be continuing my two radio shows as this year I am celebrating my 30^th year in radio. I am always out there looking for ways to make my projects bigger and take things to the next level.

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Jackson Publick & Doc Hammer talk about the 5th season of “The Venture Brothers”

Debuting in 2003, The Venture Brothers follows the animated misadventures of super scientist and former “boy adventurer,” Dr. Thaddeus ‘Rusty’ Venture, his Hardy-Boy-like teen sons Hank and Dean, and their self-proclaimed arch nemesis, The Monarch. The show has created an amazing universe of heroes, villains and henchmen throughout its first four seasons while sending up everything from Johnny Quest to Hunter S. Thompson. Leading up to this Sunday’s fifth season premiere on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, creators, co-writers and stars, Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer got on the phone to discuss the show’s diverse roster of characters, super science, and the challenges of animating convincing tin foil jokes.

Lauren Damon: Your show revolves around a lot of Super Scientists, is there anything in actual modern science that’s freaked you out or sounded like something from the show?
Doc Hammer: I’m personally not that educated. So I’m personally not up on actual scientific discovery.
Jackson Publick: I have recently subscribed to Popular Science.
Doc: So he knows all the things that are popular.
Jackson: I’m super excited that they might be figuring out warp speed and when they grew a human ear on a mouse’s, I’ve never forgotten that.

LD: How about the 3D printers?
Jackson: I’m not that excited by the 3D printer—Somebody showed me a Green Lantern ring they made with a 3D printer the other night. Actually it was a White Lantern ring, calling it a “White Power” ring, which is weird!
Doc: Do you have to wear glasses for the 3D printer?
Jackson: No, it’s a printer that makes a 3D object for you. Out of like, resin or something, it just carves this thing for you.
Doc: Oh yes. You know what? Those are more like 3D fax machines than they are 3D printers.

LD: You have so many characters on the show, do you find that you have favorites to write or watch interactions between?
Doc: Oh yeah, you can tell just by watching the show.
Jackson: Yeah, you can tell who we’ve turned into pairs, we like those guys.
Doc: And you’ll start seeing pairings that are not appropriate. Like Hank and 21 for some reason are weird pairing…
Jackson: Yeah, yeah.
Doc: They’ve been together and we kind of keep throwing them together because they interact well. Because they both have this kind of love and exuberance. And then there are just classic pairs. I mean 21 and 24. Even though we murdered one…
Jackson: I like when we put 21 and the Monarch together.
Doc: 21 and the Monarch is another…I think when we put them with The Monarch, he was trying to hang out with them…That’s when we realized these guys will interact well because they’re so different.
Jackson: And the power dynamics of their relationship—
Doc: Yea.
Jackson: ‘The creepy boss is trying to be my friend now…I don’t know what to say, he shoots guys sometimes when he doesn’t like what they say.’
Doc: Yeah, and weird combinations show up. Billy and Doc are funny because Billy dresses Doc down a lot. It’s an odd combination—
Jackson: Also he lifts him up a little bit.
Doc: He does! He does, because he fanboys on him. But at the same time he—
Jackson: Yea he’s like ‘I can’t believe that’s what a fucking mess the thing I’m fanboying about has become!’
Doc: Yeah, it’s a weird thing. It’s a weird thing because he loves Rusty Venture but I think he can barely tolerate Dr. Venture.
Jackson: ‘Please try once try to be what you used to be!’
Doc: [In Billy Quizboy’s voice] “I used to love you and you’re nobody! You’re a horrible person!”

LD: Last season, with the death of Henchman 24, Henchman 21 went through so many changes, did you anticipate such an arc when you singled out these henchmen at the beginning?
Doc: Oh no, those two guys were anonymous henchmen!
Jackson:Yeah, we just got sick of them being anonymous. And we liked two voices we did.
Doc: Yeah they were made up on the spot. I mean it was just two voices that we used to do while reading people’s emails. [Both laugh] So we just put them in the show. I mean, I remember when it first happened, you know Jackson was trying to do that every time we would get a nerdy e-mail. He would get like 21 and then he did that weird Ray Romano voice. We just did it not knowing that these characters would be around for ten years.

LD: What type of e-mail would instigate the Romano voice?
Jackson: It was just him. I think we would just pick on him because we had like watched like past episodes—
Doc: We would pick on him and we would use his use his voice for just being not us but not being a character on the show. But now we can’t.
Jackson: Right. To express the opinion of someone—usually a negative one. [in Henchman 24’s Romano voice] ‘HEY WAY TO GOOOOO’
Doc: ‘GOOD JOB.’ That kind of crap.

LD: And, as opposed to 21, which character do you think has changed the least over the course of the show?
Doc: Has changed the least? Doc, actually.
Jackson: Yeah.
Doc: He’s gone through a lot of revelations but his basic character has not changed so much. Even Brock has had more changes than Doc has and Brock is rock steady.
Jackson: Even Hank has had more changes.
Doc: Hank, the boys, have had a lot of changed.

LD: Your characters have such great names, working on this for ten years are you just constantly thinking of new potential characters?
Doc: It’s like a bi-annual thing.
Jackson: Yeah, I forget the good ones…
Doc: I think both of us have notebooks filled with idiot names and then there are actual documents of names of episodes that don’t exist. Like “Return to Spider Skull Island” was just a bad episode name that we wrote around.

LD: Does that happen often?
Doc: More than it should. I don’t know about often.
Jackson: Probably yeah, like two episodes out of every season we like, just have a working title the whole time we’re making it and then when we’re making the credits, we have an argument about what to name it and then we both make a list of about forty things and try to hone in on one.
Doc: Oh yeah. The amount—just like the season premiere, we both probably wrote forty different titles for. All of them would have been fine in anybody else’s book, and of these eighty, of the eighty titles that we came up with “What Color is Your Cleansuit?” was the one that we liked. Which is insane. That was just a good one for us.

LD: Any names from season five that you’re particularly excited about that you can share?
Doc: We’re very particularly excited about season five, but we can’t give out any spoilers because season five is coming and the episodes themselves—
Jackson: Oh! You can drop a name out, can’t you?
Doc: What? Titles? Characters?
Jackson: Or name.
Doc: Go ahead! I’m not gonna do it. I have a firm line on spoilers. But you can do it.
Jackson: We’ve already told people that there is an Augustus St. Cloud. Which we were excited about him this season. He exists. What’s the best episode title do you think?
Doc: Best episode title?! Pick yours…Mine are awful.
Jackson: [laughing]
Doc: I have awful episode titles. They’re always awful. Name one of yours. One of yours that isn’t clever or just stupid. Those are my favorites.
Jackson: Right.
Doc: “O. S. I Love You” is a good title.
Jackson: There ya go.
Doc: That’s not bad.

LD: You’ve had a lot of gross stuff on the show—half-formed clones and skinsuits are jumping to mind—has there been anything that’s made you as grateful as I am that it’s all animated?
Doc: Like disgusting things that happened? Well nobody wants to see anybody turn into a caterpillar, we did that in episode three.
Jackson: Oh that would look so much better if we did it in episode five.
Doc: Oh, right? Yeah…
Jackson: It really just kind of looked like he was wearing a caterpillar costume, it was very just flat and stiff back then.
Doc: Some of the things that we do are bad ideas. Like we make a lot of jokes that really don’t work as well in cartoons as we think. Like we made a terry cloth joke. And you can’t animate terry cloth. It looks just like color.
Jackson: Right, or tin foil. We did eventually get good tin foil though…
Doc: We kept asking for tin foil and eventually we got tin foil.
Jackson: We did the worst tin foil hats for season one and then we did like amazing ones last season that the Korean studio even called us and went ‘Hey, can you simplify the tin foil design please?’ It was like five hundred facets of tin foil…
Doc: And you couldn’t really move it. You could only draw it once and then have tin foil floating. The first season just looked like a gray hat—
Jackson: Like a gray walnut shell is what it looked like.
Doc: Yeah, you knew it was tin foil. But you can’t make tinfoil jokes, you can’t make terry cloth jokes—
Jackson: My god, I want to make corduroy jokes so bad!
Doc: And you can’t show corduroy because you can’t really animate corduroy…
Jackson: I know!
Doc: We can barely get a car to turn the corner nicely. We’re never gonna get corduroy on that screen.

Venture Brothers premieres Sunday, June 2nd on Cartoon Network. Also making a return this year is the show’s exclusive weekly Shirt Club, not seen since season three. More info can be found, here.

In the meantime, Adult Swim has released a full four-season recap video hosted by Henchman 21 to get you all ready for the new season!

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Keanu Reeves and Mark Mann talk about working together on “Generation Um…”

Keanu Reeves is known for his films in franchises like “The Matrix” and “Bill & Ted”. In this film “Generation Um…”, he plays a much different role within this character piece. Mark Mann is the writer and director on the film, which is his feature film debut. Media Mikes had a chance to chat with Keanu and Mark on the film and what we can expect.

Click here for our interview with Adelaide Clemens & Bojana Novakovic

Mike Gencarelli: Mark, tell us how did “Generation Um…” come about for you?
Mark Mann: Alison Palmer (Bourke), the producer on the project, gave Keanu the script to look at as a friend at first. He liked it and said he wanted to meet with me. We had a coffee and it was sort of monumental coffee. We riffed creatively for a bit and found out that we got along well. We shared visions for the characters and the story. So after that he decided to do the film, which was great. He was perfect for the role. So we went out and made a movie [laughs].

MG: Keanu, what was it that really drew you to the role of John?
Keanu Reeves: I liked so many things about the character. What stuck out for me was the writing, the structure, the humor, the humanity and the way the story was told. With John, in particular, I had a great sympathy for him. He felt like a character that was hyper-aware. He was trapped in his past, maybe with his confidence or trapped in his life. He was seeking a connection, a friendship or something that we might think of as simple but is fundamental to life. I felt like a lot of people could relate to him. I also felt that since this took place in New York and it was more personal and I liked that.

MG: Any challenges with shooting in New York?
KR: [laughs]
MM: I had no issues whatsoever [laughs]. New York is a great place to shoot. Just because you are shooting there doesn’t mean that it is going to behave any different than New York does. It seems to add attention to the frame. We were using New York in a somewhat unorthodox fashion, with shooting in the park, running down streets, driving over bridges and staring at trains. In general, I think that New York tolerates you if you shine at the end of it all.

MG: Keanu, this is a real change from some of your past action driven films; was it a challenge taking on this character piece?
KR: I wouldn’t really say a challenge but more of an opportunity. What struck me was getting a chance to actually shoot the footage that John does in the film. That was a very unique situation for me and it was something that I really appreciated and enjoyed. The trust that Mark put into me was great. He was like “Ok Keanu…go shoot!” We shot on Super 16 with a lot of wide angle lenses and fixed perspectives. So we get to learn about John through the camera but also get to learn about the other characters from John’s perspective. For me that was very unique, fulfilling and a fun opportunity.
MM: What was interesting about that, as well, you will notice in the film that he bundles that into the character. You watch the character developing his own feelings through the camera itself.

MG: Mark, what was your biggest challenge taking on your first feature film?
MM: I would have to say just making a film. It is an impossible pursuit. Once you start getting into it there are so many things going on at the same time. It is like you are one with the inside of your head with little tentacles extending out sort of taking of the form of all these different people all handling various tasks. It is impossible…
KR: No it’s not [laughs].
MM: Yeah it was easy. It was like butter [laughs].

MG: Keanu, I loved the chemistry between you and your leading ladies, Adelaide Clemens and Bojana Novakovic. What did you do to form that bond between the three of you for this film?
KR: We started with the audition process. Mark went on search for Violet and Mia. Luckily, I was a part of that process. He asked me to videotape the actresses that came in to meet on the project. It happened with both Bojana and Addy that there was a nice simpatico between us and we got along right away. They were interesting and loved the material. As me moved forward in rehearsal and just hanging out, everyone seemed to be on the same page. We just got along really great, so that was really cool. Mark really let me in and be a part of the creative process and I really appreciated that as well.
MM: That was part of the fun though. The film ultimately is what happens between the people making the film. It was just great. Having Keanu, Adelaide and Bojana together work through it all in rehearsals and then turning on the camera and watching them do it was amazing.

MG: Mark, you also wrote the screenplay. How much did it change throughout the production?
MM: The script was god. It was bible. It didn’t change.
KR: Urgh…writers and directors, they say that the script is god. [laughs]
MM: [laughs] If you asked me the question as a director, I might have a different answer but in terms of writing you have to have a moment when you can be a writer. That is what writers do.
KR: It was just really a great script. One could think that it was improvised since the words are just so great.
MM: There are also a lot of moments of silence in the movie and I had to try to push it into direction. But there were these long moments with Keanu, Bojana and Adelaide where they are just there and they are doing what they are doing. That is not something you can write. It was very exciting to see them take the implications that I wrote and then completely bring it to this magically level where they were and just embodied these characters.
KR: Human animal footage [laughs].

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Adelaide Clemens & Bojana Novakovic talk about roles in “Generation Um…”

Adelaide Clemens & Bojana Novakovic are co-starring in “Generation Um…” along with Keanu Reeves. You may know Adelaide from the film “Silent Hill: Revelation” and upcoming film “The Great Gatsby”. Bojana Novakovic has been in films like Sam Raimi’s “Drag Me to Hell” and M. Night Shyamalan’s “Devil”. Media Mikes had a chat with these two beautiful Australian actresses about their role in the film and also working with Keanu Reeves.

Click here for our interview with Keanu Reeves and Mark Mann

Mike Gencarelli: Tell us about what drew you each to your roles in “Generation Um…”?
Adelaide Clemens: I think right off the bat for me, it was when I read the script. I thought it was a very dense piece and the characters were really well written. Mia to me was very intriguing. She has this sort of dark past and I liked exploring that.
Bojana Novakovic: I was also drawn by the script. Like Adelaide said, the density of what happens. Also I liked the richness of the characters lives and how much is actually going on without there being plot points. I find that fascinating. I love character pieces. I found it also scary to work on something that was this intimate. It required a lot of authenticity, honesty and commitment…and I really enjoyed that. I think it is an actor’s wet dream actually. Then of course there was the fact that Keanu (Reeves) was attached to the film, which just interested me a little bit [laughs].

MG: I loved the chemistry between the three of you in the film. What did you do to form that bond for this film?
BN: I think that is thanks to the way that Mark (Mann), the director, wanted to work. We just hung out for two weeks, rehearsed and talked about the roles. When Adelaide and I got to meet Keanu, we were both at first a little bit intimidating about meeting a superstar. We tried to play it very cool, but we realized that he was also incredible excited about the film like us. We were able to engage with him on a really intimate, visceral and committed level. So it was really great. The way we worked together was really reflected in the film.
AC: It is interesting how the dynamics between characters came together. I remember during the rehearsals, we were all very passionate about this piece. There were some challenging aspects of the film and we did all the preparation necessary to make sure we weren’t losing our shit when we went on set [laughs].
BN: I think we also surprised ourselves with the terrain we covered ourselves. Like how intimate we were willing to be with each other. I am not just talking about physical, which of course exists in the film but also emotional, honesty and work ethics between the three of us. Actually the four of us, Mark was like a fourth character since he was very present when we were shooting.

MG: When I spoke with Keanu, he told me he has a blast shooting with the camcorder himself. Did you enjoy working with that handheld aspect of the film?
AC: It was very interesting to break down the barrier of the typical shoot. When you are on a film you hear “Action” and you hear “Cut”. It was a new territory there with him since he was always filming. It allowed us to be vulnerable. Then it allowed that vulnerability on the camcorder to transfer to the screen. I thought it was very interesting.
BN: I also felt like the camera exposed us more, like what Adelaide was saying. It was really fun getting to perform to the camera, that way you don’t have to worry about actually performing. You don’t have to about ignoring the camera. So it actually takes the acting out of it. It was awesome.

MG: With Mark Mann writing the script, as well as directing. Do you feel you had much freedom with your characters?
BN: Oh, we had a lot of freedom. I think the whole thing came together with the four of us together in a room and collaborating on these people’s backgrounds. Who they are? Where did they come from? The actual characters formed once we came together. They can’t exist without this story. It was a collaborative process on every level. My decisions were absolutely based on who Adelaide and Keanu were and what they offered to their own characters.
AC: Yeah, we were encouraged by Mark to find our own rhythm and to inject it into these characters, which I think was fantastic. It went against the typical nature since we were able to shape our own characters. Mark also wrote the script in a way that mimics the way that we all speak, which made it even easier.

MG: Adelaide, going from films like “Silent Hill: Revelation” to “The Great Gatsby”, where does this film lie for you in terms of a challenge?
AC: I shot this film long before I shot “Silent Hill”. We did this film two and half years ago. It was an incredible different kind of experience. Like I said we were all very passionate about the material. I had room to work with the script and of course working with Bojana and Keanu also helped. We all did the work together and really invested in this project. I am very fortunate and happy to see the way that things turned out the way they did.

MG: Being from New York, I know that sometimes the city can have a life of its own. Any cool stories from filming in New York City?
BN: I actually ended up with a bunch of bruises. We don’t know where they came from but they appeared all over my body. I remember I went out doing what I call research one night; Mark told me check out what a party girl would do in New York to get into character. We also did go to a strip club. But one night I was out just observing people and I saw a guy riding a bicycle in a tuxedo. I yelled at him and said “You look fantastic!” Later that night around 2 am, I was waiting for a taxi and wasn’t able to get one. It was that kind of Saturday night in New York. So I started talking with the guy who I yelled to in the tuxedo and he ended up giving me a ride on his bicycle from all the way across town. Then he tried to get my number and I gave him a fake number [laughs]. If he is out there somewhere…maybe I do want you number. I felt bad because he was a cool guy.
AC: I remember we had a crazy thunderstorm one night. The entire sound tent was lifted up and then smashed down. We just had an amazing experience. It was a very intimate crew. I remember one night we needed to get some photos taken and instead of just taking them, Keanu said that there was a photo booth on 2nd and A Street and that we should do there. Mia, Violet and John together are not particularly well behaved together.
BN: [laughs] Yeah, so we were in this booth with Keanu Reeves and we were slamming him against the wall.
AC: Yeah, the public was just around, watching us and seeing it happen. But you know it was New York so no one really cared. But it was really fun.
BN: It was really fun and we had a great time.

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Filed Under: Film Interviews, Interviews Tagged With: adelaide, bojana, clemens, costarring, generation, keanu, ...

Inga Cadranel talk about her role in BBC America’s hit show “Orphan Black”

Inga Cadranel is currently playing the role of Detective Angela Deangelis on BBC America’s “Orphan Black”. She is also know for her roles of Aoife in “Lost Girl”. Media Mikes had a chance to chat with Inga about her TV roles, her love of sci-fi and her turn to start producing movies.

Mike Gencarelli: What drew you to the role of Detective Angela Deangelis on BBC America’s “Orphan Black”?
Inga Cadranel: The thing that drew me to the project was the creators John Fawcett and Graeme Manson. I happened to work with both of them before on different series here in Canada. John Fawcett was the producer/director for another cop show I did called “The Bridge”. That was were I got my chops as the detective type actor and we did a lot of cool research for that show. So when this part of Angela Deangelis came up for this show, it seemed for me to be a perfect fit for me to work again with John. He was really stoked to have me reprise another hard-ass female detective, which is a role I love.

MG: Tell us about the character and what you like most about her?
IC: Well, I can say that she is not the most likable character. She is the one that never seems to get what she wants, which is Beth’s partner Art (played by Kevin Hanchard). She is gunning for her partner because he is really high up in the precinct. She is a pit of a keener and very by the textbook. But soon enough this will change and she will get more out of it then she wants. I think she is a tight ass. She doesn’t have as many redeeming qualities than other characters I have played. She is good at what she does and is very tough. She is layered, which I was told they are going to explore more of those in the second season and that makes it more fun for me. At this point it is just about her drive to chase after the Beth/Sarah character. So I look forward to getting more into the nitty-gritty of her character.

MG: Compared to your other roles; what was your biggest challenge?
IC: It is really fun and it is hard to think of a challenge. It is a great set and awesome actors to work with. Maybe the challenge is that I have to play against myself in being a bit more of a kiss ass. Her choices wouldn’t necessarily be the ones that I would make. She is not as cool [laughs]. But otherwise, I wouldn’t say any major challenges. I had a great time on the set from every department. It was like a big family.

MG: How was it acting along side Tatiana Maslany?
IC: She is really great. She had such a wild challenge of doing different accents and voices. It was very impressive. The whole show is that actress, so thank God that they picked Tat because she is amazing and I have nothing but good things to say about her.

MG: Tell us about what you like most about playing Bo’s succubus mother, Aoife in “Lost Girl”?
IC: That is a whole other thing. That role is super fun for me. To play a bad guy that everyone hates. You don’t know what her motives are and she is just creepy. I have never played a part like that before. I can play her with more of a character aspect than in “Orphan Black”. It is a really fun part and great show.

MG: What do you like most about working in the sci-fi genre?
IC: I love sci-fi. I am a huge fan. It just gives you such freedom. I have always been fan of thrillers and mysteries as well and that really plays into the sci-fi aspect. The possibilities are endless since it is so broad and out of the realm. You can play out these great stories. Like the cloning in “Orphan Black”, it is not that far from what is happening right now. We are able to clone sheep. It is here. It is exciting, scary and to make to show that it can actually happen in real world is what makes sci-fi cool. My father-in-law, Michael Hogan, also worked in the sci-fi genre with “Battlestar Galactica”. It is funny we keep saying that we are going to run into each other at conventions.

MG: Besides acting you are also an accomplished musician ranging from Opera to touring with punk rock band, Battlestar; tell us about that side of Inga?
IC: It is really different but it was also more of mine passion before I became a mother. I have two kids now. I played in a punk band for many years and then I had my son, so it is just such a different lifestyle. I couldn’t do it anymore. But music is still a real passion of mine. I have been writing some stuff at home with my guitar still but I haven’t tried to do anything with it just yet. But I always see myself getting back to music.

MG: You are also currently producing two feature films and developing a 30-minute comedy series; tell us about those?
IC: My brother, my partner and myself wrote and are developing a 30-minute comedy series about a neighborhood here in Toronto called Kensington Market, the show is called “The Market”. I lived there for 10 years and wanted to do a series about it. Every city has a neighborhood like this. We are in the stage of trying to get our pitch package developed and start shopping it around to networks. The other two features are being optioned and we are in the process of attaching names to them right now and gathering funding. This is a whole new side of the business for me with producing. I see this as a great way to get behind the other side of the camera. I am going to start doing both and I see myself in 10 years focusing solely on producing and possibly directing.

Robert Redford, Stanley Tucci, Brit Marling and Jackie Evancho talk about new film “The Company You Keep”

Opening in New York and Los Angeles on April 5th, “The Company You Keep” tells the story of Jim Grant, a former member of radical sixties group The Weather Underground. Thirty years ago the Weathermen were involved with a bank robbery that turned fatal and Jim is brought out of hiding when another former member (Susan Sarandon) finally turns herself in. Jim must go on the run from both the authorities and a young truth-seeking journalist (played by Shia LeBeouf) to clear his name and reunite with his young daughter (Jackie Evancho). Along the way, he turns to other ex-Weatherman played by an array of veteran actors including Julie Christie, Richard Jenkins, Sam Elliot, Nick Nolte and Chris Cooper. Redford, joined co-stars Stanley Tucci, Brit Marling and Jackie Evancho at a press conference in New York this week to discuss the film.

What do you want people to take from this movie about the legacy of the Weather Underground?
Robert Redford: “There are a probably a number of things to take away. To simplify, I’d probably say the first thing would be that they would think. Some films are made not necessarily to think but it’s like eating cotton candy. You have a wonderful ride and then it’s over and that’s all you really want. And other films are designed in a way to at least make you ask a question afterwards. Or think about what’s happening and maybe start a dialogue with someone. I think maybe that’s what I’d prefer, it’s not always possible. So that’s would be the first thing and the second thing has to do with a criticism that I have for my own country. I don’t think we’re very good at looking at history as a lesson that we learn, so that we don’t repeat a negative historical experience. We’re not good at that. And looking back in time and saying ‘Well, this happened then, what can we learn from that?’ I just think it’s an American tradition to be so busy pushing forward and driving forward and doing, doing, doing. They don’t look back and say ‘Gee, what could I learn from the mistake that I made before?’ So I guess the hope, that’s all it can be, is the hope that you look back in this moment in time–which, by the way when this happened, I was of that age. I was of them in spirit. But because I was starting a career in the New York theater as an actor at that time and I was also starting to raise a family, I was obligated to that task so I wasn’t a part of it. But I was certainly empathetic to what they were doing. I thought it was a wrong war. I thought that it was a war that was going to cost unnecessary lives. It was also a war that was designed by people that had never gone to war. And it had a lot to with kind of a tragic history of the United States with the mistakes it’s made, they never seem to learn by. So that was my own personal criticism about my country and my history. So I guess I would hope that you would look back
on this time, it’s not about what happened then because it’s about thirty years later…There’s a wonderful poem by Yates, one of my favorite poems, there’s a line that says because he was so sick of what was happening to Ireland. He could see that calm Ireland was about to be disrupted by vandalism, by revolt, by revolution and that Ireland would never be the same. And so he was bemoaning that by taking a conservative stance. So he says…’The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity’. And I thought that was a nice thing for me to play with. Because people who were filled with that passion and intensity were all older and look back. They’re trapped by their past because in order to stay free from the law they go underground with a false name. But how long can you live without you true identity? And that’s what interested me to tell that story not then but now.”

Brit Marling was also intrigued by the idea of aging activists in this film:

Brit Marling: “…When I read the script I was really moved by the idea of the Weather Underground and how it’s not set back then but it’s set in present day as this group has sort of come into age of wisdom and experience and are looking back wondering about the radicalism of their youth and did they make the right choices? And would they do it differently now? Which, I think my generation is grappling with a lot of the same ideas. So I was very attracted to that part of the story.”

Redford likened his character’s thirty year evasion of the law to that of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, a favorite story of his:
Robert Redford: “I just thought from the time I was a little kid that was one of the greatest stories. So I saw similarities in Shia LeBeouf’s character is inspector Javert in Les Miserables and then I am Jean Valjean in the sense that I go to prison for something I’ve done that’s wrong, I escape, I take on a new identity to escape prison time, I live a clean life, I have a daughter, the daughter means everything to me…I had to give up another daughter before she meant too much for me to give up, that was painful, I don’t want to make that mistake again. So here it is, this means everything to me and yet there’s someone on my tail that might expose me in a way that makes it impossible for me to have the true love of my daughter and a clean, clear life. So that was the complexity that sparked me to make this film.”

Behind Shia LeBeouf’s reporter is his editor as played by Stanley Tucci who spoke about his role:
Stanley Tucci: Shia and I worked one day and we went and did it. But the scenes are very straight-forward. I think that, you know, he is the sort of classic curmudgeonly, exhausted editor. I think particularly in this day and age, he’s an interesting character because he’s the last of a dying breed. You’re not going to see those guys too much anymore.
Redford: …Just want to add something, he talks about the energy–Shia’s energy, which is extreme. Shia has a fast mind and a fast tongue. And for Stanley to work with that and still be the character he had to play. He had to be a man in control within an industry that was going out of control, which adds it’s own dynamic, but the fact that he could manage the energy by creating a counter-energy. As Shia got more crazed, Stanley, if you watch the film, Stanley goes the other way. So it creates a dynamic. When Shia slows down, Stanley goes for his throat. I just enjoyed watching.

The youngest star of the movie, Jackie Evancho is better known for her musical success since she was introduced on tv’s “America’s Got Talent”. Seeing her perform on TV prior to filming, Redford knew he’d found his screen daughter.
Redford: “I said ‘Woah wait a minute, what’s this?’ because I don’t watch much television, so I look at this and then the camera–she’s singing Puccini! And I’m thinking ‘How does that work?’ And so the camera pulls back and there’s this symphony hall and there’s this huge orchestra in this symphony hall and this creature standing there just belting this music out there. It was so powerful…If somebody who has that composure, who can do that in front of that kind of an audience, with that kind of register, with that kind of complexity, maybe that could work. So anyway, to make a long story short, I contacted the agent, the casting person, I said ‘Find out who this person is, where she is.’ They find out she lives in Pittsburgh with her parents, they live a normal life except when she had to do these shows and they went out and taped her. They taped her, I don’t think they knew what was going on. Jackie can speak to that. They sent the tape back, it was clear she didn’t know what was going on and I thought, I don’t care, there’s something–I’m going to take this chance. She was hired on Tuesday, she came, we filmed on Wednesday. We filmed the first day I met her and I can only tell you, from that point on I figured I am one lucky man, because she turned out to be absolutely lovely…We just played together we just became people who could play together, who could have fun together and improvise together. So I ended up the beneficiary of a risk taken on Jackie.”
Jackie Evancho: All I can say was I was extremely honored to have a chance to actually act with you guys. That I was really really excited that I got the role and I just really had a lot of fun so, thank you.

Being only twelve years old, Jackie was asked if she was familiar with the name Robert Redford or his most famous films.
Jackie Evancho: Well, my dad, he always talked about it with his brothers he just would like goof around and stuff. So when I heard the name, I wasn’t very familiar with it, I shouldn’t say “it”! …The only thing that I knew was my dad was like ‘He played a cowboy.’ And that’s all I knew. I actually thought that it was an amazing honor.

Did you during the making of the film have any positive thoughts about the country and journalism?
Robert Redford: Positive? I don’t about positive so much as valuable. Because I consider journalism as so valuable. I would almost–I don’t want to be too much ego here–but I would almost take it personally if journalism failed itself. Because that’s the one avenue we have to the truth. So if I’m going to portray journalism in a film, it’s tricky business…Then you want to at least give it it’s due. Then describe the threats that are maybe against it. So in this case, the idea of Shia’s character was to me more interesting if it was complicated by the fact that is he going after the story for his own personal advertisement? Is he going after it for just getting the story? He should dance with that as he moves forward and what should be unmistakeable is what he learns about himself. In his pursuit about finding somebody else, what does he learn about himself that may change him? That was exciting to me but you have to be careful, I think you have to be careful about when you’re dealing with journalism… You have to test certain things and then back away and let the audience go with it. What they’re going to do with it.

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Eric Jacobus talk about playing Stryker in “Mortal Kombat Legacy 2”

Eric Jacobus is the founder of The Stunt People with Ben Brown and Chelsea Steffensen in 2001. He released his film “Death Grip” in which he took on the role of Writer, Director, Lead/Stuntman, Choreographer and even Editor. He recently worked stunts in the upcoming “”A Good Day to Die Hard” and also took over the role of Stryker in “Mortal Kombat Legacy 2”. Media Mikes had a chance to chat with Eric about his role in Mortal Kombat Legacy 2″ and what else he has planned next.

Mike Gencarelli: Give us some background about how you got started in martial arts?
Eric Jacobus: I was a late bloomer in martial arts. My small town of Redding, CA didn’t have many martial art schools, so I took to weightlifting. Martial arts may have helped with the bullies in school but I had a knack for talking my way out of everything, plus the weightlifting made me stronger than them anyway. I remember a kid was once pushing me around in the locker room, so I just grabbed his arms and pushed my foot against his chest and pulled until he dropped… Come to think of it I think that’s a Fatality move from Mortal Kombat. When I began producing action films in San Francisco around the age of 20, I wanted to exhibit the authenticity of a real martial artist, which made me seek out training. So I didn’t start training until I was 20. First I studied Tae Kwon Do under Andy Leung, and then Myung Jae Nam-style Hapkido under Dennis Ruel and Ray & Troy Carbonel. I’ve been doing Hapkido for eight years. Now the town I grew up in has either a mixed martial arts or trick martial arts school on every corner. Things have changed so much in just the last decade – everyone in America understands martial arts thanks to the widespread appeal of MMA, and you can see this paradigm shift influencing fight choreography in major Hollywood films.

MG: How did you end up replacing Tahmoh Penikett to play Stryker in “Mortal Kombat Legacy 2”?
EJ: I don’t know the logistics behind the change itself. It could have been a schedule issue, who knows? These kinds of things happen all the time. But the kind of character I’m known for playing in films is the underdog tough guy who is always looking for a way out of a fight, using his head for the most part but able to throw down when necessary. Some people have even called me the “white Jackie Chan.” Stryker is
a human in a supernatural world, a Jack Burton with handcuffs, and he brings real human emotions like fear, confusion, and humor. These are emotions I’m comfortable playing, so when the choreographer Larnell Stovall told me I should play Stryker I knew it was the perfect part for me. Hell, minus the cop part I play this character on a daily basis.

MG: How did you research to play such a well-known character as Stryker?
EJ: I played Mortal Kombat to the death as a kid at the local arcade. The funnier, underdog human characters like Stryker and Johnny Cage appealed the most to me because I could relate to them. Stryker’s also a riot cop. He protects the innocent, keeps the peace, and shoots to kill, a very black and white character (or black and blue). His gear is typical police equipment; gun, taser, mace, cuffs, and a baton, which I didn’t know how to use. This is where my stunt team The Stunt People comes into use. One of our members Yun Yang is a Kyokushin Karate practitioner, and he showed me how to use one. I also had a fair amount of on-set sidearm training with a firearms expert. But training in the art of police brutality itself was a non-issue – you could call that a personal character trait of mine. Protect the good guys, beat up the bad guys, no problem.

MG: What can you tell us about your episode this season?
EJ: This season I team up with Johnny Cage and we have some good scenes together, plus I have a badass fight scene. I get to be in more than one episode, too. Beyond that I can’t reveal much else. Did I mention I have a badass fight scene?

MG: Tell us about your stunt work on “A Good Day to Die Hard”?
EJ: I had just finished my martial arts action film Death Grip, and Chad Stahelski from 87Eleven Action Design took notice of the final knife fight from that film that I performed with Alvin Hsing. Chad brought me and Alvin to the 8711 gym where we choreographed a fight with J.J. Perry for A Good Day to Die Hard and filmed it, which is called a “pre-viz”. I got to pretend to be John McClane, toning down the flashy martial arts and playing more to his strengths, which again is the kind of character I’m most apt at playing. He’s vulnerable, faced with a superior opponent and always bringing the human element to the fight. He gets hurt, has to improvise, and avoids conflict whenever possible. It was a blast. Bruce Willis is another actor who inspired me to get into action film. If only I could’ve met the guy!

MG: Tell us about “Death Grip”, which you not only star but also direct, co-wrote, produce?
EJ: “Death Grip” is a martial arts thriller about a criminal who sets his life straight by assuming care for his estranged, autistic brother, but the brother inadvertently gets them wrapped up in the theft of a priceless artifact, and to clear their names they have to recover it from a Satanic Cult. Virgin sacrifices, killer monks, and a maniacal cult leader played by Power Rangers star Johnny Yong Bosch all stand in their way. I produced Death Grip with co-star Rebecca Ahn, who helped me pull together a sizable budget. It allowed me and my stunt team The Stunt People to go all out in the fight scenes: we destroy a bathroom, do a fight in the dark where the audience can what the characters can’t, and pit me against 15 other evil monks ala Armor of God. It’s pure, Hong Kong-style martial arts action mixed with American sentiment that you don’t typically get from mainstream action films. Whereas Hollywood films often rush the fight scenes and rely too much on fast editing, shaky camerawork, and stunt doubles, we do all our own stunts and have full control over the camera and editing. We don’t hide anything, and the audience can actually see what the hell is going on. People like that, especially since America now understands martial arts better than ever due to the popularity of MMA. I’m now producing a new martial art film called Marine Core, written by Steve Carolan. Imagine “Ninja Scroll” starring Rambo. Keep your eyes peeled for it!

MG: Where can people check out this action-packed film?
EJ: I’ll be at San Diego Comic-Con this year at Booth 4015 with other cast members, so stop by, get a Stryker autograph, and pick up Death Grip or any of my other films. You can always check out my YouTube channel, and you can always grab a copy of Death Grip on DVD or Blu Ray at our online store here.

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Filed Under: Film Interviews, Interviews Tagged With: 2, eric, jacobus, kombat, legacy, mortal, ...

Brian Austin Green & Melora Hardin talk about new show TBS’ “Wedding Band”

Brian Austin Green and Melora Hardin are starring in TBS’ new comedy series “Wedding Band”, which debuts on Saturday, November 10 at 10:00 pm. “Brian plays Tommy, the life of the party and lead singer of the band who is also the star on the stage and the bedroom. Tommy’s a bad boy with a good heart. And Melora plays Roxie Rutherford who is the owner of Rutherford Events. She’s no- she’ll do nothing more for her clients, she’ll do anything from shipping sand in from Fiji for an island themed party. Roxy is the person behind the most important moments and the best nights in people’s lives.” Brian Austin Green is known best for his roles in “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles”. Melora is known best for her role on NBC’s “The Office”. Media Mikes had a chance to chat with Brian and Melora about this new show and what we can expect.

Mike Gencarelli: Brian, your the lead singer for “Wedding Band”, were these all songs that you knew ahead of time or did you have to learn some of them?
Brian Austin Green: Whew. For the most part I knew the melodies. But most of the songs, I got to be honest, when I got the lyric sheets my first thoughts were, oh, those are the words, (that’s not what) we’ve been singing. When you have REM’s “End of the World as We Know It” and you go what is he talking about? I think the only thing anybody ever knew was “it’s the end of the world as we know it”…and the rest of the words were completely unknown. I’ve always had a bad habit of that, just in I’m a huge music lover. I grew up listening to it, but I’m one of those just because I play, I play piano and drums, I connect way more with melodies usually than the lyrics. So the lyrics are usually the last thing that I learn, whereas a lot of other people I know really sit and study the lyrics first and the melody is kind of the last thing. So, I knew pretty much none of them.

MG: Before I watched the pilot, I was kind of expecting the band to be funny in itself, like the performing, but I was actually impressed and thought you guys were really a solid band. Can you reflect on that important element of the show is that we’re not actually laughing at your guys’ talent because there is talent there?
BAG: Well, I think the answer lends itself to what we were just talking about. We can play comedy songs, which only kind of last for so long, or we can stick with the element of what the show is, which is that our job is to make this believable, our job is to make this band honestly the most kick-ass wedding band anybody has ever seen. I’m just saying that alone there’s comedy in that. They’re a stadium style wedding band. You never hear or see anything like that, let alone sit at a wedding, hear these amazing grand songs, and have pyrotechnics and confetti cannons going off. And throwing guitar picks out to the crowd.
Melora Hardin: Right, and they’ve got my character Rutherford breathing down their neck that it better be damn good. And they are. That’s why she takes them on in the first place. They care so much about the event in a whole other way than Roxie cares about the event, but I’m glad you recognize that because they are awesome. It’s not like we’re breaking into song, you know, like Glee does, like musical style. But it’s just using music in the storyline in a truthful, honest way. So yes, anyway.
BAG: And on top of that, too, Adam Schlesinger who does our music is so gifted at what he does.
MH: Amazing. And Steven Gold.
BAG: Yes, and Steven Gold. They have an amazing ability to take something like a KISS song at Oktoberfest, so you’re singing these party anthems but with a kick drum and a trombone and an accordion, but still doing it in a serious enough way as a musician that aside from laughing because we’re wearing lederhosen and you’re still thinking this song is awesome. I kind of want to hear this version again. It’s really fun. And that’s what music does. The music carries so much emotion to it. And when it’s done by people that really enjoy doing it, I think it comes across just in watching and listening to it. And that’s what we strive for.
BAG: It’s scary when you pick up a script and you see something worded that way. Roxie Rutherford in a jazz club singing Get Ur Freak On. And then all of a sudden you get the CD from Adam and Steve and you hear it. And it was really a nice experience to put in a CD for every episode and hear what they had been working on because it really kept the excitement going.
MH: You just wait, we got so many more coming.
BAG: Oh, I think we have 29 or 30 songs.

MG: What songs should we be looking out for the most this season?
MH: Well, Brian has a lot more to choose from, but I think I mentioned earlier, but I did a version of Get Ur Freak On, which I think they are going to release on iTunes, which is a pretty phenomenal arrangement and pretty spectacular because it’s a Missy Elliot song which they made into a jazz trio. So that was pretty spectacular. But the band has some pretty spectacular ones too.
BAG: Yes, I honestly don’t want to give any away. I think one that’s really fun and it kind of comes up early on, so I don’t feel so bad, is we do a very sort of Indian version of Party Rock, which is just really amazing There’s an entire dance number, like Bollywood kind of dance number that goes along with it and it’s pretty genius.

MG: Melora, your character is really tough but also have a fun side; what would you say for you was the most challenging part of preparing for her?
MH: Brian Austin Green [laughs]. No, you know what, she’s so much fun. I mean, she’s – I don’t know if I would say that there was like a challenging part of the character. It’s always exciting, I would put it that way, to try to, you know, to try to kind of get all the different colors running through a character like her because she’s multidimensional and there’s a lot to bite into there. And she’s similar to Jan in that respect in that she’s rich.

MG: There is a little bit of tension between you guys in the first episode and I’m wondering if you think there’s any chance of any romance between Tommy and Rutherford.
BAG: I think there’s a chance of anything between Tommy and Rutherford.
MH: I do too.
BAG: I wouldn’t take anything off the plate. I think anything is possible.
MH: They could kill each other, they could fall in love with each other.
BAG: They could. Yes.
MH: No, there’s a lot there for sure. It’s an interesting little dynamic.
BAG: Yes. I think it’s one of the things that makes the relationship fun. It’s kind of like, the Moonlighting aspect of the show. It’s the thing I always loved about that show is you can sort of have that underlying sexual tension, but never even have to go there and it plays really well. And then if we finally do, then it’s explosive and it’s sexy and it’s daring and, you know, we win Oscars. I want to be the first…
MH: We win Oscars even though we’re on TV. We win Oscars. Thank you.
Brian Austin Green: No, I want to be the first television star to win an Oscar.
MH: That’s a first.
BAG: That’s my goal. I want it to be that good and sexy.
MH: Let’s go for it. I like it.

MG: Brian, you starred in hour-long dramas and 30-minute comedies and of course. Melora, you were on “The Office”, which is another 30-minute comedy. The Wedding Band is different. It’s an hour long comedy. How is that different from anything you both have done before?
MH: Well, I’ll start. I think Brian and I both have done sort of sitcom stuff. “The Office” isn’t filmed like a sitcom, but I’ve done that traditional sitcom way of making a comedy. That’s sort of like the crème de la crème is in terms of lifestyle for an actor because, you do all these rehearsal days and then you have one long day. When you’re making a drama, an hour-long drama, you have very long days and but you also have to be funny. So I think to me, what’s nice about the show, and one of the really, really wonderful elements in it being an hour, is that you get the comedy, but you also get that fabulous arc of the dramatic arc. You have time to get into the characters, you have time to get into the storyline, and it doesn’t just have to be (joke, hit, joke, hit, joke, hit, joke, hit). So I really like that a lot and I enjoyed it. But you do have that drama schedule of having to be there for very long days.
BAG: Yes, the thing though that I really enjoy about our show especially is that coming from dramas first. I did do a sitcom and it’s a lot of fun and I really enjoy comedy. I’ve always loved watching even growing up, was I love comedy that are real, their real dramatic, you know, honest moments in funny situations. I like seeing people struggle through situations that are just absurd and laughing at them. I feel like our show is written in a very serious way. We’re honest about the things that we do and our lives are just crazy enough that it’s entertaining and it’s funny. But it’s never setup, punch line, which is hard to do.
MH: Yes, and it’s a whole different style of comedy.
BAG: It’s a hard thing to do for an hour especially.
MH: Yes. Exactly. No, it’s all based on truth.
BAG: And you guys were the best at it on The Office. That was like the absolute bar of delivering.
MH: Well, it was unique in that it really was the first one to kind of come along that was really, since like Cheers, that was sort of like really based in reality and sort of that mockumentary style. That really worked well for me, too. Brian and I have had similar backgrounds in that we both really believe that great comedy, just as great drama, definitely comes from the truth of the moment and it’s always funny, truth is always funnier than fiction and trying to get to that truth is always going to make the best joke.

MG: Tell us about how to was working with your wife, Megan Fox, on this show? How did that come about?
BAG: Honestly, she kind of stepped in and saved us at the last minute. There were a couple other people that they were discussing bringing into the episode at first and schedule wise and timing wise it didn’t work out and I had already spoken to my wife about the episode and kind of what was going on and she graciously said that, you know, if nothing else worked out that she would step in and kind of rescue us and she did. I thought she was great. I thought she kicked ass.
MH: Yes, she totally kicked ass.

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Filed Under: Interviews, TV Interviews Tagged With: austin, band, brian, green, hardin, melora, ...

Adam Green and Joe Lynch talk about FEARnet’s “Holliston” and Season 2 plans!

Adam Green and Joe Lynch are the masterminds behind the hit FEARnet sitcom “Holliston”. The first season of the show has just recently been released on Blu-ray and DVD and Media Mikes had the chance to talk with the guys about their favorite moments and what we can expect from season two.

Adam Lawton: Can you give us some back ground on how you were able to get Dee Snider and Dave Brockie involved with the show?
Adam Green: I have had a very long friendship with Dee Snyder. I actually came up with the Lance Rocket character when I was DJing at the Rainbow Bar and Grill on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. The place is a heavy metal hang out but it’s also like a time capsule where guys in there 50’s and 60’s don’t realize the 80’s are over. It’s hilarious but sad at the same time. The design of “Holliston” is that every character has a dream beyond what their day job is. When I approached everyone about 4 years ago Dee was the only one who was going to be playing a fictitious character. The rest of us would play similar versions of our real selves. Dee was a little apprehensive about the role. He told me that he was never anything like this guy but a lot people thought he was because of Twisted Sister’s imagery. He had spent the last 20 years trying to redefine himself and now we wanted him to play this role. Thankfully after he read the script he thought it was funny and that it would give him a chance to poke fun at that whole stigma. Dee is having a blast. With Dave aka Oderus I have known for 13 years that there was going to be an imaginary alien in my closet that gives me advice. I have been a lifelong Gwar fan and have hoped it would be him. Thankfully this show took so long to get made I was at a point to where I could reach out to anyone I wanted. The guys were aware of me and Dave was a very quick yes.
Joe Lynch: It is so crazy that both of those guys are in it. Being an instant fan of Gwar from the first time I saw them and having known Dee from when my Dad used to ride bikes with him is just awesome. I am very glad the show happened when it did as Adam was able to say this is the cast I want.

AL: Where there any reservations about signing to FEARnet due to their limited coverage?
AG: That is what really made the show possible. This show had been developed for a major network at one point over its 13 year process. When it was in development at the major network the first draft of the show came out and it wasn’t even my show anymore. If I had gone with that version of the show I would have only been doing it for the money. With Fear net coming in to existence and being a startup network has given us the opportunity to become the flag ship show. Creatively we could do exactly what we wanted. There were some limitations due to just getting started and not being on every provider but, most people these days don’t watch a show when it actually airs. They watch it afterwards on DVD or Netflix. We got in on the ground level and are very important to them as we are their first original show. So far we are their only originally show. We have their undivided attention. They make those shows with us which is a great experience. I don’t think it would be the way it is anywhere else. We look at Fear net still getting their footing as a positive thing.

AL: Is there a moment from season one that sticks out for you both as a highlight?
JL: It is hard to pick just one moment. The first episode for me was definitely a highlight. This was the first time that we got to see ourselves in this format. There is something completely surreal about seeing yourself in a sitcom. There’s this very strange moment where you think “oh my god I’m on a TV show”. It’s a shock and awe moment. When you watch that first episode we start in the Movie Crypt and end in the Holliston Grill. To see that all happen and having to myself drink all those black coffees is something I will never forget. Watching that arc from episode 1 to episode 6 which features a ton of guest stars was really great.
AG: We didn’t shoot the episodes in order. In fact the pilot was one of the final episodes we shot. We did that because I never want to shoot the beginning of the movie first. That’s the time when people are still finding their footing. We shot the “Candy Man” episode first which featured Tony Todd. It’s funny when we read reviews where they are talking about the pilot and how we are just finding our way but by episode 3/4 we are hitting our stride. That’s not true. That is the audience hitting their stride. The first two or three episodes you watch you are still getting in to it and becoming attached to the characters. Shooting that pilot with the show being so autobiographical was tough at times. The scene where I first see Cory and her new boyfriend was a very emotional scene for me as it was real and I had to keep doing it over and over. Everyone loved it and thought it was great but I was just dying inside. I will never forget that.

AL:Special guest-wise, who can we be watching for in season two?
AG: Kane Hodder and Daniel Harris will both be back in season 2. We also have David Naughton from “American Werewolf in London” and James Gunn the director of “Slither. Sid Haig will also make an appearance this season. There will be a lot of guests. We have been very lucky to have people like Derek Meers and everyone else involved again this season. We really wanted people who you saw in season 1 come back as it feels natural being “Holliston” has a small town setting. It’s something very natural. When an audience likes a certain character you want to try and keep them around. Even Cory’s boyfriend will be back. People just love him. There are some names we are holding back on purpose as we want there to be some surprises.

AL: Has there been a specific air date scheduled for season two?
AG: We know that it will probably air around the same time as season 1 did last year. We haven’t heard the actual date yet however it will most likely be spring time. My guess would be May or June. There will be 10 episodes as well as a Christmas episode which will air in December. What’s great about the Christmas special is it’s not your average stand alone hour special. It really acts as the connective tissue between season one and two. A lot of really big shit goes down between characters that set up things in season 2. We are really excited for this episode. I am editing it now and I think it will air in either the second or third week of December.

AL: Do either of you have any updates on “Killer Pizza” or “Knights of Badassdom”?
AG: As of now I am only the writer on “Killer Pizza”. It is a big studio movie meaning that things move incredibly slow. The writing process was a solid two years. A lot of that time was spent waiting for contracts and re-writes. I am now done with my contractual commitments to the script and it has been submitted to MGM. I haven’t heard anything either way but I wouldn’t expect to this soon. Hopefully something happens with the movie as I would love to see it get made. It is a really fun movie.
JL: That is kind of the same thing with “Knights of Badassdom”. My work is done so now it comes down to the people financing the film. I have heard the film will be out sometime next year. I have my fingers crossed just like everyone else.

AL: Can you tell us a little about “Everly”?
JL: Right now we are doing a lot of prepping and casting. The film is a really ambitious thriller that is completely different from the things we have done before. This is something that I have kind of always wanted to do. I co-wrote the film and we hope to start shooting in January. Things have been a little tough because of casting and other commitments. I also didn’t want this to get in the way of the work on “Holliston”.

AL: Any other projects you guys would like to mention?
AG: We are just about finished with post on “Hatchet III”. I have not heard the release date yet. The intention was to have it out in America by early 2013. Recently in an effort to help stop pirating distributors have started coordinating release dates worldwide so that may hold things up a bit. Until the talks are done between all of the people distributing the film I won’t know an exact release date. I will also be continuing my work on a documentary with artist Alex Pardee titled “Digging up the Marrow”. That has been sort of a side project the past year or so but I hope to be able to free up some more time to get that film completed. There also a few other things Joe and I are in talk to work on but we can’t say anything just yet about those.

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Filed Under: Interviews, TV Interviews Tagged With: adam, green, holliston, joe, lynch, season, ...

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