‘Hemlock Grove’ Continues Cinematic Groove With Netflix
One of the many impressive facets of Hemlock Grove lies in its unique vision of a morally compromised universe filled with what some may describe as creatures of the night. But monsters, as well as humans, take shape in many different forms and sizes.
My favorite tag line for this year’s Hemlock Grove is that “even demons have demons,” and most of the characters travel down a dark and unforgiving path in season two. Hemlock Grove’s new batch of episodes debuts on Netflix tomorrow (July 11), as Roman (Bill Skarsgard) and Peter’s (Landon Liboiron) mutual dislike of each other continues.
Netflix is one of the leaders in shaping how we digest film and television. The days of running home from work to catch your favorite show are over thanks to DVR and streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu. For Eli Roth, the changing landscape on how material is digested was one of his inspirations for shepherding Hemlock Grove’s development.
“It is the norm to binge watch,” said Roth. “That is how people are getting their shows. In fact, people are so used to watching multiple episodes of shows (that) they are waiting for three Games of Thrones episodes to air so they can watch them all in a row. (With Hemlock Grove), we wanted to make something special. We wanted to make something unique, and the fans really gave us a chance and embraced the show. It was a fantastic hit and we were lucky to get Emmy nominations. And we’re so excited to be back with season two.”
Chic Eglee (Dark Angel, Dexter, Murder One) is the new showrunner this season, which series star Famke Janssen accurately described as a “10 hour movie.” Featuring top notch production design and special effects, the show is also blessed with arresting visual work from cinematographer Fernando Argüelles. Roth also brought in a host of first rate filmmakers (Hesher’s Spencer Sussman and Cube’s Vincenzo Natali are among the players) to infuse their specified aesthetic for this season, giving the narrative an even deeper cinematic the second time around.
I asked Janssen and Roth about why Hemlock Grove doesn’t actually feel like a TV show but instead continues to expand its creative horizons. Click on the media bar below to hear their answer:
Will a rehabbing Olivia (Janssen) get son Roman (Skarsgard) back in her good graces, or is the damage too much to repair? Are you set to binge watch the second season this weekend? Feel free to comment below!!
Tribeca Winner ‘The Kill Team’ Readies for New York & L.A. Release
“The Kill Team,” winner of the documentary Grand Jury Prize at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, hits theaters July 25 in New York, August 1 in San Francisco, and August 8 in Los Angeles. Oscilloscope Laboratories is known for distributing quality films, and “The Kill Team” is a true story which should grip you from the start. Specialist Adam Winfield was a 20-year-old soldier in Afghanistan who witnessed members of his platoon kill innocent civilians (the film’s moniker is the squad’s nickname).
Although he alerted his father of the atrocities, the crimes continued and on May 2, 2010 Winfield was charged with the murder of another Afghan civilian, Mullah Allah Dad (Winfield received a three year sentence under a plea deal). Director Daniel Krauss (The Death of Kevin Carter) documents the effects Winfield’s actions had on his family, and as you’ll see from the trailer below, there is always two sides to the story.
“With this film, I would like to introduce audiences to a new concept just starting to be discussed in psychiatric circles: ‘moral injury,'” said Krauss in his director’s statement. “It refers to a psychological wound that comes from having taken an action or not prevented an action that is a betrayal of one’s core moral values.”
Check out the trailer below – the doc’s receiving great word of mouth and it’s definitely on my must see list. Feel free to comment below and share your thoughts on the trailer or the film’s subject matter.
‘Jodorowsky’s Dune’ Spotlights A Filmmaker’s Visionary Quest
Jodorowsky’s Dune (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 90 minutes), which is now out on Blu-ray, centers on director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s failed attempt to bring Dune to the screen. His unique vision for the project would lead to collaborations with H.R. Giger and artist Chris Foss, and their work on Dune would later influence science fiction and fantasy films for a new generation (most notably, Ridley Scott’s feature Alien). If the project ever was committed to celluloid, David Carradine, Orson Welles, and surrealist Salvador Dali were also on board.
Although Jodorowsky believes movies can literally change peoples’ lives, he wasn’t mortally wounded by Dune’s “failure.” Instead, Jodorowsky’s Dune takes a look at how an artist took Hollywood’s rejection to reinvigorate his own methods of storytelling, whether it be in comic book or book form. Creativity is a free flowing experience that only stops once a storyteller retires his pen, camera, or paintbrush.
I interviewed director Frank Pavich about his excellent documentary, which features interviews with Jodorowsky confidante Nicolas Winding Refn (director of Drive and Only God Forgives), director Richard Stanley (Hardcore), and movie critics Devin Faraci and Drew McWeeny. The Q&A is below:
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Jodorowsky’s Dune is much more than a documentary about a film that never hit the silver screen. There’s a bigger story at play with your project.
The goal was never to make it just be about Dune and this version of Dune that didn’t happen. What it was really going to be about, we weren’t sure. We didn’t know until we really got into it exactly what Alejandro’s viewpoint is. To spend two years on a dream project and to not have it be realized, for it not to happen – he looks at this like it’s a wonderful gift.
When he speaks of the film, he doesn’t say “Oh we were drawing the film.” He says “We were shooting every day.” He did all the work. He created the images, the only thing he didn’t get to do was shoot it. So he’s very much at peace and he is very pleased at the way it turned out. The way the story or his work wasn’t forgotten. So many other filmmakers have taken inspiration from it and have maybe used bits and pieces of it wittingly or unwittingly. It’s fascinating.
Your film is also about clinging onto your dreams or even changing the course – even if you’re initially deterred. Alejandro Jodorowsky’s vision may initially have been rejected by the studios, but it didn’t end his journey. Many filmmakers would have completely given up.
Sure. I think a lot of people would have become accountants or plumbers. As he says in the film, “failure to me is only to change the way.” He views himself sort of like a river or stream. If there’s a bunch of rocks and there’s something in the way, the stream doesn’t stop, it just kind of goes around it and makes a new path. And that’s what he did – he took his ideas and he put them into his comics and his subsequent films. He put them into his books. He put them into his daily life. That’s what it’s really all about.
What was your entry way into the material? Was it reading Frank Herbert’s book or were you a Jodorowsky fan?
I came to it from the Jodorowsky side of things. I viewed him as a filmmaker and didn’t know about his career in comics. I grew up in the States. In France, (some comic books) come out in these oversized, hardcover editions and they’re very expensive and treated like art. There are some people in the U.S. who treat comic books as art but in France it’s high art.
I came to this story totally being a big fan of his films and much like Alejandro I had not read Dune until after I pitched him the project. I had only seen David Lynch’s (version) once before and that was a good twenty years ago or so that was not even fresh in my mind. I really came to it from the director side of things.
Do you think an animated version of Dune is a good idea? Jodorowsky is open to the idea of turning Dune into an epic animated film.
We definitely kept that line in there for a reason. Let’s keep the inspiration going. What if some young filmmaker gets so inspired by it and reaches out to Alejandro and somehow they agree to make it. A couple of people have approached him – I don’t know if anything has happened with them. As far as I know, nothing has happened as of yet. But it’s an an inspiring story.
There’s over 45 minutes of deleted scenes on the Blu-ray. Can you talk about adding that extra footage?
When you’re shooting a documentary like this, you’re shooting hours upon hours of interview. You don’t know what you’re going to use or where your story’s going to take you. When it comes time to edit the film, we decided that we really needed to keep it straight lined and not have too many forays to the side. But there’s so much great stuff that we wanted to share. Some of them were deleted segments and then some were things we put together from the raw footage (including) Alejandro giving his views on Hollywood or religion. You would need to have a heart of stone to watch the film and not fall in love with him. I think people will dig the (deleted scenes) for sure.
What inspires you about Alejandro Jodorowsky?
He’s 85 years old and he’s never sold out to anything. He’s never done anything that he didn’t want to do. He never did anything for money. He’s never directed a commercial. He’s never directed an episode of Two and a Half Men. He could – he’s a director! He could be really rich doing romantic comedies or whatever. But he views films as something sacred and he doesn’t make movies to make money to live.
He writes comic books, he does books. He’s never used his talent, or his skills, or whatever you want to call it in the field of film, for anything other than to help people. His films are therapy in a way. He says the worst thing in the world is to go see a movie and you come out, when the two hours are up, the same person.
This is an incredible art form and you can change people for the better. Or, as he says, (to undergo) an “alchemical transformation.” When you go to the theater and you see El Topo or The Holy Mountain, you come out a different person for sure. There’s no way around it.
‘Restaurant Startup’ And Tim Love Take A Gamble On Big Dreamers
Joe Bastianich (Masterchef) and celebrity chef Tim Love team up for the new CNBC series Restaurant Startup. The pair, who both have their own unique vision on how to create and develop a successful business, will invest their own money on various culinary entrepreneurs who have a distinct vision and, more importantly, will make the two level headed men a bit of money.
“I have a double degree in finance and marketing. I love business,” says Love, who’s the owner of The Lonesome Dove Western Bistro and Queenie’s Steakhouse. “I love the challenge of making the deal. I’m also a very big gambler so this is right in my wheelhouse.”
Restaurant Startup debuts on CNBC tomorrow (July 8), and you can see a sneak peek of the first episode on the show’s official page.
Check out the video below, as Tim Love explains why he wanted to take part in Restaurant Startup and invest in a new group of food minded go-getters.
Adam Levine Has “Dream Experience” With ‘Begin Again’
Directed by Once filmmaker John Carney, Begin Again centers on Gretta (Keira Knightley) a struggling musician whose career is nurtured by a former record label executive (Mark Ruffalo). Gretta’s journey, though enlightening, is also bittersweet, as her longtime boyfriend Dave (Adam Levine) lands a record deal and eventually ruins their relationship.
During the Begin Again press conference, the Maroon 5 frontman admitted that he could relate to Dave’s situation. “This character was in the midst of becoming successful, so it was a very specific time,” said Levine, who’s also a regular coach on The Voice. “When it happened to me, I was probably tempted by the same things he was. Granted, my story is very different from his, but it was very easy to tap into to experience all these things that we never are expected to experience.”
Click on the media bar below to hear Levine explain why Begin Again was such a “dream experience.”
Begin Again is now playing in select theaters.
http://youtu.be/mKaIJTIXZVw
Witches of East End DVD Is Blessed With Bewitching First Season
Witches of East End: The Complete First Season (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 431 minutes) is based on the New York Times bestselling novel by Melissa de la Cruz, and although I’ve yet to read the book, it’s easy to see why her novel was a success. The series isn’t just a cute and bewitching tale of a group of witches, and although there are moments of humor within the narrative, the show itself is blessed with a ton of thematic meat to chew on.
Julia Ormond is Joanna Beauchamp, an immortal witch who is burdened with a huge curse. Her daughters Freya (Jenna Dewan Tatum) and Ingrid (Rachel Boston) will never live past the age of 30, and after their respective deaths Joanna must complete their cycle of birth and death once again. This unbearable torture continues throughout the centuries, and to change her daughters’ fates she decides to keep their witchcraft abilities a secret.
But sheltering one’s family in suburbia can only go so far, as a shape shifter has arrived to East End to kill Joanna and her brood. Mädchen Amick is Joanna’s free spirited sister Wendy, and although they’ve spent over a century ignoring each other, Wendy returns to the fold to warn Joanna of the new evil they must face.
Freya (Dewan Tatum) and Ingrid (Boston) attempt to juggle their own lives with their newly discovered powers. A local bartender who’s engaged to the a successful doctor named Dash (Eric Winter), Freya is all about living life with passion, but her romantic streak takes a deeper turn after she encounters Dash’s bad boy brother Killian (Daniel DiTomasso).
While Freya balances witchery with being part of a love triangle, Ingrid works at the library and spends her days researching witchcraft. Both women have different approach to their powers and also hold different abilities – Freya is great at mixing potions and Ingrid is adept at crafting spells.
The strength of Witches of East End lies in the portrayal of the four women as highly flawed individuals. Joanna’s (Ormond) overprotective and all consuming love for her kids often brings danger to their front doorstep, and Wendy’s (Amick) quick trigger temper often leads to casting spells she often regrets (she even unwittingly killed her niece Ingrid during an unfortunate confrontation). Though she’s marrying what she believes is Mr. Right, her true soulmate may actually be Killian, and her waffling back and forth between the boys leads to dire consequences by the first season’s end.
Since each of the witches have lived (and sometimes died) throughout the centuries, their behavior and personalities are slightly altered with each incarnation. Before she was a likable and studious librarian, Ingrid was an absolute troublemaker and compromised soul during a previous life, and due to a huge loss she suffers during the first season, one can assume she will return to darker territories during the second season.
Witches of East End is a definite must see if you’re a fantasy fan. More importantly, the show could have existed as forgettable, episodic fare and still could have carved out a sizable audience. Instead, the show’s creative team often puts the characters in unexpected and morally compromising situations, and occasionally our heroines do the wrong thing. The writing on the series is top notch, and the inspired manner in which they portrayed the afterlife in the episode “Electric Avenue,” especially in relation to Ingrid’s journey, absolutely won me over (Jason George, who plays Ingrid’s love interest, is also excellent in the episode).
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In sum, Witches of East End: The Complete First Season is worth a look on DVD, especially since the second season premiere begins tonight (Lifetime, 9 pm et/pt)
Special Features – The DVD comes with the featurette “Falling Under Their Spell,” which has most of the cast members talking about their respective roles on the show. Also featured in the collection are deleted scenes. Although the cut scenes run barely two minutes, two sequences are definitely worth a look. One of the deleted scenes has Killian drinking at the town’s local bar and intensely staring at Freya’s picture. Another scene has Joanna and Wendy sharing a bonding moment before they discover that the shape shifter is watching over them. Also included is a one minute gag reel (which includes a moment of levity between Rachel Boston and Jason George). Last but not least, there’s also a cat blooper sequence. It’s just a minute long, but if you’re a cat lover like me, the more feline footage – the better.
A director, producer, or cast commentary would have been welcome for the DVD collection, especially since the show is actually worth talking about. Hopefully the complete second season DVD collection will come with more trimmings.
Below is a few photos from tonight’s second season premiere episode of Witches of East End:
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‘Deliver Us From Evil’ Giveaway – Scary Owl & Shirt Collection!
The creepy owl from Deliver Us From Evil as well as the movie shirt is now up for grabs with this giveaway. These collectibles were given out at the press interviews for the film, and I was given clearance to give them out to one lucky winner. If you haven’t seen the horror film, it’s definitely worth watching (especially for the final exorcism sequence), and the owl’s cameo appearance is one of Deliver Us From Evil’s scarier moments.
The shirt, fyi, has never been worn and is brand new.
To enter, please follow the instructions below:
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Please “Like” our Deepest Dream Facebook Page.
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Entrants must live in the U.S. and be at least 18.
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After liking our Facebook page, email your address information to: editor@deepestdream.com
**The Deadline to enter this Giveaway is Monday, July 14 at 8 pm pt. I will announce the winner on Facebook and my @DeepestDreaming twitter account that evening. Good luck!!
‘Afflicted’ Blu-Ray Interview With Directors Derek Lee & Clif Prowse
Released this week on Blu-ray and DVD, the horror film Afflicted (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 86 minutes, R) centers on two buddies (Derek Lee and Clif Prowse playing a pseudo version of themselves) who attempt to capture their around the world trek documentary style. It’s a once in a lifetime shot for the pair, and although their initial excursion to Europe literally starts off with a bang (Derek has a one night stand with a stranger), things take a turn for the worse. Although Derek has his share of health problems, his recent sexual interlude leads to a physical transformation neither he nor Clif could image.
Although it’s a found footage feature, Afflicted doesn’t resort to the same easy tricks of the well worn genre. The scares don’t come from the quick cut edits but rather in the gradual pacing of the storyline and what’s actually not shown on screen. Since co-directors Lee and Prowse are lifelong friends, placing themselves as the leads gives Afflicted an intriguingly personal tone amidst all the thriller elements (luckily, both filmmakers are pretty decent actors as well).
During our interview, I asked the filmmakers about the challenges of making Afflicted, a flick which received a slew of awards at Austin’s Fantastic Fest. I really loved the film, so to make a long post even longer, here’s my Q&A with the Derek Lee and Clif Prowse.
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Can you talk about bringing a human element to Afflicted amidst all the thriller/horror trappings?
Lee: Thank you for saying that because that’s really super important to us. We love doing genre movies. We love big fantasy, big action, big horror and all those things – but to us it all kind of falls flat unless you really identify with the characters. By its very nature, Afflicted was our way of saying, how do we make the vampire story incredibly personal and feel incredibly real?
The choice to go found footage, the choice to cast ourselves. To write a story on what it would be like for two buddies that you would go out drinking with (and witness them as they go) through this harrowing experience. If you didn’t connect with the main characters on a real human and visceral level with them, then why just make another vampire movie? We had no interest in doing that.
How hard was it to make a film on just $2-300,000 and still make it a visually arresting film?
Prowse: Basically when we conceived of the idea, we knew as first time filmmakers, we weren’t going to get access to millions of dollars. We wanted to come up with an idea that we could do for money that we could raise ourselves. Once we came up with the idea of a vampire documentary, we thought, ‘great.’ Conceptually, we’re taking something that’s fantastical and then throwing a realistic lens on it and that’s going to create a story that we hadn’t seen before.
Because of that documentary style, we could execute that for $2-300,000. And then we wanted to have a small crew, but that was fine because we wanted to be able to travel around and move quickly and get shots in places that a full size crew never could.
The found footage conceit meant that we were shooting our action sequences basically just from one camera angle and we could use a lot of tricks to imply external action to make things seem bigger. We also didn’t have to get coverage (laughs). Once we have it in that one frame, we moved on. In terms of the limitations, once we came up with the concept, there weren’t too many times when we felt limited.
Do you see a parallel with the story’s plotline (traveling around the world for a year) and your own filmmaking journey with Afflicted?
Prowse: We’ve been reflecting a lot, now that the journey is done, on what a unique experience making this movie was. It was basically a small group of filmmakers making this. A lot of the times there were only 7 to 10 people. A lot of filmmakers don’t get the chance to make their first feature film, but we got the chance and got to fly to Europe and do it. You’re learning how to make a feature film with a bunch of your friends while traveling through Italy and Spain and France. It really was a dream come true. When you’re making a movie there is so much logistical and thinking that goes into it, that you don’t get a chance to think back and say ‘wow, we’re actually making a film in Europe.’
Lee: The parallel makes sense. It’s a year around the world and making a movie are both incredible commitments that are filled with many highs and many lows and a lot of hard work and an insane amount of fun. You come out the other end a changed filmmaker. We are better filmmakers, better friends with our crew and our cast. We could not have asked for a cooler first feature experience.
It must have been great to win at Fantastic Fest, especially since horror audiences are a very discerning bunch.
Lee: That was exactly our trepidation going into Fantastic Fest and Midnight Madness in Toronto and Sitges out in Spain as well. We made this film that we thought, as you pointed out earlier, that was super personal, visceral, and fun for us. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to connect with everyone. It doesn’t mean it’s going to connect with people who love vampires and who love horror and probably watch ten times the number of horror films every year that Clif and I watch.
They are hardcore and will throw it back in your face if they didn’t like it. We thought that if we were lucky, we would get (something like) “hey not bad guys, great vampire film.” (But) to win Best Horror out of Fantastic Fest was a complete shock to the point where Clif and I left Austin before the awards ceremony because it hadn’t even occurred to us that we could win. We get this email (saying) “Where are you guys.” Well, we were in Vancouver, Canada. And they’re like “but you won the thing so you should come back and get your award.” It was a blindsiding but awesome experience to find out that we totally won this thing and were totally legitimized by people who really know what they’re talking about.
With easier access to digital cameras, are you seeing a new crop of filmmakers getting the chance to mount interesting films without having to worry about a big budget?
Lee: I think absolutely. We live in a really exciting time where – I mean we shot our entire movie on a Canon 5D, which is basically a $2500 camera, right? The visual polish of that camera – there is no barrier between having to convince the audience of “hey this is a real movie.” It looks very cinematic. We had a mobile editing station while we traveling throughout Europe and we were cutting the movie while we were on laptops. Your ability to create world class visuals and present that to the audience, the barrier to that is much, much lower now which is exciting because hopefully all that means is that it’s going to come down to your ability to tell good, compelling stories.
Prowse: I think the shift in the industry too where the middle ground film, the $10-50 million film, is a really rare beast these days. So you’re kind of either where we are, which is just starting and obscure and getting very little money, or you’re dealing with enough money to make whatever the hell you want because you’re making a $150 million where you can do everything in post (production) and CG.
There’s a whole bunch of filmmakers like us who grew up on Star Wars, The Matrix, Die Hard – these big movies that you can’t really make anymore so we have to find different access points. Smaller stories or clever stories in order to come back to the films we grew up on and got us to become filmmakers in the first place.
Where do you see your careers going forth post-Afflicted? Are you getting different offers for big budget films and are you taking in meetings for future projects?
Lee: We have been taking some of those meetings. We don’t know how legitimate they are (laughs). We don’t know if anyone is going to offer us a $150 million picture – but that would be nice to hear. We’re genre guys. We love horror. We love science fiction. We want to stay in that space for a while. It would take a pretty big push to get out of that space. I don’t Clif and I are necessarily thinking about what’s the budget – we’re thinking about what’s the right project and how much could we make it for. (Just) expanding our vocabulary and our relationship with our fans.
For our next film, one of the criteria is that we definitely don’t want to do a found footage film right away. We didn’t grow up on found footage. We’re naturally very cinematic – big soundtrack, big sound design. Everything you can’t use in found footage, we love. While it was really fun making Afflicted, we’re looking forward to proving ourselves with the non-found footage crowd. That to us, in and of itself, would be a goal for the next project.
Special features on the Afflicted Blu-ray included deleted scenes (one of the sequences contains an alternate confrontation between Derek and the woman who turned him) and a behind the scenes featurette which documents one of the film’s more challenging stunts.
“Deliver Us From Evil” Q&A Interview With Eric Bana
Eric Bana plays NYPD officer Ralph Sarchie in Deliver Us From Evil, a supernatural thriller which is now playing nationwide. Based on Sarchie’s book Deliver Us From Evil: A New York Cop Investigates The Supernatural, the flick is a total nail-biter that’s buoyed by excellent work from Bana, Edgar Ramirez (who plays a priest), and Sean Harris (he’s one of the Bronx area denizens who’s possessed).
We sat down with Mr. Bana to talk about his latest film, which is directed by The Exorcism of Emily Rose filmmaker Scott Derrickson. Our Q&A with Bana is below:
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How did you get involved with Deliver Us From Evil?
The script came to me and I really enjoyed it and was intrigued and I met with Scott (Derrickson) and we had a great conversation. That was it. I jumped on in. I thought it was a really well written piece with a fantastic character who happened to be in a horror film. I was really interested.
Were you attracted to the supernatural elements of the film, or did the story’s dramatic aspects hold your attention?
It’s a bit of a mixture. I liked the fact that the character was initially very skeptical because I thought it was better for the audience, particularly and potentially a lot scarier to follow someone who doesn’t believe in it at all and slowly he’s dragged into that world and forced to have to deal with it. I thought that was a better more interesting because ultimately I think that makes the film scarier in the end.
So do you believe in spirits after doing Deliver Us From Evil or is that a question that’s hard to fully answer?
I don’t think it’s that simple. We try and comfort ourselves by letting ourselves off the hook – you either believe in this stuff or you don’t. What I’ve learnt is there are a million shades between there and there and it’s just not that simple. This is really rare. It’s not like if you choose to believe ‘oh this s**t’s going down in my suburb’ you know what I mean? It’s not like that. It’s extremely rare, some of the stuff Ralph Sarchie came into contact with. So yeah I feel more knowledgeable about it than I did before and Scott knows so much about this subject matter both historically, culturally, and factually. So I really relied on him as a resource.
How close were your dealings with Ralph?
Everyday interaction. He was on set as our police adviser. That was his actual job on the movie. He was around in pre-production so we got to hang around together and spend time with him. I chose not to use Ralph for (the role) because it just didn’t feel like the right thing to do for me. I just wanted him to be himself and go about his business. I was always going to selfishly steal something from him anyway just by osmosis I guess. There are a couple of things I took away from him but in order for him to do that I needed him to just be himself and not just sit down and tell me stories for hours and hours. So I just kind of let him be and we got to know each other pretty well.
We both ride motorcycles and 90% of the time we’d just be talking about bikes and bike gangs and stuff like that. That was kind of our way of getting to know each other and we felt very comfortable around each other. We relied on him for all the police procedural stuff and the technical stuff on set and he was very good at that. So yeah that’s kind of how I approached it.
So Ralph did double duty for the film?
Yeah, like I said it was his job to walk us through all the police stuff and a lot of that stuff I (picked up) elements of other roles over the years when it comes to guns and procedures and stuff. But still there was specific stuff in the film that we needed to make sure that we were doing correctly and it was Ralph’s job to make sure we did that.
How long did that whole exorcism scene take to shoot?
That was our final week of production so as tricky as the shoot was with locations and weather and everything, we knew that we had this gift waiting for us at the very end which was this week long exorcism in the studio which was the only thing we shot in the studio actually.
We knew it was going to be hell and pretty full on and Scott gave us a lot of warning about that. It was insane. I think, I’m going to say four days, for that one scene.
When you’re performing the exorcism sequence in a fever pitch level, how hard was it to retain your energy throughout those several days?
I guess the carrot for me was a plane ticket home at the end of it. It is difficult, but it’s the same on any movie. There’s always a sequence that you know is going to be the toughest and sometimes you don’t know. Sometimes something comes up and it’s a lot harder than it’s going to be. Sometimes the sequence that you think are going to be really tough end up being quite easy. So you never really know what’s going to be hard.
I knew it was going to be really hard for Edgar Ramirez and Sean Harris because they had far more dense stuff to do in that scene than I did but it was still tough on all of us and we had to look out for each other and I’d look at Sean and go “Guys you need to unshackle him because he needs to go to the bathroom or he needs a drink because he’s so far gone right now.” It’s rest, you know. So we had to really look out for each other because everyone was up against it. We didn’t have a lot of time to get all of that stuff done. So yeah, it was very very intense. Most of the film was just a good laugh and a lot of fun. But not that week. That was a special week on its own. That was like a separate movie within the rest of the movie.
To hear the audio version of Eric Bana’s response, click on the Soundcloud bar below:
Where did you get your comedic nature? Is it in your DNA or did you receive training to hone that aspect of your craft?
I had a couple of uncles who were quite funny. (They) were smart asses, you know? I probably took after them a little bit, so no there is no training. I guess it’s how you see the world. I’ve always seen the world as a bunch of comedy sketches, that’s how I see everything everyday. That was my background in Australia was stand up comedy and a lot of sketch comedy. I was probably better at the sketch comedy than I was with the stand up comedy because I was a more prolific writer when it came to sketch comedy because that’s just how my brain works.
I see stuff every day that, to me, is a sketch. So yeah it wasn’t a training – obviously I learned a lot on the job. I did it for 12 years so in the end you learn a lot, but I didn’t go to school.
Would you ever consider returning to sketch comedy?
Probably never. I did so much sketch comedy on my own show over the years that I have no desire to do Saturday Night Live. When Funny People, the Adam Sandler movie came along, and I read that I was like, “Yeah I’ll do that.” If I found another comedy that I wanted to do, I’d do it. Most of the stuff I get sent is pretty dark and pretty serious. It’s not my fault! I don’t know, it’s just the way it’s worked out. I’m open to it. If the right thing came along, I would do it. Maybe I just need to write my own (comedy).
Even with years of acting experience, do you still get nervous before you embark on a project?
There’s a certain rhythm, there’s a certain pattern, there’s a certain predictability to a lot of productions. I can usually predict when someone’s going to be go through a difficult time. I can usually predict if someone’s behaving odd, I can work out the real reason it is. It’s not because of what you think it is, it’s just because they’re just really anxious about this scene. So you become better at predicting why things are happening.
But it doesn’t change the fact that every time you do it, it’s going to be a stretch. You’ve got to put yourself out there. You’re going to be more nervous on some days than others. You got to get out of your comfort zone so there are some things that are always going to be exposing. But there’s also a very large part of you that can predict when things are going to happen. Sometimes you do feel like a psychic producer. And also it’s different for (actors). We get to see everything. Most of the other departments tend to see just one thing. So as an actor, if you’re attuned to it, quite often you’ll see things that are happening and it’s like “Oh, I think I know what’s about to happen next.” I can see that this prop’s not going to work or this stunt’s not going to work or that thing’s not going to be ready like they said it would be.
Sometimes you have to sit back and (realize) there’s nothing you can do and then it happens and you go “Oh I kinda saw that coming.” But, like you said, that just comes from a lot of experience but that doesn’t change the day to day . Only sometimes I’ll say to the director – “Here’s what I think is going to happen tomorrow and it might be a problem for us.” But generally that’s not my job, do you know what I mean?
Do you have a favorite Christmas memory?
Christmas for us is summertime. But as a kid I guess just going to the beach. Going to someone’s house who had a swimming pool that was a big treat in summer. (Just) trying to stay cool because it’s so bloody hot, you know?
Any plans for the holidays?
No plans. It’s a long ways away. It’s middle of winter right now so the first thing we’ve go to do right now is survive the Australian winter.