Page 2
Did you expect it to be that intense?
“Hell no! I mean I thought, ‘I’m going to have a good time and do a horror movie. It’s going to be fun!’ But I think as an actor I couldn’t really dismiss it or treat it any less important than any other film. I thought I could, but I care too much about my work. I wound up really working on it. I’d go online and I did research on the National Guard, and the government doing secret experiments in different parts of New Mexico and Arizona. I kind of went overboard, I guess, so I like to do my homework.”
Do you do that for every role?
“Yes, I have to. I like bringing reality to it. I’m one of those actors that, when I see a film and it’s not accurate, it just takes me totally out of the picture. And if I’m playing a cop, I like to meet with cops and talk to them about how it’s really done. It’s funny because a lot of times they’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s a Hollywood movie.’ People understand that Hollywood takes certain liberties and takes a creative license, but it’s always impressive when they see a film and they go, ‘Hey, that guy did his homework and did it right.’”
Like carrying a gun correctly or something similar?
“Right, and that was a big issue in the beginning because a lot of the other actors hadn’t had a lot of training. There wasn’t a lot of time; everything happened so quickly. Literally, like actors were cast on a Thursday and they were on a plan on Saturday to go to Morocco. There was no time at all. They had one day of training, which was not enough. With the military, repetition is what really instills that in you. You get great muscle memory and you just remember that, and so doing it one day was just not enough. They would always come to me and ask me, ‘Hey, we know you did Jarhead. Can you help us out? How would I hold the gun? How would I stand - shoulder out, shoulder in.’ I became kind of a teacher.’”
Did you explore Morocco during your time off?
“I didn’t. They had me really busy. I wish I would have because there’s some amazing places in Morocco, like Casablanca’s great and Agadir, and Marrakesh are beautiful cities. Unfortunately what drew the production to Morocco, to Ouarzazate, was the fact that there’s nothing out there. It’s supposed to be like this dead, barren, desolate desert and these creepy looking mountains - and that’s exactly where we were.”
This is your first real horror film. Why tackle the genre now?
“I’ve been a huge horror fan. I grew up watching horror films and when I was a kid we we’d like stay up late and we’d watch The Wolf Man and The Creature From the Black Lagoon, all the Lon Chaney films and Boris Karloff. Then when we were a little bit older my brother had a car, we’d all save our money and go to a movie theater and watch Friday the 13th and Halloween. My favorite films are the more suspenseful ones, like The Shining and The Thing, The Exorcist and The Omen, Aliens. And, as an actor, I’ve always wanted to do a horror film but I just never have.”
Did having Wes Craven’s name attached to The Hills Have Eyes 2 play a role in deciding to do this film?
“Oh yeah, that definitely helped and also Martin Weisz is a great director as well. He’s a first time film director, or he’s new to film, but he’s done a ton of music videos. I’ve always liked what he’s done with the Korn videos and the visuals. Everything was kind of dark, you know, more psychological. I knew that he would do a good job with this.”
So you thought he’d make the transition well from music videos to feature films?
“Oh yeah. I tell you, it’s such a good quality horror film. I’m very proud of it.”
Did the fact it’s a sequel bother you at all? Did you think twice about doing it because it had 2 in the title?
“Not at all. I did Next Friday, which is a sequel to the first Friday. I did Dr Doolittle 2. I just finished Are We Done Yet?, which is a sequel to Are We There Yet?, so I’m no stranger to sequels. I think sometimes sequels can stand on their own. I think compared to the first one, it’s a different film. I don’t think you really can compare the two of these.”
This sequel stands on its own?
“Yes it does. If you hadn’t seen the first one, you don’t need to see it to understand the second one.”
What’s your next project?
“My next project… Well, I have a couple of them in the can. One of them is The Death and Life of Bobby Z with Laurence Fishburne and Paul Walker. It’s an action-drama. I did an independent called The Sleep Dealer that was shot in Mexico City, which is very interesting. It’s like a sci-fi-political-love story.”
A sci-fi-political-love story? That’s an interesting mix of genres.
“It is. It’s very interesting and it was shot on a shoestring in Mexico City. It deals with, I guess, immigration in the near future or in the far future. I guess the way people immigrate now is instead of jumping the border, they attach these electrodes into these nodes that are implanted into their forearms. They transfer their energy and their souls across the border into these droids. It’s really out there. I play a drone pilot. I control a fighter jet from my video monitor and I patrol. I’m like a U.S. military personnel.”
It doesn’t sound like the typical independent film.
“It doesn’t, but it is an indie. Alex Rivera, our director, he won the writing award at the Sundance writer’s lab and so Sundance took him under its wing in developing this project with him. Actually, we shot that last year and part of it was shot in Tijuana. It takes place in Tijuana in the future, so it’s really interesting because you have a mixture of old world and new world. It’s like a donkey cart with a 40 inch plasma television. You’re going to see something really unique.”
And it gets into politics?
“It does because it deals with the politics of immigration and workers and all that stuff. It’s kind of a one-world-order now, so it’s pretty out there.”
* * * * * * *
The Hills Have Eyes 2 enters theaters on March 23, 2007 and is rated R for prolonged sequences of strong gruesome horror violence and gore, a rape and language.
