Some Fright Night character breakdown (txt interviews); an edit review; Smurfs vid
First: Dread Central visits Edit Bay and interviews Anton and Colin Farrell (it's looooong):
Tom Holland’s Fright Night is not only a modern horror classic, it’s a movie that this writer holds near and dear to her heart. A film I’ve probably seen well over 1,000 times in my lifetime and could list by memory every cast and crew member and quote every line of dialogue until I’m blue in the face.
Fright Night to me has always been sacred territory and since it is one of the movies that was partially responsible for my lifelong love affair with the horror genre, the upcoming remake is something I’m taking very seriously.
Recently, Dread Central was invited by DreamWorks to an edit bay visit in Santa Monica where we not only screened 20 minutes of the movie in 3D, we were able to sit down to catch up with director Craig Gillespie and the film’s stars Colin Farrell and Anton Yelchin to hear their thoughts on tackling the classic flick, what’s being updated and what’s staying the same for fans of the original Fright Night.
Gillespie isn’t generally a name that horror fans will recognize off the bat, but that all looks to be changing with not only Fright Night’s theatrical bow coming on August 19th but also with the fact that he was recently announced as the director on the upcoming film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. He discussed what it was about Fright Night that piqued his interest in making a vampire film in an age where the creature is now regularly associated more with romance than death.
“What attracted me to the script other than obviously the tone- which was this great blend of horror and comedy- is the way that Marti (Noxon) wrote the vampire,” explained Gillespie. “It was so refreshing and just goes back to the idea that he’s a monster. He’s a predator- a sexual predator even- and I think that something that has been lost track of recently. It’s become much more about the romance and there’s no real threat to them. I actually like the reality of thinking about Jerry as a predator and how he would exist, how he would get around- almost in the same realm of a sexual predator or a serial killer.”
Gillespie went on to discuss how even though this Fright Night is going to be a new experience for audiences, those who love the original may find some familiarities between the two. “There’s a lot to the structure of this one that pays homage to the original with certain set pieces like the night club scene. Obviously, we kept the idea of the vampire next door and everyone not believing it at first, but then coming to believe it so I think it was good to keep that all of that from the original and feature those aspects. But at the end of the day, our version was rewritten to be quite a different piece.”
When we arrived at the Santa Monica studio, one of the editors on Fright Night brought a few of us journalists into one of the editing suites where she was busy still putting the final touches on the project to show us several scenes that have been completed already for the remake.
We were able to check out one of the scenes that had been previously released during CinemaCon that showed just how crafty Jerry Dandridge can be when he’s on the hunt for some new victims and the lengths he’d go to in order to teach Charlie (which not spelled Charley any longer - a notable change from the original flick) to mind his own business.
Farrell, who has the daunting task of stepping into Chris Sarandon’s shoes as Jerry Dandridge talked about how his love for the original Fright Night almost stopped the actor from even reading the script for the remake, let alone taking the role of the deadly vampire living and killing his way through suburbia.
“Initially, I was drawn to the notion of Jerry as a vampire and not as a romantic icon,” said Farrell. “I loved the original and I didn’t want to like this script but when I read it, I loved it. So I was like ‘balls.’ And then I met Craig and I liked him a lot so I was like ‘double balls’ then. I knew I had to do it. And what was smart about this script was that the vampire was designed in a very specific way, as kind of the ultimate example of carnivorous existence or someone that reacts without compunction or remorse or even contemplation. At first, I kind found him kind of oppressive so I started asking all these questions like ‘does he have to pick her up in the night club?’ ‘Can we not have the seduction anymore?’ ‘Can we do this, can we do that?’ And two weeks into the film, Craig was like ‘Colin, you’re fighting the wrong fights.’”
“As an actor, you have to address what’s in the script but bring something new to it and so I had to engage myself with this animal, this beast and then after deliberation, I started to enjoy walking around in his shoes, engaging with that cruel sense of power that Jerry carries with himself throughout the whole film. He so gets off on his own power and he’s really bored after 400 years of living in solitary and cyclical existence with daily repetition. He’s bored and he’s so sick of these fucking humans because they’re so dull and he needs them to feed. And if he can get some sport out of them, that’s all well and good. So when Charlie shows himself to be a worthy adversary, that’s where the game kind of takes off for Jerry,” added Farrell.
Yelchin, whose quickly becoming one of the more talked about young actors in Hollywood these days after roles in recent blockbusters including Star Trek and Terminator: Salvation, discussed what fans can expect with his Charlie and how it’s really his posturing to impress new girlfriend Amy (Imogen Poots) that starts a deadly but tragic chain of events in Fright Night.
“Charlie starts off in the movie where he’s got a new girlfriend, a new group of friends that aren’t really his friends so he tries to, he postures a lot to try and be this person he’s not. It’s this sort of fake, macho thing that he does. And then he meets Jerry who’s discovers he's not some alpha male douchebag but he’s actually a monster who wants to kill everybody that’s important to Charlie. The journey that really goes on is from just posturing his way through life to learning how to actually fight- for me, it was just metaphorically about this darkness that threatened everything that was important to him. So Fright Night really is about him learning how to step up and be able to face that extreme danger and protect those people even if it’s extremely dangerous for him to do so.”
Another scene we watched revolved around Charlie doing some recon work inside Jerry’s house after he begins to suspect that his new neighbor is behind the disappearance of his best friend “Evil” Ed Thompson (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) after Ed tries to warn Charlie about Jerry. I won’t go into the scene too much because I personally think spoilers ruin half the fun for fans, but what I can say is that audiences will get some clues as to just who or what Jerry Dandridge is and just how twisted and vicious Farrell’s version of the iconic vampire really is.
In the original Fright Night, the breakdown of the relationship between pals Charley and Ed was never really explored, but Yelchin discussed how this time Charlie is someone who feels great guilt for leaving his best friend behind and how that guilt is a catalyst for his actions throughout the film.
“There were different stages that I sort of thought Charlie’s journey in-there’s the original stage where he just postures as someone he’s not and leaves Ed behind,” said Yelchin.
“Charlie carries a lot of guilt for leaving Ed behind. Then, [spoiler - see source if want] guides Charley through the next stage. Then the mania sets in for Charlie and there’s some paranoia that Ed might have actually been right and then that ultimate guilt sets in and that’s what makes him realize that life is not worth living if the people you really care about aren’t there anymore.”
“That sort of motivates Charlie to talk himself into fighting this creature to save the people he cares about. It’s kind of a very simple but moving story point that Ed comes to him and asks for help and Charlie just says ‘I have a hot girlfriend with new friends’ and basically is very superficial and rude to a person who was his best friend. It’s very moving and very simple but also kind of grounds the movie in how Charlie’s character continues to develop from that point,” Yelchin added.
We were also shown a scene with some tense back-and-forth conversation between Jerry and Charlie but the highlight for me was checking out the scene where Charlie and Peter Vincent (David Tennant) meet and Charlie reaches out to the Vegas show entertainer for a little help with his vampire problem.
Peter Vincent, originally portrayed by iconic character actor Roddy McDowall, was undoubtedly the heart and soul behind Holland’s original film so I was curious to see how the updated version would play out. And while a lot of die-hard fans may not be on board, I can appreciate the direction Noxon took when fleshing out the new Peter with some scene-stealing and often hilarious antics.
For Farrell, who’s conscientious that the original Fright Night is sacred material to horror fans, explained how this time around audiences will be privy to a few more details about the mysterious Jerry Dandridge and just where he comes from. “We do give some hints to Jerry’s background a little bit. There is also something that we came up with that will probably piss some of the old fans off- I mean, maybe some will like it but it has something to do with the relationship between [spoiler - see source if want],” Farrell added. “But for me, even though there are a lot of differences, the one thing I wanted to have in this film was an apple because of Chris Sarandon’s attachment to the apple in the first Fright Night. That was my own nod of the head to Chris’s original Jerry.”
For fans out there who want to get their own glimpse at DreamWorks’s reimagining of Fright Night before its August 19th theatrical bow, the first trailer for the film is set to debut today, May 13th, exclusively on IGN. Look for more on Fright Night 3D coming soon!
Source
Second: CinemaBlend interviews Anton at the Edit Bay
Starring in a remake is hard enough, but it becomes even harder when you’re remaking a bona fide cult classic. This August, when the Craig Gillespie-directed Fright Night hits theaters, critics and fans are going to be endlessly comparing Anton Yelchin’s performance to William Ragsdale’s, the actor who played Charley Brewster in the original. Luckily for Yelchin, he has a few key character changes on his side.
Two weeks back myself and a group of other journalists were given the chance to visit the edit bay for Fright Night and in addition to getting the opportunity to watch four separate scenes from the film (see my reaction HERE), we were also granted time to speak with the star of the show. Check out the interview below in which Anton Yelchin discusses how Charley’s personality has been altered, balancing the comedy and the horror, and his experiences working with Colin Farrell and David Tennant.
What’s your relationship with the original Fright Night? Are you a fan?
Yeah, I think it’s great. I love it. I think it’s a really smart film because it’s more about the horror genre itself than anything, and so I think that’s what makes it extremely smart and interesting. Even from the opening shot, going through a window on to a TV screen, already it sets up how self-conscious it is. It reminds me of…there’s a [Peter] Bogdanovich movie called Targets. It has that same kind of “genre movie yet not a genre movie,” super self-conscious genre movie quality. And I think Targets is really great - Boris Karloff’s in Targets and it has that aging movie star thing, and I think it’s great.
From what we saw in the footage, a lot of the film has changed quite a bit. For example, [spoiler - see source if want]. Does that same rule apply for the role of Charley Brewster?
Yeah, In the remake, like you said, [spoiler - see source if want]. I think, ultimately, there’s more of a journey for this Charley to take. In the original he gets scared, then he kind of stays scared, and then he has to fight. Here he starts off sort of super confident, feigning this kind of machismo; high school kid trying to keep up and seem kind of confident and cocky, when the reality is that he and Evil Ed grew up as best friends and that’s what they were in to. And he sort of rejects his friend to try and be more successful in the social end of school and because he then realizes that this mass-murdering vampire is living next door, all of those values, all of those false values that he had, become challenged and he has to actually become confident and strong to fight this horrible force that threatens to destroy everything he cares about. [Spoiler - see source if want], it attacks everyone around him, it threatens to get his girlfriend, you know? So there’s really a definite arc from someone that is faking his way through something to then actually growing in that place where he can battle this vampire.
How action heavy is this role for you?
It’s very action heavy. It’s exciting; it’s a very fun movie. What’s good about it is that Jerry fucks shit up. I mean, you guys obviously saw that. And it’s gory and violent and at the same time it has a certain amount of heart in the sense that you really feel for the decisions that Charley has to make. It’s not an easy decision for him to [spoiler - see source if want]. So yeah, it has a healthy dose of everything, but definitely a lot of fun action and good action sequences.
How was it balancing the horror elements with the more comedic elements?
Charley is, to a lot of it, these characters, like David Tennant’s character, Peter Vincent, he’s kind of the straight man. But there’s a lot of room to be funny, in the scenes with Chris [Mintz-Plasse] and the scenes with Imi [Poots] and even the scenes with Colin [Farrell]. What’s funny about him at first is that fake, macho thing that he’s doing, but it’s kind of humorous when he starts to trip out and this sort of mania starts to get to him that next door is a vampire. But then very quickly it just gets dark and scary and intense, which is good. I think it transitions from a lighter place to a darker place.
How do the transformations look? Did you get to see the make-up and all of that?
Oh yeah! It’s awesome. All I can say is that it’s definitely gruesome and frightening. It’s good because I think in recent years all the vampires look good and they just have fangs, and you’re like, “Alright,” but here it’s a monster. It’s great because it transitions out of Colin, who is this awesome, handsome dude, into this terrifying, terrifying monster.
Is it physical effects or CGI?
That’s another amazing thing. A lot of it is. There were transitions to the make-up artists. Howard [Berger], I think he won an Academy Award for Narnia, that’s who did [the makeup]. That’s great, because it’s kind of a dying art form, so it’s pretty amazing to see it when it’s all actually there and it’s real and it’s not just people with dots on their faces.
Is this your first experience shooting in 3D?
Yes it was.
Was it any different for you as an actor or was it largely the same?
Realistically it’s not that different. I thought it would be, but it’s not. The rig is a lot bigger because it’s two cameras shooting, one shoots this way [points in one direction] and one shoots this way [points in the other direction]. At times the focus doesn’t… their pulling Z-focus. If one of the cameras is off, it can’t shoot…realistically the amount of times that happened out of the fifty days that we shot, for all the scenes, maybe it happened 10 times at most. And it’s not like it’s a major delay, it’s like a five or ten minute delay, so it’s not really that different… I realized it wasn’t that different.
I’ve heard that those cameras are really huge.
Well, it’s not different for me. It must be different for the operator and I know it’s different for the steadycam operator because the rig is suddenly twice as big and not what he is used to carrying.
It’s not distracting at all because you’re wondering about the camera?
No, not really. I was kind of curious because I kind of like to geek out on the technology, but it wasn’t too different, no.
When they were shooting the original, they didn’t show William Ragsdale the vampire make-up until they were actually shooting so that they could get a natural reaction. Did they ever try that during this production?
In the sequence where he’s - [spoiler - see source if want] - that chamber is actually really creepy. It’s like some rapists cell. Like Silence of the Lambs, uncomfortable, and that was creepy. It definitely had a creepy quality in the things we were shooting, especially towards the end when we’re actually with the vampires. Inevitably you’re scared because you’re already in that mind.
Why is it, do you think, that vampires have become so popular in recent years?
I really don’t know. It must have something to do with the fact that… I don’t know what socially vampires represent now to people. In the old school Nosferatu, the really old one, it was actually similar to this: an all-powerful dark menace that started to consume the place that it was going to, which obviously has a lot to do with the pre-war German psyche; it’s not related to what’s going on [now]. I don’t really know. I was never a Twilight reader. I didn’t even know what it was. I had no idea that it was that huge and that many pubescent girls were in to it. So I don’t really know. It might be that the way that they’ve accessed vampires… it might just be that. Vampires now are accessible to a new audience, especially with the Twilight thing. It’s all about these little girls who want to fuck these vampires. What I like about this one is that it’s actually a scary vampire. It’s not like, “Oh, I’m in love,” like “I’m going to fucking kill you. I’m sorry, I’m a vampire, it’s what we do.” That’s what makes it exciting and fun for me. There’s no romance. It’s not like Interview with a Vampire. He’s scary, he’s a monster and he’s going to destroy you. It’s kind of how he is in the original, except he’s a little more love sick. I think this one specifically targets that original, “We want gore and we want a monster that’s going to kill things.” I didn’t see 28 Days Later, was that vampires?
No, that was kind of zombies.
Yeah, I didn’t see that. I think there’s a lack of vampires destroying things that I can think of. They’re more in love or whatever and this takes it back to the original.
Craig Gillespie’s background is more dark comedy/drama and not really a genre director. Was that a plus?
Yes, absolutely. I think Craig… in Lars [and the Real Girl], Ryan Gosling, it’s totally about the performance, so that was definitely great for me because he’s a filmmaker that likes to work with actors, obviously, and now I know this from experience. Just having seen the movie, it’s just like, “This is someone that likes to have actors give interesting looks, that bizarre look at things.” So that was definitely a plus.
Jerry really has a complete sense of how powerful he is and really plays around with Charley, and just from what we saw from David Tennant in the footage it looks like he’s going over the top and really having fun with it. What was it like working alongside Colin and David?
It’s great because Charley is kind of the straight man for those two - they’re opposing forces, but they’re such characters, you know? And it was a lot of fun, because with David Tennant, Charley is either trying to get him to be on his side - kind of like in the original - or he’s just terrified and coming to him. With Jerry, especially at the beginning, there’s that definite false kind of machismo that Charley tries to put on to counter Jerry, which is a lot of fun to play. It’s all false, it’s not real. It’s him doing what he thinks will make him look tough. And of course Jerry totally sees through it, he’s about a thousand times stronger than he is and more menacing, but it was fun. It was a lot of fun.
Have you seen the script for Star Trek 2 yet? Do you know when it might go into production?
No, I haven't seen the script. I'm not sure. I think we're doing it at some point soon, I don't know when though. No idea.
Have you spoken with JJ Abrams at all?
No, JJ's, I think, doing Super 8 now and he's doing press for it. I haven't because they'll get to it when they get to it. I'd love to get together with those people again, I really love that whole cast. It would it be a lot of fun to do it, but it's kind of one of those things.
Source
Third: Shock 'Til You Drop posts a spoiler-heavy edit review:
Out of the '80s, many horror-comedies were born. An American Werewolf in London. Evil Dead II. Return of the Living Dead. One you could set proudly alongside those classics: Tom Holland's 1985 film Fright Night. In it, young Charley Brewster must draw on his reserve of vampire knowledge - culled mostly from his high school chum "Evil" Ed and watching horror films - to take on a bloodsucker, Jerry Dandrige, who has moved in next door.
Like most genre pictures from that era, it has been remade for a new generation and on August 19 Fright Night hits theaters introducing a new Brewster, Evil Ed and Dandrige under the direction of Craig Gillespie, who is making a decided tonal turn in his career after helming Lars and the Real Girl. Anton Yelchin leads the cast as Charley (formerly played by William Ragsdale) and Colin Farrell slips into the shoes of the handsome vamp Dandrige (played in Holland's film by Chris Sarandon). Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Imogen Poots and Toni Collette round out the cast as Evil Ed, Amy (Charley's main squeeze) and Charley's mom, respectively.
Gillespie, Farrell, Yelchin and editor Tatiana S. Riegel invited Shock Till You Drop down to the Riegel's editing suite in Santa Monica, California recently to give us a 20 minute preview of the redo. This writer had spent some time on the New Mexico set late last year, however, the scene I witnessed being shot was not one of the sequences we saw presented to us in 3D.
Gillespie prefaced the presentation with: "[The film] pays homage to the original. It has some of the story points and structure, but it's really its own entity. What's surprising about it is, there's a set-up with the characters and this big cat and mouse game. [Spoiler - see source if want]."
A taste of that "cat and mouse" element was demonstrated in scene one, a clever tête-à-tête between Charley and Jerry at the former's Las Vegas home. [Spoiler - see source if want].
Gillespie, visually, plays the scene well and it's clear that he's milking the "does Jerry know that Charley knows he's a vampire?" vibe longer than the original film. Farrell oozes a "bro"-like quality that you'd normally find in guys in Las Vegas or Orange County. When I called him on it, Farrell said: "Genuinely, you would meet a different Jerry if the film was set on the East Coast, or in Florida. He's nothing if not somebody who has an insane ability to assimilate himself to any environment. He probably speaks eight or nine languages. He's only had about 400 years to learn them and he's an incredible observer of human behavior. Humans are a point of fascination to him and a source of disgust. He's sick of them. He needs them to survive."
Farrell said he didn't look to Chris Sarandon's performance for inspiration. "I loved his performance in that film, but it's so differently designed this time. I would have loved to have gone deeper into vampire lore, to have a more romantic life, I was pushing for that on this film but that was pushing a square peg into a round hole. Two weeks ahead of shooting, I had to get my head wrapped around the vampire Jerry was instead of injecting these moments that were forcing the issue. This Jerry isn't like the original. He's savage, powerful and he gets off on that. No need for love or companionship."
One particularly creepy moment I witnessed found Charley sneaking around Jerry's house where [spoiler - see source if want].
The next sequence gave us our introduction to Peter Vincent, as played by David Tennant. The Vincent role has drastically changed from a dusty horror host to a Vegas illusionist [spoiler - see source if want].
"Charley is the center point in this film," added Farrell, "but [Peter Vincent] is very much an emotional reference point. As he was in the original. With David’s version, he's also living a lie, a different one and he's got a lot of regret. David did an amazing job and a lot of the comedy comes from him as well. He plays a very self-aware Peter Vincent."
The final two scenes we were shown switched the tone and became more action-packed as Charley, Amy and Ms. Brewster find themselves under attack by Jerry. [Spoiler - see source if want].
Alas, we did not get to see Evil Ed in action, although I did spy, in another editing bay, a worn out Ed looking like he just got the shit kicked out of him. We were also not allowed to see Jerry in full vampire transformation. Farrell assured us it was cool and said that his make-up (provided by KNB EFX) occurs in stages. "There's one scene, the continuation of the car chase you saw, where Jerry hits stage four."
"I like to do as much [practical effects] as I can," added Gillespie. "We augmented some of the FX with CG, but I tried to get as much in-camera as I can."
Asked if Chris Sarandon makes a cameo in the film, the two confirm, "Yes, I believe he does," beamed Gillespie. "It was cool. We talked about the project and we tried to figure out where to put him. He was a trooper."
"It was cool to have him on the set," Farrell smiled. "He did a day and to sit beside him and hear his stories was cool."
We shall see how this new Fright Night turns out. The clips shown were impressive, but I'm being supremely cautious as a supreme fan of the original. Stay tuned for more Fright Night 3D coverage as we near the release date. In the meantime, check out photos right here.
Source
Finally: What you've been on the edge of your seats for - new info on the Smurfs movie!
(No source)
No Fright Night trailer yet, but I promise I'm scanning like hell. Word on the street is it's playing in front of Priest today, so you Karl Urban fans might have already seen it as I type this.
Tom Holland’s Fright Night is not only a modern horror classic, it’s a movie that this writer holds near and dear to her heart. A film I’ve probably seen well over 1,000 times in my lifetime and could list by memory every cast and crew member and quote every line of dialogue until I’m blue in the face.
Fright Night to me has always been sacred territory and since it is one of the movies that was partially responsible for my lifelong love affair with the horror genre, the upcoming remake is something I’m taking very seriously.
Recently, Dread Central was invited by DreamWorks to an edit bay visit in Santa Monica where we not only screened 20 minutes of the movie in 3D, we were able to sit down to catch up with director Craig Gillespie and the film’s stars Colin Farrell and Anton Yelchin to hear their thoughts on tackling the classic flick, what’s being updated and what’s staying the same for fans of the original Fright Night.
Gillespie isn’t generally a name that horror fans will recognize off the bat, but that all looks to be changing with not only Fright Night’s theatrical bow coming on August 19th but also with the fact that he was recently announced as the director on the upcoming film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. He discussed what it was about Fright Night that piqued his interest in making a vampire film in an age where the creature is now regularly associated more with romance than death.
“What attracted me to the script other than obviously the tone- which was this great blend of horror and comedy- is the way that Marti (Noxon) wrote the vampire,” explained Gillespie. “It was so refreshing and just goes back to the idea that he’s a monster. He’s a predator- a sexual predator even- and I think that something that has been lost track of recently. It’s become much more about the romance and there’s no real threat to them. I actually like the reality of thinking about Jerry as a predator and how he would exist, how he would get around- almost in the same realm of a sexual predator or a serial killer.”
Gillespie went on to discuss how even though this Fright Night is going to be a new experience for audiences, those who love the original may find some familiarities between the two. “There’s a lot to the structure of this one that pays homage to the original with certain set pieces like the night club scene. Obviously, we kept the idea of the vampire next door and everyone not believing it at first, but then coming to believe it so I think it was good to keep that all of that from the original and feature those aspects. But at the end of the day, our version was rewritten to be quite a different piece.”
When we arrived at the Santa Monica studio, one of the editors on Fright Night brought a few of us journalists into one of the editing suites where she was busy still putting the final touches on the project to show us several scenes that have been completed already for the remake.
We were able to check out one of the scenes that had been previously released during CinemaCon that showed just how crafty Jerry Dandridge can be when he’s on the hunt for some new victims and the lengths he’d go to in order to teach Charlie (which not spelled Charley any longer - a notable change from the original flick) to mind his own business.
Farrell, who has the daunting task of stepping into Chris Sarandon’s shoes as Jerry Dandridge talked about how his love for the original Fright Night almost stopped the actor from even reading the script for the remake, let alone taking the role of the deadly vampire living and killing his way through suburbia.
“Initially, I was drawn to the notion of Jerry as a vampire and not as a romantic icon,” said Farrell. “I loved the original and I didn’t want to like this script but when I read it, I loved it. So I was like ‘balls.’ And then I met Craig and I liked him a lot so I was like ‘double balls’ then. I knew I had to do it. And what was smart about this script was that the vampire was designed in a very specific way, as kind of the ultimate example of carnivorous existence or someone that reacts without compunction or remorse or even contemplation. At first, I kind found him kind of oppressive so I started asking all these questions like ‘does he have to pick her up in the night club?’ ‘Can we not have the seduction anymore?’ ‘Can we do this, can we do that?’ And two weeks into the film, Craig was like ‘Colin, you’re fighting the wrong fights.’”
“As an actor, you have to address what’s in the script but bring something new to it and so I had to engage myself with this animal, this beast and then after deliberation, I started to enjoy walking around in his shoes, engaging with that cruel sense of power that Jerry carries with himself throughout the whole film. He so gets off on his own power and he’s really bored after 400 years of living in solitary and cyclical existence with daily repetition. He’s bored and he’s so sick of these fucking humans because they’re so dull and he needs them to feed. And if he can get some sport out of them, that’s all well and good. So when Charlie shows himself to be a worthy adversary, that’s where the game kind of takes off for Jerry,” added Farrell.
Yelchin, whose quickly becoming one of the more talked about young actors in Hollywood these days after roles in recent blockbusters including Star Trek and Terminator: Salvation, discussed what fans can expect with his Charlie and how it’s really his posturing to impress new girlfriend Amy (Imogen Poots) that starts a deadly but tragic chain of events in Fright Night.
“Charlie starts off in the movie where he’s got a new girlfriend, a new group of friends that aren’t really his friends so he tries to, he postures a lot to try and be this person he’s not. It’s this sort of fake, macho thing that he does. And then he meets Jerry who’s discovers he's not some alpha male douchebag but he’s actually a monster who wants to kill everybody that’s important to Charlie. The journey that really goes on is from just posturing his way through life to learning how to actually fight- for me, it was just metaphorically about this darkness that threatened everything that was important to him. So Fright Night really is about him learning how to step up and be able to face that extreme danger and protect those people even if it’s extremely dangerous for him to do so.”
Another scene we watched revolved around Charlie doing some recon work inside Jerry’s house after he begins to suspect that his new neighbor is behind the disappearance of his best friend “Evil” Ed Thompson (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) after Ed tries to warn Charlie about Jerry. I won’t go into the scene too much because I personally think spoilers ruin half the fun for fans, but what I can say is that audiences will get some clues as to just who or what Jerry Dandridge is and just how twisted and vicious Farrell’s version of the iconic vampire really is.
In the original Fright Night, the breakdown of the relationship between pals Charley and Ed was never really explored, but Yelchin discussed how this time Charlie is someone who feels great guilt for leaving his best friend behind and how that guilt is a catalyst for his actions throughout the film.
“There were different stages that I sort of thought Charlie’s journey in-there’s the original stage where he just postures as someone he’s not and leaves Ed behind,” said Yelchin.
“Charlie carries a lot of guilt for leaving Ed behind. Then, [spoiler - see source if want] guides Charley through the next stage. Then the mania sets in for Charlie and there’s some paranoia that Ed might have actually been right and then that ultimate guilt sets in and that’s what makes him realize that life is not worth living if the people you really care about aren’t there anymore.”
“That sort of motivates Charlie to talk himself into fighting this creature to save the people he cares about. It’s kind of a very simple but moving story point that Ed comes to him and asks for help and Charlie just says ‘I have a hot girlfriend with new friends’ and basically is very superficial and rude to a person who was his best friend. It’s very moving and very simple but also kind of grounds the movie in how Charlie’s character continues to develop from that point,” Yelchin added.
We were also shown a scene with some tense back-and-forth conversation between Jerry and Charlie but the highlight for me was checking out the scene where Charlie and Peter Vincent (David Tennant) meet and Charlie reaches out to the Vegas show entertainer for a little help with his vampire problem.
Peter Vincent, originally portrayed by iconic character actor Roddy McDowall, was undoubtedly the heart and soul behind Holland’s original film so I was curious to see how the updated version would play out. And while a lot of die-hard fans may not be on board, I can appreciate the direction Noxon took when fleshing out the new Peter with some scene-stealing and often hilarious antics.
For Farrell, who’s conscientious that the original Fright Night is sacred material to horror fans, explained how this time around audiences will be privy to a few more details about the mysterious Jerry Dandridge and just where he comes from. “We do give some hints to Jerry’s background a little bit. There is also something that we came up with that will probably piss some of the old fans off- I mean, maybe some will like it but it has something to do with the relationship between [spoiler - see source if want],” Farrell added. “But for me, even though there are a lot of differences, the one thing I wanted to have in this film was an apple because of Chris Sarandon’s attachment to the apple in the first Fright Night. That was my own nod of the head to Chris’s original Jerry.”
For fans out there who want to get their own glimpse at DreamWorks’s reimagining of Fright Night before its August 19th theatrical bow, the first trailer for the film is set to debut today, May 13th, exclusively on IGN. Look for more on Fright Night 3D coming soon!
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Second: CinemaBlend interviews Anton at the Edit Bay
Starring in a remake is hard enough, but it becomes even harder when you’re remaking a bona fide cult classic. This August, when the Craig Gillespie-directed Fright Night hits theaters, critics and fans are going to be endlessly comparing Anton Yelchin’s performance to William Ragsdale’s, the actor who played Charley Brewster in the original. Luckily for Yelchin, he has a few key character changes on his side.
Two weeks back myself and a group of other journalists were given the chance to visit the edit bay for Fright Night and in addition to getting the opportunity to watch four separate scenes from the film (see my reaction HERE), we were also granted time to speak with the star of the show. Check out the interview below in which Anton Yelchin discusses how Charley’s personality has been altered, balancing the comedy and the horror, and his experiences working with Colin Farrell and David Tennant.
What’s your relationship with the original Fright Night? Are you a fan?
Yeah, I think it’s great. I love it. I think it’s a really smart film because it’s more about the horror genre itself than anything, and so I think that’s what makes it extremely smart and interesting. Even from the opening shot, going through a window on to a TV screen, already it sets up how self-conscious it is. It reminds me of…there’s a [Peter] Bogdanovich movie called Targets. It has that same kind of “genre movie yet not a genre movie,” super self-conscious genre movie quality. And I think Targets is really great - Boris Karloff’s in Targets and it has that aging movie star thing, and I think it’s great.
From what we saw in the footage, a lot of the film has changed quite a bit. For example, [spoiler - see source if want]. Does that same rule apply for the role of Charley Brewster?
Yeah, In the remake, like you said, [spoiler - see source if want]. I think, ultimately, there’s more of a journey for this Charley to take. In the original he gets scared, then he kind of stays scared, and then he has to fight. Here he starts off sort of super confident, feigning this kind of machismo; high school kid trying to keep up and seem kind of confident and cocky, when the reality is that he and Evil Ed grew up as best friends and that’s what they were in to. And he sort of rejects his friend to try and be more successful in the social end of school and because he then realizes that this mass-murdering vampire is living next door, all of those values, all of those false values that he had, become challenged and he has to actually become confident and strong to fight this horrible force that threatens to destroy everything he cares about. [Spoiler - see source if want], it attacks everyone around him, it threatens to get his girlfriend, you know? So there’s really a definite arc from someone that is faking his way through something to then actually growing in that place where he can battle this vampire.
How action heavy is this role for you?
It’s very action heavy. It’s exciting; it’s a very fun movie. What’s good about it is that Jerry fucks shit up. I mean, you guys obviously saw that. And it’s gory and violent and at the same time it has a certain amount of heart in the sense that you really feel for the decisions that Charley has to make. It’s not an easy decision for him to [spoiler - see source if want]. So yeah, it has a healthy dose of everything, but definitely a lot of fun action and good action sequences.
How was it balancing the horror elements with the more comedic elements?
Charley is, to a lot of it, these characters, like David Tennant’s character, Peter Vincent, he’s kind of the straight man. But there’s a lot of room to be funny, in the scenes with Chris [Mintz-Plasse] and the scenes with Imi [Poots] and even the scenes with Colin [Farrell]. What’s funny about him at first is that fake, macho thing that he’s doing, but it’s kind of humorous when he starts to trip out and this sort of mania starts to get to him that next door is a vampire. But then very quickly it just gets dark and scary and intense, which is good. I think it transitions from a lighter place to a darker place.
How do the transformations look? Did you get to see the make-up and all of that?
Oh yeah! It’s awesome. All I can say is that it’s definitely gruesome and frightening. It’s good because I think in recent years all the vampires look good and they just have fangs, and you’re like, “Alright,” but here it’s a monster. It’s great because it transitions out of Colin, who is this awesome, handsome dude, into this terrifying, terrifying monster.
Is it physical effects or CGI?
That’s another amazing thing. A lot of it is. There were transitions to the make-up artists. Howard [Berger], I think he won an Academy Award for Narnia, that’s who did [the makeup]. That’s great, because it’s kind of a dying art form, so it’s pretty amazing to see it when it’s all actually there and it’s real and it’s not just people with dots on their faces.
Is this your first experience shooting in 3D?
Yes it was.
Was it any different for you as an actor or was it largely the same?
Realistically it’s not that different. I thought it would be, but it’s not. The rig is a lot bigger because it’s two cameras shooting, one shoots this way [points in one direction] and one shoots this way [points in the other direction]. At times the focus doesn’t… their pulling Z-focus. If one of the cameras is off, it can’t shoot…realistically the amount of times that happened out of the fifty days that we shot, for all the scenes, maybe it happened 10 times at most. And it’s not like it’s a major delay, it’s like a five or ten minute delay, so it’s not really that different… I realized it wasn’t that different.
I’ve heard that those cameras are really huge.
Well, it’s not different for me. It must be different for the operator and I know it’s different for the steadycam operator because the rig is suddenly twice as big and not what he is used to carrying.
It’s not distracting at all because you’re wondering about the camera?
No, not really. I was kind of curious because I kind of like to geek out on the technology, but it wasn’t too different, no.
When they were shooting the original, they didn’t show William Ragsdale the vampire make-up until they were actually shooting so that they could get a natural reaction. Did they ever try that during this production?
In the sequence where he’s - [spoiler - see source if want] - that chamber is actually really creepy. It’s like some rapists cell. Like Silence of the Lambs, uncomfortable, and that was creepy. It definitely had a creepy quality in the things we were shooting, especially towards the end when we’re actually with the vampires. Inevitably you’re scared because you’re already in that mind.
Why is it, do you think, that vampires have become so popular in recent years?
I really don’t know. It must have something to do with the fact that… I don’t know what socially vampires represent now to people. In the old school Nosferatu, the really old one, it was actually similar to this: an all-powerful dark menace that started to consume the place that it was going to, which obviously has a lot to do with the pre-war German psyche; it’s not related to what’s going on [now]. I don’t really know. I was never a Twilight reader. I didn’t even know what it was. I had no idea that it was that huge and that many pubescent girls were in to it. So I don’t really know. It might be that the way that they’ve accessed vampires… it might just be that. Vampires now are accessible to a new audience, especially with the Twilight thing. It’s all about these little girls who want to fuck these vampires. What I like about this one is that it’s actually a scary vampire. It’s not like, “Oh, I’m in love,” like “I’m going to fucking kill you. I’m sorry, I’m a vampire, it’s what we do.” That’s what makes it exciting and fun for me. There’s no romance. It’s not like Interview with a Vampire. He’s scary, he’s a monster and he’s going to destroy you. It’s kind of how he is in the original, except he’s a little more love sick. I think this one specifically targets that original, “We want gore and we want a monster that’s going to kill things.” I didn’t see 28 Days Later, was that vampires?
No, that was kind of zombies.
Yeah, I didn’t see that. I think there’s a lack of vampires destroying things that I can think of. They’re more in love or whatever and this takes it back to the original.
Craig Gillespie’s background is more dark comedy/drama and not really a genre director. Was that a plus?
Yes, absolutely. I think Craig… in Lars [and the Real Girl], Ryan Gosling, it’s totally about the performance, so that was definitely great for me because he’s a filmmaker that likes to work with actors, obviously, and now I know this from experience. Just having seen the movie, it’s just like, “This is someone that likes to have actors give interesting looks, that bizarre look at things.” So that was definitely a plus.
Jerry really has a complete sense of how powerful he is and really plays around with Charley, and just from what we saw from David Tennant in the footage it looks like he’s going over the top and really having fun with it. What was it like working alongside Colin and David?
It’s great because Charley is kind of the straight man for those two - they’re opposing forces, but they’re such characters, you know? And it was a lot of fun, because with David Tennant, Charley is either trying to get him to be on his side - kind of like in the original - or he’s just terrified and coming to him. With Jerry, especially at the beginning, there’s that definite false kind of machismo that Charley tries to put on to counter Jerry, which is a lot of fun to play. It’s all false, it’s not real. It’s him doing what he thinks will make him look tough. And of course Jerry totally sees through it, he’s about a thousand times stronger than he is and more menacing, but it was fun. It was a lot of fun.
Have you seen the script for Star Trek 2 yet? Do you know when it might go into production?
No, I haven't seen the script. I'm not sure. I think we're doing it at some point soon, I don't know when though. No idea.
Have you spoken with JJ Abrams at all?
No, JJ's, I think, doing Super 8 now and he's doing press for it. I haven't because they'll get to it when they get to it. I'd love to get together with those people again, I really love that whole cast. It would it be a lot of fun to do it, but it's kind of one of those things.
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Third: Shock 'Til You Drop posts a spoiler-heavy edit review:
Out of the '80s, many horror-comedies were born. An American Werewolf in London. Evil Dead II. Return of the Living Dead. One you could set proudly alongside those classics: Tom Holland's 1985 film Fright Night. In it, young Charley Brewster must draw on his reserve of vampire knowledge - culled mostly from his high school chum "Evil" Ed and watching horror films - to take on a bloodsucker, Jerry Dandrige, who has moved in next door.
Like most genre pictures from that era, it has been remade for a new generation and on August 19 Fright Night hits theaters introducing a new Brewster, Evil Ed and Dandrige under the direction of Craig Gillespie, who is making a decided tonal turn in his career after helming Lars and the Real Girl. Anton Yelchin leads the cast as Charley (formerly played by William Ragsdale) and Colin Farrell slips into the shoes of the handsome vamp Dandrige (played in Holland's film by Chris Sarandon). Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Imogen Poots and Toni Collette round out the cast as Evil Ed, Amy (Charley's main squeeze) and Charley's mom, respectively.
Gillespie, Farrell, Yelchin and editor Tatiana S. Riegel invited Shock Till You Drop down to the Riegel's editing suite in Santa Monica, California recently to give us a 20 minute preview of the redo. This writer had spent some time on the New Mexico set late last year, however, the scene I witnessed being shot was not one of the sequences we saw presented to us in 3D.
Gillespie prefaced the presentation with: "[The film] pays homage to the original. It has some of the story points and structure, but it's really its own entity. What's surprising about it is, there's a set-up with the characters and this big cat and mouse game. [Spoiler - see source if want]."
A taste of that "cat and mouse" element was demonstrated in scene one, a clever tête-à-tête between Charley and Jerry at the former's Las Vegas home. [Spoiler - see source if want].
Gillespie, visually, plays the scene well and it's clear that he's milking the "does Jerry know that Charley knows he's a vampire?" vibe longer than the original film. Farrell oozes a "bro"-like quality that you'd normally find in guys in Las Vegas or Orange County. When I called him on it, Farrell said: "Genuinely, you would meet a different Jerry if the film was set on the East Coast, or in Florida. He's nothing if not somebody who has an insane ability to assimilate himself to any environment. He probably speaks eight or nine languages. He's only had about 400 years to learn them and he's an incredible observer of human behavior. Humans are a point of fascination to him and a source of disgust. He's sick of them. He needs them to survive."
Farrell said he didn't look to Chris Sarandon's performance for inspiration. "I loved his performance in that film, but it's so differently designed this time. I would have loved to have gone deeper into vampire lore, to have a more romantic life, I was pushing for that on this film but that was pushing a square peg into a round hole. Two weeks ahead of shooting, I had to get my head wrapped around the vampire Jerry was instead of injecting these moments that were forcing the issue. This Jerry isn't like the original. He's savage, powerful and he gets off on that. No need for love or companionship."
One particularly creepy moment I witnessed found Charley sneaking around Jerry's house where [spoiler - see source if want].
The next sequence gave us our introduction to Peter Vincent, as played by David Tennant. The Vincent role has drastically changed from a dusty horror host to a Vegas illusionist [spoiler - see source if want].
"Charley is the center point in this film," added Farrell, "but [Peter Vincent] is very much an emotional reference point. As he was in the original. With David’s version, he's also living a lie, a different one and he's got a lot of regret. David did an amazing job and a lot of the comedy comes from him as well. He plays a very self-aware Peter Vincent."
The final two scenes we were shown switched the tone and became more action-packed as Charley, Amy and Ms. Brewster find themselves under attack by Jerry. [Spoiler - see source if want].
Alas, we did not get to see Evil Ed in action, although I did spy, in another editing bay, a worn out Ed looking like he just got the shit kicked out of him. We were also not allowed to see Jerry in full vampire transformation. Farrell assured us it was cool and said that his make-up (provided by KNB EFX) occurs in stages. "There's one scene, the continuation of the car chase you saw, where Jerry hits stage four."
"I like to do as much [practical effects] as I can," added Gillespie. "We augmented some of the FX with CG, but I tried to get as much in-camera as I can."
Asked if Chris Sarandon makes a cameo in the film, the two confirm, "Yes, I believe he does," beamed Gillespie. "It was cool. We talked about the project and we tried to figure out where to put him. He was a trooper."
"It was cool to have him on the set," Farrell smiled. "He did a day and to sit beside him and hear his stories was cool."
We shall see how this new Fright Night turns out. The clips shown were impressive, but I'm being supremely cautious as a supreme fan of the original. Stay tuned for more Fright Night 3D coverage as we near the release date. In the meantime, check out photos right here.
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Finally: What you've been on the edge of your seats for - new info on the Smurfs movie!
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No Fright Night trailer yet, but I promise I'm scanning like hell. Word on the street is it's playing in front of Priest today, so you Karl Urban fans might have already seen it as I type this.