Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a pretty decent sized interview I recently did with Joel Moore star of two vastly different geek properties. First is HATCHET, which opens in limited cities this very day and the second is a film that won’t open for another 2 years almost: James Cameron’s AVATAR. We talk about both and I have to say… he was a lot more up front about AVATAR and his role in the grand scheme of things than I was expecting. Tons of horror and gore talk and then a nice juicy nugget about the first James Cameron feature film in a decade. Not a bad haul, says I. Enjoy the talk!!!
Joel Moore: How are you doing?
Quint: I’m doing well, you alright?
Joel Moore: Yeah yeah, I’m great.
Quint: Cool.
Joel Moore: What’s going on man?
Quint: They tell me that we are supposed to talk about some bloody stuff.
Joel Moore: Some bloody gore shit or for something different?
Quint: Yeah. For the Merchant Ivory film that you’re doing.
Joel Moore: (laughs) Yeah.Have we met? Have I met you out and about?
Quint: I don’t think so.
Joel Moore: So yeah, man. HATCHET… creepy movie. Have you seen it?
Quint: I did, but you will have to forgive me since it’s been a year, so my memory might be a little fuzzy on it.
Joel Moore: It’s actually a lot better now (laughs). They went through a different color process and went through an edit and fixed a lot of the sound and did some cool things that made it very theatrically releasable. I think people will really enjoy it.
Quint: It looked good when I saw it. I heard there was some trouble with the MPAA, so I’m hoping that a lot of the gore stuff that I loved wasn’t hurt.
Joel Moore: I don’t think you will even notice what was taken out.
Quint: So, it was just frames?
Joel Moore: Yeah, frames here and frames there… Just trying to appease them. I think mostly it was just a pissing contest.
Quint: I saw it at FANTASTIC FEST last year and we are now two weeks away from this year’s FANTASTIC FEST. I love those guys at Anchor Bay and I hope that they are able to get the movie out there. They obviously know genre and they know what’s great. I loved BEHIND THE MASK as well, but it just seems that they are still finding their feet as a theatrical distribution company.
Joel Moore: Yeah and I think that it will be a game of figuring out what they want to represent and what they want to do. Lionsgate started out that same way and tried to find its feet in certain genres and have been increasingly branching out from that and I think that that is what Anchor Bay is trying to do as well. Anchor Bay is releasing SPIRAL, the film that Adam [Green] and I co-directed, after that. I wrote, directed, and played the lead of this film that we did and it actually plays at FANTASTIC FEST this year, sort of a Hitchcockian character driven suspense film and Anchor Bay picked that one up as well and they will release it theatrically at the beginning of the year.
Quint: It seems to me that they know really good projects, so that’s kind of the big deal right there.
Joel Moore: Yeah, I think that what they are going to put out in theaters is going to be stuff that they either believe in or that they feel will have a specific market and I think HATCHET does both of those. They believe in it and they believe that it has a good potential for horror fans to come to and if you look, HATCHET has so much crazy buzz because Adam is such a passionate filmmaker that he has put so much time into getting this out there and getting people to really see what he did and appreciate what he did, which was turning back to an era that has been missed and I think that he accomplished in this movie, while it’s a lot funnier and a lot more real than a lot of those 80’s slasher films, I think that he accomplished bringing people back... there’s no CG and it’s based on what you would have had or what was accessible in the 80’s to make a film with and I appreciated that when I signed on and I think that fans will appreciate that as well.
Quint: I’m a big fan of 80’s horror and 80’s slashers and that. I love most horror subgenres, but as a kid growing up in the 80’s there was nothing better than getting a couple FRIDAY THE 13THs when you were doing a sleepover at a friend’s house or something, you know?
Joel Moore: Exactly, exactly. We just got done with all of the DVD behind the scenes stuff and this DVD is going to be crazy. It’s going to have hours of footage that horror fans can really dig into. It’s not your cheesy photo-slideshow behind the scenes, it’s the real…
Quint: “Interactive menu” special feature…
Joel Moore: Yeah, or like five minute little feature. We just did the DVD commentary and it’s crazy. This is one of the ones that I would have listened to even if I wasn’t involved in it, because right from the top you hear all of these voices of the people, there was five or six of us doing it, and yeah it’s pretty fun.
Quint: That’s cool. Well that’s another thing Anchor Bay knows how to do. They are the Criterion of genre films.
[Both Laugh]
Quint: They really put so much effort and love into these releases.
Joel Moore: Yeah, they really do.
Quint: When you shot the movie it was almost all location shooting, right?
Joel Moore: It was all night shoots, because everything happens at night in the swamp of New Orleans and so our shoot was really strange because we had short days. Usually on such an independent film, you cram long hours into not so long of a schedule, so not so many days, but what we did was we had a limited amount of days like any indie film, but we had a hard out and a hard in, so the only times we could shoot was when the sun went down until the sun came up, so you had only eight or nine hours of shooting as opposed to 12 or 13 or 14 or 15 that, like the film I’m doing now, I haven’t gotten out a day without shooting at least 14 hours. So it was crazy and we were just hustling and running from set to set. Sometimes there were three units shooting at the same time and Adam would be running back and forth from one set to the other trying to juggle directing three different units or at least conspiring with his second unit director and third unit director about how to get the shit finished in 15 minutes before the sun comes up… and then the actors would just go away and drink. (laughs) We would hustle and hustle and then literally it’d hit six or seven in the morning, whenever the sun was coming up, and we would be at RiteAide, waiting for it to hit that six AM, so they can start serving alcohol again. We got to know the people, it was like “Hey it’s the HATCHET people, come on in you got five minutes, so stock up…” We would sit there and chat with them until it would hit at literally six AM and he starts ringing shit up. It was ridiculous.
Quint: Do you think that those types of days helped keep the energy up?
Joel Moore: It definitely helped the momentum of the film to continue forward, because now you are a team, so now everybody is going for one goal and moving toward one goal and that’s to try to get to the end of the day and get everything that you need finished, so everybody is hustling and you’re not taking extra time in the trailer or anything like that. We were all just planted and ready to go and I think that that’s the only reason that they were able to get this done and I think that a lot of that credit is due to Adam, because of the way that he approaches filmmaking and the way that he approaches dealing with people, dealing with his cast and his crew. Nobody had a bad thing to say about him and everybody was so onboard with everything he did. Blah-blah-blah. Enough about Green! The film, and I think that the film itself was just really fun and it allowed for a community effort, because there are all of these people… there’s this group of people that are in all of these scenes together and it’s really hard writing to do six or seven different people talking in one scene, so we were all just running around in this swamp together and we had to keep our energy up. It was freezing cold sometimes and we were getting rained on, so we had to keep our energy up and our favorite thing in the entire world was a tiny little… because it’s so hard to get anything back into these woods, was a heat lamp or a couple of gas powered heat lamps and so we would all huddle around there and try to keep each other energize, so a lot of Red Bulls and a couple of heat lamps got us through it.
Quint: That’s what fueled HATCHET, Red Bull and heat lamps.
Joel Moore: Exactly. “I won’t eat lunch… I’ll just take a Red Bull.”
Quint: When I think of the swamps of Louisiana, I think of a place that I really don’t want to be at in the dark.
Joel Moore: We shot some in Louisiana, but we ended up shooting all of the swamp stuff here in LA, so it was less dangerous.
Quint: Good, because somebody wouldn’t have survived had you guys done that.
Joel Moore: Oh yeah, I don’t even think we could, but yeah we shot it here and it’s crazy, like there is a place that we shot at that in the swamps of Louisiana. They didn’t have to do a whole lot to make it look exactly like what you would see in Louisiana, in fact when they are on their tour and they are on the boat and it’s a master shot, and you’ll hear this on the DVD commentary, that’s not us, that’s extras in Louisiana and it looks exactly like what we were running around in. Of course they had to dress the trees and make sure that shit looked the same, but it was really cool and I don’t know if anybody would ever know. Unless they’re… You would have to have… Why can’t I think of those people who study plants all of a sudden? I’m still drunk from last night, I guess. I just got back from Vegas and wait “zoo-o-anthropologist?”
Quint: Botanists?
Joel Moore: I don’t know, I don’t believe you either, dude!
Quint: Well, it’d be even worse for me, because I am not drunk and that’d mean I’m just stupid.
[Both Laugh]
Joel Moore: Paleontologist? No wait, that’s dinosaurs… Anyways one of those “-ologists” to be able to fucking know the tree that was in one thing, like [in a southern accent] “Oh that’s an oak tree and they don’t have oak trees in Louisiana…” and all of a sudden my “-ologist” is from red state Texas… So yeah I think that that’s a part of what is so cool about the film, we aren’t in a rural town or anything, we are just a bunch of guys that were stranded on a boat and had to get off and ended up in these woods that are haunted by, and it’s cool because it’s a local legend, like you see us in a town at first and there’s Victor Crowley signs and T-shirts around, so people know about this local legend and we are the ones who, of course the dumb tourists, who get caught up in the local legend where all of the normal people know not to go to that site, because there’s been a lot of deaths.
Quint: And that local legend is impersonated by Kane Hodder.
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Joel Moore: Exactly, Kane Hodder… that guys is a monster among men. He is first of all a great guy and he was so passionate and happy to play this role and he got to play the father character as well, so he was able to play the monster like he has perfected in life, but he was also able to act and I think that’s what attracted him to the role, but that guy is just like 200 some odd pounds of scary. He wouldn’t allow us to see him before we shot a scene, so he would cover himself up completely, because he was the stunt coordinator as well, so he would come out in this big trench coat and a hoodie and cover himself up if he was in his Victor Crowley mode. He would come out, get the stunts right and make sure that nobody was going to get hurt, go back and hide behind whatever he could hide behind so that we couldn’t see him and then get in to Victor Crowley. He would just let these guttural groans and yells out behind a tree where we couldn’t see him and then run into the scene. It was fucking scary to be honest.
Quint: It’s funny, because I’ve met him a couple of times and he is a nice guy, but he does have that… even when he is himself, he still has really terrifying eyes that look like they’re just waiting for you to make a move so he can squish you and pop your head off.
Joel Moore: He does have those… I was confused at first, because I thought maybe he was actually just in love with me and that’s what those eyes were, but I soon found out that no he actually wants to kill us.
Quint: Method actor…
[Both Laugh]
Joel Moore: It was just so fun to see the HATCHET girls respond to this huge monster of a man run around and not being able to know him, so having no comfort in the thought that this guy was just a dude in a mask… not in a mask… whatever prosthetics and so they would just… literally Mercedes [McNab] and Joleigh [Fioreavanti] would be crying before when he is letting out these guttural yells and before they had to shoot with him, because they just didn’t know what to expect. They knew that they were going to get freaked out.
Quint: Yeah, this is a low-budget movie…” You don’t know where they found that guy.
Joel Moore: Exactly! This guy could’ve been a local actor from wherever we were shooting.
Quint: “Found him on the street and he’s willing to do it for some old Tom.”
Joel Moore: “He’s the only guy we found that had a bad drinking problem and had a hatchet scar across his face… there aren’t a lot of those guys around, but if he acts up, just let us know… W have one security guard and he’s 76 years old and he’s smoking a cigarette where you shouldn’t be smoking cigarettes…”
Quint: “But he has a tazer gun, so…”
Joel Moore: “Yeah, but he has a tazer gun. It hasn’t been used for 23 years and we hope the batteries still work…” Fucking sleeping in the back the whole time… “Uh sir, sir this man is actually killing someone.” “You know what? Let him enjoy himself.”
Quint: “Somebody should call the cops.”
Joel Moore: [In a different voice] “And I’m the cops.” Apparently my security guard is an old Jew…
[Both Laugh]
Quint: Well we’ve got an Oklahomian botanists and…
Joel Moore: …and an old jewish security guard.
[Both Laugh]
Quint: I think we know the sequel now.
Joel Moore: (laughs) “The Ologist and the Jew”
Quint: Are you a fan of horror stuff? Are you a fan of the old school slashers?
Joel Moore: I am. When I got the role, I love horror so I wanted to do a horror film. I didn’t want to do a ton of them, so I wanted to choose one that I really felt like would do well and would be cool and special and have a… even over the other ones, the big budget studio ones that were out at the time of me trying to figure out what I was going to do.
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There was something special about this one and I knew that it was going to go into history, if it was successful, as trying to bring back this other kind of horror film or genre filmmaking and I believe that it’s successful in that and I also believe that Adam did a good job in hiring comedians to play these parts, because it has such a natural comedy in it and it’s not forced comedy. You had comedy in these old movies and I think people forget that, but it’s a different kind of comedy. It was cheesy campy comedy and that’s not to say that HATCHET doesn’t have its moment of campiness… it has to, since it’s trying to be that kind of a movie, but most of its comedy is based on reality and in reaction to “what the hell is going on?” and how we got into this situation at first. Deon [Richmond] and myself are both comedians and that’s why I think we both responded to the script so much and were able to feel comfortable in walking into that kind of a role which was new for both of us.
Quint: That’s cool.
Joel Moore: And Deon is the funniest part of the whole movie. That guy is so funny, it’s great. Every time I’ve seen this movie I’m like… He just steals it. I kind of have to play the straight guy in this movie, because I’m kind of the journey of what’s going on and so Deon is lucky because he just gets to react to the insanity that is what is going on? I have to go “No, we’ve got to get out of here.” [In Deon’s voice] “Man, I’m climbing a tree!”
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What’s too funny is Adam and I talked about this early on, “Why don’t people just climb trees? Just climb trees and wait for the cops to get there or whatever you need, just get up. I can’t see a dude, unless he has a hatchet since that’s actually a good point… maybe this is the only movie you shouldn’t climb a tree with, because he could cut it down, but I can’t see a dude coming at you with a butcher knife climbing a tree and trying to swipe at you when you’re above them. You can just kick ‘em.
Quint: Yeah, you can kick them… you can throw pine cones… The comedy thing is a dangerous line to walk. You’re right, comedy has always been part of horror, especially the 80’s slasher stuff, but there came a point where the comedy, and I think this is why the slasher film died… it started laughing at itself. That’s where the SCREAM stuff came from where all of a sudden that became horror, where it’s like “Oh, let’s make fun of slashers and stuff” I think that’s why a lot of horror fans are really taking to HATCHET, because you guys make that distinction and you still take the horror seriously and you take the movie seriously, but at the same time there’s a lot of really funny characters and crazy gore.
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Joel Moore: It’s two different movies almost when it comes to that kind of an idea. It’s not poking fun at 80’s slasher films. You are involved in everything that’s going on. These characters are so well written that you actually… you cheer because the deaths are great, but you feel for whoever is dying because you have been on 20 or 30 minutes of a journey with these people already before they start dying, so yeah it’s not a farce and I think that things like SCREAM, although your average person wouldn’t think it’s a farce… It is a farce, because it is, what you said, making fun of an old genre of film… a certain kind of film, just like the SCARY MOVIES. That’s of course a bigger farce and it’s more obvious of a farce, but both of them are poking at what was ridiculous about these old films and I think that HATCHET embraces what was great about these old films and adds to it a quality of comedy that is not farcical comedy, it’s natural, reactionary comedy… these situations that we are put in and how to get out of them.
It also has a tone of us recognizing the ridiculous situation that we are in, because you do have characters that say “we are stuck in this damn swamp with this guy who is coming to get us…” we are commenting on the fact that it’s a ridiculous situation that we are in.
Quint: Speaking of being in a ridiculous situation, aren’t you working with James Cameron now?
Joel Moore: [Laughingly] That is a ridiculous situation, ridiculous in the fact that I could never ever dream that I would be working with the biggest director…
Quint: I got to meet Cameron at the Santa Barbara Film Festival a couple of years ago and that was just the coolest thing ever. I got to sit down and just talk and I totally just geeked out about ALIENS and I probably freaked him out, because there was a point were he was like “Well you know I’ve directed other movies besides ALIENS” and I was like “Dude, I have TERMINATOR posters and stuff, too. I love all of your movies, TRUE LIES… that’s great, but ALIENS is the tip of the top for me, so…
Joel Moore: (laughs) And I’m sure ALIENS is probably the one that he feels less… he created TERMINATOR… he created THE ABYSS… he created, like you said, TRUE LIES and all of these and the whole franchise of TERMINATOR is because of him. ALIENS is actually a sequel that he wrote to a movie that he really liked which shows how creative and passionate he is, but it’s probably the one that he has the least control over, I guess.
In conversation with him, he loves the movie and it’s a big part of his success was making that and because I’m working with Sigourney Weaver as well, they have some stories about that and…
Quint: That’d blow my mind man, that’s so cool.
Joel Moore: Yeah, I’m her right hand man in the movie, but yeah they talk about how… they give great stories about how they were on set together and the shit that happened and the fact that this was a sequel and Sigourney didn’t even know that there was going to be a sequel to ALIEN. She had no clue and Jim wrote this great treatment or script for it and ended up making it and then it sort of turned into a franchise because of him writing the sequel, which I thought was pretty cool.
I think he had already done TERMINATOR by the time he went and directed…
Quint: Yeah, I think he got the gig for ALIENS when he was wrapping up TERMINATOR, if I know my nerd history.
Joel Moore: You’re very right, but Sigourney… it’s such an honor to be in the position that I am in and coming from all of these comedies and movies that people don’t necessarily take seriously, which is fine because they are still entertaining, it’s such a blessing to be a part of something that is so big. It’s literally going to change the history of filmmaking, this movie. It’s crazy and the stuff that we are doing on set and the technology that is involved and the way that Jim’s concept of making this movie is A) completely different than any other movie that I’ve done or anybody has done, just because of the technology involved and B) the story that he is telling and the vision that he has created for it is captivating and not just because it’s 3D or because we are using this whole different motion capture type of thing, it’s because…
I read the script when we were meeting at first and they locked me in a room and made me sign my life away and said “We will start with your pinkies if you say anything,” but I literally was, and I knew that outside of his history and outside of TITANIC, there was a bunch of Sci-Fi stuff that he had done and that’s awesome, because I’m a fan and I had loved those movies, but I thought “OK cool, another huge 200 million dollar Sci-Fi movie… this is awesome and a great thing to be a part of,” but it’s actually this beautiful love story and it’s very politically relevant and it’s almost a coming of age for humanity story. It’s just so developed at all of these different levels and I literally teared up a couple of times just reading the script. It was such a great script. I was so surprised, not that he couldn’t make anything like this, but surprised that it was this. I didn’t think it was this kind of a movie. I thought Sci-Fi from the way that when I had met on the film originally on the phone that they had explained it and I’m sure everybody in the world right now thinks that it’s Sci-Fi, but it’s so much more than that.
Quint: Everybody assumes in Cameron’s Sci-Fi that there’s going to be good action, but at the same time you look at what he did in ALIENS and THE ABYSS, especially THE ABYSS. THE ABYSS is such a character movie all about relationships and all about the emotion.
Joel Moore: This does have a little bit of that in it, if you were to liken it to anything else that he has done. It’s just on such a bigger level, because you’ve got these crazy LORD OF THE RINGS size action sequences in it and it’s that kind of a movie as well.
To be able to put all of that together in one movie is fucking hard and that’s what I think was so impressive to me personally, because I read a lot of scripts and you never see people successfully put all of these things together, you kind of have to pick and choose. If you’re a big budget movie and you are wanting to be a love story, you be a love story. If you want it to be an action movie, you be TRANSFOMERS, you know? You can still have a love story, but it’s just… it’s really cool that all of it happens in the same movie. I’m sorry. I know that I’m being very vague, but…
Quint: No, I understand. I don’t want you to lose your pinkies.
Joel Moore: Exactly, but working alongside Sigourney is such a crazy honor and she couldn’t be nicer and Jim couldn’t be a better director. In as much as directing and filmmaking goes, I honestly can’t imagine ever working with a better director. He doesn’t take lunches. He’s editing on his lunch breaks. He is the hardest working person on set. When other people are on a tiny little break and the people are kind of… like if there’s a computer crash or a whatever is going on, there is people just waiting around to see what’s going to happen next and he’s up and going, sketching a new sketch, creating a new part of the land that we are on and just doing whatever there is to be done; he can’t sit down. They literally have to bring lunch in to him and put it in front of him so that for whatever he is doing he can just walk around and eat a sandwich as he’s going.
Quint: I’ve heard that, because there’s lots of horror stories about him being a really tough director, but each and everyone of them that I have ever heard has always had an epilogue to the story saying “but at the same time, he’s also not somebody who is doing this for any other reason and he’s doing so much work himself that he expects a level of quality from the people around him.”
Joel Moore: Yeah and it’s funny that there are all of these… because that’s what people say to me to and my only response is “If that’s the case, then why is every person that I’m working with, the whole crew, has been his crew for the last twenty years? If that’s the case, then why are all of these people back?”
They understand there is a very much militant attitude toward getting the job done, but I think that, just like I do, they appreciate that and that isn’t always roses and “Can you pleases.” That’s a little bit of “OK, let’s get this… Go do that and let’s get this done.” It’s just like that with us, he is never rude but always “here we are. This what we’re going to do. This is where we are… But he is always careful with his talent, because he knows that the talent are the people that are driving what’s going to happen for the day.
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He takes a special reservation for the talent and I’m honored to be a part of that reservation, because it’s really a story about a few of us that are going to another planet and it’s me and Sam Worthington and Sigourney that are scientists and Sam’s a marine and we are going to this other planet to sort of assimilate into another society. Because of that, a lot of it happens around us… like I have a girlfriend in this and it’s not an ugly German with a unibrow, like DODGEBALL, it’s a different thing. It’s Michelle Rodriguez and she’s hot.
Quint: And she definitely does not have a unibrow.
Joel Moore: She doesn’t have a unibrow.
Quint: I spent a lot of time in New Zealand and on RINGS I got to watch Andy Serkis work a lot, but I’m hearing that, like you are saying, this is a different mo-cap thing. Is that…?
Joel Moore: Well, we are working with WETA, the famed company that did all of Andy’s stuff and all of Peter Jackson’s stuff of course, but the technology that is involved with what we are doing is on a different level and even WETA would say the same thing. They’re part of the reason that the technology is on a different level.
They have a daunting year ahead of them to make all of this happen, but I think that they’re excited to be able to put all of the pieces together as well, because it’s such a challenge. This is going to look like no other film has ever looked and there’s something that I’m sure is special to that, just like when they were making LORD OF THE RINGS, I’m sure they thought “This is going to go down in history as one of the best trilogies ever.” I think they can look at AVATAR after a ten year break of James Cameron making movies, he come to this one which he’s had in the works, you know he wrote this thing ten or twelve years ago or at least the treatment for it and he had to wait for technology to catch up to him to be able to make it, so I think that there’s also this great and captivating part of the project that is special to them as well.
Quint: I’ve heard that he has actually been shooting live action as well as doing mo-cap stuff?
Joel Moore: Yeah, there is definitely live-action stuff as well.
Quint: That’s awesome.
Joel Moore: Yeah its pretty cool. I’m excited, we are going to New Zealand for a couple months and the New Zealand side… it’ll just be fun to be over there because I am a geek as well and I want to see all of the Weta stuff…
Quint: It’s great. I love Wellington so much. Brilliant place and the people are just so nice. The guys at Weta are the coolest people in the world. Richard Taylor, Gino Acevedo… everybody there is just so talented, but zero ego.
Joel Moore: That’s cool. I’m excited. It’s fun because I’ve been really blessed to be able work with really great directors and it’s funny, there’s a lot of what I see in James there’s a lot of that in Adam. There are two kinds of directors that you work with. I don’t want a director that doesn’t work as hard as I’m working on a film, you know? I don’t trust the outcome and we are putting our name and our acting in their hands and that’s what I appreciate about Adam, that there is such a passion and he is doing the same thing and not taking lunches, he’s on set running around trying to get all of these shots and all of these units and I just had a comfort that the end product, while it is this genre… kind of a strange thing that he’s doing, I just had a comfort that it was going to turn out well and not make me look bad
Quint: There’s also a level of you see a lot of filmmakers who are in it for other reasons, like the glory of being “the director” or they are in it for the parties or they are in it for the money or the fame or whatever. I don’t know Adam, I met him briefly at FANTASTIC FEST when we showed the movie, but my immediate impression was that he was genuinely there because he loved film and he was so proud to be a part of this thing that he loves. I think that’s such a good place to come from and it’s becoming an increasingly rare place to come. I just see lots of young filmmakers that are in it for other reasons than because they actually love and want to create film.
Joel Moore: I have, too, and I think that there’s a big difference as an actor between working with those kind of directors and working with a director who just wants for you and the movie the best possible product and there’s a wisdom in it, too. There’s understanding your crowed and understanding the specific audience you are trying to hit. There’s an understanding with the way to attack press and buzz and news and I think that there are people who get that side of this ridiculous game and there are people who don’t and that’s fine for the people who don’t, but I think that’s what it takes to be successful in this business, even as an actor, as an actor or a filmmaker. It’s the way that we had to attack SPIRAL.
SPIRAL isn’t a commercial film, but it still needed to have that same type of buzz about it, like “Wow, what is this thing? It looks very interesting…” It was devised from a short film that I wrote, I just had this great idea about this guy who did these things and was a painter and became infatuated with his subjects and may or may not kill them and so we wrote the movie around this idea and I think that that’s what draws people into SPIRAL even, that there’s this mystery that’s almost a who-done-it, but it’s not really a who-done-it, it’s more of a “What is he doing?”
Quint: So you’re going off to New Zealand for a couple months and I’m assuming you’re going to be doing some publicity for SPIRAL as well. Do you have anything else lined up?
Joel Moore: Yeah, SPIRAL comes out in theaters in early ‘08 and then after that a crazy little movie that I did, called THE HOTTIE AND THE NOTTIE… Me and Christine Lakin and Paris Hilton plays one of my girlfriends in the movie and she’s actually great in the movie. It really could be something that’s really good for her and that comes out after that and they’re working on the theatrical side of that as we speak and trying to figure out what the release is and how wide of a release and that stuff.
Then a movie I did with Hayden Panettiere from HEROES, called SHANGHAI KISS comes out in February or March-ish and it’s just a great little romantic comedy with Ken Leung playing a guy who is an Asian-American that’s trying to figure out whether he wants to be here in America or whether he wants to be back in his homeland and I play his best friend and Hayden plays his girlfriend or his love interest and yeah it’s really cute. Hayden is a great actress and she’s really funny. She’s a lot different… I knew her before HEROES and in HEROES she’s dramatic and in this she’s comic.
Quint: Busy times and then you have early ‘09 is AVATAR or mid ‘09 or something.
Joel Moore: Yeah and I’ll probably do another film that I’ll shoot after AVATAR that will probably come out before AVATAR just because of that year difference.
Quint: Cool man, well you’ve got a lot going on, a lot of really interesting stuff.
Joel Moore: Well thanks man and great talking to you. We love your support for everything that we’ve done and Harry gave SPIRAL a nice shout out and we appreciate that and we will be talking to you soon when SPIRAL press hits.
Quint: Cool man, well thanks so much for talking to me and good luck with everything.
Joel Moore: Okay, bye.
And there you have it. AVATAR sounds better and better the more I hear about it. The man is back!
I really enjoyed my chat with Joel Moore and I hope you enjoyed reading it.
HATCHET opens on around 80 screens today. If you like a good old fashioned non-remake original fun horror flick, then go out and support this one.
To find out if it’s playing near you, check out the offical site and scroll down to the 8.29.2007 update for a complete city and theater list!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
Quint: Well we’ve got an Oklahomian botanists and…
Joel Moore: …and an old jewish security guard.
[Both Laugh]
Quint: I think we know the sequel now.
Joel Moore: (laughs) “The Ologist and the Jew”
Quint: Are you a fan of horror stuff? Are you a fan of the old school slashers?
Joel Moore: I am. When I got the role, I love horror so I wanted to do a horror film. I didn’t want to do a ton of them, so I wanted to choose one that I really felt like would do well and would be cool and special and have a… even over the other ones, the big budget studio ones that were out at the time of me trying to figure out what I was going to do.
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There was something special about this one and I knew that it was going to go into history, if it was successful, as trying to bring back this other kind of horror film or genre filmmaking and I believe that it’s successful in that and I also believe that Adam did a good job in hiring comedians to play these parts, because it has such a natural comedy in it and it’s not forced comedy. You had comedy in these old movies and I think people forget that, but it’s a different kind of comedy. It was cheesy campy comedy and that’s not to say that HATCHET doesn’t have its moment of campiness… it has to, since it’s trying to be that kind of a movie, but most of its comedy is based on reality and in reaction to “what the hell is going on?” and how we got into this situation at first. Deon [Richmond] and myself are both comedians and that’s why I think we both responded to the script so much and were able to feel comfortable in walking into that kind of a role which was new for both of us.
Quint: That’s cool.
Joel Moore: And Deon is the funniest part of the whole movie. That guy is so funny, it’s great. Every time I’ve seen this movie I’m like… He just steals it. I kind of have to play the straight guy in this movie, because I’m kind of the journey of what’s going on and so Deon is lucky because he just gets to react to the insanity that is what is going on? I have to go “No, we’ve got to get out of here.” [In Deon’s voice] “Man, I’m climbing a tree!”
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What’s too funny is Adam and I talked about this early on, “Why don’t people just climb trees? Just climb trees and wait for the cops to get there or whatever you need, just get up. I can’t see a dude, unless he has a hatchet since that’s actually a good point… maybe this is the only movie you shouldn’t climb a tree with, because he could cut it down, but I can’t see a dude coming at you with a butcher knife climbing a tree and trying to swipe at you when you’re above them. You can just kick ‘em.
Quint: Yeah, you can kick them… you can throw pine cones… The comedy thing is a dangerous line to walk. You’re right, comedy has always been part of horror, especially the 80’s slasher stuff, but there came a point where the comedy, and I think this is why the slasher film died… it started laughing at itself. That’s where the SCREAM stuff came from where all of a sudden that became horror, where it’s like “Oh, let’s make fun of slashers and stuff” I think that’s why a lot of horror fans are really taking to HATCHET, because you guys make that distinction and you still take the horror seriously and you take the movie seriously, but at the same time there’s a lot of really funny characters and crazy gore.
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Joel Moore: It’s two different movies almost when it comes to that kind of an idea. It’s not poking fun at 80’s slasher films. You are involved in everything that’s going on. These characters are so well written that you actually… you cheer because the deaths are great, but you feel for whoever is dying because you have been on 20 or 30 minutes of a journey with these people already before they start dying, so yeah it’s not a farce and I think that things like SCREAM, although your average person wouldn’t think it’s a farce… It is a farce, because it is, what you said, making fun of an old genre of film… a certain kind of film, just like the SCARY MOVIES. That’s of course a bigger farce and it’s more obvious of a farce, but both of them are poking at what was ridiculous about these old films and I think that HATCHET embraces what was great about these old films and adds to it a quality of comedy that is not farcical comedy, it’s natural, reactionary comedy… these situations that we are put in and how to get out of them.
It also has a tone of us recognizing the ridiculous situation that we are in, because you do have characters that say “we are stuck in this damn swamp with this guy who is coming to get us…” we are commenting on the fact that it’s a ridiculous situation that we are in.
Quint: Speaking of being in a ridiculous situation, aren’t you working with James Cameron now?
Joel Moore: [Laughingly] That is a ridiculous situation, ridiculous in the fact that I could never ever dream that I would be working with the biggest director…
Quint: I got to meet Cameron at the Santa Barbara Film Festival a couple of years ago and that was just the coolest thing ever. I got to sit down and just talk and I totally just geeked out about ALIENS and I probably freaked him out, because there was a point were he was like “Well you know I’ve directed other movies besides ALIENS” and I was like “Dude, I have TERMINATOR posters and stuff, too. I love all of your movies, TRUE LIES… that’s great, but ALIENS is the tip of the top for me, so…
Joel Moore: (laughs) And I’m sure ALIENS is probably the one that he feels less… he created TERMINATOR… he created THE ABYSS… he created, like you said, TRUE LIES and all of these and the whole franchise of TERMINATOR is because of him. ALIENS is actually a sequel that he wrote to a movie that he really liked which shows how creative and passionate he is, but it’s probably the one that he has the least control over, I guess.
In conversation with him, he loves the movie and it’s a big part of his success was making that and because I’m working with Sigourney Weaver as well, they have some stories about that and…
Quint: That’d blow my mind man, that’s so cool.
Joel Moore: Yeah, I’m her right hand man in the movie, but yeah they talk about how… they give great stories about how they were on set together and the shit that happened and the fact that this was a sequel and Sigourney didn’t even know that there was going to be a sequel to ALIEN. She had no clue and Jim wrote this great treatment or script for it and ended up making it and then it sort of turned into a franchise because of him writing the sequel, which I thought was pretty cool.
I think he had already done TERMINATOR by the time he went and directed…
Quint: Yeah, I think he got the gig for ALIENS when he was wrapping up TERMINATOR, if I know my nerd history.
Joel Moore: You’re very right, but Sigourney… it’s such an honor to be in the position that I am in and coming from all of these comedies and movies that people don’t necessarily take seriously, which is fine because they are still entertaining, it’s such a blessing to be a part of something that is so big. It’s literally going to change the history of filmmaking, this movie. It’s crazy and the stuff that we are doing on set and the technology that is involved and the way that Jim’s concept of making this movie is A) completely different than any other movie that I’ve done or anybody has done, just because of the technology involved and B) the story that he is telling and the vision that he has created for it is captivating and not just because it’s 3D or because we are using this whole different motion capture type of thing, it’s because…
I read the script when we were meeting at first and they locked me in a room and made me sign my life away and said “We will start with your pinkies if you say anything,” but I literally was, and I knew that outside of his history and outside of TITANIC, there was a bunch of Sci-Fi stuff that he had done and that’s awesome, because I’m a fan and I had loved those movies, but I thought “OK cool, another huge 200 million dollar Sci-Fi movie… this is awesome and a great thing to be a part of,” but it’s actually this beautiful love story and it’s very politically relevant and it’s almost a coming of age for humanity story. It’s just so developed at all of these different levels and I literally teared up a couple of times just reading the script. It was such a great script. I was so surprised, not that he couldn’t make anything like this, but surprised that it was this. I didn’t think it was this kind of a movie. I thought Sci-Fi from the way that when I had met on the film originally on the phone that they had explained it and I’m sure everybody in the world right now thinks that it’s Sci-Fi, but it’s so much more than that.
Quint: Everybody assumes in Cameron’s Sci-Fi that there’s going to be good action, but at the same time you look at what he did in ALIENS and THE ABYSS, especially THE ABYSS. THE ABYSS is such a character movie all about relationships and all about the emotion.
Joel Moore: This does have a little bit of that in it, if you were to liken it to anything else that he has done. It’s just on such a bigger level, because you’ve got these crazy LORD OF THE RINGS size action sequences in it and it’s that kind of a movie as well.
To be able to put all of that together in one movie is fucking hard and that’s what I think was so impressive to me personally, because I read a lot of scripts and you never see people successfully put all of these things together, you kind of have to pick and choose. If you’re a big budget movie and you are wanting to be a love story, you be a love story. If you want it to be an action movie, you be TRANSFOMERS, you know? You can still have a love story, but it’s just… it’s really cool that all of it happens in the same movie. I’m sorry. I know that I’m being very vague, but…
Quint: No, I understand. I don’t want you to lose your pinkies.
Joel Moore: Exactly, but working alongside Sigourney is such a crazy honor and she couldn’t be nicer and Jim couldn’t be a better director. In as much as directing and filmmaking goes, I honestly can’t imagine ever working with a better director. He doesn’t take lunches. He’s editing on his lunch breaks. He is the hardest working person on set. When other people are on a tiny little break and the people are kind of… like if there’s a computer crash or a whatever is going on, there is people just waiting around to see what’s going to happen next and he’s up and going, sketching a new sketch, creating a new part of the land that we are on and just doing whatever there is to be done; he can’t sit down. They literally have to bring lunch in to him and put it in front of him so that for whatever he is doing he can just walk around and eat a sandwich as he’s going.
Quint: I’ve heard that, because there’s lots of horror stories about him being a really tough director, but each and everyone of them that I have ever heard has always had an epilogue to the story saying “but at the same time, he’s also not somebody who is doing this for any other reason and he’s doing so much work himself that he expects a level of quality from the people around him.”
Joel Moore: Yeah and it’s funny that there are all of these… because that’s what people say to me to and my only response is “If that’s the case, then why is every person that I’m working with, the whole crew, has been his crew for the last twenty years? If that’s the case, then why are all of these people back?”
They understand there is a very much militant attitude toward getting the job done, but I think that, just like I do, they appreciate that and that isn’t always roses and “Can you pleases.” That’s a little bit of “OK, let’s get this… Go do that and let’s get this done.” It’s just like that with us, he is never rude but always “here we are. This what we’re going to do. This is where we are… But he is always careful with his talent, because he knows that the talent are the people that are driving what’s going to happen for the day.
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He takes a special reservation for the talent and I’m honored to be a part of that reservation, because it’s really a story about a few of us that are going to another planet and it’s me and Sam Worthington and Sigourney that are scientists and Sam’s a marine and we are going to this other planet to sort of assimilate into another society. Because of that, a lot of it happens around us… like I have a girlfriend in this and it’s not an ugly German with a unibrow, like DODGEBALL, it’s a different thing. It’s Michelle Rodriguez and she’s hot.
Quint: And she definitely does not have a unibrow.
Joel Moore: She doesn’t have a unibrow.
Quint: I spent a lot of time in New Zealand and on RINGS I got to watch Andy Serkis work a lot, but I’m hearing that, like you are saying, this is a different mo-cap thing. Is that…?
Joel Moore: Well, we are working with WETA, the famed company that did all of Andy’s stuff and all of Peter Jackson’s stuff of course, but the technology that is involved with what we are doing is on a different level and even WETA would say the same thing. They’re part of the reason that the technology is on a different level.
They have a daunting year ahead of them to make all of this happen, but I think that they’re excited to be able to put all of the pieces together as well, because it’s such a challenge. This is going to look like no other film has ever looked and there’s something that I’m sure is special to that, just like when they were making LORD OF THE RINGS, I’m sure they thought “This is going to go down in history as one of the best trilogies ever.” I think they can look at AVATAR after a ten year break of James Cameron making movies, he come to this one which he’s had in the works, you know he wrote this thing ten or twelve years ago or at least the treatment for it and he had to wait for technology to catch up to him to be able to make it, so I think that there’s also this great and captivating part of the project that is special to them as well.
Quint: I’ve heard that he has actually been shooting live action as well as doing mo-cap stuff?
Joel Moore: Yeah, there is definitely live-action stuff as well.
Quint: That’s awesome.
Joel Moore: Yeah its pretty cool. I’m excited, we are going to New Zealand for a couple months and the New Zealand side… it’ll just be fun to be over there because I am a geek as well and I want to see all of the Weta stuff…
Quint: It’s great. I love Wellington so much. Brilliant place and the people are just so nice. The guys at Weta are the coolest people in the world. Richard Taylor, Gino Acevedo… everybody there is just so talented, but zero ego.
Joel Moore: That’s cool. I’m excited. It’s fun because I’ve been really blessed to be able work with really great directors and it’s funny, there’s a lot of what I see in James there’s a lot of that in Adam. There are two kinds of directors that you work with. I don’t want a director that doesn’t work as hard as I’m working on a film, you know? I don’t trust the outcome and we are putting our name and our acting in their hands and that’s what I appreciate about Adam, that there is such a passion and he is doing the same thing and not taking lunches, he’s on set running around trying to get all of these shots and all of these units and I just had a comfort that the end product, while it is this genre… kind of a strange thing that he’s doing, I just had a comfort that it was going to turn out well and not make me look bad
Quint: There’s also a level of you see a lot of filmmakers who are in it for other reasons, like the glory of being “the director” or they are in it for the parties or they are in it for the money or the fame or whatever. I don’t know Adam, I met him briefly at FANTASTIC FEST when we showed the movie, but my immediate impression was that he was genuinely there because he loved film and he was so proud to be a part of this thing that he loves. I think that’s such a good place to come from and it’s becoming an increasingly rare place to come. I just see lots of young filmmakers that are in it for other reasons than because they actually love and want to create film.
Joel Moore: I have, too, and I think that there’s a big difference as an actor between working with those kind of directors and working with a director who just wants for you and the movie the best possible product and there’s a wisdom in it, too. There’s understanding your crowed and understanding the specific audience you are trying to hit. There’s an understanding with the way to attack press and buzz and news and I think that there are people who get that side of this ridiculous game and there are people who don’t and that’s fine for the people who don’t, but I think that’s what it takes to be successful in this business, even as an actor, as an actor or a filmmaker. It’s the way that we had to attack SPIRAL.
SPIRAL isn’t a commercial film, but it still needed to have that same type of buzz about it, like “Wow, what is this thing? It looks very interesting…” It was devised from a short film that I wrote, I just had this great idea about this guy who did these things and was a painter and became infatuated with his subjects and may or may not kill them and so we wrote the movie around this idea and I think that that’s what draws people into SPIRAL even, that there’s this mystery that’s almost a who-done-it, but it’s not really a who-done-it, it’s more of a “What is he doing?”
Quint: So you’re going off to New Zealand for a couple months and I’m assuming you’re going to be doing some publicity for SPIRAL as well. Do you have anything else lined up?
Joel Moore: Yeah, SPIRAL comes out in theaters in early ‘08 and then after that a crazy little movie that I did, called THE HOTTIE AND THE NOTTIE… Me and Christine Lakin and Paris Hilton plays one of my girlfriends in the movie and she’s actually great in the movie. It really could be something that’s really good for her and that comes out after that and they’re working on the theatrical side of that as we speak and trying to figure out what the release is and how wide of a release and that stuff.
Then a movie I did with Hayden Panettiere from HEROES, called SHANGHAI KISS comes out in February or March-ish and it’s just a great little romantic comedy with Ken Leung playing a guy who is an Asian-American that’s trying to figure out whether he wants to be here in America or whether he wants to be back in his homeland and I play his best friend and Hayden plays his girlfriend or his love interest and yeah it’s really cute. Hayden is a great actress and she’s really funny. She’s a lot different… I knew her before HEROES and in HEROES she’s dramatic and in this she’s comic.
Quint: Busy times and then you have early ‘09 is AVATAR or mid ‘09 or something.
Joel Moore: Yeah and I’ll probably do another film that I’ll shoot after AVATAR that will probably come out before AVATAR just because of that year difference.
Quint: Cool man, well you’ve got a lot going on, a lot of really interesting stuff.
Joel Moore: Well thanks man and great talking to you. We love your support for everything that we’ve done and Harry gave SPIRAL a nice shout out and we appreciate that and we will be talking to you soon when SPIRAL press hits.
Quint: Cool man, well thanks so much for talking to me and good luck with everything.
Joel Moore: Okay, bye.
And there you have it. AVATAR sounds better and better the more I hear about it. The man is back!
I really enjoyed my chat with Joel Moore and I hope you enjoyed reading it.
HATCHET opens on around 80 screens today. If you like a good old fashioned non-remake original fun horror flick, then go out and support this one.
To find out if it’s playing near you, check out the offical site and scroll down to the 8.29.2007 update for a complete city and theater list!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
