Horror.com Visits the Set of Room 6
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Room 6 won’t be out until 2006, and that’s only two 6’s but add one more and you’ve basically got my kind of luck when it came to the set visit of CFQ Film’s upcoming supernatural chiller.
I had my handy-dandy recorder, old reliable, and taped interviews with everyone on the set — stars Shane Brolly, Christine Taylor, Jerry O’Connell, Ellie Cornell and Kane Hodder, plus director, Mike Hurst — but when I got the tapes home and set about to transcribe them, all I had was white noise! It was a case for the folks at the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomenon for sure.
In checking with my fellow journalists also on-set, several of them also had recording problems. To add eeks to spooks, the old, dilapidated hospital where the movie was being shot is rumored to be haunted. I don’t need a vision of Dan Ackroyd to convince me — I believe it! (Linda Vista was also the location of Freddy Kruger’s boiler room, and is the site of the upcoming ghost flick, Boo.)
I’m still working on getting the rest of the quotes, but before Christine’s interview evaporates into ectoplasm, here it is:
In Room 6 you play Amy, a woman who is trapped in a haunted hospital. She’s searching for her lost fiancée. This could be sort of a one-dimensional character, if she’s not played right. Did your director give you lots of free rein?
Yes. There’s so much collaboration. If anyone feels like something isn’t right or a character shouldn’t be saying that, Mike [
When I read the script, it stood out to me. I think a lot of typical horror films have a female driven lead that is supposed to run and get away… The interesting thing about this one is that it’s not necessarily all that its cracked up to be when the film starts. You know she’s having these dreams, and there’s something off in her world. She thinks she’s seeing these demons, but she blinks, and she realizes that she’s just seeing a normal person.
You’re not quite sure if something tragic happened to her and she’s seeing these things, or they’re real. Its funny, because on shoots that are so short, like this one, at least for me, the anchoring and performance with the director Mike, it has all the horror movie elements the scares, but there is more to it. There’s a deeper level and a deeper layer that makes my character…there are surprises and twists and turns. And it caught me off guard. I have definitely seen a lot of these and read a lot of these, and it wasn’t exactly what I expected it to be. Which I love.
Who do you identify most with, when watching a horror movie — the hunter or the hunted?
Oh, both. You always put yourself in the scenario¼OK, what if that happens. Jaime Lee Curtis, she protects the kids first and then she hides. I think your imagination runs wild. For me it’s a combo of both. It’s the way to run away from the stalker or the creature or whoever is coming after you, and then how to conquer them¼I think it’s strange. It’s from years of watching these movies. I have recurring dreams of Michael Myers. My husband [Ben Stiller] is like, “Are you crazy? People do that when they’re 14 or 15¼ not now.” We joke about it. But now, when I have those dreams, I know how to get out of it. I know I am going to be okay.
What’s the first horror movie you remember seeing?
I want to say that the first one that I remember seeing was Halloween. That, still to this day, is my all-time favorite¼to me that film still holds up. It scares the¼.and I was a young girl like everyone else! I had to baby-sit, and then there’s The Exorcist, and every Friday the 13th, all the Halloweens.
My brother and I, I remember, we got our dad to take us to see Friday the 13th, The Final Chapter. I grew up in Pennsylvania and it was this big deal, for us to see this movie. My poor dad had to endure it. But we knew it was all fake, eve though it scared us¼. All the summer camps, and everything obscure, I had to see. It wasn’t that we ever thought there was real blood or anything, we got that it was fake. My dad would edit out all the sex scenes in the horror films we rented, because we were so young! Forget about the axe in the head, which was fine. But a guy and a girl taking a shower? It would just go to snow for the next 30 seconds until the scene was over¼.then the horror would come back on.
Would you let your kids watch Room 6?
It is so hard these days! It was almost easier to control when we were younger. Now with satellite TV and all of the channels, already my daughter, she’s going to be 3 next month, she knows how to use the DVD player. She’s like, “No mommy, press THAT button.” Just how savvy they are at an earlier age. It will certainly be hard to control.
How old are your kids going to have to be before you let them see horror movies?
It’s funny, cause if you talk to my husband, he’s got a slew of movies, he’s got the embarrassing moments in the comedy, he says, “I can never imagine Ella seeing There’s Something About Mary. I never want her to see her dad in those situations. The zipper, and all that.” I’ll see how she’s progressed and I will start to prepare her. I’ll tell her that monsters aren’t necessarily real.
Was The Craft the first horror movie you acted in?
Nooo¼ Night of the Demons 2 was the first one that I did. I have told this story before. At the time I had lived in
It was not necessarily something I’d like to put on the top of the resume, when targeting employment elsewhere, but I had a blast doing it. And then I did another one called Campfire Tales, which I think was straight to video or straight to some cable channel. That was another urban legend type movie, kids sitting around a campfire talking about urban legends. There’s nothing more fun than going into this fantasy world and making the room really dark and screaming.
That scene of you in The Craft was pretty creepy.
I know! People don’t like seeing me with my hair like that. My character starts out so mean, she is just a terrible, un-cool girl, who definitely has her own issues, and is mean to everybody. She’s racist and nasty. But when people get upset is that moment in the film where she’s actually losing her hair, you start to see the tables turn, and you see her become pathetic and weak. It actually looked horrible! I was practically bald, my hair falling out, but it was fun one to do. I have fun doing those kinds of things.
Mike Hurst was talking about this scene in Room 6 where you’re in a chapel and this scary creature comes right at you. He said it was pretty intense and there was some wire-work involved. Did you do your own stunt for that?
No. I was actually 5 ½ months pregnant, so we had to be careful during all that. The stunt crew was fantastic, my stunt double looked just like me. I saw it on the monitor, and they have a shot of an old woman reeling, and it happened so fast that I forgot that it wasn’t me. She did it a lot more willingly than I did¼. When the script came my way I didn’t know I was pregnant. But as we got to talk about the specifics of it, I had to tell him. I didn’t want to compromise his vision of what this film should be because he had a pregnant actress on the set.
With something like this, with a certain time limit and budget, there isn’t a lot of leeway. There was very little I couldn’t do because of the pregnancy. I got pretty lucky. It’ll be interesting to see how this little one is going to come out with all the screaming. I asked my doctor, and he said, “You have no idea how many parents actually scream and fight during a pregnancy, and those kids turn out OK. So you’ll be fine!”.
You’ve been more than OK, lately. Your production company, Red Hours, is in full swing. So I’ve gotta ask: Was that an intentional nod to Star Trek?
That is more than deliberate. I wish I could take any credit for it. But my husband is a Star Trek fanatic. Most people say, “What is Red Hour films?” everyone who is a Star Trek fan knows that. The same with Mugatu. I never knew that until these questions came up when we were doing some interviews. Ben will slide star trek into any project he’s working on. I see what passion he has for it, and he grew up watching it, and just saw how cool William Shatner is.
I watch them now, because cause I didn’t grow up watching them thinking how cool William Shatner is. I watch it and I just, say, “He was in on the joke, right?” and Ben will look at me and say, “What do you mean? Look how cool he is!” he always seems like he’s at a loss for how to stand or what position to move his hands. We have so much fun watching these episodes. You know, William Shatner was in Dodgeball and he’s become a friend of ours. To Ben that’s just the coolest thing ever, to hang out with Captain Kirk.
Marcia Brady’s pretty cool, too…
The role I was born to play. I have heard it all my life growing up. I couldn’t be more grateful, because the success of that film has opened up so many doors and given me so many opportunities. To this day if someone tells me that they liked my performance as Marcia Brady I don’t roll my eyes, I am so proud.
Have you ever had a chance to hang out with Maureen McCormick?
I met her at the premiere of the sequel. She was so complimentary. But at the end of the day I put my own spin on it, and I was basically doing an impersonation of her, and the kids on the show were the first to admit that they were just playing themselves. She could not have been more complimentary.
I remember the first day walking into that table read. None of us had really ever met each other. I knew Marcia had something really specific and Jan had something really specific. I just remember thinking “What is Mike Brady?” I had seen every episode of the show. When I heard that it was played by Gary Cole, I was like, “Gary Cole?” He showed up and he looked like Gary Cole, and we read through it. He blew me away. He picked up on the little nuances that I had no idea Robert Reed even did. And suddenly Gary had this whole new vibe and twist on it. I think everybody sort of found his or her thing.
You were saying how Marcia has a specific ‘thing’. Does your character of Amy have anything specific about her in the film Room 6?
It’s so much of a blur. Its only 18 days of a shoot¼when you’re shooting these kinds of films you put your trust in the director. For me the running joke is just that I think I might of had more screaming in this movie than any other horror movie. For some reason I just perfected the screaming and yelping. Nope, nothing specific I picked up on her in the script. She’s just sort of completely confused throughout the movie and doesn’t know how much of it is real and how much is fake¼her trying to find that balance is her thing.
It’s been fun¼She spends a lot of time looking with Jerry O’Connell who plays the Lucas character, for her fiancé played by Shane Brolly. He befriends her because they are in a similar situation. He’s looking for his sister. They were all in the same car crash together. Yet she doesn’t know him well enough to know if she should trust him or not, and there are always little things like that. Is he the good guy? Is she the good guy?
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You’ll have to wait till next year to find out!
Staci Layne Wilson reporting
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Special thanks to Brad Miska and SuperHeidi at Bloody-Disgusting for helping out with the transcription!