Post by ck100 on Mar 6, 2017 19:05:10 GMT -8
A.V. Club over the years has conducted its "Random Roles" segment with various actors/actresses about different roles from movies/TV shows they've done over their career. Some of the actors/actresses interviewed have mentioned their work with TFTC. Here are some of the their comments. Some positive, some negative. I'll post more if I can find some.
Timothy Dalton:
www.avclub.com/article/timothy-dalton-penny-dreadful-serenading-mae-west--204395
Tales From The Crypt (1992)—“Lokai”
TD: Forgot it. Move on.
AVC: Really? Okay.
TD: [Laughs.] No, I haven’t forgotten exactly! I mean, it was, I guess, an interesting experience. But not a very fulfilling one.
Brooke Shields:
www.avclub.com/article/brooke-shields-on-ithe-middlei-jim-henson-and-bar--86784
Tales From The Crypt (1993)—“Norma”
BS: [Sighs.] That was an unfortunate experience. I loved the show, and I really wanted to work with… was it Uli Edel? Yeah. And I was so excited to work with him because of his sort of pedigree, so I kind of said yes just hearing an outline of the show. But the problem was that he didn’t really know enough about… They were smart to get film directors, these very cinematic directors, on the show, but the problem was that if you ran out of time, you didn’t get more time and more money. You just got a shorter script. So it, uh, didn’t make any sense. Our episode didn’t make any sense. I mean, it was the druid princesses, the guy picks me up, he wants to dress as a woman… It didn’t even fall into the normally well-crafted Tales From The Crypt scenario, where you can kind of track it in sort of a Twilight Zone way. You knew it was going to look cinematic, but it was just a disaster. We spent all our money, and we spent most of our time out in the rain at 3 o’clock in the morning, and then they were like, “Oh, let’s tie her to a bed, and then he’s going to dress up as a woman…” There was just nothing that you could follow. Seriously, it was a disaster! [Laughs.]
And Perry King… poor Perry King. I don’t know, he was in his own world about where his career was at that time, and you could tell he was like, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” I’m never going to do anything and look down on it. If I’m going to do something, I’m going to be 100 percent. I’m going to treat it like it’s the best thing in the world. I’m not going to do it and say, “I can’t believe where my career is.” Because it’s just… I feel lucky whenever I get asked to be a part of something. And I’m going to take it seriously, or I’m not going to do it at all. And I get asked to do plenty of things that I don’t do because I know I’ll feel fake doing them. But I went into Tales From The Crypt so wholeheartedly, and then I was so disappointed and so frustrated, going, “This just doesn’t make any sense! There’s no storyline, it doesn’t track, and why am I strapped to a bed?!?” [Laughs.]
It was just horrible. I liked the scenes in the car, because at least they felt somewhat realistic, but mostly I was just thinking, “What a shame… and what a waste of money.” It was just such a depressing thing, and did I even see the full thing? I might not have even watched it, because I was just so disgruntled. But I did get voted the best screamer in all of Tales From The Crypt. [Laughs.] You know, that sort of classic thing where you’re backed up against the wall, just before you’re about to die, and you give a bloodcurdling scream? So, yeah, the crew did vote me the best, most bloodcurdling screamer.
AVC: Well, that’s got to count for something, surely.
BS: Yes, it does. It was a perfect Dear Diary moment. [Laughs.]
Robert Patrick:
www.avclub.com/article/robert-patrick-onem-last-resortem-and-playing-the--86183
Tales From The Crypt (1992)—“Lothar”
RP: Oh, yeah! A rock ’n’ roll DJ. Terrific director on that [Peter Medak]. So, what, you want my word association on that? Joel Silver, Alan Schechter, Demon Knight, Filter. How’s that? Everything’s connected. It’s all tied in. You’ll figure it out. [Laughs.] Is that too much word association? Do you need more than that?
AVC: We can work with that.
[Joel Silver was an executive producer on Tales From The Crypt, where he worked with Alan Schechter, who went on to produce Patrick in Double Dragon. Silver also produced the Tales From The Crypt theatrical release, Demon Knight, the soundtrack of which featured “Hey Man, Nice Shot,” by Filter, whose frontman is Richard Patrick, Robert’s brother.— Ed.]
RP: Man, I hope I’m not being graded on this. It was a terrific experience; I’ll say that. I had a lot of fun.
AVC: Plus you got to work with Twiggy.
RP: Apparently I did. Although I can’t say I remember whether I actually had a scene with her.
AVC: Well, either way, not a lot of people can say that they’ve co-starred with Twiggy and Zelda Rubenstein in the same project.
RP: Oh my gosh. Now you’ve got me trying to remember working on it. Problem is, what I’m remembering might just be my imagination. [Laughs.] We better move on.
Corey Feldman:
www.avclub.com/article/corey-feldman-on-child-actors-his-favorite-roles-a-89648
Tales From The Crypt (1994)—“Todd”
Tales From The Crypt: Bordello Of Blood (1996)—“Caleb Verdoux”
CF: There you go. That one I remember. [Laughs.]
AVC: You mentioned earlier that you’re not a huge fan of horror, but Tales From The Crypt is more tongue-in-cheek than proper horror.
CF: Yeah, that’s different. I like horror-comedies. In fact, if you look at 90 percent of the horror films that I’ve got in my repertoire—Lost Boys, Gremlins, even Puppet Master [Vs. Demonic Toys]—they’re horror-comedies and not just horror films. Most of them have a comedic edge, which is really how I prefer it. I like the idea of building the suspense and taking it all the way up to the very last second with the suspense, and right when you think you can’t take it anymore, then you come in with the joke and kind of break the tension. To me, that’s the best kind of film. I like thrillers, so thrillers with comedy, to me, is always the best.
AVC: Dennis Miller isn’t exactly renowned for his acting. How was he to work with? Did you get the feeling he was trying to take it seriously?
CF: Not at all. Dennis Miller was the biggest dick I’ve ever worked with in the history of my career. He was terrible to the crew, treated people like shit, very disrespectful, very snobby. People would say “good morning” to him, and he would just ignore them or walk past them and grunt or something. He was just very rude. Actually, we got in a fight because of the way he was treating people; I couldn’t stand to watch it. When I’m on a set, I feel like we’re all there together, we’re a team, we’re there working as a family, and no one person is higher than another. They always do the star trip, like, “This star’s got the bigger trailer, that star’s got more assistants,” or whatever, but to me that’s all just a bunch of ego bullshit, and I don’t buy into it. I don’t play that whole game. For me, as long as I’ve got nice quarters to relax in between shots… We’re all there to work, so it’s a dig-in-and-put-your-nose-to-the-grindstone kind of thing. And Dennis Miller was the opposite of that.
He literally was not only just rude and disrespectful to everybody, but he was doing crazy things like… I remember one day he stole a van from the transportation department in Vancouver and just decided to take off and drive around because he didn’t feel like being on the set anymore. Now, anybody who knows anything about the movie industry knows, “Don’t fuck with the Teamsters.” [Laughs.] You can do anything you want, but don’t fuck with the Teamsters. And that’s exactly what he did. I could go on and on about it, but the bottom line is that I was a huge fan of Dennis Miller’s when I took that project on, I was very excited about the opportunity to work with him, and it was really my first lesson in learning that it’s sometimes best to leave people on the screen. When you get to meet them and get to know them and find out who they really are, it’s very disheartening. Dennis Miller was definitely my slap in the face to that cold, hard reality.
The other thing was that when he went out there to promote the film, he didn’t even do good by the promotion. He literally went on the late-night talk shows and said, “Don’t go see this film, because it sucks!” I mean, he killed the box office singlehandedly. But the movie itself I actually really enjoyed. I thought that Angie [Everhart] was great, Erika Eleniak was great, Chris Sarandon was great. There were a lot of great actors, which definitely gave it the support that Dennis was lacking. And the film overall, the writing, the direction… Gilbert Adler did a great job directing it. I thought it was very funny. I love the Tales From The Crypt franchise because, again, it’s the comedy-horror thing which I think works so well. I really enjoyed doing the episodic version, the television series. And I think I would’ve had a lot more fun doing that film if anybody else was playing the lead role.
