Got a chance to hit up Vancouver recently. What a cool little city. Holla! There’s Mahoney’s Sports Bar (the Pale Ale is excellent). There’s the River Rock Casino where they spread some awesome $500 NL games that feature friendly folks and wickedly loose action. Plus how can you not love a city that looks like a 70’s version of the future?
And oh by the way, they also have the remake of a little genre classic called THE FOG shooting right now. Since I’m a ridiculously lucky sumbitch, I got a chance to hang out on the set, chat with the talent, and even ask a question or two of one of the literal and figurative Masters of Horror – John Carpenter.
So how’d it go you ask? Well sit right back and I’ll tell a tale, a tale of a fateful…OK, so I’m not gonna go there.
Night one we had a chance to catch some dinner with the Sony folks and chat about what to expect the next day. Two great things came out of that.
1) The Peking Duck
2) We found out that there will be a comic book coming out in support of the movie. It’ll be a prequel, but in the way that the Torah is a prequel to the New Testament. That’s right, they’re going waaaaaaaay back.
The main event, though, was Day Two. Here’s how it broke down:
1) We watched part of a climactic scene in the town hall.
2) We interviewed John Carpenter and producer David Foster
3) We ate lunch (don’t scoff, they had FOUR types of salmon!)
4) We interviewed Tom Welling (SMALLVILLE), Selma Blair (HELLBOY), Maggie Grace (LOST) and director Rupert Wainwright (STIGMATA)
THE SCENE
If you’ve seen the original movie, then the scene we watched was the equivalent of the rectory scene. The characters are finally figuring out what the hell is going on, while at the same time trying to secure themselves from the fog. It was a short scene with nice intensity overall, but a line that I can only hope they drop before this thing hits theaters.
The set up involves Father Blake ranting about the sins of the fathers being visited on the children. Spooner, a black guy whose character is new in this version, steps up to Father Blake and says, “Don’t bring my forefathers into this. I’m from Chicago. Southside!”
Yeah.
But it’s the first week of shooting and there’s plenty of time for editing and such. Hopefully it’s just one ill-conceived line, or perhaps (though difficult to imagine) one that kicks ass in context. I do have hope for the rest of the screenplay by Cooper Layne being one of the few people who actually saw THE CORE in the theater and thought it was a lot of fun. Besides, since Sony is leading the way with the PG-13-ifying of horror, I guess a few WB stars and a little comic relief will simply become deriguer in their genre releases.
Which brings us to: THE INTERVIEW (PRODUCERS)
We got to sit down with Producer David Foster and Executive Producer John Carpenter. You’ll get to read the whole glorious interview next week, but they did share some stuff that is worth sharing now.
– Carpenter is basically completely uninvolved in the remake, but would be interested in helping with the score if asked.
– The film was designed to be PG-13 from the get go. Foster pointed out that the primary audience for horror films recently has been female teens.
– Carpenter would not specify what he thought of the new script.
To tell you the truth, they didn’t share a whole lot about the remake itself, but there were lots of interesting anecdotes from Carpenter that his legion of fans should make sure to check out when we post it next week. I mean, it wouldn’t be any fun to get it all at once would it?
And then came: LUNCH!!!!!!!
Four kinds of grilled salmon and a dessert tray worth getting yourself sick on. Yay! So then we finished the day with: THE INTERVIEW (TALENT)
Easily the most entertaining portion of the set visit was our roundtable interview with Tom Welling, Selma Blair, Maggie Grace and Rupert Wainwright. Note I said entertaining, not informative. These folks knew exactly how to share the company line in their answers on things.
The one exception was Wainwright, who dropped some cool info about specific aspects of the fog itself. However, he requested that we not spoil too much, so all I can really tell you is that there are guaranteed to be some sweet-ass scare scenes. Oh, and Stevie Wynn gets the hell outta that damn lighthouse this time around!
What we did get to see was the clear chemistry between the cast, Wainwright’s passion for making a legitimate horror flick, and best of all, Selma Blair pulling a falsie out of her bra and slinging it across the table at her dear director.
I’m gonna repeat that – because it bears repeating.
Selma Blair pulled a falsie out of her bra and slung it at Rupert Wainwright in the middle of the interview. Sometimes life is just too much fun to believe. More on the interview next week.
So it’s time to move on to: WRAP UP AND FINAL THOUGHTS
The end of the day brought a final tour of the town hall which is pretty damn cool, and a chance to chat with Wainwright a bit more. He’s a hella cool guy so I’m pulling for him. Especially after the criminally underrated WOLF LAKE. It definitely seems like the fog itself is going to be amazing to look at, and probably scary to boot. As to the rest of the movie, it’s too early to tell. No doubt it’ll easily open big, so the suits are going to be happy no matter what. I’m just glad there’s a guy like Wainwright behind the camera who cares if the film is good as well as a cash cow.
And one other thing that just occurred to me. Tom Welling plays Superman. Selma Blair has played a variety of characters that could be described as, well, freaky. So if they have an onset romance and some babies result, the little tykes will be SuperFreaks!
Yeah, I’m gonna stop now.
