October 27, 2009

If you had any doubts just how huge a horror fan actor AJ Bowen was before this interview, then you should know that it was his idea for us to meet and have this chat while touring the familiar streets of Pasadena, which served as many of the shooting locations for John Carpenter’s classic Halloween. Definitely the perfect backdrop for this writer to talk to him about a little movie called The House Of The Devil.

Having appeared in the Sundance hit The Signal, as well as the (yet-to-be-released) black and white indie pic Maidenhead, Bowen is no stranger to the genre. (Hell, he knows exactly where Michael Myers house is!)

We chatted candidly about working with his friend writer/director Ti West, playing the son of Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov, the “Satanic Panic” scare of the early 80’s which inspired the flick and why The House Of The Devil (which he affectionately refers to as “hot D”) stands out as one of his favorite projects thus far.

Robg.: When I spoke to Ti West, he mentioned that you guys originally met for the first time at South By Southwest when you were promoting The Signal and he was promoting Trigger Man?

AJ Bowen: Right. I had never seen his stuff up until then. We met briefly there, but didn’t really hang out. The reason I ended up working on HOT D was because one night Jacob Gentry gave me a call and said he was hanging out with his buddy Ti and I kind of remember meeting him. It was literally a 5 minute walk from my house to the bar they were at, so I went to hang out and the topic eventually went to movies, since it’s the only thing I ever talk about, and in the middle of it, somehow some movies came up that both he and I are passionate about. Movies that people always think we’re being cute about. Teen Wolf, Iron Eagle, The Karate Kid. Ti and I started quoting The Golden Child in its entirety back and forth. At the end of it all, we found out rather quickly that we were into the same type of stuff, the same type of storytelling, the same types of movies that people thought we were screwing around about, but there was a very serious reason we were into them and I hadn’t met someone before that was seeing the same things in these “pop” movies the same way I did. Some people assume they’re silly 80’s movies. A month later, he sent me this script and basically said there’s a small part in it that, if I recall correctly, he was going to play. But obviously, he had his hands full, so we talked about it, and we knew that we wanted to work together. HOT D came together really fast. It was small but I had some creative ideas how to play Victor Ulman.

Robg.: You refer to it as a small role, but I think it’s a significant role and your presence is very much there, especially for the second half of the movie. And despite it being small, you took it really seriously, because I remember reading interviews where you’d bring along your Satanic bible as “research.” [Laughs]

AJ: I don’t mean to use the word small, the role is definitely central to the plot of the film but in terms of scope it’s not really an ensemble piece. House Of The Devil is really about Samantha. (Jocelin Donahue) It really was going to be a heavy lifting gig for someone else with the rest of us peppering it and we show up when shit has to go bananas. I took it really seriously. I’m of the mind that if someone is going to hire me for a performance, I want to run with it and take as much weight as I can. Honestly, I was looking for an excuse my entire life to buy the Satanic bible. [Laughs] So when Ti sent me the script and it said “The House Of The Devil,” I thought fuck yes. I went on Amazon and ordered it, read it cover to cover. It’s tough because while doing press for HOT D, it’s almost impossible for me to talk about Victor at all without giving away serious plot. When I show up in the movie it’s when shit goes down. You know it’s on.

Robg.: Arguably you have the most memorable line of the movie. I mean, I’ve seen people go up to you and say “Are you not the babysitter?” When you make your appearance, it’s when we realize where the movie is going. How’s that been for you having one of those stand-out moments that people quote back to you?

AJ: I had no idea that line would be memorable. I would’ve tried to have said the line better had I known it’d be the most quoted one. [Laughs] It’s purely a stretcher thing. It has nothing to do with me. People have been waiting for something to happen, and Ti did such an amazing job of ratching up the atmosphere so well.

Robg.: He’s one of the best directors at building suspense.

AJ: He’s great at that and you know why? He doesn’t have a contemporary sensibility about it, which is not to shit on anybody else, but Ti is an active participant in film watching. You can tell it in his films and he expects his audience and respects them enough to assume they’ll go along with it. It’s not going to be for everybody, but it’s the kind of thing that I as a writer am looking for. I’m looking for these moments, there’s moments in the movie when Sam’s alone and that moment shifts from when you’re in someone else’s house and you’re acting bottled up and reluctant, and then there comes that moment of feeling the safety of being alone and you let your freak out. I think most filmmakers wouldn’t key into that, but Ti did. Those moments for me are really interesting. It’s interesting storytelling when someone shows you something about your life that you haven’t put in a visual medium before that you instantly relate to. I definitely instantly relate to all these moments. It’s a story about a girl that just ends up being a horror story. The atmosphere is all pay off. Luckily, I save the movie from being incredibly boring by showing up and bringing the action. [Laughs]

Robg.: I wanted to talk a bit about your working relationship with both Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov, because they play your parents in the film and I know it took a bit before you got to know Tom?

AJ: It’s funny, because even people that have seen and reviewed the movie seem to often be unaware that we’re a family! I’m not trying to augment any relationships, but we are definitely a family unit. A very happy, functional family that happens to be Satanic.

Robg.: How can people miss that? Tom Noonan references you as their “grown son.” You’re not just “pizza guy!” [Laughs] Well, the thing I picked up from your performance and it’s what I liked about Tom’s performance too is that you’re both bordering… I want to say bordering on camp, but I don’t want that to come across with a negative connotation. What I mean by that is you both seem like you can barely contain your excitement about what’s going to happen later this evening that it’s difficult for you to hold the facade.

AJ: Neither Tom or I talked about what we were trying to do. As a matter a fact, none of us did. I didn’t speak about it with anyone. In terms of this, and to try not to give anything away by answering this – I couldn’t possibly go in and play a heavy role that was self aware of how heavy it was. I just don’t believe that’s the right dynamic or emotionally realistic. The most basic lesson I learned in college by studying and trying to learn how to be an actor was that you find the comedy in tragedy and you find the tragedy in humor. It’s a balance system. So, there are things that Victor does that are unusual, to say the least. [Laughs] I wanted to try to root it in as emotionally sound of a place as possible for someone watching the film. I felt like it would’ve been a disservice to Ti to make obvious choices that would’ve played into a stereotype. There’s a big event that’s supposed to occur later in the evening, and what I wanted to do was play it of the mind that Victor, my character is like a 5 year old and it’s Christmas Eve and that excitement starts early afternoon Christmas Eve. You’re getting ready to have dinner, maybe gets to open one present, but, he can not wait until 5am comes Christmas morning. He’s bursting at the seams to get there and he’s not going to sleep all night. I kind of wanted to play around with that idea and make Victor seem like he was excited about what was going down, because if you’re of the same belief system of him or his family, it’s going to be a very awesome evening. [Laughs] It’s not a bad thing as rational people would view it as. He wants to get to business as quickly and efficiently as possible. And so, everything else that happens, the actions that Victor does, the thing that’s going to to happen, that makes him the type of person he is. Doing anything else would’ve made him cheesy.

Robg.: It’s been interesting to see the buzz slowly build for The House Of The Devil over the course of the last several months. And early word has been predominantly positive. You’ve said yourself that it’s by far the best movie you’ve been associated with up until this point. Why do you feel that way?

AJ: I said this recently and it may come across the wrong way, but I have to respect, as a storyteller and even in an actor capacity, I can’t make the film successful by myself, all I can do is try to hold up my end. And in this particular instance, this film, I think people get wrapped up too much in like or dislike for good or bad and some movies aren’t for everyone. I’ve been in good movies, I’ve been in bad movies and the response is basically the same for both. If I’m ok with the film then I’m OK with the film. And if people like it, great. If they don’t, I don’t really care. In this instance, I know that this movie is a very special experience for me. Again, people say a lot about Ti, people may not be into it, but that’s because he has a particular view point as an artist and it happens to be one that’s in line with mine. And this story is very true to its ambition. I almost wish I wasn’t in this so I can talk it up, because if it was just my friends movie or just a movie that I knew no one affiliated with it, I’d be trying to get everyone to watch it because I love it. I don’t go out and talk about everything I work on that way. A perfect example, I try as often as possible to get people to watch Murder Party. I don’t know anyone associated with that movie. It’s in the Magnolia stable, I got a hold of it and watched it and was just really blown away by it. So there’s a handful of movies that I always tell people, look, if you want to check out what I’m into, watch this. HOT D is right smack in the middle of that, so it’s almost a conflict of interest for me to tell people I’m fond of it, but it’s very true. When you’re an actor for hire, most of the time (unless you’re very fortunate), there’s going to be things you do for career opportunity (or lack of career opportunity) that you maybe wouldn’t do if you had the choice. You end up having a library of work and some of it you’re ok with, and some of it you’re not. But with HOT D, I’m so grateful that my name is in it. I’m so grateful that if even it was the last thing I was going to be involved with, I’m ok with it, because I’m very happy with the way it turned out, with the work that the actors did on it and the work of the crew. People have brought her name up before, but the production designer Jade Healy is Ti’s secret weapon, because what she did as art department for this film is amazing. It could’ve been hyper stylized, but it feels not like a period film, but more like a film from that era that’s only now being discovered. I think that’s a great compliment.

Robg.: I heard the house looked nothing like it did in the movie before Jade re-dressed it to look like a house in the 80’s.

AJ: I’m a set whore. If I’m not shooting, then I’m on set, because I love being there, I love the energy on the set and I love being around the crew. The last night of shooting was a scene with Tom and Jocelin and I was watching them, I walked back into the house and it was being broken down. When I found out what the actual kitchen looked like? It was the first time I realized that they had built walls over the actual kitchen walls. It’s a modern home and they did an amazing job turning it into something authentic. I was born in 77, a huge part of my childhood was about “Satanic panic.” I wasn’t allowed to play Dungeons & Dragons because my parents are very religious people and assumed I’d join a cult or be sacrificed on an alter. In Atlanta in the early 80’s, there was a big abduction scare with missing Atlanta children. That was what got big attention back then, and I was in it as a 7 year old, constantly hearing don’t go outside, don’t talk to strangers, check your candy on Halloween because there’s definitely going to be razors in it. Someone will poison you! I guess it missed an entire generation, but again that thing was effective storytelling that I was very aware of, it was very much a part of my life, and it wasn’t until Ti wrote the script and we started shooting it that I thought “Wow, somebody else remembered about that!” To me, we’re survivors for getting through the early 80’s as kids and for not getting put into a cult or being abducted! [Laughs]

Robg.: Did you guys have the white van? Because in Long Island, NY, we had the white van with the camera on the side view mirror that would take pictures of kids and then abduct them later. It terrified me as a kid!

AJ: We had all variations on that. We had one where there’s literally a guy at the end of the street and if you went too close you were definitely getting kidnapped! I was frightened to death of composite drawings because those were everywhere. I couldn’t watch Unsolved Mystery as a kid because the composite drawings would come up and I’d think “Oh my God, that guys going to come into my house and kidnap me and make me join a cult or sacrifice me to Satan!” [Laughs] And so, I find it funny and ironic that I got to tell my mom that I was in a movie called The House Of The Devil and that I may or may not be playing a Satanist in it. She thinks I was playing such a bad man in The Signal but I argue that Lewis wasn’t really a bad guy at all.

The House Of The Devil opens in limited theatrical release on October 30th and is now available for VOD.