February 4, 2010

Actor Shawn Ashmore has built up quite an impressive body of work over the course of the last several years. For comic book fans (and that includes this writer), you’ll recognize him as Bobby Drake (aka Ice Man) in all three X-Men movies. Horror fans have spotted him in Carter Smith’s The Ruins, based upon the Scott Smith novel of the same name. He’ll next be seen in Darren Lynn Bousman’s remake of Mother’s Day. But this weekend, you can catch him in Adam Green’s new horror thriller Frozen, which has already garnered a significant amount of buzz from the on-line community and positive reviews from critics. It was also one of Sundance’s most talked about movies last week having sold out all seven screenings.

Shock had the opportunity to speak candidly with the actor about what was one of his most challenging (both physically and emotionally) roles to date. (Beware of mild spoilers if you haven’t seen the trailer yet.)

Robg.: Were you familiar with Adam Green’s previous films Hatchet or Spiral prior to doing Frozen?

Shawn Ashmore: I actually had gotten the script for Frozen last December and I was up in Toronto reading it and really liked it. I had asked Mike Dougherty, who’s a good friend of mine about Green. Mike had seen Hatchet and he said he was friends with Green on Facebook and Adam was very supportive of Trick ‘r Treat, so I thought that was cool. I checked out Hatchet before I went to meet with Adam and I loved it, I thought it was super fun. Clearly, I’m friends with Dougherty, so I love the genre stuff, its right up my alley. So I hadn’t seen the films before meeting Adam, but once I got the script and starting asking Mike about Adam, that’s how it all came to be. That was my initiation into Green’s world.

Robg.: Speaking of the script, it’s very rare to get a horror script that has this rich and challenging a role for an actor. So what were your initial reactions to reading this, and how was this different from some of the other horror script you may have been offered lately?

Shawn: I’ve read tons of horror stuff and usually when I read a horror film, for me it’s about how interesting the plot device is. How scary the ghost or supernatural aspect or concept of the script is. What is it that you’re relying on to carry the story. When I started reading Frozen, I thought of it as less of a horror film and more of a horror thriller. It was all character. Even for the first 40 minutes of the film, it’s all character and all build up. It’s developing all these people as individuals and as a group, their dynamic and it was amazing. It was really scary too to think if I were to get this film, there wasn’t much to rely on other then the dialogue and the performances and Green keeping the tension and excitement going.

So it was a dream as an actor, because you think “wow, I get 90 minutes of me and two other people on screen,” but you also know that if it falls flat, it’s your fault. So it was exciting and scary at the same time. Obviously, it’s high concept and it creates the situation, but once you’re in that situation with those characters, the whole thing is character. I think the last horror thing I read that I felt had the same dynamic was The Ruins, which was a movie I ended up doing. That was something that initially for a split second there were comparison’s in the sense that people are trapped in a contained scenario, but immediately Green’s script branched off and did completely different things than the characters in The Ruins did, but it reminded me of that in the sense that I was drawn into the story. I was really interested in what these people were going to do and how they were going to try and survive and how they were going to treat each other along the way.

Robg.: One of the things I know Green does as a director is he offers specific backstory and information to his actors that he doesn’t tell the other actors about. For example, he told Emma Bell that Parker was in love with Dan and that in her eyes he was “the one”. Whereas, he told Kevin Zegers that he wasn’t sure about his relationship with Parker and was thinking about breaking up with her after this trip. What kind of direction or backstory did he give you to work with as the character of Joe Lynch? Because also, you’ve got the biggest arc of the three characters.

Shawn: I think the great thing about Green is not only did he give us stuff to play, but he was very open about suggestions. I’m pretty sure it was Kevin’s idea that he wanted to potentially break up with Parker after this trip. For me, playing Joe, especially at the beginning, it really was about reacting to these other two characters. Clearly, Joe’s best friends with Dan and I sort of don’t care for Parker, so that stuff was easy and on the page, that’s the way it was written. Joe was this guy, not necessarily a bad guy, but a guy that uses humor to deflect his insecurities. He’s too cool for school and kind of an asshole to be honest, but I loved that. I think Kevin brought a lot to it too, in the sense that he’s going to potentially break up with her. It seemed like he was bringing her out to see maybe how well I reacted with her, but if it was a bummer, he’d break up with her and go back to hanging out with the boys. I loved that Green was open to that. Because I’ve read a few reviews accusing these characters of not being too likeable, but that’s real life! If you have three people on a chairlift shooting the shit, if you and I and Green were riding the lift for example, we’d be talking about normal stuff. We’d probably be hanging out, talking smack, being real people. Joe really does have a big arc. By the end of the film, he’s completely broken down, he’s opened up to a stranger probably in a way that he never has before, just by telling stories of how he got dumped, and all the shitty things that have happened along the way for him.

Adam gave these characters somewhere to go, because he wrote them as real people. Hopefully, these characters become more redeeming or step up by having a cathartic experience because of the awful things that are happening to them. As far as the back story, most of it was all on the page for Joe. The monologue he had for how he got dumped and how stupid he felt, and how he feels like a bitch for backing down and not fighting for this girl, it was really a matter of finding the most natural way to sort of be that guy. Honestly, I’ve been through those experiences, so it was easy to relate. Green had told me that a lot of the stuff he wrote for Joe is stuff that actually happened to him, so I think that’s what we talked a lot about. Green was very honest about it. A lot of that stuff had happened to him, a lot of those stories are real stories, so it was very personal. I tried to take my lead from Green as a person, on his vulnerability as a person, his dark sense of humor, his bravado. Adam’s got all those things, I think I tried to take a little bit of Green and put that into Lynch.

Robg.: Speaking of, have you met the real Joe Lynch, whom your character’s name is based on?

Shawn: Yes, I have. I met him on set and actually Green is my neighbor now. Lynch and Green get together often to write and there’s a park up by my house, so it’s become a ritual almost ever week, they write, then wander around and I’ll meet them at the park and we’ll have a few beers and hang out. I’ve been hanging with the real Lynch quite a bit. He’s hilarious and a lot of fun to be around.

Robg.: Green and Kane Hodder are fairly notorious for being jokesters on-set. Were there any high-jinx on the set of Frozen?

Shawn: I was warned about Kane before I met him and I also watched the behind the scenes documentary on the Hatchet DVD, so I knew Kane was a character and to expect the unexpected. Kane acted in the film but he was also our stunt coordinator to make sure we were safe on the lift, and I have to say, he was super professional and really the nicest guy. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Whenever I came into the office, especially the first couple of days, I was kind of expecting him to come flying out of the closet with an ax and a camera rolling somewhere, just to scare the shit out of us, but it never happened. There was one prank Adam tried to pull on me involving one of the wolves, but I’ll save that one for the DVD special features because I know it’s in there. We were pretty busy so it was tough to work in practical jokes, but if Green and I ever work together again, which I really hope to, I’ve got to start putting ideas in a book for things to do to him to get him first, because I know it’s coming towards me on the next one!

Robg.: What was the most challenging, or better yet rewarding scene of the film for you personally?

Shawn: I think for me as an actor, it’s the scene dubbed “the blame game”. It’s the scene where Parker and I have our first argument on the lift, that’s my favorite scene in the movie as an actor. It’s just really emotional. Sometimes you read a scene on the page and you know exactly how you’d like to do it, and 99 percent of the time it doesn’t come out exactly the way you planned it or wanted it to. But that scene hits me every time I see it in the same way as when I read it on the page. It’s a kick in the gut. It’s a scene about losing your best friend and who’s to blame and it turns into a blame game, but it also turns into a real emotional mess. It’s a real breakdown for both characters, and there’s a lot of anger and pain there. It’s a tough scene to watch, but it’s exactly what I wanted it to be, how I wanted the scene to feel. It’s my favorite scene as an actor for the work we did there. My favorite scene as an audience member, and this is a spoiler, but pretty much everything with Kevin Zeger after he jumps off the lift. His performance and that whole sequence is amazing. It was another scene I read that I thought “oh my God, if this is done the way it’s written, it’s going to be amazing. People will lose it!” Judging from the Sundance screenings, everyone reacts at that part.

Robg.: You’ve seen the film now with an audience and it seems to have done really well at Sundance. What’s the theatrical experience been like seeing it with an audience for you?

Shawn: The first time I saw the film was with Green in his living room, which was amazing and super fun, but it’s night and day to seeing it in a theater and with a group of people that don’t know what’s going to happen. We went to see the Sunday midnight screening at Sundance and it was literally amazing. I knew the people that paid to see the movie would be into it and excited, but what I didn’t expect was the two rows of people that were with the actors and the filmmakers that hadn’t seen it yet. Agents, managers, etc. Even though they knew what was going to happen, there were agents in front of me that had their knees up to their chest. People were jumping and really reacting. That was really satisfying.

Green really knows how to make a movie that if you’re into this sort of thing, you’re going to love it. You have to see this in a theater, because it’s a communal experience. I didn’t see Hatchet in a theater, but I can imagine the same thing. You watch it at home and it’s fun and gory, but to see it with 200 people that are all screaming and yelling and excited to see someone’s head ripped off. Obviously, Hatchet and Frozen are two different films, but I think Adam makes movies that need to be seen in theaters. That’s really rare. So it was nice to see it with fans, people who had never heard of the movie before and they all seem to enjoy it. I think a lot of people had no idea what they were getting into, but we had people get sick, and cry and faint. We didn’t even believe that stuff. [laughs] But I was at the airport flying out of the Salt Lake City and this woman came up to me and asked to take a picture. She said she loved the film and that she was the one that passed out at Sunday’s screening. I think what happened was she had broken her leg once, and so in the movie when you see the compound fracture, I think it hit her in a personal way having gone through it herself.

Robg.: Since you’ve appeared in The Ruins, Frozen and soon we’ll see you in Mother’s Day, what are among your personal favorite horror films?

Shawn: The Exorcist, The Shining, Evil Dead. Although I will admit, when I was a kid I saw Army Of Darkness before I’d seen Evil Dead, and I love any horror movie with a good sense of humor that has deadites being decapitated. [laughs] I love the original Alien. Oh, I think the movie that scared me the most as a kid was Pet Semetary. That scared the crap out of me. The sister Zelda really, really creeped me out. I’ve never watched it since! I watched it that one time as a kid, and to this day I can’t watch it again.

Frozen opens in theaters this Friday, February 5th.