September 1, 2007

Actor Deon Richmond plays Marcus, the best friend to Joel Moore’s character Ben in HATCHET, writer/director Adam Green’s loving homage to old-school “slasher” flicks! Deon also made an appearance in the horror genre with SCREAM 3 and re-teamed recently with Adam Green on the web series IT’S A MALL WORLD. Enjoy, and be sure to be at the theater September 7th! – by Robg. – 9/07

Deon, what do you remember being your earliest recollections of the horror genre? Do you remember the first films to scare you as a kid?

Aw man. I’m not exactly sure what the first one was, but I do remember the one that scared me the most and that was ‘A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET’. The first one of those.

That one got most of us as kids!

Yeah, that one got me. It was the first one to really scare me.

Can you go back and tell us a bit about how you got involved in acting as a career? You started at a fairly young age, right?

Yeah, yeah. I started before I was one! (Laughs) My first bunch of gigs were print ads and commercials and then it went on from there. I started doing more TV. I started doing The Cosby Show. So, it started when I was young.

So acting has just always been a part of you life as far back as you remember, right?

Right. As far back as I can remember.

Can you tell us how you got involved in HATCHET? Did you know writer/director Adam Green beforehand or did you come in and audition for this?

I didn’t audition. Adam (Green) called me. He said he knew my work and he loved me and he wanted to work with me. He didn’t want me to cast for it. He just wanted to put me straight in it, so I said OK, let me just take a look at what it is. And from there, we met. Adam and I sat down and I realized he wasn’t going to mess it up. That made me more comfortable and that was it.

Did he talk you about the character of Marcus before hand? What was it about HATCHET that made you realize this was going to be a cool project to work on?

Adam told me the whole movie. He knew everything, explained it to me shot for shot. He told me what the whole movie was, and he kind of broke it down to who my character was. He didn’t tell me all my lines, he wanted me to read it, but he explained to me that my character was essential to be there for the audience. And I felt that was perfect, that was the perfect character for me in the movie.

In the movie, your character Marcus is best friends with Ben, Joel Moore’s character. What was it like working with Joel?

Joel was cool. Real cool.

Did you get a chance to improvise at all? How open was Adam Green to letting you do your own thing?

Yeah, we got a chance to do a lot. When Adam wrote it, he didn’t see exactly who would be the character. So he wrote it pretty standard, and he wrote some really funny jokes, and we used those and elaborated a little bit as much as we could when we were doing the scene. It worked out great collaborating, because that’s all we needed to do after that. Just a little bit of adlibbing. Not much, because the jokes were there.

I know you spent several weeks shooting this film in the swamps, but I’m sure one incentive to doing that was that you were surrounded by some very, very lovely ladies. Mercedes McNab. Joleigh Fioreavanti. Tamara Feldman. So, can you tell me a bit about working with some of the ladies of HATCHET?

It was fun, man. Those girls… they’re the reason were going to sell, I’m sure! (Laughs)

When we talked to Adam Green, he had mentioned that there was one moment on set when we was standing in between Robert Englund and Kane Hodder having a conversation about Kane’s make-up and he realized “Oh my God. I’m directing a movie, and I’m standing in between Freddy and Jason!” You mentioned before that one of your earliest horror recollections was A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. So, what was it like for you to get the chance to work with Robert Englund and Kane (Hodder)?

I mean, after you get over your initial fear, (laughs) you’re just in awe that you get to work with them. It happened so long ago that you’d seen the movies, so they’re ingrained in your mind now. ( Elm Street, Friday) is part of your subconscious. To meet them finally, you think “Oh wow. They talk. They speak!” (Laughs) So once you get over the initial fear and start talking to them, you’re like “all right.” You start to get their opinion, and you start to see their experience and understand how long they’ve been doing it. As it all comes to you, you appreciate the experience, you know?

Now, Kane Hodder is notorious for getting really into his roles. So, how intimidating was he when he portrayed HATCHET’s killer Victor Crowley?

Oh, he was pretty intimidating. (Laughs) He really gets into it. This is the first role where he had to do this much acting behind the make-up. For HATCHET, he did a lot more body motions, and screaming and grunts and yells. He never did that thing with the Jason character. He was just imposing as that figure. But as Victor, he’s crazy!

I hear there is a scene in this movie where after one of Victor Crowley’s attacks, your character Marcus ends up running up a tree to hide. (Laughs) Can you talk about that scene? And would you personally do that in real life? Seems like the smart thing to do.

(Laughs) I mean, to find the highest possible spot to hide, that’s pretty smart. Ya know? Killers don’t want to put too much effort into chasing you, so yes, I think you definitely should climb. That’s a hint for all people in all future horror situations.

Now, HATCHET has screened numerous times in the past few months. It’s a big audience movie. What was it like for you to see it for the first time in a theater with a packed audience?

It was fun. You get to really see the parts people react to. That’s the most important thing. You really want to see how they react. What they jump to, what they don’t jump to. What they laugh at, what they don’t laugh at. So, that’s always important.

This movie’s come a long way since you guys shot it. Are you excited that Anchor Bay is giving it a theatrical release?

Yeah, man. We’re all very excited. We’re happy to see that.

Myself and the entire New York crew will be at the theater on opening night!

Definitely, you have to!

You went on to work with Adam Green again on the ‘IT’S A MALL WORLD’ web series. How’d that come about? Did you guys just get along so well on HATCHET that he had you in mind for this?

Yeah, he’s a great writer, and I guess he thinks I’m great at performing his work! So it works out well. IT’S A MALL WORLD he wrote and he came up with all the jokes and everything. It was easy to do once we got it.

HATCHET isn’t your first foray into the horror genre, you were actually in SCREAM 3. What do you remember about that whole experience? Because I remember SCREAM was really big, and nothing else was really going on in the horror genre in the late 90’s?

Right. Well, the experience was fun. It was just one of those big budget experiences. We had a lot more on that then say HATCHET. They had a lot more money then on this movie. (Laughs) Wes Craven’s a cool dude. He knows what he’s doing. He’s very different from what you might think. He’s no way near as neurotic or crazy as people might assume. But he’s pretty laid back. It’s cool to see him and actually work with him, because I thought he’d be like an ex-killer. (Laughs) But he’s a regular dude. He’s a pushover.

He’s a very smart guy. He used to be a college professor before he was a director!

And that’s exactly how you can see him. He looks like he’s about to teach you something out of his history pages or something. (Laughs)

So, would you consider yourself a horror fan? Do you like horror movies in general?

Yeah, I think everyone does. There’s nothing more fun then being scared. Especially when at the end of it, you can get up and leave! (Laughs)

HATCHET opens September 7th. Anything you want to say to the Icons readers about it?

It’s the best horror movie to come out since the first SCREAM. This is the first movie in years to have the type of energy that really brings the crowd into it. I’m very proud of HATCHET and the work that everyone did on the movie.