Freddy Rodriguez Interview, Grind House

Movies Online sat down with Freddy Rodriguez to talk with him about his new film Planet Terror which is part Grindhouse, a double dose from long time collaborators Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino’s Death Proof is a white knuckle ride behind the wheel of a psycho serial killer’s roving, revving, racing death machine. Rodriguez’s Planet Terror is a heart-pounding trip to a town ravaged by a mysterious plague. Inspired by the unique distribution of independent horror classics of the sixties and seventies, these two shockingly bold features are presented together on a drive-in style double bill, replete with fake trailers, missing reels and plenty of exploitative mayhem.

In Planet Terror, married doctors William and Dakota Block (Josh Brolin and Marley Shelton) find their graveyard shift inundated with townspeople ravaged by gangrenous sores and a suspiciously vacant look in their eyes. Among the wounded is Cherry (Rose McGowan), a go-go dancer whose leg was ripped from her body during a roadside attack. Wray (Freddy Rodriguez), her former significant other, is at her side and watching her back. Cherry may be down, but she hasn’t danced her last number. As the invalids quickly become enraged aggressors, Cherry and Wray lead a team of accidental warriors into the night, hurtling towards a destiny that will leave millions infected, countless dead, and a lucky few struggling to find the last safe corner of Planet Terror.

Freddy Rodriguez has become a highly sought-after character actor since his Emmy-nominated five season stint on HBO’s critically acclaimed "Six Feet Under.” His film credits include David Ayer’s Harsh Times, Havoc written by Steven Gaghan, Alfonso Arau’s A Walk in the Clouds, Dead Presidents directed by the Hughes Brothers, Wolfgang Petersen’s Poseidon, M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water, and most recently, Emilio Estevez’s Bobby. Planet Terror marks his debut in a science-fiction or action film.

"Wray is kind of a mysterious character,” Rodriguez says. "The film takes place in Texas. Because of his appearance, the way he talks, and the way he behaves, Wray is clearly not from Texas. We really don’t know who he is or where he’s from. He’s kind of a loner. As the movie unfolds, you see different layers of Wray, and as they are peeled away, you see more and more of who he is.”

Co-star Rose McGowan was extremely happy with the pairing. "Freddy’s got this great edge in this character and he just really nails it. He’s very, very focused,” McGowan says. "He definitely has the ‘cool’ thing going on. He’s got swagger going into it, and swagger coming out of it.”

Here’s what Freddy Rodriguez had to tell us about playing Wray, the tough loner whose identity is shrouded in secrecy, in Robert Rodriguez’s retro-futuristic vision of horror:

Q: Was that actually you riding that tiny motorcycle and how fun was that?

Freddy: Yeah. I had a blast doing this film. Everything you see is me, by the way. I had months and months of training for all of that stuff. The knife sequences you saw, the fight choreography, the bike stuff, the little bike stuff.

Q: Did you fall over ever?

Freddy: No, I didn’t [laughs].

Q: Robert has a backstory for your character? Did he lay it all out for you?

Freddy: Oh yeah. He laid it all out for me and what was left in the film. Because he had to shorten the film, we couldn’t fit everything in there, but maybe you’ll see the rest of it in the missing reel.

Q: Will there be additional scenes in the international version?

Freddy: I think so. That’s what I heard, because it’s [Planet Terror and Death Proof] not going to play together in the international version. It’s going to be separated so each film will be longer.

Q: Do you know which scenes in particular?

Freddy: No, not yet.

Q: Is there a possibility of maybe doing a prequel to show more of your story?

Freddy: Robert hasn’t approached me with that at all, but anything is possible at this point. If this film is successful, the sky’s the limit.

Q: How hard was it to pick up all the knife stuff? Did you take to it pretty quickly or did you stab anybody?

Freddy: No, I didn’t stab anybody. Yeah, it was hard. First of all, I’ve never played an action hero before in my life and so I’ve never dealt with guns or knives. I’ve never done a fight sequence before so it was all new territory. At first it was hard, but I’m a pretty quick learner and I learn pretty fast. Even as we were filming, I was still practicing, and I would always have the knives with me on set just to get the feel of it, or the guns, I was always twirling guns on set.

Q: What was it like filming that scene where you kill all the zombies in the hospital corridor?

Freddy: That scene was probably the most physically demanding scene in the film and I believe… You know we shot the whole film at night and I believe that scene, I remember it was like four in the morning, and I was like nodding off in my trailer and there’s a knock on the door, ‘come on. We’re about to do that elaborate fight scene’ at like four in the morning, and I remember just being tired and, when we were done with the scene, the sun was up. Go back to the hotel and try to sleep after that.

Q: From your past work you don’t come to mind as the first person to pick for an action hero in a zombie movie.

Freddy: [Laughs] Really?

Q: How did that happen?

Freddy: I auditioned for it like everyone else, but I think the real reason why it happened is because Robert always thinks outside of the box. I don’t think he looks toward anything as what the conventional choice would be. He did that with Antonio Banderas. Before he did Desperado, he wasn’t an action hero in Spain when he was doing those films. If you were to see him, you would probably think the same thing but he just always thinks outside the box and that’s part of Robert’s genius.

Q: You aren’t related to him are you?

Freddy: No.

Q: The love scene between you and Rose, do you know how much of that was shot that we didn’t see?

Freddy: [Laughs] A lot.

Q: Any chance of that showing up on the DVD?

Freddy: [Laughs] Maybe on the DVD.

Q: You had great chemistry with Rose. You guys seemed to work together really well.

Freddy: She’s great man. She’s just great. She’s a cool gal. I enjoyed hanging out with her and working with her. She’s really funny in real life. She has a very dry sense of humor that will have you cracking up all day so we just got along well.

Q: What’s it like working with Robert on a day to day basis?

Freddy: Robert is just a pleasure to work with. You’ve got to think, he’s the boss. The guy is a hundred percent self-sufficient. The guy has his own studio, his own sound stages, his own mixing bay, his own editing bays. He’s like the George Lucas of Austin. So, when he’s the boss and the artistic nucleus, then he will dictate what the vibe is and so, to give an example, we would do a scene and, in between scenes, he has a guitar attached to his monitor, he’ll take the guitar out and start playing the guitar and people would join in and sing and jam with him. It’s that artistic freedom that goes on on set so it was just great, man. This guy, he’s so ahead of the curve. He’s so ahead of everyone else and you see that in the first fifteen minutes you’re around him.

Q: This could never be a traditional studio movie?

Freddy: I don’t think so. I don’t think that it would have the innovation or originality behind it. It takes somebody like Robert and Quentin to have full artistic freedom to come up with something like this.

Q: Is it fun for you to go from Six Feet Under which is subtle and nuanced to something that’s big and over the top like this? Is this something you prefer as opposed to a more subtle style?

Freddy: I just like to be versatile. I just like to choose my projects and be different all the time so that you don’t get pigeonholed or stereotyped as a character which is always the danger you run when you do a TV show and play a very specific character. You run the risk of being typecast as that guy. So that’s why last year I put out four movies and this film. I was just trying to play different characters post successful television show to show people that I wasn’t that guy.

Q: One of those movies was Poseidon. In Poseidon, it seems like they wanted to get to the wave right away. Was there more character stuff cut out? I heard there was going to be a longer version of it.

Freddy: Yeah, there was more character stuff. They definitely cut some of it out, but the wave was the star, man. The ship was the star. [Laughs]

Q: That was an intense death scene for a PG-13 movie.

Freddy: Yeah, I saw it and I was like "ooooooh.’

Q: It wasn’t enough for you to get on the spikes, then they just slammed you.

Freddy: Yeah, that Richard Dreyfuss, he kicked me off.

Q: Is it going to be released over here?

Freddy: Yeah, yeah, it was in theaters. It was just actually released on DVD last week I think or two weeks ago, but it was in theaters.

Q: It was released here?

Freddy: Yeah, it didn’t do well but...

Q: I saw it when it came out in the U.K. last year.

Freddy: Yeah, I remember that.

Q: It got a bigger release.

Freddy: Yeah, I remember that. It didn’t do great here.

Q: Why do you think that is?

Freddy: I won’t elaborate, but that’s what happens when you don’t have the proper support system behind it. We’ll just say that.

Q: Did you grow up watching any of these double features in the old movie houses?

Freddy: I did, I did. I’m from Chicago and we had these big movie palaces there. It wasn’t like the multiplexes that exist today. Yeah, that was our form of entertainment when we were kids. You know my pop used to take us to the double feature, sometimes the triple feature I remember as a kid.

Q: What kind of movies were they?

Freddy: I remember a few of these as a kid. It was just these bad karate movies. Remember those, like the grindhouse karate movies?

Q: The poor man’s Bruce Lee movies

Freddy: Yeah, two karate movies for two bucks. They were just terrible, but it was like ‘wow, we got to go out and go to the movies.’ We would go in in the daytime and come out when it was night. I remember that as a kid, like wow!

Q: I just watched the director’s cut of Payback, the deluxe version, and I was curious what your experience was on that, because when you were seen, he definitely, specifically talked about you and said it was really cool working with you.

Freddy: Oh yeah, yeah. I just talked to him. He just told me about that. That premiered at the Austin Film Festival.

Q: It did.

Freddy: Yeah. He told me about that.

Q: It’s going to come out on DVD next month.

Freddy: Yeah, yeah. Wow, you got to see it. Brian was awesome. This was 1997 I believe, so this was before Six Feet, before anything. I was just working and I just remember he was always really good to me. You know sometimes these directors, if you’re not a big movie star, they’re just… But he was always really good to me and everything you saw in the film, he allowed me to create. The dreads – that was my idea. The only thing that was in the script was the nose ring. But he said, ‘yeah, just come in and do what you want.’ He allowed me to create this kind of druggy guy with the dreadlocks, talking that way and chewing the gum, and he was just like ‘yeah, go for it!’ At that time I was a young actor and I was working with Mel. I wasn’t sure if they would let me have that creative freedom, but I took the chance and I said, ‘I think this is what it should be,’ and he was like ‘yeah, just go for it.’

Q: Robert is such a visionary. Can you come to him and say ‘hey, what if I did this?’ and he’ll listen?

Freddy: Oh absolutely. He’s extremely collaborative. If you have an idea, he always allows you to bring it to the table. To him, it’s about who has the best idea. He has a blue print in his head of how he envisions the film and where he wants it to go, but if the idea that you present to him works better for the blueprints, he’s more than glad to accept the idea.

Q: What are you working on now?

Freddy: There are a few things I have going on. I haven’t signed on yet. I can’t say, but as I said earlier, I put four films out last year. I just took a break after doing so many films and five seasons of my show, I just … I was burning the candle at both ends as they say. I took a couple months off. I haven’t signed the papers on the new flick so I can’t say what it is.

Q: Would you ever go back to series television?

Freddy: Yeah, I think I would. I don’t know. I would consider it. I would never say no, I would never go back, but right now the film career is going very well, so I think I’m just going to follow that path right now.

Q: What was the biggest memory you took away from shooting in Austin? The fun, after set, just being in that area.

Freddy: Ah man, I just remember the people were so nice there. The people were so cool and the food was phenomenal in Austin. Yeah, yeah. And great music too. Great music. I’ve always heard about that and we kinda went out and saw some bands play and some DJs spin and I was really impressed by how good the music was there.

Q: What was it like working with Christian Bale in Harsh Times?

Freddy: Man, it was great. Great, great guy. Good human being. And such a committed actor to what he does and very gracious with – how can I explain it – with his art. I always describe acting as emotional tennis and that whole movie was just him and I, 14 hours a day in a car, and so he was just very gracious in terms of what he gave back.

Q: Can you talk about the importance of these types of movies?

Freddy: Right. Well the horror genre is really popular now. You have your Saws – Saw I, Saw II, whatever, The Hills Have Eyes and all that. So I just think that the 20-year-olds are going to come see this movie because they like that genre, right? But those same 20-year-olds are going to see this other genre that was really popular back in the day and it was a great genre. The whole concept of double features, they’re going to get to experience something new and original when they come see the film.