Megan Boone, Edi Gathegi Interview

In 1981, the slasher film craze was at its peak, driven by the box office success of films such as Halloween and The Last House on the Left. Then, out of Canada came the controversial low-budget sleeper My Bloody Valentine, whose enormous cult following shocked even its creators. Now, My Bloody Valentine 3D brings the fear factor to a new level with an immersive and utterly terrifying remake of the ultimate campfire story using the latest dazzling stereographic technology to put audiences in the middle of a chilling nightmare.   

MoviesOnline sat down with Edi Gathegi (“House,” Twilight) and Megan Boone to talk about their new film, My Bloody Valentine 3D, directed by Patrick Lussier from a screenplay by Todd Farmer and Zane Smith. The film also stars Jensen Ackles (TV's "Smallville" and "Supernatural"), Jaime King (The Spirit, Sin City, Sin City 2), and Kerr Smith (Final Destination, "Dawson's Creek").

Edi Gathegi has recently begun to gain increasing acclaim for his roles on both the big and small screens.  He is probably most recognized for his recurring role as ‘Dr. Cole’ (aka ‘Big Love’) on FOX’s hit television series “House.”  He was recently a guest star on the best reviewed show of the Fall season, ABC’s “Life On Mars.” Gathegi’s past film credits include Gone Baby Gone directed by Ben Affleck, Death Sentence opposite Kevin Bacon, and Crank with Jason Statham. He is currently starring in the theatrical feature film, Twilight.
 
Gathegi is also no stranger to on-stage production as his theatre resume includes Two Trains Running at the prestigious Old Globe Theatre in San Diego with other regional stage work including King Hedley II, Blues for an Alabama Sky, Golden Boy, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, The Crucible, Fade, A Maiden’s Prayer (Santa Barbara Independent Award), A Raisin in the Sun, Othello, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Cyrano and Dutchman.
 
Megan Boone makes her feature film debut in My Bloody Valentine 3D. Boone graduated with a BFA in acting from Florida State University, where she had the privilege of studying playwriting and performance technique with Jane Alexander, Mark Medoff and Ed Sherin. 

Next, Boone traveled to London to study playwriting and Shakespearean and Restoration performance under professors who worked with the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and The Royal Shakespeare Company. After graduation, she relocated to Los Angeles and studied with Sanford Meisner’s twenty-year protégée, William Alderson. After finishing his program, Boone began her non-profit theatre production company, I’m a Parade Productions. The company produced an evening of David Mamet’s one-acts and then the West Coast premiere of Charles Mee’s Limonade Tous Les Jours.

Edi Gathegi and Megan Boone are fabulous people and we really appreciated their time. Here’s what they had to tell us about their new horror movie, My Bloody Valentine 3D:

MoviesOnline: For your first major feature film, you get to screw around with a married man and you get killed.

Megan: Yeah, the things I would never be brave enough to do in real life.

MoviesOnline: How will you ever top this?

Megan: Oh God, I don't know. I'll have to show you that. Yeah, it will be hard to live up to this movie. It's an amazing break into the industry for me and into the world of filmmaking because it's a really special movie that everybody is always going to reference back to. It's the beginning of the 3-D, life action revolution in 2009.

MoviesOnline: For both of you, what scares you in life? What frightens you?

Edi: In real-life? Barnacles. Things with raised surfaces and small patches like a burnt bagel that gets that raised surface.

MoviesOnline: Where does that come from?

Megan: That’s really weird, Edi.

Edi: I do not know. The fact that the hair on the back of my neck stands up and I get the heebie-jeebies and I freak out.

MoviesOnline: Do you scrape it off?

Edi: Well, I won’t get that close to something like that. That is the only thing that terrifies me.

MoviesOnline: That’s original. I’ve never heard that before.

Edi: It’s the truth, too.

MoviesOnline: Megan, what about you?

Megan: Mine is a disregard for human life on any level, like real-life things, things that are going on right now, like who wants to talk about it? The reason we go to 3-D movies is to escape it.

MoviesOnline: That’s what Jaime King said.

Megan: Yeah. The world is in a terrible, terrible state and I try not to live in fear and be terrified of it, but I am a little bit and I think everybody feels that way. (to Edi) Barnacles, baby? I’ll have barnacles all over me as long as we can solve some of our issues.

Edi: I’d like to solve the issues too, but barnacles get me.

MoviesOnline: No undersea movies for you then?

Edi: (laughs) No.

MoviesOnline: Did either of you see the original before you did this film? Have you seen this film and how do you think it compares?

Megan: We both decided in order to prepare for it we shouldn’t watch it. We’ve already talked about this a little bit today because we wanted to have an original take and neither of our characters were in the first film. So, I actually got the movie and watched it after I shot the film and ours is way frickin’ better.

Edi: Wow! You can’t say that. I heard the first one wasn’t finished and it’s very campy. So there were problems with it.

Megan: Did I just mess up?

Edi: No. It’s alright. They won’t print that because they love you.

Megan: Okay.

Edi: So, their film is a very different energy. I think our film takes itself more seriously, but there are still some very campy elements to it and it’s just a totally fun ride. We have seen it and I had the greatest time. I’ve seen it twice and it gets better the second time.

Megan: It does, doesn’t it? I saw it three times and the third time is even better.

Edi: Really?

Megan: Yeah, go see it three or four times.

Edi: You start to lose the 3-D element the more you see it until you forget that you’re watching a 3-D film.

Megan: That’s the thing because they didn’t use it as a gimmick. They used it to support the movie and that’s why it was such a wonderful marriage because it wasn’t like, “We’re going to do this in order to make a 3-D movie.” They were like, “We’re going to add the 3-D element to make it an even better movie.”

Edi: Yeah.

MoviesOnline: I thought the first shot, the first kill, was a good little gimmick introduction with the eye popping out.

Megan: It gave you a good sense of what we were trying to do, what Patrick was trying to do.

MoviesOnline: But it wasn’t cheesy. It was actually just fun.

Megan: Yeah. Fun and gruesome.

MoviesOnline: What person doesn’t like eyeballs?

Megan: (laughs)

MoviesOnline: Edi, I thought your character had more scenes that might have gotten cut because for a while I thought “Oh, maybe it’s him.” Did you have more lines?

Edi: Yeah. Actually at the premiere one of the camera guys and the cinematographer and the writer came up to me and they were like, “Sorry.” And I was like, “What are you sorry for?” “We cut a lot of your stuff.” “I didn’t even notice. I was having fun. You probably cut it for the better to enhance the movie, right?” But I remember now that there were a lot of scenes that ended on a look that I had and there were a couple scenes that were actually cut completely from the film.

But I liked what they ended up doing and making it subtle because they don’t actually hit you over the head and say, “This is who we want you to think the killer is” until she disappears from the hospital and the chase part of the movie ensues. So, I think it allows the audience to feel smart trying to deduce who it is numbers-wise. A couple of my friends came up to me and said “Yeah, there was a moment where I was like that is who it has to be because it can’t be him and it can’t be him.” So people are truly surprised at the end of the movie.

Megan: Even going into it, we know who it was. So when I first watched the film, I knew who it was but I was still so impressed by how complex and how convoluted all of the little red herrings are. They did such a good job with that and Kerr, for me, his performance is so mysterious. I just think he and Jensen did such a good job in maintaining a mystery.

MoviesOnline: Kerr said they shot alternate endings. Were you the guy in any of those?

Edi: No, I don’t think I was ever the guy in any alternate endings. I’m trying to remember what the alternate ending was.

MoviesOnline: He said that he was the killer. Or maybe that was in the early script?

Edi: Oh yeah, the script changed three or four times before we started shooting. I noticed a lot of stuff that changed but I don’t think I was ever the killer at one point. They were definitely trying to make me one of the main suspects in one draft. (laughs) I’ll be the killer in the next one.

MoviesOnline: You weren’t too friendly in Twilight?

Edi: I wasn’t too friendly in Twilight. No.

MoviesOnline: (to Megan) And unfortunately, you can’t come back in the sequel.

Megan: Unless I come back as a twin or a manipulative ghost from the spirit world. Yeah, that would be fun. Oh, I need to talk to Patrick now. (laughs) I’m just kidding.

MoviesOnline: Did you guys have any input into the dialogue, any changes? Did you have any freedom adlibbing dialogue at least?

Edi: Plotwise, you don’t ever want to improvise but what I loved about Patrick is he’s such a great director. He’s sort of an actor’s director and a director/director. He’s genius. He knows how to edit films, he knows filmmaking, but he knows how to deal with actors. I improvised a lot of scenes and he kept the original [dialogue] and some of [what I improvised] and so, yeah, we did get to play around.

Megan: For me, I did a lot of things. I wasn’t bold enough since it was my first movie to actually improvise on set. I didn’t know where the boundaries were with that. But whenever I came to him with questions about what does this mean, what is this line, sometimes we would end up making changes based on our discussion or based on my perspective and his perspective. So, he was always really open to your thought process and what you brought to the table. I think that’s why this film works so well because it is an ensemble cast and it is also an ensemble effort.

Edi: We even added a scene and improvised the scene that we added. That’s the kind of director he was. Kerr Smith has my favorite line in the film which was improvised.

MoviesOnline: Which is?

Edi: “I’m going to rip your bleeping head off.”

MoviesOnline: Edi, you’ve worked for numerous directors. Given your experience, do you find that Patrick, who started as an editor, has a much clearer vision or visual style? Given his editorial background, is his directorial style different than some of the other directors you’ve worked with?

Edi: I think every director has a different style so it’s different inherently and I can’t see his editing style when he’s directing. We do that later on. But he is a great director and I would work with him again and I think that’s the highest compliment that I can pay a director.

MoviesOnline: The producers of House said that during Season 4, when House was eliminating candidates for his medical team and the actors were being eliminated one by one, that they were just making it up as they went along because they didn’t know in advance which actors weren’t going to make the cut. Since they brought back the Cutthroat Bitch, are you waiting by the phone for them to call and say “Come on back”?

Edi: This is a true story. They didn’t know who they were going to get rid of. When they did get rid of me, they were like, “Um, we just had an embarrassment of riches. We had to just figure out where these characters were going to go and then your character wasn’t one of those the writers were going to take in that direction.” But all five of us had the same contract series regular option and we always knew from the beginning we were going to do eight episodes and then only three of the five would get picked up. So we would flip through to the end of the script to see if we were the one. And then they called me in there and I was the first one to get the news that I wasn’t coming on. They said, “Just so you know, we’re going to bring back Annie. That’s going to make you feel like you’re the only one that didn’t get picked up. That’s not true. Sit tight.”

MoviesOnline: What scary movie did you guys like as kids that really affected you?

Megan: They asked me at the Butt-Numb-a-Thon where we screened the film in Austin. (laughs) It’s a very cool festival. They pick amazing films for that and it’s a great audience because everybody there is so knowledgeable and interested in film. I remember as a child watching Gremlins and having nightmares for years. Not the cute ones but when they turn really nasty and slimy. And then, when I was about 12 years old, my aunt made the mistake of watching Goodfellas with me, and Joe Pesci and his Napoleonic disregard for human life has really terrified me ever since.

Edi: That’s not horror, is it?

Megan: None of them are horror movies. That’s the thing. I have to answer honestly, I’ve never been that frightened by horror movies. I’m entertained by horror movies but I won’t watch the torture-gory SAW stuff.

Edi: For me, I watched Nightmare on Elm Street. Those were the ones that freaked me out. I was a kid though so, of course, that stuff is going to happen.

Megan: That’s how Johnny Depp got his start on a horror movie.

Edi: So there was that and then I watch them with my friends, but I’m not really a big horror fan. And then, The Ring was something that I’ll never see again.

MoviesOnline: The original Japanese one or the American version?

Edi: The American one. That successfully freaked me out. I think that’s the most scared I’ve ever been in a theater.

MoviesOnline: Were you looking for weird little girls to come out of your TV?

Edi: I felt like I was looking at barnacles.

MoviesOnline: Edi, you graduated from NYU and Megan, you studied with professors who worked with The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and The Royal Shakespeare Company. I graduated from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television so I’m curious…

Edi: Do you know Mel Shapiro? (Note: One of the founding members of NYU’s Theater Program in the Tisch School of the Arts and currently a Distinguished Professor of Theater at UCLA.)

MoviesOnline: Yes, I do.

Edi: I love Mel!

MoviesOnline: I’m curious if you found your education good grounding or preparation for what you’re now doing?

Edi: Absolutely.

Megan: Absolutely. I wouldn’t take it away for the world.

Edi: I don’t even know any other way since that is my training. I feel like I wasn’t ready to do what I’m doing now before I went and I feel like I’m ready to do what I’m doing now because I went.

MoviesOnline: So doing Shakespeare and August Wilson on stage is good preparation?

Edi: Oh yes.

Megan: Absolutely. I think that if you can get your feet grounded and rooted in something that’s really human and something that really puts your focus on why we do this and why we tell stories, it prepares you to come to Hollywood and not be taken away by the things that are traps for human beings, because human beings can very easily be susceptible to vanity or caring about getting attention or the things that are fleeting or the things that don’t really matter. For me, I feel that I’m able to maintain a center, be grounded, focused, and happy in whatever happens to me because I’m not fully attached to things that would make other people feel whole. I’m more interested in telling a story in whatever way I can and the thing that’s beautiful about actors is we never know when we’re going to affect people. We could be in a hole in the wall theater and you know that that is just as important.

Edi: I’ll say for a lot of the people that do go get training at these institutions, they go get training because they have a passion and a calling for the craft of acting and that’s what drives them. They don’t necessarily want to become celebrities or work in the entertainment industry. That kind of becomes a by-product from learning about this craft and the need to make a living and then realizing that you can actually spread your wings further.

Megan: It’s not only that. Edi and I have talked about this before. All actors do have a part of themselves that has a need for attention and so it is still appealing to be recognized and respected for what you do. Thankfully, he and I have had the experience of rooting it and grounding it in something that’s worthwhile and meaningful. I think it’s because we were actually drawn to that aspect of it, but I think there’s also something gratifying about actually getting it.

Edi: Well said!

“My Bloody Valentine 3D” opens in theaters on January 16th.