Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the second and final interview I did with the people who made the snowy thriller FROZEN, which had its official premiere at the Sundance film festival, but I got to see with a wired BNAT crowd last month.
I’ve already chatted with director Adam Green and now here’s Shawn Ashmore who plays the best friend of Kevin Zeger’s character and third wheel on this ski trip gone horribly wrong. It’s a great character, the guy who is fighting to save a lifelong friendship as Zeger’s relationship with Emma Bell threatens to divide the two. Ashmore somehow makes this character relatable and likable… while filming in sub zero temperatures 50 feet above the ground.
Here’s the chat! Enjoy!
Shawn Ashmore: Good morning, how are you?
Quint: Doing great. I imagine you are in a similar boat as me, I’m just busy working on my Sundance schedule.
Shawn Ashmore: I’m waiting to drop into the snow. I can’t wait actually.
Quint: And you guys have got a perfect movie for it.
Shawn Ashmore: Yeah, it’s very topical. Hopefully we will scare the crap out of some people and make them think twice about going skiing the night after they see the movie.
Quint: There are some movies that can just make me cold just watching it and that’s one of them. Another one, and other than the cold and snow, it has nothing to do with it, but DR. ZHIVAGO is another movie like that, where I watch that movie and I just get cold.
Shawn Ashmore: Yeah, FROZEN… I just saw the film for the first time I guess three weeks ago and there’s a real visceral sense to the film. It’s tangible and you can feel it. You smell it and I think that’s thanks to Adam making sure that we shot this on a mountain at nine thousand feet, fifty feet above the ground and you can really feel that and that’s one of the best decisions they made for the film.
Quint: I talked to Adam a little about that. He was saying that when the call first went out essentially half of the people that would come to audition on the movie were scared off by that, but he knew that those who came were going to be in for the long haul. So I guess the question is are you crazy? You knew that he was going to do all of that and shoot outside in the real cold…
Shawn Ashmore: That was one of the things that attracted me to it, to tell you the truth. With a film like this, you need as many real elements as possible. This is a hard sell to make a film like this in the sense that you have to be in one location with three characters and they have to be engaging enough to keep an audience’s attention. I think we are all very aware, the actors coming in, that this is a huge opportunity and also a huge risk. If you don’t buy into these characters, if you don’t like these characters or the performances are false at all, you are going to write the movie off. I think we all came in knowing that we needed to keep a level of reality going throughout the film in all of the performances and the story points, so that people wouldn’t shut it off, because you can’t cut away to another scene.
You can’t cut away to other characters elsewhere, so you have to live with these characters and really put yourself basically next to them in the chairlift, so again knowing that we were going to shoot this on location in the real cold was appealing to me. That was making my job a little bit easier. I didn’t have to sit on a soundstage with a green screen behind me faking that I was cold. We knew that there were going to be blizzards coming through. We knew that we were going to be miserable. We basically knew that we would feel the way the characters were feeling and so to me it didn’t seem crazy, it seemed like the only way to make this movie and make it good.
Quint: I completely agree looking at it from the nice warm movie theater.
Shawn Ashmore: Trust me, we cursed Adam daily and he knew we would and we made no bones about it. In all honesty, I’m actually really good friends with Adam and I’m so happy that he picked me to play this character, but yeah he told us from the get go “This will probably we the hardest movie you ever make” and he didn’t lie. I thought he just meant physically, too, but it was an emotional ride. The really cool thing about the movie for me as an actor was once the characters get stuck, like I said if you were fifty feet above the ground for real…
We didn’t get to interact with anybody on the set, really. We were taking direction from Adam through a walkie-talkie that I had in my coat pocket, so there was a real sense of isolation. Usually you are on a set and you are hanging out with the producers behind the monitor or you are talking to the grips or you are getting food or whatever, like you whip out your cell phone and send a text between setups or whatever and on this film, that was not the case, so we really were isolated up there, which was kind of cool.
I’ve never done anything like this experience. It really was unique and just really helped to throw us in those parts, but the reason I say it was difficult emotionally was you get lonely up there. Do you know what I mean? You are alone up there for six hours at a time with only the other actors to talk to and you can only talk so much and at a certain point you sort of go into your own little cocoon and you are focusing or there’s a huge emotional scene coming up and you’ve got to do your own preparation.
Usually on set you can just walk away or walk into a corner. It was really, I guess, embarrassing at some points, because you have these two other actors right next to you and you are trying to get into your own head space and play little games that you have to to get to where you need to go, but you can’t do it privately. You have to do it with these people right next to you, so it was definitely emotional and difficult to sort of get past that barrier.
You have to sort of break yourself down in real life before you actually have to do it on camera and usually you get to have a private moment to get where you need to go and this was like in front of everybody for the world to see. It was really interesting, but again I think that made it more real, more vulnerable, and made it more intense. I think, having seen the film, that the performances really pay off because of the circumstances we were in.
Quint: Don’t sell yourself too short there either. I think the reason why the Butt-Numb-A-Thon audience really responded to the movie was in large part to what you guys brought to it and what Adam wrote. Your character in particular is a very interesting guy and you don’t really see this type of guy very often in films, especially genre films. He’s a very complex character and very well drawn. He’s obviously desperately to like this girl for the sake of his friendship, but just hates what she represents. It’s a very interesting dynamic.
Shawn Ashmore: Yeah and again, when I read the script, I felt like these were real characters. I was expecting it to just sort of be a sort of survival film and I like those films anyways. I think they are fun and it would have been something I would have been interested in, but to have that sort of depth and layers to the characters… Dan and Lynch, Kevin Zeger’s character and mine, just the relationship that they have from the beginning, like how they just know exactly what to say to each other to piss each other off and just that camaraderie and stuff… A lot of it was Kevin and I have been friends for years, so that really helped, but a lot of that dialogue and banter that feels very real is really Adam’s direct writing.
He’s got a really great ear and a great tone for dialogue and even the funny stuff where it’s there to keep it a little bit lighter before it gets too crazy, there’s a lot of character development going on in that stuff, so I think it’s neat how these characters sort of sneak into you and again you are right, these aren’t characters that you see a lot in genre films. I think it’s just because we are given the time to be with these characters and live with the characters, it’s not about jump scares and quick cuts or anything like that.
You spend minutes at a time or hours at a time it feels sometimes with these characters, so like I said it was a unique exercise. When I tell people about the movie, I’m like “You are going to get the crap scared out of you and you will feel gross coming out of the movie probably, because that’s how I felt, but it’s also a character film.” It’s a character piece and people are sort of surprised by that. They don’t think they see the two going hand and hand, so I’m like “No, if you want to get scared and you want to go for a ride and go see a crazy movie that’s fun and scary, go see FROZEN, but if you also want to sit and develop with a character and find some people that you really like to watch on screen, this movie offers that as well,” so I like the fact that it has both of those elements.
Quint: That’s the trick with any film that’s going to force you to be in one spot with the same characters and you mentioned that earlier, but I’ve seen countless indie films that are two people in a room or three people in a room, but if you don’t care at all it just becomes tedious. Especially in a thriller or horror picture, you have to care about the people in danger or you are just going to get bored and that’s especially…
Shawn Ashmore: Then the excitement of the film becomes waiting for them to die. Do you know what I mean? That can be fun to; there’s nothing wrong with that… It’s fun, but when you can do both it’s pretty incredible and it is a rare film that can attempt even to pull that off. Adam doing this successfully is exciting, so it’s just one of those movies that I really hope people will go see, because it does have all of those elements, especially for people that ski, immediately, but other people who are like “So I’ve never been on a ski lift, so it doesn’t really seem that scary” and I say “That’s probably true. From the trailer, that probably didn’t scare you, because you haven’t been in that situation, just sit down and see the movie.” It draws on such primal fears that you don’t need to necessarily have been stuck on a lift to be scared by this movie.
Quint: I’ve never been hanging off of Mt. Rushmore, but I can still find that scene in NORTH BY NORTHWEST scary.
Shawn Ashmore: Exactly.
Quint: I’m not a skier much either, but everybody at some point, whether it’s an amusement park or something has been on something like that, at the mercy of a machine…
Shawn Ashmore: Yeah and it’s amazing how it’s something as simple as a chairlift, a piece of technology that we take for granted that’s just going to work and all it does is a very simple task, it takes you from point A to point B and you assume that’s how it’s going to work, but all of a sudden when technology fails us and we are stranded out there, human beings in the elements, we realize how frail we are.
Even with the best gear that you can possibly put on, you can’t survive for very long in the elements, like man vs. nature. I don’t think that’s a huge theme in this film, but obviously that’s sort of the scenario and again it’s those simple little things that can go wrong and this culmination of certain circumstances that sort of lead these characters into this insane intense situation… It’s just one of those things like “This could happen. This is realistic.”
Quint: Let’s talk a little bit about how you worked with Emma Bell. You mentioned that you have known Kevin for a while, so how did she fit into your group, how did she fit into the dynamic?
Shawn Ashmore: First off, Emma is amazing in the film and she’s a great girl. I didn’t know her at all. I didn’t know her work before we started working together, so it was kind of nice, like a blank slate. It’s always nice when you haven’t seen someone’s work and you just sort of meet up and start working; there are no preconceived notions.
I always wonder when I go into stuff like I’m just going to be Bobby Drake, you know what I mean? That’s what most people know me from, X MEN stuff, and there’s a preconceived notion that that’s all you can do. I’m sure most people haven’t seen the rest of my work because they are smaller films, so it’s nice and you sort of walk in and it’s like a fresh slate with an actor, there’s no preconceived notion about what they can do or what they have done.
So that was really great with Emma and one thing that Adam Green did in the rehearsal period that I thought was really smart was he took meetings with all three of us and we rehearsed the scenes, because we were doing literally fifteen page takes, because it was on lift moving out so we could do all fifteen pages at a time, so we really drilled those and really worked on those scenes, but he also did individual meetings with us, like just me and then just Emma and then just Kevin and then Emma and I together and then Kevin and I together without Emma.
So for example when Kevin and I were doing meetings with Adam and Emma wasn’t there, we would talk about what our characters thought about Parker, her character, that wasn’t on the page, just ideas that we had, but we wouldn’t tell her, because it’s like why would you want the character to know?
Lynch is best friends with Dan and he’s being dragged on this trip sort of to get to know his girlfriend. We always played Lynch like he’s a decent guy, but this is his buddy, his bro time and he’s kind of being broken up by this girl that he doesn’t particularly like or know and his buddy has sort of detached himself from the group of friends. We had all of these stories and ideas and attitudes that I wanted to play towards Emma, but I didn’t want her to know that before we started shooting, so it was really interesting to sort of have those notions and those ideas going in and I think those scenes are very obvious. Lynch is not a fan of Parker at the beginning and then as… I don’t want to give too much of the film away, but I think you see in the trailer, Kevin’s character Dan tries to make an escape attempt, so basically it’s just Emma and I on a lift at a certain point in the film.
I don’t want to give too much away, but then these two characters are all of a sudden left alone and they have to get through this amazing situation together and it was really amazing to be up there alone with Emma working. It was literally just two people up there and emotions are so high that I think we sort of forced each other to raise the bar all of the time and I think we fed off of each other, which was great, because if you had someone up there who wasn’t giving as much as you were wanting to, it might have flattened out, but I think that every day and with every situation that arose, there was an emotional level that we played off of each other which was really nice. Yeah, I thought she was great and she was just very cool. It was nice to be up there with someone that you got along with and who was there to do the work and to bring something really cool to this film. Working with Emma was really cool.
Quint: Now I’ve always been curious about this, I am not an actor and will never be an actor, but you have a moment where you kind of unleash on Emma and I just wonder if when you nail a take that’s as mean and as horrible as that, are you happy at the end or do you feel kind of bad for directing that at somebody?
Shawn Ashmore: You know what, the way that I think about it is it’s real life, in all of us there’s that dark little spot that you basically want to try to hide from the world. Your existence is trying to hide the darkest little corners of yourself to the rest of the world and as an actor every once in a while you get the chance to find that spot and bring it to life. You can say “Well I’m just acting,” but the truth of the matter is to get as emotional and as fired up as you need to to do scenes like that, and I think I know what scene you are talking about in the fight between Emma and I on the chairlift, I dug as deep as I could.
I went as far as I was comfortable doing in public and it was emotional. It was really really difficult, but it is enjoyable in some way, you know what I mean? It’s that little dark spot, that little button that you try not to hit in real life because you know where it’s going to go, you are going to fly off the handle or be an asshole or unleash something and open up more than you are comfortable with, but ultimately there’s certain scenes with certain parts where you need to go there, so it does feel good.
I felt great about that scene when we shot it. I was crying and I was emotional and I was pissed off and all of that, but I knew that I got were I needed to go and it’s very rare for an actor, for me anyways, but I really accomplish exactly what I’m setting out to do. You always have a game plan or an idea of where you need to go or a direction that you want to take this character in a scene, but for me it’s very rare that I 100% hit that level of emotion or whatever and it’s just that sometimes you are not in the mood or you can’t find it enough. That’s why some actors are just so incredible; they just nail it every time. I’m not that guy. I’m not that actor, but every once in a while everything comes together and you really sort of nail something. With that scene, I really felt like I did exactly what I wanted to do. When I read that scene, I imagined the emotional punch that it had on the page for me and what I wanted to do with it, that I did exactly what I wanted to do. I felt great about that scene. I was also crying for 20 minutes after it…
But yeah, it is difficult, but it is enjoyable. That’s part of the job. That’s part of what’s fun about it. It’s not about sitting on set and having someone bring you coffee, it’s about doing the work. I love it and can’t imagine doing anything else and so getting the opportunity to do scenes like that and experience and create a character like that is amazing and I love it and I think that’s one of the reasons I’m so proud of this movie, that we really got to do what we love to do and Adam was a great guy to do that with. He loves his job so much and is so appreciative of where he’s at and what he’s doing that you can’t help it, it rubs off on you. You have this energy of “Oh my God, we are playing! We are having fun. We are making a movie!” That’s why FROZEN was such a great experience.
Quint: Cool man. I think that’s about all I’ve got and I don’t want to take up anymore of your afternoon.
Shawn Ashmore: No worries man. I appreciate it and again sorry for having to postpone, but I’m glad we got a chance. I read the reviews and stuff on the site after Butt-Numb-A-Thon and you guys were all very kind, so I’m glad everyone got to see it there and everyone seems to like it. Thanks for your time and hopefully we will get to speak soon.
Quint: All right, later on.
It’s always nice talking to people genuinely excited about their work and Shawn Ashmore came across as that kinda dude to me. Hope you guys dug the chat! The flick opens theatrically early next month, so keep an eye out for it!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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