Fran Kranz already has a nice bit of history with Joss Whedon. After landing the role of Topher on the Fox series DOLLHOUSE, which Whedon created, he eventually became involved with THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, where he'd fill the stoner archetype of Marty. He also recently finished shooting on another Whedon project, the modern retelling of MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, where Kranz has the role of Claudio.
However, Kranz has lived life outside of the Whedon-verse as well, having parts in THE VILLAGE, MATCHSTICK MEN, ORANGE COUNTRY, TRANING DAY, DONNIE DARKO and DIARY OF A WIMPY KID 2 under his belt. He starred in the short-lived John Hamburg CBS series WELCOME TO THE CAPTAIN, opposite Jeffrey Tambor, while also having credits on IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA, PRIVATE PRACTICE and FRASIER notched in his belt.
In THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, Kranz is easily the standout of the kids heading into harm's way. There's an intelligence written into his riff on the group's fool with his sloppy looks deceiving you as to how sharp he really is. You hope moving forward Kranz isn't typecast into such a role for the rest of his career, but, for THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, he's really damn good at it.
I got to speak with Fran Kranz a couple of weeks ago about the film, and, for this discussion, we went into a bit more spoilerish territory, examining some of the themes at play in Drew Goddard's picture. We also talk a bit about DOLLHOUSE's failure to find an audience, his connection with Joss Whedon and CABIN's place in the realm of horror. If you don't want to know anything about CABIN and prefer to go in fresh, you might want to hold off on reading this one until after you catch the film this weekend. Otherwise, proceed with caution. Enjoy...
Fran Kranz: Hello.
The Infamous Billy The Kidd: Hey, Fran, how are you?
Fran Kranz: Good. How are you doing?
The Kidd: I’m doing alright. How are you this afternoon?
Fran Kranz: I’m great. Yeah, I’m in D.C. It’s a beautiful day. It’s nice to be here.
The Kidd: Let me start off by asking you a little bit about DOLLHOUSE since that’s kind of where your history with Joss Whedon started. With the serious only really lasting like two seasons and there was kind of a lot of fan interest going into it, did Fox just kind of not get what to do with the show for it’s end result?
Fran Kranz: You know, I don’t know. I can’t totally blame Fox. I mean granted they are the network and they are going to be the ones to cancel it, I just don’t think it ever found a wide enough audience for the network realistically that could keep the show on the air. I mean obviously we had Joss’s fans, but I think these days to be a major network it needs more than just the following that Joss had. I think they were looking for that to break out into a wider audience and a wider market. Unfortunately the show just didn’t do that. I thought it was a really original, intelligent, and creative show and it was so much fun to work on it, but I think Friday night is tough. I think some of the themes were tough. I don’t know if science fiction is always going to get the widest audience. I think there was a lot of niche audiences and markets that it was aimed at and unfortunately we just couldn’t coalesce into a short of prouder market, but I loved the show and I still stand by it. I don’t know if every episode necessarily was focused on the most interesting aspects of what the show was capable of, but you know you have to build the world and we took it at our own pace and we didn’t act like we were going to be cancelled at any moment, so we were sort of enjoying elaborating on the world at our own pace and maybe people didn’t quite catch on to it as quickly as we would have hoped. Maybe we didn’t peak people’s interests in time, but it’s hard to blame Fox and say, “No, Fox didn’t get it.” I can’t say that. I think Fox is the network that gave it the chance and in a way I’m very thankful for Fox for letting us finish the two seasons, you know?
The Kidd: Well DOLLHOUSE and CABIN kind of happened right around the same time, so was it your work on DOLLHOUSE and Joss’s familiarity with you that led you to get the role of Marty?
Fran Kranz: Yeah, I mean Joss told me eventually there was a day on set on the DOLLHOUSE set where Drew Goddard, the director of CABIN IN THE WOODS came to the set to discuss possible locations for CABIN IN THE WOODS and I was working that day and I came over and I saw these photos that Drew had of these three different lakes and one was where they filmed the original FRIDAY THE 13th and I’m a big horror film fan, so I kind of geeked out and said how cool that was. I thought it was so cool that they were talking about filming there and I just thought was a part of history and I said “You guys have got to film it there” and at that time I didn’t even know there was a role for me. I didn’t know anything about the movie. I knew it was called CABIN IN THE WOODS, but I knew Joss well enough to know that it’s probably a little different than that and probably not what it sounds like and also I knew Drew did CLOVERFEILD, so I knew this movie is probably more than what it’s themed, so I didn’t really expect that there was anything in it for me, but much later when we were filming Joss told me that he had Drew come that day specifically because I was filming and he wanted Drew to see me and so I actually really lucked out just being a horror film fan myself and coming over there and showing my interest in their project and horror films in general and just knowing that history about FRIDAY THE 13th and getting so excited. I think Drew may have seen in me a kind of kindred spirit and was that much more eager to work with me knowing that I was someone passionate about the genre and would enjoy working on something like that, so yeah I’m very thankful to Joss that he clearly had me in mind for the role early on. Then he stayed out of it. When I got my audition I don’t even know if Joss knew about it, I just got an email from my agent about an audition for CABIN IN THE WOODS and I had never even spoken to Joss about it. So for me it was kind of awkward. I felt like it was the elephant in the room, because I’d go to work each day and see Joss, but not know how to broach the subject. Eventually I did go out for it just for a casting director and then one day he broke the ice and said, “Hey, you did a really great job in the audition. I want you to read for Drew.” Then after I read for Drew I think Drew got excited about me and then Joss gave me the script and then we got together the three of us, Joss, Drew, and I and sat down and made a tape and at that point I knew they were on my side, so it was a comfortable experience. They were just trying to make the best tape possible to show the studio and then take it from there. I think my time with Joss was everything for me in getting this role. I think he believed I could play it and Topher and Marty are obviously very different, but there’s a sort of wit (Laughs) and I guess a pursuit of question things that’s sort of fundamental to both characters and maybe he saw some connection there or maybe he just thought I was stoned all the time and thought I could do with that too. I’m not sure.
The Kidd: Well Marty really is this transcendent role for stoners, because typically the stoner in not just a horror film, but any type of… even in comedy they are the slacker, the burnout and they are not as sharp or as quick as everybody else mostly due to the amount of weed they smoke, but Marty in CABIN is probably the smartest of the bunch and it might actually be because of all of the weed that he smokes. So how much fun goes into playing a character like this where you are still playing on this certain archetype, but he still really isn’t like all of the other stoners that have come before him.
Fran Kranz: Yeah... no, and I’m glad you use the word “archetype,” because I think that’s right. I think he is an archetype. He’s a character we have seen before, but he’s not stereotyped. He gets to play against a lot of the stereotypes of that archetype and I think that does make sense, right? (Laughs) I think I can distinguish those two words. I think it is a lot of fun. I did worry at times that I was getting a little over the top or cartoonish and that my portrayal of my character might not have been in sync with the other actors’ performances, but then I went to Joss and he was excited about that. I said “Am I acting like a cartoon?” and he said, “Yeah!” and he was excited about it, so I continued to go in that direction, because I felt like Marty was sort of the wild card. You know, he was the fifth wheel and he was the slacker and the stoner and in most horror films you’d think he’d be either the first or second to die, but Marty is more than meets the eye, so I felt like I could play into that knowing that it had places to go and knowing that it wasn’t all that he appeared to be and like you said he is sort of a transcendent stoner and so I thought it was okay to sort of play into the cartoony kind of aspects of the role and play into some of the stereotypes with having the actual language and his actions play against it so he could eventually break out of what people’s preconceived ideas of what the stoner is going to be. At the end of the day it was just a lot of fun. I mean I got to do some very silly stuff and Drew encouraged a lot of improv and we did a lot of stuff. We shot a lot of just fun little scenes that most of which wont make the movie, but you know we just had a lot of fun with the character and we felt like there was never… We couldn’t be afraid of going too far, that we could leave that up to the guys in the editing room, but that on set it was okay to have Marty do some pretty outlandish things and so it was a lot of fun. It was a dream role. When I read the script I couldn’t believe how lucky I was or potentially could be if I got it. I got to read the script before I actually got the offer and so in many ways it was kind of painful, because I knew if I didn’t get the part it would probably something in my head for the rest of my life as that kind of role that got away from me.
The Kidd: Beyond the comedy and horror elements there’s this genuine social commentary aspect to CABIN that Marty is right at the center of. The first is kind of this fascination with the viewing and recording of everything that’s kind of like where we are at today in terms of our entertainment and whatnot where everything is kind of reality TV based and watching the misfortune of others. Then beyond that there’s also this kind of idea that the only way for society to really atone for their mistakes and their missteps is to kind of destroy ourselves. Was that something that you picked out in the script? This kind of subtle message that was in there that you could take away as part of one of the many, many layers of the film?
Fran Kranz: Yeah, I mean I guess so. I think that that’s funny. I mean there’s that idea that the way to fix things is just this extreme purge. I think Marty says that early on in the script in the road truck. I think that might be what you are referring to, that society needs to crumble, “We’re just too chicken shit to let it.” And this idea of a clean slate, because things have gotten so out of control in one or multiple directions that you really need to hit like a reset button and to go back to basics. That’s sort of Marty’s enthusiasm about going out in the woods and “getting off the grid,” which is exactly the opposite of what they are doing, they are going right into the heart of being monitored and all of the surveillance, but obviously they don’t know that. I think that is definitely a major theme of the movie and it’s kind of nice. I think Joss and Drew, when you think about where horror films were going, you know they didn’t like the direction they were going and they said that, that they didn’t like the sort of torture porn or the SAW franchises or this kind of violence for violence sake. The whole CABIN IN THE WOODS idea does feel like a very sort of pure form of horror film and you think of classic horror films like EVIL DEAD or the FRIDAY THE 13th and granted this movie really shakes up that convention and that storyline and gives you all of this whole new different way of looking at it, but it does sort of revert back to I think a more pure type of horror film making. There’s a certain sense of nostalgia to the movie I think and so I think that parallels the social commentary of “Look where we are now with reality TV and being entertained by the misfortune of others and the monitoring of everything, of our children and what they are watching,” a sense of “Let’s just wipe the slate clean and start from a more pure place” and there’s something beautiful about that. It’s obviously pretty macabre, the message, especially this sort of hatred and envy of young people and enjoying watching them get tortured and killed, but I think the movie is so entertaining. My job as an actor, I focus on the role and I think the final product is so much fun. I think it’s so entertaining that it’s hard for me to ever take it too seriously as social commentary. I think Joss and Drew could probably speak to that better than I could, but I do think the movie is just a lot of fun at the end the end of the day. Certainly those things are in it, but I think it’s so enjoyable that hopefully people just remember how fun movies can be.
The Kidd: I agree. It was one of the things that I just kind of picked up in watching it and I talked with Kirsten earlier and the movie, for me, played more as a comedy with horror elements to it as opposed to a straight up horror film.
Fran Kranz: That’s cool. Yeah, that’s cool. Someone referenced GHOSTBUSTERS and I love that comparison. I think a lot of people think of SCREAM, a horror film that’s sort of aware of the horror film tropes, but I love the idea because it is so funny. It’s one of those things like if you are in a video store, I guess they don’t exist anymore, but I guess you’re going to find this under the “horror film” section, but it’s true, it certainly does belong in the comedy section and it is just kind of a great action movie. It’s just all over the place. It’s a lot of fun and so you know that’s great. Some people immediately wont see horror films, because they just say “I don’t like horror films” and I really hope that this movie sort of breaks through that and gets to people despite what they think of themselves and their history with horror films gets those people into the theater, I would be really happy.
The Kidd: Yeah, it’s not a traditional horror film by any means. It is probably one of the more different approaches that I’ve seen with horror and I love the film and everyone that I know who has seen it has really loved the film as well. It is fun to watch it with a crowd of people, like I’m anticipating being able to watch it with a large group of people. I think if you get it, it makes for a good communal experience.
Fran Kranz: Yeah. I know, I finally got to see it with an audience and it was so gratifying. It was so great and so much fun. I mean people were cheering. I couldn’t believe it. Before that I had only seen it with one other actor in the room and you know it was s totally different experience. Exactly, I think this is just a great example of how much fun the movies can be in the theater experience, that joy and excitement that you going into the room with a bunch of people you don’t know with the lights off and watching something just completely out there and crazy and entertaining. I think it’s great. I’m pretty confident that that reaction will be out there and will be pretty common, I hope so certainly.
The Kidd: All right, well thank you very much for talking with me today.
Fran Kranz: Thanks a lot. Thank you.
The Kidd: All right, I appreciate it.
Fran Kranz: All right, I’ll talk to you… Bye.
The Kidd: Bye.
THE CABIN IN THE WOODS opens this Friday, April 13.
-Billy Donnelly
"The Infamous Billy The Kidd"
Follow me on Twitter.
