One of my favorite parts of watching the films of director Jim Mickle (STAKE LAND, WE ARE WHAT WE ARE, COLD IN JULY) over the last few years has been being given the chance to really appreciate the acting (and writing) of Nick Damici, the actor who has written all of Mickle’s films since his feature debut MULBERRY ST.
Damici is usually cast in a strong supporting roles (see his work in IN THE CUT, WORLD TRADE CENTER, or PREMIUM RUSH), usually as some kind of voice of authority, and he’s always struck me as an actor poured from the same mold as some of the great character actors of the past, who are perfectly capable of doing great lead work in the right hands, but for whatever reason, their tough-guy persona has kept them playing heavies for years.
But with Spanish-born director Adrián García Bogliano’s most recent work LATE PHASES, Damici steps up front and center, as a wounded war veteran who moves into a small community of mostly older folks, where people are dying from mysterious circumstances. It’s a cool little horror movie from the director of COLD SWEAT, PENUMBRA, HERE COMES THE DEVIL, and most recently the “B is for Bigfoot” segment of original THE ABCs OF DEATH, as well as the upcoming SCHERZO DIABOLICO, which he recently shot in Mexico.
I had a chance to sit down with Damici and Bogliano at the SXSW Film Festival in March, and now that LATE PHASES is available on VOD finally, and making its way into a handful of theaters, I’m glad to finally have a chance to run this. They were a great pair, and I had a blast talking to them about the film, their influences, and what they have coming up next. Please enjoy my talk with Nick Damici and Adrián García Bogliano, and check out LATE PHASES by whatever means you have at your disposal…
Capone: Nick, was it strange being in a movie you didn’t write, especially as the lead?
Nick Damici: I’ve been in a lot of other stuff, but not recently, outside of a couple of TV things a few years ago. I just did DARK WAS THE NIGHT, which I think is finally coming out, and that I didn’t have anything to do with, I just had a bit part. But this is the first thing I’ve ever had a major part in that I didn’t write, so it’s interesting.
Capone: Do you feel like you raised your standards slightly with the roles that you pick that you don’t write, because the material you and Jim [Mickle] have done together has been such a great run. But do you feel like you’re a little more picky now?
ND: I’ve always been picky, but I’ve gotta pay my rent. If I had my druthers, I’d never do a “Law and Order” or a “CSI” or any of that. As it is, I won’t do commercials. I never did commercials or soap operas; I wouldn’t even audition for them. So, it’s nice to be falling into a realm where independent directors at least know who I am. They say, “Hey, that’s the guy from STAKE LAND. We can get him in our movie.” “Yeah, guys! I’ve been here all along!”
Capone: When you decide you’re going to enter the world of werewolves, what do you need to have in that script that we haven’t seen before? I imagine you’re not interested in taking a straight-forward approach to it. So what are you looking for?
Adrián Garcia Bogliano: The thing is, I never thought I was going to make a werewolf movie. That was never particularly something that I was interested in. There are a few werewolf movies that I like a lot, but I wasn’t particularly a fan. But I just got to read the script and to find these amazing characters I had, and this father and son relationship that I could understand, and I could understand some of the themes that the movie was talking about. There were a bunch of themes there that were very appealing to me. It was more about the themes than just playing with the toys and doing the werewolf thing and having monsters and designing things. That’s not my thing, really. I’m more interested in characters
But we needed both things to work, and in order to work, what I felt was the most important thing was the transformation scene. So that’s when I started to have the idea of doing this with very specific equipment. We did it with motion control. It was the core in terms of special effects to me—if I can sell the transformation, everything’s going to fall into place with the werewolves. But then what I was more interested in were the characters, that relationship, trying to find a son [Ethan Embry] for Nick’s character who would be not the typical poor guy that can’t stand in front of his father and say things to him. I wanted a tough guy, someone who looks tough, but at the same time has to deal with his father, who has had a hard time dealing with his father. So that was the type of things that I was really interested in finding.
Capone: You say you weren’t just interested in toys, but you figured, well, you’ve got the toys, you might as well play with them a little bit. You get Robert Kurtzman to do your makeup.
AGB: That was amazing. That was an amazing experience.
Capone: I couldn’t believe it when I saw his name on the screen. Good catch.
AGB: [laughs] Yeah, I couldn't believe it either. When I saw his name on an email that said, “We can get Robert Kurtzman,” I was like, “Who are you talking about? THE Robert Kurtzman?” And it was really weird for me. I get these meetings with special effects artists all the time. When we start referencing films like, “This should be like this. This should be like that.” And I was talking to him and I was like, “Yeah, we have this shotgun, this blood on the wall that has to be like when John Travolta gets killed in PULP FICTION.” I was like, “Wait a minute. He did that.”
Yeah, he’s amazing. I don’t know the other KNB guys, but I’ve heard great things about them. What I was really surprised about was that he’s really down to earth. He’s a very normal guy, and he’s a hard worker. He’s puppeteering and doing all this stuff, and he doesn’t have any problems to stay as long as it takes. He’s not the type of guy to that’s going to be like, “I have all this experience, so fuck you.” He’s like a kid. He still has a lot of fun doing things. He just wrote me yesterday super excited about the premiere, and asking “How did it go?” He’s a really nice guy.
Capone: Did you work with him to get a design together, because the werewolf heads are very different than I’ve seen. Talk about just narrowing down the look. What did you want to emphasize?
AGB: I wanted to emphasize something that was actually in the script. That it that these are all werewolves, and as much as they’re fierce and tough, they’re still a fragile element to them. When you see one of them at the end that is dying on the floor, you can almost feel sympathy for him, like pity.
Capone: That shot was a great parallel to seeing the dog dying earlier. That seemed like you’re saying, “Look, it’s basically like an animal dying.”
AGB: Yeah, absolutely. Those are the details that I wanted to have—missing teeth and grey hair.
Capone: There’s one with its eye that’s whited out like it has cataracts?
AGB: Yeah. That kind of thing that makes them look a bit more fragile. And even if they have this strength, it makes them a bit more even on a fight with this older guy. I was into those kind of things, and also I was very interested in not having slime for the transformation or for the werewolves. Just go with dry skin, like old skin.
Capone: It looks like molting to me, like a snake would.
AGB: It’s a lot more like that, and it proved to be really difficult. We had very intense discussions about that, and luckily Larry Fessenden stood by my side like, “No let’s try this. We’ve never seen that.” It’s not the slimy thing that we’re used to seeing. Let’s try that. It was a good thing.
Capone: I feel like in the last year or so, I’ve seen Larry pop up in movies that I didn’t know he was in.
AGB: Yeah. He was a producer on this one too. He was a huge asset for me as a filmmaker. He’s more used to working with first timers. I have a bunch of movies, but this was my first movie here in the U.S., so I was a kind of first timer. So it was great to have this father figure, taking care of you.
Capone: Your English is great, but were there issues in terms of this being your first English-language film?
AGB: Even if your English is okay to have a conversation, there are so many details of a language that is not your own, that it’s really difficult. I had to put a lot of trust on the actors. I was always trying to tell them, “If you feel like this dialogue is not working, you don’t have to tell me that. Just change it.” It’s just a force of nature. But to all the other actors, I was like, “If you don’t feel comfortable saying this, just change it.” I was lucky enough to have a great editor who’s also a director himself, Aaron Crozier, who can see certain things and say “The performance here is not working. Let’s try this other take.” He helped me a lot through that process.
Capone: In addition to the father-son relationship, there are many other things you touch on—you don’t dwell on them—things like religion, the scars of war. Talk about how you infused the main story with those elements.
AGB: I didn’t feel like it was about religion; it’s about trying to find the meaning looking back at your life and getting to a certain age where you look back to try and find a meaning to what you’ve done and how you’re going to finish your days. To me, it’s about that, the whole movie. So all these little elements are pointing in that direction. You have this guy who’s determined to finish his days with a bang, or going out in an explosive way, let’s say. And this other guy that’s opposite. He’s completely insecure, and he’s like having these huge issues, and he’s completely afraid to die.
Capone: Nick, tell me about your preparation for playing blind, and not just blind, but pissed-off blind, suicidal blind. You’re not just playing that you can’t see, you’re playing it angry.
ND: I’m a pretty angry guy, contrary to popular opinion. Just tapping into that; I actual am a pretty angry guy. I don’t like the human race. Individually, I get along with people, I’m a monkey. But whether we should of come out of the fucking jungle and started farming, I’ve got my doubts about that. If I was around then, I probably would have torn a guys head off who started growing something and said, “Are you stupid? We got it perfect here. You’re going to fuck it all up.” And now look what we’ve got. So for me, it’s very easy to be angry about those kind of things. I don’t think Ambrose was angry because he was blind. And that was one of the things, I didn’t want a character who had any self pity and neither did he. But he is a solider, and I really think that was his defining thing. A solider who can’t see is “What the fuck am I now?” And at the end, he gets this chance to say, “Wait a minute, I am a solider.”
Capone: He gives himself a mission.
ND: Exactly, exactly.
Capone: He builds up a fort, and he keeps practicing his defense strategies.
ND: He prepares and he saddles up and goes to war again. To me, it’s a Viking thing, it’s an American-Indian thing. “It’s a good day to die, man. I’m not going to sit around this fucking nursing home with all these old fuckers.” So there’s a big part of that in him, and I think that plays through strongly in the script itself. Eric [Stolze, screenwriter] did a great job about honing this character. He was very clear on the page to me.
Capone: Eric seems pretty young to really capture these older characters.
AGB: Yeah, he’s a really talented writer. You can see through the script and the way it’s written. He’s a great, great, writer.
Capone: What’s funny to me is that you set a monster loose in a retirement community, it’s like killing fish in a barrel. Because you know going in that it’s going to be a bloody mess, because you know pretty much everybody is going to die. Was that fun to play with?
AGB: But that was, to me, the point of connection I made, with BUBBA HO-TEP. I didn’t want to play it like, they’re all by themselves and nobody gives a shit about them. It’s not like that. You see their sons worrying, but at the same time having their own lives, and doing something. It’s not like they’re assholes that just dump their dads somewhere. But at the same time, there’s nobody here to protect us or to help us or to do anything about it. That’s a point in common with BUBBA HO-TEP, which is a film that I love. We never wanted to play it with the comedic elements that BUBBA HO-TEP has, but what I did want specifically is to capture the soul that that movie has. There's a lot of fun, and you see Bruce Campbell doing this crazy stuff, but when the movie finishes, I was so thrilled and overwhelmed by emotionsIt’s a very emotional movie. And I wanted to try to go that direction.
Capone: Aside from the makeup and the special effects, were there things about just classic werewolf film lore that you wanted to either embrace or reject?
AGB: Besides the transformation, no I can’t think on anything very specific that I was making reference to.
Capone: Silver bullets are still around?
AGB: Ah yes. And SILVER BULLET, the movie itself, during the preparation for this, it was a big influence for me. I would have even liked to have that scene from SILVER BULLET when they’re preparing bullets. That’s such a beautiful thing.
Capone: I love that Nick’s character, after just one or maybe two attacks, immediately concludes it’s a werewolf problem.
AGB: You know what? We discussed that.
Capone: It almost made me feel like maybe he’d had some experience with this before.
AGB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was in the air, that idea. Somebody mentioned that. But to me it was like, fuck it. It’s a movie. There's just so much time that the audience can be ahead of the character before they start to get bored, and if you cross that line, it’s like “Hey, asshole. These are werewolves.” And I didn't want to get to that point.
Capone: There are horror movies that spend like half the movie in denial about what some great evil obviously is.
AGB: Yeah exactly, and it’s like, okay. We’ve all seen zombie films. You have to shoot the fucker in the head. We all know that. Until they realize like 45 minutes in, “Oh, we have to shoot them in the head to kill the zombies. Oh, we need silver bullets for the werewolves.” I didn't want to spend that time doing that. We know it’s a werewolf, so we can be ahead of the lead character like 10 minutes, then he has to catch up. Otherwise, it’s so fucking boring.
Capone: I thought it was genius, because you made Nick look older than he actually does, and you somehow imply that maybe he had some history with werewolves. Then you’re next movie is a prequel: WEREWOLVES IN VIETNAM, when you were younger.
AGB: Yeah, many people have told me that. Yeah, they have the impression that maybe it was something like that.
Capone: I’ve got to talk about Ethan Embry, because he’s amazing here. He’s having this revival now that I love. Have you seen CHEAP THRILLS?
AGB: I saw CHEAP THRILLS. I saw it after we cast him. I know that some people said, “Now that CHEAP THRILLS is successful, you’re casting him.” That’s fine. But I loved CHIEF THRILLS when I saw it at Fantastic Fest, but we already shot our film by that time. But to me, Ethan is one of the best actors of his generation, and I love him for his performance on Don Coscarelli’s “Incident on and Off a Mountain Road” [part of the original “Masters of Horror” series]. He was like one of my top names.“I want this guy.” He’s so awesome. At the same time, we had discussions with the producers because of that, because on paper, you could read his son’s character as a weak guy that can’t say anything to his father because he’s so weak, and I said, “No. I don’t want that. I don’t want that type of actor, someone who can play that way. I want somebody who can go in a physical fight with his father and can have a chance to win.” But he will not do that. He respects his father. They’ve got this very tense relationship.
Capone: But he’s also trying not to be that son that, like you said, just dumps the father in a retirement home. He’s trying to keep up the relationship and to visit. Talk about just working with him, because those scenes are so uncomfortable to watch you just want to look away; it feels way too personal.
ND: Ethan and I, we just got along from the get-go. He’s a very personable guy. He knew the script inside out, and we talked a lot. We had a lot of time together, a lot of scenes sitting in the car waiting for stuff. So I got to know him really well. I had a father, he had a father, so it wasn’t a far stretch to know what it was and to play it. He did a terrific job of being that and not being the asshole. Because in the script, he did seem like a bit of an asshole, on the page. And I was always concerned about that and so was Ethan, obviously. So he said to me, “I was thinking of playing this where he isn’t as much of an asshole.” I said, “You shouldn’t be an asshole; I’m the asshole. You can’t have two assholes.”
AGB: That wasn’t the idea, but a lot of people did perceive it that way in the script. Like, yeah this guy’s an asshole. It was like, okay, let’s try to change that, because that’s definitely not the idea.
Capone: The last thing I wanted to ask is do you have anything lined up next?
AGB: I’m working on a new project, but we’re still early in the process.
Capone: Do you think it will be in English again?
AGB: Yeah, the idea is making it in English, but probably shoot it in Mexico this time. That’s the idea. [Bogliano is currently shooting SCHERZO DIABOLICO in Mexico in Spanish.]
Capone: Nick, are you and Jim doing some sort of TV series based on material by the same author as COLD IN JULY?
ND: We’re in early talks. I was interviewed for this movie, he’s a young reporter, he was putting his coat on because it was over, and he asked me what I was doing next, and I stupidly said something about that, but I didn’t say what he wrote. I said we’re talking to people, and I mentioned the names, and he printed it as if we were announcing it. So I got in a lot of trouble for that. I have to be careful. [The series in question is the Sundance Channel’s “Hap and Leonard,” based on the book series by COLD IN JULY author Joe Lansdale. It was recently confirmed that the channel had ordered the six-episode series, which will be co-written by Mickle and Damici, and directed by Mickle, which will be shot in 2015 and air in 2016.]
Capone: Right, that’s what I read.
ND: Yeah, he did two articles. Did a whole article on announcing that me and Jim were doing this thing. It had nothing to do with the reason he was there for the interview, of course. I’m a little ticked off.
Capone: That’s how they get you, man. They make you think that it’s over. That’s how I do it.
ND: [laughs] I’ve been veryy lucky with press. I’m a pretty generous guy that way. And then he got me with the Oscar thing.
Capone: What did he ask?
ND: He’s going out the door and he turned to me and said, “Oh, did you watch the Oscars?” You can’t ask me if I watched the Oscars. I hate the fucking Oscars. I went off on the Oscars—spoiled sons of bitches.
[Everybody laughs]
AGB: That was the headline, right?
ND: Yeah. But at least I did say “brilliant actors.” These fucking actors. What are they, fucking saving the world? Get up and pat each other on the back for fucking playing like kids. I’m including myself Spoiled fucking actors. Brilliant actors, but spoiled fucking actors. He printed that.
Capone: I did see that section.
ND: I’m going to get the rep as being the old fucking sour grapes guy. I think it’s funny.
Capone: It is funny. You’ll get more work because of it, I bet.
ND: I hope [the Sundance project] works out. It’s got a good shot, but we’ll see. It’s very early. Capone: Well guys, thank you so much. Great to finally meet you.
