Capone wonders what it's like to be the one normal dude in an office full of maniacs, with THE BELKO EXPERIMENT's John Gallagher Jr.!!!

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

Actor John Gallagher Jr. has been a busy man over the last 10 years or so, on stage, on television and, with growing regularity, on the big screen. After winning a Tony Award for his role in the musical “Spring Awakening” and being one of the stars of the original cast of the Green Day musical “American Idiot,” Gallagher made appearances in such films as MARGARET, SHORT TERM 12, and THE HEART MACHINE, as well as in the Aaron Sorkin-created HBO series “The Newsroom” and the HBO miniseries “Olive Kitteridge.”

But in the last year, Gallagher has made starred in three quite memorable genre works: as the would-be masked killer in HUSH, as one of three parties trapped in a bomb shelter in 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE, and his current release as an American working for a soulless and manipulative corporation in THE BELKO EXPERIMENT, which was written by James Gunn and directed by Greg McLean (WOLF CREEK). And sometime between making those films and today, he also went back to Broadway to co-star in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” with Jessica Lange, Gabriel Byrne, and Michael Shannon. In other words, the man never rests. I had a chance to speak to Gallagher recently via phone about BELKO and his other recent projects, and he was absolutely one of the nicest and easiest people I’ve ever interviewed. Please enjoy my talk with John Gallagher Jr.…





John Gallagher Jr: Hello, Steve?

Capone: Hi, John. How are you?

JGJ: Hey. Good, how are you doing?

Capone: Good. It occurred to me that since we first met a few years ago at SXSW when you were there with THE HEART MACHINE, you’ve made these three really fantastic genre films.

JGJ: Yeah, it totally came out of nowhere. It was really funny. I’ve always aspired to do more genre-oriented movies, but they had never really come my way before, and then it just happened very randomly that three of them came my way back to back.

Capone: I was going to ask you if horror and science fiction were a big part of your life growing up?

JGJ: Absolutely, yeah. When I was a kid, around the same time I saw the original TERMINATOR, I saw ROBOCOP—I saw an edited-for-TV version of ROBOCOP because it’s extremely violent—and it blew my mind, and it totally captured my imagination. And a few years later, I saw ALIENS, then I went back and watched ALIEN and I saw ALIEN 3. I always really loved sci-fi, action, horror, thrillers. some of my favorites are ones that end up being…it’s hard to say because I really love campy, b-movies, and I also love high-concept science-fiction movies. I have an affinity for all of it. I’ve always wanted to do more of them. I’ve always wanted to do that style of acting, but it just never came my way. It wasn’t like I said to my agent, “Find me the science fiction/horror scripts.” It happened very randomly. The first one was 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE. I shot that, then I shot this movie HUSH.

Capone: I love HUSH.

JGJ: Thank you. I think [director] Mike Flanagan is a tremendous filmmaker. I feel like he’s carving out such a name for himself already at a young age as being one of the stalwarts that we have now of this new generation of horror and genre filmmakers. He’s a great guy too. It was a pleasure working with him. All of these experiences have been great. Working with JJ Abrams and Dan Trachtenberg on CLOVERFIELD LAND and working with Mike and his wife Kate on HUSH, and now working with guys like Greg McLean and James Gunn has been so huge on [THE BELKO EXPERIMENT]. So I feel really, really lucky that I stumbled upon these three really great, high-concept genre scripts in a row, and they were so much fun to make, and I’m so happy that they’re being given the chance to get out and find an audience.

Capone: I interviewed Mike for HUSH last year, and it’s clear from HUSH and the OUIJA prequel that he’s the real deal. I said to him “As much as I believe an artist should grow and explore different areas, don’t leave horror just yet. Make a couple more really great horror films, then go and branch out.”

JGJ: [laughs] I’m totally with you. He’s one of those guys I feel like he’ll stick with horror as long as he can, because it really is his passion. He’s just one of the nicest guys too, isn’t he? He’s just so cool and down to earth, and he works so hard. We did HUSH really rock and roll, down and dirty. We shot that really quickly, and just went for it. He’s just so enthusiastic. That’s a contagious energy. James Gunn is the same way. He has that energy, that enthusiasm, and it just starts with him and it trickles down through the whole production.

Capone: So how did you get involved in BELKO? Did this just land on your desk?



JGJ: Yeah. It totally landed on my desk. The funny thing is, a few years ago I went and auditioned for James for GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, in like 2012? I think it was 2012. You have these moments as an actor where you absolutely know you’re not going to get it. It’s just not going to go that way. Not to belittle myself or have a deep insecurity, although I have those as well, but I got the sides for GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, VOL. 1 and I saw that it was “Peter Quill/Star-Lord,” and I wasn’t really familiar with the comics, so I did some Googling, and I was like “I’m not going to get cast as the lead of this Marvel movie,” but I saw that James was writing and directing it, and I had been a fan of his going all the way back to the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake [which Gunn wrote] in 2004. So I was well aware of who he was and I loved SLITHER. I love his mixture of horror and comedy

So I wrote my agent back and said, “Look, I’m never going to get the lead in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, but I really would love to go try out for James Gunn just to meet him. Is he going to be in the room?” And they said, “Yeah, he’s going to be in the room.” So I said, “I’ll do it. I’ll go.” So I went in knowing full well that I wasn’t going to get it. I just went in and gave it my best shot at the audition, and he was so nice, really complementary, and totally unbeknownst to me, I guess I made some sort of impression on him. He really liked that audition. I had stayed in his mind, and he someday wanted to find something for us to do together. So lo and behold, I get this script sent to me in the spring of 2015, and it was a James Gunn script, and they sent a little note to my agents like, “We really love John and have been a fan of his. Would he read this script?” I read it, and it’s insane. It’s absolutely bonkers. It’s so wild and violent, but he’s such a fantastic writer that I couldn’t put it down. I thought it was such a great ensemble-driven piece with so many great characters, and it takes these unexpected turns.

Then I Skyped with Greg McClean, and I was like, “Yeah, this is really interesting.” And he said, “It’s a crazy script, but we want to treat it real. We want to make sure the acting and the approach we use is like very serious. We don’t want it just be just a schlocky horror/midnight movie,” which it also functions well as, but thankfully they put people in it that I think bring it down to a grounded, realistic level at the same time. And then I totally thought that I was going to have to do more auditions and fight for the part more, and then randomly they just ended up offering it to me, and so I was like “Absolutely I’ll totally do it.” It was just a funny happenstance turn of events that connected me to James.

So whenever I’m feeling blue and down about career stuff, which happens every once in while—you can’t help but get frustrated for one thing or another—I always remember that you never know where it’s going, and you never know who you’re going to meet that’s going to remember you a few years down the line. I really have James to thank for bringing me in to this movie. I wouldn’t have been involved without his input and without his desire to work with me, and it was a great experience getting to work with him finally.

Capone: Correct me if I’m wrong, but one thing I noticed about your character—and this is in a long tradition of guys that office nerds who snap—is you’re the only one with a short-sleeve dress shirt on. And I’m thinking “It’s like Shaun in SHAUN OF THE DEAD or Michael Douglass in FALLING DOWN. Is that on purpose? Is that a statement about your character, that he’s the only one that’s dressed comfortably for the weather in Colombia?

JGJ: [laughs] I know. That’s so funny that you noticed that, because I went in for my costume fitting and they’re like, “We’re thinking we want to put you in short-sleeve dress shirt,” and I had the exact same first thought. I thought very specifically of those two characters that you have. By the end of SHAUN OF THE DEAD, it’s the same type of thing. He’s completely covered in blood, still got the tie and the short-sleeve shirt on. I think what they were going for in this one was the sense that he’s not a tough guy. He’s a Poindexter—very basic mid-management, not a lot of authority, not a lot of responsibility, but he’s a good guy who shows up to work and takes it seriously and gets the job done, and the irony is that he’s forced into this life-or-death situation that he’s totally ill-equipped to deal with. And there’s something about that outfit that he wears that tells you all you need to know. This guy is not cut out for this type of thing at all.

Capone: From an acting perspective, I can’t imagine shooting this out of sequence, because every single character has a very specific and different progression emotionally and physically. Did you have to keep very close track of where your character was supposed to be in that respect at any given moment?



JGJ: Totally. You hit on something, which is that the continuity becomes the most frustrating part. You’re “Wait a minute, have I been hit in the head yet in that scene? How many times did I get whacked in that last one? Did I fall down the stairs yet?”—just keeping track of that stuff. We had a big master board on set. We had these easels that had poster board, and it really went 1 to like 120 or something, and it was all the scenes and everything that happened in them written out in a very easy-to-read way, so you could always go back to that board and be like “So here we are. We’re at number 19 today, so I can look back from like 15 to 18 and see what has just happened and what is about to happen.” So that was really helpful. The screenplay itself isn’t that long, but the shot list was crazy. And the amount of characters that you have to keep tabs on, because it’s such a giant ensemble, it was really helpful to have that board because we could always come back to that if we found ourselves getting lost.

Capone: What I love about the film is it’s a sea of faces, and I know who a lot of them are, but I’m guessing most people are going to look and say “I recognize all these people, and I know almost none of their names.” They’re these great character actors. The one I was most impressed with was Rusty Schwimmer; she’s in 100-plus TV shows and movies, and everyone has seen her, and no one knows her name. Was that cool to have that giant group of some of the best character actors around?

JGJ: It was awesome. It was amazing. I’m such a movie nerd and I’m such fans of these people, so being on a set with them was at times surreal. You look around and you’re like “Oh my god, there’s everybody.” And I’ll say this: they couldn’t be cooler. There’s no ego, no diva behavior, all these people are hardcore actors. They live to act. They live to work, and they love it. You look around in the room and you’re like “Holy fuck, there’s John C. McGinley. I’ve been watching him for years and he’s in PLATOON and WALL STREET and all these movies I love. And there’s Michael Rooker standing right next to him, and there’s Rusty Schwimmer, and there’s Brent Sexton, and there’s Tony Goldwyn.” It totally blows your mind to be in that environment, and the icing on the cake is they’re all amazing people on top of it, which is all that we really want is for our heroes to be decent people, and this was like a dream experience to see how cool everybody was and how great they are at their jobs. It’s really inspiring.

Capone: So you actually shot this in Colombia, which is funny because so much of it takes place inside…

JGJ: I know! We could have shot it anywhere.

Capone: Did being in a foreign country and having this giant group of Americans together but so detached and isolated feed into the tension of the film? At one point, you even make mention of it in the movie, something about “It never made sense why we had to move here.”

JGJ: Yeah, “Why did they take us out here?” Exactly. I think James says in these interviews that people ask, “Why Columbia?”, he says, “I wanted to go there. I wanted to shoot the movie there.” And there’s some truth to that, I think. I had an idea in my head—a very limited small-scope vision—of remembering some of the history from the ’80s and ’90s and some of the struggles with drugs and crime going on there. So I was apprehensive when I first heard it was going to be shot there, but then I started asking around and doing some research, and I have some friends that visited, people that had gone on vacations there and stayed there, and people said “No, it’s really great, it’s really warm, it’s really welcoming, and we had a great time.”



You’re totally right, I think that some of that does feed into the movie, because we definitely bonded. We were strangers in a strange land and we really stuck together. We all lived within the same couple of blocks from each other. We were spread out from a couple different hotels, but we all went out all the time. Whenever there was a free night, somebody would arrange a dinner. You fight off the homesickness when you’re working on a movie together like this in a far away place, because you want to be around like-minded people and keep each other company.

I think that’s what’s great about movies wether you're aware of it or not, the environment does follow you on screen. It gets captured and trickles down into the actual film. I’m sure there’s something about being there and working with the great crew that they had there and just being on an adventure. It makes you a little bit more fearless, or you just go for it a little bit more. You drum up your courage and say, “I’m just going to take this ride and go shoot this movie in a place I’ve never been, and we’re going to take these chances, and it’s a really wild movie.” So I feel like Colombia is in there. It’s in the heart of this movie, even though we shot so much of it inside, you would never know. But it’s in there, yeah.

Capone: Who was the toughest to go toe-to-toe with in the last couple of years: Tony Goldwyn [in THE BELKO EXPERIMENT], John Goodman [in 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE], or Kate Siegel [in HUSH]?

JGJ: [laughs] Oh well, they all totally kick ass. They’re all such bad asses, but John Goodman, he’s in a class of his own. He’s such a presence, he’s such a force, he’s such a dynamo. That was scary, when he was going after me in CLOVERFIELD. Oh my god, those days on set were really intense. And the irony is that he’s the sweetest guy. He’s an absolute gentleman. He’s one of the nicest people. And all of these people, actually. I’ve been really blessed. I’ve worked with incredibly gifted and very, very sweet tender-hearted people, and they all kicked my ass. [laughs] As you can see.

Capone: There was a real push just before the Oscar nominations to get Goodman a Best Supporting Actor nomination for that role, and I agree with that sentiment.

JGJ: Oh man, yeah. I was hoping he would get a nomination because I thought he was so great in it, but it was cool to see everybody rally around him in that part. That was really cool to watch.

Capone: After you made these three films, if I’m looking at the chronology correctly, you raced back to Broadway just until fairly recently. Is that the palate cleanser to make you feel like an adult again?

JGJ: Totally. And also a little bit of a challenge, like “Do I still remember how to do this?” Because it’s such a different approach to acting. Speaking of Chicago, the great Michael Shannon played my brother on Broadway in [“Long Day’s Journey Into Night”], and that was incredible to be on the stage with him, but yeah it’s a challenge. It is a palate cleanser. It is a refresher course. I just love that play. It’s my favorite play ever written, so the fact that they asked me to do that, I just leapt at the opportunity. It was terrifying sometimes to the point of my being comatose on stage, but it was also one of the best experiences that I’ve ever had as an actor, working on that play. I love to do both. I like to go back and forth between both because they’re so different.

Capone: BELKO is a film that’s designed to make people feel very uncomfortable—as much as it’s batshit crazy and fun and bloody, it’s also going to make a lot of people very uneasy with some of the moral decisions and behavior. Is it a home run as far as you’re concerned if you hear about a few people maybe getting so bothered by it that they walk out.?

JGJ: I think what’s great about it is there’s something very bold about making a movie that’s not easy, and it isn’t easy; it’s very messy. It quite literally devolves into this bloody mess, but that has a larger impact and larger connotations. It’s a difficult situation without an easy answer. So much of the movie is about right verses wrong, but at the end, wrong becomes right. It becomes totally upside down and discombobulating, and I think that it’s only natural that some people are going to go “Whoa, this is so intense I don’t even know if I can handle it,” because it’s very much like the way the characters respond. But I think that any time you reach people in that kind of visceral way, it’s a great thing because it does mean there’s really something powerful about the thing that you made, and that’s ultimately what we’re all trying to do, I think.

Capone: John, great talking to you again.

JGJ: You too. I look forward to doing it again. Take care.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter