30 Days of Night Cast Interviews
The cast of Columbia Pictures' vampire movie 30 Days of Night showed up to work the faux blood-spattered red carpet at the film's Hollywood premiere. Check out what the stars had to say about working at night around actors made up as vampires.
Transcript: 30 Days of Night Cast Interviews
Rebecca Murray from About.com Hollywood Movies at the Hollywood premiere of 30 Days of Night.
Josh Hartnett ('Eben Oleson')
Josh Hartnett: "There's been a lot of film made about vampires but I don't think anything with this, I think, pool of artists involved. David Slade is a really wonderful new director. Sam Raimi is obviously great at this genre and others. And I just in general thought it was going to be a really interesting film. I don't really…it's never really been a prerequisite of mine to choose by genre. I always choose kind of based on whether or not the film's going to be any good. I think this one turned out really well."
Mark Rendall ('Jake Oleson')
Mark Rendall: "I remember like hearing weird noises in the woods late at night. My mind would be playing tricks on me because I was so deprived of sleep. I would think it was like werewolves or something like that, in the New Zealand bush. I was like, 'Oh god, what's going on?'"
Did anything really strange happen? You always hear on horror movies that things really bizarre happen on the set.
Mark Rendall: "I don't know. Other than like Mark Boone slipping on a pool of blood, seeing vampires eating salad at lunch. That was a bit weird. That is surreal. But no, nothing like really creepy. No swarms of bats or anything like that."
Mark Boone Junior ('Beau Brower')
What made David Slade the right guy to tackle a vampire movie?
Mark Boone Junior: "Maybe because…Oh no, I can't say that. You know, I don't know. I think he's stretching for something. I hope it came across in the movie. It does."
It's a very specific look.
Mark Boone Junior: "Oh, it's definitely a specific look. I mean, these people… Do you know why it was? It's all shot in like a focal length of two inches. So in a movie camera that means there's no iris there, you've got to move that. So the guys that were doing that, they were working. You move like this and they're like, 'Whoa! Whoa!' Working really hard, and that's why it's like right in your face."
Andrew Stehlin ('Arvin')
How do you get in the mindset of playing a vampire? How do you wrap your mind around that character?
Andrew Stehlin: "Well David Slade has a big influence on that. He sort of like gives you the basics of how he wants you to act and then you put your own feeling into it, you know?"
Director David Slade shows up to tackle/hug Stehlin.
David Slade: "Sorry to interrupt your interview. This man is a star, an absolute star. He's one of the stars of the film. You'll see a lot of him."
High praise.
Andrew Stehlin: "He's a wonderful man."
Manu Bennett ('Billy Kitka')
Tell me about working on this film and specifically about filming at night over the course of 33 days.
Manu Bennett: "Yeah, I mean, the film's called 30 Days of Night and as soon as you hear that a film is called that, you know there's going to be a lot of night shoots. We shot for a few weeks in the snow, shooting some of the opening scenes. And then we went through a very long period of night shoots. But when you're doing a vampire film, I think that's the best setting to actually feel like you're in the moment, you know?"
When you get a script and it says it's a vampire film, what was your first reaction?
Manu Bennett: "You know, I saw David Slade's movie Hard Candy just before I was actually given the role for this film, and then I went and bought the graphic novel. Hard Candy is such a tense film that I knew that David Slade could take a story about vampires and make it totally terrifying. I believe that's what he's done. I believe this is a very, very, very scary film. Watch out!"
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