Joshua Rollins: From Living Hell to Darkest Knight. By Brian Kirst
Chicago stage actor Joshua Rollins definitely has a career that has been positively infectious. Besides dealing with a mutant flesh eating plant in the Sci Fi Channel’s Living Hell (on DVD as Organizm), Rollins has made appearances in the Jessica Alba thriller Awake, the as yet unreleased Killshot (with Diane Lane) and (comic geeks gasp!) – has a nicely visible role in the blockbuster Dark Knight.
Rollins is passionate, talented and recently took some time to answer some exclusive questions for Horror Society.
Brian: Who were your first performing influences – Mickey Rourke charming Faye Dunaway bar room style ala Bukowski – Will Smith rapping his way into wealth on network television – An eccentric aunt who used to loudly recite Shakespeare at family gatherings?
Joshua: Good question. I grew up in a really small town in West Virginia where no one, and I mean no one considered the arts something you could actually make a living doing. There was no drama program at my school so I never got the chance to be Danny in a really bad production of Grease but I can’t sing anyway, so all is good. I think it was really the movies I saw when in middle school that had the biggest impact on me wanting to act. Not necessarily Citizen Kane kind of movies, but movies that affected me nonetheless. I saw Dead Poet’s Society and decided I wanted to be an English teacher (the whole student committing suicide thing never really deterred me J ) I saw A Few Good Men and wanted to be a lawyer. Then, I saw Fearless, with Jeff Bridges, directed by Peter Weir (my favorite director). Wow. That movie…that movie just made me want to act. I realized that all of these career interests I had were from watching other actors do them on screen. Why not be an actor and get to be everything. If you’ve never seen Fearless rent it. It should be required viewing.
Brian: How many clergy did you interview to get the proper tone for your funeral minister in the beyond unbelievable Awake? Or did Catholic guilt inform you every step of the way? (My guilty note: I actually was all about the Awake action and enjoying the ride until the last act or so!) Also – any onset stories?
Joshua: I had met with the Weinstein casting people and briefly with Harvey Weinstein, who was incredibly nice. A few days later, I was sitting in this small little trailer near a graveyard putting on a priest’s collar. I’m not Catholic or very religious in general, but I’ve been to enough funerals to know how it’s done. Be loving, but not cheesy, respectful, but not overly emotional. I didn’t get my lines until about five minutes before hitting the set and sat in the make-up room furiously trying to remember everything. Luckily I had read the script. When they wheel the body by dressed like Santa, one of the extras whispered “Wait, they killed Santa Clause?” Awesome. I was presiding over the funeral of Father Christmas. Now I can tell my children “No, Santa is real…. Real dead!”
Brian: Can you tell us about working with director John Madden on the forever stalled Killshot starring Diane Lane?
Joshua: Yeah, what is going on with that movie anyway? I remember flying down to Cape Giradeau and being placed in a hotel room right next to Johnny Knoxville’s. I remember getting up at 4am and heading to the transport van only to meet Diane Lane and can honestly say she is more beautiful in person than she is on screen. I remember being on a barge in the river for hours on end, freezing my butt off and being laughed at by the guys who do the job everyday. I remember eating at Outback Steakhouse…. A lot. That was about the only place around to grab something. A few months later, I shot an Outback Steakhouse commercial and thought “Am I going uphill or downhill here?”
And I have to say, meeting and getting to spend time with Thomas Jane was very very cool. I’m a huge comic geek, and while I’m not the biggest fan of the Punisher movie, I’m a huge fan of his. The Last Time I Committed Suicide- I mean, come on, the dude played Neal Cassady! And The Mist- wow. I think the best part for me about that movie was all the downtime. Sitting around with Thomas Jane, Johnny Knoxville, and Diane Lane- three very professional and really genuine people- was a lot of fun.
Brian: Do you do the same amount of research for a role like Kermit Shourt in Living Hell as you would do for a stage production? Or – does it depend on the circumstance?
Joshua: Yeah, I do. I take every job seriously. And so I was taking this “boot camp” class at my gym and talked to the instructor (an ex drill instructor) about military life. We didn’t get much on site training, so I wanted to make sure I knew how to handle a gun that big, knew how to stand, all that. Now with Kermit, I got to be the smartass. A few scenes were cut from the movie, but I kind of felt like Bill Paxton in Aliens you know? The dick that you secretly cheer for. “I’m not going in there! Screw that!” And the audience says “Yeah, I wouldn’t go in there either. Enough of this heroic bullshit!” The director at first thought I should go in a different direction, particularly in the sandbag scene. He wanted me to be really frightened and shaken by what I had just seen. And I got that, but I also thought, “Okay, but then why the hell am I slinging sandbags?” I wanted that to be more about a guy frustrated with having to do menial tasks, something that, talking to people in the military you do a lot of. “Why am I peeling these potatoes? Why am I digging a hole and then filling it back up?” Kermit’s smart enough to know when he’s being just kept busy.
Brian: What is your most interesting memory about working on Living Hell aka Organizm?
Joshua: When dealing with a mutant flesh eating plant, you have so many memories from the set. James McDaniel, who played Fancy on NYPD Blue was a very cool guy. And in the long shots, where the camera couldn’t pick us up, we would roll up in these military trucks and ask each other for “grey poupon”. I think the funniest story for me was during the escape scene, when we all abandon the military base. I had to shoot at the plant, open the door to the humvee so Erica and Jonathan could jump in, continue to shoot, and then jump into a humvee as it sped away. On the third take, James McDaniel jumped into the front seat and, as I grabbed the door handle to the back, told the driver to go. If you look closely, you can see me run frantically beside of the humvee as it speeds off. Finally, to try to keep the continuity going, I leapt behind a dumpster to hide until the shot was over.
Brian: Do you have any special effects stories from the Living Hell set?
Joshua: Look, I think actors in horror movies often get a bum rap, and I sort of equate it to outdoor drama. When I was in college, people warned me against doing outdoor drama over the summer, because it was looked down on. Why do “The Life of Tecumseh” when you could be third spear carrier from the left in “Much Ado”. Well, you try acting in a loin cloth, riding a horse bareback, jumping off a 20 foot cliff. Same thing with horror. Jonathan and Erica, the two leads, were asked for the world. It was low budget, all post production special effects, so they had to react to things that just weren’t there. That is incredibly difficult to do.
Brian: Can you give us a sniper’s eye viewpoint about working on Dark Knight?
Joshua: Talk about an amazing experience. Getting on set, being led to a trailer the size of my apartment, being treated with respect from everyone. Spending long hours in Bruce Wayne’s penthouse between takes talking to Gary Oldman, talking with Christopher Nolan. It was all amazing. A movie that size, it’s not a movie, it’s a city. I mean, this thing was huge in scope. A lot of my stuff was cut out of the final (as normally happens. I told all my friends to go see the “Lake House” and had no idea my part had been cut, they were not happy). But all my friends went to the IMAX screening and cheered like hell anytime my face was on screen. There was a particularly cool stunt involving me that I really hope makes it to the DVD.
Brian: Lastly, any words of wisdom (IE: Never let a flesh eating virus attack you, especially if you’re the comic relief) or future projects that you’d like to leave us with? And thanks – it’s been positively infectious!
Joshua: First off, if someone tells you not to open a secret vault… don’t open it. Also, if a monster can crash through walls and kill you, don’t waste time filling sandbags. And never ever stop screaming until you hear someone yell cut.
