Marcia Degia - Publisher
Actor Garret
Dillahunt has got some meaty features under his belt with modern classics such
as No Country For Old Men (2007), The
Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (2007), The Last House on the Left (2009) and The Road (2009).
He’s also a bit of a star on the small screen which the of fans the likes of CSI, Deadwood, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and
Burn Notice, will know. His
recent film, packs a low punch, favouring
the use of real tigers, rather than CGI, in Burning Bright.
The horror thriller is about a big cat on the lose, with two kids as bait,
trapped in a locked house. Garret talks to FilmJuice about his role as the
stepfather from hell.
What attracted
you to the project?
I thought the
concept was insane. It was a most welcomed challenge to make it fly. [Director]
Carlos [Brooks] did a great job. I did not have much time on screen but I
enjoyed it. The tigers were around but it was never onset. They were outside in
the trucks when we were filming.
Does Carlos
have a death wish?
He didn’t want the
CGI effects. He wanted old school special effects, blending shots together. We
had very little contact with the tigers. They were kept in trucks outside the
studio. We were never on the set at the same time.
Renoun
hell-raiser and rockstar Meatloaf has a bit-part as a tiger trader. What was
scarier, working with the tiger or Meatloaf?
[Laughs] I’ll
guess I’ll say Meatloaf. He’s an icon of mine. As a child, I played Bat Out of
Hell incessantly. It was exciting to meet him. He’s actually as nice as can be.
It was a pretty pleasant afternoon.
You have done
you a few bad boy roles such as The Last House On The Left. Do you prefer
sinister characters?
It was a change.
Bad guy roles, [that] I play, is more minimal. In most of my films, I’ve played
good guys.
The character
you play in the film is somewhat ambiguous.
We wanted to make
him [the character] sinister. If it wasn’t for the money, he probably might not
do it [entrap the kids in the house with the lion]. It is not really about playing a bad guy, it is just a good story. No Country For Old Men, was like that. I
went for an audition for the Josh Brolin part. I went six times before they offered me my part [as
Wendell].
The saying is
that you should never work with kids or animals, and here you are working with
both.
We were lucky.
Charlie is not an infant. There was a lot of improvisation. You didn’t know
what the tiger was going to do.
So what’s on
the horizon?
I have two films
with Toronto Film [Festival]: Johnny Sayle’s Amigo (2010) about the
Philippine-American war and Oliver Sherman (2010) about a soldier who returns from the Afghanistan war.
I also have a new
series starting on Fox called Raving Hope. It’s a comedy about a couple who
have a baby at 15 and he now have a child so they are young grandparents. In
fact, this was more difficult to film as there is a baby on set!
Burning Bright is
available on DVD on September 6th 2010.
