Fear Clinic Interviews

Later in the afternoon on the mildly warm Friday of Comic-Con, I took part in a roundtable interview with the cast and director of the upcoming web miniseries, Fear Clinic. 

 

The first couple of awesome guys myself and others got to sit down with is director Robert Hall and actor Kane Hodder who plays Dr. Andover’s henchman of sorts, Villatoro. 

What got you into the web series genre?

We had the script from Aaron Drane and mark Johnson in killer pat, brought it to me and it was originally a feature script and wound up being on FEARnet. their forte is the web so they said that this would make a great web series. So we talked to Robert anelgib and robert was super gun ho and he was instrumental in getting the orject going with us and robert came in and got in with all the heads of fearnet and loved the idea and that orbert was so behind it hnd how it wen form there

What is your character in Fear Clinic?

Kane: My character is the assistant to Robert’s character who is the doctor who runs the clinic. I assist him and he’s got a backstory type hold ove me in order to make dude what he wants me to do even though he doesn’t treat me any well. But theres a reason why he ended up not rebelling against him or else I’ll be back in prison. He takes advantage of him most of the time even though he tries to help him. Robert Hall called me and asked if I could be involved with it and I said absolutely. Its going to be a ground breaking web series.

Robert Hall: I don’t like doing things half-assed, I always have to do the whole big thing kind of mentality. I said that if I’m going to do this I’m going to do it with my friends and I’m going to make it bigger than it should be and with Robert (Englund) in there and with a call to Kane and like lets make it as horror centric as possible and we got Danielle (Harris) involved and my company and treats like its a movie and its not sub part, its shorter but not sub par.

Kane: We just saw the trailer; the sound the quality of the shocks that we did and everything about it is very high quality and I’m starting to get pissed off that people that say ‘Oh its on the web’. Oh just wait and see.

Robert Hall: The expectations are going to stop art changing and Angel of Death is a good show, wekk prodced, more money than us and looks pretty good. Internet and television are merging, theres no doubt about it. I can see youtube on my television and we all know it is merging. We all know how fast it is and I think that were right in line. There is nothing like this on television and nothing like this on the internet.

What do you do with the short attention span (of people)?

Robert Hall: I’m sorry I wasn’t paying attention. Just kidding. You basically have less time for exposition and character development and you have to hit them in the nuts really quickly with the story and thankfully we have to do work so fast and gone so far. And our actors thought we were so prepared it makes it very easy. It looks like a movie and that you were put in the middle of it and normally it would take five episodes to explain who everyone is. Everyone is watching this and I think that this works quite along with that.

Kane: Because of the limited time that we have to show an episode it works because Robert (Hall) and myself we can get across a point or really a story point just by a look or one word or expression or a gesture that tells what you need to tell sufficiently and its kind of a fun challenge.

Robert Hall: I haven’t worked with Danielle and other than everyone behind and in front of the camera I’ve worked with before which helped obviously.

Melissa: In regards to it being a  number of webisodes, depending on the increased amount of popularity, do you plan to do more or keep it as a mini series of sorts?

Robert Hall: I don’t know, I think theres a lot of  possibilities and  it depends on how people respond to it and how they respond. And its ultimately up to FEARnet and they’re behind the project. It feels like we can only goes up from here either it be 12 or 25 wepisodes to a movie. Not real sure what will be next I mean, Fear Clinic will happen

Kane: There’s more story to be told with this, we told as much of the story as we can do within five episodes and there’s so much more material (to be) explored that I can’t even imagine that we can’t do more of it.

Have you enjoyed being a character across a series because I know you havent done TV..

Kane: I’ve done quite a bit of TV, not too many recurring characters but I have done some of that in the past. Lately I’ve been doing features, nice roles within features, but this is nice to kind of continue a story, even though the webisodes are short, were going to continye the story

Robert Hall: Having this kind of medium enables you to explore it. You can do this infinitely, we can go and bring great horror guest stars with new phobias. There’s a lot of fun sh*t to do with this thing. Its like whatever medium that it is, whatever feature an actual feature or more episodes, there are more things we can do with this and were excited for the possibilities.

What makes you do this without you go like ‘We’ve seen this before’?

Robert Hall: I have to straddle a pretty fine line because of my effects kind of things. In my company I make remakes and a lot of people’s films and its not my fault. And what makes me roll my eyes is remakes that are really needless (cough) A Nightmare on Elm Street (cough). Its kind of like, if your talking a movie that was made thirty years ago and it was crappy then fine. I remade a film called The Crazies and the first crazies wasn’t anyting special and I think we had made a good remake out of that. But whenever I hear on a daily basis about the remakes that have been made makes me roll my eyes. What gets me excited is foreign films, (Let The Right One In, Martyrs) none of them from America, thats what gets me excited is originality.

Melissa: When it came to phobia aspect of it, because its obviously a huge part of the storyline, were any of the phobias one of your own? That kind of freaked you out?

Robert Hall: Mildly claustrophobic, but even today when we did the signing I can’t have anyone behind me brushing up against me. There’s certain airplanes I can’t sit on and like I can’t have my back to the table or wall. There were people coming and going behind me (at the signing) and at one point I had to walk away and shake it off. I believe I’m mildly (clausto).

Kane: I haven’t discovered any phobais that I’ve had yet.

Melissa: Your too tough? (laughs)

Kane: I know that’s what people think when I say that.

Robert Hall: (Strokes his shoulder) Your sure you aren’t suffering from homophobia? (Robert & Kane laugh)

 

Robert Hall and Kane Hodder are taken away to another table, so now we get to sit face to face with one of the icons of more recent horror generation himself, Robert Englund. I find myself slightly intimidated by his presence at first, and unfortunately his answers were so detailed (as wonderful as they are) and time was already running very short that I was not able to ask a question. However, here are the ones he did answer.

What is your character Dr. Andover like?

Robert Englund: In the purest sense he’s going to be, he’s fulfilling the ingredients of the mad scientists. But I’m not planning on lifting my hands and cackling at the moon like Jacob’s Ladder or Frankenstein. I’m probably borderline genius and I come out with a controversial thing to treat phobias. You know in the back of the magazines, like the New York Post, about how you go and have the clippings of fat kids camp or something like that? I probably ran a clinic like that, that caters to wealthy adolescent teenagers with phobias that you could not live with. Any older and something went wrong, we’re not sure with what yet, we’ll probably get back to it and it’s probably its Danielle Harris and her fear of the dark. Maybe I was sued, maybe I lost my license, maybe I was operating with and I use Kane as a bodyguard and male nurse. My other assistant, our cold nurse ratchet played by Lisa Wilcox, and I moved south of the border where I wasn’t required to have a medical license but because of my great track record people still send me their children. Things begin to go wrong, and my theory is that the chamber itself is acquiring a residue of fear from people that I cured and its beginning to bond like molecules and it gets a bit stylized. Andover relieves well and he’s probably got a 95 percent cure rate and things are starting to tear at the seams now and that’s where we pick up our story south of the border. I mean well, but I’m starting to deteriorate a bit emotionally as the show progresses. I think perhaps I will become a full blown paranoid mad scientist, not evil but psychologically damaged, and I think that Kane who probably is going to become accidentally heroic. So there is this interesting cross between these two dynamics and Danielle will serve as this cry among the darkness survivor warrior woman. And I’m obsessed, why I’m able to not fix her and as an actor I can use that in order to get into the brink of madness or obsessive  behavior thats basically Andover has.

There is a lot of scary people here. Have you ever had an incident where a fan kind of scared the hell out of you?

Robert Englund: I’ve had such great fortune with my Nightmare on Elm Street fans and from Strangeland and my redneck fans from 2001 Maniacs. There are different and many because of all the box sets and DVDs and video and cable, I’m on my third or fourth generation of Nightmare On Elm Street fans and other fans. My only weird one was way back on V, she was obsessed with my character on the show. She saw me as, dare I say Christ-like, the good alien and with my blonde curls, my youth, my innocence and I had done Godspell I brought a little bit of that to my character she literally dressed like my character. She wore his wardrobe to places that were appropriate like Comic-Con and inappropriate. I was giving out an award and I was giving an award to Tracey Walter and it was an normal event at USC. And she taped her boobs down, hair permed colored like mine she’s really smart and sent me great letters and really great stuff. I ended up yelling at her, saying you should be a screenwriter, you should be writing for television, put your energy into that instead of just being focused on me and my character on V. You can still be a fan but quit writing a 10 page letter, write a short story. I think that it kind of got through to her and I can tell that maybe, sometimes television comes into your home its different than renting a movie. It comes in for free and you can fix on something sometimes and if there’s a correlating something something that makes you particularly vulnerable and you connect with something you can step over the line a little bit with your obsession. Its the only time that’s happened to me. I think that she moved recently to la and she was very lonely and the show came on, very imaginative, and because it was a mini series that meant you could abandon yourself for four hours all at once which was a big eventin those days. And I think that it is (the show) a metaphor for the occupation of Europe with the nazis and I think thats what happened with that particular fan. I think its because Freddy has a dark, cynical sense of humor and that even if they try on the costume or put on the makeup and want to play the cruel clown that Freddy is, but never want to be him. Like ‘Oh I wish I had third degree burns’. I just never had that experiences (with Freddy fans) I have hugged and kissed and scared many with tens of thousands of fans and I think it has to do with Freddy’s kind of cynicism and I don’t think nobdoy wants to be Freddy. They want him to be the logo as a good scare for A Nightmare on Elm Street fans.

What is your take on how internet is coming into the home. What’s your take on web series?

Robert Englund: There’s a whole bunch of things with the web and one of the things is that its not cost prohibited. It’s a place where new talent can really get their foot in the door. I love home made but I love production value which is what were attempting to do. We’re attempting to raise the bar on internet production value, like what we did with V. Before that we had a girl in green makeup being chased by William Shatner, now we’ve really elevated special effects and cgi and were doing that with Rob (Hall) and it looks so wonderful. It looks like a David Cronenberg movie. It looks that good. Danielle is our surrogate on the blog-o-sphere on the show as her character tries to tell the world about what’s going on in the clinic.

 

Now actors Danielle Harris and Lucas Till are ushered on in. The remainder of the round table event of sorts stays centered on these two.

When Robert left he was telling us about how you have additional content where you have additional content where your video blogging.

Danielle: I’m sort of sharing what the real world what is going on inside of here because we are trapped in the middle of nowhere and unbenowst to them it is spreading all over the place. People are coming in voluntarily to come in and have their phobias cured while I am in hell. Its almost like glorified like ‘How cool, that is so cool I get to go through that awful experience I wanna go’.  I have these scenes where I say to them ‘Are you an idiot I told you not to come’ and I’m sort of the resident in this place.

How long is a long time?

Danielle: Since I was a child. Parents passed away since I was a kid, been there probably since I was seven or eight. I can’t get out because I’m not fixed and he’s sort of a father figure. He’s sort of the protagonist and because of this fear its not one thing specific. It’s scotophobia, it is a fear of the dark, but its whats in the dark where my actual fears are. Its not just the dark, its just the things that live inside the dark and once you guys see the trailer, there’s a lot of things there so you can’t really pin point. I think hes become obsessed with me and he’s the only family that I’ve known. As much as I don’t trust him I think he’s brilliant but he does some stuff that I don’t agree with. There’s some stuff he’s trying to help us with and their is specifically me that has been in there to begin with so my choices are really limited.

Lucas, now your in this thing too, tell us your relationship with Robert (Englund)?

Lucas: Yeah. I said yes even before read the script and robert said ‘Why not yeah’. I mean he’s very loyal and I’m the same way. I did my first real movie when I was twelve and ever since then anytime he asks me to do something I just do it. We went to a concert last night, I’m really sore today (laughs). So thats where our relationship is.

What’s the atmosphere like on set?

Danielle: Its really mysterious. You know I filmed in so many scary places in my career that I don’t even really look at them anymore. It doesn’t even phase me. I put on my scrubs, walk down the hallway and its like ‘Oh, a dead baby in an incubator covered in blood thats cool’. You know, all that random stuff that you don’t think about and when someone hasn’t grown up with it you think ‘Whoa, ew thats gross, what is that?’ but its just another day on the job. Basically I definitely wouldn’t want to be in this clinic at night by myself, there’s no way. ‘Oh my god no its a creepy, creepy eerie haunted place’ and so we did five episodes in six days like thats even though its like five minutes per episode. We’re doing like eight pages a day, we were just jamming and as an actor your like ‘Oh did that go ok we did two takes. Did we get enough coverage?’ and you like look, we don’t know how it will look and you see it and your like ‘Oh my God’.

Lucas: The best stuff happens when your rushed.

Danielle: Yeah I saw it and I had no idea it looks so good.

Lucas: I just saw the trailer last night and it looks sick.

Danielle: Yeah it looks sick, I’m really excited by it.

Does it feel more like TV or film?

Danielle: It felt like film, like a low budget independent film. ‘Hurry hurry hurry up, hurry up. We’ve got buckets of blood, we have to get this. We didn’t get that, we can’t get it tomorrow, we have three minutes to get it’.

Lucas: Yeah I had to direct myself once and cause there was no director in the room.

Danielle: Yeah that’s what happens you get first second and third unit going and you just get thinking that Rob (Hall) trusts us. He knows that we know what were doing and we don’t need to be directed, as much as we love it, and just kind of lets us go for it. Then he watches dailies and goes ‘Oh thats cool’.

Melissa: With only like limited number of days, how was it just working with these actors. How was the experience?

Danielle: I think that we are all so trained and doing it for so long that you can throw us into any situation and you can say to us ‘You’ve got three minutes to get this’. We’ll knock it up out of the park. Who your playing opposite there’s no learning to be done. You don’t, how do I say it, it’s just there its just there. You don’t have to rehearse it, don’t have to do it twenty times, you can just walk in look at somebody in the eyes say your dialogue all prepared because you can not be and it becomes what it becomes.

Lucas: Maybe you were prepared but sometimes I found myself as a scene was starting to look at my lines. But yeah, I had scenes with Robert Englund and Kane Hobber and the woman who played my mom and they’re riduclously gifted. It made it that much easier cause I’m just really reacting. I’m not acting just reacting to what they’re giving me and it makes it that much easier.

During the scenes when Kane was scaring them…

Danielle: Kane was scaring them? I think that they were lying because he likes to pretend that he’s this evil mean guy but he’s like the nicest, biggest teddy bear. Made them tell you that you he was scaring them on set…

Lucas: Hold on, hold on. But he did take people back into rooms in Linda Vista Hospital where we were shooting and would close the door on them.

Danielle: Yeah he’s a prankster.

Lucas: And even just on the little catwalk on there he’s doing all of his freakin grabbing and is like ‘Oh your just tripping and falling’ by scaring. By playing his character then no, he’s a big nice guy and tough guy in scary and realistic situations.

Do you watch any web series? 

Danielle: Not really, there’s none really that I…

Lucas: No no, but thats the thing because this is great.

Danielle: It’s not the same, it doesn’t feels like the web series where you are walking down the street and talking with your friend.

Lucas: …and like shaky Youtube video phone crap.

Danielle: Yeah you remember that show back in the day called Undeclared? It sort of seems like its more college-y and its kind of missing a creative element.

Lucas: And that’s why this is completely different, and like I’ve got friends who’ve shot web series before and like I never want to be a part of anything. But then Rob (Hall) asks me to be on this and I come on set and I’m like ‘I can’t believe this is how we’re going to shoot a web series, it looks like were shooting a full feature’.

Danielle: Yeah I know it really reads like a movie. Its going to break the mold, its going to shape how web series are supposed to be. Its going to raise the bar with it. Tell us what you guys think after you see it.

 

Fear Clinic will start showing this October only on FEARnet, so stay tuned for that!