Q: Can you talk about Eddie’s obsession with comic books?
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HH: Sam's character wants to believe in chivalry and bravery and in being good and helpful to all. He longs for that bygone time. The last place for those ideas is comic books. But this is not a comic book that's based in the now, it's a clunky old reprint that he's reading, which for me have much more charm than the current spate of comics. We made up this comic book called Tales of Chivalry and Honor and it's meant to mirror what's going on in the film. As a big comic book fan growing up, I knew how I wanted it to feel like. Gregg Schigiel, a New York-based comic book artist, did an amazing job of creating this comic, he was recommended to me by my editor's girlfriend.
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The hero looks vaguely like Sam; the heroine looks vaguely like Phoebe; the dragon is meant to be Peter Ferdinando's villain. And the guy riding the dragon, the magician, is the crime boss, Arkady. It's meant to mirror what's going on, but also to tap you into the noble state of mind that Sam's character is in, that kind of old-fashioned, good-versus-evil. He's a petty criminal, but also he's been guided wrongly, he's had people take advantage of him, use him and then get him the blame for things. He's not exactly book smart, he's street smart, he believes in the good of people--when people are like that usually they get taken advantage of.
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Q: Eddie also ends up being a bit of a hero with some star quality, how did that come about?
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HH: Sam wanted to get just a very subtle vibe of Steven McQueen going with the character, because McQueen didn't say much, he did it with looks, was tough and had this charisma. Sam played it cool, very laid back and that is how character was written, with Ben talking a lot and Sam being calm. Sam really pulled it off, he has that laconic coolness in the movie, it’s his effortless star quality and charm that draws you in.
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There’s a scene where Sam’s wrists are tied to a pool table and a gun drops by his feet as Ben struggles with a villain, so Sam had to kick the gun towards him, pick it up with his tied hands, cock it and shoot the gun. Now as that’s so hard to do in reality, what you would normally do on set is to shoot that in three shots and cut it together in the edit but Sam went for it in one take. So we roll camera, the gun is dropped by Sam’s feet, he kicks it towards him, amazingly it slides perfectly right by his tied hands, he picks it up with ties hands, cocks the gun and fires all in the same take, now you have no idea how difficult this is to do, but he just did it effortlessly.
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Q: Whereas Ben’s character, Paul, is more of a Muchacho with a mustache.
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HH: Ben is the classic, talkative, hero's funny friend, who yabbers, yabbers, yabbers, always getting the hero into bad situations. And that's always intrinsic to this kind of film: the funny friend and the hero who doesn't say much. Ben's very easy to like, but he's even more easy to like with the mustache I made him grow! I thought he looked great in that he caught a certain period of time perfectly with that mustache, like a late '70s p***o actor! I don't know why it looked right but it did, also my older brother had the same moustache and wore that identical Kung Fu robe when I was a kid, so that was an inspiration, too!
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NEXT PAGE, METHOD IN THE MADNESS: PETER FERDINANDO
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