On playing Sheriff Dutton in The Crazies
ShockTillYouDrop.com: You play the town sheriff, David Dutton, in this film – can you give us a tease of what kind of arc he goes through?
Timothy Olyphant: I remember talking to Breck when we first started and [the character] reminds me of a guy in a situation that he thought it would be a [cushy] gig and then when the shit hits the fan you think, “You know what? This is not the job I signed up for.” I think you start from there.
Shock: What were your initial thoughts on the script?
Olyphant: The most appealing thing about the movie when I first read it was, well first of all, the title. I just couldn’t get enough of that title. I thought that was great and I thought there was a pace to the movie that I really liked, there’s this kind of very nice, simple…things don’t seem right, things seem worse, things just get out of control fast, and there’s a nice kind of puzzle that has a nice little simple through line. The character, to be honest with you, when we first started was not all that appealing, but I thought Breck and I had a really nice collaboration about finding something that I really like.
Rotten: Can you talk about some of the complications of having a pregnant wife during this madness?
Olyphant: It just elevates the pressure in the situation. What I thought was interesting about it was, especially in the beginning of the movie, is tapping into that feeling of being an expectant father. There’s this thing that I think, no matter who you are, you just want to run, you just want to get out. I mean, you could be married for 10 years and then the moment your wife’s pregnant you think, “Oh, f****. I’m stuck.” You just want out. There’s that terrible panic of, “I’ve made a terrible mistake.” And even if it’s a small, there’s a â the fleeting feeling is there, and so we kinda tapped into that and allowed that to kinda heighten the whole situation. (S_____?) (4:20) a job that you thought would just be rather easy. I remember kinda equating it to life guarding, you thought it was going to be a lot of, “No running, adult swim, everybody get out of the pool.” And that would just be a great way to spend the summer. But when somebody drowns, then all of a sudden you think, “Oh f***, this is not the job I signed up for.” And you add to that that you’re in a small town, you’ve committed to that kind of a job, now your wife’s pregnant, and now that shit goes wrong and you just think, “Oh my God, just get me out of here. Just get me out of here.” And everything happens so fast that there is no getting outta that.
Shock: The original follows two volunteer firefighters who had a past in Vietnam. Skills they relied on when they had to evade the military. Does your character have a similar background,?
Olyphant: We didn’t. We don’t have that kind of history with the character which would be nice because it’s a nice thing. You get why they did it with the original. But at the same time, we are conscious that it’s not about average Joe who is in a situation. It is about the sheriff, so, you do have a guy who’s capable, but we don’t get into that.
Shock: What was your first reaction to the “crazy” make-up since it’s so drastically different from the original when they didn’t have any make-up prosthetics at all?
Olyphant: I think it looks great. Yeah, I think they did a great job. I think it looks great.
Shock: Did it help sell the situation for you a little bit more?
Olyphant: No, I mean, either way you’re still doing what you’re doing, you still have the same actions, you’re still fighting the fight and it doesn’t go zero to 360 in two, three seconds, there are stages of it. I think there are a few times during the movie where you really see that. Breck was always breaking it down in four stages of the virus – the first sort of being unrecognizable physically, but you pick the little things up. And then it gets to a place where the veins and the bleeding, it’s pretty horrific looking. It’s like they’re strained almost, there’s like a permanent strain. Their bodies, their backs are kind of arched and their veins are popping out, their blood vessels are popping, their eyes are sort of blood. But it’s pretty fantastic looking. The movie, from what I’ve seen is just gorgeous, it’s unbelievably gorgeous. You see the stills, you can’t believe it’s a horror film because it really is stunning.
Shock: Well, you’ve got Maxime Alexandre, the director of photography of High Tension…
Olyphant: Unbelievable how good the movie looks. I tell ‘ya, it’s a really fun movie and it really does feel like this hybrid. You guys were asking about it before, but there are times it feels like we’re making some kind of an action film. That’s what the set feels like, it feels like that’s what the role calls for. There are other times where it feels like some sort of No Country for Old Men vibe. There are some really nice scenes, there are some really nice characters, really nice relationships. And when you take it out of all of the activity and you’re just sitting with these characters, it’s really simple and it feels like it has a real nice…I just like the voice of it. It feels like we got away with something at times. It feels like there’s some scenes where you think, “I can’t believe we got away with that nice scene in the middle of this movie.” Without actually stopping the film, I think we did a nice job of really getting where when you do have these scenes and you’re exploring the character, you’re still moving the character and the story forward, you’re not slowing the movie down in order to have them. And then you these scenes that are just nasty, just scary, just downright f***ing scary. And they’re fun. It’s always like that, where can you find the humor in it without losing the truth of it? It’s been good. It feels good, it does feel good.
Shock: You had mentioned that you weren’t thrilled with your character at first. What needed changing?
Olyphant: I just didn’t feel like there was a character. I felt like there were hints of a character. We saw a movie that you really got…I get how something’s a little funny, and I can’t quite figure it out, and then shit gets worse, and then before you know it you have what you see tonight which is all of a sudden this military presence, and confusion, and mass hysteria, and then it just gets out of control from there. You really watch this guy go through the whole deal. We’re halfway through the movie and I haven’t had a day off, so it’s a lovely situation in terms of the involvement, my involvement and the characters’ involvement. But what I didn’t get was I felt like I had a cliché. I get that he’s the sheriff and I get that he’s in this spot, but I don’t get where he’s coming from. It would be great if we knew before the movie started on day one who this guy is and then committed to that and watched that flesh out. It’s in there, it’s just about bringing this out and this idea of being a guy whose father was the sheriff and whose father’s father was the sheriff and watching this unfold and him kind of trying to figure out if he took this job for the right reasons and if he’s the right guy for the job. And of course the fun of it is he doesn’t know why these things are happening. The audience is in on the joke that he’s not. So we had a wife who was pregnant, we had that, but it wasn’t enough.
Source: Ryan Rotten, Managing Editor
