On set and in full make-up
Only a few iconic monsters of cinema have consistently been portrayed by the same actor. Those patient souls have endured an arduous transformation in the make-up chair, sequels of arguable merit and hours on the set under the punishing glow of lights. Frankenstein, the Mummy, Michael Myers, Leatherface and Jason Voorhees don’t apply as sundry actors and stunt men have slipped into their brutalized skin. However, you speak of the classic Wolf Man, Pinhead or Freddy Krueger. Now that’s the ticket. During their original incarnations on the big screen, each was played by indomitable Lon Chaney, Jr., Doug Bradley and the Robert Englund, respectively. The latter essayed his role eight times (!) on the big screen in addition to numerous appearances on television. And while his streak as the bastard son of a hundred maniacs will forever haunt our nightmares, it has come to an end.
That realization couldn’t be made any more clear as this longtime Krueger fan sees Jackie Earle Haley stride onto the set of Platinum Dunes’ A Nightmare on Elm Street, the company’s latest rebooting of a horror franchise rolling cameras in Chicago four months after their Friday the 13th took in a cool $60 million opening weekend. Haley’s in full make-up, though from Shock Till You Drop’s perch on set, it’s hard to study the fine details. He’s a walking signature with that tattered hat and red and green sweater, an identity feared and embraced in pop culture that is further defined when the actor slides on a familiar razor-fingered glove. The metamorphosis is complete.
There’s Freddy Krueger.
Haley is restrained. You can tell he’s working things out in his head. Sure, he’s short but, strangely, it heightens the “creep” factor. He holds his claw at his side, fingers extending, retracting, extending⦠About as handy with it as an Iron Chef is adept with the knives in his kitchen. On the way from the make-up trailer to the set, Haley’s guise is covered from prying photographers lurking beyond the soundstage’s chain-link fence trying to get a snapshot of the man who would be carrying the tradition of being cinema’s most feared dream-stalking bogeyman.
The search for a new Krueger was an unenviable one that would be laden with rumors (Billy Bob Thornton became the subject of one lame joke) and fan petitions. Ultimately, it was Little Children and Watchmen star Haley who bravely committed to the role. “We were looking to have the best possible actors that we could find,” says Platinum Dunes producer Brad Fuller, commenting on the pedigree of film Nightmare has become with the actor’s involvement. “There are actors in our cast here who passed [on this film] before Jackie and became interested after Jackie.”
Producer Andrew Form adds: “It’s amazing to watch him. It seems to happen on our movies a lot where you think he’s the guy and then, finally, when he comes out in the make-up and you see him down there doing his lines, you can’t believe that he’s the guy. Even Derek Mears in Friday the 13th – when we first met Derek we thought he was going to be an amazing Jason, but for us we couldn’t believe how good he was, how amazing he was to work with and what he did with that movie for us. It’s very similar in this.”
After a few takes under the direction of Sam Bayer (here making his feature debut with Platinum Dunes), Haley sits down with Shock allowing me to see him up close and in full light.
He’s disgusting.
Moreover, Haley’s face is fascinating. A portrait of a car wreck only curiosity keeps you from turning away from. Eschewing the various meatball looks of Krueger that were applied to Englund through his term, make-up FX artist Andrew Clement has embraced the tragic and real scarring of a burn victim. The nostrils hovering above his lips are a reminder that there used to be a full nose there. One of his cheeks is speckled with vibrant green paint, markers for the CG artists who will come in during post-production and add meatier signs of skin loss akin to what was done to Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight.
Haley’s Krueger is a departure from the original, no doubt about that, but this embodiment that sits before us retains the spirit which is what Haley is hoping for.
“Robert Englund’s done an amazing job over the years playing Freddy,” Haley says. “Everybody that’s a fan of Nightmare loves Robert, so that’s a challenge when you’ve got to step in a big man’s shoes like that. It’s scary, but it’s also exciting. You can’t please everybody. All I can do is really just try to work from the heart and do the best job at playing Freddy that I can and hope for the best.”
Scary, exciting, but also daunting, he admits. Similar to how he felt slipping under the cloth mask of Rorschach, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ anti-hero; yet no other actor had played that character on the screen before Zack Snyder’s film came along. The pressure of fan expectations are palpable to Haley. In talking to him, however, one can tell he’s not letting that inform his performance. Instead, other factors are helping him with that, notably the make-up.
“It’s torturous for me,” he sighs. “It’s just a long time in the chair. Wearing this stuff, my ears are killing me and it pulls down on the back of my neck. I have to eat Advil, but, at the same time, it’s kind of odd, man. It’s like the best Freddy research and motivation shit I could do is sit in that torturous chair for three and a half hours and I’m ready to throw the glove on and start slicing just about anybody.” A grin begins to emerge through the latex. “It’s almost like I’m wondering if I can even play this character if [the make-up] wasn’t on.” But of course he can. Because he has to. After all, the film promises to give us a taste of Fred Krueger before he’s burned alive by an angry mob of parents for, in this reboot’s case, reasons the producers are not willing to talk about: Child molester or not? Haley won’t say either.
Whatever the case, the actor confesses his take on Krueger is a work in progress and Shock is catching him “in the middle” of his character discovery, a telling sign this self-described compartmental actor isn’t writing the role off. Right now, he can’t even give us a taste of what his Krueger will sound like (this was the same situation when I interviewed him on the set of Watchmen and asked to âhear” Rorschach). That, he says, will come about through “thinkubation.” “In terms of the posture, the voice, things like that, it’s not about sitting down and trying voices – although sometimes you do that. It’s just about working with the material, thinking about it and sometimes things will happen while you’re just driving your car. It’s when you’re not thinking about it, all of a sudden stuff bubbles up. It’s like knowing to allow the subconscious do some of that work.”
Physical objects do play their part, too. He takes the Krueger glove home with him so he can get the feel of it. For Haley, without a doubt, Krueger is serious business.
“This version of Freddy is focusing [on] less camp and a little bit more of the scarier side. There’s a little more focus on, what makes this guy who he is?” Haley pauses for emphasis. It’s a bit spooky and you’re not sure whether to look him in the eye or keep gawking at that make-up. “There’s a bit of a deeper kind of look at him. In my research I really started to delve into serial killers. I was studying Ed Kemper. They did a movie on him. It was a total slasher movie. It kind of pissed me off. And that’s when I realized I’m playing a bogeyman, you know? That’s what I’m really trying to embrace, but at the same time find out what makes this bogeyman tick. I think that when you start to get a sense of what makes somebody tick and you realize that [his] clock is kind of ticking out of whack, that’s scary. That scares me in this world.”
“I think it’s really important that Robert Englund and New Line have done such a fine job over the years of creating this world and this character,” he continues. “It’s fun to re-envision that but at the same time we need to remain true to a point of who Freddy is and what the franchise kind of represents. It’s neat to get to re-envision it but at the same time you don’t want to go so far that we’ve left what makes [the franchise] so cool and bitchin’.”
Haley as Krueger is here to stay. Although it is admittedly surreal to see anyone else other than Englund play the part. Will he work? That’s anyone’s guess. If a new generation of horror fans embrace him, he is signed for inevitable sequels – another commitment Haley mulled over. “I definitely had to think about it. It just kind of boiled down to: How do you not play Freddy Krueger? It’s just such a cool project. Such an iconic character and such a cool challenge. Clearly, I wasn’t thinking about all of this shit glued to my head, but it was too cool not to do, man.”
Source: Ryan Rotten, Managing Editor
