Eric Christian Olsen may not be the most obvious choice to play a serious role in a horror movie, but having Scandinavian blood certainly makes him more believable as the descendant of a Norwegian scientist who might get the call when they discover an alien spaceship and lifeform in the Antarctic wasteland.
Although Olsen wasn’t shooting that day, he was nice enough to take some time to meet the visiting journalists at the hotel, apparently having skateboarded there from his own hotelâ¦
ShockTillYouDrop: How did you get involved with this? Were you very interested in working in a horror genre movie?
Eric Olsen: I did so many comedies that we’ve had numerous discussions about this genre of film and I’ve always been really hesitant to do so because the last thing I wanted to make was a horror movie. I told my dad about this script and he told me a great story of when he was 9 years old and the original, the 1952 movie came out, and he wanted to see it so bad and my grandfather wouldn’t let him see it so he snuck into it and he was so scared that he had to hide behind the seat. (At this point, Eric runs around the back of the tables where we’re sitting to reenact the following:) He would gather enough courage and poke his head out and watch 15 seconds of the movie and put his head back down. He said that movie terrified him. I had seen the original one when I was young, and I re-watched it then had my first meeting and audition with Matthijs and he didn’t want to make a horror film he wanted to make a thriller. He wanted to do justice to what John Carpenter did so well in his version of it in the scene where they are testing the blood, that’s the kind of paranoia and the kind of tension that’s so hard to do in storytelling and that’s what Matthijs wanted to do. He really wanted to do storytelling versus “somebody comes up and chops somebody up with an axe and they run away and pick out the next person.” I found that really appealing to me in contrast to a lot of the stuff I had already done so I said “Hell yeah.”
Shock: And who is your character?
Olsen: I’m Adam. I work for Sander who gets a phone call from his partner, this Norwegian guy, which is how this all dovetails together and he brings me in, which is his assistant and then he tells me to find a paleontologist and an extraction person and I went to Columbia with Kate and we’re good friends and the movie opens with me pitching this whole story to Kate about what it is they possibly found in the ice and we don’t know what it is. She guesses and I say bigger and then she guesses and I say bigger and then we’re off to the races in the story. But it’s a great relationship because we have that past history so when you go into this, kind of when Act 1 ends and you go into Act 2 and Act 3, its then about alliances and relationships and how that’s stressed when you don’t know who anybody is. The way that I look at this and the conversation I had with Matthijs is it really is kind of Aliens meets Lord of the Flies in that all of a sudden all the rules that dictate how we act in a normal society, New York or where we started in Washington D.C, are thrown out the window its really a separate society and what do we do under the banner of self-preservation, like who am I going to kill to protect myself? If we were all stuck in the Antarctic and shit was going crazy, I’d kill you. He’d kill you. I think that’s what’s more of an interesting story, that’s about relationships, that’s aboutâ¦not just the paranoia and something out to kill us but the paranoia of who you are and can I trust you. I think that’s one of the things that really attracted me to this and I think what attracted Matthijs. Because we’re all making that version of this movie, because there’s a terrible way to make this movie, I think. I think there’s a version where they hired Chad Michael Murray and some terrible actress and they are running around with a bunch of jump cuts and that’s a movie versus guys who are big fans of the first one and want to do justice and pay homage to what John Carpenter originally did.
Shock: When people hear you’re in the movie, they assume you’re there for comic relief…
Olsen: I don’t think I have a single joke in it. The first scene there’s definitely elementsâ¦no, I’m playing a complete contrast to most I’ve played. There’s no room for comedy.
Shock: Is that one of the things that attracted you to the role; that it’s so not what people expect?
Olsen: I had a conversationâ¦I’ve done so many broad comedies, I was talking to my mom and see asked why I don’t do some more romantic comedies. So I did three romantic comedies and she asked me why don’t I do something that you want? Why don’t you do something you went to school for? So I’m doing a series next year where I’m playing a lawyer who dropped out of law and is now an undercover cop and doing this at the same timeâ¦I think I’ve been really lucky to be able to jump back and forth. I think one of the appeals for this for sure is that this characterâ¦after that first sceneâ¦there’s no comedy. And I think that’s appealing to any actor.
Shock: You mentioned how the movie sort of convinced you that it would be a different kind of movie but how did you convince the director and producer that you were going to be different?
Olsen: Long, long conversations. I mean Adam in the first script is different from what he’s become now and again that’s a tribute to Matthijs and how great he is at communicating. A conversation I had with him, a conversation I’ve had with Mark, and then he has to go to the writers and then come back with a draft, and then you come back with another draft, and he changes this, it’s kind of an evolution of the character. In life, simplistically when you study biology, with people in a situation there’s â whatever the catastrophic events are â there’s fight or flight and my character is flight. He doesn’t think about it, its just self-preservation, it’s weakness. I think that he’s the fish that goes under the shark because it can’t fend for itself, it can’t maneuver in the water, it can’t navigate on its own, so it finds something more powerful than itself and aligns with that which I think puts him in an even more weak position because when all the alliances fall apart and he doesn’t know who to trust he’s swimming on his own for the first time. That was a character that evolved out of multiple conversations. I think it’s a really human story to tell. I think as an audience member I think you’re going to identify with this kid because at the end of the day he’s doing what he has to do to survive.
Shock: Did you do things to add to the character on-set?
Olsen: Yeah, always, because everything changes and when you change one thing here it’s going to change everything down the line. So as everything evolves and changes, what somebody else does versus what I do, you got to make linear reconstruction all across the board for what it is your going to be doing.
Shock: What’s it like being around all these Norwegian actors?
Olsen: I’m 100% Norwegian. Three generations removed and all continuous inbreeding of Norwegian of Minnesota and Iowa so I traveled to Norway before. We literally grabbed the burliest Vikings that we could find in this movie and shipped them over here and you met them. They are creatures from “Where the Wild Things Are.” They are literally giant paws and beards, rummaging through stuff and eating berries with their paws. Some of these dudes are full-on Vikings, and that’s great because it adds to the paranoia. Some of those guys don’t speak English, so when shit goes down and they are speaking in Norwegian it only adds to the paranoia.
Shock: Have you interacted with a lot of prosthetics or practical effects yet?
Olsen: Yeah I spent allâ¦I’m shooting second unit on the weekends so we shot first unit Monday-Friday and Saturday and Sunday under one of the most beautiful practicals I have ever seen. So much so that when I walked in I didn’t know it was the actor.
Shock: How long is the period of time that the movie is, you know from when it first starts to all that stuff?
Olsen: It starts out in New York where leaving in two days, flight out there to Argentina another 2 days. It’s in a span of 4-5 days the whole movie?
Shock: Do you remember the first time you saw “The Thing”? Did you rent it?
Olsen: I was probably thirteen or fourteen, and I remember as soon as the dog scene happened I was just terrified with the rest of the movie. The most terrifying scene was when they were tied up testing the blood. You could just feel it. Your heart was beating so fast during that whole scene. Then I didn’t see it again till I had the audition and meeting and then I re-watched. I re-watched it in a much different sense.
Shock: So this is Matthijs’ first feature and he is from the Netherlands. Does this bring a different dynamic for a first time director and European?
Olsen: You know what, he’s amazing and mark my words he is going to be a huge director. I think that he knows the story he wants to tell, he knows how to tell it. The tonality and how to make it consistent all the way through so you don’t feel like you’re watching a schizophrenic film where you feel like you’re watching four different films. He’s a great communicator as far as how to make accurate how actors feel what he wants.
Shock: Have you seen his shorts?
Olsen: Yeah, I’ve watched everything. Yeah, you’ve got to watch it because what’s really funny about him, even with his shorts he’s a storyteller. He got hired to do some commercial for some car company. It was just about the car and he got fired after three days because he wanted to tell the story. He said there was no story. That’s his passion as a director to tell a story.
Shock: You said something before about it not being a horror film but being a thriller, but it’s a throwback to older horror films rather than having people being slashed or tortured. Would you say that?
Olsen: I think that’s a better description than what I gave you. I think that got lost in my generation of the horror film, in Jason vs. Freddy, or whatever these stories have become, that horrible movie when they went out to the lake and somebody was like water snowboarding or wakeboarding, and they got cut off. There’s no story. You’re right. That’s what a horror film has become but this a truer sense of what it was when it started off. So yeah, it’s a thriller for what we know now and it’s a horror for the beginning or the birth of preexistence.
Shock: Horror movies and thrillers tend to move at a really fast pace and what it seems like you guys are going for is more of a slow burn character piece, more methodical kind of thing. Do you think that’s risky at all because of the way audiences are now geared for this quick-cutting kind of thing or do you think they are hungry for what you guys are going to be doing?
Olsen: I think it’s a combination of both because one of the movies I saw, that I loved was⦠have you’ve guys seen “Zodiac”? Terrifying. It was great. There was that building tension all the way through. He told a great story. I think that everybody watching these “Freddy vs. Jason” that made a billion dollars, I mean there’s nothing in there. It was all slow, and breaking cues, and pull-backs so I think its got to be, in all honesty, its going to be a combination of both those things. I think that’s the tough part, is making it what we’re talking about, but also having enough of those, and we do with the practicals, we have that with the CGI, the combination of those things. We’re going to have that. That’s a good question.
Shock: The people who have seen the original might have respect for that kind of film and will know it’s slow but building to something big. How important is it for people who haven’t seen the original to come into this and have their own experience?
Olsen: That’s a good question. That’s more of a marketing, advertising question. I don’t know if I’m qualified to answer that. I would argue that it’s a stand alone but I think its much better if you’ve seen the first film. Is it necessary? Probably not. It’s beautiful, dove tailed in, obviously, and its set up like first movie, like John Carpenter’s movie. Without seeing the first one this one makes sense from point A to point B.
Shock: Do you think there’s a sequence in this that sort of compares to the blood testing scene?
Olsen: Yes. I think because when the problem starts to arise there’s problem solving and because there’s five biologists, a paleontologist, and an extraction person everybody tries to figure out their best way based on technology in 1982 to figure out the problem, so there definitely is that. Overall, I think there’s a way on the prospective on how they want to make the movie, which is, we are going to tell the story versus just doing a horror film.
Shock: Some of the transformations, especially the one that happens to you, looks painful.
Olsen: Yeah it’s incredibly painful. When I walked in to see it, it was in this tent, and I just went in there to look at it. I just literally froze in fear. I couldn’t take my eyes of it.
Shock: After doing a movie like this would you go back to doing something comical like “Fired Up,” or at this point would it be staying in one direction?
Olsen: No, I think that’s the beauty. One of the great things about Hollywood right now is you could literally jump from comedy to drama, from TV to film, and back and forth and there’s no consequences like there was even 15 years ago. I’m doing a show called “Community” right now and I have so much fun on that and it’s a completely different character than I’ve ever played. I have another show that I’m doing next year, and then this, and then probably another comedy next summer and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Source: Edward Douglas
