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[Interview] ‘WolfCop’ Himself, Leo Fafard!

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It’s been almost a year since we dropped our review of Lowell Dean’s riotous WolfCop and tomorrow the bad beast is finally shredding its way onto home video and VOD. The Canadian production is more than just a wicked name, it’s an excellent exploitation homage with retro-80s synths and hammy acting that also works really well as an actual cop movie, in which the lone wolf (ahem) policeman takes on small town corruption.

That lone wolf would be Lou Garou, played by Saskatchewan’s renaissance man Leo Fafard. He drinks, he growls, he welds Wolf Cruisers in his garage! I recently spoke with Leo and he dished out the ins and outs of playing WolfCop, the role’s difficulties, and more. Let ‘er rip…

(and come back tomorrow for our interview with WolfCop writer/director Lowell Dean).

The first question I have to ask you is, what’s it like being WolfCop?

It’s fucking awesome, what do you mean “what’s it like”? It’s the shit.

Good Answer. How did you get involved with the project?

A couple years ago I was shooting a music video for a local band in Saskatchewan called Rah Rah. I played a werewolf in their video for this song called “Henry.” Lowell (Dean) was the director and by the end of the shoot he liked what I did so he asked me would I like to be involved with a project he was writing called Wolfcop. It took about half a second to answer that one. “A movie called Wolfcop and you want me to play the wolf?” Done.

Such a no brainer. What was the most difficult part of the role?

A lot of people think it was getting in and out of all the makeup. But let me tell you, Emersen Ziffle, the makeup artist, is so much fun to hang around with. He’s so talented and good at his job. That part wasn’t as nearly hard as you think. For one thing, he would start putting all the stuff on me and I’d doze off, he’d wake me up an hour later. So the most difficult part of playing Wolfcop would have to be playing a cop.

Really?

I’ve never really gotten along with cops all that well. I’ve never really had anything to do with them unless I was running my ass off from them. Lou is a downright drunken, kind of cast off, so that’s what kind of got me into the role.

When Lou transforms, his whole attitude and movements change as well. How did you approach playing the cop versus playing the wolf?

Very little as far as the direction. Lowell really gave me the reins on that. As far as the transformation scenes, they were kind of difficult. You had to get yourself in the mindset of someone who is in excruciating, body-twisting pain. To portray that and the fact that he’s losing his humanity and becoming a beast, a savage as his skin falls off…it’s traumatizing enough. There was some challenge there. I grew up in northern Saskatchewan in the wilderness, so I spent a lot of time observing nature and animals. It was really just a manner of getting back to a more basic being. More instinctual, finding that aspect of yourself. If I didn’t have the foreshadowing of societal pressure and how you’re supposed to move through society, what’s the most efficient way? That’s what animals do. They behave in the most efficient, most instinctual sort of way. So it was that sort of idea.

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The film’s obviously really out there. Was there ever a moment on set where it felt like you were going overboard?

(Laughs) Every moment. What this movie had to rely on was Lowell’s skill and his vision. He’s very talented and very professional so it’s easy to put your trust in his hands. He knows what he wants and he knows when to take a break. I mean, we shot a lot of stuff that was over the top and he went into it knowing what he wanted to get out of it and what he wanted to do with it. We didn’t have much rehearsal time, you know. This movie didn’t have much money. So we really hit the ground running every time we stepped on the set. Lowell did take the time to shoot scenes a couple of different ways to get what he wanted. It’s over-the-top and campy, but it’s still marketable. And we just let loose to see where we could take it. So yeah I thought we were going over-the-top a few times but I had faith in Lowell and knew he’d capture what he needed.

I talked to him and he mentioned that you helped weld the Wolf Cruiser together.

Yeah! I spent a lot of years as a welder so I had all the equipment. I have a small welding shop in my garage so I’m always making stuff. And I’ve been working on vehicles as a backyard mechanic my whole life. So we looked at some pictures, broke out our pencils and sketched some stuff out. I patched up the car a little bit and then we decided “we need more of this or less of this.” Then Lowell said “I want you to do this and this, rip the doors off, blah blah blah.” We really did develop it together and then I just took it to the shop and I cut the fucker up.

Give me one crazy story from the set.

Me and another local actor were sharing a fight scene during the climax when I’m on one of the final killing scenes. So we’re out in the bush and he shoots me with a shotgun and has the drop on me and whatnot. We did a lot of blocking and when it comes time to shoot it we know what we’re doing and what we want. In the initial shot when I attack Josh (Strait), it starts with him hitting me in the face with the butt of the shotgun and then I sort of push him against a tree. We started into this fight scene and really went at it. And Lowell at this time had a sprained ankle and was walking with a cane. He’s behind the monitor about 40 feet away and I guess he wobbled up had yelled “cut”, but neither of us heard him. So we keep going at it. Throwing punches and slashing and I’ve got him up against the tree, Josh’s squirming around and tossing himself on the ground and Lowell has called “cut” about four times. Finally he just goes “okay keep going! Keep going!” Me and Josh look at each other and we’ve been going for about three minutes. I look at Lowell and he’s just got this look of shock on his face. It was awesome.

It’s early in production, but is there anything you can tell us about Wolfcop 2?

I don’t know what I can get away with telling you, so I’ll just say this: bigger and badder. If you thought the first one was over-the-top, buckle your seat belts.

Very good to hear! Congratualtions again on the film and thanks so much for talking to me.

No, thank you!

Patrick writes stuff about stuff for Bloody and Collider. His fiction has appeared in ThugLit, Shotgun Honey, Flash Fiction Magazine, and your mother's will. He'll have a ginger ale, thanks.

Interviews

“I Don’t See Retiring from This” – Joe Bob Briggs Talks New “Last Drive-In” Format and the Show’s Future [Interview]

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Hey everybody, have you heard the news? Joe Bob is back in town!

The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs has returned for its sixth season on Shudder. While the show’s format has been slightly revised adopting a new biweekly schedule with one film instead of a double feature the beloved horror host’s approach is much the same.

“It didn’t really change anything,” Briggs tells Bloody Disgusting. “We were crowding all of our movies into 10 weeks once a year and then having specials, and we found that people would rather have more weeks. It’s actually more movies than we had before.

“And some of the people on the East coast fall asleep in the second movie,” he laughs. “It’s about a five-hour show when it’s a double feature because we talk so much. Also, it’s hard to get thematic double features every single time. So our specials are still double features, but our regular episodes are single features.”

The season kicked off last week with The Last Drive-In Live: A Tribute to Roger Corman, celebrating the legendary filmmaker’s first 70 years in Hollywood with a double feature of 1959’s A Bucket of Blood and 1983’s Deathstalker. The special was filmed live in front of a fervent audience of Briggs’ fan base lovingly dubbed the Mutant Family at Joe Bob’s Drive-In Jamboree in Las Vegas last October.

In addition to his usual hosting duties, Briggs conducted a career-spanning interview with Corman and his wife, fellow producer Julie Corman. They were also joined by one of Corman’s oldest friends and collaborators, Bruce Dern. In a heartfelt moment of mutual admiration, Briggs and Corman exchanged lifetime achievement awards on hubcaps.

“I’ve known Roger for about 35 years, so I’ve only known him for half of his career,” Briggs chuckles. In his long history of reviewing, interviewing, and talking about Corman and his legendary work, one emblematic encounter sticks out to Briggs.

“I remember the very first time I went to the Corman studio, which was a lumber yard on Venice Boulevard. He had a standing set for a spaceship control room, a standing set for a strip club, and I think he had one other one, and then he had all of his editing facilities there, but it was still a lumber yard. They had not really changed any of the buildings or anything.

“He’s showing me around the studio, and we were walking past a pile of debris, and I said, ‘Roger, is that the mutant from Forbidden World?’ It had just been thrown over in a corner. And he just said, ‘Yes, Joe Bob, I believe that is. He was apparently no longer needed.’ I said, ‘Roger, you gotta get with it! That stuff is worth money.’ But he was like, ‘When the movie’s over, the movie’s over.’ That was Roget to a T.”

At least part of Corman’s longevity can be attributed to his shrewd business practices and pragmatic approach to the industry, which has included working in every conceivable genre of cinema. “I couldn’t think of a single genre he has not made,” Briggs says.

“When we did this interview at the Jamboree, I said, ‘I’m gonna name the genre, and you tell me what you love about that genre,’ and every comment that he made involved money and box office performance,” he snickers. “None of it was involved with love of cinema, although I did get him to say that his favorite genre is a genre that he didn’t dabble in much other than his first movie [1954’s Highway Dragnet], and that was film noir.”

While the fourth annual Drive-In Jamboree is still in the planning stage, Briggs is delighted by the event’s continued success. “The Jamboree is something that we literally just threw together. We’ve had three of them now. It’s something where we just show up and try to come up with programming for each day.

But I really think the Jamboree is more about the mutant family meeting the mutant family. It’s more about people who know each other online gathering and partying with each other in person. It’s not so much about what movies we have. I mean, we always have an anniversary movie, and we always have some special guests and everything, but it’s more about the gathering of the mutants. It’s fun from that point of view. They’re exhausting, I can tell you that.”

The zeal among Briggs’ audience has only grown over the years, from hosting Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater on The Movie Channel from 1986 to 1996, to MonsterVision on TNT from 1996 to 2000, and The Last-Drive-In on Shudder since 2018. “I’m amazed, having been in the business for this many years, that I still have a show at this time, because they say you can’t repeat TV,” Briggs notes.

“Nobody wants to see old TV, and yet I’ve done the same show three times on three different networks, and every time I try to change it everyone says, ‘No, no, don’t change it! That’s the part we love.’ I always want to do something new, and I’m always told, ‘No, you’re the CEO of Coca Cola who went to New Coke.’ You can’t do that. People will revolt. So we’re still doing it.

“It’s one of the few shows that I know of that’s just sort of grown organically over, gosh, almost 40 years. We’ve just added elements to the show. We try things. If something doesn’t work, we throw it away. If something works, we do it forever!”

The mutant family will be happy to know that Briggs plans to continue hosting and writing about movies for as long as he’s able to. “I don’t see retiring from this or retiring from writing. I’m primarily a writer, and the good thing about writing is long after they don’t wanna see you on TV anymore you can still write.

“The difference today, though, is I was pretty much the only guy doing genre films when I started. Now, there are academics that do it. There are entire books written about Dario Argento and Tobe Hooper and even lesser names than those, and there are, of course, a massive number of websites, including your own, so that when something comes out today, there’s immediately a hundred reviews of it; whereas in 1982, I was sort of the only guy, because the movies were considered disposable trash. So I have been surpassed in my deep knowledge, because who can keep up with all that? It’s impossible!”

Diana Prince, who serves as Briggs’ co-host Darcy the Mail Girl and was instrumental in getting him back in the hosting chair, has been promoted to an associate producer this season. “She was sort of always the associate producer, but I guess they finally gave her the title,” Briggs explains.

“Diana Prince is in on all the decisions about programming. I always listen to Austin Jennings, the director, and Diana Prince, the mail girl, because they come from opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of what kind of movies they wanna watch, and we try to strike a balance between. You know, she’s not gonna vote for Possession, and he’s not gonna vote for Mountaintop Motel Massacre,” he chortles.

“They’re probably the principal advisors, as far as what we show. Of course, [Diana] has a lot of social media clout, and she’s extremely knowledgeable about pop culture. Wow! She has seen everything. She’s seen more than I’ve seen!”

While surprises are part of the fun of The Last Drive-In, Briggs previews some of what’s in store this season. “The place we normally live is the neglected ’80 slasher, and we still live there,” he assures. “But we’re gonna pay a lot more attention to the ’70s especially. I’ve always thought the ’70s are more interesting than the ’80s anyway. And we’re gonna pay attention to some really recent stuff.”

He teases, “We’re gonna bring back Joe Bob’s Summer School, which is something that we used to do at MonsterVision. And we may have a marathon. There’s a possibility of that. But I’ll be digging this new format of being on every other week between now and at least up to Labor Day.”

While Briggs’ hosting format hasn’t changed much across four decades, the world around him certainly has and that’s why The Last Drive-In remains relevant. He points out, “In the era of streaming, where everything is menus and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of choices, we are that thing called a curator that can direct you to the fun places on the spectrum of streaming.

“Streaming is very confusing for people, and a lot of people don’t like it for that reason. I hope what we’re doing is cutting through the weeds and bringing things into perspective. And, you know, it’s just more fun to watch a movie with us!” he concludes with a Texas-sized grin.

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