Connect with us

Published

on

A handful of actors have portrayed the iconic “Shape” known as Michael Myers over the years, kicking off with Nick Castle in John Carpenter’s original Halloween and continuing onwards with the likes of Dick Warlock, George P. Wilbur, Don Shanks and, most recently, Tyler Mane. In this year’s David Gordon Green-directed Halloween, a direct sequel to Carpenter’s 1978 classic, Myers is actually being played by *two* actors, which is not uncommon in the world of masked horror villains. And one of those actors, in a nice little tip of the hat to hardcore Halloween fans, is Nick Castle himself, who will reprise the role of Michael Myers for a few moments throughout the new movie.

The bulk of the work, however, is being done by actor/stuntman James Jude Courtney, who officially takes up the mantle as our new Michael Myers on October 19. The actor, who memorably portrayed the terrifying Der Kindestod in “Buffy” episode ‘Killed by Death’ back in the ’90s, has been tasked with bringing Myers back to the big screen in Gordon Green’s film, and his Myers isn’t quite like the others for several reasons. One of the biggest of those reasons, of course, is that Courtney’s Myers is no spring chicken.

This year’s Halloween takes place exactly 40 years after the events of the original film, which means that Myers is right around 60 years old in this particular timeline; and he’s spent those past 40 years locked up in an asylum. But the second you see Courtney in the mask and full get-up, as we were fortunate enough to on the South Carolina set of Halloween this past February, it’s clear that though Michael may be older, he’s damn sure no less terrifying than before. In fact, with Courtney underneath the iconic blank-faced mask, we may be in store for the most ruthless Michael Myers to date.

Courtney, an imposing, intense man with a martial arts and boxing background, explained to us that his technique for fake-killing the film’s actors was taught to him by, get this, a real-life Mafia hitman!

I learned how to kill from a Mafia hitman who lived with me when he got out of prison,” Courtney told us, silencing the room with his revelation.

He continued, “I was writing his life story, so he went to see the movie I did… it was called The Hit List. It wasn’t a big movie or anything and when we walked out he was like ‘Jimmy, it was a really nice movie but that’s not how you kill people.’ And I’ve been complimented many times here on set on how efficiently I kill and all I did was take what he taught me.”

Courtney described embodying the character of Michael Myers as a sort of transformation of his own psyche, leaving himself behind and fully inhabiting a sadistic killer.

I’m in a place, this is a place, it’s a place that exists, my job was to find that place; it’s a living, breathing place so when I go into that place everything is natural. I just do what the place or space dictates, which was created by Nick [Castle] and John [Carpenter] and Debra [Hill] and has lived and breathed all these years,” Courtney explained, inviting us into that head-space. “Michael Myers is carrying the space for the shadow that most human beings are afraid to look at. Most human beings are afraid to look at the fact that there’s a killer inside them, that there is someone capable of heinous acts. For me, for instance when we were in the mental institution and before [Michael] broke out, all I focused on was… ever since then it’s been building and festering so the energy was just expanding and expanding and I just held that space from again, what Nick created, and just let it grow and grow because he’s become more powerful. He’s defying death, he’s defying any type of restrictive condition. So to me, from my perspective, what Nick created has just gotten stronger and more powerful.”

He added, “It’s really important to note that Pol Pot and Joseph Stalin didn’t consider themselves evil. There’s a judgement where people are saying well, this is evil, but Michael Myers is just being who he is; he’s being true to who he is and that’s an awesome space to occupy, man. I can’t tell you how incredible it feels.

Specifically touching upon Myers’ age, Courtney told us one thing that has stuck in my mind these past several months. “A fighter never loses his punch,” he said, recalling his experience on another film set that taught him a valuable lesson about age being little more than a number.

I’ve got to tell you, even old fighters don’t lose their punches. I got in the ring with Joe Brown, who was Rocky Marciano’s sparring partner for seven of his eight title fights. I showed up on Far and Away, the Tom Cruise film, and I showed up late,” Courtney recalled. “The guys had already been in the ring with him and he said, ‘C’mon Jim, you can throw better than that.’ And I threw hard at him, man, and that old man kicked my ass like a mule and that’s when he sat me down and said, ‘A fighter never loses his punch.’ I think it’s the same with [Myers]. He’s not going to lose his strength, his virility, his power and his focus.”

Michael isn’t just battling age in 2018, however.

As many fans noticed when the first teaser poster was revealed, Courtney’s Michael Myers is completely blind in one eye, a result of an injury he sustained at the hands of Laurie Strode way back in 1978. In Carpenter’s film, Laurie stabs Michael in the left eye with a clothes hanger, and he’s still dealing with that injury to this day. But again, Courtney explains that, just like his age, a missing eye is little more than a minor annoyance for an older, angrier Michael Myers.

There is a guy I know who was blinded in one eye and ended up being a pitcher for San Diego State, so if you can pitch a baseball at the college level with one eye, you can do just about anything with one eye,” Courtney assured. “It’s just adaptation.”

Courtney cut right to the chase towards the end of our chat, beautifully summing up the character of Michael Myers while tying him back into his Mafia inspirations…

My Mafia friend, he could walk into a place and tell you everything about people, what they did for a living, because his life depended on him reaching out that way. I think Michael Myers is the epitome of someone who can reach out and feel everything around him. And then hiding behind that mask makes it all the more private and personal.”

He’s a bad motherfucker man. He’s a bad dude.

Writer in the horror community since 2008. Editor in Chief of Bloody Disgusting. Owns Eli Roth's prop corpse from Piranha 3D. Has four awesome cats. Still plays with toys.

Interviews

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

Published

on

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.

Continue Reading