Interviews
10 Things We Learned On the Set Of “From Dusk Till Dawn!”
Back in May, Robert Rodriguez’s new(ish) television network El Rey treated Bloody-Disgusting to a day on the set of the From Dusk Till Dawn TV series. Filming took place in a private studio in Austin, TX, and the episode that I was able to see shooting was Episode 207, titled “Bring Me The Head Of Santánico Pandemonium.” I, unfortunately, had not watched a single episode of the show so I spent the night before the visit binging the entire first season. I really love my job.
After arriving on set, I was ushered along with the rest of the press to the area where filming was happening. It had been raining most of the week (we had some sort of strange monsoon season here in Austin that month) so shooting the scene was delayed a little. While we all waited for the crew to set up the scene, we were able to talk to Jeff Fahey, who plays the Gecko brothers’ Uncle Eddie, a new character in the second season. As Fahey finished up answering our questions, we were called back to the set.
The scene being filmed was a fight scene between newly transformed Culebra Richie Gecko (Zane Holtz), Santánico Pandemonium (Eiza González) and The Regulator (new cast member Danny Trejo). Unfortunately, all of the filming involved stunt doubles, so we didn’t get to see the actual actors in action. That being said, it was quite nerve-wracking watching them try to get the fight choreography just right before the squibs went off, for if it went wrong they would have to take the time to clean up before they could shoot the scene again. I have a lot of respect for stunt actors, because they put in a lot of hard work without much of the credit.
Once the scene wrapped, we were able to grab lunch with the entire cast and crew of From Dusk Till Dawn and have a sort of casual interview with the cast members, including Eiza González, Zane Holtz, DJ Cotrona (Seth Gecko) & Danny Trejo. It was a refreshing change of scenery, as interviews are typically a bit more formal. With this setting, we basically got to go on a group date with the cast. Below are some of the best pieces of information we found out while on the set!*
*Some of the following quotes also come from my interview with additional cast members Madison Davenport (Kate Fuller), Brandon Soo Hoo (Scott Fuller), Jake Busey (Professor Tanner/Sex Machine), Wilmer Valderrama (Carlos), Robert Rodriguez and showrunner Carlos Coto at the From Dusk Till Dawn press conference at the ATX Television Festival on June 7th, 2015.
1. There Will Be A Lot More Action & Gore
It’s no secret that the first season of From Dusk Till Dawn took a few episodes to really get going (they didn’t arrive at the Titty Twister until the end of episode 5), so now that we’ve reached the end of the story that the movie told, the writers can really branch out with new stories and action set pieces. In Danny Trejo’s own words: “It takes four Bs to make a good show: Babes, bombs, bullets and blood. We’ve got all of it.” If that isn’t enough to sell you, I don’t know what will!
2. It’s The “Official” Sequel To The Movie
The second season pretty much ended where the movie ended, albeit with more people left alive (Richie, Santánico, Scott, etc.). There isn’t a blueprint for the season anymore and the writers had to come up with completely new material for the story. “Everything is a surprise because there’s nothing to go off of anymore…it definitely feels like the sequel” Holtz said. I asked Robert Rodriguez if he viewed the second season as an official sequel to the movie, he said “the first season was about re-telling the movie in a new way in order to open up the story to new possibilities for future seasons…in the movie we killed off pretty much everyone, but we changed that for the show so that we could take these characters on a new journey. This is where the fun really begins.”
3. Expect The Unexpected
Mexican actress Eiza González (who was in full makeup as the vampire version of Santánico when I interviewed her) was extremely excited about this second season.”Fans are going to be very excited…..it goes in a direction that I wasn’t expecting, and I don’t think the audience will expect it either,” she said.
4. Sex Machine/Professor Tanner (Jake Busey) Will Be Back!
I was a little confused when I saw Jake Busey at the press conference, considering his character died at the end of the first season at the hands of Gonzalez (Jesse Garcia). “We don’t do interviews without Jake Busey,” joked Davenport (Kate). While Busey could not detail the specifics of his return, he did mention that “death is definitely something that is open to interpretation on this show.”
5. Santánico Will Be An Even Bigger Badass
“Santánico gets much more baddass this season…she gets taken out of the [Titty] Twister for the first time in centuries….we get to learn a lot about her backstory,” explained González. Since she is paired with Richie, there will probably be plenty of mayhem that they get themselves into this season.
6. Richie Will Learn How To Be A Culebra
“You’ll see Richie struggling with the pros and cons of being a Culebra…he still kind of has rules and morals about who he will kill,” Holtz said. Santánico is “coaching me on the lifestyle of being a Culebra…she’s on sort of a revenge path this season and using me to help her achieve that goal. She teaches me how these Culebra figureheads all interact and operate.”
7. Danny Trejo’s “The Regulator” Will Be A Force To Be Reckoned With
The Regulator was a role that Rodriguez wrote specifically for Trejo. “I regulate, I don’t negotiate,” Trejo said on his new character. “When The Regulator is after you, just pack your bags because you’re going home…The fact that he came back from the dead makes him a little more than Dog the Bounty Hunter.” Surely this character can’t be invincible, though. On his character’s weakness, Trejo did let us in on this little secret: “You can’t kill him unless you kill him with his own gun.”
From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series, for El Rey Network and Miramax. Danny Trejo as The Regulator.
8. Uncle Eddie Will Play An Integral Role
Jeff Fahey’s Uncle Eddie is a new character this season, and might be stirring up some trouble for the brothers. “Uncle Eddie raised the brothers when their father passed away,” Fahey said. “He’s a little misunderstood by elements of the law.” There is a rift between the brothers this season, since they were separated in the finale of season one. “The brothers are only complete with Uncle Eddie. Without me, they are only part of the whole,” Fahey said. “It’s an intricate character within the arc of this season.”
9. Practical Jokes On Set Were Common
After recounting a sequence where Cotrona screwed up a shot where he and Davenport were supposed to have been sprayed with blood (he ducked out of the shot at the last second, leaving Davenport to be the only one sprayed), they got it right the second time and decided to walk to the convenience store across the street (still covered in fake blood), while Rodriguez followed them with a camera. They completely freaked out the clerk, who thought they had just come in from murdering somebody (they later came in and told him it was fake blood).
10. Machete Kills In Space Is Definitely Happening!
Trejo had to be rushed back to the set to continue filming, but I managed to squeeze in a last-minute question regarding the second Machete sequel. When asked about the status of the film, Trejo said “We have got Machete in Space in the works! It’s going to be different…something that you’ve never seen…It will definitely be in space though…James Bond went to space? Machete changes it.” Word on the street is that they will be filming later this year, though this was left unconfirmed by Trejo.
“From Dusk Till Dawn” premieres on Tuesday August 25th on El Rey Network, but is currently available from many OnDemand providers.
Interviews
‘The Death of Robin Hood’ Director Michael Sarnoski on Brutal Violence and Reinventing the Legend
Michael Sarnoski (A Quiet Place: Day One, Pig) gives a darker spin on a classic ballad in The Death of Robin Hood, which sees a legendary outlaw confront his own violent legacy.
A24 releases the dark reimagining of the classic folk tale in theaters this Friday, June 19.
Hugh Jackman stars as a grizzled Robin Hood, who begins Sarnoski’s latest in a grim place of death and violence before a grave injury presents a rare chance at salvation.
In 13th-century grit and squalor, the violence in The Death of Robin Hood is especially brutal, setting up a stark contrast for the outlaw’s thematic journey in his final days. Speaking with Bloody Disgusting ahead of the film’s release, writer-director Michael Sarnoski explained that the visceral brutality at the film’s outset was both a reflection of period authenticity and in service of Robin’s story.
“It’s always a little bit of both,” Sarnoski explains. “The initial idea for the movie was I wanted to humanize these characters from this old legend and really understand them. So, part of that is understanding the authenticity of the period and studying the brutality of the old ballads. Both things evolved at the same time, because then it became this story about this person who was grappling with their own legacy of violence and their own folklore.”
Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/A24
He continues, “It was a little bit of a chicken and the egg thing where it was like, ‘Okay, the authenticity is where we’re going to access the humanity.’ But then, through that, we also have to access how these people felt about that violence. And because of that, we really have to make that violence feel human and real and brutal and not Hollywood-ized at all.“
But don’t expect The Death of Robin Hood to be too beholden to period accuracy; the filmmaker never wanted to lose sight of its characters or their humanity. “I was more trying to capture, in my mind and soul, what it might have felt like to live at that time. When you’re steeped in nature and all of its brutality, but also all of its divinity and spirituality, what would that just feel like on a deeper soul level? A lot of the research was focused on just trying to capture that human side of existing back then.”
The Death of Robin Hood avoids retreading the familiar origin story of the outlaw and his Merry Men; the past is a distant memory steeped in blood for this iteration of Robin Hood. Save for Little John (Bill Skarsgård), very little calls back to the familiar folklore fixtures and iconography.
“It wasn’t straightforward,” Sarnoski says of his writing process and choosing which characters to incorporate. “It kind of happened organically. I knew I just wanted the pieces that I needed for that character, but then at the same time, I wanted to acknowledge that he’s grappling with what he believes his life was, and the violence of that life and of that time. But then at the same time, he’s also not a fully reliable narrator. He has been jaded for decades and has just been steeped in that violence. Even he and Little John especially aren’t 100% sure which of these things were stories and which were real in some way, because I think even in our own lives we have that, where our memories become these stories that we just tell each other.”
“I wanted to make sure that we’re doing some justice to that Robin Hood legend, and there are a lot of references to that. I wanted to use it sparingly and specifically, but then also acknowledge that no one in this world is 100% sure who this guy was, not even the guy himself.”
Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/A24
While Jackman commands the screen as the world-weary outlaw, it’s Murray Bartlett (“The Last of Us”, Opus) who steals scenes as the enigmatic leper standing vigil over the Priory.
Bartlett’s complex performance, buried under unrecognizable costuming and prosthetics, surprised even Sarnoski in more ways than one. “The initial surprise was finding such a great actor who was willing to completely disappear. And that takes a lot of ego death and bravery and excitement for the pure creative, emotional side, and also bravery in the performance side of, ‘You’re not going to have 90% of the tools that you usually use. You’re going to have to do this with your eyes, your voice, and just your physicality.’ So, I think just the surprise of finding someone who was like that was the feature, not the bug. He was so excited about that, and he found it very liberating.
“Then, it sounds kind of obvious, but the next surprise was just you write this character on the page, and you’re like, ‘Okay, he’s supposed to have this depth, he’s mysterious, but he’s also gentle, and he becomes this almost teacher.’ In your mind, you’re like, ‘Okay, I think this character can work.’ But then you see Murray embody it and you’re like, ‘Oh, this is so far beyond what I ever could have hoped for.’ And it’s so moving and so human in spite of all the limitations on the performance.”
Sarnoski notes this character acts as the ferryman, right on the cusp of life and death. That, along with the period, also informed the Leper’s look, “In those old monasteries, they had these orchard cemeteries that were also where they buried the body. It’s this place of graves and growth. He has subtly different outfits that he wears depending on if he’s ferryman or orchardman. There was a lot of thought that went into all of that.”
Credit: Aidan Monagha
You must be logged in to post a comment.