Interviews
[Interview] ‘Wish Upon’ Star Ryan Phillippe Talks the Cost of Invoking Self-Serving Desires
Disney movies have conditioned us to associate making wishes with something whimsical and dreamy. Something innocent. A playful mermaid who yearns for the legs to let her amongst the landlocked humans, a trapped princess in an immaculate courtyard who daydreams about living a common life of freedom, a wooden boy who just wants to feel real – these are all fairly innocent little fairytales. When you grow up watching stories like these, it starts to seem like only good things can happen as a result of having your will done. What they don’t tell you is that using magic always comes at a price. Wishing upon a star may bring temporary bliss when your innermost desires are granted, but toying with the fates creates a rift in the universe, and that must be answered for – and sometimes, that means in sacrifice.
In the film Wish Upon, Joey King plays sweet and shy high school student Claire, a good girl with a dark past who wants what all teenagers want – to feel normal. The popular kids pick on her, the boy she’s head-over-heels for doesn’t even notice her, and to top it all off, her father (Ryan Phillippe) can’t help but embarrass her. Just when it seems like Claire is doomed to a life of mediocrity, suddenly, a magical music box lands in her lap. Little does she know, but Claire’s whole life is about to change. With each wish she whispers to the music box, she inches one step closer to the life she’s always envisioned. However, although it may seem like all of her dreams are finally coming true, she’ll soon discover that altering the fabric of reality has only encased her within a hellish nightmare, and the wishes she’s had granted must be paid for in blood.
“If you had a genie and three wishes, what would you do?” inquires Ryan Phillippe as he sits inquisitively on the couch, eyebrows arched, a curious grin painted on his face. “I think that’s something in pop culture and entertainment that we are frequently confronted with, and so I think that stuff is just fun to think about too. I like the dark side of it. She starts off as just this kind of average high school girl, who is very sweet and well intentioned, and the power that comes with this box and the greed that engenders within her actually changes the fiber of her being and the choices that she makes. The seductive nature of the power and the box means that even when she realizes the negative effects that it has and that it’s taking people and killing people, she’s addicted to it, and she can’t stop. It’s similar to that addiction that we find so often in society now, with Instagram and all of these other things, of comparing yourself to other people and being addicted to these things that you believe that you need that aren’t real, and there’s an element of that that I find very interesting.”
Phillippe, who plays Claire’s father in the film, understands the perils that come with wishing for trivial items in the name of being better than our peers. Just as we’ve all become addicted to our phones, obsessing over the amount of “likes” we get on each post, foolishly putting social platforms on a pedestal, so too, does Claire become wrapped up in the opinion of others, and opts to use her new box to her advantage. Compulsively granting self-serving wishes in the same selfish manner as an addict who lies to themselves for the thousandth time that this really is the last time they’ll ever touch a dangerous substance again, Claire knows her loved ones are paying the blood price in order for her wishes to come true, but she still can’t stop making wishes. She can’t curb her addiction to the magicks.
“There’s a certain point where she’s told exactly what’s happening and why, and she still can’t leave it alone because of what it potentially offers her and how she thinks that’s going to fix everything in her life,” explains Phillippe of Claire’s caving to the power of the music box. “Everybody it seems these days are wanting more than what they have and no one’s happy with what they’ve got.”
According to Phillippe, the real villain in this film isn’t the box itself, which acts as more of a McGuffin, but rather, the idea of comparison. Our tendency to stack ourselves up against the competition is the real killer, both in the movie and in our real lives, too.
“Comparison is the thief of life,” Phillippe muses, “So as soon as you start to say ‘I don’t have what that person has’, you negate all of the good things. In a way, I think that’s an element of what happens and what Claire goes through. You know, she’s got a father that’s imperfect and embarrasses her, but clearly loves her and clearly would sacrifice for her. She’s a healthy girl, she’s got people in her life that care about her, but as soon as you start to focus on what you don’t have, it makes all of those other things that are so valuable less valuable.”
Phillippe’s character struggles to be the father that he knows his daughter Claire deserves, but to his credit, he’s done a decent job raising her all on his own. When Claire was a little girl, her mother sadly took her own life, and the effects of her absence have disrupted not only Claire’s life but her father’s, as well.
“Losing his wife has stunted his development as a young man into the age that he is when we meet the character, and he’s not capable of very much other than taking care of his daughter.”
Even when Claire begins wishing for unfathomable riches and lands herself and her father in a lavish mansion, the newfound thrill of the glamour and the lux is short-lived for Claire’s dad, who starts up his same old hoarding habits that he had enacted long before he started living in a giant mansion, and continues long after he moves into the extravagant property.
“The hoarding is very much about control,” contemplates Phillippe of his character’s crazed compulsion. “Losing your wife, and obviously those things would make you feel out of control, and hoarding and wanting to kind of insulate yourself in some ways is somewhat about protecting yourself or feeling like you have an element of control.”
Not everything we desire is within our reach. If presented with the same music box, many people would give into temptation, whether jokingly or not, to see if we can’t get a few wishes granted. Admittedly, it’d be nice to wiggle our noses and get exactly what we want. When it comes to Phillippe, however, he says that there’s not much in life that he hasn’t achieved already by human means.
“I feel lucky in that a lot of the wishes that I’ve had, have come true,” Phillippe reflects. “I don’t know a ton of people who can say that, but I came from very little growing up, like middle-class family, and I would’ve never thought the reality would be that I get to make movies and TV and produce. That was a wish of mine. There was a point in which I wished I could make a war movie with Clint Eastwood, and I got to do that. You know, I’ve been pretty fortunate that way.”
So what’s the biggest wish that Phillippe’s had granted lately? The answer may surprise you.
“Next week I’m going to speak before Congress on behalf of veterans,” Phillippe excitedly reveals. “It’s new legislation that’s going to benefit veterans and their caregivers. Basically, it’s about providing more resources for vets and their caregivers once they come back from combat and after they’ve served. I’ll be speaking in front of Elizabeth Warren and Mark Rubio and I’ll be there with Senator Elizabeth Dole. It’s going to be us sitting there at the same table that Comey was, in the same room” Phillippe exhales and lets out a slight relieved chuckle. “It’s going to be crazy. You know, John McCain, Orrin Hatch, all of them. I have to give a three-page speech, and it’s testimony, it’s basically why I feel it’s important. I’ve spent a lot of time with vets over the last ten years over various projects and all of the organizations that I work for, and so in that way, I get to do things often that are wishes, that like, I can’t believe I get to do. I get to do some pretty crazy stuff.”
Wish Upon hits theaters everywhere on July 14th, 2017.
Interviews
George A. Romero’s ‘Day of the Dead’ Gets New Life After Search for Long-Lost Film Elements
“I was told that this couldn’t be found by some people that I worked with, and that just set a fire in me,” Scream Factory producer Jeff Roland says of the newly restored Day of the Dead in 4K from the seemingly long-lost original interpositive.
The four-disc release, loaded with special features and new interviews in addition to the restoration, arrives almost exactly three years after Roland began his long pursuit of the missing elements that he was warned were lost to time.
It’s a fitting journey for Day of the Dead, the third film in horror master George A. Romero‘s zombie series, considering the film’s long road to reappraisal after its initial failure at the box office in 1985. A huge departure from the popular Dawn of the Dead, the third film set its battle for humanity’s survival in an underground bunker, waged between a small group of scientists and ruthless soldiers.
It was underground where Roland began his pursuit of the missing interpositive elements, starting with the old-fashioned paper trail in Scream Factory’s basement, sorting through records from their 2013 Blu-ray release.
Scream Factory’s Years-Long Quest to Restore a Horror Classic
“So, there I was, going through boxes and boxes and boxes, trying to find this one specific invoice for a delivery company amongst thousands of pieces of paper,” Roland tells Bloody Disgusting. “That was the start. I was able to figure out the delivery service, and from there, it just went into a whirlwind of… drama? Yeah, there was some drama in there at one point; I thought it had been stolen by someone.”
The lengthy restoration process that also details Roland’s Indiana Jones-like journey, but he notes that “the short and sweet of it is, it took forever, I was trying to find leads. anything. I was seeing ridiculous things online, you know, like it was in a diamond mine in South Africa. I even followed up on that. I thought it would be hilarious if it were actually being kept in the Wampum mine. So I called them, and this poor woman who answered the phone sounded like she got this call every other day.”
Roland notes, “The records, for film vaults and such, aren’t the greatest. I’ll just say that. So, I think that’s, over time, that’s something that we definitely need to improve upon in this business.”
John Harrison Reflects on Day of the Dead‘s Surprising Legacy and Original Vision
While now considered another Romero zombie classic, critics and audiences rejected Day of the Dead at first, especially the Caribbean-style theme music from composer and first assistant director John Harrison.
Few are as surprised by the massive shift in the film’s reception as Harrison. The filmmaker and longtime Romero collaborator reflects, “Now, if you had asked any of us, and George included, that, ‘hey man, you know, in 45 years, this movie’s gonna be considered like a cinema classic.’ We all probably would have said, ‘Oh, we’re making a movie, man. We’re just having fun making a movie, and God, can you believe it, that people are paying us to do this?’ I don’t want to minimize it. I don’t want to say that we were just goofing around.”
Harrison continues, “All of us were really serious about our craft and about what we were trying to do. But I don’t think that any of us, maybe George, hopefully, had some feeling that his films would last for a while. I was a kid, you know? I just wanted to have fun, make movies, and be part of that whole scene. So, it was really disappointing when Day came out, because it was a bomb. I mean, let’s be truthful about it. It was a bomb. And people hated the score. So, 40-some years later, it’s become, for some people, the apogee of that first dead trilogy. The best of the three in its own way.”
Harrison also points out that Romero’s Land of the Dead would later face a similar reception and reappraisal, which was all the more fascinating considering early budget cuts caused Romero to drastically scale back Day of the Dead‘s story. A lot of what was excised was later revisited in Land of the Dead. “That was actually part of the original Day of the Dead concept,” Harrison explains of the 2005 film.
“Because of budget and schedule and so forth and so on, and ratings,” he tells BD. “George couldn’t do it, and that’s why we ended up with the more condensed version of Day of the Dead, which everybody now knows and loves. In a way, I’m kind of glad, because it has a real identity being trapped in those caves, and the end of the world, the two sides of society. Going at it, headbutting, to try and survive. But the whole Fiddler’s Green idea and all of that stuff that ended up in Land of the Dead was part of the original Day.”
George Romero Predicted Social Media and Modern Culture
Suzanne Romero, founder & president of the George A. Romero Foundation and the late filmmaker’s wife, breaks down the film’s trajectory even further. “The original Day of the Dead script, I think, at one point, it was written for a $12 million budget, and it was basically cut in half. And it’s a great script. But that’s what happens with filmmakers, and you gotta make do.
She continues, “But I really think that this film is really for the fans and people who love physical media. And in terms of the foundation, well, anytime George Romero is mentioned is good, because what we are doing is to provide a healthy legacy. We’re uplifting his legacy, we’re supporting the archive, and we’re also supporting the Horror Study Center. So, all of these three things are what the Foundation is striving to do. As far as I’m concerned, the more we say George Romero’s name, the better it is.”
The mention of Land of the Dead brings up one recurring theme of Romero’s work: the filmmaker’s ability to keep his pulse so thoroughly on the current social climate in a way that feels prescient.
Roland agrees, “I think one of the most amazing things that doesn’t get talked about enough is in 2007, he came out with Diary of the Dead. That pretty much predicted YouTube culture. I mean, we’re going through it right now, the exact things that were happening in Diary of the Dead. It’s incredible.”
“Well, that was intentional,” Harrison says, “because I was part of that and worked with Peter [Grunwald] and George on developing that whole script and production. And that was definitely intentional. There was nothing accidental or, ‘Great timing, guys!’ It was not like that at all. It was intentional.”
Romero agrees, “[George] was very wary of social media, but very wary of the internet. He was always very suspicious and thought that we ought to beware; we ought to be walking very carefully into this space.“
“Which we haven’t done, of course,” Harrison adds.
“No, of course not,” Romero responds. “And AI. I mean, he would be writing about AI right now and thinking, danger! What the fuck are you doing, people? But not only that, but he also did it in a layman’s way. You know, he really brought it to very familiar language, and people that spoke to each other, it was in a very natural way, and it was the way he developed characters. The way he evolved with how his women were more powerful, because he kind of regretted that in Night of the Living Dead, [Barbra] was weak. He always thought the women ought to be much stronger, and I think it started with Season of the Witch.”
Everyone Wanted to Be a Zombie in a Romero Movie
George A. Romero’s legacy certainly looms large over Scream Factory’s impressive new release, offering a comprehensive look at Day of the Dead through a dizzying number of new audio commentaries, featurettes, and interviews detailing everything from the “mine fever” that spread among the cast and crew to Ernest Dickerson‘s high-pressure day on set running the second unit camera.
That’s also reflected in Romero’s zombies themselves, dating back to 1968’s Night of the Living Dead.
“In Pittsburgh, it was a badge of honor to be a zombie in a George Romero movie,” Harrison recounts. “Everybody from the Dean of Students at Carnegie Mellon to the presidents of corporations. I had a story that came out of Dawn. I was pitching a commercial for my own little company, and I’d done a bit for George as ‘Screwdriver Zombie’ on Dawn. I didn’t get cleaned up enough, and I went to this meeting at the first thing in the morning. The vice president of this bank is looking at me, going, ‘Is there something wrong with you?’ I said, ‘No, no, that’s what I know? I’m fine.’ He said, ‘Well, you’re bleeding out of your ear.’ Okay, so then I had to tell them the whole story. And he listened to it, and I thought, well, this is gonna be ridiculous. I’m coming in talking about being a zombie in a movie, and I want to sell him this, like, multi-thousand-dollar commercial that the bank is gonna pay for. He listened very carefully to me, and he said, ‘Well, listen, we’ll talk about the commercial, but do you think I could be a zombie in one?”
That hasn’t changed in the present, either.
Romero confirms, “We’re producing George’s film, Twilight of the Dead, and we get requests, ‘Can I be a zombie in this film?’ So, even today, people are very interested, and yet it’s terrible. I mean, it’s hours and hours of makeup.”
Scream Factory’s Day of the Dead four-disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray Collector’s Edition releases on June 16.
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