Hollywood Monster

by Alan Goldsher

  Ronny Yu blew into town soon thereafter, and the two of us hit it off right away. We communicated well, and his detailed storyboards illuminated his vision and clued me in to where I fit in his frame. For a guy whose first language was Cantonese, he expressed his directorial viewpoints and goals better than half of the TV guest directors I’d worked with. Ronny was a keeper.

  A COUPLE DAYS BEFORE we began filming, I was going to be introduced to the cast: first-time leading man Jason Ritter, the late, great John Ritter’s son; Kelly Rowland, Beyoncé Knowles’s right-hand woman in Destiny’s Child; and Monica Keena, who’d costarred in an underappreciated Judd Apatow TV series Undeclared and went on to portray the heartbreaking ex-love of Kevin Connolly on Entourage. For the meeting, one of our producers had picked me up at the hotel and driven me to the suburbs. When the driver said, “We’re here, Mr. Englund,” I got out of the car and was astounded to find that I was at 1428 Elm Street. This house in the middle of suburban Vancouver looked exactly like Nancy Thompson’s original Nightmare house in Springwood, Anywhere USA.

  I stared at the place and said, “Jesus Christ. The art department sure did a great job on this place.”

  My producer said, “Not really.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “One of the location scouts found it. They didn’t have to change it at all.”

  My big question was, was this a coincidence, or had some obsessed Nightmare freak actually replicated the Elm Street house? Regardless of the answer, the house was perfect and a good omen for a good shoot. (The original Nightmare house just south of Sunset bordering West Hollywood has recently been lovingly restored to its vintage Elm Street splendor. Don’t tell ’em I sent ya.)

  In the previous Nightmare films, my mission was to stalk and kill beautiful teenage girls, hang out in various Elm Street bedrooms, and get set on fire over and over again. That all required a fair amount of physical exertion certainly, but nothing that could be considered out of the ordinary for a horror-film heavy. There was the occasional stunt—including those motherfucking fire gags—and the inevitable, unending makeup sessions, but all in all, those shoots were painless.

  On Freddy vs. Jason, however, Ronny Yu brought the pain. As an active surfer and bodyboarder, I was still in pretty decent shape, but I wasn’t a kid anymore—I was in my mid-fifties when Ronny first called “Action”—and didn’t expect that I’d be run ragged. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, was I wrong. Doing a single stunt-take wasn’t that much of a problem for me, but after repeating it from several different angles, my fiftysomething-year-old bones began to complain. But I refused to pussy out and went about my stunt work without whining. Okay, without too much whining, but that’s still pretty good for an old dog.

  I’d planned to avoid fire stunts at all costs, but, since I was comfortable in the ocean, I volunteered to do my own water stunts, some of which involved being submerged in Jason’s Crystal Lake. Bill Terezakis and his team were nervous about what would happen with the makeup when I was underwater—they didn’t give a damn if I drowned, so long as their prosthetics survived intact—so when they pieced together the Freddy makeup for the underwater shoot, they lathered extra glue on my face. (Remember that this medical adhesive was originally designed for use on colostomy bags. This confirms the belief of some Nightmare critics that I was a real shithead.) Once everybody was happy with the look, into the water I went.

  The stunts went off without a hitch, and, waterlogged, I slogged back to the makeup trailer, eager to get all the glue off my face. Bill’s aide-de-camp Patricia Murray went to work on me, then, after a minute, she said, “Ummm … Robert?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We have a problem.”

  This conversation felt awfully familiar. “What kind of problem?”

  “The kind of problem where some of this shit is stuck.” Talk about déjà vu. It was Nightmare 2 all over again.

  “How did that happen?”

  “My guess is that between the water and the chlorine and the extra glue, we got screwed.”

  “You mean I got screwed.”

  “Semantics.”

  “So what now?” I asked.

  “I scrub.”

  And scrub she did. Patricia buffed my face as gently as she could with a sponge that could be used to remove burnt oatmeal from the bottom of a pot. I wasn’t freaking out because I knew she’d get it off eventually, but we’d just finished a fourteen-hour day, and as is always the case when I’m in full makeup, I didn’t eat much of anything. I was starving, and more importantly, I craved a cocktail, but unless I wanted to hit the hotel bar looking like a waterlogged demon, I’d have to suffer.

  Finally, two hours later, I was free of the last of the latex, but my skin was a disaster, especially my eyes, which were so swollen that it looked as if I’d gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. Or maybe Jason Voorhees. (P.S. The next day, I pleaded with Patricia to go easy on the glue. She said she’d try her best, but she couldn’t use too little because she had to make certain that no water would seep up inside the Freddy makeup from the area where it adhered to my clavicle. If it did, she said, I’d fill up and look like a giant, used condom.)

  Jason was played by Canadian stunt coordinator/stuntman Ken Kirzinger. Ken, who’s about six feet five inches and weighs a biscuit short of 275, had worked in one capacity or another on approximately one hundred films, including X/2, X-Men: The Last Stand, and The Incredible Hulk, and TV shows such as X-Files and Smallville, but here he was making what might be called his acting debut. (Ken, who was initially interviewing to be our stunt coordinator, was offered the part the second Ronny laid eyes on him. “I want Jason to be larger than life,” he told Ken, “and you’re my Jason.”) Ken and I became fast friends and drinking buddies, which is fortunate, because as an average-size guy who was going to have to film lengthy fight scenes with a giant, I needed to trust he wouldn’t squash me like a bug.

  Our first night shoot of the Freddy/Jason showdown at the lake was also the first day of fall, and right on cue the temperature plummeted from the upper sixties to the middle forties, not ideal conditions for splashing around in a Canadian lake for a week. From the moment we started, it was surreal: we set the lake on fire, with Navy SEALS in arctic-issue wet suits on the scene in case one of us needed some help, and we were all freezing our collective asses off. Ken, Jason, Monica, and I kept hypothermia away by jumping into a bubbling hot tub after every take, immediately after Ronny yelled, “Cut!” Looking back, I’m not sure if it was the cold or Monica in her skimpy, wet wardrobe that kept the boys constantly hot-tubbing.

  Several nights into shooting at the lake, Patricia was applying the Freddy makeup one evening when all of a sudden we heard a loud BOOM. After the trailer stopped shaking, we ran outside, and there, right in the middle of this beautiful body of water, twenty minutes from civilization, there’s a fuckin’ mini–mushroom cloud. It wasn’t Hiroshima by any means, but it was shocking nonetheless. Turned out that thanks to our setting the lake on fire three nights in a row, a gasoline slick had gotten trapped under our fake pier. One of the Teamsters was smoking a cigarette, then tossed the butt in the lake and almost blew up half of British Columbia—which didn’t exactly give me confidence as I headed into yet another fire sequence.

  Yes, that’s right, I got talked into a fire stunt again. For one of our battles, Ken and I had to tussle in a small room with flame bars attached to all four walls. (Flame bars are exactly what you think they’d be: gas-fed pipes that you can light on fire on cue.) They shot the scene from Ken’s perspective first, which meant the fire was directly behind me, and that sucker was hot. Ronny—who was, it seemed, getting more sadistic by the minute—asked for take, after take, after take; he wanted to get every angle imaginable, in front of me, behind me, bird’s-eye view, between my legs. Between the flame bars, the fight action, my head encased in foam, and that goddamned striped sweater, I thought I was going to die in that tiny, overheated room.

  Finally they turned
the cameras around, and it was Ken’s turn to enjoy dancing with flame bars. First take, the flame bar is lit, and he saunters at me with his cool, slow Jason walk, menacingly wielding his machete, and it was perfect. Second take, fine. Third take, ditto. Unlike yours truly when I had my ass to the flames, Ken was actually enjoying his John Wayne moment and was happy to try it again and again. On take four, Ken raised his machete even more deliberately than on the previous three, and as the fire behind him crept higher and higher, Ken walked toward me menacingly, unaware that the set wall behind him was completely engulfed in flames, when all of a sudden his extended machete-wielding arm started smoking. Then his shoulder. Then his hockey mask started to steam. I’m there yelling, “Come on, Jason! Come to Papa,” while my nemesis is about to burst into flames.

  He was seconds away from full dorsal incineration when I broke character and said, “Excuse me, kind sir, but it appears that your costume has suffered a bit of smoke damage, and I think it would be wise of you to vacate the premises. Immediately.” Or something to that effect. As was the case with the gas bomb at the lake, nobody was hurt. Much.

  SINCE VANCOUVER CAN BE made up to look more or less like any city or suburb in the United States, a surprising percentage of Hollywood films are filmed north of the border. There are only so many nice hotels in the area, so most productions shooting there house their respective casts and crews at the same places. We shared a hotel with the gang that was shooting the second installment of the X-Men series, and on the way to work I’d take the elevator down to the lobby with the likes of Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman, which is every fanboy’s dream. Their shoot seemed never-ending, and aside from Patrick Stewart, who always seem to be in a good mood, practically everybody on the production was going a little crazy. (Apparently Alan Cumming was more irked than anybody else, especially when he was in FX makeup all damn day and never even got on film. Welcome to my world, Nightcrawler.)

  We showbiz types hadn’t commandeered every room in the hotel; there were also a bunch of elderly Englishwomen who’d flown across the pond to enjoy Vancouver Island’s famous gardens. One morning, I got off the elevator and was greeted by the sight of Hugh Jackman besieged by half a dozen little old ladies. I thought, What the fuck is this about? They can’t be Wolverine fans.

  On the way out to wait for my car, I asked the concierge, “What’s going on here? Why’s Hugh such a hit with the grannies?”

  He said, “They all saw him do Oklahoma in London a few years back. He played Curly.” Then the concierge began humming “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’.”

  I said, “Thanks for the serenade,” then I waited for my driver to take me to the set. He was running late, so I hung in the lobby for fifteen minutes, and the entire time Hugh signed and chatted, kissed hands, and posed for photos. I’d like to point out that not a single one of these women asked me for my autograph. I guess the Oklahoma demographic and the Nightmare demographic didn’t have much crossover.

  Freddy vs. Jason opened in August of 2003, and it brought in $36 million on its first weekend, well eclipsing the $25 million budget. It ended up taking in over $86 million U.S. theatrical alone and was the most lucrative film I had ever been associated with, a legitimate blockbuster, and I decided that that was it for me and Freddy. It was the right time to move on.

  I assume Freddy vs. Jason attracted such a wide audience because A Nightmare on Elm Street has transcended generations; some of the fans who had seen the first Nightmare back in 1984 were now parents, many of whom were eager to introduce Freddy Krueger and the fond memory of their Nightmare on Elm Street thrills to their jaded kids.

  Because, as Freddy Krueger might say, the family that plays together, slays together.

  EPILOGUE

  BEYOND THE NIGHTMARES

  IT’S BEEN SAID THAT IF A SHARK STOPS moving, it will die. Well, I’ve gotta work or I’m dead in the water. And I’m not talking about some surfing accident. I don’t care whether a movie of mine makes $1 or $1 billion; I’ll probably be in front of or behind the camera until the final “Cut” is called.

  One of the most enjoyable aspects of being a working character actor is that, in addition to the luminaries previously mentioned in this tome, over the years on both the big screen and the small screen, I’ve had the opportunity and privilege to hit my marks with some of the best in the business, among them Hal Holbrook, James Earl Jones, Sissy Spacek, Lou Gossett, Brian Cox, Pat Hingle, and Jack Warden.

  I appeared on two of the more popular sitcoms of the late ’90s: Married … With Children, and The Jamie Foxx Show—two lovely experiences. (On our lunch break, I overheard Jamie playing Gershwin on the piano on an empty soundstage. Magical.) And along with Stephen Colbert, Margaret Cho, Janeane Garofalo, Fred Willard, Virginia Madsen, Mike Myers, and practically everyone else in Hollywood, including an un-credited Ben Stiller, I appeared in a nasty little showbiz parody called Nobody Knows Anything, which—in yet another Six-Degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon kind of coincidence—starred my Hollywood Monster co-writer Alan Goldsher’s pal, David Pasquesi.

  Hell, I even dabbled in reality television. Screw Survivor. Fuck Big Brother. I had Reel Nightmares.

  In 2004, an award-winning director/producer/writer/jack-of-all-television named Star Price came up with another winning idea: send the guy who played Freddy Krueger all over the country to interview people about their scariest, sickest nightmares, then set up a soundstage in L.A., turn their dreams into a frightening reality, and haul their asses out to Hollywood to live through their nightmares on camera. This was reality television, baby. Star, who went on to produce and direct most every episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, clearly had his finger on the pulse of the new media phenomenon (knew his shit), and I wanted in.

  Reel Nightmares had what I considered a distinctive format. In the beginning of each episode, I’d visit our victim’s neighborhood, taking a shortcut through a dark alley or over a backyard fence, then I’d approach the front door and knock. In my best Vincent Price inflection, I would announce: “Hello. My name is Robert Englund, and I understand there’s a nightmare on your street.” We’d then cut to me sitting in their living room and grilling them about their most demented dreams. While they recounted these very personal nightmares, I’d ask them all sorts of probing psychological questions that made everybody uncomfortable, myself included. After we watched the footage, we took the best-of-the-best subjects and sent them to speak with our legal department, to make sure they weren’t litigious or nuts or completely full of shit. Then, once they jumped through all the legal and ethical hoops, it was off to California, where they’d get to find out just how much fun it is to be on Elm Street. The best part is that we had a nice budget, and while you can scare the crap out of somebody with a small budget, it’s certainly easier to make somebody puke or poop or pee their pants when your pockets are deep.

  Despite that Star, our intrepid Reel Nightmares skeleton crew, and I gave it our all—we’re talking back-to-back cross-country flights from Chicago to Los Angeles, cheap fleet puddle jumpers from Atlanta to Little Rock, combined with multiple all-nighters—we never made it on the air. If I were casting blame—and I’m not, mind you—but if I were, I’d have to point my finger at Fear Factor. Mind you, I have no animosity toward Joe Rogan. It’s just that his show’s success kind of fucked us.

  In both television and film, networks and studios tend to stick with a concept or a format that’s already proven to be a winner. For instance, for the three years after Friends became a hit, I would estimate that three out of every five new sitcoms featured an ensemble of twentysomethings trying to find themselves in the big city. The reasoning behind that is obvious—every new product is a gamble, and producers want to stack the decks in their favor—but that sometimes means that a more original project gets shelved.

  It shouldn’t have surprised anybody on the Reel Nightmares team that most of the networks’ notes encouraged us to focus on finding people whose dreams were about being scared of snakes
or bugs, or eating monkey brains. Thing is, chilling in a snake-filled bathtub and chowing down on a goat-bladder soufflé had already been done, so the shock value and the sense of newness were gone. To us, Fear Factor gross was already passé. The networks’ attitudes pissed Star and me off because when we veered away from the Fear Factor vibe, we found we had something original and special.

  One of our strongest segments featured a young lady who was petrified of clowns, which apparently, a surprising number of people can relate to. (Me, I’m not scared of clowns at all. Fuck them. I can kick a clown’s ass any day of the week. Okay, that’s sheer bravado. The fact of the matter is, if you want to give me a mild freak-out, stick me in an elevator with Bozo.) We took this poor girl and locked her in a turn-of-the-century Victorian mansion near downtown Los Angeles, where she was hunted by a posse of psycho clowns—think Cirque de Soleil channeled through the Jim Rose Circus—all decked out in the scariest, smeared, avant-garde makeup you’ve seen this side of, well, Freddy Krueger.

  We hid those killer clowns all over the house in some pretty strange positions, the two freakiest being the one who was submerged in a blood-filled bathtub, and the one inside a jerry-rigged medicine cabinet, waiting to lunge when she came looking for sleeping pills. Gotcha! Hidden cameras were everywhere: in the ceiling, beneath the floorboards, behind mirrors—clown-cams were even attached to some of the tormentors. None of this was a surprise for our subject; we followed her blueprint, and she knew what was coming. But then she had to experience our reconstruction of her deepest fears. When I saw the raw footage, it was intense stuff. Suffice it to say, I was glad I wasn’t in her clown shoes.

  Yes, the Fear Factor paradigm cost us, but what killed us in the end was the legal red tape. Most of our subjects didn’t pass the psychological vetting; I’m not sure what criteria they used, but if our lawyers saw even the slightest hint of a red flag, they put the kibosh on the contestant, protecting our backs in the event of a lawsuit or a nervous breakdown … or suicide by clown. We pushed the envelope too hard, so unfortunately Reel Nightmares never saw the light of day. It was disappointing because we had all worked so hard and were so close to getting the show just right.