Eric McCormack (Will & Grace) and director Robert W. Goodwin (co-executive producer of the X-Files) joined us at Comic Con to promote their latest feature, Alien Trespass. The movie, set in 1957, is the lost classic of the alien-horror genre, which had its golden age during the 1950s. A classic tale of an aliens accidental arrival on earth, the film draws its inspiration primarily from It Came From Outer Space, War of the Worlds, and The Day the Earth Stood Still (the originals, of course!) McCormack and Goodwin were in high spirits on Sunday as they arrived to discuss the film, which is released on DVD in August of this year. Did you channel your inner Fred MacMurray for your role?
EM: Thats interesting, I hadnt thought of that! I love Fred MacMurray, actually. I stole a lot of Richard Carlson.
Where did the concept come from?
R.W. Goodwin: A friend of ours, Jim Swift, who ended up producing with me. Hed seen these movies when he was a kid and he thought they were the best. The problem was that there wasnt enough-- he wanted to make one more. One of our best critics, in effect said, Why would anyone in their right mind would make a movie like this? So, clearly, youre looking at two guys who are not in their right minds. It is fun. Theyre great movies, they are sweet movies. Made in the 50s, they were very earnest and knew what they were doing. If you look at them 50 years later they are funny. So what we tried to do was to make it truly the way it was in 1957. This is not a spoof, we tried to put ourselves into the space and, in doing so, its fun, sweet, and its funny.
Eric McCormack: As Bob said to us, some of them were actually pretty good films, and attempted to be so. That was the style in 1957, and it looks bad now, but there were good actors who were working hard.
R.W. Goodwin: We used three movies as our prototypes. The original War of the Worlds, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and It Came From Outer Space. Those were the three movies that I asked the actors to watch, because those were the best acting from the period. The rest of us, who didnt have to act, looked at a bunch of other movies. So we found a lot of cheesy stuff and drew from those.
How are the music and the sound effects done?
R.W. Goodwin: We found the greatest living theramin player in the world, Rob Schwimmer, who plays for the New York Philharmonic and Stevie Wonder. We brought him out to LA and did a whole thermin session, it was great. It was an original, big, 1950s orchestral score.
What happened with the distribution of the film?
R.W. Goodwin: We knew we were going for a limited theatrical release because it opened the same weekend as the Fast and the Furious. Its hard for an independent to compete with that kind of stuff, so we wanted national press and fan reaction, which was all great. We covered the whole country in 26 cities, and achieved what we were after. We got a great response, and its more of a DVD market anyway.
Are you both fans of the sci-fi genre, and what are your favourite films?
R.W. Goodwin: Yeah, Ive been a fan since I was a kid. my favourites span different decades. Invasion of the Bodysnatchers was an amazing film, Alien was incredible. You can pick and choose, but things change. What we tried to do was to go back to the 1950s when the basic vocabulary for sci-fi films was layed down and created, that was rather elemental but still fun. Everything you see since then are based on those basics. Eric McCormack: Me, less so. It was never my thing, although I loved the X Files. I think thats probably the genre that I like best: anything involving the conspiracy, rather than monsters. Thats the kind of thing I dig. I end up in a lot of science fiction, I dont end up watching as much. When playing an alien, what was your thought process? Eric McCormack: It wasnt that much of a stretch, because Im kind of an idiot... The image we talked about was, at one point Urp steals a car, which he cant drive well but he learns pretty quick. I thought, thats what Teds body is: Teds body is a stolen car. The movement was of someone who was clearly smart enough to fly across the galaxy, so he figures things out pretty quickly, but is still a little rusty. Movement was a little odd, picking things up was quite childlike, bringing in pure innocence rather than being robotic. R.W. Goodwin: I had so much fun making this movie, the cast was so wonderful. One of my favourite scenes was when Urp was in Teds body. Whenever this happened we called the character Turp. So Turp is returning from the desert, goes into the kitchen, and everything is new to him. The way Eric played it was so fascinating. Meanwhile Jodie Thompson, who played his wife, is gradually noticing that something is very wrong here.
Why didnt you make the film in black and white?
R.W. Goodwin: Most people think that most films in the 1950s were made in black and white, and I think the reason they think that is that they saw them on television in the 1960s and 1970s when it was all black and white. But the reality is that the most incredible movies at the time were all made in colour. Our prototype, The War of the Worlds, is in glorious colour, all on sets, clearly staged, its a movie. That is what we were going for.
Eric, what was your favourite scene to shoot?
Eric McCormack: I think my favourite thing to shoot was the last thing we shot, which was the long talking scene between Jenni Baird and I with green-screen behind us. It was like 5 pages of her being very perky and me saying ridiculous alien things. We really hit it off, and I think we ran that scene a few times within the course of the two weeks. So, by the time we got to it it was like doing a piece of theatre. Although, my favourite image was in the scene where we are barbecuing, and I lift up this steak that is the size of Saskatchewan. It gets a great laugh every time. There must have been a lot of trust to go into this type of project. Tell us about that. Eric McCormack: Bob came at this with a singular passion. I knew from the beginning that he knew what he wanted it to look like and to feel like. This concept that it was a real film that had been unearthed was something that was always part of our thinking. He was very into the concept of selling it full-on. R.W. Goodwin: Unfortunately Ive done a lot of stuff for many years. You go in with a vision, and this thing not only came through, but its so much better because the everybody did so much to elevate it. My partner, Jim, who conceived it, would watch it every day if you let him and love it every time. How did you see the difference between the people growing up during the 1950s compared to the sci-fi films of today with their explosions and special effects? R.W. Goodwin: There was no question in our minds, we were going to make a rubber monster. We had to make it because theres nothing more frightening than rubber terror. We worked and worked, designed it, sort-of modelled it on the monster from The Creature that Came From Outer Space. In those old films, you get little glimpses and there are lots of shadow. But finally, in the end, you get a good look at it and you wish you hadnt. Tell us a bit about the filmmaking process. R.W. Goodwin: It worked the same way for everybody, we all looked at the same three movies so that they could be as authentic as possible, and then we coordinated everything because we wanted it to be this glorious, and in rich-colour. We had to shoot it very quickly, so we shot the whole thing in 15 days. Eric McCormack: Also, we were shooting day-for-night, but didnt want to do it too well, because we wanted it to read as that bad day-for-night that they used to do. R.W. Goodwin: Some of it is hard, because its hard to make it look bad. But of course all the people who worked on it were prize-winning in their different departments. All of them were great, it was a wonderful team.
Eric, at what point did you know that you had to be in this movie?
Good question. I think I read the script first, and about 20 pages in I was like, I love this, you dont get to do this stuff. I asked Bob, who is this for? But it didnt matter beacsue I knew I would have a great time doing this. What future projects are you working on? R.W. Goodwin: Im working on a TV pilot that Im finishing up. Its called the Cody Rivers show. I describe it as Monty Python meets Moulin Rouge. Hopefully Ill be selling it in the next couple of months. Eric McCormack: My partner and I bought the rights to a book called No Time For Goodbye by Linwood Barclay. At the time it was a small book by a Canadian author, it has now become bestseller in the UK for 2008. Its a thriller, were turning it into a film, probably shooting in Canada in the spring. Hes directing in it, Im acting. The title may change.