Chase Williamson, Brea Grant and Graham Skipper Take us Beyond the Gates
Howard Gorman
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Technology, especially that of a gaming kind, is advancing like there’s no tomorrow, and chances are that this generation’s kids will be oblivious to the true inspiration behind Jackson Stewart’s directorial debut Beyond the Gates (review). The real lifeblood for co-writer Stephen Scarlata’s original pitch was the 1991 VCR game Nightmare, a phenomenon which spawned a whole new wave of new wave board games. And whilst those who shared a nerdy penchant for the game way back when will most likely relate that much more to Stewart’s love letter, those of you with a lack of appreciation for said ’90s guiltiest of pleasures are still guaranteed an absolute blast too.
Since making its debuting at the LA Film Festival, where it picked up the Nightfall Award, it’s screened at the Bruce Campbell Horror Film Festival, Popcorn Frights Fest and London’s FrightFest and is now all set to hit the SITGES – International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia. In preparation for the latter, we adjusted the tracking and rolled the dice with the three leading players, Chase Williamson, Brea Grant and Graham Skipper, to find out exactly what’s lurking Beyond the Gates…
DC: Chase, prior to the inteview, Jackson suggested I ask you about your acting influences and if you ever had an affinity for The Brady Bunch movie on VHS whilst growing up.
Chase Williamson: I was a big Blockbuster browser. I could ride my bike there growing up and I’d hang out and read the backs of boxes. I found something once that was rated PG-13 for “flood-related peril.” That was a great day. I was obsessed with The Brady Bunch movie as a kid. I never owned it but I rented it probably every time I went to Blockbuster from a certain age to a certain age. Jennifer Elise Cox is a huge inspiration to me and to actors everywhere.
DC: Stephen (Scarlata) said he wasn’t all that sure about his script in the early days and he expected Jackson to “roll his eyeballs” when he first read it. Obviously that wasn’t the case. What was it about the script and your characters that particularly resonated with you when you first read it?
Graham Skipper: For me, what was most intriguing was the deep emotional life of Gordon, John, and Margot. The tense bond and history between the brothers, Gordon’s struggles with alcoholism, his troubled past with Margot. All of that stuff just helped develop these characters as very real people, and so I cared about them as they went on this crazy adventure together. I think it’s easy sometimes with a high-concept horror film like this to lean heavily into the supernatural elements (which obviously this does as well!) but often the characters are left underdeveloped. That wasn’t the case with Stephen and Jackson’s script. Plus, then you add on an awesome concept with a haunted VCR board game and demons and other dimensions, and how could I say no?
CW: Jackson described the movie to me and I had no idea what VHS games were… I mean, I pieced it together quickly, but what made me really want to do it was the relationships between the characters and the family-driven stuff. I felt really comfortable having a strong emotional backbone in the story to rely on when things get crazy and whatnot. And Jackson wrote our roles with us in mind and each of them challenged us to do something a little different which was hugely flattering and exciting.
Brea Grant: I thought the idea for a “horror Jumanji” was cool. I thought it was a cool take on the genre without feeling like a gimmick. It’s a great story about two brothers struggling with their father’s disappearance and that humanity was something I related to. Also, what can I say? I like doing horror movies.
DC: The film’s based on the Nightmare game and I think one of the main reasons that game ultimately became as huge a phenomenon as it did is down to Wenanty Nosul’s hammed-up performance as The Gate Keeper. There’s not really any hamming-up of performances in Beyond the Gates at all. Was that something that Jackson and Stephen were very particular about from the word go, even though the film is very much a love letter to the game?
BG: The characters were written in a very grounded way so I don’t think any of us thought to stray from that. I think one of the reasons the movie really works is because the writing and the acting is so naturalistic.
GS: Yeah, definitely. We all wanted to play this as real and genuine as we could. I feel like horror film acting is a lot like comedic acting. In a comedy, if you play “at” the comedy then it stops being funny. You have to be genuine amidst a crazy scenario, and that’s where it becomes funny. It’s the same with horror – if you ham it up or make it cheesy then it becomes a parody of a thing rather than just telling a story. It’s way more compelling to have actual, real people encountering insane supernatural terrors, rather than caricatures of people. You care about them less, and we wanted people to care about what was happening to us.
DC: I know Barbara never watched any of the old Nightmare game videos before filming her scenes and I think that played very much in the film’s favor. Did you watch Nightmare videos or were there any particular films that you got hold of before filming to help get yourself stuck in the VHS era? I think Jackson had quite a few film suggestions, right?
GS: Well, I actually used to own Nightmare as a kid and played it relentlessly, so I was well aware of the style of that game and totally got the references and the style of what we were encountering in the film. It was good that I hadn’t played it in years so – like my character, Gordon – my memories were a little dusty, and I was able to draw on those rather than having it fresh. As for films Jackson had me watch, one was The Gate, and though I’d seen Phantasm dozens of times, that was a big one as well. Interestingly enough, he also had me watch Straw Dogs to sort of get into the mindset of this constrained, mild-mannered guy with great anger and intensity boiling under the surface.
BG: Renting a scary movie from the video store with my girlfriends when I was a teenager was a right of passage. Nothing like screaming your head off at a slumber party to bond you. We never ventured into the VHS board game world though. One thing I always do before I start a project is to ask the director what movies inspired him/her while they were thinking/writing/prepping their film. Jackson said Phantasm and The Gate – both of which I had seen but it’s always fun re-watching. It gets me in the mood to be immersed in the mind of the director.
CW: I watched a couple of movies as references, and there were a few I had in mind that I’ve seen over and over like Poltergeist and The Beyond in terms of what we were making aesthetically. In terms of performance I was more interested in looking at stuff dealing with unspoken family secrets, survivor’s guilt, brother dynamics, etc. Jackson had me watch The Onion Field which was a great movie I hadn’t seen before. I had just done a production of True West by Sam Sheperd which is about two brothers who are different extremes of the same coin. I played the more straight-laced brother in that show so it was cool to play the other side and have a lot of the work I did on that show still freshly in mind.
DC: As Jackson wrote virtually every role specifically for each actor, how open was he to letting you also bring your own identity/ideas to the role?
GS: Yes that was the case for me – and let me just say how grateful I am for that. It’s always a blessing to have someone write a role for you, and always super interesting to try and understand what it is about you that they see in that character, and vice versa. Jackson was very collaborative in terms of letting us bring our own ideas to the table, but had a clear idea himself of what was going on with these characters, so it was a nice way to work. I think for Gordon, Jackson wanted to have a man that was afraid of himself in a way, and that combined with his lingering fear and resentment of his father led him to self-imposed isolation. That’s already a ton of depth to work from, so it was a fun challenge to take that deeper and make it personal.
BG: Yep. Originally I wasn’t going to be able to do it, but when my schedule changed, Jackson pretty much didn’t give me a choice. Jackson and I have known each other since I drove him to Comic Con like six years ago so we can be pretty frank with each other. We were sitting at Jumpcut Cafe (RIP) and he was like, “Grant. You’re doing my movie.”
DC: Did the three of you get to spend much time together to rehearse and/or build up a bit of rapport/chemistry and work together on the history your characters shared before the shoot?
BG: Chase and I met at the table read but Graham and I had known each other socially. We also both did Padraig Reynolds’ movie Devil’s Dolls but we didn’t have any scenes together. On set, we talked a lot about our characters’ histories and choices. We had a really nice table read before the first shoot day where Barbara read a letter she wrote to inspire all of us. I think that really bonded us all.
CW: Yeah. Brea, Graham and I didn’t rehearse, although Graham and I did get together and compare notes while we were prepping just to make sure we were both on the same wave length. Both are them are so easy to work with and be around and we all had a rapport pretty much from day one.
DC: Barbara’s scenes were filmed before the rest of the shoot. Was it tough to share dialogue with someone who wasn’t even on set?
BG: We had a DVD (don’t tell anyone it wasn’t really VHS!) with her for us to act across from. But the problem was it was all spaced weird because that’s the kind of thing you can’t predict. She and Jackson couldn’t have known how long it would take us all to say our lines. We did a lot of pausing of the video or waiting for Barbara to speak. But I think it ended playing to the weird and chaotic element the tape brings in.
GS: But it was like having her in the room! A very creepy version of her, that is.
DC: I have to ask what it was like working with Justin Welborn?
CW: Working with Justin Welborn is a trip and a half. He’s a livewire, full of energy and totally committed. I had the pleasure of doing Siren with him as well and he is one crazy talented mofo.
GS: Justin’s great! I really enjoyed working with him – he’s got an amazing intensity about him, and it’s always fun to play being enemies with someone else. He brought such a swagger and skeeviness to Hank that it was totally easy to play off of that and have fun.
DC: Brea, I hear you weren’t all that keen on those contact lenses of yours?
BG: [laughs] I really hated those black contacts. They cover the full eye and they hurt like hell. I have tiny eyes and it took me over an hour to get them in before shooting (usually at around 3 a.m.) and my eyes would be so swollen from all the poking and pulling we had to do get them in. I feel like I really bonded with Josh and Sierra Russell who did the special effects because I had tears just streaming down my face all night and they had to shove these giant lenses in my eyes. They were really apologetic – even though they didn’t have to be.
GS: Yes. And all the effects were done on set! All practical. Josh and Sierra did an amazing job, and being a gore-hound myself, I always feel like a kid again when I see that stuff getting crafted on set. I got to have two big bloody moments which were so much fun to shoot. Yeah, it’s messy, but who doesn’t love getting splattered in red viscera surrounded by your friends!
DC: Apart from Beyond the Gates, can you tell us what else you’ve been getting up to?
CW: I have SIREN coming out December 2nd. It’s an expansion of the “Amateur Night” segment from VHS and it’s a lot of fun. There’s also a great movie I did called Lace Crater that’s available on demand with Lindsay Burdge, directed by Harrison Atkins that I’m super proud to be a part of. And I’ve got a few things in the can that were super fun. It’s been a good year!
My single “Wicked Ch!ld” is available on SoundCloud so ride through the streets with your windows down and feel the groove!
BG: You can see me right now on VOD in The Devil’s Dolls directed by Padraig Reynolds. A film I’m in called Dead Awake written by Jeffrey Reddick (Final Destination) and starring Jocelin Donahue is hitting festivals right now. In the non-horror world, I’m in a series on Netflix called Eastsiders which is a gay drama about infidelity and hipsters on the eastside of Los Angeles. And for those who like the Graham Skipper/Brea Grant combo, we’ve done two more movies across from each other: A Christmas horror anthology called All the Creatures Were Stirring and another horror called Bad Apples. Chase, Barbara and I also just wrapped a movie called Applecart which is a horror film I am very excited about. Like I said, I really like doing horror.
GS: I actually am in post right now on a feature film that I wrote and directed called Sequence Break, and it stars Chase Williamson! It’s a sci-fi/horror film about a video arcade repair technician (Chase) whose reality begins to crumble around him. It’s got lots of Cronenbergian hallucinations and bio-mechanical mutations, and Chase is fantastic in it. Hopefully soon there will be news about a release, but for now we’re just working to get it finished! Stay tuned!
Beyond the Gates will be screening at the SITGES – International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia next week and was picked up by IFC Midnight after it’s premiere at the LA Film Festival.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNw16wh6m8c
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