Jonathan Lipnicki On His New Slasher And Getting To Be A Clown
Mary Beth McAndrews
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Jonathan Lipnicki was a big part of many of our childhoods. While he’s famous for his role in Jerry Maguire, he also graced my screen in films such as Stuart Little and the iconic Little Vampire. Now, adult Lipnicki is tackling a variety of projects, including the new slasher Camp Pleasant Lake.
In Camp Pleasant Lake,
Rick and Darlene Rutherford breathe life into the eerie remnants of an old campsite, unaware of its dark past. Strange occurrences haunt the area, mirroring the tragedies of the old camp, where two decades earlier, a young girl was kidnapped and her parents brutally murdered. Amidst chilling atmospheres and long-forgotten secrets, the couple grapples with a horrifying revelation—they are entwined in the camp’s history. And as the shadows of the past collide with the present, the Rutherfords must confront the haunting histories of a sinister crime.
We spoke with Jonathan Lipnicki about taking on this role at a crossroads in his career, his love of the horror community, and the power of The Little Vampire. Spoilers abound for his new film, so proceed with caution.
Dread Central: What attracted you to this script?
Jonathan Lipnicki: Well, to start off, Jared [Safier], who’s the producer on Camp Pleasant Lake, we’ve done a number of projects together. He is a good friend of mine. I love working with the same people, so that was the initial door opener, right? And then I met Thomas Walton, the director, and we got along really quickly. This one, I just really want to have a good time with my friends. I think that’s really what it came down to. It’s really fun. Gave me a chance to kind of play something different and have fun. I mean, life’s short, right?
DC: It seems like a lot of fun. Did it feel like you were at summer camp when you were filming the summer camp?
JL: Yeah. You’re with your friends, you’re staying up way too late, getting way too caffeinated, so I guess so, yeah.
DC: So we’re getting into some spoilers here. I do want to talk about the evolution of your character because there’s a scene at the end where you really are feral. Was that on the page? Did they let you play? It felt like you were just running around playing in a way that was really cool to watch for you as an actor.
JL: Yeah, so I’ll explain it to you. Spoiler alert. A lot of it was me playing. I figured that if I had been in the woods my whole life, I wouldn’t have developed normally. So there’s a certain immaturity to me if I’m feral and I grew up with my sister and that’s all I knew. So there was a certain element of that. That’s what I thought of when approaching this character. And also there’s this certain element of, I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, so it’s a massive release and it’s also my time to shine. So I approached a lot of it like a comedy in a way, because it was a time where I got to be really present in a situation. I’m a kid at heart because I haven’t really grown up around anyone else.
DC: Oh, interesting.
JL: Yeah, if you notice there’s a lot of playfulness and clowning. That’s not something I just decided to do. It’s all intentional actually. I want to experiment always. And some stuff’s going to work and some stuff isn’t. I think for me, being in a certain place in my life where I was about to move out of LA where I’ve lived my whole life, and I was going at an interesting crossroads when I decided to do this role and I just said, fuck it. I was pretty bummed out about where I was in my life and I just really wanted to have a good time.
DC: You’ve been in horror films before, but this is your first time as the bad guy, right?
JL: Yeah, I guess so. But I’m not really a bad guy if you think about it. I mean, yeah, I do some bad things in it, but as an actor, you can’t go in and judge your character.
DC: You’re the bad guy in a horror sense. Basically, you get to play with blood a lot in Camp Pleasant Lake.
JL: Exactly. But yeah, I guess so, this is a first for me.
DC: What a cool mask design, too.
JL: Yeah, it’s actually a nice mask.
DC: That’s so cool. Is it easy to see out of?
JL: Yeah. I mean enough to kill people I guess. But I definitely fell over a few times.
DC: I need to see you as a full-on horror bad guy.
JL: Well, I mean your lips to God’s ears. I would love to do that. I would love a chance to do that. But yeah, it’s not like I really pre-planned so much. I just understand who I am in it, and then I just kind of do it. The scene where I’m yelling at Denny, that came out of nowhere. She’s running away and I just decided to make fun of her. And then the tree around the scene, he was going to have me enter walking and I saw a tree and I was like, “Why don’t I just pop out of a tree, dude?”
DC: Oh yeah. That is very kiddish. This film is interesting because it looks at our own obsessions with violence, with blood, with death. Would you ever go to a camp of terror?
JL: Probably not. I don’t think I would. The closest I got is Halloween Horror Nights, which is fun. And Universal Studios in LA had a class with that, but I’d rather be on the other side terrorizing people. And listen, Camp Pleasant Lake was a fun movie. Some people are going to like it, some people won’t. That’s how it is. But I really like the horror fan base because my whole goal as an actor is to build bridges. We live in a very weird time and the world can be a scary place. I just hope that [the movie] connects with some people and it makes their day a little bit better, and they have as much fun as I did, or at least somewhat as much fun.
You go out there and you take a big swing and you don’t know how it’ll turn out. I actually haven’t seen it yet, believe it or not. I need to watch. I’ve been so busy. I’ve seen bits and pieces that Thomas has shown me. But, man, for me, the whole point was being there and being present. Anything else watching it, that’s cool. But the whole high for me was getting to do it.
DC: Are you a horror fan? Do you like watching horror movies?
JL: I do like horror movies. Growing up in the time of The Grudge and The Ring, being a millennial, I really looked forward to every weekend being able to go to some big opening. It was the thing to do when you were a young teen, to go to the movies on Friday night for the opening of something. I’m not one of those people where I’m like, “This is my genre”, but I’ve always been a fan of dark material. So horror, and psychological thrillers, those things do speak to me. The biggest thing I’m in love with about horror is the people.
DC: You got to work with some really cool horror people in this movie, too. There are a lot of horror heavy hitters in Camp Pleasant Lake.
JL: I think horror attracts some incredibly kind people, which is funny. I did a horror convention a few years back and I was just struck by how loyal, cool, and easy to talk to everybody was. So I think the fan base and the filmmakers and the actors and the whole atmosphere is probably the most attractive thing to me.
DC: Did you sneak into horror movies like I did when I was a child?
JL: I always got real nervous about that. I was a good kid, but I’m pretty sure also I was already in the industry, so I was like, “I don’t want to take money away from them!”
DC: You’re a better person than me when I was a teenager.
JL: I don’t know. I was such a goody two shoes until I wasn’t.
DC: I do have to say, you were a big part of me getting into horror with The Little Vampire. I watched it obsessively. I loved it so much because I wanted to be a vampire. So your character was me as a child. You got me into horror.
JL: I really appreciate that. That was what I got a lot at that horror con. That [movie] was really fun. It’s lighter, obviously not too scary, but a lot of people at the horror convention would come up and be like, that was my first introduction, and that’s really cool.
DC: That’s neat that you had to be in that movie and now you’re in a slasher. It’s got to be both so cool as an actor and difficult to see your growth as a performer.
JL: Yeah. Well, it’s like you write, right? So you understand that your creative endeavors are just, they’re heartbreaking. They fill your heart, break your heart, everything in between. And so it’s like, man, I love it. I’ve been on really both sides of it where I was working a lot, where I wasn’t working, and I am grateful for every opportunity I get.
Like any creative endeavor or starting a business, probably everything worth doing is pretty hard, so it depends on what you’re going to stress out over. And I chose to stress out over this whole thing. I decided to really focus on going to acting class and really develop as an actor through thick and thin. I am always very transparent about it. I’m not super happy where my career is, but that’s okay.
The only thing I really planned was to jump out of that tree. But as far as my career, man, you don’t have a lot of control over that. So it’s just about setting yourself up for the best success by working hard. But I’m grateful for everything. I know it could be so much more, and that’s what I work towards every day. That’s what lights the fire.
DC: You’re executive producing now for Buffalo Eight, and I’m excited to see what you do next. Can you tease anything about what you have upcoming?
JL: Oh man. I have some really good projects on my slate. I don’t know what I could say about them yet. But I get to work with some really cool filmmakers. I also just did a movie that’s pretty trippy that just had its festival debut called Man Goes On Rant. This guy goes down this wormhole of conspiracy theories to deal with some stuff that’s happening in his life.
That director, Peter Pardini, I’m producing his next project at Buffalo Eight, and that one is a beautiful project. I really believe in this writer, director, young man. I say young man, he’s the same age as me. He’s a little older actually, but I believe in expanding, right? Producing. It’s not like I’m putting acting behind me. I’m just expanding what I can do.
Camp Pleasant Lake is out now on digital and VOD.
Categorized:Interviews
