Matt Fowler Gives Us the Lowdown on No Exit and Delusion
Matt Boiselle
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It’s one thing to feel as if you’re being sucked into a film while sitting in a theater, but how about actually becoming one of the participants in a live-action play as it runs in front of you? We had the chance to speak with Matt Fowler, who is currently starring in No Exit, a fully immersive play taking place right now in Hollywood until November 1st. He was gracious to spill the bean on a number of topics, so park your keester and enjoy!
DC: Matt, what can you tell us about No Exit?
MF: I had read it a while ago (about 4-5 years ago), and I’d approached the director about it, and we were in the process of casting it when he moved to Chicago, so it went dead for a while, and then a little over a year ago, Kent Mineault, who’s this amazing old school actor/director, did a reading with me and then wanted to direct it. From there we cast it and I’d approached my theater company with the reading and asked them what I’d have to do to get this produced, and they wanted to do a read, which went off really well – I think it’s a really great show, and it’s not done very often because it’s three people in a room, which is easy to produce but it’s a really hard acting piece. It’s an hour and a half straight of three people torturing each other psychologically and emotionally.
DC: What’s the fan reaction been like so far?
MF: We’ve had two shows (invited dresses) so far, and tons of people from L.A. have shown up, and these shows are attended by people that the cast and crew know personally, so we can have eyes on it before it officially opens, and one of my friends watched it who’s a huge Silent Hill fan, and he compared it to that. It’s a dream come true, not only because I’m acting in it, but because I’m producing it as well, as well as the sound design – it’s a lot of work, but it’s what you ask for. The producers have let me have a lot of input because I wanted it to be something that I’d want to see – people already love it anyway because it’s about Hell, and a lot of people in our generation are trying to see through this veil of bullshit, and the whole premise of “Exit” is that of existentialism, really – you are what you do in your life, you’re not what people tell you that you are or what you think you are, or what you imagine yourself to be, but it’s literally what you do. So, we’re trying to make it a little more immersive than just a normal stage play, and because I’ve spent so much time working on plays like Delusion that I’ve begun to like things that push the boundaries of conventional theater.
DC: What are the run dates on No Exit?
MF: We’ve already started, and we’ll be running through November 1st, and October is going to be really fun because we’ll be doing late-night shows and two shows on Saturdays (8pm and 11pm) – we’ll also have costume contests, and I’m a weirdo, so I’m hoping that the weirdos come out.
DC: Now if you could give us the lowdown on Delusion.
MF: I started the whole thing about 3 years ago, and the last two years of “Delusion” – I found it through one of the big casting sites, and I remember the breakdown for the character I was auditioning for was “a James Dean/James Franco type of guy” – overall it was like 10 different young movie star actors, and when I got the first script – Delusion: Mask of Mortality – the way my character dies is like a Darth Vader throat-grab, mind-choke about 25 feet up into the air, and I’m a huge sci-fi and wrestling fan, so when I read that, I was excited. So I had to drop 20 pounds because we were supposed to be plague victims, and it was in the same church that the pilot for “Fear the Walking Dead” was shot in – that’s where I got Vadered into the air! We got shut down for being too loud – the neighbors were tired of all the screaming, and we soundproofed the crap out of that place, but in the end we were still too loud – too many bloodcurdling screams. Last year’s script was my favorite so far because I’m a huge Stephen King fan, so the show was about this dark fantasy writer, and this group are fans of the writer who’s disappeared, so everything she’s written about in her books are coming to life in this house, and the house is trying to make her finish the last book so all of the entities can escape and take over the world – it was so much fun, and I always get killed rather crazily. So one of the last scenes takes place in an attic where we’re searching for this little girl, and all of the furniture actually levitates – then I get slammed against this wall by these shadow wraiths with skull masks on. So after 2 weeks of that, the producers said, “You can’t slam against the wall like that anymore,” but it looked so good that I couldn’t stop, and they ended up having to replace the wall. The other cool thing about it has been the celebrities that come – two years ago we had a group that included Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Seth Green, and Macauley Culkin, all in one group! It felt as if I was in an action movie with these guys, and that’s one of the coolest things, when you have one of those moments. Last year Aaron Paul from “Breaking Bad” was in a very small group, and there’s one scene where the audience is carrying me up a flight of stairs, and he was one of those people – so much fun!
DC: And that’s coming up next year?
MF: Yes, and I’ve been instructed to be very cryptic about a whole lot of information regarding this show, but I can say that it will be bigger and better than anything else before it, and there’s already been word about trying to secure a bigger space for the show, which has always been an issue with crowd size and noise, and the fact that we need a space that we won’t get shut down after running for a month. There should be some teasers running in early 2016 about what the show is going to be.
DC: Lastly, what else can we look forward to seeing you in down the road?
MF: Well, I’ve got this movie coming out called Darla, and the tagline is “A homeless man hears a familiar and chilling sound – will he make the right choice and find salvation?” We want to hit a lot of film festivals in L.A. with that, and we’re really trying to establish the network and make it larger. It’s definitely the highest quality thing that I’ve put on film this far, and I also do voice-dubbing for Telenovelas for this company that buys Spanish soap operas and sells them to South Africa, and I just got hired to do the lead of one of these, and it’s around 170 episodes – it’s a lot of fun, and I love being in the voice booth – it’s like heaven. I’m also in pre-production on another film called Clown Killer, which was started as a short story by a friend of mine, and I said that we’d turn this into a film – it’s like The Punisher for clowns! That will start shooting around my crazy schedule in October, and I’m also writing a feature that’s a Native American ghost story that’s based in upstate New York.
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