Exclusive: Charlie Bewley Talks Playing Bachelor Games
Howard Gorman
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Whilst it’s usually the best man pulling out all the stops when it comes to pranking the bachelor at his stag do, someone (or something) else has much deadlier plans in store in the horror-comedy Bachelor Games, the debut feature from award-winning documentary director Edward McGown.
Inspired by a short film released back in 2009 (which you can watch by clicking here) and penned by Sam Michell and Chris Hill, Bachelor Games takes a trip with five friends as they embark on a bachelor weekend in Argentina, expecting the usual heedless prenuptial antics. And that’s exactly how it all plays out… at first. But then ulterior motives leave them stranded, wounded, and hunted through the Andes.
With the film set to release on all good digital platforms worldwide this July 8th, Dread Central caught up with the film’s best man, Charlie Bewley (The Twilight Saga, “The Vampire Diaries), to find out if the groom got to the altar on time…
DC: When you auditioned for Bachelor Games, were you in the running for Leon’s role from the word go?
Bewley: I don’t think I actually auditioned in the end. There were a lot of offers thrown around. [Producer] Georgie [Edwards] had a very strong sense of what she wanted. I don’t know if any of the boys actually auditioned for their roles; she sort of hand-picked really. When you’re offering someone a trip to Argentina for seven weeks to work on a movie, I don’t think many people are going to turn their nose up at it. And the other four guys are really, really fucking good at what they do. I was very lucky to come in from an American standpoint and work with these guys who, apart from Jack, had all been theater trained. It was really interesting to get to work with all of these guys who had gone and done things the right way. I don’t mean the ‘right’ way, but a different way to the way I did it.
DC: Tell us about working with the rest of the cast. Much of the comedy comes from the camaraderie you all share at the beginning, but then mistrust creeps in and that’s where the terror and tension start to escalate. Was it a challenge to forge both ends of the spectrum with your fellow cast members?
Bewley: We did a lot of rehearsals to be fair, and I like a bit more of a messy approach to things because I wasn’t theater trained so I don’t really know the craft of acting that well [laughs]. It’s tough to say really, but it certainly wasn’t difficult to step into that character who turned a little bit more sinister halfway through the movie. And I can’t say that I don’t empathize with the kind of situation we see in the movie so it wasn’t difficult to understand what fractured the relationship between me and Jack Gordon’s character.
DC: And was it as simple as that when it came to juggling that balance you always need to get just right in horror-comedies?
Bewley: The guys are all really funny. I mean, Mike Noble, just by virtue of his Scouse accent, he cracks me up. And then Jack Doolan is just like a mini Del Boy (which he played once) so he’s just a very lovable guy.
And then the script was written really well. It was written in a really naturalistic manner with all its sarcasm, jokes, and digs so it was just a matter of us bonding as these five people and allowing that conversation to happen naturally. The comedy came quite naturally after that. I don’t think there was any ‘on the nose’ type of comedy in it at all really; it was just how people talk if they were on a stag do.
And then the shift in the end isn’t really as big as it seems. It goes along as a bit of a The Hangover style comedy to start off with, but that’s only in the way Brits talk to each other so that’s very natural. And it was important to have the rehearsal process in order to get that down. But when it turns nasty halfway through, that’s just part of the scenario. It really is just a thriller, but it’s been written so nicely that it came across as a bit of a comedy to start off with.
DC: Director Edward McGown cut his teeth directing documentaries. Would you say his experience in that realm brought with it a different directorial style than you are used to working with?
Bewley: Sure. Everyone is different. I’d say Ed is more of a technician, and he worked very closely with DP Lucio [Bonelli] to make it a very aesthetic movie. I think they also cast people they knew would give a performance regardless of the director. That way, the director’s job was made one hell of a lot easier by the fact that we just took the mantle of allowing ourselves to mold into this pocket of five friends that didn’t really need that much in terms of wholesale direction. All that was needed in the end was a bit of fine-tuning of the performances in order to maybe punch certain key plot points. That was basically it. Everything else was left quite natural by the way that we’d been together for a good week or two before we started shooting, and then we had the rehearsal process, which was invaluable as well. Most of the directing went down in that rehearsal process so we were ready when we got onto set in a high-pressure indie situation where you don’t have too much time or money to spare, and we were all ready to hit the ground running.
DC: You were out in Argentina for a good few weeks. What challenges did you encounter both on and off set?
Bewley: Yeah. We were there for seven weeks, mate. But we only had just enough time. There were no thrills and luxuries in this. This was indie filmmaking at its finest. We all chipped in, and the great thing about indie films is that it’s a great leveler of people and there’s no special treatment for anyone. We all stayed at the same hotel and we all ate at the same breakfast table and we all helped carry the camera gear into the desert whenever we needed to. Because we were all under the same roof, it created a very camaraderie-based engine room where we all got together and got the movie done. I think that if we’d had a bigger budget or if people had been getting special treatment, that would have created a hierarchy that might have resulted in an inferior project. We were all very humble in our roles, and I think that’s what they needed to be.
DC: Obi Abili plays Max, a friend who’s just returned from the war and is struggling with his own demons. I know you are hard at work prepping a film called Thunder Road which focuses on PTSD so I’m guessing this character struck a particular chord with you?
Bewley: Absolutely. That’s a great point. There are a lot of PTSD movies about to come out, and we’re lucky to be in that wave. The part that Obi plays is typical of some of the extremes that people coming back from war can demonstrate. Society is quite unforgiving when it comes to returning soldiers because they just don’t have the information to understand what they’re going through. It’s a huge problem in the United States; in England probably a little less because we treat our soldiers slightly better. There’s a little bit more of a bespoke nature to the way that we reintroduce them into society, but in America it’s been really bad. To answer your question, the way that Obi’s character is written really is not atypical of how soldiers are when they come back from war.
DC: How close are you to filming Thunder Road now, and how did the idea come to fruition?
Bewley: Even three years ago, when I was shooting Bachelor Games, I was working on this project with my friends Steven Grayhm and Matt Dallas, and it was initially a movie about veterans and prisoners of war. Then, through research, when we discovered this epidemic of 22 suicides per day within the veteran community, we realized we had to deliver a more truthful picture. This led us to doing intense research on the subject and creating a fictional script based on hundreds and hundreds of true stories which had resonated really profoundly with some large veteran service organizations, especially within Texas. Because of that, we’ve been able to generate investment through existing supporters of veteran causes in America. The movie is scheduled to shoot this fall, pending the rest of the development. Amongst half a dozen other PTSD movies, what you’re going to see with this one is a film which is incredibly humble and honest and graphic to the point of hopefully disturbing the population into actually doing something about this epidemic. We’re really excited to be able to bring Thunder Road to the silver screen after a five-year journey.
DC: And are you willing and able to reveal anything about any other future projects?
Bewley: Yeah. By the way, thanks for not asking about Twilight [laughs]. I filmed a couple of movies. I shot one with Jackie Chan recently called The Foreigner, which is a Martin Campbell movie. He was a wonderful director to work with, and I’d love to repeat the process. I also have The Lake, which is Luc Besson’s biggest budget movie through EuropaCorp. They were lovely people to work with, and this is a huge project that we undertook last year in Europe. It centers around a team of Navy Seals, but I don’t know how much more I can tell you beyond that. How about we talk again in December when the movie comes out? That’d be cool.
As we said, Bachelor Games releases on digital platforms worldwide this July 8. All the details can be found on bachelorgamesmovie.com/.
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