EJ Moreno chats with actor Anthony Michael Hall about his new film Trigger Warning…
You’re one of these performers, and everyone has a favorite role from you. Everyone seems to love you so much. So, it’s such an honor to speak with you.
Oh, that’s so sweet of you. Man, thank you for the kindness. What a nice way to open up. I appreciate that very much.
I mean, man, I still say “Evil Dies Tonight,” as you did on Halloween. So, you know, it’s burned in my head.
You know what? Let me address that right now. We all thought it was a great idea on set. But you know what? Smarter minds than I? Like many people, I thought we could have done with a couple 100 less of those in the final edition. But in fairness, I want to shout out to David Gordon Green and Danny McBride. Like, I loved working for those guys. It’s just so funny. Because, like many people, I loved all the memes.
I just want to go on record and saying the memes cracked me up. Pumpkin Pies tonight, Santa flies tonight, I was dying. That’s hilarious. So maybe it’s not that bad a thing.
It lives on, truly. And your work. I mean, you have this lasting thing, and with Trigger Warning, you’re kind of a different vibe than normal. You’re going for pure baddie. Is that what drew you to this film?
Great question. Yeah, you know what was really fun is I, again, this came up through my managers, and I got, I became aware of Mouly Surya’s work, and I had requested a meeting with her, and so we had a beautiful FaceTime kind of zoom call. She couldn’t have been lovelier. She was such a cool lady. And I had seen her film, Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts. And she’s a phenomenal filmmaker.
I mean, if you ever seen that film, it’s just, it’s like, her Kill Bill, you know, it’s just, there’s a lot of action, and it’s powerful, and it has a beautiful, poetic beauty to it, to the way it’s shot.
So I was excited, man. When you play a bad guy, you have to go all in; there are no limits. You dig into it and have fun with it. So, it was a lot of fun to play. I chose to give it a little bit of a Southern thing, even though my sons weren’t that, and we were in the Southwest. But the other thing is, when you get to a set, the collaboration, like the costume department, had all these ideas. Remember, the costume designer showed me her vision board for the role. It was like, pictures of, like, Ted Turner from the 80s, guys that live in the great Southwest, but because they’re so wealthy, not that they were necessarily cowboys.
So playing this character was a lot of fun. And then there’s the thing of, when I get to the set, and I got two grown men playing my sons, I’m like, okay, you know you’re getting in your 50s when you have two grown men playing your son?
Action Star looks great on you, though. You talked about Ted Turner being an inspiration for the vision board. But were there any iconic movie villains that you took from? I always feel like this has an ’80s tinge, and there’s always a little Hans Gruber there for everyone.
When you have that opportunity to play that guy, everything is like free reign. You can go for it and dig in. And if anything, I would ask Molly to pull me back, but because he’s such a slithery guy, he’s actually this corrupt and corruptible senator. And the two sons I saw are like Cain and Abel. Jake Weary is fully entrenched and involved in the arms deal. Mark Weber, a great guy and a different type of actor, was also a lot of fun. And then there’s that whole backstory with him and Jessica because they had a love story when they were younger. It was a lot of fun to dig into that. You know, to work with this group of actors was fun.
Speaking with you, it’s impossible not to mention the iconic start of your career. Can you look back at a young Anthony Michael Hall or a young Mike and give us some films you wanted to star in back then? Have you lived out any of those dream roles, or is that childhood dream role still there for you?
Well, you know what? I’m gonna break something with you, which probably a lot of people didn’t know before now, but Leonardo, who’s had just a stellar career, and as a fine actor, I have great respect for DiCaprio. He wound up doing a film that I originally developed, which was called The Basketball Diaries.
When you brought that up, that was the first thought I had. I developed it with Jim Carroll. We were trying to get it made. My father, who is now deceased—God rest his soul—is no longer with us. He was a great manager. He wound up discovering Sandra Bullock, John Leguizamo, Mike Epps, and a lot of people after he worked with me as a child. So, we developed The Basketball Diaries—that was one that comes to mind.
Let me see. In the end, this is the footnote, and it’s strange because I wound up not making the film, but I had the opportunity and was offered Full Metal Jacket. So even just that experience of negotiating and getting to talk to Stanley Kubrick, I mean, it was like, it’s like Oz. I remember those conversations I had with Stanley Kubrick, and they were amazing. He was talking about his great influences, like [Charlie] Chaplin and [Sergei] Eisenstein. I’ve had incredible experiences even in trying to secure a deal for that.
It didn’t wind up working out but Kelly LeBrock, who’s a dear friend of mine, she wound up taking me to Jack Nicholson’s house when I was doing Weird Science, so I could talk to Jack about working with Stanley. I mean, the things that I’ve lived. Yeah, I’ve had some great experiences.
So that’s what comes to mind when you bring that up. You have to wish success for everybody, man; the equitable and the proper mindset. So, I’ve never been jealous or envious of people. You always want to see people win, you know. But in terms of things like that, I would love to have done even more comedies. But the things that I did with John were incredible. He really gave me my career working with John Hughes; he was just the best. We were, like, best friends. He was a great guy.
There’s a lot of talk about the Brat Pack right now, reliving that whole era. Can you speak to those connections you made then? Is that something you are looking to reconnect and get with on other productions? You guys have known each other forever and stayed strong.
That’s a great question. You know what? I can actually answer that in the most positive way.
I’ve been doing comic cons for 20 years. I’m unabashed about saying I love them. I love meeting people. My wife is from Europe, so it’s enabled me to travel all across the country. I love meeting fans and doing them. We did one recently in Pittsburgh, and it was a reunion of everybody there.
It was a great thing because we wound up meeting for dinner. So I had dinner with Molly and her husband, a great guy named Ponyo, a Greek guy who’s also a writer, and Judd Nelson. Ally didn’t make it out that night because Ally is notorious that she likes to be in bed early. It led to a great dinner; it was just so nice to sit and break bread with Molly, her husband, and Judd.
And then what happened was, after we got back from Pittsburgh, Judd and I wound up flying back to LA together. We had a layover, so we spent the whole day at the airport. So it was like Brian and Bender again. In Chicago, we were walking through the mall. We had a beer together. That led to Judd and I hanging out. We got together, and he came to the beach and met my son. We went out on the beach and hung out. It’s really nice. As to your question, yeah, I recently connected with those two who I love, and it was great to see Ally as well. That’s amazing when you can reconnect with people. And we have that special connection because of the film and what it’s meant to people for all these decades. Yeah, it’s incredible.
To close this out, let’s return to Trigger Warning quickly. I want to say that Senator Swan’s character is very intriguing; you need to bring something great to him. Is it still easy? Is it getting easier to find nitty-gritty details in these characters with more experience under your belt? Or is every role filled with new experiences and new challenges?
That’s a great question. No, I was very comfortable in this role at the same time. You have to stay open to stay open to the process. So, a lot of it is in the design on a scene-by-scene basis. So, for example, there’s a scene that came to mind when you were saying that where Jessica, you know, she goes after me, you know. And if you saw the film, it’s pretty gruesome, but they cut out of that scene before you see that, right?
So in the case of, like, to your question, that’s a great, great question. I stay adaptable. I just go with the flow. And I also, as I said to you, study the dynamic between the director, whoever it is, and that and the cinematographer because they’re really leading the charge in terms of shot selection and how you’re approaching the day. So it’s just that awareness of, like, working in teams, having respect for everybody’s input and feedback, and, you know, staying open to it. So, I was very flexible with Molly if she felt I needed to add a little more color here or there. But honestly, she trusted me with what I was doing, and what I gave to him was just a little bit of a Southern, you know, a little bit of a Southern snarl, albeit nondescript. And then again, it was like having Cain and Abel as sons. So they were such good actors, like they come alive.
One thing that comes to mind is the scene where we’re in the office, and they’re getting into a fight. So they make a choice. We’re like, this guy, he’s probably, this is the type of father. He’s probably pitting his sons against each other, which some dads do, to toughen up their sons, you know? Yeah, and it leads to that scene, as you saw, at least, to them almost coming to blows, right? But then I silenced them at the end of the scene with a gun, right, which is really powerful and interesting. So, Molly, it was interesting when we were rehearsing that scene. We’re playing with it. And Jake and Mark are pros. They’re excellent actors, and they knew what they were doing, but she was calibrating. How much did they go after each other? How physical does it get? Meanwhile, I’m sitting at the table in the background, between them, seated, you know what I mean.
So there’s an example: you just go with the director’s vision. You let the directors spell out how the shot will be visualized. And then you calibrating in tandem with the director and your other actors, you know. So you know. So, to answer your question, you have to be adaptive, flow with it, and allow the scene to take shape.
Trigger Warning will stream on Netflix from June 21st and stars Jessica Alba, Anthony Michael Hall, Mark Webber, Jake Weary, Tone Bell, Gabriel Basso, Kaiwi Lyman, and Hari Dhillon. Watch the trailer here.
Many thanks to Anthony Michael Hall for taking the time for this interview.
