Patrick Lussier is an incredible filmmaker
It’s a gray, chilly day in April when FANGORIA visits the Vancouver set of WHITE NOISE 2, and drizzling rain-not very inviting. The location is a large home in an upscale neighborhood-not particularly scary. But the scene being shot involves the lead character, Abraham Dale (SLITHER’s Nathan Fillion), researching the spooky paranormal phenomenon of EVP, which he has been experiencing in a very unique and personal way, and which drove the action the previous WHITE NOISE, a surprise box-office hit in January 2005. Three years later, the in-name-only sequel is debuting this week on DVD from Universal, putting a different spin on the idea of one man’s close encounters with the deceased.
“I’ve always had a list of things I wanted to do on TV,” Fillion says, taking a break from filming close-ups of the material he’s reading and writing. “I kind of came up with it with another friend of mine when we were doing a soap opera. I wanted to shoot a gun, get shot and ride a horse. In the FIREFLY pilot I got to shoot a gun, get shot, ride a horse-and then shoot a horse. That one show kind of took care of everything, and I had to come up with a new list. So when I’m watching TV and movies I always try to say, ‘Oh, that’s something I want to do on film.’ And today was one of them, where the camera is over my shoulder and I’m writing, on screen… I’m showing everyone my penmanship, be it good or crappy. They let me pick the pen and everything. I picked a Pilot Fineliner. No stunt hand.”
The always witty Fillion is especially sharp today-perhaps because he has been forced to bottle up a lot of his usual humor during the actual takes, as the role of Abe is a very serious one. But WHITE NOISE 2 director Patrick Lussier, who first worked with Fillion on DRACULA 2000, insists the actor is having no trouble at all staying in character and selling the drama. “Nathan is amazing,” Lussier says. “He has every single beat of the character down. The events that happen to his character in the film are devastating. His life is basically destroyed repeatedly. And never once does he have to be adjusted to be more appropriate. He is always spot-on at what he needs to be.”
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“My character is Sherry Clarke,” actress Katee (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA) Sackhoff explains. “She’s a little, eccentric nurse who ends up being in the emergency room when Nathan’s character is brought in at the beginning of the film. They become friends in a sense, because they’re both going through the same grieving process in their lives. She kind of latches onto him through the process, because it’s something she experienced a couple of years ago. She believes she can inevitably help him through the process a little better than he can help himself. She’s always there. There’s that fine line, and she walks it. Occasionally she might go [over it] a little bit, but she pulls herself back.
“Sherry is really fun,” Sackhoff continues. “She’s very different from [GALACTICA’s] Starbuck. I get to be something of a damsel in distress, which is nice. I called my agent after one scene and said, ‘I just screamed and cried and actually got beat up, and it was great. And I didn’t fight back.’ ”
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The movie’s tone also takes quite a shift from its predecessor, as WHITE NOISE 2 offers more pure horror elements than the previous film. In fact, the screenplay was conceived by Venne as a completely original project before it was reconfigured into a follow-up. “My initial spec was a horror-thriller,” Venne explains, “so it fit what they were looking for. But the rewrite process also involved pushing it as far as we could in terms of horrific moments; it was important to everyone involved not to let any potential for scares slip by.
“Patrick Lussier is an incredible filmmaker, and working with him was an amazing experience,” Venne continues. “He brought a lot of terrific ideas to the screenplay, and did what great directors do: He studied the material diligently, then worked to unearth the themes of the film as thoroughly as possible. At a certain point, it became apparent that he knew the material better than anybody, and it was such a relief to know that the film was in his hands. Nobody has the horror-thriller genre in his DNA like Patrick does. He’s such a talented filmmaker, I wish he would direct all of my screenplays.”
WHITE NOISE 2 producer Shawn (SLITHER) Williamson agrees: “He’s amazing to watch. I’ve worked with a lot of directors over the years, and Patrick comes in with the film pre-cut in his head. Toward the end of the day you always end up, on every film, cutting shots and compromising things, and you watch him as we get into the last few hours going, ‘OK, I need this, this and this…’ and he’s cutting the film as he looks at the setups we need. We were doing a split-screen shot yesterday that was incredibly complicated, where there was going to be this amazing transition between Caine, one of our characters whom you believe is evil at the beginning, and Abe. Working with the digital guys on set to create that transition, to work the scene out, he was really coming from his editor’s head. He’s been doing it throughout the film; he’s designing shots with the cut already in his head. It’s amazing to watch. He’s an amazing editor, but the transition from that skill to directing isn’t always as seamless as it is in his case.”
- Full Article: [Warning: contains spoilers]
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