Wake Up and Smell the Pandorum
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By Genevieve M. Blaber "ScarletScribe" on
June 09, 2009
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The trailers for Christian Alvart's Pandorum are out, but it seems like the more we see, the less we know what to expect. The basics: Bower (Ben Foster) and Payton (Dennis Quaid) play amnesiac travelers who awaken aboard a spaceship that once held 60,000 passengers but which is now apparently abandoned.
Well, abandoned apart from the monstrous creatures that lurk around corners and two fellow passengers, played by Cung Le and Antje Traue, who team up with Bower. The rest of the trailer -- involving skin peeling off, random flashbacks, and a small shrieking monster -- does a lot to convey the disorientation the survivors must feel but little to shed light on the basic stranded-crew-in-space-battling-alien-like-creatures premise.
That's why we were glad to meet up with Foster and Le during Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors in NYC this past Saturday. Seated at a round-table event with the press, the actors couldn't give away many details beyond what we've seen in the trailers, but they did talk about the general mood of the film and what it was like to shoot in Germany.
Cung, did you pick up this role because it was a physical role or because you wanted to push more into genuine acting?
Le: I wanted to push more into the acting and actually when I saw the cast they told me that Ben Foster and Dennis Quaid were already attached and I was like how do I get in? Whose arm do I have to break?
Ben, what was it about this character that appealed to you?
Foster: I guess I like the idea of not remembering who you are and having to get back to more of a primitive reaction. And I like the nightmare element. I don't know how you guys sleep, but I don't sleep too well. I wanted to play with that experience of being so lost and having to depend on an instinct. We've all had these nightmares and actually getting to bring that in to a living experience was exciting to play with.
How do you make yourself not remember?
Foster: Very basically it's like, "Where did I put my keys?" But then you add crack to that -- on a spaceship, in the future
You mentioned this is a substantially violent film. How so?
Foster: I mean, it's a thriller, sci-fi horror; it bounces or weaves through a lot of different genres... so I imagine it'll appeal to a wider audience. It certainly scared the shit out of me when I read it... When I read this [script] it just it had me. There are a lot of interesting twists and physical twists that were exciting to play with.
Is there a lot of CGI and special effects in Pandorum, or is a bit more cerebral?
Foster: I'd say it would be a great combination of both.
The trailer seems a little claustrophobic; is that a theme throughout the film?
Foster: It plays with both phobias: agoraphobia and claustrophobia -- so it switches between quite tight, very uncomfortable spaces to a vastness which makes you feel more inconsequential and endangered.
How physically demanding was it?
Foster: Never, never, never physically this challenged.
Le: For me I got on set and producer Jeremy Bolt [says], "You're on a ship, there's not that much food, I want you to lose 15 pounds in two weeks"... That was for me hard -- cutting the weight and holding it. Because usually for me, when I fight, I get on the scale so I hold it for maybe a day; I get on the scale and I can eat. This was like two months. Definitely hard.
You're shooting this very demanding film and then you wrap for the day and go out onto the streets of Germany. What was that like?
Foster: It was more like six-day weeks and very long hours and very rigorous stunts every day so the one night that we had off half the time we just passed out. It's really unfortunate, [that] one of the downsides to traveling and working in this way is that you have very little time to actually explore the city you're working in. It's like, "How's Berlin?" You're like, "I have no idea." I got my ass kicked but I know very little about the city.
Can you describe the ship that you're on in the film?
Foster: It's extraordinarily vast and because it plays with memory and identity it jumps around a bit. And that's, I suppose, the exciting thing. It would be kind of a drag to give it all away but you start in a small space that can allow you to survive... and then have to confront this environment which expands and introduces a level of violence which we have to try and survive.
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Tags: Pandorum, Text Interview |
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