COLONEL’S CRYPT: How were you approached with ALIEN TRESPASS?

R.W. GOODWIN: Jim Swift, the writer, had a friend who approached me about doing it. He had seen these movies as a kid, he had gone to the Ritz Theater in Inglewood, took the bus from Windsor Hills, and every Saturday he would see two science fiction movies on a double bill. Coincidentally, I went to Inglewood from the bus at Windsor Hills and saw the same two movies every Saturday. We were in the same theater as kids but didn’t meet each other until six years ago. He was a year younger than me. We both loved those films and he wanted to make one. He came to me about it and I thought he was a little crazy. I did run the old ones again because I really hadn’t seen them since I was a kid and they held up with the childhood memories. They were still everything I remembered but what was different was that they were funny. Fifty years later they became funny because the styles have changed. It went out of fashion and people making those films, they were serious when they made them but now they’re funny. I figured that if we really did that then we had to stick to the fifties in every way. It would be funny but we weren’t going to do a parody or a spoof. We were doing a real 1950s movie knowing that if we kept to the style and with the technology, it would be fun have all of the elements that I love so much which is that it would be scary. You are scared by this rubber monster. People get scared by it. There’s suspense and there’s some very touching stuff. There’s a sweetness that I love about it that’s from the 1950s.

CC: The film is being promoted as a “lost science fiction masterpiece” that’s been recovered after 50 years and opens up with a newsreel footage explaining this. Why did you decide to open up the film in this way?

RWG: The newsreel is clearly tongue in cheek, the whole approach of it being a lost film is tongue way in cheek and I think people enjoy it. They feel like they’re in on the joke, they like that. What it really was, it was much more practical. When we started screening it around the country, in the very beginning the movie would start and people would sit there. It became very clear that a lot of people had no idea what they were seeing. There was no context for them. A lot of people were leaving going “Oh my god, the acting is so bad. The special effects are so terrible and cheesy,” and they didn’t get it. We realized that the audience had to be informed before the movie started as to what it was they were going to see. Originally it was me getting up and doing an introduction and saying it. I would say “This is a lost movie found after 50 years” and so forth and in the beginning we were really struggling. Then we came up with the idea of this newsreel. The first three stories were real. They were from the 1950s. We bought those and then we added our own little story to set up the fact that this was a classic film in the 1950s that never got released and here it is. There’s also the featurette which is on the website, if you go to the website, www.alientrespass.com, you can view it there and it’s a lot of fun. It’s an 8 minute history of this classic film going back to archival footage.

CC: Personally speaking, what were some of the films from that era that stood out for you?

RWG: Well there are a lot of them. My two personal favorites are the original WAR OF THE WORLDS. I just never get enough of that. I can still keep watching it over and over again. It’s just so beautifully done. Byron Haskin did such a great job directing it and the look of it was so gorgeous. That was our prototype. That was the movie I told everyone that ours should look like. The other two that we used as prototypes were THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE. We used those as the yard stick as well. Now my other personal favorite is INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. That was fantastic. I also liked a lot of the bad ones too. INVADERS FROM MARS scared the heck out of me as a kid but I look at it now and it’s extremely low budget. You can see the zippers on the Martian outfits. It did have an element. The little boy was the focal point of the beginning. It was a scary movie. He’s in his bedroom and he sees a spaceship land near him. Then he sees his father get sucked in. Then the townspeople are changing into martians. Then he wakes up and it’s all a dream only to see the spaceship landing, so now it’s happening for real. I never forgot that. I liked a lot of them. They all have different charms to them.

CC: One movie I always liked from that era was THEM!

RWG: THEM! was great. That was a really good one.

CC: Your decision of filming it like it was film in that era, did that cause more of a challenge because of today’s technology?

RWG: We took advantage of today’s technology but only in ways that were invisible to the movie and that helped me get through the schedule. In the 1950s, all the driving shots were done in rear projection. Nowadays they don’t use rear projection. If they use it, it’s front projection. In the case of ALIEN TRESPASS we just used green screen because it was just the process of the foreground being on stage and the background being filmed. That made things go a lot faster because I didn’t have to coordinate backgrounds and foregrounds until later. I could just short and I got through three days of just driving. It was a huge help because I took one car out, put another one in, relit the background, and it saved a lot of time. Eric Chauvin did all of our visual effects and he’s brilliant. He was the first one to say “You have to make a rubber monster” because there’s no other way it would be acceptable. We really did everything as it was done in the 50s unless it was invisible where nobody would tell the difference. I used the same things. In EARTH VERSUS THE FLYING SAUCERS, there’s a scene where the heroes are running from the saucers who are bombarding this air field. You can see they are clearly running on a treadmill with a moving image projecting behind them. I used the same technique in ALIEN TRESPASS when Tammy pulls alongside Ted. He’s on a treadmill and even when he stops, the screen still moves for a second. There’s a whole bunch of things in the movie like that. Everyone who’s seen the movie a few times always tell me that they see something they haven’t caught the first time. There’s all these wonderful little elements that’s buried in there.

CC: I think the film looks great in color and has the feel of WAR OF THE WORLDS, but also I am curious because in seeing how it’s lit and shot, if it were shown in black and white, I feel that it could also look pristine from that era.

RWG: Yes but the problem with people remembering those 1950s black and white movies is that so many people saw them on television when all that was available were black and white television sets. There were as many color movies than they were in black and white. There was WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE BLOB which we show in this movie, THIS ISLAND EARTH, and others. I preferred color because as a kid seeing this in the film I saw in the theater. That’s the look I wanted for this film and it was in color. I do see your point however.

CC: How was it getting Eric McCormack in the lead?

RWG: It was amazing. We got a list from Susan Edelman, our casting director in LA for that character because we had to cast the leads first. We had great names but I was thinking that nobody would do a low budget film. We felt we needed to go with the gem and our top choice which was Eric. Susan is a well regarded casting director in the business. She’s a well regarded casting director. She knew Eric’s manager and gave him a copy of the script. It was then just very simple. He read it and immediately just loved it. He responded instantly. He totally got the approach we were taking. It was an honest movie. It was not a parody but by doing it the way we were doing it, it was going to be delightfully entertaining. He saw all of that and immediately said he wanted to do it. It was great.

CC: I thought he was great in the role and what I liked mainly about it was that he played both his roles dead serious and in a way that you could believe it.

RWG: That’s what they were in the 1950s. They were serious. They were earnest and that’s what we’re going to be. We are earnestly trying to make the best science fiction movie we can. The only thing is that we’re all living in 1957 and we have to abide by the rules from 1957, the style of acting, the style of shooting, and the style of technology at the time. Eric and the other actors watched the three movies we spoke about before mainly because there is good acting in those movies. We didn’t want to make a bad fifties movie. We wanted to make a classic fifties movie. We borrowed and stole from a bunch of other things. Everyone was so immersed in the 50s all through the pre-production and watching these movies that it was in our bones when we were shooting it.

CC: I have to mention Robert Patrick, being that you’ve worked with him before. How is it working with an actor numerous times and does it get more comfortable and easier with them in each passing project and personally how is it to work with Robert who’s playing once again the prototypical bad guy character?

RWG: With Robert Patrick it’s easy from the day you meet him. He’s the nicest guy you’ve ever met in your life and the most talented guy. I did a pilot with him, a single camera comedy and I was amazed. I thought “Oh my god, the Terminator can really be funny.” I felt that nobody really knows that. In ALIEN TRESPASS, in the first scene he’s in at the diner and he’s coming on to the waitress, making a wise remark to her. She calls him on it and all of a sudden you look at him and he has this incredible vulnerability in his face. He’s sort of put on the spot and he’s shocked. You don’t see that much because Robert’s not asked to do that much. The scene goes with Robert’s character Vern asks “Tammy when are you and I going up to the point together,” and she responds “Never because you’re Vern.” He responds with “You’ve been here three years and I’ve never seen you with a guy.” She goes, “What’s your point” and repeats it. I told Robert that at that point you know that she’s eventually going to go out with you but at the same time being that you know this you are sort of praying to yourself that she will go out with you. He did the scene so beautifully and after the scene he came up to me and said, “You know Bob, when she asked me that this guy’s kind of vulnerable. I like that!” (Laughs) If you see his death scene, it’s really funny but Robert’s not playing it funny. He’s serious.

CC: In dropping a spoiler, that was one of the best shots in the film being that he’s attacked by this monster and slowly being turned into a puddle.

RWG: It was the only time in the movie that we showed the process. In the other scenes you would see the monster move and then show a quick cut to a puddle. I really wanted to play that. We had built a Ghoda belly that had a foam rubber with a split in it so that as Robert is being pulled in, you could see his head enter his body. When we were shooting that particular shot, he just kept pushing and pushing to the point that only his neck was sticking out. We heard him say “Hey, what are you doing in here?!” (Laughs) I just went cut and laughed.

CC: In science fiction and in horror, the trend seems to be in monster movies that whoever is considered to be the villainous human seems to get killed in the worst possible manner on screen. It seems to be the one element that has stayed true throughout the years.

RWG: There’s a whole bunch of things that are standard science fiction conventions and I think it’s one of the fun things we had with the movie. The 1950s was a time where the basic vocabulary for science fiction films was established. All of those conventions are in the movie but it’s an original movie. That’s what attracted me the most. All the conventions of WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, and IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE are there, but they were put together by my buddy Jim as an original idea with some original twists. The girl’s a hero which never happens in the 1950s for example. If you could do it, we could go back in time to 1957 and release this film and probably people would love it for what it is.

CC: Where do you see horror and science fiction going within the next five years?

RWG: Who knows? You never do know do you? People ask me that most of the stuff that comes out based out of graphic novels or out of a game, they seem to be so dark and nihilistic and that sort of thing but it wasn’t that long ago that we were doing THE X-FILES and that had great humor and great humanity to it. Someone else will continue that. My feeling on genres is that the tendency is that if something becomes a hit than people try to emulate it and copy it which I think is a big mistake. I think the truly wonderful films and TV shows have some unique approach to it. It may have all the elements but there’s some unique approach to it. If you take the new STAR TREK, I’m wondering because I was involved in the first STAR TREK and I knew Gene Roddenberry very well. I’m very curious to see what J.J. Abrams does with it because he is a unique talent.

CC: I’m curious as well. I know some people with LOST being it’s in its fifth year that some viewers have left not fully understanding the whole plot.

RWG: It’s very hard to keep a television show going. When I started on THE X-FILES, I openly said at the beginning of producing the show that it would be great if we could go up to five years. It’s hard to sustain creativity and stay vibrant. Although THE SIMPSONS is in its 22nd year and they’re still funny.

CC: THE X-FILES I felt did sustain that in its nine years well, and I also liked how it balanced itself between science fiction, comedy, and horror.

RWG: We had some scary stuff, some very funny stuff, and sometimes both together, one right up against the other in the same episode. It was just the right combination of people. The group of people assembled for that show couldn’t have been more perfect. We all complemented each other and we all brought something exciting to the table.

CC: What’s coming up for you?

RWG: I’ve just done a pilot on spec that I’m finishing called the CODY RIVERS show. It’s a bunch of sketch comics. They do song and dance, puppets, mime, and characters in silly outfits. They are totally off the wall. I put together a pilot for it and I’m hoping to sell it to cable. I call it a combination of MONTY PYTHON meets MOULIN ROUGE in the 21st century. I’m writing a script which is a departure from ALIEN TRESPASS but it has a lot of humor in it. It’s about an individual going through a midlife crisis. And finally, of course, Jim Swift is e-mailing me ideas for a sequel to ALIEN TRESPASS and I gotta tell you he’s got a take on it that’s fantastic. It’s not in any ways that you expect it. It’s Tammy, Ted, and Chief Dawson five years later.

CC: Thank you for your time Mr. Goodwin and best of luck with ALIEN TRESPASS.

RWG: Thank you for the support and for helping spread the word on our little film.

(Special thanks to Falco Ink)