Lost Boys‘ Corey Feldman, Jamison Newlander
If you had told me when I was eleven that 23 years later I’d be speaking to the Frog brothers, my little head would have exploded. Who would have thought the vampire killers from Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys would still be in business? Needless to say, they are – together again in Lost Boys: The Thirst (review), coming to DVD and Blu-Ray October 12. Earlier this month, I found myself sitting across from Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander (aka Edgar and Alan Frog) to discuss their reunion in the second sequel to spin off from the ’87 film.
Shock Till You Drop: How soon after Lost Boys: The Tribe wrapped did real talks of a third entry start? How much say did you have in the creative process?
Corey Feldman: Tad Hilgenbrink is out! [laughs] I’m just kidding. Talks began on the set of The Tribe. This could be a franchise and have a future. Obviously, the only way to do it and to do it right was to have the return of the Frog brothers. That was my idea and some of the producers as well, but the only way to see that properly executed was with the support of the fans. This franchise, more than any other, is really all about supply and demand. It’s really interactive with its fan base. The Tribe did exceedingly well on DVD. That said, the reception to it was mixed. Some people loved it, some hated it. The constant was everybody was let down because the Frog brothers were missing. The constant review we saw was, good job, Corey, glad you were there, but the rest of the film felt it was on its own thing. So, I listened intently to what the fans are looking for. I immediately took that back to Warner Bros. and said this is what they’re looking for. If we’re going to do another film, we have to do a full-fledged return of the Frog brothers. There were some debates and back-and-forth talks and there were some things I was able to get into the film and some things I was not, but that’s okay because it leaves us open-ended, we can do more stuff in the future.
Shock: Jamison, to hear the fan base looking for your return must have been a tripâ¦
Jamison Newlander: Yeah, it was amazing. For The Tribe, as they were putting it together, they realized it really had to involve Corey. There was a possibility I was going to be involved and then I was, but it was only a little taste. When it premiered at Comic-Con, Corey had this cool idea where we’d come out as the Frog brothers. The audience got to see them together and I think that was a turning point for Warner Bros. because they were seeing the fans drink that up and loving it.
Feldman: It gave them “the thirst” to see more. [laughs]
Shock: Oh, man⦠Nice pun.
Newlander: [laughs] It was fun for me because it allowed me to get back to that dynamic we saw in the first movie. We worked closely in that first movie, more so than Corey and Corey working together. We had a lot of bits together and Joel [Schumacher] encouraged that. To work with Corey again was excited.
Feldman: If you had gone back to that place and time, I think the idea would have been that Jamison and I were the team that arose from that film. If it weren’t for the fact that Corey had his own success and I had my own success, the two Corey thing, it might have gone in that direction. But because the two Coreys became what they did, things obviously veered off differently.
Shock: Was it hard to slip back into that Frog brother groove, did the amount of time help?
Newlander: It was not exactly hard, but I couldn’t slip right back in. It took some time and it took some time talking about it. Talking about how much do we slip back into what we were then and how much do weâ¦where are our characters now?
Feldman: How they developed, yeah. For The Tribe, it was fairly easy for me. It was the first character I ever created. I mean, I had somewhat done that for Stand By Me and The Goonies, even Friday the 13th, but with The Lost Boys I was given free reign by Joel Schumacher. I could development him into this unique entity. So, it was already well-established in my mind, as they say it’s like riding a bike. I put on the costume and Edgar came right back to life. Because my on screen time was limited in that film, I had to make certain choices about what to do with Edgar’s progression. It was about bringing him back and emulating as much as possible what the character represented in the first film, however, this film is now a few years past that. I’ve faced a lot of loss, he’s disenchanted, disengaged. At the end of the day, he’s a lone soldier and fending for himself. He had to come from a somber and solemn place. It’s not until he’s enticed to save his brother’s soul that he gets back in the game. Where I was coming from, recently suffering a divorce, losing friends from that and being in a tough place, I pulled from my own personal experience and put that into the character.
Newlander: If you look at that arc he’s talking about, there’s all of this time coming into his own as a vampire hunter, my twist is I’m there dealing with that hatred of vampires and then I become one, there’s that conflict. I’m trying to deny my vampire instincts. I’d rather suck the blood of an animal and then turn him into a little sculpture. [laughs]
Feldman: And he did very well denying those vampire instincts.
Newlander: Is that a joke?
Feldman: No! No, you did very good. [laughs] I congratulate you on feeding on animals all of these years.
Shock: This is a knowing entry. You poke fun at vampires in pop culture and the Twilight craze, always a fun thing, but stay true to the Lost Boys essence.
Feldman: The template was given to us by Evan Charnov who wrote the original screenplay, Hans, Jamison and I had some writing meetings about where we saw the script leading. We fixed it up from there. What was instilled in those writing sessions was that vampires are very popular in movies now, how do we keep it contemporary and where do we see it going in the wrong direction and how do we properly reclaim our stake by becoming the original vampire hunters? The best way we saw doing that was to confront it head-on, lets acknowledge it and make a bit of a joke with it with the presence that they had.
Source: Ryan Turek, Managing Editor
