Mentor and liege facing a world overrun by vampires!
Just when you thought everything that could possibly be done with vampires has already been done with them, along comes Stake Land, directed by Jim (Mulberry Street) Mickle, a post-Apocalyptic tale of a country overrun by blood-sucking vampires on one side and over-zealous Christian right wing militias on another.
Stuck in the middle is Mister, played by Jim’s regular collaborator and co-writer Nick Damici (right), a loner traveling across the country killing vampires, who comes upon Martin, played by 20-year-old Connor Paolo from “Gossip Girl” (left), a young man left alone after his parents are murdered by vampires. Mister takes Martin under his wing and teaches him how to survive and follow in his footsteps, and on their journey to a safe haven known as “Eden,” they encounter others including a nun played by Kelly McGillis, a pregnant barmaid played by Dannielle Harris and a veteran played by Sean Nelson. The results veer closer to the movie version of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” than it does the movie version of “I Am Legend.”
ShockTillYouDrop.com visited the set back when it was filmingâyou can read that here–and this time, we really wanted to talk to Nick and Connor together, because they have such fantastic chemistry on screen and we wanted to see if that was also the case in person. As we already knew from meeting the duo on set, they’re very different than one would expect from the characters they play. D’Amici is a true New Yorker and has a similarly gruff exterior as his character, but his knowledge of filmsâand not just the ones you might expectâis quite incredible; Connor is quite a bright and eloquent young man who also had a lot of opinions that counterbalance his general newness to the business.
We got off to a bit of a rocky start, but feel free to take a swig of your favorite whisky, malt liquor or soda every time we mention visiting the set in the following interviewâ¦
ShockTillYouDrop.com: The whole movie is pretty impressive because when I was on set, I got some idea what the movie was about, but I had no idea it covered so much ground and time. It’s been a long time so what’s been the toughest part about getting the movie finished?
Nick Damici: Not for me. I didn’t edit it. Jim had to deal with that, but we’ve been working with Dark Sky Films for a while, they’ve been involved, so we had a lot of support on that end. Basically, it’s been pretty smooth, just got done what had to be done.
Connor Paolo: Yeah, I think with any independent film, even something like this, it had a small distribution base from the get-go. You kind of need to do those festival accolades and that’s what you want, so that’s going to add a lot of time. We just had to wait for Toronto and had to be ready for that, and whatever festival closest to, you have to fit it into that, and let that festival do what it does.
Shock: Connor, I know you had limited time because of the show, so after you were finished shooting, it was just all on Jim to get all the pieces together?
Damici: Yeah, it wasn’t fun.
Paolo: And from him, what I got was basically that race to get it ready for that film festival.
Damici: That was the biggie.
Paolo: Yeah, and then after that, it was just kind of running off that.
Shock: Obviously when you first conceptualized this, Nick, you were always going to play Mister, what were you looking for in a liege and how did you end up in Connor and what were you looking for specifically?
Damici: A lot of it was practically. Originally, I saw Martin as a bit younger, and then it came to the reality of shooting an independent film and we need an 18-year-old kid who looks like he’s 15. We can’t do this with a kid unless he was my nephew or something and I don’t have one, so how are we going to do this? We just came across Connor and Jim brought me up and said, “I just want you to meet him, put you on tape,” and I sat down with him for two seconds and Jim asked me and I said, “That’s it, hire him, he’s the kid! He’s our guy! There’s no way around it.” It was that instantateous.
Paolo: We sat down a couple weeks ago, maybe longer, but we were watching⦠there are ultimately going to be some DVD extras, and they have footage of that meeting that we did.
Damici: Us reading the scene.
Paolo: And it’s the scene of us in the houseâ¦
Damici: Where I’m putting the garlic oil on the stake and it’s that scene. And I had the same hoodie on, it’s really funny, and we did it in (someone’s) office.
Paolo: But it’s essentially played exactly the same way as when we actually shot it.
Damici: When you see it back to back with the film, you’re like, “Holy sh*t, we had it in the office!”
Paulo: Exactly, and that was sight unseen, so at least for me, it was a pretty instant, “Oh, this works.”
Shock: Cool, cool. What were your concerns as an actor about doing the movie since you were already on the TV show and I remember they had to do the movie in two sections for different seasons. Was the genre very much a draw to you?
Paolo No, it was the film. It really was just that. It was the arc of it, was really just something I wanted to make as good as possible. The only way I know how to do that is through my work, which is as an actor, so I want to be involved in it. My only challenges from the outset was just in that interim period when I would be back on the “Gossip Girl” set, keeping Martin in my head and making sure that when we came back to work, that it was there and that aging, I’d be able to do that work. A lot of that was helped by the fact that Nick and I kept a steady stream of meeting and training and hanging out and building our relationship so we could cram anywhere between a year and two years worth of understanding into those scenes.
Shock: Was the split of shooting done in a logical way and it was done mainly for locations and seasons so when you came back to it, was it later in the movie chronologically?
Damici: To some degree. There was some overlapping, but you don’t really notice it,
Paolo It was pretty good.
Damici: We were afraid of it, but there wasn’t much noticing it. Basically, it was a seasonal thing. Originally, we were going to break it up three times because we wanted snow, but by the time we got to the second half, we realized budget-wise, we realized we had to do it all in one shot. If we get snow, great, and we didn’t really get snow in November.
Paolo: We got potato flakes.
Shock: I remember when I was on set, it was pouring rain but it actually adds a lot to those scenes. Usually, when you have rain on a movie, it completely screws up your entire schedule.
Paolo Except for my ass. I sat on the ground quite a bit.
Damici: That’s the only thing I hate about making movies, getting your ass wet.
Paolo: And it happens quite a bit.
Damici: But you weren’t wearing leather pants. Get your ass wet when you’re wearing leather.
Shock: I also saw you guys killing the make-up guy dressed up as a nun, and I was really impressed how good that scene looked on screen. If I hadn’t been on set, I wouldn’t have known it was a guy under the make-up.
Damici: He looked great.
Paolo: Nah, he’d best be good at his own make-up.
Damici: I was amazed by what he did physically though.
