Finally, just one question that I try to remember and ask everybody. What is the film that made you want to get into acting or directing?
Elijah Wood: I don’t know if there was a movie or that kind of movie, I didn’t have a “Eureka” moment where a piece of cinema spoke to me in that way, but I loved movies from the moment I started watching movies so from The Wizard of Oz to Star Wars to Raiders of the Lost Ark to Gremlins and like direct-to-VHS horror movies that my brother had. I love movies.
Stephen, do you have a movie that influenced you?
Stephen McHattie: No, I wanted to be a theater actor. I never ever thought I’d make movies, no. So I don’t have a movie that…to me it, I grew up way out in the sticks and it seemed like another world. There was no way of getting there from where I was.
Ant Timpson: It’s funny though because I get asked these questions all the time and if I’m being truthful, the pivotal moment, the seminal moments that were more of a profound impact were things I watched on TV late night as a kid because they had more power to me than the big screen, which is crazy. It sounds like I should be flogged for saying that, but those are the ones that never leave like they’re burned into my synapses, those moments.
“…the seminal moments that were more of a profound impact were things I watched on TV late night…”
The first David Cronenberg movies I saw were on tv, and he’s a very important director to me, so I get it.
Ant Timpson: Yeah, it’s something about being alone with the tv and watching it by yourself. I still remember Scrooge in 1970 was the first film I saw, and it terrified me as a five-year-old, but it’s the earlier stuff, the British ghost story stuff that I saw as a kid that was…
Elijah Wood: What? Like The Changeling.
Ant Timpson: Yeah, Escape in the Night was the one.
Elijah Wood: I’ve never seen that.
I haven’t seen that either
Ant Timpson: It’s hard to find, but worth it. And we could talk all day.
(everyone laughs, again)
