Terrifier 2′ star David Howard Thornton talks hit horror film Alabama roots @River-All - @Mobile HEAD TOPICS

Terrifier 2′ star David Howard Thornton talks hit horror film Alabama roots

10/21/2022 10:00:00 PM

Art the Clown actor says ' No pun intended but art isn t supposed to be safe'

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Actor and Huntsville native David Howard Thornton got his degree in elementary education from Montevallo. But you might know him better as 'Art the Clown' from the hit TerrifierFilm series. Meet the actor from 'Terrifier 2': Art the Clown actor says, 'No pun intended but art isn’t supposed to be safe' So I am completely beside myself right now. This thing has taken on a mind of its own recently, the past week or so, and they just mentioned us on Howard Stern today. I just can’t believe this.It’s purely organic too because we didn’t really have a publicity team to do this kind of campaign. Unlike a lot of the Hollywood movies that are out there this is primarily word of mouth, from fans going to the films and just tweeting about their experiences and what they have seen in the films. And it’s just captured media’s attention now and now everybody else is talking about it. It’s unbelievable. Read more:
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The 35-year-old played the theme of the 1970 film “Love Story” and the Italian national anthem, among other songs, on the saxophone during a nine-hour operation. Read more >> 15 pairs of movies that have nearly the same plotArt imitates art (sometimes more closely than others). Missy Elliott Makes Triumphant Return to Her High School: ‘Yes I Was the Class Clown’Missy Elliott was honored at the dedication ceremony for Missy Elliott Boulevard. Love to see Missy get her things! Legend MissyElliottBLVD ChrisKross77 Go off!!! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 we love to see it. Congratulations Missy 💜💜 7 clown horror movies to watch after Terrifier 2 on streamingNot satisfied with 'Terrifier 2'? These ones will freak you out, guaranteed. She-Hulk Finale Concept Art Reveals Very Different K.E.V.I.N. DesignsSheHulk concept art reveals alternate designs for K.E.V.I.N. Thought the hat was a hilarious touch—glad Feige folded on that GaoDaGawd The hat 😂😂🧢 Mid journey 😂😂 San Jose elementary school art teacher arrested under child molestation chargesA after-school art teacher at a San Jose elementary school was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of child molestation, according to the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office. Air-Powered Art From a Newly Minted Winner of a ‘Genius Grant’Works by Paul Chan, the newly named MacArthur Fellow, go on view in November at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in the show “Breathers,” as well as this week at Paris+ by Art Basel. Fangoria , the iconic horror magazine.Stacker chose 15 pairs of films that have eerily similar plots: All pairs on this list have the same basic plot once you strip away the details.Missy Elliott performs onstage at SOMETHING IN THE WATER - Day 2 on April 27, 2019 in Virginia Beach City.. When it comes to horror, those are some big deals. What’s it like for you for “Terrifier 2″ to be connecting on that level? It’s mind blowing to us. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community. [Laughs] And especially when you know that Stephen King’s talking about your film. Related 10/19/2022 “Manor High! This my school I graduated from & yes I was the class clown always in the hallways cuttin up,” she tweeted on Wednesday (Oct. That’s the master of horror himself, the true king. I mean, I’m a huge lifelong fan of his work, both film-wise and book-wise. And of course, Fangoria magazine, I grew up reading that as well.” The rapper made her return to Portsmouth, Va. So I am completely beside myself right now. This thing has taken on a mind of its own recently, the past week or so, and they just mentioned us on Howard Stern today. I just can’t believe this. Other A-list attendees included fellow Virginia natives Pusha T, Trey Songz and Timbaland, as well as Congressman Bobby Scott and Governor Glenn Youngkin. It started a little bit with part one though. We had some celebrities that had seen part one talk about it, like Lili Reinhardt from (teen drama TV series) “Riverdale.” She had posted a post on Instagram about it. Last month, Elliott. And, of course, probably one of our biggest advocates was (wrestler/rock singer) Chris Jericho, who is actually now in part two. He had me on his podcast way back in 2019 and he’s been talking the movie up ever since. And so when you have people with that caliber talent and recognition talking about your movie, that helps, you know, get the ball rolling. But recently it’s just taken on a life of its own that we couldn’t even ask for. This is incredible what’s happening right now. It’s purely organic too because we didn’t really have a publicity team to do this kind of campaign. Unlike a lot of the Hollywood movies that are out there this is primarily word of mouth, from fans going to the films and just tweeting about their experiences and what they have seen in the films. And it’s just captured media’s attention now and now everybody else is talking about it. It’s unbelievable. There’s a lot of creativity in horror right now, from the recent hit “Barbarian” to what you all are doing with the “Terrifier” series. Why do you think the genre’s going through a bit of a renaissance? I think probably part of the reason for that is, I hate saying this about Hollywood, but it seems like in the past 10, 15 years or so horror films made by mainstream studios have kind of gotten stale. They’re all playing it way too safe. And now we’re starting to see these lesser-known studios and independent studios coming in making the films that fans want to see. Because the people making these films are actually the fans of the genre. It’s not some, you know, Hollywood executive just trying to make a quick money grab or something like that. So I think that’s kind of what’s going on right now. With these reports of moviegoers having extreme reactions while watching “Terrifier 2″ because of the gore, when you were filming those scenes did you realize how intense the scenes were? Yeah, we definitely knew we were doing something different. That’s for sure. And we knew that especially because, you know, the reactions to part one with the infamous hacksaw scene. We took that a starting point. Because we’re like, OK, we’ve set that bar there, that fans are expecting this kind of level of kill scene in our films, so we have to pass that bar now and go somewhere crazier. Because we don’t want to let the fans down, especially since they practically funded the whole entire film, so we definitely intend to do crazier with things. While we’re doing these scenes, like when we were filming the very first kill in the movie, I remember Damien turned to me at one part, when we had just done one of the very first things in the kill where it wasn’t much of anything. It’s just basically blood splatter. And he’s like, “This would be a whole entire kill in a Jason (”Friday the 13th”) movie back in the day. We’re just getting started on this kill.” [Laughs] Going back to previous question, it’s like that’s what’s happened with a lot of the Hollywood films. They’ve all gotten to where they feel like they have to be too safe. They’re too afraid of offending anybody. I think they’ve lost the whole point. What’s the process like for you getting transformed into that character with costume and makeup? And how long does all that take? It’s fun for me. Putting on the costume’s always the cherry on top of the character. That’s how I truly get into character and that goes back to my stage days. And it’s a process too. Originally it took about four hours to get into all that makeup, and now we’ve gotten about down to I’d say an hour-and-a-half depending on how much battle damage I have to have. Especially with blood continuity, because we have to deal with blood splatter and make sure they sync up to previous days of filming. A chore is a chore, but it’s fun for me. I’ve always been the type of actor I don’t have to go full method. As soon as I understand the voice of the character, I understand the character himself and so I can slip in and out of character very easily. Just putting on the costume just makes it that much easier. And so as soon as they say “rolling” I can become Art, and as soon as they say “cut” I’m back to being David again. Which is probably weird for my cast mates, because one second I’m just chatting about what we’re going to have for dinner, then they’re like “rolling” and I’m on top of them stabbing them like crazy. They go “cut” and I’m like, “Are you OK? Are you ready for dinner now? Let’s go eat. ” Lauren LaVera as Sienna Shaw and David Howard Thornton as Art the Clown in the horror film Terrifier 2," a Cinedigm release. (Courtesy Cinedigm) What’s your camaraderie like with your “Terrifier 2″ castmate Lauren LaVera, who plays the protagonist character, Sienna Shaw? That’s one thing I wanted to make sure happened. As soon as she was cast, I told Damien I want to go out to get lunch with her to get to know her before we started filming this thing, because I knew how much that we’re going to have to go through together, especially with the climax of the film. It’s very physical. And we’re going to have to have a good relationship with each other and a lot of trust before we go into doing all this stuff. And so we instantly became like best buds, all three of us. We had so much fun. I was like, “Oh, this is great,” because my future is basically intertwined with hers now, for God knows how many years. I look at how Robert Englund (who played “Nightmare on Elm Street” villain Freddy Krueger) is with a lot of his old castmates. They’re still best friends 30 plus years later. And so we have a lot of fun with each other. I like to pull pranks on her because she has a fear of clowns. So several times on set, I would just stand there so when she turned around, I’ll be right there in her face, and she’d just scream. And I was risking my life because she has like a black belt in, I think, several forms of martial arts. We also have a really good trust system. We went through the wringer especially with the climax of the film. That was a hard few weeks there filming because it’s all very physical and long hours, filmed in the middle of winter in Philadelphia, in this very cold building. And we’re tired and all that. And we were both just trying to keep each other’s spirits up. I’m like, “You know what? We can power through this. This is a little bit miserable right now, but it’s going to be worth it when this movie comes out.” We were a true team. You know, we might be their rivals on screen, but we’re like best friends in real life. Any major horror villains you draw from for inspiration for what you do as Art the Clown? The two main ones, I would say one of them is not necessarily a horror villain, but he is a villain and well-known villain, would be The Joker (from Batman comics and films). He’s one of my favorite villains of all time. I definitely put a lot of Joker in Art even though he (Art) doesn’t speak. And number two I would say would be Freddy Krueger, definitely. I look at Art as being the bastard child of Freddy Krueger and Harpo Marx, so it works very well there. Especially Freddy’s charisma and how he always has kind of a little wink to the audience after every horrible thing he does. So Art’s kind of like a silent version of Freddy now. For you, what makes “Terrifier” series creator, writer and director Damien Leone’s approach to horror cool or interesting? Well, first of all, he’s a lifelong fan of horror. He’s literally named after Damien from “The Omen.” Yeah, he’s been watching horror movies since he’s three-years-old and he’s got like an encyclopedic knowledge when it comes to horror films. So he brings that to the table when he’s directing because he knows what works. He knows what scares people. He understands what audiences want to see and that’s what he brings to it. But he’s also such an actor-friendly director, because he has his ideas about how he wants things to look but he’s also open to other ideas and suggestions. And that’s where we play off of each other so well, because he’s the harder guy, I’m more of a comedy guy. And we’ve been able to just bring those two together in a great way. We just play off of each other so well. He’ll direct me exactly what he wants to do, like facial expression wise and you know, for some scenes and go, “OK, we’ve done that. Now, David, do your own thing. Let’s play around and see what else you can come up with.” And so we have all these options to go with and he just decides when he wants to use in the editing process. The budget for “Terrifier 2″ was only around $250,000. How were you all able to make successful and buzzy horror film with that small of budget? What really helped us was we just had such a dedicated crew. We had a small crew, but everybody was so dedicated. People were sometimes doing multiple jobs, especially Damien. He wrote it, directed it, did all the practical effects himself did all the editing himself. So that saved us a lot of money right there, especially on the practical effects. If we had gone with the like a Hollywood production company to help us make all the practical effects for the film, that would cost us a few million dollars right there. And then we use a lot of really good locations, especially for the climax of the film. We found this location in Philadelphia called Fright Factory that’s a haunted house, amusement park type thing, and they let us film inside of there. That saved us a lot of money on having to build all the set pieces that we need for the finale of the film. And we had enough money to also make our own little tiny studio in upstate New York where we filmed some of the other scenes like the clown cafe scene and the bedroom scenes. How long did it take for you all to shoot “Terrifier 2″? Oh, boy, that’s hard to tell. Now, originally, it was supposed to take about three months to film but then COVID happened. And so that kind of made everything a little bit screwy for us, so I really can’t give you a total amount. I would say at least 50 days, probably up to 70 days, off and on throughout these past three years. Because, you know, dealing with COVID that kind of hampered us and so we had to find times where we all could get together safely and film. Art the Clown is a character that involves a lot of makeup and costuming. For you as an actor, is there appeal there because that kind of role offers some anonymity and perhaps less potential to be typecast? Like, Robert Englund has done a lot of non-Freddy Krueger roles (particularly voice acting). That’s a very good point. There definitely is that element of anonymity to it. A great example of that is Doug Jones. That man is an amazing character actor. A lot of people don’t even know his name, but they know what he’s been in, like “Hocus Pocus” and “The Shape of Water.” “Hellboy.” He was even Mac Tonight back in the day with McDonald’s commercials, the guy with the big moon (shaped) head. But most people don’t know what he looks like. And that’s because he’s just done so many character roles where he’s all these awesome characters in makeup. And he’s done so many varied roles. And that’s what I like about it, too, is I’m able to live my own private life. I can walk around the street, people don’t know who I am, which is great. But also like, I am able to do so many different types of roles that I normally wouldn’t do because of my looks. So if you just put some makeup on me, I can become some scary monster, and I’m not the geeky guy you see before you. MORE ON CULTURE .