By Fred Topel | Images property of Dimension Films.
Josh Brolin
One of the great things about Grindhouse is how many tangents each movie takes. In Planet Terror, the action-packed outbreak often takes a backseat to domestic squabbles, including one between Dakota Block (Marley Shelton) and her abusive husband Dr. William Block (Josh Brolin). Brolin plays the bad guy with a gravely intensity that's been compared to everyone from Kris Kristofferson to Nick Nolte.
Josh Brolin on Planet Terror
"This is going to sound weird but it’s true, there wasn’t really a reference other than me and Robert [Rodriguez] just having a really good time and riffing on what we wanted to do with the voice," said Brolin. "Like every time I’d ask Robert about a line we would always do it like this [dropping his voice really low]. And so I just started doing it like that and it kind of went from there."
Though he didn't pick an actor specifically, Brolin did get the Grindhouse education for his reference. "The reference was really when we went to Quentin’s and we watched movies you know that Quentin would screen. We’d see The Cat Ate My Brain or we’d see Vanishing Point or Zombi or we’d see all these other movies. There’s a tonal quality to those movies that we wanted to match and also the earnestness in playing it that we wanted to absolutely do because the extremes of what’s going on, kind of that instigates the humor as opposed to what we’re doing."
That's right, humor. The people in Grindhouse may take it very seriously, but like the real Grindhouse movies, it's funny. "I think anything that is that extreme is going to be funny and I don’t think they intended it to really [be otherwise]. I mean, there’s scary parts but I think the scary parts come more out of the behavior. I mean, look, every shot you see the amount of blood that comes out of somebody in every shoot. That’s very exploitative."
A veteran of '80s cinema, Brolin just kind of missed the Grindhouse era. "We were talking about that in the other room whereas you look at the great movies of the '70s, even if they were exploitation films which we have a whole new appreciation of because of Quentin and because of Robert screening all those movies. Then you see movies from the '80s with the feathered hair and all of that and you just can’t help but laugh. They’re awful. So no, as an actor, no. But as a passionate lover of films of the '70s, through what we did with Quentin and Robert, we became so incredibly educated with those exploitation films and really could see what was good about films as opposed to just badly made scratched films."
Grindhouse is out in theatres now.
For the trailers, clips, posters, stills, interviews and more movie info, go to the Grindhouse
Movie Page.
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