INT: Shaw/Byrd

Last Updated on July 28, 2021

Vinessa
Shaw and Dan Byrd play a brother and sister on screen in the remake of THE
HILLS HAVE EYES, by HIGH TENSION director Alexandre Aja, based on
Wes Craven’s original 1977 classic. Byrd
is still a young twenty years old, but has already done a lot in the horror
genre, working with masters like Tobe Hooper and in the TV version of SALEM’S
LOT, while Shaw drew acclaim as the sexy Domino in Stanley Kubrick’s EYES WIDE
SHUT. Sitting down with them to talk about
their new film together, there was a definite sense of brother/sister chemistry
between them as they discussed horror films, their thoughts on director Aja and
working alongside the mutant family.

Is
this the type of film you would go see?

Shaw: I
would never see this movie because I’m frightened of horror movies.
Ever since I was a kid my friends who always wanted to see them would
mortify me by showing me clips from a movie, I would have to run in the other
room, call my parents and go home, that kind of thing.
Especially you know, Nightmare on Elm Street movies which, sorry Wes
(laughs), I just…the idea of anything that was not related to reality would
scare me more. Movies like The
Shining I would be able to see more easily, I don’t know I’m odd that way,
but things that could just possibly come out of nowhere, some crazy fabricated
monster, no way.

So
what makes you want to do a horror film then?

Shaw:
(laughs) Well, I guess I can be good in it since I’m so frightened of those
kind of concepts. But this one in
particular really attracted me because of the filmmakers.
I really though that they had a great stance on it, it’s very
different, very heart felt, heartbreaking story because of the characters
involved. That’s what made the
difference. It was more of an
actor’s piece, if you can believe that, in a horror movie.

Byrd:
I’m typically not the biggest horror movie fan.
Actually I keep trying to take myself outside of the situation and look
at it objectively and think if I wasn’t involved in this would this be
something that I may be interested in. I
think there’s a lot of really shitty horror movies out there, but this is not
one of those. I think it looks scary
and fun and I’ve seen it and I know it’s very scary.
It’s just very gritty and real and they really give you time to really
care about these characters, which I think is a major flaw in most horror
movies. This is one I would be
interested in seeing.

Have
either of you seen the original The Hills Have Eyes or Alexandre’s first film
High Tension and what was it like working with him?

Shaw: Um,
uh…

Byrd:
(cutting her off jokingly) Well, um…

Shaw:
(sarcastically) Yeah brother. The
original I have seen. And I was
actually doing my homework, seeing Alex and Greg’s (co-writer/ producer
Gregory Levasseur) first movie trying to determine how they would do it
differently. The first movie is a
cult classic, so it’s kind of hard to go okay how different can they make it,
what would they do to modernize it and all these things.
It was interesting to see the two together, High Tension, I saw it one
after the other and seeing how this could meld into a very frightening move
because of the grittiness of Alex and Greg and how they direct their movies.
And it’s beautiful at the same time; it has a beauty to it.
They have an amazing knack of making horror and beauty come together in a
magical way.

Byrd: I
think that was the one thing I realized or I notice more then anything watching
High Tension was it looks like an art film, aside from all the terribly gruesome
stuff that’s going on. I thought
that was really intriguing.

What
was your reaction to the mutant characters?

Byrd:
(jokingly) Oh, we stayed away from them. I
think it was not on purpose that it did end up being sort of like the family
hanging out and the mutant people hanging out.

Shaw:
Because they came later, we already bonded.

Byrd:
(jokingly) They would try to penetrate our group…

Shaw: No
they didn’t! We did try to
penetrate theirs.

Were
the mutant men gentle with you?

Shaw:
(laughing) Yes they’re very kind. They’re
very good actors. We had to work
with them, I mean Aaron (Stanford) had to work with Michael Bailey (Smith) for
weeks and weeks, I mean we all have like our mutant that we had to battle.
You have to bond with them too as well and it was harder because they
were already in make-up and the make-up would be kind of falling off and having
to have water all the time. They
needed a break, cause we were in Morocco with the heat, so they had to go into
this special tent, so that kind of divided us as well.

Vinessa
you probably had the most disturbing scene in the movie with the baby and
Robert’s character kind of… taking the place of your baby…

Shaw:
(laughs uncontrollably) Oh, my.

How
twisted was the scene to you when you read it on paper and then having to do it?

Shaw: Yes
it was very twisted, definitely. That
was kind of a point of contention, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to do the
movie if that were going to be the showcased part of myself, you know?
So I was like how are we going to shoot this?
I had three or four meetings with Alex and Greg before I really decided
to do the movie. I mean I thought
they’re not gonna wanna deal with me, I’m too high maintenance, but it ended
up just being I was just very specific about is this gonna turn into something
else, like pornographic?

But we had
many, many meetings regarding the nature of that and how it be shown and I made
sure it was shown in a certain way and so did he.
By the end, Alex was like – and there it is, there’s the scene we had
ten million meetings about – so we were all glad when it was done.
But it was hard, it was hard to negotiate with Robert (Joy) cause he has
this cleft palate, I mean it was more then just me just getting attacked at that
moment, it was a lot of negotiation, it was a long, long scene and lot of
screaming, a lot of crying over and over again.
So it was pretty horrifying. It’s
a huge, huge moment – I think it’s like the turning point in the movie really.

What
are you doing next?

Byrd: (in
a throwaway tone) The next movie that comes out for me is Lonely Hearts, which
is a John Travolta/Salma Hayek thing.

Shaw:
(ribbing him) He really knows how to publicize, huh?

Byrd:
(laughing) I don’t know when it’s coming out.

Shaw: I
have two movies, one that’s called Badland.
And now I’m doing this movie called Garden Party.