Who knew creating a werewolf’s howl was an artform? That’s exactly the impression we’re getting from THE WOLFMAN director Joe Johnston in an interview he recently had with Box Office Magazine.
When questioned about the rumor that legendary rock and roller Gene Simmons, of KISS fame, had provided the howls for Benicio Del Toro’s ‘Wolfman’ Johnston responded:
“Well, when we were designing his howl, we were going off in a lot of different directions. We tried a lot of things to see what would work and be interesting. We listened to every wolf howl ever done on every film. We listened to all of them. And you’d be surprised how unconvincing most of them are. Some were just wolves, but some were men going, ‘Aoooooooo!’ We didn’t get a lot from our research in what’s been done before. We were looking for this great pure tone—we knew we were going to process it and overlay elements to it, but we wanted that great foundation. We tried Gene Simmons and one of Gene Simmons’ howls is in the movie. I don’t think Gene Simmons would recognize it, but it’s in there.”
But that’s not all! Johnston also confirms that Van Halen’s David Lee Roth yelled at the moon for the film as well!
“It was great. These guys, they’re not only singers—they’re comedians. Hilarious sessions. You can imagine Gene Simmons and David Lee Roth in there howling with the picture on the screen. And they would do it, crack a few jokes, and try it again. Even if it hadn’t been useful, it would have been fun just to do it.”
Simmons (above right) and Lee Roth (above left)?! Damn! I guess Del Toro’s howls weren’t good enough. Half the fun of being a werewolf is howling at the moon isn’t it? Poor Benicio… He had to wear that hair all day and didn’t even get to howl. Shame. To read the rest of the interview you can head right over HERE, where Johnston even talks a little about JURASSIC PARK IV: “Well, there is going to be a Jurassic Park IV.”
THE WOLFMAN hits theaters February 12th and stars Del Toro, Emily Blunt (below), Hugo Weaving and Anthony Hopkins.
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