Interview: Jim Cummings Talks Working with Robert Forster and More for THE WOLF OF SNOW HOLLOW

This past Friday night, Jim Cummings celebrated the world premiere of his latest film, The Wolf of Snow Hollow, at the 2020 edition of Beyond Fest, and the movie will be headed to theaters and VOD later this week on October 9th, courtesy of Orion Classics.

Daily Dead recently had the opportunity to speak with Cummings, who also stars in the film, about his unique take on lycanthropic cinema, and he discussed how The Wolf of Snow Hollow is an extension of his first feature, Thunder Road, and how Orion completely embraced his offbeat take on werewolves. Cummings also chatted about collaborating with Robert Forster, who sadly passed away late last year, as well as the rest of his cast, the approach to the film’s lively dialogue delivery, and more.

I'm a big fan of werewolf movies and I love that this is at the forefront of this werewolf renaissance that we're having right now. I think you guys did a really, really fun job with doing something very unusual and very different as well. I would love to start off at the beginning and talk a little bit about the inspiration behind this story, because I think in some ways this obviously feels a little bit like a spiritual successor to Thunder Road, but it’s also very different and something that's very much its own as well.

Jim Cummings: So after Thunder Road, I was wanting to do bigger movies. I wanted to start making studio movies and this is my first studio movie. The opportunity came along and I had written this feature in tandem with the Thunder Road script that was more like a David Fincher horror movie, and I just couldn't do that in my backyard. The budget for Thunder Road was such a shoestring. There was no way that we'd be able to do this enormous detective story without any help.

And so, Orion Pictures was doing this initiative to bring in indie filmmakers to make more nuanced genre-bending movies, and we pitched them this one. I had already written the script for it and they loved it. Very quickly, we started making the thing. The origin of it was my appreciation of David Fincher and Silence of the Lambs and all of Orion's earlier movies of this genre. I just wanted to do something that would be a bit like Zodiac as a comedy. I was blending what I knew was going to be a cool detective story with these character comedic moments that worked so well with my previous work.

Well, now I'm really trying to picture the humorous version of Zodiac [laughs). But what I really love about this is all of the humor in this story. At the same time, there's a lot of heart and I think a lot of that comes from this cast that you've been able to put together. I've been a huge fan of Robert Forster's for so long, and to get to see this, as his final moment in film, was really, really lovely. I was wondering if you could discuss putting together the cast, because there's just a lot of really great talent and you all really bounce off of each other so well here.

Jim Cummings: Okay, cool. Yeah, Robert was great. Robert came on about five weeks before we started production. We had reached out to his team and we didn't know if he was going to like it or not. He's a big fish. It's a very weird thing to be like, "Hey, there's this kid who's making bizarro, slapstick horror movies with heart in them. Would you consider acting in it against the guy?" He read the script and sent it to his manager and was like, "Absolutely, this is a thing I want to do." And his manager said, "Bob, this is a werewolf picture." And he said, "Yeah, I don't really care about the monster stuff. It's the stuff in between that I really like." That was very much him. It wasn't necessarily the scares or the horror aspect of it, he wanted to play this guy where it's like our relationship is I'm trying to hold him up as the patriarch of this small town sheriff's department, while he's going through this medical condition and can't tell anybody about it.

That is such a weird, realistic relationship between father and son that he was like, "Yes, I want to do that thing." It was a dream to work with the guy. He was such a gentleman and professional and knew everybody's lines better than they did, and was just such a mascot for the production and everybody's grandpa on set. He and I had that relationship. It was a bit like Indiana Jones and Sean Connery. It was constantly fighting and getting together. It was very much our relationship in the film. It was great. A really super nice guy.

Then, Chloe East came on. She said that she hated her audition tape. She said it was the worst audition she's ever given, but she came across so much like a big jerk that I was like, "This is her. This is such a funny character to have in the movie as my daughter." She killed it. She is so amazing. She just turned 18, so she could act in the movie, like two weeks before we started shooting. Then Riki Lindhome, I had only seen in comedies and taking these kind of bigger comedy roles. She came in to audition and immediately we were like, "Oh, yeah. No, she can play this tomboy cowgirl so well." She's so endearing. You feel so bad for her the whole time that she's just getting trampled by this lunatic and it just adds this wonderful allegiance that the audience has with her.

Jimmy Tatro came on because he acted in my buddy Tony's show American Vandal. I sent him the script and I sent him a podcast version of the movie so he could listen to it. He is so talented. He was the one guy where he would get into the scene and understand it entirely, and we would do it in one or two takes. I was like, "Yep, that's it. That was the fucking thing." He's like this pro, in a weird way. He's such a goofy and funny dude in real life. But then he's such an incredible performer as soon as the camera's on. I was so lucky, man. We have so many wonderful character actors who are in this movie and all of them stand out. Hannah Elder, who plays Hannah in the film, Kelsey Edwards, who plays Liz Fairchild, all the victims, and then, obviously, Will Madden does a fantastic job as well. I was just very, very lucky to have such an awesome team.

There’s a very specific rhythm to the delivery and it's the energy that comes from the delivery in this movie that really keeps things moving. It really keeps you on your toes. I was wondering if you could talk about keeping that energy up. Because it really bounces along so well and it really pulls you in when you're watching it, where there's just this constant movement that you feel as a viewer as you're going through the story.

Jim Cummings: Definitely. I mean, that is so important to a good detective story. It's a weird thing. It has to constantly fly. You have to be getting new evidence. You have to be interweaving all of the character faults into the thing, every bit of the new facts that come up. We call that detective pornography, and weaving that stuff in inside of montage, inside of sequence editing rather than just scene editing, so that when it cuts to a scene and it's me and my dad shouting at each other in the copy room with Dave the EMT there, you can kind of live in that space for a minute.

Or, at the end of the film, that it's just this uncomfortable, quiet conversation at the end of the film. But the audience, because the rest of the movie has been at breakneck speed, so when it gets to that point, you know something is wrong. That is such a fun place to put an audience. But we talked a lot about that, of the way that Hitchcock crafts his movies and Spielberg, and just making sure that the audience is at the right point of the rollercoaster. That's just the fusion of editing and cinematography.

I'd love to talk about your character in this movie because he's got a lot going on. He's really dealing with a lot between things with his dad, his relationship with his daughter, his ex-wife, there are the pressures of his job, and there are all these things going on in this town. Can you talk a little about finding John’s headspace and doing it in a way where there are the fun moments, but there are also these heartbreaking moments, these really stressful moments, but ultimately, there's a sense of humanity to him?

Jim Cummings: He is such a lunatic and it's so crazy to watch that people still have allegiance to this guy. When you watch a movie like Uncut Gems, people always say in Hollywood, "Oh, the characters have to be likable." And it's like, when you watch these movies, if the movie is paced in the right way, or if there's something, if their character is interesting, they don't have to be likable. The character John is such a lunatic and just type A personality, somebody who needs to be right and needs to be proven right. All the while, his life is falling apart around him. He can't talk to anybody about falling off the wagon. He's just this bulldozer in a small town. I find that really interesting.

I think there's something so interesting about watching somebody who has a pistol who's out in the field being a lunatic sometimes. Then it's very confusing because at the end of the film, he's proven right in a real way. That's a scary thing and a weird thing for an audience to digest, of like, "Is it okay to watch this guy stand over the body of a corpse and make a joke to insult one of his coworkers, if at the end of the film that person was right, but was just going about it all the wrong way?" I think he's a really complicated character and I think that's what's so fun to watch.

You mentioned working with Orion on this movie. Did they give you a lot of support on this? Because this has a big cast, you're in this specific location, and it seems like this production could be very challenging.

Jim Cummings: It's a dream come true to have that Orion logo. They let us use the old one from the '90s, so it was cool to have that film logo in the opening. It was just so dope. It's a dream. They supported us in every possible way, which is crazy. I don't mean that like being the executives and the suits in Hollywood and all that stuff. The majority of the executives came to set.

There's the scene in the opening when Jimmy Tatro and Annie Hamilton are making out in the hot tub and it wasn't a functional hot tub. It was just like a pool that we had, so it was freezing. The executives from Orion and us were carrying pots of boiling water out from the house next door into the thing to keep the actors warm. These people who are supposed to be these giant Hollywood executives are actually getting their hands dirty and helping us out, slipping down stairs on ice and stuff. It felt very communal. It felt like a wonderful experience to make a movie with these kinds of people.

Then, from the very beginning with the story, I was like, "Hey, I want to do this werewolf movie." They read the script and they got it and were just entirely supportive of us throughout. I mean, this is the biggest movie, and it's my first studio movie, so I am endlessly grateful that they took a chance on our little team.