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2009-01-16

by John Esther

Interview: Edi Gathegi

Summary

Pick-axe-ing My Bloody Valentine with the smart guy

Article

As 3-D technology increases, we can expect more and more movies to come at us from the big screen. Of course, what better way to get the youth to wear those funky glasses than to promise sharp objects, blood and gore?

Moving from one Valentine’s Day to another Valentine’s Day a decade letter (without any of those dumb male wigs to signify another time), My Bloody Valentine tells the discordant tale of the town of Harmony. Plagued by the hard economy, the members of the this mining community now live in fear of a pickaxe wheeling maniac who was presumed death but, apparently, has arisen from the grave to spear away the downtrodden.

While the Sheriff Axel Palmer (Kerr Smith) has his pants full with his lover Megan (Megan Boone) and his wife, Sarah (Jamie King), whom he mistrusts around Tom Hanniger (Jensen Ackles), her ex-boyfriend who vanished after the last time a homicidal maniac attacked Harmony, Deputy Martin looks on.

Played by Edi Gathegi, Deputy Martin is the brains of the bunch, and also the only one who does not have a link to the past. Perhaps he is the town’s only African American?

Born in Kenya and raised in Berkeley, Ca., while his father was in the process of picking up five degrees from UC Berkely, Gathegi stumbled upon acting after a basketball injury that ended one career and started another.

Gathegi’s first screen acting break was in the movie Crank followed by such roles as Zeke Molinda in Veronica Mars, Darudi in The Fifth Patient, Cheese in Gone, Baby Gone, Dr. Jeffrey “Big Love” Cole in House, Laurent in the recent blockbuster, Twilight, and other films and television programs.

In this exclusive interview we spoke to Gathegi about My Bloody Valentine, his life and the upcoming sequel to Twilight.

JEsther Entertainment: What kinds of films did you watch while you were growing up?
Edi Gathegi: As a kid I was into cartoons like all kids. I remember watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie and leaving the theater trying to do jump kicks. Then I went through this “horror phase.” I remembered being freaked out by A Nightmare on Elm Street and not being able to like sleep for two nights. Now, as an actor having dabbled in a lot of different genres, I’m most excited about playing real life, historical figures/biopics of some sort. I like having their entire life there as resource material. The joy in acting for me is playing the detective where I may even find footage of the person walking and talking.

JE: When did you decide you wanted to be an actor?
EG: My family tells me I was always a natural performer. I was the cloud, the family raconteur. I tell dinnertime stories and bedtime stories to my brother in our bunk bed, but I didn’t claim until I broke my knee trying out for the basketball team in college. I just wanted to take an easy course and acting seemed like something that would give me joy, even though I was getting depressed from not being able to walk. And then I fell in love with acting. I decided I wanted to make it my life’s journey and my mother and father fully supported me.

JE: How did you get involved in My Blood Valentine 3D?
EG: I was in Portland working on Twilight and a I had a few days off so my representation gave me a same-day audition for My Blood Valentine, which I hated because it didn’t give me time to prepare. They still found I was right for the part and the rest is history [laughs].

JE: You mentioned you like to do research, what kind of detective work did you do for this film?
EG: Good question. I did not see the original version because I was told my character was not in the original version. This is a very tone. That was a very campy film. I didn’t feel it was going to be useful for what was required with the script I had. I don’t have a lot of action scenes with the killer so I didn’t watch a bunch of horror films. For me, I was just a deputy sheriff trying to solve a case and that’s the way I approached it. I talk to friends who had friends who were in law enforcement. I read some law enforcement material. I geared my character toward what it means to be on that law enforcement side.

JE: He is only character who does not appear in the opening scene 10 years ago.
EG: Good observation. I can’t tell you where he’s from. That’s my own personal secret [laughs]. An actor’s got to have some secrets.

JE: What do you think you have in common with your character?
EG: My character and I share a perceptive quality. My character is the perceptive one in the cast. He’s the one who’s sort of quietly watching. He’s got a finger on what’s going on. He knows secrets that others don’t know, that they don’t want him to know. I’m not saying this about myself but my character is the smartest one in the movie. He is the one I would trust to be the sheriff. He’s got FBI aspirations. He’s not going to stop at this case. This case is a stepping stone if he solves it. He’s going to go to Washington, D.C. That’s the kind of guy he is.

JE: The film does not let him solve the mystery. Why not?
EG: [Laughs].

JE: He should be the sheriff. The sheriff he works for is erratic and an adulterer, which the small townsfolk should know.
EG: Alex’s a bit short-fused. Every man who’s cheating eventually gets caught, or they continue cheating [laughs]. He’s a guy who’s got his issues. I’m sure Kerr did not judge the character he played. He did a wonderful job.

JE: There are quite a few metaphors going on with the pickaxe, the mining shafts, the villain has a condom costume, and so on. What is the film saying about sexual oppression in this small town?
EG: Wow! I hadn’t thought about it, but I’m sure some scholars – if they do see this movie because I’m sure it’s right up their ally – will have a field day with that metaphor, with that dissertation [Laughs]. They’ll put it into pieces.

JE: Plus it is in 3D and the point of 3D is to have things come at you, which are almost always phallic. These things, shall we say, are thrown in your face.
EG: [Laughs]. That’s definitely a way to look at it. I don’t know if that was intentional. I haven’t thought about it like that. I thought of it as seeing a cool, badass film. [Laughs]

JE: Well if these things work on the subconscious it could make for a good date movie.
EG: [Laughs]. It’s hard to believe but this is the perfect date movie. When you take a girl on a date you don’t necessarily want to take her to a romantic comedy. That’s mundane. You want to go do something that’s exciting. A 3D movie is like a roller coaster. You’ve got live action, excitement, laughs, camp. Your woman will get scared, jump on your arm and feel your bicep. You get to be the hero [laughs].

JE: What can you tell us about the upcoming sequel to Twilight?
EG: We got that locked down. We’re doing that in a few months.