Actor Michael Rooker knows scary and not just because he was Merle in The Walking Dead's Season 1. He also played a serial killer in Henry, morphed into a mutant monster in Slither (on AMC this Thursday), and worked with horror masters Stephen King and George A. Romero on The Dark Half. Given his association with both The Walking Dead and this year's AMC FEARFEST lineup, AMCtv.com talked with Rooker about a few of his favorite frightful things.

Q: It's been 25 years since your breakout role, in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Anything about that experience haunt you?

A: It never really haunted me, but it was my first full role and I had never done a film before -- and, psychologically, it was a different role to get into and maintain. I basically tried to stay in character throughout the day, and then I would chill out at night. It was a goody though. It's one of these little movies that just will never be forgotten. People are seeing it now for the first time, so the fan base is three generational. It's pretty cool.

Q: Do you have a favorite scary movie? What kind of things scare you?

Continue reading "The Walking Dead's Michael Rooker Reflects on His Own Horror-Movie History" »

With credits including such iconic films as An American Werewolf in London, Flashdance, Rain Man, and Batman Returns producer Peter Guber clearly knows a thing or two about what makes a good story. If you're interested in learning more about the philosophy behind his success, now's the perfect time to school yourself via his new book Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story. As Breaking Bad's own Executive Producer Mark Johnson states: "For decades now Peter Guber has understood the power of a great story. With his new book he makes it clear how successful storytelling is at the cornerstone, not just of selling and marketing, but of all social intercourse. This book should be on all of our required reading lists!" Need further proof? Read this AMC interview (or watch the video interview after the jump).

Continue reading "Q&A - Peter Guber (Producer, Author - Tell to Win)" »

Vampires aren't the only undead getting new life: don't look now, but zombies are gaining on them. They're starring in commercials and filling up book racks (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) and theaters (with George A. Romero's latest, Survival of the Dead, coming at the end of May). AMC is even getting into the act, with this fall's coming adaptation of The Walking Dead. What does Romero himself make of it all?

Q: Do you think there's a zombie renaissance right now? And what do you attribute it to?

A: It's not movies. There's never been a huge zombie movie until Zombieland, so it must be video games. That's what I think. For some reason, my stuff has a shelf life, but why beats the shit out of me. Maybe because my movies are actually talking about something.

Q: Or because your Dead series is more about the people than the zombies.

Continue reading "Q&A - George A. Romero on Survival of the Dead, The Walking Dead, and the Zombie Renaissance" »

The members of the dysfunctional family at the center of City Island all have their secrets -- and for Vince (Andy Garcia), that means taking acting classes with Molly (Emily Mortimer). He auditions for a De Niro-Scorsese film, unbeknownst to his wife and children, and even manages to score a callback. This is something he can share only with Molly, leading his wife (Julianna Margulies) to conclude he's having an affair. Mortimer says it wasn't a stretch playing an aspiring actress who wishes she were in a Scorsese film -- even though she had just come from the set of one.

Q: Chloë Sevigny was originally cast as your character. How did you step in?

A: Andy Garcia and I were shooting The Pink Panther 2, in Paris, a scene right outside Notre Dame, and we got caught in a rainstorm, so we took shelter in a café. I immediately ordered a cognac, he lit up a cigar, and he told me about this film, for want of anything else to talk about. And he told me that there was this part that would be great for me but unfortunately someone else was doing it. It was a very clever tactic, because it whet my appetite to be taunted like that. So when the money didn't come together as quickly as they thought and the other actress got another job, as is the way with these things, he rung me up -- and this was a year later -- and said, "We're shooting this summer. I would love for you to do it." And so of course, by then, I was desperate to do it.

Q: Had you done Shutter Island already at this point? Because your character references Scorsese.

Continue reading "Q&A - Emily Mortimer on How She Got From Shutter Island to City Island" »

Green Zone takes us back to 2003, a time when the world believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In the film, that information is traced back to a single source, code name Magellan, who leaks the information to a journalist named Lawrie Dayne (played by Amy Ryan). The locations Magellan gives are searched by U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (played by Matt Damon) but come up empty. Ryan explains that her character represents every journalist who was duped, and how she'd like to be shocked instead.

Q: Now that you've played a journalist, do you look at members of the media any differently?

A: Well, right now I'm looking at your notepad! I had a little bit of a bigger one in the film that my character ended up not using. At least, it never made it into a scene. I mostly used it for doodles. The hard part was doing improvisation as a journalist. We had this one scene that didn't make it into the movie, and I was supposed to go in and ask questions, and I turned to [CBS news producer] Michael [Bronner], whom we had on set as an adviser, and I asked him, "What do I ask?" It's one thing to improvise feelings, emotions, but a vocation? That isn't so easy to do. But luckily Michael was there, and later on Rajiv Chandrasekaran [author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City], and I also talked on the phone to Anne Garrels about her book, Naked in Baghdad, which was set during the time the movie takes place.

Q: The thing that surprises me the most is that your character was able to get her stories printed, in The Wall Street Journal no less, without a second source.

Continue reading "Q&A - Amy Ryan on What Affleck, Eastwood, and the Green Zone Director Have in Common" »

Q: Usually you play characters who are somewhat powerful.

Continue reading "Q&A - Crazy Heart's Maggie Gyllenhaal Explains Her Character's Crazy Choices" »

Brooklyn's Finest focuses on three cops: one who is about to retire (Richard Gere), one who is undercover (Don Cheadle), and one who is struggling to get by (Ethan Hawke). Each of them gets what he wants, with a twist. Perhaps the most tragic is Hawke's Sal, who is tempted daily by the large piles of money he finds during drug busts. He dreams of buying a new home for his pregnant wife and their ever-growing brood, but the only way he can afford one, he thinks, is by committing a crime. Hawke explains what motivates his character and what motivates him as an actor.

Q: What was it like to reteam with director Antoine Fuqua?

A: We set the bar kind of high for ourselves, with Training Day, because we had such a great collaboration on that. The older I get, the more I realize how rare it is to meet a kindred spirit, let alone to meet a director who knows what they're doing. It's a thrill to work for them, and we had a good time together.

Q: When you did Daybreakers, you called that a B-movie. Do you feel like Brooklyn's Finest could have been a B-movie as well, in the wrong hands?

Continue reading "Q&A - Ethan Hawke Calls Brooklyn's Finest the Kind of Movie That Made Him Become an Actor" »

Q: So did you think you could help that little girl by doing this film?

Continue reading "Q&A - Lee Daniels Expected Precious to Go Straight to DVD" »

Radha Mitchell isn't your typical scream queen: in between films like Pitch Black and Silent Hill, she's starred in a Woody Allen movie (Melinda and Melinda), art films (High Art), and literary period pieces (Finding Neverland). But she keeps coming back to the horror genre. In her latest, The Crazies, she plays a doctor who needs to diagnose an illness affecting the residents of her town. Mitchell puts it all in perspective for us.

Q: It sounds like your voice hasn't fully recovered from all the screaming.

A: It does wear out your voice. You go down a couple registers, and it changes the way you speak. But it's so cathartic, and you feel so light and floaty afterward. A friend of mine screams into a pillow when he can't stand what's going on around him. It's a kind of therapy. And there are all these different kinds of screams, which you don't think about until you have to go in and loop the sound, and then you learn there are all these intricacies of what a scream sounds like. Imagine what your throat feels like at the end of a day where you're just in a black room screaming. You learn quickly there's a scream for just about any occasion.

Q: It probably also helps relieve the tension and give you a laugh when you're doing a film like this.

Continue reading "Q&A - Radha Mitchell Says Idea Behind The Crazies Isn't That Crazy" »