Norman Reedus is an up and coming actor who may be best known to Chewers from his recent turn as Scud, Blade's new tech guy in Guillermo del Toro's Blade 2. This Friday his next movie, Deuce's Wild finally opens. It has been ready for almost a year, but was shelved after the events of September 11th. Deuce's Wild is set in the 1950s and is about gangs in the time just before guns and drugs came into Brooklyn. Reedus plays the heavy, Marco Vendetti, who wants to start selling heroin in the neighborhood, and who is reponsible for the death of hero Stephen Dorff's brother. I talked with Reedus in a midtown Manhattan hotel, and he spilled the beans on his involvement in future del Toro films, a zombie western he wants to make, and what it was like to hang out with Kris Kristofferson. Look for interviews with Dorff and costar Balthazar Getty, as well as director Scott Kalvert, this week Q: When did you shoot this? Reedus: We shot it a hundred years ago it seems like. We shot it, what is it, two and a half years ago now? I shot Blade II AFTER this. Q: Was it hard for you, a contemporary actor, to get into a 50s mindset? Reedus: You know, there were so many of those guys who collected those cars who were bringing those cars around, talking about those days. You watch films. What I did mostly was look at photos. Get the hair right, get the clothes right, get the posture right, work on the speech and then that character and what his goals are in the movie. You can't really channel the spirit of a greaser from the 50s, you can just get the look, the attitude, and you play Marco Vendetti doing his thing. Q: Was it hard to get the speech? Reedus: I have a thing with my speech patterns. Sometimes if I do a movie set today and it's this sort of a character, I sound real street. My slang is very modern. That's what I tried to avoid with Marco. I get that all the time. I get directors who say, "You sound too young MTV Guy, somebody who's been watching MTV all day." You've got a lot of guys my age and they're all doing it, so it's hard not to do it. It's the thing you usually catch after you do it. Q: There are a lot of young actors in this film. Did you guys hang out after shooting? Reedus: I knew Balthazar from before, and I hung out with Debbie Harry a lot cause I was in Six Ways to Sunday with her. But I didn't really hang out with too many of them. It was hard not to because they were all standing around the trailer area all day long. I'm not one of those guys that likes to hang out when I'm working. I have a motorcycle in Los Angeles so I would bring my motorcycle to the set and take off. But I didn't do a lot of gabbing on this movie. I just felt like the more time I spent with the other guys, I'm just a part of the Vipers. I wanted to have the Vipers work for me instead of hang out and be buddies. If you all hang out and I walk by and I don't say hello and I shut my trailer door and I alienate myself it shows a little bit onscreen. Q: At the end of a shoot like that, do you go to those guys and make nice, show them that you aren't some big asshole? Reedus: Screw 'em! [laughs] They know. They're cool. Q: You're in your early thirties, but you always seem to be able to play ten years younger. Why do you think that is? What's your secret? Reedus: I've got that baby face thing. You have your own defense mechanisms when you grow up, and mine were always to be introverted. To get your way as a young child I would be the guy instead of pouting and screaming put on the cute innocent face and I guess subconsciously I kept doing it through the years. I look back at some of the films I've done where I play a younger guy, and I don't know if anybody else notices it but I notice it, like Six Ways to Sunday, doing the little innocent mama's boy thing. That's a conversation I was having recently. I don't know if it's genes or something because I chain-smoke, I drink caffeine, I have tons of coffee, I stay up really late, I'm always upset. They're usually covering up bags under my eyes to play those parts. Q: Are you still getting scripts for young roles? Reedus: Every once in a while, but my agent knows to just throw them away. I got offered this Jennifer Love Hewitt movie recently, and it was weird that they even said that to me. It's nothing against Jennifer Love Hewitt, I met her and think she's really cool. I was like, "What do I do in the movie?" "Oh you're the boyfriend." "Well, do I rape her, do I kill her? What do I do?" "No you're the nice boyfriend." That's NEVER going to happen. I mean look at my history, I've killed somebody in every movie I've done. Q: What was the key to Marco for you? Reedus: It was easy. The thing about Marco was, OK, he's a killer and he wants revenge, he wants this one guy, but he's got a plan. After he goes to prison he puts the word out. He doesn't want to rumble in front of the candy store anymore. He wants to own this building, he wants to sell drugs out of this building and move up the ladder. He gets the OK from the Matt Dillon character to do that, which hasn't been done in the neighborhood before. I don't think he even cares about his own gang. They can wipe themselves out; all he wants to do is move up the ladder. He's not one of them anymore. He's like "Fuck everybody." He wants to sell drugs, and he wants revenge on the guy who put him in prison. He's going to do anything to fight this guy. People say that you have to find the goodness in a character, but the only goodness Marco has in my eyes is that he's having fun. Q: You worked with Brad Renfro on this movie. He's a talented guy who has some well- publicized rough times. What was he like on the set? Reedus: I think he's really talented. And he's young. I don't think many from where he's from go as far as he's gone already. He's from the Midwest someplace, some small town. I think he's super talented. You can tell he's going to make it. Q: Johnny Knoxville has a part in Deuce's Wild. Did he do any stunts? Reedus: No. You know, I knew Johnny before. I knew his girlfriend. I was like "Congratulations, you're doing the acting thing, right on." And he takes me to his trailer and he's like "Yeah, I'm working on this tape and I'm trying to sell it to MTV." I'm watching and it and I'm like, you're crazy. It's hilarious, it's so funny. I take off to Prague to do Blade 2 and when I get back he's on the cover of Rolling Stone! Q: Speaking of stunts, there are a bunch of fight scenes in this movie. Even with the fights being choreographed well, did you ever get hurt? Reedus: A couple of times. The thing is in Blade, it's all down [makes wacky martial arts moves with his hands] to a science. Those guys are all professionals. This one is up and coming actors swinging wildly at each other, flailing left and right. Which is a more realistic fight scene, but you have to choreograph that stuff. Part of it is two guys fall on top of you this way, your head hits over here, this guy jumps on you. I had the wind knocked out of me. Q: You mentioned that you did Blade 2 after you finished Deuce's Wild. What else have you been working on? Reedus: I did a movie in China called Great Wall Great Medicine. I was the only American actor. It was Chinese actors, Japanese actors. We shot it up on top of the Great Wall. It's getting a lot of hype in Asia right now. Q: Is it a period piece? Reedus: It's now, it's a contemporary movie. I play this kid who is studying Eastern medicine who is trying to get the patent - and this sounds ridiculous - I try to get a patent for basically a toilet for colon cancer. There are all these weird old Eastern medicine tricks that are very strange that I learned while I was there. But for them, it's the norm. Q: How did you end up as the only American in the film? Reedus: Boondock Saints did really well in Japan and there was a distributor there who was in contact with an actress named Niu Bo who was just released from prison. He's a very famous conceptual artist in China. He took a bust of Mao and took the face off and put his own face on it and they sent him to prison for that. He's a very out there artist. He'd seen Boondock Saints and asked if I would be in this movie. Q: What else is on your plate? Reedus: I started this production company in Spain with a young director named David Barto who did really well at Cannes this year and won the Portugal Film Festival. He and I are making a western with zombies. Q: What's the best part of acting? Reedus: I would like to say traveling, but it's not. I hate flying. The best part is collaborating with other people and working something out on the page. Bouncing ideas off each other. The worst part is the opposite of that. People not listening to your ideas or having their own ideas and being close down to other ideas. As soon as you do a film, you walk away and you don't see the film for a year and a half and you have no idea. They could turn it into a musical if they want to. Q: Did you get to be collaborative with this film? Reedus: Well, [director] Scott [Kalvert] knew what he wanted to do. Let me give you examples. First time you see me in the movie I'm in prison, in this jail cell. I wanted to do that in my underwear, and he wouldn't let me do it. I think guys in prison I think rape, I think a lot of sexual tension. If I'm in my underwear talking smack I own the joint was my idea. He wouldn't let me do it, it would be too distracting. In another scene I was supposed to cut Brad Renfro with my knife to call his brother out. They had already shot the insert prior, and it was a little poke. I was like, "What is that?" This guy comes out of prison, he kills this guy, he rapes this girl, he tries to start a fight with a little Hello Kitty poke? [puts on stodgy old guy voice] "People don't want to see Brad Renfro with a cut on his face. Young girls across America don't want to see that." But other things I got to do. We went back and forth. Q: So, Mimic, Blade 2. Are you part of del Toro's regular cast now? Will we see you in Hellboy? Reedus: I probably won't be in Hellboy, but I'll probably be in Mephisto's Bridge, which he'll do after. Q: And what will you be doing in that? Reedus: It's about a billboard artist who sells his soul for the devil for a girl. Q: You'll be the artist? Reedus: Or the devil! Q: What's it like working with del Toro? Reedus: He's insane! He sits behind the monitor like this [mimes punches and ducks] ahh, ooh, ooh, ahh! He's like a kid, like a big kid. Q: What are your expectations for this zombie movie? Reedus: We've got a lot of people from Blade, we've got Kris Kristofferson is going to hopefully be in it, Ron Perlman. I met this kid; Guillermo flew him in from Spain to design some special effects for Blade. He's one of the top three directors out in Spain. The Spanish market is all sci-fi and goth horror, it's really big out there. I met this kid, it's the first scene in Blade when I'm up in the diaper harness, he walks in and says, [Spanish accent] "That's the guy! That's the guy!" And Guillermo is like, "What are you talking about?" "That's the guy I want in my movie!" We started writing a script, and the more we got into it the more people we got to help us. We just want to have fun - it's a western with zombies, I don't think we're going to get rich from it. I think Mickey Rourke is going to play in it. I met Mickey and I'm begging him to be in it. Q: You have to beg Mickey? Reedus: Well, he's still Mickey Rourke, know what I mean? He was one of my heroes growing up. Barfly is insane. He turned down Lethal Weapon to do Barfly! Q: Do you have a title? Reedus: Yeah, it's called City of the Dead. Q: Who else were your heroes as a young actor? Reedus: Same guys I still like. Christopher Walken, Gary Oldman, all of those people that actors my age think are cool. Kris Kristofferson, the first time I saw him in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid I thought, God, I hope to be half that cool. He was great. On Blade 2 he and I became friends right away. I would be sitting in my trailer and he would pop his head in and look around. I was watching this Bob Dylan documentary, Don't Look Back and he throws me aside and was like "Oh, me and this girl slept together. And me and this kid, one time on tour…" And he just narrated the whole thing for me. It was great. "My first kiss? It was terrifying. I was at a roller skating rink and I was pushed to go kiss this girl in front of all these other girls. They set it up and she waited with puckered lips and they pushed me over to her. I was terrified and it was quick and I got insulted for not making it long and passionate. But I was completely terrified, didn't make out well at all." - Norman Reedus He's played a suicidal rebel (Reach the Rock), an unrepentant prison inmate (8MM), and, in a string of upcoming films, Alan Rickman's secret lover (Dark Harbor), an Irish murderer (Boondock Saints) and an artist (Gossip). Currently, he's searing the screen as a mobster who's mama's best boy in Adam Bernstein's coal-black comedy Six Ways to Sunday. A former Prada model, his name is Norman Reedus and he has just been anointed one of Hollywood's Stars of Tomorrow by Vanity Fair. The thirty year old actor, who plays and looks 18 in Six Ways to Sunday, is oblivious to the hype. The way he tells it, acting's a way to pay the bills. What he really wanted to be was an astronaut but "I wore contact lenses and [I'm] flatfooted and clumsy and not that smart." He moved out to Los Angeles to be a painter, did a lot of shows but "it's hard being a painter and not living off Frosted Flakes all day." Acting was an accident. A woman asked him to audition for a play after seeing him cause a commotion during a party. He auditioned on a dare from his friends, landed the part and a William Morris agent. After several weeks of auditioning, he decided to go back to painting. "But then I was starving and I jumped back into [acting] and it's sort of panning out." Though he resembled Leonardo DiCaprio, Reedus in person recalls Vincent Gallo, the iconoclastic Renaissance man. Like Gallo, Reedus has an aura of grungy bohemie and an oddly ingratiating charm. He also shares Gallo's edgy sensibilities. "Yeah! Yeah, baby!" he enthuses. "I like them edgy. Even if it's not an edgy film on paper, I would hope to make it an edgy part regardless. It's more fun and more real. Otherwise, I'd do a television sitcom, 90210 or something. There's nothing worse than watching a movie and you just imagine everyone has minty fresh breath. That's boring." Playing a character who not only has violent rages but Oedipal lust and an alter ego satisfies his craving to be edgy. Working with Deborah Harry (who, in an interview, has called Reedus her babydoll) and Isaac Hayes was an added bonus. Then there was director Adam Bernstein's unorthodox way of relieving any tension that arose on the set. "He would put on Jewish rap music on this boombox," Reedus smiles. Of course, there were the challenges of his role. "The character I play goes from one extreme to the other and we shot so out of sequence that I had to pay close detail to where I was in the story." Plumbing the depths of his own psyche to play such an unbalanced and potentially unredeemable character wasn't particularly necessary. Reedus cites his dropping out of school and living in so many places (Japan, Spain, London, and an Indian reservation in Arizona among them) as factors to his remarkable self-possession. "I never had a sheltered life where I did what everybody else did or did what I was told was the cool thing to do. To play a character that's a badass that kills everyone -- I've gotten in fights, I know what that's like. Sleeping with your mother -- I haven't done that yet but I might," he smiles. Jim Jarmusch, Martin Scorsese, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Walken, Tim Roth, and Gary Oldman are on his wish list to work with. Reedus spotted Roth sitting in his friend's hair salon in Beverly Hills but was too nervous to approach him. Oldman's performance as punk rocker Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy is a particular favorite. "When Gary Oldman is sitting on the train and he's shaking and he's all junked out. When this snot bubble comes out of his nose and goes back, I was like (claps). They didn't cut it out. It wasn't an attractive moment for him but it was really realistic. The balls for him to do that and for them to leave it in the film is right on." Reedus has had experiences in both big studio and independent moviemaking. He laughs about his experiences during Gossip, a Warner Brothers film. "There was a couple of times in there where it was, 'Take 25. Hold the cup up higher. Take 26, a little bit higher.' It's good when you do an independent movie because you get about three takes with every scene. If you do what you want anyway, they have to go with it. So that's good." Independent filmmaking is more his style. Though big budget filmmaking affords more time, Reedus feels this luxury can sometimes turn into a handicap. "You can do a scene and go look at it on the monitor and talk about it for half an hour then do it again, which costs a lot of money but it's in the budget or whatever. It's good, but I like something about guerrilla filmmaking. Everyone down to the caterers is, 'I love this movie! Let's go!' The coffee may not be cappuccino but they like what they're doing." Despite his burgeoning career, don't be surprised if the painterly life beckons Reedus back. When asked who he'd want to trade places with, he immediately answers Salvador Dali and the image of the great, madcap painter that stuck most in his mind. "He's sitting on a piano bench playing a piano in the ocean and he's got thousands of villagers from this town dancing around the water. Painting things with 12-foot paintbrushes, people are loving him and it's all about wine. That sounds like a good life."