It was a warm day in January in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley when I visited the set of horror icon Tony Todd’s upcoming film, The Cold Descent. When I got word that he was making a genre Western set in the 1800s, I was ready to saddle up and herd some cattle – imagine my surprise when I arrived at a nondescript campus of soundstages in a cement-covered back forty.
The Cold Descent actually takes place all within the cars of a train – think: “Hell on Wheels” meets Snowpiercer with a dash of Agatha Christie and a touch of Angelheart, and you’ll have some idea of what it’s going to be like.
They were on the next to last day of shooting when I arrived, so Todd and his cohorts had lots of tales to tell about the making of the film, which is expected to be released later this year.
Tony Todd – actor
DC: Tell us a little bit about the movie, and how you came on board (so to speak).
Tony Todd: Well, it’s an independent film. The director Michael Steves is condensing the spirit of the West into a train, because train movies and Westerns are two of my favorite things. Also, it’s set in purgatory. These are people who don’t have a chance, and they come to realize what they have to do about it. It’s character-driven: who they are, why they’re here, what it is they want to do. There’s actually been four different versions of the script. When I came on board, it was about 105 pages of script and then it exploded, and Michael got really excited and expanded it to 119. All of our effects are practical, so at one point we had these slave demons who come on board, and also there were going to be dog demons, but that got in the way because we had only 18 days to shoot this. So the current script is 100 pages, all character-driven.
DC: Aside from yourself, there’s quite a cast. It’s impressive. I understand you and Michael Eklund have a lot of scenes together. And you worked together before?
TT: We’re surrounded by great actors. Michael is wonderful; he and I have a chemistry. Yeah, it was back in the “Smallville” days [when we worked together before]. He was just starting out actually, and I remember him whispering to me, “We’ll work again,” and here we are. And then Richard Riehle and I have been on three different films including Hatchet and a wonderful film called Driven. Lance Henriksen and I worked together twice; he was here yesterday. So they got the names that it’s going to take to get it out to the fans and the supernatural base. And we have a damn good chance of getting picked up by one of the majors because we’re giving them something that’s already shot.
Did you get a look at the set yet? The art department was very ingenious and there are four different cars on the train. So we shoot out each segment. We went from third class to the dining car to first class and the caboose. So we shoot out all the sequences in each particular thing, and they take a day to redecorate it, and then we’re back and running. And then we have the little practical effects; we have the walls shaking in the train, and then later we’ll add in the SFX’s and the CGI stuff. You know, long train shots. We might sneak in a horse or two.
DC: I am sure you have tons of offers all the time. So how much does the opportunity to shape and collaborate on your character, as I am told you do here, factor into your career decisions?
TT: A lot. Where I am these days, I like to meet with the writers, whether it’s a big film or a small film, and talk and discuss and trade ideas. So there is a lot of input that I gave with my character, and Michael’s gracious enough to incorporate it with the dialogue.
DC: Who is Jericho Whitfield?
TT: He’s an ex-slave whose daughter was massacred and scalped viciously [by his enemy, played by Eklund]. So the switch in his brain flipped, and the only way he can make her father feel the pain that he felt is to send him her scalp, but things happen in the course of the journey and then things get redirected. He is also a bit of a collector, his total body count is something like 48 scalps. He is sort of roaming around in the back woods of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and everywhere, scalping overseers and slave drivers. He is a bit of a collector, like this shirt piece I’m wearing — it belongs to the son of a slave driver who drives the fear, and me doing business with his daddy and hence the scalp. There is also a glimpse of his humanity; he was educated by my master and is well-read. I can discuss Plato and Socrates and Shakespeare, and at the same time I’m a father whose family has been viciously divided from him.
DC: How far along are you in the schedule? I heard some people are done tomorrow. How about you?
TT: We have two more days of shooting, and nobody is hanging their head low, everybody truly gets along. If you saw, we all gathered together for National Hug Day, in spite of who we are and who we’re playing. Today is a hectic day. We’ve been shooting nine pages a day. Michael and I are the leads so that means we’re here every day at 7 o’clock doing the thing. I just want everyone to know that this is legit, this is not some amateur made movie, people parading around swamps somewhere; this is a story-based, character-driven, supernatural Western.
Yousef Abu-Taleb – actor, producer
DC: How much is being revealed as you market the film?
Yousef Abu-Taleb: Basically, it’s a train going to hell, [it] is more like a disastrous train ride – something to do with that. What it really is, it’s a story about redemption as a lot of Westerns are, but it’s set in a horror setting.
DC: And that it’s supernatural?
YAT: Or supernatural things are happening and occurring. I don’t want to give away the twist.
DC: You’re wearing a cross as part of your costume. Are you a priest?
YAT: Yeah. My character’s a little bit of a – he’s not the holiest holy man, I wouldn’t say. He’s got a lot of his own little quirks that happen.
DC: Are you an actor first, or a producer first?
YAT: I actually moved out here about 10 years ago and I got my start as an actor on a series called “Lonely Girl 15”. And then from there I got a lead on a series called “Bite Me”, a horror-comedy show. And somewhere in between I just started producing movies. A friend of mine asked me to, he told me he lost a producer and needed help with a producer. And I said I don’t know what producers do. And he said,‘That’s okay, nobody does.’ So I just came on set and, yeah, I just sort of fix problems. I liked it. I liked being able to kind of like see a story through from beginning to end. I love the acting as well, but the in between making movies happen, it is just crazy. So for me, this movie, in particular, I had an idea. I wanted to shoot a horror on a train. And I met Michael Steves [the writer-director] through a friend. And so I ended up hiring him just to write it.
DC: So you haven’t known him for a long time?
YAT: It’s been a couple of years. You know, from beginning to end. And then, by the end of the whole thing, I was looking for directors to get it going. He has so much passion. And he already knew the material and everything. He has a movie, Clinger, that’s at Slamdance right now, which is also a horror, and so I said, ‘Let’s just go with you.’ Tony was the first one to come on board. And then we got Michael Eklund – he’s awesome. And Lance Henriksen came on board and Richard. We worked with Lance yesterday; he was a blast. And it’s just been a hell of a ride.
Jeryl Prescott – actor
DC: Tell me a little bit about who you play in the film…
JP: I play Desdemona. Desdemona is the former slave and current servant to Grace. Grace is the woman who boards the train with Desdemona later [after Jericho], and we’re on another kind of journey. Desdemona is on a journey, here, beyond just her journey on the train. She is on a journey toward unearthing a lot of repressed feelings. I think every person who was enslaved had to repress a lot, right? A lot of repressed anger, and we find Desdemona has been repressing a lot of other emotions too. So that’s one of the things to me that’s really fresh about the script and interesting in its portrayal of former enslaved African-American people. And it gives Desdemona an opportunity, at certain times, to lift that veil and show some of what she’s been repressing. So her journey to me is quite surprising.
DC: Has she done anything in her past to deserve this train trip to hell?
JP: Ah- See that’s a matter of opinion. Yeah. Absolutely. And she, like any human being, like any mother, carries a wide range of emotions – not only anger, but guilt and regrets and all of that. And so, if we think about the context of slavery and how it generally is played out, where mothers are forced to give up children and fathers ignore their paternity… When we think about the masters as fathers to these women, who were often raped – these masters would ignore and relinquish responsibility for these children, all this [mess]. Desdemona in some ways is observant of all of this and an agent in it and, at the same time, totally without the ability to change any of it. But, like any mom, she feels responsible for some of what has happened around her, even though it wasn’t stuff she could control. And so it’s an interesting set of circumstances, right? So it’s layers.
DC: It seems The Cold Descent is much more character-driven than most horror films – like “The Walking Dead,” which you are on, which is also very character-driven.
JP: Absolutely. Especially considering that the story of my ancestors is something that I try to protect and hold very dear – because my grandfather’s father was a slave master. That’s how close we are, still, to the history. And so, for me I have no interest in – and it’s really not exciting as a project for an actor to play – a stereotypical slave who we only see on the surface. And even though we’re beyond enslavement in the time period of this film, we’re only like six years beyond, and so a lot of the mindset hasn’t changed. It would not be interesting to me if that was all that I had a chance to do. But I think Desdemona is quite unique, not only her name, but her journey and what she represents historically.
DC: What’s the mood on the set been, given the subject matter?
JP: Oh my God! I feel so lucky and grateful to have run into these people, these young, creative, excited filmmakers – Yousef, Michael Steves – all of them, really, and this crew that they’ve assembled. They have an openness to the creativity that’s just ideal for any project. I’ve watched the script get better and stronger because of what they allow the actors to contribute on our own. And to me it reminds me so much of Frank Darabont – it’s the same thing he did with “The Walking Dead” and the character I played, because Frank created my character, Jacqui. She was not in the comic book – the original comic book of The Walking Dead – and he created her and allowed me to invest her with some of the humanity that we saw on the screen. And the way that these filmmakers have been open to that is just amazing. It’s collaborative. There’s a respect and a… real responsibility to the history that they’re bringing to life, as well as a desire to make it fun and make it blow the tops of people’s heads off when they walk in there and see it.
DC: But it’s ambitious. There is a lot to do in 18 days. Do you like working at break-neck speed?
JP: You know, it is the only way. It’s the only way to make films in some impossible set of circumstances, you know, when it comes to time and space, and what has to happen psychologically. I think we all kind of like to feel that pressure. It makes us maybe rise to the occasion and jump over those very high bars. Yeah. That’s how it is. That’s how it is always. I can’t think of a production where people felt like, “Oh Yeah – this has been a cake walk!” It’s always crazy. [It’s like series television], getting new pages the same morning, sometimes, and all kind of things. Ultimately sometimes there’s a little bit of magic that happens, and it all comes together in a way that’s great.
Michael Eklund – actor
DC: I understand you and Tony worked together before, a long time ago.
Michael Eklund: The first time I worked with Tony Todd was probably 14 years ago on an episode of “Smallville.” It was one of my earlier jobs when I first started getting into the business and I was fortunate enough to work with Tony then, and he’s just as amazing and spectacular as he is today. Just by coincidence I decided to do this movie, and then they told me that Tony was working on it as well. Once I heard his name was attached, then I thought it was going to be a fun time.
DC: What makes it fun?
ME: The whole film is on a train, it’s one set that we re-dress for different scenes and it takes place over four different cars on the train but we have one set that we rebuild and redecorate to look like other train cars. So it’s a very contained set, which gives that kind of contained, claustrophobic feeling for a thriller which we need, which we thought was important. The train is almost like another character of the film because it’s a train going to hell, so they’ve done a great job decorating the train and it brings a whole new kind of element to the movie that kind of gives it that scary kind of eerie feeling, and contained on this train with six different actors, it’s fun. I just worked with Anson Mount on a film I shot in New Orleans called Mr. Right with Sam Rockwell, so yeah it has kind of like a “Hell on Wheels” feel to it except ours is a thriller.
DC: Is it mostly practical effects?
ME: Yeah, [but we also have an] amazing visual effects artist on set and he’s doing things I can’t even comprehend that he does on his laptop. The visual effects that he does that makes everything just look so real, it just brings that more high production value quality to the film. When you’re doing a movie about a train going to hell, then you definitely need somebody good, and we got one of the best.
DC: How’d you come onto the project?
ME: They sent me the script over the Christmas holidays, I read it, and then I thought it would be a lot of fun. They told me we were shooting in Los Angeles, which is rare nowadays to actually shoot in L.A., and so I said yeah, this would be a fun time and to work with Tony again… it was a no-brainer to jump on board this train. And I’ve only got one job [unlike some others], one of the writer/producers is acting in the film, Yousef is actually producing and acting in the film.
DC: Tell us about who you’re playing.
ME: I play Roland Bursley, who is a Confederate soldier, and he’s been hired by Annie’s father, the character’s name is Annie, played by Jennifer Laporte, her father, to transport her to Atlanta, and if I can get her to Atlanta, then he’ll pay me a bounty of $500. So I’m kind of a bounty hunter after the war. We build this relationship on this train ride, the Roland character and the Annie character, and I start off as kind of a cold-hearted criminal that turns into a soft-heart protecting Annie. Tony plays Jericho Whitfield, who is the most hardened outlaw in the West and we’re nemeses in the film. We go up against each other, and based on the circumstances of the film that we’re on a train to hell, we have to join forces and work as a team if we want to survive the train ride. We don’t know that at the time but we learn as much as the audience does as the script goes on, so we don’t know how this actual world works until we try to fight these demons, and then we realize that they’re a lot stronger than we expected and a lot smarter. And they put us through the gamut of different scenarios to survive this train ride, and if we do, then we get to meet the devil at the end of the film. If you make it that far, then you can strike a deal with the devil for your life. I have a past. When I was in the war, I fought for the South, and all I can say is my brother fought for the North; we were on opposite ends, and so I’m repenting for the sins I’ve caused in the past. Each character in the film has their own sins, and that’s what got us onto this train in the first place.
DC: Was it the horror genre that attracted you?
ME: No, no, not at all. I’ve done everything from science fiction to dramatic to romantic love stories to thrillers, horrors… I like doing all of it because they are so different and they force you to exercise different muscles in your acting toolbox that you don’t usually get to use. So after this one I’ll probably follow it up with maybe a romantic comedy if I had my choice. [In the meantime] you can expect a film coming out this year called Edward, which is a biopic about the godfather of motion pictures. He’s the guy who created moving pictures in the 1800s, and he is the reason why we’re even making movies today. That comes out this year.
Michael Steves – writer-director
DC: What’s the basic synopsis of The Cold Descent?
Michael Steves – It is a Western about a group of two people on a train headed to Atlanta. It focuses on a former slave in 1870s Georgia, who is on a mission of revenge to kill the daughter of his old master, who scalped and murdered his daughter. So it’s an historical Western horror film.
DC: Sounds unique.
MS: One thing really unique, especially for a movie of a lower budget Western horror film, is it’s very historically based. Almost everything mentioned in the film, besides the core elements, are based on real people. So the two main characters are both based off real people. Tony’s character is based off Nat Turner, who was a slave in the 1840s who had a slave rebellion, and he was kind of a symbol of resistance at any cost; he was a guy who killed about 60 white people in a rebellion, and sometimes not necessarily someone who specifically wronged him. So our main character is this guy Jericho. Jericho is after his former slave master’s daughter because he led a rebellion on his plantation and as retaliation after the rebellion failed, his old master scalped and murdered his daughter. So this is years after the Civil War, years after the fact, his master’s daughter is now a grown woman, and he is on this train to Atlanta to murder and scalp her. So that kind of kicks off the ‘A’ story, this girl has a hired mercenary who’s a former Confederate soldier, he’s supposed to protect her, who is kind of a Clint Eastwood type of guy who doesn’t give a shit about anyone, very stone-faced killer sort of guy. And then over the course of the movie they ultimately find that there’s something scarier on the train than any of the three of them. These people have to team up to fight this other threat on this train to Atlanta. So our three leads are Tony, Michael Eklund, and then Jennifer Laporte; basically they’ve all brought whole new elements to the story, to their characters. They’ve all managed to make very memorable Old West characters that draw off tropes but then completely subvert, which you will see when you see the movie. Lance Henriksen is great.
One thing that’s also cool with our cast, we kind of want to draw off Alien, like in the first Alien there is no one person who was the one big movie star, so basically you have a group of recognizable actors mixed in with some unknowns, and hopefully that adds an element, like you really don’t know who is going to survive or not. So that’s kind of fun, like you don’t really know who actually has a good side to them and who’s going to make it to the end. Lance plays the devil; he is an awesome devil. He kind of plays it like a cold-hearted boss who would love to fire you just to see your reaction.
DC: Who are some of your favorite cinematic devils?
MS: I like the one in Damn Yankees, that old musical from the 40’s. He is basically just some kind of a common huckster. Tim Curry was an awesome devil, and what was cool about Tim Curry was he was a sexy devil. So you have two sides, you have the more deadpan devils and the more campy ones. Peter Stormare in Constantine. Those are two of my favorites; not necessarily my favorite movies, but… you know. Yes, Robert De Niro, he’s a great devil. Al Pacino made a great devil in The Devil’s Advocate; he made a campier devil, but that was a really fun one.
DC: Who came up with the idea?
MS: The initial idea came from Yousef, our producer, who also acts in the film. The train is going to hell is what’s ultimately happening; these people think they’re going on a train to Atlanta, and then they find out they are on a train to hell and now have to team up to avoid being damned forever. Initially what came to me was, we wanted a story about a haunted train, and they gave me the twist. Then a few kind of general character ideas. And then from there it was supposed to be a Western, so I kind of changed the setting and made it like 1870s Georgia, mostly because the reconstruction is really a fascinating time in American history; like for example, the place that they’re going to in Atlanta, at this time it wouldn’t be uncommon to see a black person shot in the street, that was a normal everyday thing and not illegal… well, technically illegal, but like not really illegal. So you’re in a time period that is brutal, very barbaric and also not really covered by many films like 1870’s Georgia, like that kind of setting. It is the Wild West because it is a place where laws don’t apply to everyone. In a sense everyone is a villain, so there you have all these characters who have villainous sides to them that over the course of the movie find their humanity, find what little might be left of their humanity. Every character kind has some dark secrets and bad things they’ve done and bad things they’re going to do on this train. It’s kind of like “Hell on Wheels” meets The Shining, or Unforgiven meets The Shining is how I’d describe it.
DC: You mentioned the historical accuracy.
MS: I did a lot of research; it was very important to me that everything in the film was related to a real life incident. So for example, one of the characters takes part in a massacre that actually happened during the Civil War in Centralia, in Missouri, where a train full of Yankee soldiers were beheaded and had their heads rolled down into a town as a terrorist attack. One thing that I wanted to include is a lot of Westerners and a lot of things about this time period have this element of class, like when people talk there’s kind of this idea that even though they were rough-and-tumble, that brutality is usually taken out of it, more sanitized in some way. So in this one we really wanted to look at things that people had done, or historical moments that has been talked about, really bring to the forefront the brutality and kind of the cheapness of life in a place like this.
DC: Is it hard to do an authentic-feeling Western on digital media?
MS: Stylistically, the movie has a very old-fashioned style; it’s like very heavy camera, lots of simple movements and old fashioned lighting style. But then we’re talking about issues and exploring issues through the horror element that you wouldn’t see in an old fashioned Western; but it has a little bit of that John Ford old fashion style Western look. My DP is Gabi Chennisi and she’s phenomenal. Our first movie is Clinger and it premiered at Slamdance. It stars Vincent Martella. That movie was like a campy 80’s horror comedy… kind of in the vein of Evil Dead and Re-Animator; this one is a completely different style but still a bit of a throwback style, like not a modern visual aesthetic. Gabi and I work on commercials all the time.
DC: I understand the Jericho character evolved. Can you explain how?
MS: Originally the character from the beginning, Tony’s character, was written much younger and one of the producers threw out Tony Todd’s name and I thought, “Oh my god, that would be perfect!” It brought a whole new element to the character. In terms of casting and performance, Tony’s character Jericho Whitfield, who is this former slave on a mission of revenge, his character has basically gone around the South killing slave-owners and their families. And he has all these souvenirs from all the things that he’s done, so it’s kind of like Nat Turner meets Malcolm X, but also he’s got a little bit of a heart of gold, he is a sympathetic and lovable character too, he is a complex man. But Tony really made it his own, like there’s a lot of stuff that Tony has brought to the character that wasn’t in the scripts, for example, his entire costume was all stuff that came from back stories that Tony made up, and it ended up in the film. What’s really incredible about working with actors in the caliber of Tony and Michael Eklund and Jennifer Laporte, our female lead, is they really do transform the characters from what’s on the page. They take people that are on the page and then they bring a whole new life to them. Tony has absolutely done that with his character Jericho. I hope that together we create some sort of iconic Western horror character that you haven’t seen before, so it’s incredible. The coolest part has been the elements that the cast have added to the scripts and added to their characters that were never there before.
DC: Do you use some practical effects?
MS: Demons are all practical. Yeah, it’s pretty much all practical with a little bit of CGI enhancements, that’s how we do it, but then that’s keeping with the old-fashioned aesthetic. We wanted this to have the look of a movie that if it were in black and white you could’ve have seen it in the 40s or you could have seen it a long time ago. So the effects are deceptively simple, but then there are elements in the story that you would never see in an older film. There is nothing that you see and don’t know where it came from. One of our references was The Lord of the Rings, which kind of takes a fantasy world but everything feels very tactile and you know where everything came from. If you look around in the art department, you’ll notice, if you read the newspaper, their newspaper actually has like articles that they wrote, like we actually went to the detail in the sets of props and costumes, they are very specific things. The same is true for the visual effects; they are specific and detailed in terms of how we present the demons and the hell element of the story.
DC: What were your references for hell?
ME: The hell is from a bunch of different places. So our version of hell was a combination of Dante’s Inferno, it has a few elements; this hell is cold, hence the title, so it’s cold in this version of hell and it’s based on mostly a test, that tests not only you but also tests the characters against each other. So it’s kind of like a series of trials, it has the kind of Biblical element. The demons in the film have a Greek mythological look to them kind of based off Greek theatre. So it’s like Greek mythology, Egyptian mythology, a little bit of Biblical stuff, a little bit of Hellraiser and The Lord of the Rings thrown in there, and even a little bit of Event Horizon in there, and then also Old West elements. The whole thing still has the period piece element continue even when they’re in hell.
Look for more on The Cold Descent in the coming weeks.