Max Thieriot - Film
By Rych McCain International/Nationally Syndicated Entertainment Columnist
Max Thieriot Gives
One The Best Psycho
Performances In Film History!
Photos Courtesy of Relativity
Media
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| Max Thieriot as psycho Ryan |
Many films are made in the horror/thriller
genre and those movies make a heavy mental impact that is hard to shake off.
People remember these films for life and in some cases the actors in them
become cult figures. Two of the most famous films in this category that comes
to mind are the late Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 classic “Psycho” where Anthony Perkins immortalized the Norman Bates
character and was nominated for various awards and the other is 1975’s “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s nest.” This
movie cleaned house at the Academy Awards® winning five Oscars® where Jack
Nicholson as Randle Murphy won “Best
Actor,” and forever burned his crazed image in the minds of viewers with the line “Heeear’s
Johnny.” Well, we can now ad one more soon to be classic psycho performances to
the list in the person of young actor Max Thieriot who gives a brilliant and
certainly Oscar® nomination worthy performance in the new thriller “House At
The End Of The Street.”
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| Psycho Ryan loading a body in his car trunk |
You can chalk it up to a brilliantly
written script with great direction by Mark Tonderai but Thieriot convincing
plays two personalities in one character in sheer genius fashion. When he first
read the script, how did he mentally prepare for this duality switch that he
had to navigate? Thieriot leans back and thinks, “Honestly, I watched a lot of
videos of people who have done some terrible things in their lives. A lot of
YouTube videos of famous (so-to-speak) psychopaths and read a lot of interviews
and information and they all had a lot of similarities, so I tried to bring on
those.
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| Max as the "good" Ryan |
I had to wrap my head around some crazy stuff but at the same time I
wanted Ryan to be compassionate, affectionate and somebody who everybody cares
about and who Elissa would be willing to approach and be able to form this
relationship with. Mark helped me a lot. We talked about it a lot and went into
all sorts of character development and research and just really putting
together what made Ryan tick. And that was my job to try and make sure that all
came across as that.”
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| Ryan Chillin' |
Since the film didn’t have a major budget,
they had to shoot all of the scenes that took place in the house and other
locations all at the same time so Thieriot was turning the good guy bad guy off literally form scene to
scene which makes what he did all that more astonishing.
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| Max masterfully turning psycho on and off |
Thieriot recalls, “You
know all of the house stuff basically, there was both sides of the story that
happened in the house and we had to film all of those at the same time. So as
an actor you have to say I’m going into this now and take a deep breath. I’m
turning psychos on and off and it’s a problem. By the end of it I just want to
go to the casino every night, gamble and forget about everything.”
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| Jennifer Lawrence (Elissa) with the "Good" Ryan |
Thieriot and Lawrence had great chemistry
on screen. How did it develop? Thieriot smiles, “I didn’t know anybody in
Ottawa (where the film was shot in Canada), and neither did she so we spent a
lot of time together and became a tight-nit family while we were up there. We
just spent so much time together that it helped everything come off as being so
real.”
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| Elissa (Lawrence) escaping from Psycho Ryan |
How did Lawrence react to Ryan being normal vs. him being psycho while
shooting? Thieriot laughs again, “As soon as the camera was off, everything
would be normal and she would act normal like that’s fine. So that was kind of
funny because she and I were flipping in and out being friends and then not.”
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| Elissa (Lawrence) with gun -- its on now! |
What was Thieriot’s initial reaction after
reading the script for the first time? He recalls, “I’ve read enough scripts
where it becomes like a total formula and you can see exactly what’s happening.
And this script for me, after I read it, I was legitimately surprised and just
kind of impressed by everything that just happened that I was just blown back.”
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| Max as psycho Ryan on a mission |
© 2012 Rych McCain Media/Syndication tm
(You DID Hear It From
Me!)
