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THE
MAN WITH THE HOOK: MUSE WATSON KNOWS WHAT
YOU DID LAST SUMMER by Owen
Keehnen Muse
Watson was catapulted to the forefront on
many a horror fans consciousness
with his bone-chilling turn as butchering
fisherman Ben Willis in I Know What
You Did Last Summer and I
Still Know What You Did Last
Summer. But The Hook
Man has an awful lot of other
credits to his name --- many of them in
the horror world such as his work in
Dead Birds, Birds
II, Hollywood Vampire,
House of Grimm,
Frankenfish, as well as an
unforgettable performance as rodeo
clown/vampire C.W. Niles in From
Dusk Til Dawn II. Some of his other
numerous credits include Sundance
Festival award-winner
Songcatcher,
Rosewood,
Assassins, Austin
Powers II, Jane Doe,
A Day Without a Mexican,
American Gothic, If I
Die Before I Wake, and
Something to Talk About. In
the past he has guest starred on numerous
TV series like Matlock,
Young Indiana Jones,
JAG, and Walker, Texas
Ranger. Now his career is about to
move to the next level. This summer the
red-hot actor is filming the first 13
episodes of the highly anticipated new
series on FOX, Prison Break
(Mondays at 9:00) in which he co-stars as
inmate Charles Westmoreland. Recently Mr.
Watson too a few moments out of his busy
schedule to answer a few questions for
Racks and Razors.
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Owen:
First off, congratulations on 'Prison
Break' your new FOX series. Can
you tell me something about the series and your
role as Charles Westmoreland?
Muse: The pilot is the talk of
Hollywood. Most folks agree it is the best
pilot to surface this season. Grossly
oversimplified, it is the story of a very
intelligent young man who gets himself thrown
into prison in order to break his bad boy brother
out before he is executed. His plan is
ingenious. My character, Charles
Westmoreland, is thought to be DB Cooper, the man
who jumped out of an airliner with a bag of money
and was never found. Money buried on the
outside makes him very attractive to anyone
breaking out. The brothers are played by
Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell, a couple of
great actors who are both great to work with and
great to be around. The pilot was
directed by Brett Rattner and written by Paul
Scheuring. The series director is Michael
Watkins, who is doing a phenomenal job.
Im excited.
Owen: Now on to the horror
stuff. How did your being cast as Ben
Willis in 'I Know What You Did Last
Summer' (and the sequel) come about?
Muse:
I read for the part after the production
had already gotten underway with
pre-production.... so I don't know if they had
had a tough time finding Ben or whether they
waited til the last minute because they didn't
think there was much to the part. But five
minutes after I read, the casting director said
she was going to Fed-x the tape to the director
who was already in North Carolina. I liked
the challenge of the role as it was written in
the original script. The script described a
guy who was devoted to his daughter. She
had been on a date and the boy she was with had
gotten drunk and wrecked the car they were in,
killing her. The guy found the kid on his
pity pot on the coast and whacked him. Four
drunk teens driving on the coast run over him on
his way back to his truck and dump his body in
the ocean to assure an uninterrupted college
career. Surviving the ocean, he returns to
make the teens life hell.
Literally. I was thrilled at the chance of
playing this guy. He was smart. He
was organized. And he was a loving father
in trouble.
When I got on location, a lot of the loving
father part disappeared and what was left was a
quick and cunning serial killer. The hook
he used was cumbersome and an unlikely tool of
such a man. The hat covering his face
became another stretch of logic with the movement
he accomplished. All in all, I loved
working with Love Hewitt and Michelle Gellar a
couple of professional actors who were a pleasure
to talk to and be around.
After the film opened breaking all records for an
October opening, I went back to work on my next
projects. I was in South Africa shooting Dusk
til Dawn II when I got word that they
wanted to do a sequel. I knew Love had
signed on for two, but they hadnt thought
it was important to get me signed for two.
We negotiated another and I was excited to see
the gang again.
When I met the new director, who could have felt
like he was inheriting a circus animal, I felt
great that the first words out of his mouth were
that he really liked the movement that I had
given the character. I felt like he
got my performance. Then I got
to read the script. They had new writers
and had decided to give some background
information on Bens character. I
didnt know who they were talking
about. They decided he had been
kuckold? Are you kidding me? For one
thing, the info was unnecessary and for another,
it didnt fit the Ben who had borrowed my
body for 4 months.
Owen: What
did you use as your motivation for Ben
Willis? Did you have any special tricks for
getting into character?
Muse: After finding the
character in me, by studying the script and
asking him to take over my body.... I didn't have
much trouble conjuring him as needed. Now
that I have a daughter of my own, I realize that
the producers saw Ben in me. I thought I
was acting. LOL. I realize now, that
Bens feelings are close to what mine might
be under the circumstances.
Owen: Did you have any inkling
the movie would prove so successful?
Muse: Not a clue. I didn't
go to the premier. I was at my hideout in
the foothills of the Smokie Mountains and my
publicist called and said that there must be
something wrong with the film because they were
not allowing the press to pre-screen it. He
said that I didn't have to go to the premier if I
preferred staying in the mountains. On
Monday morning I was working on the place with my
caretaker and I got a call from one of my buddies
in Hollywood. He said...." You got the
number one movie in the nation"...I hung up
the phone in my shop and walked outside and said
to my caretaker, "I got the number one movie
in the nation". He spit a big shot of
his chew and said, "Yeah, we got to move the
tractor".
Owen: Did its success usher in a
myriad of horror offers? If so were you
careful not to get typecast?
Muse: There is still a myriad of
horror offers coming...but I am not as concerned
with being typecast as I am concerned with being
in a bunch of bad movies. ...And then if I
need to put a new roof on the barn, I'll do about
anything. If you see my reel, the
characters in my body of work or so different
that most folks don't recognize me from one to
the other. I came to town to be an
actor. Unfortunately that may not have been
smart. When the public doesn't recognize
you from part to part, then the producers don't
feel they need to pay you very much. I
wouldn't be surprised to hear that Joey Buttafuco
was cast in Hamlet. The whores in Hollywood
wear expensive suits.
Owen: In 'From Dusk Til
Dawn II' you play C.W., a rodeo clown
who turns into a vampire. What is your
predominant memory of filming that movie?
Muse: How beautiful Capetown
South Africa is...and how much fun it was to hang
out with Robert Patrick and Bo Hopkins and the
rest of the cast. Robert and I are still
close friends. The other special thing
about that film to me is the fact that if I
werent an actor, one of the things I always
wanted to be was a rodeo clown. LOL
Owen: You also starred in 'The
Birds 2'. What do you think was
the main problem of trying to follow up the
Hitchcock classic?
Muse: Oh, Jeezzzz. You
know what an Alan Smithy film is? That'sthe
name a director puts on a film when he doesn't
want his name in the credits. Birds II is
an Alan Smithy film. My name was mistakenly
left out of the credits. They had to pay me
a bunch of money for that and I don't have to
have my name in the credits either. I don't
know what the Hitchcock problem was but the movie
sucked.
Owen: Somewhat going along with
that, tell me about your work in 'Dead
Birds'.
Muse: Dead Birds was one of the
scariest scripts I ever read. I think it
may have been too deep for the critics. I
am surprised it didnt get a bigger
response. I was glad I did it. There
again, if you watch my lord of the plantation
character in Dead Birds next to the ole Cajun
character I played in Frankenfish you
wouldnt believe it is the same actor.
Owen: You gotta love a good
creature movie. Any good tales from the set
of the enjoyable mutant flesh-eating fish flick 'Frankenfish'?
Muse: Ok...how about third
degree burns. LOL When I was filming
in the water it was cold. Real cold.
So the effects guys set me up with a portable hot
water heater. I would swim over to the
stunt barge in between takes and a P.A. would
stick this hose down my wet suit and warm me
up. After one take I swam over and crawled
up on the barge and the P.A. stuck the hose down
the back of my wet suit and hit the switch.
He hadn't put the intake hose into the water, so
red-hot steam shot down my back. I couldn't
get the hose out because my wet suit was so
tight. I squirmed and fought and got burned
really bad. They put me on a speedboat and
took me to the dock, transferred me to a van and
rushed me to a country hospital. After the
nurse finally understood what I was doing when I
got hurt she said, "So, this was work
related". I said yep. She said
well this producer and this driver have to
leave the room and you have to pee into this cup
for a drug test...it's the law in work related
accidents. I said, "Lady, that ain't
possible." She looked at me like she
was gonna call the cops, when I went on to
explain that under those wet clothes I was
wearing a wet suit that zipped up the
back.... and that if everyone left the room I
wouldn't be able to pee....cause I needed help
getting out of my clothes.
Owen: I've heard your latest
film 'House of Grimm' is also a
thriller. What drew you to take on that
project?
Muse: The barn needed a roof.
Owen: I have also read that you
are dyslexic. Do you have any special
tricks then that help you to memorize your
dialogue?
Muse: Yeah, I go to sleep with
my lines playing on a tape machine that has a
repeat function. I wake up totally off
book. And when people send me scripts, my
wife reads them and tells me whether I want to do
them or not. LOL
Owen: What scares you in real
life?
Muse: Im sixteen years
sober after looking the devil right square in the
face and have had brain surgery, heart and lung
surgery and back surgery, .. My philosophy is
that life is about facing your fears. If you want
to scare somebody? You may wanta try
somebody else.
Owen: So
what are you doing this summer?
Muse: Besides being in Chicago
filming Prison Break
I will probably be spending some time filming a
new series my nephew Jon Morris and his pal Scott
Nankivel have written about a couple of goofs who
come to L.A. and end up working as caterers and
living with an ole actor. (Me) These
young guys have filmed a short to market the
project and are getting a lot of interest from
several cable networks.
Any time not spent making a living will be spent
with my little girl. Well probably be
at the beach in Malibu, the L.A. Zoo, Universal
Theme Park and Disneyland. We have annual
passes to all of them and my wife and I would
rather spend time with her than do anything
else. Shes my life now.
visit www.musewatson.com .....and watch Muse this
fall Monday nights at 9pm in "Prison
Break" on FOX. |
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