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Close-Up: Jonathan Sadowski
Alternative Press - John Millin on 6/16/09 @ 5:19 PM - altpress.com
Interview: J. Bennett
Photo: Myriam Santos
Tell us about this new Friday The 13th movie. It's a remake of the original, but it references the events of the original in the past tense?
It's kinda weird. It's a remake of the first one in a sense, but yeah, it references the first few movies. The chronology jumps around a bit. But it's gonna be great, dude. The cast is awesome. It looks beautiful, too. I went in to do some audio looping, so I finally saw some footage, and it's pretty horrifying. It's definitely a hardcore R [rating]. [The violence is] pretty gratuitous.
The director of the new Friday The 13th, Marcus Nispel, also did the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Was originality a concern when you first got the script?
Not at all, dude. Well, first of all, the script was on lockdown, so nobody got a copy during the audition process. They just gave us the scenes they wanted us to do at the auditions. I was actually one of the last people to be cast, because my involvement was kind of contingent on whether I was doing this other TV pilot or not. But once I saw who was attached, it was a no-brainer. Plus, [producer] Michael Bay is phenomenal.
As one might expect, the trailer features a lot of yelling and running. What was the most physically demanding thing you were asked to do for this movie?
Putting up with the ball-busting cast. [Laughs.] No-being onset was great. They were a bunch of pranksters. We shot it on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, so we'd have to take this 45-minute ride into this forested area, where we got dropped off at a base station. Then we took another five- or 10-minute van ride on this long, deserted road into the woods. So if you had to go to the bathroom, you'd have to walk back up this road to the Port-A-Potties. One time it was, like, 3:30 in the morning and I had to go to the bathroom, but no one else did, so I had to walk back all by myself. And it's creepy out there, man. When I came out of the Port-A-Pottie, Derek Mears, who's playing Jason, comes running out of the woods with a machete, screaming at me in full Jason gear. I swear to God, man-I almost went to the bathroom twice.
Without giving too much away, how brutal is your character's death scene?
They're all pretty brutal. They say there's something like seven pints of blood in the human body, but we used more than four gallons for one death. It got messy, man-real messy. And I definitely did my fair share of screaming.
Did you go back and watch the original before you started shooting?
No, but only because the characters aren't necessarily the same. It's like with the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: It's basically the same story, but the characters are different, and it's a little more modern. I think the director kind of wanted to make it his own, you know? Some of those Friday The 13th movies got a little hokey toward the end-like Jason goes into outer space or whatever they did. But I'll never forget the original. It had some horrifying moments, and that was what we tried to capture the most with this one.
You've got a movie coming out in April called The Goods: The Don Ready Story. What's it about?
I actually just saw it for the first time about a month ago, and I almost pissed myself, man. It's pretty funny. It's kind of like Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy, but it's about used-car salesmen. This car lot that's been around for years is going under, so the owner decides to call in a mercenary used-car salesman named Don Ready, played by Jeremy Piven. So Ready brings his crew with him to clear the lot out over the course of a weekend. The last time Don Ready was in this town, about 22 years ago, he had a one-night stand. When he meets my character, he realizes we have a lot of the same quirks, so he starts believing I'm his son. [Laughs.]
What else do you have coming up?
Right now, I'm writing a TV show with one of my co-stars in Friday The 13th, Ben Feldman. We kind of hatched this idea for a sitcom and we're trying to finish it up and get it out to the networks. Hopefully good things will happen with it. [Laughs.] Of course, we'd be starring in that as well.
THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
"I buy so much music it's ridiculous," Jonathan Sadowski tells us over the phone from a family visit in Chicago. The actor then rattles off a current playlist that includes the likes of folk songstress Jolie Holland, indie-rock upstarts Glacier Hiking and AutoVaughn and the DJ Shadow-approved U.K. electronica outfit Stateless. He's also a big fan of the countrified brotherly love espoused by Tennessee heartthrobs Kings Of Leon. "I recently saw them at the Nokia [Theater] in Los Angeles-that was an intense show," Sadowski enthuses. "The first time I saw them was at Coachella a couple of years ago, and it was one of the best shows I've ever seen. So when they came back to L.A., it was a no-brainer. They know what they're doing, dude."
Sadowski's first live music experience was a different story altogether. "My first concert was actually Alanis Morissette opening up for Gin Blossoms," he says with a laugh. "This was in, like, '91 or '92 at Grant Park in Chicago. I took the bus downtown by myself, and the guy running security was actually one of my football coaches from grade school, so he just walked me up to the front row. It was pretty cool."
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