We recently caught up with actor Emile Hirsch about his new gritty western, Never Grow Old, co-starring John Cusack. The film follows an Irish undertaker named Patrick who begins profiting when the bodies start piling up, but it may be at the expense of his family. Never Grow Old was written and directed by Ivan Kavanagh and is now available on VOD.
HGL: Your new feature film, Never Grow Old, features a super talented cast, as well as writer and director Ivan Kavanagh. What was it about the script that really drew you in and made you want to play Patrick?
EH: First and foremost, I’d met with Ivan Kavanagh, and I had seen his movie The Canal, and I just I found him to be so intelligent. He thinks about films in an interesting way and he’s got such a knowledge of film, you really get the feeling you’re with a cinephile when you’re with him. I love that about him, and he has a very particular stark sensibility, so when I read the script, I was able to see his version of it in my mind. I’ve wanted to make a Western for a long time, and I have made so many different types of films at this point now.
HGL: What was it like working with Kavanagh to make a Western?
EH: Ivan was so into performance and getting into the lives of each character and trying to make each character as fully fleshed out as possible. I thought it was cool dealing with a director like that. He actually reminded me a little bit of Ang Lee in the sense of his attention to detail with regards to character.
Horror Geek Life: You play a very conflicting character, even eliciting sympathy although you’re not quite doing the right thing. Is that type of role something you find challenging?
Emile Hirsch: Yeah, it’s tricky because on one hand, he’s profiting and kind of thrilled that all these people are getting shot, and he’s doing their undertaker work while collecting gold coins and burying them in the floor in a little box. So, that’s kind of a wicked thing and at best it’s extremely mischievous and morally compromising. Is it about the love Patrick has for his wife and kids? He thinks it’s about the love that he has for his wife and kids, but then he realizes later that this goes beyond that. It goes to his own sense of pride and that’s really what it was about, him wanting to be a greater man. That wasn’t connected to the love he has for his wife and kids, so it’s kind of like the pride before the fall. He’s got to make that fall and get that humility back.
HGL: Do you find it hard to tiptoe that line, ensuring the audience doesn’t write your character off?
EH: It’s one of these weird things about certain movies and characters, like Hannibal Lecter wasn’t a great guy, but you love watching him. Just because Patrick isn’t a great guy, I wouldn’t necessarily think people won’t want to watch him. I’ve played a lot of these kind of darker roles and in real life, you certainly don’t like people like that, but movies are a place where we get to live in a make-believe world, so it’s a bit different in the sense that you can put up with these characters that you wouldn’t want to deal with in real life. Like (John) Cusack’s character, Dutch Albert, is so messed up and not someone you would want to be around. For me, as long as there’s something there that I can lock on to, and believe for myself and understand it, I just have the faith that other people will too. They might not love it, but they might understand it a little. Patrick’s an Irish guy the town rejected and nobody helped him, so he found another chance of making some money and he’s going to go for it. He’s been shunned and ostracized, so we kind of get it a little bit.
HGL: I first saw the trailer, it hooked me because it sets up the gritty tone immediately, and the film itself did not disappoint. I can see Ivan’s attention to detail in every scene, and Never Grow Old is very deserving of an audience.
EH: It’s not getting a huge theatrical thing, but because I really believe in the film, I believe in Ivan as a director and John Cusack, I just love the work that he’s done, I feel like the film will find its audience in time. I feel like people who really love the genre will find this movie because there’s not a lot of great Westerns being made these days.
HGL: Aside from Never Grow Old, are there any other projects you have been working on?
EH: In the last couple years, I’ve been doing a lot of writing myself. Something that I really want to do is produce one of the scripts I’ve written, one of these days. I have written a bunch of different ones and, it’s funny, I entered one of my scripts in the Cinequest Screenplay Competition during the summer. I wrote this script over two years ago and I had never sent it out or done anything with it. I got some really good notes and did some work on it. I sent it to Cinequest up in San Jose and got this letter back a couple of months later saying the script has been selected for the final fifty, so that’s awesome. A couple more months went by and I got a new letter saying the script is now a top ten finalist. Now I’m waiting see what happens. I think in a few more days, it’ll come out whether or not a random little script about Chinese internet addicts that I wrote wins.
HGL: Ha, that’s an unexpected topic!
EH: Yeah, it’s weird because this is the last script I imagine anyone would ever think I would write. It’s a dark comedy, almost in the vein of Edgar Wright, about Chinese video game addicted teenagers who get sent to military school rehab for internet addicts. They have very authoritarian teachers and it’s like a prison, and it’s a real thing in China, but I did a very dark satiric take on it and it’s pretty wild. So, we’ll see what happens.
HGL: Good luck with the project and I look forward to hearing more about it. Before we wrap-up, I just have to say, The Autopsy of Jane Doe is a personal favorite modern horror film.
EH: It’s amazing how in the few years since it’s been made, it has grown in stature. People love it.
HGL: They do, and it honestly terrified me after watching.
EH: Imagine me! After I read that script, in my house alone trying to rehearse it at night. I couldn’t do it. I was like, fuck this. I could only go over the script during the day. Alone, at night, in this creepy ass house? No. (laughs)
HGL: Thank you again, Emile, for your time talking about Never Grow Old and The Autopsy of Jane Doe!
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