For the Love of Horror 2019 saw the biggest ‘Lost Boys’ reunion EVER. As well as making for incredible fan photo-ops, a major highlight of the weekend was seeing the cast together on stage, and hearing them speak so fondly about the movie, during their group and individual panels. Here’s some highlights from the group panel, featuring Jason Patric (Michael), Jamison Newlander (Alan Frog), Billy Wirth (Dwayne), Alex Winter (Marko), Chance Michael Corbitt (Laddie), Tim Cappello (Beach Concert Star) and G Tom Mac (Theme Song writer and performer).
Jamison Newlander on the inspiration behind the Frog brothers, and whether or not this was their first vampire stakeout: “I think it was not our first, but it was our biggest. So the inspiration for these characters, originally when the script was written it was more of a Goonies, for littler kids and stuff. [Director, Joel] Schumacher decided to make it into this little more mature, little more intense, little darker movie. The Frog brothers, from the beginning, I didn’t know that this was funny, our stuff, because he was so intent on making us this angry really intense crew. So Schumacher got us to be really committed to being bad-asses, and I think thats where it came from. I mean obviously [co-star Corey] Feldman and I had it in us to carry that out. As an example, when we came to Santa Cruz we went on the ferris wheel and I got sick, because I get motion sickness, and Feldman was like ‘I’m gonna tell Joel’, and I was like ‘don’t you dare tell Joel that I got sick’, so we were just really trying to pull off this really tough thing I think.”
Chance Michael Corbitt on being the youngest on set: “I have an 11 year old and a 7 year old at home and I looked at [my daughter] when she turned 10 and I thought, I was your exact age when I was on the set, and I couldn’t imagine her doing what we were doing at that time, because it was really so cool and we were super free. I heard Billy talking about how Joel was really trying to corral everyone, to keep everybody in check so to speak, and thats kind of how it was.”
Jason Patric and Alex Winter on what its like to be reunited with so many of their castmates after so long:
Jason: “It’s a little surreal. Jamie the last time I saw him I was 14 years old. I’ve seen Billy a little bit, I ran into Alex a while ago, for Tim and G none of us have all been together. But it makes you look at your life and the circle it becomes. And as I said earlier, the good thing about the sort of gypsy work that we do as actors is you make these very intense connections, have very intense experiences, that become part of you somewhat, and if you’re lucky you get to visit it again, and that’s this situation, so I’m grateful for that.”
Alex: “At the risk of being sappy, I will say that we haven’t all been together, and I haven’t seen Chance since he was a little kid, and to Jason’s point, you end up like a family, then it all kind of breaks apart and then you sort of go on with your life. I can’t speak for everybody, but I can surmise it for many of us that made that film. It was a seminal period in all of our lives. It was somewhat to do with our age, when you’re that age, a big summer like that is going to be a big memorable summer no matter what. But the experience of making the film – which has not been the case with every film I’ve done – was particularly communal, sort of the environment that Joel was famous for creating. He creates these very family, communal sort of experiences, so it was a very potent experience in my youth. I dunno, I felt kinda moved seeing you guys today. To be totally honest with you, it was like coming back to see family again. You know we’ve all done other work since then, but it has a very heightened kind of place in my heart because of the potency of the experience. And we did also have a really good time. Joel knows how to make a set really fun. Sets can often not be fun, they can be very hard work and not glamourous and kind of drudgery. The Lost Boys was a shit tonne of fun to make.”
Jamison and Billy Wirth on the lasting legacy of The Lost Boys:
Jamison: “Joel Schumacker was always telling us on the set that we were making film history. He was sort of joking, he wasn’t totally serious, but maybe he was, maybe he saw it. I’m totally surprised, but not surprised at all when I look at the movie. I watched it again like 10 years ago, I could finally see it without criticising every little move I made, and I was like this is a good movie, so in that part I’m not surprised.”
Billy: “The fact that it dealt with so many themes that were universal: the human condition and family, brotherhood, alienated youth, grandparents, single motherhood; all these things they last on. It was an elevated horror film, it wasn’t just a horror film, it had a real story, and you know those kinda films can stand the test of time, which this does, because it was really quality filming from the cinematography to the screen-play, to the costume design, to the music. I mean it had all the elements, so it doesn’t surprise me after seeing the film that it still works today.”
Chance, Alex and Billy on the SFX involved in creating the vampires:
Chance: “Well I can’t speak for Billy and Alex because I wasn’t in vampire get up as much as they were, nor hanging upside down with the glass contacts. But the one thing I had the most trouble with was we actually we had to go to a nail salon and get real acrylic nails put on. They weren’t press ons you took off every night. So as a nine year old, very active skateboarding young kid, I had these on for however long we were filming, that was kind of a pain in the ass. But the eyes did hurt, and think I know what Alex was going through with the contacts.”
Alex: “The makeup in The Lost Boys was actually really minor. It was Greg Cannom, who was a genius, came up with [the design]. We had a long shoot, but we didn’t have a luxurious shoot, and Joel needed us to be in and out of the makeup quickly, so Greg was tasked with coming up with a look for the vampires that would be extremely quick to apply and take off. So the make-up was actually far less intense than it’s been on other projects that I’ve done by a long shot. It was a very simple forehead appliance and teeth, and contacts, and that was pretty much it. The problem was in the old days, which was when we shot this movie, in prehistoric times, contact lenses were basically half a ping pong ball, cut off and painted, that they jabbed into your eyeball. It was very hard and very dry, so for my death scene I landed in a pile of dirt and had Jamison and Corey [Feldman] kicking dirt into my eyes, shoveling it with their feet, until I was like ‘you’re gonna have to get an ambulance to take me to hospital because they’ve scratched my cornea’. It was good times.”
Billy: “I also think they did minimalize the makeup, but I think they went through many trials and the aesthetic of the full on was too much, they wanted us to look semi-human. Some of the other trials we were looking real beasty.”
Alex: “Thats right, I forgot about that. Even our regular look was pretty far out and then it all got pulled back.”
Jason and Billy on why every character and element in the movie is so important:
Jason: “It’s one of the rare movies that every single little component matters, because if they were gone it wouldn’t be the movie. If that dog [Nanook] wasn’t in there, it’s really not the movie. If Chance isn’t that little boy who barely has any dialogue, it’s not the same movie. I mean it’s called the Lost Boys, but Billy and Brooke [McCarter] and Alex, they barely have any dialogue, yet they’re who you remember because of their presence. So every single little aspect of that movie, from the music and the iconic scene that Tim does, if you removed any one bit – and you can’t say that about a lot of movies – if you remove one bit from this movie it is not the same movie. And so there’s something very unique about that, and I think thats one of the reasons that it holds up today and has that kind of place.”
Billy: “Without the comedy between you and Corey it wouldn’t be the movie!”
Jason: “Yeah I mean obviously, if there’s no Corey it doesn’t work, and then [Jamison] and [Corey] Feldman created these little characters that if someone did that today it would be a franchise, and they did that without that thought.”
RELATED: Check Out All of our For the Love of Horror 2019 Coverage Here!
Jamison on the perfectly balanced comedy of the Frog brothers: “So first of all we’ve talked a little bit about Joel Schumacher and how he had such a strong vision, and it was the same thing with the Frog brothers. There were times where as I started to understand it was comedic, that I tried to push it and he was right there to pull us right back and being deadly serious. And also I gotta hand it to Feldman that, he takes a lot of heat for being kinda nuts, and he is, we all are in certain ways, but when we worked together – and it happens today too because we do various little videos and various little things together – he’s really good to work [with]. I dunno maybe it’s just us, I don’t know how other actors feel about Feldman.We had this really good chemistry together that was very much about Feldman and I being very generous with each other. But it was also about Schumacher, from day one, getting us to hang out together, me and Feldman and [Corey] Haim, while everybody else was off shooting these night scenes and everything we were just hanging out at the hotel, and we were just building up that chemistry, and I thinks thats probably a lot of it.”
Chance sharing his traumatic set experience that he’s now able to look back and laugh about: “I could share a real moment that looking back is kinda funny. So my one big scene in the movie was when I came out of the bed right, so leading up to that I had no clue what it was. It was pretty simplistic the idea of it, it was just an air compressor, under a bed with a hole cut in it. We did the scene and I wouldn’t go back in, I became petrified. I dunno what happened, I couldn’t go back in. I was crying, and so they put Larry [Nicholas], who was my fantastic stunt double in, he did probably four or five takes. And to this day still, that moment, I look back and I laugh at it now, but that was a very real moment. I was scared shitless to be quite frank. It’s funny now because I look back and I go its just an air compressor, what was I doing, but that was a real moment so I thought I’d share that with you.”
Tim Capello and G Tom Mac on Santa Cruz being the perfect setting for the movie:
Tim: “I just played Santa Cruz. I dunno, at 64 I just decided I was going to do the first tour that I ever did under my own name, so I toured around the States all summer, and I had to go to Santa Cruz. And I just wanna say that there’s an element to Lost Boys that I’ve always felt, so going back after 32 years – I haven’t been there since – I pictured the writer of the Lost Boys just going through and spending a day or two in Santa Cruz. And that movie, if you’re a really creative, great writer, would just come to you, because that town is [Santa Carla]. That town is a character in that movie, and when you go, it’s still such a hippie, slacker, stoner town; and they’re doing their very best to gentrify Santa Cruz right now, and I’ve gotta tell you guys: it ain’t gonna happen!”
G Tom Mac: “I’ll tell you my experience of Santa Cruz. I’d never even been there really, it was about three or four years ago they asked me to come up and perform on the beach before they watched the film. So I went up and I did of course ‘Cry Little Sister’, just me and an acoustic guitar. It was a great experience watching a full on audience, and I’m not telling you a word of a lie it was like 6,000 people on the beach watching the film. After I performed, I stood at the back on one of the railings and watched the audience watch the movie, and that was a trip because there we are in the very place where the film was made, Santa Carla.”
Jason on the inspiration behind his character Michael, and Alex and Jamison on how his characterisation evolved the movie:
Jason: “I told Joel early on when he kept trying to get me to do the movie that I didn’t want to make a vampire movie. So we talked about what about making a movie about a boy whose parents got divorced, didn’t wanna take the role of his father, all of a sudden got pulled into something, his sexual awakening. As I said I used the vampire aspect as a drug analogy, and someone who got pulled into something because they felt nothing. I felt if we did that then it was universal, if we did that people could relate to it on a human level. And anyone who got into the genre aspect, that would also work, and so I absolutely approached it that way. So when [Michael] started, after having that blood it was really just substance, and substance taking over your body and desire taking over your body, much like someone who’s addicted to something.”
Alex: “I just want to add one thing about Jason’s performance if I can. I was a New Yorker and I got the script, and it was super cool, and I auditioned a few times, and I rode motorcycles and I was like this is going to be bad-ass, this is going to be fun. And I remember getting to the shoot and meeting Jason for the first time, and talking about his characterisation and like how he was coming at the role. And I was like oh shit this is like a serious movie, but in a good way. And there’s Diane Weist and Barnard Hughes, and there’s this incredible cast that Joel had built. It was a bit of a shock to the system because I didn’t have much preparation in terms of thinking about concepting a film in my head that way before until I actually got there, but I remember being so grateful that the lead actor in the movie was coming at it in such a grounded way and it elevated all of our game I felt like.”
Jamison: “One thing I want to add also on that is that I feel like we were talking about why the film has endured, and I feel like that’s part of it. It’s because the people at the top of the credits, we have in lead roles, I really think for you guys it wasn’t just a vampire movie. You took it all the way acting wise, you and Keifer [Sutherland] and Corey. And I think that that’s a big part of it. You grounded this movie in a way you don’t always get with a movie that’s also got all these other grown up elements.”
Billy and Jamison on their co-star Keifer Sutherland:
Billy: “I didn’t realise that Jason was 19 and Keifer was 19 too, I cant believe you guys were such professionals, real actors. I mean I was lost – I was a lost boy. To see you guys, your presence, and depth. You know I cant believe it, you guys were the real thing. They anchored the dramatic barrier for us. It’s taken me 30 years to even feel comfortable on a set, in front of the camera, you guys had it back then. Keifer was amazing, he had an innocence about him, but he also was seasoned. He’d done Stand By Me, he was a great actor, fully committed, but he was also a kid too. He looked up to Brooke and I in some ways but there was a kinda nice innocence about him.”
Jamison: “So I didn’t see Keifer that much on set because our scenes didn’t really align, but there’s two things I remember. One is the scene on the beach where he bites that guys head, I saw him pitching that idea to the director who took it to the special effects guy, and as I think back to what a cool moment that was he was like ‘I want that bald guy, I wanna bite his head’. And then also a few months later we were doing looping, re-dubbing some scenes that the sound wasn’t right on, and I got to see the scene where he was grabbing Corey Haim’s foot in the cave, and then he burns his hand, a tear comes out and I was like this is amazing. This guys amazing.”
Jason: “I have to jump in there for one minute while we praise Kiefer. I have to speak for Kiefer. That moment you’re talking about, which is amazing, it seems so emotional. If he was sitting here today he would say his eyes were watering from the contact lens, and they caught it at the exact moment, and he loves that he got the credit for that but he says its a total accident and bad contact lens!”
G Tom Mac on how important Kiefer and Jason were in his writing of the theme song: “I just wanted to say one thing about writing the theme song, and this applies to both Kiefer and Jason. When I was reading the script, the inspiration, I had no idea who the actors were, and my biggest fear was I hope these actors have a vibe about them in this [triangle] with Star. Joel didn’t tell me who was in the film, and once I got with him in LA I was so bloody nervous I remember the opening scene of the film had my voice, he wanted my voice from the get go. I said take my voice out, just leave it as the choir, and everyone looked at me [including] my manager like, you’re commiting artist suicide, what are you doing here?! And I said no man, those choir voices are what needs to go over that, not me. But as we got into the film a bit deeper, I was watching Jason’s moves just as an actor and I was going thank God this guy has got this thing. I wrote this song around these characters that I read, but Jason so had this f*cking vibe, and then I started to see where Kiefer was at, and the rest of the boys, but I was really writing around Kiefer and Jason, and of course Jami Gertz, Star, and each step of the way it was one of those things you just hope the song worked against the characters and it just gave me shivers watching you guys perform and knowing that there was a thematic thing going on here that was really working.”
Billy on his gone but never forgotten co-stars, and why vampires shouldn’t sparkle: “I was just thinking about the vampire movies that came after us. My dear friend Brooke who we all love and miss, I’m not sure if it was his phrase, but he made a button that said ‘real vampires don’t f*cking glitter’. I never saw that movie where the vampires glitter but I got another story to say about that film, what’s it called, Twilight?! So Robert Pattinson, when we did our first Con in Milton Keynes, Robert Pattinson came up to us, because he was there for Harry Potter. He came up to us and he was a fan of the movie, and we signed autographs – everybody signs for the other actors – and he really was a fan, and then later he went on to do Twilight, which is a funny story. But Brooke was the best, and if you got to meet him you loved him and I know you loved his performance, but we miss him, we miss Corey [Haim], we miss Ed [Herrmann], we miss Barnard [Hughes].”
What would you ask the Lost Boys if you had the chance? Hopefully they’ll be appearing together at more conventions in the future. Until then, don’t forget… they’re only noodles Michael!
[All photos by Frankie Torok]
Related Article: The Lost Boys: 10 Things You May Not Know
Oh wow I do hope that they keep showing up at ComicCon etc etc! I’m a diehard fan of The Lost Boys etc. but this was a part of growing up in your teens in the 1980’s, I was still pretty young in my teens when this movie came out.
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