Adam Arkin enters the horror genre with Halloween: H20. The actor, who enters his fifth and possibly final season at "Chicago Hope," spoke about the togetherness he experienced on the H20 set. Arkin also kills the rumors of resentment and competition between the actors of medical dramas "Chicago Hope" and "ER."
Tell me how did you get involved with H20? In talking to Jamie Lee, she said she really spearheaded this thing and wanted to make it happen.
Yeah.
Did your involvement come through regular casting or was it something she was interested in?
On my side of things, I was sent a script and asked if I wanted to do it. So, whatever decision making went into it prior to that, I'm not privy to. Again, I can't imagine that I would have been cast in the role, without Jamie Lee giving me a thumbs up. And I can't imagine Steve Miner didn't have a lot to say about it, because we had worked together on an episode of "Chicago Hope" and had a really good level of communication with each other. I think he probably was an advocate for me.
So, why a horror movie, of all things?
Well, it's not just a horror movie. I mean, if somebody called up and asked, "What do you want to do?" I might not necessarily have said, "I've got to do a horror movie." To be completely frank, I'm not sitting around fielding offers all day long for movies. This was a major motion picture, it was a good role, it had all the earmarks of something that could very well be an "event movie" because of the heat these films are getting right now and the fact that Jamie Lee was returning to something was an homage to the granddaddy of all of them. And I really would have been stupid not to have done it. It was also a film that was actually happening, I mean, Miramax was doing it, and it had a kind of legitimacy to it. And once I read the script, I was there.
When you say that it was a movie that was "kind of happening," have you been fielding a lot of independent offers or movies that are in development?
Yeah. Where the thought is that if you were participating in it, it might help to get made in some way, which is fine. And I'm always honored, but I think for every 100 of those that come along, one of them is actually going to happen. And, the fact that this was an offer on a major film that had a start date, was pretty impressive.
I've talked to other actors of H20, but in talking to Michelle Williams, she said horror movies kind of unnerve people, in general. Do you feel that way about horror movies? Were you ever a horror movie fan?
This is a question that's been circulating quite a bit and I've had to come up an accurate answer. What I had to say was, in general, I'm not really a fan of any one genre of any kind of film. I don't go to see a movie because it's a Western, or because it's a comedy. I go to see it because I've heard great things about it, or I know the people involved, to the extent that I know they do good movies and I'm interested in seeing their work. That pretty much covers all genres. People have said, "It's pretty surprising that YOU would do a horror movie," or "We don't think of you as a guy who'd be in a horror movie," and I say, "What the hell does that mean?" You start looking at people who have been in horror movies and that covers everybody from Catherine Deneuve to Jack Nicholson to Mia Farrow. One of the things you want to do, as an actor, is get to work on things with as much variety as possible.
There are people who go to see horror movies, simply because they are horror movies. Kevin Williamson seems to be that kind of guy. Does that freak you out, people taking horror movies very seriously, for better or for worse?
No, in general, it doesn't freak me out. The idea of it becomes a little freaky if you're dealing with someone who has trouble differentiating between fantasy and reality, but that's a concern no matter what kind of movie you're dealing with. People can get obsessed with romance, they can get obsessed with political paranoia, they can get obsessed with horror. It's isn't the fault of the subject matter that creates the obsession, I don't think.
Do you have any idea why people like being scared?
Sure. I think, in general, people like experiencing any emotion so intensely that it takes them out of themselves. We all look to have transcendent experiences that lift us out of the everyday, and fear is a good one. But, I think it's the same reason why people want to laugh their heads off. It's the same thing that drives people to want to experience sexual pleasure or have one too many drinks. We all want to experience the other, and to get out of our daily existence. I think in the case of horror, it's a chance to confront a lot of your worse fears and those fears usually have to do, ironically, with powerlessness and isolation. To confront those fears, in a controlled environment, where there's 300 people around you going through the same thing... it's this weird sort of yin and yang. You're going through the horror of it, you're going through the isolation of it but you're being empowered by reminding yourself that you're connected to everybody else.
Can you see the end of "Chicago Hope?"
Yeah, I really can't imagine it going any longer for me. This is the last year of a five-year contract coming up. We're going into our fifth season and that is the last year I'm contracted to do. Whether I go on beyond that or not, is anybody's guess. Whether the show goes on beyond that is anybody's guess. . So, there is the sense that this is a job that will eventually come to a halt.
What do you want to do afterwards?
I want to continue doing as big a variety of things as I can do, and if that means I have the honor of getting to do more feature work, I would love that. I know that if I make any other long-term TV commitments, it's not going to be on a drama.
Did you like working on a TV drama?
It's a lot of work and I also feel like I've done it. I miss comedy. And I also think that, from purely a logistical standpoint, that the day-to-day schedule on a comedy allows you to have a life, much more of a life, than on a drama. Because, you know what your hours are going to be and they also have periods of time off within the season, that you just don't get on an hour show.
When you first started doing the series, obviously "ER" was in close competition. Has that diminished somewhat now?
Yes. First of all, it's crystal clear that our future is not tied to the future of "ER," the competition is over. We've each created our own audiences, "ER" is clearly a phenomenon that really takes place once in a decade, if you're lucky. It was clear that we couldn't compete with that. I've said in interviews that we were not a phenomenon, we just had to settle for being a hit. And that's pretty much the size of it. We've had our own rewards as a result of that. For one thing, we didn't get locked into a style or a formula that the network was breathing down our neck, saying we had to maintain. The show has gone through a lot of evolutions and changed it's identity a couple of times. I think that's created a healthy environment. The comparisons to "ER" were maddening and there was this assumption that the two of us were looking at each other with rage and resentment, which was also not the case. There were a lot of interconnections between the casts of the two shows. Noah Wyle was Mandy Pantinkin's godson. There was room for everybody to wish each other well, but the networks and the press seemed to want to make a big pissing contest out of it.
You were working with an awful lot of young people on the set of Halloween, how'd you feel about that? Was it good? Was it bad? Do young kids kind of run Hollywood, to some degree?
The place was crawling with youngsters. It was good, because the kids were good. I can't make a general assumption. Again, you're probably getting, as a general theme from me, that I don't make a lot of broad, sweeping rules about movies. But I feel like Josh, Michelle and Adam were all team players, who wanted to be a part of an ensemble. I think it helped that it's clearly Jamie's film, so nobody was bucking for center stage, because we all knew who had center stage. My experience has been, when there is a strong and generous leader, at the core of any kind of project, it creates a healthier environment.
Everyone seems to have a remarkable amount of passion around this movie. You don't get that from actors all the time.
Well, this was fun. First and foremost, it was fun. Everybody involved with it made you feel like they were an important contributor to the process. We were made to feel valued. I have rarely been treated as well, during or after a project and they bent over backwards to accommodate my schedule because I was shooting "Chicago Hope" simultaneously. It's amazing that this is still news to people, but that affects the final outcome of the film. When people are treated well, and they're made to feel valued, they give 110 percent. I think that was the case here. We just wanted it to be good for everybody.