It’s a still, cold, January night in Manhattan, and Tom
Everett Scott is at home with wife Jenny, in their apartment
overlooking Central Park. The 27 year old actor finished shooting
An American Werewolf in Paris over a year ago, but he remembers
it well, especially Europe: "I was over in Europe, primarily
in Luxembourg, for about four months; it was a lot of fun. It was
my first visit to Europe and I got to see Paris for a couple of
weeks, also Munich, Amsterdam and Bruxelles. But we worked mostly
in Luxembourg and I had a quaint apartment there; it was very
nice."
He also remembers – vividly – that bungee jump off
the top of the Eiffel Tower in which he literally falls for Julie
Delpy’s character, Serafine. One of the early sequences in
the film, this quite dazzling scene looks like the real thing. Of
course, it couldn’t be.
"They hooked us up to wires and turned on big wind
machines," Everett Scott explains. "They shot it in
front of a giant green screen and superimposed us against the
back drop. It’s all done with computers. So it’s really
some of my best acting (laughs). But we did go up the Eiffel
Tower - that was a real gas. We were up there between midnight
and sunrise and noone else was on it. We’re lucky, us
actors."
"I do like that bungee
jump sequence, I think it’s my favourite part in the
film."
Pieced together seamlessly, that sequence too the best part of
the four month shoot to actually manufacture.
"I do like that bungee jump sequence, I think it’s
my favourite part in the film. You know we filmed that one
sequence over the entire shooting schedule piece by piece. If it
rained and we were supposed to shoot outside, we’d go inside
and shoot a little bit more for that scene. It was hours and
hours and hours, of angles and hanging from wires and being
suspended on a bungee inside a studio. I saw all the work that
went into it and it came out looking fantastic. To me that’s
a great example of the fun of making a movie."
Everett Scott had liked the original, An American Werewolf in
London, and when he read the script, he liked the fact that the
mix of humour and horror were retained in a fresh adventure
– but based on a similar notion. Here, three young Americans
on a European trip, come across a beautiful young woman who is
more than she looks. Her dreadful secret brings them all into her
nightmare in the ancient catacombs beneath the streets of Paris,
where unimaginable horror lurks.
Coming from a theatre background, Everett Scott was
nevertheless a movie fan. He had seen people he would later work
with on the screen, people like Delpy and Tom Hanks.
"I saw Julie Delpy in a few movies before working with
her, like Three Colours White, Before Sunrise and Killing Zoe. I
liked her acting work quite a bit, so I was glad to work with
her."
"He’s great,
he’s very funny and I also saw a lot of myself in
him." on Tom Hanks
And the actor who had a great influence on him? "Well
first of all, Tom Hanks; and I also quite like Paul Newman. But
Tom Hanks, even before working with him (in That Thing You Do,
Tom Hanks’ directing debut), I was a fan. He’s great,
he’s very funny and I also saw a lot of myself in him. And I
thought if he’s making it work, then maybe I could have a
shot. But then, getting to work with him was truly kind of crazy.
And he did really hand out a lot of great advice. Things like
‘Don’t eat too much while you’re shooting.
(laughs). No, I’m kidding; just little things, tactful
things."
Quietly spoken, economical with his answers, Everett Scott was
brought up in Boston, Massachusetts, where he graduated from
Syracuse University. "Nobody else in the family is in this
business," he says with a hint of surprise. "My
dad’s an engineer and my mum works in insurance. They put
their four kids through college - three sisters and me, and we
all grew up in a small town. The furthest I got from there was
when I went to DisneyWorld in Miami in high school. But I’d
never flown on a plane until after college and I got a job in a
TV commercial in Miami. I was 22 years old."
"I liked being the
centre of attention."
Although he flirted with a course in communications ("I
had no idea what I’d in that,") he was destined for
showbiz from an early age: "As a kid I liked telling stories
whether they were true or not and I liked being the centre of
attention. I like telling jokes and making people laugh and I
think I just naturally just got into acting. The school play just
kind of jumped out at me as something I would like to do and I
did. I liked it very much."
Now, with a few films under his belt, he has warmed to the
filmmaking process:
"I get the biggest kick out of just doing it. I
don’t really know how to describe it. And I really get off
on working with a lot of people to make something happen in
film."
Now, with the New York winter evening cloaking the view from
his window, Everett Scott is at the end of a string of interviews
and has serious plans: "I think we’re going to go and
get something to eat right now. Some Italian place."
Tom Everett Scott’s next films to be released are Dead
Man on Campus, and River Red, which screened at this year’s
Sundance Festival.
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