Quarantine - Columbus Short

Quarantine is a horror movie based upon the Spanish language film, Rec. It comes out on October 10, 2008.

From Screen Gems: Television reporter Angela Vidal and her cameraman are assigned to spend the night shift with a Los Angeles Fire Station. After a routine 911 call takes them to a small apartment building, they find police officers already on the scene in response to blood curdling screams coming from one of the apartment units. They soon learn that a woman living in the building has been infected by something unknown. After a few of the residents are viciously attacked, they try to escape with the news crew in tow, only to find that the CDC has quarantined the building. Phones, internet, televisions and cell phone access have been cut-off, and officials are not relaying information to those locked inside. When the quarantine is finally lifted, the only evidence of what took place is the news crew’s videotape.

For our special set visit report, recounting what our reporter, Staci Layne Wilson, observed, please click here. For individual Q&A interviews with the director, makeup effects expert, and cast, please read on:

Interview with actor Columbus Short.

Staci Layne Wilson / Horror.com: Are you inside or outside of the building?

Columbus Short: I’m inside the building for the entire movie. When they get to the scene of the emergency, me and my partner are the officers briefing them. Then the madness ensues. It leaves me, Jay, and Jennifer’s characters to deal with the situation. We must deal with the pandemonium. The anxiety. The angst.

Q: You had to do a lot of choreography in “Stomp the Yard”. Are there any similarities in this? You seem to have to be running around in a lot of tight spaces.

Columbus Short: That is a great question. This type of choreography is the type of choreography I’ve been doing the longest. This is one shot. They are seven or eight minute shots. There is no messing up. If you mess up a take, you have to start over. Whether it is one minute in or seven minutes in. That has reminded me of when I used to do plays, and the blocking that goes along with that. I have had to learn choreography, and I’ve had to move my body like the guy next to me.

Q: What are the repercussions?

Columbus Short: Well, you blow just one take and it makes for a very long day.

Q: And then… everybody hates you.

Columbus Short: Yeah. But it has been great. After we lock it down for the studio, they give us the freedom to go with it afterwards. And some great stuff has come out of it. Of course, you have to do the scripted version. On any project, you come and do the way that it is scripted. Sometimes, if you start to journey out of that, you find great things as well. Dowdle has been great in doing that with us.

Q: Have you found some kind of emotional ease with shooting this in chronological order?

Columbus Short: I have. Because you get to go through the highs and lows. But in this situation, there is nothing to study emotionally. I have never been in this situation, and the people in it have never been in a situation  like this.

Q: Really? You’ve never been in a situation like this? [laughter}

Columbus Short: Neither have the characters. When you come onto something like this, you just go with it. That is the beauty of acting. Some things you want to research. But sometimes, when you are a fish without water, it is good to go in fresh and learn it. You experience it through the shooting of the movie. I think that is what we are all doing.

Q: Is the experience of doing something like this allowing you to move through different genres that you haven’t experienced yet? Or was there just something about the character that appealed to you?

Columbus Short: I could give you the stroke fest answer. But I am going to give you the real answer. That is exactly what it is. You get stuck in a certain lane. And you want to broaden your horizons. So you try to step to the next level. I am an actor, and I just want to do good work. No matter what it is. But a few projects allow you to get a little picky afterwards. You know? And it points you in the direction that you want to go.

Q: Has Dowdle shown you the original film?

Columbus Short: Yeah, I saw the original film. When I saw the original film, that’s when I decided I wanted to do it. It’s not just an experimental thing. Like “The Blair Witch Project” or “28 Days Later”. The way that it is shot is so special and interesting. It is a great role. I just had to do it. I am an African-American playing Danny Wilensky. I am crossing barriers right now. I am changing it.

Q: Because of the way it is shot, do you have to be conscious of where the camera is?

Columbus Short: The camera is there. There is no fourth wall. It is like an episode of Cops, bro. When the camera comes, you have to get out of the way. The cameramen have taken some blows. I am serious. I am manhandling them. They have to have pads behind them, because I am jabbing them into walls. It is fun, but it is pretty physical. The tuna sandwich. That is part of Danny Wilensky’s daily regime. That is my method.

Q: Did you find it easier to have the original performance to play off of?

Columbus Short: No. I watched the original for the original’s sake. But I didn’t want to be that cop. There is a different type of cop that would be in this situation. How would he deal with it. He is still overeager. But how am I overeager, and how am I overwhelmed? It is all to scale. I tried to find it for me.

Q: Do you find that you are spending a lot of time figuring out what you will be doing with the other actors? Or do you just do your own thing, and see how that works?

Columbus Short: It is a choreographed thing with the Dps and the other actors. We all come together. It is cohesive. The cinematographer is part of the action now. We have to figure out where we are all going to be. Everything has to be safe. So you are being mindful of the things around you while being organic. That is daunting in itself, but that is also the challenge. That is why they hired us. That is why we get paid…The big bucks?

Q: How much do you guys rehearse, though?

Columbus Short: It depends. We will rehearse four or five times before the camera is up. We will go get dressed, and then come back and rehearse it again. We do a thing called R-rehearsal. It is a rehearsal, but they are shooting it. In case it is great. We do three of those, and then we will do the regular take. But there has been some magic happening. There has been some stuff on the cuff that wasn’t in the script. Stuff that will take this movie to the next level. Beyond the original. Because we have a whole different set of actors, you know? Jen Carpenter is great. I cal her J. Carp.

Q: Does the fact that you are on a set make any difference than, say, if you were on a real location that is more palpable?

Columbus Short: I don’t one hundred percent understand your question, but I am going to think. I am going to field this one and say that being on the set feels like I am in an apartment. I feel like we have actually been quarantined. You feel like you are in an apartment building just about anywhere on set. So, you are in. Once you are in, and you go up into those apartments, the set decoration is amazing. I remember the first rehearsal we had. They gave me the prop gun. They didn’t tell me the woman was going to be standing there. I opened the door and was like, “Holy shit!” Johnathon Schaech screams, “There she is!” It is all done in real time. And it is brilliant. It is all real emotion.

Q: Schaech plays your partner?

Columbus Short: No, he plays Jay Hernandez’s partner. They are both fireman. Andrew Fiscella plays my partner McCreedy.

Q: Have you thought about how you would act in this situation?

Columbus Short: Yeah, I have gone against how Columbus would react. And how Wilensky would act, just for cinematic purposes. Because I don’t know. I’m the kind of guy that looks forward to getting out of situations. When I get a flat tire on the side of the road, I think, “Okay, how am I going to make this work?” I’m like MacGuyver that way. I have to ramp it up. Make it more intense.

Q: What is more challenging for you? The action scenes or the long passages of dialogue?

Columbus Short: That stuff is all easy. There have been a couple of scenes where I had to go home after shooting this lady, and I had to lye down. I did it a lot of times, so when I closed my eyes I was just seeing the scene. My mind was going off. I kept seeing the squibs explode. And I was thinking, “I shot someone today!” It was crazy. To go there and be the first guy to shoot someone was great. It was a challenge. But it stretched me a little bit. I won’t even lie.

Q: How gory is the movie?

Columbus Short: The movie is not so much gory as it is just, “Oh, man!” You are going to be all, “No! No! Don’t go downstairs. Get out of the apartment!” It is going to be like, “Just stay there!” There is more suspense then there is gore. To see what rabies really does to humans is really sad. I watched this video of a rabid kid on youtube. Have you seen that?

Q: No, but they just mentioned it. I am going to go to YouTube right now! [laughter]

Columbus Short: It is sad. To see that in this movie. I needed to know that it was real, so that I could adjust my thinking. I didn’t want to think that we were doing a zombie movie. When it gets real, it gets real. That is what I hope the audience who sees it takes from it. That it is not a zombie movie. This is a real life situation. This is what could really happen if rabies was tampered with, and there was an outbreak in humans.

Q: That sounds kind of depressing. What about the movie from an entertainment standpoint?

Columbus Short: Entertainment? What about “The Blair Witch Project”? I never saw a witch. But the entertainment in this is just that situation. We watch Cops for that reason. We want to see people getting arrested and jumping over fences. That is just normal, everyday routine stuff. To see an extreme circumstance caught ala Cops? That is going to be great ratings.

Q: Does it get pretty messy with the blood?

Columbus Short: I hate the blood. But there is new blood on the market. We are pressing forward leaps and bounds. The old stuff was like syrupy and sticky. It is like watery and nice now. It just falls off.

Q: They’ve added laundry detergent to the new mixture now.

Columbus Short: Yeah. It is nice. It is not as brutal.

Q: How is your skin doing with it?

Columbus Short: My skin is great. I just went and had a facial this morning.

Q: Despite being a black man, you do not die first?

Columbus Short: Don’t you see what we are doing? Do you see the pattern? Everything that you think is formulaic with me, bro, we are going the other way. Yeah. I was laughing about that with my boy, “I don’t die first! It is crazy!” It is fantastic. And my last name is Wilensky. That is amazing.

Q: Do you think audiences will pick up on that?

Columbus Short: I don’t know if they ever say my name in the movie. I have tried to drop it, but there is no reason. “Don’t you know who I am? I am officer Danny Wilensky!” It is on my badge. I think Bernard says my name a couple of times. If anyone ever asks, I was adopted by a Polish family. I moved to New York, and then came down to Los Angeles. My dad was LAPD. Not that my back-story really matters here.

Q: Do you come up with that stuff? Or is that something they provide you with in the script?

Columbus Short: I just came up with that right now.

Q: Suffice it to say, a back-story wasn’t important when you came onto the film?

Columbus Short: It’s important to have those things in your head, because you might be dealing with that internally in a scene. It might not be spoken. But sometimes an actor has to go internal, and the visual personification of that is great. That is what makes a movie great. Some of the greats do it well. Christian Bale. Robert DeNiro. Blah, blah, blah.

Q: You mentioned that you want to do other genres.

Columbus Short: I don’t necessarily want to do other genres. I want to do movies that are going to challenge me. I’m a person that questions the establishment. I question everything, so why not question myself? I want to see myself in a new light in different roles. I am looking to the next movie, and it is with Matt Dillon. I start that next month. It is called Armored. That is a completely different role. It is a completely different type of guy.

Q: How does making this film, an action-packed horror film, improve you as an actor?

Columbus Short: It has tightened me up. With Armored, I pretty much have to carry that movie. You know? Just like “Stomp the Yard”. But I have the best actors in the world surrounding me. So I am not really carrying anything. This movie was great exercise. It got me working out again. I hadn’t worked out in six months, since I did “Whiteout”. It was a great exercise. Being on your game, knowing the dialogue, trusting the words. It is just getting you ready for the next one. On every movie, I learn something. I am working with Dennis O’Hare right now. He is one of the Broadway greats. He is a fantastic theater actor. So, you take something away from everything. You get better. If you don’t get better, there is a problem. If you are not getting better, you better stop. Tom Hanks better be better in his next movie. Same goes for Will Smith. Come on. He did get better. Did you see how ripped he was? He is putting in the work. It is work. It is getting there on time. It is knowing your lines. Doing good work.

[end]

= = =

Staci Layne Wilson reporting