Exclusive Interview with Ever Carradine from "Dead and Breakfast"
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Dead and Breakfast is Ever Carradine’s first horror movie, and she takes it head-on as the kick-ass heroine. “The idea of me being the tough girl was actually pretty hilarious to me. [In real life I’m not really a girly-girl] but in my work I don’t necessarily get cast as the tough girl. The action girl. So that was a lot of fun,” she says.
The story follows a group of friends on a cross-country trek to attend a big wedding. We have ensemble archetypes in each character — Ever Carradine is the tough chick, Erik Palladino is the horny dude, Gina Phillips is the good girl, Oz Perkins is the nerd, Bianca Lawson is the sexpot bitch, and Jeremy Sisto is the level-headed one (literally, after he gets decapitated and is used as a gruesome hand-puppet).
The city kids get hopelessly lost on the boonie backroads, forcing them to seek shelter in a lonely bed and breakfast owned by an enigmatic, super-composed mystic named Mr. Wise (David Carradine). Before you can say “duck!” heads are rolling and recently unleashed evil spirits are on the hunt for fresh dead bodies to occupy and animate.
Carradine got involved in Dead and Breakfast through a shared love of softball. “The writer/director/producer Matt Leutwyler is an old friend of mine,” she explains. “We’re on a softball team together, along with Erik Palladino, Jeffrey Morgan, and a few others in the cast who are pick-up players. One night after a game we’re out for a drink and he’s like, ‘I think I might do a horror movie. If I do, would you be interested? Would you do it?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, of course. Just tell me when.’ And literally, two weeks later I had a script in my hand. We did a table read, and we started shooting a month or two after that.”
It was a down-n-dirty, quick experience shooting the movie, which was very low-budget. But Ever says it was all good. “We shot it in, I think, three six-day weeks. We were on location and it all takes place at night. So we were shooting only at night which means you go to work at 5 p.m. and then go home when the sun comes up at 7 a.m. That kind of takes it out of you. You have to become a vampire. It was grueling, but I was also surrounded by friends and I was a part of something that I thought was really creative and bloody and funny and cool. It all worked.”
Jeremy Sisto has some funny scenes in the movie, even though he’s not alive during some of them… “Jeremy was actually supposed to be in more of it, but I think he had to leave because he got another movie. Which is why they made the Jeremy Sisto head,” she reveals.
The DVD is out now. On the commentary, Ever talks about working with her Uncle David for the first time, and reveals some of the tricks of the trade. She’s also clearly having fun on the blooper reel.
Ever has a few projects lined up — most notably, a recurring role in Commander In Chief, a new TV series starring Geena Davis as the President of the
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By: Staci Layne Wilson
Photo: Courtesy Kevin Abosch