INTERVIEW: Casper Van Dien talks about ‘The Pact’ and legacy of ‘Starship Troopers’

Casper Van Dien, star of The Omega Code, Starship Troopers and Sleepy Hollow, is delighted that audience members at the Sundance Film Festival were positively creeped out by his new horror film, The Pact. In the movie, written and directed by Nicholas McCarthy, Van Dien plays Creek, a local police officer who tries to help Annie (Caity Lotz) with a few strange things that are happening in her dead mother’s house. It’s a scary film with many scenes that will cause the heart to start pumping much faster.

The movie is available now on VOD and will be released at New York City’s IFC Center on July 6. Recently, Hollywood Soapbox talked with Van Dien about the film and his experiences in Hollywood. Questions and answers have been slightly edited.

How did you get attached to this project?

I got the audition through my manager. I went in and I guess I did a decent enough job where they decided to invite me to be a part of it.

Were you familiar with the short film that this feature-length film is based on?

I did watch it beforehand. They sent me the script the night before, and I had an audition the very next morning. Along with the script and everything, they sent me the short, and I watched it. It was really cool.

The story focuses on just a number of characters. Did that make a more intimate shoot?

What’s for fun for me was that I was reading the script, and I was really disturbed. I went, ‘Wow, this is a really well-written horror movie.’ … I thought it was a scary script. I could tell that the director really liked the genre, and then I didn’t feel letdown when I saw the end product, when we went to Sundance and I watched it. The whole audience was screaming and jumping in the seats. And I was sitting next to Caity Lotz and Haley Hudson, and they both grabbed me at the very first scare, which I was already scared at too. Haley got so upset she had to leave the theater because she was so disturbed. That was kind of cool.

When shooting the film, did you realize how scary the material was? Was it a creepy set?

The house we went in, they did such a great job with it, it felt like another character. It felt very disturbing being in there. And I thought … that I would not like to be in that house alone at night, at all. Even though I’m a 43-year-old man, and I feel confident to protect myself, I know that I would be freaked out in there with my imagination and where it would take me and the creep factor of that house. It’s often when you see something scary, and you come back and you’re freaked out, you know you’re safe and everything’s OK and it’s not real, there’s still sometimes that ability to scare yourself with your imagination and your thoughts. That definitely happened on the set for me with this script.

Was this an easy shoot? Was it shorter than usual?

It was definitely a shorter shoot for me. But the reason it was easier for me, the director used most of the same crew that he had for the short. They were so thorough in what they wanted to shoot and did such a great job. Watching the movie you don’t get to see all the interesting characters that are behind the scenes. It felt like another movie with some of these characters. Their dedication to what they did was so professional and so prepared. They did such a great job, it made everything flow really easy. And Caity Lotz was a phenomenal actress to work with. She was so prepared. She did all her own stunts and her own wirework. She was on par with any of the great stunt people that I worked with. But as an actress, she was totally prepared and she made my job really easy, too.

How did you approach the role? He’s the outsider’s role, but he’s brought into this bizarre world.

I probably used some of my life experience I had. Looking at this character the way the director wrote it … it was an opportunity mainly for him to save part of his soul that maybe he felt like he lost through failure and relationships and in his own life. He saw this as an opportunity for him to maybe heal a part of himself inside. …  I’m able to draw from different things that have happened to me in my own life. That made it pretty interesting for me. And to play off (Lotz), she was so prepared and dedicated, she has all this natural ability that made it feel really easy to play this role.

Spoiler Alert: Were you surprised at what eventually happened to your character?

Yeah. It was definitely a shocker for me in the script, too. That’s the part that I like, because it’s not one of those, ‘Oh, God’ moments. It’s like, ‘No!’ And that was what the audience did. Literally people went, ‘No!’ when certain things happened. I liked it. I liked it a lot. I liked what he did, but it was leaving me wanting to do more, which is always good as an actor when you want to do more and you can’t.

Do you like horror movies?

I like horror movies because I feel like they are great date movies. Especially when I saw this at Sundance, and I saw everybody jumping on the people that were next to them. I felt like, that’s always great, you kind of want the people that you’re going out with to jump on you. Then people leave and they’re holding on to each other a little bit tighter. It’s always good. My wife is not a fan of this genre, so I have to do it kind of on my own. But I get to it. But I love this genre. I love to let my imagination, even when I know I’m safe, keep me on my toes a little bit.

What’s on the horizon for you?

I have a movie called noobz. It’s a comedy where I play ‘That Guy from Starship Troopers,’ which was funny. I have Starship Troopers: Invasion coming out this summer, which I’m an executive producer on. It’s an anime, and I just saw it and the uniforms were really cool. I wish I had them for me when I was in Starship Troopers. And then I have a couple other movies — one called Assumed Memories that I did, and I have another one coming up that I’m doing called The Christmas Baby I’m leaving to do. I have one called Fugitive at 17 that’s going to be on Lifetime on June 30.

Are you surprised that Starship Troopers has stayed in the public memory for so long?

I’m not because constantly people are Tweeting about it. I mean I get Tweeted on it everyday about that movie or that it’s on or different quotes from it. Also on the street people stop me, and the other day I was picking up my daughters from school, my 8 and 10-year-old, and the boys are going, ‘Johnny Rico? Wait a minute. Maya and Celeste, your dad is Johnny Rico?’ These are 8 and 10-year-old boys, six of them. I go, ‘What are you guys doing watching Starship Troopers?’ ‘Our dads made us watch it with them.’

So, you know, then my daughters get in the car. And Maya goes, ‘Wait a minute, dad, were you really naked in Starship Troopers?’ I go, ‘Yeah.’ She goes, ‘Oh my God. No! How could you do that to me?’ Then my younger one, who is 8, she goes, ‘Dad, wait a minute, you mean no clothes?’ She goes, ‘No, dad, my life is ruined.’ It was the longest 5-minute ride ever. Am I surprised? No, especially when fathers are making their young sons watch Starship Troopers.

Looking back at your work in The Pact, did the movie live up to your expectations? Are you proud of the final product?

I’m very proud of the project. At Sundance, after you leave you get on buses to go back to your hotel, and we’re on the bus and this one girl is talking to a friend, and she’s going, ‘Oh my God, I hate that movie. I’m going to be up for three nights now. I’m going to be up. I hate it. I’m so scared.’ She had her back to us. I was standing next to Mark Steger, the bad guy. Her friend pointed to her to turn around, and she turns around and she screamed. She literally screamed, ‘Oh my God!’ When you have that kind of reaction, that’s pretty awesome.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

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