INTERVIEW: Wil Wheaton stars in creepy horror film ‘Rent-a-Pal’
Photo: Rent-a-Pal, written and directed by Jon Stevenson, stars Wil Wheaton. Photo courtesy of IFC Midnight / Provided by Emma Myers PR with permission.
The new horror film Rent-a-Pal, now in theaters and on demand from IFC Midnight, is an unsettling look at a lonely man who struggles to make a connection with real people. The only place he finds solace is from a grainy VHS recording (this is 1990, after all). On that recording is the charismatic Andy (Wil Wheaton), who provides David (Brian Landis Folkins) with comfort and understanding and … well, then it gets creepy.
The movie is the brainchild of writer-director Jon Stevenson, and although it wasn’t made with these historic times in mind, the actors and filmmaker see many parallels to the unfortunate realities of 2020.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox joined a conference call with Wheaton, Stevenson and Folkins to talk about their experience making Rent-a-Pal and how it ties into today’s world. Wheaton is best remembered for his roles in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Stand By Me. Folkins is known for Hoax. Here’s what they had to say:
WHEATON: “People are uncertain, and as a consequence of that there are a lot of extremely vulnerable people around who are ready to be manipulated by a charismatic leader, whether that leader is a white nationalist racist who happens to be president, or that leader is the leader of a religion or some of the things like that. We see this happen a lot with vulnerable people being manipulated by predators who have their own agenda. You can definitely take this story and take those elements out of it and do it as a commentary, but like I said before, when we were making this picture, we had no idea what it was going to be like. No one could have predicted this, which makes me really afraid of the things that we can’t predict that we’re going to be talking about a year from now.”
STEVENSON: “Timing has been a theme that keeps coming back on this movie. The timing in which it is coming out just seems like the world is ready for something like this, which is really cool.”
FOLKINS: “It is all about the timing.”
STEVENSON: “… Three years to the day the movie is coming out that we had our day-one production meeting. Three years to the day that I started writing the script we sold the movie to IFC, so everything about it has good vibes.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Rent-a-Pal, written and directed by Jon Stevenson, stars Wil Wheaton, Brian Landis Folkins, Kathleen Brady and Amy Rutledge. The film is now in theaters and on demand from IFC Midnight. Click here for more information.
