Ghosts of Halloween Past: Another WolfCop

Happy Halloween!

With Esoteric Media launching this week and a family wedding taking up most of my time today, it seemed like a great opportunity to look back on something old (for something new).

When Another WolfCop came out in 2017, I had a chance to sit down with star Leo Fafard to chat about it. The gonzo horror-comedy from filmmaker Lowell Dean centers on, as the title implies, a police officer who is also a werewolf. For whatever reason, my interview with Fafard never saw the light of day at ComicBook, where I was working at the time, but I keep everything.

So, here for the first time, is my chat with Leo Fafard about Another WolfCop.

Russ Burlingame: The movie has such a specific tone. It isn't screwball and it's not making fun of itself, but it is aware of the sort of movie that it is, and it's having some fun while it's being serious. Is that a difficult balance to strike?

Leo Fafard: We didn't find it to be, no. To tell you the truth, most of the people involved with the project – both one and two, because we tried to keep a lot of the crew and cast the same – we didn't really have that much problem finding that happy medium or that happy place, because we're all kind of a bunch of goofballs. None of us take ourselves too seriously. We knew what we were making.

The point of keeping the same people is, we wanted that same attitude and that same stress-free environment. Goofy but not farcical, you know? It's what made the film such a pleasure to shoot, really.

Burlingame: I feel like there's a million of these kind of direct-to-streaming or direct-to-video horror films and horror sequels that come out every year. To you is it attractive to have one where, you've got a bit more going on? Most werewolf movies are kind of solitary horror, but you actually have interesting actors that you interact with throughout the film.

Fafard: Yeah. I mean, that's a big part of the magic of WolfCop, is that I have Jonathan Cherry. He's a werewolf with a sidekick, for fuck's sake. It's amazing.

The fact that it's Jonathan Cherry, and the guy is so fast on his feet and so witty, means I don't have to stay 100 percent on script. I can throw a certain amount of curve ball at him, and he always fucking smashes it out of the park. He always sends you back something awesome.

With Amy Matysio it's the same way. She's fucking amazing. Fast on her feet. Hugely talented with improv and that sort of thing. That's one of the things I love about Lowell. He didn't box us in. We were allowed to screw around an amount, and find that magic and be able to create those nice little moments where there's a chuckle in there, but at the same time you're still getting story points across. You're still a monster, or you're still in a dramatic situation, but there's going to be some flavor of entertainment and enjoyment and fun in it.

I mean, that's what that is. We found that recipe with the lead actors and with Lowell Dean. That's what we tried to maintain in the second one.

Burlingame: Having that kind of safety net – does that help you guys to be able to really bond in the more improvisational one?

Fafard: To a certain degree, absolutely. For the most part it was, "Get the safe one," but it wasn't necessarily always shot in that order either. Sometimes we'd be on set and there'd just be too much giddyup in our step. We'd pound out a couple of takes that were just fucking off the wall. You shake off the goofiness a little bit before we could pull it back, and then get the safety. For Lowell, it's always nice to get the safety first because he knows he can move on at any time, and time doesn't become his biggest worry, and it's not a constraint.

For the actors, for the guys playing in front of the camera, sometimes you just want to chase something. You want to get something goofy out of you, or you just have an idea and you're chomping at the bit to do that's something bizarre. Or you just want it the way you want it first, even though you know it's not quite what Lowell's looking for. You just think it's going to be so much cooler than whatever the hell he's thinking about.

Sometimes he'd let us smash at it a few times and get the goofy out. The odd time it would work. We'd be standing there going, "Fuck, great. Let's move on", and Lowell would go, "No. No no. We still need the straight version. We still need the version that I know is going to cut 100 percent. We still need the safety". We'd be, "Ugh, whatever Lowell. Jesus Christ, what an old lady. Blah blah blah". We'd do it, and all the while having such a great time.

Burlingame: Lowell was talking about how he had a WolfCop comic book commissioned. Is it strange to look at something like that and be like, "Oh, wow. I got drawn into a comic book?"

Fafard: Yeah. It's a little bizarre. Especially...there's a fan that has actually become a friend out in Germany by the name of Axle Feldman of Fright Guys. Him and a couple of buddies have a little horror company. They print t-shirts and they promote horror, and they do conventions. Little video pieces and stuff like that. He sent me a care package the other day, and he had Legos made. WolfCop Lego.

I've got these little Lego figurines, and it's WolfCop. He sent in drawings or pictures or whatever material he had lying around to these guys, and paid, I imagine it wasn't cheap. But he had a dozen of these little WolfCop Legos. It's got the shirt with the badge and the wolf head, and the booze bottle, and the big gun. It's like, "What the fuck? I'm a Lego. What the fuck?"

The other side of that is where you actually get into the real horror of the whole thing, and you're going through your Instagram or you're going through the internet, which I don't do very often. I'm the worst with social media.

Burlingame: When I talked to Lowell, he said that he wants to eventually take this character to space. Do you want to do that? Or is your first thought, "Oh jeez, we're going to put a spacesuit on top of all this incredibly hot stuff I'm already wearing"?

Fafard: I'm fucking into it. It's like, whatever man. I've shoveled out the foundations of buildings in 35 above weather [95 Fahrenheit], where you're outside and you're freaking dripping. If you're drinking a liter of water an hour, you're not drinking enough water.

I've done hot shitty bullshit crawling under the fucking house to weld some shit on, or some braces on, kind of jobs my whole life. So yeah, sure, let's throw a space suit on. It's still fucking better than any day out in the field doing grunt bullshit labor. So yeah, I'm into it. Anything that that fucking little nerd can think up and pull out of his crazy skull, I'm in. I'm his guy. You know? I love the guy. Let's do it. That's my attitude.

Burlingame: If you had kind of one line to sell people on the sequel, what would it be?

Fafard: My elevator pitch would be, "I play a complete and utter asshole who's in love with his boss. Has a bad habit of fucking anything he can find at a bar. Oh, and he just happens to be a werewolf cop." That would kind of, I mean I don't know if you can print that. But that would be pretty much along the lines of my elevator pitch for Wolf Cop 2.