Comic-Con 2009: Interviews for ‘Alien Trespass’ and ‘Boondock Saints II’

I am a huge Eric McCormack fan and enjoyed his retro sci-fi movie Alien Trespass, so it was a special treat to get a chance to talk with him and writer/director R.W. Goodwin (of “X-Files”) at Comic-Con about the DVD release. Goodwin emphasized that the film is not a parody of cheesy 50’s sci-fi movies or even a tribute; his intention was to create a film that would look and feel as though it had actually been made half a century ago and had just been re-discovered. He loves the “great, sweet, really earnest” films of that era and wanted to “put ourselves in that space.”

I asked McCormack what he thought about in creating the character of Urp, an alien who inhabits the body of an Earth scientist, and he said that the image he held in his mind was when Urp has to drive a car for the first time. “He’s obviously intelligent,” McCormack said. “He piloted a rocket ship to get to earth. But everything is new to him. So I thought of him as more child-like than robotic. Ted’s body is a stolen car he is learning how to operate.” Here he talks about his favorite scene.

And it was a lot of fun to talk to Clifton Collins, Jr. and Julie Benz about their upcoming film, “Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day.” Benz said she seems to be doing nothing but vigilante stories — “Rambo,” “The Punisher,” “Dexter,” and now this sequel to the cult favorite about two brothers who take the law into their own hands and famously end the film asking whether they are good or evil, saint or vigilantes. Collins and Benz join the returning cast of the 1999 original, including Billy Connelly, Norman Reedus, and Sean Patrick Flannery as the father and sons who go after the bad guys.

Collins is one of my favorite actors, most recently seen as the number two bad guy in Star Trek, but I have been a fan since he appeared in The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit in 1998. He told me that he was “not in the first film but was around it,” knew writer/director Troy Duffy’s journey from bartender to film-maker (as documented in the movie Overnight) and “once I read it, who didn’t want to be a part of ‘Boondock Saints?’ Everybody did.”