Michael Biehn Interview

Michael Biehn Interview

He’s faced Terminators, aliens, zombies and Val Kilmer.  Now Michael Biehn talks the End of the World, exploitation movies and getting his wife naked with David Watson.

If you grew up in the ‘80s, you can’t help but be nervous interviewing Michael Biehn.  The man is an icon.  In a career that’s spanned 35 years he’s played cowboys and space marines, cops and psychos.  He’s been a Navy SEAL (3 times!), kicked Wesley Snipes’ ass, been Anne Hathaway’s dad, traded Latin insults with Val Kilmer and had his head shrunk by Patsy Kensit.  Yup, you read that right.  He once made a film where Patsy Kensit played his psychiatrist.  And Biehn made you believe it!  He’s worked with everyone from James Cameron to Charlie Sheen.  Growing up, he was one of my heroes.  Even if he did once play a character named Randy Buttman he was still the guy who crossed time to pick a fight with Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

In his new film, Xavier Gens’ bleak, brilliant post-apocalyptic thriller The Divide, Biehn’s facing the End of the World yet again, his character Mickey a traumatised ex-fireman forced to shelter a disparate group of survivors of a nuclear attack on the Big Apple.  Trapped in Mickey’s basement bomb shelter, with food and water running out, these former friends and neighbours (among them Rosanna Arquette, Milo Ventimiglia, Lauren German and the fantastic Michael Eklund) quickly descend into savagery.  With the swaggering, bigoted, alpha male Mickey offering Biehn his best role in years, The Divide isn’t for the faint-hearted.

Says Biehn: “Xavier had done a movie over in France called Frontier(s).  Ross Dinerstein who was the American producer over here said: “I want you to take a look at this movie.”  I did and I thought this guy obviously visually has got a lotta talent.  He (Dinerstein) said he had a movie called The Divide and Xavier was gonna direct.  I asked him what the basic premise was and I said: “Yeah, I’ll work with this guy,” I think he’s a very talented director. 

“So Xavier got over here, or I got on the telephone with him, and said to him the character of Mickey that I play, I thought needed some fine tuning, to say the least, and he told me basically at that time, he said: “Well, when I come over we’re going to get together a week or ten days before we start shooting and we’re gong to do, like, an actor’s improvisation.” He had a writer by the name of Eron Sheean and said: “We’re gonna rewrite the script.  We’re gonna change things.  We’re gonna do improvisations and if they’re good they’re gonna go in the script as long as they work.”  He said I’d be able to take that character and make it my own, so that’s when I said yes to the project.  And that’s exactly what we did. 

“We shot the movie in sequence so it was interesting, there was a lotta improvisation, a lotta writing and a lotta rewriting, while we were making the movie.  So the script was never a scrip.  It was kinda this evolving piece of story and it would move off to where we thought it was gonna go and back and then move even further off because the writing that Xavier liked and because the improvisations Xavier liked, this would cause friction among cast members because scenes they thought they were going to come in and shoot that day were being overridden by somebody else’s scenes they had written or somebody else’s improvisation that they had done and he’d want to shoot that instead and that led to a lot of hostility between the actors. 

“When you throw me and Rosanna Arquette, Courtney B.Vance and Michael Eklund a big chunk of meat, screentime, you know, you better watch out because we’re all going to go after it with gusto. 

“I thought it was a fine cast, everybody did a good job.  I think Xavier did that to create tension among the characters.  Which he did.  The cast members all hated each other and I think that shows up in the film every once in a while.  I know the difference between true “I hate you,” as an actor compared to “I hate you,” as a character.  I think it’s a really well-acted movie, I think it’s shot beautifully, the music’s great…  You know, it’s just a question if you wanna walk out of the movie theatre, if you want an experience, if you want to let yourself experience…It’s a harsh look at humanity.”

Biehn’s also just made his directorial debut with the low-budget exploitation thriller The Victim starring his wife, Jennifer Blanc. 

“A lot of people come to me and say they have money and a script and will I get involved and I’ll say yes and it turns out they don’t have money and they’ll go out and try to raise money on my name. 

“This guy came to me and said he wanted to make a movie and I said: “Ok, start writing cheques,” and he did.  So, once he started writing cheques and they started clearing, I had to write a script.  I had a very, very low budget and I said at the time “Listen, I’m gonna make a little exploitation movie.  I don’t have any money for special effect vampires or zombies, I don’t have any money for special effects makeup, I don’t have money for car chases or huge fight sequences or big crowd sequences.  It’s gonna be a small grindhouse movie. 

“And I just basically thought it’s gotta have sex and Jennifer (producer and wife Jennifer Blanc) and a friend of hers, Danielle Harris, were willing to get naked for me.  I figured dirty cops are always good.  Drugs.  Little bit of torture.  Little bit of action.  And then I just kinda threw in a serial killer. 

“It’s a small movie but it’s a fun movie. So I basically wrote that script in 3 weeks.  During that 3-week period of time we went into pre-production.  So we went into pre-production without a script and we didn’t have a script until we started shooting.  And then I shot it in 12 days.  12 12-hour days.  The difference between Xavier’s experience, which was one where he had a lot of time, and one in which I didn’t have any time at all and Xavier was doing 4 or 5 setups a day and I was doing 45 setups a day.”

Having worked with some of the biggest directors in the business, directors known for their temper tantrums and single-mindedness, what was Biehn the director like? 

“I basically was the exact opposite of Xavier,” says Biehn.  “I said: “This is how you’re gonna do it.”  There was a journalist on the set once and he described me as a cross between a drill sergeant and a raving lunatic.  Which is pretty much true.  I blew up.  I screamed.  I’ve worked with Jim Cameron…I’ve worked with Billy Friedkin…I’ve worked with Michael Bay…Kilmer, a bunch of people. 

“And everybody’s got these reputations, they’re such tough guys, hard guys to work with.  You can take all those guys, wrap them up on their worst day…and that was me every day of shooting.  I had to get it done. 

“And we got it done.  We made a nice little movie I’m proud of.  I’m probably prouder of that achievement than anything that I’ve ever done before.  We’ve got real good reception, we got picked up by Anchor Bay who are distributing The Divide and we’ll be out this Fall and I’m excited about that.”

He continues: “It’s a fun little movie.  It basically starts out saying: “This is not based on true events.”  Kinda gives the idea that we’re having a little fun with it.”

As an actor, Biehn’s always been known for his commitment and intensity.  Now he’s moved into directing, it doesn’t look like he’s going to be lightening up anytime soon.

“Well, I am a family man and I take my kids to the beach like anyone else but people don’t see me that way,” says Biehn, “I guess my family does, but people see me, I don’t know what it is, something about me people find…intense. 

“And I can be intense.  I can be, like, very inside of my head.  I was at lunch a couple of years ago and I was by the craft service table and a young actor walked up to me and said: “What are you thinking?  I looked at you and you looked so intense.  I just want to know – what is going through your mind right now?” 

“And I looked at the lunch table and said: “Fritos or cheetos?”  I don’t know.  It’s something about the way my manner is.  I’ve never really been able to play much comedy.”