The Cabin in the Woods

Patrick Gilmore is at an interesting point in his career, with one high profile fan favorite, Stargate Universe, recently ending and a meaty recurring role in AMC’s hot new series The Killing. In Stargate, Gilmore played Dr. Dale Volker, a role that grew significantly since the start of the show. And on The Killing he plays billionaire Tom Drexler. Also in the can, and in post production are Joss Whedon’s The Cabin in the Woods, which has set on the shelf for two years, but may be nearing release in 3-D with the popularity of Chris Hemsworth, who has a part in the film. Meanwhile, Sunflower Hour, a mocumentary indy film about the dark underbelly of puppeteering finds Gilmore playing a truly unique character.

Patrick recently gave MediaBlvd an exclusive interview in which he spoke about the end of Stargate, and the fans involvement both in supporting that series and his career, as well as a small group of anti-fans who made a bad situation worse. He also spoke at length about The Killing, and his other upcoming roles.

The Killing airs on AMC on Sunday nights, and the 1st season finale is set for June 19th, 2011.

Editors note: The first question is a joke. Neither this publication, nor anyone involved has any inside knowledge about the identity of the murderer of Ms. Lawson, and even if, on the off chance, Tom Drexler is revealed to be the culprit on AMC’s excellent series The Killing, that was not known beforehand!

MediaBlvd> It’s an honor to talk to you today, the day after the SGU finale, and the day that it broke all over the internet that Tom Drexler killed Rosie Lawson!

Patrick> (laughs) Oh, you know about that do you? Did you watch the finale?

MediaBlvd> No, I haven’t seen it yet. I think we have a few weeks left here.

Patrick> It airs in Canada tonight, so it’s going to be bitter sweet.

MediaBlvd> I believe it airs here in two weeks.

Patrick> I think the thing is that the actor or actress who is playing the killer doesn’t even know.

MediaBlvd> Is this like a “who shot JR thing with multiple endings?” Did they film a bunch.

Patrick> People have asked me that, and I can’t say for certain. The way they have kept things so under wraps, and under such security, I wouldn’t be surprised if they filmed a couple of different endings, but I’m the last person who would know. Only two or three people would actually know at this point.

MediaBlvd> I apologize for the joke, I was just trying to set the tone of the call. But it is a bittersweet moment for you as an actor I’d guess, since we just got the end of SGU. How do you feel now that that is out there? Patrick> I was with a cast member just yesterday, and said something that kind of surprised him. I said, “I’m looking forward to this all being over.” That seems so counter to the way the last two years have gone. This has been such an important part of my life the last two years. I would have loved for it to go on for another 8 years if we could, like its predecessor. But since we’ve known since December that there wasn’t going to be a season 3, and we’ve known for a few weeks now that there wasn’t going to be any follow-up, and no conclusion, I’m emotionally exhausted. I have a strong presence on Twitter, and I’ve kind of backed off of it the last couple of days. They are doing this standard ovation where the fans are tweeting and saying thank you. I don’t know how to respond to that. It’s bittersweet. I’m not sure what the sweet part is. I guess the sweet part is just seeing how much it means to people because it means so much to me, and I’m not alone.

MediaBlvd> Dale was kind of in the background in the start, but has been becoming more and more a part of things. I think my favorite episode of the entire series was just a few weeks ago where you saw the epilogue that the character would have died if he’d stayed on the planet. That hit me really hard watching that sequence. Was it always intended for him to have this bigger role, and grow into it?

Patrick> I think that just happened as it went along. A lot of the secondary cast members just auditioned for this general scientist character. Then they picked four or five, gave them names, and said, “Let’s see what they bring.” You had different actors that brought different things; Mark Burgess playing Franklin, Peter Kelamis playing Brody. They didn’t know who was really going to develop. An interesting little side fact and I don’t think I’m spoiling anything now that the show is over, but it was originally intended for Volker to sit in the chair instead of Franklin. And just by a twist of fate, or a slim vote, I made it out of the chair and was able to develop through season one, and get a stronger presence in season two. It was just kind of a wait and see as far as who Volker was going to be. They started really writing for our voices after the pilot, in Darkeness and Light, the 4th and 5th episode. Once they started getting to know us, and saw what we could bring, the more they started giving us. We were fortunate.

MediaBlvd> Did you ever worry that maybe you guys were the “Red Shirts” of this series?

Patrick> That was an ongoing joke, and less joke than fact! The scripts would come out and we wouldn’t know. We’d get the script hot off the copy machine and flip to the last page, then just work backwards to see if we were alive. That’s what it was like all of season 1. I guess it was like halfway through season one and the producers approached a number of us and gave us a guarantee for Season two. So we knew, at the very least we were going to make it at least close to the finale of Season two. So that took the pressure off. But I’ve been on TV shows where during the cast read through, people found out they were killed and ultimately unemployed. I assumed that’s the way it worked. But people like Josh Blacker, who played the officer who committed suicide in the first season, and Mark Burgess and Haig Sutherland, the creators and writers went to them weeks before the scripts were out and gave them a heads up, which was kind of them.

So anytime a producer said, “Can we have a chat for a minute?” I’d panic and run down the hallway. So I was always waiting for that knock on my trailer door, which thank God, never happened.

MediaBlvd> It had to be kind of confusing for you though looking at those scripts. Didn’t Dale die like two or three times?

Patrick> I remember sitting in the makeup trailer reading “Time”, the kind of groundhog day episode where we find the Kino feed, where I die twice in it. I remember reading it and flipping through a random page and finding one that said something like, “Volker died first then Brody.” I panicked and called up Peter Kelamis and said, “That’s it, were unemployed, we’re both dead.” Of course I should have read to the end of the script. But yes, I died a couple of times there. Of course I died in “Epilogue”. I don’t think I hold the record in Stargate deaths, but I think I hold the record in Stargate Universe deaths. I could be wrong.

MediaBlvd> I didn’t track this down, but you are one of the few people who has been a part of all three shows, right?

Patrick> I think the last two years there have been more and more, but I think I was one of the first. I think there were three, Gary Jones, Amanda Tapping and myself who were there from the first episode of SG-1. That was kind of a neat bit of trivia for the fans to help me stand apart, but since then there have been many that have crossed over.

MediaBlvd> One thing that struck me with the series was the fan backlash with the series. You had websites by SG-1 fans that were named things like cancelthishownow.com. Do you think that played into the whole franchise going on hiatus with the announcement that there would be no more movies? Did those people shoot themselves in the foot?

Patrick> Yeah, I’d love to say it’s because of them, and it would serve them right. But that’s not the truth. I was talking to Brad Wright about this a couple of weeks ago, and he said, “It was a perfect storm.” That’s exactly it, and I could list off ten reasons why SGU never got the momentum. But as far as the fan reaction, I hesitate to comment on it, because I get so worked up about it. I’ve talked to a lot of people who have been in the franchise when it first started with SGU. They said, “When we started SGA and SG-1 was cancelled, people crucified us for killing SG-1. So expect the same thing.” And we did get the same thing, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. Then it started getting personal, and having a web presence for actors is kind of a new thing. Twitter was just starting out, and of course I was getting my first recognition on the Internet. So it was hard to ignore, especially when they got personal. Then you would get these sites dedicated to it. These are clearly people who don’t have a lot going on in their lives, to dedicate their time towards building a website to put people out of work. I don’t understand that vitriol. But the poetic justice for all of these morons is that what happened is you shot yourself in the foot. “You think getting Stargate Universe cancelled is going to bring back SGA? Well, BS. It went the exact opposite way.” The producers knew it, MGM knew it, and we were all saying it. “You need to support us, because with SGU’s success there was no end to how much more of SGA you were going to see.” I read an article today about this guy who was anti-gun and it was about gun regulation in the United States. It was a blog that went on for two pages and the title was “Guns kill more people by accident than they do perpetrators breaking into a home.” At the end of the blog, he said, “If you’ve read this far in the article and read my argument then write bananas in the comments. Just add that word so I know you’ve read this far.” Then they show out of the three pages of angry, angry comments, nobody wrote bananas because nobody read it. They saw the title and reacted. That’s what these trolls at SGUSucks or whatever it was did, they reacted and they were idiots. They didn’t cancel SGU, but they didn’t support it so Stargate gets put on ice. Stargate isn’t dead, just like Star Trek isn’t dead, Star Wars isn’t dead. Our great grand children will be watching chapter 20 of Star Wars because people are going to want to make money off of it. But the incarnations of SG-1, SGA, and SGU, as far as the TV shows are dead. It would have been nice to have a little more support from a story franchise. I hate it, especially today when I’m seeing all these tweets of standing ovations coming in from people who just love it. And they wanted the same thing over and over again. They were happy with the formula. The writers and creators, Brad, Rob, Joe, Carl; they are artists and artists need to change. They can’t continue to do the same thing, they need to test themselves. What’s wonderful is all three series were written by the same people in completely different styles. They succeeded, and I think if they had it to do over again, they would do exactly the same thing.

MediaBlvd> Maybe more so now than ever before, it’s common for actors to be connected with their fan base. You get that instant feedback, that instant love and hate. Does that get overwhelming at some points?

Patrick> Yeah, sure. It’s like theatre where there is instant gratification where you know whether you did right or you did wrong. And up until now, actors never knew how they were doing until the ratings came out, or if they would bump into people in the street or read a review in the newspaper. Last night I was reading the real time tweets of fans as they were watching, and it was kind of fun, like being in the room with them, “Oh no, now that happened!” But I can’t begrudge people who write and say, I didn’t like that episode. If it’s an off base negative criticism, I might have a problem with it, but I try not to engage them. If they are cruel, then I just delete them. But for the most part, I’ve got to say the fans that have contacted me have been positive. Even that sometimes puts you off a little bit. I’ve been acting for 10 years and it’s weird that these people love the show and they want to know about you. Your first instinct is suspicion, or “I don’t know if I deserve this!” But it’s a nice validation. The epitome of it is the last two days, where the entire cast has received hundreds and hundreds of tweets. The fan feedback is something I’m still trying to grasp; especially with Syfy which is such a fan based medium. Ming-Na did eight seasons of ER, and I know she is never going to get the fan feedback that she did from two seasons of Stargate Universe. Syfy is a fan run industry.

MediaBlvd> Let’s switch gears a bit here. Can you tell me, what exactly is a werewolf wrangler?

Patrick> (laughs) One who wrangles werewolves! I’d been ignorant of Joss Whedon up until about three or four years after Firefly was cancelled, and someone said, “Please, just sit down and watch this.” So I watched, and I loved it. I never got into Buffy or Dollhouse, but then I got to meet the guy. I was part of the casting process for Cabin in the Woods, I was the casting reader for a number of the sessions and was able to sit in on the cast read through and read the entire script. This man thinks things differently! He sees so different than a normal person does, and he is so talented. Then you get Drew Goddard who was coming from one my favorite shows of all time, Lost. I was excited, and then there was Bradley Whitford from another one of my all time favorite shows, The West Wing. But we filmed that two years ago, and the last I heard, Lionsgate picked it up and they are trying to make into 3-D. That’s all I know about it. We signed confidentiality agreements to not talk about the details of the script. I don’t know how much has leaked out. But you look at some of the credits, like werewolf wrangler. What the hell would that have to do with this? But it’s a cool, cool show. It’s crazy and was a lot of fun to film. Joss Whedon had a quote, which I think is the perfect quote for the movie. “It’s the horror movie to end all horror movies.”

MediaBlvd> Do you think the distribution has something to do with Chris Hemsworth and his sudden popularity with Thor? Is that maybe why they are finally getting it out?

Patrick> Yeah, that, and I think MGM has kind of righted itself a little bit. It’s an MGM show so it kind of got put on the shelf with James Bond, and that was also part of the Stargate demise. So now that Thor is the number one thing at the box office, I’d think people are going to say, “Yeah, let’s cash in on this.” Lionsgate bought it out, and I’d love to see it. Someone was talking about Halloween this year, and I’ll believe it when I see it. Joss Whedon has a rare miss. I don’t know if he’s ever had a miss. For people that are Joss Whedon fans, he is an iconic geek god. I think his fans are going to adore it.

MediaBlvd> Now let’s talk about Reise. I noticed the actors and people from Sanctuary involved there. Do you think that this is headed for TV in the same way that Sanctuary was?

Patrick> If you’d asked me a year ago, I’d say yes. But it’s been quiet. I chalked that up to the fact that it’s been picked up all over the world. I know that the Reise guys are still very excited for something to happen with it, and Syfy owns it. But Syfy is changing their format on TV. You have wrestling and Food Network stuff. But that’s a hope. They’ve always kind of looked up to Sanctuary as a template of success for a web series. They’ve gone beyond what Sanctuary did in promoting it, and I think that was their biggest strength going into it. They had press about it before we’d filmed a frame. I think right now, it’s just finishing up its 10 episode arc in Asia and Europe. The fan feedback has been positive. Its steam punk inspired, and I think that’s a genre that hasn’t been tapped yet. Fantasy has a very small role in television. There was Legends of the Seeker, and then Game of Thrones which just came out, that has a very similar dark feel to it. I think there is a market for it, and Reise has really tapped into it. There could be a future for it, and there are a lot of Syfy faces in it.

MediaBlvd> Looking at your filmography, it looks as though you’ve been in pretty much every series that has filmed in Vancouver, and it looks to be a lot of science fiction. Is that because X-files got it’s start there do you think?

Patrick> I wasn’t living in Vancouver when X-files was here, so I never saw that kind of birth, or what was here before hand. I know there were a lot of Canadian series filmed here, so it might have been X-Files. But it certainly seems to be the hub. Eureka films here, Kyle XY; I’m not even going to try to start listing them. But BC does have access to so many studios and there are so many geographic locations of varying styles. There’s a lot of talent up here, and the crews no what they are doing. There are a lot of talented actors up here. It’s Hollywood North for a reason. I hope it continues because it’s kind of fun. I was a huge fan of Fringe, then Fringe came up here during season 2 to film. Then all of a sudden, I started noticing my friends in episodes. It kind of takes you out of it a little bit when you say, “Oh, there is so and so.” But that was one of the first shows that I ever did that I was an avid fan, I’d watched every episode. I’d love for more to come up.

MediaBlvd> I guess you would have a totally different perspective if you are a fan of a show, but know people in it.

Patrick> Yeah, it kind of bumps you a little bit, but it’s a small enough community that you end up knowing a lot of the talent.

nullMediaBlvd> What do you think about AMC? They kind of came out of nowhere with Breaking Bad and Mad Men and The Walking Dead, and now they have The Killing. All of those shows get so much attention. Were you a fan of any of the AMC shows before The Killing?

Patrick> Well, I never had an expanded cable package, but I was aware that HBO was kind of new genre of television that was cinematic and “no compromise” TV was coming out of them with Sopranos being the best example. Then I started hearing about Breaking Bad and Mad Men, then The Walking Dead came out. My friend was a huge zombie fan and everyone was talking about Mad Men. I started watching that this winter and finished the entire series and I loved it. I loved that they were able to do these stories in this style that doesn’t seem to have a lot of network influence. That can sometimes really sink a creative vision. At that point, I’d heard of The Killing but I didn’t know it was AMC. They sold the pilot here before they actually started filming the rest of the season, so I auditioned for The Killing and didn’t really know. When I got it, I started doing a little research and was absolutely thrilled that I was going to be on AMC. I had watched season four of Mad Men on the channel rather than on DVD, so I got to see the programming they were putting out. They do such a great job and they let the artist put up his vision. It’s just a water cooler show, the one that everyone is talking about.

MediaBlvd> Lets talk about The Sunflower Hour. I know that’s a small independent film, but it sounds like a really interesting concept. Can you tell me about that?

Patrick> Yeah, Ben Cotton is in it. I knew the writer and producer; they were friends so I jumped at it. We filmed that during the weekends when I was filming SGU. It was exhausting, but the reason I did it was that the character that they wanted me to play was so outside my comfort zone and it terrified me. The moment I got scared, I said, “I have to do this, I need to stretch that muscle that I had in theatre where I can play a 100 year old man, and play a woman the next day.” After playing an astrophysicist for two years I kind of either wanted to fall flat on my face or have fun doing it. The role is a closeted gay fundamentalist Christian puppeteer. Just reading that character description, I thought, “There’s no possible way you could make that real.” I tried it out. It’s done in mocumentary style, and is about four puppeteers vying for a spot on a children’s show called Sunflour Hour. And they had enough for a TV series; we filmed for hours and hours. It was to the point where we would do the script it seemed, but then he would let us improvise for another ten minutes. And crazy stuff came out of it, to the point that I’m not even sure what movie is going to be made. You could take so many stories out of the thing. It was so much fun to do, and was such a great exercise. And right now it is finished, and they are putting it into festivals right now, so hopefully you’ll be able to see it. I have no idea, but it’s definitely something in which you won’t recognize me; it’s different than I’ve ever played before.

MediaBlvd> I think I read about someone else having this problem too, but I actually didn’t recognize you as Tom Drexler. I knew which episode you were in from the pr piece to set this interview up, and I’d already seen it, and didn’t remember you in it, so had to go back.

Patrick> I’ve gotten that before too, and it’s such a compliment! It’s great! I have this triangle of kind of mild mannered scientist, kind of an ego-maniacal dot com millionaire, and a gay puppeteer. I’m thrilled to be able to do those things.

MediaBlvd> Maybe it was because they had you standing next to Billy Campbell, and he’s so damn tall!

Patrick> Yeah, they had me next to him and three models in stilettos so I look like a Pygmy Warrior next to all these tall, tall people. But I think that’s great. It kind of lets you know that you are on the right track, not playing the same scene every time you are on camera.