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James Marsters - "Dragon Ball : Evolution" Movie - Insidereel.wordpress.com Video Interview

Webmaster — 2009-04-19T16:05:48Z

James Marsters - "Dragon Ball : Evolution" Movie - Ifmagazine.com Interview

Webmaster — 2009-04-10T09:51:12Z

Asked if he's going through the space phase of his career, James Marsters laughs. “Yes, I'm pining for a vacuum !” He isn't really, but the actor – who played Spike the vampire on six seasons of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE, then moved to its spinoff ANGEL – is on a run of extraterrestrial subject matter. He costars the villainous alien Lord Piccolo in the 20th Century Fox release DRAGONBALL : EVOLUTION, which opens in theatres this Friday, plays real-life astronaut Buzz Aldrin in MOONSHOT, which will air on the History Channel this summer, and essays a cowboy battling marauders from outer space in the upcoming SyFy Channel telefilm HIGH PLAINS INVADERS not to mention his return stint last year on SMALLVILLE as malevolent Kryptonian artificial intelligence Brainiac and a guest voice on Cartoon Network's STAR WARS : CLONE WARS series. Marsters spoke with iF about his latest alien activity in the first of a two-part exclusive interview.

JAMES MARSTERS : I tend to not really say, ‘I want to stop doing sci-fi now' or ‘I want to do a space character now.' I just always say, ‘I want a good script,' and whatever comes across that I feel moves me and makes me excited, and gives me ideas that I want to contribute, then that's the way I go.

iF MAGAZINE : You've said elsewhere you were a fan of the DRAGONBALL anime and manga comics before the film ever came along …

MARSTERS : I was. I've got a son who is thirteen now, and he started pressuring me to buy DRAGONBALL DVDs at Toys ‘R Us and I'm very glad. It led to a lot of very good conversations between him and me, [when he was] growing up. And I've come to really enjoy the character of Goku [the hero played in the film by Justin Chatwin] as a teaching tool, because he's a really good role model, in that he is goofy, he's meek, he's humble and, above all, peaceful. But if you attack his family, you'll get hurt. And I think that's an adult, that's a good, peaceful, mature person. And it's certainly a contrast with some of the other quote-unquote heroes that I've seen who tend to strut around and quip and carry large guns. I don't see that as a good template for manhood or womanhood. But I see Goku as a really refreshing role model.

iF : Well, Goku's violence is arguably appropriate to the situation …

MARSTERS : Well, that's another thing that I like about DRAGONBALL, is the other lesson that it's teaching, that if someone forces you to fight, if you try to find other avenues, but there are none left and you have to stand and fight, to protect yourself or your loved ones, it is okay to be angry. It is okay to draw blood. It is okay to beat someone down to a pulp if you have no choice. I think that also needs to be said. And that's why I think that there's a message behind the violence. Akira Toriyama is an artist. He's the gentleman who developed DRAGONBALL, drew it all, wrote it all. Another really good theme in this project is the unimportance of race. In the DRAGONBALL anime, you get the feeling that it might be Japan, it might be Korea, it could be San Francisco. You don't really know. But it's a future idealized world where all the races are intermingled. There are all sorts of ethnicities walking around the sidewalks, dating each other, marrying, and no one even notices. To the point where [in the anime] the President of Earth is a dog. I think that's a very charming way of screaming from the mountaintops that race is not important. So, yes, it's a fun ride, yeah, it's action-filled, but there's a reason for everything and there's a reason for the violence.

iF : What appeals to you about your character, Lord Piccolo ?

MARSTERS : What I love about Piccolo is that he's not a nice person, he's not trying to make friends, but he'll never let you down, because he's living up to his own code. And I always thought that he was a really wonderful character because of that, and just to take that character and say, ‘Well, what would make me so angry that I'd want to destroy every human being on Earth ?' To know that everybody has buttons, everybody could do something to anybody if they get that mad. What happened to him ?

iF : You play Piccolo in green prosthetics makeup …

MARSTERS : [laughs] You know, the first time we did the makeup, it took fourteen hours. It was nobody's fault but my own, because I was really married to the idea that my character should be old and decrepit and ugly. I told them, ‘When my girlfriend comes to Durango, I want her to run for the hills.' In the manga and in the anime, Piccolo is so old that he uses a walking stick, and it's only at the end of the season of DRAGONBALL that he throws off the cloak and you see he's all cut [muscular] and then he starts to fight and it's a big surprise. We don't do the fake-out. We just reveal him from the first shot as being powerful. But other than that, it's kind of the same. [During the initial makeup process], I kept saying, ‘Uglier, uglier, more lines, more age, more this …' And finally after fourteen hours, the makeup artist just slapped me upside the head and said, ‘I'm done ! Go to set.' That was it. But then we got Edward French to come in and do the makeup, and he got it down to four hours and I shut up and let him do his job.

iF : How is DRAGONBALL : EVOLUTION director James Wong to work with ?

MARSTERS : He is very good. He's very calm. On a movie like this, you'd expect the director to be a maniac. But I think the only way to direct something that has so many elements and so much energy is to be the still center of it. So I have an image of James Wong with a fiery inferno behind him and he's just standing there very calmly and he welcomes me to set. Everyone's screaming. He says, ‘James, no big deal, we're just going to put you on a wire and we're going to fly you up about a hundred feet and we're going to drop you, free-fall, but we'll catch you about six inches before you hit, so make your face doesn't hit. Let's go.' He's asking me to do the most insane thing I've ever done in my life as far as stunts, but he's making it seem like it's not a big deal. I think that James would also make a good con man, because he can talk you into anything. You've finished what he wants you to do before you really question whether you should've tried. It was the last day and Justin was kicking me in the face repeatedly for a close-up [laughs]. They only kick you in the face on the last day. And I realized [the wire stunt] was the last shot, and that a stuntman wasn't going to be used. I think if James would've told me that I would be shooting DRAGONBALL with no stuntman as Piccolo, I might've run away. So he didn't tell me, he just took it one step at a time.

iF : James Wong was one of the executive producers on the X-FILES spin-off TV series MILLENNIUM, in which you guest-starred as a traumatized war veteran. Did the two of you cross paths at that time ?

MARSTERS : Unfortunately, no. I was only in for one episode, and he didn't direct that one. But he was certainly one of the forces behind that show. What an interesting show. No, I met James poolside and I screamed at him [does Piccolo voice], ‘I will destroy you !' And luckily, he liked it.

iF : Er, you threatened him to get the role ?

MARSTERS : [laughs] No, no, that was the audition ! ‘I will destroy you !' But the audition was easy, because I just felt like I was playing action figures with my son again. I always played Piccolo when we played action figures, so it was right up my alley.

iF : So you had a lot of home rehearsal for this.

MARSTERS : Oh, yeah. Hours and hours. And if anyone doubts how cool these characters are, start playing action figures. If you take up Goku and Piccolo and you pit them against Wolverine, who wins ? I'm sorry, but Wolverine doesn't stand a chance. These [DRAGONBALL] characters are so powerful, so cool and so visually interesting. I'm very excited about introducing DRAGONBALL to people who have not seen the anime, who are not familiar with the manga. There are frankly a lot of people who've never met Goku and we're going to help with that.

James Marsters talks more DRAGONBALL : EVOLUTION, plus HIGH PLAINS INVADERS, MOONSHOT and the inevitable will-there-ever-be-any-more-Spike question. iF : What age group do you feel DRAGONBALL : EVOLUTION is aimed at ?

MARSTERS : Well, just like the anime, I think we are counting on the audience growing up with us. So just as the HARRY POTTER films started [geared] toward a more youthful [audience] and then have grown up as the story progresses, so are we going to become more and more mature as we go. If you look at DRAGONBALL, the anime, it is targeted to younger kids. It's mostly played for comedy, with some safe, smaller doses of violence. And then DRAGONBALL Z skews more toward the action, still with some comedy. So this is a very family-friendly film and I think that I would be comfortable taking a seven-year-old to see this picture. I think even some five-year-olds would enjoy it very much. Because underneath it is love and understanding and peace. I think that as long as the hand underneath it has love, then the exciting and the scary parts seem to fit together into something that's not terrorizing. But at the same time, I love DRAGONBALL. I love DRAGONBALL Z. I love DRAGONBALL GT. So I would say seven to seventy-five.

iF : Your voice is digitally altered in the film.

MARSTERS : They lowered it by half a pitch. I was pretty low going in, but they wanted it to rumble just a little bit more. And I think that's fine for where we are now, for how the script was written. Piccolo does not have a whole lot of screen time, so that when he's on, he's got to impact heavily. What I'm happy about is, they didn't have to lower it so much that it takes away all the inflections I was doing. The things I was trying to do with the lines are still there, it's just a bit lower. I'm really hoping that I can do vocal training so they don't have to [digitally] lower it for the second one, so when the character becomes his younger self, he doesn't have to have that mountain rumbling.

iF : Do they know they're going to make a second one, or are they seeing how well it does ?

MARSTERS : I think they're good business people who are going to wait until they see the return on this film before they pull the trigger on the second, but they have signed all the cast to multiple pictures. I'm signed up for three. I hope there are five or seven of them.

iF : Have you been to Asia to promote DRAGONBALL : EVOLUTION ?

MARSTERS : I went to Korea, I went to Thailand and I went to Japan. They were very gracious.

iF : Is everybody still interested in BUFFY ?

MARSTERS : Yes, very much. [People] still want to know if there is going to be another project. People still want to know if there was any dirt on the set [laughs]. Stuff like that. My answer is, ‘If Sarah Michelle Gellar [who played Buffy] wants to do a sequel, I'll stand by her side any day, and yes, there was dirt on the set, but you're not going to get it out of me.' [laughs]

iF : Would you still be up for a series or a telefilm with Spike ?

MARSTERS : I think if we did that, we'd have to do some camera tests or some lighting tests, because Spike doesn't age, and I have [laughs].

iF : Could you say getting the soul aged him ?

MARSTERS : Well, yeah, or you could say he's drinking pigs' blood, so he's aging slowly, but I always thought that one of the cool things about being a vampire is that you're immortal, and if you take that away, it's not quite so cool. The good news is, I never got any fill light [on BUFFY]. Sarah got all the fill light and I got the slant, shadow light, because they wanted me to be villainous, and that's cool, but I wonder if they actually put me in that costume and actually gave me some fill, it might actually look about the same. But we'd have to test that, because I don't want Spike to age.

iF : Are there any similarities between Spike and Piccolo ?

MARSTERS : Piccolo is less tortured than Spike. Piccolo is asexual. Spike was always kind of confident, except for his love life. It mixed him up a little bit. But Piccolo just does not have that side. So there are some of the same colors as the darker aspects of Spike, enjoying hurting people, being really angry, stuff like that, but just taking all the sex out of it.

iF : With HIGH PLAINS INVADERS, were you attracted to it by the script ?

MARSTERS : Yeah. The SciFi Channel has been sending me scripts for a number of years, and this was the first one where I really liked the ride. There are no hitches, it had a good propulsion to it – a simple story but good secondary characters and a good romance in the middle of it. It occurred to me that there's a problem with Western films, which is that you have to have certain elements, or people don't believe it as a Western film. You have to have the kindly store owner. You have to have the repentant train robber, or you have to have the drunken sheriff. There are certain notes you have to hit in Westerns. And if you don't hit those notes, it's not a Western, but what that forces Hollywood to do is keep making the same film over and over and over again. So the big question of Hollywood is, how do you make a Western, but find that little switch, that little twist that you can give it to freshen up the genre ? Clint Eastwood did it [with UNFORGIVEN]by making his hero evil. He was trying to be forgiven and couldn't be. There are lots of really wonderful Westerns that just find something to turn on its head. And it occurred to me, ‘Hey ! We're adding aliens ! So we can still hit all the notes and be a real Western, but we have our little flip.'

iF : Had you thought as a kid, or at any point in your career, ‘Gosh, I'd like to be a cowboy' ?

MARSTERS : Of course. Of course. Although I usually wanted to be the Indian. I always thought they were a little cooler [laughs].

iF : And you play real-life astronaut Buzz Aldrin in MOONSHOT. You'd previously played real-life thief Bobby Comfort in the USA TV movie COOL MONEY and serial killer Ted Bundy in the Lifetime TV movie THE CAPTURE OF THE GREEN RIVER KILLER.

MARSTERS : Yeah, [as Bundy] I played the execution scene. That was easier than the other scene [where Bundy is talking about the joys of killing].

iF : Is Aldrin the first time you've played a real person who's still among the living ?

MARSTERS : For film, not for stage. Playing Buzz Aldrin was just fabulous. For my money, he was the most interesting of the three who went to the moon the first time in Apollo 11. He saved the NASA program, both with his ideas about how to operate in zero gravity for the extra-vehicular activity, the EVA – he saved the program by fixing the EVA, and he saved the program by figuring out how to rendezvous between the Lem and the Orbiter, because unless you could link back up, you were dead. He figured out all this stuff the scientists couldn't figure out.

iF : Anything else you'd like to say ?

MARSTERS : Just that we have worked really hard to give the world the version of DRAGONBALL that we responded to when we first saw the anime or when we first read the manga. I know that everyone has their own individual response to this material, but just know that DRAGONBALL : EVOLUTION is our best attempt at being true to the original.

James Marsters - "Dragon Ball : Evolution" Movie - Ign.com Interview

Webmaster — 2009-03-26T16:19:36Z

Becoming Piccolo

James Marsters on how his version of Piccolo will compare to the source material. by Eric Goldman

US, March 25, 2009 - James Marsters is very familiar to television fans for his great work in numerous villainous roles – most notably as Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, along with his work as Brianiac on Smallville and Captain John Hart on Torchwood. And in a few weeks, Marsters will be seen on the big screen playing another iconic villain – Piccolo, in Dragonball : Evolution.

IGN recently caught up with Marsters to find out what his version of Piccolo is like and how he compares to what fans of other incarnations of Dragonball are familiar with. As we learned, Marsters is quite knowledgeable on the subject...

IGN : Dragonball is a property that obviously has a huge following. When you signed on to the film, did you have any idea how large the fandom was ?

Marsters : Oh, I'm one of them, yeah ! I've seen every episode of Dragon Ball Z, about two thirds of GT, and about half of Dragon Ball — only because Dragon Ball, to me anyway, was hard to find. But yeah, I know it very well. In fact, I have a son who's now into Jimi Hendrix more than Dragon Ball — he's 13. He grew up watching it and it led to many good conversations, actually, between he and I. We have all of the little toys, and I always play Piccolo whenever we play with the action figures.

IGN : So when this part was even a possibility, I would assume both you and your son were excited.

Marsters : Very much. It was the first role that he cared about at all. And that's normal – kids care if you're there for Christmas. They care if you're going to feed them on time. But finally, I got a role that he really was like, "Dad, that's something I want to watch !" I play villains a lot and I remember one time I was playing a time agent, and I was telling my son, "Oh, dude. I've got swords. I've got guns. I've got this wrist strap. I can travel through time." And he goes, "Dad, do you win ?" And I said, "What ?" He goes, "Do you win at the end ? Do you win or lose ?" I said, "Well, I'm the villain. I lose." He goes, "Well… OK. Whatever."

IGN : You knew Piccolo very well going in. What is the take on him like in the film versus what most people know from Dragon Ball Z and other source material ?

Marsters : This character is nothing like you're going to recognize from Dragon Ball Z because this is a story that happens before Dragon Ball Z. In the actual source material that we were adapting, we were only dealing with Dragon Ball. In Dragon Ball, Lord Piccolo is a very old, kind of shriveled Namic. This green guy who has to walk with a walking stick, he's so old. And at the very end of the season, when he finally fights little Goku – and Goku in the manga is only 7 years old – he throws off his coat and it's actually kind of surprising he has a body left at all. So, my kind of template to do this Piccolo was, "Let's make him as old as possible." We don't want to make him as decrepit as the manga because he is the only villain for this part of the story of Goku, so we should make him maybe a little more powerful. But let's not give the audience the young Piccolo yet, because in the story, Lord Piccolo comes back to the Earth to get the Dragonballs to wish himself young and then take over the Earth. And if we started Piccolo being young, there would be no reason for him to get the Dragonballs in the first place.

IGN : I'm very impressed talking to you about your knowledge of the source material. I'd assume some of your costars might have been a lot more unfamiliar with it all. Did anyone ever come to you for some advice ?

Marsters : [Laughs] I think that if any of them didn't know the source material going into the project, they certainly started reading it and watching it to prepare for the shoot because I didn't really get the sense that anyone was behind the ball. We didn't really talk about the plotline in Dragon Ball Z. There's enough plotline to be talking about in Dragon Ball. But I didn't start talking to them about Vegeta or Bojack and all of that – or Buu. [Laughs] I just kept my mouth shut about that because that's just too complex.

IGN : Fans are always concerned when there's an adaptation that it holds true to or respects the source material. As a fan yourself, can you speak to that ?

Marsters : Well, that's the thing, man. I think that we have made an artistic risk because we have decided to be very respectful of the source material. I think Akira Toriyama – I hope, I haven't talked to him about it – but I suspect he would be pleased that we didn't start this movie with Dragon Ball Z. That the first shot of our hero is not blond Goku firing a massive energy blast and wiping a mountain out. That would be very cool, but that's not the beginning of the story. The beginning of the story, for the manga, is a 7 year old kid fighting midgets. He starts it way more on a smaller level and builds it up. And then by the time that Goku is that massive guy with the blond hair, then we're more invested in him. And so, we have decided not to do Dragon Ball Z, but to do Dragon Ball.

Instead of having Goku as a 7 year old fighting midgets, we take him at 17, just on his 18th birthday, so thematically, we're in the same ball park, but we get to push it a little more towards Z. But still doing justice to this character of Goku and where he starts. Remember in the first Spider-Man movie, everyone was like, "Where are all the special effects ? Where is all the big stuff ?" And Sam Raimi was like, "We've got to start this dude at the beginning. This is what we're doing." And I think it would have been easier money if we would have just blown it out with Dragon Ball Z right from the beginning. But I don't think that would have been as true to the story and to the source material. I'm kind of proud that we've taken the risk in trusting the audience and that they'll want to see the beginning of this character. In that way, when he is more massive, it'll be way cooler.

So I don't know, man. People that only know Dragon Ball Z and only want Dragon Ball Z, they're going to have to get used to this. But people that really know the material, they're going to be well pleased.

IGN : You obviously have experience with makeup and prosthetics. How did this experience compare ?

Marsters : Oh, man… The first time we did it, it took 14 hours. It was really mainly me being really specific about wanting to look older. They got all the pieces on fairly quickly. I forget how many there were, but there was something like 10 different pieces that made up the look. But it was the painting of them, where I kept going, "No, that's not old enough ! More here, more there." And by the end of it, the makeup artist was so mad at me, he just hit me. But I didn't want to be young. I wanted to be as decrepit as possible. But we got it down to four hours. We were shooting 12 to 14 hours a day, and then I had another six [hours] to get in and out. So I had pretty long days.

IGN : Did you do much fight training for the film ?

Marsters : Oh, yeah. There was a point at which I think Jim Wong, the director, kind of figured out that I was showing off for my girlfriend. Because every time he asked me to do some kind of insane wirework, I'd be like, "Oh, yeah. Let's do it !" And so by the end of it, we were about at the last shot and I was just getting kicked in the face, actually, like about 14 times in a row. And I realized, "I'm not going to get a stunt man… this is the last day. We're almost at the end of this. And I'm doing all my own stunts. This is very cool." Jim just has a very calm way of taking you one day at a time and making it seem like not such a deal. Not making you look at the whole mountain, but just take one step at a time. So yeah, we did train – we trained with the 8711, which is the fight crew that did 300, did the Bourne films. They do just a whole lot of good action movies. We went down to their facility here in Los Angeles for a month before we went to Durango, Mexico and trained there. Got nice and sore. And then went up to Durango, and Durango was a 1400 foot elevation. So that was a whole new level of getting fit. I passed out, dude. The first day we were training, they were running me pretty hard because we'd done well in L.A. and I just toppled right over. Just saw stars and was out. But after about 10 days, you acclimatize and your hemoglobin gets higher and you can wake back up.

James Marsters - "Dragon Ball" Movie - Stills - Medium Quality Photos 2

Webmaster — 2009-02-24T13:45:56Z

- Graphics / Movie 2009-04-08 : "Dragon Ball : Evolution"

James Marsters - "Dragon Ball : Evolution" Movie - Promos - Medium Quality Photos

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- Graphics / Movie 2009-04-08 : "Dragon Ball : Evolution"

James Marsters - "Dragon Ball : Evolution" Movie - International Trailer - Watch The Video

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James Marsters - "Dragon Ball" Movie - Stills - Medium Quality Photos 1

Webmaster — 2008-11-12T21:05:51Z

- Graphics / Movie 2009-04-08 : "Dragon Ball : Evolution"

James Marsters - "Dragon Ball" Movie - Teaser - Watch The Video

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James Marsters - "Dragon Ball" Movie - Trailer - Medium Quality Screencaps

Webmaster — 2008-09-03T09:08:06Z

- Graphics / Movie 2009-04-08 : "Dragon Ball : Evolution"

James Marsters - "Dragon Ball" Movie - 2008 Dragon Con Q&A - Geeksofdoom.com Report

Webmaster — 2008-08-31T14:23:46Z

Don't expect to see James Marsters to reprise his role as Detective Grant Mars from the Without a Trace television show. The actor/musician told fans the studio was likely “pissed off” when he declined to resign his contract in favor of other work.

“I thought that they were pretty much done with me,” said Marsters when explaining to fans at Dragon*Con 2008. The studio signed him to a partial contract that meant he wasn't locked in for the entire season but was also paid less money.

Marsters declined to return after signing on to play Lord Piccolo in the Dragon Ball live-action movie, which is currently in post production and due out in theaters next year.

“I didn't have to do very much research,” he said of the film. “I have a son, so I've probably watched every single episode of Dragon Ball.”

The story was something Marsters really identified with, he said, adding that Goku's nature to choose violence only as a last resort was a trait all young boys should be exposed to.

“Having said that, the hyper-violence of Dragon Ball has to be there, but in the right context,” he said. “I've had debates with my son about it.”