There's something about Kyle Gallner that does "tortured" so well. Whether he's exacting torment on his classmates in Veronica Mars or suffering at the hands of evil in Jennifer's Body and A Haunting in Connecticut, the 23-year-old actor isn't afraid to let fear and ferocity flicker across his baby face, and it's a trait that serves him well as Quentin, the high-schooler who bears the brunt of Freddy Krueger's wrath in the new remake of Nightmare on Elm Street.
This week, Movieline spoke to Gallner about two intriguing indies he has coming up (Goodnight Moon and Beautiful Boy) and the most horrifying part of his Elm Street experience: acting in the near-nude for days on end.
Before we get to talking about Elm Street, I wanted to ask you about Goodnight Moon. We profiled the director Elgin James last summer, as he was about to start shooting, and then he got busted for extortion. What's happened since?
I don't have too much information on it -- I'm just happy it came together. I actually booked Goodnight Moon, which is now called Little Birds, while I was filming Nightmare. I put myself on tape in Chicago.
What can you tell me about the story? You play this kind of thuggish kid who lures some young girls into crime?
It's about these two girls who live in the Salton Sea and they meet up with me and my friends, and it's almost like this Peter Pan effect of being free and doing whatever you want, but in reality they're just kids. They kind of learn that lesson in the worst possible way at the end of the movie. It's this interesting story about these kids getting in trouble and realizing that they're not as mature as they think they are.
What's your impression of Elgin? He's got an insane back story, from gang leader to filmmaker.
I know, his back story is incredible. He's like the nicest guy, super charismatic and really passionate about the movie. We actually shot our first day yesterday, and I was really excited to just get on set. I've been attached to it for almost a year now.
All right, so: Nightmare on Elm Street. At what point did it sink in for you, "Oh, I'm playing a high school swimmer, and I have to do my character's centerpiece dream sequence in a Speedo?"
[Laughs] When I read the script. I was like, "Oh Jesus. They will have the palest person in the world in a Speedo, with a color scheme that does not help out."
It's not the most flattering film anyway. All the actors have to look kind of tired and sleep-deprived throughout.
Yeah, but it's kind of painful when you're sitting there in a Speedo and there's no way to heat up the water, so they're dumping cold water on you and it's 40 degrees and you're in the middle of a dynamited-out steel factory, walking on shrapnel for nine hours.
Yeah, that doesn't sound enticing. You know, the casting call said, "Think Johnny Depp" for your character. Did you think Johnny Depp, or did you want it to be as far from that as possible?
It's a hard thing, because the character and plotline and the arc my character has isn't really the same as Johnny Depp in the original movie. There's also that factor of seeing who Johnny Depp is now...it's kind of like, oh please don't compare me! I'm far too young and not in the same place in my career. It's kind of scary to see your name next to his. It's kind of a weird thing. The script is different and the story is different, so to kind of replicate what they did just wouldn't work for the movie. Not that the movie went so far out of the way from the original, but it's different in a lot of ways from the first one. We had to come up with our own take on it and create these characters ourselves.
That casting call also hinted at elements of your character that we don't see, like he runs a school podcast. Did that get deleted?
That was kind of in the original script, and then through rewrites, things changed. Some stuff was gotten rid of, like the podcast thing.
But the Speedo thing stayed in.
The Speedo thing stayed in. I was like, "No, really guys." [Laughs]
Samuel Bayer's been directing music videos for almost two decades. How did he direct you differently in Elm Street than someone who's spent their life in features?
This movie is very visual in that you have to create two different landscapes between the dream world and the real world, and you have to show the transitions between both. Sam is very good with the visual aspect of making everything feel real and look pretty amazing. At the end of the day, he's a director who can work with actors, but I've never really had a director on such a big-budget film that also had to worry so heavily about visualization. The movies that I'm used to are kind of more character-driven, so it was kind of weird to learn a whole new skill set and see Sam work. I'd never seen anything like that.
You're also in a movie coming up called Beautiful Boy, where you're the catalyst for a school shooting. Maria Bello told me about it and it sounded rough.
It's an interesting movie. There's been takes on Columbine and school shooters, and it's always very sad and a difficult situation, but this is a movie where you see it through the eyes of the parents [of the killer]. The kid isn't the main focal point; as you said, the kid is just the catalyst. People forget at the end of the day that these parents lost a child as well. They're still going through a mourning process, and they have to deal with all the parents who blame them: "Why did you raise such a monster? You must be terrible people." Really, it might not have been their fault at all -- their kid could have been a loose cannon who never spoke to his parents.
How do you deal with the people who might not want to see that sort of story dramatized?
It is a difficult situation, but that's the point of film: to push boundaries and tell things that have never been told and try to see things through different people's eyes. I've played a handful of evil or bad people, but for the most part, these kids kind of see what they're doing as right. It makes sense to them, even if the rest of the world doesn't understand. Everyone does something for a reason and these are terrible things, but it's not like [Beautiful Boy] is making this kid out to be a hero.
What is it about you, Kyle, that you're so often cast to play out these molestation and murder storylines? Veronica Mars, Law and Order: SVU, Nightmare on Elm Street, Beautiful Boy...
This is the weird thing! [Laughs] In TV, kid roles are like this: You're either in a couple minutes of an episode playing somebody's kid, or you get in these procedurals where you're crying or you're playing a witness or you're playing a crazy person. Every once in a while you get a big guest star role, but there's a formula to those TV shows. I've done more TV than film, so it seems like I've played more bad guys, but between playing The Flash [on Smallville] or Gary Sinise's son on CSI: New York, I've played some good guys on TV. Actually, in my film roles, it's different. I play mostly bad guys on TV and mostly good guys in movies.