My chat with Michael Welch
Cats: Blogroll| 3 Comments »So I got a call from Michael Welch tonite. He’s sort of a distant relative of mine (his mom calls me her “Almost Great Niece”), and it was really cool for him to find the time to call me. I wasn’t able to write down what he said word for word, but he gave me the okay to paraphrase:
He just got back home from the making of Twilight in Oregon earlier this week. The production was pretty crazy at times because of the weather and the fact that Kristen was only 17 for a good part of the filming, so they had to work around child labor laws.
This is the questions I’ve been dying to ask anyone from the cast - “Were you aware of the hype surrounding Twilight when you were first getting involved?” Michael said, “No. No idea.” and went on to say that if the cast had been aware of the huge fan base there would have been a lot more pressure during auditions. He said they first began to get a clue when they saw the 50,000 some posts on IMDB’s Twilight page before production even began. We would be on set one day, he said, and the next day there would be videos from the previous day on YouTube, it was more weird than anything else.
I asked if he’s gotten a chance to see the Twilight teaser trailer. He said he had, and that it looked cool. It’s neat to be getting a taste of the music and feel of what the film will be like, and what kind of things they’re going to be doing with the editing.
I asked if the cast and himself have been welcomed by the fans, in his experience. He said that their experiences with the fans have “pretty much all been positive” and “I’m really happy the fans have been so excited” because when movies are made as adaptations you can receive a lot of negative responses. But the Twilight fans have been great. (Yay, that’s what I like to hear!)
I asked if there has been a “wrap party” for Twilight now that filming is done. He said that once they were done in Oregon last week they had wrap party up there, but the crew and a few cast members moved on down to Los Angeles to do a tiny bit more, although he said they’re probably done with that by now. So there should be another wrap party in L.A. in the next week or two that he’s excited about - because the crew was so awesome to work with.
I also wanted to ask him this: If you had never been cast in Twilight, walking through a bookstore, do you think Twilight would have appealed to you as a reader? He answered that although he loves vampire and zombie stories, he can’t say for sure that he would have ever picked up Twilight. Although once he read the script he thought it was a really cool story.
Finally, I just had to ask - was there talk among the cast and crew about the sequels being made into films as well? He had this to say, “All I can say is that right after I was cast Catherine [Hardwicke] called me to congratulate me and welcome me… I asked her about the possibilities of the sequels being made into movies. She said we wouldn’t know for sure until the opening weekend of Twilight, depending on how popular this film is.” He went on to say, “I’m not too worried about that, I’m pretty confident that Twilight is going to do well.” -
So keep in mind, Twilighters (or Twi-hards as Michael affectionately calls us), that while it’s not anywhere near being a done deal (Stephenie still hasn’t sold the rights, as far as we know anyway) but it’s definitely a possibility. I, for one, plan on seeing the movie multiple times opening week anyway…
One more thing on Michael! He’s appearing tomorrow night (Sat 5/10) on a Showtime channel movie, it’s premier, starring Ellen Page (of Juno fame). It’s called “An American Crime”, so watch it if you’re a Michael Welch fan. BUT be forewarned, this is a very dark film with dark themes and is rated R. It’s a true story about an abused little girl so if you’re easily disturbed, check out Michael in some of his other many works.
Special thanks to Michael for chatting with me tonite and to his mom for helping it work out!
