Interview: Radha Mitchell, The Crazies

Actress Radha Mitchell Lends Voice to Genre Film in The Crazies

By Lee Shoquist

What if the heartland neighbors you shared Sunday service and apple pie with suddenly lost all sanity and gave into their darkest impulses? What if everywhere you ran you faced a terrifying quarantine and almost certain death? And what if a government cover-up threatened to make you a statistic in favor of derailing an impending apocalypse?

These are the questions asked by The Crazies, a remake of George Romero’s 1973 horror film about a small town in crisis, starring actress Radha Mitchell a local Iowa doctor who goes from trying to diagnose the strange goings-on to running for her life against a backdrop of bloodthirsty neighborhood killers and untrustworthy government forces.

I caught up with Radha Mitchell recently for a chat about The Crazies’ use of genre to ask larger questions about the erosion of small town America and our ability to handle a bio-disastrous meltdown, two ideas prominently woven into the fabric of the film’s screenplay. We also discussed her ability to class up genre pictures in spite of her highly impressive resume of dramatic work, beginning with her early and powerful turn in Lisa Cholodenko’s 1998 indie, High Art.

From the thrills of Silent Hill to the real-life adventures of The Children of Huang-Shi to the comedy of Melinda and Melinda, to say Mitchell’s resume is diverse is an understatement. Equally adored by the highbrow critics and genre fanboys, the actress is happy to be part of such disparate projects, bringing equal humanity to the struggles of fighting mysterious aliens (Pitch Black) as to the emotional identity crises of a young woman in turmoil (High Art).

In person, the 36-year-old Australian-born actress is disarmingly lovely, even more than onscreen, full of healthy laughter, vibrancy and fresh discussion you don’t often find from actors who can give predictable answers to even more predictable questions. Mitchell, a classic blonde with steel blue eyes, is an obvious movie star if I’ve ever seen one.

The Crazies is a genre film yet it has a husband and wife at its center, who have their own issues.

It was interesting to me to see to adult characters with adult issues at a center of the story like this. So I was excited and interested to see how it would turn out to have two characters, a sheriff and a doctor, on the run. In terms of character, there is some opportunity for character development and what I really liked is that ultimately it’s about four people who are completely depending on each other. As much as they are victimized by what is going on, their love for each other keeps them going. So that was the female side of me.

It is very bleak in its depiction of a frightening future.

Yes, it’s pretty bleak. But even as a ten-year-old, I grew up afraid of nuclear explosions and being afraid of what the future was going to be for my generation. I don’t know if you remember, but our whole generation had this fear of being blown up before we grew up. So I guess there has always been some fear of the apocalypse, and now we have global warming to think about. So there is this idea that maybe humanity is not going to continue. Certainly that is a possibility and I think paranoia is always part of this genre.

The genesis of the outbreak is also grounded in a very plausible “what-if” scenario.

And what’s interesting about this film for me is that Participant Films has been able to parlay this into some social action. If you look at the web site, it encourages people to lobby their senators to fix their chemical plants. Apparently there are like 300 chemical plans in America that are considered high-risk, which means that they put a million people or more at risk if there is an accident or terrorist attack. And somehow this horror movie is linked with this social action campaign, which I think is an interesting extension of what a movie can possibly do.

What do you think The Crazies says about the value of human beings in a catastrophic meltdown?

I think we are cynical about our own government and I think the movie certainly poses that sort of question. If a disaster like that does go down, does the individual count or are we all statistics? I think we all know we are statistics! I could certainly imagine a scenario where the individual loses value in terms of trying to save the whole world. The fear of a global pandemic is very real. This actress friend of mine had a dinner party the other night and after the party, eight people came down with this really bad bug like 18 hours later. I was 3 hours into a 13-hour flight. I threw up all over everything and this little old lady was sitting next to me and I thought, “God, I hope I’m not going to kill her!” Another friend of mine was in the desert with it. And this was all from this killer bug. You can see how quickly these things can go through a community. And we were shooting when swine flu was sort of beginning. It’s pretty scary. I guess the diseases are getting stronger and wiser and smarter and bigger and tougher! They can take over at any point.

The film takes some potent swipes at the death of small town America.

I think that small town American is already dead, don’t you? Even when we were shooting in Georgia, Wal-Mart was central to the area. If you talked to anyone about anything, they’d say, “Just go to Wal-Mart.” There was a small town where we were shooting way out in the middle of nowhere. There was this hardcore nightclub there and I had never been to a nightclub like this. It was kind of place where you could get Meth or whatever. It was hardcore music and you felt scared waling into this club. It was one of the most exciting nights and I was surprised it was in the middle of this small town. We didn’t partake of the Meth! We shot in Warner Robins and it’s kind of like a truck stop town. And every single store on the main road was a chain store. Everything is represented and nothing is really local to the area. You had Staples, McDonald’s and every chain store represented. I have never seen anything like it. In a way, that’s America. In big cities you can avoid what you don’t want to deal with. In a small town, what you have to deal with tomorrow is still going to be there.

What it’s like to be engaged at the level of hysteria that you are in this film? There are a few scenes—in the car wish and diner, for example—that I almost feared for your safety.

It’s fun! We should have a go right now! Aaaaaahhhhhh! (bloodcurdling scream) If you do that long enough, and loud enough, afterwards you just feel like (feigns relaxation).

Because you get things out that you can’t in real life, right?

Yes! I mean, when do you get to attack a crazy and smash them around in the rain? Somewhere inside you, don’t you have a fantasy about doing that? That’s fun. What’s really difficult is to act surprised or shocked. Surprise is really the hardest thing to feign. We had these gunshots which were physical stimulation. And everyone knew they were going off, and it was like, “Oh, God, again?”

I fought a crocodile recently. I’ve fought aliens. And what the hell were they in Silent Hill? I really liked the monsters in Silent Hill. I thought they were beautiful and ugly and strange and so surreal. When we were shooting that movie there was this one girl who was really small—this gymnast. We hung out and acted in the scenes and I never met here because she was always in this costume. She had to breathe through this tube that came out the back. But there would be other monsters on set that would be hanging out, drinking Coke. That was so cool! I’d love to see that in a movie where it’s very casual and the monsters are just living life, you know?

You are just as prolific in dramatic roles—The Children of Huang Shi, High Art, Melinda and Melinda and Henry Poole is Here. Yet you are probably more visibly recognized for your genre work.

I guess people don’t really get out to see drama anymore, or small dramas. I am curious why that is. They can’t even make adult drama anymore. I guess there is so much stimulus that people are desensitized, and you have this veneer around you that is hard to penetrate. Why are we so busy? Why are we always on our cell phones? Why are we so distracted? Why can’t we sit still and focus on something?

I want to see a movie that’s slow. I want to see a movie about a nature photographer, or just something where you are forced to slow down to the speed of a forest and watch grass grow. It’s not boring. Like Terrence Malick. It’s very poetic and reminds us of our humanity. It’s very important in our culture to have stories like that. I think that, but I don’t know if anyone wants to pay for it.

I also think it has something to do with what people want and maybe people need to slow down in general. A friend of mine, Walter Goggins, recently produced a movie with Hal Holbrook named That Evening Sun, which is a very beautiful movie that is about growing old—a part of life that people just don’t want to talk about. Yes, we are going to die but we are still relevant and part of the journey. It’s very human. So I’d like to see more films like that. I’d like to be in more films like that.

But often genre movies do go to the edge of where the mainstream is willing to go, and can bring to the fore issues that people don’t want to discuss, and there’s certainly a rage and rebellion and things in them that are important and need to be included in culture, and I am happy to be part of that voice.

Is it even possible to make a High Art today?

I think we have this digital opportunity right now and movies can be made and sold directly to an audience. Actors can make these very, very low-budget movies and I’m not a marketing person, but they could be directly marketed to an audience in the same way you buy books on Amazon. You could look for what you like. I think that will be one of the future possibilities for audiences to find stuff they like without having it marketed at them in this very general way. So independent voices and different kinds of stories could come out of that environment. We’ll see what happens. In Australia we are lucky because we have government financing, and there’s a sense that it’s important to make art in cinema.

Any thoughts on age and being a Hollywood actress?

What do they say, “life is suffering”? That’s kind of what we all go through. You celebrate youth while you have it and then you have to accept the beauty of aging as part of the process as it comes. I don’t think anyone is excited about aging—men or women. I’ll tell you more of what that’s like as time progresses!

What’s the best part about your job?

What I really like about is that when you’re acting you can block everything else out. That is the best part of it, the concentration and focus that goes into it. Everything else stops. You know how most of the time your mind is chewing over some stupid thing? When I’m acting, that goes away and I’m doing what I’m doing. I really like that. The travel part is fun. Doing research is fun. I met a gynecologist on this film and it was like, “God, who really needs to know that stuff?” You don’t see it in the film, but I’m a trained gynecologist!

I have no interest in celebrity. You’re expected to be; I mean you do have to sell your stuff and go around and talk about it. It’s fun to talk about it if it’s with people that love it. And that is why I like talking to people about genre films because generally, the audience members are film buffs and they know cinema. Their references are about the movie and not about your love life or these things that you don’t want to talk about. It’s very much the love of cinema.

- Special thanks to Radha Mitchell for this interview