Renfield Archives - Sci-Fi Tips

Five Things With: Renfield star Ben Schwartz

admin — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 18:48:32 +0000

Set in the modern day, Renfield switches Bram Stoker’s classic vampiric tale on its head to tell the story from Renfield’s (Nicholas Hoult) point of view as he starts to realise his long relationship with Dracula (Nicolas Cage) is, in fact, toxic. After getting tangled up in a local gang war after an altercation with the leader’s son (Ben Schwartz) and meeting up with cop Rebecca (Awkwafina), he starts to realise his relationship with the Count might not have to be eternal after all…

Schwart plays the fantastically named Tedward ‘Teddy’ Lobo – the heir of a gangster empire – in the movie and we sat down with Schwartz to find out five things about him…

1. He enjoyed playing a bad guy for the first time in Renfield

Schwartz is probably most well known for playing quirky chancer Jean-Ralphio in Parks And Recreation or our favourite cheeky blue hedgehog in Sonic The Hedgehog, but in Renfield he plays Teddy, the heir of a very nasty gangster empire and he liked playing a character that is completely different to one he’d played before. “It’s fun to play the bad guy,” he laughs. “I’ve never played the bad guy before. I’m always the good guy or a voice of an animated animal that’s trying to do good. So it was very exciting to play the bad guy and have shootouts and drive and have chase scenes and learning how to fight on camera for the first time!”

2. He cites Garry Shandling as a mentor and inspiration

Schwartz has been in the business around 17 years now as a performer, producer and writer, and has worked with many legends. He says that actor, comedian, writer, director, and producer Garry Shandling was a big inspiration to him. “He was a brilliant guy,” Schwartz nods. “I was lucky enough to be in a basketball league at his house every week for seven or eight years. And every time I went there I just learned a lot. Not even work stuff, I just loved his brain and talking to him, but I found a lot of inspiration from him.”

And Shandling isn’t the only person who’s inspired Schwartz throughout his career: “I found a lot of inspiration from Billy Crystal when I worked with [him],” Schwartz continues. “And Amy Poehler started The Comedy Theatre where I learned how to do comedy. And [Don] Cheadle is a machine. He’s one of the best actors in the universe, and he’s a kind, good dude. I love watching how he treats himself and how he treats his friends and his family.

“I feel very lucky. I’ve had a lot of people that I look up to and if I have a question about life or business, I can call somebody and chat with them.

“But Shandling, man, if you guys haven’t seen The Larry Sanders Show, it’s one of the best shows ever made, I think one of the best comedies ever made. “

3. One of his favourite movie villains is Heath Ledger’s Joker

Schwartz plays a movie villain in Renfield, and he has a few favourite movie villains of his own. “One of my favourite villains was Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight series,” he tells us. “I loved it. I thought he was so in the zone in that movie.”

To get in the right frame of mind for his role as Teddy he watched Mean Streets, Donnie Brasco, and Scarface. “I think that my character has those posters on his wall and could never be them, but pretends that one day he’s going to try to be them!”

4. He’s glad that Cocaine Bear exists

Though Schwartz has been part of plenty of established IPs, he says that anytime he writes his own scripts now, they’re always original. “I love the idea of bringing something new,” he says.

“I’m a sucker for Marvel movies but I love what Lorde and Miller does. If they’re going to tackle an IP like Spider-man, they do Spider-verse, which I think is one of the best movies of the past decade.

“For me as a comedian and as a writer for studios who writes comedies, the fact that Cocaine Bear did so well and the fact that that movie comes out, it allows me to take bigger risks and try to sell movies that are comedic. Growing up I had Steve Martin, Jim Carrey and John Candy movies. Now there’s so few comedies out anymore. My hope is this is going to start a trend to take a couple more risks on comedies and do it.”

5. He grilled Nicolas Cage on his movies

Well if you’re going to get a chance to do a movie with Nicolas Cage, you’re going to want to talk about his impressive body of work. “My moments with Nic Cage were mostly all on set,” Schwartz remembers. “But the coolest part about that is when they said ‘cut’, he and I would go to our chairs, and he’s still dressed as Dracula, but I’m like, “I loved Adaptation, I watched it twice in a row. I thought it was unbelievable.” I’m just talking to him when he’s dressed as Dracula, but I’m like, “so Raising Arizona….” and just grilling him on all of his movies.

“It was heaven to be around him. He has more stories than anybody. He also knows everybody and then you randomly forget that he’s a Coppola. He’s done and seen everything. So it’s a treasure trove, a museum of wonders inside Nic Cage’s head.”

Renfield is available to Download & Keep now and will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on 17^th July

The post Five Things With: Renfield star Ben Schwartz appeared first on Sci-Fi Tips.

“Nicolas Cage is as iconic as Count Dracula!” We speak to the cast and crew of Renfield

admin — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 11:55:42 +0000

“I think Dracula is a character that really lends itself to the human experience,” Nicolas Cage says when we ask him why we’re so obsessed with the character – he was created 125 years ago by Bram Stoker and we’re still making movies about him, including the one we’re talking about today: Renfield.

“Even though he’s supernatural, he’s a character that has this blood lust addiction, you supplant one addiction – like alcohol or heroin or sex – with blood, and then we can relate to that,” Cage continues. “Then you also have this idea of eternal existence as an undead, meaning that he’s always going to get his heart broken or be betrayed again and again. I think that’s the curse of Dracula, which is also a human experience.”

Cage plays the Prince Of Darkness in the new horror comedy Renfield, which follows another character in Stoker’s classic novel: Dracula’s forever obedient servant, Renfield (played by Nicholas Hoult).

Set in the modern day, the classic tale has been switched on its head to tell the story from Renfield’s point of view as he starts to realise his long relationship with Dracula is, in fact, toxic. And after getting tangled up in a local gang war and meeting up with cop Rebecca (Awkwafina), he starts to realise his relationship with the Count might not have to be eternal after all…

After meeting Rebecca (Awkwafina), Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) realises he might be able to escape his toxic relationship with Dracula

The movie was created from an original idea by The Walking Dead’s Robert Kirkman, who basically just wanted a new way to write a Dracula story: “Dracula had been done 1000 different ways and most of those were quite excellent,” he says. “So it was trying to find a different lane where you could set your project apart, and I hit upon the Renfield character, which had a lot of untapped potential.”

Kirkman has teamed up with director Chris McKay (The Lego Batman Movie) and writer Ryan Ridley (Rick And Morty) to bring his idea to life – and with all of those excellent credentials on board, they set about telling a brand new story about these 100-year-old characters.

“Robert and Ryan have come up with such a modern and original take on this world by choosing to focus on the world of Dracula through the lens of his assistant, of the co-dependent relationship that this assistant has with Dracula,” says McKay

“That made it really easy for me to come in and get excited and figure out this movie. You had a character who archetypally could stand in for this big idea of narcissism, the boss from hell. That was something that, thematically, was an incredible foundation for the conflict, for the comedy and an incredible thematic relationship to this character.”

Dracula is the boss from hell in Renfield.

Indeed, Renfield is a horror comedy; those two delicious genres that can go so well together if paired right and it’s a sub-genre that Mr Cage is also a big fan of. “My favourite genre really is this blend of horror and comedy,” he nods. “I think the two, oddly enough, go beautifully together and really put you on a ride in the theatre because you don’t know what’s going to happen.

“It knocks you around, you’re laughing and then all of a sudden you’re screaming and that’s a great feeling when you’re an audience member.”

For Cage, harnessing a lot of that comedy came with working with Hoult, who he had previously worked with on the 2005 comedy drama The Weather Man. “I saw it as a great opportunity to get back on set with Nick and riff off of each other. I was really excited to be able to work with him on a movie with such a specific tone of comedy and horror because I got to see what he could do with that as well and I thought it really helped what I was trying to go for.”

“We had a lovely experience on The Weather Man,” Hoult agrees. “I was 14 years old then so I hadn’t seen a lot of Nic’s brilliant work at that point in my life. I knew who he was and was a fan but then coming back to work with him again as an adult and then get to spend time working with him, particularly on these two characters that have such a history between each other…

“I felt like I’ve just learned so much from him, both in terms of how he approaches the acting work and the scene work, but also just his presence and the kindness he brings to set and the people around.”

Speaking of Cage’s presence, he is an inspired casting choice for Dracula, and though he’s played a vampire before (in 1988’s Vampire’s Kiss) he’s never played the King Of Vampires.

For McKay, he knew that Cage would be perfect for the role, but he wasn’t sure if the studio would agree… “For me, Nicolas Cage was the four leaf clover,” he says. “He’s just one of those people who can do everything. My dream would be to put Nicolas Cage in this movie. I was never sure that the studio was behind that and I think we were all really surprised that the minute that we mentioned Cage, they got really excited.

“That was one of the times I was expecting the worst and I was really pleasantly surprised that the studios were literally as excited about it as I was!”

The studio was just as excited as Chris McKay to have Nicolas Cage play Dracula in Renfield.

Once Cage was on board to play the role, the actor’s now-iconic way of putting his own spin on a character was well underway. “He’s so inventive and is always coming up with really surprising choices, really unique choices,” McKay nods. “Cage is this guy who can do so many things. He’s got so many tools. He’s a movie star, he’s a part of film history. Cage is as iconic as Count Dracula, so he fits that.”

We’re sure we can safely say that when you read those words ‘Count Dracula’, a certain story or movie or performer comes into your mind – the character is so wide-varying, appearing in as many mediums as there are, that his name alone will invoke some kind of memory. For Cage, he was first introduced to the character when he was very young, when his father, August Coppola, would project black-and-white 35mm films on a screen in the family’s living room. Among them was 1929’s Nosferatu, starring Max Schreck as the sinister vampire Count Orlok (“I saw it at five, as a child and it was very scary”).

These days, Cage cites a slightly more recent performance of the character as his favourite: “I love Christopher Lee as Dracula,” he says. “I liked the Sixties hairdo. I like the clothes. I liked the Hammer Horror films. He was my Dracula.”

Hoult cites Tod Browning’s 1931 movie, Dracula, with Bela Lugosi playing Dracula as his particular favourite. “Dwight Frye [from that movie] is probably my favourite Renfield as well,” Hoult says. “That was something that I went back and watched a lot. I would listen, I’d have his laugh playing in my headphones on set to carry that with me and kind of pepper in occasionally throughout this story.”

For Kirkman and McKay, bringing this epochal character to the big screen in a different way was a challenge, but one they met with the fervour in-keeping with an archetypal villain: “The iconography of Dracula, the imagery of Dracula, the fangs, the blood, the castles, the bats… everything about it is something that speaks to us and it’s become a huge part of our civilization,” Kirkman says. “Earlier today someone asked the first time I encountered Dracula, and I literally cannot remember, it’s always just been a part of my life. I think that’s probably the case for most people.”

The iconography of Dracula speaks to everyone.

To achieve this, they wanted to put a range of emotions, themes and genres into the movie, balancing the violence, horror and comedy with a genuine emotional core – that of the co-dependant relationship with Dracula and Renfield. “I think people respond to a full buffet when they go see a movie,” McKay says. “Your audience wants to be surprised when they go see a movie. [They are] okay with a tone that can be a little bit flexible, because as long as they feel like the director is, for the most part, in control of it, they will respond to that and love getting excited by that.

“That’s something I think that we all try to adhere to.”

Renfield is out in cinemas now

The post “Nicolas Cage is as iconic as Count Dracula!” We speak to the cast and crew of Renfield appeared first on Sci-Fi Tips.

Renfield Review: Nicolas Cage sinks his teeth into the role of Dracula in madcap horror comedy

admin — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 03:43:01 +0000

It is absolutely no spoiler to say that the last two words of Chris McKay’s Renfield, said in voiceover, are “metaphorically speaking”.

The film’s narrator is also its protagonist, even if he is usually just a sidekick and a marginal player in the shadows of someone else’s story. For Robert Montague Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) is the long-serving minion and familiar of Dracula (Nicolas Cage, sinking his teeth into the rôle). Unaffected by daylight, Renfield seeks potential victims for his slumbering master among the pure and the innocent.

The Renfield of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula enacts his master’s every malevolent whim in exchange for a regular supply of insects and the promise of immortality. Here, however, screenwriter Ryan Ridley (who has contributed to TV’s Community, Rick and Morty and Invincible), working from an original idea by Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead), deviates considerably from the character’s depiction in Stoker: for Ridley makes Renfield a one-time real estate lawyer, as in Tod Browning’s and George Melford’s separate 1931 films of Dracula – and flashbacks to Renfield’s earlier adventures with Dracula are shown in flickering, distressed monochrome to suggest an archival print of Browning’s film.

As a further embellishment to Stoker, the consumption of bugs temporarily grants Renfield a portion of Dracula’s supernatural abilities, which approximate wire-fu superpowers; and Dracula’s own blood can heal the most grievous of Renfield’s, or anyone else’s, injuries, and even restore life to the dead.

Renfield’s narrative really does, as those final two words suggest, operate at a metaphorical level. For if its vehicle is a bunch of g(l)orified vampiric lore and action playing out in hilariously hyperbolic form, its tenor is the struggle, psychological and sometimes physical, to break free from a toxic partner and to rediscover life for oneself.

Renfield may, in frequenting a self-help group for those caught in dependent relationships, ostensibly be on the hunt for the oppressors of his fellow attendees to serve up as not altogether appetising morsels to Dracula, but he is also trying to get to the root of his own problems, and to rediscover himself through identification with similar sufferers.

And while Dracula may, like the metaphorical ‘monsters’ who torment Renfield’s new therapy group friends, be a controlling, manipulative, megalomaniac narcissist whose very voice has implanted itself in his partner’s head, he is also a more literal monster of the fanged, flying, Fledermaus variety, even if Renfield’s confrontation with him will involve therapeutic self-actualisation alongside bludgeoning combat.

Much of Renfield is concerned with ethical choices. When New Orleans beat cop Rebecca Quincy (Awkwafina) decides to face down mob enforcer Teddy Lobo (Ben Schwartz) and his formidable mother Ella (Shohreh Aghdashloo) rather than to acquiesce to their corrupting power, her example inspires Renfield to take his own stand against Dracula, even as the initially wavering Teddy decides, upon seeing Dracula’s awesome influence, to commit thoroughly to evil.

Everyone here is conflicted, apart from the straightforwardly, gleefully malicious Dracula and Ella Lobo (whose name translates roughly as ‘She Wolf’). So this monstrous morality play is realised with wickedly funny dialogue that fully embraces the premise’s absurdity, with ridiculously violent fight sequences where even severed limbs are weaponised, and with, well, a lot of psychobabble lifted straight from manuals of self-improvement and self-empowerment.

McKay also directed The Lego Batman Movie (2017), and Renfield’s madcap tone is similar if a lot bloodier in all its self-parodying humour, while also occupying narrative territories familiar from TV’s What We Do In The Shadows. Yet here it is Renfield who ultimately finds his voice, taking back control of his destiny and making Dracula’s story all his own – in a figurative sense, at least.

Renfield will be released in cinemas on 14 April. Find more reviews with SciFiNow.

The post Renfield Review: Nicolas Cage sinks his teeth into the role of Dracula in madcap horror comedy appeared first on Sci-Fi Tips.

Renfield trailer: Nicholas Hoult and Awkwafina battle Nicolas Cage’s Dracula

admin — Sat, 25 Mar 2023 14:39:53 +0000

Nicholas Hoult stars as, Renfield, the loyal servant to Nicolas Cage’s Dracula in Renfield, a modern monster tale with plenty of gore and, from the looks of the final trailer, plenty of laughs too.

Watch it here.

The movie follows Renfield, who is forced to procure his master’s prey and do his every bidding, no matter how debased. But now, after centuries of servitude, Renfield is ready to see if there’s a life outside the shadow of The Prince of Darkness. If only he can figure out how to end his codependency…

Check out some brand new stills from the movie here…

2553_D003_00575R

2553_D010_00550R_CROP

2553_D022_00050R_CROP

2553_D037_00325R

2553_D040_00438R_R_CROP

2553_D042_00446R

2553_D102_00162R

2553_TP_00076R

Directed by Chris McKay (The Tomorrow War) from a screenplay by Ryan Ridley (Rick & Morty), based on an original idea by The Walking Dead and Invincible creator Robert Kirkman, the movie stars Nicholas Hoult (The Menu), Nicolas Cage (Willy’s Wonderland), Awkwafina (Shang-Chi and the Legend of Ten Rings), Ben Schwartz (Sonic) and Adrian Martinez (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty).

Renfield will be in cinemas in April. Watch more trailers at the SciFiNow YouTube channel.

The post Renfield trailer: Nicholas Hoult and Awkwafina battle Nicolas Cage’s Dracula appeared first on Sci-Fi Tips.

Renfield: Nicolas Cage is bad boss Dracula in first trailer

admin — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 17:20:15 +0000

Nicholas Hoult plays the classic servant Renfield to Nicolas Cage’s Dracula in the upcoming comedy horror Renfield.

Watch the trailer here…

Nicholas Hoult stars as Renfield, the tortured aide to Dracula (Nicolas Cage).

Renfield will be in cinemas in April. Watch more trailers at the SciFiNow YouTube channel.

The post Renfield: Nicolas Cage is bad boss Dracula in first trailer appeared first on Sci-Fi Tips.