Wondercon hosted the passing of the torch from one Superman to another. Henry Cavill appeared before fans to promote his pre-Man of Steel movie Immortals, and Brandon Routh brought his latest comic book movie Dylan Dog: Dead of Night. Routh and his Superman Returns costar Sam Huntington riffed with the press and each other behind the scenes in San Francisco.
It’s one comic book movie after another:
Brandon Routh: Which almost happened in succession with this movie. I filmed them the same year, kind of back to back basically. I filmed some of this, was kind of doing some preproduction for that as this was happening.
Real life best friends:
Brandon Routh: It’s amazing. We should make a movie of this.
Sam Huntington: Bring your cameras into my living room and watch us watch Amazing Race together.
Brandon Routh: Or America’s Funniest Home Videos.
Sam Huntington: That’s basically what we do. Seriously, Sam and Brandon and Wives Watch Reality TV on Sunday Night and Eat Indian Food. That’s about it. That’s the window into our lives right there.
Real life is the sequel to Superman Returns:
Sam Huntington: That’s where we became friends.
Brandon Routh: We did actually meet, oh my Lord. We were neighbors and we didn’t know it.
Sam Huntington: In the same apartment complex in L.A. we played basketball together. Literally at least a year later, I remember going in.
Brandon Routh: You were the one that remembered.
Sam Huntington: I looked at pictures of you online after I heard you got the job. Obviously he was cast much before I was but I think it was literally my first costume fitting when I remembered, “Oh, you know what? I know him. I know that guy. I even played basketball with that guy, very badly ”.
Brandon Routh: “He dunked on me.”
Sam Huntington: That man dunked on me.
Brandon Routh: I didn’t, I didn’t.
The big question: Have they crossed paths with Henry Cavill?
Sam Huntington: Oh, I didn’t see him.
Brandon Routh: Haven’t seen him.
Sam Huntington: No, we don’t need to see him.
Brandon Routh: Down, down, Sam.
Sam Huntington: I’m sure he’s a lovely gentleman.
How to shop for your zombie:
Sam Huntington: New parts. New body parts. So it’s like if your arm rots off, which happens, you can go buy a new arm or eyes or scalps or just really anything. They call it a chop shop. It’s a pretty original idea and it’s Beetlejuice-esque. That’s how we play it.
Brandon Routh: People that have perished from the morgue. There are zombies that work in the morgue so they re-appropriate.
Sam Huntington: It’s recycling. It’s zombie recycling. It’s the green way.
Brandon Routh: Or maybe they dig up graves and get them later too.
Sam Huntington: Either way it really works.
One guy thinks Dylan Dog is cooler than Superman:
Brandon Routh: I actually was aware of Dylan Dog because I have a friend, my friend Garrett, who lived in Italy for seven years. His parents worked over there so he grew up as a teenager there reading Dylan Dog just like any other normal Italian would. So when I met him after he’d come back from there, he told me about this comic he used to read all the time and showed me the hundreds of volumes that he had of it. So when the script came to me, the name rung a bell and I called him up. I was like, “Dylan Dog, isn’t that the comic that you were telling me about?” He’s like, “Yeah, if you did this movie, it’d be cooler for me than Superman” because that was a bigger deal for him growing up there. He’s actually in the movie. He plays a zombie in a restaurant.
There’s no Groucho Marx in the movie. You get Sam Huntington instead:
Sam Huntington: I had heard of it but was very unfamiliar with it. Then obviously once you’re reading for it and getting closer and closer and closer, you kind of bone up on it but to be honest, my character, obviously I learned about the world of Dylan Dog, but my character is kind of original. I think they couldn’t get the rights to Groucho or it was so wildly expensive, Groucho Marx’s estate was unattainable. So they created this wonderful character that was very original and fun.
The awesome arsenal of Dylan Dog:
Brandon Routh: There’s this great flare gun. There are some really antique flare guns that are used. We had five of them and then we had one that was actually a rocket. It wasn’t a rocket launcher but this big grenade launcher that they made kind of look and feel used as a flare launcher, which is pretty cool. Just some cool antique old gun.
Sam Huntington: But the idea behind it was it would shoot these tubes of UV light, burns like the sun basically. So it would singe the vampires.
The comedy stylings of Brandon Routh:
Brandon Routh: It’s just the other side of me. Certainly Dylan is not really like Superman in any regard but I tend to be dry and sarcastic like Dylan is so there was my own sensibility that I felt comfortable in bringing to the screen that I thought played well with Dylan.
Sam Huntington: You should have said, “I’m not really dry or sarcastic at all.” No? No one?
Brandon Routh: And laughter ensues.
Sam Huntington: This is why we think each other are hilarious.
Brandon Routh: I think of this movie as a horror comedy. For me, horror/action/comedy. The buddy relationship, it’s kind of like The Odd Couple-esque, which was a lot of fun. The relationship that we developed with Clark and Jimmy, we only had a couple scenes like that. In this, we get to do it a lot more and create an even deeper relationship. We’d also become better friends so that plays on screen too as we were able to play with some of the dialogue in some scenes. So that was one of the things that attracted me to the role was the comic side. Although Dylan is being dry and sarcastic, it’s still humorous and it’s very different from Marcus’s energy. It plays really well.
Sam Huntington: Also I agree with you. I think you should just do comedy because you’re so frickin’ funny.
Brandon Routh: Thanks. I love comedy. I’m ready. Bring it on.
Sam Huntington: No seriously, I love those movies too. I’ve seen Scott Pilgrim like a dozen times. The guy’s funny.
Brandon Routh: You’ve got to believe it I guess to make it real. Trust Edgar Wright, I trust him to hell and back I guess because he’s just that good. He allowed me to be that committed to the character and be that kind of over the top in a way but committed so that it worked.
Sam Huntington is totally famous in Chipotle now:
Sam Huntington: I’ll never get used to it. People are starting to, and I’m sure this is something that was weird for you when it first started happening, but people are starting to know me by name now which is really weird. I was at Chipotle the other day. Shout out, Chipotle, f***in’ best chips ever. I was ahead in line and he was still making my tacos behind me. Shout out to the taco guy, I don’t know his name. I was up dealing with my bowl and the taco guy goes, “Hey Sam, are these crispy or soft tacos.” And I turn around without missing a beat, I was like, “They’re soft.” I didn’t even think about it until I had paid and was walking out. Wait a minute, I never told him my name. He just knew who I was. He was totally a cool guy but that’s happened a lot now, people being like, “Hey, you’re the actor Sam Huntington.” Yeah, I guess so.
Dylan Dog, kickin’ ass:
Brandon Routh: Kevin [Munroe]did a great job in the action sequences. He would go in, we’d say, “Brandon, this is how you do it.”
Sam Huntington: He would do it first.
Brandon Routh: He would do it first, no. It was cool. It was a lot of fun to do that because I hadn’t really done a lot of action in my acting life. In real life I fight a lot. No, I don’t. So this was a great opportunity to learn some fight choreography and some cool moves and do Hollywood Fu as the stunt guys call it. And working with Kevin was great because he really loves this movie and had a great vision for it and was extremely collaborative which is really important as an actor to know that you can trust your director, but also if you have a problem you can come to him and talk to him or her about it and work it out because at the end of the day, it’s most important for everybody to feel comfortable, for me as an actor to feel comfortable. Otherwise I’m not going to be able to be open and honest when the camera’s on.
Sam Huntington: How about this? Chuck Norris’s kid was our stunt coordinator. Yes way.
