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*That's what Manu called the blog after the interview because he couldn't remember the exact name.
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Captain Shinypants: Welcome to the Geeky Adventures of Dalek Chick and
Captain Shinypants! I’m your host, Captain Shinypants, and today I have the
pleasure of sitting down with Manu Intiraymi. Thank you for doing this, it was
very nice of you to spend your time with me today.
Manu Intiraymi: You’re welcome.
CS: So, I guess we’ll head right on into the first question.
MI: Okay.
CS: How did being on Voyager impact your career?
MI: How did being on Voyager impact my career? Um, well, I
mean, up until that time I’d just done mostly, you know, guest spots in
different television shows and I’d done a movie called Whatever It Takes where
I was like the lead geek, but a lot of the stuff got cut; this teeny-bopper
movie back in the day with like Shane West and James Franco and Colin Hanks and
all these kids that got mega-famous, uh, except me. I, um, I did Voyager and, you know, for a
while there I was really kind of in a stream of, of, you know, getting into the
auditions that counted. Usually when you’re on a series, you kind of get right
up there in that selection of, you know, of people that get seen for big movies
and stuff like that, so, for a couple of years there after the show and during
the show, I got to audition for some huge parts, you know; I auditioned for
Spider-Man and Lord of the Rings and the Star Wars films and just all those
kind of big movies, so it was nice to get up into that category, but the thing
about acting then is just it’s always a roller coaster and a couple years after
the show ended it’s been a fight ever since to kinda get back up into that run
again.
CS: So, it sounds like it’s opened quite a few doors for
you.
MI: Um, sure. You
know, it’s a strange thing about Star Trek and Sci-fi television in general; it
opens a few and it shuts a few. Um, it’s kind of a mixed bag because for the
most part the casting directors don’t respect Sci-fi television as much as I
think they should, and you get kinda pigeon-holed into, “Oh, he’s a Sci-fi
guy”, so there’s a little bit of backlash from that as well. So, I mean, you’ll
see that with a lot of Star Trek actors, that they fight whether they wanna get
away from their Star Trek image or whether they wanna hold onto it, you know.
CS: Right.
MI: But I think, I guess, you know, on the whole it’s been a
good thing. I can’t say I have anything to complain about, that’s for sure.
CS: Yeah. And speaking of Voyager, you’re teaming up with
some of the former cast mates there with Star Trek: Renegades. Is there
anything you can share with us about that one?
MI: I’m pretty excited about it. I haven’t seen the script
yet, so I can’t really tell you how excited about it I am. I know the concept
is a really good idea, and that there’s, you know, there’s corruption high in
the Federation, it’s 10 years after Voyager’s gotten home. I know my character
has been re-assimilated by the Borg and saved again, and then joins some agency
that’s a little corrupt called Section 31, or something like that, where
they’re testing all this new Borg technologies on pre-Borg people like Icheb
that have come out, to give them all these new powers that the Borg have, but
that keeps them on our side, but something that Section 31 is doing is controlled
by somebody evil, so Icheb’s kind of been really messed with and he’s got
things in his bloodstream that are trying to make him a bad guy. So they make
him this kind of like assassin for the Federation, and he’s just become sort of
a – I dig it, he’s become like, he’s got all these new powers, and he’s a
little more…he’s old, of course, and he’s gonna have demons to fight the whole
movie, so that sounds kind of like a new take on him. But as far as the whole
film goes, I know there’s a new alien and a new villain and, um, the guy that’s
playing him is incredible, J.G. Hertzler’s playing the new bad guy and I think
it’ll be great.
CS: And how do you feel stepping back into the role of
Icheb?
MI: Um, you know, until I see the script, I don’t know. When
I saw Star Trek: Of Gods and Men, that film they made before this, I thought
that it was a good story, but that the special effects were lacking. But
there’s a whole new special effects team on this, and I brought in a special
effects guy and company that I know that’s gonna help out called Radical 3D.
They’re the guys that do all the space and flight stuff for Disney, and they
did all the special effects for that movie Red Tails and a film I did called
Fortress, and so I think at least the special effects will look better than the
last one. But really until they finish that script and I see that script, I
don’t really know how I feel about it. If it’s well-written and it looks like
an exciting film, I’ll feel pretty good.
CS: I know a lot of people are probably going to be looking
forward to that. And you mentioned Fortress,
and in that movie you portray a member of a B-17 fighter squadron during
WWII. What did you do to prepare for that role?
MI: When we got cast in that film, that film was like a roller coaster
of a movie. They shot it so quick; they shot it in like 19 days. And they built
a replica of a B-17 that could connect in three parts so that they could get
the camera in on a long jib, which is like a long pole that can float in and
out of the plane without hands, so it wasn’t all bumpy in there. And they put
us in all authentic gear, so we were wearing like the 40 pound flak jackets and
all the gear that they would really wear in the aircraft, and it was actually
from WWII. Every little prop that we used in that film was legitimately a
WWII-used prop, like the guns, the canteens, the uniforms, etc. But we only had
like a week before we started shooting, so we didn’t have a whole lot of time
to work on our characters and, you know, do the kind of work that you would do
on like a studio movie, where you have a lot of time to rehearse. So the only
thing we really did as a crew was we got together one night at the guy that was
the captain’s house and we all got really, really, really drunk, which is basically
what the soldiers did every night before they got on the planes the next day
because it pretty much could’ve been the last day of their lives every day. But
it was somebody’s idea to drink Absinthe, and I don’t know whose idea that was,
but it actually turned out really well because here’s a bunch of actors, we all
stayed in character, we all saluted who was superior to us and all got into the
military feel, and then drank a bunch of Absinthe and got just hammered to the
point of delirium, and I remember sitting out on the porch like after six shots
of Absinthe, and I don’t know if you’ve ever drank Absinthe, but it’s a
heavy-duty hallucinogenic at one point, and I was into the character and I, you
know, at one point I had myself actually believing that I was gonna get on a
plane the next day and go bomb Italy. And then we all showed up really, really
hung over at the shoot the next day, but the scene we shot was the hangover
scene where everybody’s hung over before they go get on the plane. That was
really the only acting work we did was we all got drunk together, and you can
actually see it in the film. I mean the film is a really good movie; they made
it for $400,000 and it looks like they made it for $10 or $15 million. It’s a
pretty amazing feat that these guys accomplished. But as far as the acting
goes, all of the acting is solid and we all do fine, but because we only had a
week to prepare, if you watch the film, nobody makes any real strong choices,
nobody takes their character in a, you know, a really strong direction. You can
tell that like almost all of us are just kind of playing cool. We’re just like:
“Hey, I’m in the military. Hey, how are you? Yeah, I’m a pilot, too. Hey,
what’s up? I’m a man. Yeah, I’m a man. We’re all men.” That’s basically like
all of us. So, I dunno, I think if I had the opportunity to do the film over,
and the director and producers had really probably given us a little more time
to work on the roles…cause it’s weird, it’s like, you know, same thing on
Voyager: it was like, I didn’t really know who Icheb was until about the fourth
or fifth episode. I kinda got a handle on who I was playing, and it’s weird
like that when you come in as a guest star on TV, too, ‘cause you don’t get any
real rehearsal time. About two thirds of the way through that film, I had a
real solid idea who Charlie was. That being said, I still thought the movie was
pretty good.
CS: Yeah, and I would have to agree: that is a very good movie.
MI: Thank you.
CS: So for anyone listening: if you haven’t seen it, go see
it. Pick it up…it’s a good movie.
MI: And get it on Bluray ‘cause it’s so, so much better on
Bluray. If you watch it on DVD it doesn’t quite hold up because the special
effects are meant to be seen on Bluray and they don’t look very good on DVD.
CS: Alright. Aside from Fortress, you’ve also got a few more
stuff in the works. Would you like to maybe talk about some of those?
MI: Sure. Six Gun Savior is a western about the devil, it’s
like a supernatural western. It’s about these two brothers and the two brothers
get tricked by the devil. One of them dies, and they get a last wish for their
soul, so one brother says to save my brother and the other brother says to get
revenge on the guy who killed me. So, basically this like one brother is this
walking dead guy, and Eric Roberts plays the devil, and there’s all these
walking demons and it’s very action-packed kind of like, I dunno, Buffy the
Vampire Slayer meets a western, and I just play a bad guy in the film, I have a
real short scene in it just playing this bad guy poker player that plays poker
with a demon. But what was cool about it was, like, maybe four months after, or
three months after I shot it I went and saw that Tarrantino film Django
Unchained. Did you see that yet?
CS: I have not seen that one yet.
MI: Well, right in the beginning, I shot in the same place that
they shot that film. It was up on the old set, the Deadwood set for HBO, that
show that was on HBO. They still have that, that whole town is still built and
available to shoot on and it was neat just to watch because the characters in
Django, Jamie Foxx and the other guy, were sitting at the exact table that I
was sitting at. And it was just kind of, like, I dunno, um…for lack of a better
term, weird. I know there’s a better vocabulary term. When I was sitting in the
movie, I was like, “Wow! I was sitting in that chair like three weeks ago!
That’s strange.” But it was the first time I got to play, you know, a western,
first time I got to do that accent, and put on all that, you know, the cowboy
hat and the gun, and I had a lot of fun doing it.
CS: Well it sounds very fun.
MI: Yeah. I don’t know how they went to the bathroom in the West,
truthfully, because there’s so many – you've got your gun belt on over your
belt and suspenders on over that and a shirt tucked in under that, and then you've got, you know, boots and you've got those little ties that go around
your knees and your boots tie on, and I also had a microphone that was clipped,
which they didn't have in the West, but which was clipped to the top of me and
bottom of me, and then I had to go to the bathroom. And I was like, “Oh my God,
how the heck am I gonna get all this stuff off?” And I really don’t know how
they did it, but I went and asked the costume designer, “Well it must have been
a real pain in the butt for people to go to the bathroom back in the day. How’d
they get all these clothes off?” And it turns out, this is really gross, but
back in the West they would actually wear pants that had a slit in the back of
the pants so that all you’d have to do is, like your underwear, was just pull
your pants apart sideways. So people didn't have to take off their clothes;
they just split their pants. I thought that was hilarious. You learn something
new every day I guess.
CS: Yeah, we all just got a History lesson there.
MI: Yeah, so everybody in the West just wore these pants
that split in the back. I think that’s hilarious. Um, and I have a few other
things going on. I produced a film called Benjamin Troubles which is about this
kid that has, um, he’s had a tough life and he was addicted to drugs and he
used to sell drugs with this gnarly gangster guy, and it’s kind of like a romance
meets like a fantasy meets a Guy Ritchie-type of movie that’s fast-paced, kinda
gangsters and guns and poker. But it’s about the kid who, when he’s down and
out, finds this pair of magic blue jeans that produces a hundred dollar bill on
the hour every hour, and he thinks that that’s gonna fix his life and it’s
about the trials and tribulations he goes through trying to get out of all his
old stuff with these magic pants, um, and that should be out sometime later
this year. Um, and I, if people don’t know, last year I was one of the main
villains on the show One Tree Hill in the final season of that, and this week I
go and I film a scene opposite Eric Roberts in a film called Abstraction, which
is like this robbery heist film, and I play this character named Nick Russo
that’s a mechanic at one of the shops that gets robbed, and it’s a nice little
12-page scene that starts the film and gets the film off, going in a kinda action direction. And the
very last thing that I’m doing at the moment is I’m raising money for a film
called Dark River and we’re about a third of the way there; we want to shoot in
late May, and it’s a story about a bunch of kids who go up to the woods and get
in trouble the night before in a local hick bar and then end up getting hunted
through the woods as they try to make their way back to the car after they get
about 30 miles into the wilderness. Um, and it’s kind of like a
action/thriller, horror/thriller, hopefully like Deliverance, you know. We want
to make another really, really, really good people-running-from-creepy-hicks
movie.
CS: Sounds like all of those are going to be very
interesting and we’re all going to be looking forward to them.
MI: Thank you. I’m looking forward to it, too. I’m having
fun with it.
CS: Sounds like it. And you mentioned producing Benjamin Troubles, but you’ve also done writing and acting and theater. Is
there anything you prefer doing one over the other?
MI: Absolutely! I’m only producing films because I’m 34 now
and I’ve, you kinda realize after you spend some time in this town trying to be
an actor and that all the big movie stars, you know, all the A-lister movie
stars, they all produce their own stuff. Almost all of them own production
companies and once you get to that level, you have a piece of the back-end of
the movie, you own a piece of the movie, and if someone brings you a movie, you
say, “Yeah, I’ll do that. I wanna produce part of it and own part of it”, and
that’s how these guys make as much money as they do. And so really the only
reason I’m producing films is ‘cause I wanna make films that I have more
control over, you know, what the final result is gonna be and what the story is
and writing myself good characters and using the actors that I’ve met in the
last 15 years of working in this town to try to make good projects. But
truthfully, if I didn’t have to do that, if I could just be an actor and not do
any of that other work, I would love it. Actors are the most over-paid, wimpy,
bitchy little, like, lucky career people in the world. All they have to do is
show up to the set, say their lines and take all the credit for the movie being
good, and then go home. And producers have to, you know, show up and scout for
locations and work the lights and work the cameras and hire all the crews and
hire the makeup and make sure the actors are all happy and make sure that the
money is there and raise the money for the film, and that takes years to raise
money for a film, and then you’ve gotta cut the film for another 13 months
after it’s finished and do the final sound design and do the color correction
and special effects and hire the special effects companies. Fuck all that. I
just want to act. That’s it. If I could just act, that would be great, but at
the moment I’ve gotta create some of the work that I’m doing. If I get higher
up the totem pole, when I get higher up the totem pole, I think I’ll act more
and produce less. Maybe direct a little bit, but not produce.
CS: Sounds like a plan.
MI: Yeah.
CS: If you hadn’t gone into acting, what do you think you’d
be doing right now?
MI: Um, wow. If I hadn’t gone into acting…um, I don’t know.
I’d probably be in a, um, some insane asylum somewhere just babbling at myself
incoherently. I don’t love really anything else. It’s really the only passion –
I mean, I did have a passion for music at one point in my life, but then I
spent a few years in a band trying to make that happen, and sleeping in the bus
with all my stinky band mates, and their alcoholic farts, and driving across
the country getting paid nothing to sing for no one, and I got to just hate
that, so, it’s really the only thing that makes me happy, you know, so, and my
passion, like, I just want to do – I know Star Trek affected a lot of people in
a good way, but personally I’ve yet to make the film that I can sit back and
say, “That was a perfect movie and I really affected people the way I wanted to”,
you know, like a movie like Juno or Pulp Fiction or Hesher or one of those
movies that you walk out of and it completely rocks you in so many different
ways and makes you, like, feel a part of
this, you know, race that we are, the species that we are, um, makes you feel
connected to other human beings, and I’ve yet to do like a movie that, you
know, rocks me like some of the movies that I’ve seen and until I do that I
couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
CS: Do you prefer being in movies or being in television
shows? Do you have a preference there?
MI: I think most actors would tell you that they would much
rather be, you know, in movies than TV. Movies don’t pay as well unless you’re
a movie star, but for me they’re much more, they’re less censored and
television is so controlled by the network censors and what society and the,
you know, kinda the propaganda machine wants to tell the public. And also TV
for the most part is just made to sell products to the public, you know, it’s
about getting to that commercial time so that they can sell you Budweiser,
Coca-Cola, toothpaste, and laundry detergent
and Taco Bell. I mean, the HBO shows, I’d love to do those. I think of
HBO and Showtime shows basically like movies, but, you know, they’re that good.
But I’d much rather do films or shows of that nature than, you know, network
television. Not to say I wouldn’t take a part in network television. I’ve done
it and I would love to do it because the paychecks are amazing, but, you know,
as far as when it comes to like artistic integrity, I want to make movies.
CS: I can see your point there.
MI: Yeah.
CS: Of all the characters you’ve portrayed so far, which one
do you identify with the most and why?
MI: Hmm…well, this next film that is coming out, Benjamin
Troubles, was the most me that I’ve - you know, most of the characters I’ve
played have not been very much like myself. Charlie was a little bit like me,
but he was a total prick and I’m not really that much of a, I mean, I’m kind of
a prick, but not that bad. The kid in Benjamin Troubles is an artist and a
painter, he’s struggling with trying to find his place in the world as far as
everything, as far as like his belief in love and life and happiness and art
and struggling with sick, sick parents. There’s a lot of things in that movie
that really was almost kinda magic, I felt like I was playing myself the whole
time. I also spent a lot of time in my early 20’s partying way too hard and
this character did the same thing. So, um, that probably would be the character
I relate to the most. You guys will be able to see that in a few months here.
CS: I guess I’ll go ahead with some of the questions people
have submitted. This one’s from Aaron: Do you have any interest in what your
character has done in the Star Trek novels, such as serving on Deep Space K-7?
MI: Oh! No. I mean actually, I, yeah kinda…no, I have no
interest. I don’t care. No, I do, I’ve just never read them and no one’s ever
told me what novel my character’s in. I would love to read whatever novels my
character’s in and see what they decided to do with Icheb in the literal world.
But I don’t know the names of the books. If someone would send me those, I’d
read them.
CS: Well, I will have to ask him that and get back with you.
MI: Yeah! Ask him. Yeah, ask him what books Icheb’s in. I
would love to read those and see what they have him up to.
CS: Our very own Dalek Chick, she would like to know what
your favorite Voyager episode is.
MI: The one where I give Seven my cortical nodes for a
couple reasons: one – like I was talking
about earlier, as an actor, at least me; I can’t speak for all actors, but I
wanna do work that affects people in an emotional way, you know, makes people
feel connected and cry or laugh or, you know, shows people the strength and the
weaknesses in human beings, just, you know, relate on a real level that affects
people. And I remember being, I think it was like 21, and I got that episode’s
script sent to my house and, you know, I’ve only done a few guest spots on
different TV shows, a couple movies at that point, nothing that I was really,
really, really proud of. And I read that episode and just the human sacrifice
in that episode and willing to, you know, give up one of your organs for
another person that you love; I thought that was a really powerful message, and
at the end of the script I was so excited to get to do it because I thought
maybe it would affect people somewhere, and I called my mom to tell her how
excited I was and I started crying on the phone. I was like, “Mom, I finally
get to do something that counts”, you know, and then it’s been really amazing
in the last, God, however many years it’s been, 12 years or whatever since the
show ended, going on different conventions when they put me on stage, there’s
been a couple of really magic moments where someone stood up in the crowd and
thanked me for that episode because of like someone that was having a kidney
transplant in the family and somehow that episode helped them and brought them
together and that, like, just floored me on stage. I remember I started crying
on stage in Germany profusely, like, snotty nose and everything and the guy was
like, "I'm sorry. I didn’t mean it”, and I’m like “No. Thank you, man.”
You know, like, that’s what I was trying to do. That’s by far, that is my
favorite episode just because I know it had an impact out there for real.
CS: And we’ve just about reached the end of our time, so
we’ll do one last quick question here.
MI: Okay.
CS: Again, from Aaron. I thought this was pretty humorous.
He would like to know: do Borg prefer cake or pie?
MI: Do Borg prefer cake or pie…um, pie. Cake’s lame. Everybody prefers pie. Who prefers cake? Are
there really people out there that would rather have cake than pie?
CS: Maybe the Klingons like cake.
MI: Probably. I mean, pie is so good. You’ve got so many
choices; you’ve got lemon meringue, and you’ve got coconut cream, and
chocolate, and cheesecake, and fruit pies, and key lime, and, like, banana
cream, and like, oh my God! I love pie. How could you like, you know, cake?
You’ve got chocolate cake, vanilla cake, and it’s all pasty and it sticks in
your mouth and it usually has too much frosting. It’s never really that
exciting unless you have a glass of milk, and then that kinda helps the whole
process, but pie.
CS: So, there we have it: Borg definitely like pie. Well, I
thank you again for your time.
MI: Yeah. Well, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you very much
for the interview.
CS: You are welcome. And thank you everyone for tuning in to
listen. Thank you! G’bye!
