Kalamity Interview Series Part 1: Nick Stahl

Actor Nick Stahl (Sin City, HBO's Carnivale, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, The Man Without a Face) discusses his lead role in the mystery thriller Kalamity

A noted actor of film and television whose filmography includes roles in such projects as Sin City, The Man Without a Face, Bully, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, HBO’s Carnivale, and Sleepwalking, Nick Stahl’s latest film, Kalamity, finds the actor plumbing the churning depths of heartbreak as well as enmeshed within a murder mystery. Stahl plays Billy, a young man who has returned home to Virginia after breaking up with his long-time girlfriend Alice (Beau Garrett).

Looking to heal and reconnect with family and friends, he notices a sea change in his best friend Stan (Jonathan Jackson), a far more vicious personality than the one he previously knew. As he tries to figure out what has happened, Billy suspects that Stan has committed the most heinous crime of all. I recently had a few minutes to speak with Stahl about his experience on this project and here is our conversation:

Vegas Outsider: First things first, how were you approached with this particular script and what about it drew you to it?

Nick Stahl: Well it was pretty standard, it was just offered to me. I read it and thought it was a really honest attempt to portray young people and suburban life as realistically as possible. I really appreciated the themes of the movie, ones that I think most people are able to relate to like love lost, aging, coming home, and growing up. I thought it was well-written and found the dialogue pretty realistic. It was written by James Hausler, this fairly young guy himself and I felt that he really captured the reality of how young people actually talk and interact. All of those things I would say turned me on to the story.

VO: What I found refreshing about the story is that given it being ostensibly a thriller and mystery, it feels very realistic in terms of its characters and their motivations. These seem like people whom you could actually meet in real life and not just ones constructed for a film.

NS: Yeah I think in order to sell the thriller genre or even things like horror, the thing that really sells it are the characters; how they look and talk, being as realistic as possible and again that was one thing that I thought he did a great job of in the script. I write a bit myself and these are the kinds of stories that I like writing, which are things that I draw from my own life, i.e. where I grew up, along with friends and characters that have been in my life from the past. It was very much the same for James, he thought of these people based on characters he knew. In fact the role of Chris, played by actor Christopher Clark, is essentially Christopher playing himself since he was a young friend of James growing up. So it was very much a personal story for James.

VO: Much of Billy’s screen time is spent with Alice, or more appropriately, his own memory of Alice as he is contending with their breakup. Do you feel that Billy is using her to genuinely attempt reconciliation or perhaps as a mechanism to finally allow him to let go?

NS: I think it’s true that when you go through a breakup you tend to remember the good stuff and not flash back to the hard times, the things that might bore you about the person or what have you. That rang true for me in how it was written, but I think in the story he is someone who genuinely wants to get her back, especially since she broke up with him. It’s such a big heartbreak for him that he actually ends up going home to live with his parents. So I would say he does genuinely want her back and is using her memory to remind him of only the good times they had together.

VO: Were you able to draw upon any of your own personal experiences as you approached this character and if so, how?

NS: I’ve gone through breakups and heartbreak, I’ve had friends I’ve grown apart from, and have seen things change. I felt that those were themes within the movie that everyone could relate to so it really didn’t require that much crafting a character, because as it was written on the page it immediately evoked my own memories of those things, how I reacted, how I felt at the time, etc. Sometimes the less challenging part of this job is when things are that clear, when you read something that evokes emotions in you and you can immediately understand what you need to do in the film. It gives you a much easier way in. So again, there were some things in it that were personal to me that I was easily able to then apply my own experiences to the character.

VO: Finally, I feel that Kalamity really is more of a relationship film than a thriller ultimately, in that it provides these two characters who are really two sides of the same dilemma: how do you deal with letting go of the one you love? What are your thoughts on these two men as they relate to this fundamental issue?

NS: Well, one is a little more accepted the law (laughs) and humanity. With Stan, he really loses his mind, he acts totally out of himself and becomes violent with a psychotic break. With Billy, I think he is more of the everyman in that he deals with it in a way most people can relate to by suffering the loss, moving through it, and feeling it. In that way, he is the classic hero or everyman in the movie. I think everyone can relate to the thoughts that Stan has, those fleeting thoughts of violence but Stan actually acts on them and that’s what separates him from most others.

To learn more, go to www.kalamitymovie.com