WAMG Interview: Marlon Wayans – Star and Writer of A HAUNTED HOUSE 2

Actor/writer Marlon Wayans is best known for his frequent collaborations with his older brothers Keenan, Damon, and Shawn in successful comedies such as SCARY MOVIE, WHITE CHICKS (where he dressed as a Caucasian female), and LITTLE MAN (as a baby with Marlon Wayan’s head) and The Wayans Bros TV show. Marlon has had the opportunity to flex his acting chops in roles for more acclaimed directors such as Darren Aranofsky in REQUIEM FOR A DREAM and the Cohen Brothers in THE LADY KILLERS. He’s even tried his hand at action stardom with GI JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA.  Last year Wayans wrote, produced, and starred in the spoof  A HAUNTED HOUSE which cost just 2 ½  million dollars and grossed over 40 million. A HAUNTED HOUSE 2 opens nationwide this Friday, April 18^th. Wayans was in St. Louis promoting the sequel and hosted a screening here on March 16th. I caught up with the star the next morning at the Four Seasons Hotel in downtown St. Louis to discuss the new film as well as his past career and future projects, including his dream of playing Richard Pryor.

Representing We Are Movie Geeks, I participated, along with several other film journalists, in a round table interview with Marlon Wayans. Here are highlights of that interview:

Interview conducted March 17th 2014

Q: Having fun in St. Louis? Been here before?

MW: Yeah, I might have come here back when my brothers performed here maybe twenty years ago. It’s a really cool city. I didn’t know how nice it was. The food is good, the ballpark is nice, down by the river here people are getting drunk, so it’s nice. I wanna set up a gig here and do some stand-up.

Q: It was said you were going to play Robin in a Tim Burton movie and you opted not to.

MW: No, I didn’t opt not to. It was really sad. That was a great experience. I got the role but told my agent I didn’t want to get stuck playing Robin in too many movies, so they got me the option to do just one movie. That was stupid, I should have signed for twelve! What was wrong with me? Tim Burton said they would be introducing Penguin and Catwoman and that was too many characters and they just wanted to give Batman and Robin their own movie, and that would be the next one. Then they changed directors to Joel Schumaker and then he said Chris O’Donnel would have the part. That prepared for when they wrote me out of G.I. JOE 2. That stuff just happens in Hollywood sometimes. Everything happens for a reason.

Q: Your new film HAUNTED HOUSE 2 only cost 3 million dollars and I assume most of that went to special effects and stuff like that. Where there a back end deal?

MW: Yes, nobody got paid. My trailer was like a guest room in the house. It’s where all the grips went to the bathroom. It’s grueling because it’s not your typically Hollywood experience but I’m just glad to get a movie made. It’s such a blessing to get one made especially in this climate. I was always excited every day just to be making a movie. Lunch sucked but I was making a movie!

Q: You’re so good in REQUIEM FOR A DREAM. Your costar in that movie, Jared Leto, just won an Oscar…

MW: Am I jealous? Fuck Yeah!

Q: Do you keep up with him?

MW: No, he’s in a band and stuff. He’s a weird dude, Jared, you never know what character he’s playing. But REQUIEM FOR A DREAM was a great experience, grueling but fun. We did a lot of research together, walked the streets, found out what it was like to buy drugs. Darren Aronofsky damn near threw a needle in my arm, but working with a director hands-on like Darren was great. I felt like a student learning about filmmaking, not just as an actor but as a director. Darren walks you through what his angles are and things like that. You really get absorbed in his world. I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time and be in his movie.

Q: Was that your first dramatic role?

MW: No, I did a PSA once for the United Negro College Fund. I went to a performance arts high school for dramatic arts. Omar Epps, who’s my best friend to this day, and I were classmates together so that experience always stays with me. Hopefully I’ll get to do a dramatic film about comedy. I really want to do the Richard Pryor story.

Q: Does the Richard Pryor story exist? What’s the status on that project?

MW: Yes, it’s an awesome script. Lee Daniels is tapped as director. I got it when it was Bill Condon. We had an amazing screen test that we did together. It’s a lot of work preparing to do these types of things. In Hollywood, things that are supposed to happened often don’t. So Lee Daniels is now directing and things might change. I understand directors have a choice on who they pick for these kinds of things and I’m going to have to respect that. I started doing stand-up because of Richard Pryor three years ago, and if I end up not playing the role I know that the preparation I did trying to become Pryor was me playing a great and now I want to be a great and that’s why I travel the country doing stand-up because I love it.

Q: Did you ever meet Pryor?

MW: I did. I met him when he was in a wheelchair at the Comedy Store. He was doing stand-up in the wheelchair which I thought was the bravest, most beautiful thing I’d seen. All he talked about was his Multiple Sclerosis and how his body was acting a certain way and how his dick wouldn’t get hard and how he couldn’t drive a car and it was really funny – that was greatness.

Q: I’ve heard that writing parodies is difficult. What was that like for you?

MW: Everything. Parody and sketch are two of the hardest mediums to take on in comedy because everything  is a joke. The description of where you’re at, the description of the character, the dialog, the response from the other character, the action, the location, everything is a joke and you’re doing it for 110 pages  – throwing out thousands of jokes only to keep a hundred of which maybe ten will make it.

Q: You’re on all the time. Is that hard?

MW: I’m on in my sleep – you should see me.

Q: What’s with the dogs in HAUNTED HOUSE 2? You’re killing them in there

MW: They got us fake dogs. I really wanted to do something against cats but I’m allergic to them so we couldn’t. I have nothing against dogs. That dog I named Shilo, which is my kid’s dog’s name. He named him after Bard and Angelina’s kid Shilo, so I have with with Shilo.

Q: So is your kid worried about killing his dog?

MW: Every dog ever chased me when I was growing up in the projects. They used to call them “nigger-chasers”. They were big dogs like Rottweilers. In the ghetto they don’t have dogs, they have dinosaurs. They call them killer names like Rambo and Conan and they would chase me.

Q: In A HAUNTED HOUSE 2 you’re raping a doll

MW: I wasn’t raping her, she came on to me!

Q: Were you worried about splinters?

MW: Definitely not – I wore a condom …..for most of it. That was crazy though. We didn’t know where we were going with that. That’s like improv. Jaime Pressly was on the set that day and couldn’t believe we were really doing that! It was so foul and so raunchy but it’s god to be silly and to not care. I try to make me laugh and if I can do that, and I don’t laugh often, that means most people will laugh too.