INTO THE STORM
Directed by: Steven Quale
Starring: Richard Armitage (as Gary Morris), Sarah Wayne Callies (as Allison Stone), Max Deacon (as Donnie Morris), Nathan Kress (as Trey Morris), Matt Walsh (as Pete), Alycia Debnam-Carey (as Kaitlyn), Arlen Escarpeta (as Daryl), Jeremy Sumpter (as Jacob), Kyle Davis (as Donk), and Jon Reep (as Reevis)
Plot: In the span of just a few hours, the city of Silverton is ravaged by an unprecedented onslaught of the most furious twisters they’ve ever seen. The entire town is at the mercy of the erratic and deadly cyclones, even as storm trackers predict the worst is yet to come. Most people seek shelter, while others run toward the vortex, testing how far a storm chaser will go for that once-in-a-lifetime shot. Told through the eyes and lenses of professional storm chasers, thrill-seeking amateurs, and courageous townspeople, “Into the Storm” throws you directly into the eye of the storm to experience Mother Nature at her most extreme. (www.intothestormmvoie.com)
Our team here at TheYoungFolks.com was recently given the chance to sit down with the director and cast of this weekend’s natural disaster film. Instead of reporting these interviews in the standard question and answer format, I decided to do something different with it. As a heads up, this was my first time doing interviews. Much like that other big “first time”- you know what I’m talking about – the experience was exciting and scary and ‘do-we-make-eye-contact’ awkward, sometimes all at once. That being said, let’s jump in.
Part 1: The Idiot and the Daredevil (Their words, not mine)
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The first group of cast members to walk into the room were Jon Reep and Kyle Davis, the idiot and the daredevil respectively. Which really is a fitting title as the two play stereotypical country hicks chasing after this deadly storm in an attempt to get famous on YouTube. Davis himself started the interview by asking where we (the other interviewers and I) were all from. Keeping in mind that this was my first time, I answered with my hometown. I’d only realized I’d made a fool of myself when the rest of the press responded with their websites. So there was some trouble getting started. Yes, there is a parallel there.
Q: Have either of you ever been through a storm of this caliber?
Jon: Yeah, actually, I’ve been through a couple hurricanes. I’m from North Carolina originally and we get our fair share of hurricanes coming through there. I think I’ve been through three of them. And one time, our parking lot was a river. To this date, my roommate still has no idea where his car is.
*Cue laugh break*
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Kyle: Well, I grew up in LA so I went through a lot of earthquakes and in Arizona I went through a lot of monsoons and floods. And as for the earthquakes, I’ve been through a lot of the big ones, Yucca Valley, Northridge. Some of our house actually broke apart in the Yucca Valley one and Northridge left my sister’s apartment basically in shambles. I remember going to school while it was happening and the ground started to shake and smashed my car against the side (of the median) and it was pretty crazy. But no tornados though.
Well, that’s alright Kyle, I’d say the natural disasters you’ve experienced have been sufficiently traumatizing for this lifetime. And as for mentioning monsoons in Arizona, I did a bit of a mental double take there. After doing some research, it turns out that shifting winds and desert air pressure cause that state to get some seriously hormonal storms.
From there, we moved onto having gigantic CGI tornados as co-stars.
Q: So when you were making this movie, did they do that thing where they hold a little blue ball in the sky and say that’s where you’re looking?
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Jon: They did for some people, but not for us.
Kyle: They’d basically say…
Jon: “That’s where the tornado is,” and they’d point to the window of a building.
Yes, they do finish each other’s sentences. Watch out Hans and Anna, you’ve got some competition.
Kyle: We didn’t really do any green screen. Technology has progressed a lot. You don’t really need a lot of green screen stuff. But Steve (the director) would tell us, “Alright, this is going to be the big tornado, this is going to be the little tornado.” Steve actually created this thing called a prefib, which is like an animation for you.
Don’t know what a prefib is? Don’t feel bad; no one in the room did either.
Q: A pre-what?
Kyle: A prefib. I don’t really know the spelling.
Jon: Don’t quote us on this. It could be a total lie.
Kyle: But he created like a five minute long animation of what the tornado would be so we could get it in our minds and it wouldn’t just be like, “Oh, yeah, a tornado over there.”
And once the answer is out, it’s a race to see which press can talk the quickest and the loudest to get the next question in. Just picture us as the cast of The Hunger Games sprinting towards the cornucopia. It’s the older press who play like the ruthless district tributes who have been training their whole lives for this. Me on the other hand, I was Peeta…
Q: What do you think the appeal is to a movie like this?
Jon: I mean, people really enjoy watching death and destruction. If you go on YouTube or you Google something and find a video of something terrible happening, you don’t really want to watch it but you do, and then you end up watching more that come up.
Kyle: That’s why people call things a train wreck. You can’t not watch a train wreck.
Jon: And there’s always gonna be natural disasters in our world. This is real stuff that happens. It’s not like the zombie apocalypse where you’re like “Oh, that’s cute, but that will never happen.” This shit happens.
Speaking of shit, let’s move on to how Kyle Davis ended up swallowing loads of cat shit.
Q: Did anyone get hurt filming this movie?
Kyle: I didn’t get hurt per se, but I did get sick. We were shooting the scene where the quad jumps the flaming pool, that was the stunt guy of course, but once he was already in the water, they put me in there. And then they started just dumping buckets of water on me. And this area we were in, I don’t know if the fucking lady was a cat hoarder but there was tons of cat shit on the property. So they were just picking up buckets of this stuff and dumping it on my face and I’m getting it all in my mouth and for the next five days I was sick as a dog in my hotel room.
That’s right. Next time something shitty happen to you on the job, remember that you didn’t have to literally drink shit. Literally. Drink. Shit.
And I’ll wrap up this portion of the interviews with Davis and Reep’s take on their characters as compared to themselves. Here’s where that semi-insulting title plays in.
Me: So both Donk and Reep are serious risk takers – was there any point during filming where you were like, “Man, what are these guys doing?”
Jon: Yeah, well, they’re idiots. They don’t think things through. They’re just trying to get famous on YouTube. And they’re just trying to get laid.
*Cue laughter*
Note: Neither of their characters ever mentioned getting laid. This is a PG-13 flick after all.
Jon: And then we see these professional tornado chasers come through town and so we think, “Well, let’s chase them,” so we call ourselves Tornado Hunterz. With a Z.
Kyle: We don’t think about the danger at all, we think about the girl.
Jon: In real life, he’s a daredevil. (Referring to Davis, of course).
Kyle: I was a skateboarder and I was kind of a bad kid. I’d get in lots of trouble jumping off things, doing flips off cliffs, so when I saw this character I thought, “Oh, that’s sweet,” but I need a stunt double now cause I’m old.
Jon: And I’m a comedian and I’ve got a couple viral videos on YouTube that have millions of hits. There’s one where I’m playing a drunk cop who pulls a guy over and teaches him how to pass a sobriety test because he’s just drunk and bored and it’s got like 2 million hits because people think it’s real. So I’ve got a little bit of experience in this kind of stuff but this guy is a daredevil. He’s got dead body parts inside of him.
And for your viewing pleasure, I’ll link that video mentioned above right here:
I chuckled. Maybe you will too.
Davis: I’ve had spinal chord surgery, ACL surgery, and three eye surgeries because I’m blind in my right eye. I was beat up by seven guys when I was 17. I had my face smashed in and I’m blind in my left eye now. That’s how I actually became an actor.
[tps_footer]Click NEXT for our interview with The Stormchasers[/tps_footer]
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