Run With The Hunted is set to be released On Demand on Friday, June 26, and revolves around Oscar, a young boy who commits a noble murder and is forced to run away from his rural hometown, leaving behind his best friend, Loux. 15 years later, he has forgotten his past and become the leader of a band of lost children, and Loux takes it upon herself to find the boy who saved her life.
The legendary Ron Perlman stars in the movie alongside a superb cast which includes Michael Pitt, Sam Quartin, Mark Boone Junior, William Forsythe, and Dree Hemingway, and he was kind enough to recently sit down to discuss his role as Birdie in the film, not to mention being asked back to play Big Red in the Hellboy reboot and his interest in starring in a live-action Tangled movie.
As well as delving into his Run With The Hunted role, Ron also talks to us about whether he's planning a return to the comic book movie genre, and his upcoming role in blockbuster Monster Hunter.
Oh, and if that's not enough for you, Vertical Entertainment has also supplied us with an exclusive clip from the film which features a tense exchange between Birdie, Sway, and the young Oscar.
Hey Ron, how's it going today?
We've been waiting for you for two hours...where the f*ck have you been?
Oh man, please don't say that – you're gonna stress me out before we even get started! [Laughs]
No, no, actually, we were just getting ready to wait for you, but your timing is perfect.
Phew, that's okay then. So, I loved this film and was wondering, as an experienced actor, what was it like for you working with Run With The Hunted's young cast members?
Well, you're always working with a wide swathe of cast members ranging from kids to young adults to adults to...people like me: old farts and old timers. You basically are there to interact with their humanity regardless of what it is, who it is, what their age is, or what their life situation is. That has nothing to do with the job at hand which is to see what they're bringing and counteract it in a way that sheds light on what the director is looking for in the film.
One scene that really jumped out at me was the conversation in the car with Peaches which gave you the chance to really shed some light on Birdie's motivations and his view on life. What was that like to shoot and did you relish the chance to give him a little more emotional depth?
I really like characters that you cannot categorise because there's just too many facets or elements to them that are at odds with one another to say that they're one thing or another. I think those are the most interesting characters to watch on screen and certainly, from my point of view, the most interesting ones to play. I saw that particular scene as an opportunity to say, 'You know, as much as I'm running a business here and I'm kicking ass and I don't have time to tolerate indulgences of any kind or things that are going to take away from my bottom line, every once in a while, I have a fondness for some of the people I work with.' In this case, this conversation was a way for him to express that fondness, and I found that it humanised the guy so to not make him like this moustache twirling villain.
With a 15-year time-jump like the one we see here, what sort of challenges does that present to you as an actor to pick up with a character after so much time has passed?
For me, it was not nearly as much of a challenge as it was for the younger actors who had to straddle the fact there were sometimes two actors playing the same character. Those guys had to do all the heavy lifting of figuring out how to honour each other's work to the point where it seemed they were seamlessly one human. When you meet Birdie in the early going, he's already what he is. He's already fully formed, and so in the 15-year jump, there's not much that changes other than he maybe slows down a little bit. His worldview is the same, his thinking is the same, his modus operandi is the same, so there wasn't a great deal of real hard adjusting for me when it came to that 15-year gap.
Did you do a lot of research looking into the world of child exploitation Birdie runs, and how difficult do you find it as an actor to step into the shoes of someone like that?
The kind of a character this is, I felt it was completely up to me to figure out who he was and what his history was, and what informs the man you come to meet when you meet him on screen. So, no, the only research was me doing the work of figuring out his humanity and where he grew up and what made him the way he is, and how he formed the values that are represented in his actions. This is not one of those pictures where you've got to go do a lot of research and find the model for the character because it's somebody that actually existed. This is a made up character, so the imagination is where all the research happens.
You've worked with a lot of different filmmakers over the years, but can you talk us through your experience working with director John Swab on Run With The Hunted?
Well, he loved what he was doing! I thought he wrote a real interesting story, and was very enthusiastic about getting it on the screen. Getting a movie made is so hard. By the time you hit the set, you've pretty much had the snot beat out of you, so there's a kind of relief that comes with, 'Okay, we're actually doing this. We actually have a cast, a schedule, scenes we're going to shoot in a certain kind of order.' He was in a great mood because he had climbed all the big mountains and was there doing it. It was obviously a story that meant a great deal to him because he wrote it, and God only knows how long he took to do that. I found the guy who was just so enthusiastic and excited, engaged, and thrilled with watching you interpret what he had put on the page and bring life to it. It was a good experience.
On another note, in terms of comic book movie roles, have you ever met with Marvel or DC and are those something that would be of interest to you?
Uh, no. No, I basically have been so blessed with what has fallen out of the sky into my lap that I basically just wait to see what the Gods have intended for me next. I'm not really developing anything in that world.
I'm hoping to talk to Vinnie Jones soon about your movie The Big Ugly, so was wondering what you could tell our readers to expect from that one?
Vinnie Jones. Ron Perlman. Malcolm McDowell. C'mon. There's gonna be some testosterone blowing.
I actually got to watch it a few weeks ago, and loved it. It's a real kick-ass sort of film.
I loved it too. I loved working with Vinnie. He's the one who produced the film, and basically talked all of his friends into considering being in it. I'm just lucky enough to be on that list, and that's how I got involved. I love how it turned out, I loved the experience of working with Vinnie. We had known each other for years and years and years, but never worked with each other, so it was kind of a dream come true, and he's quite a bloke, as you might say!
Going back to Run With The Hunted, on a smaller budgeted film like this, what is the shooting schedule like and how difficult is that for you to handle?
Well, you don't have the time or money you do on a big film, so whenever you're working on one of these smaller films, you've gotta get it done and get a lot done every day and you're not going to be out of town working on it as long as you might if you were working on a huge studio film, so it's very concentrated, but whenever you go to work, it's all about how much enthusiasm you have for the world that's being depicted in the film, and how much you love the writing, and how eager you are to mix it up with the other actors once the cameras are rolling.
Having worked in television for such a long time, is it fun for you to be able to come on to a project like this and be able to get it done in a much shorter span?
Well, that and the fact I have an incredibly short concentration span which you can probably tell from this interview. [Laughs] I really like jobs that don't keep me out of my living room for very long.
Finally, with theaters still closed, are you looking forward to the day people can watch a movie like Run With The Hunted on the big screen, or are you a fan of the way films like this can be shared directly into people's homes?
I'm not sure there was ever a plan for a really huge theatrical release for Run With The Hunted. These smaller films seem to fare better on Video On Demand and that kind of thing where people find them in their own homes. I have another film coming out that demands a big theatrical release called Monster Hunter, and I'm just hoping things return to some semblance of normalcy where we can start filling theaters up with eager audience members and show them what we got.
Just before I let you go, what can we expect from you in Monster Hunter?
Just a lot of overacting as usual. A lot of chewing the scenery...it's just gonna be another one of those singular Ron Perlman performances, and I don't know what the [frick] that means. [Laughs]
Well, I think people love you for those, so I don't think that's a bad thing by any means!
Thank you, my friend, I appreciate that.
Run With The Hunted is available On Demand on Friday, June 26, 2020.