Interview conducted by and copyright Edward Gross
There was a moment back in July at San Diego Comic-Con when the cast of Syfy’s Warehouse 13 had to cut their time in the press room short to get to their panel. The journalists present were bothered by the abrupt end to the session, but equally as annoyed was actor Eddie McClintock who stars in the show as agent Pete Latimer. In fact, he was moved to go to each table and apologize personally to the gathered journalists, suggesting that they contact his manager and promising one-on-ones with each of them.
On the one hand it was something he didn’t have to do, but on the other, it was exactly what he had to do. “It’s a matter of respect,” says McClintock matter of factly a couple of months later. “It felt a little disrespectful to me the way it was handled. You guys were in there to do your job and time should have been made to get to all of the tables. Besides that, I think it’s great to be that hand’s on with people. I work really hard at my job and the fact that people are interested in talking to me about my TV show, well that’s insane. It’s a dream come true for me. When I was a little kid growing up in Ohio, I never imagined that I’d be on a TV show and people would want to talk to me about it. I’m there to help the show, I’m there to promote it. I want it to stay on the air and I’m proud of it. I want to talk about it.”
Which he actually manages to squeeze in a decent amount of time to do throughout each season (the show’s fourth is currently airing on Monday nights on Syfy). What the actor has not really had a chance to address are the things that get his geek on; the passions that drive his real-world geekiness which don't seem so far removed from those of his on screen alter-ego.
On the show, Pete, who teams up with Myka Bering (Joanne Kelly) to help retrieve “artifacts” that threaten the world’s safety, is far from a traditional action hero. He goes for the laugh whenever he can, and it’s obvious that McClintock’s geekdom has bled through to the character in a major way.
"I still have all my MAD magazines, my Crazy magazines, my Cracked magazines," he enthuses. "I still have as many of my Hulk comics as I was able to keep. I still have all my football cards and my baseball cards. Back in Ohio, I was always into - and still am - B horror films like The Brain That Wouldn't Die. On Friday nights we had Big Chuck and Hoolihan, which would show those films."
A personal geek moment came for him recently when he was, as he says, trolling his Twitter account as he tends to do, when he noticed that the band Lords of Acid ("Music is still very important to me," he notes) was talking about Warehouse 13 on his Twitter account. Recalls McClintock, "He was, like, 'My friend's got me hooked on Warehouse 13.' So I just sent him a post and he wrote me back and said, 'Dude, I can't believe I'm writing with you on Twitter. I'm watching your show right now.' Chris Vrenner, his friend, is from Nine Inch Nails and Nine Inch Nails is one of my favorite bands. And this guy also works with a band called KMFDM, which was one of my favorite bands growing up. So I’ve been writing with him, telling him I want to get one of his songs on the air. He’s sending me a big package of Lord of Acid and KMFDM CDs and shirts and stuff."
Man the clichés, because McClintock absolutely sounds like the proverbial kid on Christmas as he continues with the things that drive him to geekdom come. "I love Stan Lee, King Kong and, like I said, The Hulk," he relays in rapid succession. "I still have Hulk posters framed around the house to the point where my wife is, like, 'Really? You're going to put the Hulk poster in the front room?'... And, hey, I got George Romero to give me a lithograph and he signed it for me. We had lunch together because we're trying to do another Dead story... Dawn of the Dead - that's something I'm geeky about. Sam Raimi's Evil Dead, Dawn of the Dead... I made George Romero hug me. I'm, like, 'I'm sorry, sir, you're going to have to hug me.' I think that was a pretty geeky moment for me. All of those things, I believe, quality for giving me some geek cred."
Which is all fine and good, but this might represent a good time to back up a bit. Eddie McClintock and George Romero are working on a new something of the Dead zombie film?
"Well, the script is being written," McClintock clarifies. "I think there's 90 pages of script at this point. I know that George is writing with his writing partner, and then my friend, Matt Berman, who's basically a son to George, is writing and they're going to combine ideas and figure it all out. We want to shoot this thing in March or April, so we'll see what happens. Now I'll be in it, but they may need to get funding with a bigger name, which I understand - I know how the business works and I'm okay with it. I just want to be a part of a George Romero film. We'll see how things go."
McClintock concurs with the notion that working on Warehouse 13 on a channel called Syfy, coming to Comic-Con, and meeting fans is genuinely a dream come true for him. "Totally," he exclaims. "I may have told you this one before, but one of my high school coaches took me down the hall one day, put his arm around my shoulders and he goes, 'You know, Eddie, college isn't for everybody. You ever thought about getting a job and working for the North Canton park system? They give you your own truck.'
"I just wasn't a candidate for high education," adds McClintock with a shrug. "I wasn't interested in school, so it appeared to my teachers and maybe my peers that maybe I was best suited working for the park system instead of going on to doing bigger and better things. Maybe that's what's driven me. When I got to college, I certainly didn't turn into some great student. It took me six years to get through college, but I became interested in chicks and partying and goofing around. It took me a while to realize that I should get my priorities in order."
And as he gets ready to head over to the Warehouse 13 set, it's obvious that everything worked out fine in the end. "It's so funny, because right now we're doing a noir episode," he says, "so we're in all '40s costumes. Last night I was driving an old '44 Ford. Our director and I looked at each last night and kind of laughed and said, 'We have the best job in the entire world.' I’m still having a great time. I get to run around with a ray gun, I get to save the world, I’m surrounded by these actors whose work I’ve admired for years. It just gets better and better for me."