By Gill Pringle
“When I first got it, it wasn’t the whole thing,” actor, John Gallagher Jr., tells FilmInk of receiving the script for the highly secretive, J.J. Abrams-produced genre flick, 10 Cloverfield Lane, which has been enigmatically linked to the 2008 found-footage alien flick, Cloverfield. “It was up until a certain point. And then I got another script, which was the rest of it. So right from the beginning, I was aware that there was a bit of secrecy going on! And of course, J.J and [his production company] Bad Robot are big fans of the ‘less is more’ brand of advertising, so that you go and see a movie, and there’s still room for surprise. Nowadays, it’s really hard to do that. By the time that you get into the theatre, you’ve almost seen the whole movie, through various trailers and clips that get shared. I love that J.J has a real passion, and is committed to that idea of making sure that there’s still some fun, and surprise, when you go to a movie. That’s awesome. I’m all for that. I love it!”
Though the official plot of the film (and its actual connections to Cloverfield) remains buried under several layers of media-baiting obfuscation, it’s known that 10 Cloverfield Lane is a tale of claustrophobia, mistrust, deception, and survival. It stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Death Proof, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Alex Of Venice, Smashed) as Michelle, who wakes from a car accident to find herself in the basement bunker of a house belonging to John Goodman’s Howard Stambler, an eccentric survivalist who says that he’s saved her from a chemical attack that has left the Earth’s surface uninhabitable. This unlikely pair is joined by John Gallagher Jr., whose role remains enticingly unclear.
Speaking to the actor – best known for the acclaimed indie, Short Term 12 (starring Oscar winner, Brie Larson) and TV’s The Newsroom – after seeing just twenty minutes of footage from the film, we’re informed that the information passed out in the film will be drip-fed to the audience in a similar manner to the way that press has been kept in the dark about the film before its release. “I love movies that don’t tell you everything,” Gallagher says. “The information being given out constantly turns things on their head. I’d constantly be like, ‘Wait a minute, who do I actually trust here?’ This movie plays with that. It plays on that feeling of being trapped with strangers, and being like, ‘Well, I don’t know these people. Who is telling the truth? Who is looking out for me, and who wants to do me harm?’ This movie does a great job of keeping that tension alive. That’s the way that the script played, and I was drawn to that. I think we pulled it off – the audience can never really relax. They always have to be on the edge of their seat a little bit, paying attention. Who’s the good guy? Who’s the bad guy? What’s going to happen here? Where is this going?”
Though 10 Cloverfield Lane is now somewhat synonymous with its powerhouse producer, J.J. Abrams (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Trek, Mission: Impossible III), Gallagher is quick to sing the praises of its director, Dan Trachtenberg, who’d previously helmed a couple of impressive shorts. “Dan was amazing,” says the actor. “I can’t wait to see what else he does, because he is a burgeoning visionary. He has very, very clear, good ideas. He’s a total film scholar. He’s seen so many movies, and on top of that, he’s one of the nicest people! He’s so great, and sweet. I like movie making when it’s fun and collaborative, and I like a good vibe on set, and Dan is the master of that. He never once lost his cool. He was always really positive, and he was always there to laugh with you and tell a joke. But he also wants to make a good movie, because he loves going to see movies. That’s the way that it is for me as well. For someone who loves movies so much, I like to make movies that I myself would want to go see. Dan does that really, really well.”
If lots of other people want to see10 Cloverfield Lane as well, Gallagher could find himself with a whole new following. The son of musician parents, Gallagher is a musician himself, and also has an impressive list of stage credits (Jerusalem, Farragut North, American Idiot) to his name. A true multitasker, Gallagher’s creative urges came into play early. “I realised from a very early age that I wasn’t going to make it doing anything other than pursuing something artistic,” he says. “I was a bad student. I was bad at maths. I was bad at science. But I was obsessed with movies and plays and music. That was what I loved, and my parents were thankfully very supportive of that. They helped me get involved in acting from an early age, which is great, because I don’t know what else I would do without the arts. I would be lost!”
Was there an epiphany moment, when Gallagher definitively knew that’s what he wanted to do? “Gosh, I don’t know,” he replies. “It wasn’t so much like one big moment…it’s more like it came in waves, and it was more gradual. It started out as me just being a really little kid and loving movies. I didn’t even know what movies were…I just knew that I was obsessed with them. I’d watch them over and over again, and then once I started to put two and two together, it was like, ‘Oh, wait a minute, so these people are actors, and they do other movies! This is how they make their living. And once I started seeing how that worked, I was like, ‘I want to do that!’ But it mainly comes from a love of storytelling. I love storytelling, whatever the form is…whether it’s writing or music or through acting, or through filmmaking. So getting involved in that at an early age came from that slow, gradual awareness.”
Unlike so many of his acting colleagues, Gallagher has been working pretty much non-stop – both on stage and on screen – since he first pursued acting in earnest. He hasn’t even had to wait tables or grind coffee to make ends meet. “Not really,” he smiles. “I’ve been really, really lucky since I moved to New York about twelve years ago. I was about eighteen-years-old when I moved there to do an off-Broadway play, and I haven’t really had to get a ‘day job.’ I did some catering for an event at a school in Brooklyn once, and I was terrible. They tried to put me behind the bar, and I think I sprayed Seltzer all over somebody’s expensive coat, and then they put me out on the floor, and I broke a glass. I thought, ‘The acting stuff better work out, because if it doesn’t, who knows what I’ll do?’”
10 Cloverfield Lane is released in cinemas on March 10.
