Our Very Own Jiminy Cricket Interviews Ernie Hudson!
Jonathan here. I wanted to introduce you guys to our newest writer… Mr. James Harraghy. Or for those of you who are avid forum members: Jiminy Cricket. Jiminy contacted me over Facebook about a week and a half ago offering to do some interviews at a local New Zealand con over this past weekend. As far as I’m concerned, the more of this experience called Geekscape that you guys are involved in the better. We’re a community and it only grows when community members step forward and “geek out” publicly.
James was a little nervous going into this interview with Ghostbusters and Dragon Ball Z star Ernie Hudson but I think we can all agree that he knocked it out of the park. Check it out. Our little forum member has all grown up in the Geekscape community. Show him some love. This is a fun read!
J: So let me start off with the first question I’m required to ask; Is it true that you are afraid of no ghosts?
E: It IS true that I am afraid of no ghosts.
J: Okay, you did voicework for the videogame of Ghostbusters, right? Or have you not recorded that yet?
E: Yeah we finished it, I think in May, we finished the videogame. I thought they were gonna release it this fall but it got pushed back.
J: Yeah it got cancelled, apparently.
E: Yeah, so you know I’m sure eventually it’ll come out but I hear it’s pretty good. They got some new technology in it. My son came with me and played the game and he says it’s pretty good, so-
J: Did you get a chance to play the game?
E: No, I’m not a gamer, man! I play Tetris and that’s about it for me. I never got past Tetris. But I’ll take his word, you know. ‘Cause the first one we did was like right after Ghostbusters and, uh…And it was really bad (laughs). And people still remember how bad it was, my kids definitely remember. But this one, hopefully it’ll be good.
J: Since you’ve done the voicework, do you think it stays true to the kind of dialogue that was in the movies?
E: Oh yeah! In fact, Harold Ramis and Danny Ackroyd, who wrote the two Ghosbusters movies, wrote the script for the videogame. And it’s a huge script. It’s like 600 pages and it stays very, very true. And doing it, it was like returning to Ghostbusters. I mean at one point we were talking about naming it Ghostbusters 3. We thought we’d never get another movie made, but now I hear Bill Murray, who was always the hold-off, has agreed to do another movie, WANTS to do another movie, so we may in fact be doing another actual movie, but the videogame is very, very true to [the movie]. I mean the visuals, it’s almost like being inside the movie. It’s really kinda cool.
J: So you can’t really tell us anything about the third movie?
E: Nothing more than I was in Europe, me and my youngest son were doing a tour of Europe about a month or so ago, and it first came out that Harold Ramis was working with, I think Apatow on the script so fans started coming up and asking me about it. Since then I’ve gotten nothing official, but I saw in an interview that Bill Murray said that he was wanting to do it and I saw an interview where Danny, and also Harold. I’ve known Danny and Harold have been wanting to do it for a long time, so it looks like it’s going to happen. I haven’t heard anything official from the studio and I’m making a big assumption that, if it happens, I’ll be involved in it, so you know, that would be cool. I’m hoping so, but you never know, this is Hollywood so I never take anything for granted.
J: So it’s safe to say that you’d reprise your role if you were asked to?
E: Yeah! You know, they pay me well, I want to get paid. I can’t see a reason why they wouldn’t want to ask me but, once again, it’s Hollywood so they never cease to throw new curves.
J: You’re in the new Dragonball Z movie, right?
E: Yeah
J: So what was it like filming that? I mean it’s quite a bit different than anything else you’ve done.
E: Yeah, it was a little bit different than Ghostbusters and also a very different character. I thought when I first went in to meet with them that I had a real shot at playing Lord Piccolo, which I really wanted to play. Once that didn’t work out, because they wanted to go a different way with the character, they asked me if I would do this character who’s name is Seapoo Norse (??) [IMDB has him listed as Master Mutaito] but I’ve seen stuff on the internet calling the character something else so they might have changed it, but it was cool. I play the part of a Buddhist priest who is, you know, very wise and my head is shaved. My eyebrows and goatee are, you know, very…white. So it was a little [weird] but it was a cool job, you know, I don’t do a whole lot in the movie, but what I do is fine.
J: One thing I saw you were working on is Machete Joe…?
E: (laughs) Oh yeah, a friend of mine asked me to do the movie, it’s a horror movie and I haven’t done many horror movies but I kind of did it as a favor to him, I have no idea. He had no money, I don’t know WHAT it’s gonna look like but I gave my word I would do it, so, I did.
J: Well I think you’d be pretty good at acting scared. I mean in Ghostbusters 2, when you get hit by the ghost train? You looked pretty scared there.
E: Ha, oh yeah. Ivan Reitman described the scene as like, A REAL train comes down the track and runs over me. So I played it that way, like there was a huge train that hit me. When I saw the movie I was like “What!?” it was like a little phantom train! So I always thought I overdid the moment but I think, for the humor, maybe it’s best that I did play it much more serious.
J: Yeah, that was hilarious. So, it’s a long flight to get here, obviously…
E: Yeah! Yeah, 13 hours, non-stop.
J: Non stop?
E: Yeah
J: Wow, so what did you do to pass the time?
E: Wow, I don’t know. It was hard. I mean when I left it was at night and you get there in the morning. I mean New Zealand to California, there’s a 4 hour difference but on a different day. So in other words when it’s 12 o’clock here it’s 4 o’clock there, the next day. Sorry, the day before. Like over there now it’s actually Saturday. To leave at night and arrive in the morning made it a little bit better. But uh, I’m writing a script, a play, that hopefully will be done at the North Boles Reparatory (?) Theatre and so I’m in the middle of doing a re-write now and I’ll use that time well but it’s hard to write on a plane, or do anything. It’s just big, uncomfortable and liberal (??), you know?
J: What’s the play called so we can look out for it?
E: Well right now it’s called “My Kingdom Come”, but I’m not totally set on that. It’s actually based on a shorter play I wrote about 30 years ago when I was in college. So we’re sort of expanding it and making it full length so we’ll see. Hopefully it’ll be something I feel good about. Actually, if it goes well, and I hope it does, then we’re making a movie out of it, so yeah.
J: Well, I hope that gets made, we’ve got a lot of fans of yours at the site so they’ll be glad to hear that.
E: Yeah, actually I’m at a point where I don’t want to disappoint the fans. A lot of the stuff I’m being asked to do by the studios just isn’t really worthy. I want to be able to stand behind the work and what I do, but what I’m finding is it’s really gonna require me stepping up and just taking a lot more charge of the work. Either in writing it or creating or producing or whatever, ’cause some of the stuff, you know, is just silly.
J: So you’ve been doing these conventions for a long time now, right?
E: Yeah, I mean the first one I did was probably 3, 4 years ago. Not a REAL long time, I didn’t do them back when we did Ghostbusters. I’d been asked but I really couldn’t imagine it. What I found though, is it’s a wonderful place to meet the fans, you know, it’s a wonderful way to have time to sit, people come up, you can talk, they can tell you a story and what they really thought of a movie. In Hollywood, most people never get outside of, well, Hollywood. So they don’t really know what’s going on with their fans. I mean the conversations I have here I could never have on the street because people come up on the street and you’re automatically cautious and always just try to end it, but here you’ve got no place to go and when they come up it’s kinda cool.
J: So with you being at these things for, 3 or 4 years is it?
E: Yeah.
J: Right, so do you think you’ve kind of taken in any of the geeky things that everyone’s into here?
E: Yeah, some of the stuff is interesting to see because I do a variety, my career has never really been just in one genre. I’ve done some action stuff, some comedy stuff, some dramatic stuff. I’ve done a little bit of everything.
J: Yeah, Jonathan, the guy who runs the site, he was really trying to get me to watch Leviathan…
E: Oh yeah, Leviathan. We thought that would be a bigger film than it turned out to be but I had a great time working on it, it’s one of my favourite films and yeah, so I’ve done some sci-fi and stuff, Leviathan being one and so I get invited to a lot of different kinds of conventions and it’s interesting to see how fans are really very, very loyal. I don’t think Hollywood really gives them credit. They’re finally catching on now but I don’t think Hollywood really gives people credit for really supporting and really they’re worthy of better than what Hollywood has been turning out. Hollywood really kind of can’t win with stories. I think they think they can buy everybody off with action and they’ll be fine.
J: Yeah, but with things like comic book movies, for example, they’re really stepping up the game and it’s getting a lot better.
E: Yeah, I mean ’cause it’s based on characters. I mean comics are really character driven and heavily driven by the character’s situations. So it’s not just about the explosions. You get the explosions, you get all the action stuff but it’s still about the person so that’s very cool.
J: Yeah, I mean like Iron Man and Dark Knight were amazing
E: I agree, yeah. Great.
J: So have you seen any movies recently that you could maybe reccommend to our audience?
E: Uhhh any movies recently that I recommend. I can’t remember anything I saw recently. God I don’t remember. I mean I saw those two movies but uh, nothing comes to mind.
J: That’s cool. Well, that’s pretty much all the questions I’ve got.
E: Great.
J: Thanks very much. It was nice to meet you.
E: Thanks for giving me your time. Good luck to you guys.
