The Innkeepers: An Interview with Pat Healy
When one (aka: me) is sitting in on press conferences, one (me) gets to hear a lot of banal questions. How did you feel about this script, did you like your character, what did you relate to with your character, what was it like working with so-and-so, what’s coming up the pipe for you?
I suppose this is a sign of what people like to read about in their movie reviews and their companion-piece interviews. Personally, I’ve always found that stuff rather trite– with a few exceptions. If I’m reading an article about someone’s experience filming a ghost movie, I don’t want to hear about all the “spooky” things that went on on set. It’s filler, and it’s boring filler.
I want to know more about what’s going on, how people processed certain activities and how they view themes of the movie, more than how often the lights flickered in their hotel room or what got them into acting.
So I poke and I prod and I ask (often confusing) questions. Fortunately for me, when I sat down with The Innkeepers male lead, Pat Healy, he was willing to answer my (often bizarre) questions and do so with much thought.
I’ve had to take out some bits so as to remove spoilers, but there still are somewhat hinting sentences, so read at your own discretion.
AM: I found it really interesting, your character and Sara’s character seem to be almost the same person except at very distinct junctures where you actually had some notion of sexuality and where your character […], but you guys seemed so much the same person until those slight diversions kept happening.
PH: Yeah, I think that they’re two of the same type of people at different points of their life. He [Luke] is older and dropped out of college long ago and he’s there and, like many people that I’ve known that are just as talented if not more so than I am, has seemingly no ambition for whatever reason. She [Claire] is at this turning point where she’s just dropped out of school and he’s trying to guide her in a way to not take this stuff [ghost hunting] too seriously and to be careful and not make the mistakes that he made. He says to her, “You start thinking that these things are real and then you’re out there and you can never come back,” to that effect.
AM: Right.
PH: It must be because he’s been there himself and he’s older now and it’s coming from more of a place of cynicism. I think that those are the two sides of a person, like in “Paranormal Activity”: the early go-getter– the young person fresh out and excited about everything– and the hard-worn cynic who has been there and seen that there’s nothing there and really wants nothing to do with it anymore. It’s two very distinct stages of life of a person who has moved into the working class world with the dead end job.
AM: “The Innkeepers” had a lot of these little interesting moments and one of the ones that caught me off-guard was when they [Luke and Claire] were going down into the basement together and they were sitting and then […]. And I was just like… it was so unexpected for me.
PH: Yeah, that was like the diversion path you were talking about, which is that at certain parts of our life we choose to believe something, whether it’s a creation myth or religion or in ourselves and sometimes we get scared and we back off. I’ve been in those places where, in my life, I’ve had opportunities where, you know, I choked, and maybe it was because I had an impression in my mind that I was a choker. Now that I’ve stopped thinking that about myself, when I get to a place of opportunity for myself I seize it. Luke is a person who has given up on that. I think he sees some salvation or transformation in the form of this person that he really likes [Claire], and right before the scene that you’re talking about, that’s shattered.
AM: Right, it was kinda heart-breaking.
PH: After that, there’s really no reason for him to stay around anymore […]. That’s certainly from an actor’s point of view, reading the script and doing it, the sort of through-line that I was working from is that he’s doing it all for her and then he sees that’s not going to happen […].
AM: So, if you’re going off of a metaphor, which Ti [West] said a lot of the side characters are like metaphors, and he was going and looking at a future with her, a future in a certain way, where he was going and believing with her, and when it came to a crunch point […].
PH: It’s interesting. He’s operating under a complete delusion that she’s interested in him. During the movie, he moves away from this delusion into a harsh reality while she moves into this theoretical delusion of the supernatural. They sort of move away from each other. They have this nice camaraderie that is split apart by these ideas of things that are going on in those two people’s heads. I imagine Ti is an astute guy and there’s possibly some of his own experience in this.
AM: It’s funny, if you take that metaphor that she’s going forward with her belief in the supernatural and he’s going in reverse, her hopes and dreams and beliefs were the vehicle that forced her conclusion while Luke reached his own by staying cynical and not pursuing potential pathways which seems kind of counterculture.
PH: Yeah, I guess it is, though it certainly is not my personal philosophy. It may have been at one time and it might very well have been if I had chosen the path of least resistance in my life and not been ambitious in the way that I have been. It certainly has been a struggle to survive in this business and I could have done what some of my friends have done and taken a regular job and still live in wherever. So I can understand that in him and I can understand the philosophy in that it’s safer to stay that way, though it doesn’t necessarily make it better. He’s pretty shattered, pretty devasted in the end.
AM: So if it were up to you, if there was more of you in the character, you would have acted differently as Luke?
PH: Nobody really knows what they would do in that type of situation. I’d like to think that I’m the kinda person that would step up– and in times of crisis in my life I have surprised myself and been that person, so I’d like to think that I would be, but who knows? I’ve seen a rat in a subway before and hidden behind a girlfriend, you know? I just happen to be really frightened of rats– I have a phobia of them. I’d like to think in Luke’s situation that I’d help another person, but there are times when we surprise ourselves by how selfish and self-absorbed we are. In this case, I don’t really think there was anything he could have done.
In case the “picture break” didn’t alert you, the interview section of this article is over. We’re now moving along to where I reflect on my years as a high school football mascot.
One of the tag-lines of this movie is “A Horror Movie for the Minimum Wage”, which I think is terribly clever as it not only parodies the constant claim of “A *insert amazing thing here* for the modern age” line, but also touches upon not only the current economic “issues” the country has been having, but also brings us (or at least me back, if you guys aren’t going to join me in mental solidarity because you’re assholes) mentally back to that first job.
We’re told in high school that we need to determine Our Career. They give us personality tests to determine the field we’re “best suited for” and have us shadow someone in that field so we can see what Our Future can/will be like. We’re told to keep our grades up, to do community service, be on a sports team or in an academic club so we’re more attractive to colleges in our pursuit of Our Future.
And I’ve found that very few high school students actually know what they want to do as A Career through this “guidance”. (Note: generally speaking, if you’re a high school career guidance counselor, your own dreams certainly have fallen by the wayside and, therefore, you shouldn’t be guiding anyone.)
So those of us that are lost either go straight into the workforce and head into college, hoping the answer to The Career Question will show itself and suddenly we’ll have A Plan and Social Value. Our parents will finally be able to stop finding creative ways to tell their friends that their child has no direction in life but is doing really well in that basket-weaving class.
During The Innkeepers press conference, Ti West spoke on the design of Luke and Claire’s characters. “I’ve either had a minimum wage job or directed movies,[…] I have no intermediate skills. So if this [directing] doesn’t work out, then I have to go back to being a bus-boy or something. I’m sorta terrified of that. But I’m also very charmed by one’s weird insular work friends and being stuck in a job. It’s not digging ditches, but it’s probably not where one wants to be, […] so I worked very hard to make a charming ghost story and I thought that if I could make these characters relatable to myself and the people that I worked with, people would relate.”
We care about these characters because we, to a degree, understand them– whether we see ourselves as the charmingly aimless Claire or the fatalistic Luke. It makes the film that much more entertaining and that much more frightening when we see someone we connect with in potentially dangerous situations.
The Innkeepers is available On Demand and in select theaters on February 3rd.
