Quint over at AICN had a very interesting chat with Paul Giamatti yesterday. For those who don’t know, Giamatti’s a huge Don Coscarelli fan (as should every living person be) and has recently brought his production company into play to help produce Bubba Nosferatu. The last we heard of the prequel to Bubba Ho-Tep was that Bruce Campbell wasn’t interested in reprising his role as Elvis, something that doesn’t make sense to most people familiar with his filmography.
“Every effort was made by us, he just didn’t want to do it and he was
cool about it.” says Giamatti. “He just didn’t want to do it, which is
a bummer, because part of the reason I love that movie is him… a big
part of it. He’s fantastic and I’ve always loved him. I’m a big fan of
his, but he didn’t want to do it, which is totally cool.”
This led to a search for the right guy to fill the sequined jumpsuit… and their thinking led around to Ron Perlman. Cause who else could do the role so well and satiate fanboys at the same time?
Giamatti will be performing in the film as Col. Parker (Elvis’ manager). What’s all that Nosferatu stuff about, though?
“It’s got a lot of stuff about Col. Parker being responsible for a lot of what happened to Elvis and kind of literally making him a vampire in some ways, you know? A kind of a blood sucker… It plays on a lot of things, this movie, in a great way and it’s got Sitting Bull in it and there’s a peyote trip in it that is amazing and it’s just a big leap beyond the other movie. It’s ten times more insane and bizarre and it’s great and hilarious, too. It’s funnier than the other one is even. It still ends up being this great character study of this Elvis guy.”
Can’t say how pleased I am to hear this news. Next job- convince someone to pump some money into Phantasm 5 already! Angus Scrimm ain’t getting any younger. Check out the full interview with Giamatti right here.