“There is no better vampire hunter than Edgar Frog, and no better team than the Frog Brothers.” – Corey Feldman
My two favorite characters from Lost Boys have always been the Frog brother, Edgar and Alan, respectively played by Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander. So it was fun to get a moment with both Frogs to talk about the newest installment to the Lost Boys series, Lost Boys: The Thirst (my review here).
ME: So had you guys been keeping in touch over the years, or was this film a big reunion?
JAMISON: Corey and I have been in touch a bunch. I keep in touch with a lot of the Lost Boys guys; we do a lot of conventions throughout the country, here and there. So we were in touch and we continued to be friends, but being on screen together again was really awesome, being back as the Frog brothers, I had such a blast.
M: You bring up the conventions. I gotta awesome when you guys would get together the topic of a sequel to the first film would come up a lot.
COREY: I would say out of all the films I have done, the two that would come back over and over, whether it be a rumor or whether it would be pop culture references, or whatever, the two films that people always want to hear about is The Lost Boys and The Goonies. And that’s been going on for quite some time. Back when Corey Haim and I did the premiere of the original Lost Boys on DVD at Comic-Com, about five years ago, of course that was the number one question at the forefront of everyone’s minds: will there be a sequel. And, you know, it was always like Goonies; well it’s up to the studio and we’ll see what happens. But when they came to me original with the idea for the first sequel, I have to say that when I saw the script I was kind of disheartened. I didn’t think it had a very strong potential. One of the things that was most troublesome about it, to me, was that it didn’t acknowledge the return of any of those characters. Originally the script for the original sequel was based on just a cameo for my character, and didn’t involve the other characters. So that was one of the things I kind of put my foot down on, and said “Look, I don’t really want to get engaged in this film if it doesn’t acknowledge and re-incorporate both my brother, Alan Frog, and Corey Haim’s character, cause I think that’s what the fans really want to see. And I think that would be a severe let down to do it any other way. So after literally putting it in my contract, eventually got those characters back, but in a very small way. And I think that everybody realized we were all on point, when the reviews came in for The Tribe, and the number one thing everybody said was, “you know the movie was good, but what we really want to see are more Frog brothers.” And I think that kind of led us to the open ended invitation to do the follow up.
M: I saw the newest film as less of a sequel to Lost Boys, and more as the beginning of a whole different franchise about the Frog Brothers. Is that something you were angling for?
J: Yeah, from not too long after the first movie came out, I remember the director, Joel Schumacher, running into him a couple times, and he was always a big advocate for the Frog brothers. So I think there was some talk of that even early on. So that’s what was exciting about The Thirst, it was like we finally got the chance to begin to realize that. I agree, I think there is a lot of potential there. I had a really good time with it, and it looks like the fans are feeling the same way.
C: Things is, after we finished the first film, there were plans made and scripts developed for a sequel back at that time, and I remember one of the early scripts included the idea of having the Frog brothers land in Washington, DC, and going after political vampires. Just a small idea like that was something that later blossomed in the comic book series, with the comic books being a way to sew the thread between the films [The Tribe and The Thirst], we used that as a bit of a template for where we went with this film. And if you’ve seen the film you know that at the beginning of the film we start off explaining some of this backstory in Washington DC. So it actually still involves a lot of ideas that began around the first film.
M: Corey I gotta ask you about your kooky performance as Edgar. What was the decision process behind creating this take adult Edgar?
C: I looked it like – when we first met the Frog brothers they had all this bravado. They were kinda of larger than life action heroes in their minds. But at the end of the day when they had to face off with an actual living breathing vampire they kind of flustered, floundered and melted away. Because they were just teenagers who worked at a comic store and they held knowledge, but nothing to back that up. Now I had put it in the perspective of: this is a guy who, 25 years later, has made it his entire life to become a vampire hunter. He’s been in god knows how many hand-to-hand battles at this point, he’s certainly had his shares of victories and disappointments, which brought him to where he is today. He’s a lone soldier and has lost everything and everyone that is near and dear to him. He’s been discouraged, disenchanted, disconnected, and any other “dis” words you can think of. He’s lost his luster for life. He’s for the most part hung up his stake. So, number 1, from a personal perspective, I was actually encountering a lot of personal experiences at the time we shot this; I had just gone through a divorce, I had lost many important people in my life, in a short period of time. I decided to take all that sorrow and remorse I was feeling at the time.
J: It’s really true what Corey is saying. We would see a dark cloud coming and we’d say, “That must be Corey on set.”
M: All that said, I was actually trying to get at how funny your Edgar performance is in the movie. A lot of the performance seems to surround Edgar’s signature grunt, almost like a catch-phrase. A catch grunt. Edgar’s not all storm clouds.
C: Why thank you. That’s the dry humor. I’ve always been involved with the writing of the character. The Frog brothers have always got to have a tongue and cheek approach. They can never take themselves too seriously. That’s part of what makes it fun. Certainly things like, [the line] “Who ordered the stake?” have come because we know this is something the fans connect to. They like having the fourth wall broken, to some extent, and having a voice that interprets their perspective as a viewer. And I think that sometimes Edgar, as a character, lends himself to being the voice.
M: Jameson, Corey had a whole previous movie to work on his character. How was it for you jumping back into Alan after all these years?
J: It definitely had its challenges. I had a little blip of working with the Alan character in The Tribe [deleted alternate ending], but that was pretty quick and I was under a lot of make-up. But it had been 25 years and there were definitely some challenges. Corey and I talked about it a lot, and one of the main things driving me was that, for Alan, after a lifetime of fighting vampires and hating vampires, then all of a sudden to be a vampire, to have to deal with that, that conflict… that’s what was driving me with the character. Alan Frog and Edgar Frog and different types of Frogs. Even though in the first movie we were that same sort of tough, paramilitary group, we had our own different takes on it. I wanted to have my own unique version of what happened to Alan over this 25 years.
Starting October 21 at the San Diego House of Blues, Feldman will be touring with his band, Truth Movement, as part of the Lost Boys Ball. The Ball will feature a screening of The Lost Boys as well as a costume party and sneak peek at The Thirst. Info can be found on Feldman’s website.