Subtitles by explosiveskull
I still think that it's accurate to say I've
murdered more people on film than any actor in history.
Unless somebody can dispute that, but I doubt it.
And if you do, I'll fucking kill you.
You know, I'm not sure why I enjoy horror
so much, but I really do and I always have.
People like to be scared when it's in
the safety of their own home or a theater.
They don't really have to take it with them,
but sometimes I think the most effective
horror movies are ones that you do
in fact take out of the theater in
your mind and it stays with you.
We don't address death.
And I remember thinking I was gonna
live forever when I was young too.
I think I can't believe I lived
through some of the adventures I had.
The horror movie makes us confront death.
It's one of the few places we do.
You certainly don't do it in America's Got Talent
or Dancing with the Stars or The Kardashians,
but you do deal with death in a horror movie.
And if you go to a horror movie, if you sit
in the dark with other people, there's a
collective catharsis that's in the air
and the energy in the the air.
It's a really great experience.
Kinda like riding a rollercoaster,
you know the big hill is coming and you know
you're gonna be rushing down it, but you still do it.
It's this great thing that can happen,
and you share it, and you share that
moment of really confronting your own mortality.
I think that's really the key and really
why the horror movie will always be with us,
it's the place to do that a little bit.
I think a lot of people get labeled
horror icons because they happen to
play a role in a film that ended up
gaining a lot of notoriety or becoming
a franchise or whatever it may be.
Well Kane actually legitimately loves this stuff,
and I think the fact that, look, he played Jason,
and Jason is a huge character, but he really
held the torch for Jason for a long time.
He was doing the conventions, the other
guys weren't, not at that time.
It's kinda ironic 'cause you meet a lot
of these people who play heroes and people
who play bad guys, most of the people that
I've met who play heroes are assholes
and most of the people who play
really bad people are nice guy.
It's kinda funny.
What I admire about what Kane has done
is Kane has transcended the role.
He is Kane.
He has made a brand name for himself.
Kane Hodder, plus it's just a cool kickass name.
Kane being the Hawaiian word for man.
I think it's kinda cool considering
I grew up in the South Pacific,
my first name is really Hawaiian, because a lot
of people think it's not my real name, that it's
a stage name or something, but it really is my real name.
The island of Kwajalein in the Pacific
where an anti-ballistic missile system is being perfected.
This artist conception shows a
typical operating missile site
whose job will be to guard against any
possible nuclear attack from Communist China.
I met Kane in 1971.
We both lived on an island called Kwajalein.
Both of our parents were assigned there.
It's a military base and they
had other companies out there for support.
It was just an amazing place to live.
An oasis in the real world really.
I played all kinds of sports.
The tough thing with playing high school sports is
that we had to play in men's leagues in every sport.
When you're 16 playing varsity basketball
against a men's team, that's not easy.
Every once in a while, certain sports
like basketball, we would go to Hawaii
for a trip and play a couple high schools
which was incredible for us because we had
never competed against another high school team.
We made a road trip to Hawaii,
there was only 12 of us that went.
It was a fun trip because it was just
fun playing other high school students
for one thing 'cause then we did much better,
and then we had a lot of free time.
On one of the days a bunch of us
went to a hotel and we wanted to see
what the view looked like from high up
in the hotel and there was, on each floor,
outside the stairwell there was a balcony
you could just walk out to, you didn't
have to have a room to get on that balcony.
We went up to the 35th floor of the hotel
and we're looking around and I thought hey,
another golden opportunity to entertain my friends.
I thought how fun would it be for
me on that 35th floor balcony to
climb on the outside of the railing.
So I'm holding onto the railing like this
with my feet on the deck, but that's
the balcony, I'm out here over just air.
My friends started freaking out and that
entertained me greatly, so while I'm
holding on like this I thought even more
scary would be to talk to them, go what's
the matter, and then grab on before I fell.
Now 350 feet down.
Sometimes I'm even amazed that I did this
'cause it's not very bright, but I saw their
reaction to that and I did it one more time,
guys I'm fine, and then grab on before I fell.
They took off, they went back into the hotel,
went back down, they were freaking out,
and I thought man, that is entertaining for me.
There were several incidents like that on Kwajalein.
He was a troublemaker.
To make people have that kind of reaction
because I'm doing something that I thought
was easy 'cause I've never really
had a fear of heights at all, I just
found it so much fun to do that with those guys.
I didn't know about Kane's bullying before the book,
and even after we talked about it, it took
a long time for him to open up and really
discuss the bullying and how much it affected him.
During the elementary school years,
when I was 10 and 11, I was a meek, quiet kid.
I started getting picked on a lot.
It became very severe.
There was a story that happened when
my buddy and I went to the community pool
during the summer to go swimming.
It was over at the park.
We went over there and swam all day
and then we were getting ready to leave
and we saw three kids staring at us
that we didn't know, they weren't
from our school, and for some reason
they came over and beat the hell out of us.
I unfortunately got the worst end of it.
There was three of them and they were
much older than us and just beat me
so badly that the next day my face was so
swollen that it was hard to recognize me.
It was so bad that he was embarrassed by it,
and he should've went to the hospital,
but he didn't even wanna show his mom, so he
hid in his room and suffered with all the pain.
I just couldn't figure out why they were doing it
because we hadn't done anything to make
them mad, or to do anything against them
in any way, they just seemed to do it for fun.
I don't know if that spawned other people
to do it from my school, but then I
started getting bullied all the time.
In I think it was seventh grade I was
caught by a guy that had been harassing me
and bullying me who had thrown up
in a baggy earlier in the day because
he was sick and threw it on the ground and
after school thought it would be funny if he
poured it in my face while other people watched.
Everybody thought that was hilarious.
Except me of course.
That's the way it was.
I mean there was always the typical
pushing around, calling names, slamming head
into a locker, stuff like that, but it's
sad to say those were the things that
didn't bother me anymore, that was minor.
I didn't say anything because I was embarrassed to.
It's hard to admit to someone that you allowed
this to happen because technically you did.
There's nothing you can do about it
because you just don't have what it
takes inside of you to stand up for yourself.
So you're embarrassed by it.
Very often the response is well just
stand up for yourself, just hit them back.
Very easy to say, but unless you've been
bullied you don't understand how
impossibly difficult that can be at times.
When a kid is severely bullied and ends up
committing suicide as a result of that,
it's my opinion that happens not because
the kid is scared, or even worried about
anything further happening, it's that
the kid starts thinking they're worthless
because they don't do anything to stop it.
Until you've been there, you don't
understand how impossible that can feel.
And then you start hating yourself.
And then you say you know what, fuck this.
I don't need to go through this anymore.
I'm worthless, I don't do anything
to stop, and they end their lives.
Eventually after years, I don't know
how I did this, and I just somehow
snapped and I swung and I punched him.
I couldn't even believe I did it.
It didn't even seem like me doing it, it seemed
like I was outside my body watching me do this.
I punched him not very effectively
and I got the shit beat out of me
because of it, but I went home
feeling better about myself because I tried.
So I thought hey, you know what, I lost a fight.
I felt better.
Mentally that turned me around and somehow
I started to let it happen less and less.
Eventually it stopped.
After I graduated from Kwajalein High School,
while I was going to college at UNR, Nevada-Reno,
I saw a sign in my dorm looking for
extras for a movie, and I thought
that might be interesting to go down
there and just see how movies are filmed.
So I went downtown Reno and was able to
work on the film, it was called California Split.
George Segal and Elliott Gould.
I was just an extra in the crowd, and I
was fascinated by the process of filmmaking.
I worked on it for a day and then thought
that was fun, and I had classes the next day,
so I blew off those classes and went
back and worked on the movie again
just 'cause I had so much fun doing it.
It was the only time in my life I've ever been an extra.
Even though that was only 1974, it was
the start of my interest in film by far.
It was the very first thing because the
following year I went to visit my buddy Mike,
and Mike lived in Los Angeles and he said
let's go to Universal Studios and go on the tour.
I loved it, I just loved being on the backlot.
I wanted so badly to get off the tram
and just wander around by myself.
Then the tour was over and we went
to a couple of the live shows, one of
which was the wild west stunt show at Universal.
We watched the show and that was it.
As soon as that show was over
I said that's what I wanna do.
And I knew it.
From that moment.
Once he gets something in his head,
and sorry Kane, but it just stays there.
No matter what you say to him, you can't change his mind.
Very fortune of course over the years
to get to where I've gotten, but I've also
worked hard, it wasn't handed to me in any way.
On a professional level, I love the fact
that he takes these parts so seriously.
There's a lot of times, especially with
producers or studio execs where they'll
say whoever is gonna be this villain, we just need
a big, menacing, physical presence, preferably a
stunt guy who can take hits and punishment.
Kane really gets into it and that's why
the characters he plays are memorable.
Did a movie called Prison in 1987.
I was happy to be the stunt coordinator on it,
it was a great movie stunt wise, and then at
the end of the shooting John Buechler,
who was doing the makeup effects, said we have to
have a guy in the full body prostetic makeup.
The wrongly executed prisoner comes
out of the ground strapped to an electric chair
and he has full makeup head to toe,
prosthetics, dentures, lenses, everything.
And I said well I've never done it, I'm happy
to do it 'cause it's not a comfortable thing.
I'd actually designed it on another actor,
but when I went to Wyoming I saw that Kane...
I think he had the chops for it.
I put everything on, it took
3 1/2 hours to put everything on,
and then Randy said you know what
would be really cool, since this is
a corpse that has been buried, he said why
don't we put live nightcrawlers all over you.
I said how could would it be if
I had live worms in my mouth?
He's like you would do that?
I said yeah, I still don't think that was a big deal.
He went nuts with it really.
So I put them in my mouth and did the shot.
I think that Randy and John Buechler both
were impressed at my enthusiasm
for working in that kind of makeup.
John in particular liked how I moved in the makeup.
The thing I noticed about Kane during Prison
was that he worked with the makeup.
It's one thing to design a cool looking creature effect.
It's another thing to have it performed well.
Aside from being an amazing stuntman
and a really fine actor, he works with
the appliances and he tries to
do as much as he can with them.
That stuck with me.
So that's 1987, the following year John Buechler
is hired to direct Friday the 13th Part Seven,
and immediately says I got the
guy that I want to play Jason.
I wanted Kane.
I knew that he could act, and I knew that
he could really work with the appliances,
and I wanted to take the mask off of Jason.
I wanted people to see how pissed off he was.
The thing I gave to the Friday
the 13th movies was the rage of Jason.
The makeup for Part Seven was my favorite look.
Very very well done makeup.
It created the illusion that when he
opened his mouth you saw him through holes.
The very first shot I ever did as Jason
in Part Seven being my first movie was
the single shot where Tina has a vision and sees
Michael being stabbed in the kitchen of the house.
That is the very first thing I ever shot as Jason.
When I put that stuff on and went to the set
it felt so natural, and people are gonna go
oh my God, he's so full of shit, but really,
it felt right for me to be wearing that stuff.
But I wanted to do whatever I
could to make the movie look good.
To this day it's still my favorite
look of Jason, of all of them really.
Certainly of the ones I did.
There had been six films before
I ever came into the picture.
So the Friday the 13th name,
the Jason name, were known worldwide.
For me to be able to step into that role,
how do you not consider that a huge honor?
And you better do it justice.
You're given an opportunity of a lifetime,
so you need to do whatever you can to add to that.
He brings this special focus, I think, to Jason.
When I first put the makeup on and looked
in the mirror, I thought when Jason is staring at
someone and not moving, he looks like a mannequin.
I said what can I do to still do that
same stare but add life to the character?
I don't think people understand how hard
that is to make anything, a lot of it's
just the movement, a little movement.
A lot of it's in the eyes.
He gets in front of that mirror and he
looks at the makeup and he figures
out what he can do with it.
He pushes the limits and he talks to
the makeup artist, can I do this, will it
hurt the makeup, I mean he's very specific.
I came up with the breathing thing
so instead of this you see this.
To me, that made it look like the
character was about to spring any moment.
Even though he's motionless staring at you,
the heaving chest looked scary as hell
and people have said that's one of
my signature things that I do,
but I just thought it worked.
Kane owns that, and I think that it's
very special and I think that most fans
immediately can tell if it's some
other person wearing the mask and why
it's important for true fans, I think,
that they really respond to the way Kane did it.
I remember the first time I seen him
and he was just breathing and taking
in air and I was like oh my God, oh my God.
I'm not gonna sleep tonight, motherfucker.
That Jason's just a predator.
That's it.
It's like an automatic need.
Just pure nihilistic, must destroy.
There's something about the way Kane
plays that focus that's really fun.
I have never in my life broken a bone.
Which I'm proud of because I always
think it's funny that stunt people
brag about how many bones they've broken.
Isn't the whole point to do a stunt successfully?
'Cause anybody can be crazy and
just go do something and get hurt,
but the whole point is to have a
stunt career successful that you don't get hurt.
I always find it funny when guys
say yeah, I broke 225 bones.
You're not very good then, are you?
Kane is perhaps the safest stunt
coordinator that you'll ever wanna work with.
He is very strong, very firm, very creative on a set.
He can figure out something ridiculous
and over the top instantly.
There was a scene written where as Jason
I chase Tina up the stairs, she goes up
the top of the stairs where the door
of course is locked and there's no escape.
So I come up the stairs, the way it was
written in the script was she makes
the light start moving and it swings and
hits me in the chest and I tumble down the stairs.
I mean Kane doesn't do things 50%.
He does things 150%.
You tell him to scrub a floor,
he'll scrub the shit out of that floor.
And I said to Buechler I said that's not
too bad, but how cool would it be if that
thing just swings and hits me right in
the face, in the mask, and then I just
fall back like a tree and I go through the stairs.
He goes wow, you can do that, and I
said I think so, I think it would look great.
I think it's more in character of Jason.
Tumbling down the stairs I think looks too human.
Take the hit and then fall straight back
onto their staircase, that's one of
my favorite shots in the movie as well.
It must've been difficult, but you could
never tell by the way he performed.
He never showed the discomfort or the
difficulty, he was always 100% performance.
We're at the lake set, this is in Bay Minette, Alabama.
To go to the dressing rooms I would always
walk through the woods, and whenever I was
in character in any of the movies I like
to leave the mask on and stay in character.
2 o'clock in the morning one night or something,
walking on the trail, I saw someone coming
to the set, someone who I didn't recognize.
And I thought this might be fun.
So I stopped on the trail, still had
the mask on, everything, and I stared at him.
He uttered the most ridiculous
question I think I've ever heard.
He looked at me, in all that makeup,
and said excuse me, are you with the movie?
That's a dumb bastard right there.
So I just stared at him and he started
looking around, yeah, you're with the movie right?
And that's when I rushed at him.
He took off running back to the
trucks, I never saw him again.
But the next day, just talking to Buechler
before we started, he said hey, you know
that local sheriff never showed up last night.
I said oh, hmm, I wonder what happened.
For a long long time, my all time
favorite kill was a Jason kill.
The sleeping bag.
Sleeping bag.
The sleeping bag.
Sleeping bag kill in Part Seven.
The sleeping bag is one of the
most classic ones in history.
I killed somebody with something
that's not a weapon, that's pretty amazing.
And it was just such an impactful kill
in the theaters, I went to the Chinese Theater
in Hollywood when the movie opened,
just anonymously sat in the back,
and when that kill came up opening night,
I watched half the audience stand up
high-fiving each other and stuff,
I said wow, that was a pretty amazing feeling.
One of Kane's most legendary
stunts is his burn in Part Seven.
At the time it was a record long fire burn,
the entire thing is on screen.
And I thought let's make it a little
different than what you normally see
because you typically never saw the
ignition of the stunt person on camera.
It always cut from somebody making
a reaction, then it cut to the
person on fire already moving around.
This girl has telekinetic powers, so why
don't we have her make the fire blast out
of the furnace and ignite Jason on camera.
And Buechler was like wow, I've never seen
that really, and I said I haven't
either, so that's why I wanna do it.
We did the ignition of the character on fire
with a propane cannon, then I started
stumbling around doing my acting,
which I always love doing, and ultimately
by the time I went down, because I was going
by the feel of it, I had been on fire
so long that the fuel is almost gone.
I was on fire for 44 seconds which is,
if you watch your watch for 44 seconds and
imagine being completely engulfed in flames
for that long, it's an incredibly long time
and it set some kind of records at the time.
To this day it's probably my favorite fire stunt.
And not only is it an amazing on screen fire burn,
it's a stunt done by someone who almost died
from a fire burn, so it's really poetic.
I mean you have to admit that in
Friday the 13th Part Seven he gave
one of the most spectacular full body
burns you've ever seen in your life.
This from a man who was burnt horribly.
I always say that one of the best qualities
to have as a stunt person is a common sense
knowledge of physics where you think of
a stunt and you anticipate what's
gonna happen and what could go wrong.
That's a huge attribute in the stunt
business to think well what if this
happens, then what are we gonna do?
So then you prepare for that.
Maybe I learned much more from my mistake,
but at the time you have to protect yourself.
Basically until the book came out
I never admitted the real story.
Because he knew for the first time
ever he had to face the truth.
He was embarrassed about it for years,
he lied, he told stories to other people
that it was on the set of this,
on the set of that, he made up different
situations how it happened, but no one knew.
It was really this powerful moment with
me and him when he finally decided he
could tell the world and open up
and tell the story and not be embarrassed
about it anymore, that he's matured enough
to face the facts and tell the full story.
Since I had officially gotten into SAG
and done a TV show, that's when I talked
to this reporter and she said let's do
a story about the local kid that's
making his way in the stunt business.
I'll give you some pictures and if you
want I'll do a fire stunt for you live.
She said really and I said sure,
I've been doing it no problem.
We went out, it was just her and I.
We happened to pick a place that was, where I was
doing the fire stunt, it was right next to a lake.
Six feet away from the lake.
But because it was the lake it was real windy.
We did the stunt and I was on fire
and I put myself out no problem.
I knew that I wasn't gonna be happy with it
because the wind was blowing so hard
it was blowing the flames down,
so I didn't think it looked as dramatic.
Too bad I didn't just settle with it.
So the next day they went to a
different area in the desert, not near
the lake, not near the water, he had
no safety stuff with him, it was just him,
his lighter, and the biggest mistake he did
was he couldn't afford rubber cement at the time.
Even though it was a few bucks he was broke
trying to struggle in Hollywood.
I said I ran out of glue, can you get me some.
The reporter brought some from the
office saying here you go, here's some rubber
cement so you don't have to spend your own money.
Having never used that brand before,
Kane didn't realize how flammable it was.
I got all prepped and ready and I
went to light myself, which is normally,
when I would do this you'd have to
touch the glue with the flame to make it ignite.
He put his arm out away from himself to
be safe, and when he lit the match he ignited.
Completely burst into flames everywhere.
You always see stop, drop, and roll on TV commercials
and stuff, and that's a nice theory, but the thing
that people don't understand, unless you've
been on fire, is that when your head is in
the flames, and you can hear your hair burning
and you can feel your face burning
and your ears burning, you run.
It's not the right thing to do, it's a reflex.
And every person that I've ever talked to
that's been burned seriously in the upper body
says the same thing, they ran.
As I'm running and burning, she doesn't
realize I'm out of control and in trouble,
so she keeps snapping pictures, and again,
I don't blame her in the least for any of this,
but she didn't realize until I started
screaming probably that I was in trouble.
Then I somehow got my wits about me and
realized there was some kind of dampness
on the ground, dove into there and rolled
around and finally got myself put out.
And when he finally was conscious enough
to see the reporter, the reporter looked at
him and that's when he knew how horrible it was.
All my clothes that I had on were gone.
My skin was falling off, I had mud all over me
from the ground that was falling off with my skin.
I knew I was in very very bad shape.
She said let's go, we got in her jeep,
we said we gotta get somewhere to get some help
because this is very serious, my face
was burned, everything, my hair was gone.
We're driving in the jeep out of the desert
and the first thing we see is a fire station.
I think oh perfect.
We go there, we bang on the door,
we try and get, nobody answers.
So we got back in the car, we went to
the first house we could get to.
The photographer...
Sorry.
Photographer knocks on the door and a lady answers.
And she looked at me terrified and says get in here.
And I said what, she goes get in the shower,
stand in my shower, I'll call the
ambulance and they'll come and get you.
I do that.
As I walk through the house...
Sorry.
As I walk through the house there's a little girl.
Sitting on the floor playing and she was terrified.
And I don't blame her, I mean the way I looked.
She was scared to death.
Kept looking out the shower, looking at
my eyes thinking why does this not hurt yet.
I was just astounded that I knew I was
severely injured and there was no pain.
But I kept waiting for something to start hurting.
The ambulance finally came, I walked
back out, the girl wasn't there anymore
thank God 'cause I felt horrible.
I felt worse for her than I did for myself.
Was three years old or something, just scared to death.
Got in the ambulance and sat up the
whole time in the ambulance all the way there.
As it turns out, when you burn that badly
you burn the nerves completely off
and there's no pain for a while.
The next day it was incredible and didn't stop.
That basically started the next
six months of horrific torture.
Can we cut for a second?
Once the pain started after the
initial shock wore off, it was so
much more than I ever anticipated.
So much worse than you can even imagine.
The worst part of this was he had no painkillers in him.
He didn't know at the time, but his father
pulled aside the doctor and asked him
not to give him any painkillers.
And the doctor went along with that.
I'm not sure why he didn't just say no,
he needs pain medication to get through this.
I had less medication than I should have had.
And the reason for that was his father
was in The War and he saw all his fellow
soldiers who came back with injuries
who got addicted to painkillers and he
was scared that was gonna happen to Kane.
And I know my dad was just trying
to look out for my best interest,
he didn't want me to become addicted
to stuff, but that's something you have
to worry about later, you have to get
rid of the pain so you can heal.
But the pain itself was so unbelievably tremendous.
I got to the hospital and I didn't
know anything about what is the
proper way to take care of burns.
And neither did my parents, so whatever
the hospital did for me we thought was good.
I don't know how else to say it,
they weren't equipped at all to take care
of my injury, but they thought they were.
My parents came in when they could
and my dad walked in and left immediately.
They could just see me from here up.
My face was burnt, but not as badly as the
rest of my body, so I didn't look that terrible.
I didn't know until later, when he walked in,
the smell that was in my room because of
me being burned I guess brought back
terrible memories of him during The War.
He had to run out and he had to
go to the bathroom and throw up.
Then I remember my mom lifting up
the sheet and looking at this arm and just
started crying because it looked so terrible.
It was very very hard for my parents
to see their son in that situation.
Because I was burned all in the upper body,
I couldn't use my hands at all, so I
couldn't go to the bathroom by myself,
I couldn't even change the channel of the TV myself.
It was a terrible way to have to live,
especially since I was 22, when someone else
has to help you take a piss or wipe your ass.
It sounds funny, but it's very humbling.
Then they would take me to what's called
the Hubbard Tank, and they have
to get rid of the dead tissue.
Even when you're healing, dead tissue
accumulates and it has to be removed
so the fresh tissue can heal.
So they would put him down in the basement
because he would scream so loud they had
to hide him from all the other patients.
They would soak him in a bathtub, and then
the doctor would take the back side of a scalpel.
And scrape all of the burned area to get
the material off that needed to be debrided.
This is, again, when I couldn't even stand
the vibration from somebody kicking my bed.
Now you're gonna scrape it?
There is no way I can ever express
the amount of pain there was.
They did a skin graft surgery and they
splinted my arms straight out like this.
From my body, I couldn't move because
they wanted the skin to take, and when
you do skin grafts you need to be
motionless so, it has to be your own skin,
and it can adhere and start growing to your body.
It's taken from a healthy area, my legs,
put on the burned area, and hopefully
grows into it and helps cover up the burn.
As I'm barely conscious coming out of
the O.R., going back to my room, they realize
I can't get in my fucking room because
my arms are like this, I'm too wide
to go through the doorway to my room.
Now I have to, just after waking up
from major surgery, have to stand up
like this, walk into my room, wait for
them to bring the bed in, and then
get back in my bed, which I thought
was the most asinine thing you could
ever do, not look ahead to that?
You couldn't see that coming?
That was just one of the first days and
that was an indicator of what was to come.
I was in that hospital four months,
consistently getting worse every day.
Trying skin grafts that didn't work.
One of the most important things with
a burn injury is to keep a sterile
environment around the patient.
When I'm in a room with another person who has
some other kind of problem, that's not sterile,
and that's what happened in that hospital.
And everyone had to scrub down to
come in except for the doctor, the doctor
would come through and not wash his
hands, be wearing his tennis shoes,
and just walk over and check Kane.
I was amazed that he thought everybody
else should do it, but he was above it.
He shouldn't have been taking care of me at all.
Unfortunately at that hospital they
did very little correctly for me.
There was such a long list of terrible
things that happened as a result of being
in that hospital that never should've happened.
My veins started collapsing, now I have to
submit to a needle in the vein in my groin.
They put pins through my elbows
and you can still see the scar.
They would hold my arms up like this.
When they took the pins out I couldn't put my arms down.
Not being able to sleep, and then when
you finally do doze off I would twitch.
That happened every single time I would doze off.
And I lost my voice completely.
Put a feeding tube through my nose into my stomach.
I had a catheter for a while.
Gained and lost 50 pounds in five days.
Seven skin graft surgeries.
They kept doing the procedures and it wouldn't work.
And I didn't have any health insurance.
If I read it in a book, I would read it
and say this can't be true, he's exaggerating.
To make it sound more horrific than it was.
That can't all be true, and unfortunately it was.
And it's a horrifying story.
It's bad enough being burned obviously,
but all the other things that went wrong,
I mean it couldn't have been worse.
Bottom line is after four months
that doctor told my parents that
I had a staph infection and it
doesn't look like I'm gonna make it.
My parents are like what do you mean?
After four months he's gonna die from the burns?
'Cause typically if you die as
a result of being burned it's early.
You don't get through the first week.
You don't die four months later usually.
They were astounded that he was saying that.
Then he said we're gonna ship him
to a burn unit in San Francisco.
My dad was wait, burn unit, we didn't know what it was.
He said what's that and he said it's a
place that specializes in burn care.
And my dad almost killed the fucking guy by saying
why did you not send him there in the first place?
I get to San Francisco, the Bothin Burn Center
in Saint Francis Hospital and everything changed.
At that time it was the best burn center
west of the Mississippi River.
It was a real first class burn center.
We had attendings, resident doctors and nurses,
they all devoted their time to
treating burn patients specifically.
My doctors were different, this was
a unit that was self-enclosed.
We have our own O.R., we do all our
treatments here, we have hydrotherapy.
That was built in 1967.
The other thing that the burn unit
had to deal with was that I was in bed
at the first hospital for four months,
never being able to sit in any
other position other than maybe
recline a little bit or sit up a
little bit, but I was always on my back.
So consequently I had two really bad bedsores on my back.
The burn unit had to deal with all that too,
they had to get rid of the bedsores,
they had to get rid of the staph infection,
they had to get me skin grafted
and get my weight up, and they
did all of that in six weeks.
Whereas the first hospital took
four months to get me to that horrible position.
If I had been in the burn unit from
the beginning I probably would've
been in there four weeks total.
What stayed the same from when I started 35 years ago
today is the patience that it takes for everybody,
the caregivers, the patient, the families.
The body heals only at a certain rate.
The caring part, the support that these people need,
is exactly the same through the years.
That hasn't changed.
I started getting a more positive attitude
because this place is state of the art,
even back then, for burn care.
Then that's when the depression sets in.
Because at the beginning you're just trying to survive.
Now that you know you're gonna survive,
now you deal with the fact that for
the rest of your life you're gonna
have that visual reminder, which is the scars.
The biggest misconception is
that it's just about the skin.
It's not just about the skin.
Major burns affect every system of the body.
It affects the immune system, it often affects
the lungs if they're burned in an enclosed space.
It affects the GI tract, it affects every
system of the body, and also I think
a lot of people underestimate the
psychosocial recovery of burns.
I didn't let anybody come and visit me really,
just immediate family and that was it.
I actually wanted to go out and see him,
but he didn't want any visitors, and I respected that.
But it was scary.
I just didn't want my close friends to see me like that.
It's the weirdest thing, the things your mind go through.
I'm never gonna be able to take my shirt off again.
People are always gonna stare at me.
I'm gonna have scars for the rest of
my life, limited movement, which I still have.
I got very depressed even when I was getting better.
I was laying in my bed depressed because there
wasn't much to be happy about other than surviving.
I looked at somebody come in to visit the nursing staff.
Everybody had to gown up, when you go in the unit
you have to put on everything to keep it sterile.
Even visitors.
This guy, who I didn't recognize,
was at the nurse's station, and I'm
watching him, he starts laughing
and having a good old time, being happy,
shaking hands with people and I was
laying in there saying fuck you.
You have no idea what I'm going through
and you're fucking happy, I hated him.
Truthfully I became somewhat, I guess you could
say suicidal, because I didn't know
if I wanted to live like this.
I watched this guy laughing and having a good
old time and thinking God, you are so lucky.
He pulls up his sleeve of his gown,
'cause he was warm or something, and I'm
looking at him thinking oh wait a minute.
He's got burn scars.
This guy was in this unit.
He's a former patient that was in here,
burned badly 'cause I could see his arm just like mine.
And he's fucking happy.
And I thought holy shit, this guy does
know what I went through and he's happy?
I thought holy, man, maybe there's
something positive that'll come out of this.
He completely turned my whole attitude around.
So if he can do it, I can do it.
Everything changed after that,
everything started improving.
That's the thing with a burn injury.
If you're sitting and talking to somebody
and they're telling you what to expect
and you don't see burn scars on them,
in your mind you're just thinking,
you're not even listening because you don't know.
But if you're sitting there with scars,
I'll listen to you all day long because you do know.
We do a burn support group once a month
here in the burn center where we have
patients come back for years to
get that support from people who
had been through it like them.
It was an amazing experience that
this guy completely, basically saved
my life a second time without even
knowing it, and never never knew his name.
It seems like this was the angle.
Right here.
It was bigger than this, it went out a little farther.
The beds were this way, not this way.
Right.
We were like this.
He was here.
I guess that could've been the angle I was looking at.
Yeah, I think that was my room.
My biggest goal was to get home for Christmas.
Just to be out of the hospital and home for Christmas.
My doctor's name was Angelo Capozzi.
He was okay with sending me home
really before I should've gone home.
Well I think as we've become more
knowledgeable about taking care of burn patients,
I think it's one of the physician's
duties to keep the patient comfortable.
He allowed me to go home with the
training that he gave my mother for my,
I had slight open wounds all over, but small ones.
Because it was in-between where the
skin grafts were that hadn't quite healed yet.
He knew what I had been through, decided he
was okay with me going home on December 23rd.
I haven't seen Dr. Capozzi in 39 years.
Hey doc.
How are you?
I'm great, I'm great.
Been a long time.
Yes it has.
39 years.
Yeah.
This area was some of my worst, you can see.
It was really quite deep there.
I know, but it looks great.
That's the only bad part still.
A little tight, but if you can
get along with that, I mean that's fine.
I never really got to tell you thank you.
Because you saved my life, there's no,
I'm not trying to be dramatic 'cause
everybody knows I don't do that.
You saved my life and don't try
and be fucking humble about it please.
Because...
Strike that.
I would like to say thank you for everything you did.
You're very welcome.
I really appreciate that.
I went on to have a great life.
I think it's very interesting that I never
developed a fear of fire considering it
almost killed me and I understand
how terrifying it is to be on fire.
You would think the last thing I'd
ever wanna do is be on fire again,
but another friend of mine that
gave me a lot of good stunt jobs
named B.J. Davis, was doing a movie
in New Orleans called Avenging Force.
I had worked a little bit with him,
we had become friends, and he said
why don't you be one of the stunt guys
to come down for the entire shoot of the movie.
I was very happy to do that, hadn't done
much on location before.
So while I was in New Orleans, B.J. said,
I don't know how he knew that he
could ask me this, but he had a good
sense of my personality I guess, he said
we gotta do two full burns at the same time.
You wanna do one with me?
First I was like oh shit, I didn't
think anybody would ever ask me that, first of all.
Then I start thinking about it more
and I said you know what, he knows what I've
been through and he's confident in me doing it.
If he had said you probably don't
wanna do this, but there's a fire stunt,
but he didn't do it that way, I guess
he just did it the right way for me.
Just offer it to me without any hesitation.
If I don't wanna do it, fine, somebody else will do it.
But ultimately I did the stunt with him.
B.J. comes flying out of a window on fire,
and I come out of the doorway on fire.
It was a full burn that I did again
for the first time since my accident.
I loved it.
I felt very comfortable, I see how,
when you do the proper setup, how easy
it is to do that stunt really, and I came
to the conclusion that I love doing fire.
It's very very surprising that a
burn survivor could even go near a fire again.
Doing that first fire stunt again was huge,
a huge step forward in forgetting about the past.
I met Kane when he was working
on a pictures with Wes Craven.
Called The Hills Have Eyes II.
I had doubled a character called The Reaper.
Was a stunt double for him, I was falling
through a skylight and riding a motorcycle
and doing some stuff around some fire.
He was a wonderful and interesting guy.
Clearly he was a guy that didn't
seem to be afraid of anything.
And I ended up doing every one of
Sean Cunningham's movies for quite
a while after that one, all the House movies.
Everything he did really.
I did the original Friday back in 1979, '80.
I was around for Friday Two and Friday Three,
but I was anxious to move on and
do some other things, so the series
proceeded for a while without me and then
we decided to do Friday the 13th Part Nine.
Fortunately the person that was hired
to direct, Adam Marcus, was a fan of mine
as the character and immediately said
hey, I want him to play Jason again.
This is my third go around as Jason.
He just brought a certain kind of
consistency and flavor to the character
that the fans really responded to and I
would be mad if I were to think of replacing him.
The last shot of the movie, when I read
the script for the first time, it said
Jason's mask is laying on the ground
and Freddy's hand comes out of the ground
with the glove on and the sweater, and grabs
the hockey mask and pulls it into the ground
to set up for Freddy Versus Jason.
And I said okay, well I'll tell you
one thing right now, I'm gonna be
wearing that Freddy glove to do that shot.
Nobody else is gonna do it 'cause
Robert Englund is not gonna do it.
I did that shot, I was underneath the set,
pulled down the mask and pulled it into the set
thinking I was setting up for Freddy Versus Jason.
Back in 1983 I had a meeting with Wes Craven
and he said I'm developing a new character.
He's gonna have burn scars.
I'm thinking about using somebody with real burn scars.
And I said wow, that's great.
What kind of character, well he's
not a really nice guy, he's a pedophile.
I said okay, and with burn scars,
and his name is Fred Krueger.
Wes Craven was a friend of mine, I did
a series with Wes Craven and I know that,
I think there was a time when he was
really considering Kane to play Freddy.
Obviously we know where this is all headed,
I did not play the character because he
decided to go with a more established actor
with prosthetics instead of real burn scars.
I think Robert did an amazing job as that character,
and obviously one of my horror heroes is Robert Englund.
How different life could've been
for everybody had that happened,
but I know that West thought very highly of him.
Well Kane and I, we go way back.
Robert and I have been friends for a long time.
We do conventions together of course.
And we just hit it off because we both have to
go through a lot of the same off-screen fan stuff.
Give it up for Kane Hodder and
Robert Englund, ladies and gentlemen!
When I started in this business,
never anticipated ever signing an autograph.
You loved it the first time that goth girl
walked up to you and went sign me, Kane!
But we have worked together also
which was a lot of fun for me.
I had done a web series with Robert called Fear Clinic.
Well Fear Clinic's where Kane and I
got to do most of our work together.
That's really where we found our vibe
as actors together 'cause we were really,
we had a lot of scenes between us.
I'm taking you down before you kill anymore patients.
I'm not fond of this new attitude of yours.
Clearly you don't understand the
employee/employer relationship.
Now help him!
Yeah, blah blah blah, I know,
I got the body, you got the brains.
It was fun working together.
It's cool to have pictures of him
face to face arguing without makeups on.
Really Freddy versus Jason in a different way.
There was still this pressing,
my pressing need to go ahead with Freddy/Jason.
And still, because New Line and Robert Englund
and some other issues, we couldn't do that,
at least not yet, and so that's what led
us to Jason X, or Jason in Space.
It seemed like a really good idea and was
a really fun notion to try to figure
out how we would do all of that.
The sets were amazing and the
movie was pretty clever I thought.
There was a part of the film where
somebody created a virtual reality
to try and slow Jason down, and all of a
sudden Uber Jason was back at Camp Crystal Lake.
We're in space and we're looking for
all the kind of gags that we used
to do and that Jason's known for.
Basically this is just for the fans really,
the fans of the previous films.
I had a girl in a sleeping bag,
and I was slamming her against her
friend that was in her sleeping bag.
So killing them both with each other.
Redid the stunt that the fans so loved.
It was my idea to do one shot
to the tree just as a throwback.
It was just so silly.
My hands down favorite Jason kill
is the frozen head in Jason X where he
lifts it up and then just shatters it.
Freeze the head in liquid nitrogen and smash it.
Liquid nitrogen and smashed on the table.
And then smashed it and he brain rolls out.
I thought that was great.
No one was expecting that and it
was just so gory and so crazy, and just
the way he does it, just tosses
her aside, it's an awesome kill.
I got a call from an executive at New Line.
She wanted to have lunch with me.
She gave me a script called Freddy Versus Jason
and she said we're finally doing this movie.
And I said that is fantastic, I'm so happy to hear that.
I assumed at that time that meant I was doing the movie.
You're giving me the script and saying we're finally
doing this movie, pretty sure thing in my mind.
Then in the weeks that followed I started
getting a weird vibe from New Line.
Well I knew Kane.
I was told by the powers to be, for most
of that prep time it was always gonna be Kane.
Ultimately I was told that they had
hired somebody that played Jason before.
Then I found out it was Kirzinger.
I was like how is he having played the character before?
And then I remembered in Part Eight, 'cause they
didn't want me to take a chance of
getting hurt and not being able to work,
I was forced to allow Ken Kirzinger to do the
car hit where the cop car hits Jason in the alley.
Even though I've done that stunt many times,
they thought if you get a broken leg
or something we're in trouble.
It seems to me that someone, I don't think
it was him, I'm almost sure it wasn't him
because I've talked about it with him,
but someone had represented him
as having played the character also.
Based on that shot.
That was a done deal, he was already hired,
and I, to say the least I was devastated.
It's only a role, but it's something that
I had put my heart and soul into for 15 years,
four films in a row, and it seemed like...
None of that mattered.
I never in a million years would've
given them a reason to replace me.
By saying hey, I want this much money
and they just say oh can't afford that,
let's go somewhere else, then that's on me.
But I would never have given them any
kind of reason, I was never difficult
to work with, I was never late to the
set and undependable, nothing like that,
so I couldn't understand why I was replaced and
I don't think I'll ever know the real reason.
It was a very very low point of my career.
It was almost as low a point for me as getting burned.
Because I was never told any reason.
Took me a long time to get over that.
For almost 20 years he was Jason.
And in thousands of fans, upon millions
around the world, he is Jason, he always
will be Jason no matter if someone
else plays him more than once, or if he never
plays it again, he will always be the Jason
because he's the one that made him iconic.
That made him more than just a guy with a mask.
After the whole mess of not doing the
Freddy Versus Jason movie, I got contacted
by Adam Green about a new character
that he thought could be a franchise also.
Well my first project with Kane was the original Hatchet.
I was a huge fan of all the slashers.
Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger,
and the concept of possibly having
Kane Hodder be Victor Crowley was
always just a pipe dream, and then
John Buechler who was doing the effects,
when he first suggested well why don't
I show the script to Kane, I was just like really?
Seriously?
'Cause I didn't think he'd wanna do it
just because he's already done it.
And he had been a fan of my work as Jason
and wanted to talk about playing
a character called Victor Crowley.
With Jason, he came into that so late
in the game, and as much as he's the Jason
as far as anybody who knows what they're
talking about with Friday the 13th goes,
this was a great opportunity, especially because
it's a very different character and
he's not hidden behind an emotionless mask.
I was somewhat excited because it was
similar to Jason, it was a character in makeup
that didn't speak and killed everyone he could reach.
That movie was very surprising.
It was very over the top.
It started like a comedy at first and then
suddenly it switches gears and it
turns into the most horrendous over the
top makeup effects extravaganza.
I mean I love that.
I think Adam purposefully didn't reveal
everything in the first movie so he
could give some more information over
the second one and ultimately answer
everything left in the third one.
That's pretty confident for a guy
that was unknown at the time to
assume that you're gonna get the
chance to tell your whole story
over the course of three films.
Kane was really one of the only people
who I said what the next two movies
were gonna be because I feel like if you're
gonna do a slasher series, you have to have
an endgame and you have to have things planned out.
The idea of just making one, and then
all of a sudden it performed, so now
you're gonna make another one, you can start
to tell as a fan they're just finding
their way with this and they're just
either repeating the same movie over again,
or they're making shit up, but I had a plan.
There were a lot of similarities to Jason with Victor.
And I did not wanna do the same thing,
I wanted to do more of a grotesque guy.
We did a demo appliance and the
prosthetics on top of him, and I did it
in such a way that it was risky because
there was so much prosthetic on his face,
but I think it worked out pretty well.
Kane really gets into it and that's
why the characters he plays are memorable.
When you have a real actor behind these
prosthetics and makeup, it makes such a difference.
You can tell when it's somebody just going
through the motions and when it's a character.
There are a lot of actors that could have
simply thrown the makeup on and thrown
the prosthetics on and just getting
in front of the camera and going grrr like
Godzilla in a Godzilla suit or something like that.
He was, every night, in uncomfortable situations,
he was off taking it very very seriously,
so that when he came out and when he did
his performance, it had a lot of weight
behind it and it had a lot of realism.
I mean the character really seems
like a creature that's in pain.
And so the fact that he takes it so
seriously and does not want the
other actors to see him at all, so when
he's in the makeup he stays separate.
Whenever I'm playing a killer like
Jason or Victor or anyone really,
I like to fuck with the actors a little bit
for their performance being enhanced
and also just for my own entertainment.
The cast just didn't know anything
about him and never got to see him
or spend time with him, and I think
that made a huge difference because
that way what you see in the movie
when the cast sees Victor Crowley, that's their
first time seeing him and they were terrified.
What he'll do is as he's getting into
character you don't know where he is.
He's off in the woods somewhere and
you just hear him screaming or kicking trees
and just these bursts of rawr, rawr,
and the cast is terrified at that point.
So the cast is already convinced that
he's half crazy anyway, and by doing
things like that it just brings
so much more to their performance.
We would do some rehearsal sometimes without him.
B.J. McDonald would come out and say
so Kane's gonna come out from behind
the tree and when you see him squeeze off
a couple of shots, say your lines,
and run off in the other direction.
A lot of times the only time I saw Kane
on the set was when they would go action
and Victor Crowley would come out, be in frame,
scream something horrible at us,
and then I'd be running for my life.
And what was so funny about it is when
you don't do a lot of rehearsal with him,
he actually comes out of the pitch black,
out of the woods, and he scares the crap out of you.
Amanda!
There's an interesting connection about
having been through some violent acts
in my past and being able to recreate those on
film has to have helped somewhat because
that's what people say the most is when they
watch me kill somebody on film, it's so violent.
So it's like to become the ultimate badass.
I think it's a pretty interesting thing that
he picked up as a result of his background.
He got used to torment and agony and suffering,
and then he just started getting paid for it.
Good deal.
When it comes to your death scene, it's not gonna be easy.
I'm not gonna hurt you, but it's not
gonna be comfortable either because
I like a little bit of realism.
Without fail the actor will say
goddamn, that was a little rough.
Then they see it on screen and they love it.
And they're happy we did it that way.
I've known him for 33 years now.
I always wanted him to kill me and finally that was
the thing where he sawed me in half with a chainsaw.
And I told the guy that was behind me, Coulton,
I said Coulton, he's gonna take a chainsaw
and stick it between our legs and lift us up
in the air and we're gonna get sawed in half.
He goes yeah I know, I said bring a cup.
And he goes why, I said I know Kane, bring a cup.
So Kane comes out, we're standing there
and he goes waff, lifts us up in the air.
And as soon as we're done Coulton's
like this, he goes thank you.
So yeah, Kane plays hard.
You would think that would be enough,
but then there's the pranks which I'm just
as guilty off because I love doing it as well.
Adam and I decided that it might be fun to scare Mercedes.
Mercedes McNab, on the first Hatchet,
started to complain after a while.
Well everybody else has been pranked and Kane
scared them, but nobody's done anything to me.
I was like, we were already planning it,
but I'm like now you're just asking for it.
So in the full Victor Crowley getup Kane
snuck into her trailer and just stood
in the bathroom in the dark for a good
20, 25 minutes, and just waited for her.
Then Joel David Moore had a camera
that day on set where he was just
documenting his day, and so they go
into Mercedes' trailer and Joel's
interviewing her, and when he says so
what was your favorite Victor Crowley moment.
Kane just comes bursting out of the bathroom.
Goddammit!
I scared the absolute shit out of her.
It was very funny.
I think she called me some names that I had never
been called before, so that was pretty creative.
What he wouldn't want you to know though
is that the things that he wants, like in
his trailer, are peanut butter and jelly
and DVDs of Saturday Night Live.
We would use code and be like oh bring
another dead baby to Kane's trailer,
or another bottle of Jack or whatever, but it's
really just peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
He's a very simple guy when it comes to that.
My favorite Victor kill is one of the
goriest kills in the history of cinema where
he grabs the woman's mouth and rips it open.
Anybody can kill people with a gun,
but how many people can catch a woman
who's running away from them and put your
hands in her mouth and rip her head apart?
Now that's creative.
I like the more hands on creative things,
I mean that's my favorite kill that I've ever done.
Hysterical because when I started writing
Kane's biography, my aunt was like oh
who is this guy you're writing about,
so she decided to watch Hatchet, and she's
never watched a horror movie pretty much
in her life, and she saw that scene and
threw up three times, and Kane thinks it's
the greatest thing in the world that someone
threw up because of a kill he had in a film.
It's fun as hell to have an effect like that one somebody.
I mean for me, knowing that Kane is our
stunt coordinator, I know I don't have
to worry about getting hurt, so I always say
if Kane's coordinating I'm doing my own stunts.
Unless Kane says you can't do this Dee,
is the only time that I won't do it.
When Adam first talked to me about
playing Victor, I asked him if I
could do something as another character
and show some emotion because I wanted
to show people that I could do something
other than just violently kill them.
So that's when he came up with the idea of the
father, he said let's have you play Victor's father.
I already believed that Kane
could play Victor Crowley's father,
so it's funny, he approached that as
let me prove to you that I can do this.
He was already cast, and I don't know
if I should admit that, but I
already believed he could do it.
Just sat there for almost 10 years
before he finally died of a broken heart.
And I think he surprised himself a few times,
but I just love that he's up for the challenge.
I mean we all draw from our own life experiences
and they help us become who we are and how we
deal with things and how willing we are to open up.
He got to be himself and not be covered in makeup.
And he cried on camera for real for the first time.
He was so inspired and moved by that.
He got out of monster stuntman, gonna do what
I know how to do and I'm gonna
literally take the mask off and
I'm gonna be vulnerable, and that's
something that I think is really
hard for a lot of people, especially a man,
and someone like Kane, so when he did
the scene he got a taste of the bug.
They say when you get the bug it's like a drug.
So it worked out very well, that started
all the people thinking wait a second,
he can do something else, so let's try this.
That was the beginning of all of it.
Every time I see Kane at a convention,
of course we're always choking each other,
that's the first thing we do,
we just go over and choke each other.
He can really choke you.
He's like, Kane, we're just joking
around, you're like turning blue.
Kane definitely choked me one time,
he grabbed me, he's a tremendously powerful man
and his hands are large, so when he puts the grip
around your neck it's surprisingly tighter than
you think it's gonna be, so you're like
oh wow, that's fun, I can't breathe.
I'm known for choking people at conventions.
Anybody that's had me do it knows that I choke you for real.
I don't say it in a cavalier way,
it's just what I've become known for.
People love it and they love to bring
their friends who have never met me
because they can't wait to watch the reaction of
the person 'cause they've all been through it.
Watching people turn blue as he chokes them.
Yeah, they're a little unexpected.
I thought I was dying 'cause I was like I'm
fucking getting choked what's going on, holy shit.
Yeah, it does seem real, you can feel the
pressure of the hand grip around your neck.
It definitely felt real.
It felt real and it's awesome.
Does he ever choke you?
It hurts.
He choked me to death, I don't know.
I introduced Kane to my mom and
he's like come here, and he does it
and I'm just like that's my mom, Kane, stop!
She can't breathe!
I've been choked by Kane quite a few times.
It shocks you a little bit.
I guess that's the idea.
I was new to Kane's choking tricks.
Kane put his hands on mine and started
squeezing really hard and I realized
oh my God and there was nothing I could do
in terms of countering his power.
Kane was really choking and I panicked.
He'll grab someone, he'll grab them.
I mean you'll hear them go.
He really gets in there, I think he
enjoys actually scaring people for real.
He's the only one I've let choke me, so.
People love to get choked out by Kane Hodder.
I don't get it.
I don't understand.
It does nothing for me.
But I guess that's your chance to be
in a scene essentially with Jason.
Well my experiences with Kane are not
horror related, my experiences with
Kane are comedy related, and what a lot
of people don't know is that Kane is very funny.
He's a natural comic.
By the time we got to Holliston, I mean at
this point Kane doesn't even need to see
a script I don't think, I just say
oh hey, we're doing this, and he'll be like great.
He said he wanted me to play myself in it.
I thought that's interesting.
The idea of making fun of the whole
Kane losing the character of Jason
in Freddy Versus Jason thing and making
that a plot point and having him
own it and laugh at it and make
fun of it was huge, and for me
I was just like I hope he gets it.
And this was somewhat a touchy subject
not long before this, he said now I want
you to freak out and try to kill yourself
every time somebody says Freddy Versus Jason.
I was like wow, that is going into
an area that was once very sensitive to me,
but maybe it's time to make light of that.
That's exactly what we did.
Oh God.
Oh!
Hey.
He got it, and he realized hey, if I
do this, it goes away finally.
If I'm the one to stand here and
make jokes about it and be all pathetic
and try to kill myself anytime somebody says
Freddy Versus Jason, nobody can say anything anymore.
So I tried to make fun of it and
the fans responded to it, they respected
the fact that I could finally do that.
It was a fun thing to do.
I don't have any friends.
I'm not even Jason anymore.
Now I'm gonna get stuck doing shit
Friday the 13th ripoffs with wannabe young directors
that think they're making the next horror icon.
Nice ad-lib, dick.
You like that?
I've never had an acting class in my life.
I did do a stage production in high school.
I enjoyed performing, but I had never
been trained and still hadn't ever
had any formal acting training.
If I do in fact have any talent with acting it's
gotta be from watching quality actors work in person.
Did a movie called Monster with Charlize Theron.
I was the stunt coordinator on the movie.
I always say that was some of my best
acting training was watching her work.
I was on the set every day helping her through the
action stuff and watching her prepare and do scenes.
Then the director said you know, I think
I want you to play a cop in this movie.
I was like a cop, wow.
I'm always a bad guy, this is one of the
first times I've been asked to play a good guy.
I'm gonna be a cop, finally something good,
and she goes yeah, you're gonna
be undercover in a biker bar.
Oh, well there you go.
Same thing as always.
Two whiskeys, two beers for the lady.
I'm VG.
Come in here much?
Oh come on.
But it was very cool to do a scene
with someone who wins an Oscar for the character
that they're playing in the scene you're doing.
I was so proud of him for doing that
'cause it was such an amazing movie.
All of us get pigeonholed into certain things
and to break out of that has been amazing.
He made that transition from stuntman
to stunt coordinator to actor and really
did all three very effectively.
Personally I love seeing him without
the makeup because he is a good actor
and people are finally giving him
a chance to show his acting chops.
Another guy that I credit to helping me expand
my acting career in a big way was Mike Feifer.
I think that Kane was at a place in his career
where he was looking to do real roles,
to actually show that he could act.
I think, you can imagine you're behind
the mask for so long, nobody knows
who you are or what you look like.
Kane is an actor.
He called and said hey, I'm gonna do a
movie about Ed Gein, I want you to be in it.
It's based on the story.
I think you would be good in the role.
I was impressed that he had that confidence in me.
I specifically remember a moment where
he's sad and he's upset and he has
a picture of his mother and he drops
the picture and he hits the wall
and he slides down the wall crying.
And I was like wow, I mean there's somewhere he's reaching.
I tried to make him uncomfortable
all the time, just weird and creepy
'cause that's the impression I got
from reading books about Ed that he
wasn't really that terrifying, but everybody
was always like God, that guy's weird.
So I tried to make him just feel
uncomfortable all the time and it was
great playing a character like that.
He said I liked what you did in Ed Gein,
now I want you to play Dennis Rader,
who was a guy known as B.T.K., another real guy
who was a serial killer and I loved that role
because here's a character that an actor
would die for because he has to be really
likable in a lot of scenes because that's
what the history was with him.
People loved the guy.
He was a church president, he was a Boy Scout leader,
and then he was a murderous maniac.
That's right, girls.
Your father has been chosen to
take the church down a new path.
I think he really creepily enjoyed
playing that character, so it was fun
to watch Kane inhabit this role of this
straight guy who's really mean and nasty.
Kane and I are doing a movie together called Death House.
Directed by a guy named Harrison Smith.
What I love about Kane is that he
speaks exactly what's on his mind.
And it was a lot of fun working with Kane.
It's awesome, it's like The Expendables of horror.
It's got all kinds of horror stars in it.
Kane's the big bad guy in the script.
Kane's character Sieg has a very
unique ability to regenerate.
So he gets shot, bullet holes seal up, things like that.
The way out is not that way.
It's down.
To them.
With me.
To work with him as an actor, consummate professional.
He's really concerned about the quality of his performance.
Most of all, that imagination of his,
he brought, I mean he was the character.
That's what I loved about him, he took this
totally seriously, and after we were done shooting
Bill Moseley said, he goes this is Kane's movie.
Now Bill Moseley is also hyper intelligent,
so when you get Kane and Bill Moseley together,
I mean I just sit there and it's
like they're talking in.
It's like I have no idea what these
two guys are talking to each other about.
But they both have really bizarre sense
of humor, so it's always so much fun.
And Kane is especially smart, and I think he
prides himself on talking about his MENSA,
'cause a lot of times we play pretty
dumb, scary, one note characters.
I will fuck you in Hell.
It's been in the works for a while and
some of the best horror icons are involved.
I don't know what Kane's career would've
taken had he been cast in Freddy Versus Jason.
It didn't happen and Kane, being a survivor
that he is, and most of all transcending that
mask role, went off and forged another career.
Nobody handed it to him, he worked
his balls off to get back, and I mean
he worked and he worked and he worked
and it finally paid off, he got the
Jason, the Victor Crowley and things like that,
and honestly, just me, I'm proud of him
because I've known him for a long time.
I know where he came from, I know
the things that vexed him a little bit.
While the burns scarred him physically forever,
the worst effects from the burns were actually mental.
I was burned when I was a child on 35% of my body.
We have talked about that and discussed it,
and I think we felt a little bit of
comradery because of our burns and getting
through your life and trying to deal with that.
Most patients the recovery is difficult
because of posttraumatic stress.
As a little kid I had a really amazingly
hard time, and really all my life with it,
and to go through what he's gone through
I can't even imagine because it took me
my whole life to be able to deal with it.
I started getting the feelings of...
And it's been, I've been to many therapists
and stuff and it's been classified as
PTSD type thing from the accident,
everything I went through, slowly manifested
itself because since my parents and my
sisters were the only ones that saw me,
and I got a staph infection and almost
died as a result, that somehow I've come to the
conclusion within my brain, not consciously,
but that they had something to do with that.
So for some reason, years later, gradually I
started feeling that if my parents or my
sisters came to where I lived, then they
were bringing something bad with them.
It's almost the worst part of this whole ordeal.
Everyone that had anything to do with
him at that time was suddenly infected,
they were contaminated in a way.
Even his own mother, who was the one
who took care of him and stretched him
and did every single thing afterwards
when he came home, all the therapy with him,
if she wanted to see Kane she had
to go through what he calls a process.
I would have to have them, once they
arrived at the house, give me everything
they brought with them so I can put
it in the washing machine, they'd have
to go immediately into the shower and
get rid of whatever they brought
with them, that's how it felt to me.
If I washed all their clothes and they took
a shower, then I was fine with them being in the house.
It's ridiculous, I'm the first one
to admit that it's ridiculous, but it
was something I could not control.
I would either ask them to do that
or I wouldn't be able to have them
come to the house, so what's worse?
Now that my mom is gone, I've seem
to have lost touch with everyone.
It's a sad thing because I was always
very close to my family and obviously
it's basically, it's my fault that I don't.
He lost a lot of family members
because of it because they couldn't
understand the OCD that Kane had.
It's not something I'm proud of certainly.
I'm ashamed of it, but it's just the
one thing I was not able to beat.
And I have to live with that.
I don't give up on anything.
My wife and kids know that and they mean everything to me.
My wife Susan is very...
She's a therapist, she has a practice.
For many years helping people cope
with certain problems and stuff,
so she's very caring and empathetic.
And helps people get through some stuff, including me.
I'm probably her star client because
I've had so many issues that she's
helped me deal with and been very patient.
I think what was horrifying to me was
not so much the burn story, which is bad enough,
but then the recovery story was really
I think much longer and more tedious than it
could have been, or than it should have been.
Being in the hospital for six months
I think made him a much more sensitive person.
It made him a much more generous person.
I love hanging out with Kane and his family
because we were knuckleheads, we were young
knuckleheads for a long time and then we
both started families about the same time
and I knew him with Susan and his relationship
and their dynamic is great, they're so
different and yet they complement
each other and it's just so fun to watch.
When we first started dating I was
a set decorator, but I stopped because
it was exhausting and really hard and
having two people, I found, in a relationship
that are in the same field was really hard.
I think when Susan started seeing me
really start working, there had to be
an element of concern with her considering
I was doing dangerous stuff quite a bit.
Earlier in his career it's a little
nerveracking, and there was a few times
when he would be doing, like if he was
doing average things and car stunts,
those didn't worry me, but things
where he could get seriously hurt.
Perfect example was I doing a movie called House II.
I was testing a rope, there was a rope
hung from the permanence in the sound stage.
One of the characters had to swing
on the rope from the top of the set
on a long swing down into the set
and then up the other side and
then back to the top of the temple again.
I swung out, and as I was swinging back in
I hit part of the set and it knocked me
off the rope and I fell pretty close
to 25 feet to the stage floor and hit
really hard, and right at that moment
Susan arrived on the set to visit.
I just came down to visit, he was
really excited to be on the movie.
And one of the stunt guys I had there
for the day ran over to her and said
oh my God, we thought he was dead.
Oh my God, I thought he was dead, and I'm like...
What?
Wait, what do you mean?
What are you talking about you thought he was dead?
And then she found out I had fallen.
They showed me where he had fallen.
I think since that day, that was the
instance why I don't go to the set.
I think I've brought the kids and we've
visited the set, but I don't like to
watch him work and I think he's nervous.
I have two sons, Jace and Reed, and they're
very responsible, smart, well-adjusted kids.
He really is a wonderful dad and he's totally plugged in.
It's amazing that Kane is able to
keep two completely different lives.
He has this life of flying all over
the world and putting on makeup and
ripping heads off of people, and then he
goes home and sits on his couch and
watches a TV show with his family.
If you saw a shot of them sitting there you
would think they're no different
than any other family in the world.
It's really cool that he can keep up
the balance of both of those and not
let the two bleed into each other too much.
When he's home we still enjoy our
time together watching TV and movies
and stuff like that, finding one of
his movies every once in a while,
watching a little bit of that,
him realizing how old it is and
then switching to a new channel.
I think some of my favorite memories
are probably when we hang out together.
Most fathers and sons don't really
hang out that much together, but I
really enjoy hanging out with him
instead of going out with my friends at night.
Both of my sons, when they visited
when I was shooting Jason X, I was in full
costume and I have a picture with both of them.
That was one of my favorite sets to visit.
I was pretty young, and I mean seeing
all the people in their makeup,
seeing how futuristic everything looked.
It was a really unique experience
to be on the set of a movie with my dad
and seeing him in person acting was really cool.
The funny thing about Kane is he has
this intense presence about him, but he's
the nicest, kindest guy once you get to know him.
Most people wouldn't think of Kane as being
a nice, basically mellow, soft spoken guy.
I'm sure he has his moments, but I think
that would be very surprising to a lot of people.
Maybe he sews or does macrame or something,
I'd be curious what his hobbies are.
Kane is the entire horror community.
I can say that bar none.
Kane's body language, Kane's posture,
the hockey mask, the way he moves, his bulk,
all of that is the logo for the experience
of 30 odd years of Friday the 13th films.
He's a horror icon.
Me being into the horror genre and
loving horror movies, he is Jason.
He is the epitome of Jason, goddammit!
Know about it, motherfucker!
He's by far the best Jason.
He's known as Jason, that's, you can't
really take that away.
I have to think that of all of them,
and I've said this before, he is
the one, the only, and the best.
Nobody else can even compete with him.
As a leader, when you're an icon,
if you wind up playing a role that
becomes really important to people,
there's a responsibility that comes with that.
Kane's one of the few who really
takes that responsibility seriously.
Well I think my fans are the best.
There was a big outcry from the fans
when I was replaced as Jason, and that
made me feel good that I wasn't
the only one that was disappointed.
Let's face it, if we didn't have fans
we wouldn't be in the place that we are.
I have a reputation of being nice to the fans
and Kane has a reputation of really
being fun with the fans, they love it.
He makes everybody have their own special moment
to walk away with, he's definitely a fan's fan.
Fans are everything to Kane.
He goes above and beyond.
Fans are completely the life
blood of the horror community.
You see dozens of horror conventions
with people lined up who wait hours to meet
their favorite celebrity for a few seconds.
You might be doing a convention
every weekend for a year, or on tour
promoting something, but for this person
they're waiting all year for this
moment that you're coming to their town
and they have something they wanna tell you
or share with you, so you can't ever forget that.
It doesn't matter what else is going in your life,
everything could be going to shit, you could
have the worst day ever, you could be sick,
for those five, 10 minutes that this person's
gonna get to spend with you, that's everything.
Kane really gets that and that's why
the same fans will come see him all the time.
It doesn't matter that they already got
his autograph once, they just wanna see him.
That's huge.
Even a couple people in line ahead of me,
just how he was talking to them, they'd ask
questions I'm sure he's been asked 80 times a day
and he stills answers enthusiastically as much,
but he's still got that snarky asshole attitude
that you love about it, which makes it perfect.
The first photo we took, I was wearing my hockey mask.
I did what Kane does, I did the heavy
breathing where he lifts up his shoulder like.
And tilted my head a little.
He smiled at that, I think he thought that was cool.
He gets it, okay, just like a few of us get it.
That the fans are the ones that are
really important in this whole scenario.
We're just guys doing our job.
The fans are the ones that make it all happen.
They're the driving force.
Whenever I'm with him in public,
and he gets recognized by someone,
he's always happy to take a picture.
They're really important to him and that's why he
does so many conventions to meet all of his fans.
People come to see Kane Hodder for a reason,
over and over, I mean his line never ends.
I was very envious of him 'cause he had a line
going clear out the door and I had nobody at my table.
He's so appreciative and so good with the fans.
I don't think you could have a
better ambassador for a franchise.
That whole segment of fandom didn't get the respect.
Now I think everybody realizes that
the horror movie, like the science fiction
film or the fantasy film, is a go to
popcorn ingredient in the soul of Hollywood.
Horror fans, they tend to be very
fervent for some reason, I'm not sure why.
You don't have people tattooing Adam Sandler on their body.
I'm not sure why, maybe that would be a good tattoo,
but Kane Hodder, I'm sure he's on a lot
of bodies as a tattoo, the classic face.
I do have this Kane tattoo right here.
I have Jason from Part Seven.
I had gotten this tattoo, it was the
first one I had on this arm, and he comes
over me, he's like you're a huge
fucking fan, but you got the wrong
Jason on your arm, and then he socked me one
and I was like all right, this is how
the relationship is gonna go from now on.
Now he has a whole new fan base of
a younger generation who grew up
watching the Hatchet series and those
kids' parents grew up watching the Jason series,
so it's changed and gave him a whole
new rebirth in his career and now he's
doing almost 20 movies a year because
people wanna see him do stuff.
I think Kane is relentless when it
comes to anything that he's passionate about.
He overcame a lot of things, and that's
by his own volition by a force of will.
Some people just don't have that in them
anymore, they give up, they roll over and die.
Those are words I cannot use to describe Kane Hodder.
Whether you wanna draw an analogy to Jason
who never dies, maybe Kane never dies.
I'm blown away by his history and
what he's gone through and just how he's a
triumph and he's the coolest man walking really.
A man with that much fortitude, desire, and ambition
to go through what he went through is amazing.
To go from what happened to him to being
one of the best in the business as a burn guy
I think pretty much tells you all you need to know
about Kane, the guy's got balls of freakin' steel.
A lot of people would've just been well
I had my time and that was my thing and
I'm just gonna be put out to pasture
and do the conventions, but he was
smart enough and still hungry enough
when Hatchet got put in front of him
to say I'm gonna go at this with
everything I have, and I'm gonna
keep going and I'm gonna keep showing
people that I'm just getting started.
More people should approach their
work and their life like he does.
When you go through an ordeal like that,
you begin to take life seriously.
You slow down for a second and you make
sure that your next step is the right step.
And I think that's what Kane does.
The fact that I was, suicidal thoughts
and stuff, I know how you can get to that point,
and I understand when people get there.
I think I could've been justified possibly ending
my life then because of everything I had been through.
But look what I would've missed.
That's huge, I think, I hope to instill
in people that get to that point
you don't know what you might miss.
And I would've missed all of this.
I still believe he's just getting started.
10 more years from now there could be
a whole 'nother documentary about yeah,
so he did all of that, but then he did this.
How would I want Kane to kill me?
I think quickly.
Very, very quickly.
I just thought of something horrible.
It was sexual.
I definitely, I'd want him to choke me out.
You ever hear the expression
rip off your head, shit down your throat?
Maybe if he made me eat my own shit,
or some script that I wrote and stuff
it down my throat and made it eat it, or shove
my own movies down my throat or up my ass.
I thought we were gonna be friends and partners.
What do you know about the script that I don't know?
I'd like to be beat to death by two naked ladies.
Wow.
Number one, his character couldn't kill
me 'cause I can whip his ass any day of the week.
Period.
With kindness.
No, I don't know, let's see, a particular way,
how about he and I are both burned up in a fire.
Ew, creepy.
By the way, I don't know if you know this,
Kane has killed more people with his
hands than anybody else in movie history.
Don't know if you know that.
Subtitles by explosiveskull