Wyatt Weed Interview

Wyatt Weed is an actor, writer, and filmmaker. He played the Boar Predator – one of the Lost Predator’s who appears at the end of Predator 2.

Wyatt talks working with Predator alumni Steve Wang and Brian Simpson, and some stories they shared of their time working on the Predator, how Wyatt became involved with Predator 2, his experiences inside the suit and nearly passing out on set, being pranked by Kevin Peter Hall, plenty of sci-fi tangents and more!

RidgeTop and Corporal Hicks interviewed him for Episode #105 of the AvPGalaxy Podcast.  You can listen to the episode below or read on for a transcription.

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Aaron: Before we start geeking out and just diving into Predator could you just tell our listeners a little about yourself outside of the Predator franchise? Who is Wyatt Weed and what does he do?

Sure I’ve always loved movies and there are various times early in my life when I wanted to be other things but the majority of my life I’ve wanted to be a filmmaker. I describe myself as a filmmaker because that covers sort of a multitude of sins but I like to write, direct, produce, sometimes star in but over the course of my career, I’ve been an actor a writer, director, second unit director, art department, special effects sculptor, model maker.

So, I’ve really got a varied background in a lot of things. I’m sort of a jack-of-all-trades and now what I do is, I concentrate mainly on independent films, usually writing and directing independent films and occasionally starring in them. Occasionally casting myself in things that nobody else will cast me in but yeah just sort of a general-purpose filmmaker with an emphasis probably on the horror and the science fiction films.

Aaron: Do you have an interest in horror and sci-fi out of making themselves?

Oh yes. I’m not so much of a slasher… I tend to steer clear of the heavy gore stuff myself. I enjoy that stuff, but I love a good science fiction film as we all know is engaging on so many different levels. I mean it’s dramatic. It’s thought-provoking. It can be scary. It can be action-packed and so I really love the big ideas.

The big science-fiction ideas but I also I like the creepy stuff that you never see. Like Stuart Gordon has just recently passed away and I got to work on some Stuart Gordon stuff but it reminds me of Lovecraft and I love Lovecraft because there’s so much stuff hinted at but not shown there’s like so many creepy concepts right under the surface so I love the idea of this sense of creeping dread that you’ve never quite seen but you always feel.

So, when it when it comes to horror films I’m more about the suspense and the creepy as opposed to the jump out and throw blood at you but there are some good blood splatter films that I like.

Aaron: I’ve been rereading a bit of Lovecraft lately obviously because it’s a huge sort of part of Alien as well and his whole fascination with knowledge driving people insane is one that’s really been making me think lately because I’m like I could not think of something that would drive me to the point of insanity like in some of his stories. There was one where a guy who had peculiar features and it was a family trait and he eventually learns that he’s part some sort of ancient ape creature as well as part human and it drives him to the point of him setting himself on fire.

Adam: I just recently watched Color Out of Space if you’ve heard of that one Wyatt, with Nicholas Cage. I guess that’s based on a shorter novella by HP Lovecraft.

My personal favorite is I like At The Mountains of Madness. If a studio offered me an opportunity and said, “What horror film do you want to make?” I would say At The Mountains of Madness. I’ve actually written my own spec script of At The Mountains of Madness and would love to do that someday and I think the mistake with a lot of that stuff, and I was so pleased to see Color Out of Space get made because I think they go the wrong direction sometimes.

Like At The Mountains of Madness I know at one point Guillermo del Toro was gonna direct and James Cameron was gonna produce and Tom Cruise was gonna star and it was gonna be a hundred million dollar plus blockbuster that they were gonna have a hard time getting in an R rating on and that’s not the way to go.

At The Mountains of Madness and Lovecraft films, they need to be small little independent films that don’t have to worry about ratings, and they get to include all the sort of visceral elements that those stories have. I think that’s the way to go. Not everything has to be a hundred-million-dollar film swinging for the fences to make a billion. I’d love to see studios get back to smaller independent films that are successful that aren’t billion-dollar grossers but that are successful.

It’s become so corporate that it’s driven out a lot of… those films that I grew up upon in the 80s, these little, tiny independent horror films that were hugely successful. I mean the original From Beyond, Re-animator, Fright Night. All these films, they were small films, and they did good business and that’s just not enough anymore and it’s sad. It’s really sad.

Adam: Yeah, I totally agree. I think you can really make an effective sci-fi or horror film with a small budget. I mean first of all, special effects now are very accessible, more so than they were in the 90s and early 2000s for indie studios. Like with the Prometheus and Alien Covenant, I kind of argued in some of our podcasts after that that I think the Alien films going forward, should more be made, should be smaller budget and you can still have like a grand sense of scale by just doing things a bit more economically.

Again, we go back to the idea. I mean if you think about Alien, just the idea that this thing was living inside of him and it was growing inside of him and they showed you some x-rays and they showed you some footage and you saw the Alien rip out of the guy but there was so much that was suggested and horrible and clearly the Alien was grabbing these people and dragging them away and doing something with them and there was almost as much inferred as was shown and by today’s standards Alien is such a tiny little film but it’s still so effective.

I’ve seen it in the theatres on the big screen in the last probably year or so and it still holds up. It’s still amazing. It’s practical. It’s real. It’s there in front of you and that’s what we aspire to. We’re a production company called Pirate Pictures and we try to make things practical and physical, and my friends are always saying “Go get more money” and I’m like “I don’t want more money.” I’m not saying that if a studio came to me tomorrow and said “Wyatt, you’re our guy and we want to give you millions of dollars.” I’m not saying I wouldn’t do it.

It’s just working in the independent film field, we have so much freedom. We have so much freedom to do whatever we think of and there’s so little sort of executive red tape to get through and it’s really a satisfying and freeing process. Making films at this level. It’s challenging. It’s always challenging but it is so much fun. I don’t know if I could operate under a studio at this point. I don’t know if I could operate under the supervision of a bunch of producers.

Aaron: Were you already familiar with Predator before you appeared in Predator 2?

Yes, I’m back in St. Louis now but back in the 80s, I was living in St. Louis and trying to eek out a living in the film industry because there wasn’t much of a film industry here. So, you kind of worked on local corporate commercial stuff. You worked in cable television. I was going to film school.

I was a young guy and I always dreamed of going to Los Angeles someday and then of course in 1987 I saw the first Predator film in the theaters and me and my friends were all young aspiring filmmakers and we’re all building our own models and doing our own makeup effects and stuff and makeup effects in particular were really kind of taking off at that point. Stan Winston was gaining a lot of clout and notoriety.

So, we saw Predator and Predator was, not to overstate the movie too much, but it really is just such an iconic 80s film, and it functions so well on so many different levels. It’s a great science fiction film. It’s a great action film. It’s a great horror film. It’s a great monster film. It’s a great effects film. It just does so many things so well. So summer of 1987, Predator was the movie.

My friends and I probably went and saw it three or four times in the theaters and we talked about the suit work and the special effects and the editing and just everything about it was so good and then of course back then we didn’t have the internet so it was all about going to the newsstands and grabbing up all the media. It was like Starlog and Cinefantastique and Cineffects and Fangoria.

It was about getting those magazines and we pour over every detail of these articles, so we knew who Steve Wang was. We knew who Stan Winston was, Shane Mahan, Matt Rose. We knew who these people were, and we idolized everything they did, and we tried to study as much of what they did in those films. So yeah, I was a big Predator fan and then the following year in 1988 is when I actually moved to Los Angeles and started trying to get work in the film industry.

Adam: So, for a lot of us, the individuality of the Predator designs is such a huge part of the appeal for the creatures. Now other than the one you donned of course, the Boar Predator, do you have a favorite Predator design?

I think I’m always gonna like the Jungle Hunter from the first film. I think he’s the first and the best the City Hunter I like but the City Hunter, of course, is so similar to the first one and of course, I’m partial to the Boar of course but now I think the Jungle Hunter from the first film will always be my favorite.

I think he’s the cleanest and the sleekest and his design is just so perfect on so many levels. The Elder Predator from I guess maybe he’s the Greyback from Predator 2, I think he’s very cool-looking but for me personally, it’s always gonna be about that first Jungle Predator. I think he’s so well featured too.

I don’t think the other films do as good a job because there was only one Predator in the first film, and they spent so much time just sort of lovingly showing you everything about his function. I still think that first film is probably the most successful on every level. The other films have various things to like and dislike but that first film to me is still… that’s the one to beat right there.

Aaron: So yeah, the film would be a favourite of all of them?

Yes, there are other films in the series that I like but for various reasons. I don’t dislike Alien versus Predator. I’m just so tired of everybody bringing everything back to Earth and it all has to do with earth and it just it got so incestuous and feeding upon itself time after time and even with the continued Alien films Prometheus and Covenant. They’re just trying to retcon the story and go back and fill in all these gaps and I think they should have started from Alien and gone forward and I think trying to do all the things and tie all these…

I love the idea of tying the universes together. I just think they’ve done a bad job of it. I do think [Alien vs Predator] is an entertaining film and it’s well put together. I’ve always liked Paul WS Anderson. I think he did a good job directing the film. I think the film was very exciting. I just kind of had to ignore the story. I just had to kind of watch Sanaa Lathan and the Predator and the Queen Alien and let him go at it and just ignore the story and pretend like it was taking place someplace else.

Adam: If there’s ever a third Alien vs. Predator movie, they would for sure have to do it in space and in the future.

I think the frustration for so many fans and this goes into a lot of things. This goes into Marvel movies, DC movies, a lot of different areas. For me it goes into the Batman films in particular with Alien, Predator and Alien vs. Predator in particular, there’s so much good comic book work out there. Such iconic brilliant storylines.

Why they’re not mining and tapping those stories more is beyond me. One of my biggest frustrations is with the DC films, they’ll take a little bit of Batman versus Superman. They’ll take a little bit of the death of Superman. Take a little bit of the Dark Knight Returns rather than just do that and somewhere down the road, someone’s gonna say well let me do Death of Superman, let me do Dark Knight Returns and some executive is gonna say we already did those.

No, you didn’t. You cherry picked them, and you ruined them, but you didn’t do them and that’s how I feel about a lot of the Aliens. I mean some of the stuff Dark Horse was doing back in the 80’s and 90’s. That stuff was just wonderful and that goes for the Terminator as well.

There are some good Terminator storylines that are just… Terminator: The Burning Earth I think was called. That should have been a Terminator 3, and they just keep screwing around with these things to get one more film. It’s like they’re too afraid to do it right. They just want to keep going on those big-budget home runs, but I digress.

Adam: So, you mentioned Steve Wang and we know you actually had the opportunity to work with him on Predator 2 and he was one of the artists responsible for working with Stan Winston on the very first Predator. So, what was it like to work with him?

I didn’t work with him specifically on Predator 2 although obviously his influence was very heavy on Predator 2. I got involved with him earlier. This ties the whole thing together. We’re fanboys loving on Predator in 1987. 1988, I move out to Los Angeles and then probably a year or two later some of my other friends move out and we’re all sort of grouped together and helping each other get jobs and then working at various effects houses.

We start encountering Steve Wang and at first, we’re just so in awe of the guy but we get to know him and we get to hang out with him and our big dive was he was making a kung fu martial-arts comedy called Kung Fu Rascals and to set the stage for this, Kung Fu Rascals was like a $42,000 super 8mm feature film and he enlisted our help in making this feature film.

So we spent a big chunk of 1990, the year I worked on Predator, we spent a big chunk of 1990 and 91 shooting this martial arts comedy and so day in and day out and making films with Steve Wang and working with him on these projects and then from our involvement in Kung Fu Rascals, we weren’t stupid. We knew that Steve was watching us, and he was kind of keeping an eye on us.

That he was sort of assessing us and we were all friends. We were all hanging out, but he was also kind of looking at our abilities. Well then Steve Wang got the job to co-direct the first Guyver film and he needed miniature people and suit people and sculptors for the first Guyver film. So he took like half the people from Kung Fu Rascals into the first Guyver film and then of course all of us who worked on the first Guyver film worked on the second Guyver film.

So there was like a three or four year period there where it was just me and my friends and Steve Wang doing whatever Steve Wang was working on. Steve is… no exaggeration I don’t want to hype the guy too much. Steve is one of the most unbelievably talented and disciplined guys I’ve ever met, and he’s developed his craftsmanship level to such an extreme degree.

I can only imagine that working with James Cameron is like working with Steve Wang because he literally can do your job and everyone else’s job better than you can and I don’t mean to make him sound like a taskmaster. Its just Steve’s input was always to make things better, to teach you a new technique, to push the limits of what you were doing. So even when you thought “All I’ve done something really amazing here.”

Steve would come in and make suggestions and critically analyze some of the things you were doing and show you techniques and then a day later, you’d be like “Oh my god I thought this was good, it’s even better now” and the amount of stuff he knew was just staggering. Just the volume of information and skills and ability in his head. I mean it affects me to this day. There are philosophies that Steve had about how to sculpt things, how to design things.

I mean probably the biggest lesson I learned from him was the idea of form follows function and you can look at the Predator. The original Predator design was this tall gangly thing with long spindly multi jointed legs. It was sort of insectoid and that was a cool idea. I mean I actually liked the first Predator design. It just didn’t make sense for a large hulking creature stumbling through the jungle taking out commandos.

So, the whole new approach by Stan Winston Studio and Steve and the guys was, OK for practicality, this thing’s trumping through the jungle. It can’t be some spindly multi legged thing. It’s got to be like a humanoid form. Now what can we do with the humanoid form to make the humanoid form look better and Steve has been a big one in terms of paint jobs and artistic ideas behind painting creatures.

So, if you’re gonna make an insectoid creature, look at nature. Look at insects. Look at spiders. Some of the paint patterns and schemes he’s come up with. The sort of natural spotting that he put onto the Predator and some of the colors and things that he plays with – just really amazing and how the Predator operated things. He had long claws, but he had the ability to operate his controls and do things with his fingers they just they thought everything through so incredibly well and that’s a lot of what echoes in my head from Steve to this day is does it make sense.

Does form follow function. He used to say a bad design can’t be fixed with unlimited amounts of detail. He said if your basic form isn’t good then no amount of detailing and tricks is gonna make it good. So, Steve was the guy who would say “Yeah, your sculpting is great. Your ability is great, but this design is bad” and he always went for better.

He always went for the best. He always was pushing the boundaries, and he had the skill to back it up. Working with Steve was like the greatest film school / art school that I think I possibly could have had. I mean the guy could shoot and write and direct and edit and act and he was a martial artist. I mean he literally was like buckaroo banzai with a sculpting tool. He was amazing.