THE LOST BOYS ’80S SPECIAL
All back to Santa Carla as this month’s Time Machine goes behind-the-scenes of the Kiefertastic classic. Chill out, Edgar!
Adolescence can be a tricky time. There’s acne, angst and awkward encounters with the opposite sex to deal with, not to mention all the bloodsucking vampires knocking around. That was certainly the case for the cast of Joel Schumacher’s seminal 1987 horror The Lost
Boys. His tale of brothers Michael (Jason Patric) and Sam (Corey Haim) struggling to fit into their new beach community amid an epidemic of party-loving neck-biters flipped the coming-of-age genre on its head and gave vampires a much needed makeover. For its stars, this rollercoaster ride was cemented in celluloid history during one crazy summer in 1986 and as the film turns 30, it manages to evoke fond memories from those involved.
“I’d done a bunch of little things but this was a whole other level. I was over the moon,” recalls Jamison Newlander on bagging the role of Alan Frog, one half of the film’s vampire hunting duo the Frog Brothers, alongside Corey Feldman’s Edgar. “I had a sense early on that Joel had a vision because he was very confident in what he was looking for, but it wasn’t until I was on set and saw what was going on that I really understood the vision he had for this new take on vampires.”
DEAD COOL
Schumacher’s undead revamp swapped capes, castles and Transylvania for motorcycles, metal music and the Santa Cruz boardwalk, renamed to become the fictional murder capital of the world, Santa Carla. “It was just clear that he wasn’t going to make this teen exploitation movie but that he was aiming for something a little grander,” says Alex Winter, the soon-to-be Bill And Ted star who made his screen debut as Marko, right-hand vamp to Kiefer Sutherland’s leader of the boardwalk bloodsuckers, David. “Make-up, attitude, physicality… I had a dance background and a motorcycle background so it was a good combination.”
As for Schumacher’s vision, Winter’s NYU film school-trained eye spotted a few crucial influences, not least from legendary cinematographer Michael Chapman. “I was a total pain in Michael Chapman’s backside, I followed him around like a lapdog,” laughs Winter. “I’d just come out of film school and this was the guy who shot Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and did camerawork on Jaws, one of the masters of cinematography,” he explains. “As a cinephile, I see a lot of Rebel Without A Cause. I feel like there’s this gothic horror stuff going on in there but there’s no doubt that it was a product of the time.”
That time was the late ’80s, a period of partying, excess and dodgy haircuts but for The Lost Boys’ cast it was also a time for bonding. “We basically met in the hallway about to go in to read for Joel,” says Newlander on meeting his fellow Frog Brother Corey Feldman. “Immediately there was a rapport. I could tell he was just a good guy. Joel really wanted us to be like Clint Eastwood or Sylvester Stallone – really straight. He didn’t want us playing for the comedy at all and I think that paid off. We were just these badass little kids on this mission and I really bought into that.”
The chemistry flowed off-screen too, with Newlander, Feldman and Corey Haim spending hours together between scenes during the film’s summertime shoot. “Feldman and I ended up hanging out a lot on set and off, so when we weren’t shooting we had some pretty clean fun riding our bikes around Santa Cruz. Corey Haim
and I also got really close,” recalls Newlander. “Haim was just a really sweet guy and as wild as he was, we had a lot of clean fun as well. I was there when the Coreys began. That was their first movie together and it was this weird dichotomy where they were these stars and you could tell they were on the rise but they were also kids,” he reflects. “I was 15 when it started and just a bit of a regular kid and they had that side too. We hung out a lot all through that summer.”
Meanwhile, the film’s older cast of vampires including Winter, Brooke McCarter, Billy Wirth and leader Kiefer Sutherland were having a very different experience. “I’ve heard since that they had parties every night, all night long and I kind of missed that,” admits Newlander. “It wasn’t like they had lots of lines, it was just this feel that they brought to the screen and so for them I think the set was an extension of that. I think that’s part of the edge that the film has.”
As one of the film’s vampire entourage, Winter has his own take on the film’s summer shoot. “There were two different movies,” he reasons. “There are two worlds that Michael is being pulled between: the normal world of family and daytime and then the dark nighttime world of vampires. Not only is that the world I inhabited shooting wise, it’s the world I inhabited story-wise so I had very little scenes with Jamie and Corey even though we were all hanging out together all the time,” explains Winter. “We started out on location in Santa Cruz and we were there for a long time doing all these scenes where me, Kiefer, Brooke and Billy are riding motorcycles and hanging out in the cave. We were just together all the time. It was a very communal set. I think that’s
largely due to the way Joel runs things because that’s not the way they always are. We got up to shoot at night and went to bed at dawn. It was a wild summer and a lot of fun.”
Fang gang
Since its 1987 release, The Lost Boys has taken on an afterlife of its own. Maybe the film’s comedic tilt is to blame, maybe it’s the endlessly quotable lines (Maggots? Nope, “they’re only noodles, Michael!”) or perhaps it’s that greased-up sax player at the beginning? Winter and Newlander have their own theories: “I think what hits people most was how sexy it was and how it was this different take on vampires that was purposely young. It has this raw sex appeal,” says Newlander. “I remember when I first went to college and there were people in a dorm room watching The Lost Boys and they were loving it. Then someone told them who I was and they all went nuts. That’s when I had a sense that, ‘Okay, this film is impacting people’. Then at the 20-year mark I started doing conventions and that’s when it hit me in a whole new way.” “To be honest with you, I noticed right away,” admits Winter. “It wasn’t a gazilliondollar hit but it was a hit and it was a sleeper hit right away. I would say that once the DVD market really took off that’s when it became clear that it had legs and that it was this DVD and cable go-to,” he suggests. “I was getting a lot of fan mail about it and it seemed to have really taken ahold. Now there’s this ’80s and ’90s nostalgia and it seems to really be something that holds up, which is obviously something you have no control over or expectations about when you make a movie. It’s not expected”
You only have to look at today’s pop-culture world to get a sense of the significance The Lost Boys still holds 30 years after its release but what personal significance does it hold for those who lived through Santa Carla’s brush with the undead? “I remember it as the last great summer of my youth in a way, given the age that I was and the big family, carnival craziness of the shoot. I have an extremely fond memory of that summer and fall,” says Winter candidly. “Adulthood took over after that. In terms of the details of my life, it was growing up time and it really was this swan song of youth. It was a great way to go out.”
Newlander has similar thoughts. “30 years later, it’s now a really interesting and pivotal time in my life where I got to be part of something really big and it’s the closest I’ve got to the world of Hollywood that I envisioned as a kid. That was a time where I got to be there. We did it somehow and I’m really proud of that.” He pauses briefly. “In my life, out of all of the different things I am: a dad, an actor, a writer… to be a Frog Brother is pretty cool.”