For the Love of Horror '24 Part 1

“This is my first time in Manchester,” tells Brooke Smith. “I have ancestry here. I was 23 in Silence of the Lambs; I’m 57 now.” 

Smith, Katherine Martin in Jonathan Demme’s 1991 horror hit, is the first guest on stage at For the Love of Horror, the movie convention now in its 6th year, here at Bowlers Exhibition Centre in Trafford. 

COMPARE: How did you get in? Did you know it was going be a big deal? 

BS: I did, it was part of Manhunter (the first film to feature Hannibal Lecter in 1986). I’d just got skinny; it’s part of being an actress. I had to gain 25lbs (11kg) and be naked. 

Audience questions and Smith’s answers reveal that she never saw Hannibal, the sequel! Ted Levine (serial killer and skinner of girls ‘Buffalo Bill’), she describes as ‘a sweetheart.’ 

AQ: Did you read the book? Take any inspo? 

BS: I read the book, and I’ve seen Manhunter. In the book, she was smoking pot with her boyfriend, eating potato chips and thrown in the well. 

I stepped away at this point for the Evil Dead (1983) group photo with Hal Delrich AKA Richard DeManincor (Scott), Betsy Baker (Linda) and Theresa Tilly (Shelly).

When I get back to the stage area, James Duval has taken over. His most prominent role was Frank the Bunny in 2001’s Donnie Darko, the surrealist movie that flung a young Jake Gyllenhaal into the public conscience. It’s here that, decades later, it’s pointed out that Duval was also Miguel, the son of the crop dusting conspiracy theorist Russell Casse (Randy Quaid) in Independence Day (1996). 

JD: I got the audition for Donnie Darko and fell in love with the script. Frank the Bunny was 6”tall (1m82). (For me) it probably wasn’t going anywhere. I made complete sense of it. I can explain it. We got this kid Jake Gyllenhaal from October Sky. Great movie. If it wasn’t for Drew Barrymore, nobody would watch it. She said, ‘You’re gonna do it exactly as it is.’ She gave director Richard Kelly $3.5 million. Richard wanted to make it exact. We had a meeting. All the actors were there: Jake Gyllenhaal, Patrick Swayze, Drew Barrymore. A guy says, ‘This is terrible. It breaks all the rules.’ Another guy says, ‘I disagree with you. That’s why it’s so good: Because it breaks rules.’

COMPARE: Did you think you’d be here? 

JD: No. Part of it I love it, can’t believe I’m in it. It made millions. Then a little thing called 9/11 happened, no one wanted to watch a film about a jet engine falling out of the sky. Nobody cared. 2 years later, I was walking through town and a security guard said, ‘Frank!’ 

Duval goes onto describe how he interpreted the script. 

JD: In Donnie Darko, I saw myself as a friendly bunny guy, not as a scary rabbit. How does he get there? What’s gonna convince him to give his life to save people? My approach was ‘help Donnie to realise his destiny.’ As an actor you have to make sense of it. I went over the script, and I was the only one who understood it. We’re seeing the undead guy manifested in the suit he died in. 

JD: In Gone in 60 Seconds (in which Duvall played Freb) at the screen test they wouldn’t see me. I came across as stupid and that’s what got me the part.