It's almost an unwritten rule in Hollywood that if a successful TV star under the age of 30 wants to break into films, they have to start with a horror movie. Even Clooney had to do From Dusk Til Dawn. Veronica Mars star Kristin Bell has to pay her dues with the Japanese horror film remake Pulse, but at least it gives her a change of pace from the outgoing go-getter she plays on TV.
?Maddie is a college student who is very independent and very driven and also very guarded,? Bell said of her movie character. ?I think that she?s tough, but she has a lot of walls put up. The movie starts off with her boyfriend committing suicide and he must have been the only one she was ever vulnerable with which is why she has to absolutely find out why he did it. And that?s sort of what drives her throughout the whole movie.?
In Pulse, Maddie and her friends are plagued by monsters that come to earth through Wi-Fi signals. All it takes is a blackberry, let alone an internet connection, to unleash the beasts. Do we sense a metaphor here?
"I think [technology]s already taken over. I mean, we keep talking about it. It's certainly not something I think about on a daily basis, but because of all the questions surrounding it today I think what I've come up with is that all these things that are supposed to bring us closer together like text messaging and E-mails are actually pulling us further apart because we're all becoming more reclusive. And we end up sitting on the internet for and you're like, 'Oh, it's 4 AM. What have I been doing for the last nine hours?' The idea of writing a letter has become ancient and that's only happened over the last five years. I think we've come farther in the last five years than we have in the last 50."
Of course, you don't have to go that deep to appreciate the monsters attacking the pretty girls. Bell wanted to do all of the scary action the filmmakers would let her.
"I am a very physical person. I try to stay active and I find that I'm much happier and more centered and clearer in my mind when I'm paying attention to my body which just is like health and just being active in general. And I have like no time to go to the gym, like literally, so I'll just like run up the stairs 50 times until I run out of breath and that will be my workout for the day. It's ridiculous, it's like poor man's workout."
The film's money shot has Bell pulled into the dark side by dozens of hands. During the filming, she was only worried a stunt hand would sexually harrass her.
"It's against a green screen and all the hands that are touching me are real which means there is a lot of hand choreography involved. Everybody sanitize. They were really respectful about it. And I get really claustrophic in general, so I was a little nervous about doing it, but it was up against a green screen and they slipped holes for everyone's arms. There were 12 guys back there and they did the choreography of where they would do it and then everybody sanitized their hands and the camera was dead on. And I started to scream and then they grabbed and pulled me back. And I also pulled myself back too."
Pulse was originally scheduled to open in July, then pushed to September, then announced definitively as August 11. Then they moved it to August 25 before moving back to the 11th. All in a day's work at The Weinstein Company.
"Although it looks funky, but if you think about it, Bob and Harvey are really smart. And it comes down to finding the right window. And there was a lot of stuff released this summer, some movies were pulled off this summer, it's all marketing and it?s all their research. So, something told them recently, 'No, no, no, this isn't the best window for it.' And if they didn't care for this movie, they would have just released it at any time. They could put it out tomorrow. They would have put it out yesterday. They really wouldn't care. They are moving it because they are finding research and something is telling them this is a better window. And it's because of their faith in this film and that they want to succeed, that something is telling them that is a better window. They really do their research. Think of the movies you see. They know how to market movie. So, I put my trust in that and I know there was something that must have told them that this was a better window. I mean, it's weird for me, because we're doing different press conferences at different times. I just want it to come out, because I want to go to the premiere, sit in the theater and finally watch it with my parents and stuff."
Now back to work on Veronica Mars, Bell enjoys a slightly lighter load, but only slightly. "It's gotten a bit better, because they have a lot of new characters and a lot of characters have plotlines that don't necessarily completely involve Veronica. It's still really hard. I still don't know that I'd recommend for anyone to be the main character on a one-hour drama ever unless they are planning on giving up their whole life. But they have made it easier for me to do stuff like this. Obviously they are shooting today but there is a huge storyline that involves Ricco in the first two episodes and he's shooting right now. But, yeah, it is what it is. I'm Veronica Mars on Veronica Mars. I wasn't prepared for this the first year at all so I was just really caught off guard when my life was taken away from me and all of a sudden I was having to do all these requirements I didn?t know where requirements. It's gotten a little easier, but it's still a one-hour drama and it's a tough ship."
Though her professional life has become its own kind of monster, Bell is still the same person to those close to her. "My life on the outside has changed a lot, my life on the inside I can say very safely hasn't changed at all which I'm sort of proud of because I think that my family has strict orders to knock me off my pedestal if they ever see me on it. But, I mean still like all the same things. I still have all the same friends, it's just I am a little more guarded now, because of having to be in an awkward situation where someone asked me some random personal question where you're like, 'Whoa, a, why do you want to know and b, why would I ever tell you?' You know what I mean? It?s like people's interest in celebrity really amazes me. It's like, I love some actors, but I really don't care who they are voting for. I don't care what they think. Sometimes it's interesting to hear. But, I've certainly grown up a lot and learned a lot about this business, but I think I've generally stayed the same." BR>
Pulse is now playing.
