Timothy Olyphant is participating in a remake of a revered horror classic, George Romero's The Crazies, but he's not worried about how true they're staying to the original-- he hasn't seen it. "I never saw the original. I saw the trailer, or whatever that is, online," he told me and several other journalists during last weekend's junket for his new film, A Perfect Getaway.
But don't get up in arms yet about his failure to appreciate the work of his elders. Olyphant's got plenty of actorly reasons for his decision.
"I'm an on-the-page guy. I found a few years ago that keeping it as simple as possible was the best method for me. I will obsess about everything that's in front of me. But I don't go too far outside of what I feel is absolutely necessary. But I'll go to great lenghts, if there's something that I feel is really going to enlighten me."Even without a frame of reference for the original, Olyphant is optimistic about the new movie. "I'm very proud of the work we did. I saw Breck [Eisner, the director] the other day, and he showed me some footage, and it looked awesome."In The Crazies, Olyphant will play one of the everyday townspeople who loses control when the water system goes bad. He might have had a little practice for it with The Perfect Getaway, in which he plays an ex-military guy with a penchant for weaponry. We'll have more from him and Perfect Getaway co-star Kiele Sanchez later today. The Crazies is coming in 2010; Getaway opens today.
