You know you’re in an odd place when a man not wearing 19th century period costumes and/or vampire make-up makes him an anomaly, but that was the case with Dominic Cooper, hanging in the shade on a day off from the New Orleans set of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Those working behind the scenes wore shorts, t-shirts and whatever else it took to keep cool on this hot May afternoon, but the British actor looked like he was ready for a GQ shoot in his slouchy slim jeans, plaid button-up and each strand of his long, wavy hair locked perfectly into place.
The film has one of those massively descriptive titles, like Cowboys & Aliens or Hot Tub Time Machine, allowing the audience an opportunity to decide right away whether or not it’s for them, but Cooper (An Education, Captain America: The First Avenger) revealed that the notion of Honest Abe slaying vampires isn’t only a tough sell to audiences.
“I’m not possibly reading that. Goodbye,” he initially dismissed the script. “I didn’t read it immediately because it sounded like a bit of a joke. I mentioned it to someone else that had read the book and they said the book was brilliant and I thought ‘This is ridiculous!’” But then he started reading it and eventually agreed to the role of Henry, a 500-year-old vampire who actually provides guidance to Abe in his vampire hunter pursuits.
Producer Jim Lemley also recognizes the challenges of selling the film to the public. “Of course it’s a very polarizing title and it can also play as a joke, which can be interesting for two minutes and then it’s not interesting at all,” he said. Eye-catching titles like Snakes on a Plane worked up plenty of internet buzz prior to their releases, but they failed to make much of a mark at the box-office. So what makes this clever concept worth a feature-length film?
“Emotion. And the real story of Abraham Lincoln,” explained writer Seth Grahame-Smith. “The themes of his life, the themes of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, making something of yourself when you came from nothing – no education, no family, no wealth of any kind.” In fact, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum in Springfield, Illinois fully endorses Grahame-Smith’s story, even hosting a junket in February where myself and other members of the press were given a sneak peek at several clips from the film. “Anything to open the door to a bigger audience” is their thinking.
Grahame-Smith had to swallow his pride in a way and make several significant changes in adapting his own novel for the big screen. “It’s very helpful, as it turns out, in a film, to have a villain to go up against your hero. So we created the character of Adam (portrayed by Rufus Sewell) to give voice to that and all the evils that the vampires do.” He also found it important to add a major climax since the book essentially just tapers off with Lincoln’s assassination and a short epilogue.
And whereas the book was straight-forward in tone, the film looks to have just enough camp to save it from laughable self-seriousness. This struck me immediately when I had the opportunity to watch Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) direct a scene from the film. It featured an axe-wielding Benjamin Walker (as Lincoln) making his second attempt to exact revenge on Jack Barts (Marton Csokas), the vampire responsible for his mother’s death.
Csokas slowly lowers his glasses to reveal some gruesome scarring around a glass eye while Walker lurks around the corner of the barn, ready to strike. “Abraham Fuckin’ Lincoln!” Csokas exclaims, just before a massive swing-and-a-miss from the axe of Walker. Any question I had about the film’s tone was instantly answered, as that one scene features more modern language and profanity than anything I can recall from reading the novel.
I also took notice of the amount of collaboration and moving parts involved in the shoot. After each take, Csokas and Walker would stand next to Bekmambetov as he played back the video and analyze each individual movement to the smallest detail. Should he utter the phrase as he lowers the glasses? Before? How about after?
Aside from Walker and Csokas, the scene’s other vital roles belonged to a group of horses that Bekmambetov seemed to find a bit less cooperative than their human counterparts. I was certainly more entertained than he was, trying to get them to move on queue with the action. At one point, the on-set horse trainer had to explain that if the horses moved too quickly or abruptly they would run right into the lake that was bordering the filming location.
But all frustrations were put to rest when one particularly gassy horse put an end to one take just as soon as it began. “Hey, I heard that!” joked Csokas as he and the crew laughed their way back into position.
Though the story spends much of its time in places like Springfield and, obviously, Washington, D.C., to name a few, the film was shot entirely in New Orleans. Lemley called the choice an economic one, with the city’s tax benefit saving them between $10 and $15 million off their reported $70 million budget, a relatively small number for a summer tentpole movie.
Bekmambetov and Production Designer Francois Audouy were able to tailor the shoot around the city’s well-preserved architecture, while still finding the wooded areas necessary for Abe’s axe-training sequences. “The North shore of Lake Pontchartrain actually has a lot of pine forest. They’re smaller in size, but we can augment that with larger trees,” Audouy said. “We would have had to compromise much more if we were anywhere else in the world.”
Well, there was certainly one person making some serious compromises in New Orleans. “I don’t get to eat anything,” sighed Benjamin Walker, who was forced to lose a lot of weight to play the lanky president after bulking up for his previous gig as President Andrew Jackson on Broadway. “To be in one of the greatest culinary cities in the nation and not be able to enjoy any of it has been unpleasant.”
But hey, at least know the horses are being fed.
