Excerpt from Idle Chatter
Article by Anthony C. Ferrante, from Fangoria
issue #182 (May 1999)
Fangoria sells back
issues online.
This interview with director Rodman Flender dealt mostly with the movie Idle
Hands, but the article talked a little about his experience on Leprechaun 2:
 |
| Warwick Davis and the filmmakers were awarded a little
more gold to make Leprechaun 2.
|
Flender followed his Corman stints by hopping over to Trimark and helming
Leprechaun 2,
which he recalls as another pleasant experience. "I got lucky on
Leprechaun 2,
because we had the biggest budget of all the
Leprechaun movies," he recalls.
"There's a formula going around that if the first movie makes money, the second movie
doubles the budget, the third movie is half the budget, and the fourth is a third of the
original budget. At the time, it was the biggest budget I had worked with, so I was able
to get more toys to play with and more time. That also meant our script was a little
more ambitious than the others, but the main thing I remember about that movie was
letting Warwick Davis run wild. He's a great actor and completely dives into that role
and acts the hell out of it. Many actors, when they do genre films or a genre sequel -
they'll just be cashing a paycheck, but Warwick was great throughout."
Well aware that many a fine low-budget director has been trapped in the horror
arena, Flender made a conscious decision to change career courses after Leprechaun 2
so he could move up the film ladder a bit. He did so in an atypical way: by steering
away from low-budget features and tackling one-hour TV dramas.
