The Dude Who Plays Michael Myers In The New "Halloween" Trained With A Real Life Hit Man To Learn How To Murder People
Bloody Disgusting – In this year’s David Gordon Green-directed Halloween, a direct sequel to Carpenter’s 1978 classic, Myers is actually being played by *two* actors. And one of those actors, in a nice little tip of the hat to hardcore Halloween fans, is Nick Castle himself, who will reprise the role of Michael Myers for a few moments throughout the new movie.
The bulk of the work, however, is being done by actor/stuntman James Jude Courtney, who officially takes up the mantle as our new Michael Myers on October 19.
IndieWire – You may not know James Jude Courtney’s name, but you certainly know his latest character: Michael Myers, the masked killer from “Halloween.” Ol’ Jimmy isn’t himself a crazed murderer, but he once lived with an actual hit man who wanted his life story written. The actor recalls this experience in a Vanity Fair interview, explaining that he took said contract killer to see “The Hit List,” a movie he was in, and received the following reaction: “Jimmy, it’s a really nice movie, but that’s not how you kill people.”
“Really?” Courtney asked, to which his new acquaintance responded, “I’m gonna show you how.” Well, all right then.
“There’s a stealth efficiency to the way an actual trained killer works,” Courtney explains. “Movies tend to dilute that quality with dramatic pauses and dialogue, which a true predator would never waste time doing. That efficiency is what I took to the part of Michael Myers.”
I love method acting! I mean there’s just no way this dude simply “studied notes” or looked at diagrams on a whiteboard to prepare for this role. He’s James Jude Courtney. Nobody knows who he is. He’s best known for like, a season on Buffy and some movies from the early 90s. He’s got the chance of a lifetime to play one of the most iconic roles in movie history. This is his one shot, his one opportunity, to seize everything he ever wanted, in one moment. Would he capture it? Or let it slip?
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Guarantee you he captured a shit ton of victims to work on that whole stealth efficiency thing.
This is the movie that he took his buddy the contract killer to see:
“Charlie Pike is a pro hitman, but when he meets Yancy Butler, everything starts falling apart.” James Jude, who played the #26 credited role of “Final Hitman”, listed right after “Bouncer” and “Dancer,” was heavily critiqued by his friend on how he was killing people. No chance he was going to let him down again.
I would imagine this story is going to end the same way as that Chinese author we blogged about a couple of months ago. The dude who got super famous with his murder mysteries then it turned out he wrote them so well because he was literally murdering people. I mean Halloween’s early reviews have it at an 86% on Tomatoes, so clearly the acting is pretty good. If it’s getting praised for its murder scenes, well, just something to keep in mind if you’re a detective.
PS,
Imagine if Daniel Day Lewis was in this role? Hoo boy. There’d be a body count around Hollywood that would take cops 2 decades to sort out. Half the homeless population probably mysteriously eliminated.