Just before the acclaimed (and rightfully so) LOOPER hit theaters, FANGORIA spoke to Rian Johnson regular Noah Segan. Soon enough, the talk turned to Segan's genre titles. Head below for an update on his working relationship with Chad Ferrin (SOMEONE'S KNOCKING AT THE DOOR) and a look back at the dark, gonzo necrophilia-filled coming-of-age tale, DEADGIRL. 

FANGORIA: Given your pedigree in horror, where are you at with Chad Ferrin?

NOAH SEGAN: I would love to work with Chad again. I’ve been trying to, as a friend and as a colleague, trying to get Chad back to the thought that led to SOMEONE’S KNOCKING AT THE DOOR, and previously, to the films that he made himself. Chad is one of those guys that I feel does his best work on his own. He does his best work by the skin of his teeth and his own bootstraps. That’s what attracted me to him. I would love it if that was a spirit we could get back to. I feel like recently, our business is no different than anybody else’s business in terms of how hard it’s become to function. Everybody’s lost a job, or can’t find a job, or isn’t being paid enough. This is everybody. Everybody got a little bit fucked the last few years. And it’s easy for me to say, because my job as an actor and for Chad, as a producer, is to be a cheerleader, and it’s been to keep shaking him and say, “This is it, man. This is an opportunity to go wild, because we don’t have anything to lose.” I think that just takes a natural progression for him to get there.

He’s also a pro. He’s been doing this for a long ass time. There’s very little that he needs to learn. He knows exactly what the fuck he’s doing, and I know he would agree that it’s time to get back to work. We want to do a western together. I never felt like DANCES WITH WEREWOLVES was up to snuff for him. I think that it was something that always seemed like a novelty, it seems like it did not have the weight that Chad really deserves to be able to put on a film right now. He’s at a stage in his career right now, where people will trust him with the genre. People will trust him a lot. I think that means he needs to branch out and take that trust seriously. I would love to do a western. In fact, I would only want to do a western, and so does he. We’ve talked about that a lot. I just think that it’s really got to come from him, it’s got to come from his people. DANCES WITH WEREWOLVES was something he got involved with, I think, originally for hire. That’s a very nice thing, but I look at Chad and I see an auteur. I see an Argento, I see a guy who could do that. I want him to keep doing that.

FANG: DEADGIRL garnered such strong reaction. I’m curious how you feel about the film a couple of years on. It felt like a bit of a firestorm.

SEGAN: Yea, firestorm-y and subsequently, as it smolders, I’ve warmed up to it. I always looked at DEADGIRL as a comedy. If not as a comedic film, than a comedic performance and a film that is commentary. So, I think that the people that enjoy the film now, are the people that invested the time and energy into it for that reason. So now, when I’m able to interact with people about DEADGIRL, we laugh and talk about this commentary and what this really meant; the allegory, the metaphors and hopefully the goofiness to this performance. There’s a silliness, a lightness to it that allows you to get beyond the fact that I’m playing a son of a bitch; a violent, horrible dude. They’re not mutually exclusive. If something’s horrible, it doesn’t mean that it’s not funny.

FANG: DEADGIRL is the type of film that exists on a level that is very clearly not reality. There’s that Lucky McKee quality of being fable-esque; existing as a means to express something.

SEGAN: Lucky is top of my list of guys to work with. That’s on purpose, making that decision and I’ve been lucky in that respect, with movies like DEADGIRL and SOMEONE’S KNOCKING. I get spoiled and now I want to keep making movies of that caliber, which means finding people like Lucky, who luckily is friends with Rian [Johnson] and Angela Bettis and these people that were all sort of part of the same crew and came up together. I was actually just talking to Angela and saying, “I want to work with you, I want to work with Lucky, I want to do something with you guys that follows that left of center tradition; intellectualizing the genre world a little bit.”

Let’s not cut it any slack here. There have been horror movies as long as there have been movies. This is a mature genre. So, there’s room. Let’s go left of center, let’s get weird with it. That is what excites me, that is what makes me feel we’re not just churning out a brand. I’m very happy to be part of the Chad Ferrin brand, I’m very happy to be part of the Rian Johnson brand. I don’t want there to be a "Noah Segan" brand. I’m an actor, I work for the brand. So, the best that I can do is make a decision about the kind of stuff that I want to do. 

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