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Speaking about Bruce Payne
DOUG AARNIOKOSKI: ENDGAME DIRECTOR ON BRUCE PAYNE Every good action film needs a good bad guy and a pretty girl. Endgame won't disappoint. The Immortal villain of Endgame, Jacob Kell, is a Highlander himself whose connection to Connor MacLeod goes back to Scotland where they grew up together. When I asked Doug about Bruce Payne, who plays Kell, I swear I could hear his smile through the phone. "Bruce Payne," he says, "is the consummate professional." Payne has a long list of movie bad guys under his belt, most notably making trouble for Wesley Snipes as Charles "The Rane of Terror" Rane in Passenger 57. "That guy is so tight. I worked with Bruce years and years ago when I was a second A.D. on a film called The Howling." Subtitled The Freaks, the film was the sixth sequel in the Howling series of werewolf movies. This one found a reluctant werewolf battling an evil vampire in a circus freak show, and Bruce played the vampire." "At that time I wasn't writing, I wasn't even thinking about directing. I was just happy to be an A.D., to be working in Hollywood. Bruce was the villain, and he and I just hit it off. Usually actors and assistant directors are at each other's throats, and due to scheduling and everything else that goes on you usually don't end up being friends with actors per se. Bruce was just a great guy, and truly a hard worker. We hit it off. We had not seen each other since then, and when I got this job and I read the script and read the character of Kell, I knew that was Bruce. I got on the phone with our L.A. casting director and with our London casting office and I said, 'You have to find Bruce Payne.' We were seeing wonderful actors, I mean, really, really great actors, but always in the back of my mind I knew this was a part that Bruce Payne had to play. I tried to be very democratic about it. I tried to be very open-minded. I saw the other actors and I thought some of them were just absolutely incredible and did a wonderful job, but it's like when you see a girl on the subway, you just go, man, if I'd just stayed on and waited I wonder what would have happened. You should never let that instinct go. We found Bruce, and he came in, he sat down and read for me, and he was the girl on the subway that I knew he was going to be," he laughs, "as terrible as that sounds!" I tell him the metaphor works. "He was the girl on the subway that I couldn't let drive away. And we had a great time working together." Copyright John Bierly 2000 IAN PAUL CASSIDY Actor On Highlander: Endgame (Cracker Bob) Working with Bruce was the ultimate pleasure for an actor. He is wonderfully talented and the consummate professional. Playstation *LOL* Bruce Payne, who plays Kell, and I played *hours* of Play Station at the hotel in Bucharest! Bruce is wonderful in the movie, btw
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