Exclusive: THN interview ‘Gremlins’ star Zach Galligan

In case last year’s 1984 Retrospective series didn’t confirm it, this writer is a huge fan of the Gremlins movies. The first film turned thirty (along with myself) last year and I spent pages and pages telling you all just why it is still so amazing today (it’s here if you missed it). With this all in mind it was quite obvious that when the lead actor from both movies, Zach Galligan, was announced for London’s Film and Comic Con, I seized the opportunity to interview him.

That being said, I had met Galligan at a previous London and Film Comic Con a couple of years previous. It was before my time at THN and I hadn’t quite managed to reign in the inner fan girl and I fear I may have come across as rather excitable. With that in mind I sought to redeem myself this time around.

When my time came to interview Zach it was towards the very end of day one, and although he had been exceptionally busy, he remained in high spirits and chatted away merrily. We talked about fame in the 1980’s, whether children should have been allowed to watch Gremlins and the potential for him to appear in one of his favourite television shows The Walking Dead.

So Gremlins was thirty years ago, does it feel like that?

You know that’s a complicated question because it’s the thing about time is memories that are really powerful they seem like they happened only yesterday, but then also if I think of other things that happened that year they seem like forever ago. So it seems both very close and so incredibly far away at the same time.

What’s the one memory that sticks in your mind the most about your time on Gremlins?

You know I get asked that a lot and I don’t really know because it all changes from day to day, well maybe from year to year. Some of the fond memories have nothing to do with Gremlins. Like me and Phoebe [Cates] hanging out in July, driving down to Malibu and listening to the top 100 rock and roll classic songs of all time on the radio.

It was so exciting hanging out with her because she was a huge star from Fast Times [at Ridgemont High]. Guys were losing their mind over her and I was this completely 100% unknown. It was a real strange thing because she was so famous and I was not at all. There was always an adventure, it gave me a real insight into what being recognised was going to be all about because I watched her go through it, though obviously as a woman she got a very different type of attention than I did.

Definitely the first few days probably, some of the rehearsals. I remember a lot of things like landing in LA for the first time, seeing my apartment for the first time. Things that have nothing to do with really the movie, just the experience of being nineteen and going to the West Coast for the first time. The only thing I’d really seen of California was like the Randy Newman video on MTV of LA, and it was exactly like that.

Gremlins or Gremlins 2: The New Batch, which has the biggest spot in your heart?

Well you know how they say that nothing ever matches your first love. I would say the first one for me. I love the way that the tone is balanced between the horror, and the comedy and the humour, and even the way that some of the dark, negative stuff is shown and portrayed I think is really well done. I just think that Gremlins is such an excellent black comedy.

Did you ever read the novelisation?

I think I did back in the day.

Because there are some really dark bits in that.

They’re probably left over from the script itself which was much, much more horror; it was basically a horror movie. Spielberg really is the one who managed take the horrific elements out of it and made it the more accessibly kid, a somewhat kid friendly version. Though I’ve had parents tell me that my film, our film, caused massive psychiatric bills in certain kids. But maybe they shouldn’t have shown it to them in the first place.

Well I did alright, I think it depends of the kid.

Well that’s true. Some kids are very sensitive and when they see stuff they freak out and other kids can see anything they want and it just doesn’t bother them. It really does depend on how sensitive the child is.

So yeah number one is always going to be pretty impossible to beat.

So how many conventions do you do in each year? You’re proving very popular today.

I don’t know, it really varies from year to year, sometimes it’s – like last year it was the 30^th anniversary so that was a very busy kind of time. I would say that last year I probably did like eight or nine and then this year I’ll probably do less, maybe five or six.

But you’re back in London in November at the Prince Charles.

That is correct, November 25^th through 29^th.

With Gizmo if the advertising is to be believed.

Yeah, he goes wherever I go. I gotta take care of him, you know all too well what happens when I don’t.

And it’ll be a 70mm print as well.

Yeah very exciting. I’ve seen it in 70mm fairly recently, 2009 in Los Angeles and it looked excellent. Really, really good. A little grainy but I kinda like that about 70mm. That kind of blown up, grainy, bigger than life feeling that you get from that film stock.

So if they do decide to go ahead with a reboot would you want it to be puppets, or do you think CGI could work?

I mean my personal preference is there would be some kind of practical effects in it. But it’s not called ‘show-art’ it’s show-business, so if they want to save money and do it all CGI , it hurts us, the purists, but if you look at the performance of Jurassic World gross it doesn’t hurt the box office at all. If people were really like boycotting it wholesale then they’d do something about it, but people aren’t, they’re flocking to it, and the kids parents tell me their kids prefer it. It’s like saying I wish we didn’t have cordless phones, it’s like what? You know what I mean? It’s kind of over.

On Twitter you’re very vocal about television series The Walking Dead, you also seem to be very good friends with several of the cast through convention appearances.

Yeah well for whatever reason they started accepting me for the Walker/Stalker conventions, which a lot of my friends are really jealous about. They’re like ‘you’re not on The Walking Dead, what are you doing there?!’ and I’m like ‘I don’t know’. I think the woman who books it Leanne Wyatt, I think she is wonderful and we’re good friends, and I think she just likes working with people who are familiar. She just books me over and over again and honestly I was surprised because the first time I did a Walker/Stalker convention, in Atlanta, I did the very first one, I didn’t do well at all. I thought ‘Oh I’ll never get invited back’, and then they invited me back to the one in New York and New Jersey, eight months ago – we’ve had such a bad winter it feels like eighteen months ago – but it was only eight months ago, and to my surprise, I killed! Which means I did really well, so then they had me back in Dallas in March and I’m doing Boston in August and Atlanta again in October. So I’ll have eventually done it five times which is a lot for a none Walking Dead person to do the convention.

Would you be interested in a part on the show?

Yeah I would if it was… I love the show, I would if it was the right thing. I wouldn’t want to, I don’t think I’d want to do anything too stunty casting like that, but if it was a cool part. Now that I’m older I find that I’m getting a lot more different parts than I did when I was a young guy. I mean the stuff that I get cast now, the last few things I’ve done, I’m getting a lot of cops, I’m getting a lot of cops and a lot of prison guards. I’m getting authority figures somehow. I don’t know what that means, but I’m getting a lot of people that aren’t so nice. That’s great and I guess that’s what happens naturally as you get older you start playing different roles.

And with that it was time to say my goodbyes to Zach, mainly due to the fact the event had closed fifteen minutes previously. If you missed the opportunity to meet Zach at LFCC, don’t miss your chance to meet him and his pal Gizmo when they attend the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square on 25th and 26th November.