Leo Fafard On the Anarchic, Inspired Energy of ‘Another Wolfcop’

Tomorrow sees the release of Another Wolfcop, the sequel to the cult indie horror movie Wolfcop from director Lowell Deanand star Leo Fafard.

Fafard plays the titular Wolfcop — a police officer who wasn’t all that great at his job before supernatural powers turned him into both a huge liability for the department and an incredibly effective enforcer of justice. You can pick up Another Wolfcop on DVD, Blu-ray, and digital formats tomorrow.

Fafard joined ComicBook.com for a quick Q&A about the film, what makes the franchise so dear to him, and whether he would be interested in taking the character to outer space.

The movie has a specific tone: it isn’t screwball and it’s not making fun of itself, but it is aware of the sort of movie that it is, and it’s having some fun with that. Is that a difficult balance to strike?

We didn’t find it to be, no. To tell you the truth, most of the people involved with the project — both one and two because we tried to keep a lot of the crew and cast the same — didn’t really have that much problem finding that happy medium or that happy place. We’re all kind of a bunch of goofballs. None of us take ourselves too seriously. We knew what we were making.

The point of keeping the same people is, we wanted that same attitude and that same stress-free environment. Goofy but not farcical, you know? It’s what made the films such a pleasure to shoot.

A lot of the time it’s like, “Okay. Well, werewolf movies are, it’s literally a lone wolf. This is his curse. He doesn’t have anybody to bounce off of”. But your character’s interpersonal relationships are actually quite key to the film.

A big part of the magic of Wolfcop is that I have Jonathan Cherry. He’s a werewolf with a sidekick for f–k’s sake! It’s amazing. The fact that it’s Jonathan Cherry, and the guy is so fast on his feet and so witty, means I don’t have to stay 100 percent on script. I can throw a certain amount of curveballs at him, and he always smashes it out of the park. He always sends you something awesome back.

With Amy Matysio it’s the same way. She’s f—ing amazing. Fast on her feet. Hugely talented with improv and that sort of thing. That’s one of the things I love about Lowell: he didn’t box us in. We were allowed to screw around an amount, and find that magic and be able to create those nice little moments where there’s a chuckle in there.

At the same time you’re still getting story points across, and you’re still a monster, or you’re still in a dramatic situation. But there’s still going to be some flavor of entertainment and enjoyment and fun in it. We found that recipe with the lead actors and with Lowell Dean. That’s what we tried to maintain in the second one.

Dean told us that he liked to get the straight version, and then do another take where you guys could try to deliver something funny or more interesting. Does it help you guys to be able to really bond in the more improvisational one, knowing you’ve got a safety net?

To a certain degree, absolutely. For the most part it was, “Get the safe one”, but it wasn’t necessarily always shot in that order either. Sometimes we’d be on set and there’d just be too much giddy up in our step, right? We’d pound out a couple of takes that were just f—ing off the wall. You kind of shake off the goofiness a little bit before we could pull it back, and then get the safety. It’s always nice to get the safety first…for Lowell. Then he knows he can move on at any time, and time doesn’t become his biggest worry, and it’s not a constraint.

For the actors, for the guys playing in front of the camera, sometimes you just want to chase something. You want to get something goofy out of you, or you just have an idea and you’re chomping at the bit to do something bizarre. Or the way you want it first. Even though you know it’s not quite what Lowell’s looking for. But you just think it’s going to be so much cooler than whatever the hell he’s thinking about.

Sometimes he’d let us smash at it a few times and get the goofy out. The odd time it would work. We’d be standing there going, “F–k, great. Let’s move on”, and Lowell would go, “No. No no. We still need the straight version. We still need the version that I know is going to cut 100 percent.” We’d be, “Ugh, whatever Lowell. Jesus Christ, what an old lady. Blah blah blah”. We’d do it, and all the while have a great time.

Last time around, there was a Wolfcop comic book. Is it strange to look at something like that and be like, “Oh, wow. I’m a comic now?”

It’s a little bizarre. A fan that has actually become a friend out in Germany by the name of Axel Feldmann of Fright Guys, sent me a care package the a couple of months ago. He had LEGOs made. Wolfcop LEGO!

I’ve got these little LEGO figurines, and it’s Wolfcop. He sent in drawings or pictures or whatever material he had lying around to these guys, and paid, I imagine it wasn’t cheap, and he had a dozen of these little Wolfcop LEGOs. It’s got the shirt with the badge and the wolf head, and the booze bottle, and the big gun. It’s like, “What the f–k? I’m a LEGO. What the f–k?”

The other side of that is where you actually get into the real horror of the whole thing, and you’re going through your Instagram or you’re going through the internet. Which I don’t do very often. That’s the part that scares me a little bit. I mean, it’s flattering. But yeah, it’s all pretty bizarre.

Lowell told us that he wants to eventually take this character to space. Do you want to do that? Or is your first thought, “Oh jeez, we’re going to put a spacesuit on top of all this incredibly hot stuff I’m already wearing”?

I’m f—ing into it! Whatever man — I’ve shoveled out the foundations of buildings in hot weather, where you’re outside and you’re freaking dripping. If you’re drinking a liter of water an hour, you’re not drinking enough water. I’ve done hot shitty jobs crawling under the f—ing house to weld some shit on, or that kind of jobs my whole life. So yeah, sure, let’s throw a space suit on. It’s still fucking better than any day out in the field doing grunt labor. I’m into it. Anything that that f—ing little nerd can think up and pull out of his crazy skull, I’m in. I’m his guy. You know? I love the guy. Let’s do it. That’s my attitude.

If you had kind of one line to sell people on the sequel, what would it be?

My elevator pitch would be, “I play a complete and utter asshole who’s in love with his boss. Has a bad habit of f—ing anything he can find at a bar. Oh, and he just happens to be a werewolf cop”. That would kind of, I mean I don’t know if you can print that. But that would be pretty much along the lines of my elevator pitch for Another Wolfcop.

And keep your eye out for something called SuperGrid, another Lowell Dean-directed, Leo Fafard-starred-in, Echoland production.