Interview audio

X-Men actor – Shawn Ashmore interview

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Shawn Ashmore is a Canadian actor best know to comic book fans as iceman of the X-Men film series. He’s done horror, drama and animation work. I spoke with him at Shore Leave 2018.

0:57 – Shawn talks about he started acting as a hobby with his twin brother when they were kids. At age 14 he decided to take it seriously.

2:33 – He feels that a well-written script has done most of the work for an actor. He likes to break down scripts and create a personal history for the character if it’s not done already. He used music to inspire him in roles. Costumes also help him create the feel of the character.

4:38 – All the leather superhero costumes really adjust how he approaches a character. He also played Terry Fox who was a famous Canadian runner. Wearing his running outfit was emotional for Shawn.

6:49 – Shawn was an X-Men reader so he enjoyed being on the film. He felt a chill when he saw Patrick Stewart in the wheelchair and it felt like X-Men.

8:49 – Stand By Me was the film that made him want to be an actor. Lawrence of Arabia, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and lassic horror films have inspired him. He’s a fan of storytelling and great characters.

10:57 – He’s always found fans who’ve liked works of his that he might have felt didn’t reach the level he wanted it to.

11:39 – He watched a lot of Next Gen and wanted a transporter.

13:21 – He’s on twitter and instagram.

 

For more of “The Art and Design of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Mystery and Horror” please follow me on Facebook at crisalvarezwlc, on youtube at Cris Alvarez and on Instagram @crisalvarezscifi

 

Guests: Shawn Ashmore

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: X-Men, movies, marvel comics, horror,

Sci-fi actor – Aron Eisenberg interview

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Aron Eisenberg is an actor and filmmaker who is probably best known to sci-fi fans as Nog on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He and I spoke at Shore Leave 2018 about acting.

1:01 – Aaron talks about how he first got into acting at the age of 17. He just did it for money at first then loved it. He had two auditions for Star Trek. His first big success was Horror Movie.

3:36 – Any role he takes on, he feels he needs to show the honesty of the role regardless of whether its genre or drama. He actually worked as Mickey Mouse at Disneyland in the past.

5:11 – Aaron talks about doing mask work. He mentions things he needed to do to work in prosthetics.

6:49 – He talks about his voice acting work on a Star Trek video game as Nog.

7:52 – He’s a big fan of Penn, Pacino, Rourke, and DeNiro. Those are his role models in acting. He got to work with Sean Penn in Colors.

9:51 – He loves Altered Carbon and Yellowstone. He also would love to be in Orville. He’s on twitter and facebook under his name, Aaron Eisenberg. He’s doing a webcast show with Garret Wong called the Alpha Quadrant. They talk about DS9 and Voyager.

 

Links of interest

TheAlphaQuadrant.com

https://www.facebook.com/aron.eisenberg

https://twitter.com/AronEisenberg

 

For more of “The Art and Design of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Mystery and Horror” please follow me on Facebook at crisalvarezwlc, on youtube at Cris Alvarez and on Instagram @crisalvarezscifi

 

Guests: Aron Eisenberg

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: science fiction, actor, star trek, DS9, deep space nine, Colors, Horror, Movie, Disneyland

Sci-fi and fantasy author – Greg Bear interview

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Author Greg Bear has had and continues to have a prolific and successful career as a sci-fi and fantasy writer. Blood Music is one of his more famous novels and he also helped co-found the San Diego Comic-Con.

2:14 – Greg Bear starts by talking about how he got into writing as a little kid. He talks about all the speculative fiction he was into at the time. He read a lot of paperbacks at the Kodiak base library when he was growing up.

4:02 – He started by trying to write Tom Swift type books and Burroughs type of works.

6:03 – in the 1960s there was a lot more interesting writing coming out and many more interesting writers as well. He started attending sci-fi conventions and meeting writers he liked.

8:26 – Greg Bear talks about how he chooses between making a story a short or turning it into a novel. New York publishers in the 80s were resistant to publishing hard cover science fiction. They turned them into paperbacks.

10:50 – Heinlein loved anyone who had been in the military.

12:18 – Greg Bear talks about his big success in the UK while the same book was sold as a paperbook in the US.

13:30 – Michael Crichton said he didn’t write sci-fi and disparaged it but wrote “techno-thrillers.” Publishers seem to hate genre except for mystery.

15:24 – People in the military love sci-fi but New York is not technically oriented and doesn’t understand sci-fi.

18:04 – A lot of sci-fi writers don’t have steady homes with publishers. Greg Bear has worked on different genres.

19:39 – He’s into every kind of science. He loves studying it all plus politics and military issues. He also loves, mythology, language and history. He’s been writing FBI novels too.

22:53 – Greg Bear talks about the transition from working on typewriters to computers. He also talks about how he tries to please himself in his writing first and hopes he has an audience for it.

24:52 – He’s working on a fantasy novel now.

26:24 – He has a website, GregBear.com and he’s on Facebook too.

 

Links of interest

GregBear.com

 

For more of “The Art and Design of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Mystery and Horror” please follow me on Facebook at crisalvarezwlc, on youtube at Cris Alvarez and on Instagram @crisalvarezscifi

 

Guests: Greg Bear

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: science fiction, fantasy, writer, novelist, killing tital, hull zero three, Halo, hard sci-fi, military sci-fi