James Duval has been acting in big budget action movies and a multitude of indie films since the early 1990s. His credits include cult favorites like Donnie Darko and SLC Punk, and blockbusters like Independence Day and Gone in 60 Seconds. Duval was recently a guest at Creature Feature Weekend, where he talked to Scoop about some of his big roles, being a horror genre fan himself, and what he’s working on next.

Scoop: Good afternoon. Jimmy, are you having fun this weekend?
James Duval (JD): I’m having an incredible time. Thanks for asking. Thanks for having me here.

Scoop: What do you like about doing horror conventions?
JD: I love being here with the guests, the fans are… it’s so contagious, the excitement and the passion… and the other celebrity guests, here because I’m a huge fan myself. So being from someone who’s normally on the other side, it’s mind blowing for me. Not only to come to something like this but with all the guests, organizers, and everybody who’s a part of the convention and all the celebrity guests, it’s a win, win, win. You know, sometimes you’ll get a bad apple, sometimes it’s not always the smoothest thing. It’s funny how shows can be, but this show’s definitely on a higher notch.

Scoop: So you said you’re a fan. What kind of horror movies do you like?
JD: I’m going to give my age away, but I did grow up with classics, so I grew up with the original Black Christmas, The Fog and Halloween, Friday the 13th, of course, Nightmare on Elm Street, all these sort of classics. But I remember when Dawn of the Dead came out. So, I’m 51 now and those films had such an impact on me at such a young age because I was horrified and my really big imagination ran away.

But as I got older and started to kind of embrace some of my fears, things began to kind of change, and I realized how much I actually loved these types of movies that were scaring me. And I do love the new horror too, but there’s something about the old horror, for me, that I’ve always had a special place in my heart. I like the idea of not seeing everything. Sometimes it’s left to your imagination, which can be pretty horrific. So yeah, I have a special place in my heart for the classic horror films. But again, the new horror films are incredible because they’re pushing the boundaries beyond anything that I can imagine. And I love that about filmmaking. You’ve got to push the boundaries. You got to keep moving it forward, otherwise we’re just treading old ground.

Scoop: You’ve been in a lot of high profile movies like Independence Day, Gone in 60 Seconds, and Donnie Darko. So what do you get recognized for most often?
JD: That’s a great question. It depends on the crowd, believe it or not. Here, it’s a lot of people that know Independence Day, Gone in 60 Seconds, but it really definitely is Donnie Darko. I’ve done these other movies in the ‘90s that are getting resurgence – Doom Generation and Nowhere, they were just released in 4K, and now they’re coming out in a box set through Criterion. So that’s kind of giving us a boost. You know, depending on the shows, like I said in the area like those movies Doom Generation and Nowhere have prominently featured at a few conventions recently. They’ve never done that before. So that’s really kind of interesting because those movies are not horror movies. But they are definitely fringe, kind of weird, strange movies.

Scoop: Donnie Darko is such a unique film. What attracted you to the project?
JD: The moment I read the script, to me it read like an episode of The Twilight Zone and I’m a massive fan of The Twilight Zone. Ever since I was a kid, I would go home for lunch... so I lived across street from the school and I made myself a grilled cheese and I’d watch an episode of The Twilight Zone every day – third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, and sixth grade. Then we have these Thanksgiving marathons where they show every episode for 24 hours, just Twilight Zone. Every half hour for 24 hours. And I love the idea of tapping into the unknown. Tapping into myths, tapping into possibilities, alternate dimensions, alternate realities, and I believe that the Twilight Zone was definitely doing that before anybody. So when I read Donnie Darko, that’s exactly how I felt about it, it traversed and tackled all those same sorts of issues with the supernatural element that I’ve always been attracted to since I started watching the content as a child.

Scoop: What are your interactions like with fans of Donnie Darko?
JD: It’s grown over the life of the movie. It has been fascinating because when we came out, it was a huge box office failure. When you hear Spider-Man making $115 million in a weekend, I think we made almost half a million in three weeks. I mean, nobody saw the movie. So, I was really disheartened by that because I loved the movie. I didn’t think it was bad. I understand that sometimes audiences reactions don’t reflect the film. But it was very difficult. Then one day over a couple years ago, I was walking through Staples buying some paper and the security guard – as I’m walking out – just calls, “Frank!” And I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me. He looked at me and goes, “Frank” and then he nodded at me and said, “Donnie Darko, I love that movie,” and I’m like, “Wow. You and, like, the 50 other people that saw it. Like, thank you for watching the movie.”

I’m so proud of it. I was having this conversation a little with a couple of other friends. Over time, people just started talking about it and stopping me in the street and asking about it. Then I realized that the movie was getting a second chance at life. It was actually being distributed by fans, saying, “I don’t know what this is, but you have to watch this movie.” They would tell me how they would just lend a copy out to people. The movie theaters and the studios aren’t backing it with this huge promotional campaign. They aren’t banging you over the head with it, you don’t walk into stores and see the merchandising for it. So the idea that it was being passed along because someone just saw something, was moved by it in someway, and then tells someone else to see it, and gathers that word of mouth. The fans have really, been great… I really feel like it comes from the heart with Donnie Darko. That’s something special.

Scoop: Independence Day is such an iconic summer blockbuster with tons of action and a lot of characters. What was it like filming a movie with so many moving parts?
JD: I was starting off on little movies at the time, which was a lot of fun, but it was really based on do-it-yourself, and it really is about the characters. So to jump on to something like Independence Day, all of a sudden was like going from a really tiny sandbox to the beach with the playground and the ocean. All of a sudden we have this massive toybox where we get to do all these things like that were imaginable.

So for example, in ’96 there was still little CGI. There is CGI in it, but the base of Area 51 for example – with the ship that they captured that Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith fly up into the mothership at the end – that’s all life-size. It’s unbelievable. We have the stages where they built the Spruce Goose, which was the biggest plane ever built. The ceilings were easily 150-200 feet high, and it goes on so long it would take you 10-15 minutes to walk through the entire thing, you had to use golf carts. They built the entire base inside of that. So when you’re walking onto the set, you don’t have to really use your imagination. You’re in it. The base, the computers – it’s all lit up. The base has got this clinical white light that goes all the way down the hallway with elevators and escalators and a big 100-foot room with that scout ship in there and then the test tubes with the aliens. Like all that was life-size and built, there was nothing CGI about any of that.

Scoop: Your character is one of the emotional anchors of the film. He’s trying to protect his younger brother and sister, and has a complicated relationship with his dad. Was it hard to keep the focus on the family relationship with all the aliens and special effects stuff going on? Or did you feel like you could zone in just on that part of the story?
JD: I think that actually the special effects kind of helped in the sense that it helped me zone into the story. Playing the heart of it was not difficult, that’s the thing that I love about acting. I love the special effects and the heroic stuff, but I love the heart, the stuff that’s dealing with the heart and feelings and emotions. So, using the backdrop of the alien invasion and these things happening is sort of a motivating factor, what it really became about was the family, protecting the brother and sister. My father’s an alcoholic, I’m making sure he doesn’t wander off and die, and you’re getting bombed. So, playing this character takes on the responsibility of coming at the end of the world, this apocalypse.

Scoop: What was your experience like filming SLC Punk?
JD: That was an incredible experience. First you have James Merendino, the writer and director, and of course Matthew Lillard, Michael A. Goorjian, and the rest of the cast. Making that movie was like being in the movie. So again, everybody’s in character. We shot it in Salt Lake. We lived that movie basically with the entire time we filmed it. And that really lent itself to this sort of authenticity I think that you don’t often get in films. I always felt it was something kind of raw about it feels very real. And I think that’s probably because we shot it that way.

Scoop: What are you working on now?
JD: I’ve just finished a series of films. I have a couple of movies that just came out, one is called I Challenger, where I play a 40-something-year-old gamer who’s looking for direction in my life and some luck. I decide that I’m going to bury myself underground for 24 hours and live stream it and let’s just say it doesn’t go the way I planned. It’s one of my favorite movies I’ve done in the last few years now. Then I have another movie I just finished called the First Circle, which is about a group of souls actually trapped in the first circle of Hell based on Dante’s Inferno. But in the first circle, those souls are lost and confused, so they don’t know they’re in Hell. So as the audience, you’re watching it and then you begin to figure it out and realize these characters never know that they’re trapped in Hell. The idea is hopefully when it does well, go to the second level and the third level and the start to sink lower and lower, and the souls figure out that they’re trapped as it becomes more and more deleterious and detrimental for them. I’m hoping it becomes a series, but that’s a lot of fun.

I just finished two movies literally in the last two months. I did one called Bikers Versus Werewolves. Which I think it’s got a great cast, Robert LaSardo and Michael Pare, loads of other people. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. Then I just finished another one called Skate to Hell. So no skateboard horror movies until now, I think this is the first, so I feel very proud to be part of an original first.

Scoop: Well, it’s been so nice talking to you.
JD: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me.