Interview with Eric Bossick (Henry Townshend) (Silent Haven)Date published: 2010.11.26  Silent Haven: What is your current work with Tsukamoto Shinya`s recent film TETSUO like? Eric Bossick: Anyone playing Silent Hill must be a horror fan, and as such I would reccomend a look at the Tetsuo film. This is Tetsuo The Bullet Man, the third in the series. In america this film will be distributed by IFC Films in the spring of 2011. This is the story of a man, who comes to see his quiet world torn apart after his son is murdered. The rage that arises in him, triggers his true self to be brought forth, his true self being cybernetic DNA that comes out of latency as he turns into a machine of death and destruction. He fights the transformation into becoming the ultimate killing machine. Shooting the film was about 9 months, voice overs an additional month. World premiere at the Venice Film Festival, and showed in America at the Tribeca film festival. Silent Haven: How did you land the role of Henry Townshend in Silent Hill 4? Eric Bossick: Audition. The Japanese game directors hired a translator and they worked with through translator. Silent Haven: Were you a fan prior to your work in the game? Eric Bossick: I actually don’t own a game console or play console games. I do on occasion play games on my PC, but ultimately I need to keep focused on my career goals, so I keep as a hermit the most part. But I greatly appreciate fantasy, and the ability to create any kind of fantasy realm within a game, without limits. What I currently play now on occasion is Age of Conan, my main is a Dark Templar. Silent Haven: How did you feel about your role as Henry? Was it easy or difficult? Eric Bossick: Performance and emotion are pin pointed in this kind of work, to be illustrated in movement for motion capture, and then later the voice made to be matched. This is easier then in cinema, where in front of the camera everything is recorded and needs to be perfect in your performance. The difficulty with motion capture work is that everything is in the imagination. We don`t have a set, just an empty room and you wear a suit with reflective dots on it. From being in this empty tobacco smoke filled room I`d have to imagine walls made of flesh, and body part ghosts, without knowing how the game would really turn out to look like. Silent Haven: It has been stated by Game reviewers and Within the Silent Hill community that Henry’s character was somewhat undeveloped and a little vague. How do you feel about this? Do you feel the Silent Hill developers underdeveloped the character? Eric Bossick: I don’t think video game characters tend to have much character development do they? But I appreciate the increasing trend to move deeper with games, as they become something close to cinema, but an interactive cinema. Silent Haven: Did you take any inspiration from past Silent Hill characters? Eric Bossick: Rather then characters I was more excited about the Boss demons. Once I was cast I looked at the series and thought Pyramid head and Samael were great. Samael is of course, none other then Baphomet. However the name Samael, is an ancient name for one of the forms of Satan. Silent Haven: Do you feel the Japanese Silent Hill games are better than the newer American Silent Hill games? Eric Bossick: Sorry I havn`t played either. But I do recall discussing some story elements with the directors. I asked about the occult elements of Silent Hill, such as the use of Baphomet and Samael, as well as occult sigils. I thought they had only loosely used such elements, and I thought it would be great if they went more deeper with these occult elements in the games. The reply was, in Japan and Europe our fans love these elements in the games, but in America the response is much more conservative. In America there is a lash-back from angry parents and religious zealots who monitor games for content they find to be disturbing. Hence games must be toned down, or censored in order to be sold in America, even worse if they are sold via Walmart. Since America is such a major market, this can not be ignored from a business perspective. Now based on that comment, I would believe that you would see a much darker world, a more real and intense face of it in Japanese games. American games go all out on violence more then the Japanese, but they cant touch true darkness, because American society as a whole looks away from such things. But alas, Eric Bossick |