PopHorror Let's Get Scared
According to Wikipedia, “The Phoenix Lights (sometimes called the “Lights Over Phoenix”) were a series of widely sighted unidentified flying objects observed in the skies over the southwestern U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada on March 13, 1997.” I moved to Phoenix in 2002 so I missed the excitement and in the 23 years I’ve lived here, I’ve seen anything even remotely close to them. Do I think they’re UFOs? I don’t know. Like I know things exist even though I have never seen them in person but does my belief reach that far? The jury is still out on that one.
Star People, the first feature film written and directed by Phoenix native Adam Finberg and starring Kat Cunning (read our interview with them HERE), McCabe Slye (Fear Street movie series), and Connor Paolo (Gossip Girl – read our interview with him HERE), is about a photographer chasing these very phenomena.
A photographer receives a tip that could shed light on her childhood UFO sighting, but a heatwave and some unexpected guests threaten to derail her investigation.
To celebrate the release of the film, I chatted with star McCabe about filming in Arizona, crafting his character, horror movies, and more!
PopHorror: I really enjoyed Star People so I’m excited to talk to you about it today.
McCabe Slye: Thank you very much!
PopHorror: I know you filmed in Phoenix, which is where I am. All of the talk in the movie about the heat, I feel that. That’s how it really is.
McCabe Slye: It’s a special place, for sure. It’s a special sweaty, sweaty, dry place.
PopHorror: It’s supposed to be 118 tomorrow so there’s that happening for me.
McCabe Slye: Incredible! I hope your AC stays working.
PopHorror: Thank you, me too! So, what intrigued you about the script and made you want to be a part of the project?
McCabe Slye: Oh, man. There were a lot of things that intrigued me about the script. I think chief among them was just that when you’re reading through a lot of indie scripts and a lot of TV scripts, you start to see the same things occur over and over again, and what I really appreciated about Adam’s script was it came from a grounded place. I didn’t know anything about Adam before I read the script. I read the script and I thought it was interesting, so I looked him up and what read to me was, especially for Taylor, how much background Adam has for addiction and addiction treatment. Even before I knew that he literally had a background doing a documentary about the addiction treatment system. That was really attractive to see someone’s story being told in a very grounded, real way without getting too gratuitous, without getting too into the weeds but still being nuanced. I thought that was a really lovely line that was toed, and then making a relationship road trip movie about sci-fi experiences is really interesting and sort of quirky. I was intrigued by that as well.
PopHorror: Getting lost in the desert is always fun.
McCabe Slye: Absolutely!
PopHorror: Was there anything that you were adamant about bringing to your character?
McCabe Slye: I think it was a sense of – like I said before – being grounded and not getting too far away from either things I’ve experienced in my own course of being in and around addiction and things that Adam could help me walk through when it came to things he’d experienced or seen in other people and really trying to do that part of it justice. It’s not the focal point of the film. It’s a storyline for sure, but I feel like when I read the script, it had the biggest potential to detract from what the story was supposed to be about if that became too much of an unnecessary distraction. So I was really adamant that I wanted to keep that piece of it true and grounded and based on things that I’d either experienced or seen in real life.
PopHorror: Your character Taylor is dealing with his own demons with the addiction, but he’s also trying to help his sister work through her… I hate using the word “trauma” but I couldn’t think of another word. Working through her own issues and obsession. What did you draw upon to evoke such emotion? There was so much emotion between their characters and their relationship.
McCabe Slye: I think that what I focused on was the times that I’ve been most upset in my own life or when I don’t feel like I’m being understood or seen, and I feel like I’m trying to communicate something. To me, what really hit home when I read the script for Claire was that she’s trying to be understood. She has this obsession, trauma, fixation, whatever you want to call it, she’s really into trying to find these lights and it’s a really integral part of who she is and how she defines herself, and no one seems to understand that. Maybe the person that understands that most without knowing that he understands it is Taylor, who experienced something adjacent or something similar. They had a shared experience at that time when they saw the Phoenix lights but perceived it very differently. A lot of the struggle is between them about being heard and understood by the other. It was really cool to walk through because there’s an innate understanding that you have with your sibling that comes from sharing and experience but where it diverges is where you start to define it for yourself and it’s completely different from the other person’s definition of what happened. I think a lot of the emotion was easy to come at because it was born out of that sort of trying to understand each other, or not trying and being forced to understand each other, whether we liked it or not, and you have a lot to push and pull against when that’s the situation and those are the stakes. There’s a lot to work with.
PopHorror: I love that. She was on a mission to find the Phoenix light. I’ve been here for 23 years and I’ve never seen them.
McCabe Slye: Don’t tell Kat that! Kat might take offense.
PopHorror: This film is kind of horror adjacent. It’s more of a sci-fi thriller. You’re no stranger to horror with your credits. What draws you to the genre?
McCabe Slye: Oh, man. It’s the visceral reaction that you’re getting from people that are watching and also the visceral reaction that you can conjure in yourself, no pun intended using the word “conjure” there. The stakes are high. It gives you license to be fantastical in the story that you’re playing but grounded in a really real and visceral feeling, which is fear or anxiety and I love playing with how tense things can get in the horror genre or in the thriller genre, or in this case, the sci-fi genre. You can mess around with the way that you feel and the way that others feel and that’s kind of what makes something entertaining, giving them that little grippy feeling.
PopHorror: I have just one last question for you today. What is your favorite scary movie?
McCabe Slye: Oohh. My favorite scary movie… I might reveal myself here. The Shining is probably my favorite. I think I’ve said that before in an interview. It’s pretty standard. I recently fell in love with Barbarian. I thought that was fantastic. Those two would probably be, old and new, my new two favorites when it comes to a scary movie.
Thank you so much to McCabe for taking the time to chat with us. Star People is now on VOD!
