Interview with Eric Braeden

Eric Brae­den is best known for his role as rich, con­niv­ing Vic­tor New­man on The Young and the Rest­less. For years, he wanted to make a movie about revenge in a little-discussed area of the Old South just after the Civil War. In the fea­ture below, Brae­den dis­cusses how The Man Who Came Back reignited his pas­sion for the busi­ness. This fea­ture was part of my Vir­tual Sit­down series at Pop Syn­di­cate. I approached Brae­den about doing an inter­view after I watched the film — and loved it. It ran Jan­u­ary 15, 2009.

Vir­tual Sit­down with Eric Braeden

Direct link: http://www.popsyndicate.com/dvds/story/virtual_sitdown_with_eric_braeden_by_angela_wilson

The Man Who Came Back is fast becom­ing a favorite among DVD watch­ers across the nation. Star­ring Y&R‘s Eric Brae­den, the film takes you through the jour­ney of one man’s ulti­mate heart­break — and ulti­mate revenge.

Today, Brae­den sits down with Pop Syndicate’s Angela Wil­son to share a behind-the-scenes look at the film.

After 40 years work­ing in film and soaps, actor Eric Brae­den felt the rou­tine of his profession.

But his new film, The Man Who Came Back, lit a fire inside of him that reignited his pas­sion for act­ing and the desire to share sto­ries that entertain.

This revenge tale set in the Old South just after the end of the Civil War was a labor of love that took nine years to exe­cute. With the help of friends who believed in the

project with a fer­vor that rivaled Braeden’s, he was able to pro­duce an intensely riv­et­ing tale on a tight bud­get — one that con­tin­ues to build a fol­low­ing in the DVD market.

“It just revived my pas­sion for this pro­fes­sion,” Brae­den said in an inter­view with Pop Syndicate’s Angela Wil­son. “I am hon­ored to be in it and hon­ored to be able to (act) for the last 40 years. I am very privileged.”

In The Man Who Came Back, Brae­den plays Reese Pax­ton, a battle-weary Con­fed­er­ate sniper who is tired of killing and the injus­tices man does to man. What keeps him strong is his lovely young wife and small son.

Pax­ton super­vises for­mer slaves for a pow­er­ful judge played by vet­eran actor George Kennedy. When he con­fronts the judge’s mean, spoiled son about abus­ing the work­ers, he is fired. The work­ers even­tu­ally strike.

The judge’s son isn’t done ter­ror­iz­ing the blacks — who he sees as no more than cat­tle that need to be whipped and brought to heel. He and his friends hang a black man who dared stand up to them near Paxton’s cabin.

Pax­ton takes the body to town to con­front the men, but the accu­sa­tion is turned around on him by the spoiled son and Pax­ton is con­victed of the crime. They bind and gag the man and put him in a cage, then drive him past his home, where the men rape and mur­der Paxton’s wife and son.

Pax­ton is jailed, but even­tu­ally escapes and returns to the town to exact revenge on the evil men who stole his fam­ily and his freedom.

The Man Who Came Back was pro­duced on a shoe­string bud­get of $2.5 mil­lion. That did not lessen the film’s inten­sity — or its popularity.

The film was No. 1 non-theatrical rental in the nation the week of Dec. 14, and con­tin­ues to remain in the top five. It was also in the top 10 DVD buys, fol­low­ing high-budget block­busters like The Dark Knight.

The German-born actor kept costs down by film­ing in dig­i­tal. Actors like George Kennedy col­lected small salaries because they believed in the film. After debuts in three cities, the film went straight to DVD, which cut about $15 mil­lion needed for print and advertising.

“I just have a new­found respect for how dif­fi­cult it is to make a film,” Brae­den said. “It is so dif­fi­cult. When you do it like we did — on a shoe­string — you bat­tle for every­thing. You fight for every­thing. You scratch for every­thing. Then, you hand over dis­tri­b­u­tion and it is out of your hands.”

The set had an authen­tic feel rarely seen in films today. Instead of using fronts or CGI to make up for what they did not have, Brae­den says they shot the film at a Texas town con­structed by John Wayne in 1959 for The Alamo. The town is on a ranch and was left untouched, but well cared for.

Cab­ins in the mid­dle of the woods were also located in Texas. A pri­vate land owner pur­chased prop­erty with the 19th cen­tury struc­tures and left them intact — some­thing rare in a world where the old goes out for a sub­di­vi­sion of cloned McMansions.

Brae­den is quick to credit the exper­tise of Women in Film, a Texas group that helped find these his­tor­i­cal treasures.

“We were very lucky to have access to them,” Brae­den said. “I was very con­cerned about that. When I went loca­tion hunt­ing, I said, ‘Now we have a film.’”

The film came to Braeden’s atten­tion nine years ago, when for­mer Olympic boxer chuck Walker brought him a revenge-scenario screen­play. Brae­den liked the script, but it needed some­thing — a his­tor­i­cal con­text — to flesh it out.

Brae­den and Walker teamed up with Glen Pitre, direc­tor of Belizaire the Cajun, to find the right con­text. After read­ing the book, With­out Sanc­tu­ary, they found it. The book led them to research the Thi­bodeax Mas­sacre of 1887 — the sec­ond blood­i­est labor strike in the nation.

In Louisiana, three parishes were known as the sugar bowl, where plan­ta­tions raised sugar cane.

It was hard labor and paid lit­tle. After the War, plan­ta­tion own­ers were forced to pay for­mer slaves. They got around this by giv­ing the work­ers coupons — a sort of sub­stan­dard check. These “scripts” were only good at the plan­ta­tion where blacks worked. Plan­ta­tion own­ers marked up goods so that work­ers couldn’t pay for what they needed, and con­tin­ued to get deeper in debt. In Louisiana at this time, if you were in debt, you could not move from the land until your debt was paid.

Plan­ta­tion own­ers “per­pet­u­ated slav­ery by eco­nomic means,” Brae­den said. “That means if you owned money to the com­pany store, you were, in fact, not free. That was an enor­mous prob­lem at the time.”

This inci­dent was exactly what the script needed. Pitre, who would go on to direct The Man Who Came Back, wove it into Walker’s orig­i­nal script.

One of the most intense scenes in this film is when Pax­ton watches his wife and son being beaten and killed. View­ers feel the sting, the pain, the anger, the disbelief.

Iron­i­cally, the cast and crew did not real­ize just how intense this scene was until it was in the final stages.

It took two days to film this scene. As Brae­den beat on the metal cage while film­ing Paxton’s reac­tion, the noise and move­ment scared the mules pulling the cart. They ran off and had to be brought back.

Then, the cast and crew was focused on the behind-the-scenes neces­si­ties of film­ing, not what the scene would even­tu­ally be.

“You dis­sect it very tech­ni­cally as you do it,” Brae­den said. “The art of the actor and the art of the direc­tor is to make that as real as you can within very arti­fi­cial perime­ters. You are wor­ried about cam­era. You are wor­ried about sound. You are wor­ried about light­ing… all of those things.

“While you do it, you are not really aware” of the scene’s inten­sity, he con­tin­ues. “You were aware of it when you read the script. There is a vis­ceral ele­ment that you only get once you put it together.”

One thing view­ers can appre­ci­ate in The Man Who Came Back is the music. It doesn’t over­ride the scenes — and it is always appro­pri­ate. As exec­u­tive pro­ducer, Brae­den says he paid close atten­tion to the music. Sev­eral options were dis­carded before they got it just right.

“You have to be care­ful not to overdo it,” Brae­den said. “In a lot of films, music is over­done. In a lot of films, I say, ‘Oh my God, what was this guy thinking?’”

There is a point where Paxton’s char­ac­ter could exact revenge and ride off into the desert with a woman who is com­ing to love him. Though the film isn’t in the Old West, it has a west­ern movie feel. Most seri­ous west­erns have very dra­matic ends with a lot of death.

Through­out the film, Pax­ton talks about how hor­ri­ble it is to die of a gut shot. He saw it time and again in Civil War bat­tles. Before he kills the rich boy — who hasn’t seen a true day of bat­tle in his life — Pax­ton is shot in the stom­ach. He even­tu­ally makes his way back to the graves of his wife and son, and lies down between them.

Was it pos­si­ble to have a happy end­ing for Paxton?

“We debated that,” Brae­den said. “In fact, we debated that a long time.”

But after Paxton’s talk of a gut shot, and just how painful it was to die from, Brae­den felt they would be remiss in let­ting him mirac­u­lously recover.

“I said, ‘No, we can’t do that. It’s being dis­hon­est,’” Brae­den recalled. “Per­haps we could have had him ride away and not show the end­ing, but I think there is some­thing very touch­ing and very beau­ti­ful about him join­ing his fam­ily at the end. There’s some­thing very tragic in it. It was very honest.”

The Man Who Came Back is Braeden’s first film since James Cameron’s The Titanic in 1997, though he has guested on shows like How I Met Your Mother and Hope & Faith. In between mak­ing films, he stays busy play­ing Vic­tor New­man, the pow­er­ful busi­ness­man whose bat­tles with a younger rogue named Jack Abbott keep The Young and the Rest­less view­ers on their toes.

Every time fans see Brae­den, they think of Vic­tor New­man. Did he worry that fans watch­ing The Man Who Came Back would only see New­man dressed in period clothes, exact­ing right­ful revenge as only he could?

“No,” Brae­den said. “I knew that once you got into the story, that you’d for­get about it.”

He’s right. Reese Pax­ton is a char­ac­ter who stands in his own right, and his jour­ney will keep fans glued to the screen until the very last shot.

The Man Who Came Back is avail­able on DVD.