“The second I got to work with Nicolas Cage as Dracula I was like, ‘Yeah, this is all I ever want to do,’” Ben Schwartz tells me 💛ahead of Renfield’s release. The action horror comedy stars Nicolas Cage as the iconic vampire, Nicolas Hoult as a familiar stuck in a lengthy toxic relationship with The Count, and Schwartz as Tedward Lobo - a gangster who thinks he is the coolest guy in the world, when beneath it all he is a deplorable nepo loser.
“He was amazing,” Schwartz says of Cage. “He was 🐟so committed, and it’s so incredible to watch 🌜someone who has been acting as long as he has and still come so prepared and put 110 percent into everything.”
Schwartz is so lively recalling on-set memories with the legendary actor, admitting that having a chance to work with Cage as equals didn’t prevent him from being starstruck. “We had this big choking scene, and it’s a big action scene, and then they said cut, we need to switch cameras🐬 and where everything is. We go to our chairs, he’s still dressed as Dracula and we’re just talking about Adaptation. I was like, ‘God you’re so good in Adaptation’ and he’s all, ‘Thanks, man.’ It was really, really fun.”
Between scenes Schwartz would get all chummy with Cage, b🔯oth to cement a friendship and mine out some precious career advice. “I want to know everything about all of his movies so I’m forcing him to talk about his movies, but he’s dressed as Dracula. It was the most surreal thing in the universe.”
When it comes to Schwartz's own character though, he seemed to relish in playing a cheesy gangster operating on the bank of Mummy and Daddy who firmly believes the world revolves around him. “It was so fun because I usually play characters who are pretty good people,” he tells me. “They’re trying their best, and they don’t know they’re being bad if they are bad. So this person is purposely trying to be the worst person in the world because his mummy and his friends will look at him better if he kills somebody. It’s such a messed up thing.”
Lobo&ꩲrsquo;s opening scene has him waiting outside in his car while a group of goons infiltrate a compound for him. He’s safe, and the second things go wrong he panics and speeds away. He is all talk and no action, like a parody of the tough kids at school lifted to the extreme.
“He’s just trying to get status," Schwartz says. “He’s led by his ego and trying to get status. But I love the idea that this person is not Donnie Brosco, but he’s seen Donnie Brosco a 1,000 times. He’s not Scarface, but he wants to be Scarface. Someone who announces themselves every time they walk into a room𓄧 is not doing great.”
Renfield also has it out for ska music, with an early action sequence centering around a toxic cocaine dealer whose girlfriend despises him for such an obsession. This genre ain’t so bad, and Schwartz and I think it’s been dealt a bad hand. “I love ska music,” he says. “I love Reel Big Fish, I love Mighty Mighty Bosstones. I once did a show called The Afte🙈r Party and in it my character’s high school music thing is ska so I got to sing to a ska song and dance to a ska song. Oh my goodness. I pick it up, pick it up, pick it up all day. It w🌜as amazing.”
I also noticed that throughout the film, anyone with vampire powers seems to be imbued with a newfound sense of gothic fashion. Like Drac🎀ula’s blood will suddenly transform your outer self into a being that represents the nearest Hot Topic. “We made a choice that when I got powers I would dress a little bit cooler,” Schwartz says. “I’m trying to be closer to [Dracula] so we made up my options to be a little bit closer. I pop my collar and it’s got a bit of red on 🐻it.”
Schwartz is also a gamer, but prefers to dip into older 16-bit classics instead of the newer releases. He wasn’t aware Capcom had remade Resident Evil 4 before asking me what I’d been playing, so chances are he’s deep into Leon’s European bender as we speak. “I’m very excited for Breath of the Wild [2] but I’m terrified it’s going to take up months of my life,” he says. “I beat the new Metroid. What was it called, Red? Dread? I beat that! But they made it so I didn&rsquo⛄;t have to spend my whole week playing. I’m really into games that take 20 hours or less.”
Me too, Ben. Me too.