Gregory Smith: "Getting to Be Kind of Bad"

Here's material from an MTV Movie Blog interview with Gregory Smith, who plays older brother Max Stanton in his next movie. (Thanks to Bookshelves of Doom for the warning.)

MTV: Tell me, then, how does Max - how does he fit into this epic battle of Light versus Dark?

Smith: Max comes home from college and he is acting a little strange and you’re not really sure what is going on with him but you know that something is a little wrong. It turns out he has been kicked out of college. He is ashamed and doesn’t want to tell his parents and is trying to hide it. The Darkness senses that insecurity and weakness and they sort of use that to their advantage.

MTV: So he becomes a tool of the Darkness, against Will in his quest to find the Signs?

Smith: Yes, I am trying to get the Signs before he does. I am trying to stop him from his quest and get the Signs for the Darkness. I have a foray into the Dark Side. But my character is redeemed before the end.

MTV: That’s kind of cool for an actor[,] isn’t it?

Smith: It’s totally awesome. Like, there is one sequence where Max chases his little brother through time. So on top of getting to be kind of bad there were all these special effects, all these fights that we choreographed.

MTV: Tell me about that big fight.

Smith: It was basically a choreographed karate fight scene, but the director [David Cunningham] set it on top of a vegetable cart. He had the entire cart surrounded by peasants and gave them bread, or rotten pieces of fruit, or carrots, or hay, or whatever.

And now a pause while we remember critic Robert Ebert's definition of a "Fruit Cart Scene", especially in connection to chases.

Rather than continue the pretense that this movie has much to do with Susan Cooper's novel called The Dark Is Rising, today I feature a photo of Smith as Harriet's friend Sport in Harriet the Spy (1996). Another beloved children's book, modernized for the movies a generation after publication. But not one that strayed aggressively far from the plot, themes, or spirit of the original.