Of course, it’s not like there isn’t anything to talk about as the Hoff, as I understand he is now known, discusses his new reality show with his daughters and his extremely varied career that you probably know more about me than me anyway. It’s amazing how much the man has done, and is doing, aside from “Baywatch, “Knight Rider,” his German musical superstardom, his Comedy Central roast, and a certain unplanned video appearances sans shirt but avec cheeseburger, that I’ve been able to more or less completely ignore for three decades. (He was, however, almost an extra in one of my favorite Roger Corman flicks, the original “Death Race 2000,” so there’s that.) Anyhow, enough of my yammering, you want to read the Hoff’s yammering

Click here to read Will Harris’s interview with the Hoff himself, David Hasselhoff.

Its star, Ryan Kwanten, is by far best known as Jason Stackhouse of “True Blood,” an occasionally likable dim-bulb of a character who would pretty much be nothing if it weren’t for his athletic good looks and sexual prowess. But Kwanten as an actor is certainly no mere boy-toy, even if he remains a favorite of young female fans and looks about a decade younger than his actual age (he’ll be 34 later this month). As the rather archly named Shane Cooper, the earnest, violence-averse policeman hero of “Red Hill,” he must be believable dealing with the rampage of revenge waged by an Aboriginal escaped convict (Tommy Lewis) while protecting his loving and pregnant wife (Claire van der Boom), dealing with the barbs of his taskmaster of a new boss (Steve Bisley), and spending a good chunk of the movie marinating in his own blood and believably fighting on. If that isn’t proof that Kwanten is, you know, a real actor, his next non-“True Blood” role appears to be as Charles Manson.

I met with voluble writer-director Hughes and actor Kwanten – who, as befits this film’s low budget provenance, come across as remarkably down-to-earth in person – during a press day held at Strand Releasing’s east Culver City office. A short time later, Kwanten would be chatting telephonically for a solo interview with my colleague, Will Harris, who’d be concentrating on his career, definitely including “True Blood.” No prima dona, and you’ll see just what I mean by that later in the interview, he was fine with surrendering some of the spotlight to director Hughes, who kind of dominates the discussion during the first half of this interview. However, do not fear, Kwantenites: we do hear from the very talented actor starting just past this interview’s halfway point, as he discusses crucial matters of blood, guts, and pig poo.

A quick note on interview protocol. We ordinarily designate our questions here as “Premium Hollywood” on the first question and “PH” thereafter. However, since Patrick Hughes’ initials are also, obviously, “PH,” this time my verbiage will be designated as “Question” and “Q” for the sake of not driving you insane.

Question: Patrick, this is a really ambitious first film. I know you have a background in commercials, but still it’s quite ambitious and action-packed, and I know you had a rough shoot. Did you ever kind of feel like, “Gee, I wish I’d made that little coming-of-age film”?

Patrick Hughes: Totally. (To Ryan Kwanten) What was the last thing I said when we were leaving Red Hill? “My next film is in dark room about one guy talking to someone on a telephone. That’s it.” It felt like we’d bitten off way more than we could chew. Literally, I was standing there going, “Who the fuck wrote this? Why are we setting fire to a five bedroom house for one shot? Do we really need this?” You’re going between your director hat and your producer hat, and then your writer hat would come in.

I kind of got really inspired by people like George Miller and the way they’d make films in the seventies, you look at how he made “Mad Max,” and the Coen Brothers [making “Blood Simple”]. They kind of felt like films that had delusions of grandeur, they just didn’t have any money or resources to back it up. I think there’s a texture and quality that comes out of that production. There isn’t that high gloss, and we certainly weren’t aiming for that. I wanted to find what is the reality of the story, who are these real human beings in this story, and this sort of sense of place. I kind of knew that you could certainly do a lot for cheap in the country [i.e., the Australian outback]. It’s not like the city. You don’t need permits and stuff. We just spoke to the [town] council. We said, “Can we have Main Street on Saturday night to have a shoot-out?” and 250 rounds later. “Okay, that’s a wrap.”

There’s no traffic to divert but, certainly, that landscape — you know, the opening shot of the film, it’s one of my favorite shots. That was just me and the camera operator. We shot that whole horse scene [in which Ryan Kwanten’s car-less character is forced to take a horse to meet up with his new boss] ..that was just me and the camera operator. That was it. We were carrying our own gear. But it’s got such huge scale. It’s like you [present] these landscapes, you put them on screen and then you take an actor like Ryan and you give him a gun and let him walk through that landscape. What a wonderful backdrop.

Ryan Kwanten: I’ve got my own gun.

Q: You didn’t lose yours like the guy in the movie. [To Patrick] You were talking a lot about your influences last night [at a post-screening Q&A I attended]. I’m a big fan of Westerns, it’s one of the reasons I immediately glommed onto this when I read about it. I was seeing a lot of things in that movie. I was also seeing a lot of seventies Australian films, not just “Mad Max.”

PH: “The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith”?

Q: Which I forgot to see in preparing for this, and that brings me to another point — Tommy Lewis. I did look at the trailer this morning. Boy, has he changed. It’s a really interesting character that he has. He doesn’t talk. Especially during the early parts of the film, he’s like a monster of sorts.

PH: Absolutely.

Q: A relatable human monster like Frankenstein or Two-Face.

PH: Totally.

Q: How did you come up with him?

PH: I really liked that idea. The first image I had for him — I just had the notion of the prison break story. He’d go and bust out of prison and come back and kill the men who’d put him away. You go, “okay, there’s a movie there, what’s the story?” Then, I wanted the film to be about something. I actually wanted it to say something. I felt like by making him an Aboriginal and tapping into the colonial [history of Australia]. What happened to him is sort of the representation of what happened to the indigenous population of Australia when the white man moved in….From the beginning I said, “he’s not going to say anything, the only time he’s going to talk is at the end of the movie. He’s just going to say his one line which connects to a realization Ryan has.”

I felt like by just portraying him like that, we can’t associate with any of his actions, we don’t know why he’s doing it, and his actions are really horrific. He becomes really scary. I love looking around the screening room and seeing people [cringe and cower]. He gets really creepy but, step by step, Shane starts to unravel the truth about Jimmy. Also, we treated it like his last supper. Jimmy knew, the day he broke out of prison, he’s been planning this for years to seek vengeance…he’s come to that town and he’s going out in a blaze of gunfire. He knows he’s going to die that night, and this is his last supper. When he eats the cake, there’s just a little moment where he’s maybe going to enjoy a sensory experience. He hasn’t had that for 15 years. He’s been locked away.

Q: There was the smelling.

PH: Yeah, the smelling. That’s a big thing trackers do. They look for prints. Tommy would always smell the landscape the white man somewhere.

Q: The way he found the guy in the bathroom. And I did think Ryan was extremely astute casting. I’d never really seen before him in anything before last night [after the screening, I ran home and watched, for the first time, the pilot for “True Blood.” Good stuff,]. It was a very credible performance in a very demanding, heroic role. Ryan can tell me why he took the job, but how did you come up with him?

PH: I felt like I wanted to have an actor that, if you’re in a room with him, you could physically feel kind of threatened by him if he did stand up, which obviously Ryan brings, he’s got that physicality. But also I wanted to have that vulnerability and the innocence.

There’s one shot of Ryan that’s my favorite thing that he does. There’s a little look he does to Barlow [a very frightened cop portrayed extremely well by Kevin Harrington] when’s he’s saying [Constable Cooper’s beyond gruff superior, played by Steve Bisley] is up at the town hall and there it is. He pulls out a map. While he’s looking at the map, he just does this little look at him. The subtleties and the nuance that Ryan brings to his performance humanizes him. You feel like there’s a real person

RK: That’s all there for the audience too, it summarizes what they’re thinking.

PH: Yeah, yeah. A lot of actors will just sort of fall into that sort of posing and walking in and doing it by the numbers, whereas Ryan, there’s little unique things that he brings. Remember that ballroom scene when we were shooting that and, mid-shot, you just pull out the notepad and start taking down details?

RK: The license plate numbers.

PH: Oh, that’s fucking genius. Of course he would, because he’s a by the numbers cop.

Q: This film has a small but really strong supporting cast. Where any of these people sort of role models for you, Patrick. You’re an Australian actor.

RK: Oh, absolutely, some of these guys have two, three decades worth of experience. Even though I’m sort of the #1 on the call sheet, I’m asking them for advice. Picking their brains. Seeing what motivates them; how they manage to sustain a career for that amount of time. This business is notorious for chewing up people and spitting them out, so to have that kind of longevity…

Q: The gentleman, I forgot his name…

PH: Steve Bisley?

Q: Who plays the sheriff [not his correct title but, dammit, his character felt like a sheriff] who was actually in “Mad Max.” [Ryan and he] have a really interesting dynamic…You’re probably more familiar with their career than I am. I remember “Mad Max”….

RK: It’s funny, the “stigma” that those actors come in with, for lack of a better word — “legacy” is a better word — works for the character of Shane and for me. As much as I revered them, it’s Shane’s first day at his job, so he’s looking at a boss who’s a total totalitarian and telling him exactly what to do. It was method acting of the highest order, maybe.

Q: Speaking of method acting. You confessed [at the Q&A] last night to a masochistic streak.

RK: Absolutely.

Q: …You have to do an awful lot, you get covered with a lot of stage blood in this movie…

RK: We got sent to hospital.

PH: There was real blood, too.

Q: What happened?

PH: We had a squib go off at the wrong time and blew a hole in Ryan’s hand or finger.

Q: My question was going to be “What was your most uncomfortable moment?” I think that would probably cover it.

RK: That wasn’t it.

Q: That wasn’t it?

RK: No. “Uncomfortable.” I got put in subzero temperatures, thrown in the water. All that wasn’t really uncomfortable. This is going to sound really weird, but more often than not we’re all put in sort of the same trailer. Probably the most uncomfortable was having all five of us guys — the guys towards the end that are sill alive — all changing at the end of the night together. We just worked 14 hours straight, full of sweat and pig poo I’d been lying in and it’s revolting. Yet, we’re all changing in the space of something that’s half this room and there’s legs and arms…

Q: Actual pig poo?

RK: Oh yeah.

Q: Was there a pig farm?

RK: No. It was where Shane wakes up and he’s chained and there’s hay and…

Q: Oh yeah, I remember that. I was thinking “What’s that supposed to be?”

RK: That wasn’t Patrick, that was my own [idea], I wedged my head down there. And, once I was down there, you were like, “just get down there a little more.”]

PH: Just get some asbestos in there also.

[All three of us laugh]

Q: Okay. Getting back to some of the movies that are in there, you mentioned a lot of things from the seventies and eighties. I caught even some older films. It almost seems like an inversion of “High Noon.”

RK: Absolutely.

PH: I’ve said from the beginning it’s like “High Noon” and “High Plains Drifter,” those are the two biggest influences on me. I think I mentioned “Deliverance” last night, [that] was another big influence. That element of survival. Kind of “Rambo” [i.e., 1982’s “First Blood”] was a little bit of an influence too. This threat, this unstoppable force that just goes into a small town. It’s that sense, geographically, of isolation. Here’s a town. Here’s a monster that’s coming into this town. Geographically, there’s a lot going on, there’s characters at different points around the town trying to stop this thing, and everyone’s sort of chasing each other…If you look at films like “High Noon,” they’re all about that sense of threat that’s coming and where do you run? You can’t run. Will you run out to the dessert and just die in the baking sun.

RK: That may be a better way to go…

PH: Take two — Ryan may have gotten into the police car, gone straight for the wife’s, and just got the hell out of there.

Q: You did make a very bold choice. I’ve had friends who’ve done this. You decided to shoot this on film, for a low budget movie. Obviously, it made your work more difficult. I know you used short ends [left over unexposed film stock from other productions]. You can do pretty good things now with high def. What really motivated you to stick with film?

PH: I’ve grown-up shooting film. I’ve shot everything I’ve done on film. I felt like, if I’m going to make my first film, I want to shoot on film. I want to call it “a film.” I don’t want to call it “a video.” I don’t know about the future. These cameras are developing and changing every day but I felt like I wanted to get that texture and that quality — the grain. Certainly, that’s one of the biggest things you don’t get on HD is that grain you can get off film. The way we sort of art directed this town, I wanted to try and make a film where you don’t know whether it was shot last year or 20 years ago. Everything in this town is kind of broken and old and busted. Every time we did have a car in the movie, there couldn’t be any car that was later model than, say, the seventies or eighties and back….

RK: The crispness that high definition provides I don’t think lends itself all that well to the genre. It was huge calling card for me too to know that we were shooting on 35mm. I’m also very much a purist at heart. So, when Patrick told me that, he said, “things will be sacrificed — that will not be.” That was huge.

PH: I didn’t want to make a TV movie, I wanted to make a movie that you want to go and watch on the big screen and experience and bring, hopefully, sort of a fresh insight, a new spin on something. You know, there’s also an exotic quality, especially to foreign audiences. People here that watch it say, “wow, I didn’t know that parts of Australia look that like that.” You can’t do a Western like that [makes a small, TV sized box with his hands], you’re’ going to have to do that [makes a big, wide movie palace sized “screen” with his hands].

* Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts may star, and Stephen Daldry might direct, an adaptation of a 9/11 themed novel by Jonathan Safran Foer called Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Lou Loumenick is, I’m sure, not the only one to hope the project never happens. The backlash against author Foer seems to be going full-steam. Since I”ve never read anything by him and missed the movie version of his “Everything is Illuminated,” I’m completely in the dark on this one.

* I mentioned in a tongue-in-cheek way on Sunday that, despite a fairly disappointing $10 million showing for “Piranha 3D” over the weekend, given the modest $24 million, I thought a sequel a possibility. I certainly didn’t expect this quick a turn-around, but there you go. Seems the foreign returns, combined with an okay take domestically on the famished fish tale were sufficient to justify another go-round at this price level.

* One person who I know for a fact to be delighted by the “Piranha” news is film blogger and devoted horror dad Dennis Cozzalio who reviewed — and kind of loved — the movie for the Bullz-Eye team this week, doing us all a solid as everyone in the staff was indisposed in one way or another. (My infamous gorephobia wasn’t helping any, either.) Coincidentally, Dennis’s excellent and already world-famous cinephile blog — Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule — got a little more world famous today through the attention from the lofty likes of Richard Brody of The New Yorker today. The topic, strangely enough, was the work of the late action director Sergio Leone. The infield fly rule will have to take care of itself for now.

* Oh, and if you reaction to the idea of a sequel to the aforementioned silly horror flick was “when pigs fly!” the great Japanese animator Hiyao Miyazaki has a planned sequel for you.

* It’s too sad to mention in this silly context, but it also seems wrong to ignore it and I don’t know how else to handle this. Sincere condolences to comic actor Martin Short and his family. Extremely tragic news regarding his wife.

* Apparently, unlike most /Film commenters, I actually do care that there’s may be a “Fantastic Four” reboot as they’ve always been my favorite Marvel characters, but I couldn’t even make it past the oh-so-thin first half-hour of the first movie. Why not reclaim a lost opportunity? Casting rumors, however, I never care about. Actual casting news gets really old sometimes.

* If movies are making you sick, it might not be just the content. Nah, it’s probably the content.

* The Playlist is correct. Pedro Almodovar’s new film is definitely high up on my list of highly anticipated movies for next year. It’s nice to see the Spanish director reteam with Antonio Banderas, who appeared in four of the director’s early successes starting with “Matador” in 1986 and wrapping with the controversial “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” in 1991.

However, they’ll forgive us for anticipating even more the next film from Winnipeg’s own resident eccentric cine-genius Guy Madden, which will feature Isabella Rosellini, Jason Patric, and Sir Simon Milligan himself, Kevin McDonald of The Kids in the Hall comedy troupe. No insult to Mr. Patric, but his costars appear to be two of the coolest humans extant as far as we’re concerned here at PH. Ms. Rosellini gave a great interview to Will Harris some time back, and Mr. MacDonald has a terrific career-spanning chat over at the Onion which brings up the fact that, in drag, MacDonald has a small visual similarity to the luminous Ms. R.

* The end of one of modern journalism’s greatest hates? Sharon Waxman extends an olive branch to Nikki Finke. This could be interesting.

* Capone at AICN has a great interview with thinking geeks’ favorite Guillermo del Toro. A couple of items that were new to me, anyway: it’s far from a sure thing he’ll be directing “The Haunted Mansion” though he’s definitely producing and cowriting. Also, del Toro is now openly hoping that Peter Jackson will wind up as helming “The Hobbit” after all.

* As per Nikki Finke, the early box office returns for “Inception” are looking good.

* Though I was a big fan of “The West Wing” while he worked on it, my one complaint with Aaron Sorkin’s abandoned TV classic was that it was a bit rosy in how it viewed politics and politicians. Currently flying high as the screenwriter of the upcoming docudramas, “The Social Network” and “Moneyball,” he was almost the Gene Roddenberry of political drama in imagining a relatively ideal world that could be, but probably never would be. I don’t think excess positivity is going to be an issue in his movie directorial debut, as he’ll be covering the John Edwards mega-debacle. To think I contemplated voting for/volunteering for the egocentric jerkwad who, had he succeeded, would have sunk a party and a nation on the altar of his ego.

* I don’t think I’ll really know what I think of Ryan Reynolds’ CGI-aided Green Lantern costume until I see it in the movie.

* Things have been hopping over at our sister site, Bullz-Eye.com. Earlier in the week Will Harris, with a little assistance from one or two other people who will remain nameless, took a look at 25 cinematic swan songs from film acting greats. Very cool (except for seven of them, which I’m unable to judge). Also, today, Will had a chat with his friend and rising young star, Dileep Rao, currently being seen in “Inception.”

* There may be no justice in the world, but Roman Polanski’s next movie is already being prepped, and it sounds good. It’s the film version of the London/Broadway hit play “God of Carnage.” Being as it’s a dark comedy/drama, it sounds right up Polanski’s alley. Also, Polanski’s 1994 film version of Ariel Dorfman’s “Death and the Maiden” was one of the most seamless stage-to-film translations I’ve ever seen.

* My high school history teacher, who was also a saxophone playing jazz fan on the side, always used to say that of all the rock music figures, the one he was sure wouldn’t last beyond another couple of decades in terms of popularity was Janis Joplin. Her super-gritty style was just too of the late sixties moment, he theorized. Indeed, she seems to be one of the less popular of the rock superstars of that era today. Well, director Fernando Meirelles of “City of God” and Amy Adams — a top-flight actress who is way cute to be playing the weather-worn Joplin  — will be hoping to disprove that theory with a new biopic.

* Okay, so we’ve got “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” so why not Cain and Abel with Vampires (and Will Smith)?

* I like the sound of this: Stanley Tucci, who obviously gets along very well with Meryl Streep, will direct her and Tina Fey in a mother daughter comedy.

* The Playlist apparently wants to make me happy. First, they report that the long-awaited DVD of the pre-prepared exploitation double-bill, “Grindhouse,” as it was originally presented in theaters is coming this October. Second, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is apparently planning to appear in some kind of a musical. Interesting.

I’m just annoyed that I missed his rendition of the Donald O’Connor “Make ‘Em Laugh” number from “Singin’ in the Rain” on SNL last year and it’s gone from Hulu for some reason. Moment of rank and utterly baseless speculation here: Could a team-up with fellow three-namer Neil Patrick Harris be in the cards? “Dr. Horrible and Dr. Horribler” perhaps? Forget I said that.

* The lion of Hollywood has been a bit mangy for a long time now. Peter Bart reports that MGM is about to be sold and the whole thing, 4,000 titles and all, is worth about $1.5 billion, which would be a lot of money to you and me but to a once mighty film studio sure sounds paltray. One factor, even the older titles in the library ain’t what they used to be, either. The studio’s signature titles: “The Wizard of Oz,” “Gone With the Wind,” and “Singin’ in the Rain” are now available on Warner Brother’s DVD along with a good chunk of their best known classics.  The ghosts of Culver City’s glory days are restless tonight.

* Apparently being a movie critic these days is such an unstable, lousy position that some of the best known reviewers are jumping ship and becoming film festival programmers. Yesterday, it was Newsweek’s David Ansen. Today, it’s the L.A. Weekly/Village Voice’s Scott Foundas. Anne Thompson has the depressing news that might nevertheless be creating more opportunities for some of the better known online folks.

* The fruits of my compatriot Will Harris’s London sojourn are appearing in the form of some extremely worth-your-time interviews. First with writer/director Richard Curtis of the criticially underrated “Love, Actually” and the soon to be released “Pirate Radio.” Also roly-poly movie superstud and general all around good guy Nick Frost of “Shaun of the Dead,” etc., as well as “Pirate” newcomers Tom Sturridge and Talulah Riley gets the Harris treatment as well. Bob says collect ’em all.

* Does anyone really want to see the Dave Matthews Band in 3-D? Personally, I’d just find them three times as boring as usual, I’d guess. Anyhow, those who disagree will have their chance.

* And because the world must have it, “Little Fockers” is coming up and Harvey Keitel will be on board this time. Paul Weitz, a director I rather like who badly needs a hit after the failure of “American Dreamz” and “The Vampire’s Assistant,” is on board for this one. So, let me see, Keitel and Robert DeNiro appeared together in “Mean Streets,” and “Taxi Driver” and now, this. Times have changed.

* Since my brief here is more or less strictly movies, I was wondering how I was going to work in the news that Joss Whedon’s uneven but increasingly highly entertaining “Dollhouse” has been canceled. To my rescue came Marti Noxon, who was Whedon’s right hand and more on the later seasons of “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.” Noxon, whose current writer-producer gig is on “Mad Men” is stepping out of the shadows of show-runner superstars like Whedon and Matthew Weiner and back into the old fang game to write her own movie, a remake of the affectionately recalled 1985 vampire horror comedy “Fright Night.” She’s done fine work on a bunch of different TV shows of different genres, so I have confidence in her. But, if the writing thing peters out for her, she’s got other talents to fall back on.