Rob
and Carter:
Alien Fighters!
by Lynn Barker
 Dancer/Actor
Robert Hoffman of Step Up 2: The Streets and 17-year-old Carter
Jenkins of the TV series "Surface" seem to be good buds in person
but in the new teen-friendly film Aliens in the Attic, the duo
play enemies. When unfriendly aliens land in the attic of the family vacation
home, Carter's nerdy brainiac character Tom must lead his siblings and
cousin in a fight for humanity. Rob plays Ricky, the self-serving, womanizing
boyfriend to Ashley Tisdale's Bethany. When the aliens use a device to
control Ricky's every move like a human puppet, it's up to Tom and the
gang to bring him down!
When we sat
down to talk with these guys in a hideaway boutique hotel in Los Angeles,
we noted that they both like to doodle. The two were drawing cartoons
of each other during the interview. Carter wasn't too thrilled with Robert's
artistic attempt.....
Carter: (leaning
over to take a look) Are you drawing me?
Robert: Yeah.
Carter: That's
not my nose! Come on. Come on. Is my nose like that?
Robert holds
up his drawing....
Robert: (to
me) Is that Carter?
Carter: I
have a better forehead and my nose isn't as long.
AGW: Okay
guys, I assume no aliens in your past but what scared you as a little
kid in your house?
Robert: Oh,
underneath the porch. My dad would have to go fix something and I'm like
'I don't want to go under there!' because there were spiders, man, spiders.
There were just so many webs and my dad's like throwing spider webs to
the side. 'Are you crazy?' When I was a kid I was running through the
forest and I ran into this big web and this huge guy, sort of like this
(indicates a several-inch spider on his shoulder). And the huge chicken
that I was, I just started screaming and finally, I felt like twenty minutes
later, my dad comes out and flicks it off. I was like five.
AGW: What
are you afraid of, Carter?
Robert: Girls.
Carter: (is
he blushing?) When I was five or six, we had a pool and at the deep end
there's a drain and my older brother convinced me that sharks come through
the drain and into the pool. I was so afraid of that.
AGW: Did he
believe that himself or was he just freaking you out?
 Carter:
No. He was freaking me out. I was so afraid. He said 'at night they go
in' so I wouldn't swim at night. Oh gosh.
AGW: Do you
have a favorite alien movie?
Carter: There's
so many good ones.
Robert: Oooo,
Navigator, The Navigator. Remember that one? 'You are the navigator'.
Carter: I
loved E.T. and I feel like this has some aspects of that. That
was a childhood favorite of mine as was Home Alone. It's not
an alien film but so cool and, this movie, I feel like, has elements similar
to both of those movies. I hope that Aliens in the Attic will
be a childhood favorite for this generation.
AGW: Robert,
how did your dance training help with all the physical comedy you did
in this film?
Robert: My
background in creative movement, was absolutely instrumental because not
only did I have this library of moves that I've developed in my life,
and silly ways of walking and mimicking animals, it also allowed me to
be really free and come up with different gags according to the scene
and the obstacles; the cars, the hills happened to be.
AGW: How much
improvising did you do with the physical gags?
Robert: Tons
of stuff. It took a couple of rounds where they figured out 'oh, wow,
he can bring some fun stuff to the table'. And then it got to the point
where I would show up on a day that involved me being the 'robot' and
they were like 'okay, Rob. What to you want to do?' and I'd be like 'okay.
Well, wouldn't it be wicked if I come flying around the corner and bang
into the car?' 'Yeah, let's do it. What else, what else?' So, it just
got to be a creativity fest. And sometimes it would be 'okay, we're going
to go wide and you just do a bunch of stuff'. Truly one of the more gratifying,
creative experiences I've ever had.
AGW: You do
some pretty amazing falls. Any injuries?
Robert: Yeah,
definitely. My back took a beating for sure. There were a lot of times
in a fight scene where I had to keep landing on my back really hard and
stuff like that. And that thing where I run in a circle on the gravel,
I definitely tore up my arm pretty good. I definitely got some scars there.
AGW: Did they
get you a chiropractor or massage therapist?
Robert: No.
Nothing like that. But, it's just like dancing. When the music is on,
you can be doing the most atrocious things to your body and you're not
going to feel it. You feel nothing until the music stops. Same thing with
being a character in a fun scene, you're just so delighted, scraping yourself,
banging your knees, it's like 'whatever'.
 AGW:
You also have a funny fight scene with robotic Doris Roberts of "Everybody
Loves Raymond". What was that like?
Robert: The
fact that we got to do some really iconic videogame moves and I got to
do my first really intense action scene, that was really fun but we were
very reserved. I had just seen a fellow actor who was in some of my acting
classes, she had to do a choke scene and somebody choked her so hard and
didn't realize she was really hurting right now and half of her face had
a stroke. She can't use half of her face (lots of 'oh my God's' from us),
so, having just come off that and seen her deal with that, I was anything
but trying to push the limits.
Carter: Acting
is fake and it should stay fake.
AGW: Carter,
how did they do the effects? CGI aliens but what was it like on set?
Carter: They
have these things called maquettes which are these little model versions
(of the aliens) and those were used to line up the shots and as a reference.
They shoot a pass with the maquettes and then they shoot it without the
maquettes in it. When we're acting with the aliens, it was just a little
piece of tape on the end of a string. It's important that everybody in
the scene has the same eyeline and is on the same page on what we're seeing
and what we're reacting to.
AGW: How do
you relate to Tom? Are you a brainiac and a mathlete like him?
Carter: I
think Tom is in that stage that everybody goes through; you're sort of
finding yourself. You're not quite comfortable in your own skin and he's
trying to find a balance between being this kid who he is, this brainiac,
mathlete kid and being cool and popular like every kid wants in high school.
AGW: So you
can relate to that?
Carter: I
absolutely can. Fortunately, I feel like I'm past that stage in my own
life. I feel pretty comfortable in my own skin.
AGW: Robert,
you spend half of the movie being the jerk and the other half this goofball
character. Is there any limit as to where you would go to get a laugh?
Robert: No.
No. Absolutely not! I don't want to toot my own horn, but I'm going to.
Take my website punchrobert.com where I make all these internet videos
like 'Urban Ninja' and I definitely put it all on the line for those.
One of the videos we made was part three of 'Urban Ninja' and I was so
like 'I have to push this so much further than one and two'. I was trying
to get arrested. Didn't happen but I tried.
AGW: How did
you enjoy working in New Zealand?
Robert: I
think, for me, of all the places I've traveled, I think the Kiwi people
are the nicest in general. They don't nod or go 'hi', they go 'how's your
day goin'? 'Oh, pretty good. Had a good breakfast'. Legitimately a conversation
between strangers which I thought was really striking. Overall, really
great.
AGW: What
were some of the things you guys did down there?
Carter: On
our own time, we explored and learned about their culture and saw some
amazing beaches and I didn't get to travel as much as I wanted to throughout
the country. We were on North Island. We were on Auckland. I wanted to
go to the South Island but a lot of amazing beaches on the North Island
as well.
AGW: Did any
of the cast know each other from previous work?
Carter: I
was mutual friends with Austin (Butler, who plays a family cousin), the
blonde kid in the poster. I'd met Ashley. She was a fan of the show I
was on (TV's "Surface"). That was so cool. I was so flattered
by that. That was so amazing. And, I did a movie with Doris Roberts before
called Keeping Up With the Steins. It was one of the first movies
I made.
AGW: How did
it feel to be the leader of the other kids; the one in charge?
 Carter:
I realized that I had had some more experience than the other kids in
the movie working on sets and it was kind of, in real life, mimicking
my character being hero and leading the other kids in this fight against
the aliens. I was kind of leading my fellow actors, not to take anything
away from them.
AGW: What
are you both doing next?
Carter: Well,
I have an audition at 5:30 (we laugh and tell him 'good luck').
AGW: Didn't
you do something called Arcadia Lost?
Carter: I
did. I got to go to Greece. It's the polar opposite of this movie. I like
that it's a big contrast. I just talked to the producers and they said
it's going to be at some festivals. It's about an American family in Greece.
It's kind of a weird mystical journey through Greece.
Robert: There's
a lot of films that I've done that are on their way out, Burning Palms
and Kids in America and We Got the Beat.
AGW: Are they
all comedies?
Robert: We
Got the Beat is a lot of physical comedy. Kids in America
is a lot of physical comedy. It's actually dancing. I'm basically this
party-goer that gets in this big fight with Dan Fogler and we have a dance-off
and I have to say I think he might have won.
AGW: Are you
an a-hole in that movie as well?
Robert: (laughs)
Totally, in that one for sure. I have to say that when I do get the jerk
roles, it's so fun. Not that I don't love movies like Step Up 2
where I'm the hero, fight for justice, fight back but when you get to
play the jerk there's just no limits as to how asinine and absurd you
get to be and that's a very freeing place to go I think.
AGW: And Burning
Palms, do you dance in that?
Robert: It's
a really dark comedy and I'm just a dimwit. I don't think this guy could
ever dance. One of the first things I do when I get into character is
ask 'how would this person dance?' because, for me, when I've seen someone
dance, it just tells me so much about the individual. So, this guy, we
might not even to get him to dance, period.
Carter looks
at Robert's cartoon drawing of him.
Carter: I
just don't like....that's a horrible profile.
all uncredited
pictures courtesy of and copyright , 2009
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