Walkden Entertainment (aka Peter Walkden) was extremely excited to chat with Joe Vaz, the actor from Street Trash (2024), which will be available on Digitial in Australia and New Zealand from February 19th, thanks to Lightbulb Film Distribution.
Let’s break the ice: Are you a lover of horror, and if so, what is your all-time favourite horror film, and why?
I’ve always been a huge fan of horror, though I have to admit, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve lost the stomach for some of the more violent ones. I feel horror is really at its best when you’re a teenager or in your early twenties. As a result, many of my faves are from the 80’s and early nineties. I am a huge fan of comedy in horror, but I also like being scared silly.
My all-time favourite would probably be a tie between ALIEN and POLTERGEIST – both films have an effortless quality about them – both in the acting and directing – that makes them feel extremely real and in the moment. POLTERGEIST, for example, is a genuinely great family comedy/drama – it just happens to get really fucking scary in parts. Some of my other favourites include Carpenter’s THE THING, Pete Jackson’s BRAIN DEAD and THE FRIGHTENERS, Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy (Bruce Campbell is my comedy hero), HOUSE, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, THE FACULTY. Of the more recent films, I really enjoyed M3GAN, ABIGAIL, BARBARIAN, CABIN IN THE WOODS, TUCKER & DALE, I really enjoyed STING, all of the QUIET PLACE movies and ARCADIAN. Gosh, the list is endless. I used to publish a science fiction and horror short story magazine (Something Wicked) so I think it’s safe to say I am a fan of the genre.
What was your reaction when you found out Ryan Kruger was making a sequel film to Street Trash (1987) and wanted you to be part of it? Have you seen the original movie prior to this project?
I must admit I’d never heard of the original Street Trash, but I was excited to hear Ryan had a project he wanted me for. As freelancers, we’re always excited about the prospect of being able to pay rent. But seriously, I was thrilled when I first read through the script. It’s always fun working with Ryan and Sean Cameron Micahel (who plays Ronald), and I have been friends since our old musical theatre days.
According to IMDb, your career started in musical theatre as a performer before moving into film and television. How did the transition from working with musical theatre to working on the big screen come about?
Starting out in musical theatre was mostly luck. I was theatre-trained, but fortunately, I can sing and dance because the only work I managed to get when I came out of college was musicals. I was fortunate enough to work solidly for around seven years before the theatre work dried up. At that point, I moved to London for a few years, where the only theatre work I managed to get was selling ice-creams and programmes at the Apollo on Shaftesbury Avenue. In London, I gigged a little with my band, ten Athlone, and landed some “profit share” theatre roles. But I also did some student short films. I had done some television in South Africa, but mostly 3-camera studio shoots (daily dramas, children’s TV, that sort of thing) – shooting single-cam location stuff in the student films really excited me. When I returned to South Africa, I started working on a script and produced and directed my own short film – Play by Heart. It’s not great by any measure (it’s barely good), but I genuinely had the time of my life and completely fell in love with the medium. As is so often the case in this business, luck played a huge part in it – after having spent 4 years in London unable to get an audition for any film work, I landed a part in a BBC mini-series within three weeks of returning to South Africa. Since then, I have mostly only worked in international television and film. However, I almost got back into musicals, landing a part in the touring cast of School of Rock, The Musical, before Covid scuppered the whole thing.
Speaking of music, I understand you are also a solo musician- “ten Athlone”- creating various types of music such as acoustic, indie-rock, etc. Our readers might not be aware of this, but you also sang the film’s main song, “Street Trash”. What was this process like, and did the music video take a long time?
Yeah, ten Athlone has been around for a while, but we haven’t really existed in any tangible form since the early 2000’s. During the pandemic, I found myself with a lot of free time and going slightly mad, so I started writing music again. The result was a 10-track album released in July 2024 (Travelator). We were shooting STREET TRASH while I was finishing up the album, and while reading through the shooting schedule I went through the script of the last few scenes Ryan was shooting, and this music just started playing in my head (New Day). I quickly laid down a demo for it the night before we shot that final scene (where the gang is sitting on the steps). On set the next day, I watched how Ryan framed the shots and played through the song in my head – I was convinced New Day would work as an end-credit song. On the drive home after wrap, intent on completing New Day, a single line and melody popped into my head, the opening of Street Trash – “It’s not paranoia if they’re really coming for ya.” I quickly sang it into my phone and rushed home. Wrote and recorded the demo that night and took them both to Ryan the next day. He was very clearly humouring me until he heard the demos. Needless to say, he loved them and ended up using both songs in the film. I was very much going for that 80’s teen-flick end-credits vibe – movies like MANNEQUIN, or the John Hughes classics, BREAKFAST CLUB, WEIRD SCIENCE, PRETTY IN PINK. I recorded and produced both songs and offered them to the production. The Street Trash – EP includes two versions of Street Trash, and New Day along with the silly Flim Flam Flour commercial jingle I wrote for Sean and I to sing in the fighting scene in the film. The music video was controlled chaos. We had no budget but thankfully, Ryan had one day of reshoots and pick-ups to do. He had way too much to shoot on the day, so he couldn’t direct or help, so I asked if he could spare me a single camera and operator for a few hours, and I did it myself. I drew up some quick storyboards the night before, built some stupid props (the cardboard turntable and fake vinyl LP), and we shot the thing in four hours. Using the extras and cast members who were available on the day. With playback off a portable Bluetooth speaker playing the track off my cell phone, we somehow managed to pull it off.
What was it like working with Ryan again, given you two also worked together on another great film, Fried Barry?
Ryan and I go back about a decade or more. Ryan is also an actor, and we probably met, standing in an audition queue for something or other. Over the years, Ryan has often asked me and others to jump in for a few hours for a music video here or there. Music videos turned into short scenes and then into movies. As he’s grown as a filmmaker, there are a few of us he keeps coming back to, which is great. Working with Ryan is always fun – we’re friends first, huge film buffs second, and great collaborators third. He casts well and shoots fast. And he’s tons of fun to hang out with.
In Street Trash, you get some of the most excellent on-screen gags. Did Ryan allow you to ad-lib lines or dialogue, or could you contribute to the script for your character, Chef?
Thank you for saying so. Ryan is usually quite loose with his dialogue and often lets us go off-script and improvise. Ironically, though, Chef is probably the character I least ad-libbed on. Almost all of it is straight off the page – the dialogue was just that funny already – I didn’t feel I needed to change or add much.
Did any of the fellow cast members make you break your character on set? Or perhaps, was this the other way around, given that Chef is given so much witty dialogue?
I think because we were shooting on 35mm film, and everyone was aware of how expensive film is, we kept silliness to a minimum. We really couldn’t afford to screw around too much. I’m sure there are one or two places where we cracked up, but mostly, we kept the laughter to in between takes and during rehearsals.
What was your favourite moment while working on this film?
I’ll be honest here: I loved every second of it. I loved the night-shoots. I loved the day shoots; I loved just hanging out with all these great people. We’re a very close-knit community of actors in South Africa, so I loved that every day, there would be another friend visiting the set, whether it was to play a security guard (Richard Wright-Firth) or Officer Maggot (Andrew Roux) or the Mayor (Warwick Grier), the one-eyed lady (Skye Russell), or Society, played by the legendary (Jonathan Pienaar), whom I directed in a short film back in 2005 (Blue Valentine). Sean and I have been friends for over thirty years, and although we have worked together several times, we’ve never been a double-act or shot together for as long as we did on Street Trash. I’d never worked with (Donna Cormack-Thomson) before – our awesome leading lady – but she was great fun to work and hang with – very funny, extremely talented actress. Every day on set was an adventure. I am so proud of Ryan and how slick the production ran behind the camera. I was basically being paid to hang out with old friends and talk about movies all day.
There are no spoilers here, but there are scenes in which you were required to work with lots of colourful goo and sticky melts. What was this experience like, and were these scenes a lengthy process (or painful) to complete?
I’ll just say the following: Night shoot, mid-winter, really cold goo that pours like water through your clothes all the way down. It was more cold than painful – the scene you’re referring to was shot around 4 am in mid-winter, and I had to wait around half-naked, wrapped in three towels in an easy shade, hugging a gas heater for about twenty minutes until they were certain they had the shot and didn’t need to do another take.
Are you working on any new projects? Anything you can tease us with?
Post Street Trash, I worked on a crazy-fun film called SLAY (available to stream on TUBI), which is about a group of drag queens stuck in a biker bar during a vampire attack – it’s like TO WONG FOO meets DUSK TILL DAWN – genuinely hysterical film. In the middle of last year, Ryan and I worked on a Gore Verbinski/Sam Rockwell project, though I’m not sure when that will be released. Very small parts, but it was an incredible experience to work with such seasoned pros.
Lastly, we have an end; I would like your opinion on why you think audiences from Australia and New Zealand should watch Street Trash.
There’s a lot of quirky South African humour in STREET TRASH, which I feel will work really well in Australia and New Zealand. Us antipodeans share a very similar type of humour, and I’m a huge fan of Australian and NZ films and television, so hopefully, it’ll hit that spot.
PS—I’m sorry I must say it, but I’m a massive fan of Judge Dredd, so seeing you appear in Dredd (2012) as Big Joe was also fantastic. Thank you for your hard work on this film too!
Thank you so much – I loved shooting DREDD. I’ve been a fan of the comics for decades, and it was incredible to live in that world, albeit for just a few days. And Karl kicked ass! Thanks for a great interview. For anyone interested, the songs featured in Street Trash (2024) can be downloaded from https://tenathlone.bandcamp.com/album/street-trash
Street Trash (2024) will be available on Digital in Australia from February 19th!
Published: 13th February 2025
Written by: Peter Walkden
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