Q&A: Richard Moll & Griff Furst Talk 'Ghost Shark'

On Thursday, August 22 at 9:00 p.m. ET, Syfy is premiering its newest made-for-Syfy film. It's titled "Ghost Shark" and it's directed by Griff Furst and stars Richard Moll. Moll and Furst recently took some time to talk about the film and what viewers can expect to see.

Q: Could both of you talk about how you got involved with the film?

Griff Furst: I was involved in this film from the ground up really. My partners and I at Active Entertainment met with Tom Vitale and his team over at Syfy and we kind of collectively came up with the title "Ghost Shark" first, and then after that we went into several different variations on the story that would eventually become "Ghost Shark." So, that’s kind of how it all started for us.

Richard Moll: Well, the way I got involved was like this. The phone rang one day and they said, “How would you like to come down to Louisiana and do a movie called 'Ghost Shark?'" And I said, "Well, let me think about it. Okay." That’s how I got involved, and it was actually my maiden voyage to Louisiana, so there was a pleasure in that. It was a pleasure meeting and working with Griff first.

His father, Stephen Furst, I’ve known for a long while. I don’t know Stephen very well, but I believe he guested on "Night Court" and of course we know him from "Animal House" and he was a contemporary of mine on the NBC lineup with "St. Elsewhere," because that was going on when "Night Court" was going on. And I think we might also have worked in a film in the former Yugoslavia, just to show you how far back we go, an NBC Movie of the Week, I think he may have been in that as well.

Q: Richard, what was the most challenging part of doing the film?

Richard Moll: Avoiding snake bite, I think, would probably have to be number one on that. But, you know it was fun. It was challenging. I don’t know. It was an emotional rollercoaster. I worked hard on that and I hope I didn’t freak everybody out getting into the various moods, but that was challenging. And, you know just keeping one’s energy up and giving your best every time you could; that’s challenging too. But there’s also a real sense of fun with it because of the type of film it is and the people you were working with and just the excitement of being in Louisiana around Baton Rouge and getting to visit New Orleans one day. They treated us royally at NOLA, you know that wonderful restaurant there…

Q: Well, I have to say you’ll always be my favorite Two-Face.

Richard Moll: Really? Well, there’re so many Two-Faces in Hollywood that, you know, I’m really honored that you would choose me among all of them, but that’s very nice. I enjoyed doing that role very much with Warner Bros. Television. We did it for the Batman cartoons. Really quite wonderfully done cartoons, and it was just great working with people like - you never knew who might show up, too - because we sort of do the voiceover, all of us in a big room in a semicircle with the mics in front of us. And the people in the booth in front of us, you know might run into, like Rene Auberjonois or who knows who, so it was just really fun working with some of those talents.

Q: With the summer and the big "Sharknado" hit from Syfy, how do you feel like "Ghost Shark" stands compared to the natural-occurring phenomenon of "Sharknado"?

Griff Furst: Oh, I think Sharknado was a - it was - I think it’s a nice lead-in for "Ghost Shark," I do. Those guys are good friends of ours—the Syfy original filmmakers—It’s very incestuous. So, I worked with that writer and that director before and we’re all kind of rooting for each other, so were all very pleased to see "Sharknado" become the Twitter phenomenon that is has. And, at the end of the day, they’re very different movies. It’s a very different group of filmmakers, even though we’re all friends, but you know I think they compliment each other nicely.

Q: I’m into the paranormal, but I don’t know if there’s ever been a Ghost Shark before.

Richard Moll: Actually, when I was trying to find it on the computer I think there was a Ghost Shark film, of all things, out of Australia, I believe. Did you hear about that one, Griff?

Griff Furst: Yeah, somebody sent it to me. There’s a Ghost Shark fan page on Facebook, and I got a link from somebody that said, "Hey, great minds think alike. We made a movie called Ghost Shark," back in to 2004 or something. And I lost the trail and it was kind of amusing, but they had no shark in their movie. Theirs was like an invisible shark. So, that’s the only other Ghost Shark, or paranormal shark, that I’ve ever heard of. But, I don’t think there’s ever been a full-length, real feature made about a Ghost Shark, until now that is.

Q: And so, I’m assuming that we just don’t have to be afraid of the water, from what I’ve seen. So, the ghost shark can pop up at just about anywhere?

Richard Moll: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Griff Furst: I think Syfy nailed it when they released the trailer with the tagline, "If you’re wet, you’re dead."

Richard Moll: Yes. I haven’t taken a shower since then. You were talking about the other film, "Sharknado," which I enjoyed watching. It was really nicely produced and nice values and everything, and totally believable. But anyway, you know it is kind of incestuous because we realized the producer of that film, Anthony Ferrante, and I worked a long time ago in Romania doing another Syfy project called "Headless Horseman." So, there’s another tie-in with all of those folks; just wanted to get that in there.

Q: There are a lot of deaths in the film and I wondered if either one of you had a favorite?

Richard Moll: I don’t even remember the deaths. I know mine’s the least favorite because it means I won’t be in the sequel, so that’s the way I look at it. What do you think, Griff, favorite death?

Q: Unless you did a prequel?

Griff Furst: Yes, there’s always the possibility of a prequel. We – Richard and I were actually just talking about that. I’ve lived a lot of deaths and I like a lot of them. I think I probably like the deaths in the montage because they come so fast and in consecutive order. I don’t want to give the specifics of any deaths, but there is a montage somewhere about midway through the film where a bunch of people get it right in a row, so I quite like that moment.

Richard Moll: Maybe it’s a bit of an homage to The Godfather, you know?

Griff Furst: Totally.

Richard Moll: Remember that...

Q: You were talking earlier about the fact that you started with the name "Ghost Shark" and then came up a premise that fit the name. What other ideas for the film did you consider before picking this one?

Griff Furst: Before we actually settled on the story that you have seen, there were three very, very different ideas for it. So, we knew what we wanted the villain to be when we first came up with the idea, but we weren’t too sure about the story. So, we worked together with Syfy for probably about six months just on the treatment phase and came up with three different stories. And finally the third one, the guys at Syfy thought we nailed it, and we proceeded with the screenplay from there.

So, it was a bit of a lengthy process, but it was definitely for the best because the stories were very, very different before we actually nailed the right one. So, it was just a little bit of trial and error, and they were all good stories, but finding the one that was perfect took a little doing.

Q: Griff, the name of the movie is "Ghost Shark," but Richard mentioned snakes earlier. Were there a lot of snakes to deal with during the shooting of the film?

Griff Furst: In the film, when you hear a character say, “Watch out for snakes,” that was kind of our inside joke because the place was filled with snakes. So, we shot about two weeks after Hurricane Isaac came through and it brought a lot of water inland and made our beaches a little more swampy than we had hoped, and the water moccasins were quite fond of our set. So, we had people in boots with rakes and shovels trying to scare snakes away as best they can, but yes, we were dealing with a lot of snakes on the set.