TJ Thyne on Working With His BONES Co-Stars Tamara Taylor and Patricia Belcher in His New Film SHUFFLE

The seventh season of BONES is still a couple weeks away, but if you’re lucky enough to be hitting up a film festival in the next few days, you may see a few familiar faces in the new film, SHUFFLE.

I talked with BONES (and SHUFFLE) star TJ Thyne earlier today, and after we talked about all things Jack Hodgins (look for that on Give Me My Remote before the premiere!), he gushed about his new passion project, how Tamara Taylor (Cam) and Patricia Belcher (Caroline) got involved in the process and more…

“I just did a film with Tamara Taylor and Patricia Belcher,” Thyne shared. “We did this project that is actually premiering tonight at the Hollywood Film Festival and it was really neat to step out of Jack for a while. I’ve been playing Jack for six years and seven seasons, so it was great. I got to delve into…[playing] this guy named Lovell Milo and it’s with Tamara and Patricia from BONES and [working] with a lot of the crew and it was really fun. It was neat to kind of be in a different environment all together and be a different character. It was really cool.”

In addition to working with his BONES costars, SHUFFLE gave Thyne the chance to re-team with some old friends.

“I graduated from the School of Theatre at USC, and I had some theater friends of mine who graduated with me and we had made movies together throughout the years as we were kind of living in our cars and trying to find our way,” Thyne explained. “And we made these short films and one of them was VALIDATION, that we really made because we wanted to make the world smile. We kind of felt like it was time to see if we couldn’t just get people to laugh and smile. So we made the short film VALIDATION and it spread quickly and it won 22 film festivals or something and it got posted on YouTube and has over 6 million views and blew up. So we all went, wow, that was fun, and it got a great reaction, so I went to my friend Kurt Kuenne, who is the writer-director-composer of [VALIDATION] and went, ‘What else do you have?’ And he had this script.”

“I read it and it’s very stylistic and a different kind of movie,” he continued. “Kurt and I used to sit up and watch old episodes of TWILIGHT ZONE together. We’re big fans of Frank Capra and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, all those old classic movies. And so this film, SHUFFLE, is about a man whose life is told out of order. He doesn’t know what’s going on, it’s freaking him out and then he finds out there’s a reason — he’s meant to save someone, somewhere in his life. And he doesn’t know who, he doesn’t know where, he doesn’t know when, he’s got to put all the pieces together. So it’s kind of this mystery told over nine decades. It’s very TWILIGHT ZONE-y and a kind of Frank Capra heart. I loved the script and I immediately said, ‘We have to make this.'”

Because Thyne felt so strongly about the project, he got proactive.

“I got my theater company together, the Theatre Junkies, and as we were filling in the cast, I said there are just some people I have to have in this movie,” Thyne said. “So I ran to Patricia and asked her if she would come in and play a role and I rushed to Tamara and said, ‘Please come in.’ We wanted to put in more people [from the show], but we literally ran out of roles! But it just goes to show that once again, on our off time, we’re choosing to all work with each other. We’re not running to the far ends of the earth, we’re all saying, ‘Ooh, you’ve got a project? Yeah I’ll do yours, do you want to do mine?’ We’ll see if people like it or not, but we had a blast making it. It’s premiering tonight…we’re opening night of the Hollywood Film Fest and we’re closing night of Heartland [Film Festival].”

When you watch the trailer (which you can view below), you’ll see Thyne decked out in some pretty serious make-up to play his character in the later years of his life. In order to achieve that authentic look, Thyne called in a friend…who just happened to be an Oscar-winning makeup artist.

“We brought in Barney Burman, who is a friend of mine,” Thyne explained. “I did HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS with Ron Howard and Jim Carrey and I worked on that for six months, and the prosthetic makeup was intense, so I got friendly with Barney Burman. So we brought him in to help us with SHUFFLE. There’s no way we could have afforded Barney Burman, but he came in and said, ‘I love this group of people, this is ridiculous. You guys must be a cult, this doesn’t make sense that you guys are this excited about a script! You’re in Hollywood and you love each other so much!’ So he came on board and he helped me transform — I play the character of Lovell Milo from 20-92. So Barney helped me transform to an old man. It was really fun and very cool.”

Are you intrigued? Check out the trailer for the movie below and sign up for more information on SHUFFLE’s official web site!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-OylXFddKg[/youtube]

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