Gene Simmons Makes Action Movies Now, and He Was Honored in Dallas For The First One

Dallas recently hosted a collision of rock-and-roll royalty and action-cinema pedigree. On Friday, April 24, the USA Film Festival at the Angelika Film Center at Mockingbird Station rolled out the red carpet for an advance screening of “Deep Water”. At the center of the aquatic chaos were producer Gene Simmons and director Renny Harlin, both of whom were honored with festival salutes, a special tribute recognizing the lifetime achievements of industry professionals. The festival honored Harlin with the Great Director salute, while Simmons was crowned a Modern Maverick.

Simmons, a frequent go-to cameo actor, usually in full KISS corpse paint with his tongue out, has launched a production company in collaboration with Arclight Films founder Gary Hamilton. The company, Simmons/Hamilton Productions, acquired a multi-billion-dollar financing deal requiring the production of 25 films over five years. The company will focus on original works with franchising potential, and “Deep Water” is the first release.

A few days after the Dallas premiere, we caught up with Simmons and Harlin via Zoom. They were stationed in Los Angeles, riding the relentless wave of their promotional tour ahead of the film’s May 1 theatrical release. What followed was a conversation that perfectly encapsulated the two men: one a seasoned showman armed with stadium-ready soundbites, the other an earnest filmmaker eager to terrify you.

A Match Made in Cinematic Heaven (or Hell)

If you were to lock “Die Hard 2” and “Deep Blue Sea” in a room together and ask them to produce an offspring, “Deep Water ” would emerge from the depths. Harlin, who directed both of those aforementioned works, returns to his comfort zone of high-stakes, enclosed-space survival. The premise of the movie is straightforward: an airplane crashes into shark-infested waters. But these are not your standard, leisurely cruising great whites. The sharks in “Deep Water“ attack with a rabid, almost zombie-like ferocity, turning a sunken fuselage into an all-you-can-eat aquatic buffet.

“Making a movie like this was kind of a childhood dream for me,” Harlin tells the Observer. “Having grown up with the ’70s disaster movies like ‘The Poseidon Adventure’, I felt like telling a story like this where, of course, there’s a big plane crash, and there are sharks and all that type of visual smorgasbord.”

But Harlin is quick to point out that the carnage is only half the battle.

“It’s really about the characters, and a big part of that is in casting,” he says. “It’s finding the right actors to play the right parts.”

The Fine Art of the Pivot

Speaking of casting, “Deep Water” boasts serious dramatic muscle, including Academy Award-winner Sir Ben Kingsley and Aaron Eckhart. Nobody is more thrilled about this than Simmons.

When you sit down to interview a member of KISS, you might harbor hopes of unpacking his deep history with Dallas. You might want to ask about his favorite late-night haunts, his five decades of pyrotechnic concerts in the area or perhaps the Grapevine outpost of Rock & Brews, the restaurant chain he co-founded. But Simmons is a man on a mission, and that mission is selling tickets. When asked how Dallas fits into his personal creative journey, the Modern Maverick executed a pivot so flawless it deserves its own masterclass.

“If you’re talking strictly about the launch of a motion picture, that’s a separate sort of expertise,” Simmons explains, leaving our dreams of salacious stories from the American Airlines Center green room behind. “The real story here is how this magical thing that started with a blank piece of paper and those first words that went on by a lonely screenwriter… grow and attract creative people.”

Simmons was in full promotional stride, painting a vivid picture of the cinematic process. He praised the money men, the actors and, ultimately, his director. According to Simmons, a star like Eckhart only signs on if the man behind the camera has the chops.

“He’s not going to be on a film that some schmecklehead is going to direct,” Simmons says. “Renny Harlin. I’m in.”

It was a brilliant, if highly rehearsed, love letter to the magic of movies. Maybe we’ll talk about fun Dallas stories from the vault next time.

Taking the Scenic Route

In “Deep Water,” Eckhart’s character imparts a bit of wisdom to a young girl: sometimes in life, you have to take a few detours to get where you are going. When asked if they had any personal detours they were still navigating, the contrast between the two men was beautiful. Simmons, true to form, offered a booming, populist decree that doubled as the ultimate marketing hook.

“I’m the luckiest guy who’s ever walked the face of the planet,” Simmons says. “Every day above ground is a good day… I urge everybody not only to go see it on May 1 across North America… but I urge you and strongly recommend that you don’t go see it alone.”

He then delivered the final knockout punch for his target audience.

“It’s not an arthouse film where you go, ‘Huh, I wonder what that means.’ The hell with that stuff. This is a movie for America,” he says.

“Okay,” Harlin chimed in, perhaps a bit taken aback by the sudden burst of patriotic fervor. “Beautifully said.”

But when it was Harlin’s turn to answer the same question, the director of some of the most explosive action films of the ‘90s offered something entirely unexpected: deep, unshielded vulnerability.

“I’ve worked very hard all my life and done my best in what I do, but in a certain way I feel like five years ago I realized that my entire life, in a way, had been a detour,” Harlin says. “My whole life was a detour. Now I’ve arrived where I wanted to arrive, with my wife and with my family, and now I’m where I belong.”

Brace for Impact

There is a poetic irony in Harlin finally finding a place of calm and belonging, only to spend his days dreaming up ways for passengers to be torn apart by apex predators in a submerged metal tube.

“Deep Water” promises to be exactly what Simmons advertises: a white-knuckle, shared theatrical experience that leaves pretense at the door. It is a movie that knows exactly what it is, steered by a director who knows exactly what he is doing, and championed by a rock star who knows exactly how to sell it to America.

Just leave your art house expectations on the tarmac, grab a friend and, whatever you do, do not unfasten your seatbelt. “Deep Water” is in theaters nationwide now.