MOVIES

Round Rock boys play Lisa Kudrow's devilish sons

By Chris Garcia
AMERICAN-STATESMAN FILM WRITER
Friday, July 25, 2008

In the new comedy "Kabluey," they play devil-children acting out a magnitude of mischief that should warrant three months' grounding, if not a three-month prison sentence. But in real life, Round Rock kids Cameron Wofford, 10, and Landon Henninger, 7, are chirpy-voiced angels, good boys with unblemished records. (Or so they say.)

Still, playing bad is good. The joys of unleashing one's inner id are not lost on the blooming performers.

"It was so much fun!" Cameron says.

"I like being the brat!" Landon says.

The pair play the obnoxious sons of Lisa Kudrow in the Austin-made movie, which is receiving largely upbeat reviews and won an audience award at the 2007 Austin Film Festival. When their skinny, spaced-out uncle arrives to help Kudrow's single mother supervise the boys, the duo see only an adult-sized piñata.

"I'm going to kill you," Cameron warns the dour uncle, played by the film's writer-director Scott Prendergast. The child then proceeds to dump a can of Comet powder on the man's face and in his mouth.

"He actually choked," Cameron, whose character is also named Cameron, says. Glee inflects his voice. The Comet can was really filled with Splenda, but still.

"Kabluey," a willfully offbeat charmer, was filmed during the sizzling summer of 2006 in Austin and Pflugerville. Cameron, then 8, was a student at Forest Creek Elementary in Round Rock. Landon, who plays Lincoln in the movie, was 5 and heading to kindergarten at Gattis Elementary in Round Rock.

With their center-of-the-universe self-perception and yen for praise, children are born hams. Cameron, never passionate about sports, told his father, "I want to be on TV." After some local theater and an Oscar Mayer commercial, his agent landed him an audition for "Kabluey." Several call-backs later, he got the part of the older brother. He's since shot commercials for Wal-Mart and Verizon and the feature films "Leftovers" and Robert Rodriguez's "Shorts."

Landon, recalls mother Deahni Henninger, was "just this funny little kid who liked to be the center of attention. Now it's turned into something he loves."

Landon got the part in one audition. And it took that for Landon and his family to realize the boy would be acting with beloved "Friends" star Kudrow in a small but significant feature movie. ("Oh, wow," Deahni remembers thinking at the time, "this is much bigger than I expected.")

Filming went swimmingly, even though the boys were immediately given buzz cuts for the movie.

"Everyone was so cool and amazing," Deahni Henninger says. "They all made you feel so comfortable. It was such a good experience that (Landon) can't wait to do more." (Landon earned a speaking role in the Austin-shot teen musical "Rock On," which also co-stars Kudrow, and has done commercials.)

If they were starstruck, it was well-contained.

"One time we were sitting in a trailer just chit-chatting with Lisa Kudrow, and I went, 'All right, this might be a little unusual,' " Henninger says with a laugh.

Kudrow was "very, very nice," Cameron recalls. "But she said it was kind of hard for her to see me, because she had a son at home about the same age as me."

Ask the boys how much they want on-screen stardom, and their voices kick up a few octaves.

"Ooooh, yes!" Landon says. "It's really, really fun."

"I love acting," Cameron says. "It's so fun. And singing and dancing. So, like, a 'High School Musical' movie would be good for me. I love that movie a lot."

A key scene in "Kabluey" comes when the uncle drags Cameron and Lincoln on leashes to the grocery store and ties them to a pole like dogs. When Cameron breaks loose, he pushes Chris Parnell of "Saturday Night Live" into a tower of stacked juice bottles that crashes down. Then the boys tear through the aisles like hellcats.

"There was a lady in the store who actually thought I was being a bad child," Cameron says. "Apparently she didn't see the camera and microphones everywhere, so she stopped me from running around. She caught me. Can you believe that?"

Landon remembers his favorite days on the set, one being when he asked for ice cream in the hot weather and they brought out a huge spread of Amy's ice cream.

"Another time, we stopped the scene and the director sat by me and taught me how to do a wet-willie," Landon says. "You just lick your finger and put it in somebody's ear."