Author: Shaudi Bianca Vahdat
Warning: this interview contains SPOILERS for Glass Casa.
Jon Huybecht is an actor, musician, producer and special effects artist. In the dark comedy whodunit Glass Casa, Jon played Pete, a wannabe stripper who is called to perform at a bachelorette party that goes very wrong. But his work on the film didn’t stop there—he also played multiple roles behind the scenes, including serving as special effects blood expert and drumming for a band featured on the soundtrack.
Jon recently sat down with us to talk about the technical side of stripping on camera, the scene that helped bond the cast for life, and his tricks for making blood look comical onscreen.
How he got involved with the project
You were part of Glass Casa in so many ways—on camera and behind the scenes. How did you get involved in the movie?
I know [Glass Casa writer and director] Laa really well, ‘cause we went to film school together. And so, we knew each other since college and we’d actually done some acting together. And she’s a really talented actor too—a lot of people don’t know that. But I knew her originally from acting with her, and she was one of my favorite people to act with ‘cause she’s so goddamn funny. And that’s why I was so excited to do this film, because she’s just such a funny writer.
And even in film school, we were in this club together. It was a film and theater club and we would have comedy shows and she would always blow it out of the water with her stuff. It was just so funny. And so we bonded over that and have stayed friends since.
And then when she was auditioning for a film, I sent in a video audition and, you know, was able to make it work. But, yeah, I just feel lucky to be her friend, ‘cause she’s a good person.
Bonding on set and playing a wannabe stripper
Tell us what the vibe was like on set for Glass Casa.
We had a small, small crew. Everybody knew everyone’s name—like that’s how small the crew was. It couldn’t have been more than 20 people all together. I mean, at different times there was different people helping out with certain things, like one day we had a steadicam operator that was only there for one day, and things like that. But it was small and everybody kind of jumped in and did stuff.
And we were all like, making coffees for each other and you know, whichever scene was filming, we’d rehearse our lines or do whatever on the side. And it was like a little family, for me it was 10 days, but for some of them it was like 14 to 18 days, I think.
Good group of people, I made friends that I’ll definitely have for the rest of my life, so that’s the fun part about it.
You’re not the first person to tell me they made lifelong friends working on this movie!
I mean, you always bond with people when you work at any job, ‘cause you spend more of your life at your job than you do just when you’re relaxing and resting, especially if you’re an American. [Laughs] I’m just kidding.
So it’s weird because, with this kind of a job, you’re up at like two in the morning or four in the morning when you’re doing night shoots. And so you just get giggly and have the weird, crazy, like when you’re up too late kind of situation going on. And so, yeah, you bond over the craziness and the fun of just going a little bit kooky.
One of my favorite things that helped us all bond, I think, was I was a character—spoiler alert—that becomes a dead body. So there’s a scene where they’re carrying me up the staircase and Harley [Harley Bronwyn, who plays Jamie] is in front, trying to divert her [fiancé] away from noticing that there’s a dead body being carried behind her.
And it was this crazy staircase with like 30, 30, 40 steps or whatever, maybe not that many, but it was a giant staircase. And I’m about 200 pounds at least, you know, as a pretty big guy. Over six feet tall, you know, six four. So they had to carry me up this staircase and it was a really complicated steadicam shot. And we only had the steadicam operator for that one day. And so, they had to do the take over and over and over again, because there were certain things that they had to keep tweaking and there were mirrors because it’s a glass house, so there’s so many reflections. And if you can see the camera in the reflection, which happens so much, they had to [do] a take over. But Ryan Broomberg, the cinematographer, did a great job.
So it was funny because they all had to keep carrying me over and over again. There was like 14 or 15 takes and it’s like at two in the morning, carrying a dead body up the staircase. And I thought it was hilarious because I’m the one being carried, but they were the ones that had to do all the work. So they just kept getting more and more pissed, but we all bonded through that. And like, they weren’t mad at anyone in particular. It was just like, Oh my God, how many more takes are we doing of this? But you know how filmmaking goes, it’s just part of the fun.
Yeah. And correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you… not wearing pants for that scene?
It’s a leopard print jock strap that I have to wear for the costume. I guess I died in a jock strap. And it’s leopard print. ‘Cause that’s the kind of thing that Pete would wear. Very, very stripper-like of him.
It was funny because every day on set, like nine times out of 10, I was just standing around in a jockstrap with the bathrobe on. And then they’d be like, okay, we’re ready for you, Pete. And I’d be like, here we go. So kind of fun. I never had a role like that before where I had to be like that naked, to be honest. ‘Cause there is partial back nudity, nothing in the front.
What was that experience like for you? I’m guessing Pete is very different from who you are in your real life.
Absolutely. I was raised pretty conservative Christian and I’m now spiritual, but not really religious, but my whole family is. So like, they’re not going to ever see this movie. They don’t really know this movie exists, to be honest. So it’s kind of funny.
But, yeah, it was different, because the reason why I love acting is you get to play people that you aren’t, that are so different from who you are. It’s why I like playing killers and like really horrible, crazy people. ‘Cause I like to think of myself as a nice person. But when you play the opposite, it’s more fun because you’re playing house basically, [as] a person that you wouldn’t normally get to be.
And so getting to play this character, like a crazy party-type stripper guy, it’s like…I mean, we’ve all had our crazy days in our youth and whatnot. And, you know, I don’t drink anymore, but when I did, I’m sure there were some fun stories about me then. But now, thinking about me as a stripper, doing this role, it was a jump. It was a lot of mental preparation to be like, okay, I can do this. I can be convincing.
The part about it though, is that in the script, it says he’s a bad stripper. So it takes all the expectations away because I didn’t have to worry about being really good or looking like Channing Tatum or anything. It’s like, oh, he’s like a wannabe stripper, which is like, oh, I can pass for that. You know?
But it was fun, it was cool. It was weird because there were times when they’d yell “cut” and I didn’t have my bathrobe yet, ‘cause it was on the other side of where the camera was or whatever. And I’d be like, okay, I’m just going to walk over to my bathrobe in my jockstrap now.
But after a while I just felt comfortable ‘cause we all became such good friends that they were like, oh yeah, it’s the scene. It’s the movie. It’s like, you do a play, people change backstage. It doesn’t become a thing.
That stripping scene
These are great details. I was curious, how did you prepare to do your stripping scene?
I had like two months before we were shooting in San Diego. I wanted to get in a little bit better shape just to have some kind of muscle tone or something, since I knew I was going to be shirtless. ‘Cause I’ve had auditions before where they ask you to take your shirt off and you’re like, okay, I hope they’re going for the Seth Rogan type or whatever today.
But I guess to make a long story short, I lifted weights. I wasn’t going to the gym or anything. I can’t say like, yeah, I got in really good shape or anything. ‘Cause you’ll see in the movie, I’m not like a super ripped guy or anything. I just kind of have a normal average body type and still do.
If I lift weights, I just do low, light weights, but a lot of reps. It’s easy to do, but I’m not like sitting there with like 150 pounds…Basically just lifted weights and did exercises and stuff to try to feel comfortable enough to be in a jockstrap in front of a bunch of people I don’t know in a film crew.
Was the stripping scene hard for you all to get through?
So the cool thing about it was that we did the scene twice. There were two separate days. We filmed the scene once and then [after recasting the lead role], we ended up having to shoot the scene again, a few days later.
So I got to shoot my scene again because it was shot originally with this other actor that wasn’t in the film anymore. And so when I came back, the girl that was playing my girlfriend in the scene that I was dancing to, she was now moved up to the main character of the film because she knew the script so well and was originally almost going to play that role.
And then this other girl that came up [on] like 24 hours notice, that was a friend of the main actor, [the] amazing Geri Courtney-Austein. Oh my God, she’s so funny. But she came up out of nowhere and jumped into my girlfriend role. So then I’m with this new person, you know, doing the scene, but I had already done it before.
And when I first did it, it was hard, to be honest, because for continuity reasons, you’re like, okay, take the bow tie, throw it by the couch, take the belt, throw it to the left of the chair, do this other thing when you… You know, you have to hit the mark and do the thing.
And if it’s not thrown in the right order—like one time I forgot to do the bow tie and I went to the second thing first and they were like, cut. I had all this stuff to remember, and it was also trying to act, but trying to remember…it was a lot.
And so when I got to do it again, I was like, oh, I know what to do now. Bow tie by the chair, belt by the left of this thing.
And then I hit the mark and the girls made it so much fun. Everybody was just so much fun to dance with the second time too. And I knew it was comfortable, ‘cause we had gotten to know each other a few more days later too.
‘Cause that was [initially] the first thing I filmed, was the stripper scene. And so there was one scene outside where I was dressed up as the cop. And then we did the stripper scene and I was super nervous, ‘cause I’d never done a scene that big in a movie before, as that kind of role. I know I just have five lines and get killed, but it was a big deal for me and I was super nervous. But I felt way more comfortable that I got a second chance at it.
I had no idea the stripping scene was so technical. That would be really hard to keep in mind while you’re also trying to do everything else.
Do you know what the weirdest thing is though? So when we were filming it, we never really did a rehearsal first of how it was going to go. We just started filming it. And a stripper, normally you would think would take off the pants fully or like rip them all off, and then start dancing freely because he doesn’t have his pants around his legs. Well, I did. I pulled [down] my pants, down to my boots, and I assumed we were going to cut and have me take off my boots, and then I was going to somehow be free to be freely dancing, but not with my pants around my ankles. [But] I never got to take the pants away from my ankles.
And so the whole time that I’m dancing, you’ll see me in the movie, I’m just like, okay, I guess I’ll jump over here and start dancing. And then I’ll come over here like a bad stripper.
So I guess it fit, but I had no idea that I was going to have to do it with my pants around my ankles. I just assumed we were going to cut and I was going to get a chance to dance without the pants on my ankles, but we never did.
But it was funny, and that way it made it unique as well. And I don’t know, I hope somebody gets a kick out of knowing that now. I just kept laughing to myself and I was like, I can’t wait to tell someone about it, and now here we are.
Let’s talk about the blood
So I know you were the special effects blood expert on the project. Can you tell me what that was like? Were you all worried about getting fake blood all over this gorgeous house?
So when I was in college, my friend Drew and I actually had a blood effects company. And we didn’t make a ton of money off it, we mostly just did it to get more blood effects, makeup and stuff. But we would do blood effects for student films and a couple of times got lucky and did a couple of commercials and stuff where we actually got paid good money, just twice.
But we did have a kit, and I still have some of the blood from back in the day, from 20 years ago when we were living in Orange County and driving up to like Redlands and stuff and shooting a random commercial for the power company, or whatever it was.
And we did some special effects stuff. Like we did a play in North Carolina, it was Disney’s first sanctioned Beauty and the Beast play, where it was actually sanctioned by Disney that a high school could do it. And that first time that they opened up the rights, my partner in the company was able to, ‘cause he went to that high school, got the job as making beast masks. So we got to design the beast mask for that production, which was kind of cool.
Mostly though, it was just blood effects stuff, learning techniques. Like if someone gets stabbed, how do we make the blood go on the wall. Just different techniques and whatnot.
So, I had a whole thing prepared and on the plane out to film the movie, I had the whole script on the plane. For the three hours that I flew from Wisconsin to San Diego, I was writing down all the different blood stuff and what we had to get and what we’re going to do.
I had most of the stuff already. I was bringing my blood with me and had some stuff shipped out. But we had a full plan for the blood effects and it was definitely pre-discussed. And all this stuff with her dress and the blood on it and the towels that I had on around me, the towels that I’m wearing when I’m a dead body. It’s kind of funny, but I designed those and put all the blood on it and stuff.
So I knew how to do it also without getting things ruined, but there was a situation with the grout and one of the master bathrooms. This is like an eight million dollar house—it was this crazy, beautiful house. And so I didn’t want to mess it up at all.
So we did everything we could to prepare and make it, you know, not going to be blood getting into anything type of situation. But for some reason, when we did the scene where I’m dead on the floor in the bathroom and the blood that’s coming out of my head, I didn’t think it wasn’t going to come out of the tiles, but for some reason, it wasn’t coming out. And so for like three days, like whenever I had a break, I would go downstairs and there was this closet that had all these different cleaning chemicals. And I was like, which chemical can I use today to try to clean? And I would go in there with a toothbrush. And I got it pretty good at the end where they might not have even noticed it. But for me, I wanted to leave it nicer than when I came. And so, you know, that was the only thing. But other than that, it was pretty professional.
The blood effects were fun. It was supposed to be kind of silly in a way, but not super realistic, but in a way, silly, funny blood, if that makes sense. Like not always perfectly anatomical, if you know what I mean, or the perfect color. I designed it to make it somewhat realistic to the story, you know, [but] if it’s too realistic and it’s a comedy, it could be darker. And if it’s a little bit brighter, sometimes it’s funnier. I know that sounds weird, but it’s, in my mind, true.
Wow. That is so interesting to think about—the idea that you design the blood in a genre-specific way.
We used a lot of blood in that movie. There was, like, blood every day.
It’s meant to be a little bit ridiculous. Like when you look at her [Geri’s] dress, if she would have come and picked me up, there might’ve been a weird smudge in one part and another thing, you know. But I was just like, blood all over it here and there, kind of crazy. So all of a sudden you see her and you’re like, Jesus Christ, why in the hell would it look like that? And that’s kind of an extra joke. There’s little jokes that you can add in there. And Laa does that a lot too, with little things [like] a prop in the background and even with her silly thing where she shows up as a cameo. Oh man, she’s so funny.
But yeah, the blood is definitely a character in itself in that movie, because there’s so many different types and we had three different colors for if it was fresh or if it was dried or if it was there for a few days.
It was fun. I like being part of doing actual background stuff, and getting to act in it is just an extra cherry on top of that pie, because filmmaking is crazy, but fun. Like it drives you nuts, but you love it, you know?
Yeah. I think a lot of people in the industry would very much agree with that statement. So what can you share about the severed head prop?
The head that we had was actually designed by a blood effects artist named Andy Harvey. And he’s a good friend of mine that designed the actual main head, just out of a styrofoam head. ‘Cause we used to do this thing where every Halloween me and him and his wife, we’d make bloody heads instead of carving pumpkins. It kind of originated with my friends in LA before I moved back—we’d always make these bloody heads.
I sent a picture of the head that he made that Halloween to Laa and she was like, oh, this is perfect for the head in the movie. And so she basically just bought it right off of him and was like, yeah, I’m going to use that for the movie.
And so Andy gets a blood effects credit for the first time. And you know, his head that he worked like a month on gets to be in the movie. And it looks like a real head. Like, if you look at the bottom of it, you can see like the intricate trachea and the muscles around it and the way he painted it to be perfect. He’s a really, really good artist, and a good friend of mine. He lives in Southern Wisconsin now with his family, but he was really excited because there was an article that came out when the movie first came out about the blood effects and they mentioned him by name, and he had never been mentioned in the trades before. So it was kind of cool for him. I sent it to him and all of his close cousins and I was like, Andy’s in the trades today.
Jon’s music in the film
You know we haven’t even talked yet about how your band, Gladiator, has a couple of songs in the film.
Yeah, so there’s two songs, actually, in the soundtrack of the film. There’s a scene at the beginning of the film, I think, where Harley opens a door and, and there’s a song playing in the room. And that’s our band. So when you hear the drumming in it, I’m the drummer in the song, which is kind of fun.
The other one’s the hot tub scene, where the girls are in the hot tub, there’s a song in the background playing, and there’s no words in it.
So yeah, I sent some music to Laa after the film wrapped. And she was like, oh, hey, I think a couple of these tunes might work. And so we were just excited that we got to have our music be in a movie.
Why you need to see Glass Casa
So, why should people check out Glass Casa?
I think people should see this movie because it’s a silly break from the crazy reality that we all live in now. And it’s just a fun way to let your mind take a break and relax and have some good laughs. It’s really silly dialogue. And when I say silly, I mean, silly, like this is a silly movie. It’s so fun, and crazy. And, you know, it’s well made, don’t get me wrong. But yeah, just watch it for fun. It’s hilarious.
And it’s just fun to watch these people. The main four girls are just so talented and so funny that I would recommend it just to see how goddamn talented they are.
I was so honored to get to work with them. They all had their moments where we were just like, holy shit, they’re stealing the show.
Oh my god, just what a great, talented group of people to get to work with and to be friends with for the rest of my life, because that’s how great of a bonding experience it was.
A huge thank you to Jon for sharing about his experiences working on Glass Casa!
Jon is currently involved in theatre in his community in northern Wisconsin. If you’re there March 28 and 29, 2025, you can catch him in Understudy Theater’s Bathysphere Of My Heart at the Backstage theater in Bayfield, Wisconsin. And between April 24 and May 4, 2025, he’ll be starring in The Odd Couple at the Stagenorth Groundlings theatre. You can find tickets for both productions here. You can also check out Jon’s IMDb profile to learn more about his past film work, and of course you can stream Glass Casa to see his performance as Pete the stripper!
Please note: this interview has been edited for length and clarity.