Peter Cornwell: The Hollywood Interview with the Director of THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT

(Director Peter Cornwell during the production of his stop-motion short Ward 13, above, photo by Glenn Watson)

By Terry Keefe

(Exclusive to The Hollywood Interview. The director of The Haunting in Connecticut sits down with us to talk about the making of his first feature, as well as the creation of his rollicking and hilarious stop-motion short, Ward 13.)

Ward 13, director Peter Cornwell’s 2003 micro-budgeted stop motion short film, is easily one of my all-time favorite pieces of animation. The 14-minute film introduces us to the plight of Ben, a heavily-bandaged man who wakes up in a true hospital from hell, and spends most of the rest of the story attempting to escape from evil doctors who seem intent on performing experiments of mutation upon him. The set pieces are marvels of action-comedy, with enough escalating stakes, pitfalls, and pay-offs to rival the best of vintage Spielberg. Mixed throughout are memorable touches of surreal imagery. The image which has stuck with me the most is these red dogs which have seemingly been genetically spliced into two different animals - one which just contains two dog heads, and the other which consists entirely of the two backsides of the dogs, complete with happily wagging tails. Also of note is a tense sword-style fight, which Cornwell has explained was largely inspired by the Errol Flynn classic Robin Hood.

Cornwell grew up in Sydney, Australia, and began his film production career as a sound recordist in the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC-TV). The Haunting in Connecticut is his directorial debut, and is being released theatrically in the United States tomorrow by Lionsgate. The film stars Virginia Madsen, Martin Donovan, Elias Koteas, Kyle Gallner, and Amanda Crew. The story is loosely based on the haunting supposedly experienced by the real-life Snedeker Family in Southington, Connecticut, although the family name here has been changed to Campbell. As the plot unfolds, the family is thrilled to find a great deal on a new house, but they soon learn why it was such a good deal. The place is a playground for the dead and was once a funeral home where seances were held. Kyle Gallner’s Matt, the eldest child of the family, is suffering from cancer and is the first target of the spirits, although it isn’t known at first whether his experiences are real, or the byproducts of his illness.

We spoke with Cornwell during the South by Southwest Festival, where Haunting had its World Premiere last week.

When you became involved with The Haunting in Connecticut, did you feel the need to do much additional research into the actual story that it is based on?

Peter Cornwell: When I came on board, the screenplay had already been written and then I watched the “Haunting In Connecticut” documentary as well. So, that worked out a lot of what was going to be in the film. There was a lot of conflict within the story of the family as well, which added a different type of background for this kind of story, and a lot of depth. And the mystery of the story was unique. I had never seen a haunted house story where the reason for the haunting was that it used to be a funeral home. That was a really creepy element. All of that being said, I was making a feature film here and not a documentary.

How involved have the Snedeker family members been in the production?

Carmen (Snedeker) just did the Q&A after the premiere. She’s behind the film.

You opted to shoot much of this in a real house (in Manitoba), rather than on a soundstage.

It wasn’t a big-budget film, and so the house was perfect. It was great to be able to go up the actual stairs. When you’re building sets, you have to cut between rooms, but it’s great to be able to move from one room to another for real. That being said, we did build other small bits of the house.

I imagine shooting on a real location in a haunted house film helps create that claustrophobic feel. At the same time, you and the crew were probably always backing into walls.

That’s true. You always want the house to be bigger than it actually is so you have somewhere to put the camera crew [laughs]. But one of the things that can bother me about haunted house movies, is that the family can supposedly not afford to just move out because the rent is so cheap, but at the same time, it’s a huge house [laughs]!

Let’s talk about some of your actors. I was happy to see that Martin Donovan was cast as the father. He’s an underrated performer who I’ve always enjoyed, going back to his work with Hal Hartley.

Same for me. And in this film, he doesn’t have to always carry a hand grenade (as Donovan did in Trust) [laughs]. Martin’s terrific.

Virginia Madsen.

She’s also awesome. She brought a reality to his part and a great deal of warmth to this character, who is also a very strong woman. I wanted to mention Kyle Gallner, who has such a central role, and a tough one. He had to make you question whether he was actually seeing ghosts…or going crazy, and he did a great job bringing the audience into that conflict. Elias Koteas is also such a great guy and good to hang out with too [laughs]. He’s got a whole ton of new things that haven’t come out yet.

(Virginia Madsen and Kyle Gallner in The Haunting in Connecticut.)

What type of research did Kyle do into the real-life aspects of his character, that being a teenager with cancer?

We actually had a long talk with a girl who had survived the same form of cancer (as that of Kyle’s character). One of the interesting things that came out of that conversation is that she explained that you weren’t always weak. There were periods when you were quite strong, and others when you just became weak.

(Amanda Crew in The Haunting in Connecticut, above.)

Were there any favorite horror films that you were channeling when directing this one?

The Haunting [1963], by Robert Wise, for sure. It’s just a great piece of film. It’s really creepy, really scary, and you never see the ghosts. There are just so many weird layers to the story, and such a sense of the unknown. Sometimes your own fears are much scarier than seeing a 10-foot monster.

Had you thought about completely going that route with this film, and never seeing the ghosts?

Yes, but I do think it’s difficult to do in today’s horror market. Blair Witch was able to do that and make it work. I gave a lot of thought to what the rules should be in a supernatural film. You can show certain things and still not answer all the questions. Like in The Shining, the first times you see those two creepy little girls….you see them but you don’t know a lot yet. What are they? What are they doing in the hallway?

Let’s talk a bit about the making of Ward 13, which was made with Claymation?

I actually call it stop-motion, more like The Nightmare Before Christmas because there's not much clay in the models. Only the faces are made from clay. You can get subtlety in the facial expressions that you can’t get from silicon. It’s handmade, but very expressive.

Some of the set pieces in this are so elaborate and must have been mind-bogglingly time intensive. How did you keep yourself going?

I would do a tough scene and tell myself that was the hardest scene in the film and it was all downhill from there [laughs]. I basically shot it like it was a live-action film. And because it was in stop-motion, I was able to make a big-budget blockbuster…all in my bedroom [laughs]. The whole thing was just sort of an insane dream. And because it was shot like a live-action film, I was quickly able to meet with a lot of live-action producers who were never thrown by the fact that it was made with stop-motion. They understood that I could handle live-action.

(One of the great chase sequences in Ward 13, photo by Glenn Watson.)

The action scenes where the characters are moving fast in one direction, while the backgrounds are all moving in another - this is something I’ve never seen done so well on a low-budget film.

What’s tricky there, when you’re shooting motion…the depth of field can be a problem. You want to blast it with light, but then the clay melts.

(The Dogs in Ward 13, above, photo by Glenn Watson.)

There are a lot of great comedic beats in Ward 13. As you were working on this long project, did you show stretches of it to anyone to see if the comedic timing was hitting?

Well, I cut on a Steenbeck (Editor's Note: a film editing machine where you actually splice the film together by hand, kids.), because I was making 15 seconds of film at a time, and the minimum for video transfer was a half hour. So, I cut it on film. And yes, I would play parts back for friends, and make sound effects with my mouth [laughs].

With Ward 13 as a sample that many in Hollywood have seen and are still discovering, you’re undoubtedly going to be offered quite a few animated and stop-motion projects to helm. Will you take one on?

If it’s the right project…maybe. You have a lot of control, but at the same time, I like working with actors. With live actors, you get to shoot more than 4 seconds a day [laughs]. My actors on Ward 13...I was able to put them in a box at the end of the day [laughs]. But I have an incredible respect for actors. And when you’re using live actors, you can tell right away, when shooting, whether someone is in the moment, or if it feels fake. Kyle was cast in the right part on Haunting, and if the actor is right, you know you’re safe. The more I’ve gotten to know about acting, the more I respect actors.

You grew up in Sydney. Did you go to film school?

I went to technical film college. Which was great, because you learn all the technical aspects of filmmaking, without the emphasis on Battleship Potemkin [laughs].

The trailer for The Haunting in Connecticut can be viewed below, and here are links to the official website, and the MySpace pages. The official website contains a cool interactive map of the United States, with links to various famous hauntings…some of which may be right in your neighborhood.

The website for Cornwell’s groundbreaking short Ward 13 can be found here.

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NATASHA RICHARDSON: 1963-2009

Actress Natasha Richardson.

The telephone is the bane of most interviews. Rarely does it allow the interviewer to connect with his or her subject, resulting in a less-than-stellar conversation fit for reproduction. When Venice Magazine Publisher Nancy Bishop asked me in December of 2005 if I'd do "a phoner" with actress Natasha Richardson, I was a bit surprised at how quickly I jumped at the chance. I had interviewed Richardson's sister Joely just two months before and, like many cinefiles, have had a lifelong fascination and admiration for their parents: the late filmmaker Tony Richardson and actress Vanessa Redgrave. Joely proved a charming, bright and engaging conversationalist during our lunch at The Chateau Marmont, with one of the most fascinating topics of conversation being her sister Natasha, their relationship, and their unconventional, albeit loving, upbringing. Needless to say, my appetite was whetted for more.

Natasha's sons with actor Liam Neeson could be heard rough-housing in the background when she picked up the phone at their upstate New York home. Every once in a while she would kindly, but firmly, ask them to keep it down, and each time return to our conversation with a gentle hint of laughter in her voice. Like her mother, Natasha Richardson was a classic beauty, with eyes that belied a fierce intelligence, qualities that served her well in the variety of roles she seemingly morphed into, both on stage (winning a Tony for her turn as Sally Bowles in the revival of "Cabaret") and screen. If there were a single, defining word for Natasha Richardson that carried through her very diverse 35 film appearences, it would be grace. Grace of presence, of movement, of just being. A rare quality that, and one which will be sorely missed. In the words of Carson McCullers "This minute is passing. And it will never come again." Rest in peace, and thank you.

NATASHA RICHARDSON: CHINA DOLL
By Alex Simon

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the December 2005/January 2006 issue of Venice Magazine.

Natasha Richardson is the product of cinematic and theatrical royalty: the daughter of legendary director Tony Richardson (Tom Jones, Blue Sky) and actress Vanessa Redgrave (Blow Up, Julia, The Loves of Isadora). Born in London May 11, 1963, Natasha trained at the prestigious Central School of Speech and Drama in London. After cutting her teeth on the stage, Natasha made her screen debut as novelist Mary Shelley in Ken Russell’s Gothic in 1987.

Since then, Natasha has appeared in nearly 30 feature films, most recently in the final Merchant-Ivory production, The White Countess. Natasha gives a masterful performance in the film, set in the mid-1930s, as a former Russian aristocrat whose family has fled to Shanghai, and a life of poverty. Working as a cabaret girl, she meets American businessman Todd Jackson (Ralph Feinnes, also excellent), who was blinded in a tragic accident. Together they decide to open a nightclub that becomes the toast of Shanghai, but are seemingly oblivious to the growing Japanese presence that is encroaching on their doorstep. The Sony Pictures Classics release hits screens December 21.

Natasha Richardson, who lives with her husband, actor Liam Neeson (Schindler’s List), and their two sons in upstate New York, spoke with us recently by phone.

The White Countess is the final Merchant-Ivory production, after Ismail Merchant’s death last May.
Natasha Richardson: It was sort of a gift, really. We shot it last Fall, this time in Shanghai. The summer before I was doing a play in London, which Ismail saw. He came back to my dressing room, handed me this script and said “Here’s this wonderful movie we’re going to make and there’s a great part for you in it.” One part of me was thrilled, but the other part was thinking ‘Oh yeah, right!’ (laughs) as you often do when wonderful things just seem to fall into your lap. Then I still couldn’t believe it when I read it, because it was such a beautiful story and beautiful part. So I feel like it’s a wonderful gift from Ismail and Jim, Ismail in particular. I knew Ismail very well, for many years, so his death was very sad for me.

What was the Merchant-Ivory process like?
I think they were entirely different men. Ismail was very, very outgoing, avuncular and full of life force and Jim is much more reserved, soft-spoken and working with him as a director, he’s not a very talkative director. He’ll basically tell you when he doesn’t like something. I knew to trust him, because my mother had worked with him before and she said “Don’t get put off if Jim doesn’t rush up to you after every take to tell you how great you are. But if he tells you something isn’t right, then listen to him.” One thing I didn’t expect was that he’s very open to your coming up with ideas, improvising bits of dialogue and business, things like that. I expected him to be much more committed to getting every bit of punctuation from the script onto the screen. I think that the big thing with Jim is his aesthetic eye. His eye for detail is just uncanny. We used to joke that in a huge crowd scene, Jim would notice an extra on edge of frame whose belt buckle isn’t right. (laughs)

How long were you in China?
For just over three months, and it was pretty overwhelming, I must say. I didn’t get to see a lot of the country, because we were always working. It was incredibly difficult for everyone involved, particularly Ismail. The cultural and language barriers and making such a big scale film on a low budget was really a struggle. The crew, which was partly British and partly Chinese, I think the British crew was really in shock. They were the kind of people who had shot all over the world, but never encountered the sort of difficulties that they did in China. The conditions were very basic, to say the least. There weren’t the usual amenities. Also, Shanghai is a very modern city now, and there’s very little of old Shanghai left, which also created difficulties in terms of locations, which makes the achievement of the film that much more phenomenal.

You get to work with your mother and your aunt for the first time in this film, and in very close proximity. How was that?
I loved it. I just wish we’d had more to do together. I think we all felt we were up against it a bit, so there was a wonderful sense of camaraderie. We have the same vocabulary and the same sense of humor, so the few weeks they were there it was so lovely to be together and work together, then go back to the hotel at the end of the day and eat Chinese food and drink wine and talk about the next day’s work.

You and Ralph Fiennes obviously had a great connection. Tell us a bit about working with him.
We did. We have a sense of mutual respect and love for each other. We’ve been very close friends for some time and have talked about working together that entire time. It was a very special experience. It was difficult for me at first, because what I hadn’t bargained for with Ralph playing blind was that I was so used to connecting with another actor through one another’s eyes, and he wouldn’t look in my eyes! (laughs) So there was a sense of loneliness that set into the relationship because I think Sophia is a very lonely person.

Let’s talk about your dad, who’s one of my heroes.
Oh, thank you. He’s still one of mine.

You actually helped get his autobiography (The Long Distance Runner) published posthumously, right?
Yes, exactly. I used to watch him write it out longhand on these yellow legal pads at his house in L.A. When I asked him what it was, he said “Oh, just memoirs. Nobody will give a shit and they’ll never get published.” After he died, we found them in the back of his closet, along with his Oscars. (laughs) It was quite amazing going through all those pages, really getting to know my dad again. It was a real gift. And then, of course, the book ends with this message to his daughters to carry through life. I get choked up even talking about it now, actually.

I know you and your sister both spent a lot of time on your parents’ sets growing up. What did you learn from watching your dad work?
A lot. As an actress I suppose it was like being in training from year one. Number one, always serve your director and always trust him, that was drummed into me from the beginning. I suppose also a professional ethic and a love of being on movie sets: the different departments working together, the art department and the carpentry department, and the lighting cameraman. It gave a wonderful sense of a sort of traveling circus, of a family being together, with a very charismatic leader in the sense of my dad. I think he always created a great sense of family when he worked, and a great sense of fun, as well as hard work, like you were doing something wonderful. When he first came to see me in the theater, in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in London, he’d just come in for the night and was flying into L.A. the next day. So he came backstage, just kind of patted me on the back and smiled and I thought ‘Ooh, he hasn’t said anything…’ Then he said “I’d like you to pick me up in the morning and drive me to the airport.” And I’m thinking to myself ‘Oh my God! First he doesn’t compliment me on my opening night, and now I have to get up at the crack of dawn to take him to the airport?!’ So I pick him up, and he said “You’ve got a lovely voice and a lovely quality on stage, but that isn’t good enough. You haven’t been thought about x, y and z in this part, and I’m going to mark up a copy of the script, which I want you to read, think about, and get to work.” And I was just devastated. I thought, ‘How cruel can you be.’ In retrospect, it was the kindest, best thing anyone had ever done for me. I did study his notes, and by the end of the run, my performance was entirely different. When he came to see me again in something else, The Seagull, a couple years later, he was just sort of beaming afterwards, and so effusive in his praise that I knew it was really meant, coming not only from a father that I loved, but a director whom I totally respected. You know, when you look at the body of my father’s work, not all of his films were great, but some were downright brilliant, and almost always, the performances were top-notch. John Gielgud credited my dad with teaching him to act on screen.

What did you learn from your mother’s work?
Well, she’s just totally inspiring because she’s one of the greatest actresses that’s ever lived. Her absolute dedication to the pursuit of truth and her emotional life and her transparency. I learned an approach to work through her, which helped me, which was reading Stanislavsky for the first time, which was the key that opened the door for me. So I owe her an enormous amount, which is a very brief answer! (laughs)

Was it tough for you and your sister to carve out your own identities as actors with two parents who were such legends in the business?
I think it was particularly difficult in terms of my mom, because of other people’s perceptions when I was starting out, because you want to quietly work away and make your own name and place for yourself. Having a famous parent can sometimes result in a level of attention you feel that you don’t deserve and you don’t want and comparisons, so it was carrying a card around your neck for a while, but that time has passed.

Do you think either one of your sons is interested in carrying on the family tradition?
I hope not! (laughs) I do think that acting’s a vocation. It’s something you don’t have a choice in. When I hear people say “I want to be an actor,” I always think ‘Well, if you are one, you will be.’

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Jeffrey Dean Morgan: The WATCHMEN Interview

Under the Hood: The Tears of the Comedian

With the long-awaited arrival of Watchmen, it’s a whole new ball game for both the super hero film genre, and for actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

By Terry Keefe

(Note: This article is appearing in this month's Venice Magazine.)

Watchmen was the first comic to make me a little bit scared of super heroes. It also abruptly killed any lingering childhood fantasies of ever wanting to be one. Having read super hero comics since literally the day I could put the words in the thought balloons together, Watchmen arrived as a comics fan’s equivalent of a neutron bomb, not to mention a major reality check, during my mid-teens, in 1986. (And yes, they were still called comic books then, as the term “graphic novel” took many years to catch on, even though Watchmen was to eventually become the most revered graphic novel of all time.) Written by Alan Moore with art by Dave Gibbons, Watchmen was the first comic, along with Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, to actually explore what type of people would choose to be costumed adventurers, and the answer wasn’t a pretty one. The masked heroes in Watchmen are many things, including psychopaths, megalomaniacs, fetishists, murderers, and rapists. The character who attempts to rape a super heroine in the Watchmen, in flashback, is also the one whose murder in the opening scenes by an unknown assassin drives the main plot: the Comedian, aka Eddie Blake. And, as you surely know from the billboards everywhere, Watchmen is now a huge motion picture, directed by Zack Snyder. The Comedian, featured on bus stations across town lighting his cigar with a flame thrower, is played by actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan. A feature film of Watchmen is something that fans of the novel never really expected to see, much less one which was great. As an unabashed fan who was not going to be satisfied easily on this one, I’m thrilled to say that both the film and Morgan’s performance are sensational. More on Morgan’s work as the Comedian in a minute, but first, a quick rundown on his character’s complicated backstory is in order. (Just a note to Watchmen neophytes: there are a few spoilers throughout the article.)

As mentioned earlier, the Comedian is murdered as a 69-year old man in his New York City apartment in the beginning of Watchmen, which takes place in an alternate universe version of 1985, similar in many ways to our version of the 80s but with some crucial differences. The main plot then kicks in as a murder mystery of sorts, as the last active costumed vigilante, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) starts to investigate what he believes to be a conspiracy against all the masked heroes who were active years before, prior to the passage of the Keene Act, which outlawed costumed vigilantes. Rorschach’s investigation brings him back in touch with former colleagues and teammates Dan Dreiberg, aka Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson), Silk Spectre II, aka Laurie Jupiter (Malin Akerman), Ozymandias, aka Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode), and Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudrup), the only one of them to have actual super-powers. And in flashback, we also learn of the forefathers of this last group, the Minutemen, who were the first costumed heroes back in the 1930s, when the novelty of the masked adventurers made the heroes popular and they were treated for a short time like film stars. The Comedian joined the Minutemen when he was just 16-years old, and he had the devil in him, to say the least, even then. After a meeting at “Minutemen Headquarters,” he brutally beats and tries to rape Sally Jupiter (Carla Gugino), the original Silk Spectre and the mother of Malin Akerman’s character. When costumed heroes are banned, the Comedian starts to work directly for shadowy parts of the U.S. government as the ultimate special agent, and he becomes a pivotal part of some of the more notorious moments in this fictional U.S. history. The Comedian is revealed as the shooter on the Grassy Knoll who kills JFK, and then, along with Dr. Manhattan, he helps win the Vietnam War for the U.S. in just a few months, committing many more atrocities along the way. Without the Vietnam War to drag down the march to power of the military-industrial complex, President Nixon is re-elected to five terms of office. Something very bad happens to Woodward & Bernstein along the way, also likely at the hands of the Comedian. He’s one part Captain America, the iconic Marvel Comics hero who represented all the classic virtues of truth, justice, and the American Way, but crossbred with the neocon philosophy, to create a masked monstrosity whose life story parallels that of this version of America. Triumphant and embolded by victory in WWII, the Comedian helps the U.S. achieve greater hegemony worldwide, but he is scarred by Vietnam, even though victory in this reality is swift. As the story of Watchmen begins, the United States and Russia are on the brink of nuclear war. An elderly Nixon huddles in his War Room with the nuclear football. And the Comedian himself is murdered….by an even far more insidious force looking to take over power in the world.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan has perhaps the most difficult role in a film which is filled with them. The Comedian is the one main character whose life straddles the multi-decades of the story, although thankfully he has some of the best lines as ammunition along the way. A complete nihilist, the Comedian deals with his embracement of man’s darkness by telling jokes about it, although they aren’t exactly of the “knock-knock” variety. Life itself is one big cosmic gag to him, and in that regard, he’s one part Joker, one part Loki, one part Robin Goodfellow, with a touch of Rambo. Morgan also succeeds at the tremendously challenging task of making the Comedian a somewhat sympathetic character. It’s the Comedian who discovers first what the world is about to become in the climax of the story, and even he is horrified by it. It turns out that the ultimate black hole of a man has a heart after all, which he reveals in a teary breakdown during a late-night break-in of the apartment of his former enemy, the cancer-stricken Moloch. His time has come. He’s a leftover. And he knows that what is coming down the pike is going to make him look like Clark Kent.

It’s shaping up to be a huge, career-redefining year for Morgan, who up until this point was best known for his role as Denny Duquette on “Grey’s Anatomy”, as well as his work as John Winchester on “Supernatural.” He is now poised to become a significant leading man in features.

I started our talk off by handing Jeffrey the dog-eared, original graphic novel of Watchmen that I purchased back in early 1987.

Here’s proof that I’ve been preparing for this interview for a very, very long time, Jeffrey. 22 years.

Jeffrey laughs and eagerly flips through this classic edition.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan: Hey, man, that's fucking brilliant, man! It’s got that old...smell to it, you know? I fucking love it. That's awesome! It’s so well-worn.

Many reads. When was it that you read the entire graphic novel?

Yeah, you know, my heyday was the '80s, I guess, but I didn't know about this thing. I got a call from my agent one day, who said Zack Snyder, the director of 300, is doing this thing, Watchmen, and they're interested in you for the role of the Comedian, and we're going to send you the material. And I was very excited, because I had just seen 300, and I thought what an amazing director he was, and instead of sending me a script, which, you know, that's what we see as actors are these scripts…it was a Xerox copy of the graphic novel, black and white, thick as a phone book, and I was like, “What the hell is this thing?” [laughs] I mean, literally, I was almost angry, like, “They expect me to read this?” You know, you could barely read it, and you couldn't see the pictures, really, and then I did read it, and opened it up, and on page three, the Comedian gets thrown out the window! And I called my agent -

You’re like, “I'm dead!”

“I'm dead, man!” I mean, what the hell? And on page three, no less! Not much of a run on this film. But, you know, it was made very clear to me that I was being a jerk-off and that I should continue reading. And I did, and I remember I got to the last page, and I put it down, and I was like, “What the fuck did I just read?” [laughs] And I put on a pot of coffee, and I started over, started on page one again. And I read it three times in about a twenty-seven hour period, and then went and had my meeting with Zack. And I went into this meeting now knowing the material pretty well, and I met this guy who has so much energy and so much enthusiasm, and I think I said two or three words. I said, “Hey, I'm Jeff.” That was really the extent of the conversation that I had, and then watched him for two hours, bouncing around this office, and when I say bouncing, I mean literally he never sat down. He had sketchbooks out, conceptual costume stuff at this point, pictures, you know, panels from the actual graphic novel art, floor to ceiling his office is just covered in this stuff. And at the end of the meeting, he looks at me, and he finally sits down, and he's like, “Are you in?” And that was the beginning of a tremendous ride. We're nearing our finish line now. It's been two years of my life kinda dedicated to this, and I've become, like you, a huge fanboy of Watchmen, and actually saw the movie for the first time two weeks ago. At a little screening room at Warner Bros. And it blew my mind. And for the first time I can remember - I'm hyper-critical of seeing myself onscreen, I generally don't like to see myself - but I watched this movie, and there were no signs of me in it. You know, it was the Comedian. And I was just watching this experience. I don't know how else to explain Watchmen. Even if you're not familiar with the comic book, what you're looking at here is a massive filmgoing experience. It transports you to this alternate reality that is scarily similar to what's going on now, which is crazy, since this came out in 1986!

History repeats itself over and over again. And there's the classic “Big Lie” at the end -

That's exactly right.

- and the masses buy that lie. They just go with it, because society would fall apart otherwise.

Mm-hm. You're a Watchmen fan [laughs]. You know it, you know it.

(The Watchmen graphic novel's version of the Comedian, above.)

Did you give the Comedian much backstory yourself, other than what was in the source material?

No, I mean, having this as the source material, there's so much there. It's really fleshed out in the pages. It's a lot to work with. And you never have that as an actor, you know, something like this. I mean, you could turn to a page [in the graphic novel] on any given scene, and I knew where to start the scene, I knew where to be sitting, I knew the posture to have. You’d think that would be kind of constricting, confining in a way, but I didn't find it [that way] at all. I found it to be this kind of amazing reference point, because then you start filling in the gaps between these panels. And bringing the Comedian to life, you know, what I found most fascinating about this particular character…..was I didn't hate this guy.

He’s done horrible things, but even the original Silk Spectre loves him.

Yeah, Silk Spectre loves him…and I loved him, and when I read it….why would you love a guy who commits the atrocities that he commits, the horrible acts that he commits? Even to the person I think he's in love with. I think he's completely in love with Sally Jupiter. He just…he's just a screwed-up motherfucker. I mean, he's just a brutal, cruel, nihilistic, amoral man, but I had to find the humanity in him, and I did in reading it. There was a…you almost feel sorry for this guy, you know? But as an actor to try to bite into that - because what's in the script, if I threw this graphic novel away, and didn't have this as a reference, and just saw the script - I don't know how I would do that. But seeing in the graphic novel, the scene with Sally Jupiter, when he finds out about Laurie, the pain that he's going through….Trying to get ahold of that as an actor was thrilling and a challenge and I loved every second of it.

Obviously, a lot of effort was made to match some of the graphic novel panels that are iconic from the book. It’s good to hear that it wasn’t limiting, because one can imagine that you spent a lot of time on the set matching your blocking to the panels.

Absolutely. It's funny, you know, people ask me about the script all the time, and they did a great translation. You saw the movie, they did a very faithful translation from book to script, but, you know, there was never a script around. I don't remember even looking at a script on the set.

You don't have to when you have this graphic novel.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And, you know, another dog-eared copy of this [lifts up the graphic novel] and when I say “dog-eared,” I mean beat to shit, was sitting on Zack's monitor for six months, and someone had it in their hand at all times. If it wasn't us, the actors, it was Zack, if it wasn't Zack, it was our D.P., Larry Fong, or it was our costumer, Michael Wilkinson. I mean, this was the bible on this movie, more so than anything I have ever seen. It was an amazing tool to have, as filmmakers.

What's tragic about the Comedian, and one reason why you do feel sorry for him, is that his time has passed. He represents the dark side of America, but an America that’s going to be phased out, for something far worse.

And he knows it. And I think that realization really hits him in a much harder way than I think you anticipate when you start this story. I think he realizes in that the mistakes that he's made in his life, too. But it's such a telling scene, you know, the scene with Moloch when he says to Moloch, “You're the closest thing to a friend I got -”

Right. And Moloch was his enemy.

His arch-enemy. I think that is so incredibly telling, and fucking sad, that here's a man that's lived sixty-nine years of a life of adventure, and out of that sixty-nine years, he is completely alone. And it's his fault. And it hits him in a hard way. So, that journey of discovery, from being a sixteen-year-old vigilante in the Minutemen, to this sixty-nine-year-old beaten-down monster of a man, is an amazing roller-coaster ride.

The scene where the Comedian attempts to rape Sally Jupiter. I remember reading Watchmen as a teenager, getting to that scene, and being completely stunned. But at the same time, realizing that someone had finally acknowledged what had always been a major unspoken element of the stories of costumed adventurers. They dress up in leather costumes, as bats, cats, and owls, and then fight each other. Of course these people would be fringe personalities and worse! Of course they have sexual perversions and are into S&M and are fetishists.

That's right. It's a fascinating thing about this graphic novel….when this came out in 1986, nothing like this had ever been done. Comic books, graphic novels, they were very much geared, I think, toward a younger crowd. And the characters kind of, were all living with their aunts, and drinking milk. Watchmen comes along, and they're these flawed, drunk, you know, rapists - people that should be in prison or a mental hospital. What would really happen if we had super heroes? Who would be those people that donned these costumes?

(Morgan and Carla Gugino's Betty Page-inspired Silk Spectre, above.)

Yeah, it was twenty-three years ago when it came out in the comics world, and now mainstream America is finally going to see it as a movie. I think it is going to blow people’s minds all over again, on a much larger scale. Movie audiences have never seen a hero like Batman naked and having sex, and people are going to see the equivalent of that here.

Yeah, I think it's gonna change the landscape. I think much like this comic book changed the landscape of comic books, I think this film's gonna change the landscape of the genre film especially. But maybe film. Zack, you know, we've been giving Zack shit all day for these posters which are up all over saying, you know, “The Visionary Director,” but, the fact of the matter is, you can't argue it. He is a visionary director, the way he has a grasp on technology, and film, and beyond that, he's an amazing director to work with as an actor. Compelling, and he works with you, and it's very much this team effort too.

This takes him to a whole different level. He’s going to be at the top of the A-list now. Because everyone knows what a tough adaptation this was.

“The unfilmable graphic novel.”

Terry Gilliam couldn’t get it made.

Yeah, and Greengrass.

Paul Greengrass, right. There have been a lot of actors attached over the years as well.

And everybody walked away shaking their head, “Can't be done.” And, you know, I didn't know it going in because, again, I didn't know this [indicates the graphic novel]. And so, going in, you know, you kind of go in wide-eyed, and I was just happy to fucking get out of bed, and not play a nice guy. But in a very short time-span, you figure out that Watchmen fans are a very special breed. They're very intelligent, and very smart, and they they’ve got really high expectations. So, I figured out very quickly, we all did, what this meant to people. You know, they weren't all real happy with Zack as director, or with us as actors. Just the fact that this was being turned into a movie offended a lot of these fans, so we felt a kind of a huge responsibility, to kind of do this right. I mean, more than anything I've ever been a part of. This thing is so specific, Zack was so specific in making this for the fans of this, that it felt like it was a little independent movie that we all had our own money sunk into, the way people cared about this.

Tonally, what type of direction did Zack give you all to make sure you were all on the same page? Because this is one big cast to manage in that regard.

You know what the great thing is….he hired a cast that a lot of people were [initially] disappointed with. He could have gone, I've heard him say, the Oceans 11 way, and gone with big-name people. It probably would have made people much happier, initially, that were fans of this. Maybe they would have felt safer. But what he did was…he hired, I think really good actors, that he trusted. There were no egos.

That might have been one of the secrets to making something this size work.

By putting us in it, the people that weren't the Tom Cruises or Jude Laws of the world, what you do is…you make this material the star of it. And that was more important than anything else. And Zack knew that well before any of us did. Visionary. You know? [laughs]

Let’s talk about the fight scene at the beginning of the film where the Comedian is murdered by an unknown attacker. Zach decided to show a little bit more of the attacker than is shown in the graphic novel, where the attacker is mainly seen as a pair of hands. Did you shoot it a few different ways so there were editing options of how much of the attacker to reveal?

Well, the attacker was always supposed to be in shadow. But what Zack really wanted to do was start this movie off with a huge bang.

It's one kick-ass fight scene.

(The iconic murder of the Comedian, above, complete with blood-stained Smiley Face button.)
Yeah, yeah, unbelievable. I trained, I was in Vancouver two months before we started shooting this movie, just training for that fight. Just the choreography of that fight. It’s a hell of a way to start a movie. Between that and the opening montage, I think we're off to a hell of a start.

That opening montage is also incredibly well done.

Yeah, it tells a whole history of these guys, in a seven-minute span.

And it mixes in this super hero world with re-creations of our actual history. That’s something which we’ve seen in comics but which is very new to the screen. Zack added a lot of great imagery of his own for the montage, using the novel as a jumping-off point. Such as the twisting of the iconic photo of the WWII soldier kissing the girl in Times Square, only now it’s the lesbian super hero, the Silhouette, and her girlfriend. And then there’s JFK. The JFK Assassination is only mentioned in passing, in the novel, as you know. But here, you see it. Now we know who was on the Grassy Knoll!

When we shot that, I was like, “Holy shit. This is gonna stir up some stuff!” But what a cool scene to shoot and see. Amazing.

Another of the most disturbing scenes in the film is in the bar in Vietnam where the Comedian shoots the pregnant girl in front of Dr. Manhattan, who has the power to stop the bullet but doesn’t. I assume Billy Crudrup, as Dr. Manhattan, must have been covered in motion capture devices. Let’s talk about shooting that scene with him.

Billy was basically, in essence, wearing white pajamas and a white skullcap, that was covered with blue LED lights, and he had black spots all over his face. You know, what's so amazing about his performance is it's all in his face. And you don't even see his eyes -they're these white sockets, you know, so that expression, you can't even see that. So everything is done with his face, and it's just another performance that knocked it out of the park. And acting with him, you know, there were the initial giggles that you get, when you saw him, because literally it was the human diaper, with blue LED lights. And basically, he was a lighting source for actors. And, you know, it's to his credit, he never broke. He could have easily gotten pissed at us for having giggles, and a lot of actors would. But to his credit, he knew that his tool was his face - the crack of a smile, the squint of an eye - that was his performance. The tilt of his head. And he was so in it, that very quickly, after like one day of working with him, you forgot about the silly outfit that he was wearing, and you bought him as Dr. Manhattan, man. He just had his shit down.

You played the Comedian at a lot of different ages. Mentally, how did you change it up?

You know, I'd like to say there was a point when he was maybe more naive in his younger years, but he was so kind of brutal, always. And cynical. You know, the minute he kind of crosses that line in the CrimeBusters meeting, there was really only one way to go with him….until he figures out the Laurie situation, I think, really. I mean, that's kind of the first moment when, you know, I'm searching for this human side. But the age thing, I mean, the makeup guys, everybody involved in this movie was so meticulous. When I looked at myself in the mirror at the age sixty-nine, man….

Really?

It was a scary reality. “Fuck, this is what it's gonna look like!” [laughs]

Let’s talk about another one of your co-stars, Jackie Earle Haley. He’s fantastic as Rorschach.

I've been sitting with him for the past three days. His portrayal of Rorschach is...scary. It's just scary, and spot-on. And, you know, the minute he opens his mouth and starts speaking from his journal, it sent chills up my spine. Unbelievable performance. I think everybody was just on the money…but, yeah, his performance, you brought him up, is just insane.

One of the trademarks of the novel is that there is so much detail that you pick up little new pieces of information each time you read it, both visually and in the text. The film is like that too. One example is at the end, when we’re outside the office of The New Frontiersman - you see a car parked there, and they don't make any big point of it by zooming in, but it's an electric car. The background detail of the shot subtly tells you of some of the smaller changes in the world since the big climax.

That's right. The car is plugged in and charging. And there are things in this movie like that…you'd probably have to watch the movie twenty times, like the book. You notice something new every time. I still notice things and I've probably read the thing forty times. I think the movie is filled with these Easter eggs, these nuggets. The attention to detail is just insane.

You’ve also recently shot Taking Woodstock, with Ang Lee.

Yeah, yeah, that's done, that's in the can. It’s kind of the behind-the-scenes of Woodstock and how that came to be. Working with Ang Lee. Are you kidding me [laughs]? It’s an amazing, amazing story. And working with Ang, I was like, pinch me, somebody pinch me. The last year has been one big “somebody-pinch-me” moment, you know?

And you're also starring in All Good Things, which was directed by Andrew Jarecki.

Andrew is one of the smarter people I think you'll ever meet in your life. This movie, the documentary he did, Capturing the Friedmans, scared the crap out of me. An amazing piece of work. So, this was his first [fiction] feature film, you know, and I was working with Ryan Gosling, and Kirsten Dunst, and Frank Langella.

Did you deliberately seek out material during the past few years that was very different from your role on “Grey's Anatomy?”

Absolutely. Sure. But I didn't know if somebody was going to give me the chance. Certainly, you know, I remember when I read Watchmen, I was like, “You know, they're never gonna fucking hire me for this.” And I think that's kind of the part of Zack that is so brilliant. He was like, “Fuck, you can do it, man.” He trusted me. Most directors would be like, “Are you kidding me? That's about as far away from a guy that can play this character as anyone I've ever heard of.” You know, wiping Denny out of people's minds is a hard thing to do. He made such an impact on so many people, but I think if anybody could do it, it's the Comedian, you know?

(Morgan and Katherine Heigel in "Grey's Anatomy," above.)

Will you do any more appearances on “Grey’s?”

No, as far as I know, I am dead. And I'm busy doing other things. But I owe that show everything. Shonda Rhimes is a brilliant writer and a good friend, and I wake up every morning and I thank her for giving me that opportunity. I owe everything to her, I really do, and I know it. You know, between that and “Supernatural,” it was a really great way to kind of kick-start a twenty-year career. Yeah, and I loved the opportunity, and I had so much fun working with the people over there, especially Katie [Heigel]. The chemistry we had was completely unique and special, and it was worth every second of it.

Let’s talk a little about your background and your path into acting.

Sure, I grew up in Seattle, outside of Seattle, a little city called Kirkland, Washington, then lived in Seattle, downtown Seattle, for years during the big grunge movement.

Good time to be there.

It was a great time to be there. I knew all those guys.

Did you?

Yeah, yeah. I knew a lot of Mother Love Bone. They turned into Pearl Jam, I knew them. Some of the Soundgarden guys.

Were you a musician at all?

I was, but I had no musical talent whatsoever. I just couldn't do it. Believe me, at that time, everybody was a musician that I knew, and I just couldn't do it. No, I fiddled around, kind of made a living with various ridiculous jobs, and then on the side I was painting, and I used to sell my artwork at coffee shops.

Do you still paint?

You know, I haven't in a while, but I would love to. I had moved to New York for a little while, did some graphic art, went back to Seattle, continued doing graphic art, and then I moved a friend down to L.A. I drove the U-Haul down, and he was an actor, and I met somebody who said, you know, you should give this a shot. And I did, and I got this horrible Roger Corman movie really quickly after being in Los Angeles. And I didn't know really what a mark was, or anything, but I fell in love with it. I loved the art of acting, and wanted to learn. I embraced it, and spent twenty years chasing that dream, and really kind of came to the end of the rope. And then, you know, in a quick six month span of one summer, my life changed. And here I am talking to you.

Read more!

DVD Playhouse--March 2009

DVD PLAYHOUSE—MARCH 2009
By
Allen Gardner


LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (Magnolia) An awkward 12 year-old boy, ignored by his mother and the target of bullies, finds himself drawn to his new neighbor: a girl his own age who only appears at night, and seems herself to be as lonely an outcast as he. Haunting film from Sweden is best described as The 400 Blows meets Nosferatu, and contains some of the most haunting imagery of any film in recent memory. Truly a unique and memorable work. Bonuses: Deleted scenes; Featurette; Photo and poster gallery. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
PARAMOUNT CENTENNIAL COLLECTION Paramount offers two more classic titles, restored, remastered and loaded with extras. Alfred Hitchcock’s TO CATCH A THIEF stars Cary Grant as a retired jewel thief trying to enjoy his sunset years on the French Riviera with a minimum of drama, until he catches the eye of a high-maintenance heiress (Grace Kelly, in one of her greatest, sexiest turns). When the community is suddenly hit with a rash of high-profile robberies of its richest denizens, all eyes go to Grant, who protests his innocence. More romantic comedy and very little suspense abound in this very enjoyable romp, one of Hitch’s rare forays into the light-hearted. Two disc set bonuses include: Commentary by Hitchcock scholar Dr. Drew Casper; Seven featurettes; Trailer; Photo galleries. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 mono. Neil Simon’s THE ODD COUPLE stars Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon as two divorced men in New York, childhood pals, who decide to pool their resources and room together, with near-disastrous results: slob Oscar (Matthau) and anal-retentive, neurotic Felix (Lemmon) are two of comedy’s greatest creations, and the film understandably resulted in a long-running TV series that kept the formula going for nearly a decade. Two disc set bonuses include: Commentary by the stars’ sons Charlie Matthau and Chris Lemmon; Four featurettes; Photo galleries; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 mono.
THE LAST METRO (Criterion) Francois Truffaut’s masterful drama about a Parisian theater troupe in Nazi-occupied France who are determined that the show must go on, in spite of a Jewish theater manager (Heinz Bennent) who is in hiding in the theater’s basement, while his wife (Catherine Deneuve) and the new leading man (Gerard Depardieu) have an affair, and the leading man becomes increasingly involved in the Resistance. Terrific blend of suspense, romance and pathos, as only Truffaut could deliver. Two disc set. Bonuses: Commentary by Depardieu, historians and Truffaut scholars; Deleted scene; Archival interviews with Truffaut and cast members; New interviews with cast and crew; 1958 short directed by Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 1.0 mono.
CADILLAC RECORDS (Sony) True story of Leonard Chess (Adrien Brody), a hardscrabble entrepreneur who founded the Chess Records label in 1950s Chicago, putting the sounds of legends such as Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright, superb), Chuck Berry (Mos Def), Howlin’ Wolf (Eamonn Walker), and Etta James (Beyonce Knowles) onto vinyl, and bringing rock & roll into the mainstream—all the while robbing the artists who made him rich of their rights, royalties and, in some cases, the songs themselves. What could have been a fascinating study of American greed and amorality, has been turned into a by-the-numbers TV movie with an A-list cast, due to a weak script that keeps changing point-of-view, instead of sticking with one character through the duration of the film. A real disappointment, considering what could have been. Begs to be retold by a filmmaker with a steadier hand. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Deleted scenes; Featurettes; Commentary by writer/director Darnell Martin. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
ELEGY (Sony) Adapted from Philip Roth’s novella The Dying Animal by Nicholas Meyer, Ben Kingsley plays David Kapesh, a renowned cultural critic and professor at Columbia who’s stunning intellect masks an inability to engage in emotional intimacy. A lifelong philanderer who has made a habit of trysts with recently-graduated students, Kapesh finds himself captivated, and obsessed, with a Cuban-born beauty (Penelope Cruz) in his class. When their affair proves to be more than a passing fancy for Kapesh, he finds himself questioning his past, and present, behavior and life choices. Startling, haunting drama, helmed by Spanish director Isabel Coixet, was strangely ignored by Oscar, and features award-worthy work by everyone involved, including co-stars Patricia Clarkson (in a deliciously sexy turn, whose character delivers one of the most heartbreaking screen monologues in recent memory), Dennis Hopper and Peter Sarsgaard. One of 2008’s best films, and a must-see for adults with an IQ. Bonuses: Commentary by Meyer; Featurette. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
MARIE AND BRUCE (Weinstein Co./Genius Products) Julianne Moore and Matthew Broderick star in the inimitable Wallace Shawn’s adaptation of his own play about a married couple whose relationship is revealed through a series of breakfast conversations. Biting satire blends seamlessly with some truly touching moments, and insightful commentary on the male/female dynamic. Fine work across the board by all involved. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
THE SCARLETT JOHANSSON COLLECTION (Paramount) Three early films from the now-superstar actress: GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING features Scarlett as the object of legendary artist Johannes Vermeer who became the subject of one of his most famous works. Three Oscar nominations for this gorgeous period piece. A GOOD WOMAN stars Johansson as a newlywed who finds her husband being preyed upon by an older seductress (Helen Hunt) while honeymooning in Italy. AN AMERICAN RHAPSODY tells the true story of a young girl (Johansson) whose parents (Nastassja Kinski and Tony Goldwyn) are forced to leave her behind when they flee post WW II Hungary for the U.S. Powerful drama never veers into sentimentality. Bonuses on all: Filmmaker commentary; Featurettes; Trailers. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
I’VE LOVED YOU SO LONG (Sony Classics) Kristen Scott-Thomas gives a brilliant performance as a woman recently paroled from prison, haunted by the horrible deed in her past, that tries to rebuild her life after moving in with her sister (Elsa Zylbersetin, also excellent) and brother-in-law. Powerful film about guilt, loss and loneliness, is almost perfect in every respect. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Deleted scenes; English and French audio. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS & ALIENATE PEOPLE (MGM/Fox) Funny comedy starring Simon Pegg as a gate-crashing British tabloid journalist who will stop at nothing to dig up dirt on the beautiful people, but also longs to be part of their world. When a high-powered magazine Editor (Jeff Bridges) offers him a shot at legitimacy he jumps at the chance, but manages to offend every A-list player he’s supposed to be writing about. Clever fish-out-of-water story, with fine support from Kirsten Dunst, Gillian Anderson and Megan Fox. Bonuses: Commentary by director Robert Weide and Pegg; Featurette. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
RACHEL GETTING MARRIED (Sony Classics) Jonathan Demme’s cinema-verite look at family dysfunction was one of 2008’s finest cinematic hours. A recovering addict (Anne Hathaway, in a career redefining performance) gets a weekend pass from rehab to attend her sister (Rosemarie DeWitt)’s wedding, releasing a Pandora’s box of skeletons that come tumbling out of everyone’s closet. Fine screenplay by Jenny Lumet and support from an excellent cast, including the much-missed Debra Winger as the girls’ mother. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Commentary by cast and crew; Featurettes. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
DODES’KA-DEN (Criterion) Akira Kurosawa’s first color film, from 1970, is a tragicomic look at a group of societal outcasts living (symbolically) in a slum on the outskirts of Tokyo, and their struggles for day-to-day survival. Beautifully shot and objectively told, raising many questions, and giving the viewer the gift of supplying their own answers. Bonuses: Kurosawa documentary; Trailer. Full screen. Dolby 1.0 mono.
PRIMAL FEAR—HARD EVIDENCE EDITION (Paramount) One of the best thrillers of the ‘90s arrives in a remastered edition, loaded with extras. Richard Gere stars as a slick lawyer who’s not nearly as clever as he thinks, and gets his comeuppance in spades when he defends a seemingly-schizophrenic young man (Edward Norton, in his star-making turn) for a brutal homicide. Fine support from Laura Linney, John Mahoney and Steven Bauer. Bonuses: Commentary by director Gregory Hoblit and crew; Three featurettes; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (Sony Classics) Lauded screenwriter Charlie Kaufman makes his directing debut with this story of a theatrical director (Philip Seymour Hoffman) struggling with personal relationships and declining physical and mental health, eventually putting all his waning energy into a stage show mounted on a life-size replica of New York City inside a huge warehouse—with literally thousands of actors. Kaufman’s signature blend of the surreal, the comic and the grotesque are on full display here, and your tolerance (not to mention appreciation) of the material will depend largely on your taste for his particular brand of sensibility. Fine supporting cast includes Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Hope Davis, and Emily Watson, to name but a few. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Interview with Hoffman; Featurettes. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
CHOKE (20th Century Fox) Sam Rockwell stars in this scathing adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s scathing satire about a sex addict/con man (Rockwell) who finds himself skating on thin ice due to his addiction and his profession. When he inadvertently knocks up his dying mother (Angelica Huston)’s doctor, he finds a shot at normalcy and redemption. Not for all tastes, to be sure, but for those who like their laughs to burn in their throat, this sharp comedy is a can’t miss. Bonuses: commentary by director/writer/actor Clark Gregg and Rockwell; Deleted scenes; Gag reel; Featurettes. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
PINK-MANIA! MGM/Fox releases Blake Edwards’ original 1962 classic THE PINK PANTHER, which introduced Peter Sellers’ one and only inept French police Inspector Clouseau to the world, here trying to track down an elusive jewel thief (David Niven). Great fun, still holds up beautifully. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Commentary by Edwards; Featurettes. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. THE PINK PANTHER CLASSIC CARTOON COLLECTION features everyone’s favorite pastel feline in all 192 of his animated adventures on 9 discs! Very inventive and very ‘60s, with heavy doses of surrealism and a very hip Henry Mancini score. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono.
SHORTS Some of the best gifts come in small packages. Take these collections of award-winning shorts that hit DVD this month: Provocateur Video releases EXPERIMENTS IN TERROR 3, a collection of some truly frightening and disturbing short films from around the world: Manuelle Labor, Born of the Wind, Satan Claus, The Psychotic Odyssey of Richard Chase, Terror! and The Red Door should give gooseflesh to the most hardened viewer. Full and widescreen. Dolby 2.0 mono. Gratzfilm/Laika House release MONA LISA DESCENDING A STAIRCASE, the Oscar-winning short from Joan C. Gratz, the creator of clay-painting animation. Disc also features three other Gratz shorts: The Dowager’s Feast, Pro and Con and The Dowager’s Idyll. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono.
DOCUMENTARY TITLES City Lights releases THE MATADOR, an epic-scale look at bullfighter David Fandila’s quest to become the world’s top-ranked matador. Beautifully shot and scored, with some truly sumptuous views of Latin America on display. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Extended bullfight sequences; Featurette; Photo gallery. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. Provocateur releases FIDEL!, an intimate look into the life and times of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, circa 1969, ten years after the Revolution. Fascinating to watch Castro at work, rest and play. Filmmaker Saul Landau was given unprecedented access to the usually-reclusive leader. Bonuses: Excerpts from Landau’s production diary; Commentary by Landau; Short film on Castro; Interview with Landau. Full screen. Dolby 1.0 mono. MVD releases BOB DYLAN: NEVER ENDING TOUR DIARIES, which takes a look at Bob Dylan’s process, as well as his life on the road, through the eyes of drummer Winston Watson, who backed Dylan at over 400 shows around the world. The most candid portrait of the artists since D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back. Bonuses: Photo gallery; Tour laminates; Soundtrack MP3s. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 mono.
BLU-RAY TITLES Blue Underground releases a beautifully-restored version of Dario Argento’s classic giallo THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, starring Tony Musante and Suzy Kendall, in this Hitchcock-like shocker about an American writer in Rome who stops a serial killer’s brutal attack, and then finds himself hunted. Dazzling work by a true master of the craft. Vittorio Storaro was the cinematographer! Bonuses: Commentary by Argento scholars; Interviews with cast and crew; Trailers and TV spots. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 7.1 surround. Argento and George A. Romero share directing duties on TWO EVIL EYES, with each helming an Edgar Alan Poe adaptation: in Romero’s The Facts of the Case of Mr. Valdemar, Adrienne Barbeau and her lover attempt to use a hypnotic trance to embezzle her dying husband’s fortune. In Argento’s The Black Cat, a disturbed crime scene photographer (Harvey Keitel) is driven to madness by his girlfriend’s seemingly nefarious feline. Bonuses: Interviews with cast and crew; Featurette; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 7.1 surround. MGM/Fox releases THE FRENCH CONNECTION, William Friedkin’s Oscar-winning classic about two tough NYPD detectives (Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider) who crack an international heroin ring. Based on a true story, and only dated by the clothing and haircuts. One of the greats. 2 disc set. THE FRENCH CONNECTION II is one of the few sequels that nearly measures up in greatness to its predecessor. Helmed by the great John Frankenheimer, FC II finds Popeye Doyle (Hackman) in Marseilles, where he’s tracked the elusive drug kingpin (Fernando Rey) from part I. Dynamite! Bonuses: Commentary by the filmmakers and cast; Featurettes; Photo galleries. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 5.1 surround. Martin Scorsese’s RAGING BULL, about the tumultuous life and times of boxing legend Jake La Motta (Robert De Niro), was named by many influential critics as the best film of the ‘80s (if not one of the greatest of all time). Simply a perfect movie on every level; the definition of a masterpiece. Bonuses: Commentary by Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker, cast and crew; Documentary; Featurettes. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 5.1 surround. DONNIE DARKO is writer/director Richard Kelly’s wholly original psychological thriller about a teen (Jake Gyllenhaal) who finds himself suddenly burdened with disturbing visions that seem other-worldly in origin. Terrific filmmaking from a real talent. 2 disc set. Bonuses: Theatrical and director’s cut of the film; Commentary by cast and crew; Featurettes; Documentary; Trailers. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 5.1 surround. Mel Gibson’s THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST is a reverent, and bloody, re-telling of Christ’s crucifixion. The devout will interpret it literally, while the secular might view it as an anti-Fascist parable (myself included). James Caviezel is impressive in his portrait of Jesus. Two disc set. Bonuses: Blu-ray and standard versions; Original cut and edited version; Commentary by cast, crew and theologians; Photo gallery; Deleted scenes; Documentary; Featurettes. Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 5.1 surround. RONIN stars Robert De Niro again, in John Frankenheimer’s nail-biting thriller about covert-ops in Paris who face crosses and double-crosses in their quest for a briefcase full of top secret documents. Frankenheimer’s last great film, with some of the greatest car chases committed to film. Bonuses: Commentary by Frankenheimer; Alternate ending. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 5.1 surround. VANISHING POINT is director Richard C. Sarafian’s existential chase thriller from 1971 starring Barry Newman, and a 1970 Dodge Challenger, as Kowalski, a hired wheelman who vows to drive from Denver to San Francisco non-stop in fifteen hours—and won’t let man, beast (even a gorgeous naked girl on a Harley AND Charlotte Rampling as a comely hitchhiker) or especially the law stop him. The late Cleavon Little shines as a blind DJ who provides Kowalski with moral, and musical, support. Bonuses: U.S. and European versions; Commentary by Sarafian; Featurettes; Trivia track; Trailer and TV spots. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 5.1 surround.
DON’T TOUCH THAT DIAL! Universal releases the Debra Messing vehicle THE STARTER WIFE, with Messing playing a former Hollywood power spouse who, after her nasty divorce from a Tinseltown A-lister, reinvents herself as a writer. Smart and funny. Fine support from Judy Davis, David Alan Basche, and Chris Diamantopoulos, based on the memoir by Gigi Levangie Grazer. Bonuses: Audio commentary from cast and crew. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. Acorn Media releases INTELLIGENCE, SEASON TWO, about a Vancouver drug lord (Ian Tracey) trying to go legit and the Canadian intelligence chief (Klea Scott) determined to bring him down. Four disc set. Bonuses: Interviews with cast and crew; Featurette. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. SHE FELL AMONG THIEVES is the 1978 BBC drama that launched PBS’ venerable series Mystery! Malcolm McDowell stars as an upper class Brit who finds himself at odds with an evil criminal mastermind (Eileen Atkins) while vacationing in the Pyrenees in 1922. Great fun. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. MIDSOMER MURDERS, SET 12, inspired by the novels of Caroline Graham, follows the sleuthing of Detectives Barnaby and Jones (‘70s TV fans rejoice to that in-joke) in seemingly idyllic, but sinister Midsomer Country. Four episodes on four discs. Bonuses: Interviews with cast members; Biographies and filmographies. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. STEPHEN HAWKING AND THE THEORY OF EVERTHING features a candid look into the mind of one the planet’s greatest minds, and his theories of life, evolution and existence itself. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. TAGGART, SET 1 follows Detectives Burke, Ross, Reid and Fraser, four Glasgow cops who try to keep the mean streets of urban Scotland safe. Tough and gritty, reminiscent of ‘70s cop films, bolstered by a fine cast and terrific writing. Bonuses: Featurette. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. Sony releases the 1982 telefilm adaption of THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, starring Anthony Hopkins as Quasimodo, supported by a who’s-who of British acting royalty: David Suchet, Derek Jacobi, Sir John Gielgud and Lesley-Anne Down as Esmeralda. Fine drama, expertly made. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. THE STORY OF DAVID is a 1976 TV production, starring Timothy Bottoms and Jane Seymour, in a two-part miniseries about the life of King David, from his boyhood confrontation of giant Goliath, to his adulterous affair with Bathsheba. Well-penned by Alex Segal and David Lowell Rich. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. SHOUT! Factory releases MY TWO DADS, THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON, starring Paul Reiser and Greg Evigan as two bickering former best friends who suddenly find themselves in charge of the daughter of a recently-departed ex-flame who was unsure as to the child’s paternity. Funny family sitcom holds up better than most. Bonuses: Featurette. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. The 1979 telefilm of THE MIRACLE WORKER stars Melissa Gilbert as Helen Keller and Patty Duke switching from the role that made her famous in the 1962 Oscar-winning film version, playing teacher Annie Sullivan. Written by William Gibson, from his play. Bonuses: Photo gallery; Audio description for the blind. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. DANA GOULD: LET ME PUT MY THOUGHTS IN YOU is a record of the vet comic’s performance at Chicago’s Second City Theater. Gould tackles topics as diverse as marriage, astronauts and dolphin blowholes. Funny stuff. Bonuses: Interview with Gould by Bob Odenkirk; Short film; Deleted scenes. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. THE PAPER CHASE: SEASON ONE, is the critically-acclaimed series set in Harvard Law School, based on James Bridges’ hit 1973 film, about the combative relationship between an idealistic, first year student (James Stephens) and his martinet professor (the great John Houseman). 22 episodes on six discs. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. RHODA: SEASON ONE, was the first of several spin-offs from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, this one following independent Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper)’s new life and marriage in New York City. Smart, timely stuff from the mid-70s. Bonuses: Retrospective documentary. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. MGM/Fox releases DEAD LIKE ME: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION, featuring the complete series, as well as the feature film of the same name. Ellen Muth plays a very much dead “grim reaper” assigned to escort wayward souls into the afterlife. Funny, inventive blend of satire, science fiction and full-throttle horror. 9 discs in all. Bonuses: Commentary by cast and crew; Featurettes; Photo gallery. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. Lions Gate releases WILDFIRE: SEASON THREE, featuring the further adventures of life on the Raintree Ranch: romance, intrigue, corruption, it’s all here! Bonuses: Commentary by cast and crew. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 mono. Paramount releases AWOMAN CALLED GOLDA, starring Ingrid Bergman as Israel’s first female Prime Minister. Fine supporting cast includes Ned Beatty, Judy Davis, Leonard Nimoy, and Robert Loggia. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. CAROLINE IN THE CITY: SEASON TWO, starring Lea Thompson as a popular cartoonist who life and loves provides grist for this sitcom’s mill. Funny and smart. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 surround. FAMILY TIES: THE FIFTH SEASON, features more ‘80s era exploits from the family Keaton: Yuppie-in-training Alex (Michael J. Fox) leads the pack, constantly locking horns with his former hippie parents (Michael Gross, Meredith Baxter). Still holds up quite well, thanks to great writing and a terrific cast. Bonuses: Featurette; Gag reel. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. SRO Entertainment releases DENNIS MILLER: THE HBO SPECIALS, a 3-disc set containing all seven of Miller’s HBO-sponsored live performances. Interesting, and more than a bit disquieting, to see Miller’s arc from cynical liberal in the late ‘80s to post-9/11 conservative reactionary. Regardless of your political leanings, Miller offers some smart, potent insights into the world in which we live. Full and widescreen. Dolby 2.0 mono. Anchor Bay releases HEAD CASE: SEASON ONE, starring Alexandra Wentworth as a confrontational therapist whose unique methods in working with Hollywood’s finest provide grist for this smart, funny series. A host of celebrities, including Rosanna Arquette, Monica Potter, and Jeff Goldblum appear as themselves. Bonuses: Shorts; Featurette; Bloopers. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. A&E Video releases URBAN LEGENDS, a collection of the world’s greatest myths, tales and far-out theories. Only one of the tales is true in this fun, fantastic thrill ride, with the reveal saved for the program’s end. VAMPIRE SECRETS traces the history of the vampire legend to its origins as far back as ancient Greece and China. CITIES OF THE UNDERWORLD: SEASON TWO, is a four-disc set that takes a look at the lost worlds that exist below the surface of the world’s most populated cities. Fascinating blend of history, mystery, and jaw-dropping discovery, led by host Don Wildman. All are full screen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. Sony releases MARRIED WITH CHILDREN: THE COMPLETE TENTH SEASON, featuring more raunchy fun with the family Bundy. 26 episodes on 3 discs. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. BARNEY MILLER: THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON, features Hal Linden and his comrades in the NYPD’s 12th Precinct for more dry wit and acerbic laughs. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. THE NANNY: THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON, stars Fran Drescher who tries to balance hectic personal and professional lives in this zany comedy full of Drescher’s trademark humor. 16 episodes on three discs. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. SPIDER-MAN, VOL. 2 & 3, features the animated adventures of everyone’s favorite webslinger, remastered in Widescreen, Dolby 5.1 surround sound. 3 episodes on each disc. Paramount releases SOUTH PARK: THE COMPLETE TWELFTH SEASON, with more foul-mouthed good cheer from the tots of that “tiny, redneck mountain town” in Colorado. Bonuses: Three featurettes; Mini-commentaries by creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. JAG: THE EIGTH SEASON, features 24 episodes of the continuing adventures of the military’s Judge Advocate General corps, and their battles both in, and outside of, the courtroom. Bonuses: Gag reel. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 stereo.

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Tim Roth: The Hollywood Interview

Actor Tim Roth

TIM ROTH IS TELLING NO LIES
By
Alex Simon

Editor's Note: This article appears in the March issue of Venice Magazine.

One of the film world’s great chameleons, Tim Roth was born in London May 14, 1961, the son of a journalist and a school teacher. After dropping out of art school, Roth was discovered by maverick British director Alan Clarke, and cast in his incendiary 1982 study of the skinhead movement in the UK, Made in Britain. Tim Roth hasn’t stopped working since, with over 70 feature and TV roles to his credit including such iconic titles as The Hit, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Vincent and Theo, Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You, and most recently, the lead in Francis Coppola’s first feature in ten years, Youth Without Youth.

Roth stepped behind the camera in 1999 to direct the critically-lauded family drama The War Zone and was nominated for a 1995 Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his scene-stealing work in the period drama Rob Roy, as one of the great villains in film history.

Tim Roth takes the lead in a television series for the first time in Lie to Me, which premiered January 21. Roth plays Dr. Cal Lightman, an interrogation expert who relies on his unique system of lie detecting based on the subject’s body language. Co-starring a fine cast that includes Kelli Williams, Monica Raymund and Brendan Hines, the show runs Wednesday nights on Fox.

Tim Roth sat down with us recently over coffee and croissants to discuss film, television, and the brutal brilliance of Lawrence Tierney. Here’s what transpired:

Your character’s talent in Lie to Me is very specific. Is there a consultant you’ve been working with to prepare for it?
Tim Roth: Yeah, there’s a guy who specializes in microexpressions, who developed The Facial Coding System. It’s not just to determine if you’re lying, but if you’re deceiving: if your body is saying one thing while your mind is saying another. He can do it without the other person talking, with the person speaking in a foreign language, it doesn’t matter. It’s all about body language. He studied for years abroad, in places like New Guinea, studying the tribes out there, and started developing this system from the ‘60s onward. Now he has a lab, and his system is used by a lot of people. He can train you in it, and also does some kind of government work. His aim is to tell people that they don’t need to torture, that torture is not only inhumane, it’s useless, and produces useless intelligence. I played a torturer back in England on a TV program, back when I first started acting, and I spoke with a guy who worked for the British side of that, and used that seven point system of torture which is reflected in those pictures from Abu-Ghraib. And when those came out, people were talking about it as if it were new.

If anything, that system has been used for centuries. Pasolini’s film Salo, which took place in WW II, had images that were virtually identical to Abu-Ghraib, and it was made in the mid-70s.
Yeah, restrained brutality, sensory deprivation, and sometimes not-so-restrained brutality. It’s all useless.

Tim Roth in Fox TV's Lie to Me.

From an actor’s standpoint it must be an interesting process since actors, in many ways, are professional liars, or at least professional pretenders, who have to believe their own lies, so to speak.
I suppose so, yeah. I never trained as an actor, so there’s two sides to it. A lot of what we do as actors involves deception, smoke and mirrors. When this guy Paul is around on our set, it’s a bit nerve-wracking sometimes because he can really spot everything you’re doing, every level of your engagement.

Has he taught you anything that has left you unnerved, in terms of gauging the honesty of others, which could be especially disconcerting in show business?
I’ve tried not to learn it too literally for just that reason. (laughs) I didn’t do the training, which I could have done. I know enough based on what they put in the scripts to get by.

I know you started out in television back in the UK, although this is your first time where you’re carrying a series as the lead. How is it different from doing a lead in a feature?
Oh, it’s completely different. I’ve never done anything like this before. First of all, it’s harder work in general: the hours are longer, the daily page count is huge. You’re basically doing a little independent film every week and-a-half. Not only that, but the writers keep trying to up the ante with every episode as the characters get more set. During the eight days of shooting, you get the next script that you begin the next process of doing while you’re simultaneously working on another script. So it’s very intense, quite exhausting. A bit like doing theater, actually, because you’re playing the same character in a variety of situations, which is interesting for me. In film, once you’ve done it, you can’t really go back, save for doing re-shoots sometimes, whereas in TV, you can keep going at the character until you feel you’ve got him right.

One thing that makes this show very timely is how it addresses the geo-political map is changing since Obama’s election, and as a result, the way Americans have begun to redefine their idea of law enforcement.
Well, I think everyone, on both sides of the pond, were anxious to get rid of (the Bush administration). They were just diabolical, but absolutely brilliant the way they screwed us all, and they kept doing on their way out the door, which is even more amazing when you think about it. It was like the Borges. It’s a fantastic time to study, if you’re fascinated by people like Machiavelli, but not a good time to live, especially if you’re brown and poor, and we do try to touch on that in the show, although hopefully in a way that’s not too obvious. I think George Bush and his henchmen, his gang really, cut across the planet in such a way that the recovery will take centuries. As they seem to have no remorse and no conscience, I suppose on the one hand, that makes them consummate politicians, although for my money, a true politician should be just the opposite.

You grew up in London. Your father was a journalist and your mother was a teacher.
Yeah, she was a painter, as well. She went to art school up in Birmingham, where she grew up, but ended up being a teacher in primary school teacher. My father was a painter, too.

Your dad did something interesting, which was to change his Anglican name of Smith to the Jewish name of Roth. It’s usually the other way around.
(laughs) Right. That irony has never been lost on me. My dad was a devout Communist, and left the party in the ‘70s. During the war, he was 17 and underage when he joined the air force and became a tail gunner, and did a lot of very dangerous things: dropping people behind enemy lines, that kind of thing. I don’t know what he saw necessarily, but when he did change his name, I think it was to remove himself somewhat from his family, and the name he chose was a Jewish name, I think in tribute to all the Jews who died during the war.

So you’re not Jewish?
No, but I get invited to an awful lot of Jewish functions! (laughs) My dad always considered the struggle against the Nazis to be a humanist one, and in many ways a class war, as well. He said “Remember, the camps were full of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and many other groups of people that the Nazis just sort of randomly decided were ‘undesirable.’ This will come again, and there will always be (Fascists) like the Nazis who think that this will be the solution.” So he really made my sister and me very aware of history, politics, how societies around the world functioned.

When you mentioned he wanted to distance himself from his family roots, was your dad upper class?
No, working class through and through. They came out here for a time, from Irish heritage, and dad was actually born in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Then they wound up in California and his dad did stunt work in westerns for a while. They ended up going to Liverpool when he was eleven, to work in the brick factories that were there. He and his sister said they’d run away from home if they didn’t get out of there, because working in factories in the North was bad in those days, really bad. Then they moved down to Kent, in the southwest of England, and worked in the hop fields and paper mills there. He got himself an education till he was 17, then was self-taught, learned to speak fluent Italian when he was stationed in Italy during the war…he was quite a crazy fellow. He passed away in ’89.

He lived to see you succeed, anyway.
Yeah, somewhat. I was doing a film in Ethiopia when he passed. I based my character of Vincent Van Gough in Altman’s film Vincent and Theo on my dad, and Van Gough was his hero, oddly enough.

You went to art school as opposed to drama school, so when did you figure out that you were an actor?
When I was 16 or 17 a friend and I auditioned for a play in school as a joke, and it wound up backfiring when I got the part. The drama teacher could see that I was a complete mess as a kid and really took me under her wing. I kept doing plays from there, when I was in art school, wherever I could: theaters, churches, pubs. (laughs) I was doing more theater than I was doing art, and they finally sat me down and said “Look, you’re taking the piss. Either get serious about this, or go try and be an actor. We’ll hold your place for you if you decide to come back.” I went to the dole office, and signed on. They said “What are you?” They needed a job description, so I said “Actor.” And I started getting work right away, and never stopped, and never had to go on the dole again.

Roth in Alan Clarke's Made in Britain, his film debut.

The first thing you did was Alan Clarke’s Made in Britain.
Alan was one of the greats, left us far too soon, and that was probably the best time I ever had as an actor, as well. I was selling advertising over the telephone when I got that part, which is something a lot of people in Britain do when they’re trying to subsidize themselves as actors. I had a flat tire, and was looking for a pump, and went into this theater on the west end. They mentioned that there were auditions happening for this TV film, and did I fancy having a go. And I said “Cheers, sure.” I went in and met Alan, who was a real character from Liverpool: a traveler, a joker, a troublemaker, very kind of handsome, and wild with women, and he was a filmmaker on top of all of that. And he was a filmmaker at a time when the BBC and a lot of other companies were allowing you to make these controversial dramas and were willing to take the flack for them. So Alan came up in the company of people like Ken Loach, Stephen Frears, Mike Leigh, a big group.

All the British neo-realists.
Exactly, they were just fantastic, these guys. Of all of them, I think Alan was the best, and I think Ken would agree.

Look at his eye for talent: he discovered you, Ray Winstone, and Gary Oldman.
Yeah, he did have a great eye, but it was his choice of subjects and how he went about filming them that I loved. When we filmed Made in Britain, he took me out with Chris Menges, who’s an extraordinary cinematographer, and it was the beginnings of SteadiCam, and these sort of flowing shots, which gave you total freedom as an actor, and also total madness. It was my first time in front of a camera, and a great way to enter. I knew nothing about film acting at that point, other than the fact that I wanted to be one, and that I didn’t want to be a stage actor.

Next you worked with Mike Leigh on the TV film Meantime. He’s renowned for his unique process of preparation and filming.
Mike’s got a lot of gusto. We didn’t have the luxury of the long rehearsal and prep process that he’s become renowned for, but we still had about 14 weeks, and for a TV film, that’s bloody good, with about five or six weeks of that to develop character, to live as the character, a more condensed version of what he does now. I’d love to work with him again. He’s got a twinkle in his eye. Pam Ferris, who played my mother in the film, were buying groceries and Mike was behind us, sort of leaning in, watching us, taking notes on this pad he carried with him everywhere, with that great beard of his, and his hat pulled down low over his eyes. (laughs) Real character.

Roth in Stephen Frears' The Hit.

The first film I remember seeing you in was The Hit.
Yeah, Stephen Frears did that, and we actually just did the Criterion audio commentary for that. It was a beautiful little thriller really, an odd little film, but beautiful. It was a great group: Terry Stamp, John Hurt, Bill Hunter, Laura del Sol…for me, and I hadn’t seen the film in years because I never watch my stuff, and I thought Laura’s performance was probably the best in it. We talked about it in the commentary, that each of us was from a very different school of acting: I came up from the Alan Clarke school, John came from RADA, Terry came from the whole ‘60s, working class-boy-makes-good school, and Laura, who came from the streets and was a Flamenco dancer. And here we were, among all these giants, and Laura, who’d never really acted before, gave a performance that was the most modern, in many ways. She’s stunning.

Your character seemed like one of those dim-witted kids that we now see here who watched Scarface too many times as a kid, only your guy had watched Get Carter 150 times, and wore those yellow sunglasses, and wanted so badly to be the movie version of a “hard man.”
(laughs) Yeah, right. I don’t think he’d ever held a gun before and suddenly they give him a thousand pounds and tell him he’s going to be the driver for these gangsters and he was like “Yeah! Cool!” and he just didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. When that yellow sunglass lens was blown out, I almost lost my bloody eye. That was my idea, actually. I had wanted him to get shot through the teeth, but that wasn’t possible to pull off, so they put this little charge on the inside of the glasses that was directed outward, and covered up my eye, but it still hurt like hell. I was young, and it was a bit dodgy, looking back. Shouldn’t have done that. (laughs)

You got to work with the great Robert Altman on what many feel is one of his greatest films, Vincent and Theo.
The full cut, which was only shown on TV in Europe, runs over four hours and almost goes by quicker than the version which was released theatrically here and cut in half. I’ve never seen that cut, and I’m desperate to. So if there’s anyone out there who’s reading this…(laughs) I was working on a film with Peter Greenaway at the time, and I got a call saying that Altman wanted to meet with me. I said “Is that the MASH fellow? He’s great!” (laughs) I didn’t know too much about film at that time. So I go to his hotel, and he wouldn’t let me see the script until he decided whether I was going to do it or not. I thought that I was too young, and too young-looking. I looked much younger than my years for a long time, which is useful in some respects, but bloody annoying in others. So I was actually talking myself out of a job, stupidly. But the more we talked, the more I talked myself into it. We talked about the man, and I talked about my father with him a bit. Altman said, “Just listen to your dad. Read the letters (between Vincent and Theo) and talk to your dad. Forget about everything else.” So he hired me on, and we had the most extraordinary time. Being abroad, being someone I deeply admired, being with someone I deeply admired, was just extraordinary. We spent three months together, just sort of knocking around Holland and France.

Roth as Vincent Van Gough in Robert Altman's Vincent and Theo.

He was renowned for giving his actors a great deal of latitude.
Yeah, Bob gave us the script and allowed us to rewrite it. I remember coming in one morning and he said “Where do you want the camera?” (laughs) You never felt that you were overstepping your mark. You always felt that he wanted you to do that. It was “Okay, we’re doing a scene about color. Why don’t you go in the kitchen and make a salad?” That was our way of dealing with what he wanted and dealing with what he wanted. He was happiest when we were sort of wild and took over. He encouraged it. We didn’t realize how much we were being directed at the time, and therein lies the art.

Left to right: Michael Madsen, Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Keitel, Chris Penn, Lawrence Tierney, Tim Roth, and Steve Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs.

Which brings us to Quentin Tarantino and Reservoir Dogs. Did you realize at the time that it was revolutionary, or was it just another job?
I thought it was a bloody great script. I thought it was hilarious, and brutal…it was just the writing that got me. I was halfway through the script, and got on the phone and said that I wanted to do it. But it didn’t come easy. Quentin wanted me to play one of two other characters, but I wanted to play Mr. Orange, because he was the actor, right? There were lots of battles trying to get me to read, which I don’t like doing because I’m not very good at it. I think The Hit was the last time I did a formal audition for something. So it was a bit of a battle on that front, but eventually he gave it to me, and it was madness. Controlled madness, but madness, with all those actors, and all those egos (laughs), and we found ourselves all getting along really well when all was said and done. Although Lawrence (Tierney) was really crazy. (laughs)

Everyone I’ve met who worked on that film has a great Lawrence Tierney story. What’s yours?
Lawrence really didn’t like me, I don’t think—actually he didn’t like most people—at least in the beginning, but then he decided he did. I ended up in bars with him, and he’d introduce me to all these characters, like the guy who invented the yo-yo that would light up. I had this very lovely, tall black girlfriend at the time, and all sorts of offensive things would come out of his mouth when I brought her along that I won’t bother repeating. (laughs) She wanted to pop him. He was a bizarre fellow. Then he decided suddenly that he didn’t like me again. (laughs) So he was mad, but great. Back in the day, the cops really, literally threw him across the state line of California because they were so sick of busting up fights that he’d start in bars, and so on. So he went up to New York, and he hated New York, he was so bored. So to liven things up, he’d be in a bar, and call the cops, saying “Get the hell down here, there’s a huge fight goin’ on!” So the cops would arrive, and he’d beat the cops up. (laughs)

They don’t make guys like that anymore.
Well, there are guys like that out in the acting community now, but with Lawrence I think he felt he never really got his due from this town, and I have to say I think he was right. It’s tougher now if you’ve got one of those oversized personalities because the business is so different today. It’s all these giant conglomerates and corporations who don’t give a fuck about anybody unless they’re making money, but for us, and anybody who had an interest in film history, we thought Lawrence, and those like him, were really remarkable guys. And Eddie Bunker, too, and those guys. You paid attention when you were around these guys. Eddie was a literary man, and told me some incredible stories about his life as a criminal. But there’s no room for them in today’s climate. The powers that be seem to like a sameness in their big name actors. I remember one night we had a dinner out at Harvey Keitel’s place by the beach, right before we started shooting. I was the only Englishman there, and was really nervous that I wouldn’t fit in. And Mike Madsen was so cool to me, and started talking about poetry and painting, things like that, and he was the first one sized up and thought “Oh Christ, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to deal with him.” (laughs) But he really took me under his wing, and was incredibly warm and articulate and we would end up with bars, with Chris Penn, talking about poetry and about art. It was wonderful. Mike is one of those very rare, special human beings. So they do make guys like that still, but it’s rare, and it’s hard for them to get their just desserts in this town.

Tell us about Tarantino.
It’s hit the ground running. If you’ve ever seen an interview with Quentin, that’s what he’s really like. It’s full speed ahead and you don’t stop until they say it’s a wrap. I don’t know what he’s like with the new films. We were trying to get together on Inglorious Basterds, but my schedule was too screwy. But, I found it to be a very creative and high speed process. He was all about the actor. I found him to be really articulate about the process, particularly considering it was his first effort. I remember Harvey Keitel turning to me on the set at one point saying “I think this is going to be quite good. But let’s not jinx it!” (laughs)

Roth as the evil Archibald Cunningham, his Oscar-nominated role in Rob Roy.

This brings us to my favorite role you’ve ever done: Archibald Cunningham in Rob Roy, who has to be one of the greatest screen villains in history.
(laughs) My wife drives me crazy about this, because I thought I was going to get fired, since it was so over-the-top. A lot of the credit has to go to the director (Michael Caton-Jones), because I love physical acting and there’s not many people that do anymore. A lot of acting now is behavior, where your range is about being as normal as possible. And I don’t like that particularly. I always think of Charles Laughton’s quote: “Method actors give you a photograph, real actors give you an oil painting.” And my feel is that you go at it. So Michael encouraged me to go down this road, and we did it emphasizing the grandness of his behavior, and I thought ‘When the studios see the dailies I’m fucked. I’m going to get fired for sure.’ So I called my agent and told him to find me another job. (laughs) Then I heard that the powers that be were liking it, so I kept going in that direction. My whole aim was: underneath the powdered wig, and foppish exterior, is a skinhead. Underneath the wig is a psychopath, and all the rest is dress-up. My wife was showing me books with portraits of these 18th century guys, who just looked like the worst transvestites, almost comical. But these guys were also deadly with a sword, and they used it, and they enjoyed it. They were slave owners, up in Scotland. The aim was to get to the place where the wig comes off, and his character changes, and you reveal the real guy.

Roth and Liam Neeson's climactic sword fight in Rob Roy.

That final sword fight between you and Liam Neeson is probably the greatest screen swordplay since Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone’s fight in The Adventures of Robin Hood.
Bill Hobbs, who choreographed the fight, is one of the all-time masters of sword fighting. His philosophy was “Don’t learn to sword fight. It’s about your character. How does your character fight. You fight as an extension of yourself.” So he studied our performances, and then came up with a style that was in keeping with our characters. It was a very complicated fight. In reality, Liam would have been dead in a second, because it was brute strength versus finesse.

That film was written by one of the great screenwriters, Alan Sharp.
Alan was fucking amazing! Great writer and as a human being, I just love him. He wrote this amazing, definitive script about Christopher Marlowe, that I’m dying to do, but it’s just too damn long. It’s either a TV thing, or it’s two films. He gave it to me at that time with the idea of me playing Marlowe, but now I’m too old for it. Not only does he understand the history and the underbelly of what we were doing, but he gets what actors need to come out of their mouths, and really knows how to write for the cinema.


Roth in Francis Coppola's Youth Without Youth.

More recently, you worked with Francis Coppola on his first feature in ten years, Youth Without Youth.
I think it’s one of those films that will have some kind of life, although many people found it a bit esoteric. I always felt that it was, at heart, a film about what Francis was feeling about his life at that time, about his successes and failures, about what it felt like for him to be growing older, and if you look at it from that perspective, it’s pretty great. We spent six months in Romania shooting it, most of the crew were under 30, so it was exciting to be working with all these young people that were really passionate about film and filmmaking. With Francis, you couldn’t touch the dialogue, which for me was difficult, because it was the translation of a book that was, by itself, quite difficult. So, you have that…(laughs) As sophisticated as the story and the concept were, I felt that the dialogue was not always so sophisticated. It was difficult to actually speak, and that was the hardest thing to get by Francis, so you had to let go on that. The film is a triumph, however, of color and texture and mood, and he was very open to that and very spontaneous towards ideas for different shots. So visually, it was a remarkable experience to be a part of, whereas the dialogue side, a bit of a pain in the ass. I really got stressed out over it, when Francis said I shouldn’t and looking back, I should’ve listened to him. (laughs) I really love Francis. He’s a conundrum. He was also the first person on the set and the last one off. So as much as we actors like to bitch about how tough we have it, all you have to do is look at the bloody crew, who are working much harder than you are. So I’d say the experience of working with Francis was one of the best I’ve ever had, even though aspects of it were awful. I look back on it overall with great fondness.

You made your directing debut in 1999 with The War Zone. What was it like stepping behind the camera?
For me, that’s the best job in the world. That’s part of why I’m doing the TV thing: it’ll hopefully give me enough financial clout to take some time off and do some more directing. I never want to direct myself in anything, but I have two things I want to do. One of them is an adaptation Harold Pinter wrote of King Lear for me to direct.

Ray Winstone and Lara Belmont in The War Zone, Roth's directing debut.

What is it that fills you up about directing?
Everything I’ve acted in I’ve done for someone else. Every performance is what a director wants. Film is really a director’s medium, not an actor’s medium. You serve the director’s vision. You can create. You can be of independent mind, and put your mark on it, but the director has something in mind, and your aim to straddle both your world and his world, and leave him with something that’s as close as possible to what was in his mind. That’s the deal. That’s the gig. When I came around to the directing side of it, I got to talk wallpaper, paint color, lenses, make-up…I had a finger in every department. It was wonderful. It’s a completely megalomaniacal, but sod it, it’s my turn! (laughs) And for the first time ever, I got to make a film that was about me. It had my imprint on it. As an actor, you don’t do that. They give you the Oscar at the end, but it’s really the director’s gig. Theater is the actor’s gig.

And the writer’s.
Yes, and the writer. Same with television. They gave the writer the power in television, and look where it got them, because there’s no balance.

How did you prepare? Did you study the films of directors that you’d admired?
No, I remembered all the mistakes directors made who I’d worked with in the past. The bad directors I’d worked with were the most influential.

We started talking about television, so why don’t we end on the same note: many actors I’ve talked with who have made the transition from features to TV say they really enjoy the job security that television offers. Is there always that fear, even at this stage of your career, that every job might be your last?
Absolutely! The idea of unemployment is a great motivator for most actors, I think. It fills up all your time, and at the same time frees you up. The plug can be pulled tomorrow, and it’s not my jurisdiction to say whether we’ll stick around or not. There are a lot of things I don’t like about working within the TV system, and I really want to slap it around sometimes. It shoots itself in the foot constantly. It could be so much more powerful than it is, but they keep moving toward the middle. Those kinds of fights are exhausting, but doing the performance and fleshing out this character, I really do enjoy that. And the cast are all really brilliant too, and lovely people, which makes it much easier to go to work every day. (laughs) I wouldn’t have been able to get through those first eight episodes without them.

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