Ruff! Ruff!

Do you think that doubting process is almost an arbitrary thing that anyone can experience, or do you think it's specific to Jack's situation?

I think that it's something that happens in this culture and in the culture of marriage -- even a man who does feel like he's had it all or got everything he wanted. You know, they call it the gray itch, or the seven-year itch, or whatever. Obviously 50 percent of our marriages don't work out, so something is happening to people after years and years of being married.

It's interesting though, with Jack. It doesn't seem like it's sexual -- it seems more of an emotional thing.

Yeah. I think he's having a midlife crisis. And it isn't sexual, but it's about the way he feels about himself. He doesn't feel sexy or sexual, and a lot of it is indicative of the breakdown in their communication. They just stopped sort of being with each other. And just years of this sort of unspoken resentment. It's years of "Why is the house so dirty all the time?" or "You know what, honey? I never had my literary career." She's a literary genius, she's really the talent of that couple in the book. And she subjugates her talent to be a mother. So there's an enormous amount of resentment that's built between the two people that's never been expressed and that's created these huge, vast distances between them.

I wonder why they don't make that clear in the movie, that she has that background.

Yeah, I do too. We talked about it.

Maybe it complicates things too much to make three out of four of the main characters literary scholars.

I think so. I think we were touching on it. Some of it got cut out because of length. You know, she asks him one literary reference, but it isn't exactly clear in the film that she doesn't have her dreams fulfilled.

There's something about the way she falls apart that's both familiar and yet so fierce. Your sympathy peaks, at the end, for her. Although when your character tries to talk to the kids about a possible family breakup -- that scene is heartbreaking.

Yeah, it's devastating. And this guy, Jack, is a child of divorce. He knows what that'll do to his children. He does know the cost. It's funny, because he's going along in this kind of cloud, and he's totally unconscious, and then he becomes aware of all the consequences, and not until that moment does he know. He's in a stupor; he's like the walking dead up until that point.

You have a real skill at portraying vulnerability in all of your roles. Where do you think that quality comes from? Have you always been open about expressing your weaknesses?

Uh, no. [Laughs.] I try to hide my weaknesses pretty much across the board. [Reaches for his water.] Do you want some water or anything? [Gets up and brings a bottle of water over.] I don't know. These kinds of characters, if you don't express their vulnerability -- you need to get a key into what kind of a person they are. I think people are generally vulnerable, in some place, if you catch them at the right time. Even when I was young, I just always found it interesting when people were vulnerable. I mean, it's not something I'm really conscious about.

It's just part of what you do naturally.

Yeah, I think people are really complex, and even the most heinous person has some human quality to them. And I'm always interested in getting to those moments. I feel like in film, you get a chance to see someone in their personal life interacting, and then you also get those moments of privacy that really sort of indicate a depth or something that's very opposite from the way they're acting in their lives. And film is the only medium where you get those private moments, that we don't even see. Even the people we love that we spend all of our days with, we don't even get the chance to see them really in a private moment.

That's probably why you leave a movie and feel like, "Why isn't my life that rich?" Because you don't see everything.

No, you don't. Even my wife -- we've been together for seven years. My parents, I've been with them for 37 years. There are things about them that I don't know, still.

You spent eight years in L.A. as a bartender. How does that inform your experience now? Does it make you cynical about the people who you have to deal with at all?

No, but I was really cynical when I was bartending. They used to call me "Bitter Guy," because by the time I was coming to the end of that period, I was really glad to be leaving it -- only because you're dealing with drunks all the time. But, that toughened me up, you know? That was a really important time in my life. I was in some rough-and-tumble bars, and I'm not really a rough-and-tumble guy. So to be in that world and have to be protective and tough was a good learning experience for me. I think it kind of helped me become a man.

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