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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Is there any similarity between what you've just described and acting, since you get to pretend to be a serial murderer or Abbie Hoffman and then go home?
I wouldn't put it in that area. I'd put it more in the area of expressing your creative side, whatever form that comes in. The strange people I've met in my life so far, the stranger they are, the more unlikely they would be putting themselves in the public eye. The actors, musicians and writers that I've met -- they're a bit odd, but they're odd in a creative sense. They have some need to flex their creativity. That's kind of their kink, my kink, our kink.
What kind of research did you do to prepare for the role of Stargher?
I don't want to get into it too much because some of it's too harsh. But, you know, there's so much access to things these days because of the Internet. I had books and encyclopedias on it, letters from the insane dating back to the 1700s, books of art made by the insane. My room at the Chateau Marmont was full of this creepy stuff I was reading and studying -- pictures and photos and things.
Was that particularly disturbing, going through all of that?
Yeah, but it just gives you nightmares, like it would anybody. I remember going with my wife to bookstores and looking at books of old '50s pinups and kind of sadistic stuff -- things that don't go through my mind, these kind of drunken, slutty, big-breasted women with their breasts falling out of their bras. Images like that which I can't conjure up myself are disturbing. But it's stuff I had to get into my head for this role -- looking at women in a sexual-object kind of way.
One of the great moments in the film is when Stargher and Lopez's character, Catherine Deane, have a conversation while your hands are playing in the bloody water of a bathtub containing a nude, female corpse. Can you describe what was going on between you and Lopez in that scene?
All the times that Jennifer and I were together, it was very quiet, particularly in that scene. Her approach to it was very silent and my approach to it was very silent. Nobody knew what I was going to say. They certainly knew by then that I wasn't going to stick to the script. Jennifer and I never spoke about any of the scenes we were going to do on purpose. It got to the point where if anybody had interrupted what we were doing, the whole mood would have crashed down like glass. It was that fragile -- quite an intense day.
The girl who was in the tub, she had to lie there -- not very nice. I didn't know her name -- some model chick. She certainly wasn't going to talk to me. And I wasn't going to talk to her. It was that mood on the set. The cool thing about doing a film like that, unlike the "Steal This Movie" part, is you don't have to be social at all. I prefer that. That's more my personality. I can carry that feeling around with me when I'm doing a part like that where I don't want anyone to know what I'm going to do. That is, if the director allows that.
So I riffed on the idea of what was there and did many different versions of it. Then when the camera was on Jennifer, I did something completely different to bring some tears up in her. Something I won't discuss with you. I said things that I knew would move her. But that's not uncommon; actors do that all the time.
How do you know what to say to get that kind of reaction?
We're actors. We know that shit. If we don't know anything, we know that.
You've done disturbing roles before -- was Stargher the most disturbing?
As far as a fictional character's morals, he would probably be the least moral person I've ever played.
How did you approach the role of Abbie Hoffman in "Steal This Movie"?
I approached it as a drama about this man's emotional life with the background of this revolution going on. I knew a bit about Abbie, but I'm a little too young. I was born in '59. So when I read the script, it read more like a drama to me.
Yes, there were the events that actually happened, and we felt legitimate about the way we portrayed them because we had Anita Hoffman [now deceased, played by Janeane Garofalo in the movie] with us, Tom Hayden and Gerry Lefcourt, his lawyer -- people who were there, confirming things for us.
What's more difficult -- playing a purely fictional character or doing something biographical?
There's a lot of shame that goes on when you're playing someone who has really lived and has passed. You're struggling with it all the time. I am, anyway. When I played Robert Howard in "The Whole Wide World," I was struggling with it. There's this dual thing where you feel real good about being able to play this juicy part, and then there's constant shame. Who am I to pretend to know who this guy was? Who am I to represent this guy for people who never knew him? The pressure is unbelievable, I can't tell you.
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