Thursday, March 21, 2013

El Hosaini and Floyd on Award Winner

My Brother the Devil is Playing in Theaters

El Hosaini and Floyd on Award Winner

(from brinkzine.com 3/21/13)

MyBrothertheDevilphoto.jpg Sally El Hosaini and James Floyd Photo: DP
Rarely, dating back to the 1950s, have we said that a film about youth gangs is heartfelt, but that's the case with Sally El Hosaini's bold, touching, and authentic feature debut, My Brother the Devil, which opens Friday in New York City at the Landmark Sunshine Theater and Film Society of Lincoln Center. Born in Egypt, El Hosaini lived ten years in her movie's locale, Hackney, which, as the production notes state, is "one of London's most ethnically-mixed and historically volatile neighborhoods," and got know, even befriend, countless young gang members, including those who have major roles or are extras in the movie. Her goal was to portray the youth and the neighborhood as she knew it to be, not as it has been portrayed in the British cinema. Her story is of two brothers, Rashid (charismatic professional actor James Floyd), and the younger Mo (newcomer Fady Elsayed, who the director met at an anti-gun crime event). Mo idolizes him but Rashid doesnt want his nice, smart younger brother to follow his footsteps and enter the gang life, and hopes to make enough money selling drugs to pay for him to go to college. But when the disenchanted Rashid pulls away his violent gang friends and spends less time with Mo--Rashid keeps secret his new romance with a male photographer, Sayyid (Moroccan-French star Said Taghmaoui), because all the gang members and Mo are homophobic--Mo joins the gang and threatens to expose his brother and put him in danger. My Brother the Devil won major prirzes at festivals in London and Berlin and I'm curious how American audiences will respond to it. I recommend it as the movie to see this weekend. Here is a brief interview I did with the personable El Hosaini and Floyd earlier this week:
Danny Peary: Sally, while growing up in Hackney, were thinking that this would be really great material for either a documentary or narrative film?
Sally El Hosaini: Actually, I grew up in Egypt, but I lived in Hackney for over ten years. I was inspired by my environment, just walking around the neighborhood, and I knew that I wanted to make a film about it. I knew I wanted to do fiction films, so it wasn't a question of whether I wanted to make a documentary about it. What I related to was the youth, because in them I could see this mix of all these different cultures, and I found that really fascinating--especially linguistically, hearing the way different words, from Jamaican patois to Arabic words, infiltrated that urban language. I was an outsider and I got to know boys who were in gangs in London and develop relationships with a few key people, one of whom played Repo, the guy with the tattoo on his neck in the film [see the group photo]. His name is Aymen Hamdouchi and he was my script consultant. My documentary film background really helped me, because I knew I didnt want to make a phony film. I wanted to make something really authentic.
DP: There's a young girl in the film, Aisha [Letitia Wright], who befriends Mo. I was thinking that maybe she was based on you.
SEH: No, I'd probably say I'm more a mix of Rashid and Mo. I've always been a bit more of a boy. In a way, I'm in all the characters, because when you create them from scratch, they come from parts of you. In some sense I injected a bit of myself into all of the characters, even the nasty ones.
DP: James, did you audition?
James Floyd: Yes. The audition process was just convincing Sally that I could be a gay Arab gangster.
SEH: I had wanted a non-actor to play Rashid because I was quite worried that an actor would come in and really stand out among the non-actors I was going to cast in the other roles. But I couldnt find a non-actor who wasnt homophobic, who would take this on. When I met James, we had an instant bond and chemistry in the audition room. I always hear that corny story about directors saying, "As soon as they walked in, I knew!" But James convinced me. Because of the amount of work and detail he had gone through just for the audition, he showed me an actor who was going to be extremely diligent, and who would prepare to use the resources I already had, essentially the real boys. And, James, you went and lived with the real boys for five months, and went completely method. And I knew you were going to dot every I and cross every T. It was a no-brainer casting you. We work in the same way.
MyBrothertheDevilbrothers.jpg Fady Elsayed and James Floyd                   Photo: Etienne Bol
DP: In terms of Rashid, James, when you first met and discussed the role, did Sally have the character down a hundred percent or was she flexible about you bringing something to the part?
JF: It was the best script I'd read. It was very unusual to pick up a script that is that exciting; it was a page-turner and constantly surprising. It worked . Everything in it was justified, nothing was forced. And the characters were all really there on the page. Sally had Rashid down but was very open to me doing my own thing. It was so easy that it was bizarre because we had the same ideas, pretty much, on how to play the character. When we first met in the audition, we high-fivede because everything we said was the same.
DP: Can you give me an example?
SEH: The hair.
JF: The hair is an example. I had noticed the hairstyle of this very famous rapper in the UK called K Koke, and I based Rashid's hairstyle on his. He also had a couple of scars and I mentioned these scars to Sally and she had already been thinking the same thing. They help tell his history.
SEH: They meant that he had been in a vicious fight. To have that haircut and those scars tells so much more about the character. We wanted to have nicks in Rashid's hairdo but we couldn't fit scars into his hair.
DP: Did you do tattoo research yourself?
SEH: I let all the actors who played the characters design their own tattoos. I let the ones who didn't have them evolve the tattoos they chose according to how they were constructing their characters. I wanted everything to be really organic. So as much as possible, my approach was to take what the actors were giving me.
DP: A major part of your technique, which was very effective, was using a lot of close-ups. James, did you know that would be part of her style?
JF: I can't remember if Sally had mentioned her use of close-ups to me in advance of filming. But it quickly became apparent that that was part of her style of shooting on this film. I had no problem acting with a camera right there. I really love the close-up because it's the cinema's most potent way of getting into the minds of characters, which is exactly what I want an audience to do. I think that is one of the reasons the film is able to take the audience on such an intimate ride with the two brothers.
SEH: The decision to shoot 2.40:1 or CinemaScope turned a mundane world into an adventure because the format forced us into using a lot of close-ups. The close-ups enhance Mo and Rashid's intimacy. During prep I was on the bus and there was a teenage boy sitting in front of me who had really bad skin. I remember thinking that's what this movie needs. I want to be close enough to the characters so that we can see their bad skin. I wanted to see their sweat, their acne, the meaty texture of their skin.
DP: My favorite shot in the movie, and I would guess it's yours, too, is taken above the bunk bed in the bedroom shared by Rashid and Mo. The smiling Mo is lying on his back on the top bunk and we also see Rashid on the lower bunk with his girlfriend. It's like in Rebel without a Cause when Sal Mineo's troubled teen forms a makeshift family in which his more mature classmates James Dean and Natalie Wood are his parents.
SEH: That shot was really a perfect collaboration between myself, my cinematographer David Raedeker, and my production designer, Stephane Collonge. We spent a very tense three weeks together that was crucial to constructing a successful film. I had ideas, they had ideas. They came to my house every single day for those three weeks and we went through literally every line of the script. We worked out how we were going to shoot each scene. We divided the film into five chapters, and each chapter had its own aesthetics. If you notice, in the beginning of the movie, Mos T-shirt is a vibrant shade of pink, and then later he's wearing the same T-shirt but we give it a darker shade as he progresses through the story. That's because the first chapter is Childhood, then comes Grief and Sexual Awakening. Those chapters define the costumes and the aesthetic of the movie, but also the shooting came out of that, because we didn't have a lot of tools at our disposal. We were making things subjective by, for example, having one style of camera for Mo and another style for Rashid. So that they had different compositional weights within the frame. These are very subtle things, but I think they make an enormous difference. That scene in the bed was our eureka moment, when we all came up with it together. Stephane actually told us that we were going to have these bunk beds where the bottom bed was bigger than the top bed. For us, this symbolized the way that Rashid was dominant within the bedroom, and [was consistent with] how we were going to design the bedroom. As soon as he told us that, David and I looked at each other and said, "We can do the top shot!" All three minds connected, and we all saw that top shot.
DP: Some of the shots were in such tight spaces. Did you hold the camera or was cast and your crew cramped in together?
SEH: I didn't hold the camera but I was in there too. I must say one of our unsung heroes is Chris Kane, the focus puller. He did an amazing job, if you consider the fact that we were shooting 360 degrees and it was handheld. He had to respond to our space situation and he got it right.
DP: Why is the movie called My Brother the Devil? Is Rashid ever so bad that he's the devil?
SEH: I left it ambiguous about which brother I am referring to in the title because I was conscious to the fact that certain audiences were going to find Rashid the devil and others were going to find Mo the devil.
DP: Or neither, because I don't find either the devil.
SEH (laughing): Well, that's because youre an elevated human being.
JF: We screened the movie for a lot of the kids from the area who were extras in it. Most of them thought Rashid's the devil because he's gay and they're very homophobic. But others thought Mo's the devil because he's homophobic.
SEH: Mo's homophobic and he's about to betray his brother.
MyBrothertheDevilposter.jpg
JF: Also My Brother doesn't necessarily mean My Sibling.
SEH: The concept of brotherhood begins with tribes, and the gang is a surrogate family, really. The film is about brothers but I feel it's also a family drama about a bunch of youths.
DP: You've said how you think your film is about boys becoming men. Its production notes state the same thing.
SEH: I think it's rather about exploring masculinity. But yeah, I see it as exploring what it means for boys to become men.
DP: I'm actually thinking Mo reclaims his boyhood ultimately. That's more what I see as your theme, along with identity stuff--everybody coming to terms with who they are --the brother thing, and a call for an end to a cycle of violence and revenge and proving oneself.
SEH: I feel it is about identity more than about curbing violence. Let's say that really it's a story about the power of unconditional love. It's about brotherly love, and about having the courage to be different and to live in the true vision of yourself.
DP: And the reclaiming of boyhood?
SEH: I loved when you said that.
DP: I think that's why Mo doesn't want to leave Hackney. He stays and he's in control.
SEH: Yes. Well, ending on a note of hope was very important to me and I actually had a lot of resistance to that. There were people who would invest in the movie only if I killed one of the brothers at the end. To me, you have a responsibility as a filmmaker [to stay true to your vision]. All film is in a way political, and you have to be conscious of that and aware. I didn't have the heart, myself, to kill one of the brothers. I didn't want a "happy ending" but a realistic and bittersweet ending that leaves room for hope.
JF: Theres a reason why a lot of people in the UK would wanted to kill a brother. That's part of the urban-film genre that has been serving us lies for years about how there is no hope in that world. That's the reason we would come up against all that crap. The film industry is predominantly middle-class people who know nothing about this world, and think they see it through these terrible films. And in all these films someone gets shot.
SEH: There are a lot of preconceived ideas. When I was raising the money for the script, which was the hardest part of the whole six years it took to make the film, I told people it was set on a council estate in Hackney, and they went, "Oh, I get it. It's dark and depressing and grim." I said, "Wait a minute, I live on a council estate in Hackney and no it's not like that. There's grass and there's sky and there's flowers and there's childhood and there's love and there's hope." I really wanted to show those parts of council estate life. I chose to film at that specific estate, which is about ten minutes from where I live, because it's on a hill and there is a lot of sky and we were able to play with that.
DP: So, if I would say, pretending now not knowing you at all, that the filmmaker is trying to show that these Hackney kids are growing up in what is equivalent of a war zone, would I be right or wrong?
SEH: That's wrong. I would say that it's a brittle world but it also has hope and redemption and other [positive] things in it. These kids are lot more intelligent and do a lot more thinking than how it is perceived. Often I see these kinds of characters in movies and they don't have possibilities or hopes and dreams and all the things that make them human. I really wanted to humanize these youths. Also, I set out to make a non-Arab-terrorist film, and to have characters that were an authentic representation of Arabs, not the typical stereotypes you see in cinema. Also I wanted to do that with disenfranchised youth in general. They are the ones who were rioting in Hackney at the time we filmed the movie. Everybody's scared of them, but they are just kids. In the most violent scene in my movie, when everything goes still for a moment after the violence occurs--I really wanted the masks to drop off and for us to see children underneath, when they aren't doing their macho strutting and posing. They're young gangsters starring in the movies of their lives, and while it takes only two seconds to actually stab somebody, the repercussions of that can affect them for a lifetime.
MyBrothertheDevilRashidRepo.jpg Elsayad and Aymen Hamcouchi
DP: To me, the gay element of the film--when Rashid acknowledges he's a homosexual and he and Sayyid [Said Taghmaoui] become lovers--comes in fairly late. But were there hints along the way that I didn't catch?
SEH: Yes, very subtle hints. If you go back and watch it a second time, you'll see many hints. From the first scene, in fact, when Rashid watches another guy in the gym.
JF: The key to what you're talking about is the relationship between Rashid and his best friend Izzi [Anthony Welsh], before [that violent scene occurs]. We put in a lot of little subtle things.
SEH: We used slow-mo in the scene where Rashid takes a joint from Izzi's mouth rather than wait for him to pass it to him.
JF: And you wrote that in the script. You have to remember that this is an extremely macho (so-called) heterosexual world, and taking a joint from another guy's lips is a no-no.
SEH: There were some actors on set and when James did that, they were like, that's a bit freaky.
JF: Our definition of what's slightly homosexual differed from what their definitions were. Another moment is when Rashid puts his arm around Izzi, and sits very close to him. He feels Izzi's bicep very briefly, as a joke. Those actors and extras, boys from the streets of Hackney, felt uncomfortable seeing that. They felt it was "too gay" and didn't understand the point of Rashid's relationship with Izzi.
SEH: The idea is that maybe Rashid's relationship with Izzi went a little bit deeper than just being friends, not that anything sexual ever took place. It has to be implied. It's only real when Rashid is confronted with a man who is confident and macho--then his world is shattered. If Sayyid was not the person he is, I dont know that Rashid would have the courage to come out. I think he comes out because of the kind of character Sayyid is. He's Arab, he's macho, he's hard coming from the streets, and he's gay and fine with it. And he's a nice guy--that's more of a threat than anything.
JF: True.
DP: James, with the camera right on top of you was playing intimate scenes with another male, whether it was veteran professional actor Said Taghmaoui or nonactor teenager Fady Elsayed, harder than anything youve done before?
JF: No, none of those things were difficult. I'm always amazed that some actors have issues with playing homosexuality. Last time I checked, I'm heterosexual, but you know, it's really about whether it works for the film. And is it right for the character? If Sally had wanted me to do even more intimate scenes...
SEH: He wanted to do more.
JF: Well, I wanted to give you the option. I wanted to say, "Look, I have no problem with doing even more physical love scenes, just in case when you get into that editing room, you realize you needed a bit more." It turned out we didnt need it, but if it worked for the story I would have done anything.
SEH: When you say I didn't need it,--one of the things people have asked is whether I shied away from showing more, but I don't think sex is actually that interesting and I wanted it be more about how people come together than them actually being together. Also, this movie isnt Rashid's coming-out story; I am consciously saying it is about something else, a story about prejudice, from the perspective of Mo. If I had gone further down that coming-out route, it would have tipped the balance of the movie. I think it could have overtaken the real story.
JF: I was just saying I had no problem giving you the option. I think his question touched on the fact that a lot of actors wouldn't play a gay character.
SEH: A lot of actors wouldn't.
JF: They do it for effect--a lot of actors do it for effect. A straight actor will play gay just to show how progressive he is. But do they really want to do it, or are they just doing it for effect? To me, I would do anything if it were right for the story and the character. It's that simple.
DP: It used to be that few actors would play gay characters because they thought it would hurt their images and career. But I kept thinking of My Beautiful Laundrette.
SEH: It's been referred to. I love Daniel Day-Lewis in that film, although I don't think that film has really stood the test of time.
MyBrotherTheDevilRashidMo.jpg Photo: David Raedecker
DP: In that film his character is in a romantic relationship between a respectable male shop owner and a male street punk, which is kind of a reverse of your film..
SEH: Yes, I can see that. I'm sure I've digested it in a lot of ways, but I'll say that a bigger influence was perhaps The Tree of Life, which I watched with Stephane and David when we were doing prep. I'm thinking of it in terms of developing our subjective style, how we shot the movie. We looked at The Fighter as well, seeing the way that had been shot. And Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park and Elephant were big influences. And the character Said plays in La Haine. Said and I worked together on another project and I was telling him what I wanted to do with this movie. He's from the streets of Paris, and was really enthusiastic about doing a very realistic film about Arab youth.
DP: When Rashid is spending a lot of time with Said, he is told by a gang member, "You've gone soft." That's a line told to Edward G. Robinson's gangster in Little Caesar, which was made in 1931, and the subtle implication i the script is that he's attracted to another man.
SEH: There are so many layers of things I put in my film, so many parts of myself, so many scenes, that getting the balance and the level of everything is almost like weaving a very complex tapestry. Even in the editing, we had to figure out how loud something should be. The biggest thing that I was up against creatively was this idea that I was trying to do something extremely realistic yet also poetic. And since it was a fiction, it would have to, in a way, create its own life. It's as far away from a documentary as you can get, in terms of the effect it produces.
DP: But you have a lot of feeling for the characters, which is kind of how it would be if you had made a documentary about such boys.
JF: A good documentary.
SEH: Absolutely.
 

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Director Park and His Goode Bad Guy

Stoker Is Playing in Theaters

Director Park and His Goode Bad Guy

(from brinkzine.com 3/7/13)

Stokerposter.jpg
(L-R): Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode
 
Stoker, Park Chan-Wook's erotic, beautifully-shot, cleverly-acted, and loony twist on Hitchcock's 1943 masterpiece Shadow of a Doubt breaks into national release Friday. If you're looking for a hoot this weekend, you probably can't do better than the American debut of the esteemed South Korean director (Oldboy, Lady Vengeance). In actor-turned-screenwriter Wentworth Miller's take, a charming but unhinged young murderer (fine British actor Matthew Goode as Uncle Charlie) moves in with his recently-widowed sister-in-law (Nicole Kidman as Evie) and niece (a mesmerizing Mia Wasikowska as India), who has turned eighteen and is feeling sexual impulses. Neither mother nor daughter knows he has left an asylum and they both are affected by his seductive powers to such a degree that they don't seem to care when they realize he is up to no good--in fact, that he may have been responsible for several characters' deaths is a turn-on for India, who apparently shares some of his baser traits. There's less blood here than Chan-Wook's Korean action films, mostly because Charlie's preferred method for disposal is strangulation, and spite and convenience are bigger motives for hostile acts than revenge, but fans of the director won't be disappointed. Kidman wasn't present at the recent New York press day for the film, and overly protective publicists wouldn't let me near Wasikowska, but I did take part in the following, brief roundtables with Director Park (as everyone calls him)--who had a translater at his side--and Goode, who thrives at playing interesting movie villains. I note my questions.
Park Chan-Wook RoundtableDanny Peary: In a previous interview, you said that one reason that you wanted to turn the film's script into a film is that you called it "quietly frightening." What do you find quietly frightening about this story?
Park Chan-Wook: This is a coming-of-age story, but it's unlike any other coming-of-age stories. The girl who comes of age doesn't become a good citizen. She doesn't become assimilated into society or conform to society. It's quite the opposite. What's frightening is how susceptible unstable pubescent minds can be to the seductiveness of evil.
StokerParkphoto.jpgPark Chan-Wook, photo by DP
Q: Please talk about how sound and color play such a big role in the movie.
PCW: I liked the script for being very quiet, and I could imagine right from the beginning how in the quiet Stoker mansion, sounds would inhabit the place. It would be something that your ears pick up on. I could hear, while reading the script, the tick-tock of the clock; footsteps on the creaking floorboards; the breathing of the characters; the sound of the wine glass as it is pushed across the table. It is these sounds that made me as a reader and the now audience be sensitive to the details. That's one of the big reasons why I chose to do Stoker. I could imagine all these sounds while reading the script and I really wanted to make good use of these elements. In the quiet environment, through these sounds, I wanted to create palpable tension. Now about color. In the film, the main characters don't reveal their emotions very much. India never really reveals what goes on inside her mind, what emotions she's experiencing. Uncle Charlie ostensibly is a very gentle character, but that's really deceptive because on the inside he's not like that at all. He's a very hypocritical character. Evie is the one character who expresses what she feels--her desires and emotions--but on the inside, she's very weak, fragile and brittle. All their emotions are not expressed by their dialogue or their expressions, so there has to be other ways for me to convey to the audience what really is going on inside them. It was done through color, props, camera movement, music, and editing. Another big reason why I wanted to do this script and turn it into a film, is that I saw an opportunity to include all these elements.
Q: To me, almost every character in this movie is frightful! That includes the high school kids and Whip [Alden Ehrenreich], the boy who at first seems nice to India. Do you also see this underlying sense of horror about your characters--and maybe life in general?
PCW: That's exactly right. This may appear to be a story centered around a very peculiar group of people, and their world may be a world very much unto itself, but it is not unrelated to the actual world that we live in. It may be an exaggerated view of our world, but that's what metaphor is all about it, isnt it? In that sense, this is very much relevant to the world we live in as ordinary people. There are elements that we identify with in this story--the family relationships, the emotions that each family member feels toward one another, and the confusing state of mind girls have during those sensitive years--which makes the idea of evil so seductive.
Q: Speaking of metaphor--in the second and the third acts you realize how the story is very much about nature vs. nurture. Can you actually change your nature? The turning point in the relationship between Richard Stoker [Durmot Mulroney in flashbacks] and his daughter India was when he saw a lot of Charlie in her and tried to curb her bad behavior. He knew he wasn't going to be able to change her, but he was trying to teach her so that she wouldn't end up the same as Charlie. But there's no saving this girl, and she's going to take over the antagonist role that Charlie had.
PCW: There is more than one role-reversal in this film. It's equally shocking when we realize that Evie is not really the oppressive and ostensibly strong character that we were introduced to in the beginning. As we follow the story, we realize that Evie's the most fragile of the three main characters. She's the only one of the three, maybe, that we can relate to. She's a victim who is prey to these two predators rather than an oppressive antagonist to India. So in terms of what the characters' personalities are, it's this great reversal that is a fascinating aspect and the turning point of the film.
SPOILER ALERTI like how the film lends itself to another interpretation as well. I am not sure how much of an antagonist India ultimately becomes. It depends on how you look at her decision to kill Uncle Charlie. Killing him is a very just punishment that she doles out to somebody who murdered her father. Also it reveals the last remaining emotion of love that India has for her mother. India wants to save Evie from Charlie, preserve her life, so she has to pull the trigger and kill Charlie, for whom she felt a huge amount of affection.
END SPOILER ALERTDP: You're known for being a Hitchcock fan, and obviously Shadow of a Doubt was Wentworth Miller's inspiration for his script, with Joseph Cotten playing the murderous Uncle Charlie and Teresa Wright as his good-girl niece he is bonded to. Mia Wasikowska reminds me of the young Isabelle Huppert and while watching Stoker I was thinking that it was if you replaced Wright's niece with the impassive murderer Huppert played in Claude Chabrol's Violette Nozire. Chabrol was inspired by Hitchcock, too, so I'm wondering if you were inspired by Chabrol as well as Hitchcock?
PCW: Chabrol made many great movies, so many that I haven't had an opportunity to see them all. Unfortunately Violette Nozire is one I havent gotten around to seeing. However, one thing that I can tell you is that in looking at Mia, I am always reminded of Huppert. They are remarkably similar. Let me say something about influences. Wentworth Miller confirmed that Shadow of a Doubt was an influence in writing his script, which was quite obvious from the pages. I had seen the film so long ago that I had to actually go into my DVD collection and watch it again to jog my memory. So all the influence from Hitchcock and Shadow of a Doubt is something that informed Wentworth's writing, rather than my direction. I saw Hitchcock's Marnie the other night, I'd only seen it a long a time ago and almost forgot what the movie was; and back then I saw it without subtitles so I couldnt understand everything that was going on in the film. I sought out Marnie and I was flabbergasted to find how many similarities there are between it and Stoker. For instance there was a shot of the mother brushing the daughter's hair--blonde hair, no less. And there is a woman who doesn't like to be touched in that film. What a coincidence! You can't explain things like that!
Stokerbrushinghair.jpg
Matthew Goode RoundtableDanny Peary: The first time I interviewed you was when you played the bad guy in The Lookout, opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I titled the piece: "Goode Is a Great Villain."
Matthew Goode: I hope you write something similar for this!
StokerMGoodephoto3.jpgMatthew Goode, photo by DP
DP: Is Uncle Charlie aware that he's a villain who does bad things?
MG: Thats a good question. The main question the film asks is: "Where does evil come from?" There is a predisposition to say bloodlines are responsible for the acts that Charlie perpetrates. But if it's what's inside him through no fault of his own that makes him want to do such things, then can he condemn himself? I didn't have my character judge himself for what's in his nature.
Q: You seem to like when there's a bit of insidiousness in your characters, as with Uncle Charlie.
MG (laughing): I'm a very insidious person. I think I'm pretty normal actually, but I keep doing this acting job, so there's obviously something damaged inside.
Q: I've seen you do some comedy, but you seem to really relish playing a character with an insidious smile or smirk.
MG: Charlie was a role that I pursued after my friend Colin Firth pulled out. It was by no means offered to me. I wasn't waking up every day and writing a begging letter to get the part, but I was trying to stay in the hat with the major candidates. I'm very aware of the other actors, British and American, in my age group, and I think that since we are often in the hat for good parts means that people think were quite good at our job. It's a small number of actors, and it just comes down to who the director thinks is the best fit for a particular part. It's still painful when you dont get the job, but you learn to appreciate the actor who got it. I'm always going, "You know, he's brilliant in that role." So I'm fortunate that on this occasion Park Chan-Wook chose me. It's a nice feeling. I've been very lucky, I think. If you look over my filmography, you'll see that I've bounced around between quite different characters. Just exploring, on my part. Acting is like adult dress-up, really. A dark character like Charlie, with sociopathic tendencies, is really interesting to explore. After Clancy Brown played a prisoner in The Shawshank Redemption, a reporter asked him if he'd talked to anyone and based his character on him. He said that if he met someone like his character he wouldnt admit it and he'd probably report him to the authorities. I suppose I could have gotten access to a patient in a lunatic asylum, but ultimately I just tried to work out the psychology myself. It's an interesting process--it's always a sort of puzzle when you go beneath the layers of a character like Charlie. You don't want to answer every question about, you have to treat the audience quite intelligently and let people come to their own conclusions.
Q: You got creepy Uncle Charlie down. He's very calm, calculating and mysterious in the beginning, and then he turns childlike towards the end, kind of like Norman Bates in Psycho.
MG: I haven't seen Psycho or Shadow of a Doubt, actually. Cinephiles will think less of me now! It's probably good that I haven't seen Psycho, because even subconsciously I could have fallen into the trap of repeating someone else's performance without trying to. As much as Stoker is a coming-of-age drama [not just for India but for Charlie, too, because he's been in an asylum since he was a young boy], I think there's an element of my character that's trapped in the past. There's a sad loneliness that this guy has, and I think that's why he wants a relationship with India. She's the only person out there who is like him. Despite his horrific acts, there's some sort of bizarre, childlike innocence to him. He's not really grown-up. I quite liked the idea that at moments he's quite masculine, and at other moments he's like a man-child.
stokerpiano.jpgIndia and her Uncle Charlie
Q: Whats your interpretation of the supernatural aspects that are hinted at in the movie?
MG: Nothing is spoon-fed, but there's a lot of symbolism. Chan-Wook is so detailed as a filmmaker. There are elements--Charlie wears sunglasses outside, he doesnt eat, and he is drawn to the virginal bride type thing. Chan-Wook says people can interpret it as a vampire film with a twist. You can also ask if Charlie even exists.
Q: We hope you exist!
MG: Oh yeah, I'm not into method, I like a good steak when I can get one.
Q: What was your reaction when you first read the script?
MG: I loved it! In a completely selfish way, I thought this wasn't something I havent done before. Ultimately, great scripts dont necessarily get made into great films, but everything was there to explore. And I'd get to act with Nicole, who I think is brilliant in the film, and with Mia, who is such an up-and-coming talent. And I'd get to be directed by Park Chan-Wook. Being a fan of Oldboy. I jumped at the chance. All those things coming together in one project made it a no-brainer, which I know is a sort of boring answer. It was a nice feeling to know that someone was entrusting me to work with people who are considered so good at their jobs. It's always the same process. You sit down and talk about it, you rehearse to get over your nerves of doing it. Then you concentrate between Action! and Cut! and get it out your own way, and than go, "Was that all right?"
Q: How did you get into Charlies head, for this? When you find out what he did to his younger brother, it's hard to find anything redeemable about the character you're playing.
MG: It's still about finding truth. I'm not going to have him just go batshit crazy. In a flashback, we get some idea of his childhood, and though I don't sympathize with Charlie, I am aware of his loneliness. Your question is tricky to answer because I worked very closely with my director and together we determined how I should play Charlie. I also worked very closely with Mia. I think much of the film is very underplayed. Our characters do a lot of listening and it's all about what's going on in the eyes, really.
Q: You mentioned Nicole before. Did you discuss with her the art of playing tortured characters?
MG: It's a bizarre love triangle really, isnt it? Evie has been in this marriage to Richard; she's had this child, India, which, she says, was to fix that relationship. She was always at home while India and Richard were off hunting. She's almost this gin-soaked Southern belle, kind of a Tennessee Williams character screaming to get out. So that was Evie's thing, and theres a shared link between her and Charlie.
DP: If Richard had decided to bring Charlie to live in the house after getting him out of the asylum, instead of choosing to send him off into oblivion, would Charlie have tried to seduce India anyway?
MG: Personally, I think he would have seduced Evie.
Spoiler AlertI don't think he intended to kill Richard, he genuinely loved his brother. I think one of the reasons he killed his younger brother when they were kids was that he was jealous of Richard's closeness to him.
End Spoiler AlertQ: You filmed in Nashville, where Nicole has roots. Did it bring things back to reality, to have one of the cast members live there?
MG: Well, I don't take stuff home with me at the end of the day. I'm not that kind of actor. Thank God for my family, who said, "You annoy the shit out of us every day when you're working." What was nice, in conjunction with the project, was seeing Nicole at home. I dont know what my preconceptions were, but she's completely un-starry and comfortable in her own environment and her own place. She showed us around, and we had real access to her. Sometimes you work with someone famous and they go home at night and you don't really get to know them, even if work with them all day. So I felt quite honored that we got close. Also, now that I'm a parent, it was inspiring to see someone successfully balancing work and family. I think one of the reasons we shot in Nashville was because Nicole has a family there and that's where she wanted to be.
Q: Did you go out and see any music?
MG: Yeah, absolutely. The musicianship there is phenomenal. We saw the Time Jumpers, who are an amazing bluegrass swing band. They've been doing it for like fifty years. My Mrs. and I would go down to Robert's, and it was great because there were fifteen-year-olds and seventy-five-year-olds, all from different areas of the world. It was kind of touristy-gone-wrong-gone-right.
Q: Can you talk about working with director Park?
MG: I loved it, I loved him, I'd work with him again at the drop of a hat. I found him very easy to work with and very collaborative. It's very gratifying to see things in the finished film that werent in the script but came from our sharing ideas. Regardless of whether people like the material or not, I think they will stand back and see its just so beautifully put together. The pace of it might turn off the MTV generation that likes fast cutting, but I quite like that it's a real slow-burning film.
Q: What are you doing next?
MG: Dancing on the Edge is coming out soon. It's a Stephen Poliakoff drama. I had one day off between doing Stoker and going into shooting that for five months. Also I'm doing The Vatican, which might become a series on Showtime, Ridley Scott [who co-produced Stoker with his late brother Tony] is producing and shooting the pilot. There are couple of other projects that I'm hoping to get.
DP: I'm sure you're name is in the hat!