(upbeat music)
- Let's start with a simple question.
What's most surprised you about
the actual profession of being an actor?
James?
(laughter)
- It's an interesting profession where,
I remember it was around,
it was like the year that I
was actually doing Spiderman.
Willem Dafoe was playing my dad.
Robert DeNiro had just played my father
in a different movie.
It was like, this is one of
the only professions, I think,
where it's like, you get to
work with all your heroes
and in such an intimate way.
I mean, even other artistic practices,
like you don't work with
your actual heroes in
that kind of intimate relationship
in quite the same way.
- As an equal, as a peer.
You can be the assistant
to Annie Leibovitz, but--
- Yeah, yeah.
- [Stephen] What surprised you, Tom?
- I think that it's still
just as much fun as it was
from the first time I figured out
that people took it seriously.
I mean, when I was at
whatever level you're at.
When I was in high school and
I found out this was a
class you could take.
Are you kidding me?
As opposed to drafting or
sociology or accounting?
(laughter)
You get credit for this?
Well, first of all, that's the greatest
racket I've ever heard of but then,
the amount of fun that it was.
I still feel the same
excitement knowing that
we're going to perform this kind of like,
student one-act play, you know, next week,
as I do when I get a job now.
It's still this intense excitement of oh,
we're gonna get to take
a whack at this thing
and they take us seriously as they do.
- Each time you do something,
it's always different,
because there's so many moving parts.
What you're working on, the
people you're working with,
in terms of film, the
configuration is always different.
One of the first things I find that
you have to do is kind
of, sort of figure out
what you're doing, or at
least, know where to start from
because it's different every time.
It's not like you can figure out a way
to approach things and then use that--
- Because it changes.
- [Willem] Even as a template because
the target's always moving.
- How do you go about figuring it out?
- You know, I like that.
I like that not knowing, going
to that place of not knowing,
going towards something and if
you've done it enough times,
you know, the fear that
a lot of actors feel,
including myself, when
you start something,
it's nice to get comfortable with fear.
If you're really conscientious and
you really tap into a
certain kind of wonder
and a certain kind of
process of creating something
rather than just interpreting something,
once you get in that place of not knowing,
you've been there before
and it kind of gives you
this kind of courage that
you wouldn't normally have,
that you don't normally have in life.
- Has this fear ever overwhelmed you?
- Yeah, sure.
It was just before Tinker,
Tailor, Soldier, Spy and
I'm not really sure what happened.
Two or three weeks before we started,
I froze and had
bone-crushing stage fright.
I'd never experienced it before and
I really just sort of didn't
know what was going on.
I'm not sure what you call it.
It was anxiety, or panic attack.
- [Sam] You hadn't done a lead in a while.
Was that part of it?
- Yeah, perhaps.
I'm glad to say I've worked
with people in the theater
who vomit, like, every night.
(laughter)
- I heard Pacino did that
with American Buffalo.
He'd eat some pea soup just so
he'd have something to vomit.
(laughter)
- Wow.
- You know, a shaking in the wings.
I would sometimes look
at that and I was always,
of course we all, a first
preview or a first night,
but I was always relatively
a relaxed performer.
I looked forward to going out there and
wasn't that sort of person who
was terrified in the wings.
I would look at these people and think,
oh, if I had to do that every night,
if I felt like that every night,
I don't know how I would carry on.
So, it wasn't something that
I'd had, or experienced before.
It was really debilitating.
- Sounds like it was the
pressure of the role.
Like, to you, those roles were--
- I think, also, it was
trying to slay the dragon.
I've since spoken with other actors.
Kevin Branagh, who said he
was on a set in a scene,
and it started to come upon
him and he went through it
and I realized that I
was not alone, you know.
It was like an AA meeting or something.
You go, "Yeah, I've experienced it."
(laughter)
"My name's Colin Firth
and I've experienced it."
(laughter)
- How did you get over that?
- Doctor prescribed me
something to just calm me down,
to give me a ceiling,
just to sort of take the
edge off and you know what?
I got to the set, walked
onto the set and went,
"Oh, yeah, I know.
"I know.
"I know where I am.
"Yeah, this is okay."
- [Tom] Yeah, there you go.
- And it was--
- It's just a high wire.
- Yeah!
- 3000 feet above a hard surface.
- Yeah!
(laughter)
- You have a bar to keep your balance.
- Have you experienced anything like that?
- I was competing with
Jason Robards in The Post
because he'd played Ben
Bradlee and so was I.
As Ben Bradlee, he owns that role
from All The President's Men.
So, here we're doing it and I
was actually given permission
to forget about it by Ben Bradlee himself
because I was looking,
I'd watched all the video
that I could of him and he gave
quite a number of interviews
and Bradlee, he talked about,
"Well, you know, and then they
made that movie, you know.
"Every day, someone
comes up to me and says
"Well, you don't look like Jason Robards!"
(laughter)
That's well, you know what?
There's been a lot of Hamlets.
There's been a lot of Richard the Thirds.
I wouldn't be surprised if
there are a lot of Ben Bradlees.
- Oh, dear.
I don't like hypothetical questions.
- Well, I don't think you're gonna
like the real one, either.
- Do you have the papers?
- Not yet.
- Oh, gosh.
Oh, gosh, because you know the position
that would put me in.
We have language in the prospectus--
- I know.
I know that the bankers
could change their mind
and I know what is at stake.
- You met him?
- Oh, yeah.
I had dinner with him a number of times.
- What was that like?
- He was exactly, he was the most
confident man on the planet Earth.
Loved his job.
Knew that he was crackerjack at it.
Ann Roth?
Anybody work with Ann Roth?
- I have.
- Yeah, oh yeah!
- Ann Roth did the costuming.
She's really particular about building
the character along with
you and we were shooting and
I'm trying on all these
shirts that I would
never wear in a million
years and she said to me,
"Do you know why Ben Bradlee walked
"into a room and owned it?
"Do you know why?"
And I said, "Because he knew."
And she said, "Because he knew!"
So, you end up just building.
You couldn't explain it.
You couldn't write it
down for a million years,
but you take it from
whatever source you can
and you think, hey, I'm safe here.
I'll be all right.
- Were you ever intimidated
when you work on something?
Are you intimidated when
you work with Meryl Streep?
I don't know.
(laughter)
- There's an intimidating--
I don't feel like we're
really making the movie
until about three days in.
(laughter)
Because you've got to meet everybody and
you probably haven't
rehearsed but you are saying,
"I know your movies and I know you."
You know everybody.
You're just some degree of fan and
until you get to that place where
you're just in the slog of things.
Then, you're making the same
movie but I'll tell you,
I don't know if you've found this,
but the legends, the heroes
that you get to work with,
they all do it the same exact way.
They want to run the lines.
They want to get it down.
They try it a million different ways.
They start, they stop.
They feel confident.
They don't.
That also was a liberating
process during this.
- I felt like that with John Hurt.
Having worked on Tinker.
The first day of working with him,
I couldn't wait to get
there and there he was,
smoking a cigarette, just
standing there outside his trailer
and I was absolute, I was fan-boy.
You know, it's like, my God.
He happened to be a really wonderful,
wonderful human being, too,
as well as a great actor,
but it was just such a
thrill to meet him and
to play some scenes with him.
You know, I always admired his
work so much over the years.
- You shot a scene in Star Wars
with Prince William and Prince Harry.
Was that intimidating?
- Yeah, and Tom Hardy.
It was a strange contrast
of a weird family but
it wasn't intimidating.
It was fun to me.
I thought it was like, of
course, it's Star Wars.
They're gonna bring the royal family.
(laughter)
- Were they in Stormtrooper costumes?
- Yeah, they were wrapped
in Stormtrooper costumes
and so, that was just, for me,
it's the best of both worlds for me
but it was a great experience.
- When you make the Star Wars movies,
is it hard not to go
(imitating blasters shooting)
when you're firing the thing by yourself?
(laughing)
- I'm doing all the damn time, Tom.
- All the time, yeah.
(laughing)
- All the time.
You're a child.
There's a new planet every
day and a new scene to play
and it just makes you feel as
if you're a part of history,
in a sense, a part of something
that you grew up knowing
and now, it's your
reality and it's strange
on a day-to-day basis.
- Well, that's the
surprising thing, again,
about what we do.
You know, you're watching
these films as a kid
and then suddenly, you're in one.
- Yeah, yeah and as everyone
says, like I'm literally--
- Is it different when you're in
a real-life story, like Detroit?
How do you go about researching that?
- It's definitely different.
It's the importance that this
true story is gonna be seen by
so many people and the world
is tainted right now and
this story is sensitive
to the issues that we have
and you're basically creatively
commenting on something,
it puts you in a position of
some form of responsibility.
So, on set, there is much more
of a level of seriousness,
but it's shared in unity but
there's much more of a serious
tone that's required
on a set like Detroit,
whereas in Star Wars, you know,
you've got JJ Abrams popping
every cashew he can find
in his mouth and everyone's having
much more of a lighter
time because it's like,
"Oh, there's Chewbacca again!
"His hair's just brushed!"
- What did you mean, the
world is tainted now?
- Detroit is a reflection,
even though it's set 50 years ago,
is a reflection of what's going on now
in terms of race relations
and it's strange.
You know, you watch a
movie like Detroit and
expect it to be based in 2017.
The lines are blurred in
terms of how far we've come.
- Now, listen.
Sometimes, when a black guy is put in
a position of authority, other black guys,
they like to single you out, okay?
Because I'm not suppose
to tell them what to do.
- We have these conversations,
we do them in stages, okay?
Stage One, witnesses.
Stage Two, suspects.
- Do you ever feel, as actors,
you're not doing something
meaningful enough,
or do you feel that
there is a purpose to it?
- Oh, I think I just wanna,
you know, entertain--
- Some people just want to get that check.
(laughing)
- I just wanna get that check.
- Get that Broadway check.
- You're making those
big-money choices, Sam.
(laughing)
- You always kind of think
you're doing Citizen Kane,
you know, and then nobody sees the movie
or sometimes people do see the movie but
I think you're think you're
doing Hamlet every time
and then, sometimes,
it turns out that way,
sometimes it doesn't.
I think you're trying to
do the best thing ever.
- The same commitment and energy goes into
making a bad movie.
- [Sam] Exactly!
- That's the story of my movies!
(laughing)
- Which brings us to--
(laughing)
- He thought he was making
A Streetcar Named Desire!
- Does he still think that?
- That's one of the crazy
things about Tommy Wiseau.
On the original poster,
he had written the copy.
He wrote,
"Tennessee Williams-level drama."
It shows what he thought he had made.
He told people they would
not be able to sleep
for two weeks after they
watched the movie because
they'd be so devastated
and then, when it came out,
people laughed and he didn't take
"Tennessee Williams-level
drama" off the poster.
He just added, "an
enjoyable black comedy."
(laughing)
So, it's like, he went
into that trying to just
make a movie that would move people,
the best movie that he could.
- Is that how you
approached the role as well,
being an actor playing an actor?
- I tried to make the best movie I could.
(laughing)
No, but it was about how I treated him.
I treated him with respect, as somebody,
an outsider artist is trying to do
what we're all trying to do.
Everybody that comes to Hollywood is
on the outside with a dream.
He's all of us.
So, if I treated it like that,
it would become a much bigger story
than just a spoof about a guy--
- Do you all know what this is about?
This film, The Room, which may
be the worst film ever made?
- I mean, there are--
- What film was this that I missed?
- [James] The Room.
- It was the making of an
actual film called The Room.
Not the great Brie Larson film.
- I know it, yeah, yes.
That was Room, though.
- A couple of years ago,
when they had screenings
of The Room, they said,
"Not the Brie Larson film."
(laughing)
When it came out, he paid for everything.
It was six million
dollars of his own money.
I looks like it was made for six dollars.
He put it out for two weeks to qualify
for the Academy Awards.
It didn't qualify.
Then, it just became a cult hit and
it's been playing for 14 years,
once a month, in almost every major city.
- Wow.
- [James] Yeah, it's a whole thing.
- Oh, yeah, Tommy weird!
Tommy like Frankenstein!
He like Vampire Rapist!
I hear everything!
I have ears everywhere!
I hear your whispers in your souls!
You're on my planet, okay?
- Wait a minute.
So, you've been spying on
your entire production?
- Yeah, that's right.
- That's fucking crazy!
- That's how it is!
So, now you know.
Next time, you make laughter,
ha ha ha ha ha,
I don't care who you are,
you're out on the street.
- What about me?
Am I still fired?
- All right, I give you one more chance.
- Did he ever ask you
if you liked his film?
- I love the film!
No, I mean, I do.
Like, I've watched that film almost
as much as the James Dean films.
I've watched that film about
50 times and so have the fans.
The Room gives.
It's like the gift that keeps on giving.
People just keep coming back
so you have to sort of admit,
there's something there, you know?
I don't think it's just that he made
strange bizarre choices
all the way through.
I think it's partly
the magic sauce is that
there's so much passion underneath.
I mean, there are thousands
upon thousands of bad movies
that we'll never watch again,
but people watch this one
over and over and I think
it's partly because of the
heart and soul underneath.
(upbeat jazzy blues music)
- He said something, he said,
"We're all, at one point,
we're outsiders with a dream."
Were you an outsider
and what was your dream?
- Mine?
When I started performing?
Really, just to make things and be near
people that excited me.
I started out in the theater,
in unconventional theater in New York
and was with that theater for 27 years.
We'd go there every day and work.
We'd open things in process.
Once we made things, we'd keep
them in repertory and then,
after a while, we were pretty
much reviled for many years
and then we started to get some play
with international touring and
started getting a reputation
and then, through Europe, we
kind of were accepted here.
- [Sam] Why were you guys
reviled in America, initially?
- Oh, they just thought what
we were doing was bullshit.
No, they just didn't think,
because the aesthetic was
not a polished aesthetic.
We were doing things that a lot of us,
I was not well-trained as an actor.
Most of them came from
different disciplines
but that was a time in New York,
we're talking about the mid-70s,
where a lot of people, you know,
painters were making music,
dancers were making films.
It was all mixed up and there
was also kind of a subculture
that wasn't careerist.
They were just doing things for now
and that was beautiful training for me.
It also, yeah, just you have
to do it for your own pleasure
and you have to do it to express yourself
and then, hopefully, there's
like-minded people out there.
I think the second that
you start thinking too much
about what people need,
it becomes something else.
When I was playing Jesus, I
was not cowed because somehow
I understood we weren't
doing Jesus for all time,
we were doing our Jesus, you know?
I think whenever you're working
on a historic character,
a character where you have
a really strong reference,
it's your take on it.
That's all you're responsible
for, which is a lot.
- Did playing Jesus change
any of your views of religion?
- Absolutely.
And for how I'm making things because
it was one of the most
demanding things that I've done.
- But, Willem, what do
you do because like,
you played Jesus, or like
the vampire in Nosferatu,
those are based on real
characters but you know,
who knows how Jesus looked
or behaved or whatever,
so the pressure's off but
like, have you ever had like
a real-life character where--
- I don't know that the pressure's off.
(chuckling)
- Right.
- Well, you know, I mean,
that kind of pressure.
(chuckling)
It's your take.
It's not like, you had a
certain look and they're like,
"You need to look right.
"You don't look like."
You know what I mean?
- I made the movie
about Pasolini in Italy.
- Yeah, right!
There you go.
- And he was a beloved
figure and I did feel that
responsibility but I thought
it's just crazy enough
that so many people of, you
know, he's a revered figure
but it takes a couple of crazy Americans
to make a movie about
an Italian cultural hero
but we had so much support from his family
and from people around him.
I was wearing his clothes.
We were shooting the actual places.
There were so many people
that were supportive
that that really helped.
They were like little touchstones.
They were like little relics that we had
and the support of the people.
Similarly, like this
movie The Florida Project,
that's out now.
One of the most beautiful things about
that is Sean Baker, the director,
knows how to mix actual
things with fiction.
We were shooting in an operating motel and
we were there, basically
living with those people
and what helped--
- You stayed in the thing?
No!
- I didn't stay there at night.
I didn't stay there at
night but during the day,
I'd go there and I didn't have a trailer.
I had my little room
and I was next to Troy
and I was next to so-and-so and so-and-so.
- Yeah, yeah.
- I'd talk to them.
They'd talk to me.
You know, those people
became my people and I think
the lesson for me there was
that always has to happen.
When you approach something, you know,
you have to close the
difference between them and us
and they become you, you know,
and then you have some
sort of authority and
some sort of stake and
you're not going to be
egotistical or exploitative, you know?
That's what was so beautiful, really,
guided by Sean in this experience because
the generosity of those
people, opening themselves up
and letting us be at their
place to mix with them
and kind of tell their story was, I think,
what gives the film some integrity.
You come on this property again and
you won't be leaving it, you understand?
- I don't know what you're talking about!
- You don't know what I'm talking about?
You're gonna play it that way, huh?
(grunting)
- Hey!
- All right.
Charlie Coachman of
Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
- You can't keep that!
That's my license.
- I'm gonna call your name
into the County Sheriff.
Now, you get the fuck out of here!
- Sam, is there any kind of character
you would refuse to play?
You play a pretty bigoted
guy in Three Billboards.
Did you hesitate?
- I get all these rednecks.
Green Mile.
- Yeah.
(laughing)
At least you don't have to wear
the hideous brown teeth
that go along with it.
Tom was very generous.
That was my first, one of
my first studio movies.
Tom was very generous.
I had to spit in his face.
- We had this guy coming in, like oh,
this genius guy's gonna come
in to play this other thing.
That was a great set.
- That was a great set.
It was like doing a play.
- It was a bunch of guys
who loved each other.
We came out of our trailers
for scenes that we were not in
in order to watch what you were doing.
- You went to Hollywood
Boulevard to put your hands
in the concrete and you
could have gone home.
They sent you away and you
came back to do off-camera.
You came back to do off-camera.
- That's because Frank Darabont
will shoot 16-hour days
and eat every meal standing up.
- Yeah, but you could have
gone home and you came back.
You're very generous that way.
- Well, it's only three blocks away.
(laughing)
- So, let's talk about
playing those bigots.
Have you ever said no to one because
you just couldn't bear the character?
- I think the pedophile thing is something
I can't mess with.
That's something that's too--
I did that once.
But, they're always trying
to throw me on a horse.
You know, it's weird
because I'm a city kid.
I, for some reason, I have
an affinity for it and
I've dated some Southern
girls and so it's--
I watched Coal Miner's
Daughter maybe too many times,
you know, and Tender Mercies, you know.
- Do you take those
characters home with you or
do they affect you in a negative way?
- No, I don't.
I go home and watch The
Simpsons or something.
You do live with it in your mind.
Obviously, it stays with you.
- You're working.
You're working.
It's work.
- It's working.
Gary's played some rednecks, you know.
- I've played some scary people.
- When's the bail hearing?
- I asked the judge not to
give her bail on account of
her previous marijuana violations
and the judge said, "Sure."
- You fucking prick!
- You do not call an officer
of the law a fucking prick
in his own station house, Mrs.
Hayes, or anywhere, actually.
- What's with the new attitude, Dixon?
Your mama been coachin' ya?
- No, my Mama doesn't do that.
- That's funny, you
were saying about people
playing iconic, very famous people.
- Yeah, yeah.
- I mean, you know Churchill is arguably
the greatest Briton who ever
lived, you know, to many
and they have an idea of who he is
and they've seen these pictures but
do they really know who he is?
Are they remembering Churchill or
are they remembering
Albert Finney as Churchill?
Or Robert Hardy as Churchill?
I think I was somewhat
contaminated by those other actors.
- In England, there are
much more mixed feelings
about Churchill than certainly in America.
- True.
- When I was growing up, there
were those who admired him
and there was a dissenting view.
Did you come away with more mixed feelings
about Churchill from your research?
- No, I came away with
enormous admiration for him.
He's incomparable to any figure.
Lincoln, possibly.
Lincoln is the closest, I think.
Here's a man, 50 years in politics.
He wrote 50 books.
The Nobel Prize for literature.
Painted 540 paintings.
Had 16 exhibitions at The Royal Academy.
Flip-flopped twice,
commanded in four wars.
- Flip-flopped politically.
- Yeah.
Certainly, his mind and
ingenuity took us through,
he navigated that, very
cleverly, the Second World War.
I mean, it's a towering achievement.
Just the life.
- How did you uncorrupt yourself
from those other performances?
- I went to the footage and I saw a man
who was energized and had vitality.
He looked like a baby.
He had a cherubic face, a
sort of naughty schoolboy grin
with a sparkle in his eye.
He was marching ahead of everyone.
It was like moving through
space with a fixity of purpose,
you know, an energy.
He has been played as a sort of grumpy man
born in a bad mood,
a grumpy curmudgeon drunk
with a whiskey and a cigar.
I didn't set out
deliberately to be different
but the man that I saw in
this footage was different
to some of the ways that
he has been represented.
- Christian Bale called
you about the fat suit?
Your fat suit?
Didn't he call you?
- He called me about the
jowls because he said,
"Man, that makeup's good."
- [Tom] How did you handle
the four hours every day?
Four in, one out.
That's usually about what it is.
- [Gary] Yeah, four in, one out.
- Was it prosthetics?
A bunch of stuff?
- I had two people working
on me at the same time
and with great patience and humor,
we got through it and of course,
there's that exciting
moment when, three hours in,
or two hours-15, you start
to see in the mirror.
It was a lovely way in and
the interesting thing is,
by the time I was ready and dressed,
the crew arrived and the other
actors and we would rehearse
and I came to the set as Churchill.
So, Joe Wright, the director,
didn't see Gary for three months.
- Hitler will not insist
on outrageous terms.
He will know his own weaknesses.
He will be reasonable.
- When will the lesson be learned?
When will the lesson be learned?
How many more dictators must be wooed?
Appeased?
Good God!
Given immense privileges, before we learn?
You cannot reason with a tiger
when your head is in its mouth!
- Tom, you've made documentaries
about World War II.
You did Saving Private Ryan.
Have you thought about Churchill?
Would you ever imagine
playing him yourself?
- Oh, dear Lord, no.
That's for not--
that would be like me going and
playing a Welsh coal miner
or something like that.
(laughing)
I don't think that's good casting.
Hey, how about that?
- Is there anybody that you would
like to play that you haven't?
- No, I don't, I must say,
I don't operate that way.
I mean, I'm not saying
something wouldn't come
across the desk and I'd say,
"Oh, my Lord, I never even
imagined this," but no.
I think that is an inorganic
approach to, I think,
what we do, which is very instinctive.
We have to have some,
what do they call it, a coup de foudre?
A lightning bolt has to hit you and
then suddenly, you can't
get it out of your head.
There are themes, though, however,
that I would love to be able to examine.
I made this one movie, Cast Away,
because I wanted to examine the concept of
four years of hopelessness
in which you have
none of the requirements for living,
which is food, water,
shelter, fire, and company.
But, it took us six years
in order to put together
the alliance that would
actually examine that
the way it was and I
only had a third of it
and Bill Broyles only had a third of it,
so we had two-thirds
of this examined theme
and then, nothing happened
until Bob Zemeckis comes along
and provided that other third.
That's the stuff that ends up--
- What do you mean, you
only had a third of it?
- Well, I had that original idea.
I said, a guy--
I was reading an article about FedEx and
I realized that 747s filled with packages
fly across the Pacific three times a day,
filled with nothing but
packages and I just thought,
what happens if that goes down?
What's lost?
Packages?
Oh, except maybe, so then, it's not--
- Whose idea was the volleyball?
- Wilson!
- No, that was Bill Broyles.
I had the search for the five elements and
I had the logic of how he ended up there.
- Because you need--
I did 127 Hours, another guy isolated.
- Yeah.
- Until they figured out,
oh, he has the video camera
and he can externalize the thoughts.
Danny was like, "I don't
know how to do it."
Simon Beaufort, who was the writer,
wouldn't write it until
they figured that out.
And the volleyball, that's what you need.
- Well, Bill had the volleyball.
Bill Broyles, who wrote it, but he had me
paint a face on it to
give myself company and
Bob said, "No, it's gotta
come out of your own blood."
So, he made it an accident
out of a bloody hand.
So, it's like my offspring
is there in order to talk to.
- That's how Wilson was born?
- That's how Wilson was born.
- You lost a lot of weight
quickly for that because
I remember, in Green Mile,
you were talking about it.
Then, you had to lose it quick.
- [Tom] I had a whole year.
- You had to get into all that method--
- We shot the fat half
of the movie and then,
we took a year off--
- Oh, one year!
- Didn't he make the Harrison Ford thing?
- Bob made What Lies
Beneath with Harrison Ford
and Michelle Pfeiffer, with the same crew
in order to keep everybody together--
- And you dieted!
You tortured yourself!
- I went off and grew a beard, you know,
as long as Interstate 10 and
lost every pound I possibly could.
- Wow.
- I don't recommend it.
It's no way to live.
It's better to stay trim.
Better to stay in that
Jesus shape all year round.
(laughing)
Every now and then, you have to comment on
the absurdity of what you do for a living.
- Absolutely!
You know, we're grown men, you know?
- Like in England.
It always drives me nuts in
England because you think,
oh, we're gonna go shoot this
movie at Pinewood Studios
or Shepperton Studios and it has this
patina of class and distinction and
Alec Guinness and David
Lean and you get there
and it looks like an abandoned gas-works.
(laughter)
It's just one of the most
hideous, uncomfortable,
cold, dank places on the planet.
- Just corridors and old sinks.
- Yet, you put on colorful clothes and
come in and bounce around the set and
you're like, this is silly, you know?
- I want to come back to
something you just said,
which is, you know, you're
drawn to certain themes.
There's one thing that
hasn't been explored in film,
not for a while, which is the big issue
Hollywood is dealing
with: sexual harassment.
Should it be and what should you, as guys,
be doing about this now?
- Should it be what?
- [Stephen] Explored by
Hollywood as a theme?
- Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah.
- Well, you know, it's
horrible stuff that's going on.
It's depressing and it's
sad because, obviously,
some of these people are very talented
and it's depressing that,
if they're predators,
then, of course, they have to go down
but it's fucking sad and depressing.
- Has it surprised you, what's come out?
- No, no.
Because look, there's a lot of reasons
people do this for a living.
Making a movie is a
life experience that can
create an awful lot of joy.
You can meet the person
you fall in love with.
You can laugh your heads off.
You can make the best
friend you've ever had.
You can work with one of your heroes.
That's the good stuff that
can happen on a movie.
The bad stuff can happen
on a movie as well.
There's some people that go
into this business because
they got off on having power and
the most times they
feel the most powerful,
which is why they went into the business,
is when they're making, you
know, I mean hitting on.
I don't necessarily
mean completely sexual,
on somebody that's underneath them.
There are predators absolutely everywhere.
There are some that I must say,
"Really? Wow!"
But I mean, the big Magilla,
the one that started it
all off, it's just, well--
- Harvey, you mean.
- [Tom] Yeah.
- Have you seen anything like that happen
and have you taken action or then,
have you regretted not taking action?
- We produced a project
in which someone said
there is an element of
harassment that's going on here
and as soon as we heard,
you gotta jump right in.
You talk to every one of the guilds and
find out what happened and
you go immediately there.
There's stuff that happens
on a set that can be
really inappropriate and there
can be that type of predatory
aspect on a set because you think well,
we're in the circus and we're on the road,
so therefore, do the rules really apply?
They don't really apply?
There's the other aspect
of it is that, it's
"Come try to get this job from me.
"You want me to give you a job?
"Come on.
"Come prove to me that you want this job."
That's a sin and that's
against the law and
that is a degree of harassment
and predatory behavior
that goes against an
assumed code of ethics.
I think eventually, I
think everybody who has
an office or a production office,
above the coffeemaker or the copy machine,
is going to have a code
of ethics in behavior.
If you don't follow these,
you will not work here.
That's not necessarily
gonna be a bad thing.
Somebody said, I don't
know who it was, said,
"What, is it too late to change things?"
No, it's never too late to change things.
It's never too late to
learn new behaviors.
That's the responsibility of anybody
who wants to obey a code
of professional ethics.
- Do you all agree with that?
James?
- Yeah!
If they change it, yeah, of course!
Of course!
Any situation where, you know,
one group of people is
being taken advantage of
or treated differently, then, you know,
it needs to change.
It's everybody's
responsibility to step up.
Of course!
(upbeat jazzy blues music)
- What's been your own
toughest moment as an actor,
whether you're talking about
that fear or something else?
Have you had a particularly tough moment?
- On The Circle.
- Really?
What happened in The Circle?
- On my second to last day,
I had a big speech that
basically put the whole movie
and the narrative in
context for the audience
who weren't listening
for the last two hours.
It was a really important
moment and I just froze up.
I froze up and I forgot
the whole thing and
I was there on set with Emma Watson,
who was amazing about it.
I literally found myself in
basically an 01-Acting class
with Emma Watson trying to say,
"Just remember, just remember the lines.
"What are your intentions?
"What are your motivations?"
I just couldn't, I couldn't get it.
It was embarrassing.
- [James] How'd you get through it?
How'd you get through it?
- Well, they had to--
- [Sam] Cue cards?
- They had to shoot it chunk
by chunk but, at the same time,
I had Emma Watson behind just
trying to mouth the lines.
I just couldn't.
I couldn't, I didn't understand it and
I had to re-evaluate this
whole thing when I got back
into my private time and
understand what the issue was.
- And what was the issue?
- The issue was fear of schedule.
I have a fear of schedule.
I've only just started my career and
this is the first year in which
I've worked on projects back-to-back.
I've never had the opportunity
in my career before.
So, one of the things
that I picked up was that
I'm now viewing my life in chunks.
I'm filming Star Wars in 2017 and
I've got another to do in 2020--
- It's adorable when the kids
experience this, isn't it?
(laughing)
- It's mad!
I've never experienced it
before because where I grew up
and how I grew up is a
day-by-day situation.
You know, it's class every day.
You know, it's church on a particular day.
But now, it's like
you've got this schedule
that's six, seven months down the line
and you're now viewing
your life in chunks.
Sometimes, you forget to rest.
Your mind is constantly going.
- Is it a thing where you feel like
you have to be responsible,
you know, for an entire year,
you're gonna have to be
a certain amount of--
- Yeah, yeah, it's that.
So, you overwork.
You know that you've got time
to prepare for the role but,
I guess, you know, I'm a young man.
I try to just do the testosterone
thing and just juggle
and have it all going at the same time.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Trying to learn for this,
trying to be prepped for that,
training for that and I
never understood my limits.
- James, you do a little juggling.
- [James] Not any more!
(laughing)
- You said recently you hit a wall.
- I did.
You juggle long enough,
you drop some balls.
I mean, not drop balls but it's just,
it's not actually like that.
It's more like--
- [Willem] It's okay.
You can drop some balls when
you've got so many in the air.
- Whatever the metaphor, it's
more like I was doing that.
I was holding onto work
because it was where I felt
the most safe and it was just like
not even being aware of that.
It was just like, I need more.
I need to fill this up.
Subconsciously, it was just
like that's what I know the best
and that's where I feel most
comfortable and then realizing,
after a while, it's sort
of diminishing returns.
Doing so many things, for me,
was actually not comforting me anymore.
I realized fewer things
with more attention,
with people that I really love
working with and care about,
that that will give me exactly
what I was seeking by
doing so many things.
- I had just under a year
to think about Churchill
and we had four weeks
rehearsal in a rehearsal room,
with props, with furniture,
saying the words out loud,
with the actors that you're going to
be doing the scene with.
- That's awesome!
- Discussing what works,
what doesn't work.
I have to say, you know, I go in and out.
I lose my love for it.
I lose my love for acting
because you get there,
you're supposed to have a
relationship with a person
that you've only met the day before,
you don't really rehearse.
You kind of block with camera,
sometimes, out of the gate.
And you go,
"You wanna go?
"You wanna do one?"
"Yeah."
You do a take.
"That was good, that was good.
"You want one more?"
Well, I've come all this way.
(laughing)
We've gotta move on.
It's amazing anything is any good.
I just get so sad
working like that and go,
"Really?"
- Did you ever think of quitting acting?
- Many times.
- So, then, where do you find
the passion for it again, or do you?
- When you do something that
comes, as Mr. Hanks here said,
it's not, you know, Dracula
was never on my bucket list.
It was Coppola, which made it interesting.
It came across the desk,
so you're at the mercy of the industry,
the imagination of the
people that are casting you,
and they go,
"Oh, yeah, Gary's played these villains.
"What about Jim Gordon?"
You know, and then a
Tinker, Tailor comes in,
or a Churchill, or an opportunity
to work as I've done with,
sadly, the late Tony
Scott that I worked with,
and I've worked with
Ridley and you work with
some of these people and you
get re-energized and inspired
and you remember why you do it.
- Gary, let me ask you.
A month of rehearsal sounds amazing.
- It does.
- It's almost unheard of.
- Yeah.
- I'm sure you and Joe Wright
lead the charge on that,
like you want to be a part of this movie,
this is what we're doing,
and all that, but you know,
a lot of times you can't
do that but I also think,
like, sometimes it depends
on the type of film.
- [Gary] Yeah, yeah.
- For example, like, I don't know,
maybe you guys had a
month of rehearsal for
The Florida Project.
I don't know.
But, like, I remember doing
another Florida movie,
Spring Breakers, and part of
the vibe of that is immersing
into the environment and
bringing the real people in
and so, I really don't
think a month of rehearsal
with like, non-actors, is gonna help--
- But that was Harmony's film,
in which you were superb.
- I heard you watched it and
you didn't know it was me.
- I had no idea it was you.
I said,
"God, that creepy-ass guy!
"Where'd you find him?"
(laughing)
And they were like, "It's James Franco!"
- If you haven't seen it,
it's really a phenomenal film.
- Your scenes with the king, for example.
The rehearsal for those
scenes must have played
huge dividends because every
beat so tiny and small.
You can't find that in, you know,
before lunch on the set and then move onto
the second half of the scene.
- Yeah, we came in and
the rhythm and we clicked
and just really started
to roll from take one.
What you're talking about,
and I know Harmony and
we've often talked about
doing something together
and I would gladly
throw myself into something like that.
That is very specific kind of movie
that you're talking
about and an experience
that you're talking about
with a director that has
a real point of view and a process with
the way he likes to work.
Just talking about some of those, too,
where you feel like you've got to work but
you don't want a job.
That's that.
It's that.
- Is there a film that
you've seen recently
that has revitalized you,
or has actually changed your
thinking about something,
a film this year?
- I'm gonna say Get Out.
- [Sam] Yeah, that was damn good.
- Get Out was 19 things all at once.
It was a creepy Twilight Zone movie.
It was a stand-up comedy act.
It was about two people in love
regardless of their station in life.
I think it's very hard to
make a contemporary movie that
actually does capture the zeitgeist and
the place that we are in right now.
At the end of the day,
at the end of that movie,
it accomplished something
that I had never, ever,
ever, ever seen in a movie.
There is a dead white woman
who has killed herself, right?
And there's a black guy
with all her blood on him
and the police come and he's innocent
but what is gonna happen to this guy?
And they get out of it,
you know, spoiler alert.
- You know they reshot the ending?
- They did?
What was the original one?
- He went to jail.
- [Sam] Oh, he gets taken to jail, okay.
- Have you seen anything
that's really impacted you?
- When We Were Kings
had a big effect on me.
I think that there was
something about Muhammad Ali.
We were talking about
fear and joy and you know,
Foreman made him wait 10
minutes before he came out.
He was trying to psych him out.
Ali psychs himself up.
He starts shadowboxing,
talking to the audience.
"Ali, mum-ba-yay!"
Ali's scared, you know?
He's scared.
That guy, Foreman, was the
Mike Tyson of that time,
and he mustered up the courage, you know.
So, when I'm scared
and I have stage fright
and all that stuff, I think of that.
- Were you scared when you
went in Three Billboards?
- Always!
Always scared.
Yeah, sure.
- [Stephen] Of what?
- Of sucking.
(chuckling)
You know, of all that stuff, you know?
You're scared all the time.
I mean, I was scared when
I was doing the play,
Fool For Love, that I
would rope shitty when
Ed Harris came, because he had
done the original production.
Thank God I roped good when he came.
- You roped good when I came, too.
(laughing)
- Oh, good, good.
- Did you talk about
that with Martin McDonagh
when you did it or what
were those conversations?
- I think that I had the
luxury of a lot of time
and I went down to Southern Missouri and
I did some ride-alongs with
cops and stuff like that.
- That's interesting.
(chuckling)
- How did they treat you
as a celebrity ride-along?
- They were great.
A guy named Josh McCullen,
he taped my lines in a tape recorder.
My dialect coach, Liz
Himmelstein, found a cop and
Martin didn't want much
of an accent so I said,
"You know, Liz, I think I'm
gonna have to tape another cop.
"This cop doesn't have
enough of an accent."
We found another cop, went
down and did some ride-alongs.
But, I have an acting
coach, Terry Knickerbocker.
You know, it takes a village.
I do a lot of work ahead of time.
You don't get to rehearse so you're just
ready to go when you get on set.
- Do you all do a lot
of work ahead of time?
- [Willem] It depends.
- Yeah, it depends.
Sometimes, you have to.
- Sometimes, you don't have to.
- [Stephen] When?
- You know, I think, for me anyway,
you just look for the triggers and
you look for the thing that
gives you the confidence to say,
"I am this guy."
You can receive what's happening.
We were talking about
different kinds of movies.
I tend to make a lot of movies where
you try to capture these moments and
you don't get time to
craft things, you know.
And that's interesting
but to start out with
to overcome this fear,
overcome this uncertainty,
kind of direct your energies,
you need to hang onto something.
Sometimes, it can be something
as simple as a costume.
I always go back to Wild At Heart.
I had these teeth.
They were everything.
I put those teeth in my mouth and
it kept me from closing my mouth.
I always had this expression and
I felt like I knew who
the guy was, you know?
Other times, you feel
totally insecure about
approaching being this person
until you create a history,
until you make things happen,
until you learn things
that make you have a shift in your head
to feed the imagination.
You can't just imagine
things from a dead stop.
You've got to make something, you know,
and then you turn it into something.
- That's how I felt
working on Detroit because
it was interesting, the
detachment to the project,
and not enough time was a
part of the creative process,
especially for Kathryn.
We didn't know everything
that was going to happen
on a day-to-day basis,
so there was always a
feeling of channeling
that very nervous energy,
that feeling of being fearful.
- [James] She fosters that.
- Yeah, she fosters that
into the scene and so,
you realize, after about two
weeks of getting used to it
that it's vital.
It's a part of performance
for this specific project
whereas, I'll go on something else,
I might get time and I'll use it.
- With Lars Von Trier, he
always says, first of all,
he doesn't want you to
know where the camera is.
He prohibits rehearsal.
His mantra is, we only need one.
But, you know, then you watch
something like what Gary did,
it's a different kind of movie.
- If you could put one
movie, one performance,
not your own, in a time capsule,
I know you're going to say several but
choose one that's particularly
meaningful for you
that you've seen that's impacted you.
- [Sam] Deer Hunter.
- [Stephen] Deer Hunter?
Why?
- It had a huge impact on me,
I think, when I was a kid.
Yeah.
I saw it with my father and my father
kind of looked like DeNiro in that.
He had a beard and a mole and stuff.
- John?
- Tom Hardy in The Warrior was, to me,
just a powerful performance.
Personally, I found myself
engrossed in a narrative that
made me reflect into my own life,
just because of the
versatility of roles that
Tom Hardy has had back-to-back
is shocking to me.
- Tom, what about you?
- Well, I'd go to Robert Duvall on any
number of characters that he's done,
just because he did not
look like the movie star
that was supposed to be and he did some
very subtle stuff with Coppola.
When I go back and examine the
breadth of everything he did,
he is, I think--
A lot of what we have to
figure out as actors is,
one is particular to us and
the other one is particular to the movie.
Particular to us is the behavior.
We have to get the behavior
down and it's not our behavior.
As a matter of fact,
if it is your behavior,
you'd better go outside
yourself and find something
so that you're not just being you,
although sometimes it
doesn't matter so much.
But, you have to get the behavior down.
The other part of it is the protocol,
meaning like, how the people live
in the world that they live in.
What is required of them?
What is their job?
How much do they sleep and eat?
Robert Duvall, I think, he always finds
that behavior and protocol.
I think the best of them all
is Tom Hagen in The Godfather.
You know, he's not the Italian.
He's not even related to them.
He's just a kid that they
found in the street but
he becomes this guy who is always
explaining the legal aspect of it.
- If we're taking more than one,
I'll say DeNiro is Mean Streets,
Taxi Driver, and Raging Bull.
Just the prime, you know,
collaborations with Scorsese
and you know, Goodfellas,
but those three, like,
I've never seen DeNiro behave in the way
that he did in Mean Streets.
It's just like this exuberance of youth.
He's just like ready to go and
it's like the first
collaboration with this guy
that you know they'll go on to have
all these incredible things together.
Then, Taxi Driver?
There's just never been
anything like that.
The kind of preparation
we're talking about,
you know, that's like Raging Bull,
that's the role everyone talks about
gaining the weight or whatever.
That's the role where you're like,
oh, that's what preparation looks like.
- Willem, name one.
- Frankenstein movies, Boris Karloff.
- [All] Oh, wow, yeah!
- How about you, Gary?
- George C. Scott, his
work in the Kubrick film.
- [Tom] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- A very long question, speed round here.
Just a very brief answer.
If you couldn't act, you all have hobbies.
What would you pursue?
Tom, I know you've been writing.
- Yeah, okay.
I'll go with that.
Some brand of daily
journalism, like a column.
Goings On About Town kind of thing.
I'd like that.
- Oh, interesting.
Well, we're very happy to hire
you at Hollywood Reporter.
John, how about you?
- Probably architecture.
- James?
- If I wasn't an actor?
Director.
(laughing)
What?
He's a writer!
- You're probably gonna get both anyway.
You know what I mean?
- [Stephen] What about you?
- Pumping gas.
I've got no Plan B.
Who knows, man?
Bar-backing, busing tables.
- Cook, or a farmer.
- [Stephen] Oh!
- What about yoga?
He's good at that.
- A yogi?
(chuckling)
That's my practice.
- Last, but not least.
- Well, I have, my sort of hobby is I do
19th Century wet plate photography.
- Wow!
- Wow!
- So, I would do that.
I could do that until the end of time.
- I envy you that passion.
- Well, this was such a great round table.
Thank you very, very much.
- Thank you.
- It was fun!
- Thank you.
- You guys were so excellent.
(upbeat jazzy blues music)
- Ready?
- [Director] Okay, quiet on set.
- And I look down the lens.
- Let's do it!
(upbeat jazzy blues music)
- Hi, I'm Margot Robbie.
- Bryan Cranston.
- Robert Pattinson.
- John Boyega.
- I'm Sam Rockwell.
- Willem Dafoe.
- Emma Stone.
- Allison Janney.
- Guillermo del Toro.
Thank you for watching.
- Thank you.
- Thank you for watching.
- Thanks for watching
The Hollywood Reporter.
- The Hollywood Reporter.
- The Hollywood Reporter.
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