Out of Character
A reluctant interview with Steve Buscemi on the art of 'Interview'
The interview begins over a plate of cookies. And I have come prepared: I have seen the movies and read the material; I have studied the clippings and the obsessive fan websites in search of clues. His whole life story is out there - his time in experimental theater, his earlier life as a New York City fireman, all the years since as a working film actor. But Steve Buscemi is thinking about chocolate chips. And he is already counting the minutes.
Buscemi is not the kind of guy who is always talking about himself. Being interviewed is not his idea of fun, but it is part of the job of an actor, particularly when it's to discuss a film he's directed himself. In this case, and with no small irony, the film is Interview, an intense emotional drama wherein Buscemi plays a troubled magazine journalist assigned to interview a self-absorbed blonde B-movie starlet (played by Sienna Miller). Their collision is at times amusing, sexually charged, and frequently unpleasant, a tone that one critic has already compared to the emotional warfare in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? There is shouting, crying, deceit. And it is nothing like our chat over this plate of cookies.
Buscemi is pleased with Interview, he says, but the process of interrogation has not been made more inviting as a result of making this new film. He will continue to avoid being interviewed when he can.
"If I had my way, yeah, I would do a lot less [interviews], but I understand why a company that buys a film would want the director and the actors to go out and support it," he says, gracious but definitely not fully engaged with our discussion. He breaks off a piece of cookie, looking for chocolate chips and finding only raisins. "But sometimes it just feels meaningless, because you just do it over and over. And it then verges on ruining the experience for me, having to talk about something that I really loved doing - having to talk about it so much."
If he's complaining, it's only because I asked.
Buscemi has earned wide critical acclaim and inspired all those fan websites over the last two decades as a result of his memorable acting work in a startling array of films for such directors as Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs), the Coen brothers (Fargo), Tim Burton (Big Fish), and Robert Altman (Kansas City). He's played heroes, villains, and victims; nervous, angry criminals and a bitter, sad, and hopeful romantic record collector (in Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World). He's worked less as a director, but has managed to make some striking personal statements in small independent films, most notably with Trees Lounge in 1996 and his adaptation of Eddie Bunker's prison novel Animal Factory in 2000. And he's drawn lessons from his experiences watching and working with other indie directors.
"I think it's more just an attitude," Buscemi says, "where you don't compromise on the big things, and you do what's best for the film. And then you give people a lot of responsibility. The trick is to articulate to the people you're working with how you see it and what your style is. But, at the same time, giving them the creative freedom to help you envision that."
Interview is different from his other work in many ways, including that it's a remake (of a 2003 film with the same name by Dutch director Theo van Gogh). It's the story of Pierre Peders (Buscemi), a political reporter who has arrived unprepared and uninterested in the actress he's been sent to interview, and of a young woman (Miller) with an outsized sense of celebrity privilege, who arrives an hour late for their restaurant meeting, despite living only blocks away. That first encounter ends abruptly amid a mutual tirade of insults, but when Pierre gets injured outside, the actress invites him up to her loft for a bandage and a glass of wine.
"I just love the original film and the relationship between these two characters who were just meeting for the first time and developed this sort of codependent relationship, volatile at times, and also sweet and tender," says Buscemi, who is dressed in black, a graying goatee on his chin. "When I watched the original, it was like this long-term couple that were breaking up but didn't know how.
"I was less concerned about what they did for a living than who they are as people and where they come from and what forms them as far as the experiences they've had in their past. The heart of it was this relationship between these two sort of damaged souls."
Unlike Buscemi, van Gogh was a filmmaker who loved to talk about himself. He was a director, a journalist, a political activist, and a talk-show host back home. And then he was murdered on the street in Amsterdam by an Islamist extremist who objected to van Gogh's Submission, a 10-minute meditation on violence against women in certain Islamic sects. But before his death, the director spoke often of remaking this work for English-speaking audiences.
"Theo made 13 films," says Bruce Weiss, a friend of van Gogh for 10 years, and now a producer of three remakes of his films, including Buscemi's Interview, the first to be released. "Most of them were stories about relationships between men and women, which is a very universal theme. To me, they're all about dysfunctional relationships. Anybody who's ever been in a relationship can identify with something in these films. It doesn't matter if they're in Dutch or English or French."
The trilogy of remakes, a project called "Triple Theo," has also been done with the help of van Gogh's Dutch camera crew, his script supervisor, and his original producer, Gijs van de Westelaken. The other films are being directed by Stanley Tucci (Blind Date) and John Turturro (06, currently shooting). Each has been shot on HD video, employing van Gogh's technique of using three cameras simultaneously.
The English-language adaptations on all three scripts were co-authored by David Schechter, who also appears onscreen in Interview as an obsequious waiter. "He's quirky in his own particular way," Schechter says of Buscemi, with whom he shares writing credit for Interview. "He's got a sense of humor that is instinctive, that permeates what he does, but it is very character-based. It's not about one-liners. It pretty much flows from character, and that [reflects] an off-beat quality, and a sort of an outsider quality."
That outsider persona hasn't prevented Buscemi from working within big-budget studio films (1997's Con Air or 1998's Armageddon), which have only increased his visibility - amid all the explosions - and made it possible for him to do more independent work. "Why should I regret it?" says Buscemi. "I've been able to make a living as an actor, and it's also afforded me the opportunity to do even more [independent] work than if I was only doing low-budget films. If doing studio films helps that, then I'm grateful."
In a few moments, Buscemi's publicist will re-enter the room to announce that our time is up. He will not protest. I'm his last interview of the day.
"I think there is way too much emphasis these days on" - Buscemi takes a long pause - "nothing. You know, the problems of a few people - a few actresses - seem to overwhelm what's in the media, and it's unfortunate, because it's really being shoved down our throats. And I don't think there's an appetite out there for it. It's just easier to cover that stuff, and easier to make a story out of nothing. And that's unfortunate, because there's a lot of real problems, in the real world, that people face every day that don't get that kind of coverage."
He talks of soldiers returning from war, the problems of adapting back into civilian society, the daily problems of a world at war that are not so glamorous. He knows something about this. After the attacks of 9/11, Buscemi returned to his old firehouse in New York and volunteered to help search for survivors. They found none.
"Well, why is it news that Nicky Hilton visits Paris in prison? You know, why is that news?"
He's asking, but there is no time for answers. Our talk is over, the cookies are gone, and it is time to get his picture taken. One more interview is finally behind him.
Published: 07/05/2007
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