BERLIN & BEYOND 2009—Michael Hawley Previews the Line-up

The 14th edition of Berlin & Beyond (B&B), the Bay Area's annual week-long festival of new films from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, will take place at the Castro Theater from January 15 to 21, 2009. I walked into the festival's press conference hoping to find three particular films in the line-up—Christian Petzold's Jerichow, Götz Spielmann's Revanche and Uli Edel's The Baader Meinhof Complex. I'm happy to say that two of my three wishes came true.

The one that didn't, The Baader Meinhof Complex, seemed like such an obvious choice for this year's B&B. It's Germany's 2008 Oscar submission and was just nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Foreign Language Film. Festival Director Ingrid Eggers explained that B&B tried hard to secure the film, but regrettably couldn't make it happen. The movie depicts the 1960s/1970s German terrorist group RAF (Red Army Faction), and Eggers assures us it will arrive in the Bay Area later this year.

Nonetheless, there's a lot of great stuff in this year's line-up. Director Christian Petzold makes his fifth B&B appearance with Jerichow, which garnered great reviews at this year's Venice Film Festival. The film stars Petzold regulars Nina Hoss and Benno Fürmann, and shares a plot with The Postman Always Rings Twice. Revanche is Austria's Oscar entry for this year's Best Foreign Language Film, and tells the tale of a Ukrainian prostitute, her boyfriend and the aftermath of a bank robbery gone horribly wrong. Friends who saw it at Toronto came back raving. Speaking of Oscar submissions, Switzerland's 2008 entry The Friend, will also screen at B&B. The film's director Micha Lewinsky, has also won the festival's MK Award for Best First Feature, which carries a $5,000 cash prize.

The big name at this year's B&B is Wim Wenders, who will receive the Award for Lifetime Achievement in Directing. Wenders will appear at the Castro Theater in conversation with German film scholar Gerd Gemünden, following the U.S. premiere of his latest film Palermo Shooting. The version that will screen at B&B is about 20 minutes shorter than the original Cannes edit, which received possibly the worst reviews of any film in this year's competition. We were shown this new version after the B&B press conference, and I'll be writing about it later. As part of its tribute to Wenders, the festival will also show a new 35mm print of the director's 1976 New German Cinema classic, Kings of the Road, as well as a new documentary, One Who Sets Forth: Wim Wenders' Early Years.

The festival's Opening Night feature is Cherry Blossoms, Doris Dorrie's latest film—and her sixth to appear at B&B. It's a bit of an odd choice considering it just screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival in October. The Closing Night feature is the stylized quasi-musical rom-com Melodies of Spring.

Five other narrative features have caught my attention. Cloud 9 caused quite a (positive) stir when it screened in Cannes' Un Certain Regard, and was frequently referenced as the "old people having sex" movie. The Wave recreates a classroom experiment in autocracy and fascism that took place in a 1967 Palo Alto high school. Ron Jones, the local teacher on whose social experiment the film is based, will appear at the screening. Evet, I Do! is a comedy about four couples in pre-wedding turmoil, whose common link is the same bridal shop clearance sale. It appears this may be the only B&B narrative feature of LGBT interest. The setting for The Invention of Curried Sausage is Hamburg near the end of WWII. Based on a well-known novel, the film stars the always superb Barbara Sukowa and recounts a May-December romance. Finally, Come In and Burn Out concerns three young people caught in the hamster-wheel existence of call-center work.

One of the highlights this year is sure to be a special presentation titled Hollywood Speaks German. When sound film arrived in Hollywood, so did the problem of how to export films abroad. During the silent era, movies were simply given new intertitles to overcome language barriers. In the early sound era, however, dubbing was still an insurmountable technological challenge, so films were shot in several languages. This program features clips from 14 German-language Hollywood films from 1930-31 (including Anna Christie and The Lauren & Hardy Murder Case) and will be followed by a Q&A with film historian Russell Merritt. Conversely, this year's B&B Film Classic screening will be Josef von Sternberg's 1930 Marlene Dietrich/Emil Jennings-starring The Blue Angel—only it'll be the rare, German-made English-language version.

There are several documentary features in the festival, and the one I'm most excited about is Football Under Cover. The film documents a 2006 Teheran women-only soccer match (both on the field and in the stands) between Iran's national women's team and a local Berlin team. Football Under Cover won the Teddy Award for Best Documentary and the Audience Award at this year's Berlin Film Festival. I'm also intrigued by La Paloma—Longing Worldwide, which examines the immensely popular song (even Elvis sang it in Blue Hawaii) that was composed in the Basque country in the 1860s. Director Sigrid Faltin travels the world and discovers that although the melody remains the same, the lyrics have been continually adapted to suit nationality and culture. Lastly, Bird's Nest looks at the Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron, who designed the Beijing Olympic stadium. I reviewed the film earlier when it screened at this year's SF DocFest.

Cross-published on film-415 and Twitch.

THE WRESTLER—The Evening Class Interview With Darren Aronofsky

My interview with Darren Aronofsky for The Wrestler proved something of a benchmark because Aronofsky claims the honor of being the first director I've interviewed twice, indicating—I guess—that I have lasted long enough to achieve such a benchmark and that I might stick around for a while to keep conversing with the makers and shapers of my favorite films. The Wrestler was indeed one of my favorite films of 2008. It won the Golden Lion at the Venice International, and has been nominated for three Golden Globes: Mickey Rourke for Best Actor, Marisa Tomei for Best Supporting Actress, and Bruce Springsteen for Best Original Song. The San Francisco Film Critics Circle likewise awarded Rourke Best Actor (in a tie with Sean Penn for Milk). We met in Aronofsky's suite at the Ritz Carlton to discuss the film that has almost singlehandedly resuscitated Mickey Rourke's career. Limping from a rock climbing accident outside of Phoenix, Aronofsky was otherwise in great spirits.

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Michael Guillén: Where to start? I guess we need to start with Mickey Rourke's performance, which is not only great but tempered by sheer grace. You don't often see an actor so emotionally naked. Can you talk about casting him and steering him to that performance?

Darren Aronofsky: Well, it was a very hard role to cast, as you can imagine. Now, in retrospect, it's completely obvious when things match up, as they often do; but, it was a very long path. I can't actually remember the light bulb moment. I do know that I was a big fan since I saw him in Angel Heart. I was 18, backpacking around Europe, and in Paris where I went in to see the film and it just blew me away. Since then I've been a big fan. Then like everyone else I've been wondering, "What happened?" It made me sad that he had turned into this joke. But I was always interested whenever he showed up. When the role came up and we started thinking about names, it was hard because—not only did I need someone who was emotionally surprising, original, and had enough depth to do everything: the humor as well as the tragedy—I needed someone who could do the physicality. I remember being originally concerned about the physicality because normally he's about 190. He's a big guy but he's not huge like a wrestler so I was wondering if he could do it. It turns out Mickey's dad Philip Andre Rourke, Sr. was a Mr. New York, a body builder back in the days, so Mickey grew up within the bodybuilding culture. So he was excited to do this. It ended up being six months of lifting to put on 35 pounds of muscle.

The thing with Mickey is that he's lazy. I think that's because he's one of those kids in school that could just coast through without doing any work, getting B+s and driving you crazy. That's Mickey! He could easily put up his feet in any movie and I think that's what he often does—he just coasts through—so my major job became to challenge him and dare him to do better and to do his best work. Working with him became about pushing him to go deeper and deeper because he's got an infinite well of possibility that he can summon up.

Guillén: How does it feel for you knowing that you have revived his career through giving him this opportunity?

Aronofsky: It's great! I kind of had that experience with Ellen Burstyn in Requiem For A Dream—not that I really revived her career; but, the role opened her up to new opportunities—it's a great thing to do. It's a fun exercise to find these unused talents. It's also exciting to find out how many closeted Mickey Rourke fans there are. That's been way beyond my expectations because, literally, just three months ago he was a joke. He'll say it himself. He called me a week after we won the Golden Lion in Venice and said, "What have you done? A week ago I couldn't get a ham sandwich; now there's paparazzi outside my door!" So it's been great to see all these different people who remember how great he once was and excited to see him do good work again.

Guillén: His performance in The Wrestler aligns with a true comeback mythos.

Aronofsky: He's been trying to "comeback" for a while, doing the jobs he's been doing for the last eight-nine years or so; but, I think he's finally found his groove. He's got a team around him that's supportive. The other day it was emotional, I was in Miami and Mickey sent his sister to the screening—who I had never met—and she came up to me afterwards and said, "Thank you for giving my brother his life back." My Mom lives down in South Florida and she was at the screening too, overheard Mickey's sister, and started crying. I almost started crying too. It was very emotional. I don't think I gave Mickey his life back—ultimately Mickey did the work to get there—but, I helped. I gave him a shot. But it was hard, I'll tell you. Every single financier on the planet—except for the one who paid for the film, and paid much too little for it—said no and the reason they said no was for one reason: because of Mickey. Period. I've said this to Mickey. It's not offensive to him. But every single investor said, "Mickey Rourke can't be sympathetic. He can't hold the picture." I was like, "You're wrong." [Laughs.] So we just kept at it and it took us a year and a half until we found someone who was crazy enough in that finance world to take a risk.

Guillén: Can you talk about where the story came from?

Aronofsky: It was an idea first and the idea was to do something set in the wrestling world because in the observation that (a) no one has done it and (b) the more I looked into it, the more I realized that it wasn't just a joke. When you meet wrestlers who used to sell out stadiums of 50,000 people who are now working for $200 a night, there's something dramatic there right away. I met a lot of these legends who I knew as a kid who were completely accessible and beaten down. It was a long trip. When I first started thinking about doing a wrestling picture, I thought it would be about a wrestler in their late twenties, early thirties, but then it quickly became clear that approach would mean they would be in the WWE and getting the creative freedom we needed to work in that arena probably wouldn't happen. Then we thought about making a period piece before Vince McMahon organized all the different territories that used to be fractured and brought them all together; but, then we realized we were low budget and couldn't afford that. Then I started going to these independent shows because I knew I could get into that world—it wasn't controlled or anything—and that's where I started to see these legends and that triggered the realization: "Something dramatic is going on here. What's the story?" I started talking to those guys and hearing their stories and, unfortunately, the more I talked to them, the more I detected these similar threads in their lives, of these guys who were on the road for 350 days of the year back in their glory days, who basically just left shambles of their home life in exchange for fame. Basically they were left out as trash once they got past whatever prime is defined by mainstream wrestling. So we put the story together brick by brick.

Guillén: Returning to your casting, clearly Mickey is great, clearly Marisa is great, but I was equally impressed with all of the small roles in the film. I was really taken by your use of Bryan Anderson.

Aronofsky: Who's Bryan Anderson?

Guillén: Bryan Anderson is the fellow who offers his prosthetic leg to Randy the Ram.

Aronofsky: Oh, the kid, yes. How did you know his name?

Guillén: I'd read articles about his rehabilitation from the Iraq War in Esquire Magazine and his dreams of being a stunt man and I was so impressed that you used him in the film.

Aronofsky: I didn't cast him actually. Douglas Crosby, the stunt man brought him in. The stunt man's an amazing guy who likes to give opportunities to kids that have gotten the short end of the stick, like Bryan. Bryan and Doug were like, "Hey, instead of using the folding chair, why don't you use my leg?" I asked, "Is it going to break?" Bryan answered, "Well, it's made out of this space age material that you can't crack. You can hit it as hard as you want and it won't break." So I went, "Mickey, what do you think?" and Mickey said, "Yeah, let's go for it." The crowd came alive chanting, "Use his leg! Use his leg!" It was just great. We realized right then that it made Randy the Ram a people's hero. But it was almost improvised. I mean, we had discussed it before we started shooting but we basically didn't know what was going to happen with that crowd until it happened; it came alive.

Guillén: And also Todd Barry, the stand-up comic.

Aronofsky: Todd's great! I'm an old fan. I'm a little bit in that scene. I knew a lot of those comedians in the underground New York scene. I always want to use them. Also, the writer Rob Siegel was the editor of The Onion for seven years and also knows a lot of those guys so he said, "Hey, let's write something for Todd." We wrote that role especially for Todd.

Guillén: You alluded when you were talking about writing the script that you knew some of these wrestling legends. Were you a lifelong wrestling fan? Were you a high school wrestler?

Aronofsky: No, no, no. I'm not really a big wrestling fan. I think a lot of guys my age had an eight-month love affair with the sport, y'know? Probably mine was that long, if not shorter. It was before Hulkamania so it was before it became such a cultural phenomena. When I was watching, it was more like something on local TV. But the film doesn't come out of that. It comes out of the fact that wrestling is such a cultural phenomenon but no one has ever dealt with it in a serious way. It just hasn't been, which is strange; but, I think it's because most people think it's a joke. They think it's fake so they think it's a joke and write it off. But the reality is, you look at these guys and they're all dropping dead at 30, 40 years old and the question is "Why?" Where is this drama coming from? The Wrestler is just the tip of the iceberg of the stories that are in this world. I don't know if you know about the Von Erichs? It's an amazing story about three brothers from a wrestling dynasty that all died.

Guillén: I mentioned to Marisa when I was talking with her that I appreciated how you psychologize physicality in your films. You could have had a lot of mimicry and posturing going on to simulate the wrestling world; but, instead, you've created characters that audiences truly care for. I'm also intrigued with the parallel structure you set up narratively between the lives (and bodies) of Randy the Ram and Cassidy. Can you talk a bit about how you set up that parallel narrative structure?

Aronofsky: It just sort of came out in the development process. We just stumbled on it. The reason we originally came up with the idea of the stripper was because in reality when these wrestlers are done wrestling that's what they do. They go to the strip club. Then the more we looked at the life of a stripper, we realized they too have this line between fantasy and reality. Their jobs take them into a world of eroticism, which is similar to the world of super-heroism that Mickey's character enters. They both go into this fantasy world where they dress up wearing almost nothing; they both have fake names; they both wear spandex; they both use their bodies as their art; and they're both endangered by time and aging. Eventually they're both threatened to be put out to pasture as they get older. So that parallel structure you're noting emerged as we kept developing the characters.

Guillén: And you seem to have a thematic preoccupation with redemption from ruin. What's that about?

Aronofsky: Right, redemption from ruin. There's no redemption in Requiem of a Dream. [Laughs.] It's just ruin. I don't know where it comes from. I don't see a shrink….

Guillén: You make films instead?

Aronofsky: Yeah, that's my way to tap it. I don't know where it comes from.

Guillén: Can we talk about how you put together the sound track? It's all great but my favorite is "Sweet Child o' Mine", which parallels between Randy the Ram and Axl Rose.

Aronofsky: That's true too. Mickey and Axl actually happen to be great old friends. Surprise surprise! It was a lot of fun. The writer Rob Siegel has a lot of skills and one of his skills happens to be an incredible knowledge of music, including "hair music." In the script he wrote in all these songs that were funny but they often were big hits that we couldn't afford. So then we went to the next tier of hair music, which actually made it somehow more authentic, because those smaller hits of random bands, one hit wonders, have an even cheesier feel to them because they never crossed over. It was a lot of fun for me educating myself on hair music because I knew none of it. I really got into it. I listened to a lot of it. It was fun listening to the lyrics. Basically I discovered that every lyric of every hair music could fit anywhere in the film. The Randy the Ram story is sort of a hair music song. The story of Randy the Ram is totally about, "I'm going to do it for the money. Forget my other life, I'm on the road." Those are all the themes that are there so it was the perfect music for the film.

With "Sweet Child o' Mine", what happened was we were doing the scene in the bar. Mickey was miserable because he hates hair music. He loves Guns and Roses but he hates a lot of hair music. I was like, "Mickey, these are the only songs we can use." There were like three or four songs that we could afford because it costs more money if the actors sing along. I told him, "These are the only three or four songs that we can afford. You have to choose one." He kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. He said, "Why can't we get 'Sweet Child o' Mine'?" I was like, "Go ahead, get in touch with Axl and try; but, the last time Axl gave a song to which anyone could sing along, it cost a million and a half dollars." So as the day got closer and closer, it became a possibility because Mickey kept bothering Axl and begging Axl, "Please, let me have it." But you know you have to get the sign-off from everyone in Guns and Roses. But Mickey's friends with all of them, he knows all of them. The day for shooting comes and we don't have the rights. Mickey said, "Just shoot it. I'll get you the rights." I said, "I can't, man. We'll just have to do 'Round the Round.' " So I got him to do "Round the Round." We got halfway through the day and then Axl called and said, "You can have 'Sweet Child o' Mine'." I was like, "Oh gosh, should we go tell Mickey that we got the song? Or just keep going because we can't reshoot?" Because we were on such a low budget that we couldn't go back and reshoot. Axl ended up calling Mickey and telling Mickey and Mickey agreed with me in the end that any of us, anyone, when "Sweet Child o' Mine" comes on could sing along with "Sweet Child o' Mine." It makes them more of a very unique subset that they're both singing to "Round the Round." In the end, creatively, I liked it the best; but, now that we had the rights to "Sweet Child o' Mine", I was like, "Oh great, we'll use it for the final entrance because it's such an important song for us on the film." Mickey used to come out to that when he was a boxer. Whenever he'd do anything athletic in the film, he'd be like, "Put up 'Sweet Child o' Mine' " and we'd blast it so that he was all pumped up when he did his move. For the crew it became our anthem and having it in the film was just a great thing that Axl added. That's why he has that thank you in the end. It's a long story.

Guillén: But a great one! Was it through Mickey also that you secured Bruce Springsteen?

Aronofsky: Yeah, yeah. I had nothing to do with that either. The Boss basically told me that he was doing it because he wanted to help Mickey and he's been hoping Mickey would get an opportunity like this. It turns out he's a big fan of Mickey's. He wanted to help us and he gave us the song for nothing.

Guillén: What I admire in your direction of Mickey is that you got him to offer something different. He's much more restrained and emotionally authentic in his portrayal of Randy the Ram, and not as much a hip poseur as he has been in other films.

Aronofsky: That was a big thing. Probably my greatest conflict with Mickey on this film was the fact that Mickey Rourke doesn't wear any sunglasses through the entire film. [Laughs.] Every day he brought a new pair of sunglasses to the set and I was like, "Mickey, no sunglasses today. People are paying money to look into your eyes. They don't want to look at your face behind mirrored glasses. They want to look into your eyes. That's the gateway. You gotta let 'em in." The thing about Mickey is he's got all this armor on and he's a big guy; but, he's really jelly inside, he's really soft and tender, and that's why he's always wearing sunglasses, is to hide that. He's afraid of the world. He's very afraid.

Guillén: Which really came into play in his scene with Evan Rachel Wood.

Aronofsky: We haven't talked about Evan.

Guillén: I love Evan. She's one of my favorite young actresses. I've loved her since TV.

Aronofsky: What TV show was she on?

Guillén: The role I remember her in was as 12-year-old Jessie Sammler in Once and Again, which I watched religiously for the three or four years it was on.

Aronofsky: She's incredibly talented.

Guillén: How did you pull her into the film?

Aronofsky: It turned out she was a big fan of Requiem. So it was easy to cast her. When they're big fans of Requiem…. She was incredibly well-prepared. It's been great to watch her kick butt. Her up side is infinite as to what she can do if she wants to. She's like a young Meryl Streep. You have no idea what she's going to do. She just turned 21 in Toronto when we screened the film there. She's going to have a big career, if she wants it, if she takes it, if she does it. She can do anything she wants.

Guillén: Speaking of Toronto—where The Wrestler was one of the most difficult press screenings to get into for being so popular—have you been surprised at all by the film's reception?

Aronofsky: I was talking about this last night. We finished The Wrestler two days before the Venice Film Festival; two days before winning the Golden Lion. We finished on a Wednesday, I got to Venice on Thursday, Friday we had our premiere, Saturday they told us we had to stick around for some reason and then we won the Golden Lion. Sunday we left at 5:00AM and sold it that night to Fox Searchlight. So it's been such a roller coaster ride. It's been a lot of lessons. One lesson is—that to make a good film—all you need is an honest performance. Another lesson is you can never ever ever tell. You don't know what's going to come out. It was a hard thing to stick with my gut to go with Mickey because there were a lot of chances to make a lot more money in other situations with other actors; but, it came down to following my instinct. That's my big lesson: if you know it in your gut, you have to follow it.

Guillén: Was it your instinct that led you to scale down from The Fountain to this almost documentary-like feature?

Aronofsky: No, that was Mickey Rourke. There was no money to do it any other way. We just had to move, move, move. It was the only way to do it. I look at these films like—well, I'm not worthy to be compared to Raging Bull, though comparisons have been made—but, if you look at that film, it's just an incredible movie. I don't know if there's a way to make films like that anymore. Every now and then something like There Will Be Blood gets made, a director's given enough time and resources to get through it, but it's really hard when you only have 35 days to make anything as classic as Raging Bull. The Wrestler became about seizing the grunge and our limitations and turning them into our strength. It would be great to have the time and the resources to make a movie the way they used to. Things have gotten so expensive. Something like Raging Bull in today's world would be $60-70,000,000 and to sell it would be another $30,000,000. Raging Bull would be a $100,000,000 movie in today's world.

Cross-published on Twitch.

THE WRESTLER—The Evening Class Interview With Marisa Tomei

Although my vote for Best Supporting Actress at this year's Academy Awards would be for Viola Davis for her powerhouse performance in Doubt, there's no question that Davis will receive stiff competition from Marisa Tomei, whose performance as strip dancer Cassidy—the love interest in Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler—recently garnered her a win in that category from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle. She's likewise running neck and neck with Davis for that honor at this year's Golden Globes. I recently had the opportunity to discuss how she developed her character for The Wrestler.

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Michael Guillén: Marisa, you are so fine in The Wrestler!

Marisa Tomei: Thank you.

Guillén: You're such a brave and committed actress. Can I ask how the role of Cassidy came to you?

Tomei: It didn't come in a very exciting way. Mickey and I have the same agent. It was sort of a matchmaking thing. My agent told me about the role and shortly thereafter I got a call from Darren, we got together, and we started negotiating. There was no script for me to read at first so I joke around that he did everything to dissuade me from taking this part, saying how hard this was going to be, how hard he was going to push me, how there was no money, how he needed me to be nude in XYZ scenes, how Mickey was a wild card, and how I had to be down for all of it. [Laughs.] I said, "Great! Call me when you have a script and then we'll see."

Darren and I also realized that we clicked and then realized that was because we were both from Brooklyn and had gone to the same high school. Now I know that he knew my brother and that they shared a mutual good friend. So we had a tie and a language; that was on the positive side. Then a few weeks later he sent the script and it was one of the easiest scripts I've ever read. They're so hard to read normally, which doesn't mean they're not going to be a good movie but sometimes it's hard to just get through the script and to picture it. But the script for The Wrestler was so evocative and I really liked it. I was intrigued by my part. Shortly thereafter he offered it to me and that was it pretty much. I mean, he took a little longer than I would have liked. I thought, "You've just asked me to go through Hell for you…."; but, it finally came through and we decided to do it.

Guillén: Between this performance as strip tease dancer Cassidy and your previous performance as Gina Hansen in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, you've been absolutely fearless.

Tomei: I don't know if I was fearless or insane!

Guillén: You're so much more bold that most actors around. How do you approach something like the amount of nudity you had to do in The Wrestler? That can't be comfortable for you?

Tomei: [Sighs.] We talked about it in detail. First of all, I was flabbergasted that the mystery of life should bring me a second movie in succession where I would be asked to do something like that. I had never in my whole career been interested in that or not so much that I wasn't interested but I didn't think it would create the kind of career that I want, which is to hopefully be taken seriously to do a range of roles. Because I started in a comedy, it was already hard to be taken as a serious actress. I thought, "Please let me have a range of roles." But that's hard for anybody anyway. So I was always against nudity for myself but without being judgmental. But then it came up later in my career and I guess I was like, "Well, you have to do everything once. What the hell." And there was something of an adventure about it so I was more intrigued by the adventure and couldn't resist working with Sidney Lumet. I thought, "Okay, I'm just going to do it." I was shocked when I saw what I had actually done. I didn't realize in a way. Because it's in the acting. I was doing what the character would do. I was living a normal life. People have sex and that was part of my job—the naturalness of it—but I didn't really think about how there it is.

Then when it came to me a second time by another director who I simply could not resist, someone with so much to say and someone with whom I wanted to be aligned and be part of his vision, I just had to laugh. I thought about it long and hard, "What am I saying with this? It could really go the wrong way." But ultimately I decided to trust Darren and to trust myself. It almost became a hat trick the second time. It was like, "Okay, can you do it again?" I made it into that kind of challenge. With The Wrestler it was interesting because Cassidy has to be so comfortable with it, that's just how she lives, she's naked most of the time. She's naked at her job all the time so she has to be completely comfortable. When I went in, it was just 100% and I didn't really think about it again.

Guillén: Aside from the nudity, Cassidy is quite a complex role. I was intrigued by the parallel structure between her and Randy the Ram (Mickey Rourke), between your bodies and the ruin you're both putting your bodies through. To research for the role, did you have to collaborate with actual pole dancers? You got the technique down pat. What was that process like?

Tomei: I had danced as a teenager and so that was part of my tool box in a way. I have that in my muscle memory. I didn't strip but I went to my dance classes and I've always wanted to do a musical and that's why I actually wanted to be an actress. I loved Singing in the Rain. I loved Gene Kelley. I would write fan mail to Gene Kelley and not Scott Baio. [Laughs.] My body has always been a part of my expression. Also, I started in the theater. On film a lot of times you're only required to act from your neck up really. So I was still very connected to my body through my training in dance and theater and I was excited about expressing my character through her body and her feelings through her body. Because I could dance, I knew I could learn the kind of moves Cassidy required. Mickey always talks about how he was a boxer and how he had to relearn and unlearn the boxing because in boxing you hide your punch and in wrestling you show it. For Cassidy's movement I had to do hyperextensions, something you ordinarily would never do in ballet or jazz dance. I had to hyperextend my chest and walk certain moves that were her "go to" moves, her carriage. I had to catch on to that a bit. I knew that I was flexible so I wanted to use that as much as I could. I knew I could do splits and things like that pretty easily; but, for the pole stuff, I knew I didn't have much gymnastic training. When I did gymnastics as a kid, I was always a balance beam-floor kind of gymnast; I was never an uneven bars type of person. My upper body wasn't that strong.

The pole is very very hard and I have a new respect for that. I went to a lot of clubs and hung out with a lot of dancers and also just watched a lot. It was kind of an osmosis, an absorption. Seeing what kind of style I might like, getting inspiration, observing whether it was always tawdry. I had no idea really. It wasn't clear in the script. It was open to interpretation. I sprang from the point of the parallels that you're talking about. He loves his wrestling so I went with she loves the dancing, even if it was just the dancing and not the whole world of the strip tease joint, maybe not the lapdance, maybe not always having to be on and be servicing; but, maybe in those two minutes when she's dancing, there's a transcendence for her at times? Maybe that's been a safe place for her expression when she was younger and got into this? I decided to build the character of Cassidy on that. I would look for who was connected to their bodies and into it. In a certain way you have to be into it for yourself to make the dance really good. It's not just posing or an external thing. You have to be connected inside. So I looked for different styles and for someone who I could say, "That's someone I would like to go for." But I never found someone who was that person and was going to be able to teach me so I just got a variety of visual experience and then I had a friend who is really into strip clubs and she teaches pole dancing. She teaches yoga and is a masseuse also and she had the same build that I have so that gave me a little more confidence because my idea of what a stripper was supposed to look like was not what I look like. I talked to Darren about that. He said, "You just haven't been to enough strip clubs is all. [Laughs.] There's all shapes and sizes. You're going to be fine." But I was worried that I was going to disappoint people. But he said it was going to be okay.

When I found this friend of a friend who then became a good friend of mine, it was great because I could see her moving in a way that was similar to my body type. It inspired me. The reason my friend teaches pole dancing is because she sees it not only as great exercise but because she sees women becoming liberated and empowered by it. They're not living the life of a stripper—they're just women who go to these classes—but, I was able to touch in on some of that and let that be part of Cassidy. Just in that little area of her life. I don't think she has it together—she's a mess, for sure—but, that little area might be something that's sacred to her. That's a performance thing too and I could relate to it as a performer.

Guillén: So you've described how you developed the dancing; but, in general and specifically for this role, how did you go about creating her character? You only had so much time and you had to suggest an entire life.

Tomei: Yeah, proportionally there was not that much screen time for this role.

Guillén: And it was a psychologized physicality, for which I must compliment you. It's not like you were mimicking someone else or—as you said—posing. The physicality did indeed express Cassidy's psychology.

Tomei: Thank you. I worked hard on that. I talked with Darren, of course, to see if he had a specific direction in mind. We went through the script line by line, which he does with all his actors, and I found that really helpful because it creates a space where you can bring up any questions. There was one person in particular that I met at Crazy Girls in Los Angeles who had a great sense of humor. She was almost a tomboy, like a goof I could hang out with, and I liked that it could work for Cassidy with him because I guess I just thought they were more pals even though it changes into something else that confuses her. That's why she's back and forth with him. In the end it's a feeling of comradeship. So I went with the idea that Cassidy was somewhat a goof who could be funny sometimes.

Guillén: And she likes her '80s metal.

Tomei: And loves her '80s metal! I watched a lot of Rock of Love. I don't know if you've ever seen L.A.'s Bret Michaels' reality TV show where all these strippers try to marry him? [Laughs.]

I write a lot and think about the history. You can see a lot of the history in the tattoos. Darren had said he wanted Cassidy to have a lot of tattoos. He wanted her to be like a Suicide Girl. I didn't even know what that was at the time but they're these young girls who would now be considered cheesecake? Light porn? They're all tattooed up and they're real cute with short hair. Punky porn. But I told him, "This is not my character's generation." So my tattoos are totally built on, "This was when her son was born. This was a drunken mistake one night. This was her first effort to get clean. These are the musical notes from her favorite song." We built them up layer by layer.

Guillén: I regret we don't have more time so I'll wrap up by praising again your wonderful performance in The Wrestler.

Tomei: It was a pleasure talking with you.

Cross-published on Twitch.

DOUBT—The Evening Class Interview With Viola Davis

The cascading accolades Viola Davis has received for her supporting turn as Mrs. Miller in John Patrick Shanley's film adaptation of his Broadway play Doubt confirm that this is the breakout performance every actor dreams of and which Davis unquestionably deserves. Best known for her performance in Antwone Fisher, Kenneth Turan writes at the L.A. Times that Viola Davis "brings a sense of decency, urgency and even fear to her rending performance." At the Chicago Sun Times Roger Ebert praises the scene between Davis and Meryl Streep "as good as any I've seen this year. It lasts about 10 minutes, but it is the emotional heart and soul of Doubt, and if Viola Davis isn't nominated by the Academy, an injustice will have been done." At Slant, Dan Callahan writes that Davis's performance is "stealthy and cautious, and her presence fills the screen with a rage she can barely contain." My immediate reaction after seeing Doubt was that Davis was an obvious shoe-in for an Oscar nomination in the Supporting Actress category and that—if I could interview anyone from the film—I wished I could talk to her. As wishes go, mine was granted.

* * *

Michael Guillén: It's been said that if a person is willing to begin with doubt, they can proceed to certainty. Clearly, with your performance as Mrs. Miller in John Patrick Shanley's film adaptation of his Broadway play Doubt, the certainty is that this choice role will launch you into a season of nominations and awards. It's a stellar performance inspired by formidable talent.

Viola Davis: Thank you.

Guillén: Congratulations on your Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress and—as of this morning—your S.A.G. nomination. Any others I don't know about?

Davis: The National Board of Review gave me breakthrough performer of the year—that was a good one—and various film critics awards, many of which I've never even heard of before: St. Louis, Dallas, etc.

Guillén: Are you surprised?

Davis: Frankly, I am. I have to say I am surprised.

Guillén: I'm aware you come from the Broadway stage, where you garnered a Tony for your portrayal of Tonya in King Hedley II, so I'm curious if you know Adriane Lenox, the actress who originally played your role in Doubt on Broadway?

Davis: I know her personally. I'd never seen the play before; but, I know her personally, yes. She's a fabulous actress and a great person.

Guillén: Did you know about the role when the play was on Broadway?

Davis: Oh yeah, because everyone talked about it, "My God, the scene with the Black woman"—they'd say "the Black woman" or Adriane Lenox, dependent upon whether they knew her name or not—but no one ever told me what the scene was about. It was like everyone had a gag order on them. It won Adriane the Tony, even though it was just one scene, so I knew the actress was fantastic and that the scene itself must be something extraordinary; but, I didn't know how extraordinary until I picked up the play to solicit myself for the role in the film version.

Guillén: I would say the scene is the most well-written scene in the script as a showcase for the nature of your character, Mrs. Miller. First of all, how did you come to the role in the film version?

Davis: I came to it because I heard the play was going to be done as a movie and I knew Scott Rudin would be producing it and he really likes me. Then I heard they had secured Meryl Streep. I thought, "I have a chance at this role. I can solicit myself—which I never do—so I picked up the script four months in advance, phoned my manager and said, "I really want an audition." Now probably every other actress would say, "I want the role", but I just said, "I want an audition." Every Black actress in America auditioned. I finally made it to the short list of seven. They screen tested in New York. They paraded us in full costume, hair, everything. Seven Mrs. Millers! [Laughs.] They carted us into a room with the producers, the director and the full crew to do the scene and I found out maybe an hour and a half later that I got it. I felt like I had won $150,000,000 in the lottery; that was the feeling.

Guillén: Well, you earned the win. When you read the role, and you decided to audition for it and lobby for it, what was it you felt you could give to the role? What was it that you saw in the role that you knew you had the chops to deliver?

Davis: You're always doubtful if you have the chops; but, I felt I could play the complexities of it. She's not what she appears to be when you're introduced to her. You think you know what she's going to say. You really feel it's going to just be a conflict, an argument scene, and all of a sudden it unfolds and she's so much more. It's such a scene about the extraordinary mother love, loving in extraordinary circumstances, and I felt like I could give that duality and complexity through simplicity. I feel that's my thing. I know how to be simple and how to play different emotions through that simplicity.

Guillén: I would argue that the simplicity you're describing lends itself to the collective conscience the role demonstrates and requires. That conscience is the service of this role to the story. I first noted your acting in Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven where you played Julianne Moore's maid Sybil. Especially the scene where you offer to accompany her to visit Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert), when you realize she's on her way to see him and that it isn't quite appropriate and that maybe it would look better if you went with her. In that—as you say—simple offer, the audience recognized Sybil as informed, conscious, moral, loyal, and someone who really wanted to help this woman who was going out on a weak limb.

Davis: Yes, absolutely.

Guillén: Are these roles of steadfast consciousness simply portrayed the ones you prefer to play?

Davis: I love to play them! This role in Doubt would not exist, this scene would not exist, if it were set in 2008. No one would buy it. They buy it because it's set in 1964, because of restraints. Things you want to say but can't say. A kind of relationship you want to have but can't have because you're too restrained by the culture, by racial differences and sexual differences. I enjoy playing characters like that. You have to communicate what you need and want through other means besides the obvious. I find that to be a challenge.

Guillén: I'm aware that you come from a background of abject poverty. I, too, come from humble origins, the child of migrant laborers, and—as a gay male—my mother, like the character of Mrs. Miller, loved me unconditionally. Mom was, of course, concerned about my sexuality because—as you say—it was in the mid-60s, not 2008. And yet she wanted me to get ahead. The first few times I started associating with older gay men, her friends cautioned her, "Don't let Michael go with that guy! Don't let Michael do this. Don't let Michael do that." Yet Mom wanted me to find opportunity however I could find it, wherever I could find it, in a way that fulfilled me. That's a decision she made at that time that only now I recognize as a consummate sacrifice. Perhaps that's why I related so much to how the role of Mrs. Miller was written and your portrayal of her. Her demonstration of love is amazing.

Davis: Yes! That's what it's about, right? People want to put all the labels on me too—not me, Viola, but the character Mrs. Miller—and I don't mind it, sometimes, but other times I say, "I can't take it" because they want to make the character out to be so heroic and I guess she is in a very simple way; but, she is absolutely frightened. I don't think she's as progressive as people make her out to be. I think she's a bit horrified by the fact that her son is a budding homosexual; but, I think that any mother that is at the crossroads of recognizing that their child is someone that they didn't envision them as being or want them to be then has a choice. You either love them, or you don't. Really, that's the bottom line!

Guillén: Believe me, I know. I've had many friends tell me how they were abandoned by their families once they came out. I feel blessed that my mother's love was abiding.

Davis: Mrs. Miller decides, "I love my son." Ultimately, you love your child because that is something ingrained. God has put it in you, I think anyway. From the moment you get pregnant, that child's life is probably more important than your own. She's made that decision, despite the fact that she doesn't even understand the rest of it.

Guillén: As a hypothetical—and I'm not sure you can even answer this or if it even needs to be answered—but, I've been alert to the presumption in some of the reviews that Philip Seymour Hoffman's character Father Flynn actually molested the boy Donald. Do you think he molested your character's son?

Davis: I think that they had some sexual exploration.

Guillén: So you think that indiscretion actually took place?

Davis: My character so fully believes that, that I probably believe that I believe that, even though I don't think that's actually the point of the movie.

Guillén: Interesting. I didn't read it that way. I felt that Father Flynn knew what the repercussions would be if such a scandal broke and how Donald might be harmed. He knew you. He knew your husband. He knew what would happen to the boy. That's why he elected to make the choice he made to leave. I believe it was a choice made from loving compassion and generosity of spirit.

Davis: That's great! Everybody reads it differently. But it's so funny you ask me that because I don't even know what I think, as Viola, but Mrs. Miller—because she has no frame of reference for homosexuality—she's thinking, "Well, if my son is already showing signs of homosexuality and this priest is showing such an interest in him, something may have happened." She has a line in the movie—"My husband was afraid of how he would act with the other boys; but, nothing has happened as far as I can tell"—which is very cryptic. When she comes into the office, I think that's part of the fear in the back of her mind that something has gone on, that maybe her son has touched someone. That's just character information that I'm giving you.

Guillén: I'm sure you've been asked this before; but, what was your personal feeling working across Meryl Streep?

Davis: Complete horror and terror. [Laughs.] I was absolutely terrified.

Guillén: And yet Roger Ebert, in his review for the Chicago Sun Times, qualifies that your scene with Streep "is a confrontation of two equals that generates terrifying power" [my italics] and some reviewers have even ventured that you stole the scene right out from under Streep?

Davis: Well, I have to tell you right now that—though I'm very flattered by that—I will absolutely disagree. It's funny, once again, truth is stranger than fiction, as they say. I was absolutely petrified to work with Meryl Streep because, c'mon, you gotta come 100%, right?

Guillén: I would be terrified just to talk to her!

Davis: There you go, right? Well, me too! [Laughs.] I had to work with her in this scene! But for all the reasons that I was terrified, they were the selfsame reasons that made working with her, Meryl, not Meryl Streep—such a wonderful experience. Because she is just as invested in your work as in her own. She's a consummate actor. That's what an actor does. They say you're only as good as your partner. She's a fantastic partner because she's not just invested in her close-up; she understands that it's about give-and-take. Whatever you do, you know she's going to be right there for you. And then off the set, she's a fantastic human being—interesting, funny, curious, bawdy, y'know?—and she creates a comfortable atmosphere in which to discover and to take risks. So all the reasons you're terrified of her—Is she going to be a diva? Is she going to be so fantastic that she's going to critique your work? Blah blah blah—none of those things come into play. She's a great actress and a great person.

Guillén: I've read that when you first saw your rushes, you were very unhappy. Is that true?

Davis: [Groans.] Yeah.

Guillén: But now when you look at yourself, do you realize differently?

Davis: I saw the film once. I feel like you could put me in that theater once; but, don't put me in that theater again! I was okay the first time, but…. [Laughs.] The thing about it is, when you watch yourself it's a different experience than actually shooting the scene. When I'm shooting a scene, I get out of the way of the character. I check my vanity at the door. But then when I watch it, all that vanity comes back and I'm looking at my nose dripping [what Manohla Dargis at The New York Times described as "shaking the film up with a few extravagantly mucousy minutes"], I'm looking at my lips quivering, I'm looking at what I'm doing with my eyes, I'm looking at all the things I didn't know I was doing when I was actually shooting the film. Now I had an outsider's perspective and I took to my bed, as they used to say back in the day. I drew the blinds in my house, got under the covers, for two weeks until my husband said, "This is ridiculous, Vi."

Guillén: I do understand the conflict you experienced, though. But the truth remains that your performance is precisely powerful for being authentic and stripped of vanity, as you say. You were in service to that moment in the script, both of you were, and that's why that scene is so pivotal in understanding the deepest currents of the story.

Davis: I knew when I read the scene—well, I didn't know at first; it took a long time—but, I sensed that the scene was very very intimate and I also knew the stakes were very high. I knew you couldn't play it just as a conversation because I knew that by the end of the scene Mrs. Miller was making an incredible confession. It would have been catastrophic if taken the wrong way, if it landed the wrong way. So I didn't know any other way to get there except to rip my heart out and put my guts at the feet and mercy of Sister Aloysius. In the end I knew I had to affect her and the woman constantly lives in her head. I mean, c'mon, she has a whole party going on inside of her head where she's the life of the party!

Guillén: She's so mental she could snap out light bulbs!

Davis: Absolutely! And so the only tool I had, the only weapon of mass destruction, is to slay her heart; to appeal to her heart. I mean, c'mon, by the end my character is pleading with Sister Aloysius. It says it in the script, she's pleading. They say that in acting, whatever your character says in the script are the given circumstances. You cannot question it. It is what it is. She is pleading with this woman in the end. What do you do when you plead? Have you ever pleaded with anyone?

Guillén: More often than I care to admit. [Laughs.]

Davis: I've pleaded with people and—when you're pleading with people—that means you're at the end of your rope.

Guillén: Again, comparing the role of Mrs. Miller to that of Sybil in Far From Heaven, you're exactly right when you describe your effort to pierce her heart. Both performances are the grounding performances in a context of behavior governed by false ideals or ideologies or—as Kenneth Turan stated it in his review of your performance in Doubt for the L.A. Times: "The concerns of the real world, not the cloistered one, walk into the film with her, and that's quite a difference." Mrs. Miller and Sybil are both performances that provide a reality check to what's come before in their narratives. In that tradition of grounded authenticity, your work is very much like Cicely Tyson's or Alfre Woodard's, two actresses who I admire tremendously. Who were your inspirations?

Davis: Cicely! Cicely Tyson is the one who inspired me to act. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. I was six or seven years old when I saw that and watching her transform from 15 to 105, I could not believe that it was the same human being. And she was a human being who looked like my mom, like me, dark-skinned, full-lipped, y'know? It changed my life because it was not acting just for purposes of entertainment. I saw the craft and I didn't know that acting was a craft until I literally saw Cicely do it. What made me feel that it was possible for me to do it was that she looked like me. I know that might not make sense for a lot of people; but, I'm telling you, when—as a child—you see a physical manifestation of a dream, it makes it feel possible for you. When you see someone who's doing something that you want to do and they look like you, you can feel it and touch it. She changed my life!

Guillén: I like how you phrase that—"a physical manifestation of a dream"—because when I was listening to your NPR interview with Farai Chideya and hearing about your background, I thought, "Here is a woman who has shaped her prayers. Her prayers have taken definite form. She's moved out of difficult circumstances, seen where she wants to be, and has moved towards it." I love stories like that because they confirm what I did with my own life. I decided, "I am not a victim of my upbringing. I will hold it close to me as I become who I know I'm supposed to be." That's one of the aspects I find so remarkable about your career.

Davis: Thank you.

Guillén: I'm aware you've expressed criticism about the casting of Black actors in the Hollywood system. What are your hopes from this performance in Doubt? Are you dusting off your mantle in preparation for that little golden man? Can you even think that way?

Davis: No, I can't think that way because I feel like someone's setting me up to break me down. [Laughs.] I know the breakdown is coming! But my hope? This is my hope. I sum it up through an argument a friend of mine once had with a man in a bar. My friend is Black and the man he was arguing with was White and he had, of course, probably had too much to drink. The White man said, "What do you people want? What do you want? What is it that you want?!" And my friend answered, "What do you want? Because we want what you want." That, to me, sums it up. If you could sit with any White actress right now, or a Hispanic actress, they will tell you the kind of roles they dream about. I would love to do a science fiction action movie. I mean, c'mon, I would love to do a Terminator-type movie like Linda Hamilton.

Guillén: You did The Andromeda Strain, didn't you?

Davis: Oh yeah, but I didn't get to kick anyone's butt! [Laughs.] I want to do it all. I want to do what Meryl Streep is doing, what Amy Adams is doing. I want what any actress would want. I want to work in great roles and that's it. I don't want to be limited to roles that are designated for Black actresses, which are usually functions and archetypes.

Guillén: That's fascinating that you reference functions and archetypes, because those are Jungian psychological terms.

Davis: Functions, archetypes, metaphors: that's usually what the roles for Black actresses are. Usually the writer, the producer, the director, whoever, they don't know who you are and so then you become just a way to move the protagonist on and the protagonist is almost always—not always, but almost always—White. So you know as a Black actress that your service to the story is not as another human being with her own story and her own background. That's not fulfilling.

Guillén: Returning to the context of your peers then, have you had a chance to talk with Adriane Lenox about your performance in Doubt?

Davis: You know, I have not.

Guillén: Is that anything you dread or look forward to?

Davis: If I were to be honest, I probably would say that I don't look forward to it because I feel that's the worst part that comes with the business. You have a great actress like Adriane Lenox who originated the role on Broadway and who won the Tony award for it so, obviously, she did a fantastic job. Then for the movie to come along and she's not in it? Another actress is in it? I would think that would be uncomfortable, even though you understand it's an occupational hazard. I certainly hope that she understands that I have nothing but utmost respect for her and her work.

Guillén: Having been both on the stage and in front of the cameras, is there a difference for you in terms of how you commit yourself to your craft?

Davis: No, no difference, absolutely.

Guillén: Not even as to scale?

Davis: You do have to modify. The camera's right there so there's no extraneous movement or twitches or whatever; but, basically, no, there's no difference in terms of how you approach it because your job as an actor is to create a human being so you use all the tools that you learned in acting class and then some and then what slowly forms is a human being. That's what you have to do on stage too. If there's an actor out there who doesn't follow the same process, that would be interesting to hear. But they're still people that you're creating on stage, just on a grander scale because you're trying to fill up a theater with maybe 1200 people so you have to—what?—talk louder and project facial movements; but, it still has to come from a place of honesty, of talking and listening, all those values have to be there.

Guillén: Well, within the craft of creating genuine human beings, you have created one of the most memorable characters in recent film history. I wish you the best. You have my vote for Best Supporting Actress. Remember that when you polish up your little statuette on your mantle.

Davis: [Laughs.] Thank you.

Cross-published on Twitch.

MY NAME IS BRUCE—Jesse Miller's Evening Class Interview With Bruce Campbell & Joshua Grannell

There were two questions I purposely avoided asking Bruce Campbell: the first was the status—if any—of Evil Dead 4; a question which Bruce indicated in his Ain't It Cool News interview as the one question "guaranteed" to be asked in nearly every Q&A on his two-month 22-city My Name Is Bruce ("MNIB") tour. The second was why he was replaced by Ron Perlman to play Elvis in the Bubba-ho-Tep sequel; a question again answered in the AICN interview. Instead—in anticipation of this evening's Midnight Mass screening of MNIB and on-stage chat with Peaches Christ—I invited Joshua Grannell to join us for an informal discussion of the MNIB tour.

* * *

Jesse Miller: So, Bruce, what day is this on your 22-city tour of My Name Is Bruce?

Bruce Campbell: City number 20! I just have Berkeley and Los Angeles. We're near the end. Staying strong!

Miller: I appreciate your allowing me to invite Joshua Grannell (aka Peaches Christ) to sit in with us today because you are the ultimate fan icon and Peaches is the ultimate fan, which I felt was the perfect set-up. Aware that you've been talking to lots of people on this tour about the film proper, I'm intrigued by your experience of the tour itself. You've scaled it down from your previous PR ventures….

Campbell: Yeah, my record is 55 cities with the first book that I wrote.

Miller: Which nearly killed you?

Campbell: Yeah, there's a piece of me left back in some city somewhere. There's a piece of my soul on that jagged trail. But I don't know any other way. Because if you're not Warner Brothers or one of the other big studios and you're making little stuff, you have to figure out some way to do it. I figured, "Let's just go there!" On the next tour I actually want to do the B-city tour. No big cities. It will all be towns like Albuquerque. I've had some of my best signings in Albuquerque because people go, "Thank God! Thanks for coming to Albuquerque!" We had the whole roller derby team showing up one day because there's nothing else to do in those towns. I've enjoyed that aspect on this tour. Also, we're driving. When you drive to every city, you leave when you want to leave, you take the route you want to take, you stop where you want to stop, you eat where you want to eat—none of that Godawful airplane food or nightmare traffic delays—so the tour's been really good. We've been able to take strange days off. When we were finished up around the Washington D.C.-Baltimore area, we realized Gettysburg was really close so—because we had three days to get to Columbus, Ohio—we spent a day in Gettysburg and walked the whole battlefield. I had only heard stories and seen the pictures but never been there, not even as a kid. The point is we could just do weird stuff like that because we were on our own schedule. No one really knew where we were between cities and no one cared how we got there.

Miller: What's your sense? How have your audiences been?

Campbell: Good! They're fine. The response has come in three tiers. The critics want to take the negative and shove it up my ass.

Miller: Those bitches!

Campbell: There's been a big disconnect with the critics. The bloggers have been giving more of the underhanded compliment: "For a stupid piece of shit, I laughed my ass off." And then the fans—who actually pay money—are fine.

Miller: And, after all is said and done, they're the important ones.

Campbell: Yeah, the important ones are fine. I don't wake up in the morning trying to come up with something that the fans will like or not like—that's not really the game—but MNIB is fan-friendly.

Miller: Among the critical response, I did like Roger Ebert's review.

Campbell: I just read it a couple of days ago and, I have to say, it's a very rational approach and I was thankful that yet another great critic didn't rip a new asshole in the film.

Miller: I admired it for being such a fair review. He took on Nick Schager's comment at Slant that MNIB "is just one-note insider navel-gazing with no aspirations except to excite its adoring base" by countering that "if the navel has been there, done that and had unspeakable horrors wreaked onto it, the navel has paid its dues." You have paid your dues. You're 50 years old. You've made many films.

Campbell: I appreciate what he said very much. It's going on the DVD box. We wanted to make the crappy review list; but, only pick the biggest papers—the New York Times, the Village Voice (which was the most dismissive review I've ever read)….

Miller: Aaron Hillis, I believe.

Campbell: Could be. But I think we could get some great zingers and compile the anti-review!

Miller: Didn't John Waters use that strategy, Joshua?

Joshua Grannell: Yes, it makes people want to see it more!

Campbell: Especially if you pull the real zingers that make you go, "Wow! What the hell was that?!" We'll see what happens. If you're swimming with the big dogs…. I directed a film a few years ago called The Man With the Screaming Brain and we only did selected screenings, so I only had a smattering of reviews. MNIB is an official—albeit teeny teeny—release. So the New York Times says, "All right, send Joe to go review it" because now they have to review it; it's an official release. I've never seen more reviews of anything I've ever done only because—jeez—between the internet now and all that crap, there are so many reviewers out there!

Miller: What intrigues me—and I admire you for this—is how the whole landscape is changing with regard to movie distribution and you're somewhat ahead of the curve—having learned from your own mistakes—about self-distribution and self-promotion.

Campbell: I hear this from filmmakers all the time. They go, "I've got this movie. It's a great movie but no one will show my movie!" Then get your ass on the road! In every other theatre now you've got your projector here, your projector there, and inbetween a digital projector where you can take your DVD and pop it in there and they can play it. Filmmakers need to take advantage of the fact that—through your website and on the internet—you can get some basic information out there, that's your shingle you can put up, and through the advances in technology you don't have to carry a big print around with you anymore, just a DVD you can shove in your pocket. I'm just doing what I always encourage filmmakers to do: if you don't have an avenue for your film, you have to create an avenue. I've found that if I show up sometimes, I can jumpstart a run of my film.

Miller: I likewise appreciate that you're centered and know what you want to do. You're not being misled by Hollywood ambitions.

Campbell: No, I'm misleading myself. [Laughs.] I am! It's my own poor career management; but, at least my own. The good news about MNIB—again, the movie is what it is—but, I had one guy as a partner, Mike Richardson who owns Dark Horse Comics and he was my studio. One guy. No marketing team. I remember when I first went in to pitch my first book, they had the PR person sitting in the room. I had to tell them that I'd been on Jay Leno and every major news outlet. I had to send them a follow-up list of literally the media I had done that they would recognize in order for them to go, "Okay, you could probably sell this book." That was the criteria. Not the subject matter of the book or who's the author; it was, "Can we sell it?" Before they even made the deal. It was bizarre. That happens a bit in movies too because I'm sure a lot of executives will sit around and say, "Hey, I'm thinking of greenlighting this movie. Okay, who's in it?" They'll go through all that and decide whether it's worth the risk; but, the lower the budget, the lower the risk. So your movies can get weirder, stranger, you can kill your lead actor, you can do anything, your lead actor can be any kind of character. He can be an idiot like this guy. He can mess around more. There's plenty of bad B-movies. We all know that. No shortage of bad B-movies. But there's some really cool ones too.

Miller: I grew up on cool B-movies.

Campbell: And a movie that you like is a cool B-movie, even if it's Plan 9 From Outer Space.

Miller: What's it like directing yourself? How do you do that? Do you just set up shots and then run into them?

Campbell: I have a guy who's my stand-in and blocks the scene for me so I can still sit back with the monitor. I usually carry a little monitor around the set. You block it normally, set all your movement, set up your shot however you're going to do it, then he gets out of there at the last second. I'll run through the scene once maybe to see if I'd do anything differently than the stand-in would.

Miller: Do you practice in front of a mirror?

Campbell: No. My Jim Carrey days are over.

Miller: You're not mugging all the time to try to get the right look?

Campbell: No, no, no. Other than for that, it's not that difficult to direct yourself. It's just more homework because you show up on set and you think, "Well, I know what I'm shooting today. Aw crap! I don't know my lines!"

Miller: This is the second film you've directed?

Campbell: Yes.

Miller: What would you say you have gained in experience from your first directorial effort?

Campbell: Where to shoot and who to partner with.

Miller: It sounds like your partnership with Mike Richardson really worked for you this time.

Campbell: It did for me and, again, the movie will be what it is; but, the situation for me was much better. The first time I directed I was told, "You are shooting the movie in Bulgaria." I was like, "You're shitting me? This movie takes place in East L.A. There are no people of color in Eastern Europe. None. They're gypsies. And they have no written language. Where's the call sheet going to go up? On their caravan? It might not be there the next morning." That's how absurd it was. So I had to beg them to let me restage it for Bulgaria. I said, "Look down the street, guys. No cars look like American cars! It's all in Cyrillic. All that language is Russian-looking; it's upside-down and backwards! We don't have the budget to change all these street signs and move all these cars and bring in a bunch of Chevys. These are ex-Soviet SUBs and German cars that are two-cylinder with a paper shell on them. It doesn't look like America! If you looked out this window here in Bulgaria, you'd see one new building and the other ones are left over from 1989 and the fall of Communism and they're half-built with rebar sticking up and a giant tree! What are we trying to do here?" And it was all because the average Bulgarian makes $110 a month. I don't want to disparage Bulgaria, they have their own issues, I'd be happy to go back there one day to not make a movie. Very lovely people. But if you have packs of wild dogs chasing you around, it's not a good place to make a movie. But I was so eager and so happy that someone was going to give me the money to make this stupid movie that I'd been trying to make for too long for no good reason. I really learned from that. Fans hate stuff as much as they love stuff. If there's something of mine that they hate, they hate it and go after it! And that's fair game. But I learned from that. Don't put yourself in a situation where you have to explain why the movie blew. Why do that? Mike Richardson's from Oregon. I live in Oregon now. Mark Verheiden, who wrote it, is from Oregon. We went, "Let's make this stupid movie in Oregon. Let's set it in Oregon and let's shoot it here."

Miller: You built MNIB's town Gold Lick on your own property?

Campbell: Yeah. Now I have a Western town I can't get rid of. [Chuckles.]

Miller: You should turn it into an amusement park.

Campbell: I guess. Right now it's a great party conversation piece. "Hey, shall we go out to the tavern? Hang out at the livery stable?"

Miller: Having now nearly completed your national tour with only a couple of gigs left, has your audience response been such that you have greenlit the sequel My Name Is Still Bruce?

Campbell: We're going to wait. We're not going to be that snotty and jump right into it. We have to see if people want to buy the DVD when it comes out. We have the money for it but I don't think it's right right now. I don't want to keep playing myself. I want to play some other idiot.

Miller: You're not really playing yourself.

Campbell: Of course. But there's always going to be one person, I'm sure, in every audience who thinks I actually drink whiskey out of dog bowls.

Miller: I did when I first saw it. I was shocked.

Campbell: There you go. You're the one. So I have to be a little careful.

Miller: Regarding the movie itself then, I liked a comment you made that you like to act with Ted Raimi—who plays three roles in MNIB—because he makes you look better.

Campbell: Exactly. I'm more subtle.

Miller: [Laughs.] Yes, you are! You're much more subtle than Ted. Has there been any negative reaction to his over-the-top portrayal of the Asian character Wing?

Campbell: Here I go. I was just thinking, I woke up this morning and thought, "Here I am in San Francisco. I got two gay ranchers in the movie and a horrible Asian stereotype." I thought, "Thank God this is a jackass comedy." Because look, I wouldn't go near that stuff if this was a serious drama. The whole gay rancher thing we made up on the first day of shooting. I got these two grizzled friends of mine, they're actors, one was in Evil Dead 2 [Dan Hicks] and one was from Army of Darkness [Timothy Patrick Quill]. We had them do this scene where they were both in the dark watching a slide show, and they're such grizzled guys, and I said, "You should just hold hands at some point." We did it as a tossaway gag and then we realized after the first day that they were just going to be gay now for the rest of the movie. We weren't trying to do anything other than make a stupid movie with as many gags as we could come up with.

Miller: What I found of interest with regard to Raimi's Asian stereotype in the script was that, by contrast, you yourself have been very respectful of the historic Asian populations in Oregon.

Campbell: They got screwed. I mean, c'mon. They were the manual labor group of that whole mining area, which includes Northern California and Southern Oregon, which were big on gold. The Chinese did everything. The funny thing about the Chinese is that they saved the railroads because the Irish were coming in and they would have what they called "Blue Monday" where they would drink all weekend long. The Irish would come in on Monday with liquor reeking out of their pores. Monday's were worthless. They were getting sick because they wouldn't boil the water. They would only eat meat and potatoes. The Chinese were brought in because they didn't really drink; they boiled all their water to make tea; they were told to get their own food—nobody supplied them with any—and so they caught fish, grew vegetables, and they could weave baskets to take away dirt from the holes they put dynamite in. That's what saved the railroads.

Miller: So you and Ted were just playing around?

Campbell: C'mon….

Miller: Thinking back, you grew up with Ted and Sam [Raimi] in Detroit? I'm trying to get a picture of you guys running around as kids. Have the three of you really changed much since then?

Campbell: Sam was incorrigible. Sam was a massive troublemaker. The first day of high school he comes in, he's in Modern European History before me, I come in the following class and—the second I come in—we sit down to take roll, the teacher comes to my name, and he goes, "Oh, Mr. Campbell? See me after class." I'd never met the teacher before in my life. I'm like, "Whoa. What happened? I know Sam's up to something." I stay after the class. The teacher goes, "Well, Mr. Sam Raimi tells me that you do an excellent impersonation of me. I'd like to hear that." [Laughs.] The son of a bitch. He would do that kind of shit constantly. I'd be answering a question in class and he'd make a point of sitting directly behind me and stick a sharp pencil into the back of my neck and start applying pressure. The longer I answered the question, the more the pressure would be applied. It became a test of wills. I was thinking, "Huh-uh. I'm going to make him snap that thing off in the back of my neck" versus could he make me break. So we've had a contest of wills from the start. After the question I'd turn back around and he'd say, "I was trying to help you." That was his reasoning. It was his version of trying to help me.

Miller: I was reviewing some of your earlier films and you're just a kid in them. What's that like for you and your childhood friends to look back at this body of work in which you've all grown up together?

Campbell: Yeah! I think it's fun. Of course, this is our job now. But, you know, when Sam and I were working on Spider-Man 3, we were laughing together because here he is this massive A-list director now and we both think it's hilarious.

Miller: Did you guys have a sense when you were younger of where you'd end up? Did he always want to do the really big stuff? Did you always want to do creative low-budget films?

Campbell: Sam always had a huge imagination and we could never afford his ideas. I always felt bad as a producing partner because we couldn't help him out. He'd go, "How are we going to do that?" There's some crazy stuff in those Evil Dead movies, visually, mostly because of him. But now I think he realizes that he's finally in a spot where now he can do all this stuff. He can now get the toys that he needs. If he wants a shot to go around and come up underneath and spin around 86 times, they'll figure out a way to do it. I think it's great. It's been really fun to watch him. He's wanted that. He's been ready for that. He's a bigger-than-life kind of character.

Miller: But your dream was more to create movies on a lower budget?

Campbell: No, more just to get back to the basics. Don't have big meetings with 10 people in a room about what a movie's going to be like. I'm not interested in that. I want one boss, if that. The lower the budget, I've got as much experience now as most people on the set. I can do two or three jobs on a film set. I don't care about the budget; it's the working situation: how creative is it? How fun is it? What leeway do you have to make up lines of dialogue, to do whatever you want to do at any time? That's what it's all about.

Miller: Speaking of fun, I'm really looking forward to this evening and your on-stage appearance with Peaches Christ. Joshua, how did you get involved in inviting Bruce out to the Bridge Theatre?

Grannell: Over the years of doing Midnight Mass, it's always been a dream of ours to have Mr. Campbell come and be one of our featured guests.

Miller: You mean Bruce? [Laughs.]

Grannell: Over the 11+ years that we've been doing Midnight Mass, finally we got successful enough that we could invite people like Mink Stole and John Waters and Tura Satana and it's just been a total joy ride meeting these icons and putting them up on a pedestal. I think San Francisco, in general, has the best audiences in the world. There's nothing like presenting someone beloved to San Francisco.

Miller: In terms of your fan base, Bruce, I think you're going to see your fans tonight like you've never seen them because Joshua has allowed us to be geeky and worshipful.

Campbell: Conventions have a lot of people who do that too. I would venture to say that people like to make fun of geeks and fanboys; but, I'll bet that at the average convention in Cherry Hill, New Jersey there are more people getting laid than at some sporting event because—when you show up there—you instantly have 500 friends and something in common. I've had people say that specifically. They show up there and they look around and they say, "I can instantly talk to you guys about anything right now because we're all here for the same reason." At conventions there's a lot of hooking up and connecting. It's amazing. So I'm not surprised that people really get into it. They want to feel like they can be a geek. I use that term lovingly. With regard to tonight, this isn't my show; this is your's. Whatever you want me to do, I'll do. I have no preconceptions. I don't have to do anything. I'll just try to stay out of your way.

Grannell: It'll be easy. That's the nice thing. All we do is set the stage for you and I to sit down and have a conversation, much like this, only with me as Peaches. And Peaches is the biggest fan dork there is! Girl, boy, whatever. It's the one drag territory, midnight movies, that hasn't really been mined.

Miller: To wrap things up here, Bruce, my final question: you really skewer yourself in MNIB and you also skewer your fans. How have your fans reacted to that?

Campbell: I think they're okay because they're mentioned. I'm pandering to them. I'm slapping them in the face a little bit….

Miller: You're offering them a lot of in-jokes….

Campbell: Yeah, which pisses off all the critics; but, I think for the fan they love the mentioning of movies that probably only they have ever seen. Fangoria magazine put it best. They said MNIB is a love letter to my fans dipped in poison.

Miller: My favorite description is your own: it's Bob Hope with decapitations.

Campbell: There you go.