Conversations with Bill Pullman

[Applause] how is everyone good well we're all here for the same reason which is just all great Bill Pullman who's like looking back in his career it's just so many great movies so hopefully we can get at least into a portion of them tonight I work for New York Magazine vulture here in LA as the Hollywood editor and I'm very honored to bring to the stage Bill Pullman how does all that appreciation feel didn't we do it all again that's why people like coming to these they feel very good about this good there's a lot of you know hard rooms to play so this is good to have a good room it's a very safe place yeah so you grew up in New York State State yes not the city that's a different environment what was your life like as a kid growing up well you know it was a function of being what the 50s 60s and I it's a small town that was started as a place where the steam engines used to be worked on halfway between New York City and Chicago so it was a kind of a train a railroad town and the the idea of acting really wasn't an option for anybody in those days nobody said oh I want to be an actor you know or anything like that and your parents were in the medical field yeah most of my family's in medicine and so I think that you know we were my father was a general practitioner blood-and-guts doctor so he was taking care of patients and he used to do house calls when I was young and so there was a close tie to the community and a great sense of responsibility for the unfortunate ones you know so we've always have some old retiree at the Thanksgiving table and my mother you know it was very involved with the Bluebirds which was you know kind of scouting so and then lots of philanthropy in the family lots of sense of yeah taking care of people you know giving being giving you know and then me being the actor I could burn off in a whole nother direction well when did you know that you weren't gonna follow the medicine round you know I I remember people would say oh you're so good with the young kids you're gonna be a pediatrician are you gonna be I remember thinking no I think I knew something I look back at it I think one might some of my most vivid moments were the you know because you'd only go to movies matinees you know and you didn't have we didn't have a television when my father didn't want television in the house you know one of those guys but we didn't have it for a long time and then of course once they got it it was started in the basement then it moved into the living room then I was on all the time it wasn't terrible that he saved it off for a while yes yes but we just but the movie theater and the matinee was really really critical in that sense of you know being lost in a world in the middle of the day is still one of the great things you know about getting a story told you when and then coming out in the world it's like very bright yeah yeah do you remember seeing a movie that really stuck with you well I was really struck by you know basically World War two movies and westerns you know so classic American male yeah and then when I was in college when I saw the Brisky Point Antonioni movie first time I really saw cinema as art form was that movie like a non Gary Cooper type non geeky yeah I'm John Wayne EEMA Jima and that bridge over the river kwai in a man but I do remember Lawrence of Arabia really you know my idea of what performance was you know Peter O'Toole's performance and that was particularly vivid in you know you go Mortensen said the same thing right here I really yeah that's because you know there was a something so kind of he always was a such a clean actor you know not a lot of extemporaneous but there was a vibrancy inside him or you know this kind of quiver that was his I stood so close ooh and ooh and yeah but that whole sense of what it was to be sell it for the cause of the Arab cause right that's really strong and then I had the good fortune of meeting him at Galloway Film Festival and we had dinner and I remember my wife who is here tonight was with me and she we always remember his story about an old actor you know he was because he's theater bass he it's great to get that you know the touring the British regions you know those guys were crusty and a lot of them alcohol and we have since learned yeah yeah they just kept powering on and you know they were in the town and you know the in the regions and they had an actor was sick and they said well there happens to be an actor in this town who knows Richard the third and they said well let's get him you know we need him and so he had never rehearsed with anybody or anything he just happened to know the lines and he he showed up at the theater and he was drunk Peter O'Toole said he came in and you know the Ray the rope rail you know side side of the stage where he took his finger and there was so much kind of dust and grime and he ran his finger down it and then darkened and then he said what's the play where's the stage lead me to it good British accent all right I really that was a you know it's a great privilege to have a career kind of experiences that you get to have as an actor you know because there's such a affection for him and that was a great full circle for sure and you earned an MFA from UMass yeah and what did you study it was directing for the theatre okay so by then you would kind of entrenched yourself in theater and you knew that's yeah yeah I had gone you know out of high school I was bucking the trend of my bulls and brothers and sisters it all gone to colleges and everything and I was probably now you'd consider I was game for a gap year gap years have become more fashionable since yeah nobody you know but I I won I suddenly said I not going to do any of those things I want to be a carpenter and so I went to a two-year vocational school for building construction and they I was hanging around the dorms and some refrigeration students said we're gonna audition for a play that's a sentence that's never been uttered I think Wow and so it was oddly enough the NS goes the Bald Soprano hmm which you know two-year college that's impressions so there was there were theater classes along side refrigeration they had no theater oh this is like a ragtag team of refrigeration students like this was pretty close to you know there just it was a student affairs position the guy that was director of drama was just a way to keep some of those refrigeration goods from being drunk every day they have a lot of cold beers they don't want to keep their parents yes yes but so then I the guy said you know you're pulling you're not gonna do any of these other thing you're not gonna be a carpenter we're doing you're gonna do what I did go to State College Oneonta which was 22 miles down the road and he said maybe a you know major in theater like I did there then you'll go to graduate school and then you'll come back and teach us a place like delight it's a good life feel like it he was only like seven years older than I was he's good he had a wife and a young baby that's not bad that'd be good and so I ended up doing that and again I got an MFA from UMass at Amherst with the idea at that point I was acting as all the way along but I just was felt like I could by majoring in directing I would learn more other kind of things that I was just the it was a challenge and it was I was really interested in at that point the American Theatre was talked of as being a collective of sorts made up of all the regional theaters you know there was this great sense that the American Theatre wasn't just New York City it was all this great energy coming from the regions with new plays and new talents coming out of it and so I at that point thought oh I'll go and do that and maybe run a regional theater or something someday always acting along the way and then I had finished I had gone to Montana to be part of it outdoor Shakespeare Company and been a number of years doing that in the summers and then when I graduated from UMass they said they had a faculty position so I did that for two years and you know ran the theatre company the touring company and everything and then I realized I had this more of a Jones for acting than I ever thought I it just kind of welcomed deep into your 20s you sort of yeah I was already you know patches on my corduroy sportcoat you have a great beard in hair - I mean you were just yeah I didn't the beard would have topped it too much did you have a pipe I was sporting a full-height I knew it Oh a jacket into violence it was a yeah but my father smoked a pipe so I think that was but then I were so at that point that I decided to go too you know and my wasn't my wife at that time but she came she was she's a dancer so we said you know we we could stay in Bozeman Montana for the rest of our lives and have a great life here and meeting really interesting people and doing theater you know with a place - beautiful place I was really interested in making new place for Montana and I I had a lot of interest in documentary drama we used to call it no no it's devised theatre or some is really more common term but we would make plays about things in Montana because there's no Neil Simon underneath theatre people from Montana yeah well Gary Cooper there you go yeah he was from Montana and Myrna Loy all right and a bunch of others really good and it was a great place for me to learn the theatre company a Shakespeare Company had some really surprisingly strong actors in it you know in that experience if when you're in a company and you have to figure out stick you know you want good stick you know you don't have much time and you want to see people who can really do it you know sometimes it's it's just either they're not there and we used to do we have all the comedies of Shakespeare so I learned a lot there but that's when we decided that two years of teaching and if we don't get out now I'll never get out right very very precent of you at the time so how did you go from that to being on Cagney and Lacey in 1986 what is that journey funny like guest artist on a TV show which to me was a real eye-opener about how much money you could make and you've all really into that part of it yeah yeah I I really I mean just I think it and it was a casting director who I think just said you've been suffering enough with this theatre business give you like $1,300 or something to get a little bit of get off the slippery slope for a little while did you act actually in a scene with Tyne Daly who of course had come from theatre and she was a great performer yes and and it was the part of a doctor you literally played a doctor on TV yeah I played that first television role was a doctor television or movies I guess you would say you're a doctor in singles too yes they did that I've seen I've seen a few of your movies what did your father think when you said pulldown I'm gonna be a doctor for an hour on CBS Saturday night yeah I think he was you know he was a good supporter I was the seven in the family and I was youngest son oh I think they kind of gave up so he'd like that in there and did you move to LA or in New York at that point I wish so you're in the system when I left Montana went to New York and lived there for four years and then I got an offer to do a play at the LA Theatre Center which was just opening up in 1985 and so I came to LA to do a play and it was Bill Master Simone's play nanawatai which is about the Russians in Afghanistan because at that point you know we were the Mujahideen were our guys and or they you know right so complicated but you know the CIA was slipping them weapons and stuff to fight the Russians over there but this bill was so interesting and he kind of sensed this great tragedy of the country and the great nobility living side by side and so he wrote a play that was kind of like a b-movie and that it was a it comes it starts with a tank coming onstage and it's a Russian tank and then we get out in there Philip Baker hall it plays the old tank commander and I the young lieutenant and we are in trouble and we get caught by the Afghans played by Steven Bauer and Gina Gershon was the Queen princess of the Afghans it was like real life that's an amazing cast of characters but we made friends with the Delaware families were several of the Afghan community that was here was in it and amazing people and when after the US invasion they went over there to help and the nor the father was banker is a banker and so he went over there and helped with the Treasury Department for 15 years and then just said I can't do it anymore it's it's such a hard journey you know and but we had them all over to the house for dinner because they're all very accomplished and living a lot of sounds like a great indie movie concept by the way the play and just everything yes yeah put it in your you know sometimes these plays are really formative to your life and my Nana what I means give me sanctuary and I was always thought that Americans were very hospitable and taking people into their homes and whatnot but you see that culture and what they will give everything they have to a stranger if they invite them into their home they'll give them food before they take food you know and they just you know it's great to have those very rare experiences - so your first film appearance was ruthless people in the same year were you discovered in the tank play turn in someone's eyes okay great you're we have this movie with Bette Midler and Danny DeVito and you're the guy isn't that funny exactly right I [Laughter] had never dyed my before and but I thought I would be like Lithuanian tank commander so and the director was a very well-respected TV director named oh my god Oh everyone know the play anyway he he said do you know we could dye your hair blonde and so I said okay yeah that sounds good and so I did and then after the play I just forgot that I had dyed my hair blonde and then I realized oh honey oh it's growing out good B and I went and I got one of this audition for a movie you know I went through William Morris who I just did signed with and they said yeah you're going in for this part of a kind of a bum and I went in there and I was reading the lines and I was getting laughs but not where I thought there was three directors Jim Abrams and the two Zucker brothers and they were laughing at weird places now but this is going weirdly I guess but laughs are good in any case yes but they had were laughing at the fact that I had roots realize it was anything to be embarrassed so they said will you come back and read for this part which is the stupidest man on the face and you already had his hair cut yeah but that theater helped me out right I had it not been for the the you know by color gameplan of your hair that you may not have actually gotten that part wouldn't have gotten that work Oh crazy weird so backstage we were talking about how this year marks 30 years since Spaceballs which is unbelievable and I know you had a funny of course anything to do with Mel Brooks is gonna be funny but a funny way of getting cast and he and his wife had seen you perform is that right yes okay his wife Anne Bancroft who of course no longer with us yeah but I think he had seen ruthless people okay and even though it was a really small part he just somehow kept focused on it and then he came to see me in a play I was in another play at latc Barabbas the gelda road passion drama you know I'm playing the thief who didn't get crucified and and I think our Jesus was played by a woman with her hair had shaved it was an adventurous piece so nice counter to the commercial affair that you were doing and so yes well I hadn't started my commercial I was hoping to have a little commercial enterprise going but they came to see that and he said okay I'm gonna get cast this kid which I think it now look back it was such a radical thing I think because he had originally thought when he was writing it that he was going to try to get does he used to say to me on the set every day I needed announcer to other people I thought I was gonna get a Tom Tom Hanks Tom Cruise I got a bill I think he did it affectionately I have a feeling he does yeah by the way I came out Majan either of those guys playing that far No so what I mean is you have John Candy Joan Rivers Daphne Zuniga I mean what was production like I mean did you go to I mean did you go to set every day and it was just like how did you even get through some of these scenes I mean it's the most ridiculous movie Rick Moranis of course we can't forget him yes dark helmet and but it was one of the last movies shot on the lot when it was still MGM and it was pretty amazing to see that I think back of it you know I didn't realize that this was be the my main experience with with an old-school kind of organizational structure we had this guy Bob Mills those makeup guy who came in a blazer and Abbott I mean I never saw that again he I had a 1972 valiant that I drove you know because first car I bought with some money you know and and but it was old 72 for then it would when it rained it would throw water up in the engine and something would short out and then I'd have to call get the Teamsters to come and get me and so they but I came in and the makeup guys Bob Mel said you know woman you got to learn something when teach you something about the business you can't come in here like a farmer you can't drive that car get a good car something you know like drive onto the lot and like a really yes something really impressive I thought I was doing well with a 72 he didn't so what did did you end up buying another car for noise okay I said you're crazy and what did you learn specifically from Mel Brooks who obviously by that point had already done Blazing Saddles and a million other things like like about the business because he's such a pro but also just about being funny I mean you I feel like you're in your career you've been able to so easily vacillate between drama and comedy almost at the same time where I can't really pinpoint of your dramatic or comedic actor because I feel like you can do both really well and he obviously saw that in you because Lone Star was supposed to be this kind of linked hapless guy he's striving for something but is kind of bumbling along the way yes yes I I do I think I do like those parts where it's both a sense of humor and something tragic at that's it you know if you can get both of those in the same it's so hard you know but he said so many things that I remember vividly and I the New York Times asked me to write a piece about John Kennedy and it kind of brought back a lot of memories about what it was like to be around him in that creative way and he said a lot of different things but you know I he was the one who said you know you really do make a movie three times when you write it and when you shoot it and when you edit it and he said each one is a different movie Wow yeah so he's you write it thinking it's going to go one way but you got to kind of abandon yourself to what you're shooting and then you abandon it again when you go into post-production and you just try to make that new movie you know that happened and and what did you think when you saw it for the first time it was you know it was that first shot of how long it takes that spaceship to go through I just was like yeah I couldn't believe it and to have that vision and the tone is so absurd but it's actually like a sweet story and to hit all the notes it's actually really tough you know yeah he and he would do impersonations to show you how to do the line very method but you know and it's part of it is that he'd be so good at it like I never placed me more than when he would give Daphne he would do the Jewish princess he throw his head back you know with his nose and everything just be so petulant and potty he's a he's a great great actor but direct but I do remember the thing he also is such a hard worker and never lets it out of his brain you know the project and bits and everything and he's you know and he said because only 10% of anything is great you know which I thought what but he said you know I think you're in looking back I think how often it's to really be good as fine you know and that you can achieve that but to be really great if you have that ambition you know it's and you have a reality of how hard you have to work to be great you know then it's a high bar but worthy bar right and I would say you have the most impressive run of any actor I can think of playing every nice guy in every 90s movie literally singles while you were sleeping in Sleepless in Seattle a league of their own I mean at some point did you just want to like say a million times and like like like I can do more than this because you were so good at those parts yeah I mean it's a curse and a blessing obviously yeah yeah there was a point I think you know there I never realized this at some point you're just making your way you know you're trying to get a good part and at a certain point the second male lead was pretty damn good part sure better than the guy at the end of the crawl and I just thought you know something to do and and then I just did a run of them because I was right there hadn't done a big movie but you know did Sleepless in Seattle and Sommersby right and you know the the men malice and they all and then some you know suddenly we journalists are so he's the guy didn't get the girl you know which is the second male lead never gets a girl first male lead gets a girl win I realized oh that comes with the territory right you know little I mean malice I didn't get the girl but I didn't want the girl didn't count you know it was the Nicole Kidman now she was very if she and Alec Baldwin were not you know getting it over on me and you know I turned that around the third act and I get over but no no he didn't get the girl well I have to say while you were sleeping is still to me like one of the most charming funny and it makes me long for and and actually I kind of feel bad for Peter Gallagher in hindsight where he was just asleep throughout the entire movie but what I was a good way to get the girl have the other guy in a coma had turned it around hey however you can do it and obviously you were working with Sandra at a time where she had like it's post speed and she was she was the the young woman of the 90s I mean how did did you enjoy working together and did you have kind of it seemed like an instant chemistry because I think there were some movies you see back then anything like yeah I don't really believe that they would be together but it it really believed it yeah I think I think in some ways it was really lucky because both of us have a side of us that can be pretty formal even when you're working with someone across someone you're formerly you know she's not like a goofball and realize I mean and and not cold or distant or anything but just like etiquette politeness respect sherry you know giving being generous as that kind of principle and so in some ways that's a great way to really quietly appreciate each other you know from a little bit of this separation plus she was supposed to be married to my brother you you had to be a good guy yeah I wish I could literally talk about every movie from that period but we do not have time so moving along to Independence Day in 96 obviously momentous for everyone the fate of the world rested on an Apple computer which is still kind of does so things have not changed about doing so a good point I forgot about that know-it-all it all started then it was the first time you played a president you've played a president a few times I remember I talked to Ethan Hawke when he was here last year and he'd been sent the script for Independence Day and he at the time admitted he was like a moody jerk and he was like I'm not making this dumb movie any it was the Will Smith part and he threw it out the window and went on his merry way and then he saw it in the theater that summer and he was I'm the biggest in the world that's his reason to admit that it's a big deal but did any of you have a sense of the scale of it I mean this was like one of the ultimate tent poles of summer 96 I remember vividly seeing it 4th of July weekend did you have a sense of how big it would be no you know really it was considered like a long dark horse because it had didn't have established stars and it you know at that point will wasn't the feud and Jeff and I were just we were journeymen away this post drastic park I mean Jeff had kind of been yeah you've been busy yeah where it was but we weren't you know we weren't Schwarzenegger or Restless Bruce Willis or something like that yeah but and I think it was in January that I saw projection about good movies coming up in the summer and then we were 20s on the list of 20 you know we were and then there's this one sure about this aliens attacked the earth and they think everything that's happening in the world like this seems like no big whoop yeah and how did your career change after that movie - did people I mean you weren't like the lead lead obviously well was the lead but you had a very important part it was a huge studio maybe it made a ton of money did you instantly become more marketable in a different way well you know it's always hard to say you know that sometimes those things you know they it was really great for a recognition you know go around the world and everybody had seen the movie and everything like that and that but it wasn't like you know I mean you know I got to offer some more president parts we'd love for you to play that role now if you're available [Applause] these comments are my own and not that of the foundation but one of my favorite movies that you did in the 90s was zero effect which was filmed in Portland where I'm from and I love this movie I feel like it didn't get its due it kind of had this like kind of cult life Ben Stiller obviously tell me a little bit about making that because it's still it's to me it's like kind of this underrated classic that is good I always liked that movie to that because is so it happened you know if you hang around long enough in the business you know that you're often you you have offspring in the business and I was so lucky that I worked with Larry Caston and Jake I got to know when he was 13 I was gonna ask he was probably pretty young yeah when I first met him an accidental tourist and he was 13 and I thought he is and like an old soul in a young body he would just seem wise and everything and I would end up talking to him with kids I'm good with kids I'm shy of adults I think I have better luck with kids making my points but he and then on Wyatt Earp you know I was in Wyatt Earp but a Tom Sizemore and I were the Masterson brothers and we had a lot of time hanging around the craft service or catering and and Jake was there because he was 19 at that time and he was doing behind-the-scenes documentary and again I just loved talking to him and everything in at the end of that he said you know I'm gonna write a movie for you all right good you know thinking that'll never happen [Laughter] and then like a year later I saw at an ATM machine and he said I'm working on that movie good good I mean his dad did write Star Wars like he came from yeah I know yeah and brother John's writer and you know mother's great talent for but then all sudden I get a script from Castle Rock zero effect directed by Jake Kasdan and an offer whoa first I thought oh god it's gonna be bad this is beautiful Wow beautiful movie yeah King Dickens and the great in it and Ben Stiller in Canada it was a you know Sherlock Holmes Watson parallel but contemporary times and Sherlock Holmes is on amphetamines and he's agoraphobic and doesn't come out of his lair yeah and Ben Stiller is to talk him out of his lair yeah and and I think you got to show like a really weird side of yourself too yeah that's probably why you liked it so going forward a few more years we were talking backstage about 1600 Penn which I don't know if you guys had chance to see the show a few years ago on NBC but I thought it was so funny you play the president again a slightly different circumstances Josh GAD is Court of sort of how would you describe his character just the White House idiot essentially and I thought the president again but it'd be interesting do it in a comedy you know and I had never worked in that you know a single-camera comedy so but a very you know very different mechanism than I was used to so it was really great experience because josh is such a gifted comics funny you know he's the might I have other children but he was the you know the the one that just was you know awkwardly like a big Saint Bernard and a little overly affectionate a little overly earnest at I'm overly everything you know but I still had to be the president and a dad to that guy right so and you just come off a book of mormon like not too long yeah okay yeah so he was enthusiastic about it oh my god yeah but and I was very glad that you know 13 episodes and then they didn't pick it up but surprise for me I was I feel like we I got it you know I forget they I guess television in order to be successful you know though they like to think it's gonna go six or seven years and 13 is I don't know sometimes people say oh that's too bad or when that kind of didn't that was a dud and I think it was a dud it just it wasn't didn't we got it all done and you know built a very impressive White House replica on the Fox lot yes I remember touring that and that was amazing yes I hope they didn't throw it all the way no they have the carpel of the Oval Office sets you know they store and when everyone gets brought out because they're to the inch exactly right and yeah did you get more TV role offers after that like oh it didn't work out but we like him in this milieu like Oh Fox has this other thing or maybe cable dramas or some you know I you know I did a pilot with James burrows called the nature versus nurture yeah which was a you know that didn't get picked up but I don't know if I'm really suited to three-camera stuff I heard something about it I you know the doors don't aren't real doors you know you can close them and they go you know you can tell they're all Hollow and they clunk you know I would get distracted by things like that you're like three dimensional doors you know I just couldn't stay to me it was really a lot of actors so thrive on it and I have such admiration for Emil because they think it's most like the theater you know that it's not spontaneous but they have kend they have the audience there and they're pumping them up with signs and so they're laughing but they're kind of like an audience on steroids or amphetamine Wow I didn't I wanted a small laugh because I'm going for something else to another the next sentence right what I was going for but now I still have the third the next sentence but they've already laughed and they're gonna laugh again and even though and I think this is what you know right but just was really maybe I was it's okay yeah now were you able to do theater at all during this time kind of off and on was I wait you know I hadn't done theater until I got a chance to audition for it were always the goat and I had always really appreciated a great writer you know that actors gave a lot of actors a lot of work you know and I think Edwards plays are some of the most profound that we have about our times and to do a new play by major playwright that first time on Broadway I'd never been on Broadway before it was amazing opportunity to do something that that I that why I got involved in theatre was you know and this business wasn't to do movies it was because you know you it was from those times in the library you pull out of play and and you open it up and there's the original cast and they have their names on it I just thought wow can I imagine what I've been like to be Lee Jay Cobb and Death of a Salesman you know plaint doing that production of that play and being one of the first ones to do it and and so that really was a significant you know satisfying thing to do and then I thought well if I could do it every couple years so I've done it about every two or three years since then and you feel that it keeps you sharp and at least open to other experiences beyond film and TV yeah yeah you get to do some you know you you get to have quite a bit of control over what you what you think reality is you know rather than offer a reality and wait for it to get cut and write that is the final product what's your final product Chane that's a great way to put it yeah yeah and I love that but I the most recent play that I did was when I first time I'd grown a beard since I had a beard in barabbas weight but I went I had had this idea when I turned 60 I was gonna give myself permission to do a year of place just theater for one year and I did we did my wife and I were involved with Liz Lerman who is a you know dance theatre person who and my wife has been working with her for a long time and we made a piece called healing Wars which was about caregivers in the Civil War and the current Afghan Iraq wars that were going on and it was a really amazing device theater piece in a way and we premiered it at the Arena Stage and they continued on with it that was one play and then I did David graves sticks and bones which is this you know of his Vietnam trilogy it's his middle play and the domestic story really tough tough play to pull off when we I really enjoyed that and then I but I wanted to work with this Norwegian director that I had worked who had directed Barabbas comes back to borough yeah and it was his wife that had her shave her head and play Jesus I gotta find that guy and at that point he said yeah I come to States direct something but he said how about you come to Norway and we'll do a bilingual production of a fellow and you'll play a fellow whoa and because in Scandinavia they you know it's not in their tradition they don't have they haven't had a lot of actors of color and so they would you know there was a lot of latitude about that and with that play it's changing now you know perspectives on it and I was used and John Ortiz did there's different for anything and I thought it's a really tough play to do you know it's a really hard story to tell and I had to speak and to do Norwegian and English makes it harder but I don't think I've ever done anything harder so is it I am mcknight ammeter in Norwegian there's no way I mean that's a you know they do what they call a washed version you know where they because they you know all those countries have to do in Germany has a great tradition of doing Shakespeare plays but none of them are in iambic pentameter they're all translated things so you try to find the grain of the line you know and I was involved in a lot and the English that I spoke but then I had to speak about 20 20 % Norwegian so I had to learn that part of the Norwegian part but it was really looking at the play like he's an outsider and the he's a stranger in a strange land and the the prejudice is about language and at first I come in as they kind of it's all still the Cypriots and Turks and all those things but I'm really an American coming in speaking bad Norwegian but kind of arrogantly and then you know they and I'm and then I become distrustful and then as I get more distrustful I insist they speak more English so you know and then just that whole psychology so that I was really hooked by the play they came back here and I've been talking you know Andrei Hollanders was in the mutual friend and I he wanted to play Iago so we thought we'd do a race reversed one where I would be a fellow and everyone else would be of color and we we did a reading of it which was very interesting really you know there's a there's a lot of elasticity in that play that you can discover a lot about keep discovering new layers to it yeah yeah yeah so I want to make sure we get to the center which is your current project which is so good have you guys seen in on us a really good really good very dark very strange your character has some sexual peccadilloes just safe to say but it's really really beautifully done it's by the guys who made Christine these three filmmakers out of New York she's amazing on Tonio campos um and it's based on a book of german author i think yeah i started reading the book and i was noticing some of the words are odd and i thought this has to be probably not an american writer but jessica biel is the best i I mean definitely the darkest mentor I've ever seen her do but tell for the folks who haven't seen it tell a little bit about who you play well it's a yeah it's kind of a shot like an indie movie it's a noir really a small town in upstate New York and and Jessica's characters a mother with a one-year-old baby and a husband Chris Abbott who's vaguely discontented with her life and then she's in a public place Beach with people on towels and I'm the next tile over somebody's playing music really loudly and next thing you know she it's like a switch happens and she goes with a knife and kills a guy on the other beat and the other towel and shocking it's really it's pretty intense first yeah event and she though comes out of it and just says I did it I'm guilty I don't want a lawyer send me away and there's a lot about the series that I think is makes it in thing is that there's this quite a bit about psychology you know what what we're capable of that we you know unconscious of and she had a very strange childhood so to speak so you just felt like creeping into her layers like that yeah something traumatized her and I think I had to play a detective in small town who's also a little bit of this of an oddball and I think they're discontented with some things in his life and trying trying to hold it together but really being kind of falling apart inside and he had finds her case compelling and decides you know he wants he can't accept not having a motive for why did she do it and so it's eight episodes long and we just been a shooting on Wednesday oh really that recently yeah oh wow so but it's gonna air the fourth episode tomorrow was really good and what did you learn working with Antonio and his team because it really is shot very in Juarez very Indy doesn't look like TV yeah it's definitely unlike anything I've ever seen in terms of style you know how did that challenge you and working in that space it was very good you know there are out of New York and they have a little kind of collective and you know they do movies and they try it off to paid off one would direct one and they produce the other guys they did Martha Marcy May Marlene there's after-school I think was Antonio's first film they've just done amazing stuff um James White which Chris habits started a couple years ago Cynthia Nixon so yeah impressive group of guys all interesting things but he he and Jody Lee likes was the DP who has worked with them but in the same way he is a director he directed one of our episodes right so there's a lot of kind of you know sense of like a clubhouse kind of about it and but they're all they share an aesthetic so yeah yeah I did a movie with Thomas Vinterberg and Lars von Trier and you know there's a little bit of that film doing dogma 95 feeling that they that Antonio has yeah very complex female characters to families yeah yeah so has Justin Timberlake come to the set and if so what was he like it nice when they say is he a nice guy and you can say yeah no he is a very nice guy yeah you know very very engaged you know I mean he's so talented so many different levels and everything but he's a good good eye on things and what's interesting too for it does kind of make this show shortly after becoming to mom herself so I imagine there was that was probably part of not the attraction to it but it resonated more with her probably now that she had like a one and a half year old arm yeah yeah and I think you know she she's such a good she's kind of an athlete too yeah there's a sign of her that just treats the you know they her ability her endurance inside of the hours and you know when you have to be inside a kind of a woman who's been traumatized in a way you know and cotton more and more really kind of quaking with what she doesn't know what's going on inside her and so she has to be in a kind of a state for hours an hour you shoot a scene you know it's three minutes long but you spend a day and a half inside of this rule Thingyan but she does it you know so there's such commitment and like an athlete just lets go again she's the EP two so she has to yeah she's a little bit more sway yeah so we have some good audience questions want to make sure we get to them we'll start with Bridget Fitzgerald where's Bridget there she is hi Bridget hey she says well we sort of touched on this a little bit that she said you're the lead in two of my favorite films while you were sleeping in space balls what can you share any stories from your experience on either of these projects maybe we can do while you were sleeping since we talked about Spaceballs any particular fond memories some from the set well you know that it was here in Chicago right yes you gotta go but it was also a movie that wasn't supposed to be any big deal you know I was when I was I think a fifteen million dollar budget or something and it was Sandra hadn't really been a vehicle but there was such an ensemble of actors and Doris Roberts yes Jack warden you know Peter Boyle the and there all of them are so good and but it was Jon Turteltaub you know who really was the spirit that made a kind of it was not as good a script as what what it end up being and he just he had it in him for some reason he wanted to really keep going I the story that I'm thinking of us and you know kind of result of some of the tension trying to get the studio to approve dialogue changes and everything he wouldn't he said I can't show you the walk and talk along the river that scene that we do at night you know we were walking along the Chicago River and he's I can't show you the dialogue and you'll just know that you get to the makeup trailer and I'll give you the words and that's how we'll have to do it and very secret very yeah just because he didn't want to you know they had just everything he had submitted they didn't approve of and they're trying to sanitize that make a little bit more commercial or I don't think they ever understood his sense of humor you know and when you look at the movie so much of it is really kind of I call it turteltaub Ian so just like the fact that that bicycle the kid with the delivering newspaper in the early morning of the all small town America and also he crashes was that we run to another thing right no well then do you know it's not it's kind of not your grandmother's rom-com there's like there's like an edge to it yeah yeah and and but he so we had to do that dialogue and it was Chicago in cold and we had established springtime clothing right so we had not only like barely enough clothes on but we didn't know what the hell we were saying to each other you know we just really and I think maybe because it was so cold we just got the lines really fast amazing how that works when you're out of mobile so Diane would like to know where is it Deion I think it's Diane okay what is the most memorable character you've played you may have already mentioned this person but maybe not memorable character well you know like I do have just you know been lucky this year to have a bunch of things coming out so there's gonna be a Pullman thing for every month and Dahlia if they're all different and they're all not necessarily you know leads or anything but there's the sinner in August and then battle of the sexes is in September and that's with Emma Stone and Dave Carell do you plan that I play Jack Kramer who's kind of the blocking character it's a Commedia and they you know it's true story and everything but then my own son who Louis Pullman is 24 and he's an actor and you know I really think a lot more about acting now that he's been going in for two years and he's been very lucky you know I really but it's also he's got something going for him and that's really I as much as he and he invites me to talk to him about it and what he's doing and how you doing it and it doesn't throw him off I thought oh god if I ever say anything to him that is in his brain when he's auditioning it's gonna be bad and he'll hate me or something but he's very it's really wise and he has its own gyroscope so he's in it as well so that's a precious thing but because it says he's in better he plays Steve Carell son so that's gonna be interesting and then October I'm in a movie that we shot in Montana where I've had a ranch there with my brother for we've been there for 27 years and so that was called walking that's called walking out with Matt Bomer and is a really interesting survival story based on a true story and then in November I'm in LBJ with what do you have an advent calendar yeah there's a chocolate for every movie you have god no seriously a good idea to make but it just I don't know what they're or it hasn't a 24 years like my career I had a colonic or something I built up with milk nothing that nothing came out and then I was in there there [Laughter] and because that's a but it's you know not the heat it was the interesting part of with woody playing LBJ and I played Ralph Yarborough Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Lady Bird and you know we reenacted the whole assassination scene and Jane is gay because we were in the car together and and they were bitter enemies at that time LBJ and rough Yarborough was the other liberal senator you know from Texas had two Democratic senators and they really Yarborough knew that LBJ really was a kind of crooked ways and but in just he would really they didn't get along in that he didn't want to ride in the car with LBJ and JFK spent that morning the last day in life was getting those Garbo in the card so you know it's really interesting and that movie is our perspective of the assassination you know so it's it was a great experience I guess is still answering your question they're all memorable but the one in December I think is particularly the it's a Western so in a way it's a circle back to why I got involved in this in the first place watching Matt Nassif John Wayne and Montgomery Clift and Red River those kind of things and but it's called The Ballad of Lefty brown and it's a story about a psychic who to a legendary cowboy I played the lefty Brown and Peter Fonda is the cowboy and we right out at the beginning and he shot assassinated and in lefty is quite a character you know it's a little bit of Walter Brennan little a little bit of all those people you know and then me being you know 60 year old 63 year old second male lead but it's a I think it's a and we premiered it at South by South Film Festival and had great response and so we had a bidding war for it which was so unusual for indie film and it was bought by a 24 which is very exciting distribution company moonlight and did you know audience I mean they were such a brilliant movie but not a guaranteed you know audience that for that and so we're hoping I think hell or high water changed that I think that the fact of that got a Best Picture nomination I think showed people there's definitely an audience for that for the Western Western yes yes well this is set in making modern 1800s people have an appetite for that so that comes up and and my son Lewis is in that as well as well as my wife and my dog other daughter and other son they're all extras so maybe that could be the most exciting thing is what's coming off Jeff would like to know who is your greatest inspiration who is or was greatest inspiration how this me as an actor or just as a human as a human yeah not that those things are not the same you know I've really been very fortunate to work with some terrific people actors and I you know I get inspired by actors and I of course I was doing a thousand things today but one thing I wanted to read was a Martha Graham quote about acting you know but it's just as well I didn't bring it but it's just something about you know when you you know the privilege we have to engage with kind of humanity and be the ones that are engaging both psychologically emotionally and physically and mentally with with texts and things you feel like you you were living a heightened reality and I think you know what I see people who can do it really well it's it's sounding and I've worked with so many good actresses actors that I wouldn't want to pick one out to be the most inspiring because I get but there's you know I Holly Hunter and I have done a bunch of a lot of things together movies and plays and things and I really do enjoy working with her in the theater you know because I she's somebody who I really always jumps up my game and everything but but I also think about people you know and I think of somebody like anybody who's a politician these days has can get maligned pretty quickly by people and you wonder just when you wonder what what do they get out of it you know really but there's some really good ones you know and now that I'm playing politicians I'm particularly fond I'm gonna do start this fall doing this movie Cheney which is out of the cage movie and Christian Bale is playing Cheney and Steve Carell is playing Rumsfeld who are you playing I'm playing someone who I really admire is Nelson Rockefeller and you know he I forgot my father was a Rockefeller Republican and you know they in those days you know that's was Rockefeller was really important for starting the EPA and they were environmentalists they were education supporters they started the whole New York state system and he was did some great things for unions you know when they built the Empire State Building and the whole Rockefeller Center and everything and he was also for the Arts he they started the NEA and of course I hated Republicans for most of you know well I bet and then I realized that I really there's that side of that him his life very wealthy very privileged and so I'm excited about it but he's somebody that I really admire yeah I'm quite a legacy to yeah Travis would like to know what is your dream role if you haven't played oh yeah oh my gosh that leads me I always wonder about whether I am as I worked with Laurie Metcalf you know is very good such a good actress and she you look at her resume and she really knew what she wanted to do you know it reads like a man's resume it's like she's played every great female role in the American theater and European theater you know she just did it she just had this vision like I want to play all the really good roles and and I always thought I never had that ambition I got a cherry pick and you know I'm I got addicted to the variety you know and I just never wanted to do the same thing twice you know so I never had like oh I got to play Richard a third or something you know because they always kind of sure is in a way it's Hamlet asked you know in that to be or not to be because you think sometimes you really want to make something happen and if you don't have the right director or the right theater or something else it can slip away from you so I don't really have one roll or how about maybe a genre in which you haven't worked TV or film lives well you know I don't you know doing the sinner makes me really want to do a comedy I was doing comedy I really wanted to do with drama I know just sometimes when you're in it you know you just get insight because I you know there's sometimes on the center where it's so you know psychologically kind of uh you just think like where's Mel Brooks what I need yeah funny parachute let me jump out of this and finally this is very great practical question which is how do you calm your nerves before an audition and if you have an audition in a while how did you use to call meaner yes well now that I'm with my you know all of our children are performers and at they're of different things they're almost as a singer-songwriter as daughter and then middle son is he's may he mostly makes puppets and does that with the rogue artists ensemble here in LA and other companies but he's also a banjo player and a singer and Wow you know he's got his own wild calls himself The Hollywood hillbilly he does the whole time you know music and in this is the original piece of work man you know always so creative and then the youngest is Louis's the actor but a I think sometimes there's a guy who I admired I [Music] god Donaldson you know the English director did cheek-by-jowl wires his name's Declan Donnellan yes Declan Donnellan who I think his the actor in his target is a was a very inspiring book that I didn't have as a textbook when I was studying but my son had it in college it was required text they give me that I'm taking this book and I just love what he his focus is so much about what it is to find to be free of the demon of anxiety and the demon of anxiousness before going into things and it's so important to becoming a neutral vessel and you know I remember working on it a lot when I was younger and I think to find neutral is a lifelong journey you know it's and sometimes the best technique is to fall in love with your text in a way that's so deep and so complete that you can your anxiety is gone because you're just living inside it you know but then that's if that is failing you on some days that doesn't work you go wow I am inside and I'm still nervous and then you've got to find other ways of doing it you know and I always think of you know and with my son and things he's you know they're in daughter's performer we talk about a lot of different things a provisional ego yeah you know which is sometimes if you don't have the kind of ego that says I'm the best thing I'm worried about this because I'm the best thing you know if you don't have that you better find one for the moment yeah [Applause] that is great invite like you fake it till you make it essentially yes so before we wrap I feel like we should like your wife should raise their hand so we can give her a round of applause to it where is she having all those children and living with and after all these years that really deserves a round of applause yeah yeah thank you guys for coming thank you thank you very much

Channel: SAG-AFTRA Foundation

Views: 12,286

Rating: 4.9272728 out of 5

Keywords: SAG Foundation, SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Acting, Actors, Bill Pullman, Stacey Wilson Hunt, While You Were Sleeping, Independence Day, Spaceballs, Ruthless People, Sleepless in Seattle, The Sinner

Id: b77AGW2PhjU

Length: 73min 3sec (4383 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 25 2017