Edward Norton on InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse

as an actor he achieved notoriety in his first film primal fear and garnered an Oscar nomination he followed that role with memorable and award-winning work in such films as the People vs Larry Flynt American History X Fight Club and The Illusionist outside of acting he is an environmental and social activist and in 2010 he was named the UN goodwill ambassador for biodiversity hello i'm ernie manouse coming up on interviews our conversation with Oscar nominee and Golden Globe award-winning actor Edward Norton when reading a script how do you know it's right for you I don't always and in fact this will sound really like ironic but the but sometimes sometimes the ones that I don't think I'm right for are the ones that I end up thinking were the best experience almost to the point that I I've started I've started moving toward things that I have a bad reaction to at first and that doesn't mean you know a crappy script but I mean I I mean I mean it that I've learned that if I have an initial resistance if I if I think I'm not right for this I don't think I can do that I'm not really sure that I'd do that well and sometimes even I don't understand this I don't understand what it is that those those can sometimes end up being the ones that you should do because you're you're you're you're gonna move into a zone of discomfort in a way and it and it produces interesting work sometimes is there an Edward Norton style of film or not really I hope not I mean I hope I hope not I it would be hard for me to there the people have brought up to me the idea of you know connective tissue of the thematic connection between some films I've done but you know I can't really find the pull between like death to smoochy and Fight Club so as long as I can as long as there's ones I can you know I I don't think so one time I went to the best answer to that question that I've was given to me actually was I went I went to the Shanghai Film Festival once and they were running running a pretty substantial series of films I had done and uh and I liked the selection they had picked they were a lot of ones I really liked and and I saw that there was there was a banner they had a banner under it in the program and and I and I turned someone I said what is what does that actually mean like and they said oh that's the that's the title of the of the film series of your films and I said well what does it say and they said it says the search for the spiritual center in the new youth generation Oh I started laughing I so that's what I'm gonna say from now on is my films are about to search for the spiritual center in the new generation it's pretty big for a business card that yeah exactly I had heard that when you looked at stone the script for stone that you read it put it away wasn't taken by it came back to it a few times and then got involved in even rewriting it so what makes me wonder in all of that process is what is the Nugget in there that draws you to it if at first you didn't get it and then you reworked it why that script yeah you know there's never there's never to me a set process on a film every film is different it's like every film is a different chemistry experiment and and there is a different there's a different balance scripts come in at different levels of readiness and and clarity and directors have different personalities and and you know it it's there's such a jumble of things that are involved in the collaborations on films but films are always collaboration so so I can't say there's anything that there any pattern but in this case there are two things first off I had made a film with John Curran who who directed the Painted Veil and I I I so enjoyed working on The Painted Veil with him I became good friends with him but I admired what he did with the film I had liked his other films and I wanted to work with him again and we we had said to each other when we finished painting bill let's you know let's let's start with keep an eye out and and and this came through him he had he became very fascinated by certain ideas and he was a he gave it to me first and the first time I read it I just didn't get it I didn't I didn't I didn't see the depth that he saw in it but because we're friends you know it's like gave him my notes I wasn't saying to him like categorically like this is junk throw it away I just sort of wasn't quite where he was on it and I hand over and I give him my thoughts he went and did work he was started working on it and he started challenging it and stretched you know adding things and changing things and then he brought it back to me and there was this kind of you know process of back and forth over time and eventually it got to a place where I started I started to have a sense that I knew what he was what he was getting at more and some other things the other the other thing that happened was the economy tanked and I know that sounds like a really weird thing to say but but all of a sudden some of the things that John was saying about the kind of film he wanted to make started to have a new level of relevance to me I thought that he was getting at things that were very very much at the heart of some of what this our whole culture is going through and and that's a trigger for me definitely whenever whenever I get a sensation that a piece might really be digging around at the experience of the moment data that starts to become a big pull to me because the films I've enjoyed the most and that have meant the most to me in my life and and the films that I've made that I think have achieved the kinds of things I got into films to make I would say almost uniformly are ones that that meet that standard they are they are about the times that we're living in and and they're wrestling with what's difficult about the times that we're living in I read a quote that you'd said I'm gonna terribly miss Paris right here but where the films that are the most financially successful are not necessarily the films that people remember and that the films that stay with us and become part of our fabric of our lives or those films that have something more to say I so I think meant many of the films that that any student of film was would cite as the ones that had real impact or that became lasting documents or really seen as art were not are not the same as the list of the most successful films since 1970 you know what I mean that's not to say that some successful films aren't fantastic films they are but but I think that it's not to me it's not the criteria that that is that defines like what the long-term life of a film is going to be but how do you balance out that struggle if you're Hollywood and you want to turn the profit but you want as an actor to make the longevity that hollywood's an idea Hollywood's a Hollywood's a projection you know Hollywood's an idea of of an industry but but it it's not some unilateral it's not some beast it's not some monolithic industry where everything we all do is somehow interacting with Hollywood Stone stone by way of example was independently financed you know and and it's not I wouldn't call stone a product of Hollywood per se it wasn't made by big studio it wasn't something put out by a big studio so so I think that you know and the world the world has changed in many ways that are positive I think for films because for eclectic films or arty or films or because DVDs and Netflix and now the internet that there's a film is able to sustain a life in a way that 30 40 years ago it absolutely was not and and while we may not have what you know what you had back then where if Easy Rider becomes a call to hit it can run for literally like 56 weeks or something like that we have we have something equally potent and and maybe even broader reaching which is that like a film like American History X that came out and did you know I think barely ten million dollars the box office which which was considered fine because we made the film for so cheap we made it for half that but at the same time that's that's become this you know well I I think someone told me it was in the top thirty rentals of all time at Blockbuster you know it and and when you go through those kinds of experiences enough it has a settling effect on on the pressures you feel that come from the industry because you realize that you realize that that that there's this way that films live and form their own direct communication with audiences and it's sometimes those ones are that are the deepest ones that the that the kind of a commercial distribution model is not the only way for a film to penetrate and become meaningful and and if you got into the films to try to make some of those kinds of films then it's good to know that is there a relationship between you and your body of work do you look at them and a because I see the way you talk about them affectionately hip American history acts that's a swell I mean I'm there to me they're more reference points for learnt for things that were I referenced sometimes as a learning experience like you go you go through you you you you learn about the way people interact with films and you it affects how much you you suffer from or or feel liberated from kind of the commercial pressures but I don't I don't really I don't really really interact with a body of work I don't I don't make choices based on on that or and and nor do I have a nor do I have like a a goal for for some way I would like them all to stitch together I think that mmm you know artists and many different fields that I admire are often ones who I think have had many chapters in their lives have moved through different phases and periods of interest and focus and and I to me to be acting primarily but but even filmmaking is one of the one of the one pleasures of it to me is that it's this like it's this incredible opportunity that like it expands your life you know I mean the things that I work on are this opportunity to go places and learn things and investigate other people's experiences and you you know you you you get this incredible insight into human experience and breadth of it and you get to learn all these details of strange worlds and and it has a it's my absolute favorite thing about it and I think if anything I look at making films on a selfish level as an opportunity to just explore more of the world on a non selfish level you know what you're trying to do is is is recognize things that might be of value to other people and say okay we're going to channel that I mean I'm gonna be the conduit for that or I'm gonna figure out how to how to share that out with other people you know yeah now take me all the way back the beginning six years old first acting something like that something like that yeah I mean I I I could I had a I definitely I got interested in the whole thing in the first place through a like a babysitter man who was herself and act it in her teens and in acting in a drama program you know and I I think I saw her in a play but but in and around the same time you know my parents were my parents were really in the theater and film they weren't they weren't actors or performers but they they attended things all the time they I even as a very small child I remember my it's going to the theater and I remember my dad pulling me over to watch you know watch sunny afternoon films or something and and I and I I was very caught up in them in the magic of all that true or false just total sidenote you're grandfathered one of your grandfather's invented the concept of a shopping mall is that true it's that's yeah I mean that is true my grandfather my mother's father was a very famous not just a developer but a he was most famous in some ways as an urban urban planner and urban philosopher he he was one of the great thinkers on American cities and urban development and I mean people still teach courses about his thinking and writing on City Planning and but he was he was one of the first people to develop you know enclosed shopping centers and I think he was credited with being one of the first people who referred to it as a mall yeah and you grew up in one of his communities correct in Columbia Maryland yeah that's cool anyway back into the careers Jurina so and then in your teenage years you went to a drama club her camp you know it was it was really just a jerk it was a drama arts school that was run in our community you know it was like the same way that I took tennis lessons or or like took guitar lessons you know it was like a thing I would go to after school so is there a point where you realized I can make a living out of this this is something I can do career I think it went through phases I mean when I was like when I was a kid I really thought about I thought about you know the movies and plays and I don't know that I even had a sense of myself as wanting to be a professional I just thought it was fun in college I kind of moved away from it all entirely I thought about doing other things and then got back into theater but I was even living at you know after school I I was living in New York and I was doing other things entirely but I kind of kept gravitating back toward auditioning for plays and writing plays and writing a screenplay with a friend of mine and and it took me I don't know it took me a couple years to kind of admit to myself in a way that I was that I was interested in and enough to actually try to do it professionally yeah and then and then there was you know kind of that I wonder how you do make a little bit how do how do you make a living at this or how do you get work doing this and that took me a few years to in there somewhere it would all be comes into the picture yeah Edward Albee the is you know I think to this day one of our greatest living American playwrights I loved his work I was you know a huge fan of his plays and of the film's hooter Freight Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and I auditioned for a play he's know he saw me in a small he saw me in a downtown play I was in in New York and was very complement I stayed after to say very nice things to me and I found out about a new play that he had written that was being cast and I auditioned for it so that was one of my first I think that was my first paying paying job as an actor did he directed her just right now he just wrote it she's ready I'm always interested in what he puts into his plays and what he gives to the actors to go and do the show is it just what is the written word do you find your character and it all be or is there more explanation to them I think well his plays are very diverse so you know I mean he's written plays about a pair of lizards that encounters a pair of humans on the beach so I have no idea what his notes were to Frank Langella when he did that play on Broadway but um but the play we did was very abstract it was like there's that Pirandello play six characters in search of an author it reminded me of that and he said interesting things to us about you know he said look I'm not I mean he said I'm not he said I'm not looking for character other than you you know he said if you are in the play it's because I think you have a quality that's what I want for that so he kind of said let's not tart it up too much you know what I mean let's not let's not get too decorative and I laughed at that I remember thinking that that was interesting because I was so inclined to hide behind character somehow and he kind of said don't don't bother and and I wouldn't call it hiding but what I see in your body of work now is that these completely separate unique creatures you create and I looking at your body of work I can't tell you who you are as a person because each one can be so different and so it's funny that early on yeah the advice was just be you just for that play I think this for that play I think I mean interestingly he saw me in a he saw me in a play by playwright Brian Friel the Irish playwright and it was a night it was an Irish play and I think I remember he at I think he thought I was Irish so I think he was surprised that when I wasn't which brings up another question for me primal fear I heard that when you audition do you convince them you were southerner and well I I have I I told half-truths when I got engaged that I was always a believer that I still believe that that that is very easy to puncture the bubble of of illusion that goes on and I think I never liked I never liked this there was a thing of you know just come in for the audition and then chitchat and then do your thing and I always thought what a great way to ruin everything I'm about to do you know yeah so I used to I used to try really hard back in those days it was an instinct I had to sort of say like what's what's not like it's not ruin everything right before we get started and if I couldn't do that when sometimes I realized I wasn't going to be able to sort of control the the way that I got to audition then I just sometimes I just started thinking well you know screw it I'll I'll control it by not giving them anything other than the thing I want them to see and so I would go in I would go in as close as I you know hanging already sort of in character and I would try to hold that until we were done yeah and on that Kate and in that case on that film like you know I do have roots in the south I have roots in Kentucky and in Virginia and in places like that the character in primal fear I figured I would locate it in things that I knew and understood pretty well and I and I just thought there's no reason there's no reason they needed to know anything about me other than that looking at a list your filmography I'm surprised at how early in your career was the People vs Larry Flynt yeah I thought that was much you know you think but that's pretty early there was a third poem I did yeah reaction to that film for you I love that phone I think that's one of I mean I as a fan of Melo's form and not not my own films I would say I would say it's one of his really really great ones all of it I liked all of his films but I would say for me Cuckoo's Nest Amadeus ragtime Larry Flynt I think those are those are that's him he's one of the masters in fact that was another example actually early on in my career he at I got I got sent that script and I am I didn't like it at all with no-knock - the guys who wrote it but I didn't get it I didn't I just didn't and I and then I heard Miller's form and was gonna direct it and I and he was one of my heroes one of my one of the people like proud I think I literally had I think I showed me wish that I had a journal entry from years before just I was so so admiring of his films I think I'd written something like I if I could get a job carrying lights for that guy I would carry lights for him you know and uh and I was I was so interested in what he saw in it and it was a it was another example of a director saying no no no no no just don't you're not you're not you're not seeing this it's much more than the script it's bigger than that it's the for than that and his articulation of it was what pulled me into it another question I need to ask another film I want to ask about most horrific thing I have ever seen in a film and it still stays with me to this day is the curb scene in American history acts yeah how do you get into a character such as that well I think that for me that that film you have to a film like that you have to have a very specific conviction that there's that you're that you're telling that story for a reason that's that's positive and and I don't even mean necessarily uplifting because there's the film's not very uplifting but but I think David McKenna who's my friend and I he wrote David wrote the script David and I in talking about it I we were you know we were very clear with each other that what we were going after was like a trait you know a tragedy and and a film that that made the point that there's a consequence to rate to rage to letting anger dominate your life that anger has a corrosive and destructive effect and and if I didn't feel you know you need to you need to build out from a positive intent with a film like that you need to say like we think there's value in looking at this and yes the characters you know really intense but it's about a transformation and it's about complex themes so you know I I think that we knew that the people who were making the film knew that our crew knew that you create an environment you create an environment of of people who believe in what you're doing and and that gives you sort of the the kind of private safety zone to get into the more the darker or more savage aspects of a a character like that and and you know we didn't make that up I mean we weren't trying to be gratuitous David David had pulled a clipping about that an incident I think that's what makes it so startling and upsetting is that you're not going over the top you're giving people what's out there yeah there yes we tried to be pretty rigorous with it and and I think you know to me the number of people that we've had come up to us write us about the impact of the film on them has affirmed to us that we were going after good things I think you know Amnesty International was using that phone for years as part of their discussion on hate crimes and things like that and and so I always felt I felt it was it was risky you know in some ways but but we we were pretty committed to the idea of of a contemporary tragedy you know and at the time I mean at the time I remember talking to David saying like you know a fellow and the Beth and you know if you go back to like Oedipus I mean these are these are stories where everybody ends up death you know what I mean they don't end I'm gonna end up done if we don't end this now this is what I'm gonna frustrate the audience we're barely begun in your career and we're out of time thank you so much sure yeah Edward Norton Thanks to order a DVD of this or any episode of interviews please visit Houston pbs.org

Channel: HoustonPBS

Views: 22,072

Rating: 4.9781423 out of 5

Keywords: edward, norton, on, innerviews, with, ernie, manouse, interview, houston, pbs, channel, actor, american, history, fight, club, the, people, vs., larry, flint, golden, globe, academy, award, nominee

Id: sGdB_huX3Fo

Length: 26min 49sec (1609 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 21 2011