Arabian Sights Film Festival

Adam's Rib Examines the Best and Worst in Casting Choices

Actor Edward Norton Discusses Stone

By Annette Graham, DC Film Society Member

After a special preview screening of Stone on October 4 at the AFI Silver Theater, actor Edward Norton answered audience questions and discussed the film with Nell Minow, the "Movie Mom" film reviewer and editor and co-founder of The Corporate Library. Stone was directed by John Curran and written by Angus MacLachlan; it stars Robert DeNiro as a corrections officer on the verge of retirement and Edward Norton as a prison inmate hoping to be paroled. While the two characters interact and intersect, the line between them begins to thin. The film opens in local theaters on October 15.


Edward Norton and Nell Minow at the screening. Photo thanks to Jay Berg.

Nell Minow: It's an honor to introduce you to Edward Norton. Thank you so much for being here and for that extraordinary performance. And we have to start off by talking about the cornrows. (everyone laughs) I think they're interesting because I know it takes a long time to put them in. So when I saw this character appear with the cornrows I first thought he must have some interaction with somebody in the prison, with a fellow prisoner who does that. What was it that created the idea of the cornrows?
Edward Norton: Up at the prison where we were working they were ubiquitous. They were everywhere, white guys, black guys, Latin guys. They were as common as tattoos and I think it's just part of the gear, the arm to armor, it's just one version of fierce up there. There was one guy in particular that was very compelling to me and to John Curran, the director. He had them; some days he had them in, some days he had them out. You're right, they pay; they are guys who make a business of tying people's braids. As was everything else about him and most of the language that came out of him, we absorbed it off the guys that we were meeting up there.

Nell Minow: Is that true of the body language also, because I thought that was really fascinating, the way you held yourself particularly in your meetings with [Robert] DeNiro seemed to me to be very unlike what I've seen you do in other roles and therefore very deliberate about that character.
Edward Norton: There was a quality in some of these guys that I would describe as intense anxiety. As people approach this process of getting assessed a lot of them told us they couldn't even sleep. It was incredibly existentially anxiety inducing. And a lot of the things that ended up in the scenes weren't really in the script in any way. One of the guys told us about how he at least once or twice had self-sabotaged, blown up and then gone out and screamed all those types of things we got off these guys. But apart from that, John's a really good director. What he says is worth a lot but he doesn't say too much. In the beginning when we were talking about the idea of the whole thing, he said that his view of the whole film was about a guy was here [at the top], another guy who was here [at the bottom] and they went like this [met in the middle]. I thought that was a very poetically simple kind of note that encapsulated the arc of the film very nicely and I think that to me on an emotional level it was about someone going from agitation to calm. John drew a very clear roadmap of that kind of stuff, but the shell of it, or the exterior of it, the voice of it, I did not have a good idea. We started shooting on a Monday and on the Wednesday before I was without a clue as to what I was going to do on Monday and I was feeling a little anxious myself about that--because I respect Robert DeNiro and thought it would be good to show up with some kind of idea. There was one prisoner I had been talking to for a while, and he was an interesting guy and he had a lot to offer but he wasn't what I thought I wanted to channel. On a Wednesday morning he said to me, "I know who you want to talk to. I finally get it." He'd read the script. "I know who you need to see." He had this other guy brought out and when that guy walked in, it was almost the whole package for me. He was very much everything you see there. I had John interrupted in what he was doing and brought over to meet the guy for a while and as we walked out, John said, "If you can get 50% of that it would be great." I'm not exaggerating, he supplied us with 60% of the language. He said all those strange and hilarious things about vegetarians and aliens. These were all phrases that he used. He was very very helpful.

Nell Minow: It's interesting that you talked about the two of them going up and down against each other. They had so many parallels in terms of their relations with their wives and the feeling of being in prison; there were a lot of connections there. This is the second time you acted with Robert DeNiro. I think of the two of you as having a different kind of process in the way that you approach what you do. And Milla Jovovich also comes from a very different background. Did the three of you sit down together and talk about how you were creating the characters or did you let the director run interference between you, or how did that work?
Edward Norton: No. John and I were involved before Milla. John and I worked on the script for a whole spring. I've noticed that people project a lot onto DeNiro because they associate him with a certain kind of intensity or nonverbalness. I hear people use words like instinctual. It couldn't be further from my view of his processes which is similar to my own. He's the most right-brained, clinical. Robert DeNiro is like the librarian of actors. He's like the clinician, methodical, note-taking, research. It's not a lot of head down in the corner, calling up his memories of his mother with him. It's very studious, very clinical, very research-oriented. As many great actors do, somewhere in there, he pushes it through this membrane of himself, and this thing emerges that is more poetic than that. But I associate working with him with a kind of meticulousness and I relate to that a lot. I think there are phases of the process. And that's one phase. That's the outside in phase and then there's the inside out phase and I think he's very intense about that first phase. We were really comfortable with each other; we've known each other a long time, we've worked together before. He knows me really well. I think that on this, we didn't want to over-rehearse it and apart from the fact that I was terminally unprepared and so there was nothing really I could have brought to rehearsal. I think he was very disinclined to see what I was planning to do until we started and actually John set the first scene between them, he rolled and I came in and it was the first time that we interacted with that character at all and we both thought that was golden I loved working like that. We knocked off all the scenes in the office in about seven consecutive days and then we were done. It was a great way to work.

Question from Audience: Are you interested in doing more theater? Did you have a collaborative process with Angus [MacLachlan] to work on the character?
Edward Norton: My whole grounding and training is in theater; professionally that is what I did for a long time before I worked in film. I'm always looking for a good play. They're not easy to come by. I'm still very involved in the same theater company I started off with in New York. The Signature Theater is a big part of my life in New York still. Angus wrote Stone as a play and sort of adapated it himself. It was possessed of many of the same themes and qualities. But it was very different than the film ended up being. It was set in the South, it was just different. There were many things that weren't in the film, lots of structural things, many specific things, like the murder that Stone witnesses, none of that was in Angus' script. I think what the film became was a blend of some of Angus' impulses and then John Curran's impulses to change the palette of it very substantially. John was very focused on wanting to make the movie in Detroit. He had ideas about the themes of sound and making them very explicit, things like the radio talk show host overlay. There was an expansiveness of the scale that John wanted to chase. I think Angus wrote this very strange compelling thing and he handed the baton to John and then John ran with it in his own directions and we all came in at the back phase of that.

Question from Audience: I couldn't help thinking about Kirkegaard, the religious philosopher and his ideas about savage worshipping and idols having truer faith than a so-called Christian dozing off in church. That in order to come close to God you have to silence the noise of the world, come to a crisis and then suddenly make that leap of faith. I think your character is really trying to help him, consciously or unconsciously, by the burning... to bring him to that leap across the abyss so that he could find God at the very last moment when he's looking up.
Edward Norton: I think you just made John Curran very happy and he doesn't know why. (laughter) I'm going to take everything you just said and borrow it anytime anyone asks me about this film. I think that's a terrific deconstruction. I don't know how many of you have seen John's other films, We Don't Live Here Anymore and The Painted Veil but I've thought many times working with John and looking at his films, that Ingmar Bergman would really like John's films. You mentioned Kirkegaard. I think of Bergman and Scenes from a Marriage. There are not a lot of filmmakers today that have the courage to leave as many questions hanging over a film and as many gray areas in a film. I think it's a great compliment to an audience to leave a lot for people to interpret through the lens of their own experience, to not have to struggle out carrying someone's imposed view of a set of subjects as complex as are in this film. The films that made a dent on my own head are almost uniformly ones that leave a lot of room for very diverse intrepretation or a lot of ambuity. It's one of the things I really appreciate about John. He makes authentically grown up films and doesn't capitulate to the kind of desire that comes into directors where they want the audience to like them, whether they know it or not. They want the easy affirmation that comes from people having an instant understanding of what they were trying to say. It takes a lot of nerve to leave an audience feeling unsettled on certain questions. And he has that quality which sets him way above the field, in my view.

Question from Audience: You directed Keeping the Faith. As an actor going from acting to directing, what is the most difficult thing that you came across?
Edward Norton: Annoying actors who won't get out of their trailer and come to the set. (Laughter)
Nell Minow: Ben Stiller is such a diva!
Edward Norton: Ben was great. He's an actor who has directed, so he already knows about that. When you direct you have to stay a little more in your right brain and outside the whole thing than you do if you are acting exclusively. You have the freedom from the responsibility of all that goes into a day on a film. Hitchcock's line that directing is getting pecked to death by a thousand pigeons comes to mind because that's what you deal with. A film set is already designed to destroy good acting. So, when you're actually wearing the hat of a director, you are really up against it in terms of focus or staying in the head of it. That's why I felt happy to do a lighter toned role the first time I directed. I would not have wanted to have directed Stone and played that role the first time out. I think that would have been very challenging. There are some things--you want to get in the car in the morning. The character is like a car. You want to get in, turned it on and drive it for the rest of the day and not get out of it and stay in it. I have a lot of admiration for people like Orson Welles and people who did monumental characters while directing. It's not easy.

Question from Audience: What is the difference between working with DeNiro on this film versus working with him on Score?
Edward Norton: In the most basic sense, the drama in that other film is very plot-driven. Score is a heist film. It was a lot of fun. We had a good time and genre can be fun, but a lot of the drama is the drama of the plot in that film. It's the plot puzzle. This one was entirely a dramatic tension formed by the parry of conversations. When I imagined how great it would be to work with DeNiro, I hoped I would get to do a film like this one at some point. He showed up with his A game on in this one. I think he had a deep interest in exploring what was in this for him, a person hitting a certain point in life. I think this was closer to the bone for him. What he brought to it was pretty extraordinary. I got a deep satisfaction working on this one with him. It was fun working on the other one. This was like finding your way through thick woods of material. It was more challenging and more satisfying.

Question from Audience: This movie has such a different tone and speech from your other movies. Is that a challenge for you?
Edward Norton: I'm a lot happier if I can find someone else's skin to slip away into. If I start getting close to a movie and haven't figured out how to say bye-bye to me then I start getting very uncomfortable. I don't think ME has any place in this film. John said to me in the beginning to me, "I don't have a very clear bead on the character but I want him to be from urban Detroit, from the margins of Detroit specifically and I want to look at him sitting in the chair the first time and when he opens his mouth I want to think, 'This is not a strong candidate for a spiritual transformation'." As always with John, vague but very interesting. He was highlighting something that is very apt. This story is much much stranger and more interesting if the place that you perceive that person is very different by the end of the film. That was a cue to me to swing hard at how out there he is in the beginning. The language and vernacular, the way the guy talks, was almost handed to me on a platter by this one guy and I think for me it was a huge relief. Even the guy's voice was like that, it sounded like he had swallowed a wine glass, it was one of the strangest things. I think that when you can find a great costume, or the skin of something and slide into it it's great. Then you're in a car, now I've got it, I can take this anywhere, someone can say anything to me and I can just live in it. John and I kept a legal pad full of all the things that we had taken off the tapes with these guys. We kept snickering in a corner looking for a place to put "two pumps and a swirl." Everything the guy said was golden, we had to get that in. There's an unconscious thing when we all watch movies. When someone's talking and you're not understanding 60% of it, it makes you feel you're behind the film in a great way because it immediately authenticates the world in your head. It probably means he is really coming out of that environment. That's where language can be great. There were interesting learning experiences. John and I are white kids from the suburbs and we weren't thinking about what happens when you take cornrows out of your hair. We had this idea that we would do this quick thing and change and shoot a scene in the yard when he doesn't have them. This lady who did them for me in salon in Detroit, said, "You know you're going to need some time." Why? Just take them out. And she said, "Good luck with that." When we took them out, I looked like Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein. (everyone laughs). Just when you think you own it the artifice shows up and bites you on the ass.

Stone opens in area theaters on October 15.

The Cinema Lounge

Q&A with Director Zack Snyder Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'hoole

Jack Goes Boating; Q&A with Actress Amy Ryan

By Annette Graham and Anita Glick, DC Film Society Members

A preview screening of Jack Goes Boating was held at the AFI Silver Theater on September 22. Special guest Amy Ryan discussed the film and answered audience questions; Blake Robison, Producing Artistic Director of the Round House Theater moderated. Amy Ryan earned rave reviews and received the SAG, Golden Globe, and Oscar best supporting actress nomination for her 2007 performance in Gone Baby Gone. Additionally, Ryan has achieved major success on the Broadway stage and television. Since his arrival six years ago, Blake Robison has launched the Round House Theater's Literary WorksProject, re-envisioned its educational programming, created the artist laboratory The Kitchen, and commissioned new works from exciting up and coming playwrights.

Blake Robison: I learned just now that DC audiences may have seen you act before that. Tell us what that was.
Amy Ryan: 2004 in the Kennedy Center in Streetcar Named Desire.

Blake Robison: There's a long list of credits here, I suppose most of these people already know about: Capote, Changeling, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and of course Gone Baby Gone, your wonderful Oscar nominated turn. But what I know is that you're also a very experienced stage actress. Streetcar Named Desire led to a Tony nomination I believe and there's one other as well, is that right?
Amy Ryan: Uncle Vanya.
Blake Robison: You're also a New Yorker.
Amy Ryan: I am. I was born and raised in Queens and I still live in Manhattan now.
Blake Robison: One thing I've noticed, having lived for a while in New York is that it is filled with wonderful locations and scenes, so as a New Yorker in some ways it's a love letter to a certain class of people who live in New York, people we may be in contact with and may not be in contact with. How did you get into the role? Did it help to have that background as you worked on the role?
Amy Ryan: I suppose it must have just because I use influences along the way whether they're my own or things I observe. I went to the high school of performing arts in the city and I remember my first acting teacher just said, "Watch every one and everything that you possibly can, steal from everyone that you can." I feel like the characters in this film are the New Yorkers that we all too easily dismiss or don't pay attention to because they seem ordinary. But I love that this film has taken the 90 minutes to show us that their lives are as complicated and complex and as beautiful as some of the glossier characters we see depicted in other movies filmed in NY.

Blake Robison: Tell us a little about how you got involved with this. You worked with Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, is that right?
Amy Ryan: Yes, I played Marie Dewey in Capote who befriends Truman Capote in Kansas and invites him over to dinner. But Phil and I knew each other from New York, actually in theater we both did one-act plays for the drama department. So we've been in and around each other's lives over the years. And then it was about a year before we started to film this Phil asked me to be a part of it. And he said, We have two weeks we need winter in New York. Could you wait for us?" Yes, Phil is someone I'd wait forever for.

Blake Robison: Some people know that this story started off as a stage play. Bob Glaudini wrote it as a play that was produced by the LAByrinth Theater Company in New York City. And that is a theater company that at the time was run by Phil and John Ortiz.
Amy Ryan: That's right. John founded it and then he and Phil together were co-artistic directors. They've just handed over the reins to some other people as their careers are getting busier and busier. But they're still very much a part of the theater company.
Blake Robison: Did you see the play?
Amy Ryan: I didn't. I remember when it was on. And I think at the time I was working, I couldn't get to it, I couldn't get a ticket. Once we started, we did a two-week rehearsal process on this before we shot anything here. And I remember there were days I was stuck because Connie was so odd to me. How could someone so painfully shy have such an open fantasy, this odd vocabulary to describe things. I couldn't figure it out and kept wondering what the actress did in the play. And then Daphne [Rubin-Vega] was complaining, "I wish I hadn't done the play because I'm stuck. I want to do it the way I did it on stage." And it's two very different beasts.

Blake Robison: Two weeks doesn't sound like a whole lot time to rehearse, even to me.
Amy Ryan: For film it's extraordinary.
Blake Robison: How much do you normally get?
Amy Ryan: In theater you get 4 weeks and then you get a week of technical rehearsal. And in film usually you get a table read, if that. Even in the case of Changeling when you work with someone like Clint Eastwood you get no rehearsal and sometimes he films the first take and moves on. So you really need to have your homework done well before you arrive. But in this case Phil really wanted to have that rehearsal process because obviously he wouldn't have the time to explore as much as he's directing.
Blake Robison: Because he's filling both the director and actor role. Was that odd for you. Have you ever been in that situation before?
Amy Ryan: No. I've worked with actor-directors but never when they're in the scene with me. I wouldn't say it was odd. It was different but I didn't find it disconcerting. It was probably more focused. The rest of us didn't goof off as much. We knew we had to keep it together for Phil because he was so exhausted and he had to stay laser-focused.

Blake Robison: A number of people also know you from your turn on the TV show The Office. You were in the season four finale. Should we expect to see you on TV anytime soon?
Amy Ryan: Yes, I'm going to go back. I really couldn't resist to have one last laugh with Steve Carell before he leaves. It's really a fun place to work.
Blake Robison: A scary place, but a fun place I would imagine.
Amy Ryan: They tape that show with two cameras that are hand-held and it's their own choreographed dance--the cameramen are really part of the cast as well. One of my first days I laughed so hard just at a word that Steve said which was looky loo. I couldn't stop laughing; I just cried my makeup off--the kind of cathartic laugh--laughter into tears--silent tears streaming down my face. It's really as fun. I love it.

Blake Robison: The comedy in this movie is of a very different kind obviously from something like The Office. It's very character based. It grows out of the situations the characters are in and their particular personalities. Although as you can hear there was a wonderful response from the audience. Do you think of that when you're working on the scene or do you just try to play it straight and let people take it however they will?
Amy Ryan: I try to play it straight. I think the rule in comedy, I'll paraphrase, it's "Don't ask for the laugh, ask for the ham sandwich." I try to play the gravity of the scene, the seriousness of it. Because it is life and death for these people. It's funny to us to watch that horrible first day but I doubt any of us would really want to go through it. I know I wouldn't. I'm happy to represent Connie in that scene, but I'm glad that never happened to me.

Question from Audience. Thanks for an excellent performance. You're talking about people in New York. you're shooting in New York, shooting a comedy, people with neuroses. Is the ghost of Woody Allen around? Is he talked about as you're going through this? Any other influence? Predominantly I thought of Woody Allen and this is a 21st century improvement.
Amy Ryan: We didn't discuss those influences. I know for myself that when I'm in a story it becomes almost very narrow minded that this is the only person this has ever happened to. I wouldn't have the guts to emulate any of the characters in a Woody Allen movie, that I grew up admiring so much. No, I think that's just New Yorkers.
Question: As it was being shot was there any discussion about this outdoing Woody Allen?
Amy Ryan: No.

Question from Audience: What is your favorite part about film acting and your favorite part about stage acting, because they're so different.
Amy Ryan: My favorite thing about stage acting is this intimate dialogue with an audience--1,000 people or 200 people that you've never met before. But there's this real energy that happens in the dark. I feel a little shy now because I can see you all. But when you're on stage you can feel people but you can't see them. And that's a thrill. Everyone is in on the story; it will take you there but it's for you. And it's immediate. And that's a thrill like no other. And film acting--I think it's the thrill of sharing the story with a larger audience but the process is so miniscule. Like how to get it through this small quiet room with four actors and a crew and it goes through this lens and it reaches more people. I know that sounds super corny. But it's a different intimacy. And also even though we did get to rehearse this film, I always thought it was important to do plays in my career when I was younger because I thought theater is where I'll learn to be a better actor and then film is where I can apply what I've learned. Because I knew there wouldn't be time, although we did get to rehearse this one. But usually you get thrown into it.
Question: I thought I saw advertised on TV you have a role in the show In Treatment?
Amy Ryan: Yes, this fall I'm going to play Gabriel Byrne's new therapist for the next season.

Blake Robison: Actors talk about being in the moment all the time. Certainly when you're in a stage play that's something that everyone is trying to find every night so that there's spontaneity and there's talking and listening between the actors. How is that different as you described when you're in a small room with just these cameras and sometimes you might only be shooting a brief 7-10 second segment of a scene. How do you apply that? You talked about applying the lessons from one form to the other.
Amy Ryan: I always to use the same rules. I go through the script, I ask the same questions, why is my character in the story why is she in this scene, what does she want from this scene, what does she want from this person. I apply all those same questions. It's not that different; it's being in a place that you're so relaxed and you know the character so well, there's no need to improvise. In a film if you're that open to be reactive and active to what may come at you and if that happens with a change of dialogue or something your other actor did, it doesn't have to be so rehearsed and choreographed. It's just about being open.

Question from Audience: In this film the women were more sexual beings as opposed to the men. How did you approach the Metro attack and the love making scene where your character said, "Take me."
Amy Ryan: People have asked before. At Sundance someone asked what happened to her. I said she wasn't attacked sexually in her life as a child. Her neuroses come from being single in New York and in her 40s. And that's enough to have enough fear to be afraid to open yourself up to a potential date. Connie is one of those people like the Charlie Brown character with a cloud over his head. Like that attack that happens on the subway, things just happen to her. I know people like that. You ask how many times can people draw the short straw. I think what is so powerful about the scene at the end is that she says "don't hurt me." She's very firm. She says, "Overcome me." I think of the line earlier that Clyde says about Connie, "She's one of those--things go on in the mind." I think Connie thinks too much; she gets in her own way. But when she says "overcome me," it's not rape me, hold me down, it's stop me from thinking, just take me away. She worked so hard to build up her fantasy I want it to be by the lake, and I want it to be a sunny day, all this control. The point is just take me away from that. Don't hurt me, just take me away from that. And she finally met someone she can trust to do that. Even though it's a sexual scene, I think it's more about trust.
Blake Robison: It strikes me that if the female characters in this film are in fact more overtly sexual on screen in the scenes that we see, they're also stronger characters in a way. A lot of the film is your character drawing Philip Seymour Hoffman's character out of himself, inspiring him to self improvement and various other things. And that scene at the end he needs not only permission to take you, but the directive to do so. Daphne's character is a very different person, there's a similar kind of strength there. Is this the kind of thing that gets discussed in the two-week rehearsal? I'm fascinated by the time around the table, what you bring to the process on your own and what really gets explored in the short amount of time that you had to prepare.
Amy Ryan: It's hard to speak for John and Daphne, what their process went through. But as for Daphne's character, she's above Clyde in terms of determination and she's more motivated in her career. I knew they talked a lot about character back stories, like who has the lease on the apartment. They decided Daphne does because that's the power shift. In New York I have friends who have rent-controlled apartments, they are married, they have children together but they still won't give up that apartment just in case something doesn't go so well.
Blake Robison: We used to say, "A good job, a good relationship and a good apartment." But in New York you can only have two of the three.
Amy Ryan: What a grim life. I love it! (everyone laughs). I don't remember the women's sexuality being a theme of the movie, as much as I remember love being the theme and one love growing while the other is deteriorating. I actually find that scene so painful to watch where Clyde is trying to ignite something with Lucy when she's there in her underwear and she could care less. She's so out of that relationship in her heart, soul and body. I find it painful to watch, not sexual, I find it sad that their marriage is definitely over.

Blake Robison: Tell us a little about Bob Glaudini who wrote the play; he wrote the screenplay as well?
Amy Ryan: Yes.
Blake Robison: That's unusual as it is. So many playwrights sell their property to a film studio and then it gets taken away and rewritten by eight other people and turns into something entirely different than what they intended. That's obviously not the case here.
Amy Ryan: Bob is a LAByrinth company member as well and I think it was smart for a first Hollywood endeavor to stay close to people like Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Ortiz. John is a great instigator. He was the one who just turned to Phil one day and said, "You should direct this." He plants seeds. Phil said, "No I couldn't do it, I couldn't play the part and direct it" and then as he tells the story, suddenly he can't stop thinking about it. He sees the film cinematically and sometimes on stage they even thought certain scenes were more cinematic. But back to Bob, He's a real aloof quiet guy. I would ask him a lot [of questions]. He would go, "I don't know." He just had this Cheshire cat smile. He has real patience with actors. This is his world, this is New York, he knows these people. But he loves and respects actors enough to let them find it without keeping a strong imprint of his own thumb on it.
Blake Robison: Was he around a lot during the shoot?
Amy Ryan: Yes, Phil relied on him heavily, just to keep that extra eye out for someone who knows the piece in and out better than maybe even Phil does. Just to make sure it was on course and the right tone.
Blake Robison: Thank you.

Jack Goes Boating is currently playing in DC area theaters.

We Need to Hear From YOU

Calendar of Events

Previous Storyboards