Here’s another really cool “Daybreakers” roundtable interview with actor Willem Dafoe (Portrays Lionel ‘Elvis’ Cormac) at the ACE Hotel, New York City, Wednesday, 1/6/10. “Daybreakers” stars Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Claudia Karvan, Michael Dorman, Vince Colosimo, Isabel Lucas and Sam Neill.
Question: (Q) How do you see yourself, your role in this? Do you look at yourself as just a character, or do you look at yourself as someone who represents something?
Answer: (A) No, I look at the whole thing. I have some thoughts about how I’m supposed to function in the overall thing, but I don’t think it has a name, not necessarily. I mean, you can sort of make sense of it. It’s also a flexible thing, it depends what the configuration is, but you do have some sense of it in the scene of what you’re responsible for. Because in a scene with Claudia (Karvan) and Ethan (Hawke) and myself, for example, we have different elements to uphold or pay off, or at least you have some cconsciousness of that.
Q: What was it like working with both Peter and Michael (The Spierig Brothers) on the film?
A: Good. It’s so wild, because they are identical twins, you know that are very close. They have distinctly different personalities, and they did have a tendency to not always, but generally, tend to concentrate on different things, and speak to you in different ways. I mean, one was better at acting direction, and the other was more technical. But it still sifted around. And sometimes, because there were a lot of effects and things, it was pretty ambitious for a reasonably budgeted movie. Sometimes one would be left behind, and the other would go off to shoot second unit. But they were both real clear, they do speak with one voice. They were really well prepared. They couldn’t be bullied, they’re very practical. I like working with them a lot. They had a good script that had a lot of fun elements in it. They weren’t interested in just getting actors. It wasn’t a case of taking a piece of shit genre movie, and trying to elevate it with a certain level of actors. They wanted to get these people to get in there and help make these characters. It’s always a risk. I saw their first movie, and it had real stuff. There was real evidence that they were filmmakers. But on the other hand, it had plenty of limitations. You’re always sticking your neck out a little bit.
Q: You mentioned before about the script. You had some of the best lines in this movie. How much of that was improvisation?
A: Not much was improvisation, but some was us working together to find the dialogue. It’s silly, but there are a couple of lines when I hear them that I say to myself, that was my line.
Q: Are there any lines that didn’t make it in that you can share with us now?
A: No.
Q: The New York Times, when they did the article on you recently, they said you had a distinctive growl, and “strange is a relevant term when talking about the work of Willem Dafoe.” Did you say that’s true? What’s your opinion? What do you think of your body of work?
A: It’s a lot of things. It represents a long period of time. It depends on what you’re interested in. For me, it is what it is. It’s my body of work, it continues, and I don’t feel the need to reflect on it so much. I think the lessons learned, they stay with you. You don’t look back, but maybe you do. I’m reflective, but not that way. For performing, I think it’s instinctive. I don’t have much of an attitude. I do it from the heart, and get ready for the next one.
Q: How do you decide to do a project or to refuse a project?
A: Always a combination of things. The accent, the priorities are always changing. But I will say that it’s often in reaction to what you did before, just as a natural thing. It’s not a question of repeating yourself, you don’t want to keep going on the same route, it’s nice to mix it up.
Q: This is your second vampire movie within a span of like eight months. Do you have a fascination with the supernatural?
A: It’s fine by me. I have enough interest in it. To be fair, this is quite an extensive time. For example, why I did The Vampire’s Assistant because I knew (director/producer/writer) Paul Weitz and had a really good time working with him on American Dreams. He asked me to do this thing, and it was fun, and I thought it would be fun to do a couple of scenes with John C. Reilly. If it went well, there were going to be sequels, but it didn’t go so well, so I don’t think there will be sequels, but that was kind of the idea behind that. We were shooting in New Orleans. The reasons are very specific, it’s by coincidence that they both involve vampires.
Q: What was it about this one that you said, I have to do it?
A: The character was sweet. I felt that it was something kind of fun and entertaining. I think it’s pretty unusual that you have a film like this where there are things for actors to do. There are fun scenes. There’s good integration of action stuff with dramatic scenes. It has a good sense of humor about itself, but not so goofy. It walks a lot of lines, but it does it in a pretty skillful way.
Q: Susan Sarandon said that she’s hired for pictures to sort of give a certain depth to it. All of a sudden, it’s a whole different film, no matter what role she’s in. You seem to be like a male Susan Sarandon, that no matter what film you’re in, we know your name’s there, and there’s going to be some sort of quality moment in the film. What’s different about your acting that blows people away, that raises other people to a certain level?
A: You’re flattering me, thank you. I mean, I don’t know. I’m serious about what I do. I only try to do things that I feel some connection to. Or if I don’t know what they are, I hope to get the instinct to come to it.
Q: Have you seen a change in your profile recently?
A: As I get older, there is this cumulative affect, and people see me a little broader. I don’t want to gloat, because things are changing so quick, and who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow. I’m going through a period where I think people appreciate when actors take small roles. When I do take smaller roles over bigger roles, I’m seen as that guy who’s not doing things for the money or the Hollywood lifestyle. I mean, whatever appeals to people. Like this year, I had a mix of different kinds of roles. If people follow films, I think its fun for them.
Q: What was the appeal to John Carter of Mars?
A: (Director) Andrew Stanton. The material, the idea that I’m going to play a ten-foot Martian warrior. I live very much in the independent cinema world. That’s great, that’s where we find a lot of great filmmakers, and sometimes more freedom to make personal films. But the flipside of that is that sometimes there isn’t a protection or care. Or there’s an emotional rigger, but you don’t have the technical stuff to work with. You can have lousy lighting, or no time to prepare properly. You’re very vulnerable. For someone to ask you to make a movie, directed by Andrew Stanton, with Disney behind it, a big, temple movie, I know from making Finding Nemo how these Pixar guys work. They’re very thorough, they’re very rigorous, they really get it. It’s a real pleasure, because they’re so well researched and you get so much help trying to make something, so I think I got excited about that. I like to go back and forth, but it’s time to do a big movie again.
Q: Has Andrew talked to you about how they’re going to film four arms?
A: I saw him recently, because we start in London for studio stuff, and I start next week (the week of January 10, 2010). He showed me some samples just so I can understand what I’m in for, mostly of ideas of how they’re going to film these creatures next to human beings. We’re going to play the scenes, it’s not like some people’s fantasies. It’s not like they put you in a room and sample you and then go off to do this computer magic, and nobody ever plays the scenes. It’s not like that, we’re going to play these scenes. He showed me examples of the different variations of how they shoot it, different equipment I’ll have to wear, certain times I won’t have to wear different equipment.
Q: Are you going to have to wear prosthetic arms?
A: I’m not telling! You know what, I can’t tell you that much about it, because I don’t know yet. I mean, we don’t even start shooting next week, we just prep. I go to London, to do the things we need to do to know how to solve those problems. Officially, productions starts the 18th.
Q: Do you agree with the messages in Daybreakers?
A: You know, I don’t even know what the message is. I never know when we’re filming. Some people think that that means I don’t care, or I’m trying to be evasive. But I don’t need a message, I get feelings. Its lots of things to me. But I don’t think it all crystallizes in one thing and hits you in one at the end of the thing. It’s a lot of things. It’s an entertainment that has some content, I like that a lot.
Q: You’ve played so many great characters, both heroes and villains, in your career. Do you have a preference, do you lean one way or the other?
A: No, I don’t. It’s more fun to play, it’s a pleasure to play someone who does the unthinkable, or thinks the unthinkable, or does the things that you don’t have the courage or the recklessness to do in your own life. I mean, there is a pleasure to that. It’s a fantasy, it’s nice to test your own moral rules, so that would imply that its fun to play villains. But it’s also very hard to find very good villain roles. In the same way, heroes are really fun to play when they’re beautifully made. But it’s hard, because they’re usually prickish. You’ve got these cardboard guys who have one-dimensional motives, you have to give them some sort of spin, or you got these prickish hereos. It’s really about good roles, I don’t have a preference. I will say that I consistently like, I feel a little more comfortable doing something that feels more devilish than virtuous, because it has greater energy to it. The virtuous stuff always has an agenda to it, a tightness to it that tends to support what we already know and believe, where some of these offbeat characters challenge who we are and how we think. It’s more creative, and sometimes it’s more fun.
Q: You said it’s more fun to play characters that do the unthinkable. Antichrist has a lot of unthinkable things in it.
A: I play the more rational, reasonable one. But it’s true that one of the things I adore about (director) Lars (von Tier) is that he has a nose for going to taboo things, and I think he does it in a much more thoughtful way than people give him credit for, and I admire him for that, and that’s why I think that makes the movie much more powerful. It addresses a kind of guilt that is almost unspeakable. I can’t think of to many films that deal with it. Also, he deals with some of the negative stuff between men and women that I think exists. I’m not saying this is the truth, but it has a smell, it has a flavor of the unspeakable. For that, I think it’s very challenging.
Q: Your name, Willem, has Dutch roots, and you’ve worked with some Dutch directors. Is there any kind of connection to Holland?
A: There’s a big connection. I spent a lot of years performing periodically at the Mickery Theater in Amsterdam and also touring around the provinces, starting in 1974, maybe, through the early ’80s. I started there performing with theater acts. I also did a show with a Dutch director in Amsterdam, so I spent some time there. Thank you for your time.
Written by: Karen Benardello
