Read our roundtable interview with actor David Hyde Pierce and Australian screenwriter-director Nick Tomnay, whose psychological thriller ‘The Perfect Host’ is now available via VOD, and will be released in select theaters on July 1, 2011. The movie, which is based on Tomnay’s 2001 short film ‘The Host’ and marks his feature-length debut, follows John Taylor, played by Clayne Crawford, who just robbed a bank and is trying to escape capture from the LAPD. He shows up at the doorstep of Warwick Wilson, portrayed by Pierce, who is preparing a dinner party for some friends. As the night progresses, the two men both discover how deceiving looks can really be. The two discuss, among other things, how Pierce prepared for his role, and what sort of challenges they faced during the film’s 17 day shoot.
Question (Q): David plays the perfect host in the movie. What were some of the necessary changes that you felt David brought to the character that were different from the original incarnation (‘The Host’)?
Nick Tomnay (NT): Honestly, I didn’t change anything. I just wrote it as I thought it should be. When we were doing it, and when we were rehearsing it, David would come up to me and say, this doesn’t make sense to me. I said, what would you say, and he said so-and-so. Some people said to me in Australia, this doesn’t really feel like an Australian movie, it feels like it can be a tale that could be told anywhere. I agree with that. When I expanded it into a feature film, I wasn’t specifically thinking about America or Australia, I was thinking about telling the tale.
Q: David, when you first got the script for ‘The Perfect Host,’ which is Nick’s first feature film, why did you take the chance on him?
David Hyde Pierce (DHP): I had been drinking. (laughs) No, I had read the script, and I had really liked it. Obviously, the character is incredible for any actor. But also, it’s also a really smart, funny, interesting, twisted, twisty script. So I had loved that, to begin with. I saw the short, ‘The Host,’ so I got a glimpse of Nick’s style as a filmmaker, which is really clear and strong, and also fun, not heavy-handed, that’s something that’s important to me, that there’s humor in the script. You’re allowed to laugh. He did all those things. The last part of it was actually meeting Nick. We had a couple of meetings. It was not just the process of talking through how we would do it and how to play the character. It was also getting to know him, being very comfortable, wanting to work with him. It was a friends level, I would want to spend time with this person, it would be worth a shot.
Q: What about your walk David, the distinctive walk the character has. Was that something you brought, or was it something that was in the script?
NT: No, David did that. I think in rehearsal, you said “Hey, I’m working on this, what do you think?”
DHP: I never said those words! No, I had been drinking. No. (laughs) I’ll tell you, the walk came honestly from early discussions. I don’t want to give too much away. **Spoiler alert: The character has many different aspects to himself, sort of in the beginning and the end of the movie, they’re different sorts of people. I wanted to physicalize that in a way that was noticeable but not so extreme that it wasn’t believable. So one of the ways to do that was to kind of goose the way he moved in the beginning of the movie into one direction, which was more of a fluid, kind of snaky oddness, so that later on in the movie, when his physicality is a little more stolid and lumpy, it would help underscore the differences.
NT: The last shot of the film, you have both Warwicks, which is great. I think that’s something I realized in the editing room, are you doing both? I think at the time, when we were shooting, we were so energetic. In the last shot, David starts off one way, and ends up another way, which is almost like the whole movie in one shot. End spoiler**
Q: Do either of you give dinner parties?
DHP: No one ever comes back. (laughs)
Q: Do you cook?
DHP: No, I’m a terrible cook. My partner’s a great cook, but I’m lousy.
Q: But you’re good at entertaining?
DHP: No. We have friends over occasionally, you would think. I’m a terrible disappointment that way.
Q: Can you talk about the dancing and musical sequences?
NT: The film has a lot of dark humor to it. To have the dark humor work, I think there has to be dramatic tension in the film. So the humor becomes the release and the relief. I felt that that would be entertaining. I think the reason why it’s in there, the dancing sequence actually occurred to me early on when I was writing it. I thought what an unusual decision for this man to make when he has John in this situation, he could sever his arm, but he’s not going to do that. He’s going to do something else. Once I thought that’s what he would do, that really taught me a lot about the character. From that moment, I thought that was an anchor for the drama and the dark comedy. I hope the film is equally weighted as a dark comedy and a psychological thriller.
Q: Did you discuss between yourselves any back-story? Some actors really like to ask the writer what motivates the character. Did you discuss that at all?
NT: I don’t know, did we?
DHP: I do remember now. But there’s a good reason, because I usually am someone who would do a lot of research and stuff like that. But with this one, it’s all on the page, in the script. Not only because it’s so well-written, but also because the character is so complex, you don’t need to look elsewhere to find new levels, they’re all there. You’re busy enough playing all that stuff. For me, the work was more about reading and re-reading and re-reading the script to understand the motivation, the moment-to-moment motivation, what he’s doing at any given moment or point. But there’s more than enough on the page to play him.
Q: When you were preparing for it, did you research multiple personality disorder?
DHP: No. (changes tone) But I did. (laughs) No, I didn’t, but for the same reason. I feel that the world in this movie is very specific onto itself. It’s not ‘Awakenings’ or something. That’s kind of what I mean when I say it’s all there on the page. I didn’t feel like I had to go elsewhere. I may have done a little work on the hallucinations and delusions and stuff like that, to understand how they worked and what they felt like, and schizophrenia. But that was very, very peripheral. What I tried to do was bring to life what he had given me.
**Spoiler alert: Q: When you approach a character that’s several different characters, how do you as an actor tap into the really dark side of yourself that is drawn to these horrific murders, as opposed to tapping into part of yourself that can be this guarded figure as a lieutenant?
DHP: I think most of us are all of those people. Most of us aren’t crazy psychotics, but most of us are a whole bunch of different people. I think when you are in a position of authority, that doesn’t remove that from you. We find that out all the time. You read the paper everyday, and you find out that yet another person in authority has revealed themselves to be caught in some criminal way. So I think being an actor in general is just acknowledging that, that we are constantly playing different roles, that we constantly have all these different parts of ourselves. Instead of pretending that you’re one thing as an actor, you get to admit that you’ve got all this stuff going on. End spoiler**
Q: This is for both of you. If you could host a dinner party with anyone in the world, who would it be? Who would be the last person you would ever host a dinner party for?
NT: I don’t know. I probably wouldn’t want anyone like The Incredible Hulk turning up. I don’t know who I’d want to be there.
DHP: Where’d that come from? (laughs) Do you eat so much?
NT: He’d probably destroy everything and monopolize the conversation. (laughs) I don’t know. What about you, David?
DHP: I don’t know. I hate questions like this. You’d say, oh, I’d have Beethoven over, but then the whole night would be like “What!?!” (laughs) I don’t know.
Q: David, you talked before about how you first read the script, and you loved it from the actor’s perspective. From a character’s perspective, how did you initially see Warwick? You say, oh, he’s a little batsh*t, but who cares?
DHP: I’m really glad you said that, because there’s a trap when you’re playing crazy or whatever characters, that you try to solve the character and make them what they’re not. Make them more sympathetic than they are. I certainly didn’t want to do that. I think maybe what you’re identifying with is that between us, we found the reasons, even if they’re not stated, why he does the things he does. You get the sense that there’s a need he has that maybe it’s expressed differently than we would all express it, but it’s not all that different from the needs that we have. To have friends, to have someone to have time with, to have a life that’s not just sitting alone in your house with your things, that kind of stuff. I think, the same thing with the character on ‘Frasier’ (Dr. Niles Crane), any of those extreme characters, sometimes the extremity allows you as an actor to allow people to see more of themselves. It’s not so a part of your normal life that you take it for granted. It’s a weird situation, so you’re kind of lead into the humanness of it.
Q: Some of the casting was interesting, like Helen Reddy (who plays Cathy Knight). She’s not one of the main characters, but can you talk about working with her?
NT: She’s represented by my manager. She hasn’t done a movie in awhile. She read the script and really liked it and thought it was great. She wanted to do it. The producer, manager Stacey Testro said “What about Helen?” I thought that was great. I was really pleased that she wanted to do it. She understood the role, and was really professional and terrific.
DHP: Oh, she’s lovely, a sweetheart. If you know her from her previous work, the days she was actively performing, she was kind of a sex pot. Now she’s like an Earth mother, she’s so nurturing and warm. She wasn’t on the set that long, but she made us feel so at home, and she was the person coming into the working set. I just saw her again at the Tony Awards. She’s really a sweetheart. That was a nice thing to have around. Also, she’s really funny. It was cool of her to do, because it wasn’t a big part,, it was just sort of a cameo.
Q: Can you both talk about the shot, it was 17 days. How was it working on such a short schedule? David, how was it for you, since you do a lot of stage work and ‘Frasier,’ where you’re on-set for a long time. Was that a challenge, working on such a short schedule?
NT: Well, I wish we had more time. I felt the pressure of the clock constantly over my shoulder. The trick of it for me was not to let the audience feel that. Particularly in the beginning of the movie, where the characters are feeling each other out. I wanted a certain amount of silence, a sense of someone you first meet and it’s an uncomfortable situation. So that was challenging. I had planned out the film quite extensively, in terms of how to shoot it. When we got to film it, particularly in the house, it was just a manner of getting in there and doing it. There wasn’t a lot of time to experiment. I had a pretty clear idea of how I wanted to photograph it. We had had a four day rehearsal period where we basically explored every bad idea we could think of until we got rid of them all. We figured out a lot of the blocking, in terms of the emotional reality. So when we got to the set, we were fairly prepared and comfortable with each other, especially Clayne and David and I. So what that meant was, in my point of view, I was able to, even though I had prepared fairly extensively, I was able to throw out a lot of what I planned and be in the moment with what was happening, as opposed to what I thought would be happening. I think that was a big lesson from all of this. I felt that worked quite well. If you prepare well, that gives you the luxury to be spontaneous. I learned that from this film.
DHP: I had been warned by an actor friend who had done an independent film, who said that you have to learn the script ahead of time. Unlike a regular, big-budget feature, where everything takes forever, you can look at the scene you’re going to shoot the next day, you’re going to shoot five scenes in a day. If you haven’t gotten it all in your head, you’ll never catch up. So fortunately, I had that knowledge. That rehearsal period Nick referred to was vital for all those reasons of shaping the trajectory of the story, the emotional trajectory of the character. But most importantly, of us learning that we could all trust each other, me and Nick and Clayne. There were no arguments, no “Wait, you want me to do what?” We all knew that we are all good at what we did, and understood the story the same way, and just fly with it.
NT: There were some exciting things that we left out during the rehearsal intentionally. I didn’t want to rehearse certain scenes. Some of the more risque stuff that David did. What happened was when we were rehearsing that stuff, we’d get up to that point and stop and skip over it. When we came to shoot those moments, there was this electricity because we hadn’t touched them yet. There was something about those moments, I notice that spark.
Q: What’s next for both of you?
DHP: I’m about to direct for the first time. I’m directing a musical, which we’ll do in the fall. After that, I’m acting in a play at the end of the year.
Q: What’s the name of the musical?
DHP: The musical is called ‘It Should;ve Been You.’ It’s fun, it’s comedy. I have been talking to all the directors I know to get advice. What you just said about directing Nick, that you prepare and prepare and prepare, so you can throw it all out, that is the thing I’ve heard most from directors. All different walks of life, film, television, everything, musicals, straight plays, that’s what you do. You may be right, what you prepare may or may not be exactly what you do.
Q: What about the play you’re doing?
DHP: It’s called ‘Close Up Space,’ which is an editing term. It’s a new play I’m doing at the Manhattan Theater Club.
NT: I’m writing a thriller.
Q: Another psychological thriller?
NT: No, it’s more of a visceral action thriller. It’s a fish-out-of-water story. It’s set in Sydney, Australia.
Written by: Karen Benardello