Star Andy Garcia Makes a Home in "City Island"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Friday, 19 March 2010 12:49

Written by Brad Balfour

Nestled up alongside The Bronx's mainland is the bridge-linked City Island, a sweet gem of a seaside neighborhood with the kind of New Yorkers you don't much see anymore. It's made up of classic borough working-class folks struggling to survive, and laden with family issues that don't usually make it into films populated with superheroes and otherworldly villains.

Situated in this environment is the story of a troubled, middle-aged, prison-guard patriarch, Vince Rizzo (Andy Garcia), husband of Joyce (Julianna Margulies) and father to Vivian (Dominik García-Lorido) and Vince Jr. (Ezra Miller), who all have various issues of their own. Though his wife thinks he's having an affair, the only flirtation on Vince's mind is an acting career, and he's afraid if anyone he knows finds out he will endure endless taunting.

Manhattan-based director Ray De Felitta has made other local films, but this one really hits its mark as a fine dramedy, with heart, some twists and turns and unique touches. It hit its mark with festival audiences as well, having won the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival's Audience Award.

The 53-year-old, Cuba-born and Miami-raised Garcia has played his share of villains, Hollywood heroes and, in recent years, the lead in films he passionately supports not only as an actor but as an occasional director and sometimes as  producer. Though he was Oscar-nominated for The Godfather: Part III, he has really been driven by movies with authentic roots, such as the self-directed The Lost City (2005). He signed on to produce City Island  because he so connected to the story — understandably so, since it also stars his daughter Dominik.

Q: This is such a feel-good film. It's so rare that we get those types. What did it take to get it made?

AG: Well, Ray sent me the script — we share the same agency — and then my agent said, "There’s a script I read, Raymond wants to talk to you about it and you could produce it if you want."

So I sat and I read it and I had the same feeling that you guys had with the movie; I went, "Wow, what a beautiful script. You mean this thing is having trouble getting off the ground? What kind of world are we living in?" This is a beautiful script and I knew it would attract great actors because of the quality of the writing.

So we met and hit it off. We had a lot of similar interests in music and piano and all these things. I watched his movie Two Family House — which was terrific — and then I signed on. It’s easy to say romantically, "Hey, I’m a producer in the movie," but I’ve done six of these independent things and when you sign up to produce a movie, it’s a commitment you’re making to the director, to the piece and to yourself — to challenge yourself to get this thing made. I want to fulfill that challenge.

When you challenge yourself, you want to be successful, and not in terms of money. I’m talking about just the achievement, because the fact that the movie exists is success enough already. The fact that you’re going in saying, "We’re going to do this," you want to fulfill that.

So it’s not like anything that comes along I go, "Yeah I’ll produce it!" because it takes a lot of work. Unless you go to Warner Brothers, where they say, "Great script. When can you start?" That''s easier. But when you’re on your own, raising money from your dry cleaner, it's different.

Q: How is it producing in this economic environment?

AG: It's a very, very tough environment. Most of the independent distributors are gone, the ones that were part of the majors, the Warner Independent, Paramount Classics and all that, most of those closed down, so it's very difficult. It’s hard to raise money internationally if you don't have a distributor. The pre-sales are very soft, so it’s possibly the worst time to try to produce a movie. But yet again, here I go.

Q: What strings did you pull to put this movie together?

AG: Well, [how about] Alan [Arkin], Julianna [Margulies] and Emily [Mortimer]? They were friends and colleagues and I had worked with them before.

Q: Was it fun working with your daughter, Dominik García-Lorido?

AG: It was great. For us it’s like baking bread together. It’s pretty natural because we’ve ... worked together before. Of course I'm proud of her and look at her from a distance going, "She’s doing her thing." But it's like you want to also make it not a big deal like, "Hey, I’m really watching you," kind of thing.

First of all, she doesn't need my help. I need her help as much as she needs mine because as actors we need each other, so it’s as simple as that. You just let it be relaxed, have fun and do your thing. If there's an idea that I feel I can articulate to her or to a fellow actor or a fellow actor to me, I want people to be comfortable to express ideas. I'm not one of those actors who goes, "Mind your own business."

Jeff Bridges taught me that the first time we worked together many years ago in 8 Million Ways to Die (1986). I didn't know the man, but I played the antagonist to him, so my job was to make it miserable for him as much as I could. And the first thing he said to me was, "Hey man, if you have any ideas of something I could do that would make it better, please let me know." And I went, "Okay. Wow."

Q: He's like that, isn't he?

AG: He's the most generous individual and generous actor I’ve ever worked with. And he set a great example to me of how to behave as a protagonist in a movie. He always said, "I consider the protagonist really the most important supporting actor because I'm here every day and you've got guys coming in to a new set. It's my job to make them feel like, "Hey, man, come in here and let’s play and don’t worry about it. What do you want to do? Let’s just do it."

He's so supportive that way and it was a great lesson for me in one of my first movies. I feel that way; it's a collaborative art form. The most important thing in any creative collaboration is respect, and the deeper the respect, the deeper the love, and the deeper the generosity, the deeper you can go into hatred and all the other dark characters because you’re going in there together. You can push each other's buttons and at the end of the take go, "Hey man, that was pretty wild."

You went there together and it feeds you as a creative unit. You don't have to really hate the guy to hate him. So Jeff really personified that for me and it’s been a philosophy that I’ve adhered to and I've followed.

Q: Though your character didn't struggle too much because he gets a part right away, for non-actors just the audition, the huge line of actor wannabes, is unnerving, but at the same time…

AG: Funny.

Q: Did you struggle a lot?

AG: Oh, yes, very much.

Q: Was it like that?

AG: Pretty much like that. I had a lot of embarrassing auditions. I had a lot of struggle: years without even an audition, without agents. I was still going to class, I was doing improvisational theater. I was staying active in my craft. But I was making a living as a waiter or as a roofer or as a mover. I was not getting any acting work because, first of all, I didn't even have an agent that would pay attention to me. So for me it was very difficult for me to get an agent to begin with.

I moved to LA in '78, I started making a living as an actor in '85. So that was like seven years, and it was really like the last year-and-a-half that I actually had an agent and was making a little progress. The other six years or whatever were like Death Valley days; nothing was going on for me.

Q: Did you ever feel like giving up during that period?

AG: I had nowhere else to go. I had moments of insecurity. I had moments of sadness. And I had to really deeply soul-search; those years weren't always a party. They were lonely years. I was there alone, really. I had some friends I had made, but I wasn't around family, and wasn't married until '82.

It helped me when I got married. That empowered me more and grounded me more with my wife. We had Dominik right away. The first thing I did to make a little bit of a living is I used to do what they call "walla," which is the background voices on all the show. If you're in a restaurant scene, it's all those people. You go in as a group and you would do all those voices for the mixer to fill in, and I used to do that for Cagney and Lacey and other television shows. When they rerun you get a second check, so I used to do that two or three times a week with a group. Barbara Harris was the leader of the group. That kept me afloat and got my daughters in Pampers, and paid the rent. I was waiting to find a niche.

Q: Was acting the only thing you were interested in doing?

AG: That was it.

Q: How long did you know this?

AG: It was always in me as a young man, but I was involved in competitive sports all the way until my senior year in high school, baseball and basketball mainly. But in high school I concentrated on basketball, because the seasons overlapped and they wouldn’t let you play both sports.

Q: So you didn't go professional?

AG: Of course I wanted to play professional basketball, but the likelihood …  I was a little guy, I weighed 150 pounds. I'm about the heaviest I've ever been in my life right now and I'm not that heavy.

I was very good at point guard but had physical limitations ultimately. I could have played college ball at a small college but ... I got very sick my senior year with an illness that put me out, and during that time of limbo is when this other interest really grew. I was vulnerable for that other virus because it really was something in the pit of my stomach. I started feeling this kind of intense thing inside my body and I really related to it like a virus, like a huge cramping feeling that I needed to attend to, and it was this thing about acting.

Q: You must have found it ironic to play a character that wants so desperately to be an actor?


AG: There's a reason why I made this movie — because I related to him, I related to his dream. I remember there's one scene where I'm telling my son, Tony, played by Steven Strait in the movie, and he discovers me with this thing and I tell him I want to be an actor.

What's in the movie is the first take because the second take I started weeping, and the director said, "It might be too much. Would you be weeping in front of the son? You haven't even told him he's your son; would you be weeping in front of him? It might be too much because this guy’s so cramped up that he'd be evasive."

But I related to Vince so much that I had this reaction, and if you look at the movie again you see in the scene that it's there underneath and it's coming. He wants to be an actor but he doesn't think he knows anything about acting. He thinks he's terrible about it. He's insecure. He's embarrassed.

There's a great line that was an improvisation that always gets a laugh, and it's always very gratifying for me because I come from an improvisational background. When the character starts to speak, and Raymond was very good about saying, "This is yours. Go with it."

He knew that I worked that way a lot. When you stay out of the way of the characters, they start to speak for themselves. And there are some lines in the movie that come out that the character says that you can see the audience relates to because it’s not even Raymond or me or anybody, it’s the guy. There’s a moment where Emily says, "No, no. You channeled your son’s experiences and incorporated them into yours. That’s acting," and I said, "That acting? You can do that in acting?"

And that's just him; that's just me in it there and that's what came out. There’s another one at the end where I kiss him and I say, "You're my son now, you’re my boy now, I’ve got you now," and then I turn around, and I turn to Dominik and I say,"Hug your brother." That just came out. At that point you’re just a vehicle for the guy who is in it.

Q: Dominik said that in the scene in the cul-de-sac you decided to play it straight. Was that how it was written in the script or how you worked it out?

AG: There was no rehearsal in this movie. The first scenes we shot in the movie, we sat around the dining room table in the morning, they brought the pasta, I looked at Julianna and she looked at me and said, "Here we go," and that was it. [There were] two cameras, we kept moving them around, shot the two scenes and went home.

Q: In 27 days?

AG: 27 days. But that scene is basically as written, aside from these little embellishments and things that come up. I knew that this scene was designed, for me anyway, as sort of farcical. All the stories are coming together, everybody's coming in and out of the door, the stories being tied together in this one scene. I knew that it was my responsibility in the comedic structure of the movie and the comedic structure of the scene to drive this scene. If I didn’t drive the scene it would just lay flat because it was just too much information, too many storylines to complete.

I knew that I needed to hit it because I was at the center of the vortex. After we did the scene inside the house where he runs away, I knew that when I hit that street we had to be powerful until I finally say, "I walked out on you."

So I knew that was the way it needed to be played; that was just my own thing. Other than that it was in the material, the relationships were there, and you’re in it. But you make that directorial choice in a way of how the scene should be designed.

Q: I've always liked how you make your characters really organic in your films. How do you get into these characters to make them so real?

AG: Thank you. My training has been one to try to personalize the characters and find the parallels in my own life, to feel their emotional weight, their joys, pains, whatever. I try to strive for a sense of truth in the work and stay present in the moment and be free and relaxed and spontaneous and take my performance as much as I can from my fellow actors. You just got to stay in the moment and make sure the stakes are high, and the only way the stakes can be high is that I try to do as little acting as possible, basically.

Q: Do you have a favorite role of the many you've done over the years?

AG: This one's pretty close. But it’s like children; you’ve got to be careful when you pick a favorite child. But this character was ... unique. First of all, I'm playing against type because I've played a lot of gangsters or tough guys. People who know me see me in a much goofier, looser fashion, but you get known for a certain persona, thank god, because it’s a job, but you get typecast to that persona.

Q: What's next?

AG: I did a movie called Georgia directed by Renny Harlin, about the conflict in Georgia. I played the President, Saakashvili. I might have done something else; my memory is so bad. Right now I’m involved in a script that I wrote called Hemingway & Fuentes, with Hilary Hemingway, who is Ernest's niece, about the relationship between Hemingway and Gregoria Fuentes, who was the captain of his boat for the last 20 years of his life. I'm going to direct that. I've committed to trying to raise the money for that.

For more by Brad Balfour: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-balfour

Writer-Producer Harald Kloser of New-to-DVD "2012"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Tuesday, 16 March 2010 00:35

Written by Frank Lovece

The world ends not with a whimper but a bang in Roland Emmerich's new-on-DVD 2012, an apocalyptic apotheosis from the director who destroyed world landmarks in Independence Day and froze much of the world in The Day After Tomorrow. His quite literally earthshaking epic, gives us the end of the world that doomsayers predict will coincide with the end of the Mayan calendar, and that sane people say will go by like Y2K.

Whatever the case, such dire spectacles are an ever-popular prospect in fiction and non-fiction alike. Already this year we've seen the planet destroyed in Knowing and witnessed the aftermath of civilization's end in the History Channel series Life After People, a spin-off of the 2008 special. Some moviegoers remember seeing the Earth destroyed in the appropriately titled The Late, Great Planet Earth (1979), based on the speculative nonfiction book; The Rapture (1991), which played it solemnly; and the 2002 series finale of TV's Lexx, which played it as anything but.

This one plays it as destructo-porn. Pre-release, it was heavily marketed with a trailer and a nearly six-minute clip released online (after a portion was shown Oct. 1 in a "roadblock campaign" across 450 North American broadcast outlets and 89 cable channels, in both English and Spanish, in the same 10-minute window) that lovingly spotlighted the CGI destruction of Los Angeles. Limo driver/science-fiction writer Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) races to get his ex-wife (Amanda Peet), their two kids (Liam James and Morgan Lily) and the ex's fledgling-pilot boyfriend (Tom McCarthy) to a plane and ostensible safety. Still, insists 2012 co-writer/co-producer/composer Harald Kloser, "the disaster is primarily the background for strong emotional stories of regular people. You know, we have John Cusack, Oliver Platt, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover — actors with higher standards than 'Run! Go! Watch out! Duck.' All those brilliant actors have accepted to be in our movie because the characters in the story were appealing to them. At least," he adds, chuckling, "that's what they told me!"

Kloser, a composer by training and trade, wrote the music for The Day After Tomorrow and says that when he suggested some story changes in order to enhance the score, Emmerich was impressed. He invited Kloser to co-script 10,000 BC with him, as well co-compose that film's score (with Thomas Wander, with whom he reteams on 2012), and serve as an executive producer. And while Kloser concedes that visual-effects-heavy clips are a way of selling the film as a big-budget thriller, he keeps returning to the humanistic themes that, to him, are more important.

"People see explosions and buildings collapsing and earthquakes, but that's only the stage," he maintains, "the canvas for very intimate and very private stories and very deep characters, which is what Roland and I — I can speak for him here — are most proud of." As for the audience appeal of glimpsing the end of the world, Kloser couches it as an environmental allegory.

"I think seeing the world destroyed makes us aware of what we are actually destroying every day with our reckless behavior on this planet," he says. "I think that is the appeal, at least in our movie — to see this as a wake-up call, and for audiences to leave the theatre and see everything safe and normal and to be aware there's still time to save things."

Kloser understands that the tectonic, mega-earthquake devastation in his film is a natural cataclysm and not the result of bad human caretaking, but the end, whether quick or slow, is the end the world.

"Do I believe in the apocalypse?" he muses. "Yeah, I do. If we don't stop what we're doing, you don't have to be a scientist to know the world's going to end" sooner than in some billion-year future when our sun goes nova. "If we keep doubling the population, fishing every living being out of the ocean and destroying our atmosphere, maybe it won't be in 2012, but how long can we keep on using up the Earth?"

The film's many and myriad building collapses do uncomfortably recall 9/11, and the fall of New York City's Twin Towers. Kloser is cognizant of the troubling memories this type imagery can stir. "I wouldn't want to see a movie just about big buildings collapsing," he says, "and I'm the first one who doesn't want to bring back all those horrible, horrible memories. Buildings crumbling are part of a natural disaster in our film —they come and go in a second or two and are part of the big painting in the background as our heroes have to escape. We're not exploiting things," he insists. "We're not zooming in, we're just flying [or driving quickly] by these things that happen. If you want to realistically show a 10 or higher magnitude earthquake, that's probably what would be happening."

The end-of-days date of December 20, 2012, is part of a widely discredited claim by pseudo-scholars based on the Maya "Long Count" calendar, which tracks 5,125 years in a series of b'ak'tun — cycles of 144,000 days, or roughly 400 years. The current 13th b'ak'tun ends on the Maya calendar date 13.0.0.0.0, corresponding to either Dec. 21 or Dec. 23 GMT, depending on the conversion formula used. The Long Count calendar was discontinued following the arrival of Spanish conquistadors, but as E. Wyllys Andrews V, director of the Tulane University Middle American Research Institute, told the Tulane magazine New Wave, "There will be another cycle. We know the Maya thought there was one before this, and that implies they were comfortable with the idea of another one after this."

Regardless, the idea that 2012 marks the end of Earth or, conversely, the beginning of a new age of great spirituality and enlightenment has led to a slew of books like Daniel Pinchbeck’s 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, Lawrence Joseph's Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization's End and Andrew Smith's The Revolution of 2012: Vol. 1, The Preparation. It all makes about as much sense as The Da Vinci Code — and look how that did! Indeed, Kloser and Emmerich are already working with Sony Pictures and ABC on a planned TV series, 2013, "which deals with whatever happens after the movie ends. The ending bears some hope and the possibility of a new beginning."

That comes courtesy of what appear to be giant spaceships that the U.S. government has prepared under a Noah's Ark principle (which bears no relationship with German native Emmerich's first feature, 1984's The Noah's Ark Principle, which does have a space station but has nothing to do with preserving samples of life to start anew after world destruction).  In 2012, President Thomas Wilson (Glover) has kept the imminent cataclysm secret in order to preserve the old trope of "preventing panic" (which begs a question, whether the movie asks it or not, of which is more humane — letting people know so they can make spiritual peace and choose their own ends, or keeping it from them so they can waste their remaining days going to work and winding up in a collapsing skyscraper). Science adviser Adrian Helmsley (Ejiofor) and chief of staff Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt) are on opposite sides of how to respond, but it looks like only a chosen few will get to ride out both the real and the metaphoric flood (the former of which shows John F. Kennedy returning to the White House — in the form of the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy).

"We have a situation where the government knows that a disaster of such magnitude is going to happen that it doesn't make sense to warn people," says Kloser, "because there'd be only chaos and that wouldn't help. But they can save a few hundred thousand people — the legacy, the culture — and plants, seeds and animals, which they choose to do. If you can save 400,000 or 500,000 people, who are you going to save? Even worse, who is going make those decisions? In the face of such a cataclysmic event, should we just die together and not bother? Or if we could actually build these giant vessels, is it unethical to try and preserve mankind and what we've achieved all these millions of years? If you say yes to that, then come the big philosophical questions, probably as big as you can think of."

Kloser, an immigrant born in Hard, Austria ("The name means 'a little outpost'"), says that the two children in the film were inspired his own 14-year-old son, Lennon, named after John Lennon, and 12-year-old daughter Luka, christened after the 1987 Suzanne Vega song. And like Cusack's character, Kloser also has an ex-wife he's close to — his kids' mother, Désirée Nosbusch, a Luxembourg-born actress. "She's my best friend," Kloser says of the since-remarried star of German TV. "We live ten minutes from each other" in Los Angeles.

So he sounds earnest, at least, when he talks about 2012 as a human story and not a disaster movie. "There's huge CGI and huge sets, but there's also, in that exact same scene eyes full of fears, close-ups of people talking and feeling. That's what I'm proud of, that Roland [doesn’t] have the huge, amazing visual effects detract from the feelings, the dialogue, the problems, the dilemmas, the decisions. As huge as it is, it's as intimate as it gets."

Whitaker & Law Go for Your Gut in "Repo Men"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Monday, 15 March 2010 11:34

Written by Brad Balfour

Based on a one hell of a gonzo idea with decidedly political implications, Repo Men doesn't just bleed on the screen, it smears it in your face.

For veteran actors Forest Whitaker and Jude Law, this demented buddy movie pulls on both their inner action heroes and tragic Shakespearean personae. As veterans of some meaningless conflict set in the future, the two come home, still pals, and try to find their place. Eventually that place turns out to be the Union, the company that has cornered the market on mechanical body parts ("artiforgs") to replace the many that are lost to the ills of this future world.

As repo men, Jake Freivald (Whitaker) and Remy (Law) are assigned to recover the artificial organs that are sold on an egregiously inflated installment plan that only the most financially secure can pay off. If you default on your loan, the repo men can come and cut out your body part after three months.

So Jake and Remy become master repossessors, bloodily slashing their way to corporate success. But Remy's wife wants him to quit — it's either she or the job — and Jake can't imagine life without his buddy at his side. When an accident occurs, Remy has his heart replaced, making the collector potentially collectable.

Placing such consummate actors as Whitaker and Law into roles where they are pitted against each other makes the gory action all the more delicious (and decidely different from Repo! The Genetic Opera — a rock musical with similar themes). And with a support cast that includes Alice Braga, Liev Schreiber and Carice van Houten, you easily overlook the film's over-the-top premise.

The two leads sat down in a mini-press conference, livers intact, to rewind their experience on this sci-fi action-thriller based on Eric Garcia's 2009 paperback novel The Repossession Mambo and directed by Miguel Sapochnick.

Q: In creating your characters' back stories, how much did you collaborate on developing your interactions?

FW: Jude worked on the script for a while with Miguel at the beginning of the film. I came on towards the end, and there was just little discussions about these markers: what scenes we were going to shoot, what scenes we weren’t going to shoot and what was necessary to make sure we told the simple backstory of our characters to bond us, to complete the world and to create this weird universe that we were going to live in.

Once we realized the bonds they had since they were children, and when they went into the army, and how these things would affect them in being able to be members of society…that was really important to the movement of our characters, and to the human part of the movie. [It's] about their friendship and separation, and about people who were growing in different directions. It was all a part of it in some way. We didn’t have a long, hour-long discussion…

JL: No, it's funny, we really didn't… [but] it's thrilling when people watch your performances and can say what worked and what didn’t. It's not something you sit around and create or orchestrate, because that’s like dissecting a friendship, which seems unhelpful or unhealthy. But a lot of it was on paper. We did both have our filmmaker hats on to fight for certain scenes, in flashbacks, but an awful lot did get cut in the end.

Little bits like coming back and little bits that we knew were worth fighting for, rather than talking about — let’s see a little of those moments. We particularly thought it was important to see them in combat together. Another theme in this film is very much how to do with we have all these governments around the world who train men to kill, and then when they come home, that's not there anymore…

FW: …And where do they go?

JL: We have more war vets than ever before, and what’s interesting in this film is they’re given a place to go use their skills. And when that breaks down, what are they going to do? Go be normal citizens?

FW: You look at life a certain way — this is "right," this is "correct" — and then all of a sudden, this character looks at it a different way. Where do I fit in? What I’m doing every morning can’t be right; that's not me anymore — that’s something that’s explored.

Q: The violence in this film is so over the top it's almost balletic...

JL: The script was very descriptive in the violence, and we knew when we read it that it was going to be extreme. For my part, I constantly thought, how much are we going to be able to get away with? But again that's a question really more for Miguel because he really fought for it. I hope I answered the question directly but I’m going to be more sort of impressionistic about it.

The idea of these two men in a society that’s desensitized to violence, it was important to the theme of violence, that the graphic nature of the violence be very real. And then the rest of the film, the journey of the film broadens, especially towards the end, when it becomes almost unreal. This level of violence, this grotesque use of the body or dissemination of the body, you suddenly start to realize, you’ve been so brought into the world that you continue to believe in it.

We also hoped…I hoped, that it was a film that would make you close your eyes. Especially young people when they're watching that sort of stuff, it doesn't do anything to them. And I hope this one does, that’s it's shocking, because it should be. Violence is shocking.

FW: It’s part of the dilemma for your character, too. What he faces is the construction of violence and what it means, and it’s personal.

JL: How far do we go for it to be shocking? For us to wake up?

Q: Did you have to hide your director's hat to work on this?

FW: The whole thing was to create a universe, a world. Every great movie is its own universe, its own world, with its own rules and stuff. I can't say that I would do it that way, but what [Miguel] did was create a universe that allows you to fall into it, and believe and trust in what we’re doing. And we were committed to those motives. We would do anything, as far as we needed to, to get inside the truth of what this universe was.

JL: One of the scenes I found the most important was when Beth [Remy's fellow artiforg fugitive and ex played by Alice Braga] and Remy repossess each other. To get that far there had to be a sort of embrace of the violence in a way — two people coming together physically like that, it could almost be lovemaking, a sharing of something, a sharing of agony rather than sharing pleasure.

FW: It was a bit bleak to do things that broadly, to go so far out, like A Clockwork Orange-y or Monty Python-y, because you have the chance to fall on your face.

JL: A Clockwork Orange was a big influence on Miguel.

Q: Did you do any research on the proper way to do the removal of organs?

JL: I worked with a surgeon in London. I bought a half side of a pig, because pig flesh is very like human flesh, and he taught me how to cut through that with scalpels, and then we worked with a guy in Toronto.

FW: A surgeon. For my character, though, my character is not a neat kind of guy. He just is into retrieval, so I watched that and discarded that and went with the knife and fork concept.

Q: Both you had training, so whose kung fu is stronger?

JL: We never really had it out.

FW: No. (makes a funny kung fu noise)

JL: The truth of the matter is we didn't do a lot of the fight sequences. The producers don't want you to pull a muscle or be injured, so they do these trainings to get you in good shape, so you don't call in and go, "Oh, I've wrenched my thigh yesterday kicking that guy down." But we had a quite bit of training and there was an awful lot of choreography.

FW: For my kung fu grip.

JL: I had to catch up with you.

Q: Did you know anyone who had to deal with an actual repossession?

FW: Oh, yeah, I've had friends who’ve had cars repossessed, I've known people who've had their homes taken.

JL: You said something really interesting earlier. To take it further, to lose your home, you should say it, to lose your home, people can lose belongings. You lose your car. You lose your job. You lose your home. But this idea of taking it further: I am myself, I own myself — the idea that they own you too, and they're coming to take it.

FW: They have emotional questions too. When you lose everything, when someone takes everything, your house, your home and then a part of yourself, you feel a loss. The emotional loss is so powerful.

Q: What was cut about your characters?

JL: There wasn’t a whole lot…

FW: There were scenes with the repos…

JL: They cut my favorite scene…. (laughs at the irony of the comment)

FW: It was Christmas…

JL: There was a Christmas scene we were filming in Toronto. The script kept changing. We had done a lot of stuff in the middle, which was trimmed down, the army stuff, to just us in the tank. But there was one scene in a bar, and we’re saying, "What are we going to do with ourselves?" Then we see a poster that says, "Be trained by the Repo Men;" and it had just snowed in Toronto, and there was this little house that was covered in lovely Santa lights, and we decided, we just covered each other in blood. And we come out of the house just laughing, having just done our first repo, and we walk down the street. It was my favorite scene. Anyway, little bits that just show the bond, layers and layers of brotherhood.

Q: Could there be a series in this for you guys, doing a prequel or sequel?

JL: Is there any saving Remy? He's there, but he’s not all there.

FW: He was always… well, we could get some more body parts.

JL: But at what cost?

Q: Do you think Jake is finally happy with brain-dead Remy?

JL: What, me in the corner?

FW: I always thought he was just happy with him. He’s not gone. And caring for him could be part of that relationship, and he’d be with him. I think there’s something a little twisted in that part of Jake, because that defined his life, his world, and now he can’t say he’s going to go away.

JL: That’s a very contemporary theme, too — the questions asked, keep the lie up, don’t question the lie, and you can pretend that everything’s alright. I was the one asking the questions, and Carol [Remy's wife, played by Carice van Houten].

Q: Did you make any notes on the script?

JL: You'll have to ask them. Oh, yeah, I remember one note: I wanted people to like Carol. Carol was just a bitch, and I was thinking, "It wasn't fair; it should be a balanced relationship." It’s more touching when see a relationship with two healthy, wholesome people — well, not wholesome — but two rounded people falling apart, then someone leaving someone because they’re a pain in the ass, you know?

I was just really taken by the characters and with the heart of the film, so going through it and working on it, I can't remember what I contributed. To be really honest, I think it became very much a part of what we then filmed and that process is very fluid. I should keep notes so I can claim ideas for myself.

Q: Since this movie touches on the health care debate, what's your perspective on it?

JL: I don’t talk politics. (Long pause, then laughs) First of all, let's talk about the film. What’s always interesting about dystopian films, or rather, good dystopian films, [is that they] only reference current themes. They don’t hit you over the head with them; they don’t make it the source of the story. Don’t forget, [when] we made this film, [it was] filmed this two and a half years ago. So it was an issue, but it wasn’t as current as it is now. It's just very fortuitous that the world is as messed up as it is and played right into the hands of our movie.

With what's going on here, I think everyone would agree that it's a side, an element of your society that needs addressing. The problem is that it’s a Gordian knot, in that everyone approaches it with a very different need, a very different design, a very different background. And everyone has a right to have their voice heard in that argument, but equally, one can’t hear all arguments and please all people all the time to reach a consent.

As far as how it references England, I think the more interesting theme in the film is how … there can be corporations who can sell you stuff and it’s bad for you because they know they’re the company that’s going to sell you stuff that’s good for you. That there’s a sort of umbrella holding it all together. That they can, they’ll cut off your nose with one hand and sell you a nose with another.

Q: So did you read the book?

JL: I did. This is like a cousin of the book. First cousin. Very close cousins.

Q: What do you enjoy about making genre films — sci-fi, fantasy, horror — and do you take them as seriously as drama, or is it a matter of real acting vs getting a paycheck?

FW: I didn't see [working on this film] as that …  I saw it as an interesting character, a well-written script, the chance to work with someone who was really talented, a good director, something new. I’m always trying to challenge myself to do something new, to try to do something great, whether it’s sci-ii or comedy or whatever.

JL: There’s still a serious theme to it. It still required a lot of work and attention, even the physical side. I know the physical side of films, the action, the violence is considered thrill-seeking or what have you, but to make that kind of stuff, especially when you have something grounded in reality, it's not just gratuitous. It required a hell of a lot of work. I think we both, what Forest said, it’s fun to try new things.

Q: Will you be doing a Sherlock Holmes sequel?

JL: We had such a blast making that film, and it was another very happy experience. I know you probably always sit in front of actors who say, "I had the best time." I haven't always had the best time but I did on these two films.

We were very aware that we had a lot more material to use. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote so many books and there’s so much to take from. And because of our enthusiasm for the project, once we knew it was doing well financially, we all started throwing in our ideas of where it should go and what should happen next. And of course mine involves Sherlock Holmes being locked in a box and Doctor Watson… I don't know for sure, but I think we probably are going to make another one.

Q: You'll have to grow the mustache again.

JL: So that's fine but it's not like next week. I think it's sometime next year.

Q: Is there more theater or independent films underway for you?

JL: Maybe later this year.

FW: I’m going to go very shortly to Shanghai to do this movie, Little Treasure, about adoption. My character, his friend and his wife go to adopt a child, and they start to question her sense of cultural identity. They start to question her sense of being able to raise a child, and issues like that. That’s the next film I'll do.

JL: I don't know actually what I'm going to do next. Hit a bump with a hammer? It's quite hard to read scripts after you've done Hamlet. So I'm not really sure, I don't know. I may be doing another Sherlock Holmes, but that's not certain.

I'm working with a wonderful writer/director team in London. They're going to do a play in summer or winter of next year, they're writing that now. And Contagion [directed by Steven Soderbergh] is not until the end of the year. I'm one of a large number of people in a big ensemble, so I'll be doing my 10 days in San Francisco.

The subject matter’s really very interesting, and again, very current. It's about a contagious disease spreading across the world and how it affects the public, the medical services, politicians, and I play an online blogger who is a fear-monger. I just liked the part. I really like the part.

For more by Brad Balfour: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-balfour