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CHRIS NEUMER: Back up. So you were talking about Down to You. SHAWN HATOSY: Down to You, the director had an idea that my character was going to start off in a certain way and then I was gonna put on weight. Then there was gonna be this whole beat in between, where you see why he got heavy. There’s a whole scene, a whole story, and a whole plot line why he became that and they ended up cutting that little part out, so then he’s just looking normal in the beginning and by the end I have a fat suit on and it was never explained. That kind of stuff can really screw up a performance and, when they edit things that… it causes all kinds of disconnects. They had to make the movie. Obviously, things were going to get lost, but it does affect your performance when they cut out that scene that might lead to another scene that connected to the next scene… CHRIS NEUMER: I can I understand how that… SHAWN HATOSY: You have to be able to trust the director. I just did this thing, I was talking about ER last night, it was on ER and my character had multiple personalities and so they had asked me to come in. It was a tough character to read and I did. I ended up getting it and the director was wonderful to work with. I loved it. To play a character that complex; the transition from one character to the next character. He spent a lot of time with me and it was just awesome, I really enjoyed it and I’m pretty happy with the final result. Most of the time I’m this really obnoxious, jerk, asshole. CHRIS NEUMER: Asshole, I was gonna say. SHAWN HATOSY: (laughs) In the part. CHRIS NEUMER: Oh. Yeah. The part… SHAWN HATOSY: (laughs) And then my character switches to this other guy, and it’s an hour long show. Anyway I’m going off topic. I was gonna say something related to it, but I don’t want it to be perceived that I didn’t enjoy [it]. I loved absolutely everything about it. But if he had cut something, you know what I mean… CHRIS NEUMER: It could have really gone the other way? SHAWN HATOSY: It could have really screwed the whole thing. Because I’m three different personalities so if one of the things got taken out I would’ve just looked like a terrible actor. CHRIS NEUMER: Trust almost seems like synergy in a way. Anytime people say, "Oh we have this great synergy," I always go, "Stop right there and define that word to me." No one has been able to define it because I think it’s almost a place saver. It allows you to try out figure out what I’m trying to say and it’s sort of like me saying a word like "right now". It’s a nice trick to get the other person to figure out what you mean without actually saying way you mean. But with the way you’re describing it, I’m actually getting the sense of it right now that, to you, trust in the director mean that he’s not going to make you look like a gigantic ass. That you can have faith that you’re gonna put in your best work and you’re not gonna get burned in the end of it. SHAWN HATOSY: Yes. Trust it’s the most important thing between an actor and a director. I’ve only done one movie where it was just an awkward… and I never even talked to the director before I agreed to do it. CHRIS NEUMER: This was early on? SHAWN HATOSY: It happened once. CHRIS NEUMER: Like early on in your career I’m assuming? SHAWN HATOSY: Yeah, maybe within the last three to five years. It’s the only time I never met the director before I agreed to do a part I just did it. I accepted it and I just didn’t have any faith in the guy, it was awful. CHRIS NEUMER: Did it affect your performance? SHAWN HATOSY: Absolutely. It was the worst thing I’ve ever done. (laughs) It’s so important. I’ll never do that again. I’ll always meet them, I’ll always talk to them… CHRIS NEUMER: So it’s probably good that you had that experience, because now you can…this is the way I approach God knows how many different things in my life, which is, well I’m glad that I did X, Y and Z because now I know not to do that again. SHAWN HATOSY: Absolutely. CHRIS NEUMER: It only works for so many things, but generally speaking… SHAWN HATOSY: Basically, you can repair anything. It’s a perfect example of one of those things that you learn, it’s wisdom and you can always… unless you’re Mel Gibson, (laughs)…fix any kind of damage that’s done to your [career]… I guess I’m talking about a bad performance. CHRIS NEUMER: Good save there. You bring this up and I equate this to. I’m single. There are things now, because I’m thirty, that come up in dating where it’s a red flag. Maybe not just a small red flag, it’s an enormous red flag. Like uh, I’m trying to think about something like uh, I don’t know… Okay, if she’s got her entire arm covered with tattoos. I hope your girlfriend doesn’t have a tattoo on her arm. SHAWN HATOSY: No. CHRIS NEUMER: You know. Like from wrist to here. She’s got a huge tattoo. If I was 20, I’d be like "oh yes". Now I’m 30 and I’m like oh, red flag. I’m curious is there any sense of that with your acting, back when I was 20 or whatever, I saw this but now I’m starting to see certain red flags, this one goes up, no I’m not doing it. SHAWN HATOSY: There are red flags. CHRIS NEUMER: Not even specific for projects. Feel free to get as specific as you want, but I’m saying just in general. Co-starring opposite Matthew Lillard… SHAWN HATOSY: A big red flag sometimes when you make a movie like this where there’s no budget there are all these little red flags and I’m used to doing things a certain way and with that comes there’s a lot of experience here and it’s hard to do a movie that small. CHRIS NEUMER: Less takes, less time. SHAWN HATOSY: Less takes. Overall the understanding of the film process across the board, because we’re here in a small town. CHRIS NEUMER: Not only that but people you hire are… SHAWN HATOSY: They’re not experienced, which is okay, because it’s all a learning experience. But that can cause trouble. CHRIS NEUMER: Not on this one? SHAWN HATOSY: Not on this one. CHRIS NEUMER: But other ones? SHAWN HATOSY: There have been projects where you don’t have as many takes. A movie like this with a small budget and not enough money to buy the best clothes, or get perfect props, or the right cars, or the right locations; it forces everybody on the creative level, to be creative. I mean, super creative. Like ubercreative. You have to come up with ways of doing things that you might not have thought could be done, but on the fly... CHRIS NEUMER: And it seems you have to have an actor that’s gotta be appealing? SHAWN HATOSY: That is appealing, yeah. So I guess a red flag would be budget. CHRIS NEUMER: But that wouldn’t because you not to do it. That would because you to look at it more carefully. Shown Hatosy: Look at it differently. CHRIS NEUMER: Are there any things, like working with a first time director, which of course you’ve done, but is it something like that where you’d like to see more experience or not working with a Russian DP who shot a ton of Scorpions videos or something. SHAWN HATOSY: I’ve never met a director, a first time director, and been like, "Nah, I don’t think I can work with him because he’s a first time director". It’s the material that’s the most important thing. That’s what draws everybody to it. And if there’s a heart or a heart beat, something in there, that’s where it all starts. I don’t think that I ever met a first time director on any of my movies that I didn’t believe in. I’m trying to think. Maybe I have. I mean shit, I think…Greg Marcks that was his first film. CHRIS NEUMER: That was. SHAWN HATOSY: Wayne Kramer, The Cooler, that was his first film. He might have done a short or something, but I’m pretty sure that was his first film. Peter Sheridan, who directed Brostal Boy that was his first film; there’s a bunch. All those guys are fantastic directors. Scott Caan who directed Dallas 362 that was his first and I just think he’s brilliant. CHRIS NEUMER: Really? SHAWN HATOSY: Absolutely, I really do. CHRIS NEUMER: Now let’s get in to this, Scott Caan, I have not seen the movie, I’m only curious because you take a public persona and you find out that he’s a brilliant filmmaker. SHAWN HATOSY: Doesn’t seem like it goes together? CHRIS NEUMER: Having not seen the film, no. But what I’m saying is what makes him brilliant? SHAWN HATOSY: I guess I can see where you’re coming from. I didn’t know him, I met him a couple of times. CHRIS NEUMER: I still don’t believe that Ben Affleck is an Oscar winning screenwriter; let me just put it like that. "Him, really?" No. That would never happen. And you’re like, no no, it happened in ‘97. SHAWN HATOSY: I think he is. I read his latest script and it’s good. CHRIS NEUMER: Scott [Caan] or… SHAWN HATOSY: Ben [Affleck]. Scott Caan called me and asked me, he said I got a million bucks to make this movie and I’m a fan of yours and I’d like you to do it. I don’t even know this guy. I know him from his reputation. I knew nothing about him and I just agreed to do it. Not thinking. Because actors do that often, "Yeah let’s do this... CHRIS NEUMER: Not the not thinking part, the let’s do a movie… SHAWN HATOSY: (laughs) Yes, the let’s do a movie. I said "Sure, sure, sure". And sure enough it happened. Scott comes from this theater in LA, called Playhouse West, he writes plays and they put them up there. He’s written between four and eight plays and I’ve seen two of them. I saw two before I ended up working on the film and I was just blown away. I was really blown away. And I’m not just saying that because we’re friends. I think he’s an extreme talent. We made Dallas 362 and I was very happy. It’s a cool movie and I would do anything that he asked me to do. Not only is he a good writer and director; he’s a really good actor. I don’t think that he’s had the opportunity to really show what he’s capable of doing because kind of what you were saying he’s got a reputation or whatever. He looks a certain way but I think if given the chance he would…he’s actually gone on to make his next film with Giovanni, that he wrote, Giovanni Ribisi, Don Cheadle and Mira Sorvino. hear it’s very good. CHRIS NEUMER: Now you got me curious, I’m gonna have to go take a look at that. I always like when things don’t quite match up. Like the first time Hilary Swank did Boys Don’t Cry, it’s like that kind of thing. Now, you’ve gotten two based on true stories, right? SHAWN HATOSY: Yeah. CHRIS NEUMER: Factory Girl and Alpha Dog are both based on true stories. Now, is there an appeal to the based on a true story because it’s true? SHAWN HATOSY: No, first of all, I’ll start with Factory Girl, I didn’t know to what extent it was before I read the script. And honestly, I think Andy Warhol has been done, it’s been done in films, we’ve seen it, it’s, "Ugh okay…" CHRIS NEUMER: This is true. SHAWN HATOSY: But the script had a heart to it, the characters were solid and it’s really her story I mean its all about her. People started falling into place like Guy Pearse, whom I have a ton of respect for. The appeal was the heart and the script, the actors. I didn’t know the director. CHRIS NEUMER: He did, uh, Ravenous, right? I was trying to figure out where I knew his name from. SHAWN HATOSY: You’re asking me the tough questions. I don’t know. CHRIS NEUMER: Is it possible that it had a heart because it is able to be drawn from a real story that really took place and so that maybe it had some elements to it that were in fact real, that gave it heart? SHAWN HATOSY: I guess so. CHRIS NEUMER: I know it’s all interconnected but my thing is this and this is why I’m asking… SHAWN HATOSY: I know what you’re saying. CHRIS NEUMER: So far we’re together on these two. SHAWN HATOSY: And I’m sure what they did was amazing and I’ve heard that they were amazing. CHRIS NEUMER: I also gotten other people angry by saying that they were mimicking as opposed to acting. SHAWN HATOSY: I’m not gonna say that that’s the way I feel, but I’ve played real people. I had to play John McCain in this A&E Movie [Faith of My Fathers]. At first I was like, [whispers] "I’m not even gonna read it," because I thought it was crap. CHRIS NEUMER: I like how you have to whisper that. SHAWN HATOSY: (laughs) And then I read it, because it was a good offer. And it wasn’t about politics at all, it was about John McCain, and what he went through. It was heart breaking and I couldn’t believe it; so I did it. I remember doing my research, reading the book and looking at him and thinking I could try (imitates McCain’s voice) to do a John McCain, but I just did it, I just did it. CHRIS NEUMER: You sort of turned off the egos this…. SHAWN HATOSY: The ego. People liked my performance, including John McCain. CHRIS NEUMER: They did? They liked it? SHAWN HATOSY: I could never play Johnny Cash the way that Joaquin [Phoenix] played Johnny Cash. He’s a good actor…I’m with you, on the same page as you, I don’t really need to see that… CHRIS NEUMER: It’s interesting because everything is so interconnected. It’s sort of like it’s a click, if you didn’t know that Johnny Cash was a real person. If you took Walk The Line for example and instead of calling him Johnny Cash you called him something else, a made up name like Sam Francis, you know. I wonder whether that would have the same amount of soul. SHAWN HATOSY: Probably not. CHRIS NEUMER: One of the reasons, and this is what gets me into trouble at parties when I start yelling about the acting, if I’m a housewife in Iowa I have something that I can judge Jamie Foxx’s performance in Ray against. I know who real life Ray Charles is, I know who John McCain is, and therefore I look at you, are you like that? Whereas, you take a look at something like, you in 11:14 or you take a look at you in Outside Providence, I have nothing to base this on other than, do I buy it? With a real life character, it better be like that. And in every other movie its "well can I buy it or not?" You already buy it with the biopics. SHAWN HATOSY: I like what you’re saying. In a way, it’s a way for them to make an art house film but have a built an audience, say for instance you’re going to make Dukes of Hazzard. You know people like Johnny Cash, so let’s do it and let’s see if we can get it close. I love all those actors. CHRIS NEUMER: And they’re good, and they probably do really good jobs in the things they do, I’m just sort of pushing back against the intense critical praise that they get. Let’s look at this in a little bigger of a picture. That’s the thing that bothers me, look at Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa, I don’t know if you’ve seen it but the year that came out, I thought, that is a fantastic performance of just a horrible man who some how is likeable, and it’s like nobody is talking about that, everybody is talking about Charlize [Theron] and it’s…I wonder if I wrote it down, yes here it is, it’s "acting on steroids". That’s what it is, because you take a look at something like Walk the Line or whatever and you’ve probably taken the five highest moments of Johnny Cash’s life, the five lowest moments of Johnny Cash’s life and you’ve sort of put them together and it gives you the opportunity to display a huge broad range. Most stories you don’t get that, like that you do. SHAWN HATOSY: Yeah. CHRIS NEUMER: I shouldn’t be so good, if I weren’t so into this… SHAWN HATOSY: Well it’s exciting to talk about this though; I was genuinely interested in seeing what Jim Carrey would do as Andy Kaufman, because I love Andy Kaufman. Did the movie really show me anything…? No, not really, he did a good job, I loved Milos Forman, he’s one of my favorite directors, I just kind of walked away feeling like "yeah, it was all right" but what’s the point. What did we discover? What really gets me off is character driven movies like Diner. That’s one of my favorite movies, I love those guys talking, I can see them their in my life, I know exactly who they are, they have some sort of personal meaning, I love movies where it’s like being there. CHRIS NEUMER: Peter Sellers. SHAWN HATOSY: Yeah, Being There. Just a great movie. All character, I really get off on that. CHRIS NEUMER: This is even going to sound flippant now, compared to the ones that you’ve just mentioned but even something like Super Troopers, which I don’t know if you’ve seen? But one of my favorite comedies, or when you get something like Caddy Shack , even though it’s funny again, the characters work and it’s not just the formula. SHAWN HATOSY: Good acting too. CHRIS NEUMER: Good actors in that movie. Let’s be honest, Chevy Chase is many things, but, he’s probably sitting in a café in West Hollywood right now and his ears just perked up and "I feel a ringing, what happened", somewhere in the Eastern Time Zone someone called me a good actor. SHAWN HATOSY: You watch the TV show Taxi, I love that show, it’s character, all those actors, Christopher Lloyd, Danny DeVito, Judd Hirsch, Andy Kaufman, Andy Kaufman is great. They’re all character, straight actors. That show worked on so many levels because of the writing. Because they weren’t playing these broad jokes, they were just being these sometimes repulsive, yet loveable characters. CHRIS NEUMER: That’s funny. I was out in LA and say maybe 4 minutes of that show, King of Queens. I hope your not affiliated with it. It turned out that the guy [Kevin James] had bought stock in something and his wife [Leah Remini] didn’t know about it, so it went up. And then she wanted to sell, and he said no, no we can make more money and then it went down and she said let’s sell now and he said no, no, it’s going to go back up and it went further down and he then panicked and he sold it. Then, the stock went up. So the wife was really really happy and so he had to tell her that he had sold it and she got really depressed, and the stock kept going up so he bought it again and then it really went down. I was watching this and it was like, this is not funny, this is brutal, this wouldn’t have even worked in Diff’rent Strokes. It just seems like what we’re talking about is the idea of forcing something versus just sort of letting it happen. (points at the bartender) Like her, she’s probably at least a little bit amused by sitting here and listening to the weird things were talking about. BARTENDER: (laughs) Slightly, I haven’t heard a lot of it. SHAWN HATOSY: What were saying is that there are only so many combinations of what you can do on a half hour comedy, with the same characters then regurgitating the same thing over and over… CHRIS NEUMER: Anything. Even like the sports movie, it’s been done but the point is if you do it right… SHAWN HATOSY: Then you’ve done something. CHRIS NEUMER: Million Dollar Baby, which I really didn’t like but the first movie, in that movie, the one where she’s boxing, everybody’s been there, you’ve probably been in four of these movies where like an underdog who’s really kicking ass. But I was watching it and it was done really well, because the characters were there and it’s not bad just because it’s formula, it’s bad because that’s all you throw into it. How do you deal with it? Well, you were in a Freddy Prince movie, so we can start there. You have something that’s pretty formulaic; do you have any way that you try to un-formula it? SHAWN HATOSY: That’s the whole goal, you need it. Especially with television because it’s written in such a way the goal is to kind of be like a painter, I hate to sound like a dork, but to make it blend and it seem like its real, even though what we’ve got is the stock going up or the stock going down. You want to make it seem as real as possible, and that’s what I do. CHRIS NEUMER: Often people tell me they are draw to a certain quality that a character has or the subtext, I’m always interested to know how you go from sort of just feeling that you want to do something to translating it into an action that you do on set SHAWN HATOSY: No, for me it’s not. It’s like having this conversation and having a drink. CHRIS NEUMER: But you don’t know where the conversation is going, that’s the difference. For us, you’ve got absolutely no clue what’s around that next corner, you have no idea what I’m going to bring out next. What I’m saying is, whereas in a script, maybe I’m going to start talking about whether or not hot women can be into the concept vampires. Who knows. You have to display that same reaction knowing that’s it’s coming, so do you have any sense of certain things that you do, is it like "I do this gesture, or I do that" or is it just, you’re not thinking about using yourself as a sort of marionette. SHAWN HATOSY: (laughs) It’s really not. Every character has an objective (laughs) so if you’re in whatever that head space is then, it’s really about that focus. CHRIS NEUMER: When you say focus, focus on what? SHAWN HATOSY: I wish I could give you an example. But I can’t it’s impossible to articulate. [I’m really going to have the readers nailed to the wall.] CHRIS NEUMER: Well, it’s not a Q&A so we’re all right. SHAWN HATOSY: If you know your material and you’re working with good people and it’s always different every time, there’s something that happens and it’s this spontaneity that makes it good, seemingly fresh. [When actors are good together], it’s always different... CHRIS NEUMER: I don’t think it was Hitchcock, it might have been David Lean when he needed actors to cry, or actresses to cry, he would actually poke them with needles. They would start yelping and he’d be "Okay, now I’ve got it". There are other people, I think it was Julia Roberts who said that she thought of this leather coat she had lost when she was 17 or something and that got her crying. That’s the complete opposite from one another. One person’s just thinking of a leather coat and other person’s physically being injured. SHAWN HATOSY: Have you ever read this book, Making Movies by Sidney Lumet it’s really a good one. If you’re interested in the process of making a movie, he takes it from the very beginning all the way through the whole process; lighting, to editing, to working with actors, it’s a great read, if you’re into filmmaking. I’ve lost interest, somewhere in the past 5 years, in watching films. I don’t know why. I don’t know what happened, something got lost. CHRIS NEUMER: Believe it or not, I’m getting to that point. SHAWN HATOSY: I’ve watched enough. Maybe I’ve become jaded because I’m so involved, I don’t know what it is. I was really excited to see Borat. (laughs) Because it was just this whole new thing, something that I’d never seen before and it made me laugh and made me think. CHRIS NEUMER: I don’t know how that ties into anything necessarily, but it’s an interesting point. Someone told me recently that I was the only film writer they had ever met who proactively tries not to watch movies. SHAWN HATOSY: I don’t know why I’ve lost interest. It used to be that if it were a Martin Scorsese film, it’s fucking Martin Scorsese, I’m going to go see it, I don’t care. I didn’t see The Departed, but I hear it’s really good, but I would be there first in line. CHRIS NEUMER: Interesting. The interest that you had in seeing these films, where has that gone? I’m assuming there’s a space in you that needs to be entertained and it used to be entertained by the films. Is it you being entertained by video games or your son or something? SHAWN HATOSY: Yeah, yeah I guess. Video games, guitar. I just don’t know why [films] have to be so big? Why do they have to be $100 million dollars? Why do they have to be so expensive, why do they have to do that? CHRIS NEUMER: Particularly on that one [question], if you see Star Wars you can sort of go, okay I get it, but with The Departed… SHAWN HATOSY: Yeah, because it’s a character piece. Did you see Factotum ? It was pretty good. CHRIS NEUMER: I’ve heard of it in passing. SHAWN HATOSY: Charles Bukowski; with Matt Dillon. I went, I saw it, I liked it, and I enjoyed it. Artsy fartsy but it’s very good…
CHRIS NEUMER: No, the last thing I saw was Catch of Fire, Tim Robins. I realized that it’s only terrorism if it’s against you. If I was thrusting forth my beliefs on to you, that’s not terrorism it’d be something else. It’s funny to think about that. I have so many problems with calling them a terrorist who are attacking the troops because of the definition of a terrorist: Anybody who attacks armed military personnel is a guerilla warrior. Terrorists attack the public. It’s a minor semantic point but it just bothers the hell out of me when they keep calling them terrorists attacking the troops, "that’s not it". That’s the same type of thing with this definition, which is it seems in the movie, it was set in South Africa during the Apartheid, and it’s basically this black guy that becomes revolutionary and he wants to blow up an oil rig and it’s sort of, on one hand we’re cheering for him because he’s the lead character and we see what everyone is doing is wrong, but on the other hand, lets just shift this around a little bit, what if somebody were trying to blow up the World Trade Center? Okay that’s weird. Certainly V for Vendetta in that way which you probably haven’t seen. SHAWN HATOSY: Haven’t seen. I did see star wars, though. CHRIS NEUMER: Now this is interested here. Where did I write this one down? Star Wars from the perspective of a Storm Trooper. What got me thinking was, I wonder how a Storm Trooper, the British guys with the green berets on, I wonder how they would view these rebels? I’d love to be on that conversation. This small group of people just won’t join the rest of the universe, they just keep attacking us, they just keep making our lives terrible, and we have to go scouring the universe for these five people, who are just determined to bring us down. We gotta go where? They did what? They killed how many? SHAWN HATOSY: (laughing) They blew up the… CHRIS NEUMER: That’s right, they blew up…They flew into our new ship. The one we’ve been spending thirty years working on it. And they blew it up with these ships that are like a 1974 Dodge equivalent. God damn, we just spent all this time building this thing and you know, I’d love to see Star Wars from that perspective.
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