CHRIS NEUMER: I thought, “Well I can’t move twice can I?”
HEATHER GRAHAM: Wooooow. Did you think he was picking up on you?
CHRIS NEUMER: (confused) No. I just—have you ever met or interacted with Nick [Nolte]?
HEATHER GRAHAM: No. No.
CHRIS NEUMER: It’s an experience.
HEATHER GRAHAM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting.
CHRIS NEUMER: The example that I use is one of those old 1950s movies where you have the women who are working the switchboard, pulling plugs out and going, “Let me connect you.” His wires are put in all the wrong holes. I will give the audio of me interviewing him to my kids and be like, “This is why you don’t do drugs.”
HEATHER GRAHAM: That’s funny. That’s what I was thinking, it’s probably some sort of substance. I feel bad talking about someone though through your tape recorder. And if I say something about him I don’t want to be dissing someone I don’t even know. Am I being paranoid… or…?
CHRIS NEUMER: No, you’re being… reasonable.
HEATHER GRAHAM: Okay. How do you know Brian [Herzlinger]?
CHRIS NEUMER: We met when he was doing some stuff for My Date With Drew, and we hit it off and realized we had not only the same birthday but the same birth year.
HEATHER GRAHAM: Uh huh. The same birthday? That’s weird. So you’re Aquarius?
CHRIS NEUMER: I think I’m Pisces.
HEATHER GRAHAM: I thought he was Aquarius…
CHRIS NEUMER: It’s in the middle. It’s on the cusp. So I’ll give him a call and be like, “Hey Brian.” I think Jeff Daniels has it and Haylie Duff.
HEATHER GRAHAM: I’m Oprah Winfrey.
CHRIS NEUMER: So I’ll call him up and be like, “Hey Brian, what’s going on?” and he always does this thing where he’s like, “Thanks for remembering,” a little suspicious that I remember. Then I say, “I’m not gay, we have the same birthday and then he says, ‘That’s right!’” And it turned out he was in Chicago shooting and he told me that I had to come onto the set.
HEATHER GRAHAM: Are you from L.A. or coming from New York?
CHRIS NEUMER: No, I’m from here, but I’m in L.A. all the time. It’s what allows me to live here and go there.
HEATHER GRAHAM: So, just to let you know, they just wrapped me, so if I don’t seem like I’m really wanting to chat for a long time, that’s why.
CHRIS NEUMER: I’m expecting about four hours from you. If not dinner.
HEATHER GRAHAM: Okay good. Good.
CHRIS NEUMER: Both. Just so you know. By the way, just so you know, I’ve decided I’m going to start doing this, because John was apprehensive, he was like, “I haven’t heard of your magazine.” So I said, “You know what? If it sucks, if you’re not having fun, if there are horrible questions that you seem to get a lot of, just feel free to tell me to go to hell and walk out, and I won’t use a thing.”
HEATHER GRAHAM: Can we do it in like 5 or 10 minutes so I can go home and, like, relax?
CHRIS NEUMER: Can you give me 15?
HEATHER GRAHAM: Are you going keep talking about Nick Nolte? Because I really want to leave.
`CHRIS NEUMER: No. I will not. I will instead ask you this. In this movie you’re playing pregnant. It seems like playing pregnant, to a person like myself, a lay person who’s not an actor, it seems like a bigger stretch, a bigger commitment to a role than normal romantic lead. Am I right or wrong in this?
HEATHER GRAHAM: Ummm. Yeah. I’m really grateful that the makeup artist on the film, her name’s Cello, she was helping me. Because I did do research, and I read books and talked to friends and I did all that, but when it came to the day [on set when] I had to go into labor, she was helping me a lot and she was basically like telling me how you stand. It was really good that she was there. She was like, “You have a head between your legs.” It was very descriptive things that she would say. Like, “It’s like you shit a baby out.” (laughs) It was funny.
CHRIS NEUMER: But no more commitment to that?
HEATHER GRAHAM: What?
CHRIS NEUMER: Like in terms of committing to a role. I always think of guest-starring on some TV show, an actor who you probably won’t see anywhere else who’s just panting and screaming and yelling at people and there’s Kelsey Grammar delivering a baby and it just always seems like a very interesting position to put two actors in, one as the screaming woman with her legs open. It seems like you really have to jump in with both feet.
HEATHER GRAHAM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
CHRIS NEUMER: (pauses) But I’m asking you and you’re saying ‘no’.
HEATHER GRAHAM: No, it was fun. It was definitely challenging. A lot of women were telling these stories when we were doing those scenes and they were saying that when they gave birth they’d be like yelling at their husbands, “Don’t touch me! I hate you! Fuck you!” You know, screaming at them and they’d be like, when the contractions ended, “I love you” or whatever. So we tried to put that in there a little bit, sort of the craziness. And I did watch—I did have this Russian birthing movie about water births that’s so beautiful that some friends have shown me. But it’s kind of the opposite of this movie, because this movie’s more for the comedy. So I am kind of freaking out. But in this movie they talk about how you can give birth really relaxedly and there’s this one woman that gives birth, she’s by herself, she just reaches down, she’s in like a bathtub with her kids and you watch and she just pulls the baby out herself. And they’re not panning… nothing.
CHRIS NEUMER: Well, there must have been a lot of pain meds involved.
HEATHER GRAHAM: No, I mean it’s like a whole—it’s amazing. It’s called Birth Into Being. So... That was a really cool movie. I showed Brian, he was freaking out because basically you see when the baby comes out you see all these particles come out, so Brian was freaking out about all these particles.
CHRIS NEUMER: I can understand that. Let me ask you this, sort of getting away from this particular project. I was doing some research on you over the last couple of days and I realized that you have got an absolute plethora of really horribly questions. A combination of offensive slash pushy questions being asked of you, one of them was asking about when you lost your virginity and stuff like this and I just thought to myself, “How do you as a person deal with…” I mean here you are, you’re an actor you’re a person, you’re telling stories, how do you deal with the press like that?
HEATHER GRAHAM: Ummmmmmmmmmm. I just…
CHRIS NEUMER: Or is that Robin’s work? [ed. note: Robin Baum is HEATHER GRAHAM’s publicist]
HEATHER GRAHAM: I just do a lot of therapy. Yeah and I have a good publicist and I just kind of—if someone asks me a really lame question I just take it as more of a reflection of them than me.
CHRIS NEUMER: There we differ. My response would be to get really angry.
HEATHER GRAHAM: (laughs) No, every now and then someone will make me angry but I just think—usually when those things happen it’s more coming out of the interviewer than sometimes the person, you know? Some people, I guess, they come at you with this sort of angry thing and there’s nothing you can do about. You just go, “Okay, well that’s their problem.”
CHRIS NEUMER: That’s a very valid point.
HEATHER GRAHAM: I also think it’s like reaching a certain level where you go, “I don’t care what people think because it’s just too tiring” Who cares? So even if they ask you a dumb question, it’s like, “Who cares?” You know? Because that’s freedom, once you don’t really care.
CHRIS NEUMER: And I noticed you have a habit of sort of playing with reporters as well. Giving very deadpan answers about things. I saw where someone asked you how much heroin you did to prepare for something and you threw the person asking the question for a loop by answering seriously. I thought, “How in the world don’t they get that she’s joking?”
HEATHER GRAHAM: I’m glad that you got that I was joking.
CHRIS NEUMER: Well I just figure that anytime a celebrity, other than Nick Nolte, says anything remotely interesting, that they’re probably joking.
HEATHER GRAHAM: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
CHRIS NEUMER:. On another topic here, I was looking at just the stuff that you’ve done. You’ve been in the big, you’ve been in the small, you’ve been in the lesbian, you’ve been in the P.T. Anderson, you’ve been in the hardcore drama, starred opposite William Hurt and Corey Haim. You’ve been in everything. Every single type of thing. I was curious at this point in time in your career, do you look back and find that certain projects satisfied you more than others?
HEATHER GRAHAM: Yes, but, right after you do a movie you’re like, “I liked that, I didn’t like that. I’m proud of it, I’m not proud of it.” But it’s weird, because sometimes you look back and think that even the ones that you didn’t feel maybe as proud of, there was a reason it was in your life. Do you know what I mean? Like, “Oh, I learned to do yoga when I was doing that movie, because I was staying next to this yoga studio and then yoga changed my life.” Do you know what I mean? So it’s kind of like, it is about the movie and the movie being good but sometimes it’s just about your journey as a person and it’s just everything is there for a reason to just help you hopefully grow… or something.
CHRIS NEUMER: I was thinking about this, like Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, when it came out it was savaged. Critics panned it. They hated it. And now it’s one of the best films ever. And as actors, you’ve got to look back at these movies and your opinion of your own work has to change as you get older. Tim Robbins said that he used to enjoy drinking and meeting extreme women and now he’s a much different person. I’m pretty sure you don’t share the same story, but my point is, is there any project that you look back on that you look at more fondly as you grow older?
HEATHER GRAHAM: Well I guess I feel lucky that I’ve had opportunities. I feel really lucky and grateful to be in a lot of things I’m in. Other things that I may have thought at the time, harshly, “I can’t believe I’m in this thing”, I look back on later and kind of go, “Well, that, it was all kind of a big adventure that sort of led to a big adventure.” You just have to enjoy it.
CHRIS NEUMER: Any specifics you can give?
HEATHER GRAHAM: Ummmm.
CHRIS NEUMER: I’m not looking for dirt or anything.
HEATHER GRAHAM: I don’t know. I just kind of try to be in the moment, just doing what I’m doing instead of reminiscing all the time, to be honest.
CHRIS NEUMER: Fair enough.
HEATHER GRAHAM: Yeah.
CHRIS NEUMER: One of the things that Brian mentioned to me about you was that you could carry on like five conversations at the same time…
HEATHER GRAHAM: I’m kind of non sequitor.
CHRIS NEUMER: I said “Okay, I’m up for that challenge.” And he said, “The other thing you don’t know about her is that she’s funny.” And I don’t mean like you’re doing stand-up or anything, but he was like, “You would not believe that Heather’s got this amazing knack for comedy.” And I thought to myself, “That’s interesting.” Because you have a knack for comedy. You also are a very good dramatic actress, and you can do, you know you’ve done the role of the heartthrob. And I thought to myself, “How is it…” do you ever just find yourself, and I don’t want to say “tearing out your hair”, but you are the complete package as an actress—
HEATHER GRAHAM: That’s nice.
CHRIS NEUMER: And say what you will about Nicole Kidman, but she’s not doing comedy, and after last year she’s probably not doing much stuff anyway—but you are like the full package and I looked at you and thought, “How come people aren’t taking advantage of you?” In the positive way that is. So I figured I’d ask you, do you think that there’s a way to best use you? You’re a great actress with an amazing ability to do nine different things at the same time that people don’t seem to be utilizing very well.
HEATHER GRAHAM: That’s so nice. Thanks. To be honest I’ve kind of gotten into producing because I thought I want to make something for myself that is saying something that I want to say that I feel that I could do very well. And I have these two things. One of them is about the triangle fire. It’s kind of this crazy, historical epic. It’s a great story, just a great story. And then I have this other thing that’s like a sex comedy. So one’s kind of this dramatic, sweeping epic about compassion and like women’s rights, you know? And the other one’s kind of this crazy sex comedy but it’s also got this somewhat empowering female kind of thing going on. So, that is probably… I do feel like I’d like to take more control of putting myself in things that I really believe in so I’m working on that now. And at the same time it’s great that I’m getting other opportunities to do things.
CHRIS NEUMER: Now I don’t want to make you necessarily a representative for all females in Hollywood, but with what’s-his-name at Warner, reportedly saying that they weren’t going to be making any more movies with female leads, what the hell is wrong with Hollywood? We’re doing the face transplants and finding cures for cancer, can’t we get a woman in a lead role on a regular basis?
HEATHER GRAHAM: Well, look at Juno.
CHRIS NEUMER: That’s true.
HEATHER GRAHAM: I think that when someone makes an across-the-board statement like that, it’s never true you know? And one fun thing about the movie business is that it’s so unpredictable. You know? So one minute you’re saying, “no female leads”, the next minute there’s this massive hit with this girl. So it’s kind of, I’m sure that guy will probably be fired within a few years like all of them. (laughs)
CHRIS NEUMER: Yes. It’s amazing how… yes. And then he’s going to turn up at Paramount and get fired again.
