Title: Jack Nicholson & Benicio Del Toro: two reasons to go to the movies talk about their crazy business.(Interview)

Date: 11/1/2002; Publication: Interview;

Jack. Benicia. No last names needed, thank you. Not with two of the movies' biggest, brightest stars, four Oscars between them: A candid, casual conversation between two colleagues, collaborators and friends in Jack's Beverly Hills living room.

JACK NICHOLSON: All right, Benny. "Mention the title," is what my first ever PR person told me to do. "Mention the title." What films do you have coming out?

BENICIO DEL TORO: I've got The Hunted, with Tommy Lee Jones. It's directed by Billy Friedkin. It's coming out next year. What about you?

JN: This movie they're going to release in December, it's About Schmidt, by Alexander Payne. So what's working with Billy like? You know, I like Billy when he doesn't have a lot of money. He's very inventive.

BDT: This is a Paramount picture, so it's a studio film. Butit had an added edge. He's a fun guy--

JN: --He's a Celtics fan. [both laugh) But I don't hold that against him. What's the film about?

BDT: My character's a soldier who's come back from Serbia and Croatia--all the massacres in that part of the world--and he's kind of disturbed by it. It's made him see things. What's it called? War--

JN: --Post-traumatic stress syndrome?

BDT: Yeah. So he takes to the mountains and turns to the Bible for some kind of salvation. And he's chased by Tommy Lee Jones. Have you done a picture like that, with a chase?

JN: No. [pause] Well, I always have to stop and think. I got chased around in Wolf [1994] and The Passenger [1975].

BDT: What's your new movie about?

JN: My guy, Schmidt, is an actuary. That means he knows when everybody's going to die. He's got statistics on everything. I asked the guys down at the insurance company what the jokes of their profession were, and the one I liked best was you ask an actuary what time it is, and he tells you how to build a clock. [laughs) So Schmidt's all facts at his job, but it's completely self-deceptive. When we started, Alexander said, "Now Jack,"--one of the best directions I've ever got--" I want you to play a small man."

BDT: What makes a small man? I was watching Prizzi's Honor [1985] last night, and you were this small, but big man.

JN: Dedicated, talented.

BDT: Yeah. Dedicated to love. I was laughing out loud watching that movie.

JN: I didn't know it was a comedy when I first read it. [John] Huston [the film's director] was the object lesson in simplicity and economy. You and I, we've only worked together on Sean's [Penn] movie [The Pledge, 2001). I'll tell you, as I've told you before, I was obsessed with your performance in that film. What's interesting to me is--you don't mind my saying this--I don't understand how people ultimately say, "What's a good performance?" because if you asked me to pick a performance in the last few movies I've done which really impressed me, I would say you in that part. I'm crazy about that performance. That's who the guy was. That's who he is. I mean, I can never believe it when people think there's too much character.

What do they exactly mean when they say this?

BDT: Well, I think sometimes it works when there's too much character and sometimes it might not. But I think your performance in Sean's movie was outstanding. I'd come out of Traffic [2000] and everybody's going "Oh, the simplicity!"--

JN: --It's what people feel comfortable liking, and I think all actors simplify as they go on. You get to where you get less mannered, but at the same time, reality could be a trap as an actor, too. In other words, I wouldn't like to be an actor if I could only be real. I like to get wild, behaviorally wild, and it's crazy to think of any form where it's just one way. You know, there are a lot of different forms of movies, but the criteria always seem to be bound. But in the end, we say to ourselves, "If it works, that's it." If I suddenly start talking in a Japanese accent in the middle of a scene, if it works, that's fine. If it doesn't, it's no good. But no matter how unbelievable the circumstances, you always come at it the same way. You know, when we talk about movies today we behave as though there hadn't been [Luigi] Pirandello, [Jean] Genet, [Eugene] Ionesco, [Samuel] Beckett and all these people.

INTERVIEW: Would you call those artists influences?

JN: I've never been able to say I've been influenced by a list of artists I like because I like thousands and thousands and I've been influenced in some way by all of them. Frankly, I got into the movies because I like the movies a lot. When I started off, there were 25 people walking around L.A. in red jackets who looked exactly like James Dean, because he was very extreme and quite easy to imitate, which missed the point entirely. And there was Marion [Brando]. of course, but I said to myself, "Marlon is my idol and I definitely can't do that." So, in many ways, he influenced me on a different level.

I: What about you, Benicio? Who or what were your influences?

BDT: Well, I'm sitting here with one of them. [Nicholson laughs] There's no doubt. I think the first time that I saw you in a movie after I'd really thought about acting was Prizzi's Honor, and that performance influenced me very much.

JN: You know, before this [Prizzi's Honor), I never thought I got it right. I was always thinking, Should I ask for another take? And then I said, "This is John Huston and he likes it, and that's good enough for me!" It really, definitely relaxed something in terms of my own self-censorship.

BDT: [Steven] Soderbergh was like that for me.

JN: Did you do a lot of takes with him?

BDT: I was in that same situation, where I would ask him to give me another one and he was like, "What for?" But he would say, "OK," and when we did another take, I didn't change anything. And I realized that that was my lesson.

JN: That's an interior lesson.

BDT: It's a major trust, too. I learned to trust him as we went along. Sean understands that process, too.

JN: We trust people we work with in different ways. Sean, Alexander, I trust their basic aesthetic. I don't have to think, Am I this, or am I that? I just have to shoot.

I: Let's talk about L.A. for a few minutes. Benicio, when did you come out here?

BDT: In 1987. The first time I came to L.A.--this is a true story--was in 1984, when I came to visit my brother. I was walking--

JN: --You were a law student weren't you?

BDT: No, my brother is a doctor, and he was going to UCLA. I came here and I was walking in Westwood and out of the blue, a dollar bill came flying out of the air and hit me in the chest. [Nicholson laughs] And I said--

JN: --"There's money in the air here."

BDT: Maybe I'm still looking for George Washington. [Both laugh] So a few years later I was going to UCSD [University of California, San Diego], and I decided to be an actor and move to New York. It was kind of rough in New York so I came back to UCSD and I stopped in L.A., where my brother was still going to UCLA, and I got into the Stella Adler Conservatory on a scholarship. That's how I stayed. But there's something about the layout here, something about the sky... there's just....

JN: Space.

BDT: Yeah. Space gives you--

JN: --a longer view of life. Painters and musicians always do their very best work here, and I always thought it was because of the space. When you live in a metropolis, it shapes your perceptions. When the throw of your vision is never more than a few yards or it's down an alley, the human being is affected by this. You're effectively thinking in these types of metaphors: shortsighted. I came to Los Angeles as a teenager in the '50s from the East Coast, and there's nothing that's in another city that isn't here. But you have to generate it. You have to get to it.

BDT: Right. L.A. is one of those towns you have to put together like a puzzle. It's almost like listening to jazz. You've got to work for it.

I: Can you live in L.A., not be involved in the entertainment industry and professionally still be a part of this town? Or are you something of a second-class citizen?

JN: No, no. People don't know about all the unbelievable non-show-business people that live in Los Angeles. It's a wild place to live from that point of view. But look, even if you go to a town like Chicago or San Francisco, and you go to a dinner and the senator of Wyoming is there, yeah, you talk a bit about government, but basically he's interested in movies. It's so much a part of all our lives. It ain't just in L.A. Acting is everybody's favorite second job.

I: And the public is into the business of movies nowadays. People look at weekend box office numbers like they look at box scores from baseball games.

JN: Let's not Pollyanna about it: The relativity of who's number one [at the box office], those movies, by nature, have to be children's--teenagers'--movies, because you don't get to those numbers unless people see it more than once. In other words, the more literary a movie becomes, the less audience it's relating to. The last time I can remember that kind of a movie being really successful was [One Flew Over the] Cuckoo's Nest [1975]. And that was 20-something years ago.

I: Does that mean that filmmakers are so bound by numbers that they've lost their fearlessness?

JN: The head of the studio has got to make 15 pictures [a year, and) he only likes three or four of them. Making those few pictures are easy--he's really looking for the other 11 or 12. When you think you can't get a picture made, this is a fallacy, just like the great, unshot script is a fallacy. It doesn't exist, other than my own. [both laugh]

BDT: [laughs] Me, I'm just looking for the great movie. [both laugh]

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