|
|
John Goodman & Susan Sarandon Interview, Speed Racer
MoviesOnline had the pleasure of talking withJohn Goodman andSusan Sarandon at the Los Angeles press day for their new movie, “Speed Racer,” a high-octane family adventure directed by the Wachowski brothers. The film adaptation of the classic cartoon focuses on Speed Racer’s (Emile Hirsch) journey to become the best racecar driver in the World Racing League. John Goodman plays Pops Racer, a brilliant car designer and engineer who builds Speed’s racecars. Susan Sarandon plays Mom Racer whom she describes as “the glue that holds everybody together.” Christina Ricci andMatthew Fox co-star.
Our interview takes place against the exhilarating backdrop of the 34th annual Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach where more than 180,000 racing fans have packed Long Beach’s famed seaside street circuit to enjoy the speed, sound, sunshine and unparalleled excitement of open-wheel racing.
Here’s whatJohn Goodman andSusan Sarandon had to tell us about working together on “Speed Racer”:
Susan Sarandon: (remarking on the cool weather in Los Angeles) I’m glad I brought my coat. It was 78 in New York when I left yesterday. 78, it was so nice.
Q: Susan, do you have any recipes like those pancakes that your kids would kill if you didn't make them for them everyday?
SUSAN SARANDON: I do make pancakes and Tim makes crepes and sometimes I put little blue berries or bananas. I don't think there is anything too secret, but I get … What’s the store? There’s one that is Jack's. It’s called Jack's. I get mixes. I make them from the mix, you know, and you add your eggs and water. And waffles.
Q: As a New Yorker you probably aren't much of a car person, but what was the attraction for you to make this film?
SUSAN SARANDON: The Wachowskis and I'm a huge fan of The Matrix and my youngest son, well all my kids were, but especially my youngest. I just thought they were brilliant. When they called me, after a few phone calls I said "I don't even understand what you are talking about, but [I'll do it]." They were telling me all the things they were doing technically – I mean I just learned to text like a month ago. [laughs] I'm way behind the learning curve. I can't even wear a watch, it stops on my body so I'm like so not good with inanimate objects. Inanimate objects have never been my thing. What they said was also very seductive. Besides, I just thought, "If you are going to do a big film, these are the guys to do it with. Right? If you are going to do something really cutting edge instead of some old green screen movie, you should do it with the Wachowskis and Berlin's not a bad place to spend the summer. They said though it’s really important the family in this movie and we want to try to find a way so that emotional core survives the surrounding things that are going to be happening and that's why they chose us honey (turning to John Goodman).
Q: Had you known each other before?
JOHN GOODMAN: No
SUSAN SARANDON: No
JOHN GOODMAN: We met each other.
SUSAN SARANDON: Bonding under pressure.
JOHN GOODMAN: I met Tim once.
SUSAN SARANDON: All the big guys.
JOHN GOODMAN: [laughs] Yeah.
Q: What was it like working with the green screen?
JOHN GOODMAN: It hearkened back to a time for me without money, without throwing a lot of money in a set, you know, off off Broadway. When I first got into college, I did a play in a church basement by Thorton Wilder and the directions were ‘There are no props. There are chairs, tables.’ You use whatever you can – just not hone in on whatever the props that are supposed to be there and people will start paying attention to the actors and after awhile you don't care. So that was what it was like for me. It was like going back to off, off Broadway and you concentrate more on the person you are working with.
SUSAN SARANDON: If you are going to be working for like a week in a green screen situation, you want a good group with you …
JOHN GOODMAN: …and a chimp …
SUSAN SARANDON: We laughed a lot and the chimp helped because he is so unpredictable and funny and cute so that kept us on our toes, but it was a good group. Everybody was real professional and really funny and it was also so cool to be able to be on a set where there are so many fine actors from different countries that you never would have met like Hiro. I’d seen Hiro in so many movies and he was one of my favorite people and then Rain, of course, I'm madly in love with Rain.
JOHN GOODMAN: Rain is insane. He is so talented and he works so hard.
SUSAN SARANDON: Such a strong work ethic.
JOHN GOODMAN: He is like the hardest working man in show business now that brother James is gone.
Q: When you are on the green screen, do you get a chance to see what's around you?
SUSAN SARANDON: They would show us – I mean not while we’re on the thing -- but the first day when we showed up we had a tour of pictures of things and what they were trying to do. These guys are so incredible and you want to be like them because they've created a world that they’re in complete control of and they just do anything they want. They were like “Yeah. We built this big window. We saw that on that set and then we thought well what if there were big fishes in that big window? We love Flight of the Penguins so some penguins are going to walk through that shot." This is so crazy and sort of trippy.
JOHN GOODMAN: And then a hamster and a gerbil on a wheel.
SUSAN SARANDON: Yeah. “And then we’re going to dress the gal who is like the gerbil and they’re going to be on the wheel together. You are like "Okay, that's cool." [laughs]
JOHN GOODMAN: It is like they are drawing a comic strip while they’re…
SUSAN SARANDON: It’s so the opposite as an actor. You are constantly being asked to try to customize what you do to someone else's vision and to try to deal with the fact that you can't move out of this line or you’ll be off camera. These guys are just like whatever they want and plus they have arranged their lives in such a way that they shoot where they want to shoot. Their families are always there, they hire their friends over and over, they don't do press. They've got like the perfect set up. You just have to say "God, you are so cool."
JOHN GOODMAN: Yeah.
SUSAN SARANDON: They’re cool.
Q: Susan, you've often talked about your characters as ordinary women who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. So how would this character, Mom Racer, compare to some of your more outspoken characters?
SUSAN SARANDON: Well I think she has to keep the family together. She is the glue. She's kind of the one … Pops has his emotional perimeters that he doesn't go beyond or that he's very passionate …
JOHN GOODMAN: Very constipated.
SUSAN SARANDON: Very constipated and tends to blow up. Mom's got to find a way to wade through the waters and at the same time I think the scene is a pretty important scene when she's talking about the cross over between art and commerce, which every artist feels and I certainly – my dirty secret is that I really don't even care about cars or know about cars. I drive a Prius. They all look alike to me. They’re low or they're high or they’re red or they're yellow. I don't understand anything. In this context, if your kid is interested in racing and that is your family business and that is what you do you, you know, I think what she says to him is so important and I knew that was a scene that really had to work to set up…. There are a few emotional little spots that have to make the ending pay off because it is really about the take over by corporations of the human aspects of sports, of all sports. When we were filming, they were having all the scandals that summer about racing. It was so weird. Remember, all the stealing of designs.
JOHN GOODMAN: McLaren
SUSAN SARANDON: Yeah, and that racer McLaren. You know they were pretty on it, the Wachowskis.
Q: Was this the kind of film where you needed to access a more stylized, less realistic type of acting?
JOHN GOODMAN: No.
SUSAN SARANDON: They wanted the opposite.
JOHN GOODMAN: There is realistic and then there is truth. You always play the truth, then you worry about the style. That’s when the style of the piece comes in, and I'm talking now about if you are doing a French farce onstage, it is going to be totally different then doing an Arthur Miller drama, but you have to play the truth or the farce isn't funny and you are going to have people sleeping and walking out.
SUSAN SARANDON: They were really insistent upon, if anything, smaller, smaller, smaller. (to Goodman) Right?
JOHN GOODMAN: Yeah.
SUSAN SARANDON: They really knew that whatever they were listening to in their mind’s ear…
JOHN GOODMAN: They have that grand volcano behind us with all the colors of the rainbow, the constant moving and action, the seizure-inducing races. You’ve got to have that grounded in reality.
Q: Is that because the film, despite all the vistas and the craziness that’s happening visually, was largely shot in close up so you had to?
JOHN GOODMAN: I think the beginning of the film is brilliant where you get all the exposition during the race. I've never seen anything like it before with things sliding around.
SUSAN SARANDON: Even Scott (Porter), the young [Rex Racer] – I thought that was really moving. Racer X when he was younger with Speed when he's younger. That relationship and the way they showed how close they were.
JOHN GOODMAN: That kid was wonderful. Young Speed.
SUSAN SARANDON: Little tiny bits and pieces, but you totally bought into that. Trixie's younger version was really great too. They were very careful about that, the human aspect of it. That is where the film could have gone off. I haven't seen the final film, but would have been in losing the people.
JOHN GOODMAN: If you don't have the people, then all you have is very rapidly moving wall paper.
Q: Susan, you have said before that children reinvent your world for you. Even though that probably applies to your personal life, it’s also a really strong statement that comes out in this film.
SUSAN SARANDON: I think the one thing you fear as a parent is that your kids won't have a passion for something because then what do you do? So anything that they feel passionately about, it’s your job to create memories and to support whatever their passion is -- whether it is stamp collecting or…
JOHN GOODMAN: Dog fighting. [laughter]
Q: Was there anything from the movie that you wish your car could do?
SUSAN SARANDON: The thing when Matthew punches the guy – that is my favorite moment in the whole movie. That’s what we call Car-fu.
JOHN GOODMAN: Car fu.
SUSAN SARANDON: That was really fun.
Q: John, when you read your part in the script, were you excited that your character got to kick some serious ninja butt?
JOHN GOODMAN: You’re presuming that I read it [laughter]. I was actually worried because my knees and my shoulder are pretty heavily riddled with arthritis and, not from my angle so much but when you are working in a stunt fight, and I love to do fights, I’ve got to slow down a little bit and admit to myself that maybe I can't do this because somebody else could get hurt. My stunt guy was flipping up and he had a good guy pulling a rope so he could achieve this height. The guy didn't pull the rope right and this guy wound up smack in the middle of his head -- slam like that -- and you know that's a broken neck, but he just popped up and …
SUSAN SARANDON: The guys that coordinated the stunts, we worked with them quite a bit.
JOHN GOODMAN: They were great.
SUSAN SARANDON: They did The Matrix and they did The Bourne Identity before that. They were jumping across buildings into windows and they were just the sweetest, cutest, most patient guys. So they already had such a great rapport with the brothers.
JOHN GOODMAN: They made it easy. Oh boy! Everything was so simplified.
Q: You've mentioned that the Wachowskis don't do press, so they are a big mystery to us. You've talked about how they called you and talked about all this technical stuff as well as on set they were urging you to bring it down.
SUSAN SARANDON: They were also telling me this whole business about the political message of the movie and this business about corporations taking over sports was a lot of it too.
Q: What is their style like on set when working with you as actors?
SUSAN SARANDON: I will let John answer this because he's also worked with another set of brothers.
JOHN GOODMAN: I worked with the Alou brothers in baseball when I played. There is no mystery. Their strong point is they are very well read, they are very well grounded in popular culture. They are technically brilliant but they know how to tell a story. They just come up and talk to you. If Larry is finished with something, he’ll go "Andy, do you have anything to add?" and Andy will go "Nope."
SUSAN SARANDON: They are very specific.
JOHN GOODMAN: They are very specific, they know exactly what they want and that is what they have in common with the Coen Brothers. The Coen Brothers write these brilliant screenplays and then they know precisely what they want, they know how they want you to do it. The first time I worked with the Coens was on Raising Arizona. I came back to New York and we’re sitting around their joint with a bunch of other actors and this is when the Coen Brothers were just starting to be heard of and what were they like. So I was describing how tight everything was and a couple of the other actors were saying "Man, I couldn't work like that." And I said "Man, you don't understand. It is oddly liberating to be within that restriction. You can do anything you want."
SUSAN SARANDON: If you surrender your ego to the greater good. [laughs] If you are someone who is going to be in some kind of power struggle, then it’s not going to work, but if you listen to what their vision is and that's your job to jump on board, then that works really well.
JOHN GOODMAN: There is a story about an actor that the Wachowskis have worked with before and he was not being difficult, but not being the most humble cat in the world, and they wanted him to do 40 takes of something and he goes "What do you want?” “Oh, a little humility?"
Q: What did you think when you saw the movie?
JOHN GOODMAN: I saw the movie a couple of months ago when I didn’t know it wasn't finished. It was like spectacular. And then Emile saw it a couple nights ago and came back and told me about it and said "Dude, it is so much better." I said "How could it be better?" “It is great now.”
Q: Are you signed for the sequel if there is one?
SUSAN SARANDON: We are
JOHN GOODMAN: I think there were options. I hope so because I just want to get together with these guys again. We had a blast.
Q: Each of you has several things in the works. Can you talk about your upcoming projects?
SUSAN SARANDON: I'm going to film two films in May and June and I have a film that’s opening today in Canada called Emotional Arithmetic with Max von Sydow.
Q: How was it working with Roy Dupuis in “Emotional Arithmetic”?
SUSAN SARANDON: I loved him! I mean he’s a huge star there (in Canada) and he took this little part and did such a great job. I gotta say when I saw the film, everybody in it was so surprising to me. I thought that Christopher Plummer…that could have been such a crotchety old guy and he was so sympathetic and did such a great job, and of course, Max (von Sydow) is adorable. Gabriel is, you know, now he’s a shrink, a charismatic shrink.
Q: And don't you have The Lovely Bones?
SUSAN SARANDON: And someone just reminded me that I have 'The Lovely Bones.' [Laughs] I knew there was something else I had done. And then I did a film with my daughter Eva that's called the 'Middle of Nowhere' with Anton Yelchin which I just saw for the first time the other day and they are so good. They are really great. I play the evil, evil mother. That was actually kind of fun. I don’t know when that’s coming out.
Q: What about The Colossus?
SUSAN SARANDON: I don't know anything about it. I'm doing something called 'Peacock' with Cillian Murphy, Ellen Page and Bill Pullman and I'm not sure who else and then something else called 'The Greatest' opposite Pierce Brosnan.
JOHN GOODMAN: He plays Muhammed Ali [laughter].
SUSAN SARANDON: It is a bit of a stretch for him but I think he can do it.
Q: John, what do you have coming up?
JOHN GOODMAN: Last year at this time I was doing a film with Tommy Lee Jones called ‘In the Electric Mist.’ I've got a cartoon about Paul Bunyan. I've got a Pixar cartoon coming up that takes place in New Orleans where I live, ‘Confessions of a Shopaholic' with the fabulous Isla Fisher, and a film called 'Gigantic' with the beautiful Zoey Deschanel and the beautiful Paul Dano.
Q: What was it like working with Emile Hirsch? What was the best part?
JOHN GOODMAN: His bod. [Laughs] He's a very hungry…he wants to be a good actor, he’s a very good actor. You can see it in him. He wants really to be the best possible actor he can be and he goes to a lot of lengths. He's very serious and also one of the funniest kids I've ever met because he can imitate anybody.
Q: Can he imitate you?
JOHN GOODMAN: Not to my knowledge.
SUSAN SARANDON: [Laughing] Yeah, he can.
“Speed Racer” opens in theaters on May 9th.
source: MoviesOnline |
|
发表于 2008-5-2 18:28
发表于 2008-6-14 19:48
