CNN LIVE SUNDAY

Interview With Edward Norton

Aired January 18, 2004 - 18:52 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: The Sundance Film Festival is the hottest winter spot for Hollywood to premiere movies. Party until dawn, and pick the next generation of stars and wonderkens (ph). More than 100 feature length and documentary films are up for consideration this year. "Dirty Work" is one of them. The documentary offers a humorous and thoughtful glimpse at three of the dirtiest jobs you might imagine.

The film follows a reproductive physiologist, that is someone who collects bull semen. A restorative artist who prepares corpses for funeral, and a septic tank pumper.

Actor Edward Norton is the film's executive producer. He joins us live from Sundance, along with David Sampliner, and Tim Nackashi, both producer/directors of "Dirty Work". Thanks very much, all three of you for being with us.

Edward, how did you get involved with this project?

EDWARD NORTON, EXEC. PROD. "DIRTY WORK": David and I knew each other in college, and have stayed friends, and he bounced this idea around with me early on when he was coming out with the concept of what they wanted to examine in the film. I thought it was both funny and interesting on a sociological level. So I've just kind of played Producer to these guys' good idea all along. And the film came off really wonderfully I thought. So it's just been fun for me to ride along with.

LIN: David, Tim, how did you guys come up with the idea, and why these particular professions?

DAVID SAMPLINER, PROD. "DIRTY WORK": Well a few years ago I visited this friend of mine on a dairy farm in Georgia. And when I visited her she had just finished artificially inseminating a cow. And I was naturally curious, and asked her where the bull's semen came from. And I got...

(LAUGHTER)

LIN: See, you guys are laughing. It's your film.

SAMPLINER: It still makes me laugh.

And she said from the semen salesmen, and look, he's here. And so I went up to him and asked him the same question, and he gave me this great five minute soliloquy, totally dead pan, about the bull semen collection process, and I knew a person like that had to be documented. The idea grew from there.

LIN: Tim, what did you learn about how people actually make these kinds of decisions about their lives?

TIM NACKASHI, PROD/DIR. "DIRTY WORK": Well I think we learned that these people in particular love what they do. And it's -- they had an interest in these fields, or related to these fields from an early age, and they have a passion for what they do. And it's a big part of it I think.

SAMPLINER: Yes, the bull semen collector was breeding chickens in his city garage when he was six years old.

NORTON: A true calling you might say.

SAMPLINER: Exactly, and the embalmer had took the pets -- or actually the animals from his dad's science class, and his dad would bring them home, and he would bury them when he was 10 years old in the back yard in these little tiny coffins that he made for them.

And his Mom realized, maybe I should introduce him to the local funeral director. Maybe he'll find an after school job. And he did at age 12, started at the local funeral home. So the interest and passion started early.

LIN: Edward, if you were to play any of these -- or portray any of these people in a film, which character would you pick?

NORTON: Geez, the images are so enticing from all three of their lives, it would be tough to choose. But I don't know, I found myself very -- I found myself actually intrigued by the perspective that all of them had, but in particular I thought that Bernard, who was the Mortician.

He ends up having this incredibly, almost poetic articulation of what he sees as society's overall kind of distancing itself from the ritual of death, and emotional and spiritual connection to it. And he was kind of a fascinating character to me.

LIN: What did he say?

NORTON: Well I think I'd say that probably one of the things that I was most surprised by about the film is that, as you might expect, there's kind of a shock value humor to just watching these guys do the jobs they do in the beginning.

But by the end, I think far from being -- coming to the conclusions that these are -- you have to be a really strange person to do this, they are all -- they offer -- from within these realms of intense specialization, they seem to have acquired this incredible perspective on society as a whole, and the ways that we have collectively maybe divorced ourselves from very important facets of life.

Like knowing where our food comes from, or engaging on a spiritual level in the death ritual and the death process. And you walk away thinking these people aren't the ones who are screwed up, we're screwed up. And that was -- I thought that was a very nuanced piece of filmmaking on these guys part.

LIN: Well I think that the fact that you were able to capture their spirit as well as their lives in this film, and showcase it at Sundance, certainly gave great meaning to their work. Thank you.

NORTON: Plus it's the only film at the festival that comes with a doggy bag in case you get sick. How many films can say that?

(LAUGHTER)

LIN: Thank you very much. And on that note, I will leave it to all three of you to have a good time out there, and enjoy the debut of your film at Sundance. Edward Norton, David Sampliner, and Tim Nackashi, good luck.

NACKASHI: Thank you.

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