Brando, De Niro, Norton
Words: Colin Kennedy, Portrait: Jean-Francois Robert
Empire Magazine, October 2001
...Three names that head up this month's heist caper, The Score. But when the history books are written, will Edward Norton still be on that list?
The woman did not know the kid. He was tall, slim, kinda ordinary looking. She could see on his CV that he was a Yale graduate, a history major who had spent time in Asia. Perhaps there was even reference to the fact that he taught himself Japanese, aged 16. Anyway, there was a bit of theatre experience listed, nothing much, an off-Broadway Edward Albee play, but she guessed he was here to audition for the part. She had seen maybe 2,000 actors trying out for this damn part. Matt Damon gave it a shot, but he couldn't nail the switch. Y'see, it was two parts, really - a cold-blooded killer who fakes multiple-personality disorder in an attempt to escape Death Row. Anyway, this current kid was talking with a stutter, a thick Appalachian accent which could be just right for one half of the part; but then he didn't introduce himself, just went on stuttering - maybe the kid was just lost. The point was, the woman did not know the kid. And then, in a flash, the kid's eyes changed, went black. He began screaming in her face, all sorts of abuse. The stutter was gone. And then he was yanking her hair, bearing down. The woman remembers thinking, "Oh great, the real thing. I hope my husband can raise our daughter by himself."
This event took place in 1995 in New York's Gulf & Western building. The woman was Paramount Pictures' head of feature film casting, Deborah Aquila. The part was Aaron Stampler, the showcase role in courtroom thriller Primal Fear. The kid was a 25 year-old hopeful named Edward Norton. Aquila was half right. It was not the real thing, but the kid was.
Soon enough, everyone would know the kid. "By the time we were finished shooting," recalls Primal Fear's Executive Producer, Howard Koch, "he'd already met with Milos Forman, Woody Allen and Anthony Minghella. He became an instantaneous hot kid." No shit. The movie was released Stateside in April 1996, and for his extraordinary debut, Norton won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor and nabbed an Oscar nomination. The meetings with Forman and Allen led to notable work as a harassed lawyer in The People Vs. Larry Flint and a good-hearted socialite in Everybody Says I Love You. Minghella cast the aforementioned Damon as The Talented Mr. Ripley; and the two seemingly intertwined actors eventually teamed up for gambling drama Rounders, with Norton stealing the show as the permanently-wired card shark, Worm.
All this had placed Norton firmly in the public eye. From
listening to Nirvana in his rent-controlled apartment on West 78th
Street, Norton was suddenly escorting Kurt Cobain's widow, Courtney
Love, to the Oscars. From watching Withnail And I with his fellow
Yalie, Stuart Blumberg, while simultaneously penning spec scripts
about an inept superhero, Stupid Man, the two best friends were now
sketching the outline of a religiously-inflected romantic comedy
which would eventually become Norton's sweet directorial debut,
Keeping The Faith. However, it was Norton's next two acting roles
that really caught the attention and set the pattern for his career.
It was thanks to these two parts that the larger public really
started to understand how Deborah Aquila came to fear for her life.
First up was Derek Vinyard, the bruising, hulking skinhead trying to
reform in American History X; a mesmerizing performance which
garnered another Oscar nomination. This body blow was swiftly
followed by the sucker punch of Jack, the flipped-out, fucked-up
narrator of David Fincher's Fight Club.
However, just as the critics had started to mention Norton in the same breath as his co-stars in this month's The Score, the backlash began. When debut director Tony Kaye failed to deliver an edit of American History X after a full year in the suite, Norton was asked by New Line to handle the cut. The eccentric Kaye responded by placing bizarre trade ads citing philistine behaviour by the studio. Norton did not escape the mud, Kaye accused him of being a patrician brat - a reference to his grandfather James Rouse, a millionaire city planner and former Time cover star who founded the town of Columbia, Maryland, where Norton grew up. (Kaye famously dismissed Rouse as the 'inventor of the ice cream' - he was in fact the inventor of the shopping mall, and Norton's participation in Fight Club was in part a response to the bland 'Starbucks' branding which had tarnished his grandfather's dream.) Norton shrugged off the fuss, claiming, "People presume - based on the very limited information they've bothered to find out about my grandfather - that I grew up in an affluent setting."
However, if there was little substance to the charge of trust fund yuppie, Kaye's branding of Norton as a "narcissistic asshole person" gained some ground with further report of clashes with Fincher on Fight Club, drawn out arguments over such minutiae as what trainers Jack would wear. Fincher ended the shoot on good terms with Norton, but a revealing comment left little doubt that the two had been through tougher times: "He's a daunting proposition because you're taking on a collaborator."
In Norton's defense, he is well aware of his reputation. "I am incapable of engaging as an actor on something without engaging as a dramatist," he argues, "and when you work with great people, they not only accept it, they welcome it." In the past, this self- assessment has contributed to Norton turning down prestigious acting gigs - Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line - in order to do his own thing with Keeping The Faith (his mother, a lover of romantic comedies, died of cancer in 1997 and Keeping The Faith is dedicated to Robyn Norton). More recently he turned down Hart's War and a reunion with Primal Fear director Gregory Hoblit because he knew the script needed work and didn't want to "get in everybody's face". Indeed, since Norton has had the luxury of choosing projects he has broken his guiding principle - "great script, great director" - only once, with this month's heist drama, The Score.
"This one," he smiles, relaxed in a high-rise suite of a Manhattan hotel, the air-conditioning blowing hard, "I did for the poster."
You can see his point. There's something of a holy triumvirate at work in The Score - Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, and the guy who would seem to be their logical successor but couldn't care less. The best actor of his generation has little empathy for such tags.
"Being called one thing or another thing by people who write stuff doesn't mean anything to me. Acting's not a competitive sport. Marlon is a great actor, and there were lots of great actors in his generation. But when people say, 'Marlon Brando was the first contemporary actor,' that's bullshit. Go back and watch any Jimmy Stewart movie. Sometimes that stuff gets a little overstated." Nevertheless, in common with any young actor, Norton felt the opportunity of working with the two Vito Corleones was a "completely unrefusable offer".
"Of course, Brando and De Niro are the main reason I did the film," he says, almost dismissively. "If they'd said, 'You, Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro are going to read the phone book on camera,' I'd have said, 'That sounds stupid, but okay.' It's just that I always kind of sigh a little bit when people feel compelled to say, 'Well, do you want to be like them?'"
As a matter of fact, the two career arcs that most impress Norton are those of fellow director-actors, Warren Beatty and Sean Penn. However, one scene in The Score touches upon how Norton feels about the estimable Robert De Niro.
In the Montreal-set thriller, De Niro plays career thief
Nick, whose help has been reluctantly sought by Norton's young hot
shot, Jack (Brando plays the colourful fence and Nick's own mentor,
Max). In this key scene, Nick is trying to teach Jack the value of
discipline, how correct choices are just as important as raw
talent. "There's a lot of talented people in this business," Nick
says, "who never see the light of day anymore."
Nick is, of course, talking about jail, but the parallels with the fickle nature of showbusiness are clear to Norton. "You could be talking about actors or thieves," he explains. "A lot of people are hailed as the 'next-so-and-so', but you don't remember their coming and going because they didn't have career discipline." Then again, the parallels should be pretty clear to Norton - after all, he wrote the scene.
Frank Oz, the director of The Score, had already cast De Niro and Brando. Like many people he saw Norton as the natural choice for the youngest generation of thief. Norton, though, had reservations. "Edward's first concern was, 'Can I contribute?'" Oz recalls. "'I don't just want to be an actor 'cause I have ideas.'" Indeed, although he remains uncredited, Norton is pretty vocal about his "pretty substantive rewrite" of Kario Salem's original script (two other writers, Lem Dobbs and Scott Marshall Smith, are credited for re-drafts). Norton's main contribution was to change Jack from a character closer in spirit to Tom Cruise in The Colour Of Money, to a dedicated young professional. "I remember talking to Frank one time," Norton says, "and I said: 'You know you can be a colourful flake in a pool hall, but you can't be a colourful flake as a high-tech thief.'"
Norton also added the aforementioned scene between Jack and Nick, basing De Niro's dialogue in part on an interview with the actor Norton had read aged 16. He may not want to be called the new De Niro, but Norton certainly envies his discipline. "I look at De Niro, and the thing I admire about him is just the length and diversity of his career," Norton says. "He has just done so much wonderful work and so many different kinds of work. That to me is worth something."
If all this makes Norton sound like a serious young fellow - and he is - it comes as a delightful surprise to hear that life on The Score set was apparently one long frat-house joke. Take the first scene featuring the three great actors together. Norton was understandably nervous about this unprecedented occasion. What chemistry, what excitement... What actually happened was that, busy concentrating on saying his line, Brando dribbled designer water all down his shirt. Turning to De Niro for a reaction, Norton caught the Raging Bull in the middle of a quick nap. So much for legends.
By all accounts, Brando was at the centre of most on-set antics. Not only did the joker bring along a high-tech whoopee cushion which he'd fire off near De Niro whenever the trio "were trying to be cool-thief serious", but he also sat down with Norton to enjoy an episode of The Simpsons.
"I showed him the episode where Marge gets cast in a musical version of A Streetcar Named Desire," Norton laughs. "He loved it. Marlon loves stuff like that." Norton should know - he's been hanging out playing chess with The Godfather since a friend hooked them up a couple of years ago.
Clearly, Norton has all the right connections, and romantically too. He's still dating Salma Hayek, and recently returned from Mexico where he assayed a cameo as Nelson Rockefeller in her long-in-the-planning Frida Kahlo biopic, directed by Julie Taymor. Many has laboured over the script, long the film's sticking point, but true to form, Norton pitched in with the successful rewrite.
"I love Mexico," the 32 year-old enthuses, "and the Mexican people are just overwhelmed with emotion that Salma is doing it. I couldn't have predicted the level of emotion; people walking up to her in the streets with tears of happiness that a Mexican woman is playing the part. It was moving to see."
Back from Mexico, the spiritual New Yorker - "I love the density of it here, I just find it always an inspiring city" - is currently "looking for a new place". With Hayek based in LA, he'll likely find himself bi-coastal. He's also looking for work. "I would do anything if I was in the mood to do it," he insists, shrugging off his perfectionist reputation. "I don't have a game plan. I do whatever strikes me at the moment." And there are still plenty of people left on his working wish list, tops being Kevin Spacey. As actors do, they've been talking over options for ages, but "just never found the right thing".
In the meantime, the two thesps will continue to e-mail back and forth. "I love it," Norton says of electronic post. "E-mail has returned us to a more 19th century, correspondent-focused kind of communication, which I think is great because I hate the telephone."
Let's just hope Norton doesn't give Spacey a rewrite.
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