Charlie Rose Show 4/12/00
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Transcript
Charlie Rose: Edward Norton is here. At the age of 30, he has appeared in six films and earned two Academy Award nominations.
Despite his brief career, he is often proclaimed to be the best actor of his generation. But one goal that alluded him was to direct a film. With Keeping the Faith he has done just that. Based on a screenplay by his college friend, the film follows a priest, a rabbi both in love with the same woman. The film opens this Friday, April 14. I am pleased to have director/actor/producer Edward Norton back at this table. Welcome back
Edward Norton: Thanks, it's good to be back
CR: I saw you kind of wince when I said the notion "the best actor of his generation"
EN: Yeah. I never know quite what to do with those things. I mean you have to take the complement that's implicit in it but there's so many good people and I never know exactly..
CR: And how do you choose the best in something like that- painting or some other art form..
EN: Yeah
CR: But I am right about the directing. I mean this is something that you've wanted to do
EN: Yes, I have wanted to do this for a while and we got the opportunity to do it. And it was, as you said, a script written by an old friend of mine, longtime collaborator and..
CR: Former Yallie as well
EN: Exactly. Roommate, writing partner. We've written a lot of stuff together and this was something he wrote, an original screenplay. It just kind of evolved. Actually, I started off just kind of producing it and rewriting it with him and eventually he looked at me and said, "Why don't you direct this?" And I hadn't really thought - it's a romantic comedy- it wasn't really what I would have necessarily pegged as the thing I would do when I got the chance. But I talked to a couple of directors that I had worked with, that I admired and they all said it doesn't matter what it is, just do it, you know, if you get the opportunity. So I just dove in.
CR: There is this story, actually, that I just read today I think in Time Magazine that you got a call from Warren Beatty.
EN: Yeah, that's true.
CR: Who has wont to do something like this. He once told me a story about him and Jack Nicolson. And when Nicolson hit it in Hollywood, he called him up and said, "You and I are going to be friends, you know, and we might as well get used to it. So why don't we have lunch and get together."
EN: That's exactly the kind of call I got. And I mean, you've had Warren on here, so you know him. Someone.. I read in something about Warren one time. Someone wrote a great sentence that having a conversation with Warren is the equivalent of being on call waiting.
[Rose laughs]
EN: 'Cause Warren. You know, he's right here with you [facing Rose] and then he's completely over here [turns away from Rose] with something else and then he's back to you [turns to Rose]. And I..
CR: Tell him I'll call back
EN: Exactly. But this was a classic Warren phone call. I picked up the phone and said "Hello," and this voice went "Hold on one second" and then I could hear someone talking with their kid about like should he go to the bathroom now or not or something and then he came back and he goes [imitates Beatty] "Oh hi, hi, hi..This is Warren, this is Warren Beatty." [normal voice] and I said, "Yeah, I figured", you know and he said [imitates Beatty] "We should have lunch..I think you and I should have lunch." I said okay. So we went and had lunch and he kind of ..[imitates Beatty's posture]..he kind of sits and he does that thing.. and he kind of went [imitates Beatty's voice], "I don't know why I want to talk to you, but I feel compelled to talk to you becasue I think you're like me. I think you're like me. And I don't want you to be frustrated, because I got frustrated. So if you're going to write and direct and do these things, you should do them now. Do them now. Don't wait." [normal voice] And it threw me at first, 'cause it was so out of the blue, but I got what he was getting at
CR: And it was good advice
EN: It was good advice cause he said, he basically said, you know, he said, "I started producing when I was about your age," I mean, he produced Bonny and Clyde when he was about 30, but he didn't direct anything for a long time
CR: 'till Reds
EN: 'till Reds, really. And he said to me, "I shouldn't have waited that long 'cause I kept waiting for that all important thing or 'til I was ready. And I wish I'd done more of them.."
CR: I think I remember in the account of this thing he said, "Just do it."
EN: Yeah, that's what he did. And then I talked to Milos Forman too, who obviously is a great director and someone I had worked with, and I said "Do you think..it's a comedy.. do you think that makes a difference?" and he said [imitates Forman] "I don't even remember my first four movies. It doesn't matter."
CR: Just do it
EN: [normal voice] Everyone said just do it. So I figured..There were things about it that I really liked. It was a really orginal screenplay in the sense of the balance of the romatic comedy, the classic screwball elements, with something a little bit more substantive too. And it was in New York and I really wanted to make a New York movie 'cause I've lived here for a long time. So it had components of it that, to me, were really interesting and good characters so I just decided to take a shot at it.
CR: What's the story?
EN: Well, we call it our 30 million dollar rabbi-priest joke [Rose laughs] 'cause it is in a classic comedy sense. It's about a young rabbi and a young priest who are best friends in New York and this woman who they were friends with as children returns to New York..
CR: She's been in Hollywood for twenty years or something
EN: She's been like California. She's a big management consultant, corporate executive, sort of a high-tech management consultant. She returns to work on a project for a while to New York City. She reenters their lives and they all rediscover their friendship and both of them. She has this big impact on both of them and they on her and kind of all the complications that ensue between them.
CR: Some have looked at this and said, and maybe you, that it's like the Philadelphia Story in part?
EN: Yeah
CR: She's Cary Grant
EN: Yeah, well right, I think I said that Ben Stiller's character reminded me..
CR: Who plays the rabbi
EN: Yeah, he plays the rabbi. In some ways he's like Katharine Hepburn's character in the sense that in the Philadelphia Story, Katharine Hepburn's character, to me, was always the one with the, she had sort of the character issue. She's this great dynamic woman who, Cary Grant says to her, "You're never going to be a first class woman or a first class human being until you learn to have compassion for human frailty and it's this thing of her of getting over her toughness on people, really, and becoming a little bit more compassionate and human. And Ben's character is kind of that figure in our story. He's kind of the bronze god. He's had everything come a little bit too easily for him, including his faith in God. And he pushes other people a little too hard in his progressive leadership. He's pushing people, and he doesn't put a whole lot of faith in the people in his life. It's about her getting him to do the same kind of thing, getting him to ease off a little bit. But obviously it's got nothing to do with the Philadelphia Story, particularly, but Staurt and I definately were fans of movies like that or even Jules and Jim, Broadcast News. Things that were about complicated relationships between three people over time.
CR: You've also said something that was interesting too. You said, in fact, someone of you're generation and of your ethic should be making a romatic comedy right now rather than some ironic, cynical film.
EN: Yeah. Well, I thought that..I mean, there's been a trend in my generation of filmmakers that to lean toward irony
CR: Detachment
EN: Irony and detachment as a means of deflecting vulnerability. I think we're a very guarded generation. We're very..I thin we feel a little overwhelmed by kind of the condition of modern life in general and a lot of our comedies and dramas have tended to be..You know, the obstacles in them have been people's own lack of sense of self , kind of their own existential angst. And a lot of the characters that we've created tend to deflect emotion and vulnerability with cynicism or sarcasm or ironic detachment. And it's a great thing. It's definitely a part of my generation's aesthetic that's defined our stuff. But we thought that it had become a cliche in its own right and Stu, my friend, said to me at one point, "I think the most radical thing you can do these days almost is to do something completely uncynical." And who could be more uncynical than a rabbi and a priest, so we did it. It's part joke and it's part serious because they are these two guys who are very committed to their spiritual..
CR: Let's take a look at some clips from this. This is a scene in which you play Brian, the priest. Ben Stiller plays Jake, the rabbi. And Anna, who is coming back..
EN: I think this is them talking about her about to return
CR: Roll tape
[Clip of Brian telling Jake about Anna's phone call]
CR: [Rose laughs] So he's saying, "Why not me?"
EN: Yeah, that's the thing I like about these guys. I mean, obviously they're shooting hoops at the west side highway.
CR: Right
EN: And they're a rabbi and a priest but they're longstanding type of banter between them and they're very grounded. They grew up in New York, they're New York kids.
CR: Casting: Stiller, obvious?
EN: Yeah, very. In Stuart's original script, the character was named Ben
CR: Stuart being Stuart Blumberg
EN: Stuart Blumberg is my partner who wrote the script. The character was originally named Ben because he had Ben Stiller so much in mind when he was writing it.
CR: Now is that because Ben Stiller as an actor or because he knows Ben Stiller, who has kind of a quality that is part of..
EN: From having watched him as an actor, I think. We talked about it a lot. Among the kind of peer group of actors that we knew who was Jewish who could play a rabbi and who had the chops to kind of balance the really broad comedy with..
CR: More serious
EN: Yes and more substantive stuff. I mean Ben has some very serious, dramatic stuff in this film. He has some stuff that's very straight ahead and romantic and dramatic. And people have obviously seen him do There's Something About Mary and those kind of comedies and love him for that stuff. But we'd seen him in these little films Permanent Midnight and some other things where he played very serious parts. And we thought he was the guy to play this and he was. And he's fantastic.
CR: And Elfman to play Anna
EN: Yeah, Jenna Elfman. I had never seen her show, which is obviously very popular. But she just reminded me when I met her of those screwball comediannes in the sense that - she's obviously very beautiful - but she has this kind of Lucille Ball kind of goofiness to her. The ability to kind of screw up her face..
CR: So the story's about two men from different religious faiths, longtime friendship, who fall in love with her. This is a scene in which Brian and Anna... and Jake, played by Ben Stiller, begins to take note of the fact that he has feelings for her.
[Clip where Brian and Anna and Jake at dinner, talking about chemistry]
CR: So having made this film, having directed this film, does it wet your appetite? Is it something that you in every other outing will be directing?
EN: No, I mean I have a good day job and I'm not eager to leave it. But I do think there's no real point to directing once because the learning curve is so steep your first time out that by the time you're done, you realize you're a big step towards understanding what it's really all about.
CR: Here's the last question about this. It would seem to me. I mean, maybe this was all laid out. But you've got this very interesting dynamic going on. You like the characters, they're interesting. It's an interesting story. But do you have questions about how you're going to end this film?
EN: Sure, yeah.
CR: For you. From the beginning, from the get go. Because you don't want to do the obvious yet at the same time, it leads you to certain obvious directions.
EN: Yes. Whenever you are in the genre of some kind, you have to embrace the genre. And if you're in romantic comedy, I think you have to embrace certain conventions within the context of that. For instance, without giving away one thing that happens, there's a moment that appears to be coming together toward the end of this movie that, you know, the clinch of the two people who have been separated and come back together and I was talking to Ben and he said "You know I did this other movie where we ran together and we kissed. Can we find some way..?" And we thought about it for a while and we came up with this thing that hopefully..so far with audiences it's levelled the place, you know what I mean. And sometimes it's fun to invert expectations. I think that beyond the romantic comedy conventions, it also is a movie about a guy whose a rabbi who falls in love with someone who's not. We wanted to be able to end things happily without stretching the truth or punching any buttons too much. So part of the two was finding a way in which, without being too pat, it could be believable..
CR: You don't want to shock..
EN: No, no that's not what this is about.
CR: Shock would be for him to run away to.., for your character to run away and leave the priesthood and run away to Russia.
EN: It's funny that you said that 'cause once Sean Penn came to watch the movie with me one time. So I said, "What did you think?" and he was, "I was laughing my ass off. Of course, if it was my movie, he'd be on a plane with her at then end and splitting. But I recognize that that would be my version of it."
[Rose is laughing]
CR: Well said. You got this script, or you thought about this while you were doing Primal Fear and American History X?
EN: Not quite that far back. When I was shooting American History X in the spring of 1997, Stu wrote the original script. So it's been a three year process.
CR: Did you know where it would come in the placement of your own films, from Primal Fear to Larry Flynt to..?
EN: No, not at all. It takes a long time for these things to come together. When they come together, sometimes it's a brief window, you kind of got to jump on them. It just happened that right about the time I finished Fight Club, Ben had a window where he could do it and he said he wanted to do it. So we said, "Okay, let's do it."
CR: Was Fight Club all that you wanted it to be?
EN: I would says Fight Club is my favorite film that I've been in, as a film.
CR: Better than Rounders, better than Primal Fear, better than American History X?
EN: Not so much better.
CR: I don't mean better movie, I mean better for you
EN: I mean they're all good films, but it meant more to me in terms of what it was about. American History X was also on the kind of pulse of a certain kind of real social phenomenon. But for me Fight Club was about the zeitgeist of my generation and it meant to me kind of the way The Graduate meant things to people and stuff to me. It felt like that to me. I felt that it was about the people of my generation were going to understand and maybe the others weren't. And that meant a lot to me. And beyond that, on a pure cinema level, it was the first thing I'd worked on that exceeded my hopes for it. It lived up to all my hopes, in terms of the cinema and what David Fincher did with the language of the film. It dropped my jaw.
CR: Do you understand why you became an actor? I mean I know there are stories of a babysitter taking you to see Cinderella.
EN: Just for these kinds of reasons. I like storytelling. Acting is a component of storytelling. Filmmaking is storytelling ultimately. And directing for me was a natural extention that in the sense you're taking on full responsibility for being the author of the story or the storyteller. I like it. I'm a big fan of movies myself. I go, like everybody else, because it's fun. I think people do need, ultimately, still to get together like cavemen around the campfire, except now it's a movie screen instead of a campfire. And that somebody with all of us together story, there's an impact to it. I think it's the way we sort out meaning and feel connected to other people and I think with all the hoopla that surrounds our current entertainment culture stripped away, I still think there's a core need that film, as a storytelling medium, fulfills, you know.
CR: What's interesting about you too is that people who know you talk about this sort of encyclopedic knowledge of the business. I mean, you can quote from films that you know constantly.
EN: [laughs] It's a plague
CR: It's like you've been wired to remember great scenes and great dialogue. Right?
EN: Yeah, I have a weird function. If I hear things once or twice and pay attention to them, I can always..
CR: But that's served you as an actor, the capacity to mimic?
EN: Sure, yeah, absolutely.
CR: The other thing that Stu said about you is that this movie gives you a chance to reflect a different side of you see in a film that you haven't seen before.
EN: A little bit, yeah.
CR: Is that part of the attraction of this kind of thing?
EN: Yeah, it was a nice change of gears. Like I said I'd start working on this right after Fight Club and Fight Club had been such a satisfying experience to me, treading in a certain territory. I just didn't really feel like I wanted to go into something else that was.. This had a different tone to it entirely a completely different set of challenges and it gives you a feeling of freshness. I don't know, you're doing other things now too. It adds spice, it adds variety.
CR: That's exactly what it does
EN: You know what I mean. It keeps you engaged. It keeps you engaged, so you don't start falling into autopilot. And I think directing makes acting more fun again because you go back and kind of rediscover it.
CR: The cliche is that you use other muscles.
EN: Yeah, exactly. You do your other show and then you get to come back here and maybe this doesn't get to be as regular, you know what I mean.
CR: You appreciate it more.
EN: Yeah, absolutely.
CR: The notion of auditioning. I read somewhere about projects that you are considering. Did I read somewhere that you had to audition? Do you still audition for things?
EN: I haven't auditioned for anything in a while. I'd say the last thing I sort of auditioned for was American History X which was largely, in some ways, auditioning for myself in a way. Because Tony Kaye [AHX's director] and I both wanted to test it out, you know, see if it wore well on me. But since then, I don't think I've..
CR: Primal Fear almost
EN: Yeah, I don't think I've really auditioned for anything in a while. You know, that's kind of the fun of becoming your own boss. It's like you decide you're going to direct and you say, "Well, who do I want to play the priest? Well, well.. me!"
CR: You came to that conclusion?
EN: Yeah, part of it too was that helped give me the leverage to get a certain budget. If I would be in it, that would certainly give me a little bit more leverage.
CR: What's the next project?
EN: I'm going to take a little break. Then I'm going to go this summer and do a movie called The Score with Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando, which should be fun for all the obvious reasons.
[Rose laughs]
EN: I still try to say it with a straight face.
CR: The obvious reasons are a remarkable group of actors
EN: I try not to get this smug grin on my face when I say whose going to be in it. But it's kind of exciting. I would do it really just for the poster. [both laugh]
CR: That's great
EN: Exactly, just for posterity.
CR: Whose directing?
Frank Oz.
CR: Oh, this is terrific.
People were saying this film is a shift in genres for me, but Frank's doing the same thing. He's done mostly comedies, but this is a heist film. It's like Thief
CR: As I remember the story, you're the young guy and you're going to convince some old guy not to retire, sort of like that?
Yeah, it's about some burgulars, essentially thieves. Kind of more cat burgular types. It's like Thief or kind of those good old gritty thief movies which I always liked. Not so much Thomas Crown Affair..more kind of like Thief, like Michael Mann's movie. And De Niro plays a guy whose sort of a veteran whose trying to get out of the game and I try to convince him to do one last big score with me. And Marlon's kind of the fence who sitting behind the whole thing, orchestrating it all. I talked with him the other day about it. He's great.
CR: Can you do Marlon?
EN: Marlon? Well, everyone has their own version of Marlon, you know. We were talking. I said, You know, I'm going to try to get in shape for this 'cause the guy's supposed to be able to climb ropes and stuff. And he said [imitates Brando], "What do you mean get in shape? You're a skinny little punk, I've got to lose fifty pounds for this thing." He's great. He's sharp as a tack. Have you ever had him on here?
CR: Ah, no. I've tried hard and continue to try. I want to do it in the right way
EN: Yeah
CR: I'm hoping he'll do it because he and I have had conversations about it. He'll say things like, "If you come with me to Tahiti, maybe we'll do it."
EN: Right
CR: Or come and have dinner and we'll talk about it. I think he's got about a bank of phones in his house on the top of the mountain. Places calls to lots of friends.
EN: Yeah, he's funny. I've enjoyed the times I've talked to him.
CR: So the film is under way now? You're filming?
EN: No, we'll start it this summer
CR: Keeping the Faith opens this Friday April 14th nationwide. Edward Norton doesn't do many of these and I'm always pleased.
EN: When you can have more than four minutes, you can get some real conversation.
CR: Thank you for coming.
EN: My pleasure.
CR: Keeping the Faith opens this Friday April 14th nationwide. Back in a moment.
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