Superstar Tom Cruise Stars in Valkyrie, And Considers That Slide Down the Slippery Slope to Fascism

Feature Story by Brad Balfour
[Photos by Loud & Clear]

Though he totally missed the Oscar loop, you have to give some credit to media magnet Tom Cruise for releasing his World War II drama, Valkyrie at the end of 2008 despite the surge of Nazi-inspired holiday fare. Anytime a star of his stature dons a Nazi uniform and parades around Berlin in jackboots while enjoying facetime with a cinematic Adolf Hitler, it invites ridicule. Yet by playing the stone-faced Colonel Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg--who made the final coup attempt against The Fuhrer--Cruise provided audiences with a bete noir to his Jerry Maguire-esque stereotype.

Certainly this wasn't a follow-up to his comedic cameo in Tropic Thunder where he does an astounding parody of the ultimate Hollywood exec--the kind that Cruise, as an executive among the team running United Artists, clearly knows intimately.

For a long time, the 46 year-old actor had been Mr. Moneybags, the most bankable star who could sell a movie even if it had a thin premise. But as he has gotten older, and taken on the responsibilities of a producer, maintaining that star power and financial dominance isn't as much of a challenge to him or that easy anymore.

So in light of seeing the media character, or even parody that Cruise has become, he turned to making Valkyrie, a film that's not a standard heroic starrer. Cruise turns to this devastating period and to a character who ambiguously seems valiant in his goals and means, except that he was an arch-conservative whose goals sometimes intersected with Hitler's. Maybe in regaling us with the lavish, subtle eroticism of boots and black leather, Cruise does his Nazi with a cinematic flair, but the complex implications of this character and era require serious contemplation not just flair--something Cruise and director Bryan Singer addressed in this interview drawn from a recent press conference.

Q: Valkyrie has come out at a time when other Nazi-era films have been released -- but this film has a different angle from the others and it's an important too to educate the public about the Germany of that time.

TC: It's something that Bryan and I have spoken about -- that it's important to know that not everybody felt that way and fell into the Nazi ideology. To me, that was surprising. To take this story -- and it's such a massive, comprehensive story; we could've made this a five hour, 10 hour, miniseries -- it could've been very different kind of movie. [But] Bryan was always specific: this is a suspense thriller about killing Hitler. It's not a bio-pic. That [the story is true] was a bonus, really, for the film.

BS: It's not a "Holocaust" movie. There are movies that happen to take place [about] this subject matter that are coming out around this time, but it's a coincidence. This is far from a Holocaust movie. It's a conspiracy thriller about assassinating Hitler. As Tom was just saying, the bonus is that it happens to be true, it happens to be gripping. And even things that you might think are film conventions -- some of the twists and turns -- actually really did happen.

TC: We spent eight months working [together], and Bryan spent more time before that. Bryan wanted me to come on board, and I started working with him, writers Chris [McQuarrie] and Nathan [Alexander]. Every time we started talking about the Holocaust and the different characters, and trying to put as much into that story as possible, Bryan always went back to, "This is a piece of entertainment. This is a suspense thriller about killing Hitler."

The more you know about the history of it, [you find] there are so many moments we were able to put in there. Von Stauffenberg despised the Nazis, [yet] as a parent [he had to] look at his daughter saluting him. On that day, July 20th, 1944, his son was indoctrinated into the Hitler Youth. These are the moments Bryan wanted to seed in there, but [he] never var[ied] from the picture that he wanted to make. We wanted to [make] this movie [accessible] to a broader audience.

Q: What was it about Claus von Stauffenberg that made this role so irresistible to you?

TC: When I first read the script, I thought how incredibly suspenseful it was. Right from the beginning, I thought it was a great story, this is a suspense thriller. I went, "Whoa. It's cool."

Stauffenberg went to Hitler the day after D-Day; you find out it really happened. It is definitely an important story. I'd never heard [of] it before. I grew up playing with the neighborhood kids in the yard, wanting to kill Nazis, wanting to kill Hitler. As a child, I [wondered], "Why didn't someone just shoot him?"

And, [after] sitting down with Bryan and finding out it was a true story, and I wanted to work with him, off we went. Bryan is someone I've always wanted to work with. [I was first introduced to Bryan] when I saw his film The Usual Suspects but we actually met at the premiere of the first Mission Impossible. And I said, "Man, I want to work with you."

He was totally accurate to the behavior and what was happening during that time period. I really respect Bryan's staging, his composition, and his storytelling. When I look at his movies, it's very cinematic, classic storytelling. So you don't see the hand necessarily until you see that it's missing. They build to that so you see it in the bed.

I've always felt that you want to get it right. And within the limited amount of time, and economics, you want to do the best that you can for the audience, for the subject matter, whatever it is. The most important thing is the film, because I want to entertain an audience, and when I'm making a film, that's so important.

Q: You two seem to have a partnership as much as an actor-director relationship. What's the difference in working together as producers and then working together as an actor and director?

TC: I have great respect for him as a filmmaker, as a storyteller. Out of a scale of one to 10, I think this film is a 20. It was a challenge to make.

BS: We spent a lot of time, we had Tom's interest in the project as well as position at the studios. We has the freedom to spend a lot of time working together, working with Chris and Nathan, and talking about the project.

We have a lot of fun talking. We had meetings at Tom's house 12 hours long. We camped out in the desert when we were shooting the desert sequence, and everyone's families were there. When we moved to Germany, we learned more information. We had some good experiences.

And then once we get on the set, he becomes an actor. And I become a director and for my experience, there was never any difference. I knew that no matter how many takes I asked him to do, it would never be as many as Stanley Kubrick did [laughs]. And we tried, we experimented, and it was phenomenal, because anything you'd [saying to Cruise] ask -- anything, you'd be like, "Let's do it." There was never a lack of wanting to try and never a lack of trust.

And then afterwards, [there was] the full support of an actor -- it's a rare opportunity with Tom. As a director, you always feel like nobody cares about the movie as much as you do. What you probably see here is a relationship with someone who cares about this movie as much as I do.

TC: I want to be directed. I enjoy that. I do like to be directed. I don't stand outside myself and direct myself. And I have a lot of fun doing it.

BS: He doesn't come to the monitor and look at it and say, "Oh, there's none of that," which some actors do.

TC: As an actor, getting direction from Bryan, he gave great notes on behavior and we were just tracking. I like that in a movie where as an actor I'm tracking with the director.

BS: It's been a really great journey, but one that comes from caring about the project.

TC: There's certain things that Bryan knew from a story sense how you want to build to those moments, because there [are] little pieces that build to a moment. There are moments where there's tension, you've got to take the audience along and build that tension. Every scene has to move the story along, but every scene you're revealing more about the characters. There [are] rhythms and structure to a movie that I love as an audience.

When I read a script, when I'm seeing a movie, I see it like an audience and not necessarily as a filmmaker, particularly when I get caught up in the picture.

Q: Does Tom Cruise, the actor, compete with Tom Cruise, the businessman?

TC: I've produced a lot of films. Mission Impossible was the first film that I produced and then I produced all the Mission films, and The Last Samurai. So there's always the balance of art and commerce, and the challenges of that.

And it's not just having talent in making a film, it's also important to know to surround yourself with great people. I've got very good people that I work with. I've always tried to surround myself with people that I respect, that I enjoy working with, and that's what we have. I'm very happy to have these guys on board with MGM. At the studio it's actually a very exciting time, with Mary Parent, who's come on at MGM.

But I am an actor first and foremost. That is my love.

Q: You both have had so much control over the project. Why wasn't it just put into a December release originally; at one time it was scheduled for October and then, February 2009?

BS: Originally, the schedule of completion had to do with that. It was going to come out a lot earlier, but then the Tunisia sequence took time. I ended up scouting Jordan for a location, and then Spain, but those two locations didn't work out, both aesthetically and economically.

We figured we would just see what movie we had when we got home. [We'd] cut it all together, and then go back and go to California where the location we found looks far more like Tunisia. Cougar Buttes, that's where we shot. We would have the equipment and resources, and we would sort of drop and pick up.

And then that moved our release day. It was a crowded Christmas, but we didn't know where we were at finishing the movie. Is that pretty much as you remember it?

TC: You know, we were making a film not for a release date, to be honest with you.

BS: Yeah, exactly. Thank you.

TC: February was never a firm date. We also never wanted to say, "Hey, we want to put it in awards season." That's not even why we moved to Christmas. Christmas is a great time for audiences. It's the biggest time of the year for people to go [to movies]. You want to put your film where it can [be] available to as broad an audience as possible.

Q: So what were the challenges and rewards playing this character?

TC: The rewards are that I thought it was a very exciting film. It's a story I'd never heard of before. And I wanted to work with Bryan Singer [as I said]. I loved Chris's script [and] to be able to work with these actors. That's the reward every day, going in and having that challenge... and, as I said, to entertain an audience. I thought it'd be a very compelling story and a fascinating film. That's what I like. That's what I'm looking for in a film.

When I'm making movies, it's about "us," it's not about "me." It's about the journey that we all take together. We got to shoot in locations where these people [lived and where] they died, which was very powerful to be there and to see that world.

I grew up wanting to travel the world and I wanted an adventurous life. Sometimes [there was] a little more adventure than I had ever bargained for [laughter]. But this was something I didn't want to pass on.

BS: Chris and I used to make war films in my backyard.

TC: And I saw the World of War. The way that this film was directed, [it's] not like anything that I've seen -- these films that I greatly admire: Schindler's List and Paths of Glory. But this is very different.

Q: From the military formations to the assassinations,the [orchestration] was pretty amazing and quite ominous. What was it like for you, Bryan, in the directing and you, Tom, in performing this... that it was so precise?

BS: Well, [we] stud[ied] a lot of war photography. There was a huge amount. Hitler filmed everything, so we had the benefit of a lot of both color and black & white motion picture film of that era. Also, we were in Germany so we shot with Arriflex cameras and the Zeiss lenses. And also, with color, I wanted to give a sense of vibrance so it would look like it did to people who lived back then, as opposed to trying to approximate black & white or muddy the film or desaturate it.

The pageantry and the military aspects of it we have, thanks to all that recorded film material. And then we worked with the military advisors who knew the history, and who could help us with the movements and the salutes. So we could have authenticity regarding the difference between the way a colonel would salute a major, or a field marshal, or the Fuhrer.

TC: And specifically at that time period. There is actual dialogue in the film that I discovered were from letters [and] journals that Chris and Nathan had studied.

BS: Yeah, which changed after the assassination attempt. Certain things were more mandatory. And that's what made the scene where he throws up his hand. If you were missing your hand, you wouldn't put it up and give the Heil Hitler salute. And that's why it's interesting that he does. He shows his stump.

TC: This is a film that, right in the beginning, needed that kind of dynamic orchestration, and you had to be very specific in editing these pieces together. That was all very thought out. From top to bottom of the production, we really had a lot of help and support from the Germans -- their production, the stuff that they gave us. When you talk about colors, the reds, the whole point is to try to give that audience that visceral feeling of being on the edge of their seat, even down to the wardrobe.

[In] wardrobe with Joanna Johnston, a lot of time and attention went into this -- the kind of fabrics, and also studying the fact that certain people would make their own uniforms.

And so [too] with Tom Sigel [cinematographer]: the kind of film that he used, the lighting that he used. The level of detail in the film -- even down to Hitler's signature, [which] was, to the best of our knowledge, exactly the signature that he signed at that time period. Same with Stauffenberg. This is the kind of stuff that we film geeked and history geeked out on.

BS: People were taken blindfolded to the homes of people who collected Hitler's furniture so we could see it and know the furniture at the Berghof, his summer house. There are people who collect this stuff secretly in Germany.

Q: Are they neo-Nazis?

BS: I don't know, they just like the furniture; [they're collectors].

TC: There's certain things you go, "Look, I don't care. I don't wanna know. [laughs]." But we're very happy to have the desk in his office...

BS: I had lunch with Hitler's bodyguard, [Cruise] wouldn't go.

TC: It was good for the director to have it. He needed that. I didn't need it. I'll read about it.

Q: I understand the eye patch initially gave you unexpected balance problems.

TC: Yeah, it did. I was surprised -- for a few hours and a few days, when we started working on it, especially when it was dark, I lost depth perception and balance.

From visual storytelling, I think it was a challenge for Bryan. He also understood it's a different story depending on where that camera is on my face -- different profiles, shooting with the patch and the hand. It was a challenge always going into a room, or which angle we shot.

Q: What about the creative decision of not going with German accents for everyone, but letting the actors speaking their own natural way?

BS: Well, we didn't want that to be what the movie was about. It should be exciting and the audience should be taken on a ride through the film. The actors speak wonderfully the way they do in their current dialects.

We have an international cast: American, Dutch, German, British actors. To have everyone try and approximate German accents, when in reality they're supposed to be speaking German -- which, I promise you, after the first 20 minutes, you'd be sick of it -- would ultimately sound silly. And it would distract from the drive of the plot. Though they can do it -- that's Tom speaking German at the beginning of the movie. But it would ultimately be not as fun for the audience.

Q: Did your research find anything new about Hitler and his followers?

BS: That meeting between Von Stauffenberg and Hitler actually took place -- it was his first time meeting Hitler and the Big Six. It was the day after D-Day, and the thing that Stauffenberg noticed, and went home and told his wife -- it's not in the film, but we keyed off this testimony -- is that Göring had on makeup. There was distrust [among] them, clearly the Allies were at their door, and Hitler was detached from what was going on. The only one that seemed to have a clue was [Albert] Speer, but he was just the architect along for the ride.

TC: The scene where Stauffenberg goes to Hitler after Berghof, it's challenging. I've grown up with the footage of Hitler at the rallies. I was interested in the focus on Hitler, and to see him particularly during that time period where he wasn't [yet] so obviously, utterly insane.

That sequence has this eerie, terrifying feeling -- all of the detail where Goebbels is looking at Göring, all these little looks.

BS: Hitler walked over and held Stauffenberg's hand, and acknowledged his injuries and his heroism as a way of mocking his own people. He would do that. He was always playing one against the other. It was how Hitler rose in politics-through flattery, promises, and backstabbing. He did it with Stalin and he did it with the German people, and eventually that's how the war ended.

So it was nice to put hints of that kind of detached, laconic Hitler in the Berghof scene that the people didn't get to see, in a scene that genuinely happened, and all the specifics of that leading up to [it].

The reason that we have such detail in the third act of the film is because the Gestapo did a very stunning investigation into this assassination attempt, and trials were held and filmed.

So we have the benefit of all of those facts and information to inform our story, as well as the research we've done, and actually talking to a lot of people who were with Hitler.

TC: I was surprised [at] Stauffenberg upbraiding the General [in the desert]. He did that. He had those conversations with generals exactly in that way.

Q: Which is why he ended up in Africa?

TC: Which is why he ended up in Africa. He had actually court-martialed friends of his for war crimes. His uncle was concerned for him, arranged for him to go to Africa. And he was that outspoken with generals. He was a supply officer [at the rear]. He was saying, "What's happening? How can this happen? Why is this happening? This guy's a liar. This is not the country that we want, that I've wanted."

The amount of desperation and pain for him -- because he loved his country, [because] he wanted a moral country, but one that participated in the world, not annihilating [it], not [creating] the Holocaust, not [committed to] world domination. He was a man that was able to really think for himself within all of that propaganda, and recognized very early on that insanity.

At first he's thinking, "Well, someone's got to stop him. Let's overthrow him." "Someone's got to shoot that bastard," is a quote of his. And it's ironic that those injuries actually put him in the position of high command where he got on the inside, and realized that the only way to stop this is from the inside.

And really recognizing that it wasn't just enough to kill Hitler. You had to have something that's going to put people in a position where they're going to follow you, because you have that oath. That oath is so creepy, to get people to not be able to think for themselves. As an American, to open the film [with it], that struck me.

BS: Because the army was compelled to give an oath. An army of 10 million people in Germany was compelled to give an oath to Hitler himself, personally.

Q: Did you think of Fred Zinneman's film,The Day of the Jackal, in the sense that people knew going in what the end would be?

BS: Not so much; I hadn't seen it in awhile. But movies like that were discussed.

TC: Yeah, definitely. You look at Apollo 13, Titanic -- any film that's made out of a book [where] people know how it's going to end. I had an idea when I read -- of course I heard of the briefcase under the table. When I read it, it was so surprising to me, the story, the details. And I was surprised in reading it that I was that caught up and I was whipping through the pages.

BS: You might [know] if you know history. But I don't think audiences know the full degree of how this particular story ends, and that's an important thing.

Leo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet Step Down that Revolutionary Road

Feature Story by Brad Balfour

At a recent press conference in New York preceding its premiere, the essential members of the Revolutionary Road cast (Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon and Kathy Bates) and director Sam Mendes (American Beauty) answered questions before a small room of journalists. Of course, the big news--that the film re-unites actors DiCaprio and Winslet, who first made their mark in Titanic as a couple madly in love--drove the interest in this film about the disquieting side of the 1950s corporate society. It also drove the nomination of the film and some of its cast for the 2009 Golden Globes (Winslet won for Best Actress) foreshadowing the upcoming Oscar nominations.

In Titanic, these two came together against the odds of diverging social backgrounds and relationships and with the backdrop of the tragedy about to occur. Audiences were stirred by the burgeoning love affair between them.

The opposite happens in Revolutionary Road. Audiences see the destruction of a relationship never really fated to be, somewhat thrown together by expectations they have for each other but are never realized. In fact, the two don't really share much or see eye-to-eye about their goals and life in general.

Based on the late Richard Yates '60s novel (of the same name) which described the unfulfilled, alienated life of the '50s (and led to the rebellion of the '60s), Winslet plays actress wanna-be April, who meets the diffident but charming Frank Wheeler at a party. They share their dreams of an individualistic life. Ultimately, though, unrequited dreams and emotional frustration beset their relationship as they start to have a family. Wheeler sets aside his vague goals and falls into the same man-in-the-grey-flannel-suit salesman's life his father had. April feels the anomie of life lacking personal accomplishment. They became further estranged, leading to damaged lives and a tragic ending.

Q: This is obviously a movie about a troubled marriage. Would you say it's because of a failure to communicate?

KW: It's a combination of different things. It's an inability to communicate, or certainly more to do with the fact that they have forgotten to communicate with each other for some time. It's only when April turns around to him and says, "We can't go on pretending that this is the life we wanted," that they are both then truly forced to question exactly that.

For April, it's very clear that this isn't the life she expected for herself, and Frank is then forced to question that too. And it's at that point that they realize maybe they aren't the people they were when they first met. They want different things from life. April, ultimately, is so determined to find happiness, to feel something again other than what she has, that she's prepared to risk anything in order to get that—which to me is a very heroic act, and not a cowardly one.

LD: And my character, on the other hand, is very un-heroic and cowardly [laughs], which is the truth. Ultimately, he's a product of his environment. He doesn't have the courage to manifest any tangible change in his life. On the one hand, April is wanting to risk everything for a new opportunity, or to pursue the dreams that she once had of what she wanted her life to be, Ultimately, my character is my father's son—I want to conform to my environment. Is it about two people that don't communicate enough? I don't think that's the truth.

It's about two people that are being forced apart, but are desperately trying to salvage their marriage and stay together. I think they are trains on different courses. Ultimately, the facade of what Paris represented, the ideals of what Paris was to them, was an opportunity that could or could not have resulted in something positive or tangible. But I think they were being forced apart by different intentions for what they wanted their lives to be.

KW: Also, I think, for April, Paris represents, possibility, hope, and change. The notion that she might be forced to live a life without possibility is ultimately the kiss of death.

Q: Having worked together before on Titanic, were there any surprises was this time around?

LD: Well, Kate and I have remained close friends for many years. Since Titanic, I think we've been both actively looking for the right project to do. This wasn't at all treading on similar territory. We knew that that is a complete set-up for disaster, having done Titanic. We knew we needed to try something completely unique, it was just about finding that project.

And this was something that Kate was shepherding for many years, and putting the pieces together, and I felt very fortunate to be chosen for it. As far as how Kate's changed or not changed, I think that she's always had that pursuit of excellence within the characters she plays. She's got an unbelievable work ethic that she's retained ever since I knew her in her early 20s. She cares about the movie being great, and the other actors involved, and everything.

That's all still there [plus], the fact that Sam was attached to this, the fact that this was a great piece of material, and such a departure from what we'd done before.

What has changed is we don't approach the filmmaking experience quite the way we did in our early 20's. We don't look at the director or the producers involved as parental figures, which I feel we did in our teenage years—we were constantly looking for that guidance. We come into movies now as kind of equal pieces to the puzzle, and bring our own ideas for what the movie should be and, for lack of a better term, we're more like "adults"—whatever that word means.

KW: Any major surprises? I think he's nicer than he was (if that's possible). He's funnier than he was (even if that's possible); and he's a better actor than he was (if that ever was possible). And quite honestly, playing Frank and April Wheeler, there was a surprise every day.

I so much loved playing some of the difficult scenes with Leo, knowing that, because of the trust we have as two people who have known each other for so long, there were no boundaries. That was a real gift to have as two actors playing these parts. I was able to do off-camera dialogue for him, and had to stop myself from crying because I was seeing someone for whom I have so much respect doing things as an actor that I've never seen him do before; [I got to watch him] morphing his face into positions that I've never seen him morph his face into before, as an actor or as a person. There were moments like that pretty much every single day.

Q: Was there one scene that stood out as the most exciting or most rewarding for the two of you?

LD: The most rewarding? What was interesting about the way Sam set this whole film in motion was [that] he really attacked it like he would a theater production. He realized it was an ensemble piece that depended so much on the actors, and listened to all of our different ideas endlessly in the rehearsal process.

Then what we got to do was sort of live this tiny microcosm of a life in a four-month period in almost real time. It was bizarre because we shot the beginning sequences at the beginning, and there was so much unsaid throughout the first two-thirds of the film, so much pent-up within these characters, that when the kettle sort of explodes at the end of the movie, all that stuff felt ultra-realistic because we were confined to this tiny suburban house for months at a time. And there was so much that our characters had wanted desperately to say to each other.

When those scenes finally happened, that was something I was really looking forward to because I just felt there's such a comfort level we have just being friends and knowing that we have the best intentions for each other, like she said. So we can be brutally honest and savage to each other onscreen, and we trust each other in that regard. So that was the stuff I was looking most forward to, and it was ultimately fun.

KW: For me, one of the most memorable scenes that we shot together was the breakfast scene at the end of the film. I remember reading it on the page and thinking, "How the hell are we gonna get through this? How on earth are we gonna do this?" And everything about that scene took me by surprise from the way that it was lit in that incredibly stark, beautiful, naked way; from the way that Sam really steered us through the very difficult emotions. Rhythmically, the scene is very delicate.

I remember feeling very strongly that Leo and I were very much in Sam's hands when we were shooting that scene, because it was so difficult for us to have a kind of sixth sense of what we needed it to be. All we knew was that we had to be very honest about every word we were saying, and we just had to trust in Sam so completely, because emotionally it was just very difficult to get through.

Q: Was your character a heroic figure?

KW: I feel that April is a heroine. I didn't feel she was a coward, neither did I feel she was suicidal, and I certainly didn't think she was bipolar. But I do believe that this was a woman that was taken to an emotional brink in her pursuit of happiness, and I think it literally sent her mad, I really do. And in giving herself an abortion, I don't think that she was intending to kill herself, but she knew that it was a very big risk, and there's something incredibly courageous and stoic about that. And it's a fine line, you know? It's very difficult to translate those two things simultaneously.

Q: And Leo, your character is such a tragic figure. Do you think he ever recovers?

LD: Where do I begin? I think what's interesting about the novel and the way Yates writes all these characters is that the sympathy shifts constantly throughout the course of the book. Where you think Frank is sort of despicable for cheating on his wife at the beginning of the film, at the end of the film you realize that he's the one trying to salvage the relationship. I just loved playing a character that just slightly fell short of his ambitions. I thought it was a compelling thing to do. He just did not have the courage at the end of the day to follow through with the life he wanted. He would be happier conforming to his existence.

Q: Do you think the '50s were as much a character in this film?

LD: At first, having read the novel and the script, I thought the '50s was a huge component. This was the era of prescription medication, and we're moving to Levittown and the suburbs. Trying to have that symbolic American family existence drove a lot of people nuts. But I thought as much as that was a product of the movie, once we did the film, a lot of that stripped away and became the backdrop to the emotional drama of these characters’ lives unraveling.

Q: What did you think about the plight of oppressed women in the days of Revolutionary Road?

KW: We should also share this question with Kathy. But one of the things that was so touching to me and moving to me about April Wheeler was that this was a woman who seemed to me, like so many women of that time, whose interior world was so much bigger than her exterior world. I'm very different to her, and I had to find a way of understanding her and loving her, which I did and which I do, but it was not always easy. She's a very complex and complicated woman who has no emotional outlets.

I'm lucky. I get to express my passions and the spirited side of myself, and the strong-willed side of myself through the jobs that I do. I was so moved by April's lack of emotional outlet, and it was just crushing to me, and it was very difficult to play. Frank and April do see themselves as being slightly more glamorous than everybody around them. In many ways, I think that that's the one thing, actually, that's kept April going, living this life that she's really unhappy living. She's somehow managed convinced herself that everything's okay because they're not like the Campbells [their friends], they're not like the Givings [their neighbors], they're just a little bit better than everybody else.

She goes to Frank, "We can't go on pretending that this was the life we wanted," and in many ways she's incredibly brave, even to be able to admit that to herself. So many women were coasting along and living this lie because they simply had no other option. As Leo said, prescription medication and sneaking beverages midday all began during that time.

Q: Leo, you've done a lot of big movies with many famous directors including Martin Scorsese four times. What did Sam Mendes bring to the table as a director?

LD: He knows how to work with actors, that's simply it. He's kind of masterful at that. And he realized very early on that we'd all have questions about our characters, and the true intent of our characters, and he let us unleash a lot of that.

We got to express all our doubts and disbeliefs about what our characters’ intentions were, and what we felt. He listened to a lot of that and asked us these very penetrating questions. Sometimes it's jarring, when you're in the middle of doing a scene and he says, "What do you think your character's really doing this for?"

You have to stop and say, "Actually, I didn't think of that. I have to admit you're right. I should have an answer for that, but I don't. Let me think of that answer." That ability to question his actors in a very gentle way. It gives you all that subtext that you need. I could go on and on about it, but I think you get the picture.

Q: Kate, with this and The Reader, you are competing against yourself in various awards races--especially since the Oscar noms are upcoming. How do you feel about that?

KW: I'll answer the last part of your question first. I feel very proud of both of these films, and proud to be a part of them. Quite honestly, I don't know how categorizing of actors even happens. I really truly don't. It certainly has nothing to do with me. It's incredible to be talked about in that way, and I can only hope that I can live up the expectation. I hope the work speaks for itself. It's my job to make myself available to support both these films equally.

Director Thomas McCarthy Discovers “The Visitor”

Feature Interview by Brad Balfour

Though Irish American actor Tom McCarthy has been in feature films since the early '90s, most audiences became familiar with him as a supporting player in several George Clooney starrers such as "Syriana" and "Michael Clayton." But for this New Jersey native, directing his own features was a goal he wanted to achieve as much a working actor in quality productions; So far that he has done that and been 2-for-2 in terms of respect and success.

McCarthy's "The Visitor" stands to become an even bigger success for the 42-year-old director/actor than his debut feature, 2003's "The Station Agent." This feature, a low-key film about disparate people (Peter Dinklage and Patricia Clarkson) who become an unusual surrogate family. It won all sorts of awards from the Audience favorite at Sundance to several Independent Spirit Awards.

Striving to have a sleeper hit, McCarthy lined up socially conscience production company, Participant Media, to get behind his story of Syrian musician (Haaz Sleiman) befriended by a college professor (Richard Jenkins) who is inadvertently swept up by U.S. immigration and deported. Starring longtime vet character actor Jenkins (with 75 roles since 1985 under his belt) his understated performance made him the perfect lead—and this his first leading role. The rest of the cast especially Hiam Abbass ("Munich," "Paradise Now," "The Syrian Bride") hits the right balance between tragedy and romance, political relevance and personal emotionality necessary to make the film a praiseworthy.

Surprisingly, though this story sympathizes with Middle Eastern immigrants once reviled as the enemy right after 9/11, this story caught the attention of audiences and critics and became an indie sleeper this summer. While McCarthy has two high profile pictures in the works—"Duplicity, "The Lovely Bones" and "2012"—in the works, he's surely cooking up his next intimate social portrait as well.

Q: How do you balance your work as an actor with your work as a director.

TM: It’s an evolving process. My agent jokes with me. She was watching the final "Wire" episodes and said, “every time I want to say, ‘just focus on writing and directing;’ then these great things come up.”

I was editing “The Visitor” when David Simon called and offered me that role [Scott Templeton] sight unseen and I had been a fan of the show and a fan of his. So it was a pretty brutal couple of months. When I wasn’t in the edit room I was in Baltimore, and visa versa, but it was worth it to be a part of the show.

I’m also working on Tony Gilroy’s new film here in New York ["Duplicity" starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen] when I’m not doing that, but they’ve been nice enough to work around my schedule. To work with Tony and Julia and Clive, and with Bob Elswit, Paul Giamatti, and Tom Wilkinson—both as an actor and as a writer/director—it would be foolish and almost irresponsible not to work with these guys.

So it’s a balancing act. You have to choose your jobs. With acting, you have to be incredibly picky. I won’t take a job just to take a job, even to generate money because I can generate money other ways. I’ll only do it if I really want to work with the people.

Q: Do you partly see doing these roles as a chance to meet people you can later cast?

TM: Totally. You spend a lot of time getting to know Tom Wilkinson, for instance, whose work I’ve admired forever and you think, “I like him and I like the way he works. He’s a pro and he’s damn good.” He’s someone I’ll keep in the back of my mind. As a director, I couldn’t think of anything better.

So It’s all starting to mesh in a nice way. There are times where it becomes difficult to manage just on a practical level and a time level so I’m trying to gauge that. Plus I think I’d like to make another movie quicker. I’d like to do that sooner than later. I’d like to not wait another four years.

Q: It took that long?

TM: "Station Agent" was [made from] 2003 to 2004. It’s funny how time just goes by. I was writing. I did some work with the guys at Pixar for a while and did some other writing projects—one for ["Austin Powers" director] Jay Roach, and one for some other friends. I enjoy doing that sometimes because it takes the pressure off.

When I’m working on my own material that I know I’m going to direct, the process becomes very insular. Sometimes when working for another director you sort of give up. You give up a bit. You say point me in another direction and I’ll write. I’m like a hunting dog and there’s something very freeing about that.

Q: Now, finally, your second directorial effort, "The Visitor" is out. Did longtime character actor Richard Jenkins come to mind for the role of Professor Walter Vale because you had worked together in some capacity?

TM: No, I never worked with Richard but I was a fan of his. I had an idea that I was going to have this sixty something year old man and I want an actor who can really disappear into the role. I’m a big believer in taking actors and using them in ways they haven’t been used before. I did that in “Station Agent” with almost all the characters. I had a short list and Richard was almost always on the top of it. By the time I actually began writing the script I knew it was going to be him.

I was actually in L.A. at the time, working on “Good Night and Good Luck” and staying in the same hotel as Richard, who was working on another movie there. I’m not sure which one. We had the same agent and I called her and said, “you think Richard and I could set up a dinner?” And she’s like, “I think you should call Richard.” And I did; it was like, “have you eaten?” He said he’d love to get dinner.

We had never really met before. I’ve been a fan of his. He’d seen the “Station Agent” and really enjoyed it. So we went and had dinner and by the end of that meal I had his voice in my head.

Q: Was there pressure to cast someone with more name recognition?

TM: Not really. One of my producers was saying that from the beginning of this project I never wavered on a lot of things and one those was Jenkins. They were like, “We love him, but can he do it and can we sell it?”

Now they couldn’t be prouder of the film and how it turned out. Specifically they like him in that role. So I don’t think I wavered on that. There was some concern. In fact, I had that dinner with Richard, and a year later I sent him that script through my agent Rhonda. A week later, he called and said he'd let her know that he’d love to do it. We had lunch where I officially offered him the role.

He came down to New York and when I offered him the role, his first comment was, “I’d love to do it, but you’ll never get the money for it if I do it.” I remember I helped Tony out one night on “Michael Clayton.” I was there to be a voice on the phone for George Clooney.

I’ve known George for a while now and we were just hanging out and I said, “Let me ask you something. What do you think of Richard in this role?” I greatly respect George’s taste and business acumen. He said, “It’s such a great call,” because he loves Richard and has worked with him. He thought it might be hard to get the money I needed, but I didn’t need that much. I can make my movies in such a way that I don’t need that much money. He said, “If you can figure out a way to work it out where you don’t feel like you’re sacrificing than anything, go for it.”

Q: It’s better to make a low-budgeted movie than to not make it at all.

TM: Yeah, and it was difficult and it would be tough for me to make another movie at that budget to be quite honest because it would be such a struggle. When you’re working in New York, there’s a lot of huge movies shooting here and there just weren’t a whole lot of options in terms of man-power and equipment and stuff.

That’s the tricky thing about these movies. For them to work, you kind of have to play a perfect game and you’re doing so without the resources of a lot of the big films. It’s an uphill battle. I think the key for me has been original characters and that’s been my inroad into the script.

Q: People see that this story has all the right elements, but are concerned that it can’t sell. Do you push aside those concerns when you sit down to write?

TM: I do think you have to put aside those concerns when you approach a story, because to write the most interesting thing possible you should focus on one thing: the story. Let the marketing people worry about that stuff.

Overture Films has a crack team of people worrying about that. If you tell a good story that’s the best marketing device. It’s bigger than stars and bigger than having a huge company behind it. A good story sells itself and that’s our philosophy for this movie.

Q: Your film has a lot of integrity. Had you taken a different route, would it have significantly changed the shape of the story?

TM: My style is usually a bit more subtle and a bit more ordinary and about finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. I did a Q&A after a screening recently where a gentleman stood up—an African man who lives here in New York and works in the Immigration Rights Council—and he said, “I spent time in this detention center, you could have a gone a lot further and blown the door off this thing. Why didn’t you?”

My answer was, that until I walked into one of these detention centers three years ago, I knew nothing about them and I guarantee, most Americans have never seen the inside of a detention center. Seeing this movie will be the first time they do. So that was an indication to me that we’re at point A with this. It’s not like everyone really knows about this. So this is subtle in the sense that it’s happening everyday and not in an extraordinary way, but in heartbreaking ways.

The best I can do is shed some light on [this situation] and let people know this is going on right now. Even on the most basic level, families are getting separated, people are getting sent out. There are people whose lives are at stake here and can we do it better. That’s where I start with this film.

Q: It’s not just Arabs and Africans being deported.

TM: Everything. Irish. I was talking to an immigration lawyer the other day who said one of her stories was that an Irishman she was defending was stopped, and this is the kind of thing that had I put it in my movie I would have been lampooned for, and he was arrested and he was checked for papers and pulled into detention. He was a painting a restaurant on Liberty Island at the base of the Statue of Liberty where they were renovating. The police did a sweep and picked him up. If there isn’t irony to that, than I don’t know what irony is.

Q: And you’re of Irish descent.

TM: My family's from Cork.

Q: I’m surprised you didn’t feature that kind of Irish story here as well.

TM: I heard it too late, but the reason I didn’t, honestly, is my stories always start with characters and Tarek was the character. In part, what I wanted to do with this movie was not shed light on immigration, but to put on the screen an Arab character that I haven’t seen in movies and television as of late. I knew I was on to something in the audition because I had so many Arab actors come in and say, “good luck and thank you for this, we haven’t seen this before.”

I knew then that they got what I was trying to do and it was only with that character and when I was developing that character’s storyline here in New York I realized that it would be irresponsible of me to ignore the immigration issue.

Q: What made you decide to shift the focus of the film to the romance half way through and introduce actress Hiam Abbass’s character, Mouna Khalil?

TM: For me, that was the biggest challenge of the script because basically I’m introducing a character 40 minutes into the movie that we haven’t seen. So the challenge was, as you say, to shift the storyline and then how to keep them all operating at the same time.

For me as a writer and as a filmmaker that was my most challenging obstacle. I think the reason I did it is because it feels organic to me. It doesn’t feel like I’m manipulating the plot in any way and I think in Hiam, who I wrote the part for, I had an actress who could pull that off, who could come in with such history and presence that she would immediately command the audience’s interest and take the story over.

Q: There wasn't a problem with having a romance with older characters?

TM: No; that actually never occurred to me until right now. I’m 41 and still single and I know there are 21-year-olds who are married. I don’t think about that. I think there’s something much more compelling in the romance that develops between those two [particular] characters.

Q: Did you learn any drumming?

TM: I took drumming lessons. When I was doing research on my character, I read a book called "The Prophet of Zongo Street," which was something I just picked up in a bookstore to get some background on West Africa. This was Ghana actually. I read this lovely story about a man retuning home from America to his land and it was written by a guy named Mohammad Ali. I flipped over the cover and it said, "Mohammad now lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children and he plays the djembe in a jazz trio" and I was like, "That’s weird."

So I had my agent contact him. It turns out he went to Bennington College and knew Peter Dinklage very well. He said, “What do you want from me.” I said, “first of all, I just want to congratulate you, and second, will you give me djembe lessons.” So I took lessons from Mohammad through the winter.

Q: You could have learned Irish drumming too.

TM: I realized I didn’t have a future in drumming after the first couple lessons.

OSCAR WATCH: Once Around Dublin With Glen Hansard and John Carney

Feature Interview by Brad Balfour

Fashioning a hybrid from two cinematic genres can either pay off or be a profound failure. In the case of John Carney's debut feature, "Once," he succeeds handily—even to the point of getting an Oscar nom for the song "Falling Slowly" (Hansard /Irglová). Maybe that's because he enlisted his longtime pal and former band member, Glen Hansard, lead singer of Ireland's hot rock band, The Frames, to play the lead character in his entrancing folk-rock fable.

Hansard formed The Frames in 1990, as part of Dublin's expanding rock scene. Merging folk with rock, the band maintains a balance between energetic and pacific through Hansard's crisp songwriting, authentic vocal delivery and the simple yet somehow original song structures.

Hansard quit school at 13 to busk on local Dublin streets, but first garnered solo attention as guitar player 'Outspan Foster' in Alan Parker's film "The Commitments." He then presented the television show "Other Voices: Songs from a Room," which showcased Irish music talent. Last year, he released his first solo album, "The Swell Season," in collaboration with Czech singer and multi-instrumentalist Markéta Irglová, along with two other friends. Then he made "Once" with Carney directing and Markéta as the other lead; it won the World Cinema Audience Award at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

"Once" is a very matter-of-fact tale of a street musician who meets a girl, a Czech immigrant played by Markéta Irglová, near Dublin's city center where she inspires him both with love and with music. But as the film merges two love stories--one about his love of music and the other his love for a woman--it becomes neither a concert film or strictly a love story. There are performances and touching sequences but they never become too melodramatic or predictable. And since Glen Hansard's music is so great, this makes for a fine debut.

Q: So, John, your attempts at being a folk-rock singer failed; is this where your film career emerged from?

John Carney: Well, I come from a reasonably musical family. My older brother was a music lover and made it his thing to go out and discover weird bands in the '70s and '80s that no one else knew about; he brought their [recordings] home and exposed his younger brothers, myself and Kieran, to this obscure music. So we had a piano and he brought a guitar and it was put under the bed, and I wasn't allowed to play it but I went and played it when I wasn't supposed too. Like at 2 o'clock in the morning, I played his guitar.

So I always played music. Then I met Glen when I left school and I joined his band and we played together in The Frames for a few years. But basically I got bitten by the whole film thing and I went off to try and seek my fortune as a film director in Ireland which is kind of an odd thing to do at the time because it was pre-Irish Film Board. There was no money and it wasn't state subsidized and it had just Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan; they were the two lads and they had their houses up in Dalkey overlooking the hills...so it was a funny time.

I made a couple of films, and myself and Glen met up a number of times along the way. Our paths crossed and we said we should do something together; you know, "I'd love to use a couple of your songs in my film" or I would take him and say, "I'll shoot a video for you or your band. Is there someway we can kind of share what we've done and let our two artistic endeavors kind of cross over?"

But it never happened and there was never anything to do together so I came up with this idea simply of a busker and an immigrant, in what is kind of a musical, because I wanted to try and do something that would get this musical thing out of my system. I love music and I'd stop writing scripts and go off and write at the piano and stuff for like three hours. I'd waste three hours or four hours a day just playing Billy Joel songs at the piano and I would be like "what the hell, I just wasted hours doing that. I got to put this into something," so I wrote a musical film.

Q: Glen, how did you get started?

Glen Hansard: Well I have this uncle in my family who was a very charismatic character. My mother comes from a family of 13 kids and he was one of the younger of the 13. He was like this amazing guy and it was a very working class family and he had this character, he did a bit of acting and was a musician and all the girls loved him. He was very good looking. He had the kind of, he had gray hair, all the family loved him, the women loved him you know. He was kind of a hero to all of us as young boys.

At one point during our lives, he disappeared and my mother was like "Yeah he's gone away"-- it turned out he had taken a car and driven it across Europe filled with something illegal, and had gone to prison in Turkey for many years.

His nice guitar got left in our house, and his car, which is a four door amazing Ford Explorer, had been left in our garden and I was kind of wondering where he was. My mother kept stopping me from taking the guitar because I would just take it out and have it on the floor and be like [strum noise] and I just really enjoyed the sound of it, [but] she kept on putting it back.

It was a really nice guitar like a Gibson Hummingbird, a beautiful instrument. She thought I would wreck it but after a year of slapping me on the wrist and putting it back she realized--my mother was a real Leonard Cohen fan--maybe it would be a good idea if she'd teach me "Bird on a Wire" and when he got out of prison and came to the airport when all the family was there to greet him, there would be his nephew with his guitar playing him a song--as if to say, you have been a good influence on the family . So that was kind of how it happened. I learned to play "Bird on a Wire" on the guitar. I taught myself.

Q: How old were you at the time?

GH: I suppose I was about 9 or 10 and I went to the airport and of course as he came through, it was a big deal, he came through the arrival stall and the first thing he said is "my fucking guitar!" [laughing] It was wrecked because obviously I'd been dragging it around the flat because I had no idea that you keep this thing precious.

But it was completely anti-climatic because he took me into his band and I played music with him. Then at the same time my school teacher advised me to leave school at the age of 13, which was a couple of years later, and take on the goal basically of being a street musician. He said the best place to start your career would be the streets because it's the bottom rung. It would teach you everything you need to know. I learned to play a couple of chords from my uncle, and being a street musician is where I got my education.

Q: John, what gave you confidence that Glen could actually carry the film; he's an act but not necessarily an actor.

JC: Well, being a director, I originally thought I would get Cillian Murphy to do the role because I know him and he can sing, he's quite a good singer. I thought you would do the usual thing--get a good actor who could half-sing and maybe train his voice, which is one way of going. [But] it certainly became clear to everyone involved in the film that we should do it the other way around: we should get someone who can really sing and half-act and I'll trust that I could do something magical with that, and I really didn't have to do much.

I knew Glen for long time and, really, being a director you know there's a million different styles of acting. When you look at a person, you decide to employ a certain approach and style and directing a non-actor or someone who acted a little is really knowing them and knowing their personality and putting them into a situation where they're comfortable to read your lines and bring this character to life. An actor can take different directions but I kind of just knew him. I figured he would be great by the end of the day.

Q: Glen, what gave you that confidence?

JC: He didn't have much [laughing]. Glen said, "If I'm rubbish just sack me on the first day." [Talking to Glen] You were worried.

GH: I was terrified for a few reasons. I didn't want to suck for his sake and I didn't want to suck for mine. I'm a really comfortable person behind a guitar but in front of the camera it's a whole different ball game and I didn't know if I could do it. So I really needed him to tell me the truth.

Am I rubbish? Are we pulling this off? Is it going to work because if it isn't, then let's just pack it in . Because I thought really when they chose me, John was just jumping on the nearest person.

I was thinking that if John had really wanted me to play this role me would have asked me at the beginning and maybe I'm the rebound [choice], but at the same time it made a lot of sense. This would be something where I was dealing with my mates. And it was a big deal with loads of people telling me this and that. It was a very obscure scenario which I never felt attached to at all. Whereas John was like "Look, let's just do it and if it's shit we'll just shelve it; if it's brilliant we'll sell a few DVDs to make the money back." That was the logic so we basically had to look at it with an open mind.

Q: You describe this as a visual album. How hard was it to translate that? You might have it in your head but music is such an interpretive thing--how hard is it to get that on the screen?

JC: Well, I put "Singing in the Rain" and "The Star is Born" in the top 10 films of all time because they are [great] films. If it's a Sunday morning and it's raining and I stay in I put on the scene from "Singing in the Rain." Or the scene between Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons in "Guys and Dolls" just to hear a song because it's like an album. So you expect to sit back and watch this great scene and the dialogue is brilliant. But only about 10% of all the great musicals I would rate highly and the rest I hate.

I'm not a great fan of musicals. There are only certain ones I like. So I wanted to make a modern day musical. I wanted to try and figure out how do you take a younger audience that don't like those films , which can't accept people breaking into songs, sitting back and watching a film and leave the cinema after watching eight or nine songs in their entirety. So it quickly became clear to me these would be the tools. I would film it on tape. I would film it with un-actors. Make a really small little story. The story was really secondary to the visual album-ness of the project.

So it was always something that I wanted to do and address where you leave the film unaware that you just watched all these songs but you're like, "Well it didn't seem like we were watching a film with all these songs."

Q: Can you guys talk about the relationship between the songs and how they evolved?

JC: Basically, it was collaborative. I liked the idea of being able to go to the songwriter for the musical. With the Gershwins or Harold Arlen, the music was there.

Most of the time the songs were given to you and you wrote a story around song. But I like being able to go to Glen and say, what do you think of this for a scene or idea for a character, and he would take it and come back with a lyric or a title or a song and give me a song that he had written ages ago. So there's kind of a scene and a song here where we bounced off ideas. The skeleton of the story was in place: guy meets girl--she's this, he's this. He becomes broken-hearted. They come together. Didn't we Glen?

GH: Yeah it was great. John came to me and said I need a song called "Once." He said "It's the only part of the film where we are going to suspend reality; we're going hire a crane which will cost us five grand so we need to get it fucking right." We knew he needed a song for when Markéta [Irglová] walks down the street and we will have her do a musical moment, so we need that song and it needs to be very strong. It needed to have a beat and we need it to be a song-song. Not just acoustic guitar and vocal.

We were acting during the day and we were going back to the flat and basically picking up the guitar and going "we need this and this and this" and we still hadn't finished this song. It was a very creative moment. We'd finish in the evening and basically go back, pick up the instrument and start to work on the next song. So it was very intensive.

Q: How different is this music from the music you do as a band?

GH: That's the beauty of it. It's actually the same. Some of the songs that are in this film are actually on The Frames record. It was one of those things where I just wrote a bunch of songs because that's just what I do and then for the film John wanted specific other songs which me and Markéta went off and tackled. For the most part that's just what I do. John made a point last night that if anyone doesn't like the film, it's because they probably don't like the songs. John's like, "that's cool because that gets me off the hook." These songs suck so I don't like the movie.

JC: That's how a musical should be. The only musicals I hate are the ones where I hate the music.

Q: Will you let John shoot your music video now?

GH: He already has. For me the most beautiful thing about this film is that no matter what happens John has documented Markéta's and my history. He's documented a bunch of music I've written. It's on DVD. It's there. I'll show it to my kids. That's it. That's the beauty of it. That's the moment.

When all the rest goes away that's what is most important. It's funny that we're doing promo now--I have to say it's boring, this whole idea of sitting in front of an audience and singing our songs because we don't do this in our lives. It not something we do at all. This is very, very new and strange and quite enjoyable actually.

At the end of the day when all the ink and things evaporate--because fame is measured in ink--at least we will have this documentary that hopeful in 20 years I will take off the shelf and show my kids and it will be like "There's your dad when he looked good and had hair."

Q: John, you said that shooting on video is kind of a risk in a way. Did you think about going back and using film?

JC: No, because there are different tools for different stories. Every young filmmaker--would you believe that some people still call me a young filmmaker, and I love when I read it. I am a young man. Every filmmaker wants to shoot on 35mm but it's kind of ridiculous because there are some stories where you'd waste all your money on 35mm, you'll bring the circus into town.

There are certain stories that need certain approaches and this was definitely one where I thought I don't need to use film because it was a very intimate project. For me it was very autobiographical. It has that feel where you shouldn't be watching what you're watching in a way; that was part of the project. This is a bit too intimate. We were saying at the screening last night about the scene with the woman that Glenn is watching on the laptop. That was my girlfriend and that's actually footage that I filmed of her from seven years ago with all the rudeness cut out.

Q: No rudeness!

JC: Yeah, the rudeness has to go. Even though the audience does know, they feel like this is someone's home. You know when you see those movies and it's faked and recorded and everyone is doing this when you are faking.

I wanted to get the audience into the atmosphere where you were looking at something intimate because it is a film that friends made. There is no lie. We did make it as friends. We didn't make it to be here promoting it so everything that happens in the film is a bonus. The [acclaim from] Sundance is a bonus. Just like what Glen said, if we show our kids in the future. Plus it was made cheaply so if we needed to destroy it because it was rubbish [we could].

GH: Plus the fact that me and Markéta aren't actors, there was a lot of footage that needed to be shot [repeatedly] to get us right. So if you were shooting us in film you would have spent a lot of money. I really wanted to do a black and white 16mm. John was basically like... No!

JC: There's no point trying to be beautiful in this film. Just let the music and the relationship be the beautiful part. That's all it needs to be for me anyway.

Q: This guitar you play--it has survived a lot.

GH: Well, the uncle I was telling you about brought it for me years and years ago. I use to play in his band and didn't get paid for it, so eventually he brought me this as sort of a gift. I just had it for so long and it's been my guitar so I've brought it into my professional career.

During the making of the film, John was like "You definitely have to use your own guitar;" I was like "Yeah, because that's what I use anyway."

It's really funny because it's just a piece of wood and the case is worth more that the guitar itself. It's getting pretty old and I wanted to protect it. Parts are starting to fall off which is bugging me out because I'm not use to being attached to things.

Q: So where does that leave you guys? Now that you have your acting career, is that the end of the music?

GH: No. We'll make a sequel called "Three Times a Lady."

Q: One of the best scenes involved the two singing at the dinner table. Is that kind of something you two lived through in real life?

GH: Oh yeah, that's a typical evening in our lives. That's actually my flat where we shot in. My mother is the one who sings the Irish song and all the people in the room are friends. There were no extras in this film. We just got all our friends to come, so actually we just threw a really big party and John spent an hour of the party telling people to shut up while he filmed something. It was really just a get-together with friends and family. One great thing I love was, here was an opportunity to get all the people you love in your life in one room that you could document forever.

JC: But it's not a documentary...

GH: Even the extras were people from the set so basically everyone got used.

JC: I spent three years in working for TV because it paid well and every extra got paid $100; there were only three takes. So coming back to make "Once" was a really great because it's was what I really thought filmmaking was about.

Films should be about the real world so it was great to have a situation where --because we had no permits for shooting the opening scene [on the street]--that the actor who played the kid that grabs Glen's busking money, he actually got chased down the street because no one who saw it knew he was acting. I was shooting so far down the street that no one saw him. We basically had to go rescue him from the guys who chased him down.

Q: The end is so bittersweet. What do you think happen to the guy and girl?

GH: I like to think that the guy goes back and works things out with the girl [his former girlfriend, now living in Liverpool] because he really loves her. This guy was kind of lonely, then this girl [Markéta] walks into his life and then he finds him writing songs and playing the guitar, something that he wasn't used too. She basically woke him up out of a long, long sleep. I like to think he does the right thing and goes and gets back with his [former] girl, but he keeps this [new] girl in his heart.

JC: Why do you think the two don't end up together in the end?

GH: Why? Because she doesn't want me.

Q: Well you two just have such good chemistry--I just wanted to see a happier ending.

JC: That's what people are responding to in the picture. As you can see, you are wondering why they didn't stay together.

GH: I think it's about her strength. The whole film is about her strength. She basically walks up and puts it out to him. He responds by getting his shit together and going away. She's actually left with the bad rap because even though she goes back to her husband [we don't know what happens to her really]. If the guy had a choice in the matter he would have been all over her. It just never was going to happen.

She does the right thing. We wanted to make a story that was about their romance through music. I was just on the phone the other day talking with someone and they said that your film was a sentimental and romantic film when it actually isn't. To me a romance is a film where two lovers talk about themselves alot and what could happen. That to me is a romance. In this film they never touched and never kissed. There's only one moment where they physically touch and that's the end when he holds her by the piano.

So to me it's a film with romance through music. Specifically how music and the artistic connection between two people can be incredibly romantic. So for me it was a no-brainer that they would never come together--maybe a kiss--but that would be it.

OSCAR WATCH: Ryan Gosling's Love for a "Real Girl" Leads to Nom

Feature Interview by Brad Balfour

Born in Ontario, Canada, to a strict Mormon family, actor Ryan Gosling started his career as a Mousketeer in the early '90s version of The Mickey Mouse Club. Sharing that distinct career boost with the likes of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, Gosling has clearly veered away from the gossip mag profiles that his fellow MMC alumni have earned themselves.

Instead of focusing on garnering an audience of peers, Gosling kicked off his film career playing a neo-Nazi in "The Believer." Then he did such roles as a young murderer in "The United States of Leland," an unsuitable lover in "The Notebook," a suicidal patient in "Stay" and now, the lover of an inflatable doll in "Lars and The Real Girl"—a film which has gotten the Oscar nom for original screenplay.

Though it seems like a huge leap to take on the role of a guy who establishes a real, though seemingly delusional, relationship with an inflatable doll, Gosling has the acting skill to make it work. Certainly he has given life to tough parts before: witness his study in subtlety defining Dan Dunne—the inner-city junior high teacher with a drug habit who forms an unlikely friendship with one of his students—in "Half Nelson."

That part got him a dark-horse Oscar nomination for Best Actor last year. So, although it's no longer that surprising that he can lend depth to his characters with skill far beyond his peers; Gosling likes to keep challenging himself... and us.

larsandtherealgirl-themovie.com

Q: You've had some remarkable success with your choice of films. Is there a conscious process as to how you choose your characters, and in particular, your character in this film?

Ryan Gosling: For the most part, when I read scripts I can't relate to any of the characters. So when I can, I jump on it. I think movies make it look easy to be a person, and I don't think that it is [the case]. It's kind of complicated to balance out who we are, who we think we are, who we think people think we are, so I look for characters that feel human, that have jobs, that have to work for a living, and aren't sure what's wrong with them and don't know how to change it.

Q: So you're really into this guy Lars? What did you see in him that struck you?

RG: First of all, the film hit me as a "Harvey" or a "Harold and Maude" or "Being There." There are these movies that we all love, but there's not that many of them. They're in a genre by themselves. They just occur once in awhile. But I love them, and I thought this was my opportunity to play in one of them.

When I read "Lars" I wished Gene Wilder could play the part. If he did, this would be the greatest movie ever. So I thought it was just a great opportunity for me to get to be a part of something that won't come around again.

Q: This is more of a comedic turn compared to your other movies. Did it open up your eyes to do more humorous films, as opposed to those that you've done that were dark and desolate?

RG: Yeah, well, I think Craig Gillespie is a great director, because we took it seriously. The more serious we took it, the funnier it got. This kind of takes it back to Gene Wilder, when he falls in love with that sheep in "Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex * but Were Afraid to Ask," he really falls in love with that sheep. He's looking at it lustfully and it's just the funniest thing ever. I think that a lot of comedies are trying to be funny. But this movie walks an interesting line. It's funny and sad at the same time.

Q: Well, it is a black comedy. Do you have other favorite black comedies beyond the Gene Wilder ones like "Catch 22"—any that inspired you?

RG: Yeah, sure... that's a good one. I think for the most part, we were thinking a alot about films from the Hal Ashby ["Harold and Maude"] vein.

Q: The tagline to this film—"The search of love begins outside the box"—makes the film sound like a salacious, perverse kind of movie but it wasn't that at all. Was that something you brought to it, or was it on the page? Though it is about relationship with a sex doll, he doesn't have sex with it, and doesn't see her like a sex object at all.

RG: I felt struck by how rebellious it was to make a movie [like this] that was nice. To make a movie that believed in the goodness of people. To ask the question to everyone who is afraid of being themselves. Like what would you do if you walked into a place of total acceptance? It's an interesting question.

Q: When you first were pitched the film, did you think it was going to be a crass, perverse film?

RG: I heard the tagline, about a guy with a sex doll, and I didn't think it would last a whole script. But when I read the whole thing, I found myself crying, I was so connected to it, I couldn't believe this writer took me on this trip, made me care about these people, made me care about this doll who became a woman to me as I read this script. It became romantic to me about this guy who loves, and makes this choice to love and doesn't need to be loved in return, doesn't compromise his hopes to be with someone. He just has all this love to give and he gives it.

Q: This movie isn't just about a fantasy love, it's also about a fantasy community. People might look at it strangely as if it doesn't exist. Maybe in Canada this place might exist.

RG: I think people don't give people enough credit. I was in your camp in the beginning, and then I saw the effect of Bianca on the crew, the crew who never read the script. The thought of it just as a job. Suddenly she had an interesting impact on everyone. The idea of her. She's a symbol, she forces you to be creative with yourself—through her. A lot of people were interested in taking that ride.

Another thing about the community [Lars lives in] is everyone thinks that they go along with it, but that's not true. Through the course of the film, Craig made sure that there were people that were doubting.

The film focuses on the people who are willing to take this trip, because they are the interesting ones. There's lots of people in this film who don't want to do it and so they're not interesting, it's a dead end, they're not willing to go on this trip with him. That's what makes this film special. I was waiting for someone to burst Lars' bubble, do something terrible but the film doesn't focus on those people. It acknowledges them [and] moves through it but focuses on those who will.

Q: What kind of research did you have to do for this movie?

RG: What are you implying? [laughs] But for Lars, it's a real love story, he's not really... it's not a doll to him. And there's a whole community of guys out there who have relationships with these dolls and now, since I've done this film, I am very interested in it. I think it's fascinating.

But Lars doesn't consider himself part of that community. He's in a love story. He met a girl on the internet, she came out to live with him, caught a terminal illness and died... That's a movie I'd see anyway.

Q: What did you learn about this community of men who become attached to dolls like this?

RG: Well, I think it's easy to be judgmental about them. There's an interesting documentary on the BBC about them—there are very complicated relationships. They [the dolls] are a very huge emotional support for them. One guy is a hang-glider, and he takes his doll to watch him hang-glide. He needs that support. It's not that far from a kid who needs his teddy-bear. It's possible. You go through something with that bear, you go through fun times, you cry with that bear, you really experience things with it and bond with it. Should you ever lose it, it would be heartbreaking. You would see a real sense of loss. We're all capable of this.

Q: How did you develop the character of Lars?

RG: It's always different for every movie. For me it's fun to start from scratch, play different characters so I can't use the same tricks developed from the last thing. On this... these things just kind of happen. Really they happen [more] when pursuing ideas that are than aren't. You never really end up using them—but subconsciously you tend to use them.

Q: And was the physical image of Lars your idea?

RG: There was no picture of Lars. I had a beard. I shaved it. And I saw before I shaved my mustache off... I glanced up in the mirror and I saw him looking back at me. He was kind of wearing women's clothes underneath and that came from doing a fitting. And nothing felt right for some reason. So I felt like he needed something feminine. There was no feminine energy to him, to his whole life.

Without judging it, he would just gravitate toward things that are feminine just because they are interesting, they are exotic. We put him in women's long underwear, as close to it as he could have. I gained some weight for it. It changed the way I moved my body. It was a whole process.

Q: Is it hard acting with something that doesn't give any expression back?

RG: Well, that's what acting is anyway. We're all pretending something in front of each other. We're used to it. I'm pretending to be this character, you're pretending to be that character, I'm pretending to be sexy, I'm pretending that you are too, we're pretending that we're making love, whatever it is, it's all an act. It was kind of a more honest version of that in a way.

Q: Did the crew embrace her, dress her, you know... hang out with her, when she was on set?

RG: She certainly has a presence to her. When she came on set, you could feel it. There was a sense of excitement when she was in a scene... everybody liked her. She had magazines in between takes, she had kind of an entourage, women who took care of her, she had her own trailer, she wasn't on set when she wasn't in a scene. It was like working with another actor for the most part.

Q: She's very pretty.

RG: Yes, I think so too.

Q: Where is she now?

RG: She's at my house.

Q: Is that true?

RG: Yes, she's reading a book by the window.

Q: When you weren't in front of the camera, did you stay in character?

RG: That's interesting because I hear a lot of actors do that, they become the character. I always get so jealous when I hear that because that seems like so much fun. But I don't become the character—they become me. I am all of them. I turn on all of the parts about them that are me and turn off all the other parts that aren't.

Q: Are there people in your personal life that have come over to your house and seen the doll?

RG: I take her out.

Q: How do they react?

RG: Everybody likes her.

Q: Where do you take her?

RG: Bars, you know.

Q: One of the other things about this the film, is that you meet her through the internet. What's your experience with the internet? Do you have your own MySpace page and do alot of surfing?

RG: I'm just getting into it. I really kind of resisted technology for a long time. I have a band [Dead Man's Bones], we have a MySpace page . I think it's kind of fascinating, you get to talk to people you would never get to know. One woman in Ohio, she wrote us, she says everyday she comes home with her kids and they put on our song and they kind of go crazy in their house and dance around. It's neat. It's neat to kind of have that kind of relationship with people you would never meet.

Q: So when you do a film like this, do you feel like you have to do something totally different with the next one?

RG: Well, the next project is called "The Lovely Bones," which is directed by Peter Jackson, from a really great book by Alice Seybold. We start rehearsals in a few weeks.

Q: I heard your character in "The Lovely Bones" is the father. How is it for you, not having children, to play the father of a daughter who has been killed? How are you going to summon up that character?

RG: That's a good question. We'll see, I don't know. I'll have to wait until we meet each other. I try not to go into anything with a real set idea of how it's going to happen. It depends on the kids and we'll just have to develop a relationship with one another. It's a tricky role, because anyone who has a kid, it would be really hard for them to play a role where they lost a kid. I don't think they would want to go there. And I can understand that. And anyone who doesn't have one, it would be very difficult for them to understand what that was like. So I think either way it's a very tricky role.

Q: Once you've been nominated for an Oscar, what changes.

RG: Yeah, I get more free stuff. It's a bizarre system. It's backwards... [because now I can afford to pay for it].

Q: Music is also a big part of your life. "Dead Man's Bones"—your band with Rachel McAdams' brother—wasn't your first experience with music. What role has music been in your life, and what made you come back to it?

RG: Music is a big part of my life. I started out as a dancer. But then I realized that you can't really make a living with it so I started acting. My father was a musician and always played music.

Q: Have you ever jammed with your fellow actor friends?

RG: I've played with a couple of times with Jason [Schwartzman]. He's the real deal. He doesn't consider himself an actor. He's a really talented guy. A real talented writer.

Q: Is it hard having time to squeeze in a band?

RG: Not really, you get a lot of downtime as an actor.

Q: And what's your favorite band or music?

RG: I've been getting into a lot of Balkan music, and klezmer stuff lately.

Q: Now that you are part of the Academy, has the process started for you in this year's Oscar run-up?

RG: It's exciting because I get all the free screeners. I'm really excited about that. It's just getting started.

Q: So you don't have any idea of your favorite movies this year?

RG: I saw this movie called "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" directed by Julian Schnabel which i think is one of the best movies I've seen this year. I hope people go and see it.

OSCAR WATCH: Director Stefan Ruzowitzky and Actor Karl Markovics Make "The Counterfeiters" an Authentic Holocaust Film

Feature Interview by Brad Balfour

Just when you think everything that happened during the Holocaust has been chronicled, a new film appears based on a true story that offers another look at that horrible experience in a fresh way. So it's no wonder this Austrian film, "The Counterfeiters," got nominated for the Foriegn Language Oscar.

Based on the published memoir of Adolf Burger, it details the experience of Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch, a masterful member of Berlin's criminal underground. Upon being sent to a German concentration camp, Sorowitsch agrees to help the Nazis in their organized counterfeit operation—“Operation Bernhard”—set up to finance the war effort against the Allies. Through a brilliant performance by veteran actor Karl Markovics, Sally obliquely reflects the prime conflict for the Jews during the Holocaust—resist and die or survival at all costs.

Burger, one of Sorowitsch’s fellow detainees (played in the film by August Diehl) captures many of the traumatic decisions these prisoners grappled with; help the Nazis and live or sabotage their efforts and be executed. In this cinematic telling of this gripping drama, director Stefan Ruzowitzky (“The Inheritors”) documents the inner war within the counterfeit workshop against the backdrop of the Reich’s final months while wrestling with complicated issues of morality and survival.

Though both Ruzowitzky and Markovics aren't Jewish, they offered particular insights into the emotional and psychological depravity wrought by the Holocaust. A favorite to win the Academy Award, it's no wonder the film was a hit at the Berlin, Telluride and Toronto International Film Festivals last year.

Q: You both made this film from the perspective of someone who isn't Jewish... of not being someone who has the same imposing sense of that experience and that definitely lent the film a different perspective.

SR: The thing that struck me, was that these [prisoners] are actually Germans. I tried to stay away from every cliché, [even] positive clichés, that all Jews are intellectuals and cultivated and wise people because this is something I learned from Alfred Burger’s book as well, that the people he’d been together with, they were Jewish blue-collar workers, Jewish Prussian bankers and for me that was rather an interesting thing.

So here’s a group of Germans and just because they have Jewish ancestors they’re put in a camp and the Nazis want to kill them; that’s that insane concept I’ve been thinking about a lot, and that struck me in a way.

It’s also when Adolph Burger is asked whether he still hates the Germans or whether he has problems with the Germans, he always says no because he’d been in the camps together with so many Germans, German Jews [yes]—these were people from Hamburg and Munich, whatever—but they were Germans as well, so for him it wasn’t Germans on one side in the uniforms and Jews on the other. There were Germans on both sides.

Q: And Karl, what about from your point of view?

KM: For me it was much easier, because playing a Jew never mattered to me because this character doesn’t care about his Jewishness at all. So it was much more [about] the point of why human beings treat other human beings like that, and under what conditions.

This was the most interesting point for me and I hope that we will one day come to the point that it doesn’t matter at all anymore. At that time, [when] the story [takes place], it mattered too much, today it still matters very much in Austria and Germany, but there are not so many Jews left.

On the other hand there weren’t so many at that time as well. This when I first heard about I really thought I can’t believe this, that only 0.8% of the German population in 1933 were Jews. This small amount of population should be responsible for all the evil happening to the German race? This number drove me crazier than other facts of this part of our history.

Q: How do you explain that it happened to so many people, yet their role in society was so blown out of proportion.

KM: It’s only possible because of several centuries of an ongoing tradition of having a minority within the [majority] population to blame for anything you want. It’s kind of a fashion, sometimes, to protect them and sometimes, the governors, the kings, the dukes and so on would persecute them for any reason.

Of course, [these reasons include everything from] Christian ideas of they killed Jesus to the fact that they often were really well skilled and well educated. The thing was that they often had a lot of money because they were forced to only do jobs as bankers and the economy stuff and then the people blamed them for that.

So it’s really weird, but it seems to be human [is]to look for a minority you can blame for everything. There was one famous line in one of my favorite American novelist’s books, Annie Proulx. In “Accordion Crimes” she writes that even if there hadn’t have been the African-American population in the States there would have been an ongoing civil war between the Polish, Germans, Scandinavian immigrants, but they all had the Blacks to look down on and to kick and to feel better and this we did to our Jews.

Q: It's an interesting permutation that your character is a criminal. His alliance is less with the Jewish community and more with the criminal underground. You successfully showed another side to this when these different classes of people together were thrown together. That gave you an opportunity to play the role with a unique outlook, and, for you, to direct him with a unique point of view.

SR: From the very beginning [that’s] what intrigued me the most, the pitch of having a counterfeiter in a concentration camp, which is just a great pitch, a counterfeiter who’s somebody who’s betraying somebody, who’s manipulating reality and without knowing the details I thought right away, well that’s interesting. Will he be able to manipulate reality in the camps? Will he be able to betray himself and things like that?

On top of that I felt it was very interesting, or it would be a completely new perspective because all the autobiographies that we know [about the camps] by Bruno Bettelheim, Primo Levy, all these were written by people with an intellectual, bourgeoisie background, an academic background, and here we have somebody who’s sort of trained to survive and survive well within a prison.

Of course a concentration camp isn’t a normal prison but still he would know how to get along within the hierarchy of the inmates and all these things. Doing research on the concentration camps I did find out, [that] there were many criminals in the camps and they usually got along much better and survived better because they were better at organizing themselves for food and good jobs and all these things with a mix of betraying, stealing, and just performing their skills. So I felt, well, that’s an interesting new perspective that I haven’t heard about that interests me.

Q: To play a criminal who wasn’t just an obvious hero was an extra wrinkle for you...

KM: Yes, definitely. That was the point for me, because he’s sort of a lonesome wolf. He thinks of himself as a lone wolf and that he doesn’t belong to all the others, all the rest of the world outside. [He thinks] “I need them, I use them, but I stay on my own” and suddenly at once in the concentration camp he’s forced to belong to others because he’s a Jew.

He’s suddenly forced to be responsible for others, too, if he wants to or not because his skills decide whether they will live for a certain time, at least, or if they will be killed at once if he doesn’t manage to make the pounds and the dollars. So, he is forced to start socializing for the first time in his life.

Q: He’s challenged with a moral dilemma that he wouldn’t ordinarily be challenged by.

KM: Right.

Q: The film is morally complex. On the one hand you have a character that advocates the idea of not helping the Nazi war effort but at the same time there's the logic of wanting to stay alive and doing what you can to do to survive; what were the challenges in presenting that point of view?

SR: The idea was to balance all that as well as possible in terms of not saying there is a right way and there is a wrong way. The idea was that you would watch Sally and say, “yeah, probably, I would have done the same thing” and then you’d hear Burger talking about principles and that the Nazis wouldn’t have a chance if people would stick a little bit more to the principles and you say, “yes I agree completely,” but you also understand the guy who said “I almost died a dozen times. I just want to go on living.”

I just wanted to show that everybody’s right in a way and everybody’s causing some special problems with their approach. Initially I thought that audiences would fall much more for Burger because he’s sort of the typical hero with his ideals, so we have some scenes which show his dark side as well, but then pretty early on I found out that the opposite was the case.

People love Sally because they can identify with him, because that’s what we all are doing, just sort of trying to get along somehow and it’s not always 100% correct. But we try to be good people which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. Whereas people like Burger, the movie character not the real person, we admire them to a certain extent because they’re radical and idealistic, but at the same time they’re boring and we all know that they don’t succeed with their big ideals and that often leads to even bigger catastrophes.

Q: Moral ambiguity is always more interesting than dogmatism.

SR: Yes and the interesting thing is I had one screening in New York for the National Board of Review and there was a couple of Cuban immigrants there. They said that when they saw him in the first scene, recognized him right away because he was just the typical Communist, saying "I have my ideals and I’m ready to die for my ideals and I’m also ready for other people to die for my ideals." That’s enough of a dark side for Burger, so we didn’t use these scenes I was referring to because I felt he’s negative enough in the eyes of many people.

Q: Did you do certain things to create this character without being too obvious and was the moral ambiguity a challenge for you?

KM: It’s hard [to say] because I don’t really know how to explain the process of acting, because I don’t know myself. It happens. It sounds stupid, but it is a little bit like that. One always tries to find the symbols or analogies to explain something. So I could talk on for half an hour, but wouldn’t really say anything clever or smart. I don’t know. It was a challenge... a challenge for me in itself, to do this.

The biggest challenge was could I be able to put away my personal feelings, my feeling of "am I allowed to play a Jew as a non-Jew?... To put away my historical knowledge about this time, all the things we heard at school or I read in books, because the guy I play doesn’t give a shit about all this, he has no political sense and is not aware of his Jewishness; he is what he is, I am what I am and that was the biggest challenge... To be sure when we started shooting, not to care about all this, just make it happen.

Q: You bookended the film with an opening scene with a woman and the last scene with a woman. What did you have in mind and was that for you to give you him someone different to play against?

SR: From the very first idea and treatment I had this frame and there were some clever people who said you shouldn’t do that, you’re taking away a lot of suspense by showing that he stays alive. This could be a big suspense thing and actually it was much later, actually some interviews helped me to find out that what’s happening here is the movie actually starts with the ultimate happy ending: there’s a guy after six years in concentration camps, he’s sitting on the beach of the Cote D’Azur with a beautiful woman and a suitcase full of money and then he asks himself, “why me? Did I come to close to evil? Did I compromise too much?”

This is actually what the movie is about and it’s not that sort of cheap thrill of "he’s a Jew in the camp, is he going to survive or not?" but it’s rather about the how [of his survival] and I think that’s far more elegant than it would have been without the frame.

Q: Is that why you decided to film this as more of an adventure story, almost like a film noir?

SR: I wanted to make an accessible movie, a movie for people of my generation who are not [feeling] guilty because we have been born years after the war and I wanted to invite them to be interested in that period of time because it’s worthwhile to think about it.

So I tried to make an accessible movie which is emotional and suspenseful but not with the kind of suspense of "are they going to descend into the gas chambers or not;" that kind of cliffhanger would be disgusting. It’s about other things, [and that's] where the suspense lies.

Q: Was it a pleasure to work with those two actresses?

KM: It was a pleasure definitely, in different ways. Of course it was a pleasure because it was a pleasure, but also [there was] the opportunity that I really felt this clash of dimensions personally—we were shooting all these [glamorous] scenes before we went onto the concentration camp scenes.

So we had been in Monte Carlo and it’s at the Mediterranean sea [we're there] with this beautiful suit and dresses in the casino; and we did all this and then there was a short weekend and then [there we were] on Babelsberg Studios lot with the prefabricated barracks and we started in the [concentration] camp.

It was sort of, you know, there is a cut in your life and you can’t imagine [it being] deeper. I felt a little bit like this working the first morning before we started shooting with all my memories of the Mediterranean and Dolores Chaplin and Marie Bäumer, the only two girls in this movie, [fresh in my mind]. It was such a short time and then [we started] going on to the real story.

Q: Then there is the "real" unreality of this whole Oscar nomination thing.

KM: Yes absolutely. It seems fake as well. You can’t believe there’s really an Oscar. I’m sure it’s chocolate [inaudible].

Q: Did it catch you by surprise?

SR: Not really, because of the short list. You know you have this short list with nine movies [on it from which they pick the Oscar nominees for the international award].

KM: I didn’t know. You did? I was surprised.

SR: So you’re kind of prepared, and I think you know if you’re among these last nine and then you don’t make it among these last five, that’s really frustrating. Now of course I want to win but okay, if you don’t win you can’t help it you know, but being among the last nine but not among the last five must be really shitty.

Q: Is there anyone you want to talk with or something special you want to do at the Oscars?

SR: It’s funny... It’s similar to when a movie is premiering and you have this red carpet situation. When you’re there on the red carpet in that situation they make you feel like you’re the most important person in the world and then one minute later you meet the same journalists in the bathroom and nobody gives a shit about you.

It’s like a play and you have your role, which is smiling on the red carpet as they shout “Stefan, Stefan look here” and you look there and it works only in that very moment and not later on and it’s fun.

KM: I want to meet Governor Schwarzenegger, my former fellow Austrian citizen.