New York Character Re Defined For A Weekend

Sometimes the visual dynamic of New York, and Manhattan in particular, can be too much -- too much a jumble, or a clash of priorities and styles -- a cavalcade of dissonance. But sometimes, something comes into view that re-orders the environment so much so that it both jars the visual ecology and redefines it. That happened yesterday when I saw three large brightly colored metal shipping containers stamped CHARACTER PROJECT on the front and back sitting in various public spaces in Manhattan.

Plopped down into high trafficked public pavilions these boxes captured the attention and altered the impact of the space they occupied. But because they are there as pop-up movie theaters, meant to feature eight shorts commissioned by the USA Network and RSA Films (Ridley and Tony Scott's company), they did more than visually affect the street dynamic -- they became site-specific gallery spaces as well.

Having started yesterday, Friday, May 13, this cinematic experience can be found in Manhattan throughout this weekend, continuing today (Saturday, May 14) to tomorrow (Sunday, May 15) from 10am-10pm at three locations: Gansevoort Plaza (9th Ave between Gansevoort and Little W 12th Streets); Flatiron Plaza, Broadway between 22nd & 23rd Streets and South Street Seaport (Fulton between Water and Front Streets).

Somehow, the impact of these containers on the visual ecology stirred further musings in me about how a graphical strong statement alters something prosaic as a public walk space. And that has led me to muse on today's start of the annual International Contemporary Furniture Fair -- the long-standing /exhibit/conference held in the Javits Center that runs from 10 am today through Tuesday, May 17th. This event also heralds Design Week in Manhattan.

Inside the Javits, the ICFF exhibitors take up 145,000 net square feet with 500 exhibitors displaying contemporary furniture, seating, carpet and flooring, lighting, outdoor furniture, materials, wall coverings, accessories, textiles, and kitchen and bath for residential and commercial interiors. This throng re-defines the Javits space, offers an unparalleled view of recent design developments from all over the globe and presents a broad selection of the world's best, most innovative, and original objects for the home, office or any space for that matter.

Simultaneously, on various streets (such as Tribeca's Franklin St.) and pockets through Manhattan such as the Noho design district (and even some of the other boroughs) stores and firms band together to host open houses, receptions and celebration of their wares as well. Though the ICFF is mostly for industry insiders, the closing day, Tuesday, May 17th from 10 am - 4 pm, is open to the general public as well.

Robert Duvall Wins High Praise for Get Low

Story by Brad Balfour

When Get Low hit the festival circuit earlier this year coming to New York during the Tribeca Film Festival, veteran actor Robert Duvall hit the town and did a few interviews to discuss this film, his career, and playing roles like the irascible Felix Bush. The grungy, ill-kempt Bush is this mysterious hermit who throws his own rollicking funeral party -- while still alive -- in 1930s Tennessee. He confront the folks who run the funeral home --played by Bill Murray and Lucas Black -- and his long-ago ex-love, played by Sissy Spacek, with his odd event with both touching and tragic results.

A remarkable actor, going back to his days on television in such series as The Outer Limits (his two- part episode, "The Inheritors," is considered a classic) or films such as MASH or the original True Grit, the 80-year-old is now considered one of the Olympians in that starry universe of Hollywood.

Yet he has often stood apart from that celebrity-centric world. He has an estate in Virginia, is married an Argentinian, Luciana Pedraza (who is 41 years younger than him), and has his own film and television production company. His politics leans towards libertarian/conservative and he loves the western -- all things that haven't set well with the Hollywood insiders and tastemakers.

In the last two films he performed in, Get Low and Crazy Heart, Duvall co-produced them, and much to his surprise, won back-to-back hurrahs, awards and many nominations.

With a crinkle to his eyes, a big smile and that good ol' boy geniality, The Texas native makes for a perfect interview subject. Whether he's doing a long string of one-on-ones, roundtables, or Q&As, he shows an infectious enthusiasm and openness that makes each one seem like he's doing it for the first time.

Q: How do you prepare for a role like this -- what's the process with such a complex character?

RD: I didn't do a lot, but just thought about it. Though this year I couldn't because I had to work, we usually go to Argentina where my wife's from, we go up to the North, to the Jujuy [region]. We cook on Christmas Day, we'll cook meat and then her old man will jump off with one of the sisters zipped up and hang glide with the condors, the biggest bird in the world.

While we're there, there's this is hotel where we stay, there's a window and a place where you sit, the patio, and I would sit there, I'd say it's a perfect [environment] if you were going to write something, and I would look at those mountains and work on this part.

That sense of being with nature and looking at, not the hills of Tennessee or Virginia, but -- and just, it's just a matter of thinking about it, thinking about it a lot and not necessarily doing research other than using my imagination. They say play the parts closest to you, to your imagination and I think there was a part of my imagination -- this was close to [me] and I didn't want to go in it for any way on accident. [He] was just a little bit like my dad who's from Virginia -- my family's from Virginia.
 
Q: Did you carry such a powerful character with you upon leaving the set at the end of the day?

RD: Sometimes when I carry him with me I get pissed off or like if things weren't going right or I didn't think it was just right, you carry that frustration with you, sometimes.

But usually at the end of the day if it went well then you go off and have a meal. And there was a great Chinese restaurant down there in the middle of nowhere. It was terrific.

The better things go, the more relaxed and relieved you are at the end of the day. If it doesn't go so well then you feel, ahh, you know? You just go home, get your rest and come in the next day.

Q: During the shoot, were there other things that you, Sissy Spacek and Bill Murray spent doing on your downtime?

RD: We all went out to eat, to different restaurants, and had fun down there going out, yeah. We'd go to a party and showed Bill Murray a tango. He said he wanted to learn the tango. He likes to try everything, Murray. The guy's a character.

And Lucas Black -- it's great to work with the guy. [He's] from Alabama, with that thick accent -- you need subtitles for the guy, you know [laughs]. And Sissy is -- [they're all] wonderful, talented people to work with.
 
Q: Is your character manipulating other people? At one point somebody says, "I think he's got an idea and he's playing all of us."

RD: That's what that guy said. I'm not so sure -- even having played the character, I'm not so sure if that's true or as much, percentages, or that's what they perceive in him. They perceive him to be a tough old guy, but he's not necessarily that. You know, he lives off these stories that he likes, you know, "You boys come out here and throw rocks at my windows for 25 years."

I think that they build up this myth about this guy being a mean old guy, but maybe he's not that. He could have been a lawyer, he could have been a doctor, he could have been a schoolteacher, he could have been a world traveler, merchant marine.

He's not a dumb guy; he could have been a lot of things. But, he chose to live in the woods out of this deep sense of guilt or being ashamed of what he did or what he thinks he might have done.

Q: Producer Dean Zanuck said it had been 10 years and that you had stayed with this project...

RD: No, I think it was about five... Yeah.
 
Q: What was it that made you say to yourself, "Whenever it comes, I'm going to be there, ready to do this."

RD: Well, I'd given up on it. The initial thing of a guy setting up and going to his own funeral was very unique -- they're not going to do a remake of this in 12 years like they did of True Grit. This is so unique and original, they're not going to do a remake, but I'd forgotten about it. They came to my farm once and then they came again.

The initial script was good, then they rewrote, and it wasn't so good. Then they got a guy, Charlie Mitchell from Alabama, who put in the final touches. This guy's a terrific storyteller; if he hadn't come on, I wouldn't have done it. But even when that happened, they didn't have the money, so I'd be sitting sometimes -- I don't live in California, I go out there sometimes to work or whatever -- in a Palm restaurant and the Zanucks would be there.

I said, "If the Zanuck dynasty can't raise $7 million, who can?" So I forgot about it. "Well, that's a good project, but, you know, I'm on to other things." Then a couple of years ago in December, they said, "Now's the time." I said, "I'm not ready. I can't." But they said, "Oh, we've got to."

I thought to myself, "I better do it now. This is a wonderful [story] ..." But, you know, I wasn't like waiting, I'd kind of given up on it, and thought of other things because they didn't have the money. But when they did, then we went.
 
Q: This film has stirred almost the same response that Crazy Heart got...

RD: People have said that. They spent a lot of money on Crazy Heart and it's different. This is my wife's favorite film I've done in maybe 15, sheesh, years; she loves this film and the script. But, we'll see. I don't know.
That made a lot of money for an independent film. I don't know who made that much money. It made, what... It grossed almost $39 million.
 
Q: Your performance here is dead on, just every minute of it works.

RD: Well, I don't always get leads in movies, and I'd rather play sometimes cameos or supporting, but when something like this comes along I feel maybe I can do this in a unique way. 
 
Q: What did she love about it?

RD: She just loved the writing and there's so much, and the performances. But she loves what this guy, Charlie Mitchell, who brought [to it] a unique script, just a certain aspect of humanity that's in the script in a different, very unique story. 

We sold it all over. It won some award in Italy at a film festival, then it went to here, and it went there. They're taking it everywhere [laughs]. They're trying to build it up in a prestigious way, but also hopefully that it'll be a commercial success.
 
Q: Have you ever gotten a great script and as you were filming, things went haywire and it didn't end up the way you expected as with this film?

RD: did it end up the way I envisioned it?
 
Q: Yeah, in the past.

RD: Yeah, I think so. But with this writer, there was a time when they rewrote it, it didn't work, I said, "I'm not doing this." Then when they brought Charlie Mitchell on he added those touches of a southern storyteller that was terrific. Little things, like the woman in white at the end coming in an apparition, like a Southern Gothic story. And when that hearse went away, they didn't know that it was going to be and they passed her coming on film and they all got like goose pimples. They didn't know what it was about.

And the things with Sissy, when I explained how I loved her sister, not her and then I have a thing where I fall over from like an illness, he added that. He added those things, those things with Sissy in the beginning about the -- he really took the basic story and made it more direct and made it work and that's what really bonded me to the project was his writing and that's why my wife loved it, was the writing so much and the way it was executed.
 
Q: Was that scene where you beat up the guy who was harassing you in there originally?

RD: When I hit him? Yeah, they had to put stuff on him -- Scott Cooper, he directed Crazy Heart -- I whacked him good [laughs].
 
Q: Is there a theme or a line running through the roles that people think of you the most? I'm thinking of Tender Mercies and these country men.

RD: I played a city guy in The Godfather. I played Stalin once [laughs]. But, yeah, yeah, I like to play -- my favorite part was in Lonesome Dove, when I played the Texas - I love westerns because that's our thing. I said the English can have Shakespeare, the French Moliere, [Anton] Chekhov the Russians and the Argentines have [Jorge Luis] Borges, but the western is ours from Canada on down.

I say let the English play Hamlet and King [Lear]; I play Augustus McCrae [laughs], because you have eight hours to develop the character. But, you know, I like city guys, country guys, whatever. I've played German guys, I've played Eichmann, Adolf Eichmann, that's where I met my wife in Argentina. Eichmann went to Israel and got, you know, they killed him and this Eichmann got a beautiful woman from Argentina, my wife [laughs].
 
Q: Do you still dance the tango with her?

RD: Yeah, we do.
 
Q: Since the recession hit do you find yourself taking roles and doing business differently?

RD: Doing business differently? Well, the business aspect of it might be different because you always try to raise money and with my company we're always trying to do movies under $10 million. We did... Another one of my favorite things was Broken Trail, a two-part miniseries for AMC. We did that and Eichmann, we did the tango movie, we did The Apostle, we did, what do you call it? We did Crazy Heart.

We've had a good run, my company, in doing producing. But as far as taking the parts, it's the same thing. You read it and say, "Oh, I like this part." You go with your first instincts. "I think I can do this part. I like it." Then you say, "Who's going to be the director? How much? [laughs] Usually the independent movies not much, so you still do them because you love them.
 
Q: How much does "how much" matter?

RD: It depends. If you're going to do a big film, how much does matter. You know, it does matter, you know, in this country. We had to cut Jeff Bridges' salary, you know, he does a hefty thing. We make more in this country than other countries, you know, and also I suppose it's more expensive in a way to live in this country, so how much matters some.
 
Q: You're batting pretty well though.

RD: Oh, very good. My little company's as good as any of the other companies as far as doing -- we've done well, especially doing something under $10 million. Somebody said that there's a list every year of the 10 best movies that never get made, so that happens, so we've done well. It's tough to get these things going. We got things we're trying to get going right now that hopefully, you know.
 
Q: What do you think when you hear people say, "This is one of the best Robert Duvall performances ever; you're going to get another Academy Award for it?"

RD: Well, listen, the Academy Awards can be very political [laughs]. People think of that, you know. When I did The Great Santini, I was sitting in my chair just meeting the producers and they said, "Well, they're talking about Academy Awards..." [And that was ] before we even rehearsed it or anything [laughs]!

Especially in Hollywood, there's a strange preoccupation about [awards] in this country. If those things happen it's a secondary thing; you just try to do a good job. I like this role a lot, maybe it's one of my [best] -- I don't know. I can't [think about that] -- there's a friend of mine coming tonight, I'll see what he thinks. He's known me for years, he loved the script when he read it, so I'll see what he thinks. 

Q: So many people, after doing this for 20 or 30 years... You look at them and say, "God, it's like they forgot how to act or something."

RD: But I have more than that my amigo [laughs].
 
Q: What keeps an actor fresh through the years?

RD: It depends on -- whatever you read is you're going to jump in and do, no matter how long you've been doing it, you still have a certain hunger to do it. You're still a bit hungry. I'm getting offered more parts now than ever. It's as good as ever. I was considered as a late bloomer, but I'm blooming into eternity [laughs].
 
Q: What's the name of your company?

RD: Butchers Runs Films. Down in Virginia the small creeks are called runs. I don't know what that comes from, Bull Run, the Battle of Bull Run. My father grew up on South Run in northern Virginia. They were southerners during the Civil War, tobacco farmers, pro union behind confederate lines, pro union! They named my grandfather Abraham Lincoln Duvall. He was behind enemy lines, but they were Southerners.
 
Q: And they didn't get hung for it?

RD: No, they didn't. They had some dicey times when it came to it with the bayonets and the stuff they had to hold, the babies and stuff.
 
Q: What part of Virginia was this?

RD: In Virginia near Fairfax County. We live now in Fauquier County, my wife and I. My wife loves Virginia. 
 
Q: How did you know that your wife was the one? In the movie, your character talks about when he knew the woman he loved was the one. When did you realize that about love...

RD: You mean in this movie?
 
Q: No, in real life.

RD: I guess after the fourth marriage something better work [laughs]. She's very smart. She did an interesting documentary on Billy Joe Shaver; I put her in the tango movie though she's never acted, but she had a certain kind of middle class street mentality of Buenos Aires.

She went down to take care of her mother, and strapped $15,000 in her purse to go through customs and she knows how to... I put her in the movie -- she said, "If you think that young actress is going to play the part, I'll take it."

Now I know she didn't have to go to Lee Strasberg, because she said to her sister, this cop stopped them through a yellow light like, "Whatever I say, you say, "Si. Si." The guy said, "You were going through a red light." "No, a yellow light." "Si, si, going through a yellow light."

She saw the crucifix, she played on it, "If you're going to give me the ticket, come here. I have my papers here, I'm on my way to the hospital, I'm dying of cancer." Tears. The guy never gave it. So I said, "If you did this, you don't need to go to Lee Strasberg." [Laughs] I put her in the movie; she was terrific. She stole the movie!
 
Q: You met her when you did that movie?

RD: No, I met her before that. I introduced her to the tango. The other night I was with the guy that danced over the closing credits, he's a great tango dancer -- he was in town on his way to France, so we had dinner and everything; he's one of the good guys.

Q: On the subject of great movies that never got made; will The Man Who Killed Don Quixote ever happen?

RD: I hope so. What a script. It's like Shakespeare. I read it and still don't understand all of it. You know, Terry Gilliam has his own thing. I want to do this film, I just hope there aren't too many dwarves running around, you know? But, it's terrific. It's different from the version that failed eight years ago that he had to scrap because the guy got hurt -- the French actor [Jean Rochefort]. This is totally different.

I did a thing with Richard Harris where I played a Cuban barber in Wrestling Ernest Hemingway and he saw it and liked it -- if he hadn't seen that he wouldn't have offered me the part because I worked very hard putting on the accent and everything.
 
Q: Now that he's got you, what's the roadblock?

RD: It's a little more than like this. It will be three times the budget, something like $25 something, $20, $25, yeah [million].

Garspar Noe Shows How He Enters The Void

The week preceding Halloween provides an opportunity to celebrate the genres of the supernatural, fantastical and horror film. The Film Society of Lincoln Center presents its fourth edition of its annual Scary Movies series (through Oct. 31). Clint Eastwood's neo-supernatural Hereafter has just opened and other film centers around town have offered their share of creepy cinematic offerings.

At this time, Gaspar Noe's Enter The Void is still playing in town. Though not strictly a supernatural film, it draws on some of the genre's conventions to offer an surreal, visually odd film with a unique point of view.

Over his relatively short career, Argentinian-born French filmmaker Noe has garnered a disproportionate amount of press for his controversial films. First he made I Stand Alone, then Irréversible. Both provocatively deal with violent men in violent situations; in the first case, incest, and, with the second, brutal rape.

Then he made the mystically-infused Enter The Void featuring the ever-seductive Paz de la Huerta (now starring in Boardwalk Empire). Though it is rife with violent scenes, it is not a violent film like the others. Based on a reading of the Tibetan Book of The Dead, Enter The Void takes the audience through a man's first few minutes after his death. As his spirit, essence, or whatever you want to call it, travels through the city, over rooftop, we see a series of flashbacks until his "soul" reincarnates in the next vessel that will emerge as another life takes shape in a graphic sex scene.


Q: The idea in Buddhism is what is real/what is not real is illusory; that's why the Tibetan Book of the Dead has connected with people tripping on acid. Both the book and acid raise the question what's real and what's not real. Am I really seeing this, am I not really seeing this? Is that also what you were raising was the question of what is reality in a sense?

GN: Ask yourself what is present and real, why your own memories get so blurry when you have a blackout or even why you try to remember what you did two weeks ago.

Q: The Buddhist notion that life is an illusion or that in life the only unchanging thing is change links with the feeling here that life is cheap, and that these Japanese seem to regard these Westerners' lives as cheap.

GN: What happened in the movie would never happen. It could have happened in some other countries but not in Japan, but I needed some dramatic [element] to start the movie. At the end of the movie you don't know if his memories were not an illusion. He comes back to life to understand that the whole mental state that you were going through actually was just a dream. All that in the movie is just an illusion but you can think that even his whole life is an illusion before that.

The truth is that you don't know at the end of the movie. You can't tell anymore what's real. But in the case of his dream at the end of the movie you don't know if he's not going to simply just wake up in a hospital and be sent to prison; you can't tell if he died or not. It's making a dream out of all the elements that he went through. He read The Book of the Dead and promised to never leave her so he decided to reincarnate.

Q: Your other films have equated sex with violence. Though there are elements of that in this film, it also has, at least by the end, the flip side, where sex offers a resurrection, reincarnation or redemption. Is that what you were showing in terms of your own evolution and in the evolution of the film?

GN: There is no reincarnation because at the end he comes back through his mother's belly and we don't know if he's going back into the loop and coming back to life through his mother's belly or if he's just remembering or reconstructing a false memory of the most traumatic moment of his life -- the moment he discovered his life for the first time. I don't know if there is any redemption in heterosexual love here but you see a woman and a man making love.

Q: Are you familiar with Wilhelm Reich -- the radical psychologist who posited that sexuality and sex was the most important release of energy.

GN: He constructed a machine didn't he?

Q: The orgone box [orgone accumulator].

GN: I've read about him but never read his books.

Q: This movie deals more with sex as a positive energy release as well as negative energy release; you're looking at both sides of it here. Was that your message, about the negative and the positive of the energy release of sex?

GN: I don't believe in good and evil, I don't believe in positive and negative energy. There is an energy of life or course that fights for the survival of the species, so whatever keeps you alive is good for the survival of the species. There is a meaningful energy which is the sexual energy.

Q: The most important thing though I think in making this movie work was having Paz, because you had to have somebody with that sexuality and that power to sort of reconnect throughout. Was she the toughest person to get for the film?

GN: No, actually I met her almost one year before I met Nathaniel [Brown, who is the man getting killed] and I really liked her and I wanted to have her in the movie. But I had problems, believe it or not, to find someone to play the brother, because I wanted to have some physical resemblance between the brother and the sister. And also I knew that I wanted to avoid a professional actress because as a concept of the movie I knew that if I had a professional actor he would have a vision.

Q: This movie fits into a canon of films about the experience just before death. There's that movie that was one with Ryan Gosling in it. Marc Forster directed called Stay. Have you seen any of those movies -- were they an inspiration?

GN: Of course there were other movies that had complex special effects, like The Matrix but in many ways this movie is simpler than those others.

Q: I see a science-fictional influence in this film. Will you be moving more towards science-fictional films?

GN: Actually I'm going to go more [towards] erotic movies. I shot a documentary but I guess I'll go to a safer place.

Q: Buddhist thinking also involves that peace, satori or enlightenment, the idea of not killing, not damaging life. Do you see yourself moving more in that direction creatively and conceptually as well?

GN: I know that I wouldn't want to kill an animal. Even when there's a cockroach in the kitchen I don't kill the cockroach.

Q: Did you become more Buddhist-oriented in making this movie?

GN: I'm not Buddhist. I don't believe in religion; I don't even believe in the survival of the mind after death. I believe that there are forces and connections between humans in their lifetimes but I don't think they will ever exist on another dimension.

Actor Elias Koteas Steps into "Let Me In" And other Genre, Arthouse Films

What makes Canadian-born actor Elias Koteas so fascinating, is that he doesn’t like to play it safe. In his latest film the vampiric Let Me In, he plays the policeman who discovers the true nature of the mysterious 12-year-old killer Abby (Chloë Moretz) and pays for it. In the process, he shows a humanity that's needed to charge this dark and chilly film.

This 51-year-old handles gritty roles full of dark and light mixtures from the auto/erotic-obsessed Vaughan in David Cronenberg's Crash to the stalwart Captain James Staros in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line.

Though Koteas first got known by playing Casey Jones in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies he moved onto a number of genre films such as as the horror thriller Skinwalkers (2006), David Fincher's Zodiac, Shooter (both released in 2007), the Denzel Washington starrer Fallen (as the demon-possessed serial killer Edgar Reese) and as the priest-turned-detective Thomas Daggett in The Prophecy -- which also starred Christopher Walken, Viggo Mortensen, Eric Stoltz and Virginia Madsen (with whom he appeared in The Haunting in Connecticut).

But he's done lighter fare as well, appearing in John Hughes' Some Kind of Wonderful and in Disney's golfer bio-pic The Greatest Game Ever Played. He's also done a ton of television series guesting on CSI: NY, The Sopranos and House, in which he plays a man who shoots Dr. Gregory House.
Born in Montreal, Quebec, to his Greek mechanic father and milliner mother,. Koteas is tri-lingual. He left Canada in '81 for New York City's American Academy of Dramatic Arts and later, the Actors' Studio where he studied under Ellen Burstyn and Peter Masterson. While at the AADA, Koteas was in the school's production of The Devils adapted by John Whiting from thecontroversial Aldous Huxley novel, marking a provocative start to his career.

Q: You’ve done such amazing extreme characters that push the envelope or live in an envelope-pushing place, whether it's in a film like Crash or Prisoner. How do you so lose yourself in these characters that sometimes the viewer doesn’t even realize it’s you?

EK: I can’t believe you saw Prisoner. I don’t know what to say other than thank you.

Q: What makes you fascinating as an actor is that you don’t like to play it safe. What's your process of inhabiting these arch characters?

EK: There’s no rhyme or reason; for better or for worse, these jobs, they find me. I like to think that. Sometimes you develop a relationship with them, and sometimes the character pitches a tent outside your front door and doesn’t leave unless you invite him in. It sounds hokey, but I don’t know what to say about it, you know what I mean? You try to give as much of yourself as you can to each role.

Q: Look at the policeman you play in Let Me In. You have to make it appear that an extreme situation is slowly revealed to him, and that he's being blown away. Literally. What did you do to make that work for you?

EK: When I first read [a script] there are odd things that happen. You never really know what it is that’s going to set you off or set you on the track to where you need to go with this thing. For some reason Abraham Lincoln came into my life. I read voraciously about Lincoln; what that has anything to do with the movie I don’t know.

Other than that it allowed me to somehow think about the higher nature in man and somehow the compasionate qualities in people and to see both sides of something and to bear witness. It’s odd to try to make that connection, but my life at the time was going through a lot of changes. Then how do I make it personal? How do I make the part relevant without being obvious?

Somehow he felt like a ghost to me, like somebody who was in a room observing, bearing witness. Then at the same time you spend a lot of time alone. Your life somehow dictates that, and if you’re open and sensitive, one feeds the other. And the atmosphere and arena that director Matt Reeves created sort of allowed you to be open, vulnerable and to explore different ways about playing this guy.

I didn’t really know how; I didn’t have any preconceptions other than I felt it needed to have a sort of compassionate tone. Then with a hope and a prayer, you dive off, and hope for the best. It’s always a crap shoot; you never really know what’s going to happen on that day.

Q: Your role in Let Me In is an important one, if secondary, to the two kids.

EK: I feel so blessed that I’m able to do this. Then you work with these two children, and after all these years of my so-called experience, having been on stage and gone through it, To this day, I still feel like, if I got another job it would feel like I have no experience at all. It’s starting over, and I’m beside myself, hoping that I asked the right questions in order to get the ball rolling.

So the toughest part is getting up in the morning and actually showing up. That’s the scariest part of the film for me. But then you show up and you work with these two children who are so unaffected, so incredibly phenomenal. They’re so pure that it’s just humbling to be in their presence. You have a lot of kids at that age who aren’t able to reflect back what they see, but here are these kids just so soulful.

There’s almost something divine about it that as an actor I look at that and go to myself, "Oh my god! As an actor that what I pray for: to be as affecting and as moving as these kids are capable of being." So in their presence, I don’t know anything about acting.

Q: You're also in a segment of Eric Mendelsson's 3 Backyards which screened at The Hamptons Film Festival last week -- a really wonderful film with three separate stories that are interwoven in one way or another. No one story dominates and nor does any one overwhelm the others, so it’s more about the film as a whole.

EK: It was a great two weeks of guerilla film-making with people who are really passionate about what they do. Ultimately, it’s a crapshoot whether it comes together in a meaningful, affecting way, but the journey of making [a film like that] that and being entrusted in that [performance] was what I remember. There was a lot of kindness on that set.

It’s a small film [which won an award at Sundance where it debuted] and got a little bit of [exposure] in New York [at the New Directors/New Films] in the spring. I’m very proud of it. I’ll be curious to see what your thoughts are [about it]. I haven’t seen the [completed] picture but I’ve heard that it’s kind of like an everyman [story], and if I can tap into that, that’s the toughest part, in relation to what you just said, where you could just be almost everyman in a situation.

Now It’s just doing the festival thing and I think this spring it might play some more dates in New York.

Q: Sometimes, you have this slightly deranged streak, and yet at the same time, a sympathetic quality. With Vaughan in Crash, he has to be somehow sympathetic to show how he draws them in to his little cult -- that was one reason that it got you so much attention for that role.

EK: That part to me was a metaphor for love and for making the connection. And it doesn’t make sense, but I saw it from a young boy’s perspective with wonderment. Everything that he did was with a sense of wonderment; I haven’t thought about it in 16 years, but that’s what I recall from it. If you leave yourself open to just making discoveries without any sort of preconception then anything can happen.

Q: You’ve done such a range of films. One of the through lines seems to be that you often understand characters who are either pushed to an edge or stand at an edge. Do you feel that’s true?

EK: You know what, I don’t know, man. It’s really in the eye of the beholder. I’m living my life the best way I know how -- try to be curious about things and open, and work through my own neurosis and fears and hopes. And somehow, for some reason that’s beyond me, they translate that way on screen. So where that comes from I don’t really know. I don’t know what it is. I wish I had a better answer.

Q: In capturing the duality of darkness and light, you're in some ways a successor to what Robert De Niro is able to do.

EK: You flatter me putting me in that company. He’s certainly somebody that I admired during my studies and during my career. In response to that I just feel like I haven’t even started yet, so I feel with your thoughtful words and kind words that maybe in my life I’m opening up that ways that would invite different experiences, different roles.

I don’t even know how to explain it; all I know is that I’ve barely begun. It feels that way. I feel like a late bloomer even though I’ve done 70 movies. I just feel like I’m just getting started. It feels that way. So if you can compare me to an actor like that then you flatter me. I should be so lucky.

Q: Reflecting on your career, which roles were linchpins for you?

EK: You want me to think about the roles that I’ve played and how they’ve had some kind of effect on me?

Q: Your relationship with Atom Egoyan -- being in Exotica as well as other of his films The Adjuster and Ararat, -- has been very important. You had to have extreme talent to be able to play that character in that very tough film. Was that a critical role for you, and maybe a chance to make something of a statement?

EK: A lot of these roles that I feel like I’ve had some sort of impact, or that have had an effect on me, have always been with directors who have the time to somehow get to know me. Any good director’s going to be curious about who it is that’s coming aboard. Because of lack of time a lot of directors hope that you just have the character in your pocket and you just show up and do it. and controversial production. Egoyan is very intuitive and he was very inclusive about getting to know you and hanging out.

That breeds an environment that allows you to be open and to sort of explore and to trust. David Cronenberg just left me alone. I kind of somehow knew the role for some reason, and it was just all about finding your light. The whole experience with Crash was I felt like I was in a state of grace. I felt that we were making discoveries as the camera was rolling, and that was very exhilarating.

The Thin Red Line was an experience where, again, the director would get to know you and push you in a way that it’s a tough act to follow. Most directors don’t know -- they don’t really know what questions to ask and how to inspire you. I feel like I’m at my best when there’s a relationship with a director, and you feel safe and that you can fall on your face and make mistakes. I could go on.

Q: Your ability to give yourself to each of those situations allows you to go from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to Shutter Island. You’ve worked with directors like David Fincher and Martin Scorsese who are known for a degree of meticulousness. What do you think they find in you that works with this meticulousness?

EK: With David Fincher first of all, it’s just a blessing that he would see me as the color that he would invite along to help him tell the story. That’s just the luck of the draw. You know people, you’ve done enough work, and you know the right people who would get in touch with you and put you in his line of sight.

And so there you are, and you’re scared and nervous and this and that. I consider him like a big pillow. Like if you’re going to be nervous on that day, scared out of your wits, you know you’re going to be there, and you’re going to work through the scene until it happens.

That to me was like a comfort know that you’re not going to move on; you’re going to do it 20, 30, 40 takes, whatever it takes, to make it happen. And he’s such a brilliant filmmaker and storyteller; you could just let it go and just try to do your part and you’ll be taken care of.

With Marty Scorsese, oddly enough I felt like I was home, and I don’t really know how else to describe it. The whole experience of making that film was like going to church almost. It was a very quiet set and then suddenly there you are with all this makeup and everything stops, everything’s in slow motion. There’s Mr. Scorsese and there’s the set and the cinematographer. It’s a little surreal.

You’re plucked out of your own life, and then suddenly you’re thrown into this situation and you’re asked, “Okay, what are you going to do?” I don’t really know how to articulate the adrenaline that is shooting through you at this moment, but somehow you have to remember your whole life has prepared you for this one specific moment, that you are here, you are where you have to be. And Marty Scorsese was just so open to trying a lot of different things, any fear that you have is your own, and he’s there to help you along.

Q: You’ve done two films with David Fincher, so obviously you have some understanding of him. Have you seen his latest?

EK: Social Network? No, I’m going to. It looks pretty interesting.

Q: He’s becoming heralded on a level he didn’t get with Zodiac or even The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. What’s the secret of working with him?

EK: I wish I knew. He is an incredibly bright guy, very visual. He knows what he wants. It’s all about rhythm in the scene...He’s very thoughtful and open, but like any creative person, it doesn’t have to be the most comfortable, and sometimes it’s very frustrating.

It’s a lot of different things, so some days it can be very difficult, and some days he might not even know what he wants. But that’s all part of the process, so you’ve got to be willing to go through it.

At the end of the day what’s up on that screen is what’s important. I’m so happy for him because I remember when Zodiac came out, it [was the] beginning of the year [but despite] glowing reviews somehow at the end of the year it was like, “Zodiac what?” There wasn’t any sort of acknowledgment, and I thought to myself, What’s at work here? But then it goes beyond that. The guy is able to make his films, and he’s able to tell a story, and the fact that he’s as prolific as he is these past few years is awesome. He’s got a lot to say and he’s just getting started, and I look forward to seeing anything that he does. It’s poetry.

Q: You’ve been in films, sometimes in a critical role or as a supporting figure who understands isolation and alienation, and you deal with directors who show the dark side of humanity, like Michael Winterbottom with The Killer Inside Me, or with James Gray, showing that crazy side in Two Lovers. What is it that you get about these characters? Are you slightly crazy?

EK: I don’t really know…It’s all instinctual…it’s really my makeup I guess, and in some way I’m able to find a voice within my own struggles with why I’m here and what my purpose is and what my conflicts are within myself and family and relationships; whatever it is.

I have an idea of what my own personal demons are, and somehow the more aware I am of those maybe perhaps the work will get even more honest -- and perhaps get close to what those children were doing -- at the tender age of 75. Maybe then I’ll be able to figure it out.

Q: When did you decide you wanted to be an actor?

EK: I don’t know. It was like overnight almost. I was watching Rich Man, Poor Man with my mom, and I was deeply affected by that series for some reason. Nick Nolte’s character blew my mind. There was something about his character that somehow, I don’t know, as a 10-year-old, as a 15-year-old, whatever I was at the time, what I saw in it -- the idea of affecting people. Like I sat and watched after his character was killed; I was crying, I was weeping, I was inconsolable. Somehow there was something about that that wanted me to do that and affect people that way, make them see their own mind.

At the time I didn’t know that; at the time I was more like, Let’s pretend. Let’s make you forget about your life. Let’s entertain you for a while. Let’s tell a good story. You want to be affecting, you want to be doing scenes where when somebody’s watching it they’re not just saying, “Oh wow, what a wonderful scene,” and then go off and have a sandwich. In some way you want to open the door to the view in their own hearts, their own life. To touch someone and make them see themselves perhaps.

Q: But you were able to get outside of yourself.

EK: A lot of times I don’t watch anything that I’m in because I’m going to nitpick it to death or I don’t see it behind the eyes or I could have made that choice or they could have done this. So I don’t even bother. And the fact that I’m able to watch – I saw Let Me In three times in one week, and each time I saw it everybody got better and I got worse. It’s tough, man. I mean Ritchie Coster as the teacher, he was lovely. He had a limited amount of time.

Q: Whom would you like to work with again?

EK: Atom Egoyan, obviously, and David Cronenberg, I would be back there. I’d like to say Terrence Malick because of the arena that he creates and the poetry of his films, but for better or for worse I’m always Captain Staros to him, and I don’t know if he’ll ever see me in any other aspect. And that’s not an indictment; it’s just the way it sometimes is.

Q: You can proudly say you’ve been in both a werewolf and a vampire movie. You’ve covered two of the great iconic…

EK: I grew up watching these guys, man. Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, later Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing -- they were my idols as a kid. The outward monster, but then inside there’s this conflict, this battle with one’s good and bad side. Somebody outside looking in, trying to belong, being a freak.

Maybe that has something to do with the kid that was sitting in front of a TV late at night. Maybe I should have been supervised, maybe I shouldn’t have been allowed to watch TV, like endlessly watching horror films. I’m sure that had some sort of weird affect on how I look at the world and how I look at myself in this world.

Q: You've been in ghost stories, played a priest, been in a vampire movie, been in a werewolf film. But I haven’t seen you as a space captain. You’d be the perfect captain of some ship in space dealing with the dark and light sides of encountering aliens.

EK: I don’t mean to be glib but do I have to wear like tight, spandex uniforms? As long as I don’t have to do that then I’ll be okay. I’m taking the question seriously. Hey, you know what, if it’s a good story out there in space. Can you image being out there light years away from earth? Can you imagine what it was like being in that capsule going around and round the moon? You’re just by yourself.

Movie Review: A Trio of Films Offer Inspiration, but Only Two Deliver

By Brad Balfour

Two of last weekend's movies served up satisfying, feel-good fare without the pretense of the weighty message that Eat Pray Love promised but failed to deliver. Despite expectations for this big Hollywood production with megastar Julia Roberts as author Elizabeth Gilbert on her journey of self-enlightenment, the film neither gives much sense of the author's inner odyssey nor elucidates. Mostly we learn that Gilbert was so restless that a cure for her ennui -- sex with a younger man (even one as tousle-haired as James Franco) -- didn't do it for her. 

Viewed through Sex-and-the-City-colored glasses, the film by Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy comes off more as a tony travel brochure for Italy, Indian ashrams and Bali than as a source of transcendent insights. The only real journey provided takes us up Robert's ski slope nose, down mounds of spaghetti and into Javier Bardem's soulful eyes, which has its momentary pleasures, but also risks disappointing fans of Gilbert's book. 

That this antidote to testosterone failed to perform elevated the other pair of films by comparison -- both satisfied for very different reasons.

While Nanny McPhee Returns cannot stir great philosophical expectations, it oddly has something of a subversive nature, one far less contrived and conniving than Eat Pray Love. And when it comes to entertaining, Emma Thompson and her energetic film do that for both kids and adults. As directed by Susanna White -- herself a parent -- Nanny McPhee Returns doesn't look down on kids or parents but reminds us that kids can rise to the occasion, especially when it seems that the adults are overwhelmed and nonplussed.

Summoned through the ether, Nanny McPhee appears to straighten out the little brats and put everything right in the world while taking the piss out of those too full of themselves to see beyond their -- or her hugely bulbous -- nose. She means business, but she's not above having fun. As she explains, "Once they want her but no longer need her," she moves on to bring her message elsewhere.

Even more fulfilling with all its sentimentality snuggly in place is Mao's Last Dancer, a film couched full of larger issues but in the end, a plain and simple tale of redemption and personal growth.

The film has to accomplish a huge amount in scant time: it must create a sense of Mao's China without seeming ideological; it must show the life of Chinese ballet student Li Cunxin (played as an adult by dancer Chi Cao) in an entertaining fashion without becoming overly technical; and when the narrative shifts from China to the US, it has to show with some depth the conundrums Cunxin faces while trying to making it in a drastically different society.

Thanks to the sure hand of Oscar-winning director Bruce Beresford, Mao's Last Dancer succeeds as a cross-cultural drama and finally as an epic of triumph when Cunxin breaks away from both his Chinese and American patrons in Houston. 

Taking into account all that this film has to cover, the moments when it falls back on easy emotion and tearful melodrama are more than acceptable given the complex elements in the true-story narrative. In any case, I'd rather see the interesting faults of an ambitious film rather than the dull perfections of a cookie-cutter toss-off.

The scenes in China were the most compelling, both because they offered a look into a once-closed world and because they presented a sense of what people were like without falling back on cartoonish caricatures seen in other films about the China of this era.

Then there's the essential message of the film -- not that Cunxin found love in America or chose our system over Communist China's (though that was the case), but that he negotiated his psychic survival between being a star and subsuming his ego as part of a troupe. Having had it thrummed into his head that he should have no bourgeois aspirations of fame and money, he struggled with his needs as an individual artist vs. his needs as a member of his beloved Chinese family vs his needs as a grateful guest (and later solo performer) of the Houston Ballet. Finding his way to his ego without losing his sense of balance is his, and the film's, great leap forward.

For viewers pirouetting down to their local theater, all three films hold out messages of inspiration and aspiration, some more cogently than others.

British Auteur Ken Russell Makes Rare Appearance

One of the greatest directors of all time, the 83-year-old Ken Russell, is enjoying a retrospective at the Lincoln Center Film Society, Russellmania, starting this weekend going on through July 5th. This is one filmmaker who pushed the envelope both creatively and professionally -- and in many ways changed both the face of cinema, inspiring many of my generation both aesthetically and personally,

Not only will nearly all of his best films be screened there -- from some of my favorites such as The Devils (1971) and Savage Messiah (1972) -- but some of his most widely acclaimed films such as his Oscar-winning Women in Love (1969) and his extravagant version of The Who's Tommy (1975) will get a proper showing again.

More importantly, the eccentric British filmmaker will also make an extended appearance here, spending six nights providing conversations with the audience about several of his most memorable and provocative films.

Tonight, he discusses his experiences in making The Devils, his torturously graphic telling of an Inquisition-like persecution inspired by Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudon (with Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave). Though he had been in New York not long ago when his production of the play, Mindgame, was seen here, he has not been around the city for such a substantial time to really talk about his work publicly in years.

On Saturday, July 31, Russell will answer questions about his sexually ground-breaking version of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love. The film starred Glenda Jackson, Oliver Reed, and Alan Bates and is unforgettable for its nude wrestling scene, which showed male genitalia.


On Sunday August 1st, The Boy Friend will screen with Russell in attendance. This is one of his many musically-inspired films, this time harkening back to the Jazz Age starring famous model Twiggy and Glenda Jackson.

On Monday Aug. 2nd, the burly director will join the audience in discussing Mahler, one of his several biographical films inspired by the life of a classical composer. Another one of those fascinating cinematic re-imaginings, Lisztomania, will have Russell on hand this coming Wednesday August, 4th.

Finally, on Thursday August 5th, the Film Society will show his incredible visual fantasy version of the Who's landmark rock opera -- to be dissected by director and audience alike.

July
Friday 30
2:00 Women in Love
4:30 The Music Lovers
7:00 The Devils + conversation

Saturday 31
1:00 The Boy Friend
3:45 The Devils
6:00 The Music Lovers
8:15 Women in Love + conversation

August
Sunday 1
1:15 The Devils
3:30 Mahler
6:00 Savage Messiah
8:15 The Boy Friend + conversation

Monday 2
2:30 Savage Messiah
4:30 Valentino
7:00 Mahler + conversation

Tuesday 3
3:30 Lisztomania

Wednesday 4
4:30 The Boy Friend
7:00 Lisztomania + conversation

Thursday 5
2:00 The Boy Friend
4:30 The Devils
7:00 Tommy + conversation

Alice Braga Battles Predators and Repo Men

Interview By Brad Balfour

Maybe it's because of her Brazilian genes that Alice Braga looks good even when sweaty after a jungle trek. Braga has become the go-to girl for sci-fi action thrillers with another one coming out this year not long after Repo Men -- the recently released Predators. This time, as the bust-ass female lead, IDF sniper Isabelle takes charge -- with co-star Adrien Brody -- of a pack of errant mercs, para-military, rebels and hardcore criminals who are forced to band together in order to survive after they are mysteriously chute-dropped into an unknown tropical forest on a distant world.

Chosen because they can kill without conscience, these warriors, some trained, some not, battle a pack of 10-foot-tall Predators who are hunting them as prey. In this vast jungle, these human predators must learn who, or what, they're up against, and test the limits of their abilities, knowledge and wits in a battle of kill or be killed.

Having appeared in several films, most notably as Angélica in 2002's highly acclaimed Cidade de Deus. she landed her first U.S. blockbuster with 2007's I Am Legend. Who else has starred in two apocalyptic films about the world's end within a year -- I Am Legend and Blindness (2008) -- and survived.

Braga has learned to endure all kinds of abuse whether it's rolling around in slimy traps, or having a hand rammed into her gaping wounds. Maybe because she neither has the tough-as-nail glare of Angelina Jolie or the towering power of Uma Thurman, she suggests both intelligence and vulnerability.

Coming from a cinematic family -- her aunt is the great Brazilian actress Sônia Braga -- 27-year-old Alice Braga Moraes got started at eight-years-old being in a yogurt commercial. Besides her native Portuguese, this native of São Paulo, Brazil also speaks English and Spanish, and shows a sort of pluck that propels her career.

Q: You've done a lot of futuristic movies lately; do you have an affinity for them? Do you look for science-fiction scripts or do they happen to find you?

AB: It was a happy coincidence. It was something that my mom always loved, so I grew up watching those types of films, but it wasn’t something that I focused on. These scripts came to me; I read them, had fun with them and liked them. I really had fun because this type of film really opens a door for your imagination. It was a happy coincidence.

Q: Meeting you here, it's hard to believe they cast you as a tough "guy."

AB: Everyone tells me, “You look so much taller in the movies.”

Q: Your character is Israeli military?

AB: She is a sniper. She’s a special force lady.

Q: So are you chasing the predators? [chuckles]

AB: I’m being chased.

Q: When did you finish it?

AB: We wrapped the second week of January [2010].

Q: How was that experience?

AB: It was great, really nice, a lot of running around -- running for my life as fast as I can. A great cast and crew. The photographer, Gyula Pados, was amazing. It looks really nice and the predators are dark, and really, really, scary.

I think the fans are really going to be happy with it, at least I hope so. The director, Nimród Antal, is a fan of the films, so it was like a fan directing us. He was like a kid on set, and having that energy was really special.

Q: Was Predators a tough shoot?

AB: It was a fun shoot. It was hard because of the weather conditions -- really cold and working outdoors. But it was a blast, and I think it’s going to be interesting.

Q: What’s it like acting next to some guy in a suit?

AB: Awesome. Truly, I had so much fun because in I Am Legend they were wearing suits with dots, so it’s like Teletubbies.

I remember I took a picture when I met the guys because one of the guys who played the Predator, Derek Mears -- he also played Jason -- he’s so big, and I was next to him barefoot. He’s great. Having someone that tall, that big, with me -- and I’m like 5’3” -- that kind of vibe was great because it gives you [a sense of] that desperation.

Q: What was it like working with such different people on Predators? It has such an interesting collection of actors, like Topher Grace and Adrien Brody.

AB: It was great because I think they wanted to do something different. Having Adrien as the hero was not the obvious choice, but he did great. I thought it was a great choice just to play around with acting in an action film.

Q: It was R rated; was it ever going to be a PG-13?

AB: I don’t think they could have because there are some [really] dark scenes in it, like any other of this type of film. So I think it’s going to be hard. We never know what’s going to happen or what the studio’s going to do in the editing. But it looks really dark, and I had fun doing it.

Q: Will you get your own action figure for Predators?

AB: I hope so. We did the scanning. I don’t know if it was for action scenes or post-production things, but I really hope I have an action figure. I would love that.

Q: Do you think it one-up the old movies?

AB: I don’t know if it will one-up [the original]. I hope it adds up more than anything else. I don’t know if it ones-up the other ones. I think to become successful as the others I think it needs to add up. You cannot try to make something different because then you lose the fans. The best thing is to make a film for the fans. That’s why we’re making it.

Q: Is there a possibility to get your own franchise out of this Predators movie?

AB: I don’t know. I would love to, but I have no idea. I’m totally open for anything. People ask me, “What type of films do you want to make?” I want to make films. I have a blast when I’m on set. Seriously, I’m a kid, ask anyone that worked with me or saw me on set.

Actually, what [director] Fernando Meirelles used to do with me on Blindness is he would keep me for last so that he could keep me on set. He knew that I wouldn’t leave. So if it comes up, definitely I would love to do more action and more stuff. I’m open for any type of acting.

Q: Have you talked to Fernando recently? Do you have any idea what he’s going to do next? Are you going to work with him again?

AB: I heard that he was going to do something with a Janis Joplin story or something, but I’m not sure. I heard that at a party at midnight in São Paulo, so that’s not a trustful source.

He was doing a really wonderful TV series in Brazil about Shakespeare. He’s been writing, and I think he’s probably in pre-production or something. As I was shooting Predators I was away for the past few months so I’m not sure.

Q: If you could work on any action film franchise or remake, do you have that ideal role in your head where you could be another kick-ass character?

AB: I never thought about it. I’ve always been a small, short girl so I never thought about myself running around and kicking ass and punching and shooting. In Predators, I’m a sniper and truly, my gun was the heaviest gun on set. It’s 14 pounds and everyone is with a knife, a pistol, and I’m with a [huge] rifle.

I totally love the challenge to portray someone like that character. It would be great if something comes up as another action figure. It’s a nice challenge physically and emotionally.

Q: Your career seems to be moving not only in a sci-fi direction but in an action film mold. The world needs a really big Latina action star. They’re looking to cast Wonder Woman right now.

AB: That’s great! But Wonder Woman is not going to be Latin for sure. With my accent?

Q: Linda Carter is half Mexican.

AB: Oh yeah but she didn’t have an accent like I do. That would be great though; Wonder Woman Latina. But I did City of God and Lower City and independent projects, and then I did some dramas. It was nice to face a film like Repo Men that has some drama, is a character that has some hard background stories but at the same time is running and training and firing. It’s cool.

Q: When did you do Repo Men?

AB: Right after, actually. I was shooting Blindness in Toronto and went to LA to audition with Jude [Law, co-star of Repo Men with Forest Whitaker] on a Saturday. Then I went straight back to Toronto to finish Blindness. Then I ended up shooting Repo Men in Toronto again.

My mom always asking me, “When are you going to do a romantic-comedy without monsters?” and I’m like, “Okay, that’s coming one day. Let’s work for it.” But this is a happy coincidence.

Q: Did you think of yourself as a female Terminator?

AB: The way Beth’s going, she probably can be a Terminator because the only thing’s real are the lips.

Q: One of those scenes near the end where he’s taking the parts out of you is really sick but also sexy in its own way. It recalls the movie Crash. In filming that scene, how did you play it so that it was both passionate but kind of sick and crazy at the same time?

AB: When Miguel told me that he wanted to do that scene as a love scene I couldn’t picture it. Once we started doing it I was just trying to figure out how to play it, not to be overly painful or only love and forget the pain. I tried to stay in the middle and to just bring truth.

It’s interesting that both characters are so in love and they’re fighting for their lives, yet they’re so connected at that moment in the film. I think pain and love go together. If you’re in love, you’re going to feel pain and the passion increases the pain.

It’s hard to explain with a logical answer, but mainly I do think that’s what Miguel wanted, and I tried to put my heart into it and just bring it alive. It was fun to do it because it was so free to create anything. We are in sexual positions actually; it’s like we're making love. It was a great idea.

Q: Do you think your character, Beth, in Repo Men was plagued by a love for the surgery? Do you think she was addicted to the surgery or she was just going along trying to fix things?

AB: Miguel [Rosenberg-Sapochnik, the director,] and I spoke a lot about her past, about what she’s been through, what happened in her life, what was her background, why was she in that situation when we first see her in the film, just because I love doing that and Miguel also was really involved in the story.

We wanted to understand what kind of emotional state she would show up in. It’s just life; we created a little background, like some disease, some problem, some lack of health, addictions maybe. As soon as she started getting new ones then it became an addiction I think, because it’s kind of hard to say she had all those problems. It was mainly an addiction, but it’s hard to say that it was only that.

There was a line that ended up not in the film but is really fun. I looked at him and was like, “Did you get upgraded? Come on!” And that kind of line shows that she was always trying to keep up. It’s like us; you guys don’t have tape anymore.

We’re always upgrading, always doing something new. Everyone has the iPhone; in a week everyone’s going to have the iPad. We’re always upgrading all the time, so I feel that’s what Beth did. And it’s nice. If someone’s boring talking to you, just turn it down.

Q: How do you find the right level of empathy for a character that has so much of her body turned over to science and is a drug addict and does all those deals? How far do you go to make that character empathetic, and where do you stop?

AB: Empathetic in what sense?

Q: You want people to feel sorry for her so that you worry about her, but where do you stop? Because you also want her to be tough.

AB: I don’t know if I want people to feel sorry for her. I never felt sorry for her. I always try to not judge the characters that I portray. I try to just understand, and get meaning and belief in the characters. But I always tried to make her as human as possible.

All of us endure pain, sadness, loss. Life is not only happiness. But on the other hand, you can find love or happiness, or you can find anything else, so that’s the change she goes through her life. She’s giving up on herself when he finds her and that’s why I punch him in the face and am like, “Why? Why did you do that? You’re not going to save me right now. You’re going to go away.”

Who knows, maybe 10 guys did with her, or her family did with her, we don’t know. I just tried to create a character that was human more than anything. I think feeling pity is a really strong thing to feel for someone.

Q: Apparently, in the book version, your character had cancer which ravaged most of her body? Her husband at the time had been a doctor, so she got a discount, which is why she got so many body part upgrades -- he was just trying to keep her alive. By that time she was 74% artificial, and he couldn’t be with her anymore.

AB: [Miguel] didn’t say anything. No but I wish he did. The script was so different in a sense, so we tried to build the story and background. There were a lot of different versions of Beth and Remy’s love story in the beginning, and then it changed through the course of the film until we started shooting.

Q: Miguel said your character started out in a different relationship with Remy. What’s your reaction as an actress? You play a part a certain way, and then it’s edited and somehow it works in a completely other way that you hadn’t intended. What did you think when you see that?

AB: My mom’s an editor, so I totally understand editors, which is great -- It helps. I’m kidding. I grew up in this world. My father’s a journalist, but he directed a lot of TV shows in Brazil. I never think too much about what they’re going to do. I always try to grab the script and learn it by heart and focus on that, and whatever they want to do later they can do it. I don’t mind.

I’m passionate for the story and being part of something. That’s the most important thing. Funnily enough, in Repo Men, I prefer what I saw on the screen than what we shot. It works really nice. I don’t know how, because we had such a background in our minds –- me and Jude, Beth and Remy –- all the time that drove us through the journey towards the end of the film, and once we cut the part before they meet, where we meet them in the film, it could have gone wrong.

What is great is that it was done perfectly, and it was even better. I’m glad he took it off because the story is even sharper. I think more important than you as an actor is the storytelling. Of course as an actor you want to show your work, you want to be on screen, but being part of a nice story, it’s really special. So I do think as an actress you need to know how to understand and how to put yourself into it. Everything matters; don’t take anything for granted. Be present in the moment. That’s the best thing to do.

Q: At the end you’re still alive. Is there hope for a sequel that would include you?

AB: Maybe. I'll give you Universal’s number so you can ask them. Then I’ll give you mine, and you call me. I have no idea what they think of it. I don’t think so. I think the story’s done.