WILLEM DAFOE
Abel Ferrara and IFQ Publisher Stuart Alson sat down with Willem Dafoe in Soho to discuss his feelings on acting and his latest film Auto Focus.
IFQ : You just came back from Toronto with (Paul) Schraeder’s film?
WD: Yeah.
IFQ: You look….
WD: No, I’m here.
IFQ: What’s the name of the film?
WD: It’s called Auto Focus.
IFQ: What is it about?
WD: It’s about, um, it … you remember this TV actor Bob Crane? He played on Hogan’s Heroes.
IFQ: Sure.
WD: And this deals with … um …
IFQ: He was murdered, wasn’t he?
WD: Yeah, he was murdered, and basically the story takes him from, like, before Hogan’s Heroes to when HH gets cancelled. And he’s doing films like Dusk and SuperDad for Disney, and he’s doing dinner theatre at the Interlakes, and as his career started to wane his, like, compulsion, his addiction towards picking up women and photographing them, making little porno…
IFQ: Brilliant.
WD: …and one of the reasons he got there was this guy I play. He’s a real-life figure called John Carpenter. Of course, not the director John Carpenter. He worked for Sony and they would … his job was to introduce home video equipment to celebrities to test the market, to see how they would use it. Well, it was a perfect fit because also John Carpenter liked to swing and liked to get out of the house. So it was this totally symbiotic, co-dependent relationship where each of them was a part that allowed them to do something they wouldn’t have done alone. So here, Carpenter was in heaven because he had the celebrity to service that he could put out there to attract the women, and then they’d all get down and he would get the stuff that, you know – the stuff. The leftovers, basically.
IFQ: The scraps?
WD : The scraps.
IFQ: In the valley?
WD: Yes, the valley. And he was totally derogatory, I mean, from my perspective.
IFQ: Is that the guy who killed him?
WD: Well as our story tells it, it points to him, but it’s left ambiguous. You don’t see who killled him, but a huge part of the story covers their relationship. And right before the end of the movie, he is killed. They have a real falling out. And my character, John Carpenter, is really distraught because his whole identity is totally threatened because of this beautiful thing they had created. Crane wants out. He’s decided, you know – he’s not a very self-aware guy – he realizes he can’t get hired because there is too much of a split between his public face and his private behavior, so he is really agonizing over where his career will go. He becomes so obsessed with cataloging and all the shooting that it starts to become even more important than the sex.
IFQ: It reminds me of stories about junkies.
WD : Junkies getting higher off the anticipation of copping than actually shooting the drugs. It’s like that kind of addiction because he is not even, he is not even having sex anymore. It’s about the compulsion.
IFQ : Who plays Crane?
WD: Greg Kinnear.
IFQ: Oh God, (laughter from all) I can imagine.
WD: It’s good, it’s good.
IFQ : A perfect choice and this is all.
WD : He was very good, he was very good.
IFQ: He wanted that role, he called about it, right?
WD: Exactly, he … eeh … well actually he was on the project even before Schraeder.
IFQ: Oh, really?
WD: Yeah, because there was a book being written. There was a book written – I think it was called The Murder of Bob Crane – and the script was made and it was shopped around and somebody got the idea, right away, to talk to Kinnear. And he responded to the material, and then Paul got called.
IFQ: And they show scenes of episodes of Hogan’s Heroes in it with Kinnear.
WD: Yeah, just little bits. It covers quite a bit of time because Hogan’s Heroes was something like ’65 to ’78.
IFQ: That was a great show.
WD: I was a kid, I remember. I saw it.
IFQ: I remember his attitude, right?
WD : Yeah.
IFQ: I mean, it was a total heterosexual deal, right?
WD: Welllllll…. (laughs) There’s a little ambiguity. Because look, you know these scenes were the things that dragged the people out of the movie in the first place. There were these scenes that read like the guys were so intimate with each other and so dependent on each other. These scenes read like they are a married couple and their world is so colored by sexuality. But it is not about them being attracted to each other and it is not homosexual, but the proximity of things makes it at times … dicey. But at times there are a couple of scenes where Crane’s homophobia is expressed, and Carpenter’s lack of homophobia. Because he was a swinger you know….
IFQ: Was he married?
WD: Carpenter? Yes, but he had sort of an arrangement that was separate from his wife and had kind of a bachelor pad.
IFQ: Did you meet any of the women that were involved with these guys?
WD: Yeah, I met Carpenter’s wife. And I met some people that were good friends with Carpenter, and they made available planners and videotapes and personal materials tapes and…
IFQ: The actual tapes of them rockin’ and rollin’?
WD: Yeah.
IFQ: Wheeeewwww!!!
WD: Well you can go online and one of Bob Crane’s sons has a Web site. It’s a pay site, and you can become a member and you can see his stuff on the internet.
IFQ: That will probably make more money than the movie.
WD: (Laughs)
IFQ: Which company made the film?
WD: It’s … uh … Sony Classics. (laughs)
IFQ: The murder was what, with a gun, with a knife, what?
WD: A bludgeon.
IFQ: A BLUDGEON… oh my god!
WD: Now they think it maybe was a tripod, because it was…
IFQ: A tripod … was he hit with a tripod or tied to it?
WD: No. He was hit with a tripod, he was in bed. And there were some reports that there was semen on the body too.
IFQ: And what semen on the tripod…
WD: You know, the film doesn’t really focus on the murder itself. It focuses much more on the relationship.
IFQ: Yeah, but you know the guy is going to end up dead whether you show it or not.
WD: It’s like Star 80. Some people have said it’s a little reminiscent of Star 80.
IFQ: Well I mean everything back then … remember John Holmes? (Christopher) Walken wrote that whole story.
WD: You know, they are trying to make that. There are a couple of John Holmes scripts out there right now.
IFQ: When he came up with that idea Walken, right…
WD: It’s casting. Type casting.
IFQ: …when Walken came up with that idea, for years any interview I did, anywhere I went, that was the first thing they’d ask me about: John Holmes. So anyway, Walken got into it with Zoe (Tamerlis Lund) writing it. Anyway, after about three years, he had put up all the money. She wrote a great script, then he read and he says, “This has nothing to do with what I want, I don’t want to have anything to do with this script.” Then I find out he didn’t know who John Holmes was. He didn’t know John Holmes, he’d never seen a John Holmes movie, he knew nothing about him. What he wanted had nothing to do with his life or the murders or any of this. All he wanted it to be about was his “gift” and when someone has a great gift, what happens to you. Then he says: “… this guy is more like Caruso hit high c.”
IFQ: (Laughing) Boogie Nights had that tale.
WD: Right, exactly, ’cause the only thing with Holmes, it was like that chick in the Lana Turner movie. John is taking a leak, he stops in a bathroom in a deli, I think somewhere in the valley, and this porno producer is next to him, and he says, we can use a guy like you. He was only eighteen. He came to California with his wife who was a nurse. He had no intentions of getting into porno. But even like Sal Mineo–when I first went out there (LA) always scared me. There is always something about people dying.
IFQ: How did Sal Mineo die?
WD: I think in an alley, I don’t know the particulars. I thought it was… and I remember I knew so little about Bob Crane, and when I heard he was murdered, I thought it was, too, because I didn’t really read into it. It was in around, he was bludgeoned, he was in bed. I think it had something to do with that bomber jacket, too.
IFQ: But it wasn’t funny. It was such a wacky take on being a prisoner of war. I mean for a lot of kids, growing up we had our own version. What other version did we get of the Third Reich? Anyway, so what ‘s the Wooster Group doing? Do you want to make films out of there?
WD: Yeah, we’re starting.
IFQ: What’s coming up the next season?
WD: Aahhh…. You know, there is no season. We balance things between keeping our old repertory going and the magic in showing it next to new work. And also part of our bread and butter is dynamically international touring, so we always have to keep those up our sleeve. So we balance making new work, touring, and we also like to perform here. So we’re always making up a schedule that has a couple of variables in it. But touring we have available to us when a piece is ready, how long it takes to make, because we are somewhat flexible. We have certain obligations because we get grants to develop.
IFQ: Do you have a group now that is on the road? Do you have a group on the road now?
WD: No no, never.
IFQ: You never split up?
WD: No.
IFQ: It’s not the Wooster Dinner Theatre?
WD: No no.
IFQ: So when are you hitting the road again?
WD: We’re doing some American touring coming up. We are going to the Wechsler Center in the lovely Columbus, Ohio, we go to Seattle, then in the Spring we are looking to form in Europe in different cities.
IFQ: And your film thing, do you have anything up your sleeve?
WD: Not right now. I’ve got a couple of films coming up but as far as things I’m looking to, right now I am just reading stuff.
IFQ: Do you write with her (your wife)?
WD: Oh you mean as far as this film project?
IFQ: No, I’m talking about just any project. Do you write at all?
WD: I have, you know … lonely on the set, baby! (laughter) Like right now we are starting a new project and she let me know, she wants me to initiate more and put me into a panic. (laughter) Because she is a real strong director, and as a performer, you know, I like to be, you know … I get my hands dirty, don’t get me wrong, I like somebody to…
IFQ: Direct?
WD: No, no no … I’d like somebody to say what we’re working on, and I’ll apply myself. I mean, even when I read a script I never know what it is about. Why I do it is always kind of instinctive, and it’s just because I got a smell, in the whole, a smell that I like about it. It has something, I can’t quite put my finger on it. And then in the process of making the movie, it is making the personal relationship to it. Making it means something to me, chasing what that thing is that attracted me to it. And sometimes you can even finish a film and you still don’t know what that thing is. I mean much in the same way when you do a lot of conventional interviews and they say, “Tell me about your character,” and I am always “AAAAHHHH!” I prefer you look at the picture and you tell me, baby, because I’m what you’re watching, if you really want to put a button on it, if you want to explain it, account for it. I prefer someone that has more objectivity than I do to say what it is. The idea that someone can identify, someone can give a meaning to what you have done, has always been something that interests me. I don’ t try to be dumb, and I try to know what is going on …
IFQ: … to search for that piece. And then how do you come back, I mean how … when the film ends, it is always a funny thing, it is arbitrary. Now you are there. Is it good for you? Did you find that thing you were…
WD: Well you don’t know because you are just putting stuff out there. You want some sort of engagement, you want some sort of commitment. You know, I believe in the doing, not the showing. I believe in making the gesture without knowing what the gesture is going to be. It’s like reaching in the dark and not knowing exactly where your hand is going to be.
IFQ: As Dylan says, “A song leave my fingers as soon as it leaves my hand.” It’s out there, now it’s out there, now it’s interracting with the audience, and then it goes on. But it’s funny – with a play, you keep performing a play…
WD: … there’s a big difference with a play. How you invest in it is more the journey; what the action is is less. Some of our pieces are meticulously scored out. You are tied to all kinds of video tracks or visual track or some musical thing, you know. The improvisation is in your commitment to it, how you lean on it, where you lean on it, where you back off; the interior rhythms and how – where you are at in doing this thing that you do eventually. I like it a lot. It’s a good thing to practice for life. Think of all the things we do habitually that you can go cold on, it can go dead on you, rather than sitting in it and having that be what it is about. I mean, I am an old hippie. I believe in present-mindedness. I get lots of practice going ahead and going back, but the interesting things happen when you are there to receive them, when you offer yourself up to possibility.