Neal McDonough: The Hollywood Interview

Actor Neal McDonough


NEAL MCDONOUGH TAKES OFF THE GLOVES IN TRAITOR
By
Alex Simon

Editor's Note: This article appears in the September issue of Venice Magazine.

Neal McDonough first gained notoriety in Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ epic HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, playing real-life WW II hero Lt. Buck Compton. This came after more than a decade of bit parts, guest spots on television, and paying his dues the way only the tough son of Irish immigrants could. Born February 23, 1966 in Dorchester, MA. Neal was the youngest of six children. After attending Syracuse University, he went onto study at London’s Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.

Following his acclaimed work in Band of Brothers, Neal went on to appear in such films as Spielberg’s Minority Report, Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers, and the acclaimed series Boomtown. More recently, Neal appeared in such diverse fare as The Guardian, I Know Who Killed Me, The Last Time, and Jon Avnet’s 88 Minutes, opposite Al Pacino. Neal also recently appeared in the miniseries Tin Man, as the eponymous leading character.

Possessed of an old-school tough guy steeliness not seen since the likes of Lee Marvin, Steve McQueen or Robert Mitchum, Neal’s talents are put to good use in director Jeffrey Nachmanoff’s Traitor, as a hard-nosed FBI agent who, along with his partner (Guy Pearce), track a suspected terrorist (Don Cheadle)’s entry into the U.S. However, as in all good political thrillers, no person, or event, is quite as it seems. The Overture Films release hits theaters August 27.

We sat down with Neal McDonough at his Hancock Park home recently. In between two lively children and four cats and dogs, a conversation managed to happen. Here’s some of it:

I said to (director) Jeffrey Nachmanoff that Traitor reminded me very much of John Frankenheimer’s political thrillers from the ‘60s and ‘70s. It had that same gritty energy.
Neal McDonough: Yeah, I think Jeffrey’s in the same league. My wife and I used to see Frankenheimer at church and he was somebody I’d always wanted to work with, he was such an icon. Now that he’s gone, there are people like Jeffrey that can take up where he left off. The film is entertainment for thinkers, and there isn’t a lot of that out there right now. Everything is really…

A comic book.
Yeah! Although some of the comic adaptations, like Iron Man, I thought was really terrific. I haven’t seen Batman yet. Once you have kids, you don’t have much free time to watch anything but Teletubbies, which is okay. (laughs) But this is a film I was proud to be a part of. In the last few years I’ve done twelve films, a couple of which were great, a couple weren’t so great, and the rest…I’m very lucky to be a working actor, let’s say that. (laughs)

You’ve been very busy the past few years.
Yeah, I’ve been really fortunate: Flags of Our Fathers, Boomtown, Tin Man, which is probably my favorite role to date. It was fun to play that hardened guy with the heart of gold underneath, but wouldn’t show that heart to very many people. That’s what I am, mostly. My dad came over from Ireland in 1947; my mother came over in ’53. As soon as my dad arrived on American shores, he went straight to the Army office and said “I want to be an American.” So they shipped him all over the world for five years, and he became a sergeant all of which, as he says, is a small price to pay for being an American. So he sunk that into my skull at a very young age: if you do something, do the best you can. If you don’t like something, tell someone you don’t like the way it’s done. That’s really who I am, and when I play these John Wayne, Lee Marvin type characters, that’s who I gravitate towards, like my character Max Archer in Traitor. He can be a good guy or bad guy in the film, but as long as he plays in the gray, not the black & white, that’s who I am.

Lee Marvin was the king. Point Blank is one of the great movies.
Oh man, he was just amazing! That’s a perfect film, just perfect.

Do you think Lee Marvin’s character in that was real, or was he the Angel of Death, as some film scholars and pundits have theorized?
I think he was real. What else could Lee Marvin be, but real?

Let’s go back to Max Archer. How did you avoid making him a cartoon, which would have been very easy to do?
I went into it determined not to make him a cartoon. I played Max as gray as possible. When he’s doing things that might be perceived as being bad, I tried to understand why he was doing it. I tried to portray him as a person who loves what he does, has a very specific way of doing things, while Guy Pearce’s character has another way of doing things.

Ultimately a pragmatist at heart.
Absolutely. He’s going to do what he has to do to get the job done, and if you get in his way, you’re going to get your ass kicked. If I’d had a few more minutes with Don Cheadle’s character in that room alone, I think he would’ve told me everything. (laughs) Someone said to me the other day “How do you feel about being typecast as the tough guy?” I said “What would Lee Marvin or John Wayne have said if you’d asked them the same question?”

McDonough and Guy Pearce in Traitor.

Steve McQueen is the other actor you’ve always reminded me of.
Thanks, man. He was amazing, too, another guy who existed in the gray. I thought about McQueen somewhat with this character I just played in Street Fighter, named Bison, who would have been easy to make into another cartoon bad guy. So I had him speak eight different languages, flying private jets, and everything he did was according to this really crazy code of ethics, but it was his code of ethics. This made him such an incredibly scary character. You look at this guy, and you say “That’s Richard Bramson!” (laughs) He’s this charming guy who’ll smile and charm your pants off, but he’s truly dangerous underneath—not that Richard Bramson is dangerous or evil, but you see what I’m saying. (laughs) You look at the great leaders in the history of the world, and they all exist in that gray area. You have to at that level, and I like playing those characters.

This is the second time you’ve worked with Guy Pearce.
Yeah, and almost identical characters. In Ravenous he was the very thoughtful, careful thinker, and I was the gung-ho guy doing push-ups in the snow. Guy’s great. He’s a very mellow, peaceful guy in person, too.

You paid a lot of dues before you got your first break. Your first paying gig was a single line in Darkman.
“Buncha cuties, huh?” That was my line. At the premiere, in Hyannis where I’m from, my brother Bob at that time had a sign company and had this thing called the ad van that would cruise all over Hyannis. For a week, it had a sign that read “See Darkman, starring Neal McDonough as Dock Worker # 2.” (laughs) We had the premiere and the place was just packed with all my friends. I got killed before (director) Sam Raimi’s name came up in the beginning, and as soon as Raimi’s name came up, we all got up and walked across the street to a pub, and I still haven’t seen the whole film, to this day! (laughs) Someone asked me recently, “How do you enjoy your life now, compared to your salad days?” When I didn’t have anything, and I was working UPS out here, or doing Christmas tree deliveries, I enjoyed the heck out of that, too. As long as you enjoy all the steps, that’s just what life is. I just try to keep it simple as possible.

McDonough in Band of Brothers.

You’re the youngest of six kids, right?
Yeah, and all my siblings are amazing. We have two professors, a stock broker, my brother who had the little sign company now runs the biggest sign company on The Cape, a teacher, and then there’s me, out of the blue, the actor. My mother always said I was the best mistake she ever made, because she had five kids in six years, then four years later I came along. So there was the pod, then there was me. For me, it was more freedom, whereas for the first five it was more like the military: everyone gets in line, everyone eats now, everyone go to bed. My dad, the sergeant, had that down.

When did you know you were an actor?
From the get-go. There was a lot of tension in my family because there was so much going on all the time. I just wanted to make everyone smile, and enjoy. I don’t think that’s changed at all. I’m still the kid who wants to put a smile on people’s faces.

McDonough (center) with Tom Cruise (L) and Colin Farrell (R) in Minority Report.

So you were the kid that was always going for the lead in the school play, or the church play?
Oh yeah, that and sports. I loved baseball. I had to choose between theater or baseball. I got all these scholarship offers from amazing schools to play baseball, but I told my dad “Syracuse has one of the best theater departments. I want to go there.” He just looked at me and said “You’re going to have to work your ass off to pay for it.” Alright. He said “Okay, good. Don’t let yourself down.” And I haven’t. You work hard, great things will happen.

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Into the Belly of the Beast: Antoine Fuqua returns to the (police) force with BROOKLYN'S FINEST

(Director Antoine Fuqua, right, and Richard Gere, during the shooting of Brooklyn's Finest.)

By Terry Keefe

(This article is currently appearing in this month's Venice Magazine.)

Don’t even bother trying to pigeonhole director Antoine Fuqua in one genre, Hollywood. He’s made it impossible.

After the success of Training Day in 2001, the searing L.A. police thriller which won Denzel Washington the Best Actor Oscar for his turn as the corrupt detective Alonzo, Fuqua picked for his next project Tears of the Sun, a run-through-the jungle action story, albeit one with a social message about colonialism, starring Bruce Willis and Monica Bellucci, set in war-torn Nigeria. After that, he was off to Camelot in 2004 for his revisionist take on King Arthur. 2007 saw Fuqua teamed with Mark Wahlberg for Shooter, a modern western of sorts, with Wahlberg playing a retired military sniper who is framed for a crime and subsequently cleans up the “town,” in this case a particularly malignant wing of the military industrial complex. Fuqua has only now returned to the setting of his greatest commercial and critical success, that being the police department, for Brooklyn’s Finest, which follows one tumultuous week in the lives of three separate police officers, played by Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, and Ethan Hawke, in Brooklyn’s 65th District. Gere’s Eddie is a cop who has done little except punch the clock for his twenty years on the job, and finally gets to retire at week’s end, although life will present him with one last crossroads and a chance to use his gun for something positive, or not. Cheadle’s Tango has been deep undercover for way too long and learns that the only way back to his old life is by betraying an old gangster friend played by Wesley Snipes. And Hawke’s Sal is a once-good cop who can’t pay his family’s bills and has taken to robbing drug dealers for their cash.

Fuqua grew up in a tough section of Pittsburgh, before attending West Virginia University on a basketball scholarship, where he majored in electrical engineering. He received his first breaks as a director through a series of music videos, the most prominent of which was Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise.”

[Over lunch, Antoine and I started with some small talk about how so many of the great L.A. institution restaurants have disappeared. Joined in progress.]

I listened to the Training Day director's commentary last night, and you were talking about shooting at the original Pacific Dining Car [for the scene where Denzel Washington’s Alonzo goes to meet with the Three Wise Men] -- so some of the classic places have survived.

Antoine Fuqua: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. No question about it. That place is like my midnight joint. In the middle of the night, man, I'll go down there. One o'clock in the morning-- I'm up writing at night, and I'll just like want a steak or get in the right environment...and it's all sorts of great characters in there.

What sorts of characters are there in the middle of the night?

It's kind of bizarre. There's guys in suits, you know, businessmen in suits, which, you're not quite sure what kind of business they're in. You know what I mean? 'Cause it's not like New York, Wall Street, and it's in the middle of the night, like one in the morning--and then you got like the old, old drunks -- old women, sitting in there eating. You know, like, they look like they've been there since it opened.

They possibly have.

Then you've got the people in the bar that are a little more...mysterious.

The place is the definition of noir.

It's totally noir. That's exactly what it is. And then every once in a while you see some young, really beautiful people coming in. There's always somebody trying not to be seen, like a booth in the back. But, you know, you're walking through the booths, you can't see who's in there.

Which is perfect for your scene with the Three Wise Men, in Training Day. Of course they would meet there.

That's where they'd meet! That's where they'd have to have a place. That's the type of people you'd see in there. Three guys in suits...politicians? Detectives? You know they're not a hundred percent clean, because there's something about 'em that's a little different, maybe it's in their eyes or in their sweat. It's that little film you can see, you know? And you know not to interfere with whatever's going on over there. And they make sure you don't sit too close.

You know, they told me [at first] they wouldn't let me shoot there, either, and I called the owner, making Training Day, and the owner came down, cool guy, and he's like, "No, we'd never do that." And I said, "You gotta do it." I said, "The movie is an L.A. story, and most people don't get a chance to see this -" Really, he was cool. He was like, "Okay, I'm on it." That one stained-glass window? I loved that room. The reason I picked that room, there's a bullet hole right there. [laughs] If you look at the shot, there's a real bullet hole right there. And I was like, “What's the story to that?”

Did they know? Did they tell you?

They kind of said there was a shootout, a long time ago. It's old. A long time ago. And they left it there. And, you know, I remember just looking at that bullet hole, going, you know, "Just that alone is a great detail." For me. Just for me, whether the audience ever pick up on it. These Three Wise Men sitting there with a bullet hole in the stained glass.

(Fuqua, right, directs Ethan Hawke and Denzel Washington in Training Day.)

You like shooting in practical locations, I assume.

I prefer 'em. It's tough on crew, but it just can't be the same essence otherwise, you know, because the actors know it's fake, I know it's fake, somewhere in your mind, it's just fake. And I know it's acting, except when you're in a real environment, [as an actor] you look at the environment, and go, "What is it about this...what is it about me that's fake, because everything else is real." So... "I have to adjust myself to be real for this environment, because if I don't feel that I really fit in, then it's not working." If you put an actor in a real environment, all their choices have to be based on what's real. And, then, as a director, you can't always move that wall and get that fancy shot.

Lighting's more difficult. You're backed in.

But then again, you know, sometimes it makes you just have to deal with some real hard choices. Instead of it being a restriction, it actually becomes more of a creative choice, "What's this scene about?" It's not about the fancy shot on the wall, it's not about the pretty light in the hallways. You know, and if you can get away with that and tell your story, and it actually helps you be more disciplined, then it's better.

In Brooklyn's Finest, that was a real housing project?

[nods] We didn't build anything. Well, we built one thing: Ethan's basement. That was the only thing, because I needed the space, but actually I had to do it for tax reasons. So I built that one set. Everything else was real, all the scenes in the projects were real, every little small project apartment was real.

Were people living there in the project buildings, when you were shooting?

Oh, yes. We paid them to use their apartment. Some apartments I decorated, but I barely decorated. I found so many amazing things, like when Ethan goes in and shoots the two guys and he goes in the back room, it's got weird little waterfalls [in decoration form, on the wall]--

That was a great touch.

Well, I saw it on the wall in another apartment. And it’s [the apartment] chaos, and a big-ass Rottweiler, and a baby's crying, and I walked into this back room, and it's the most serene, blue, weird waterfall, like the only moment of peace. I just thought, "I gotta have that in the movie."

A lot of those visual touches felt very '70s. I grew up around the same time you did, and I just remember some of those types of decorations and their design. You can't find that stuff.

You can't find it, man. I would walk around to the prop department, "I want this--" But there's not a prop house [for those items]. It reminded me of my childhood. I grew up in the projects and stuff, so... Yeah, even the panther on the wall. I saw that somewhere. Because some are stuck in time, you know, places, they don't have money to keep decorating and keeping up with the times, man. They get what they can get. And most of that stuff is from the '70s. Velvet paintings. The painting of the black Jesus, you know.

Were you channeling any '70s cop movies on Brooklyn's Finest? Sidney Lumet?

You know, I was, but it was self-consciously in a weird way. Sidney Lumet and I actually sat down after I did the movie, and he watched the rough cut.

Really?

That was great, man, what an honor. He came in, he sat down, and watched the whole movie, and straight up, man, he turned around, and goes, "I love it." He loved it. And he gave me some advice, he goes, "Fuck exposition! Fuck that! Nobody explains shit!"

Lots of exposition was never his thing.

Yeah, and he's right, but there's a few things in there I had, that an audience may need that [exposition], it's so complicated...but then, you know, I took his advice in some areas, and I was like, "He's right, man," because people are smart. They're gonna get it. You don't need to tell 'em everything. And some of it is better for the imagination. But it was great. And then Scorsese...

Oh, did he watch it also?

Yeah. You know, it's great.

Those are the two guys you would want to give advice on this film.

Those are my gods, and I became good friends with both of them. I've been blessed, because I got to hang out with Scorsese, man, and talk to him, and do the thing for the DGA about Mean Streets. I didn't realize how much I was influenced by Mean Streets, or Q&A, you know, you start watching 'em, going, "Ah, I kind of shot it like that." Weirdly enough, you know, because I had scenes where I would stay wide….I just loved the acting, and I realized I loved Sidney Lumet movies because he would too. It was like stage clips, he would just stay wide, and the actors would just fuckin' fill the frames up with their power. What's weird with Scorsese is that, I love the stories of the Bible. I grew up with pastors in my life, my grandfather was a priest--and I was on the other side. I was always on one foot: half gangster, the other foot: half priest. I always knew right from wrong, which probably saved my life, but I was always one step away from the other side. And then I didn't really realize it until I met with Scorsese, he's like that, too. Scorsese's part gangster, part priest. He's this nice guy, wonderful guy, giving, caring, but he's got this other wildness in him. And I was like, “Wow, no wonder we loved the same movies growing up.” The movies he obviously grew up watching, that I discovered, you know.

The character arc of Richard Gere also has roots in the Western.

That's Shane. He hangs his guns up, and turns his conscience off, and in our case, instead of a little boy who brings him back, you got a girl. And he has to do it, he has to go and pick his gun back up. He didn't even have the guts in the beginning of the movie to kill himself. But he had to go into hell. Into the heart of darkness.

The belly of the beast.

The belly of the beast. That's why I had him go DOWN into the basement [in the conclusion at the housing project]. The reason I had Don Cheadle and Ethan Hawke going UP was because their journey was different, they were spiritual heroes doing the wrong thing. And it was that sort of elevation of these angels who were supposed to go up, and they stopped. Ethan can't even finish his prayer. He's given up on faith. And Cheadle's given up because he took an oath to serve and protect, and now he's gonna go do vengeance.

That's why I started off [the film] sort of in the sky, where in my mind, God and the Devil made a deal. They made a wager: Are there any good men or not? And the camera comes over the graveyard, and it's like, oh, they're all dead. And then you discover [Hawke and Vincent D‘Onofrio, talking in a car], and okay, “Are these good men?” And then it sort of starts to take you into that journey, or that concept, and we watch the pressure of their lives -- economic, psychological, spiritual pressures -- unfold and become more and more taxing, and then what choices do they make? And then that's where I found that, that was the journey for me. So it was almost more of a spiritual movie for me. The [police] stuff is superficial, it was much more internal, for me, and for the actors, because I laid it out for them in a lot of ways. Cheadle’s color was red -- passion, violence. That's why, when he's looking right at the camera in the beginning, it's red on his face, he says, “You gotta get me outta here!” And then Ethan's was green, he was always a tender, green one-- you look at greed, you look at the money, greed, a demon. Once you do that act, taking a human life, the demon has you. How do you redeem a person after taking another human life? And so it kinda has that. And so Richard's color was neutral. That's why, in the beginning, he was a ghost. There weren't even sheets on the bed.

Inaction is his problem.

Exactly. He had to be resurrected. Reborn. And that's why, when he comes up the steps, in the beginning, in the precinct, they don't even acknowledge him. The cops don't, they move aside.

(Richard Gere in Brooklyn's Finest, above.)

Redemption stories have something of an appeal to you I noticed. I watched Shooter last night, and I watched Tears of the Sun, and I've seen Training Day a number of times. There's kind of a theme. Tell me where I'm wrong on this…you have great faith in the individual, but great suspicion of institutions.

A hundred percent right. I think there's always going to be an abuse of power. I think if you ever put your faith in institutions, it's a false god, it's gonna let you down every single time, you know. I mean, we got a wonderful new President, President Barack Obama, it's fantastic, he's the first African-American -- half-African-American, I like to make that clear -- because he is that. But he's the first mixed President, let's just say. But he's still part of the institution.

Yeah. It's like, “Congratulations. Now you've got to be suspect too.”

Exactly. It's like, now you've joined the ranks of the rest of 'em, because you're a part of that institution, no matter what. And there are secrets we don't know about. And there's agendas we don't know about. So, I think, people, innately people are good people, the majority of us, outside of a few fucking freaks out there like murderers -- but 99.9% of the people, I think, want to do the right thing. I think the pressures of life always put something in front of you, and opportunities to do the right thing.

In Tears of the Sun, I kind of went back to my old Westerns, which was like The Wild Bunch. The Command is saying, “Just do what we told you and get out, we don't want any problems, political issues.” You're watching someone being murdered and raped and slaughtered. Do you do what's right, human, you know, the right thing as a human being, the moral thing, or do you listen to command and follow orders? Can you sleep at night knowing women and children were just slaughtered and burned? You do the right thing, though. That's basic Western, typical. And I believe that people in the business of service, you know, police, firemen, military guys, that's a redeeming quality, man. They're out there fighting for the people, you know. That's a good thing. The hardest thing is to be in their shoes. To judge them on some of the choices they've made without understanding the whole picture….

I used to, I grew up hating institutions. Hating the police force, 'cause, you know, the abuse that I watched them, the power they would abuse. And, you know, I'm an adult, with children and everything, I'd rather understand it. I'd rather not have hatred as much as understanding of what caused a cop to shoot a kid forty-something times. What was his history? What was his psychological makeup? Because maybe we should take that as a pattern, and watch other people that have that same pattern. And take their gun away before they kill someone else. Or themselves. And that's the other thing that I found, is that the New York Times had an article that more police officers kill themselves than die in the line of duty. And I had a buddy, I said, “What is that?” He said it's called the Hall of Whispers. The Hall of Whispers, that's what he called it. Because you don't talk about that.

Was he a cop, your friend?

Yeah. Undercover cop. I was surprised. It starts to bring up these psychological issues… My question is, so what do we do? And as a filmmaker, you know, it's like Scorsese said, “We all become smugglers,” you know, we have to smuggle in a social relevance, in the package of entertainment.

If it's entertaining...

People will see it. But then you can't try and teach people, because you lose your audience, because nobody wants you to sit there and preach to 'em, and try to teach 'em. I'm just a director, you know, I'm not a professor or a politician. I'm an entertainer. But I can't help but want to try to find a way to constantly put that in, my message, somewhere.

Did you consciously avoid doing cop stories for a while after Training Day?

Yeah.

You were probably offered every great cop script, although maybe there aren’t that many great cop scripts?

There's not a lot of great cop scripts that I could find my way in. It was just some tough guys being tough guys, guns and shooting the bad guys. It was just, like, bullshit. And then I read this, and, you know, it's hard to say why now, but I know that for me, this was important, because there were three different stories that all felt to me Biblical, and I don't know why. And it may have been just, they're so complex. They touch on so many different things, they touched on what was happening in our country. Ethan Hawke's character is like, “I can't even take care of my family. I can't even move. I have twins, and one of them may die, because I can't get another house. Can't get a loan…” You know, what do you do?

He's a good guy. He's doing the right thing. He's protecting our kids, right? He can't get a loan. You know. And if guys like that start to feel abandoned, they start to feel like everybody else in the world is getting what they want, and getting taken care of. And here he is trying to do the right thing, and be a good guy, and not cheat on his wife, and take care of his family, and do the righteous thing, and he's getting punished for it. A lot of people in this country are feeling that way. Unfortunately, they made bad choices, like the guy that drove his plane into the IRS. That's life's pressure, taking a hold of somebody, and twisting their thinking, and making them do something horrible. And when I read the script, I said, this is kind of speaking to where we are.

It felt very much of the time.

Yeah, and that's why I did the scene with Richard at the end, that last shot. For me, that's why I did that. This country's beat up, right now, black eye, bloody, you know, a mess. Still has some abundance there, you know, I love my country, but we're a little lost, a little confused, and then we finally took a path, and we're walking ahead, and we've got some hope left, but when you stop and look at us, man, we're a little beat up, you know, and that's--

We're walking with a limp.

Yeah. There's some blood in our eye. But, you know, we can move forward. But it's up to us. And that [final] image of Richard Gere, to me, represents this country.

I always say, you look up the Statue of Liberty's gown, she's got some scars, and you know, she's a little beat up, up under there. But she's still standing! She's taken some hits, you know, like a boxer in the ring, her ribs was broken, but we’re still standing, and that's really how I saw this movie. This is an American story about where we are, as a country. And there's still some hope, but we've got to figure it out. We gotta pick our direction, and we gotta move ahead. That's why I had Richard, dazed, the yellow line is faded, the line is not so clear anymore. And he's pacing back and forth, and nobody is really giving him no great thank you. I didn't do the scene where the girl hugged him, [little girl voice] “Oh, thank you! You did a great job!” None of that shit. I just thought, man, I'm gonna stay wide.

You're ready for the big swell of the music at that point, but he's just “there.”

He's just there.

There's dead cops upstairs.

There's dead people everywhere. He just says, “Well, I don't know where I'm gonna go, I don't know what I'm gonna do, I'm not gonna get high anymore, though. I'm gonna move straight ahead.” I’m hoping that that resonates.

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Steve Zahn: The Hollywood Interview

Actor Steve Zahn.


STEVE ZAHN MOVES UP THE LADDER IN MANAGEMENT
By
Alex Simon
Steve Zahn has become one of his generation of actors’ great chameleons. Zahn’s filmography features roles as diverse as goofball stoners, cocky musicians and one very brave fighter pilot struggling for survival in a North Vietnamese prison camp.

It all started November 13, 1967 in Marshall, Minnesota when Zahn was born to a Lutheran minister and his wife. After being bitten by the acting bug in his Minneapolis high school, Zahn spent one abortive semester at local Gustavus-Adolphus College, before crashing the audition of a professional production of Biloxi Blues at the urging of his acting coach. Zahn, a non-pro at the time, was cast in the lead, and as the famous blues song goes, “the train kept-a-rollin’” from there, including graduation from Harvard’s prestigious American Repertory Theater program several years later. After honing his craft on stage in New York, Zahn landed his first film role in Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites, in 1994, and garnered major attention for his turn as the manic guitarist Lenny Haise in Tom Hanks’ writing/directing debut, That Thing You Do! in 1996.

Zahn’s latest turn is in the indie gem Management, playing Mike, a sweet-natured slacker in the small Arizona town of Kingman, who falls hard for an overnight guest named Sue (Jennifer Aniston), at his parents’ motel where he is employed. Reminiscent of some of the 1970s’ best oddball romantic comedies like Harold and Maude, Management is a delightful cinematic road trip that charts the unlikeliest of romances, and how what doesn’t seem to make sense in affairs of the heart is oftentimes a sign that you’ve met your soul mate. Boasting terrific support from Woody Harrelson, Fred Ward and Margo Martindale, the film also marks the directing debut of playwright (and screenwriter) Stephen Belber (Tape). The Samuel Goldwyn Films release goes into limited exhibition starting May 15, with wider distribution to follow over the next month.



Steve Zahn, who resides on a farm outside of Lexington, Kentucky with his family, spoke with The Hollywood Interview during a recent stopover in Los Angeles.

I really loved this movie. It was nice to see a film that wasn’t about things blowing up, for a change.
Steve Zahn: Thanks, man. I really love it, too. It’s so nice to be talking about something that’s so cool and so different. Aside from the fact that it’s great to do press for something you’re proud of, this film is a really terrific throwback in the genre of romantic comedy. It’s…it’s not even a throwback, it really stands on its own. It’s unique.

Yeah, but it also has a really cool, ‘70s vibe.
Yeah, because romantic comedies in the ‘70s had a lot of regular people playing the love interests, you know what I mean? You had guys like Dustin Hoffman…

Yeah, movies like Harold and Maude, which was about oddballs falling in love, which is what this is.
Yeah, and because they’re a bit odd, or even ordinary to some extent, it makes it easier to relate to them, than it is in a kind of formulaic romantic comedy, which can minimize the audience and you get what you pay for, but ultimately, it’s an experience that’s forgettable.

It’s like eating at McDonald’s.
It is, yeah. I’m not going to see movies like that because, well, I’m a guy! (laughs) But I mean, if I was a guy, I’d go see this movie. Wait a minute…I am a guy! (laughs)

The fact that it’s from the guy’s point-of-view also makes it unusual in the "rom com" genre.
Exactly, it’s from the guy’s point-of-view, and a guy that is not like an expert surfer, or whatever…

He’s not Matthew McConaughey.Right. He’s a regular guy who works in a motel and his mom’s terminally ill. He’s trying to make the best of it, getting soup over at the Chinese restaurant and doing yoga…

I didn’t know they had yoga in Kingman. They’ve come a long way since I was there last.
(laughs) It’s so refreshing. When I read it I kept laughing so hard in my kitchen and my wife said “Wow, it’s that good?” And I said “Yeah, it’s really that good.” In the same breath I’d turn the page, and I’d be so floored and moved it and I realized ‘God, I have to be in this. How do I get in this?’ You know when you read something that great that a lot of other people are going to want to play the part and be in it, so I just immediately jumped on it.

L to R: Writer/director Stephen Belber, Jennifer Aniston, and Steve Zahn.

I saw that Jennifer was one of the producers. Was she the one that approached you with the project?
No, it was Wyck Godfrey, the other producer, and Steve Belber was also really instrumental in that. I knew Jennifer and I knew she was cool with it, but not until after. I just kind of went in blind, not caring who else was in it, as long as I was. (laughs) I sort of went in and did the meeting that they always advise you not to do: where you tell them how you’re perfect for the job. (laughs) I tried to be modest, but I just kept on saying ‘I get it, that’s all I can tell you. I get it.’ Steve writes for pauses. I get that. I understood the tempo. I understood the tone, that there was slapstick comedy and kitchen sink drama in the same movie. For some reason it all makes sense because these characters all so believable and so vulnerable and interesting and funny because of that.

Two of my favorite character actors play your parents: Fred Ward and Margo Martindale.Those guys, both of them are…that was just a thrill, for real. Fred is the rock of Gibraltar. You won’t find a more old-school, manly guy. Those are my favorite scenes in the movie, those scenes with Fred.

He’s a real throwback to the Robert Mitchum/Lee Marvin school.
Yeah, totally. Nothing seems to really affect him, but then you see that still waters run deep. And Margo was terrific, but a lot of our scenes wound up getting cut. Steve had a really tough time losing those scenes. I don’t think he realized how well they would come off, and they wound up coming off much more deep and meaningful than he intended them to be. It kind of brought the movie into a different place, and a different tone, so they had to minimize that. Margo is so wonderful even in that little bit, that you get it. You get that relationship between she and her son. It’s like writing a symphony: you can’t just keep it at this ardaggio, you have to bring it up again.

Aniston and Zahn get mellow in Management.

It really seemed like you, Woody, and Jennifer were having a lot of fun.
We did, and it’s not always like that. I’ve had horrible times on movies, and they’re still great, because it’s a great job. But when you can’t wait to go to work the next day because you’re laughing your fuckin’ ass off, and you know what you’re doing is actually challenging and interesting, yet at the same time you know you’re doing it well, there’s nothing like it. And I had the best time with Jennifer. I don’t know what it was. We just work similarly, and she’s such a kind, great actress who comes totally prepared right out of the gate. We rehearsed for a week before we shot, which was essential, and Steve, coming from the theater, really wanted that. I was all for it, and was nervous about it. I was like ‘Let’s practice so when we get to the game I know what the fuckin’ play is, and I can catch the ball.’ I really approach things like that and Jennifer is the same way. By the first day of shooting, we felt really comfortable with each other. That scene where we fight in the basement, that really high-pitched, emotional scene, we rehearsed that two times before we shot it: we read it at the table and then we got it on its feet, and it just worked. I remember we did it and we were all like ‘Let’s just leave this one alone.’ We knew then that it was gonna be good.

Your character is a tricky one in that if he were miscast, or approached from a slightly different angle, he wouldn’t have worked at all, and maybe come off as a bit of a loser.People have brought up the “stalker” thing, which I wasn’t worried about at all. Jennifer played it so well, and it’s really due to her reaction that the idea of him being a stalker isn’t present at all, I don’t think. But what I was worried about was him coming off as a kind of loser, like you say, this kind of sad sack.

You have to believe that Jennifer Aniston is going to fall for this guy, and the only way anyone would buy that is if you found your character’s humanity, which I think you did.
Yeah, and Sue has got her flaws, too. There are so many great scenes with her where Jennifer doesn’t say anything, like when she’s sitting in her room with her computer, and it’s just quiet. She just sits there, not knowing what to do, waiting for her time to leave, and she calls her mom…it was just so vulnerable and yet at the same time, she was able to put this wall up and be this hard woman that she didn’t want anybody to attach themselves to.

Mike (Steve Zahn)'s first clumsy attempt at seducing yuppie Sue (Jennifer Aniston).

Her issues had to do with intimacy, for the most part.And yet at the same time, it was so cute, you know? (laughs) And that’s what Mike loves about her. And he even says in that great line “I think you’re really sweet.” And she’s like “Please…” And he’s like “No, I do. Underneath…” “Underneath what?” “Underneath the part of you that’s not.” And he’s fuckin’ telling the truth! And then he walks away, and that’s what brings her around to him. He’s very honest.

He was probably the first person to really see her in a long time.Yeah, or ever, aside from her mom, or whatever. It’s a very interesting movie and the challenge is to get people into seats so they can see it. How do you market this movie?

Yeah, how do you compete with tentpole, “event” movies like Star Trek, and the like that populate most of the summer?
I don’t worry about that stuff, or the new Tom Hanks movie. Those are completely different movies. And this thing is going to go out and platform itself across the country. It won’t be this big opening. It’ll be in Lexington in probably like, two weeks, and people will be like (Kentucky accent) “I couldn’t find your movie. We all went out but we couldn’t find it and had to watch…some other thing.” (laughs)

Let’s talk about your background a bit. You were born and raised in Marshall, Minnesota.
I was born in Marshall and raised in Mankato. My dad was the chaplain at Mankato State University, and my mom worked in the bookstore. We lived just off-campus. Then we moved to the suburbs of Minneapolis, to New Hope, which is where I went to high school.

Then you went to Harvard for grad school.
Yeah, I went to Gustavus Adolphus College for undergrad, but dropped out. It’s a very strange story. I worked professionally in Minneapolis, but I’d already paid for a semester, so I thought, ‘Okay, I’m gonna stay, and eat at the caf’ and lift weights.’ (laughs) I was stupid. Then I moved home and started working professionally, and auditioned for different grad and training programs, after working with these really amazing professional actors in these plays. They were like “You gotta go train, man. Go East and learn,” which was the best advice I got, ever.

When did you know you were an actor?
I was in high school and I was the guy that always got cast in the school play. Theater is huge in high school in Minnesota and I knew that I was very good at that, and gifted and I was “the guy,” but it still wasn’t something I ever thought of as “a job,” or something that one could do professionally. I was going to be a Marine before I was going to be an actor. I was really serious about joining the Marine Corps. Still all I read about is military history, and all that stuff. It’s not till I got to college and also I went to London for a trip and saw theater there, and realized that this was what I wanted to do.

Was there one epiphanous moment during a particular play that did it for you?
It was all of them: I saw Les Mis, Starlight Express, and everything that was on stage there. I just loved it. I knew what I wanted to do. I was like ‘I have a goal! This is my goal!’ (laughs) I was like Mike, in that sense. I had never thought farther ahead than the next day before that, and I was happy with that and…I’m still like that. (laughs) So I got back to Minnesota and was working in this machine shop, and my mentor, my acting teacher said “Look, they’re doing Biloxi Blues at this professional theater. Just like and say you’re in Equity and audition.” And I was like ‘Uh…okay.’ (laughs) So I went out and lied, and got the part. I told them I wasn’t Equity, and they said “Don’t worry, we’ll make you Equity.” And I got great reviews and was the guy that stuck out, and my co-workers were like “You’re good, man but you still have a ways to go. You need to study and figure things out.” They knew I was just a puppy. “Don’t get too sassy. Go learn.” One of my roommates suggested I go to the A.R.T. program at Harvard, which was basically the old program from Yale, but moved to Harvard. So I auditioned and got in there. It was a two year program, and was fantastic.

Was it an M.F.A. program?
No, it was very strange. We were Harvard students. We got IDs. We went to classes. We went to lectures, whatever we wanted, and yet I was committed to the theater and the institute there. Then at night, I was committed to working with the company. Now, it’s an M.F.A., with Theater Moscow. It didn’t really have its legs yet, because it was brand new, but was the “new Yale” drama program, but it was at Harvard. It was ideal, though because we didn’t have any pressure about getting grades. They were like “No, you’re absolved from getting grades,” and I was like ‘Fuckin’ A!’ (laughs)

The Wonders, from Tom Hanks' That Thing You Do! L to R: Hanks, Jonathan Schaech, Liv Tyler, Ethan Embry, Tom Everett Scott, and Steve Zahn.

You did a lot of stage work in New York, then made your film debut in Reality Bites. But the film I really took notice of you in for the first time was Tom Hanks’ That Thing You Do!That was just on TV last week. That movie’s so timeless. That was really the baptism for me. That was school. Tom really nurtured us in that. He had a tough job, but he really took the time to teach us. He’d say things like “Here’s what you do when you stand up in front of a camera. Don’t stand up too fast because…” and he would explain. And I really learned everything technically about film acting from Tom. Also about showing up for work on time, knowing your shit, setting the tone, all those things you kind of know on some level as a beginner, but it’s so helpful to have someone tell you. When you have someone like Tom Hanks say to you “When you’re a lead in a movie, you set the tone. If you come in late and not knowing what the fuck you’re doing, then that’s how the crew is going to be, that’s how your fellow actors are going to be,” and so on. And he was totally right about that. You do have to be that leader, and set that standard. He was brilliant, man.

So it’s different being directed by a fellow actor, as opposed to someone who’s just a director?Oh yeah, for that very reason. He really understood the process. Any director who’s also acted understands the fact that every person has a different process and has to be approached differently. That doesn’t necessarily make for a better show. Sometimes that director is not good, because they’re just referring to their own experience and not taking your process into account. But that’s what so great about this job: every job is so fuckin’ different from the last. If I go through the last three years and all the things I’ve done, they’re all so different.

Zahn in Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight.

Speaking of different, your character in Out of Sight couldn’t have been more different from the guy in That Thing You Do! What was it like working with Steven Soderbergh and that amazing cast of actors?
Oh man, I loved that. The first time I saw it was at the premiere and I was sitting in front of (Don) Cheadle, and he said “Have you seen this yet, man?” “No.” And he was like “Fuck!” He was so excited that I was about to see it and that we were a part of it. It’s kind of like this movie. It’s such a nice feeling to be in a movie that you know is going to be considered to be very good, that’s going to be somebody’s favorite. Soderbergh just sort of lets you do your own thing. He’s the only director I’ve ever worked with who never really watches the monitor. He just watches the actors. I’m someone who kind of likes a lot of input from the director, but he doesn’t really do that.

Clint Eastwood is renowned for that.
Yeah, I really like that. And I love the fact that he doesn’t yell “Action!” I hate that shit! Soderbergh doesn’t do that, either. I mean, some directors are like (affected voice) “Okay everybody, here we go. Ready? 4, 3…ready to pretend? Remember, you’re not you. You’re someone else. And here we go, and…(yells) EVERYBODY QUIET! EVERYBODY QUIET! WE’RE ABOUT TO DO SOME MAGIC! EVERYBODY WATCH THE MAGIC!” And you’re just like ‘Fuckin’ shut up, man! You’re reminding me…’ “AND—ACTION!!” (laughs) Everybody knows what’s going on. Just turn the fuckin’ camera on. Please! (laughs)

Do you know who the director Sam Fuller was?Yeah, I’ve heard of him.

Instead of saying “Action,” he used to shoot a .45 automatic into the air before each take.
(laughs) That’s awesome! I find a lot of time with new directors, they’re so…let’s say the final word of the scene is “bird,” okay. So you’re saying ‘So that’s why we killed the bird.” “CUT!” (laughs) You just want to say ‘Dude, film is really cheap, just let it go for a while.’ (laughs)

Tell us about being in the universe of Werner Herzog with Rescue Dawn.
Oh, that was totally different from anything I’ve ever experienced. He’s just an artist, pure and simple. There’s no defining him or figuring him out. The minute you think you have him pegged, he’s different the next day. And the trap is to be preoccupied with trying to figure him out. And once you give into that, and just say ‘You know what, that’s just the way he is, and this is going to be kind of chaotic,’ then you’re good. And Christian (Bale) and I understood that right off, and we work really similarly and became really close, which helped make that film a really great, fun experience. I was so into that film. We didn’t get paid a lot. It was a small movie, but I felt very connected to it. It was something I had to be a part of. Werner’s documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, which the film was based on, changed my life. That movie is brilliant. It’s so inspiring. So when I found out he was making a dramatic film of the story, I knew I had to be a part of it, and I’m very lucky that he let me be. I’d never played a real person before. I have a picture of Duane, the real Duane, on my fridge. The minute I wanted to cheat, I would just look at his picture and…there was no cheating. I felt a real responsibility there. Dieter’s wife and kids visited our set in Thailand during the shoot. His wife walked in, looked at us, and just had to leave. It wasn’t a “set,” per se. Werner liked to keep things “If you don’t need to be here, you’re not here.”

Zahn and Christian Bale in Werner Herzog's harrowing Rescue Dawn.

What’s his process like in terms of how he works with actors?
I don’t know. (laughs) Dude, I’m telling you…he loves actors. He admires the process. He’ll lose weight with you and he’ll be the first to dive in the river to show you there’s no rocks and that it’s safe. I like that about him. But there’s another part of him that doesn’t want to feel anything. It changes every day. One day you’ll do something and he’ll just get up, come over and hug you. And it’s kind of weird and out of the blue, and it’s him telling you that it was great. Then the next day, it’s like he doesn’t notice anything. He yells at somebody, and yells at you, and he walks away. And it’s fuckin’ crazy! (laughs) But I loved it, and I love him to death. I really do.

Any final thoughts about Management before we wrap up?
I just hope that it’s a film that people discover and will continue to discover years from now. And if it takes years, that’s okay, too. But I sure would like to be in one finally that people see and does a little bit of business. (laughs) Go see it!


Theatrical trailer for Management.

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