James Ellroy: The Hollywood Interview

Author James Ellroy.


JAMES ELLROY: BARK AT THE MOON
The "Demon Dog of American Fiction" sinks his teeth into RFK, MLK and Vietnam with The Cold Six Thousand
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the May 2001 issue of Venice Magazine.

If there were any justice in this world, and in the world of James Ellroy that's debatable, there would be a picture of the imposing, 6'4" author in Webster's Dictionary under the word "survivor." Regarded by literary scions as not only the reigning king of crime fiction, but also one of the greatest authors of our time, James Ellroy came into the world as Lee Earle Ellroy, born in the city of his literary dreams and nightmares: Los Angeles, during the post-war boom of 1948. Ellroy's father Armand was an accountant, and onetime business manager of Rita Hayworth. Mother Jean was a registered nurse. According to Ellroy, in his memoir My Dark Places, "They stayed together for 15 years. It had to be sex."

After a nasty divorce, Jean was given custody of young Lee, and a tempestuous relationship between the two quickly developed, for Geneva Hilliker Ellroy had two fatal weaknesses: booze and men. Both took their toll on her young son. After initially moving to Santa Monica, Lee suddenly found himself living in the town of El Monte, a less-than-glamorous enclave in the lesser-than-glamorous San Gabriel Valley. In 1958, after spending the weekend with his father in L.A., Lee returned to El Monte, only to learn that his mother had been murdered over the weekend, strangled to death, her body dumped in a field next to Arroyo High School. The murder is still unsolved. It would be the spark that ignited some of the most brilliant American fiction of the latter 20th century.

The next decade and a half was a continuous downward spiral for Ellroy, who nearly succumbed to alcohol and drug addiction while still in his early 20's. After getting sober, Ellroy began reinventing himself, and started writing in an attempt to purge some of the demons that nearly consumed him. While supporting himself as a golf caddy, Ellroy published his first novel, Brown's Requiem, in 1981, followed by Clandestine, the following year, which was a fictionalized account of Jean Ellroy's murder set during the Red Scare of the early 50's. Four more crime novels followed, each more powerful than the other, gaining momentum as Ellroy began to find his literary voice, many of his stories dealing with the brutal slayings of innocent women, and the knights in tarnished armor (usually cops) who sought to avenge them. His work garnered rave reviews and a solid cult following. Stardom was just around the corner.

The Black Dahlia hit bookstores in 1987 and made Ellroy a full-fledged literary star. A fictionalized account of Los Angeles' most notorious unsolved murder (wannabe actress Elizabeth Short's bisected body was found in a vacant lot. She had been slowly tortured to death over a two day period), it deftly blended historical fact with fiction so seamlessly, it was difficult to ascertain where the reality/fantasy line was in the sand, if it was ever there at all. The Black Dahlia was also Ellroy's first chapter in his now-legendary "L.A. Quartet," which includes The Big Nowhere, White Jazz, and the classic L.A. Confidential, which was adapted for the screen into one of the most honored films of 1997.

1995 saw the publication of Ellroy's epic American Tabloid, a down-and-dirty jigsaw puzzle of U.S. history in the early 60's, ending with JFK's assassination. Time Magazine named it "Book of the Year." In 1997 Ellroy published his shattering memoir My Dark Places, in which the author reopened the investigation of his mother's unsolved murder with the help of retired L.A. County Sheriff's detective Bill Stoner. Ellroy has also published Hollywood Nocturnes, a collection of short stories, and Crime Wave, a collection of fiction and non-fiction pieces that he penned for Gentlemen's Quarterly (GQ) Magazine. It was to be the 21st century, however, that would see Ellroy's greatest work, to date, come to pass.

The Cold Six Thousand is the sequel to American Tabloid, following that story's surviving characters, and a few new ones, immediately following JFK's murder, up to Robert Kennedy's assassination in 1968. A labyrinthine, epic, and passionate tale of greed, twisted ideals and the underbelly of the American dream, The Cold Six Thousand deserves to take its place alongside the greatest American novels of our time. Ellroy has outdone himself once again.

James Ellroy, who now lives in Kansas City with his wife, writer and journalist Helen Knode, sat down with Venice Magazine in his favorite L.A. haunt: the original Pacific Dining Car on 6th street downtown. Journey with us now to the dark places, big nowheres, and black dahlias that exist in the world of James Ellroy...

The thing that really struck me with this book, as you did in American Tabloid and many of your previous works, is how you weaved historical fiction with historical fact, and made it seamless.
James Ellroy: The one question I never answer is what's real and what's not in my books. What I give you is the human infrastructure of public events. I make them more real because I give you the hearts and souls of the people who were there, implementing public policy at its very lowest levels. There's no sense of hindsight in these books, and especially in this one, because the human stories I'm telling are so immediate. They're integral to the larger public events, but they are, in most occasions, even more compelling. The idea of a young cop who travels to Dallas on November 22, 1963 to kill a black pimp in order to prove himself in the police hierarchy, and then the shit hits the fan with JFK getting killed. What's important to Wayne Tedrow, Jr. now is getting out of Dallas with some honor still intact. But oops, he starts saying things he shouldn't.

All your books are journeys of self-discovery for your characters. But with this book, this was history that you lived through, as a young man. In the course of writing American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand what did you learn about the United States?
I made a conscious decision after I finished the L.A. Quartet books that I would never again write anything that could be perceived as a crime novel or, God forbid, a mystery. I think these two books, if you have to hyphenate with the word "novel", would be classified as historical novels. I was moving into the years of my cognizance. The four quartet books began in '47, before I was born, and ended in '59, when I was not quite eleven years old. I had a reluctant idea of what the key events would be in both books would be about going in: J. Edgar Hoover's reluctant war against organized crime; John Kennedy's ascent; Bobby Kennedy's rise as crime fighter number one in America; Fidel Castro's takeover of Cuba in 1959 and the mob's being pissed off that they were losing a couple hundred grand a day when Castro nationalized their casinos; the 1960 election; Howard Hughes' colonialist designs on Las Vegas; the crazy Cuban exiles mingling with the CIA and the mob; the Kennedy assassination; J. Edgar Hoover's war on the Civil Rights Movement; the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy; the early days of the Vietnam war and CIA men bringing heroin out there. Just an enormous tapestry of America from 1958-1968. I knew the rudiments of the story. I had a sense of collusion, which is the title of part II of American Tabloid. You had then that last gasp of republic accountability America, this nexus of rogue intelligence agents, crazy Cuban exiles, right wing lunatics of all stripes, the intelligence community and high-ranking law enforcement officials and political operatives all serving a common cause, which was the anti-Communist agenda. They were all in bed with each other incestuously. They had imperialist designs on Central America, Cuba and Vietnam. What I decided I was going to write was the epic history of American bad ju-ju.

That's when it really all started, isn't it, after WW II?
Exactly. I heard a story where Eisenhower, who was traumatized by what he saw during WW II, particularly the death camps, said in his first cabinet meeting "Gentlemen, I will tolerate no foreign wars during my administration." And what he did was let the CIA run amuck in Iran, Guatemala, and all over the globe, because he didn't want another full-scale conflict. As Saul Bellow wrote in The Adventures of Auggie March "Everyone knows there is no fineness or accuracy in suppression. If you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining." That's what these guys ultimately learn (in The Cold Six Thousand).

And we're still recovering from the hangover that this party gave us, aren't we?
Absolutely. The party of drugs and American expansionism, mass skepticism, and bad wars.

Do you think we'll ever recover from JFK's assassination?
I think we already have. I think if we found out today who really pulled the trigger, it would be irrelevant. I think that America was never innocent. This country was founded on slavery, land grabs and the genocide of the indigenous population. This narrative line has been stuck on JFK's death. The truth is, Jack Kennedy accepted favors from organized crime, then sicced his rabid, pit bull kid brother on them. Jack promised the Cuban exiles a second invasion after they were betrayed at the Bay of Pigs, then continued to screw them. Jack Kennedy deported (mob boss) Carlos Marcello. He walked out of El Salvador and Guatemala with cactus thorns in his ass. He fucked up and fucked with some very hot headed Latins that most sophisticated people would know "Don't fuck with these guys." It's a terrible story of hubris and naiveté. I think what Jack Kennedy's death was, was a glorified business dispute killing. I think that by the rules that Jack Kennedy lived by, he got what he deserved.

What about Bobby?
I came to admire him a lot in the course of my research. He was the greatest American crime fighter of the 20th century and Martin Luther King was the greatest man of the American 20th century. He was a marked man from the Montgomery bus boycott on, and I think that sustained physical courage that he was forced to have, messed with him.

How do you get in the mindset to write a period piece?
I isolated myself in the 1960's when I wrote The Cold Six Thousand. I thought about it from a 60's mindset. I immersed myself in it. I sat in a room and thought about it, and savored what I always call "the tremor of intent," which is the title of an Anthony Burgess novel. The tremor of intent is gearing yourself up to write a great novel, a novel of complexity, depth, stylistic ardor, characterization and, dare I say it, profundity. It's going back to when you were a kid and all you wanted was to be a great novelist, because great novels were the only thing that moved you. It's savoring that kid's feeling of "I want to do that, and I want to be the best." You've gotta get there first in isolation, which helps you conceptualize it, plan it, and steer you for the sustained concentration that books like that require. Part of the process for me, aside from the assiduous note taking from research, is the outline. The outline for The Cold Six Thousand was 343 pages, and took me eight months to write. Then you have to pull it off in successive drafts. There has to be perfect order in the words, perfect depth of characterization, perfect setting of every scene. You've got to be able to track all your references, to be able to juggle the 125 characters that the book has. You've got to be able to push everything away so you can shape this thing into a cohesive whole. Even though I'll break to do magazine pieces, like in GQ, it's all about living in that pitch. So present day politics and social conditions are not considerations. It's all about thinking, immersing yourself in the era. It all comes down to this: how well can you lie? How well can you do it? It comes back to that. You have it or you don't.

How did you get the nickname "Mad Dog"?
Well, really it's just "dog," but I guess it's because I've always loved dogs. I have a canine identity thing, and I've always done dog shtick.

Let's talk about your background. My Dark Places is one of the most amazing memoirs I've ever read. Like all your characters, you are a survivor who's lived many lifetimes. In a nutshell, what was it like being Lee Ellroy, long before you were reborn as James Ellroy?
It was fearful. It was anxious. It was debased. It was bufoonish. It was occasionally horrifying. It was degrading. I doubt if I've had five depressed minutes in my life. A lot of anxiety, though. Some anger. I possessed in the early part of my life, a horrible obsessive nature, and I've been able to turn my obsessions into something good, creative and life-affirming and now I'm having a big, fat, fuckin' blast! I'm the happiest person I know.

Any one of the things that happened to you as a young person would have killed most people. What do you think accounts for your resilience?
I saw the enemy, and it was me. It's like that line from the Pogo comic strip: "We have seen the enemy, and it is us." When I cleaned up and was suddenly sober at 29, I didn't have anybody to blame. My parents were dead. I didn't have any brothers or sisters, or any family. I knew that nobody turned me into an alcoholic and a drug addict and a bum and a thief and a lowlife and a full time fantasist. I understood that I had free will in all of this. And I understood at the time that each one of us is fully responsible for his success and happiness and no one else. I cleaned up because I wanted things. I wanted to get laid. I wanted either the woman, or women, plural and I knew I wasn't going to get either in my current, raggedy-ass state. I wanted to write novels. I wanted to live a decent life.

Tell us about when the fascination with writing started.
I always wanted to be a novelist, I think even preceding my mother's death. I read kid books up until her death, boy's adventure books. Then after my mother's death, I started reading kid's mystery stories, then adult mystery stories, then true crime books, then the entire crime fiction genre: Raymond Chandler, Joseph Wambaugh...good and bad crime writers across the board. I loved Mickey Spillane when I read him as a kid, because he's a big anti-Communist, as I was then. The Fugitive TV series made a huge impression on me as a kid. I watched the first couple years of that. It debuted at an interesting time: two months before John Kennedy got it. It was great, because wherever David Janssen went, he always hooked up with the best looking woman in town! (laughs) And these actresses...oh God, Diana Muldaur, Anne Francis, June Harding...

I love June Harding. Remember her in The Trouble With Angels. (1966), with Hayley Mills?
Are you a June Harding fan? That's great, because she's a friend of mine. I wrote a piece for GQ called "My Life as a Creep," about my teenage years when I was obsessed with June Harding. My buddy Rick Jackson of the LAPD was working as a private eye then, and I was telling him about her, and he found her, living back East. She's an artist now, a great human being. But she was a guest star on "The Fugitive." Let's see, there was also Patricia Crowley, Madeline Rue, Lois Nettleton...all these good-looking, classy, smart women and great actresses. I felt like the Fugitive as a kid, like I was on the run. So here I could fantasize being on the run, getting all the babes! (laughs)

Your first novel, Brown's Requiem, was written in 1980, when you were still working as a golf caddy.
At the Bel-Air Country Club. I was living in Venice, on Ocean Front Walk, near the Victory Coffee Shop. I didn't have a car, and would take the bus out to Bel-Air, write on a bench outside the caddyshack, caddy, make just enough money to pay my rent and eat off of, a little for bus fare. I'd write on my days off. I'd write at night, late afternoons. I wrote the book in 10 1/2 months.

The book that really put you on the map was The Black Dahlia.
I'd been obsessed with that case since 1959 when I read about it in Jack Webb's book The Badge, which my dad bought me for my eleventh birthday in March, 1959. In the wake of my mother's death, I found it shocking, revelatory. I didn't understand at the time, of course that (murder victim) Elizabeth Short was the stand-in for my mother. I had nightmares about Elizabeth Short, became obsessed with her. I used to ride my bicycle down to 39th and Norton where her body was found. I later read John Gregory Dunne's wonderful and fanciful novel True Confessions in 1977, which is also based on the Dahlia case. When I started to write two years later, I thought that I couldn't write about the Black Dahlia case because he already had...years later in 1985, I was finally, tenuously, self-supporting as a writer. I had moved East. I ordered up the LA Times, January-May 1947 on microfilm. I went to the big New York library on 42nd street and 5th avenue. I got myself $400 in quarters, which is a shitload of quarters, and copied it off of microfilm. So I had complete chronologies of the LAPD investigation. I had known the essential story for many years, the details. I savored the tremor of intent very large on that book. I was living by myself in a basement apartment in Eastchester, New York. I put the story together largely through finding a methodology and a psychology that was so horrible, so baroque, that it would credibly explain the horrible crime itself. So, hence the story of Georgie Tilden and the Sprague family. I realized after I'd finished it that I didn't want to write contemporary-set books, that I didn't want to continue the Lloyd Hopkins series. I wanted to write a quartet of books about L.A., my smogbound fatherland, between the years '47-'59...I even remember staring at my desk, thinking that the third book would be called L.A. Confidential, that it would be huge, that it would feature a hellish robbery, people gunned down in a meat locker, and scandal rag journalism. It all evolved in a fever pitch between the years '85 and '91--I wrote the four books in six years.

The film of L.A. Confidential became an almost instant classic and was adapted from your book which was thought by most to be unfilmable because it was so complex.
I thought L.A. Confidential was a wonderful film, and a very deft adaptation, particularly considering that it only encompasses 15-20% of the overall story. It was amazing and dislocating to see these deft actors portraying Bud White, Ed Exley, Jack Vincennes, Sid Hudgens, Lynn Bracken and Dudley Smith. It was strange to see these actors, because I never think of actors when I'm writing, who weren't these characters as I'd pictured them, speaking some of my words reinterpreted was startling. The music was wonderful. Curtis Hanson would be the first to admit that a few of the scenes are underdressed due to budgetary constraints. To see it fly along of its own momentum, it's own wit and own dramatic arc was startling because it was a work that could only have originated with me, but in the end, was something entirely different, yet mine. (The film of) L.A. Confidential is the best thing that ever happened to me in my career, that I had nothing to do with. It was a fluke and it's probably never gonna happen again.

Are we going to see more Dick Contino and Danny Getchel stories?
Yeah, I want to do another Dick Contino and a whole bunch of Getchels, with Danny spreading his bad ju-ju. I want to do a piece where he's hanging with Ayn Rand during the Red Scare. I want to do a piece where he's a front man for Ronald Regan during his gubernatorial campaign. I'm actually going to do one where he's hanging out with Curtis Hanson and Sam Fuller during the Watts riots! (laughs)

You dedicated The Cold Six Thousand to former L.A. County Sheriff's homicide detective Bill Stoner.
Bill's my best friend. We remain very, very tight and talk a lot. He's a profound human being and a very old soul, as they say. It wouldn't have worked with anybody else but him. It was a guide shot. It was a great confluence.

Were you able to make peace with your mother after My Dark Places?
We continue. As I say in the book, "Closure is bullshit." I think about her. There's moments when I'm savoring the tremor of intent, and my thoughts keep coming back to her. There's a great photograph of her that I describe in My Dark Places from August of '46. I'm a year and a half away from being born. She wasn't married to my father then. She got married when she was a few months pregnant with me. She's sitting in the backyard at a swimming pool at a party, looks like a Beverly Hills movie biz party. She's sitting there, and she looks so good, and she's smiling and she's delightedly content. And I'm thinking (whispers) "What were you thinking? What's going on there?" Why did you settle for so little when you could've had so much? What were the blanks, what were the fill-ins of your horrible story, your horrible childhood in rural Wisconsin? Her dad, my grandfather, drank himself to death at 49. He was a forest ranger and game warden. He'd hire Indians to put out forest fires, then they'd use the money to go out and buy booze, then start more fires so they could get paid to put them out again. It's a classic example of a woman who was molested in the home, was promiscuous at a very early age, back in the day when promiscuity was wild and crazy ju-ju, not like it is today. She got out of that town and never looked back. She was running for the rest of her life. My mother was statuesque, fair, red-haired, hazel eyes. She was a very handsome woman. Always wore her hair in a bun. She exuded allure and mystery and she created a blank space around her and made people come to her. She hid from people. She only told people so much. She didn't let people all the way in. She slummed with cheap men. She listened to the Brahms symphonies and piano concertos on a cheap record player we had at the place in El Monte. She loved reading historical novels and Reader's Digest condensed books. She'd get drunk and her alcoholism escalated during the last couple years of her life, even though I was only 8 or 9 years old I was able to figure that out. She would formalize and overstate her lies. She did not credit me with being a good lie decoder. There's so many mysteries. Who killed her? Why did she suddenly move us from Santa Monica out to El Monte, which my father called, aptly, "Shitsville, USA"? You never knew what she was thinking.

At the end of the book, even though you didn't solve the physical mystery, it felt like you solved an internal one.
I got a handle on my origins. I got a handle on my ancestry. I calculatedly understood, going in, that it's highly unlikely that we were going to find her. I understood, on a semi-conscious level, that the book would not be about a successful homicide investigation, but would be about my journey of discovery with my mother and Bill Stoner's journey of discovery as a homicide detective.

You live in Kansas City now. Any chance you'll ever move back to L.A.?
No. I love Kansas City. It's quiet. It's peaceful. It's homogenous. It's physically very beautiful. It's nicely contained. It's a peaceful zone in the middle of the country. I went there with my wife before we got married to meet her mother, and I fell in love with the place.

What advice would you have for a first-time novelist?
I would say, don't write what you know. I would say write the kind of shit that you like to read. I would say outline assiduously. I would say savor the tremor of intent. I would say think. I would say make the whole process as unintimidating as possible by planning. This will allow you to write a more surely plotted, and more complex book than you might be able to if you just went at it hack and burn and chop.

Read More

Kevin Spacey: The Hollywood Interview

Actor Kevin Spacey.



KEVIN SPACEY:
HOLLYWOOD'S CHAMELEON
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the September 1997 issue of Venice Magazine.

In a relatively short amount of time, Kevin Spacey has moved to the forefront of American actors. A brief list of his credits include starring roles in A Time to Kill, Looking for Richard, Seven, Swimming With Sharks, Outbreak, The Ref, Glengarry Glen Ross, Consenting Adults and The Usual Suspects, for which he won the 1995 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. In addition, The National Board of Review, New York Film Critics, Chicago Film Critics, Seattle Film Festival and the MTV Awards honored him for his role as the crippled and deceitful criminal Verbal Kint in director Bryan Singer's dual Oscar winning thriller.
Kevin Spacey was born July 26, 1959 in South Orange, New Jersey. He grew up in the San Fernando Valley area of California, becoming active in high school dramatics. After doing the round of local comedy clubs following high school graduation and community college, Spacey was accepted to the prestigious Julliard drama school in New York, where he studied for two years. He soon made his stage debut as a messenger in Joseph Papp's 1981 Central Park production of Henry IV, Part I. A year later, he made his Broadway debut as Oswald opposite Liv Ullmann in Ibsen's Ghosts. He was an understudy in Mike Nichols' production of Hurlyburly on Broadway and co-starred opposite Colleen Dewhurst in the Kennedy Center production of Chekov's The Seagull. Other theatrical work includes Barbarians, Right Behind the Flag, Real Dreams, and As It Is In Heaven.
His breakthrough came as Jamie Tyrone in Jonathan Milller's 1986 Broadway and London production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night with Jack Lemmon and Peter Gallagher. He most recently premiered Athol Fugard's Playland at the Manhattan Theater Club, directed by the author.
Television audiences know Kevin as Mel Profitt on the CBS series Wiseguy, and for his performance as Clarence Darrow in the American Playhouse production of Darrow, directed by John Coles.
Kevin also recently made his directorial debut with Albino Alligator, starring Matt Dillon, Gary Sinise and Faye Dunaway in a claustrophobic tale of two bank robbers who hole up in a dingy New Orleans bar.
Upcoming projects include F. Gary Gray's The Negotiator, with Samuel L. Jackson, and then repeating his stage role of Mickey in the film version of David Rabe's Hurlyburly with Sean Penn, Holly Hunter and Robin Wright Penn. He will also play Hickey in the Howard Davies production of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh at the Almeida Theatre in London next Spring.
Kevin just wrapped the film adaptation of the best seller Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, directed by Clint Eastwood, and his upcoming film, the adaptation of James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential, directed by Curtis Hanson. With his masterful performance in Confidential, Spacey has possibly earned himself another Oscar, and at the very least a nomination, for his role as the opportunistic, fame-chasing cop Jack Vincennes. In his relatively short time on American screens, Kevin Spacey has become the sort of actor that most people thought died out with the likes of Henry Fonda, Spencer Tracy and James Stewart: a brilliant character actor who seems to morph and disappear into every role that he plays. A character actor who has also become a movie star.
Kevin, who lives in New York City full time, took some time recently over lunch in L.A. to talk about his past, present and future as an actor, director and Hollywood chameleon.

You seem to be a consummate artist quite naturally. Did you come from an artistic family?
Kevin Spacey: My father was a technical procedure writer, which means that if you were building the F-16, my father would've written the manual to tell you how to do it. Very technical work, work I suspect that was not all that interesting for a man who really fancied himself a creative writer and really wanted to be a novelist and spent most of his private time working on a variety of stories and novels and things I really only discovered after he died. My mother was a private secretary for quite a while. But we moved around a lot and without being a Navy brat, I almost felt like one.

Any siblings?
I have an older brother and sister.

Were you always fascinated with things creative from the time you were a kid?
I think probably my earliest recollections are sneaking downstairs while my parents were asleep and watching the late show, or the late, late show and seeing a lot of great black and white films. So before I ever started going to the movies, my introduction to film were the movies of Tracy and Fonda and Bogart and Stanley Kramer and that kind of style. Then when I actually started going to movie theaters...there was a theater in Thousand Oaks called The Melody, which some told me was just demolished...I remembered being really frightened initially by my early experiences in the theater itself. I remember my mother taking me to some really bizarre films...Peckinpah's Straw Dogs sticks out, and Blade of Grass as two that really disturbed me. Later on in junior high and high school we'd go to the film festival here in Century City and for years and years the Nuart was my home away from home. I'd go there and watch Eraserhead, or Peter Brooks' King Lear. I remember once a friend and I got really angry because the prints at the Nuart were so bad. Scratched and cut and jumping all over the place...We went to the manager's office, knocked on the door, said 'hi,' and very calmly suggested that instead of calling the theater the 'Nuart' they should change the name to 'Oldart.' He told us to get the fuck out (laughs).

Did you start acting in high school?
I sort of fell into it when I was in junior high, although my parents would say I'd been doing it in the living room for years. One of the first things I ever did was a pantomime and just that reaction that I got in my class of twenty people, was a pretty impressive feeling...so I just found myself falling right into it and embracing it in a major way and within a couple years I was directing scenes and acting in plays and writing plays, doing drama festivals. There were these festivals that they used to have at Northridge College where they chose the three best representatives of high school plays throughout southern California, although now I think much of the funding that paid for these sorts of things has been cut...So on a weekend these schools would have workshops, then on a Saturday and Sunday these schools would re-mount their plays. We were fortunate enough to be chosen, doing a production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons. The day before we went on, Chatsworth High School did The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie with Mare Winningham and Val Kilmer in the lead roles! I remember sitting out in the audience and thinking "Who the fuck are these actors?! They're so good!" And at that point I was somewhat frustrated by the opportunities I'd been getting at my school, so I thought I'd really like to go to Chatsworth because those are the sorts of people I'd like to fall in with and I wound up transferring to Chatsworth the following year and we all ended up doing our plays together. Val wound up going to Julliard two years before I did and was enormously encouraging to me that I should audition and come out there if I was really serious about it. I took his advice and did it. So we ended up spending his last two years and my first two years together, then we wound up doing our first play together, playing spear carriers or something in a Joe Papp production of Shakespeare in the Park. It was the greatest way to spend a summer in New York, just the coolest. We'd take a rowboat out to the middle of the lake and have lunch before the show. It was a really priceless experience. Mandy Patinkin and John Goodman were in the show as well. There was actually a whole troupe of us in the chorus who went on to make lives for ourselves. A pretty great summer. 1981.

I heard you did the comedy club circuit for a while. Were you the class clown?
I only did that just at the tail end of high school. I wanted to see what it was like and had really admired comedians, but had no idea what stand-up was like, other than what I'd seen on The Tonight Show. But I was a bit of the kid in the back of the room, making voices, getting other people in trouble, then acting my way out of going to the principal's office, or actually acting my way out of the principal's office that it was all a terrible misunderstanding between me and the math teacher or English teacher. But as an experience, stand-up was a challenge but...when it doesn't go well, it really doesn't go well.

Were you good?
I was good at impressions. That was the thing that I found myself falling into. I was doing Johnny Carson, Jimmy Stewart, and watching in those clubs Robin Williams, Jay Leno, all those guys who've gone on to bigger things. I was such a little punk and I'd get up on amateur night. I was doing other venues as well, like bowling alleys. They'd have talent contests at the Canoga Bowl at midnight, and you slowly realized as you were standing there, hearing nothing but the noise of bowling pins being knocked over, that people who are in bowling alleys at midnight don't watch Johnny Carson (laughs).

You truly had humble beginnings, it sounds like.
That and working at the shoe store to try and get enough gas money to go around to these different clubs...it's just a tough life. Somewhere there is a tape of a pilot of a potential ABC stand-up show where comedians got up one after the other. It was based on a British series that never aired. We did a pilot and I sort of hosted it. I was about 19, I think, but never got a tape of it and never saw it. So maybe if someone out there reading this has a copy, they'll be nice enough to send it to me! Boy, that seems like a long time ago...

Tell me about Julliard.
First of all, New York City hits you like a wave of steel. Julliard was an extraordinarily intense, competitive place. It's an experience I'm enormously grateful for because it taught me so much. Many of the people there I'm still close with and many of my teachers there still work with me. I have this sort of long relationship with the school that's continued. But, I was very anxious to work. And I decided in the middle of my second year that I wasn't sure if I was going to stick out the full four years, and I ultimately chose not to, although I'm convinced that had I chosen to stay, they would've thrown me out the door anyway.

Why is that?
I didn't fit into a certain idea of the program. I was making a lot of choices that were creating some degree of tension. I mean I wasn't being a bastard and I wasn't obstructing anything, I was making choices a bout which classes I'd go to. Instead of going to class sometimes I'd rehearse plays. Whatever it was I felt that I'd gone there to learn, I somehow felt that I had. I felt it was time to move on, even though I had no agent, no money, no prospects and I was now a Julliard drop-out. It didn't take too long to get that job in the park. There have been many times in my life when I've made a decision to leave someplace, even though it's a risk, it just feels right. It's been a real pattern in my life where I'll get to place and just...go! And I enjoy it because it keeps giving me new stuff to live off and new experiences and new people to come in contact with and allows me to keep re-defining myself and my world. The downside is you take a risk and some things suffer when you make choice like that. Some people don't understand those kinds of choices.

You did extensive theater work in the 80's, both on Broadway and regionally. Tell me what the best experience was and the worst experience was.
I think one of the best experiences I remember from regional theater was going to the Williamstown (PA.) Theater Festival one summer and doing this brand new play by Trevor Griffiths called Real Dreams, about the SDS student movement in the U.S. in 1969. The entire cast found this house in Williamstown and lived this sort of commune life together. Trevor came over from England and directed the play. It was the last play I did on the road, after three years of doing various plays all over, before deciding it was time to go back to New York. This was the one that made me feel I was ready to play in the leagues I wanted to play in. I just remember that summer as being a really creative, argumentative, stimulating, time. Even the play was stimulating. In Williamstown there's American flags on every other porch and many people there perceived it as being an anti-American play, which of course it wasn't. So it became the best of thinking man's theater. There were huge arguments between people in the lobby during intermission...and you just sort of went 'Wow! This is fucking intense!" It was a wonderful experience. A great group of people. And Trevor was very into Tai-Chi. And Trevor would start every morning by doing Tai-Chi with all 16 actors on the front lawn of the house we were living in. Everyone thought we were just nuts! Just bananas. Next to Barrie Keefe, Trevor is one of the most extraordinary writers. The worst...was when I was understudying an actor in a play at the Kennedy Center and just hating it. Never got to go on. Was grateful to have the work, but it was frustrating and I was just thinking "What the fuck am I doing with my life?!" But, that's all part of the journey, you know? I just remember being very depressed and very lonely, very vulnerable and feeling like I had no future (laughs).

Then Mike Nichols gave you your first big break in New York.
Right. I had actually been back in New York for three months, auditioning non-stop and landed an off-Broadway play that I ultimately didn't stay with. There was something that told me that wasn't the play to come back to New York with. So I asked to be let go of it and within that same two week period, I went in and auditioned for the national tour of The Real Thing, by Tom Stoppard. Nichols was going to take it on the road with Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons. And I'll never forget this. It was at the Plymouth Theater and Mike Nichols came down to the edge of the stage and called me over and said "What's your name again?" I had just gotten done auditioning. "That was very interesting. I'm going to suggest a very odd thing: have you seen a play called Hurlyburly? I've directed that as well and I'd like you to go see that play and next week, I'd like you to audition for that play because I'm in the process of replacing actors, getting understudies, and so on." So I went to the play, which was by David Rabe, and had Bill Hurt, Harvey Keitel, Chris Walken, Judith Ivey and Sigourney Weaver in the cast. I watched the play and I thought, "Who in the hell could he possibly want me to play?" I was considerably younger than anyone else in the play at that time. Then I got this message that they wanted me to audition for Phil, who was being played by Keitel. Now Phil, in the play, is an out of work actor who is kind of like a thug. This guy's got to look like he can beat the shit out of anyone on stage. And at that point I was very sort of tenuous about my ability to be able to do that. But Nichols was insistent and I auditioned and he offered me the opportunity to either do the national tour of The Real Thing, or stay in New York and stand-by or understudy in Hurlyburly. So I decided to stay in New York and I started rehearsing and literally got thrown up on stage one night when someone wasn't available...eventually Ron Silver, who was playing the role of Mickey by this time, left the show to do a miniseries in Canada. And one night Mr. Nichols was at the show, came back stage, and said to me "That was really good. How soon could you learn Mickey?" I said "What?" He said "You were really, really good as Phil, but I think you'd be really good as Mickey." So then I found myself playing Mickey, which I played longer than any other role, and later on I played Eddie (the other male lead)! I mean I became like the pinch hitter! If he could've gotten me to play any of the women, I know he probably would have! I was understudying all the men in the play and, I kid you not, it would happen that I'd show up on a Friday night and play Phil and on a Saturday night play Mickey. It's a dialogue-heavy play. There's a huge party scene that starts off the second act. Very often when there would be a pause, and I wouldn't know if it was me or not who was supposed to be speaking, I'd think "Who am I playing?" I'd have to look at my costume and say "Oh, I'm Phil today! It must be me. Where are we?" But for me, it was the greatest training to get thrown up on a Broadway stage, not having your name out there. It was a great way to come back to New York. And it was after that, just toward the end of the run, that I got a phone call from Mr. Nichols, and he said "What are you doing this summer?" And I said "Let me run through my imaginary calendar of events and see. Oh, I'm free!" "Well, I'm going to do a little film and I thought maybe you should come and read for it." "Well what is it?" "Well I'm just doing this little movie with Meryl and Jack." And I'm thinking, he doesn't mean that Meryl and that Jack, does he? And so he cast me and I played this mugger on a subway. On my first day of shooting my first film, it was on my birthday and I was absolutely terrified. It was shot on the subway at 42nd street. It sweltering hot and I had to wink at Meryl Streep and I couldn't do it! Mike was like "Just calm down. Just relax." We had a great experience. He's a real force in my life and a real mentor and we became friends and I hope to work with him again some day. He's a truly extraordinary man.

He's one of my favorite directors, also. In school, I took a class where we intensively studied Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Do you know the story about Virginia Woolf? Mike was doing one of the first early screenings of the film for friends, and Henry Fonda was there. At the end of the movie, Fonda comes up to him and says "That was the most extraordinary thing I've ever seen. They never give me th ese kinds of parts." Nichols' jaw dropped and he said "Are you kidding? I offered you this part for a year and your agent said you turned it down." And apparently Fonda went directly to a pay phone and called his agents, who were MCA at the time, and fired them right there over the phone! I love that story.

You have a real chameleon quality in your work. There are movies I watch where I completely forget I'm watching Kevin Spacey, whereas with conventional "movie stars," they always seem to be playing themselves continuously.
Well that's the point. You look at guys like Fonda, Stewart and Tracy, they had this incredible range, despite the fact...that Jimmy Stewart was Jimmy Stewart. I always have had the feeling that, probably because this was the way I was raised from my first beginnings as an actor, I'd read a play and say "God this is an incredible play! This part, this character is so amazing! I would love to be that person! This is a person I'm not. I wish I had that degree of courage, that degree of intelligence, I wish I was that complex!" So the idea always form early on was to serve that. That's the job. Take that idea as a sort of vessel, or spy, your job is to get that information across the border. That's why doing L.A. Confidential was, for me, a first step in a direction where I'm going to do many, many different kinds of things.

Let's talk about L.A. Confidential. I think it's some of your best work ever.
Thank you. The thing that attracted me to it was that it was really all about character. These three amazing characters. We didn't want the look of the film, or the costumes or the recreation of the time to be the main focus of the film, which is what a lot of recent films set in the past have really wound up doing. This film was really about these three people. And Jack Vincennes was this guy who was not bad, but kind of shady. And not necessarily involved in something evil, but the stuff is a little dicey. And slowly you start to realize that this guy is not particularly comfortable with where he's at. The great twist is that he actually turns out to have a conscience. But I think that the film is really going to catapault Russell Crowe, Guy Pierce, and Curtis Hanson to the fame that they all deserve. Curtis and I have been trying to do something together for 12 years. He's a tremendously talented guy, a brilliant director and I think L.A. Confidential will prove that to the rest of the world, as well.

Let's talk about The Usual Suspects. Did you guys have any idea that it was going to be the phenomenon that it was?
I guess not. I was a little bit more in the dark maybe than most of the actors, because I didn't go to dailies. (Director) Bryan (Singer) and I decided early on that it would be better for him and for me not to start second-guessing what was coming across because there were too many levels of subtlety and if I started going to dailies and thinking "Oh, that didn't work" I might start pushing it in another way...and skewer the organic nature of how we were going. That was the first time I stopped going to dailies and other than my own film (Albino Alligator) I haven't gone since. I think it's dangerous because you wind up falling in love with moments that might wind up not being in the movie, and who wants to go through that frustration. So I was really protected by that process and put myself completely in Bryan's hands...I was at a place where I'd played a series of slightly more bombastic characters. And I felt that I needed, as an actor, to play something quieter. Because when they first approached me with the script, they didn't tell me what part they wanted me to do, although they'd written Verbal with me in mind, because they knew that I don't like to know that going in. I just want to focus on the story. Then if there's one particular character that I respond to, I'll let them know that and make the embarrassing mistake of choosing the character that, they tell me, Tom Hanks is playing (laughs). But no, there was no way to know. I was confused by it, but I thought it was the most brilliant screenplay. Then when I went and saw it...I was absolutely dazzled. And to give you an idea that none of us really knew what we had, Gabriel Byrne came to that screening convinced he was Kyser Söse! (laughs) I remember at the end of the screening seeing Gabriel and Bryan over in a corner having this heated argument! To me, that was what was going to make it a lasting film. It doesn't hand you anything on a silver platter. It makes you work. I feel that way about L.A. Confidential, too. So, I want to do another film with Bryan...if we can find something that really motivates both of us. He is, without question, someone who's going to be around at the top of his profession for a very long time.

Tell me about Swimming With Sharks. A lot of people view that as a training film that should be watched by all college grads heading for Hollywood.
I read that script when I was in London, working on Looking for Richard. I fell off the bed in my hotel room, while I was reading it. It was so brilliant. It's really an examination of ambition in our society. The most memorable screening I went to of that was when I took it to Washington D.C. and showed it to the White House staff, congressional aides, and senator's assistants. And there was this massive pouring of people coming at me after that screening saying "You don't understand, I work for Senator So-and-So and this is my fucking life!" (laughs) And several high-level people said to me that after seeing it they'd never treat their assistants the same again. So I'm glad we had a global effect with it (laughs). I'm very proud of that film, not only because it's so potent, but because we made it for $950,000 in 18 days, and it doesn't necessarily look that way. So, it can be done.

How was it working on Glengarry Glen Ross with all those powerhouse actors?
It was really because of Al Pacino that I got that part. He'd seen me in this play in New York...We treated the rehearsal process very much like a play. We rehearsed for three weeks...and it was funny how we all started to take on the characteristics of our parts during the filming. I was thinking that I had no right to be there, that I was a stooge, that I was going to be found out at any moment, definitely going to be fired because, you know, there were all these fuckin' guys--Pacino, Ed Harris, Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin--and I'm the guy they all hate! And let me tell you, it's really convincing when actors of that caliber call you a "pussy." (laughs) I was so depressed! It's such a great piece and a great story. But sometimes when you're doing a really int ense piece, it helps to have some levity on the set, so we were all playing jokes on each other. The one that was played on me, I don't know if you remember the scene where I storm out of my office and yell at Arkin to go to lunch? It was finally time for my close-up. And little did I know that Pacino had arranged for everyone in the cast and crew to, once I had gone back in my office and shut the door, leave the set! And only the camera was there rolling alone. So I storm out of the door yelling "Will you go...to..." to just total emptiness! And I yelled "You assholes!" And there was laughter just echoing from everywhere and everyone!

Walk me through Oscar night through the eyes of a nominee and then a winner.
You go through a lot of emotions. I went through a lot having to do with my family and the fact that my father had passed away very recently, before that night. My mother was able to be there with me, because without them, without my mother in particular, I don't think I would've amounted to much. There's so many things you go through because you grow up watching the Oscars, so you have a perception about it, then suddenly you find yourself on the other side of it. I remember when I did my very first talk show, and it was Johnny Carson and I did it with Johnny. And I used to go to The Tonight Show almost every night, five nights a week when I could get tickets. And watching him live every night. And then years later when I was promoting a TV movie I was doing, he had me on and then suddenly there I was, feeling...reversed! I was always used to looking at Johnny on the right, then suddenly here I was looking at him on the left! And there was this audience and these lights and much smaller than I thought. So it was a little like that, driving in a limo on the way to the ceremony, watching the pre-Oscar show on a TV in the limo and I remember saying to my mom "We used to watch this at home!"

It's a little like being Alice on the other side of the looking glass?
Completely. And just not wanting to fall down the hole! So the evening is just sort of fraught with memories and it's history, so you think "What am I doing here?!" And like on the set of Glengarry, "When are they going to discover I'm a complete fraud and escort me out of here?!" (laughs) I hadn't started to think about what I would say until the night before. I had been working on Albino every day and the night before I came up with something...then when you actually hear your name called the next night, your mind just goes completely blank. You have no memory of what you say, at all. It's a very emotional moment. Then you go out and face a phalanx of photographers and reporters and then I went right back to work the next day. I was back on the dubbing stage at 9:30 a.m. with Per Hallberg, who'd also won that night for sound design with Braveheart. We brought our Oscars, set them on the console, intimidated the mixers and said "Let's get to work." And we worked a long day that day. And that was the best way to do it.

Tell me a little about working with Mr. Eastwood.
(Imitating him) Mr. Zen Director? He is very careful about not over-intellectualizing. So there's not very much conversation about the work. There's a great deal of conversation about other things. He makes you feel like you know more about the part than he does. Any idea or feeling you have about the part, he's open to. I think he's smart enough to always leave himself room to get out if the idea doesn't work. It's the most relaxed, fast, easygoing set I've ever been on. Nobody's yelling "Quiet!" "Action!" "Cut!" "Shut up!" He doesn't say "Action!" He doesn't say "Cut!" He says "Stop" sometimes, which cracks me up. You very often don't know if you're rolling or not, which is very interesting. I think his way of making a film is very collaborative in an unannounced way. He makes every department be responsible for itself, including the actors. He fills you with confidence. He only does a few takes usually, so you'd better be ready, and that's in every department.

Albino Alligator was your first directorial effort. What's your advice for first-time directors?
There is no job and there is no book and there is nobody who can prepare you for what it will be like, I suspect because every experience is different. I was fortunate to have worked with enough directors, some of them first-timers, where I was able to observe. We have this unusual job, as actors, where we get to watch other people do what we do. And that includes if you have aspirations to direct, you get to watch directors. So I watched on a lot of film sets and took notes and observed...made notes about the kind of environment I wanted, how I wanted to treat people, how I wanted people to treat each other and the work. And I also had the opportunity to call directors that I admired who would actually take my phone calls. Sidney Lumet was one of the first calls I made. I thought "Well, here's a man whose first film took place in one room, 12 Angry Men." And we talked about differen
t ways to establish claustrophobia cinematically. He was a huge help. Gave me lots of great pointers. I wanted to start my first experience as a director on something that was small and action-driven. I had a wonderful time and was blessed with a great cast and crew. It did very well overseas, much better than it did here.

What I really liked about it was that you shot it in a very straightforward way, without pumping it up with fancy shots. I have to say I'm getting burned out on the whole MTV style of filmmaking.
I feel the same way with a lot of the films I see. I went into Albino knowing on a certain level that a lot of people might go see it because I directed it. But at a certain point, I wanted the audience to forget who directed and wanted my hands to just sort of lay off. Often I go to a film and can feel a director's hands all over it, and maybe not trusting the story or the actors. I just wanted to see as an experiment for myself if I could lay back. I'm pretty pleased because I feel that I kind of disappeared a little bit with that film.

Read More