Tod Lippy: You grew up in New York, right?

Tim Robbins: Well, I moved here when I was three years old, from a pretty quiet neighborhood in California. In a lot of ways I think it’s defined who I am, personally and professionally and creatively. I think the wonderful thing about New York that’s unlike any other city in the country as far as I can tell is that it celebrates diversity. It’s a given that different races, different nationalities, different languages are all going to intermingle in this huge, wonderfully complex experiment of democracy. So many cities are segregated, but it isn’t that way here—and it’s always been that way. I’m raising my kids here for that reason. I want them to see and experience this diversity.

I often see you out and around here. Is that ever a problem?

Generally, New Yorkers are pretty cool about that kind of thing. They’ll say that they like your work and that’s it. Also, I think if you keep moving—you don’t linger around—it’s okay. I walk fast, I keep moving. But, unlike L.A., a lot of people are not living here to be in show business, so you don’t get the “hey I’ve got a script” thing. Everyday kind of life is so much more about this kind of conglomeration of ideas and professions and different kinds of personalities. It’s a much more interesting environment.

How has it affected your work?

Well, I think it lends itself to less judgment of people—and the less you judge, the more you’re able to write them honestly and act them honestly. There are deep complexities in human nature, and oftentimes what you hear coming out of people’s mouths is not the obvious, not the stereotypical. People who do write that way probably have blinders on, and live off of prejudices and stereotypes.

From my impressions, you had a very liberal upbringing.

We knew at the time about the civil rights movement, and we were encouraged to ask questions about it. We knew who Martin Luther King was, and we had friends who were different colors. We were basically living in an artistic community—and with creative people, you find a lot less bigotry and racism.

I recall reading something about your mother proudly announcing to you that your sister had been arrested in a Vietnam protest march…

Yeah. That was really very cool the way she presented it. I’ll always remember that. I think that my parents believed from a very early time that that was an immoral war. They were in California when Nixon was senator, and they had a track on him from a very early age—they were at UCLA at the time.

Didn’t you become involved with theater here as a kid?

Yeah, my sisters worked at a place called the Theater for the New City, which started out at Westbeth, then moved to Jane Street, and ended up on the Lower East Side. A very off-off-Broadway, experimental theater. I worked in their street-theater program, mostly. I think the first year I did it I was 12—it was a summer job and I’d act in these little street plays with songs in them about various neighborhoods. Then they’d turn into more political vaudevilles—Watergate-era stuff. It was 1971 to 1977 when I worked there.

Had you decided on an acting career at this point?

I was coming around to it. I wanted to be a director and an actor. I started directing in 1973, at Stuyvesant High School. My second year there I directed my first play; after that I would do one every year. When I got to UCLA I wanted to study directing, not acting—I’m not even sure you could study acting. I think there are some very good acting teachers—I was certainly influenced by Georges Bigot, an actor with Théâtre du Soleil who was doing a workshop in L.A.—but the danger with acting teachers is the frustration factor—why are these people teaching? Because they really want to teach or because they can’t get jobs as actors?
   Basically, the one rule I kind of lived by was that no one knows for sure about anything in acting. I still believe that. It’s a mystery, really. I’m sure there’s validity in all the theories, but it isn’t a fucking religion, and you didn’t have to give up who you were to follow a way or a person, like some kind of cult. Any time I saw that happen I just kind of ran the other way. I remember a fine actor the first year I was at UCLA who I used in a play. He was really funny—instinctually funny, a natural clown onstage—and then he got into a Method class. By the next year he was taking himself so seriously that he’d lost it. That was tragic to see.

Why did you go to UCLA?

Well, I wanted to get away; you know, it’s a good growth thing to get away from home. It’s part of the reason you should go to college, to live by yourself for a while in a safe environment. I chose UCLA because I had family in Los Angeles—a brother and his girlfriend lived there, my grandfather and my grandmother lived there. I didn’t have much money, so I had to find a place that was realistic. I went out there and worked for a year in a warehouse to establish residency so I could afford to go to UCLA. I got in—didn’t get in to the theater department, but I went anyway—and started taking courses.

When did you start up the Actors’ Gang?

At the end of my time there. We did a production of Ubu Roi, and it was quite successful at the school, and I decided to take it out into the real world after I graduated. There was a group of us who were calling ourselves the Actors’ Gang, so that became our first official production. It was pretty successful.

The Actors’ Gang aesthetic, with its emphasis on works in the Brechtian/European surrealist tradition, has been characterized as a “Warner Brothers cartoon come to life.”

We were doing stuff that was so un-Hollywood. It was interesting, too, because most theater in Los Angeles is what actors do to try to get agents, or work; casting directors and agents come to theater there. Our thing was, we’re not doing that; we’re doing theater. And part of the deal with theater is you try to find things that you can travel to different places in, so that you can have the most bizarre experiences on stage. We wanted to create fantastical experiences, not reality-based stuff. We didn’t have any living-room sets, you know? Wherever our imagination would take us was where we would land. Plus, the whole point in playing characters onstage was to try and create someone who was completely unlike yourself, so we’d wear makeup and costumes and wigs—really change our appearance—which also doesn’t help with casting directors.
   But what has happened over time is that casting people and agents have come to realize that there’s a breadth of experience to actors who come out of the Actors’ Gang—a lot of the members have been working in film regularly in the past few years. About five years ago I built a theater as a kind of lasting place for them to work out of. We’d been kind of an itinerant company up until then. We’re almost at 20 years now. We’re going to do a revival of Ubu in 2002.

In the mid-eighties, you wrote a series of plays with Adam Simon for the Gang. Was that your first writing experience?

I started writing in a course at college. It was great, because it would only accept six or seven writers, and they would all get their plays done. So you really saw how it worked. And then after Ubu I wrote a really terrible play, a musical. A total disaster. Then we did a German Expressionist play, Methusalem, or The Eternal Bourgeois, written in 1922 by Yvan Goll. Adam Simon came to that, and we started talking about working together, and then came up with the idea for Slick Slack Griff Graff, our first play. We did three together: that, Carnage and Violence.

Did you feel like it was swimming upstream to do experimental theater in L.A.?

Well, no. I mean, we would get pretty decent audiences. We weren’t trying to fill a huge house, though; we were just doing ninety-nine-seat houses. I mean, sometimes, the places we were at were difficult to get audiences to come to. We did a play off of Skid Row once—the theater stunk so bad, drunken guys pissing…

When did you start getting acting roles?

Well, I graduated in ’81, and, well, let’s put it this way: I was still delivering pizzas in 1984, okay? [Laughs.] I did get jobs, but I didn’t get a lot of jobs, and I wasn’t really making a living for a while. Part of the reason for that, though, was that I would take four or five months off every year to do Actors’ Gang stuff, which drove my agents crazy. But it was the only way I could stay in Los Angeles and stay sane, I think. I always had an outlet, a place to go create and experiment and challenge myself.
   I think that’s a way to survive in Los Angeles. There’s so much sedentary time there; so much down time in show business. And you’re not interacting with people generally, on a day-to-day basis, and if you are, they’re probably all in your industry. So you’re constantly reminded whether you’re working or not, what your position in the industry is, what your last job was, what your last hit was—it’s everywhere you go, whether it’s a restaurant or the cleaners.

What would you consider your first significant film role?

Well, I thought my first significant film role was going to be this George Lucas thing, Howard the Duck, but that didn’t work out that well. Right before Howard the Duck came out, I’d gotten this job in Five Corners, and that was really the movie that signaled a change for me because it was a lead role, and it was a good project, with good actors—coincidentally, in New York City. It was huge for me, because up to that point I had been so distrustful and cynical about show business. I mean, I’d had a couple of nice parts, like in The Sure Thing— that was a really nice part, and it was great to meet John, and to work with Rob Reiner—but for the most part, I was doing stuff like Hardcastle & McCormick. It was a great way to make a living, but I didn’t take it seriously.
   As a matter of fact, when I was starting out I very nearly lost my agent because I was so flippant about it. Actually, I did lose my commercials agent. I went into an audition where they wanted me to tell a joke, and I knew what that meant—something quick to look at the actor, hear what their voice sounds like and then move ’em out. I’d been on things like that before, and I was fed up. I’d had it. So I told the longest joke I knew—it was like seven minutes long—and I just wouldn’t stop, because I knew they were trying to get me out of there. And the end of it is this terrible punch line—it’s one of those jokes where you go on and on and on and then you’re like, “Why did you tell me this joke?” That’s the whole point of it, that it’s a groaner. Anyway, I got to the end of it and I left. By the time I got home, there was a message from my commercials agent on my machine, saying they’d dropped me. [Laughs.]

Did you ever consider someone like Cassavetes, who used his acting work to supplement his own projects, as a model?

I think he is a much purer example of an independent than I am, in that he really used his own money to finance his films. I’ve been able to finance my theater that way—and I’ve put a considerable amount of money into the Actors’ Gang—but as far as my films go, I’ve had other financers for them.

When did you come back to New York?

I moved back here in 1987, after Bull Durham. I’ll tell you, coming back for Five Corners really made me miss it a lot, and made me want to get back. I always felt like I was going to wind up back here, but when you’re starting out as an actor, and the jobs are starting to come, you really don’t want to leave Los Angeles. Also, as I said, I had this creative outlet. But I decided to come back for a couple of reasons. First of all, Susan lived here. But also, career-wise I was able to, because after Bull Durham I started getting scripts, instead of having to go audition for everything.

You did an interview right around the time of Bull Durham with Joan Lunden for Good Morning, America. It never aired, but it was on an in-house “bloopers tape” I came across while working at ABC News. It was actually with you and John Cusack, your costar from Tapeheads—

You saw that? [Laughs.]

Yeah. It’s clear why they never aired it—you both were so hilariously resistant to her questions, particularly regarding your private life.

I remember that. I can’t believe you have that. I remember she said to me, “Well, Tim, all the gossip columns are talking about your relationship with Susan Sarandon….” And I said, “That’s a really interesting choice of reading material for a journalist, Joan.” [Laughs.] Listen, man, it was set up beforehand. It was not something I wanted to talk about. It was oil and water, boy. And John was right there behind me the whole way: “I’m with Tim; let’s talk about the movie.” [Laughs.]    
   A lot of the press we did for Tapeheads was painful. I remember we’d gone through this whole junket in L.A., and this guy from Rolling Stone, I think, interviewed John and me. We just got punch-drunk, and we started talking about our shoes and hair—that’s all we would talk about. We said that all acting was about was shoes and hair. [Laughs.] I thought it was pretty funny, but we got written up as being the worst interview of the year or something.

That was probably one of your first experiences with hardcore publicity. Over time is it something you learn to navigate better?

Well, at first it’s very difficult because you want to punch people who ask you personal questions. Then you get more philosophical about it, and more tolerant of the idiocy. You don’t give in to it, you just figure out better ways to deflect it that are less confrontational. But the bottom line is that these people are strangers to me, and I would never talk about my personal life with someone I don’t know. It’s like if someone comes up to you on a bus, and says, “What’s it like to be with one of the sexiest women in the world?” You know, you want to say, “Get the fuck out of here.” Anyway, you just figure out how to deal with it.

Do you find that you can “use” publicity to promote other agendas, particularly political ones?

Usually when I do publicity I’m talking about it in relation to the film I’m doing, and not bringing things up out of thin air. I remember doing a junket for Nothing to Lose, and there was a question about what its political message was, and I was like, “Are you kidding me?” That wasn’t why I was doing this movie, and it wasn’t why I was doing the press. They were trying to draw me into a political discussion about this comedy.

When did you do the “Bob Roberts” short film for Saturday Night Live?

It was actually during the trip to New York for Five Corners. That’s what inspired me to write it, because I’d come back to my old neighborhood—I was living on LaGuardia Place, and I’d grown up about four blocks from there—and I was shocked to see how gentrified the Village had become in such a short period of time. That kind of early-eighties explosion of wealth. Franchises had hit the Village in a big way. So I started thinking about the concept of a yuppie folk-singer out of that experience.

Was the Bob Roberts feature your first screenplay?

Yeah. It was the first thing I wrote. Everything I’ve written so far for film has gotten done.

That’s a pretty good track record.

Well, it’s more just perseverance and stubbornness than anything else.

I know you’d utilized a lot of improvisation in your theater scripts; did that play a role in Bob Roberts at all?

Well, you can’t really do that with a film because you have to give a script to a prospective financer. You can do it when you’re filming, and I think the best example of that with Bob Roberts is Gore Vidal waxing poetic about the state of the union after his character has lost the election. That was a situation where we stole two hours out of the schedule with a makeshift desk we found on one of the locations. We just let Gore talk about America. It’s really great.

There’s a marvelous moment—I believe it’s his first appearance in the film—where we see an image of him on a local nightly news broadcast with blueberry pie dribbling down his chin. It’s a subtle reminder of how the media presents its subjects in such a way as to bias us one way or another...

Right, right. [Laughs.] And Bob, of course, had much more control over his image. I just saw this thing last night on Nightline about George Bush complaining about the “left-wing conspiracy” that’s being fomented by the Democrats to ensure that McCain is the Republican opponent. Sour grapes stuff. Right behind him, though, was this backdrop with “A Reformer with Results” or something like that, repeated like a hundred times behind him—just the visual image. So as you’re watching George W., you’re getting this image, and then, finally, he actually says it, “I am a reformer with results.” [Laughs.]

Did the success of Bob Roberts give you a sense that you’d hit your stride as a filmmaker?

I’m not one of these people that—I don’t really—I’ve never been really content with what I’ve done. I mean, I know I’ve done a good job, and it’s been well-received, but I’m always looking to the next thing. I should probably enjoy it a little bit more.

That’s the last time you acted in one of your own films. Is that too difficult?

Well, I didn’t want to do it with Dead Man Walking. Sean was my first choice, and, you know, he’s such a great actor, I don’t think I could have done it as well. And with Cradle Will Rock, it was just so complicated, with so many different things to worry about, I didn’t want to have to worry about a performance on top of it.

How did you come across the book for Dead Man Walking?

Susan found it. She met with Sister Helen in New Orleans when she was doing The Client down there. They got to talking, and she brought it to me and asked me if I wanted to do it. At the time, I was really hoping to do Cradle next—I was in the midst of writing it, and coming to the end of a draft—but finally she just asked me if I was going to do it or not, and I decided to do it. I wrote the first draft in September, and we were shooting by January. So it came really fast, unlike Bob Roberts or Cradle Will Rock.

Were you always committed to the flashbacks to the actual murder? That kind of relentlessness has a lot of integrity—just when the audience is sufficiently sympathetic to Sean Penn’s character, they’re reminded once again of his brutality.

Well, when I first met with Sister Helen, I wanted to be sure that she was okay with the fact that the guy was going to be clearly guilty, because there were two people in the book, and one was probably innocent, or at least did not commit the actual murders. I didn’t want it to be one of those movies where an innocent man is going to die. The other thing we changed was that it was an electrocution in the book, and I didn’t want to get to the end of this journey and have the audience be able to say, “We should never electrocute anyone, we should do something more humane, like lethal injection.” I wanted to present the most sanitary, whitewashed version of execution that they have come up with now; a cold and calculated, anesthetized version of killing someone.
   It was meant to be a meditation in a lot of ways. It had to bring people to a meditative place where they could make their own decisions, and see a human life, however flawed, extinguished. And I think that movie had a huge effect on a lot of people; it changed a lot of minds. Most importantly, if you’re against the death penalty and you haven’t considered the victims’ families, then it took you to a place that was uncomfortable and made you really examine why, and maybe even if, you were against it. If you were still against it at that point, you were against it after having walked in the victims’ families’ shoes—a much stronger opposition. And on the other side, I think it took people who were for it and showed them specifics that they were uncomfortable with. Sister Helen has told me that it’s had a tremendous effect on her work. She would give talks before where twenty people would show up, now there are 2,000. She has sensed a “sea change,” as she puts it, as far as people’s perceptions of the death penalty.

You said you’d already started on Cradle Will Rock when Dead Man Walking came along. When did you first decide to adapt Cradle to the screen?

I first heard of the story in, I think, 1992. As soon as I learned of it, I immediately knew I had the ending; I just had to figure out how to arrive there honestly, and earn it. As I started to do the research I discovered these other stories as well that were just as compelling, like the funeral march of the dummy, which was a real thing. It was actually a Pinocchio puppet. They were doing a production of Pinocchio as Congress was in the midst of these cuts, and as an act of protest the cast—a bunch of circus performers—took the dummy of Pinocchio out onto the streets of Broadway in a mock funeral procession with the audience following behind.
   So I thought that would be a great image for the end as well, but I didn’t want to do Pinocchio, so I thought up the idea of having a ventriloquist instead.

Why did you decide to tie in Diego Rivera’s destroyed mural for Rockefeller Center?

I guess the connection was Rockefeller, really, because I’d read that when Citizen Kane came out, Rockefeller or someone had cancelled the film at Radio City Music Hall at Hearst’s behest. Also, Rockefeller was the one who suggested Welles leave the country to help the war effort in Brazil by doing a documentary on Carnaval. It was a kind of cultural exchange program between North and South America that our government was doing to make sure that it didn’t go Nazi, so they were sending artists down there. Rockefeller was the one who called and got Welles involved in the debacle that became It’s All True, which basically wound up ruining his career. Because as he’s out of town, they’re recutting Magnificent Ambersons after test screenings and completely tearing him apart in the press when he wasn’t there to respond. So by the time he gets back, he can’t get a film made in Hollywood.
   So something was sort of fishy about Rockefeller, and I started doing more research on him and discovered this mural thing that happened about four years before Cradle. So I decided to write that into it as well.

You wrote several hypothetical scenes between Rockefeller and Hearst, where they discuss somewhat schematically the power they wield, particularly relating to cultural patronage and their support of fascism.

I got some flak for that. That’s an embarrassing chapter in the Rockefeller family’s history that they’d rather have forgotten, and don’t want to be reminded of, especially since they’re so connected with modern art. And I know the Hearst people didn’t like the way he was portrayed. But you have to remind people of these things. It’s conveniently forgotten how supportive we were of Hitler and Mussolini. The powerful and the elite were in bed with these guys because they were decidedly anti-communist—and we feared communism more than anything as a threat to our capitalist system—so they buoyed Hitler and Mussolini, helped them build their war machines. We’re supposed to forget all of this.
   And you see these World War II movies that have absolutely no mention of this, which glorify our involvement in that war as saviors. I think it’s intensely political when you ignore things like that. It’s propaganda. You notice we aren’t seeing any Vietnam War movies glorifying war, or glorifying soldiers. We’ve conveniently skipped back a few wars to World War II again and again—I mean, look at the History Channel—it’s like the World War II Channel.

Are you happy with the critical response to Cradle?


Well, it was pretty well-reviewed. It just wasn’t thoroughly embraced by the critical community in a way that would have propelled it into award consideration and that kind of thing. And ultimately, that’s what drives the box office on a movie like this. It either needs to get this groundswell of incredible support to find its audience, or it dies on the vine. If it doesn’t have that, it can’t make that next step. That says nothing about the quality of the movie—I mean, I know it’s a good film—and over time, I’m sure more people will find it. But coming out when it did, and being released the way it was, there were so many things going on at the time, and it was difficult for it to find a mass audience.

Do you read reviews?

Mm-hmm. Sometimes I wish I didn’t.

Are you ever inclined to respond?

I was on Cradle. Particularly because I thought there was this very unfair thing happening with the Orson Welles situation. People seemed to think that I’d defamed him in some way; some people mentioned that in their reviews. I didn’t really write anybody back, I just felt like I wanted to. Because I think they missed the point on that.
   It’s difficult when you’re dealing with an icon. It’s very hard to please people. And with Welles, what we created was accurate to the descriptions I had read about him: He was pretty wild, he was a drinker, he was a genius. Genius doesn’t come in a pretty package with a bow on it, you know? It’s messy; it’s uncomfortable. Groundbreaking artists make people around them uncomfortable, and I thought that’s what we were trying to do with Welles. We were trying to create a character who was controversial and possessed an incredible genius, but who was also prone to demonstrative behavior, who did drink, who did burn the candle at both ends, and pushed the envelope. I could have written scenes with him ruminating as he puffed on a pipe, you know, having a genteel conversation with someone, but I just didn’t think that would be honest.
   I knew there was something up in Cannes. You know, we had these incredible screenings there—fucking standing ovations for five minutes. All three of the screenings were met with this amazing public response. And the day after the screenings, I was doing an interview with a French journalist and she said, “Orson Welles is a character in your film; why isn’t the film about him?” I said, “Well, it could have been, but I didn’t want to do that. That’s not what this is about. This is an ensemble thing. He was one person in a group of many creative people at the time.” And she said again, “Well, still, shouldn’t it have focused on him?” I kind of started to understand what would eventually become part of the problem, which was that Welles was such a large character in life and in death that to portray him as anything less than a visionary whom the world centered around was going to be met with a response that was either controversial or uncomfortable. That same day I saw this incredible ecstasy of these screenings, and then I saw the intellectualization of it—which I also read in some of the reviews of other French critics—all within 24 hours. And the didn’t match at all. It was mind-boggling to me.

So you felt like these “gatekeepers,” as it were, were going to somehow limit access to the film?

I don’t know, it’s hard to analyze. There are many different factors determining whether or not a film reaches a mass audience. How much the studio’s behind it, which other movies the studio’s releasing at the same time—I think Disney had nine or ten in release at the same time—how much energy is put into it. Who knows. It’s always been a mystery to me. Jacob’s Ladder came out at a time when it was just not right for that movie to be seen. We were about to go into the Gulf War, and the country did not want to see a movie about a Vietnam veteran involved in drug experiments when, as the movie’s playing in theaters, we are inoculating Gulf War soldiers with anthrax. I got a letter from one guy that resisted—he got put in a brig because he would not take the drugs. He said, “Thank you, because I saw Jacob’s Ladder before I left, and it gave me the strength to resist.” And now they’ve found out that a lot of these soldiers got sick from these vaccines, with this Gulf War Syndrome.
   That movie found its audience in video and cable, and it was huge. And then you see movies that somehow hit the zeitgeist, make tons of money, are huge hits, and then you see them a few years later and you go, “What? What did I see in this? Why is this not working?” Certainly you can’t judge the success of a film based on its initial box office. You have to wait ten years, see it again. If it still works, it’s a great film. There’s a lot of great films that didn’t do well in their initial release. It’s a Wonderful Life was a bomb. Citizen Kane didn’t do well. Shawshank Redemption.

You’d said after Cradle Will Rock that you wouldn’t be directing again for a while. Why the moratorium?

It was a huge project, and I’m exhausted after it. You know, something’ll come up in a few years, but I’m not going to direct for a while. I’m going to start paying more attention to my acting career.

Of the scripts you get as an actor, what percentage do you actually end up turning down?

Actual offers?

Yes.

I don’t get a lot of actual offers. I mean, I probably don’t see some of them. I wish I did. I can’t really say, because to tell you the truth, in the past four or five years I’ve had windows of time where I can work in between directing, so I really haven’t been able to be as selective as I have been in the past. When you’ve got a two-month window and you say to your agent, “I need to work in those two months; I need money to pay the mortgage,” they come back to you with, “Okay, here’s a movie that’s shooting, and there’s an offer on that,” I’m not really in a position to turn that down.

So choosing to direct has adversely affected the acting career?

Yeah. I mean, if you consider the amount of time you put into writing a film, trying to set it up, shooting it, editing it and then publicizing it, you’re talking about a good two to five to seven years of your time. And the actual shooting process, where it takes you off your mark as an actor, is about a year and a half. So your earning power or “heat” is highly diminished. And your momentum as an actor is also kind of stalled—who knows, maybe that’s a good thing.
   Anyway, I’m not going to direct for a while, and will concentrate on being more selective with my acting roles. I would like to start having a little more control over that, because I don’t feel like I’ve paid enough attention to it. But your question was, what percentage of scripts are good?

I guess that’s the hidden question.

You also have to understand, I’m on a list—I’m not sure what number I am, but there’s a certain echelon above me that the movies go to first. So the really good scripts often don’t even get to me.

You don’t know what number you are?

Oh, you know, it’s pretty obvious who the top echelon are, and that’s good, that’s okay, because they deserve it. If you can open a movie, and you can deliver a product of quality, then you deserve that. I’ve been directing—that’s where I’ve been putting my creative energy—so I never feel wanting, or jealous, or competitive in that sense. I get the scripts I get; they get the scripts they get. To worry about it—to spend time complaining about it—is wasted time and wasted energy, and it’s all negative. So I’ve got my own stability career-wise. I would like to up the quality a little bit, but I think that comes with time and with dedicating your energies to that.

Once you’ve accepted a role, are you ever compelled to rewrite your part?

It depends on the script, and it also depends on whether they want that from you. But when I’m an actor, I tend to just be an actor. It’s difficult when you come into a project, you’ve read it once, twice, the director and producer have been living with it for years, and you give notes and maybe some of them are good—but maybe some of them are bad, too. You have to be able and willing as an actor to say, “Listen, I may not know what’s right here.” At some point you just have to give over your trust and faith to the filmmakers and hope that they pull it off.
   I mean, you can change lines and make them a little more interesting. Little things like that. But I don’t get involved in the structural problems, or the visual style, or anything like that.

Any favorite roles so far?

Five Corners, Bull Durham, Shawshank, Jacob’s Ladder. Also The Player, Short Cuts.

How have you drawn on your own experience as an actor when directing?

Well, you just know what your actors are going through, and you know what kind of space they need, and what kind of protection they need, and you try to create an environment that is about them. It’s not about the technical stuff. We did a lot of ambitious technical things with Cradle, but it all started with, “How do we capture what the actors are doing?”

You said at one point that you hated having to do auditions for Cradle.

I just don’t like it. It’s a necessary part of the process, but it makes me uncomfortable because I don’t like passing judgment, and I don’t like disappointing people, especially actors. The truth is, there’s really very little that separates the people who get it from the ones who don’t—it’s just an intangible something you know when they walk in the door, or after they’ve read. A spark, a magnetism, chemistry—you know it’s right. It has nothing to do with “being the best.” It’s not a race.
   That’s the difficult thing about making movies. It is a collaborative art, and it’s very difficult to be an actor and audition—constantly put yourself and your emotions on the line and expose yourself to judgment—because ultimately there is no gauge you can read that will make you feel better about not getting a part. Unlike in some kind of athletic competition, you know who wins the race, or who scores the most goals. You can’t look at any kind of scoreboard, though, when you haven’t gotten a part. It’s all so intangible.

Are there any movies you particularly liked this year?

I liked Boys Don’t Cry a lot. It’s typical that the Academy wouldn’t nominate that for best picture. That’s by far the best picture I’ve seen this year. So good. I liked Three Kings a lot, thought that was really well done.

Incidentally, did you know that there is a dialogue reference to “bleeding heart liberals” in every one of your films?

Oh, yeah. There’s also another line that’s in every film as well: “Are you a communist?” [Laughs.] It’s in Bob Roberts when he asks the newscaster; it’s in Dead Man Walking when someone asks Sister Helen if she’s a communist, and it’s in Cradle Will Rock.

Is that intentional?

I don’t know what it is. I guess it’s that kind of twentieth-century obsession with a tactic that’s been used by people on the right to define as a “communist” anyone who disagrees with them. If you’re going to accuse, accuse big.

Are there any directors you’d like to work as an actor with that you haven’t so far?

Tim Burton, Wes Anderson, Paul T—what’s his name?

Paul Thomas Anderson?

Yeah. Wait—is it Wes Anderson?

There are two—

Two Andersons? My God! [Laughs.] I didn’t realize that, but I know I like both of those guys. I like Spike Jonze very much, and as I said, I love David O. Russell. And Alexander Payne, I love his movies. And I’m sure there are others, but those are the ones who come to mind immediately.

On the more hypothetical side, are there any directors who are no longer with us you would have particularly liked to work with?

Orson Welles. I’d love to screen my movie for him, and tell him that people got really pissed off about it. I’d love to see what he thinks. [Laughs.]