AVC: You did later direct yourself in Running With The Bulls. What was that like?
AG: That was this bizarre, quasi-pseudo-autobiographical-documentary thing I did for the Independent Film Channel. It was a road trip I took with my co-writer from I Love Your Work to Chicago, the idea being that IFC wouldn't pay for me to run with the actual bulls [in Pamplona, Spain], in addition to the fact that I'd be terrified of doing it. So we decided to go to Chicago to run with the Chicago Bulls, only to learn that they were in the off-season. So it ends up just being an exploration of those issues which haunt or interest me. Ultimately, I end up interviewing this couple, very good friends of mine in Chicago, about how they managed to stay together for as many years as they have. On a kind of horrifyingly ironic note, that friend ended up getting killed in a car crash a year later. If you watch it now, it's incredibly haunting and disturbing because of what ended up happening. So there you go. Nice and cheery.
How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days (2003)—"Tony"
AG: God, what do I remember from that? The hotel bar, really. I don't remember much. Making some money.
Saving Private Ryan (1998)—"Pvt. Stanley Mellish"
AG: I did that, obviously, only for the money. [Laughs.] Okay, not that one. I suppose I mostly remember my death scene. Pretty much any time I'm beat up, or I beat up somebody, or I get killed, it ends up being a fairly memorable experience. That, again, was one of those cathartic things, dealing with an issue I tend to have a lot of problems wrapping my head around—that being mortality. It was definitely a really exciting day, a kind of fulfilling experience. Mainly I just remember being incredibly tired. The lines began to blur between what was real and what wasn't, which I think was certainly part of the idea of sticking us in a boot camp, and directly into shooting without a break. But it felt like a very noble experience, and you have very few of those. At least, I've had very few of those experiences, where you feel like you're really doing something important on a much larger scale than to satisfy your own creative needs and pocketbook.
Entourage (2006-2007)—"Nick Rubenstein"
AG: Entourage is fun. It's strangely sort of chaotic, I guess because it's television. It's more like doing an independent movie, which is ironic, given how much money it actually costs to make a TV show. It's very fast-paced and frenetic, which I suppose, in the case of the character I play, sort of lends itself to that. But it's a lot of fun. I enjoy doing it.
The $treet (2000-2001)—"Evan Mitchell"
AG: The $treet bound up a whole bunch of issues for me, because it was something I wanted to do because I really liked the script an awful lot. I wanted to move to New York, and it was an excuse to move to New York. Somewhere between shooting the pilot and going to do the series, I had a meeting with [David] Fincher—he in essence asked me if I wanted to be in Panic Room, in the part that Jared Leto ultimately ended up playing, and I couldn't do it because there was no way to do this TV show and a Fincher movie. And Fincher was—and still remains—a hero of mine. So it was eating me up inside the entire time I was shooting the show, which ultimately was cancelled after only five or six episodes. It broke my previous record of being on a series that got cancelled after 19—and I'd break it again on Head Cases, which was cancelled after two. It was very conflicting, because on one hand, I actually had quite a lot of fun doing it and got along really well with everybody. And then on another level, I'll always find some reason to feel like I should be somewhere else when I'm doing whatever it is I'm doing.
AVC: Are there other specific roles that haunt you—roles that you didn't get or couldn't take for some reason?
AG: Well, there's a zillion roles I couldn't get, but those, you don't ever think of again. Or I don't, anyway. You just can't. That was one of those situations that happens very rarely. It was just one of those things, and it happened to be with a guy whose films, I think, are really unlike the films that modern American filmmakers are making. I couldn't believe it.
Mr. Saturday Night (1992)—Eugene Gimbel
AG: That was my first movie, I guess. Whatever I ended up saying in the movie, I believe, was cut out. I think there was a reaction shot left in. But the experience at the time—I was 21, and I was genuinely excited in a way that I don't think I was for very much after that, because I was filled with that sort of naïve conviction that once the ball started rolling, there'd be no stopping it, and this business would be a cinch, and all these other things. It was my first real job. I mean, I had done some TV stuff, but it was within the first 18 months of having started working.
Joey (2005-2006)—"Jimmy"
AG: [Laughs.] Joey. [Laughs.] Those guys I really liked. I liked Matt [LeBlanc] and Drea [de Matteo], all those guys, a lot, so it was just kind of a laugh.
Déjà Vu (2006)—"Denny"
AG: A surprisingly collaborative experience, which I had very little expectation of, at least going in initially to meet [director] Tony Scott, who ends up being one of these guys who… I think it's an important lesson. You assume that these guys who are elder statesmen, in a sense, who are such visionaries, are just going to move you to your tape mark and pull your strings and then call "cut." But he solicited quite a lot of actor input, and there was a lot of scientific stuff that I became very, very involved in. I became really immersed in all this quantum-physics stuff, at least as much as my brain could process, which is fairly limited. My brain is a sieve when it comes to languages and science. And math. Anything exercising any sort of non-verbal skill. And I really enjoyed it. I was surprised, and Val [Kilmer] and I had a really nice time together. He's a hoot, so we were sort of like the bad kids on the set.
AVC: When you look back at random, what role of yours stands out most? What jumps out at you first?
AG: There's absolutely no question that it's Dazed And Confused. I think of that as being my first real movie. Up until that point, I would get a job. It could be speaking barely—or not speaking, in the case of Designing Women—doing these little parts, and then I'd go back to my job at the bookstore. Dazed And Confused sort of drew that line in the sand, where even though I didn't really make any money, I knew I could never go back into the bookstore, because it would seem strange. Beyond that sort of superficial, practical effect, I always feel bad for people who didn't have a first experience like that. I did that film with these kids, and a lot of them, it was their first time on location. It was definitely a fun movie, but it operated on so many levels, because there was the life outside the movie. It's this really abbreviated, condensed, high-octane equivalent of the college experience I essentially never had. And on another level, I think we all really felt that we were part of an incredibly unusual creative process, because it was a collaborative effort, and we were taken really seriously by Rich [Linklater]. He's one of those guys that for years, I wished was directing everything I'd been in. And it's sort of bittersweet, because it's the thing that breaks your professional hymen, and you're always trying to recapture that spirit. But the nature of the business doesn't normally allow for such a creative atmosphere in what was essentially a studio movie.
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