The actor: Jeremy Davies' breakthrough role as a brooding college student who becomes way too involved with his mother in 1994's Spanking The Monkey seemed to establish him as a quirky, offbeat leading man in iconoclastic Dustin Hoffman/Donald Sutherland mode. But Davies has subsequently leaned toward eccentric supporting roles, generally as misfits and loners. Davies' performance as a prisoner of war in Werner Herzog's rousing, fact-based adventure movie Rescue Dawn—now out on DVD—is characteristically intense and uncompromising.
Rescue Dawn (2006) — "Gene"
Jeremy Davies: I'll try to give you the abridged version of how I became involved with Rescue Dawn. But the abridged version is still quite an extended version, because you kind of need to know the preamble to my meeting Werner, actually. What I've been doing with my misfit, so-called acting career in film from day one on my first film, Spanking The Monkey, is, I've kind of made a concerted effort to hijack my acting career to turn it into film school, because I've always had the blasphemous idea of becoming a reasonably competent filmmaker in my own right some day. And because, frankly, I never expected the acting thing to last. A misfit like me getting anywhere in Hollywood as I somehow have, seemed, certainly at the time of Spanking The Monkey, kind of out of reach, or not a very realistic take. As you know, getting anywhere in this business is kind of like winning an interplanetary lottery.
But most of all, I really wanted to become a filmmaker, and I've used every acting experience to just turn it into film school. How this connects to Rescue Dawn as a preamble is that setting up my acting career that way led to me not only stealing film wisdom from the filmmakers I was wildly fortunate enough to work with, but also, between gigs, I started approaching filmmakers, tremendous filmmakers that I deeply admired, to see if I could ignite some apprenticeships. For example, I sent a letter to Lars von Trier, which as you know is a pretty unorthodox thing to do, send a letter to a renowned filmmaker overseas. I actually had to fight with my very well-meaning representatives at the time to get them to send it, because they wanted me to go through proper channels and all that. But at any rate, that's what I've been doing between films. I sent a letter to Lars and just asked permission to come watch him make films, so I could further my filmmaking education. Against his better judgment, he invited me to Copenhagen, and even kind of made me take a small role in… This was back when he was doing Dogville, and this developed into a very rich, very rewarding apprenticeship. So I'd been doing this for a while, and on a short list of dream, God-sized filmmakers that I wanted to have the same opportunity with, was Werner. So before I met him, before I'd heard anything about Rescue Dawn, I was intending to write him a similar letter, and then out of the blue, he got in touch with me about Rescue Dawn. I met with him and proposed the same thing I proposed to Lars. I said "I don't know how serious you are about me for this role, but if you go another way, it would still be a great privilege to have your permission to come and watch you make films." And against his better judgment, he cast me in Rescue Dawn, so that's how it all came about.
AVC: It seems like Rescue Dawn was an incredibly difficult film to make, from a physical perspective.
JD: Well, it was a bit of a trial, a bit of a crucible, physically. It was, at times, you could say, a little too vividly Fitzcarraldo-esque, because he's back in the jungle, and it was pretty intense. It was very subterranean, independent filmmaking. But on the other hand, I come from that. I have a long history of subterranean films. I'm used to that.
And of course, I lost, like, 35 pounds for the role, which I thought was an absolute necessity to honor this individual, Gene, and also every man and woman in uniform. Beyond the physical, the greatest burden I felt was just psychically and spiritually, the burden of not wanting to let my director down, not letting Werner down, and most of all not wanting to let down… wanting to honor this individual, authentically and legitimately. That's the greatest burden I felt, but it was definitely physically pretty much a crucible.
AVC: Psychologically, was it difficult playing a character who becomes the story's antagonist, and invokes such strong reactions?
JD: No, actually, I was first of all very deeply grateful to Werner for allowing me a great deal, perhaps too much room, to collaborate on Gene, in creating Gene. It really helped to be allowed that much room to collaborate, because one of the most important things, for me, that Werner allowed me to expand and work on was the idea that in every great story, not only do you need a very believable, complex, compelling protagonist, every great story needs an equally believable and empathic opposing force. You need an antagonist who's not dismissible, who's not two-dimensional. We've all seen films where the opposing-force character or characters are laughable, and there's no room to empathize with that. And that was one of the things Werner and I worked pretty hard on, just really presenting Gene's perspective much stronger than it was in the original outliner sketch for the script. Because I really, truly believe Gene had a fiercely legitimate perspective, even though it was kind of the polar opposite of Dieter's. [Christian Bale's character.]
One other thing that helped in developing this, and understanding the psyche, and navigating the psychological terrain and psychological burden of this, was reading Viktor E. Frankl, particularly a book called Man's Search For Meaning. Victor Frankl is a renowned psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz and wrote about the psyche of prisoners of war, and those who've gone through tragedies like the Holocaust, and he writes a lot about why he believes certain individuals are more inclined to survive such atrocities, and why some are less inclined to survive. He talks about the individual being able to find the freedom between stimulus and response, and to develop a powerful, hopeful belief system rather than a tragic or negative belief system. Gene had been in the camps for two years before Dieter showed up, and his belief system, what he was hanging on to, what was essential to his survival, was that a) there would be and was no war, and then b) they would be released at any time. So obviously the energy and character of Dieter represented a force that crash-landed on Gene's belief system and shattered his faith and his hope. And in a situation where you feel like your life depends on holding on to a belief system, then you're gonna fight for it. You're going to hang onto what you believe.
Shoot First: A Cop's Vengeance (1991) — "White Punk"
JD: I remember very little about this. Even the most humble role, I've always felt really wildly grateful to be getting anywhere in this business. Beyond that, I truly don't remember much about those earlier, survival kinds of roles.
AVC: Not even Pete Stoller in Melrose Place?
JD: Don't remember much about that, either. [Laughs.]
AVC: Do remember getting these roles, or any specific part of it?
JD: The truth is, I think I'd prefer to try to help promote Rescue Dawn. Self-promotion has never been a point, and I'm incredibly inept at self-promotion. Talking about myself is a little less inspiring than talking about the character. I'd rather praise Werner. I could talk for days about Werner.
Spanking The Monkey (1994) — "Ray Aibelli"
JD: David O. Russell is a pretty wildly brilliant guy, and I've been such a fortunate fool. To start out with someone as remarkably gifted as David O. Russell was pretty striking. I remember the first time reading it, thinking, "This is an intelligent script." At that point, I had not been able to even approach or get to read more interesting, intelligent scripts, and this one, I thought, was pretty remarkable. I think I only had a shot at it because everyone was afraid of it, and it was an intense tightrope to walk. David and I together tried to figure out, "How do you keep the audience onboard with this character, despite the actions he takes?" You want to be able to root for him, and it's essential to empathize with him. It was quite a bit of pressure, working as low-budget as we were, as subterranean, guerilla-filmmaking-style as we were, but also trying to really get this balance right. It's remarkable to me, looking back. I don't know how we pulled it off.
AVC: It seemed like there was a lot of David O. Russell in the character that you were playing. Did you see it as a very personal project for him?
JD: You'd have to ask David, really. I'm sure there's some of David in that, but just how much, I wouldn't even venture to guess, particularly because of the subject matter. It's definitely a personal film, but what I find most remarkable about him is that he went from that to Flirting With Disaster, which is a complete 180, then did another 180 and did Three Kings.
AVC: You talked about taking on certain roles as a form of film school. Going back to Saving Private Ryan in 1998, was that in your mindset, or was it more "This is an amazing role"?
JD: Oh yeah. That started on Spanking The Monkey, because as I was saying earlier, I really didn't expect the acting thing to last. I truly believe a misfit like me getting very far in this business, there wasn't a chance, and I'm incredibly sincere about that. I have so many really gifted friends, actors who I thought deserved as much as I did to get an agent or a job, or deserved more, and just never made it through somehow. I've always been really fiercely tethered to that. You know, I've been very lucky. All the filmmakers I've worked with have taken my desire to educate myself very seriously. Steven Spielberg is such a remarkably generous man. I still remember him taking breaks and setting up little diagrams, grabbing rocks in the dirt and showing me how to navigate. A dinner scene, for example, I remember him saying, is one of the hardest things to shoot in the world, because there's only so many ways you can do it, and you end up repeating yourself, and everyone's done it. But definitely, I have stolen with abandon, as much film wisdom and genius over the shoulders of these remarkable filmmakers as possible, from Spanking The Monkey on.
The Million Dollar Hotel (2000) — "Tom Tom"
JD: Wim [Wenders] is just such a dear man. He is just a deeply dedicated artist, and has always been—and still is—incredibly supportive and generous. I just took every chance I had to listen to him, to encourage him to speak. He's like the most mesmerizing, gentle professor. You ask him anything about film history and film theory, and he can speak at great length. You could just record it all and transcribe it and publish. It was a difficult experience for all of us, and the production was a little troubled.
AVC: How so?
JD: Well, I don't really want to get into all that; I'd rather focus on praising mentors. It's in the past.
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