Investigating Sex (2001) — "Oscar"
JD: Every film, obviously, everyone starts out aiming at making it good, and in the end, filmmaking is really fragile. Making a film is like building a house of cards on the deck of a speeding boat, or playing chess on train tracks. Every opportunity feels like that; it's the one artistic field that's unlike most of the others. When you write a novel or paint a picture, you have the opportunity to approach it and back off, tear up pages, write, rewrite, paint over, and come back to it. In film, once you start shooting, you can't restart the clock, and you keep moving forward, and you don't look back, and you don't go back. And that is, of course, antithetical to the creative process. It's really hard to generate a comfortable creative flow under that kind of pressure, particularly in the subterranean-film background, where, on average, your take ratio is two-to-one or three-to-one. You can prepare all you want and all you can, but when you get there on the day, you have this window. You don't know when it's going to come up. You spend 85, 90 percent of the day or more lighting and setting up for the camera, and the remaining tiny window of time, you actually work and you shoot. Because it's so expensive, you can't afford the luxury of a 50-to-1 take ratio, so that necessarily requires you to be more self-conscious, because you have to try to choose the best takes that you want to bet on.
As an artist, particularly an artist like Werner or Lars, you want to capture more of a jazz interpretation of the role. You want to capture what I call an "unrepeatable moment," and to do that, you need to take a great leap of faith, and you need freedom, and you need to take risks. I'm really looking forward to digital breaking wide open and becoming comparable to 35mm, and allowing us to have a far greater shooting ratio, where the ratio and the workday is reversed so you spend 80 percent of the day shooting, and 20 or 10 percent of the day setting up the camera, or less. And when that ratio reverses, I think there'll be a much greater chance at capturing a more compelling performance, or figuring out a way to get the alchemy of film right. Investigating Sex was an example of a film where a lot of great friends and artists got together to try to pull off an interesting and compelling subject about the surrealists, and it didn't quite work. I don't believe it ever saw the light of day, but that's what that reminds me of.
Dogville (2003) — "Bill Henson"
JD: Actually, a great deal of what I was just discussing, I learned from Dogville. The preamble to Dogville was me sending that letter to Lars, and it really was just a very sincere request to come and watch him. The roles that he made me take, I really didn't ask for, and I probably would've learned more if I didn't have to be in front of the camera, but what I've learned from Lars—and he let me shadow him throughout the entire process; I lived in Copenhagen for some time as well, and was with him throughout the editing process. We've become, kind of surprisingly, remarkable good friends. I just think he's extraordinary.
Like Werner, I think I'm really drawn to filmmakers and artists who are kind of pathologically incapable of thinking straightforward about film, and about life as well, who cannot help but think laterally, think sideways about an approach to anything cinematic. That's what Lars has done, I think, and Werner, arguably more than most, or maybe more than anyone in film history. What I was drawn to about Lars to begin with was his earlier films, before he did The Kingdom. All his films were technically spectacular and precise, like stainless steel, and he won every technical award there was to win. One of the first things that impressed me was that he went as far as he could go in that respect. And what he decided to do was take all those strengths and put them aside and not rely on them. So he threw out all his technical strengths and turned toward embracing emotion and letting go of all the precise rules of film school. The Kingdom is when he first started experimenting with this, and then into Breaking The Waves, where he threw all the rules aside and embraced emotion. He ran headlong into it, and for the first time, really wanted to overcome his fear of actors. So he's, to me, constantly thinking laterally.
He's really trying to reverse the ratio I was talking about earlier. Dancer In The Dark is when he first really started pushing this. It was just him with the hand-held camera and the actors 80 percent of the time. On Dogville and Manderlay, he got back to the editing room with this enormous arsenal of footage, just increasing the take ratio exponentially. The difference between that and a filmmaker who only gets two or three takes per scene… The difference between ending up in an editing room with those limited options, vs. getting in an editing room with as many options as Lars had, and watching him go through it all, and seeing the kind of alchemy that results from that… I could talk forever, but I think he's embracing the future of filmmaking. Soderbergh's the same way. Soderbergh just endorsed the RedCam—the Red Camera—and we are getting to a point where digital will finally be comparable to 35. And I believe when that happens, when it's undeniable, and the cost is brought down, and the camera's as light as the RedCam, and the magic of film is adequately duplicated in digital, then I truly believe studio systems will start going the way that the record companies are going now. Because when it becomes really, really cheap to make films, that will be the beginning of the true democratization of filmmaking. What will be valuable are the best stories and talents out there. And the best filmmakers.
Helter Skelter (2004) — "Charles Manson"
JD: My whole experience with Manson was, I was offered the role years ago by independent filmmakers, and I was preparing for this independent film, and I prepared for a couple months, and realized taking on such a particularly iconic role, with this particular nature and history, was just far more daunting and overwhelming than I imagined it would be. One of the greatest ironies I experienced in this business was, I was really starting to have a bit of a crisis in a motel room. I'd been putting myself on tape for months, just trying to crack it a bit, to decode it, trying to get there and feel like I could get somewhere in understanding and portraying this, and I'd really decided I didn't think I could pull it off, when 9/11 happened. And of course that shifted a lot of things in the business, and financing on a lot of projects fell through, and it fell through on this one.
That was kind of, in a way, a tragic, strange, ironically tragic saving grace, because I really didn't think I could pull it off. But what I did was, I kept rehearsing on my own, because they were trying to get the financing back. They never did, but I kept rehearsing on my own, and I'd been teaching myself filmmaking skills, and had taught myself editing. I was shooting myself, and I edited down 30 hours of footage to a 20-minute tape of footage that I felt kind of captured it a bit, and that tape, I gave to the filmmakers at the time, and a few other friends. People really responded strongly to the tape. I never did that independent film project, but this accidental demo ended up getting bootlegged around town somehow, and my reps would hear it ended up in the hands of a lot of really surprising artists, who would from time to time say, "Hey, I came across this. Kudos." For example, it ended up in the hands of Soderbergh, and that's one of the reasons why he wanted to meet with me for Solaris, and why he ended up casting me. That tape did a lot of good, and I only ended up doing it for CBS because they got the tape a couple years later, and offered me a far-too-generous deal, where they gave me a lot of creative control, and let me rewrite all Manson's dialogue.
AVC: Did you meet with Charles Manson at any point throughout this process?
JD: No, I didn't meet with him, and my understanding was that it wouldn't have helped, because of his mental condition. I don't think he would've been helpful, because he's not quite arguably stable. It would've been an interesting sociological experience, but I don't think it would've helped me, and I don't suppose he would've wanted to be necessarily too helpful.
Solaris (2003) — "Snow"
JD: I learned a great deal from Steven. He's quite vividly generous, and took my desire to educate myself seriously. I would be repeating myself to tell you everything—he's also very much from the school of trying to find the "unrepeatable moment." One thing in particular I remember about Steven is, he gave me a lot of freedom with the dialogue as well. First of all, here's a guy who is the youngest winner of Cannes with sex, lies, and videotape, a film he wrote and directed, but he claims he doesn't really think he's that great of a screenwriter. The reason was, he claims—and I disagree fiercely—he feels like he's not as good as his friend Stephen Gaghan is in separating the voices of the characters. So what he expressed to me is the importance of making sure your actors' voices, your characters' voices, are not homogenized, and really understanding that every actor approaches it differently. There are their working methods and their own voices, and you need to allow the actual authenticity. You need to allow room for that kind of collaboration, and he certainly allowed me quite a bit. That just scratches the surface of what he taught me.
AVC: How do you think the Soderbergh Solaris compares to the Tarkovsky original?
JD: That's a question for Steven. I really wouldn't want to try; it's sort of like picking your favorite child.
AVC: Going back to the early, early part of your career, you were known for an ad—the "like punk rock, but a car" Subaru commercial. What do you remember about that?
JD: All I think about that time was just realizing the full weight of what an interplanetary lottery it is to get anywhere in the business. There wasn't anything in that other than survival, and a fierce desire to be around filmmaking of any kind. I actually learned a lot from the director of that. And heroes of mine from film had gone the same route, too. I think Dustin Hoffman had done a Volkswagen commercial. So it's just wanting to be around a film set, be around any kind of filmmaking.
AVC: You were kind of grateful to be getting any kind of opportunity at that point, it sounds like.
JD: Yeah, I just came from nowhere. I didn't know anyone in the business, really came from nothing.
AVC: So you didn't have a strong opinion as to whether Subaru was just like punk rock, only a car?
JD: Um, no.
AVC: You didn't write up a history for your character or anything?
JD: [Laughs.] No.
Secretary (2002) — "Peter"
JD: It was a privilege to be part of that particular film tribe. A lot of gifted people in that. I remember the casting director, Ellen Parks—she was also the casting director on Spanking The Monkey—and [Secretary director] Steven [Shainberg] sent me a copy of Maggie [Gyllenhaal]'s audition tape for that. She was extraordinary on this little tape. So it was kind of a combination of feeling very kindly toward Ellen Parks, because she had a lot to do with me getting Spanking The Monkey, and she discovered Maggie. I just thought it was a really smart, intelligent script. And it wasn't so much the role that moved me, I just wanted to be around the filmmaking process and a collective of smart artists. Ellen being one of the ringleaders was a big, gorgeous bonus.
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