AVC: Were you worried about being attacked by the hawks you were working with in that film?
PG: Not as much as you would think. I was before I actually had to deal with them. The birds are completely terrifying. I was like, "I need three months to work with these birds." Of course, I had a week. I thought it was going to be impossible. I was terrified of them. But then I actually got there and it was a piece of cake. It was ridiculous. Those birds were so well-trained that they're not going to do anything. You inevitably get scratched by them by accident. The thing that was scary was the beak. I thought it was going to rip my eye out. But they don't actually use their beaks. They use their talons to do the damage. By the time I got sliced up, it wasn't that bad, and it was an accident. They're actually very pleasant animals to be around.
I had to irritate them to get them to behave like wild animals, because otherwise they would have just sat there on my arm and not done anything. So I had to tighten these things around their feet and keep them off-balance. No animals were harmed in the filming, but I had to make their lives unpleasant so they'd start flapping around and trying to get away from me. I was bothering them a lot more than they were bothering me. I had to tire them out so they'd jump off my arm, which is what a real wild bird would do. If you tire them out enough, they want to get the fuck away from you, so they kept diving off my arm. One of them was nasty and I had to be in the car with it at one point. That was actually terrifying, because it just went fucking crazy. I wanted it do that a little bit, but I definitely was not comfortable. I mean, I was driving in a car with this hawk going crazy. It was a real wild-card scene. We didn't have any idea what it would do. Unfortunately, they didn't keep in any of the scenes where it'd crap. They have huge, giant crap and it would just fire this stuff out its ass, but they didn't keep any of that, unfortunately.
AVC: Speaking of animals, one of your more memorable supporting roles was as a conniving ape in Planet Of The Apes.
PG: I was an orangutan, I think.
AVC: Did you study primates to prepare for that role?
PG: A little bit. I looked them up. I watched those Clint Eastwood movies [Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can] with Clyde the orangutan. Have you seen those? They're fantastic movies. I took some things from Clyde, hopefully. I really wanted them to make the mask so that I could do the bending-the-lips thing, the baring-the-teeth thing, but they didn't do that.
AVC: They didn't have the budget for it?
PG: Oh, they had the budget for it. They just didn't care to indulge me that way.
AVC: How many hours did you have to spend in makeup getting dolled up as an orangutan?
PG: I was out of makeup in about two hours. I lucked out and got a makeup guy who was really fast. It doesn't have to take four hours. It really doesn't.
AVC: When you do a giant blockbuster like Planet Of The Apes, do you feel as emotionally invested in its outcome as you would with a smaller independent movie?
PG: Ultimately, no. No. I was a big Planet of The Apes fan, so I was really excited about being in it. I had a really good time. I liked wearing all that stuff, and I liked playing the part. It was not the most engaging script in the world. And ultimately I didn't feel the same investment, no.
AVC: You've played sad, bitter men in many of your lead roles. Are you worried at all about being typecast?
PG: Not really. It's an interesting thing to get typecast as, in a way. I don't mind being typed, if that happens, a little bit. It's all decent work, so I'm not too worried about it. To some extent, people want to type you when you play leads, a little bit. I guess that started happening when I started getting supporting stuff that's more varied. If I continue to play leads—which I don't necessarily know will happen—it doesn't bother me getting typecast, no.
AVC: You don't think you're necessarily going to continue getting lead roles?
PG: Who knows? I take it all with a grain of salt.
AVC: What's the best part of playing a lead?
PG: People are so much more attentive to you, in ridiculous ways. Everybody will just wipe up your every spill. There's so much more indulgence. You're given a lot more room to screw up. You're given much greater run of the thing.
AVC: Do you think that's a good thing?
PG: I think it's a great thing, acting-wise. I don't really care about the rest. I'm not necessarily looking for everybody to get me my iced latte, but everybody will. They'll do all that for you, but acting-wise, it's great. You get a lot more time to figure things out. I think it's demented that for these huge movie stars, they'll fly in steaks from Indonesia. That's ridiculous. That's obscene. Those guys are more powerful than the presidents of small countries. They're more powerful than the president of France. That's awful, but I appreciate the fact that people give me more time to figure things out on the set. There's a lot more of that, "Quiet, quiet, he's working!" kind of thing, and that's nice.
AVC: Do you have an entourage yet?
PG: No, I didn't have any kind of entourage.
AVC: Is it tempting, all these things that people throw at you when you start to be in really big movies?
PG: You mean goods and stuff like that? Nah. I've got enough shit. I've got plenty of stuff. And you get these huge leather bags full of shampoo and stuff, and I don't really want it. It's nice and everything, but I've got enough stuff, I really do. It's a little weird, that swaggy thing, like "Here's an iPod." I'll buy my own iPod.
AVC: It seems counterintuitive that the more money you have, the more free stuff you get.
PG: It's beyond counterintuitive. It's insane. You see these people with shopping bags, heads of studios with shopping bags stuffed full of goods. It is a little bizarre.
AVC: Of all the films you've done, which do you think is the most underrated?
PG: The Hawk Is Dying. [Laughs.]
AVC: And that hasn't even come out yet.
PG: I don't know that it ever will! It's going to come out in Europe. It's going to come out in France and a couple of European countries. Nobody bought it here! It doesn't seem like it's that weird of a movie. It's not that uncommercial of a movie. I don't actually know what the situation with the movie is domestically, but I did feel like it's a really good movie, and hopefully someday people will take a closer look at it.
AVC: If you had to choose between only doing lead or supporting roles for the rest of your career, which would you choose?
PG: I would probably choose supporting roles, if I had to make a choice. It's actually a really hard thing to say. It's all on a role-by-role basis, ultimately. I shouldn't be so quick to say that. I feel like you're given greater license to be colorful and eccentric in supporting roles, and that's interesting to me. Your job is to be a little more invented and kooky, to kind of fill in the gaps and put some color around the lead people, and that can be more interesting to me. But there are lead roles that can be interesting in the same way as well.
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