Paul Dano talks Ruby Sparks and how acting is like maintaining an erection
Paul Dano has gone from indie quirk (Gigantic) to big-budget action fare (Knight And Day, Looper, Cowboys & Aliens) with a lot of divergent stops along the way, from the bombast of There Will Be Blood to the miserablist drug drama of Being Flynn and the parched spareness of Meek’s Cutoff. But one thing that’s tended to remain consistent in his roles is his sense of frustrated, almost desperate sincerity, as his characters struggle, often ineffectually, with worlds that aren’t what they would prefer to make of them. That holds truer than ever with his latest project, Ruby Sparks, written by Dano’s girlfriend Zoe Kazan (The Exploding Girl, Meek’s Cutoff), and helmed by the directors behind Dano’s breakthrough film, Little Miss Sunshine. In the film, novelist Calvin (Dano) has never been able to follow up on his hugely celebrated debut with another work, and he suffers from crippling writer’s block until he creates a bubbly, Manic Pixie Dream Girl character named Ruby and falls in love with her on the page. Then she turns up as a flesh-and-blood person in his kitchen, convinced that they’ve had a longstanding relationship, and oblivious to the fact that she’s still defined by whatever he writes about her. What starts out as a seemingly twee magical-realist fantasy goes to increasingly dark places, however, as Calvin can’t decide who he wants Ruby to be, and keeps rewriting her to fit his jealous, controlling needs. The A.V. Club recently sat down with Dano (and, separately, Kazan) to talk about his run of needy, arrested-development characters; how his four-year relationship with Kazan affected their work on the film together; and why staying in character is sort of like maintaining an erection.
The A.V. Club: You and Zoe Kazan have said in other interviews that she first brought the script to you in its infancy, when it was just a few pages and no plot. What kind of input did you have into it from there? Did you participate in her development process?
Paul Dano: Well, I read the first few pages and asked, “Are you writing this for us?” and she just sort of said, “Yeah.” But I don’t think she knew that yet. I think she was headed there naturally. So once she had that in mind, she was showing me pages when she wrote them. I would try to just be as good a balance board as possible, and give feedback and ask questions. I would also try to be a good boyfriend and encourage the writer, if she ever needed that. Zoe and I have been very collaborative in other ways: If I’m working on a part, I’ll talk to her; if she’s working on something, she might talk to me. So I think it’s just a natural thing for us to help each other when we can. I’m not a writer, but I certainly tried to be the best collaborator possible, knowing we’d eventually go act this together.
AVC: How did your relationship affect working together on set?
PD: I think, actually, at work was the easiest time for the relationship, while we were making it. Going home after a 14-hour day was sometimes when little domestic things took on more weight, just because we were hard at work. Zoe and I care so much about what we do that I think when we’re there, we’re really there for Calvin and Ruby—probably more than for ourselves. And I hoped we could bring a chemistry and intimacy to what we were doing. And we could maybe bring certain personal experience as well. I don’t think [the relationship] ever got in the way. Maybe there were times in the latter part of the film where it became surprising, or took on a depth or weight I didn’t even know was there, but I think, for the most part, it was a good thing.
AVC: The last time we interviewed you, you talked about how you like to have a longer lead-time to build your characters, and how There Will Be Blood was difficult because you had less than four days. In this case, you had more than a year. Was that a better experience? Did you worry about overthinking it as a result of having so much prep time?
PD: Sure. I think that can happen. But I can really only do one thing well at a time, so while Zoe was writing this, I was acting in other things. So it’s probably not the case where I was filming something else and thinking about Calvin. And I think while Zoe was writing, I was probably trying not to think about Calvin yet, and just kind of let her do the story, and be there to respond to that. And then once we were going to make it is when you really try to drop into that thing of sticking with it and heading toward just trying to live and breathe a little bit every day with this guy as your best friend. So, yeah, that could happen, but I don’t think it happened on this. But I did enjoy our prep time.
We were also so much more involved in this film than any other film that I’ve done, so I remember going to bed at night worried about a location, or trying to think, “God, who would be great as this character?,” considering another part of the film we were casting, rather than dreaming about Calvin. And at a certain point, I had to cut myself off from that and say, “Yo, you need to just be Calvin. Don’t worry about locations. It’s nice that you get to be involved a little more, but at a certain point, you’ve got to take care of your character.”
AVC: You talk about living with him as your best friend. He’s a pretty difficult best friend—needy, resentful, controlling, and immature. How do you find the humanity in somebody who starts out so damaged, and eventually turns into almost a villain?
