Talking with the Minds Behind Human Nature

Rhys Ifans

Q: There's quite a bit of nudity in the film. How do you approach this part of your job? Is it difficult?

Rhys Ifans: Well, you take your clothes off, you learn your lines, and you get on the set. No. This part has to be naked. It's the natural human state. And of course the first couple of days it's daunting, it's kind of embarrassing. But the first couple of days filming anyway, whether you're fully clothed or naked, are daunting and embarrassing. It's what every actor tries to arrive at—the naked character, whether clothed or not. So it's sort of working really extremely from the outside in. But I was lucky in the sense that I had Patricia as a decoy, because if you put me and Patricia next to each other with no clothes on, I can guarantee you who most of the guys on the set were looking at. So, I spent a lot of my time standing behind Patricia.

 

Q: How does it feel to be part of a great Welsh tradition of actors that includes Anthony Hopkins and Richard Burton?

RI: I'm very honored and very frightened. Just fantastic. I had the pleasure of working with Anthony Hopkins on his directorial debut, a film called August, and it was my acting debut in film too. I just played the guy on the bike. I'm very proud to be a Welshman.

 

Q: Is there any filmmaker you'd like to work with at the moment?

RI: I'd love to work with Coen Brothers. Spike Jonze [who produced Human Nature]. Obviously, I'd like to work with him as a director. Sergio Leone if he was still alive. I love Spaghettis, and I kind of grew up with Spaghettis. They did the same thing Charlie's doing in a sense. There's a real comedic air to them and at the time they were refreshing ways of telling a story.

 

Q: Why does Puff kill Nathan?

RI: Nathan is his father. Nathan has done to him what his father did to him. And I can't think of any better reason for killing your father.

 

Q: For you, Rhys, what is Human Nature about?

RI: For all the benefits society offers us as human beings, it never allows us the liberty of completely being ourselves.

Tim Robbins

Q: Why Human Nature? What drew you to this role?

Tim Robbins: The script was really great. For me it was a character I hadn't done, and I'm always attracted to things I haven't done. I don't want to play the same thing over and over again. And there were talented people doing it and I love Patricia Arquette, so it all made sense to me.

 

Q: Did you think that Nathan was an empathetic character?

TR: Well, certainly he's kind of the bad guy. But I don't believe in bad guys. I just think there are circumstances and everyone has flaws. And everyone in the script is trying to take advantage of someone else. And it is kind of human nature—it's all these people doing all these awful things to each other. But whenever you play a part you have to be compassionate of the person you're playing.

 

Q: Your character Nathan is described as having a very small penis. As an actor how do you use a bit of information such as this to shape your performance?

TR: I did sense memory of when I was two.

 

Q: Which do you prefer, acting or directing?

Robbins: I love directing when I'm directing. I don't love directing when I'm trying to put the movie together, raise the money, cast it, edit it, and promote it. So I like acting better in that regard, but if I was just able to direct just in the day to day, go to the set, block the actors, work with them, move the camera, I would do that.

Q: What is your next directing project?

TR: I don't know. I'm just acting right now.

 

Q: What did you think of Brian DePalma's Mission to Mars, which seemed to be a very stylized film and not your typical sci-fi adventure film but was nonetheless panned by critics?

TR: I thought that as an action adventure movie, I much prefer my kids going to see a movie where the denouement, the ending, the climax, has to do with discovery rather than destruction. And I don't think any critics picked up on that!

 

Q: I know you've worked in the theater since you were 12 years old and in 1982 you co-founded Actors' Gang in L.A. for avant-garde theater. Do you have any plans to go back to the theater? Do you wish you could do both on a regular basis the way Willem Dafoe does with film and the Wooster Group?

TR: I do, actually. I have gone back. I took a four-year hiatus from the Actors' Gang, but this last January I came back and I am now once again the Artistic Director. I directed a play this summer called Mephisto that ran through March and produced a play, The Seagull, which ran in repertory with Mephisto, and I am currently producing a play called The Exonerated, which opens in two weeks at the Actors' Gang Theater. And I'm doing a play right now called The Guys at the Flea Theater and I am very happy to be doing so.

Patricia Arquette

Q: So why Human Nature?

Patricia Arquette: (Smiling) Come on! You saw it, didn't you? Let's get real here! Well, first of all, I wanted to work with Michel, and I saw one of his videos [one of his six Bjork videos] and I said, "I have to work with that person!"

 

Q: Tell me about your character Lila in Human Nature.

PA: I loved this character. I'm different from Lila. I don't have this hair condition, but I have things that I feel apologetic of. I think Gabrielle [Miranda Otto] thinks I'd be more worthy of love if I was a French girl and that would be sexier. And Tim thinks his adopted parents would love him if he had the best table manners. And we're all trying to earn love in something or hide ourselves or change ourselves to be accepted. And I felt that.

 

Q: There's quite a bit of nudity in Human Nature. How do you approach this part of your job? I know you've done it before in David Lynch's Lost Highway, but is it still very difficult to do?

PA: Yeah. And this nudity was really different. First of all, I'm not that naked in very much of it, but it seems like I am because we're not having sex. It's no prelude to sexuality, it's like people are walking around and talking naked, and this woman has hair sometimes and is naked. I knew, as an actress, there was a danger in taking a part like this. I know people who have not been hired for parts because their feedback was that they weren't "fuckable" enough. I thought this is a town where as a woman you're always being traded in for an 18-year old, somebody we haven't had yet. So I had to think it through.

 

Q: What about the physical process of applying all of that hair to your body?

PA: The physical process was itchy and uncomfortable and I couldn't sit down. I started freaking out. Whose hair is this and why did they sell their hair and why is there hair on my inner thigh! Drug test this hair. DNA analysis. I might have a murderer's hair in between my legs. But I wanted Lila to be more comfortable when she has hair.

 

Q: You've worked with a number of great filmmakers—David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, John Boorman, etc. How did these filmmakers differ from each other in their approach to actors? Do you have a favorite of the bunch?

PA: Well, they're all so different. John Boorman taught me a lot about film. He reminds me of a dynamic version of myself—hot, really fast, cold, loveable, but easy to anger and easy to forgive. Tim Burton is very visual and off in his own kind of world. David Lynch would listen to music in one headphone and the scene in another and would go [in Lynch voice], "Slower. Do it slower." And usually people say "speed it up, we have only a 120 minute movie and we need this scene in three minutes."

Q: What about Scorsese?

PA: We'd do these really neat rehearsals and he would let you do what your body did and he'd inform his camera work. One scene I was having a really hard time and she [her character in Bringing Out the Dead] was having a really hard time, so sometimes you don't know whether it's your character or you being conflicted. It was when she was going up to the crack house and she wants him [Nicholas Cage] to stop following me. And [Scorsese] said, "Take whatever time you want. We're all set up. You can go away. Go for a walk around the city. You can come back in four hours and we'll be here. It's fine." And that's amazing to have that kind of trust.

 

Q: What filmmaker do you want to work with next?

PA: You know I love Wong Kar-Wai. I'd really like to work with him.

Charlie Kaufman

Q: How did the idea for Human Nature emerge? Did you start with this mythic conflict between nature and civilization? Did you start with a particular character? Or was it an interest in parodying "wild child" movies?

Charlie Kaufman: Yeah, I was making fun of those and what I think of as the sort of simplemindedness of that idea. And I was reading about behaviorism and I wanted to include that. Then I had the idea of having a woman who had an unacceptable amount of body hair because I think that's another cultural thing that we all have to live with. So I threw these things together, and it kind of formed into this story. I didn't have a plan going on.

 

Q: What was the Oscar experience like when you were nominated for Being John Malkovich?

CK: It was hard. I don't do well in situations like that and I was very nervous. I was hoping that I wouldn't win. I'm serious, I was. I mean afterwards, I kind of wished that I had. But I didn't think I could get through that night if I had to go up there and accept an award and make a speech. So, I was tense. And then I didn't win, so it was all good.

 

Q: Who are your influences as a screenwriter?

CK: I like a lot of people. I like Kafka and Beckett and David Lynch and Woody Allen and Lenny Bruce and Monty Python and the Marx Brotehrs and Flannery O'Connor, Shirley Jackson.

Rosie Perez

Q: So why Human Nature, Rosie? What drew you to this part?

Rosie Perez: 'Cause it was good. It was different, it was honest, and it was funny. And also 'cause, besides Charlie Kaufman, I really love Michel Gondry—his music videos, even his commercials. He did this awesome Absolut commercial with the stop-motion and the bullet going through. So he did it before The Matrix. I was like, "This guy was amazing!"

 

Q: So you didn't have any doubts about working with a first-time feature director?

RP: No. I've worked with a lot of first-time directors, so I'm not really afraid of that, and knowing his prior work, I was extremely confident in him.

 

Q: How was it working with Michel Gondry as an actor?

´´P: He's very, very French. He has a very sarcastic wit. That French sarcasm. He was hysterical and fun to work with, but he also knows exactly what he wants, which is good. I really appreciate how he was telling Patricia (in mock French accent), "Don't get too heavy with your body. Don't get too buff!" And I was like, "How about me, Michel?", and he was like (in same French accent), "Oh you look perfectly ugly next to her. It's perfect!" (Laughs)

 

Q: Human Nature is a hard film to describe. How would you describe it in one sentence?

RP: I think Charlie was just saying we're all full of shit!