Ahoy, squirts! Quint here to present you good people with a little chat our boy from Chicago had with Michael Clarke Duncan. In every interview I've seen him in, Duncan seems to be a geniunely sweet guy, a nice dude. He comes across that way here, too. Capone did this interview at the Bermuda Film Festival, where he had fun in the sun and I heard got caught fondling some tropical fish, but that could be explained... I'm sure... yeah... Anyway, here's Capone and Michael Clarke Duncan!
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here. I've been horribly delinquent in filing my wrap-up report from the Bermuda Film Festival, but I'm going to spend the next couple of days working really, really hard to finish that up before all the movies I saw there open up. I whole-heartedly enjoyed this experience both as a lover of beach-front property and film festivals in general. BIFF is a big enough event to attract major talent as jury members and important independent films, but small enough that lugs like me actually have access to filmmakers and their works. One of the people I got to spend a little time with was the festival's Jury Foreperson (and Chicago native) Michael Clarke Duncan, a busy man with two films out right now (the piece of holy crap called D.E.B.S. and a little ditty called SIN CITY; perhaps you've heard of it? He's also in one of the more highly anticipated summer releases, Michael Bay's THE ISLAND). Please remember that I conducted this interview before I'd seen either of his current films, so we're still talking about them as upcoming releases.
Capone: Let's dive right into SIN CITY. Which storyline do you appear in?
Michael Clarke Duncan: My character's name is Manute. He's a bodyguard for the guy that supposedly runs all the crime in Sin City. I handle all his dirty work. The story I'm in leads up to me doing different sinister things. Robert Rodriguez made it pretty clear that he was breaking up the stories into two films, and I'm pretty sure I'm in both parts.
Capone: You practically narrate the newest trailer.
MCD: I saw that. That speech is taken from my scene with Rosario Dawson, which was pretty cool. She had on this skimpy little outfit, and I was teasing her about her butt cheeks. We had different things to do on different days. I worked with Clive Owen and Rosario Dawson mostly.
Capone: Explain the process of being directed jointly by Robert and Frank Miller. Did Miller leave most of the direction up to Robert?
MCD: Totally. Frank was more like an advisor. After most scenes, Robert would ask him what he thought, and he would say, "I think we should do this, that, and the other." And Robert would take his advise, and try it Frank's way. They rarely disagreed, maybe a little bit, but Robert is such a good director, who would use Frank as something of a technical advisor. They jelled together like peanut butter and jelly. They were the easiest people to get along with.
And Robert Rodriguez plays his guitar while he's directing. That was my first time every being in a film with him, so I didn't know what type of director he was. When I saw him, he's be walking around playing the guitar. And he's really calm, while everyone is rushing around setting up. He's king of like the wind here in Bermuda: it's breezy but it's not blowing everywhere. Robert would come over to me and say, "Michael, I want to do that scene again." Strum, strum, strum. "Take your time. Feel it, and let's see what happens." Then he walks away strumming his guitar again. All I could think was, this is a cool set right here.
And he's got a wonderful set up in Austin. He doesn't have to go anywhere. If he takes on a movie, people have to go to Austin. His family is there, so why mess up a good thing? He has this hanger where we did all our scenes in, and when you see the film, you think we were out somewhere where it was raining, but we were inside. You see a car go over a cliff. Actually, the actors are just sitting on a box with a steering wheel. It looks fantastic. He's cool, as long as he can play his guitar.
Capone: You're also in the indie comedy D.E.B.S. What do you do in that film?
MCD: I'm a principal of an all-girl spy school. My job is to make sure the ladies wake up on time, get their assignment done, and have everything they need to go out in field, what to expect, how to handle it. I'm their advisor. It's funny, I messed with Meagan Good, who was on the cover of King magazine at the time. I'm coming into work one day and spotted the magazine, so I grabbed it up, took it to work, and told Angela Robinson, "Let's do one take; I've got to play this joke on Meagan." So we're sitting there, telling the girls what to expect, and then I say, "Okay, D.E.B.S., it's very important that your appearance is always right, to respect the academy." And the girls are looking at me like, this isn't in the speech. "We can't have stuff like this..." and I whip out the magazine with Meagan in it, and she screamed. Actually, she signed it for me, and it's up on the wall in my house.
Capone: Two other things you've got coming up is, of course, one of the summer blockbuster THE ISLAND, the clone movie directed by Michael Bay. What secrets can you spill about that film?
MCD: Yeah, that's with Ewan McGregor. I did a lot of running in that film. I wasn't there that long, but Michael Bay got every inch out of me the days I was. I didn't think it was going to be that tough, but it was. He had me working it. At the last minute...I felt that Michael was going to make me cry in this movie, I had a feeling.
Capone: During a scene, I hope.
MCD. Yeah, yeah, in a scene. And I told my girlfriend that something just wasn't right. She said, "What's wrong?" And I said, "I'm about to start crying. I know Michael Bay is going make me cry." Five minutes later, he calling out, "Let's get him some tears!" And I said, "Don't worry about it! I'm ready, let's go." And that's the part that he kept. [If you watch THE ISLAND trailer, you'll spot Clarke Duncan crying as he's being dragged across the floor to...somewhere.]
Capone: Do you happen to know if Ewan McGregor was coming off of his motorcycle journey around the world at that time? It seems like the timing would have been about right.
MCD: I don't know, but if I'd come off a trip like that, I couldn't be in a movie so soon after.
Capone: What is your role in THE ISLAND?
MCD: I'm a football player, who needs some organs replaced. They don't use the word clone to describe the people that are harvested for organs...I can't remember the fancy word they used, but I kept saying, "Can't we just say clone?" And Michael Bay would say, "No, it has to be this word." My clone on the island is under the belief that this is a tropical place, and one day he will be let out into this beautiful land. We're kept underground, and we try to win this lottery. If you win this lottery, you come out onto the island that's all beautiful, no pollution, no wars, nothing bad. All the clones are under this perception. In reality, when you get chosen in the lottery, that means your real-life person needs an organ. We have to use you. That's why you've been held and bred. You don't actually get to go to the island, you're about to go and have something taken out of you.
Capone: That sounds a bit LOGAN'S RUN.
MCD: Oh yes. My clone is on this operating table, and I look down and my chest has been cut and propped open. I immediately break free and take off running with my organs hanging out and all these medical clamps on my chest. And I take off running and crying with blood everywhere, and Michael is running back with the camera. It seems like we had to do that thing 50 times.
Capone: Is this film going to be R-rated? Can they really show this?
MCD: They better show it, as much work as I did on that scene. It's going to be really good.
Capone: The other films you have coming out this year is AMERICAN CRUDE, an independent film directed by Craig Sheffer. Is that THE Craig Sheffer?
MCD: Yes. I don't know if its his first film, but its one of his first as a director. It was funny seeing him behind the camera, and he didn't put himself in it either. The funny thing about that film is that I get my first on-camera kissing scene.
Capone: Nice work, man. Who are you kissing?
MCD: Jennifer Esposito. She's real cool. I made sure I had my mints, my lip balm, I brushed my teeth between every take. It was an interesting situation; I'd never done that before.
Capone: You seem to have settled into that balance between the big-budge stuff and the indie work. Is that where you feel the most comfortable?
MCD: I do. If it's a good indie script, I'll do it. When I read AMERICAN CRUDE, I thought it was fantastic. Sheffer wrote that too. I'd seen him in some little movie called DEEP CORE 2000, and he was a little technician and he was wearing this little headband, and he was wearing the same headband on the set. He said it was his favorite headband, and I'd just seen him like two weeks earlier in this film.
Capone: Up to lately, you've been the go-to guy for larger-than-life characters in DAREDEVIL, PLANET OF THE APES, THE SCORPION KING, THE GREEN MILE. You were probably the only quality thing in DAREDEVIL. Were you concerned about the race issue and Kingpin's character? For my money, as long as the guy wore sharp suits, carried a cane, and kicked ass, I didn't care who played him.
MCD: I was worried about it, because I followed Daredevil and Kingpin as a fan. So when they told me I was up for the part, I thought like a fan first. I don't mind seeing him black, but I'm used to seeing him white, so if he's going to be black, he better bring it. So I asked the filmmakers, do you think it's going to be a problem with the large fan base? Because I told them not to change anything else about the character; I wanted to see exactly what was in the comic book. Warner Bros. assured me it would not be a problem. So I got to fight Daredevil and beat Ben Affleck up a little bit.
Capone: And with PLANET OF THE APES and SIN CITY, you jumped into characters that were well known before you got to put your stamp on them...
MCD: I knew very little about Sin City before this movie.
Capone: What was your first exposure to that material? Did Robert load you up with the graphic novels?
MCD: Yeah. At first I thought they were very dark, and Robert said that's exactly what the movie's going to look like, exactly what you see in the book. And I thought, "Well, you can't be exactly the same way." But he assured us it would be exactly the same. Nobody's every done that before where you look at the comic book and look at the movie screen and see the same thing exactly.
Capone: What did you think of Robert's three-monitor system of directing? One with the panel from the book, one with the black-and-white image, and one in color.
MCD: That's what he had. He would always check them religiously....in between playing his guitar. He was just so good at it; I guess it just comes naturally to him. He never seemed stressed about it. He had everybody at ease, and his crew loves him.
Capone: Are there any other genre films you're looking at right now?
MCD: I'd like to do a comedic love story. I think that would be the one who the jokes are bounced off of, but he gets the girl in the end and looks handsome in the end. Something like that. I think comedy is really fun to do, but it's very trying. I'd also like to do some television.
Capone: Really? Something harder, like on cable?
MCD: You know my favorite show right now is "24." I watched it last night. I think Jack Bauer is the greatest guy on T.V. I'm open on the television work. Action, comedy, but the script has to be good. That's all I ask.
Capone
email:capone@aintitcoolmail.com
