Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Now this interview is a bit different than the usual. I’m rarely approached with an interview opportunity AFTER a film has seen release. It’s happened before… there was one awards season that kicked all sorts of ass, where I got to interview Golden Globe nominees, great people like Curtis Hanson and Steve Kloves well after WONDERBOYS was in theaters. My brief interview with George Clooney was after GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK came out, when he was doing his Oscar push. But here, I was approached with an opportunity to talk to Jeremy Davies about RESCUE DAWN, Werner Herzog’s POW flick also starring Christian Bale and Steve Zahn. I’ve always like Davies’ work and I really liked RESCUE DAWN, so I thought, “Why not?” The only problem was I scheduled this interview the day after I got back from Comic-Con. I was so worn out that I tried to cancel it, but I got a pleading email back saying they’d push the interview a day or two so I could rest up a bit, but that Davies was adamant about doing this. So, we did the interview at the end of last week. I think it turned out really well. He was very flattering, so of course I like the interview, but aside from the flattery he had some really interesting things to say about making the film, how he approached his character and his experiences working with some of the most interesting directors in film. There are some spoilers regarding RESCUE DAWN, so if you haven't caught the flick yet, be warned. Enjoy!
Jeremy Davies: Quint?
Quint: Hey, how’s it going man?
Jeremy Davies: Hey, good day Quint, how are you?
Quint: I’m doing alright, but I heard you were a little under the weather.
Jeremy Davies: Yeah, I apologize, I really was just… I wanted (the studio rep) to kind of bring that up mainly because I’m… I really have a lot of respect for you guys and your site and of all the interviews I’m doing, I really wanted to dedicate no less than 110% of my misfit energy to you guys, rather than have you catch me at the end of some really long exhausting interviews, because truly I am a huge fan of Ain’t It Cool, so… I was just seeing if you had any room at all… like I’d be able to focus and want to give you much more energy, but if this is all you have by all means, I don’t want to come close to canceling on you.
Quint: That’s very flattering. Thanks man, I appreciate it.
Jeremy Davies: Sure man and thank you. Thanks for your support of the film.
Quint: Well it’s real easy to support good movies. We get thanked a lot by people and it’s like you guys have the hard job, the job of actually making it, something worthwhile and worth talking about.
Jeremy Davies: Well thanks man. Are you recording this by the way, Quint?
Quint: Yes, I am.
Jeremy Davies: OK, good I’m kind of a famous mumbler and I can speak a little fast sometimes…
Quint: It’s aright, that’s why we have technology here… yeah, the technology will help us…
Jeremy Davies: You’d be surprised, some people still take notes and they can be a little dangerous.
Quint: Well I think that that’s okay if you’re writing feature articles where you just have to pull sound bites, but the way that we traditionally do interviews is just in the Q & A format or a conversation. I don’t know, I’ve never been… even in high school I took a class that tried to teach me short hand or whatever and I never got the hang of it, so I could never do that. I’d be lost without my recorder.
Jeremy Davies: Well, thanks and I apologize in advance for the rambling, far from abridged answers I’ll likely be giving you…
Quint: That’s alright, I ramble when I ask questions, so we’ll be a perfect match.
Jeremy Davies: Well great, by all means ramble with abandon.
Quint: Alright, well the first thing that I’m interested about RESCUE DAWN is to what degree did any of the actors speak to those who were involved in the real events. I would guess Christian Bale talked to Dieter… but for you… does anybody know what ever happened to Gene?
Jeremy Davies: Great question and no, he was never discovered and that was of course one of my first questions and I wanted to find as much information on him as I could, but the only information I ended up with was hearsay through my widely generous mentor director Werner [Herzog], who just really wanted to collaborate with me on Gene, so yeah there wasn’t a whole lot of information with hard facts to go on and of course Dieter was the only one who got out alive, so everything that we have on what happened came through… well hearsay, through Dieter, but the most important thing for me and for Werner, in regards to orchestrating a compelling portrayal was to first of all honor the memory of Gene and honor all of the individuals in this story and every man and woman in uniform by first of all and purely on a superficial level, just making sure that I didn’t or any of us make sure none of us look like well fed pampered Hollywood actors who just walked out of their trailer. It was absolutely necessary to get down to prison camp weight class and to honor that and be on that and specifically in Gene’s case, what was important to me and to Werner, and he was very generous and gave me a lot of room to collaborate on, was to make sure that Gene represented an authentic and viable opposing force, because you know in every great story you obviously not only need a very compelling and believable and empathic protagonist or hero, but you also need an equally believable and empathic opposing force, like opposing characters or character and Gene in the camps certainly represented that the most and so it was really what we worked the hardest on, to train with, as you pointed out, with very few hard facts to go on… presenting his arguments, his perspective, his conflicting perspective on the situation opposing Dieter, presenting that most authentically and legitimately. You know, I really believe, came to feel, that Gene had a very fiercely legitimate perspective on opposing Dieter’s… see I’m already rambling…
[Both laugh]
Jeremy Davies: …far from the abridged version…
Quint: That’s alright; we’ve got plenty of time.
Jeremy Davies: Cool. Basically Gene’s perspective to me was that they had all been there for two years before Dieter showed up and what I understand about… what I’ve learned about the psyche of anyone in battle or in a situation like these gentlemen in prison camps…. I actually learned a lot, by the way, by studying Viktor Frankl, what he wrote and for example a book called MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING. Viktor Frankl, you may know, is the renowned psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz and wrote a lot about how certain individuals or why he felt certain individuals were more inclined to survive such horrific experiences and why they were less likely to. One of the things he talked about is the capacity of the individual to find the freedom between the stimulus and response and the capacity to create a hopeful belief system to hang on to, rather than a negative belief system and for Gene what I could gather was that from his perspective, he believed first of all that there was no war and there would be no war and he really believed that they would be… they would be let go at any time and Dieter, as charismatic and heroic of a character he undoubtedly and clearly was, never the less crash landed on Gene’s belief system and shattered that hopeful perspective that Gene was clinging to, so in the end I really felt a great deal of empathy for Gene’s perspective.
Quint: You brought up an interesting point, because in most traditional prisoner of war movies it would be the new guy in there rallying the troops and his main nemesis would have been one of the guards. Like in this movie it would have been Little Hitler or another one of the guards, but that’s really not how this one is structured, where his biggest fight is to win the minds of the other prisoners. That he needs their help to escape and it seems almost like a… I wouldn’t say political, but it’s close to that... It’s almost like a political tug of war between Dieter and Gene.
Jeremy Davies: Exactly, it’s very well said and it was an interesting tightrope for Werner and I to try to navigate and negotiate, because we’ve both seen films where the protagonist is compelling, complex and believable and empathic, but the opposing force, whatever it is, is more 2 dimensional and dismissible and you can’t even begin to empathize with it and the whole film and story is weaker for it. Here you’re having a fellow prisoner represent that opposing force. It was that much more difficult to keep it from being 2 dimensional and just sort of superficially angry as particularly as we’ve discussed already that considering that there’s so little information to go on about what actually was said and done in the camps, but yeah that’s what’s… you know trying to bring, as well as his opposing ideas and his opposite end of the spectrum perspective on the situation, to also make him and give him a sense of humor and some humanity and compassion for the others…
Quint: Yeah and he really doesn’t do anything dickish until he just bails out of the attack and even then we don’t even know why. It’s not like we see him stand by and let somebody else get killed or something.
Jeremy Davies: Exactly, that’s a good point and of course that goes… I gain a lot of insight from a past experience on another (film) about war of course in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, one thing I really came away… one invaluable part of that experience was the appreciation that Steven [Spielberg] instilled in me for… I mean really seeing how hard Steven tried to portray a complexity in his characters in a complete spectrum from… to balance it from the history of war films that we had seen up until that point, particularly about World War II, to bounce it away from a primarily heroic, predominantly heroic depiction, to showing the complexities… showing that everyone has a different capacity for performing in battle or in the military and certainly my character in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN represents… Steven wanted him to represent the audience, someone who was not supposed to be there who was not trained to be in battle and Gene in a kind of similar way represents clearly the opposite end of the spectrum from Dieter, someone who is a little more inclined to, within a situation like this, to react with much more caution and more less than heroic and impulsive, less than impulsive instincts…
Quint: Dieter seems to be the kind that would make something happen, while Gene is the one who wants to wait for somebody else to do it.
Jeremy Davies: Yeah and I honestly believe that portraying that complexity… portraying the differences and allowing legitimacy to voices more like Gene and Upham, really honors the individuals in the military, soldiers more than the opposite, more than just having it like most films, where most soldiers behave quite courageously and heroically, so… It’s much more compelling as an actor to explore that as well.
Quint: You filmed this in Thailand, right?
Jeremy Davies: Yeah.
Quint: How was that experience? I’d imagine you were on location that you weren’t in Thailand just sitting in a set the whole time right?
Jeremy Davies: On the set the whole time? Not the entire time. We were there for about four months and it was… well I wouldn’t have had it any other way and it was definitely a pretty intense creative crucible at times… at times a little too vividly visceral to act. It’s Werner back in another jungle with another collision of man against nature and it was far from luxurious, far from a studio production… very subterranean filmmaking which I’m quite used to. I was quite fortunate to begin that way with SPANKING THE MONKEY and so I’m used to those conditions and I actually prefer it. You know, we didn’t have trailers and the heat was pretty intense and the sets very realistic and it was quite a hike through the jungle to get to the set and to me that’s invaluable to have that type of environment as an actor, as a filmmaker in training, to me I’ve… the sets that I feel most uncomfortable are the ones that feel more like a vacation, where everyone agrees with each other… on those I become very uncomfortable, because I prefer a set where disagreement is encouraged and you’re allowed to bring different ideas to the table and where conditions aren’t quite so luxurious. I believe that just all feeds into allowing a greater chance for the audience to experience what I call a keyhole perspective on the performance… so you really feel a more authentic portrayal because it’s, you know, you don’t feel like you’re just watching actors who’ve just stepped out of their air conditioned trailer and stepped away from craft service.
Quint: It seems like you’re almost collecting brilliant directors like trading cards. You have Werner now, but you’ve also worked with Spielberg and Soderbergh and Wim Wenders and Lars Von Trier… When you’re looking for a project or you are approached with a project, is it very important to you to find those unique voices as directors?
Jeremy Davies: Yes, it’s very… I would say absolutely, there is… I’m struggling to give you the abridged version before I launch into it and I don’t know if there is one… forgive me again in advance, Quint… What you should know about my misfit career or so called acting career is that from the very beginning when I got SPANKING THE MONKEY, I mean… truly getting anywhere in this business is like winning an interplanetary lottery and I always felt, again quite sincerely, that someone like me, who wasn’t actually from this business and I came from nowhere really… someone like me getting anywhere in this business, the odds are quite stacked against you and so when I was able to stumble into the wildly great fortune of the chance to try to pull off SPANKING THE MONKEY with the remarkably gifted David O. Russell, I made a decision back then to… because again with those odds I never expected a misfit like me would have too great of a chance of a flourishing acting career, so I made a point from the very beginning to deliberately hijack my misfit acting career, to turn it into film school, because that’s what I’ve always wanted most of all and I always thought if my acting career did continue that it would only serve me more as an actor to understand the entire filmmaking process much more,. So I made a proposal to David O. Russell after he… against his better judgment, cast me at SPANKING THE MONKEY. I asked him if he would be gracious enough to keep me informed of everything that is going on, to educate me and that precedent just continued and has accelerated and I have absolutely taken every acting opportunity in film that I’ve been wildly lucky to be a part of and really made sure I didn’t take it for granted and I’ve always made a point to steal as much film life as much as possible. That precedent has led to, even between projects, actively seeking out filmmaking mentors in between and as I became more and more serious about being… about my blasphemous intention of becoming a reasonably competent filmmaker in my own right some day. As an example seeking out mentors... pretty much Lars Von Trier, for example, I sent him a letter years ago, just because he was the top of my list… the top of my short list of God-sized filmmakers that I would have given anything to have the chance to steal some filmmaking wisdom from and, Quint, I actually had a fight with my very well meaning representatives at the time to get them to send this letter to Lars, because they just… they really meant well, but they wanted me to go through proper channels and protocol and at any rate, they finally ended up sending it. All my letter said was… I just simply asked permission to come and watch him make films to further my filmmaking education and against his better judgment he responded very well to my letter and was recklessly generous enough to invite me out to Copenhagen and actually insisted that I take a role in DOGVILLE, even though I really just wanted to come and kind of apprentice him…
Quint: And observe, yeah.
Jeremy Davies: Yeah, exactly. That started the really deeply, richly rewarding mentorship with him. I mean he took my desire to become a filmmaker very seriously. I lived in Copenhagen for a while and came back for the editing process, did the whole thing again with MANDERLAY, and I’ve been back… I go back quite a bit and so long story short, I’ve done that quite a bit over the years. Werner, actually before I had heard anything about RESCUE DAWN, he was on my short list of filmmakers that I wanted to approach in the same way as I had approached Lars and he just out of the blue ended up approaching me. I actually proposed the same thing to Werner when I sat down with him, the same thing that I had proposed to Lars. I said, “ I don’t know how serious you are about me in this role, but if you go another way, it would still be a great privilege to have your permission to come and steal from you,” and you know, sorry I keep saying this, but against his better judgment he cast me in RESCUE DAWN and has taken me under his wing. I was in the editing room everyday and throughout the whole process he really made point to keep me involved and help me out, so…
Quint: I can kind of relate to that a little bit, because I had to make a decision, because I started writing for the site when I was really young… I was 16… maybe 15 when I started…
Jeremy Davies: Wow, incredible.
Quint: … so I was writing through high school and then I kind of had to make a decision for college and it’s like “What would I go study?” I’d go take film classes obviously, because I’m a big movie nerd and that’s where my passion is, but I had to make a decision. Do I stick with the site and make that be my film school or do I go to college and have to put the site on hold and pretty much cut off my involvement in it. Obviously I stuck with the site and it’s been amazing. I’ve gotten to see some of the most amazing directors in their genre, and all genre, work. There’s just something about sitting back and watching how Peter Jackson works with his actors on LORD OF THE RINGS, or watching how John Carpenter worked a scare on one of his movies, you know that kind of thing… I don’t know, there’s just something about watching that, a film actually come together, it’s greater than any… Why would I go sit in a class room and have somebody who couldn’t make a movie tell me how it’s done? Or I could, as part of my career, just watch the best filmmakers of their time work.
Jeremy Davies: Exactly, Quint, I would just kill for your… if I didn’t have this great privilege that I have myself. I would kill for your position. You absolutely made the best decision and that’s exactly what I’m talking about. You, even beyond me, you have access to far more God-sized filmmakers than I do and you can speak in depth with them and go and observe them. I would kill for your position. You’ve done extraordinarily well, period. You started when you were 16, that’s incredible.
Quint: Once again you talk about this sort of lottery… it’s like I just happened to know Harry right when the site started and that’s… what are the chances, you know?
Jeremy Davies: Yeah and beyond the wildly rewarding and enriching experiences, you’re having this four dimensional film school … you’re also; you’re doing so much with that information. You’re helping so many others, including me. I gain such a wealth of insight from just reading your take and your experiences with these films and the fact that you guys… and I really mean it, but beginning the way I did, of all the interviews I’ve done, the fact that you guys are unequivocally cinephiles to the Nth degree… I have such great respect for what you guys do and the good at which you aim and where your hearts are about cinema. As you know, there are many different reasons why people want to talk to an actor or filmmaker of whatever and often it’s far too rare that it’s someone from your perspective, with your intentions and care and respect for cinema.
Quint: It’s strange, there are very few people in film criticism who genuinely love movies. I remember seeing that just as a kid, looking at my local newspaper reviewer, it’s like “does this person like anything? Why do they even go to the movies?”
Jeremy Davies: Exactly, it’s amazing to me. It does feel often like that, that the film reviewer is just someone who just sort of agrees to do that as well as his other listings that they’re doing… it’s a small part of their lives, where the fact that you guys clearly live and breathe film and it means as much as it does to you. For someone like me, who, I’ll tell you, maybe this will help make sense of why I’ve kind of hijacked my acting career the way that I have… If I’ve done anything right in this business and it’s debatable whether I have or I have not, but if I’ve done anything wise, perhaps the wisest thing I’ve been able to pull off in my personal life to set up my professional life is… to give you an abridged version of this isn’t easy either, but what I did was when I first made some of the, shall we say, monopoly money that this town is known for paying its actors, even working class actors like myself, I made a point of investing that wisely from the beginning and I intentionally set up my life, my personal life, so that… you know, I made some wise investments in real estate and I’ve set up my life so I don’t have to work if I feel like I have nothing to offer the filmmaker, because I saw from the very beginning that that would give me the most control, one of the greatest positions to be in is for an actor like me, is the position where you have the power to say “no.” I don’t have to take a job that my heart isn’t artistically into to support a certain lavish lifestyle or pay the mortgage. I put off starting a family… I’ve done this so I can kind of create exactly what you’re talking about, a lifestyle where I can really educate myself. I went for years watching an average of 25 films a week and breaking them all down and kind of a mock Monk’s lifestyle in hopes of it maybe translating through me and becoming a reasonably competent filmmaker.
Quint: “Shaolin Movie Geek”
Jeremy Davies: Yes, exactly. The point being, speaking with someone like you and your site, you and Harry and your site just means a great deal, maybe that helps you understand a little more…
Quint: You’re doing good work, so it’s like I said, it’s easy to be supportive. I don’t really know what to say besides thank you.
Jeremy Davies: Well it’s good enough, so thank you very much.
Quint: Well I think this is running real long and I’ve probably pissed off somebody at MGM, so…
Jeremy Davies: Oh don’t worry about that, I just again feel bad for you with the transcription. I understand you’re really busy from Comic-Con, so I really appreciate it.
Quint: Comic-Con was nuts, but luckily after nine and a half years of breaking my fingers off, we actually now have an intern that can do the transcription for me, so this is… I’m going to force him to transcribe all of this stuff and if he doesn’t blow his brains out, then we’ll be good.
[Both laugh]
Jeremy Davies: Well definitely offer all apologies on my behalf to your intern.
Quint: Certainly.
Jeremy Davies: And if you could do me a favor, too, Quint, and give my highest velocity regards to Harry and his review of SOLARIS and the wildly generous… recklessly generous comments he made about me in that I’ve never forgotten and in fact just put on my reel… recently I got that updated and made a DVD reel of my work. I guess on a format that’s pretty unorthodox, but at any rate I’ve included some quotes and his quote was just far to generous, so please by all means extend my deep gratitude and God-sized respect for him and you guys for what you do.
Quint: I certainly will. He’s on the road right now, he’s going on… 1) his honeymoon and 2) he’s going on the big geek road trip. There’s a rolling road show, so he’s going to go watch all of these movies as they’re projected in their actual shooting locations.
Jeremy Davies: Fantastic.
Quint: It’s pretty cool, they’re going to have GOLDFINGER at Fort Knox and NORTH BY NORTHWEST at Mt. Rushmore... lots of cool stuff. He gets to go travel around America and geek out, but I’ll…
Jeremy Davies: And on his honeymoon as well?
Quint: Yeah, yeah. He got married on the 15th.
Jeremy Davies: Oh tell him congratulations.
Quint: Certainly, I’ll pass along all of the well wishes.
Jeremy Davies: OK and thank you so much man. Keep up the good work really and truly.
Quint: Yeah, well you keep up the good work and keep making our jobs easy.
Jeremy Davies: Thanks, brother.
Quint: No worries.
Jeremy Davies: You guys take care.
As always, a big thank you to Muldoon for slaving away transcribing this interview. He really helped me with my Comic-Con interviews, allowing me to get them out to you while I was still covering the panels. Speaking of, I still have a goodly amount left to share. And it looks like I’ve set up a chat with a bad motherfucker… my second time to interview this particular awesome actor. That should happen in a couple days. So, keep them eye-balls peeled! -Quint quint@aintitcool.com
