Capone Survives An Interview With Javier Bardem!

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here. Has there been another movie character this year more evil than Anton Chigurh in the Coen Brothers NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN? Forget this year; in the past five years, has there been another screen villain that has haunted you more than this single-minded death machine. His walk, his posture, his clothes, and, above all else, that terrifying haircut combine to make your stomach drop to the floor each time we see that hulking mass of sinister as played by Javier Bardem. I've greatly admired Bardem's fearless ability to never repeat himself. This year alone, he has given us three very distinct and vastly different characters. Many disliked Milos Forman's GOYA'S GHOST, but everyone agreed Bardem's snake-like Brother Lorenzo was a masterstroke. Just last week, Bardem gave us his take on the compassionate, love-obsessed hero in LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA. But this year, the Spanish acting giant will be remembered for making us collectively pee our pants as Chigurh, wielding his compressed air canister of doom and killing nearly everyone he comes into contact with…unless of course you win a coin toss. Some may forget that Bardem has been nominated for an Oscar, for his stunning portrait of Cuban dissident poet Reynaldo Arenas in BEFORE NIGHT FALLS, but you should also check out his glorious work in MONDAYS IN THE SUN, THE DANCER UPSTAIRS, and THE SEA INSIDE. He even has a tasty little role in Michael Mann's COLLATERAL. But it would appear that Bardem, for the time being, will be making English-language films for the next couple year. You may recognize the names of a couple of the directors he'll be working with, assuming the writers' strike allows him to build his schedule the way he'd like to, but we'll get to that. Here's my conversation with the very funny and charming Javier Bardem… Capone: Hello, sir.

Javier Bardem: Hello, how are you?

Capone: Good. First off, thank you for talking with us. I read a couple other interviews with you that you've done in the past couple of months, and more than one of the journalists has mentioned that they were nervous about meeting you because the character you play in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD ME scared them so much. How you gotten that sense from some people, that you make them nervous?

JB: [laughs] No. Well, I guess yes, some of them did mention that to me, and I found that very funny. I guess that they thought once they got into the room, they would see me with the same haircut. But you know what? I'm an actor; that was a role; that's not me. Some of them even said they had nightmares with me, which is good.

Capone: What a wonderful compliment.

JB: Exactly. I prefer that to them saying they had wet dream with me in them. [laughs] That would be insane.

Capone: I spoke to Josh Brolin a couple weeks ago, and he does a scarily accurate impression of you. Have you seen him do that?

JB: Of course. He's always doing that shit to me, and I'm tired. I go like, “Okay, Josh, what else can you do?” [laughs] I love him. I was just with him like five minutes ago. He makes everybody's life easier and funnier. He's a great, adorable guy.

Capone: The character of Chigurh is the essence of violence. How do you crawl into the mind of a character like that? You said before that it was just a role, but there's got to be more to it than that, somewhere your mind goes to play a man like that.

JB: It's very much imagining what a guy like that could be, since I haven't shared a lot of experience with a person like that, fortunately. I haven't killed anybody, so it was brand new for me to say, “How do you portray this guy?” Sometimes you really have to go to places where it's really dark, but the good thing is, it's so extreme that it's a fun game to play. You just play that and go about your own self, because it's impossible to stay there. [laughs] Playing a villain is like a big game. The problem though is that once I was coming to my own self, I still was wearing the haircut, so in that sense something was staying with me whether I liked it or not. But yeah, sometimes you have to go and put yourself in an insane place where you feel like almost numb to people's feelings, like the character himself does. You stay there for the scene and then go back; you don't stay there for a long time.

Capone: What did you think of his weapon of choice? What was it like to hold that air canister and hose for the first time?

JB: Well, I would recommend to any psychopath not to use it because it is very uncomfortable to carry, very heavy. [laughs] And it's not very useful, I have to say. It works for movies but I don't think that would work in real life. So don't try that at home. That comes from the book. When I saw it, I thought it was kind of a fire extinguisher, but no, it was a kind of a gun. I thought it was pretty insane, but that's on [NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN author] Cormac McCarthy.

Capone: Were you aware when you first read the book or the screenplay how funny some of scenes are that you're in? You don't play them for laughs, obviously, but there's something about Chigurh's seriousness that makes people laugh.

JB: Yeah, the humor is there in the book and in the script, but it was very…from the beginning, the Coens and I talked about the humor. But if there's humor in this film, that comes from the Coens and the way they pull it together. It's not about playing goofy or funny. Actually, Woody Harrelson's character says, “I would describe him as a man with no sense of humor.” I never tried to be funny, otherwise you'd lose the essence of the guy which is somebody that is not funny at all.

Capone: The Coen Brothers have created so many iconic film characters over the years. Do you have a particular favorite?

JB: John Goodman in THE BIG LEBOWSKI. I could keep on watching that character on and on for the rest of my life. He's insane; he's so funny. I loved it. You know which other character I loved? The husband of Francis McDormand in FARGO [John Carroll Lynch], doing his artwork. I don't remember what he painted. Was it butterflies? Some sort of art expression…

Capone: I believe it was ducks.

JB: Yeah, yeah. He's a great actor.

Capone: I've seen NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN twice now, and it wasn't until the second viewing that it even occurred to me that the three main male characters aren't ever on the screen together. Can you tell me about you seeing the completed film for the first time? Was that the first sense you got of how the film was structured?

JB: Not really. This is one of the few examples where you realize…on the page, there's a guy with this insane kind of gun going and killing people, and you're like, “Why?” What in the world made this thing interesting to do? But it's one of the few cases where you know that some guys are kind of geniuses, in my opinion. The Coens are behind the camera, and they know exactly what they're doing, and they're going to take very good care and make sure everything is in place. So you go there and do your thing, and you go back to the hotel. And every day, I was killing somebody and going back to the hotel, because I didn't have any idea what kind of movie Josh Brolin's movie or Tommy Lee Jones' movie was. We didn't have anything in common or interact. So when I first saw the movie, I was really blown away because everything works like a clock: tick tick tick. Perfect. In a way, we were doing three different movies. The only one who interacts with everybody is Kelly [Macdonald].

Capone: I did want to talk about a few things you have coming up. I know you just finished shooting a new movie with Woody Allen [called VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA].

JB: That's right. I finished that in September in Barcelona, and that was fast. He shoots really fast. You have to be really prepared for that.

Capone: Is it a comedy, or is it more like MATCH POINT, more serious?

JB: You know what, I think it really depends on how he puts it together. That's the only thing I can say. The dialog is brilliant, but it has so many layers, he could easily choose different options. So I don't know what kind of tone it will be.

Capone: I've heard that about some of his other works, that something could be edited to make it a comedy or a straight drama.

JB: Totally. This is one of those cases.

Capone: Can you tell me anything about the story?

JB: Yeah, I'm a Spanish painter, and there are two American tourists played by Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson, and they go there and I meet them and they meet me. [laughs] And it's good work; it was a hard job. [Bardem's good friend and frequent co-star Penelope Cruz is also in the film as his character's ex-girlfriend.]

Capone: It sounds like you play a tortured man.

JB: Totally. But it's great dialog; it's very Woody Allen, a movie about relationships and how we place ourselves in relationships. I don't know; that's what I think. I like that very much. I truly had a great time with him. He's very warm and very nice in his own way. He's not the biggest talker in the world; he doesn't talk that much. But he's really nice, and he's there for you in case you need him for sure.

Capone: People talk about his style as a director of actors the same way they talk about the Coens in terms of their hands-off approach, but you must flourish under those conditions.

JB: Yeah, but at the end of the day you have to understand that these are people who have done some masterworks, and you realize that they are very natural and normal and low key, and you just have to surrender and give up the fight and realize that you are in a master's hands. You are in the hands of a master, and sometimes they can do wrong, but when they do right, it's amazing. So you don't have to go there and bother them with a lot of questions. You just do what they tell you to do. That's all.

Capone: I know that you are a huge Fellini fan, and I understand you may be in the film version of the musical NINE, directed by Rob Marshall. Is that still happening?

JB: No one knows. The whole thing is up in the air now, as you know, because of the strike. I'm not very familiar with it because I live in Spain, but apparently everything is up in the air. Hopefully it will happen. I met Rob Marshall, and I think he's a great guy and he has really great material. And I think it's a funny thing to do because it's so far away from what I would normally do, but I think that's the challenge.

Capone: Are you a good singer?

JB: No! Of course not! But that's the point: how in the world am I going to achieve that? That's the challenging part.

Capone: Your name has also been attached to KILLING PABLO, Joe Carnahan's film about Pablo Escobar. I'm sure many people will tell you about a storyline in the HBO show “Entourage” that tracks the making of a film about Escobar, if you haven't heard this already.

JB: No, no. Again, this is also up in the air, but he has a very powerful story. The script is really powerful, and I would really like to work with Joe. But once again, I don't think anybody knows.

Capone: Just last night I saw Francis Ford Coppola's new film YOUTH AGAINST YOUTH, and I understand you have signed on to be in something he's directing [TETRO].

JB: Yeah, but that will be a tiny role though. But I have the privilege to know him, and I talk to him, and I would love to collaborate with him. It would be an honor for me. But it's about dates, once again. It's about seeing how it can be worked out. But, yes, it's a little tiny role, nothing big.

Capone: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, I think it's fair to say, is your most American movie to date. Not just because it's an American film, but it borrows from Westerns in so many ways. And now it appears that you've got a series of films coming up with American directors. Is this the direction you're headed in for a while?

JB: It's kind of accidental. It's not something that I looked for; it's something that just happened. I mean, I was in Spain when Milos Forman came to shoot GOYA'S GHOST, and then I ended up working with a genius like Milos Forman. Then I was there, and Woody Allen comes to Barcelona to do a movie three. And then the Coens do a movie where there is room for a foreign actor. So these have been very accidental kinds of things, you know? In the mean time, I keep living in Spain, and my goal is to keep working in Spain, but at the same time I need the material. And if the material doesn't arrive, how in the world am I going to say no to material that I truly like. It's not something that you want to do on top of the other; it's something that you just do because you want to combine two things if it's possible.

Capone: You mentioned GOYA'S GHOST, the Brother Lorenzo character you played in that also had an unusual haircut. Well, maybe not unusual for the time. Do the hairstyles and the clothes and the body language of these characters, does that help create these characters? When you see yourself in the mirror, does something click?

JB: Yeah. The funny part is just to, not to do it because you want to make it an exhibition of your skills. You just want to do it if it helps you understand some other people's point of view and behavior. Then that's the right way to go, because you are portraying someone who is not you, and I like that. That's one of the most enjoyable parts of the work. Mainly it's about being honest, but it's also about creating behaviors as much as you can do that, because that's our job. We see people and we bring those people into our work. We construct people, and you want to construct different people if it's possible.

Capone: I should also mention LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA just opened here last week. Again, another example of another character you play who is very single-minded, focused.

JB: Yeah, as much as Chigurh is the ultimate badass, this is the ultimate lover. Also kind of an icon, as much as Chigurh is an icon of violence, he is a symbol of what love should represent. I did CHOLERA 20 days after I finished NO COUNTRY, so I'm quite content about how it worked out because it was kind of challenging, and that's why I wanted to do it. I wanted to go those different extremes in a brief period of time. Not to show anything to anybody, not even to myself, but to have the experience of being in those two different minds in such a small space of time.

Capone: Was that difficult, or do you enjoy that jolting shift?

JB: It was exactly what I was expecting, which is a place where you have to put yourself in very uncomfortable situations, where you really have to pull yourself away and get inside those two people's minds very fast. And that's the funny part, not over-thinking too much; just do, just try, have fun with it. Go there and do what you did when you were five years old. That's the whole genesis of this work: playing. Play, play, play.

Capone: So it's more play than work for you?

JB: That's the fun part. What's not the fun part is the whole promotion situation.

Capone: Oh no. I hope this wasn't too painful for you? I don't want this to feel like work.

JB: No, no. This was fun, this was good.

Capone: Well thank you for saying so. Thanks again for sitting down with us. I'm really looking forward to the Woody Allen movie and any of those other films you may do after. They all sound like fun.

JB: Alright. Thank you.

Capone