There’s a film out now in some parts of the country that covers what were essentially the fame years of country singer Hank Williams, and it does so with a fair amount of effectiveness. And while I may have issues with some of the choices writer-director Marc Abraham (FLASH OF GENIUS) makes in his storytelling, there’s no denying that the work Tom Hiddleston does as Williams is astonishing, both in terms of acting and singing. He’s not trying to sound like Williams, and yet he sounds close enough that the variations disappear almost immediately.
This is only Abraham’s second film as a director, but he’s made a name for himself as a top-notch producer with such notable titles as THE COMMITMENTS, AIR FORCE ONE, THE HURRICANE, BRING IT ON, THIRTEEN DAYS, THE RUNDOWN, Zach Snyder’s DAWN OF THE DEAD remake, SLITHER, CHILDREN OF MEN, IN TIME, THE THING prequel, and THE MAN WITH THE IRON FIST.
The first time I sat down with Hiddleston was back in December 2011, when he was capping off the greatest year of his career so far with the release of Steven Spielberg’s WAR HORSE, a film that followed his appearances in THOR (as Loki), Woody Allen’s MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (in which he played F. Scott Fitzgerald), and Terence Davies’ THE DEEP BLUE SEA. When I saw him, he had recently finished shooting his second turn as Loki in THE AVENGERS, so yes, 2011 was a very good year for Hiddleston. Since then, we’ve seen him as a vampire/rock star in ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE; a coupe of Shakespeare characters in THE HOLLOW CROWN series as Henry V and in CORIOLANUS in the Donmar Warehouse’s stage production; another turn as Loki in THOR: THE DARK WORLD; and in Guillermo del Toro’s CRIMSON PEAK.
In just a couple of weeks, Hiddleston will star in the six-part AMC miniseries “The Night Manager” (which has already aired in the UK) and in Ben Wheatley’s latest film HIGH-RISE, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, as did I SAW THE LIGHT. He’s just wrapped shooting on the King Kong prequel KONG: SKULL ISLAND for director Jordan Vogt-Roberts; and he’s prepping for the start of production of THOR: RAGNAROK in July. Both of those films are due next year. Strangely enough, at Butt Numb-a-Thon in December, Hiddleston and Vogt-Roberts delivered a very funny birthday video to Harry from the SKULL ISLAND set, which I bring up at the top of our talk.
This interview took place the morning after a truly great post-screening Q&A I did with Hiddleston and Abraham the night before. Their answer were detailed, lengthy and quite informative, so naturally I ended up asking them almost entirely different questions for our on-the-record interview. By the way, if you saw the very funny video of Hiddleston doing the local Chicago weather while he was in town, that happened about 40 minutes before we sat down to chat, and they had just come from the local Fox News affiliate when I saw them. With that, please enjoy my conversation with Tom Hiddleston and Marc Abraham…
Capone: Do you remember that video you made on the SKULL ISLAND set? It was for Harry’s birthday. Jordan was my guest at Butt-Numb-a-Thon the year before, which is why he made the video with you.
Tom Hiddleston: He said it was one of the best events for film lovers.
Capone: It’s a great communal experience.
TH: It was so funny. He and I were on second unit that day and he wanted to turn up to do that specific shot, and we literally had to grab it at the very last minute. Did it go down well?
Capone: Oh yeah, people loved it. You were spinning around showing us things that we weren't supposed to see on the set.
TH: [To Marc] It was a really cool thing. Jordan was doing—it was for Harry Knowles, right? He was like, “Hi, Harry. Jordan Vogt-Roberts here on the set of SKULL ISLAND. I wish I could be there with you. I can’t, sadly. I had so much fun last year. I’m being called over to set. I’ll just hand you to a PA.” And it was me. “Hey guys.” I started moving around. I was like, “I’m really sorry I can’t tell you any spoilers…” And then behind me, there’s a huge set of a giant skull.
Capone: Giant bones of this dead animal.
TH: Of a Kong.
Marc Abraham: That’s funny.
TH: It was cool.
Capone: So forgive me if we cover some of the same ground as yesterday, but I’m expecting completely different answers.
MA: Don’t worry.
TH: [laughs] We’ve been doing this so long, we’re actually really good at coming up with different answers.
Capone: We talked about the opening, slightly surreal moment of the film, but I want to talk about the first time we see Hank perform in the real world in that honky tonk. The camera is scanning the crowd first, so we get reactions to Williams before we get him. It’s almost like you’re looking for him, and everyone’s reacting differently. That’s the first time we see him the way a lot of people in those early years saw him. So talk about setting up that sequence.
TH: Great question.
MA: Well, what I wanted to do with that, rather than pop straight into “Here’s Hank” is to set the ambiance and environment that this performer is often in, which is a small crappy little honky tonk somewhere in the middle of nowhere. That’s why I started seeing some of the faces, and the faces are really real and authentic, and some of the shots that he ended up using—one guy is sort of sleeping and a couple of the girls are talking and one girl later is playing with her eye.
TH: But you grabbed those shots in between set ups.
Capone: They look really natural.
TH: In between set ups when I wasn’t playing.
MA: Some of them were. The ones where you’re playing for the most part, but there are a couple of girls. There are some of those. But the whole idea to me is, I love reality. I want films to feel real, and they haven’t been aggrandize in some filmy way. You look at honky tonk, you see these movies with crowd scenes. Crowd scenes, I don’t like them mostly. They’re not actors. They’re being paid a minimum amount of money, and they don’t really know how to modulate their performances, so often times they’re pounding their fist in the air, they’re going too hard and too fast. I really like to be specific about that. Usually I don’t tell them to do anything. And then after a few minutes, they’ll start to do something. They’ll start talking. And then of course when he was playing, we did grab a lot of stuff, and out of that we found the most subtle versions.
Capone: It just occurred to me— did you have any concept of what “honky tonk” meant before you made this movie?
TH: [laughs] No, I didn’t.
Capone: I barely comprehended the meaning. I think it’s just a bar but it’s in the South. Maybe there’s something else to it.
TH: Yeah. I honestly didn’t really know. I had always heard of it though. I remember the first time I heard of it was listening to “Honky Tonk Woman” by the Rolling Stones, which is a song I loved. But I was like “What’s a honky Tonk Woman, and how are they different from other women? But that was the first musical number we shot. It was a big moment because for the first two-and-a-half weeks of our shoot, we shot a lot of stuff at the end when Hank is very sick and frail and the scenes with Maddie Hasson as Billie Jean. We did the ending, and then the next day or two days later, we were in a straight run of musical numbers for 10 days, where we just shot music day after day. Sometimes two musical numbers in one day. With “Honky Tonkin’” was the first. It was “Alright, here we go. It’s time to get my feet wet.” It was such a great number to start with, because it was unpolished, and the performance is supposed to be like that.
This is a good catch. You may have never known this actually: Marc had told me how he wanted to establish that scene in rehearsal, and by chance had added, “I think I’m going to get the camera to just roam around and find you at the back.” And I’d been in the studio with Rodney Crowell laying down the track for “Honky Tonkin’,” and they were about to let rip into a really polished version of it, and I said, “Here’s what we should do: We should let it play in a very extended intro, which then Marc can use so that you hear the music before you see him sing. Michael Rinne who plays Lum York, the bassist of the Drifting Cowboys in the film, is also playing the bass on the soundtrack. So Rodney had the idea of like, “Michael, why don’t you start? Just bring the bass in. Bring it in really heavy. Really slap it, and make it unpolished, and then Hank will just start strumming when he wants to start.” And that track never changed actually.
MA: Yeah, well we started. I put in the other track—
TH: “I Can’t Get You Off of My Mind.”
MA: “I Can’t Get You Off of My Mind,” which is playing when you first come in, then we go slow, then there is that lead in that Tom’s talking about. So we put that song in as well.
Capone: You mentioned last night that you lost some weight to play this part. How does that physically changes you other than just makes you skinny. You carry yourself a different way, your clothes fit differently. How does that change the way that you feel and carry yourself?
TH: It’s interesting. You feel less strong and you feel more vulnerable and you feel somehow…it’s odd. It’s a very odd feeling. It’s a professional obligation to stay fit for most of the work that I do. And also I think even if it wasn’t a professional obligation, I would anyway because it makes me feel good. I like being healthy. I always have. I was an athlete in school. I was on the rugby team and I take huge please in physical exercise and activity, and Hank didn’t have that really.
He was quite weak as a child and he had this terrible back pain, and I was very keen that, in representing Hank’s illness, there are certain things you can’t fake. Marc and I talked about that a little bit, but he never asked me to lose the weight. I just took it as an implicit obligation. If I had to look like him towards the end, I had to lose a bit. So what I did was I ran a lot and ate a bit less.
Actually there was one day, and I’ve never talked about this, where I ran myself into the ground and I gave myself Achilles Tendonitis, which is when you basically aggravate your Achilles tendon to the point where your body is saying “Please stop running.” It was incredibly painful. The Achilles tendon is the thing that holds your foot to your leg, and I remember saying to Marc— he was like, “Are you okay, dude?” And I said, “No, I’ve done myself an injury.” And he said, “Rest when you can and use it. Use it in your portrayal of Hank because he was always in pain.” He had Spina Bifida, which nobody had diagnosed and nobody knew about and nobody sympathized with, but he had to get up there and perform. It didn’t last for long, but it was at an interesting moment in the shooting that there was some way of transmitting his physical disability with my own.
Capone: Almost all musical roads, at least in America, lead back to Hank Williams. I feel like every musician at some point figures out what they like starts there or grazes his music. I actually discovered his music though punk rock, British and American. Social Distortion used to cover him constantly, and they’re this LA punk band that used to say without Hank there would be no Sid Vicious. We talked about jazz musician who cover him, and obviously country artists. You said last night you didn’t want this film to say this is why Hank Williams is Hank Williams. At the same time, you have to recognize that he is a legend for a reason.
MA: It’s interesting, and maybe this is just my nature as a writer, I like to use the audience’s intelligence and accessibility to information to fill in that blank, and I’ve spent more energy—and have been challenged for it or criticized for it—showing him as a man. The movie really does not do anything about trying to say how important he was, other than it shows that he got to Number 1, but it’s very personal. Some people really want me to say, and wanted Tom and I to go up there and say “Here’s this great genius that you have to understand is a genius.” That is given. It’s a given by the fact that we made a movie about him. spina bifida So in the ether, it exists in some balloon of understanding that he was powerful and important. Now, they don’t know that he influenced Bob Dylan particularly or Bruce Springsteen or Sid Vicious or Keith Richards or Neil Young.
But I didn’t feel any obligation and maybe should have, but didn’t feel that. This is about this man. This guy who walks the earth the same as anybody else. But here’s his music. Here’s his art. Here’s what he created. Here’s how he lived. Here’s how he died, in terms of not even showing how he died. We don’t even show it. We could easily show him in the back of a car in some melodramatic scene with the kid reaching back going, “Oh my God, Hank’s cold.” But it’s all there on Hank’s face, Tom’s face, at that moment. So I didn’t feel like that, because I felt like we made a movie about this guy. ’s not something I was that interested in.
Capone: Tom, I have to ask you before they kick me out of here, when do you start shooting the next THOR film?
TH: In July.
Capone: In July. I met Taika Waititi at Sundance with his new film (HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE]…
TH: I hear it’s great.
Capone: I loved it.
TH: I hear it’s wonderful.
Capone: I just read a quote that’s being construed as you saying that this will be your last time around as Loki, but I can’t believe you’d say that.
TH: I did see this morning that that’s gone pinging around the internet. I think so, but I think I said in the same piece… Look, Loki’s died twice, and he’s back. So truly, people don’t believe me when I say this, but Marvel do make it up as they go. They think there’s some grand master plan. I know that Kevin Feige is incredibly intelligent. I mean, a deeply, deeply intelligent man and an immaculate producer. He knows exactly what he’s doing. But the nature of the development at Marvel is everything is constant movement all the time. I truly don’t think they have planned… I don’t know how much they’ve planned anything beyond the next couple of years. That’s what I said on that day, but of course now the internet has its opinions on that. So I have to be very careful what I say about this. I truthfully don’t know. All I know is, I’m back.
Capone: Your friend Mr. Cumberbatch seems to be wrapping up on DR. STRANGE.
TH: How long is he playing Dr. Strange for?
Capone: I’m sure he’s signed on for at least a couple. They set something up in this one that I think has to be carried into another one at least. Do you keep following all the Marvel films, even the titles you aren’t a part of?
TH: Now that I’m a part of that thing… it seems like the Marvel Universe has been in our lives forever, and it’s actually a very recent phenomenon. When I signed up to play Loki, Marvel had made one picture, and it was called IRON MAN, and that was it. And it was fantastic. So it’s been an extraordinary thing to watch and be part of as this huge culture around those characters has grown and expanded. Of course, I know these people. The actors, they’re all friends of mine, and I feel hugely proud of them. I watched AGE OF ULTRON for the first time. I hung out with those guys for five months, just like I hung out with this guy for five months. So I’m happy for them when they succeed. I can’t wait to see CIVIL WAR. I have absolutely no part in it, but it’s exciting to watch it.
Capone: Gentlemen, thank you so much. Best of luck with this.
TH: Thanks, man.
MA: Thank you, buddy.
TH: But maybe you can disabuse the internet of its hysteria.
Capone: Of your abandoning ship? No problem.
TH: Yeah yeah. The strange thing about anything I talk about with Marvel is people jump on it, and it gets misconstrued and misquoted and it goes around the entire planet in half a second. And that I find genuinely tiring. It’s like “Guys, that’s not what I said.” Then you get quoted out of context. How do you feel about that?
Capone: I don’t do news for the site; I just review films and talk to you guys, if that’s any indication. We do run news and some rumors, but I stay out of the headline game, because too often a site gets it wrong, or they emphasize something that isn’t worth emphasizing. So I stay out of it, because I don’t want to be that guy who has to apologize or print a correction later.
TH: Smart move. Thank you for all of your support. It was a great, great Q&A last night.
