After making three films with Joel and Ethan Coen, Josh Brolin says he still sometimes can't figure out their cryptic directing; the artists who installed a teahouse in Griffith Park last year are now transforming a downtown L.A. alley for one day; the Sundance Film Festival's commitment to inclusion has become a beacon for filmmakers such as Jason Lew.
Josh Brolin says 'panic' sets in when the Coen brothers offer him a role
Josh Brolin's first big film break was in one of the most iconic movies of the 20th century, "The Goonies."
But he stepped away from film shortly afterwards in favor of theater, during which time his friend Anthony Zerbe encouraged Brolin to embrace character acting. Brolin told The Frame that experience made acting "more fun for him."
Returning to the film world, Brolin was cast in "No Country For Old Men." It was the first time Brolin had worked with the Coen brothers, and it marked a turning point in his career.
Auteurs Joel and Ethan Coen have a penchant for relying on a favorite roster of actors, and "No Country For Old Men" marked the first of Brolin's projects with them. Now, Brolin plays the lead of Eddie Mannix in the Coens' new movie, "Hail, Caesar!."
Mannix was a real studio executive and producer in the Golden Age of Hollywood who was known for keeping his movie stars' often problematic private lives out of the public eye.
Josh Brolin says that to help him prepare for the part, the Coens gave him just one direction: Make it interesting. When Brolin met with The Frame's John Horn, the actor discussed how he actually prepared for the role, his relationship with the Coens, and how Old Hollywood compares to today.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
What attracts you to acting? Is it that you become a more interesting person?
I think what's interesting about acting is it's the extreme of the human condition. It sounds kind of trite, but it's the truth. People were asking about Sean Pean and El Chapo and all that. And look, I completely understand pursuing an extreme personality. That's our job. So if it were 10 years from now, I would totally get it. Doing it now is maybe a little too soon. But we're all looking for those personalities in extreme situations to be able to project on the screen — for your entertainment.
So the more extreme, the more interested you'll be in a part? Or the more extremely different it is from who you are as a person?
I loved writing as a kid. So I think it's more about that for me. I've heard actors say, I love between "action" and "cut." And I hate between action and cut. I think that's the most tortuous moment. So I find that to be a massive pain in the ass. So it's the accumulation, it's the talking about it. What is this? And Eddie Mannix — what is he going to sound like? Let's go listen to Abbott and Costello. Let's read about Thalberg and Mayer. It's the creation, the sculpting, it's the construction.
George Miller directed "Mad Max: Fury Road." You happened to meet him in the lobby before you came in to talk with me. Your eyes were as big as a kid in a candy store. Do you still get excited by meeting directors and by watching the work of somebody like George Miller?
I get excited by meeting anybody who puts their ass on the line for whatever their chosen profession is. I was nervous talking to him. I looked down a lot. I said, "I aspire as an actor to do what you have done as a director" — which you realize, he's done "Mad Max," and he's also the same guy that did "Babe." There's something about Scorsese and doing the mafia and all that kind of stuff, and not to say Scorsese doesn't have diversity, because he does, but not that kind of diversity. I love that.
That brings me back to the Coen brothers. And really a landmark part in your life, which was "No Country For Old Men." At the time that movie came around, you'd been playing bad guys. And I think you saw yourself in that movie as a different character. Can you talk about what happened in that film, and where you saw yourself professionally was thrown upside down by what the Coen brothers offered you?
Things have changed, for me, based on other people seeing something inside of me that I don't see. Or that other people don't see in me. The Coens were about to see this guy [Lewellyn in "No Country For Old Men"] in me. They were very frustrated that they couldn't find the guy. I sent them a tape and their response to the audition tape was "who lit it?" It was like I wasn't even on the tape
But we should explain that Robert Rodriguez shot your audition tape...
And Quentin Tarantino...they didn't even comment...like I wasn't there. And my wonderful, amazing agent, Michael Cooper who they now call The Gnat, he somehow got me in that room, their last audition when I knew they were focused on another actor and when I walked in there, Joel didn't say anything he stared at me the whole time. Very creepily stared at me. When I left I go, I read for the Coens, how cool! I read for the Coens. I got a call the next day, we'd really appreciate it if you'd consider being in our movie.
When you look at the part of Eddie Mannix, what are the kinds of concerns you have? Eddie Mannix was a real person. He ran a studio in the '40s and the '50s. But what is your reaction to that part? Do you see the real person? Do you see yourself in the part? Do you see the movie broadly?
There's always panic. And I don't say it trying to make it sound funny. And then — being Joel and Ethan, and I'm used to this — I [ask], Well, what's the guy? And they go, Whatever you think he should be. And I go, Well, what is that? Like what were you thinking when you wrote it? [And they say] Well, we were thinking we wanted it to be interesting. What the f*** does that mean? I don't know if it's just fun for them to play with me or not, but I'm like the little mouse ball and they're the kitty cats. But I feel more like a writer/director than an actor when it comes to this. Being in their movies and creating actual characters. I always learn the entire script before I show up, I know the whole thing and I've read it probably 60 or 70 times. There's something about making it cellular that's really nice on the set. It being a tortuous process.
We should talk about the historical context in which this story unfolds. I think a lot of people who are familiar with modern day Hollywood assume that it's nonstop debauchery and excess. But Eddie Mannix was presiding over a studio at a time when what happens today was kids' play!
Nothing! What was going on with [Clark] Gable, with Marilyn Monroe. We know those stories. But I mean, the orgies, the brothels. All the people we know and love and appreciate.
The murders! I mean, Eddie Mannix might have killed George Reeves.
Literally. We could probably do 25 movies on this. And yes, it's the easy thing to say there was no social media back then. At the beginning of the Vietnam War, everything changed. They televised the unthinkable, the anathema. Before that, you could hide,you could construct a movie star...This cultivation is not something that happens anymore.
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Sundance 2016: Jason Lew moves from in front of to behind the camera
As we get closer to the Oscars, the conversation around the lack of diversity in Hollywood is only getting louder.
A trio of advocacy groups — known as the Multi-Ethnic Coalition — has announced that it will press the major movie studios to increase the number of minorities both on- and off-screen. The Coalition has for many years been working with the TV industry on these same issues.
About 700 miles from Hollywood, the Sundance Film Festival has been a more inclusive environment over the years. This year’s event included a variety of films with diverse casts and made by filmmakers of various ethnic backgrounds.
One example is the film “The Free World.” It was written and directed by the bi-racial director Jason Lew. The film stars Boyd Holbrook, Elisabeth Moss and Octavia Spencer. And it’s Lew’s directorial debut. He started off in the film business as an actor.
The Frame's John Horn spoke with Lew at the Sundance Film Festival about how being an actor benefited him in the director's chair, how his Chinese-American upbringing inspired his film, and the importance of the diversity conversation in Hollywood.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
How did your acting career help you out on your directorial debut?
I speak actor from being one for so long, and that was the one thing that I held on to in going in as a first-time filmmaker. I knew that I could get in there and I knew what good acting feels like and the atmosphere that's required for it. The real joy is getting to help shape these performances.
You have also done some screenwriting. The first screenplay you wrote was "Restless," which was directed by Gus Van Sant in 2011. How did that change your interest in becoming a director and was that a good first-time experience to be on the other end of things?
It was great. It was definitely overwhelming because I came to L.A. to pursue an acting career and had all my ups and downs with that, and in my downtime I was adapting this play I wrote while I was in New York. I found that people aren't super anxious to read a script by an out-of-work actor, but eventually I got it to some of the right people and it was a total dream.
But it was overwhelming after it happened because people were [asking], What's next? And I'm [saying], Give me five minutes. Because I didn't come to L.A. with a trunk full of scripts. So it was a whole process of figuring out what it means to be a writer. "The Free World" was the second thing that I wrote. I just wrote it for myself.
"The Free World" is about a man who was wrongly convicted of a crime he didn't commit. What was the inspiration for the story? It's very dark, troubling material.
Well, I always start with character and I was haunted by this image of a man who works at a dog shelter who was wrongfully accused. I was terrified as a kid of being accused of something I didn't do. I don't think anybody loves that, but I couldn't watch stories where that was the plot, even if it was a kid's movie. So I just wanted to lean into that fear and obsession.
The main character in the film, Mo, played by Boyd Holbrook, undergoes a religious conversion in prison and becomes Muslim. Did you think about casting Mo with an actor of color, or was it important that he be played by a white man?
I was always open to that, but the first image that I had was this white Muslim. I was really fascinated because it happens in prison. I was reading about it and I was just so fascinated with just how strong that spiritual conversion must have to be to cross tribes in prison. I'm bi-racial, which I'm very proud of — I'm Chinese-American and Caucasian — so I've always identified with characters that don't quite feel like they fit and are struggling to define what world they belong to.
As a Chinese-American filmmaker, do you feel like this is an opportunity for you to tell stories that might not be told? And are those stories different from what you've being asked to do as an actor?
Yeah, well, it's a pretty simple answer for the parts I was being offered — [there were] just very few, and that was one of the motivating factors, that I'd love to change this from the other side. It's getting better. I think the diversity conversation is no longer a conversation. They're calling it a crisis, which I think is great, but I like to tell stories about characters that don't have their stories told. Unfortunately, right now that's a lot of stories about people of color.
I come at a story as somebody who had to struggle with my identity since I was a kid. When I was a kid I asked my dad: "So I'm half-Chinese and half-regular?" Of course, that's a heartbreaking thing to hear, but ever since I was conscious enough to know that you had an identity, I had to search for it. So I think that will always permeate stories, whether they're specifically about the Asian-American experience or not. I hope to be able to make more about specifically that.
A cascade of flower petals is set to transform a downtown alley
Last summer, a wooden teahouse mysteriously popped up in Griffith Park. It was a serene place on top of Mt. Bell with gorgeous views, where people were invited to write down wishes for L.A. and hang them inside the structure.
The teahouse came and went in less than a month, and the anonymous art collective who built the installation donated it to the city. On Feb. 6, that same collective is creating another ephemeral experience in Los Angeles — this time in a downtown alley.
Downtown L.A. is noisy, and, for all the gentrification taking place, still somewhat funky. I’m standing on South Broadway between 5th and 6th streets. A loud stream of buses and cars are barreling by, and a stream of people — some obviously down on their luck — are walking past a row of cheap jewelers, cell phone shops and clothing stores. In other words: hardly the place you’d expect to have a transcendent experience.
But a woman opens a door into the alleyway between two jewelry stores, and it’s like I’ve entered the wardrobe into Narnia, or Platform Nine and Three Quarters for a train to Hogwarts. In this first small chamber, a young woman brushes glittery paint on origami flowers pinned to the brick wall. It’s bright and calm and quiet — an immediate contrast to the cacophony on Broadway.
Then I enter the main alley, which is open to the sky, and a gentle flurry of flower petals is falling like snow. Along the walls are stations to write down your first memory of L.A. on a piece of paper, a wooden filing cabinet to store them by category, and a pulley where you can clip memories to a rope that hoists them up a flight of narrow metal stairs.
The staircase leads to a small platform, where another woman silently types away on a stenotype machine, which spools a long trail of paper over the balcony and down into the alley below. Petals keep falling and building up, and a man walks around sweeping them to the side with a broom. It’s absurd and contrived and artificial — and utterly serene.
In the middle of downtown Los Angeles, for a brief moment, I’m in a still, quiet wonderland of precipitating flowers, with an invitation to dwell on my memories of the city.
“It was a bit of a portal, right?” says Gasshan Sarkis, who isn’t part of the collective behind
, but is one of their fans. (One member described him as an "unofficial spokesperson.") “You walk through a door and suddenly you’re no longer on Broadway. It feels in between worlds, kind of. It’s in between buildings, but it’s also ... you’re not quite to the other place. You feel like if you keep walking you’ll get somewhere else, but where you are you right now is just this transitional place. It’s fantastic.”
“There’s an ephemeral quality to the petals that we feel connects, in a way, to this ephemeral event that’s just happening,” says one member of the collective, who all prefer to remain anonymous. “It’s also happening in this very narrow sliver of the city — this sort of narrow alley — and this narrow window of time.”
“When I first arrived in L.A.,” she recalls, “it was a very hard city for me to process and to understand. It felt very overwhelming. I didn’t know how to find the beauty and joy in the city. It took me a long time to do that. But over time I realized that there’s so many surprises in the city, and it’s like one wonder after another. These kinds of experiences are what make Los Angeles amazing to me, and so trying to create some of them is really what has motivated me behind this piece.”
After months of searching, the collective found this privately owned alley through a friend who lives in the neighborhood. “You can actually rent the five feet between two buildings if you have occasion to,” explains another member of the collective. “It’s amazing how quiet a little alley nestled between two buildings can be on Broadway downtown,” he adds. “Doesn’t take much.”
Another fan (who also preferred to remain anonymous) stumbled on the teahouse last summer and was excited to fall under the collective’s new spell. “Look at us,” she says. “Look at where we are right now. And then five steps away, you’re in solitude, and you’re encouraged to empty your mind.”
Petal Drop LA takes place on Feb. 6, in the alleyway located at 530 S. Broadway. Five thousand cups of assorted cherry and wild rose flower petals will fall on anyone who turns up. But it’s only happening for one day, between sunrise and dusk — or whenever they run out of petals. So hurry up, jump in your car, race downtown, and experience a small taste of fleeting tranquility.