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Gabriele Francioni Ok first just a simple
question, how did you get in contact with Amir Naderi and what was the
casting process?
Mark Greenfield
Amir is good friends with
my wife, she used to work in film production and they were very close so he
was already a friend. I’m a theatre actor and we were doing the Tempest by
Shakespeare in a park outside of Manhattan close to Amir's neighborhood in
Thomson Square Park. In the style of theatre I do we are always in
character. It never ends so in between scenes I was going around the park
stealing people’s beer and taking sticks and putting them in piles and Amir
saw this and loved it.
And then I saw “the runner” which is and early movie Amir did in Iran and I
thought it was one of the greatest movies I’d ever seen and then we started
talking to each other about eventually working together.
He was doing a movie and he asked me to audition for it and I got the role.
The first think he asked me when I auditioned and I’d known him for a long
time, was would you kill a cat. So the first question he asked me was will
you kill a cat? And I said I’ll kill something if I can eat it afterwards.
But I don’t just want to kill it and I think Amir will kill for his art.
That’s what I've learned in this he will kill to make it a better movie. Do
you agree? (To Z) I mean he will kill me he will kill you, all he cares
about is the movie and he would give his own life for it.
So he cast me in that movie as a guy who kills chickens, but it ended up
that the budget changed for the movie so he had to change the script, it
actually made the movie a lot better but in the process my character got
cut. So then three years after he calls me up, were still friends the whole
time, he calls me up and he says can you come to Las Vegas in two weeks? I
said how long do we have to be there, he says oh, two months, give me two
months. Then it became five, six months you know it was six months in the
end. And also one other thing, he is the godfather of my child. He’s my
son’s godfather. He's really like family.
GF (to Zach Thomas) What about your casting process. How did they
contact you? How are old are you?
Zach Thomas Oh I’m 16 right now. I was going to an acting school and
they did auditions, and Amirs assistant went in and auditioned a few kids
and i got a call back and I went to a motel 6, for the audition so it was a
little weird in that perspective. So I went and he called me back and in
about three weeks he told my mom to sell her house and move to Pahrump. And
that’s what we did. We sold our house and moved to an even smaller town than
I was raised in. It’s tiny. So we moved there and we thought maybe in about
three or four months we’ll be fine and we can get out of there, and be able
to be in a real school again but we were wrong!
GF What did you do before? In terms of acting, productions etc?
ZT This is my first thing,
G.F Well you where great, compliments.
ZT Thank you
GF When we first see your character, an adolescent American boy, you
instantly think of characters from a Gus Van Sant film, however your
character is the opposite and you are sensible and sensitive and the glue
that holds the family together. How did you at such a young age prepare for
your character? Is it you in the part? Is the characters personality a
reflection of your own personality?
MG You do know we haven’t seen the film. So I don’t know what he
looks on the film. I only know what he is like to live with.
ZT I really didn’t prepare too much, I don’t really know how I
performed in the film but I hear I did an ok performance, I hear I did a
pretty good job, I don’t know, I've been into acting since I was born so its
kind of like a sixth sense for me. But Amir helped a lot though by directing
me into what I needed to be by telling me how I need to act to act and
giving me motivation I need for my part.
GF To us watching the film it seems as though amir sometimes takes a
step back and gives you a sort of free reign for your parts during the
movie, is this correct?
MG Well it was different for each actor, I saw one of the first
scripts and what the final film was in terms of comparison to the first
scripts, well it was a completely different thing. Nancy the woman who
played my wife didn’t have a script so he would it to her from one day to
the next.
It was shot chronologically we would each day start with the script and do
take after take after take and as we do the takes the scripts start to
change, and he’d say “oh that was good do this now talk about this”, it
seems the film when you watch it that he let the actors go, but he would
fight us to make us get into the right mental state, you know he would trick
us, he would tease us, be nice to us, but once he let us go he let us go,
but to get us there he didn’t just let us go, he’d push us, mould us, really
manipulate the process and then let us go.
But it’s a combination of complete control and complete freedom, so he
created structure and get us to the right place and then he’d leave us alone
and let us go. (to zac) that sound about right? What do you think?
ZT Yeah like even with the filming, some of the scenes would almost
be real life. I don’t know whats in there but with some of the fighting
scenes those got intense; it seemed like it was actually happening, it
wasn’t like they were hurting each other but they had a cutthroat rage
towards each other.
GF Talks about the end fight scene where the guy attacks the kid and
drags him into the hole as an example.
MG It was hard because a I really like Zac, he’s a nice kid but what
Amir wanted to express, is that there is also a part of me and everybody
that’s also very angry and very dark and very mean and Amir wanted to let
that out and I think working with Amir for me is going beyond morality, like
taking morality and forgetting about what’s good and nice and gentile and
showing the ugly part. So it was hard because Zac is a very nice guy and I
had to be ugly with him. But that’s what Amir wanted and that’s what he got.
(To Zak) what do you think about it?
ZT It was really difficult to act, even though I didn’t have too much
anger in the film, well I had anger towards the dad at the end I pretty much
wanted to kill that guy, but in real life I liked Walt. Because he is a very
nice guy so it was hard to get in to it and feel the rage to actually kill
someone, because actually I’m a very docile person. I don’t do much harm to
anybody; I play paintball that’s about it.
GF What do you think the core of the movie is about? Because Vegas as
a city is defiantly a strange, is the movie about addiction, or a symbol of
life that is projected into the garden. Trying to put some roots into the
landscape, what does it mean to you?
MG What was amazing to see was that Amir built this world in this
landscape, with this trailer and it was the one place that had grass, and he
actually tied leaves to the tree so it took four days to make the tree with
plastic leaves, tying on one leaf at a time. So it was amazing to see how
hard it was to grow something there. Now how I see the film, one part of it
is definitely about the American dream gone bad, now the American dream is
not just particular to America, a lot of people in other countries have the
desire to be rich and famous and be on TV, win the lottery, be movie star
etc, its not just for America, for me at the heart its about addiction, but
not just addiction to one thing, it’s addiction as a gigantic concept, you
don’t know what you are addicted to.
Aliyah Hussain Its not as simple as and addiction to gambling for
example, because you character seems to become addicted to the idea, so in
the end not necessarily the thing he is going to find but the idea of
finding it.
MG For me a lot of it is about wanting self esteem, its like if I win
the lottery a lot of people will like me, I will be a better person, when I
drink people think I’m funny, when I dig this hole and find this money my
wife will appreciate me. You know so its almost addiction as a way of curing
the part of people that feel worthless and having a part of your person that
feels something. So addiction is the main word.
03:09:2008
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