Check out these two interesting interview pieces, the first one is from Digitalspy who talked to Owen about his outlook on life:

Owen Wilson has said that he is “sort of a pessimist” and has a naturally fatalistic personality.

“That all came to an end when my parents sent me to military school. I’m driving a Prius now, so it’s hard to go really fast. I’m a little more mellow as a driver than I used to be.”

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And this one is from Guardian, chatting with Owen about his relationship with Ben Stiller and what he says back:

“Its great being in a film with Ben,” Owen Wilson, a regular co-star, has said. “He worries about everything, so you don’t have to.” Stiller has two movies lined up, a sequel to Zoolander and another Fockers movie with Robert De Niro, but insists he is learning to chill out more. He laughs hard when I bring up the Wilson quote. “Owen is a unique individual who has the ability to allow himself to be in the moment and not worry about the little stuff. He does care, he just has a different way of approaching it.”

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It’s nice to see Owen start to circulate popularity again now, let’s hope for huge success with Zoolander 2 and the many other projects on his horizon!

Here is what the brothers had to say about the film in an interview:

“[The main characters are] married guys, and they’re faithful to their wives, but they always look at other women,” Peter explained. “[It gets] to the point where their wives get so annoyed that they say ‘We’ll give you a week. You can have sex with one other woman,’ just to let the guys realize it might not be such a picnic.”

The part of Wilson’s wife has not yet been cast. Wilson does already have a male co-star lined up: “Saturday Night Live” cast member Jason Sudeikis. The actor will play the best friend, who apparently also gets a “hall pass” for extramarital relations.

Once again, Owen Wilson took the time to interview his good pal Woody Harrelson, check out what he had to say in this awesome interview!

OWEN WILSON: Hey, buddy.

WOODY HARRELSON: Hey.

WILSON: Where are you?

HARRELSON: I’m in the beloved state of Hawaii. Maui.

WILSON: Where?

HARRELSON: I’m at your house. [laughs] No, I’m up in my house.

WILSON: Sounds like you’ve had a good run of poker there. Last you said, you won three games in a row?

HARRELSON: Yeah, three times in a row. That never happens. But I’m also managing to pull the chute a little earlier and get the hell out before I give it all back and start writing chits.

WILSON: That’s always been the scouting report on you in poker: Not a lot of discipline. So I’m glad to see that you’re learning how to walk away.

HARRELSON: Yeah, I’ve got to look at your scouting report sometime.

WILSON: We’re probably the two worst players in that Maui poker game.

HARRELSON: It’s not that. We’re just the most trusting.

WILSON: We’re the most optimistic, the most hopeful.

HARRELSON: We believe in our own luck.

WILSON: It’s such a cast of characters that play in that Maui poker game. I remember our one friend saying it looked like the bar scene from Star Wars.

HARRELSON: Those guys are scoundrels, man. They sit there and pick you clean.

WILSON: I’m out in Malibu right now, and I was just thinking that you lived out here when you worked on Cheers, didn’t you?

HARRELSON: Yeah, I was out there until I was about 33.

WILSON: That seems like a long commute from here to Paramount Studios on Melrose.

HARRELSON: I never broke the 25-minute barrier, but I could always make it in under a half hour.

WILSON: Which is insane.

HARRELSON: Well, I had my motorcycle. I took the PCH [Pacific Coast Highway] to [Highway] 10 to Crenshaw [Boulevard], just trying to fight the traffic.

WILSON: Wow, that’s flying. When did you first come to L.A.?

HARRELSON: I came in around ’85.

WILSON: I remember you saying that you had already landed the role on Cheers and that you were rooming with Clem [Franek] and the Farrellys. I also remember you saying that when you first did interviews for Cheers and people asked you who the funniest guys you knew were, you’d say these guys from Rhode Island, the Farrelly brothers . . .

HARRELSON: I was always saying that. Who knew that they’d become these comedy phenoms?

WILSON: I remember Pete Farrelly saying that you guys would do things to try to scare each other.

HARRELSON: Yeah, I’d sometimes hide in his bathroom. . . I might wait an hour or so for him.

WILSON: Pete said that he’d come home and fix himself something to eat, go into his bedroom, start watching TV or reading. Then after an hour or two, he’d finally go into the bathroom to get ready to go to bed, brushing his teeth in the mirror, and suddenly you’d appear from the shower. [both laugh] This means you’d been waiting for two hours. That’s a real commitment to a joke.

HARRELSON: Yeah, it’s a little twisted. He finally put a stop to it. And one time he slapped me because he got so freaked out. He started screaming, “Never do that again! I could have a heart attack!” So that ended the fun of that one.

WILSON: When did you first get interested in acting?

HARRELSON: High school. I heard that if you were a terrific athlete, you could attract girls. So I had to look into some other possibilities. [laughs] I got into theater actually because of this girl, Robin Rogers. After she saw me do an Elvis impersonation in the library, she said I should be in the theater. And I was like, “If Robin Rogers wants me to be in theater, I’m going to be in theater.”

WILSON: You did a good Elvis impersonation?

HARRELSON: [In Elvis voice] Well, I, uh, uh, don’t want to brag, but, uh, uh, I surely did.

WILSON: Obviously you made the transition from doing theater to meet girls to something that you found you were good at.

HARRELSON: It really was specifically so I could hang out with Robin. I started dating her up until my freshman year in college. She came to visit me at college and got really upset because I had a paper that I hadn’t even started and she didn’t want to watch me peck away at my typewriter. She got furious, and our relationship ended. But, yeah, I found out I really liked acting.

WILSON: When did you decide to try to make acting your job?

HARRELSON: Well, I think it was because my buddy Clint Allen, who went to Hanover College with me, said that he was going to try out for Juilliard. And if he got accepted, he asked if I’d move to New York and be his roommate. I said, “Well, sure!” thinking the odds were astronomical that he’d get accepted. But he did. So I went. I was planning to bounce around and do regional theater and summer stock and eventually make my way to New York. But it happened faster that way.

WILSON: I’ve never done any theater acting. What did you like so much about it?

HARRELSON: We’re never going to be rock stars, which is probably everybody’s real dream. So that’s our only chance to get up in front of a live audience.

WILSON: Do people still send you plays or do you look for them?

HARRELSON: Well, mostly it’s been people sending things. But lately I’ve been looking for something to do that’s really cool. Dustin Hoffman said he would love to do a play with me, so I’ve been trying to think of one. Frances McDormand also wanted to do one. They both said this to me casually. But I take it very seriously, so I’ve been looking around. The thought of doing something they could all be in—and maybe Ben Foster as well. That would be pretty cool.

WILSON: You and Ben worked on The Messenger together. It was some of the best work I’ve seen in a long time.

HARRELSON: Thanks, man. This fellow named Oren Moverman co-wrote the script. He’s a fantastic writer and director. When I first read the script, they wanted me to do a small part, and I really didn’t want to, although it was one of the greatest scripts I had read. They wanted me to play the colonel, which was more of a cameo thing. But when I said I couldn’t do it, they said, “What about this other part, Captain Tony Stone.” And I was like, “Ah, yes. I think that one is a fantastic part.”

WILSON: Did you do any research?

HARRELSON: Well, you might remember I was picking your brain, finding out all about your military service. And I got to go meet a lot of soldiers, a lot of people in the Army, which was a great experience for me because I’m not a big lover of these wars we have going on here, which I would consider oil wars. So it was nice to spend some time with the soldiers and realize their part in all this and how truly heroic they are, doing what they’re doing—all this for no money and just for the love of their country and fellow man, really putting their lives on the line. So I really became a fan of the warrior but not the war.

WILSON: Did you speak with anyone who actually had your job? The “messenger” refers to the characters that you and Ben Foster play, who are military officials who give news to the next of kin about a death.

HARRELSON: Casualty notification officers. Yeah, I talked to a few of those guys, and they say it’s the hardest job in the Army. You can imagine it would be pretty tough to have to go and tell people that news. There’s not really that much they can say. It’s incredibly difficult, so painful. What’s cool, though, is that the Army really got behind the film and supported it and let us shoot on the Fort Dix military base. They wanted people to recognize this part of the program. But I don’t want anyone to think this movie is a bummer. It is really quite uplifting. Oren Moverman is an amazing director. He did so many extraordinary things—like letting a scene go for nine minutes long. Your buddy Ben Stiller saw the movie and had lunch with him the next day. He wants to work with him.

WILSON: After the stories you heard from the Army, did you do any improvising?

HARRELSON: The script was pretty polished by the time I read it, but we did do a lot of improvising and we did throw in things, sometimes just spontaneously. Like in one scene I sing an army song . . . .

WILSON: I remember when you were working on No Country for Old Men. I guess you were doing a scene with Javier [Bardem], and you guys just started talking. It was that incredible last scene you were in with all of that tension. I remember you saying that you guys brainstormed dialogue together, and you came up with some ideas and wrote out a couple of pages. And you guys were excited and showed them to the Coens, and they said, “Yeah, this could be good.” But then you ended up doing it the way they had it. [both laugh]

HARRELSON: I actually saw so much good material in Cormac McCarthy’s book. There was cool stuff like “You keep looking at my eyes like you think if you keep looking at my eyes I won’t shoot you.” So I actually rewrote the scene, and Javier and I got together in the evening and memorized it, and then we went in the next day and performed it for those guys, and they were like, “Yeah, you know what? Let’s keep it the way it was.” [laughs] I think they did change one line, which for them is unusual, being such maestros, and I was being presumptuous. But I’m one of those actors who is going to come in with 2,500 ideas. You can shoot down 2,499, but one of them you’re going to like.

WILSON: Your body of work has been amazing. There aren’t many actors who have done so many different things. I mean, to go from Cheers, where the character had your name, and break out of that and then go from Natural Born Killers to The People vs. Larry Flynt and then Kingpin [1996], which you did with the Farrellys—that’s real range.

HARRELSON: You know, I was on Cheers for eight years, and I couldn’t get another job, and I thought, I’m going to be Woody Boyd forever. Which is not bad, but I really thought I was capable of more.

WILSON: What do you think was your real break into movies?

HARRELSON: It was really White Men Can’t Jump [1992]. I guess I probably would’ve just been Woody Boyd but for the fact that Keanu Reeves didn’t play great basketball. [Wilson laughs] That was the only thing that saved me.

WILSON: How did you get cast in Natural Born Killers?

HARRELSON: Well, we thought it was kind of weird because when I was cast in Natural Born Killers, the only things Oliver Stone could have seen me in were Cheers and White Men Can’t Jump. Even Indecent Proposal [1993] hadn’t come out. So it was weird that he cast me, but he just said, “I see something in your eyes.” I was glad to work with Oliver because I always thought he was one of the great cinematic geniuses—I still do. And I was really glad to get to do that part, although, ironically, when the movie came out, I thought the big problem would be that people wouldn’t believe my character. But the big fallout actually came from the violence in the movie.

WILSON: That film got a lot of criticism.

HARRELSON: The media rained down negativity on it. At the time, I really thought that was unfair because I saw it as a misunderstood romantic comedy. But if you’ve got to explain that something’s a satire, then I guess it don’t really work. [laughs]

WILSON: I was going to say that I can only think that Oliver Stone must’ve seen something in your eyes that I’ve seen a few times, like when I’m trying to collect from you on a bet that you’ve lost. You do have a kind of crazy gear that you can click into.

HARRELSON: Yeah, you’ll be seeing that in a couple days, don’t worry.

WILSON: Which one of us would you say is the better sport when he loses?

HARRELSON: I think I’m probably a better sport. You tend to really just freak when you lose. You have a real hard time with it.

WILSON: But I think that’s because we’ve always been good friends and love the competition. It’s the same with my brothers. We can just sit there for eight hours throwing pebbles at a tree to see who can hit it the most times and be endlessly entertained by that. You grew up with brothers too. There’s something funny about growing up with a lot of male energy—and now you’re surrounded by four goddesses in this beautiful family that you have.

HARRELSON: It’s the way I like it now. I can’t imagine anything different.

WILSON: Having three daughters must be a change of pace from being around a bunch of guys.

HARRELSON: I don’t know—they’re pretty competitive. [laughs] Well, dude, I know you must have little stand-up paddling in your immediate future.

WILSON: Whoa! Don’t be rushing me off the phone here! I’ve got a page of 47 questions and we’ve covered three of them! We’ve got to keep going. Really, I can do this all day. [laughs] But I was actually having flashbacks to before we were even friends, when I set up a lunch with [film producer] Richard Sakai to pitch you on a script idea or something. I remember, after about, like, five minutes, I just kind of stopped talking, like, I kind of gave up on my idea. You say that you still remember it being one of the worst pitches you ever heard. [laughs]

HARRELSON: It was so funny because you wouldn’t even commit to finishing a sentence. It was like, “Well, I was just thinking, you know . . . Maybe . . . You know?”

WILSON: It was definitely the soft-felt approach. I don’t even remember what the idea was that we were pitching you, but I was not P.T. Barnum exactly. [both laugh] All right, buddy. I look forward to seeing you down the road in Maui.

HARRELSON: I’ll see you then, bro. Take care.

WILSON: You bet.

—–

Source: Interviewmagazine.
Image source: Niko Tavernise.

There’s lots and lots of hype about Fantastic Mr. Fox flying around, and I’ve been sort of picking and choosing what to post and what not to post as Owen doesn’t really have a very large part in it. However, this interview is totally worth the read! It’s a very interesting inside look to how the voice acting came together and how Wes Anderson originally came up with the idea for the film. Check it out!

So my first question is, ‘Why this book?’

The actual true answer is I don’t really remember. I don’t remember making the decision to adapt this book—it was 10 years ago that I first approached the Dahl estate about doing it. I wanted to do a stop-motion movie and the idea to adapt Fantastic Mr. Fox was simultaneous with that. It’s the first book I ever owned that was officially considered to be my property in our household, and the book made a huge impression on me as a child.

And what fascinated you about stop-motion?

I loved those Christmas specials that were stop-motion and I always liked the magical aspect of those. But I think there’s something about the fact that you can kind of tell what the technique is that’s making the illusion with stop-motion. It’s something I’ve always found very appealing and that really gives it a special, magical feeling. I don’t know of another technique that has quite that feeling.

How did you convince the studio, Fox Searchlight, to make the film?

In fact it was originally set up at Revolution, so this is why it took so many years to actually get it done. We went through a whole process with Revolution—we were about to do the movie when they decided to shut down the whole operation. We had organized the whole thing by that point but we had no studio. We had no backing of any kind, and you don’t usually show up with an animated movie that’s ready to go, with a script, and a group of people; you usually start with the studio and its animation department and it’s really done all at once. And we didn’t do it like that. Instead, we showed up with what we wanted to do, and it was a question of finding a place to do it. But then, for whatever reason, Tom Rothman at Fox and their animation guy then wanted to do it.

At that point, did you have George Clooney attached?

You know what? I don’t remember. I don’t know if we had cast it yet. Maybe we had. I don’t know if we had approached George yet. He was the first person that we talked to, and he was the first cast member, but I don’t remember if that was before we went to Fox.

Where and when did you record the dialogue?

We went to a farm in Connecticut, which was a really fun way to do it. I don’t think they usually bring the actors together into one place to record them for animated films.

And you had everybody there?

We had most of the group. Some roles we hadn’t cast yet at that point but we got as many as we could. We had George, and we had Bill Murray, and we had Wally Wolodarsky who plays the sidekick character [Kylie] and a bunch of other people. It was really like summer camp.

Did they sit around and read the script or did they act it out?

They acted it out. We video’d some parts of it but really it was less formal than that. The actors played it as if they were being filmed, but the microphone could come in close. For scenes that were outside, we did them outside, by a river, or in the woods. We went to different places that corresponded with what’s in the scene.

When you were little, did you always picture Mr. Fox in his corduroy suit?

No, no. But in the drawings in the first edition of the book, they’re in clothes. And they had wonderful costumes but they were sort of Edwardian outfits. I don’t know if I had seen corduroy on a puppet, but I just had a certain corduroy that I liked, in a color that was also suited to the movie, but it wasn’t like a big decision [to outfit Mr. Fox in corduroy]. It was really more like, ‘Well this might be nice.’ Maybe Paddington Bear wears corduroy, I think. Yeah.

Did you and your two brothers have the same dynamic growing as the two Fox cousins, Ash and Kristofferson do?

Someone from The Guardian had asked me that in England. He said, ‘Well your brother says it’s you and your older brother,’ and then I was like, ‘That’s exactly what it is.’ [Kristofferson] is an exact representation of my older brother, who was taller, more skilled, less troubled, polite, and protective. It really corresponds to the dynamic between us. But it never would have occurred to me.

You live part of the year in Paris. Are you often recognized over there?

I’m not recognized that much here. I’m invisible everywhere! (Laughs) I don’t have any issues like that. Even in my own neighborhood in New York nobody ever says anything to me anyway. So in Paris, I’m definitively invisible, I’d say. The only people that ever say anything to me in Paris are people who walk up to me and say, ‘I live two blocks away from you in New York and we met,’ or something.

How do you reach Bill Murray? Do you have the secret phone number?

Well I do have a secret phone number but that doesn’t necessarily get him. I think by this point he’s resigned to the fact that if I really want him to do something, he’ll probably do it somehow. I think he accepts that it’s inevitable. (Laughs) He’s just one of my favorite actors on the planet.

I heard he was doing press for this and I couldn’t believe it.

Yeah, because it’s not like he needs to. It’s not like he has any obligation to. It’s pro-bono work I think. (Laughs)

Was stop-motion a completely new thing for you to learn?

Completely new, and I’m glad I did this after having done a number of other movies because my ideas for how I wanted this to be are, in a lot of ways, different from how a stop-motion movie would normally be done. And I think because I had done a lot of other movies I could sort of find my own way into. So often, just the basic techniques are a mystery. The way somebody animates a scene is very personal—it’s a lot like acting. The way somebody knows that on frame 22 the character’s going to be pronouncing the word ‘what’, to go from that micro bit of information to making this thing seem alive… I can’t really understand how an animator does it. Or how they’ll have a set of instructions that are so clear frame-by-frame, but two different animators can have completely different interpretations of those things. To find a way to collaborate with someone who’s doing something that you can’t really understand and yet get what you want, that’s another thing.

Was it frustrating at times?

Not any more frustrating than a live-action movie. On the one hand, it’s a super complicated sort of thing and there are a trillion things going on at once, but on the other hand, compared to a James Cameron movie, it’s just the most intimate little operation. At the most, we had 30 units going at once, so that’s 30 different sets, 30 different animators, 30 different things at once. But with each one, I have a direct communication. The work is happening very slowly, so I can work with this animator and I look at their work each day. And they do another couple of seconds that I look at at the end of the day and we can discuss that and see if something’s not quite right. But anyway each unit is its own little operation and the pace is so different from a live-action movie. But at the same time it’s a lot happening simultaneously, so anyway I’m not sure exactly where I’m going with that but to give you some impression. (Laughs)

You’d think The Darjeeling Limited set would be more hectic, shooting in India.

There was a wilder, more intense feeling there. Things could go wrong in a crazy way and we were adapting to that, and there were just fantastic surprises happening. We were all doing one thing at a time together but it just felt like this chaotic adventure, and this is kind of completely different.

That might be my favorite Wes Anderson movie.

Oh, that’s good to hear, thank you. That’s not the universal consensus. (Laughs)

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Source: Vanityfair.

Rumors were flying around after Owen’s hospital visit of 2007, pointing guilty fingers at Steve Coogan for various reason. In this wonderful in-depth interview, Coogan talks about various issues in his life openly and honestly and touches on the subject of Owen, putting the rumors to rest and stating that, “Yes, Owen did have a bit of a personal wobble between the first Night At The Museum film and the one we’ve just finished, but he is totally fine now. I spent last Thanksgiving with his family in Texas. We’re working together again this year. It never affected my friendship with him at all.”

Read the full article at Dailymail

Image from: Fadedyouth.

OWEN WILSON: Just relax, buddy, I’m a veteran—I interviewed Tony Shafrazi. The best interview they ever had in Interview.

STEPHEN DORFF: [laughs] Do we chitchat or do we go right into it?

WILSON: Let’s go right into it. You just finished a movie that Adam Sandler’s company is producing, Born to Be a Star, in which you play a porn star. It’s a comedy. You haven’t done a lot of comedies, have you?

DORFF: No, I mean I did a movie with John Waters called Cecil B. Demented, but I haven’t done a comedy like the kind you do—a straight-up comedy. It was an exciting opportunity, and I got you to help and coach me on it, buddy!

WILSON: Talk about your Born to Be a Star character—it’s kind of a funny character.

DORFF: His name is Dick Shadow. At the beginning of the film, he’s at the top of his game. Then there’s Bucky, played by Nick Swardson, who realizes his parents were porn stars and is destined to come to Hollywood. Adam wrote the script with Nick Swardson and Allen Covert.

WILSON: It’s a nice way of making movies—to do it with your friends where you can keep control over it.

DORFF: Yeah, it was a really loose and fun atmosphere. Because Sandler has made so many successful films, he’s really laid out a friendly family atmosphere. You see a lot of familiar faces you’ve seen in many of his other films, and I just had a great time. So I might be giving you a little competition in the comedy area.

WILSON: [laughs] You’ve been acting since you were a kid, right?

DORFF: Yeah. I mean, well, I did my first film when I was like, 12 or 13. Then, besides a few commercials here and there, I didn’t really act again until I was about 16.

WILSON: What was your big break?

DORFF: Probably The Power of One [1992], this film I did in Africa with Morgan Freeman and Sir John Gielgud. I found myself working with some amazing actors, and I thought I was just going to go to college. I had auditioned for a couple of theater schools, like Juilliard.

WILSON: Did you get in?

DORFF: I got in, yeah. I remember getting that movie at the same time and asking my parents what they thought I should do. It was obvious that I didn’t really feel ready to jump right in with actors on that level, but I was so flattered I accepted. It just seemed I was destined on that road as a youngster—to be around adults who I could learn from.

WILSON: Did you have anyone who was a mentor? I remember my dad always saying that when he started his own business, he was surprised where the help came from. It seems like there is always a person who helps out along the way.

DORFF: My first manager was this lady named Booh Schut. She actually worked with me on my auditions. It was pretty surreal to be auditioning as a kid, and I’d get close to these actors that I really respected. I remember River Phoenix in particular. I met him at an audition hall or something.

WILSON: For Stand By Me?

DORFF: Well, I had auditioned for Stand By Me [1986] when I was like 8.

WILSON: You did?

DORFF: Yeah. [laughs] I was really young, and I got a callback but . . .

WILSON: Which character did you audition for? Because you were kind of a roly-poly, heavyset little kid.

DORFF: [laughs] Oh, I don’t even remember what part. Maybe the Corey Feldman part?

WILSON: You have an affinity for accents. I remember first seeing you doing British in Backbeat. And you did South African in Power of One, right?

DORFF: Yeah, that was what was weird. At first the best roles I was getting were ones playing English people. First I was doing English–South African, and then I used the same dialect coach to do Backbeat, which was a Liverpudlian accent. That one was hard. I remember I once had a meeting with Sydney Pollack and the playwright Tom Stoppard, and they thought I was English. I said, “I’m just from the Valley!” [laughs] Just from the San Fernando Valley! It’s weird because I found out later that English actors like Ewan McGregor and Jude Law auditioned for some of those roles. Then, when the whole crop of British actors kind of rose up, I never played English again. Saved a lot of money on dialect coaches!

WILSON: It’s a cliché to call you a child actor because you did only one movie as a kid. Your father has a pretty interesting background in music, right?

DORFF: Yeah, well, I moved to L.A. when I was like, 6 months old. I was born in Georgia ’cause my dad was going to college at the University of Georgia for music. Then we moved to the Valley, and my dad was a songwriter out here. After struggling for a little while, he had some pretty big hits. He wrote that song “Every Which Way But Loose” for the Clint Eastwood movie.

WILSON: That’s the one with the monkey in it.

DORFF: Yeah. I have all these really cool pictures of me as a kid on Clint Eastwood’s lap or sitting with Ray Charles. I have one where I’m with Johnny Cash in the studio. So it was kind of a cool childhood because my dad was in the business, but not really in the business . . .

WILSON: Did your parents encourage you with acting? Or was it a symptom of being in Los Angeles and saying, “Oh, I’d like to be an actor”?

DORFF: Well, no. I was on the set with my dad, and I remember seeing kids on set and thinking that was so cool and wondering where they went to school and finding out they have tutors, like, Wow, they have their own teacher? [laughs] And you only have to go to school for three hours a day? This is awesome! You know? That was kind of the first thing that got me excited about the gig. Plus I went to a lot of schools in L.A. that were private schools, but I just never really had a great teacher, so I found myself bouncing around a lot. I never created a real rhythm with other kids. Acting was something that my mom thought gave me self-esteem and confidence. If I tried and did well at school, they would take me to audition—that kind of thing. I didn’t have stage parents. Every kid needs their thing, and that was mine. When I got older, I started watching movies and learning and thinking, I want to work with Jack Nicholson!

WILSON: Was he your favorite?

DORFF: Yeah. I just loved watching him, you know? Even as I got older I would study his earlier movies like from the ’70s. Even in later movies, like The Witches of Eastwick [1987], he was so great. I really made a conscious decision after The Power of One, that I wasn’t really in it for the money. I wanted to build up a good filmography. I wanted to get a chance to work with the best, and that would help me and make me better. So I was always conscious about like, who’s in the movie? I would almost ask that even before reading the script: “Is Jack in it?”

WILSON: Did you get nervous working with Jack? What did you learn from him?

DORFF: So many things. Just control, and ease, and how to get to the place where you’re relaxed in what you’re doing, no matter what it is. I was definitely nervous. But it was so exciting to be on that set. I remember sitting there with Nicholson on one side, and Michael Caine on the other, and being the kid there. It was like, Wow, man, this is what I want to be doing.

WILSON: You guys filmed in Miami?

DORFF: Yeah. [laughs] Going out with Jack at night, and then him not having to go to work at 7 a.m. but me having to, and trying to hang with my favorite thespian and make the 7:30 call. But I made it through!

WILSON: Seems like you’ve always been able to maintain that excitement for acting without burning out on it. And lately you’ve been producing and doing some music stuff. You produced that movie Felon.

DORFF: Yeah, I produced that with my friend Tucker Tooley.

WILSON: In Felon you play a wrongly convicted guy who gets kind of railroaded by the system. There are some pretty intense scenes, especially between you and Val Kilmer.

DORFF: It was a great script, and Ric Waugh—the writer-director first-timer—researched the hell out of that movie. So by the time I got there, all the details were really there. It just felt like we were making something real as opposed to a Hollywood-type prison film where you recognize the people playing the guards, you recognize the inmates from episodes of Prison Break or whatever. We were going to do something that was really based on what happened in Corcoran State Prison. I had a character to really sink my teeth into. And it wasn’t a villain or the normal role you expect me to take. That’s nice because we’re getting older, buddy!

WILSON: And now you get to work with Sofia -Coppola, which is exciting because she’s only done a few movies, and each one is very special. How did that come about? Because you play the lead.

DORFF: I really think it’s probably the best part I’ve ever been given. I’ve known Sofia for a long time, since I was growing up, and we’ve been friends from kind of a distance. I was blown away when all that excitement happened over her for Lost in Translation. It reminded me of being friends with you when you got nominated for [the Oscar for best screenplay for] The Royal Tenenbaums [2001]. It’s exciting when it happens to one of your peers, someone you care about. Over the years I had worked with her dad [Francis Ford Coppola], workshopping some of the things he was directing. I’m really lucky to have the opportunity to work with Sofia. Somewhere takes place in the Chateau Marmont—I’m going to be moving in there soon. I’ll actually be living there as we shoot, which is kind of cool. My character is going through some kind of personal crisis.

WILSON: He’s a movie star?

DORFF: He’s an actor, yeah, who’s got a kid. And there have been a lot of changes in his life. It’s really in Sofia’s style. It’s very poetic and sweet and unique. It’s not the kind of scripts we get sent very often.

WILSON: It really doesn’t even have a thorough script, does it?

DORFF: Her scripts are famously short. She doesn’t write everything down and spell it out for the reader; I think she leaves a lot in private.

WILSON: It’s better. I always think it’s hard to read scripts because, first of all, a lot of the time they’re just boring. It’s hard to read a script from start to finish, like a book, and enjoy it just for itself. The script is supposed to be the blueprint for the movie. So you can read a script and be like, Okay, but then it can turn into a good movie. I feel like I’ve only read a couple scripts ever where I thought, Wow. I remember being in Dallas, and one of the guys who helped us with Bottle Rocket [1996] knew Quentin Tarantino when Reservoir Dogs [1992] was happening. He had a copy of True Romance [1993], and I remember he gave that to me and Wes. That script seemed so great, just so exciting and different from everything. It’s nice to read something that has its own voice, and Sofia’s script obviously does.

DORFF: Yeah, It’s an exciting time. I’m getting some great opportunities. I’m growing up. I think that’s the goal to try to keep finding those new things and take those risks,

WILSON: And you just did Public Enemies with Michael Mann.

DORFF: Yeah, Michael Mann has always been one of my favorites. I loved The Insider [1999], I love The Last of the Mohicans [1992], I love Heat [1995]. Public Enemies was the biggest film I’ve ever worked on. I was on set for 70 or 80 days for that movie. It was great to work with Johnny [Depp]. He’s always been an actor I’ve looked up to and respected.

WILSON: When you and I first met, I remember you were living in that house at the top of Mulholland that he had lived in previously.

DORFF: Yeah it was a weird connection. He had rented the house years before.

WILSON: It’s a great house.

DORFF: It was just a cool tree house on top of a mountain with a killer view. But on set he was very generous with the actors. It was an intense shoot. We had a lot of nights. I play Homer Van Meter, one of Dillinger’s crew—kind of the dangerous one—they were together almost all the way up until Dillinger’s death.

WILSON: You play a hothead.

DORFF: His job is basically to control the front of the bank while they’re inside taking care of business. So Homer was documented as having done a lot more of the murders.

WILSON: That’s one of your specialties, playing a hothead. [both laugh]

DORFF: Sometimes the bad guys are the juicier roles. But I definitely wanted to play a gangster. I think the gangsters have more fun, you know?

WILSON: Yeah.

DORFF: We’re being chased by Christian Bale and his team of authorities, but the gangsters had a lot of fun back in 1934. Dillinger busts me out of prison in the opening, and from then on, it’s basically the last year of Dillinger’s life. We go on the tear-up until things start getting ugly.

WILSON: You know, this interview wouldn’t be complete without a mention of . . .

DORFF: Shafrazi?

WILSON: Shafrazi and American—

DORFF: American Greats. [both laugh]

WILSON: My dad always loves seeing you because you always bring up the book he did, and he always gets real excited.

DORFF: I was at the book signing for American Greats. I believe it was at Neiman Marcus or somewhere in Beverly Hills, and I’ve still got that book on my bookshelf, Robert A. Wilson: American Greats. And your interview in the issue of Interview with Tony Shafrazi is great! He was great in Life Aquatic with you. He keeps always telling me, “Get me in some of these movies,” and so I had a part for him at the porno party and he wanted to reschedule—he doesn’t realize when you schedule a certain scene, you have to be in town to shoot it. They’re not going to rearrange a whole film for your travel itinerary, you know?

WILSON: Yeah.

DORFF: Now I’ve warned him again. I said, “Sofia would love you to be in this film and do a little appearance, maybe a little scene with me in the hotel. But you have to be available at the end of June.” And he, you know, he’s gotta pay his dues before they’re gonna start arranging whole films around his schedule.

WILSON: Right. [laughs] That’s what it was like on Zoolander [2001]. He was in it for a second just to show a little bit of New York nightlife. I remember him afterward saying, “Please talk to Ben.” He felt his character needed more of an arc, to come back at the end and say that the nightlife isn’t so great. [both laugh]

DORFF: I mean, Tony taught me all about art. He got me buying art when I was young, and I still have some of those things. Tony really opened up my eyes to a lot of things.

WILSON: What music have you been listening to?

DORFF: A lot of stuff. My little brother Andrew is a songwriter in Nashville. He just had a hit with this country singer Martina McBride.

WILSON: Creative family, you guys . . .

DORFF: Yeah, it’s been an intense year for my family. I lost my mom last year, but I feel like she’s really been with me and with us, guiding us. I’d never really lost anybody before in my immediate family. Your mom is the person you don’t ever want to lose, but in losing her, I had all these great things that started happening. I think she was part of me getting the whole Sofia movie,

WILSON: You took a year off to be with your mother when she was sick, too.

DORFF: Yeah I found it hard to keep going away, doing a movie, coming back . . . When Michael Mann came to me for that movie right after everything, I thought for a while that I couldn’t do it. But in the end, I think it was the best thing for me. I really thank him for bearing with me and being an incredibly supportive director at a really rough time. He gave me a great opportunity, a great role, and that really saved me. If I hadn’t done a film for those six or seven months, I probably would have been chewing myself.

WILSON: Your mom had this great spirit.

DORFF: Yeah, my mom was the kind of woman who, if I was the worst actor in the world in my first performance and literally the whole audience walked out of the theater, she would have been saying what a great performance I gave. She was kind of the ultimate mom, I mean, almost too nice sometimes. She was just a really special lady, and I was really lucky to have the relationship that I had with her. It kills me that she’s gone, but at the same time, I think she’s given me strength. I always remember she would want me to do the right thing and make her proud, so I think that’s what I have to focus all my energy on, to be a better person and do great work. I think my mom will be up there, hopefully smiling.

WILSON: In Sofia’s movie, you’re going to play a father in a kind of Paper Moon [1973], Ryan O’Neal/Tatum O’Neal relationship. How old is your character’s daughter?

DORFF: She’s 11.

WILSON: Did you draw on your sisters for inspiration?

DORFF: Yeah, I have two great half sisters. I never had a sister growing up, and now they’re 9 and 12. I have a really cool dynamic with these girls. They’re like people now. They’re so smart. They love to come to the beach and surf. What I’ve realized is that kids are busier than us at our busiest time, because they have like 900 hobbies; they can never hang out. I wanted to get my sister to teach me Guitar Hero, but I can’t even get an appointment with her because she’s got gymnastics, or swimming lessons, or French lessons, or track and field, or ice skating, or Cub Scouts—it’s impossible. I think the same goes for all young kids. I know the actress who will be playing my daughter, Elle Fanning, has got a serious schedule on her. It’s like, I’d be tired.

WILSON: Well, jeez, buddy, I’ll teach you how to play Guitar Hero. I feel bad.

DORFF: I taught myself . . . It’s hard, man. It has nothing to do with playing guitar. It’s putting the right fingers on the right colors. I have to get good at it because I’m playing it in Sofia’s movie. So I have to practice all the time.

—–

SOURCE: Interview Magazine.

On set for filming of the upcoming James L. Brooks project “How Do You Know?” provided by SpoilerTV.

And a short interview Owen provided for Shiftyourhabit:
June 23rd, 2009.

Occupation: Actor, Writer

My Shift of Habit is: I’ve gotten a lot better at recycling.

If you can ask everyone in the world to shift one habit it would be: using transportation that is more fuel efficient and environmentally sensitive.

Proudest Moment: I feel I could be doing much more but I guess there’s a sense of satisfaction in participating in the BP Solar Neighbors program, where I got solar panels put in my home and at the same time BP donated a solar system to a low income family in California – permanently reducing their energy bill while being more
environmentally responsible.

Wildest Dream: That the solutions offered in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth are enacted by governments around the world beginning with ours.

Inspiration: I think this quote from Emerson is inspiring “The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.”

My perfect planet is: Its pretty perfect the way it is, isn’t it? I guess that’s the whole point we gotta keep it this way.

—–

Pretty inspiring!

Night at the Museum 2 premiere

“I watched a lot of Yosemite Sam,” the actor, 40, told PEOPLE at Thursday’s premiere of the movie at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. And the best part of playing a miniature cowboy was “knowing you were never going to hear from the director, ‘Owen, that was too much!’ It’s like the guy’s over the top. So, however kind of loud and Yosemite Sam-like you can be, it’s going to be good.”

The latest Night at the Museum again teams Wilson with pal Ben Stiller. “It’s unbelievable. This is like I think the 10th movie that we’ve worked on together,” Wilson says. “And then we’re working on another one too coming up. Who knew way back when, when I was in The Cable Guy, that that was gonna lead to us kind of teaming up and being in the same movies so much.”

And the love goes both ways. “He’s a good friend of mine, so I love working with him,” says Stiller, who admits that this latest teaming was “weird” because Wilson “shot all his stuff later on” so “we’re in a movie together, but we’re actually never together.”

SOURCE: PEOPLE

You can catch “The Cable Guy” on TV July 2nd @12:30pm CST, on HBO.