Thanks to Tracey:
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QUESTION: What was it you saw on the page that said “this is something I want to be involved in”.
ANSWER: (Foster) I think the first thing on the page was Jim Mangold directing, with Christian Bale and Russell Crowe in a WESTERN and that pretty much sold it.
- Not to suck up because you are sitting right here, but to not be upstaged in any way by the likes of Christian Bale or Russell Crowe, and in fact stealing a couple of the scenes you are in is a major accomplishment. How different was it working on this stuntwise than from the physical work you’ve done on X-Men? Can you shoot, for example, are you pretty good?
- (Foster) I’m pretty good with a gun. I’ve played with it in the past, so that wasn’t new. I suppose the great thing about this particular convention is that you are celebrating and honoring genres and the exciting thing to participate in genres is the characters are usually based on people with specific talents – specialists. So in a Western, you have to be an incredible horseman and gunslinger. In something like X-Men one has the opportunity to hopefully learn how to fly. So each particular genre gets to honor a different specialty, which is an incredible exiting thing for an actor to approach.
- Is it more fun to play villains than good guys?
- (Foster) This film was a LOT of fun. You go on a killing spree across the desert to save Russell Crowe, I’d say you are having a really good four months.
- The other stigma Westerns have is there is no CGI, no chase scene with 400 cars, no huge explosions – the action has to come from you guys hunting each other down – that’s more of a challenge, right?
- (Foster) It’s more interesting for an actor. When you are doing something on the scope of X-Men, you are working with a lot of green screens, tennis balls and tape for eyelines ….. with this, your out in the desert with the horses, you are out with the guns, and you are out with the actors and the cameras are generally far away so it becomes very intimate. Its easy to let go of reality and believe what you are doing. Ideally the product shows that.
- Did you live in the desert for most of the shoot.
- (Foster) Yeah, we were WAY out. We were actually spending a lot of time at Ghost Ranch, Georgia O’Keefe’s place, where she spent a lot of her time painting and there are in fact a lot of ghosts there.
- Did you bump into any?
- (Foster) (long pause) Yeah. (audience laughs)
- Anyone you’d like to have taken a shot at?
- (Foster) I’m in this strange quarry, right ….
- (Interrupting) Could you ride before?
- (Foster) No, I’d never ridden before. We went to cowboy camp. Russell really took good care of us – the guys who didn’t know how to ride. He took us to cowboy camp where we’d just go out to the desert and barbecue, shoot guns, and …..spit. (laughter) A lot of spitting.
Announcement of special guest… the Oscar winning Peter Fonda!
- Were you involved with what Ben was talking about everyone going to….
- (Fonda) Oh yeah, except I already knew how to ride and shoot, other than having messed up a couple of times on a horse – or was that a motorcycle? I didn’t’ have to go cowboy camp, but once I heard about the barbecues, I thought I’d missed out on that one – free food! Actors love free food – swag – we all love swag! I want some swag. It was a good time, a tight crew as Ben said, Jim Mangold is a remarkable director.
Q. Give us an example of how the story reflects what is going on today.
A. (Fonda goes into a description of the film and then comments:) It was pretty darn cold when we were shooting.
A. (Foster) That’s the amazing thing you learn on a set like this, is the specifics of how to handle the genre of this particular world. You can’t shoot a gun if your hands are cold – you can’t do a fast draw – so Russell had a great trick, which was we had these little hand warmers, and you’d have to warm your hands 20 minutes before doing a take to have a fast enough grip to put it back in. Because when its cold – it was freezing – and the film takes place in a drought but we had the worst snow storm in 20 years so we had to bring in 40 tons of dirt to cover over the snow, so it was VERY cold. So to be able to pull the guns out we had hand warmers, we had to put them in hot towels …… so you have a bunch of like bad asses running around with little hand warmers …. and you begin to understand how America was built and that these are actors. And it translates, but its unbelievable to be able to do the things this country was based on without a coffee or cigarette break ……
A. (Fonda) Without craft-****ing service, man!!!!
A. (Foster) Those are real outlaws ! It looks real. I plays to me like High Noon on Eastern Standard Time with a watch that’s ten minutes fast. Its got elements of High Noon, elements of Shane, its got a lot of things going on.
Q. How long was the shoot?
A. (Fonda) 42 days
Q. Were you guys, Christian and Russell and you two together for most of the shoot?
A. (Fonda) We had bunk beds and lived in a tepee out in the desert, which was really romantic. (*not sure if he was serious about this*)
Q. How do you put yourself in that time period as an actor?
A. (Fonda) We dressed well. We had exceptionally good wardrobe and got to choose what we were wearing. So one of the way I prepare, when I accept the role, I really start working on what the clothes are and then I feel the clothes with the character. Some people go just the other direction, from the inside out, that’s just my way of doing it and gets me into the Western idiom.
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