- 5 minutes ago
GQ sits in on a tête-à-tête between Men of the Year cover star Oscar Isaac and GQ editor Alex Pappademas at the Chateau Marmont. Isaac hints towards a Star Wars return before reflecting on Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein —from the unique casting process over Cuban food to finding real-life roots in the story. Credits:Director: Nick CollettDirector of Photography: AJ YoungEditor: Jeremy Ray SmolikTalent: Oscar Isaac; Alex PappademasProducer: Cara MarceanteCoordinating Producer: Sam DennisLine Producer: Jen SantosProduction Manager: James PipitoneProduction Coordinator: Elizabeth HymesTalent Booker: Dana MathewsCamera Operator: Shay Eberle-Gunst; Mike MaliwanagGaffer: Lucas VilicichDIT: Lauren WoronaSound Mixer: Glo Hernandez; Paul CornettProduction Assistant: Fernando Barajas; Hollie OrtizMake-up Artist: Holly Silius; (for Alex Pappademas)Post Production Supervisor: Jess DunnPost Production Coordinator: Stella ShortinoSupervising Editor: Rob LombardiAssistant Editor: Billy WardSpecial Thanks: Chateau Marmont
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00I don't have an intro, I just realized.
00:02I don't have a start.
00:03We're just straight into it with no anything.
00:06We're going to do a little sequence of Chateau stuff.
00:10So there's drone shots, and then here we are.
00:21Once upon a time, you said that you would never return to Star Wars
00:25unless you needed a bigger house or a second home.
00:28Yeah, that was a real likeable quote.
00:30See, there you go.
00:31Jesus Christ.
00:33You know, you say stuff.
00:35People ask you things.
00:36You say stuff.
00:37You don't really think about it that much.
00:38Right.
00:39But then you're held to it because it's there.
00:41Yeah, yeah.
00:42It's like a religion.
00:43It's true.
00:44No, I said a slightly dickish thing.
00:46But then you've softened on this.
00:49That was what I was going to ask.
00:50It sounds like you've kind of—
00:52I feel like more recently I saw you saying,
00:55well, maybe, why not?
00:56Yeah, I mean, possibly.
00:57I'm open to it.
00:58Like, you know, I'd be open to it.
00:59Although right now I'm not so open to working with Disney.
01:02You know, but, you know, if they kind of figure it out
01:06and not succumb to fascism, but—
01:09That would be great.
01:10That would be great.
01:11But if that happens, then yeah, I'd be open to having a conversation
01:16about a galaxy far away.
01:18There we go.
01:19Or any number of other things.
01:22So I saw Frankenstein this week.
01:24This is a story that's been told, I think, 400 times I saw somewhere
01:29in various media and various forms.
01:31Is there one that impacted you, a young Oscar Isaac?
01:35I mean, I think when I really got turned on to movies, you know,
01:38like I remember vividly like De Niro as the monster and being so excited about that.
01:45And, you know, so that one actually loomed large in my head just as like a moment of being excited about,
01:52oh, wow, how did they tell that story?
01:54You know, unlike Guillermo, who was a devotee of this book since he was a child,
01:58for me, you know, it was just a little bit always in the periphery.
02:01What was your monster of choice of the greats?
02:05You a Wolfman guy or like a—
02:07I remember I was a—I really loved the movie Monster Squad that had all the monsters.
02:11Okay.
02:12Wolfman has nards, you know?
02:13Of course.
02:14Classic line.
02:15It appeared in my head the minute you said that.
02:16I know.
02:17As soon as you said Wolfman, I'm like, Wolfman has nards!
02:19But I think Bram Stoker's Dracula, for me, was like such a huge one.
02:23And I watched it so many times.
02:25And Gary Oldman for that, like I just, you know, he became one of my favorite actors from that,
02:30from his portrayal of that monster.
02:33So yeah, this was a bucket list project for Guillermo.
02:36Like I think, you know, it goes back to before he was even making films.
02:39Like he said that he's been wanting to do it and scared to do it for 25 years or something like that.
02:45How was it pitched to you?
02:47What did he say to you when you talked about it?
02:49How did he tell you this story?
02:50We got together.
02:52I went to his house just to meet, just it was like a general meeting.
02:56It happened to be in town.
02:57And we sat in his kitchen and ordered, you know, take out Cuban food.
03:01And we're sitting there eating rice and beans and pork.
03:04And we just started talking about our fathers.
03:07We started talking about our dads.
03:09Both the pain and the joy and forgiveness and becoming fathers ourselves.
03:14And you know, what's inherited as far as pain and trauma.
03:18And so we talked just very much about that.
03:20And at the end of that conversation, he said,
03:23I'm making Frank Stein and I think you need to play Victor.
03:27And I said, what, what's that?
03:28What now?
03:29You're doing what?
03:30He's like, I'm making Frank Stein.
03:31It's this thing I've always wanted to make.
03:33And I just think that you need to be Victor.
03:35And so I, you know, of course it was an incredible moment,
03:38but I was protective of getting too excited.
03:40I'm like, maybe he's just having like an aneurysm right now.
03:43Or who knows?
03:44Maybe he says that to everybody.
03:45That's like his pickup plan.
03:47But I was like, I'm just going to go and let's assume that, you know,
03:50I don't know.
03:51It was just, I was dreaming it.
03:52He gave me Mary Shelley's Frankenstein when I left and the Tao Te Ching.
03:56And he's like, these are the two books you need to read.
03:58Wow.
03:59And then we kept talking.
04:00And then within a year, he had the whole beginning and the end
04:05and then descriptions of a lot of the middle.
04:07And we got together in New York and we sat down and just,
04:12I read basically all the parts and he just watched and listened.
04:16And, you know, particularly the ending,
04:18which is so much about how do you move forward with a broken heart
04:23and how do you forgive?
04:24You know, we were both just in tears.
04:26And then it started to feel real.
04:28I want to start with like, why Taoism?
04:31And how do you think it's a Taoist Frankenstein?
04:33Well, I think he's kind of a Taoist filmmaker.
04:35You know, it was interesting.
04:36I was looking at even art that way.
04:37And a lot of it is big picture.
04:40You know, it's like it is a bit of a God's eye view of the world and of reality.
04:47There is a circularity to it.
04:49There is, even in all of the darkness, there's this kind of benign awareness
04:53underneath it that ultimately there is like a loving universe underneath all of the pain that can be accessed.
05:03Yeah. I mean, even that process sounds atypical.
05:06Even like the starting with that conversation before you ever even, before the word Frankenstein is mentioned.
05:13Yeah.
05:14It sounds like you had the heaviest possible conversation a little bit over Cuban food.
05:18We did.
05:19But what's amazing is that Guillermo was such an incredibly joyful person as well.
05:24And the set was joyful.
05:27You know, we were laughing all the time.
05:28He basically directed me in like dirty jokes, you know.
05:31And we only spoke in Spanish to each other.
05:33So it really, there was like an incredible intimacy that was happening.
05:36And I think because there was so much joy and lightness, we were able to kind of go full tilt with the darkness as well.
05:46And I think that's what Guillermo does.
05:47He's always done that.
05:48He kind of shines a light on the ugly to make it not so scary anymore.
05:53I think our version, this Victor, maybe unlike others, has a lot of rage in him.
05:59And a lot of defiance was a word that we used a lot, you know, and a lot of addicts.
06:04Like that's one of the main things that they have is defiance.
06:07Defiance against circumstances, defiance against themselves, against their past.
06:12That allows them to spiral into just the void.
06:16And so, you know, the fun thing with Victor is that he, I played him like an addict.
06:21You know, even though the only thing you see him ingest is milk, right?
06:24You know, in a way to get mom's milk back.
06:26Yeah, that's not Freudian at all.
06:27No, not at all, not at all.
06:28That signifies, it's so confusing.
06:30But that's an element to him.
06:32So he's kind of the personification of like defiance.
06:35Well, he's defying the gods.
06:36I mean, this is like the original sort of story about a tech guy playing God in a way.
06:41Yeah, a bit.
06:42Although, you know, we've shied away from the tech part of it.
06:44Like we really, it's an emotional Mexican militama that we made.
06:50This is like a very European story told in an extremely Latin point of view.
06:54You know, at one point, I was like, that's a lot, man.
06:57Is this too much?
06:58And he's like, look, it's not an accident that my Victor's real name is Oscar Isaac Hernandez.
07:03You know, he's like, this is, you know, this is his story.
07:07Guillermo's story, you know, refracted through, you know, this 18-year-old English woman.
07:13Yeah, I mean, it's the most Catholic Frankenstein way that I've ever seen.
07:18Because I know he said that that was his idea, that the Karloff version was like, oh, this is what a saint would be.
07:24Well, he said he called Frankenstein the patron saint of imperfection.
07:28Yeah. In general, do you like to go from when you're kind of coming up with a performance, kind of getting into the space for it?
07:35Do you like to go from ideas to something sort of physical and tactile that you're going to do?
07:40Or do you like to go the other way and kind of find the idea?
07:43I think I try to listen to what the story is, you know, or what the project is.
07:48So I don't have like a very strict way that I get into it.
07:52I'm also pretty gullible. So like, it's easy for me to buy into stuff, you know?
07:57Maybe that's because of a religious upbringing, you know, where it was like, you have to believe, you know?
08:01It's like, and so the fear of not believing is like, I just got to believe this. I got to believe this.
08:05Even if I have doubts, you know, it's like, there's no other choice.
08:08I'll go to hell otherwise. And that's how I approach scripts.
08:14But I had lots of ways in, you know, like there was obviously the emotional talk that really was a thematic thing that we were going into.
08:22But also, I love playing with form.
08:24And I know one thing that Guillermo said was like, this is not naturalistic.
08:28I need speed of speech and speed of thought.
08:31And so we watched films from the 30s and 40s where it's just clipping and clipping.
08:35There's a long, long reams of dialogue that have to just move at a clip even as heightened as the dialogue and the writing is, you know?
08:43The poetic nature of it.
08:44So I played with doing some of the speeches in Iamic Pentameter just for myself as like a nerd.
08:51Sure.
08:52You know, just as a way of like, I'm going to see if I can fit all these into five beats every single line and see what I can do and then actually play with that.
08:59And that was just, it was just like a way into finding the pleasure of the language.
09:04And I think for me, as painful and as dark of a character and as rageful and defiant of a character as Victor is, he's also probably the most pleasurable character I've ever played.
09:15Character is kind of a conceptual thing.
09:18You know, it's, I bring an element, but then Kate Hawley shows up and expresses this person through these incredible costumes that suddenly I'm like, oh, oh, this is, oh, I see who Victor is.
09:31You know, he is an artist.
09:33He's, he would have maybe been a musician and, you know, he would have been on the forefront.
09:37He's a, he's a punk, you know, all that comes together to create this person.
09:43The first time we see him or not, I don't know if it's the very first time, he's in the, he's in the arena, you know, he's on stage.
09:48He's like strutting around, kind of being like, look at my, look at my works, you know, all of that.
09:53There's that quality to him, like, you know, that.
09:55Well, that was Guillermo's, one of the Guillermo's reactions was like, he's a rock star.
09:58He's, he's, that's him in the studio.
10:00He's looking where he wants the speakers.
10:02He's looking where he wants the pyrotechnics.
10:03That's how he struts around in the thing.
10:05And again, we're going into, this is an unreliable narrator that's telling the story.
10:10Right.
10:11Not necessarily how it was, but this is how it felt to be there and to present his work to these people.
10:17You know, it felt like him expressing himself.
10:20It wasn't so much of, you know, talking about his scientific achievements.
10:26It was like an emotional expression.
10:28Yeah.
10:29But he does have, yeah, it's that, it is that rock and roll.
10:32The gloves, I think, are really where, those red leather gloves is where it gets really glammed out.
10:36Yeah.
10:37It's like, oh, this is, this is Prince.
10:38No, I mean, I watched, there's like a great, great behind the scenes of Prince.
10:43I think it was the performance for the Special Olympics in 95, 96 or something.
10:48And watching the way he walks up on stage and is quite quiet, but moves around in his little black high heeled shoes.
10:54And I definitely took a lot of inspiration from that.
10:58How to own a space like that.
11:00Yeah, how to move kind of effortlessly through a space and own it and create.
11:06Yeah, I wanted to ask about music just because, you know, before you had the job you have now, you played in rock bands, like for real.
11:15You were on stage, you were, I don't know if you were touring, but you were playing out.
11:19Did you have moves back in those days?
11:22Did you have stage moves?
11:23Oh, yeah.
11:24I mean, you know, it was a ska band, so there's like some set.
11:28I guess, yeah.
11:29Some set stuff you got to do, you know, some skanking.
11:32Pick it up.
11:33It's like, oh yeah, pick it up, pick it up, you know.
11:35Yep, I think there are quite a few videos of being online skanking around on stage.
11:41But you don't have to come up with the advantage of ska is that it's a sort of...
11:44It's a pre-existing architecture, exactly.
11:46Yeah, it's a dance, it's formatted, you know what you're doing.
11:49Exactly, yeah.
11:50Do you feel like you've carried that with you in some way?
11:52Am I skanking?
11:53You're skanking, yeah.
11:54Are you skanking internally when you're doing this job, when you're acting, when you're performing?
11:57Always.
11:58Always.
11:59Yeah, once a rude boy, always a rude boy.
12:01I want to go back to that initial conversation where Guillermo was talking you through all of these things.
12:09I think it's interesting that the first thing that you said was you were talking about your fathers.
12:13The saddest moment is when Victor, who's, for me anyway, I don't know if this might reveal too much, but when Victor, who has sort of defied his father and is like, I'm going to be better than my father.
12:24I'm going to do what you could never do.
12:25I'm going to outdo you and everything.
12:27And implicit in that is like, I'm not going to be the way that you were.
12:30And then he beats the creature just as he has been beaten in his life.
12:36It's such, it's, you know, that has nothing to do with it being a Frankenstein story.
12:39It's the sadness of like, yeah.
12:41The blindness of what gets inherited, you know, and not, you know, by raging against it, by that response kind of blinds him to him doing exactly the same things again.
12:56And, you know, I think I certainly can relate to that feeling of, you know, running away from something so much that you run right into the arms of it, you know, without realizing it.
13:07That's fascinating to think about like what, you know, how we unerringly kind of seek that out, those opportunities to either redo or.
13:16Yeah, to refix it or to, yeah, or to just redo it because it's what you, what feels some part of the body feels that needs to experience it again to kind of have some agency.
13:25Have some agency over it.
13:27What Victor just didn't expect was it's this idea that the creature is an extension of himself.
13:33So if he can rage at himself and he can hate himself, it's no problem hating this creature because it's just a, it's just a reflection of him.
13:42His fear of being rejected because of the creature or his hopes for being accepted because of the creature just objectifies it.
13:50You know, it's just a thing in that he is in relation to.
13:54And that's something that I think as a parent can happen often.
13:57You know, it's like you, you know, people helicopter their kids because they're just so afraid that they'll look bad.
14:03Like you don't embarrass me.
14:05You know, I don't know if you do that, you know, even like with the good intentions.
14:09Like I don't want you to be a spoiled brat.
14:11I don't want you to talk to people that way.
14:12I don't want you because they'll think I'm a bad parent.
14:15And then they're also on the other side is the pride part of it.
14:17It's like, yeah, that's, that's mine.
14:18That's my, you know, I, I, that's mine.
14:20It's mine.
14:21You know, this possession.
14:22In the end, you know, he may not, he may not deserve it.
14:26I mean, there may be some people who would like to see Victor get, you know, skull crushed by the creature as he shows up.
14:32He's not, but like instead what happens is this, this moment of forgiveness.
14:37It's this, and it, and it, it came out of nowhere for me and kind of took me by surprise when it happens.
14:43You know, I think that maybe that's also the kind of Catholic part of it is that grace isn't only for those that deserve it, you know, because who really deserves it, right?
14:51So it's like, and how much bigger the gesture of forgiveness to those that don't necessarily deserve it, right?
14:58I mean, it's supposed to be available, you know, you want to be, be available to do that.
15:02It was about him.
15:03The creature, you know, for the creature wasn't, does he deserve it?
15:06Does he not deserve it?
15:07It's like in order that it's just was his nature.
15:10Right.
15:11In order to survive and be human, like we need to forgive.
15:14Yeah.
15:15But also it takes so much like fortitude to do that, like, and to be able to be able to do it.
15:20Or it also takes like a lot of surrender.
15:23There's a great line of T-Bone Burnett song where he says, everybody wants peace, but nobody wants to surrender.
15:30And so it's like that's one of that moment where he just surrenders the war to him.
15:36And, you know, I think Victor also finally calls him my son, you know, and realizes that it's he is his own entity, his own thing.
15:48It's not, he's not just an extension of him and shows remorse for the first time, you know, and kind of also forgives himself, you know.
15:56He says, forgive yourself into existence.
15:59Right.
16:00And that's right.
16:01And that's when he becomes real.
16:02Yeah.
16:03Are we spoiling Frankenstein a little bit?
16:05Maybe.
16:06Maybe.
16:07We'll see.
16:08Too late now.
16:09Yeah.
16:10But yeah, that's the hardest thing, right?
16:11Forgiveness.
16:12It's the hardest thing to do.
16:13I don't know.
16:14Are you good at it?
16:15I mean, I think I try to give the benefit of the doubt often, you know.
16:20I try to, yeah, you know, there's like a sense of trying to speak just what's true and what doesn't divide people so much.
16:28You know, like there is an element of, that's like a Joseph Goldstein, like a Buddhist monk thing where he talks about that.
16:34Yeah.
16:35I think I've definitely, you know, attempted to be more forgiving and to let go of resentments the older I am.
16:42That's the work, increasingly I find that that's the work.
16:45I'm no good at it.
16:46That's why I asked the question.
16:47I've got a, it's holding on to a lot of them.
16:49There's like three or four people.
16:50I'm like, oh, you know I have to forgive me.
16:53Damn it.
16:54I'm good at asking for forgiveness.
16:56Sure.
16:57That's good too.
16:58Well, right.
16:59That's also, that's important too, I guess.
17:00Yeah.
17:01Like maybe that, right.
17:02Okay.
17:03That's it.
17:04One of the best scenes playing festivals is King Hamlet, which is the story of your life in around 2017 basically, right?
17:12It's about, it's a little about less than a decade ago.
17:15Yeah.
17:16But enough time ago that I imagine it's, you know, feels somewhat remote.
17:20Have you had the opportunity to revisit that movie as it's been coming out?
17:24And if so, what's that been like?
17:26What was it like to visit that time again?
17:28Yeah.
17:29Well, King Hamlet is this doc that Alvira Lind, who's an incredible documentary filmmaker and also I happen to be married to, she filmed in 2017 while I was doing Hamlet and a lot of really wild things happened in life.
17:41And so her, her way of digesting it and processing it was just to pick up a camera and years later, she's put it together and it's, it's fascinating.
17:50It does all actually feels a little bit like a doc about a band making an album, you know, it's very much about this time and a place and these people coming together to make, to do Hamlet.
18:00It's very epic versions of four hour version with two intermissions and, and very much about grief.
18:06And so, yeah, it has been incredible to, to revisit that also scary to open up a window into how, you know, how it's done, which I think often people don't see is how does one use the thing as an artist, use the things that happen in your life?
18:21And how do those things affect the work and how does the work become entwined with life, um, and with death and marriage and birth and, um, and you know, that kind of synthesis that happens, um, you know, inevitably or, or, you know, it's hard to know which comes first.
18:40Is it like, do we use that because we're artists or, or does using that make us artists?
18:46You know, were there moments where you're like, Oh man, this guy knows nothing.
18:49This guy has no idea what he's in for.
18:51Like looking ahead.
18:52I do.
18:53I, I, I look at him.
18:54I do.
18:55It's like, I, I feel compassion.
18:56I feel compassion for, for this person that's in the middle of the storm, you know,
19:01on like a little tempest tossed bark.
19:04Uh, and, and yet compassion for someone that's trying to make sense of it by, by doing this work and doing it in public and trying to connect, you know, connect with other people.
19:18You know, you're going to forgive your younger self.
19:20Yeah.
19:21Yeah.
19:22Some naivete maybe.
19:23Yeah.
19:24I mean, that, that, that's in a way going back to like who deserves forgiveness.
19:27Like that is the hardest thing is like self forgiveness.
19:29You know, it's, that's the, I think the most challenging thing, you know, it's like, how do you make a friend of your mind?
19:36Yeah.
19:37You let me know if you figure that out.
19:40Once you've solved that.
19:41Lots of psychedelics.
19:42There we go.
19:43There we go.
19:44Exactly.
19:45That makes it a stranger of your mind.
19:46Yeah.
19:47Friendly stranger.
19:48Right.
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