- 14 hours ago
"It was a risk… It's about taking chances." Brendan Fraser takes us through his illustrious career, including his roles in 'School Ties,' 'Encino Man,' 'George of the Jungle,' 'God and Monsters,' 'The Mummy,' 'The Whale,' 'Killers of the Flower Moon,' and 'Rental Man.'
Director: Adam Lance Garcia
Director of Photography: Dave Sanders
Editor: Paul Tael
Talent: Brendan Fraser
Producer: Madison Coffey
Line Producer: Natasha Soto-Albors
Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi
Associate Production Manager: Elizabeth Hymes
Talent Booker: Lauren Mendoza
Camera Operator: Nigel Akam
Gaffer: Dave Plank
Audio Engineer: Kevin Teixeira
Production Assistant: Nicole Murphy
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo
Additional Editor: Sam DiVito
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Director: Adam Lance Garcia
Director of Photography: Dave Sanders
Editor: Paul Tael
Talent: Brendan Fraser
Producer: Madison Coffey
Line Producer: Natasha Soto-Albors
Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi
Associate Production Manager: Elizabeth Hymes
Talent Booker: Lauren Mendoza
Camera Operator: Nigel Akam
Gaffer: Dave Plank
Audio Engineer: Kevin Teixeira
Production Assistant: Nicole Murphy
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo
Additional Editor: Sam DiVito
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00It was a risk, and I think I learned that I like that.
00:04You should feel a little bit of uncomfortableness.
00:07You should feel a little bit of, I don't know, calculated danger, you know?
00:10That's what acting is about.
00:12It's about taking chances.
00:13You're going to fall down.
00:15When do you get up?
00:15How do you get all that?
00:17That all played in, and I decided, yeah, I'm going to get on board with this.
00:21Hello, I'm Brendan Fraser.
00:30This is the timeline of my career.
00:35Thanks for the lift, coach.
00:36I think you're bad.
00:38I borrowed my mom's car to travel down the coast to Los Angeles, and shortly thereafter,
00:45I went up on a movie called School Ties.
00:47So where are you from, Green?
00:49Scranton, PA.
00:50Scranton.
00:52It's like an America color.
00:54Oh, shit.
00:55So you know you're the very first ringer St. Matt's ever hired.
00:58Hey, Dylan.
01:00No, he is.
01:01That's something of an honor.
01:03Aren't you honored, Green?
01:04I haven't really thought about it.
01:05It come from background theater, and everything I did was, you know, for the last row.
01:09And I saw that Matt had this uncanny ability to handle dialogue as if, as he spoke it, it
01:16sounded like he had written it.
01:17And he had an energy level that cued me to match pitch, if you want to get to the next
01:24round.
01:25I know who cheated.
01:26Who?
01:29It was Green.
01:30What?
01:32Yeah, Green.
01:33I saw him do it.
01:33You're a liar.
01:34I saw him cheat.
01:36What a squirmer.
01:37Just admit it.
01:37I gave him the choice of confessing.
01:39It isn't going to work.
01:40Hey, hold up.
01:41Hey, I saw you.
01:41Hey.
01:42Whether he knew he did that or not, or I was like, you know, copying his work or however
01:47you want to look at it.
01:48Without Matt, I would have a career, but I don't know what it would be.
01:51What I saw in Matt in that moment, I got a real quick lesson in honing down a performance
01:57and letting it work for, you know, the audience of one, that piece of glass over there, instead
02:03of a house of 500 or whatever.
02:09Go crazy!
02:11Go!
02:14Hey, God, no!
02:15Wait, stop!
02:16I had gone in to read for a teen comedy that was being produced by a branch of Disney called
02:23Hollywood Pictures.
02:24George the Loom was producing it, Les Mayfield directing, and these were guys who had just
02:31come off of doing the innovative new thing in filmmaking, which was behind the scenes of
02:36Spielberg Pictures.
02:37So they were on, I think, one or two of the Indiana Jones Pictures, and they really impressed
02:42Spielberg, and they got their directing start that way.
02:44And their choice to make a movie was about a frozen caveman come to life.
02:53Speaking of theater background, I went into this audition knowing little about what one
02:58should do in that situation, and the dialogue was light, and I figured, well, Link the Thought
03:05Out Caveman is basically the new guy in town.
03:07You know, he's trying to fit in, and he wants to belong.
03:10He doesn't know what a doorknob is until someone shows him how it works.
03:13You know, everything's brand new to him.
03:15There was something about painting on glass with ketchup and mustard squirters.
03:19I don't recall, but whatever I got up to, it left an impression.
03:23And I went off and did School Ties, started getting the call saying, do our movie, please do this movie.
03:30And I was being a little bit precious, to be honest, because I was in School Ties.
03:34It was a thoughtful drama.
03:35And in my thinking, I thought, well, you know, I can't kind of throw anything away.
03:40Early on, I don't want to confuse people about who I am.
03:44And it was Keith Wester, who was our sound mixer, who was just a gentleman.
03:49He's got the headphones on, you know, he hears everything.
03:51If everyone knows what's going on on the set, ask the sound guys, they hear everything.
03:54He said, it's a bird in the hand.
03:56What?
03:56Worth two in the nest.
03:58What?
03:58You can do this, and you can do that.
04:01It's a good calling card to show both.
04:04Think of the masks.
04:05Comedy, tragedy.
04:07And you're right.
04:08So, I finished the film School Ties.
04:13The offer was still there, and I took a leap.
04:17It was a risk, and I think I learned that I like that.
04:22You should feel a little bit of uncomfortableness.
04:24You should feel a little bit of, I don't know, calculated danger, you know?
04:28That's what acting is about.
04:29It's about taking chances.
04:31You're going to fall down.
04:32What do you get up?
04:33How do you get up?
04:33All that.
04:34That all played in.
04:35And I decided, yeah, I'm going to get on board with this.
04:38And that's how it began, honestly.
04:40Everything else we did during the movie was just a lark.
04:42I was working with Sean Astin and Pauly Shore, and it was crazy 90s comedy.
04:48A lot of the jokes, I don't know if they still hold up, but hey, it was sort of a piece of
04:53cinema history when you go back and look at it compared to what we make now and today.
04:57And also, it had resonance with an audience at that time who were used to teen comedies
05:06in the 1980s, really having a real specific formula.
05:10And I think that film, Xenoman, was kind of like the swan song or the last of that genre
05:16to really embrace the high school trope, nerd become hero, and of course, it flipped it upside
05:23down, and everyone loved it, from what I can tell.
05:27Almost everyone.
05:28It's the story of Odysseus.
05:50Stay with me.
05:51It's just a guy who wants to go home.
05:54He's got to go through a lot to get there.
05:56It's like the storyline and the plot of so many of our favorite films, books, music,
06:01all that culture.
06:02That was my initial heady, scholastic approach.
06:05Other than that, yeah, I went and I lifted weights until it hurt, and I barfed and did
06:10it again, and checked my vanity at the door and my pride sometimes, and jumped in fully
06:17knowing that, well, if I was going to fall down, at least there'd be like a safety line
06:21on me on this one in George of the Jungle, considering it's a guy who smashes into trees.
06:26And you can't not say that the guy doesn't confront his obstacles.
06:34George Nutt feels so good.
06:36I did know that it really put some wind in my sails, and it made me feel like, well,
06:40I do have some interesting new choices here.
06:42And again, now that I have that sort of comedy tragedy aspect that the sage master of sound
06:49told me earlier, I guess I got to find out what I can do to counterbalance something that's
06:55easily digestible, bro, mass consumed, a comedy like that, with something that really spoke
07:03to me that got me in the feels, and that was a film called Gods and Monsters.
07:09Good morning.
07:11My name is Whale.
07:12This is my house.
07:14And your name is?
07:15Boone.
07:16Clay Boone.
07:18I couldn't help but notice your tattoo.
07:21That motto, death before dishonor.
07:24What does it mean?
07:25It just means that I was a Marine.
07:27Ah, the Marines.
07:28I suppose you served in Korea.
07:30Sarita McKellen was attached, who was just a champion of the profession.
07:36That wasn't lost to me when I was a student in college, because I probably wore out the
07:40Betamax copy of Acting Shakespeare in the library that he did for BBC, whichever number,
07:46because it was required viewing.
07:47And what Ian was doing was making iambic pentameter and heightened text and prose so easily accessible
07:55to the audience and the listener.
07:57It almost sounded as if he was just thinking and speaking his own thoughts, let alone we
08:02know that they are written by the genius William Shakespeare, not far removed from what I remember
08:07hearing, in a way, what Matt was doing back in the day.
08:11So then you did have a wife?
08:14Or a husband, depending on which of us you asked.
08:17My friend David lived here for many years.
08:21They have a lunch, and they come to an understanding across a long dining table.
08:27They have two people each seated at one side, that they can see each other eye to eye.
08:32And I remember him playing that scene, and maybe I willed it to be, but I felt like,
08:40okay, this is someone who unabashedly is a hero and influence in my life.
08:46And the scene was about, we understand each other now, do we?
08:49For whichever reasons, we learn later.
08:50But he really made me feel like I did have a seat at that table that I deserved to be at.
08:58No one could have let me know that and feel more accepted than he did in that moment.
09:06You don't think of me that way, do you?
09:09And what way would that be?
09:12Well, the way that I look at women.
09:15Don't be ridiculous.
09:16I know a real man like you would break my neck if I so much as laid a finger on you.
09:23I remember on one occasion, before we went to do, I think it was the confrontation scene with
09:28fighting and I'm not your monster, and we were running lines, and he said, let's say the words.
09:33So, you know, he wanted to make sure I knew my lines.
09:35We spoke the sides together, and he said something to me that was certainly for my benefit.
09:42Not that he was trying to bestow knowledge on me or show me the way or tell me how to, how to.
09:50He said, it has to be as if it's the first and last time that you will ever do this.
09:57And that made a lot of sense to me.
10:00I am not your monster.
10:05It made a lot of sense to me, and I hung on to that adage, and I've repeated it to myself many times,
10:13certainly whilst doing The Whale.
10:14I knew that.
10:15We are in serious trouble.
10:30Audiences knew The Mummy to be an old guy wrapped in bandages with his arms outstretched.
10:35Stumbling quietly, going, oh, and always catching whoever he's chasing by walking while they run and smack into a wall.
10:42And then, you know, oh, the terror.
10:44And those were brilliant for what they were for that time.
10:47And so that was, you know, the perception of how that film should be made.
10:51Little surprise.
10:52It was quite the opposite.
10:53Steve Summers' opinion was, this is The Terminator, Mummy.
10:56Ain't nothing stopping this.
10:58What are we going to do to right the world?
11:00And that was the energy he brought to it.
11:02And who knows why all the pieces line up the way they do, but it struck a chord with audiences.
11:08This is something that they wanted to see.
11:10They wanted to be taken on a thrill ride.
11:12They wanted to feel a little bit dangerous.
11:14They wanted it to be fun, and then they wanted to do it again.
11:16And so with that combination, hey, we did it again in The Mummy Returns.
11:23And then we did it again in the third one, but we're not going to talk about that if we don't want to.
11:26There was a stunt with a rope around the neck, and a stuntman doing it with proper safety gear and a wide shot.
11:38Then my turn, and to match, put the rope around the, you know, the reely.
11:43There was a stuntman holding the tension on the rope, and it wasn't selling to match what the stuntman did.
11:50So director asked, can we pull the tension up a little bit?
11:54And we're just doing this once, and it was kind of uncomfortable.
11:56It's not nice to have strangulation, I learned.
11:59Anyway, what happened basically was I went up on the balls of my feet like a ballet dancer, which I am not,
12:05and tried to get on my toes because the tension kept going up.
12:07I couldn't sustain it, but the man upstairs didn't know that.
12:10So I relaxed back into my feet and the tension.
12:13So between the down of my body and the tension up, I remember seeing the camera just come around,
12:18and then it was as if a giant volume switch went.
12:22It irised.
12:23And next, I knew the world was sideways.
12:29I thought, that's curious.
12:30Ow.
12:30There's dirt in my mouth and my ear, and my arm is twisted all weird.
12:35Man, my shin really hurt, and everyone's quiet.
12:37Whereas before, they had the extra screaming and shouting, and suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, pin drop quiet.
12:41And I thought, what happened?
12:43And it's like we're in a wrap, and he's going, Brendan, Brendan, wake up.
12:47Wake up.
12:48And he's like, hey, you just joined the club.
12:51Same thing happened to Mel on Braveheart.
12:55And I'm like, yay?
12:58I'm going to go home.
13:01They didn't send me home for the rest of the day.
13:03But look, that's just the physics of it.
13:05There's no blame attached to any of this.
13:07If anything, it's my own stupidity for not checking it out, thinking myself to be invincible,
13:12which I've learned you're not.
13:17Let's go!
13:19Run, Andy!
13:20Go, go, go!
13:21Run!
13:24I go to fan conventions, so they show up dressed as the characters.
13:27People have rolled their sleeves up and showed me their calf with my mug tattooed on it.
13:31It's a little weird, but it's popular.
13:33I can attest.
13:34What people love about it is the romance, the mystery, the broad scope of it.
13:39The number of young women who I've met over the years who've told me,
13:43I've become an Egyptologist.
13:44I've gone into archaeology.
13:46I have become a historian because this film inspired me from a young age.
13:52None of us ever anticipated hearing or maybe couldn't appreciate it at that time,
13:55but I do now.
13:56I'm so grateful because, hey, it's a movie.
13:59Win, lose, or draw, it's always going to be there.
14:01And your hope is it lands with people.
14:03It stays, it changes them, it inspires them in some way.
14:06This one did.
14:07So how's school?
14:09You're a senior, right?
14:11You actually care?
14:13Of course they care.
14:15I'd pester your mom for information as often as she'll give it to me.
14:19The whale was shot during the height of COVID before vaccines came out.
14:23Everyone lived each day as if, like Ian said, it could be your last.
14:28The internal world that I approached that with was,
14:31well, if they're, you know, conceivably, there's no tomorrow.
14:36I'm doing this as if it's the last time I will ever be invited to do this job ever again.
14:44And it stripped away all the actor-y pretensions and insecurities and fears and made the story that much more personal considering it was four or five characters in one room and a pretty humble piece of writing based on Samuel D. Hunter's stage play.
15:02Darren's approach to that was a masterclass for me in acting, which is to leave everything you thought you knew about how to do this.
15:16And find out what you can get from one another to support the performance.
15:24The only way that character could have succeeded in the way that it did was not just because I was working with Hong Chao.
15:32Not just because I was working with Sadie Zink.
15:34Not just because Adrian Moreau was doing the prosthetics, the cumbersome bodysuit, which was uncanny.
15:44And the technology has become standardized since, but Adrian was on the cutting edge, the tip of the spear, using 3D to create makeup appliances that are realistic, could last a day, et cetera, et cetera.
15:54All of those technical things put together, it gave to the world of that film just as simplicity in the mundane and the sadness of a man who has certain regrets in his life
16:10and the reckoning he finds himself with, and the story itself is not an old or unusual one seeking to reconnect with if somehow hopefully ameliorate a father's relationship with their child.
16:25It's really the heart of that and will it or will it not succeed?
16:28That's what that story was.
16:29When that film came to Japan, I should mention, no one made mention ever, any journalist, anyone I spoke to about the issue of Charlie's obesity.
16:36I didn't hear about it.
16:38That's all you hear about from any of the other journalists.
16:41That's what they want to talk about.
16:42Okay, that's fair.
16:43And that's an interesting conversation, but if you want to have it.
16:46But the impression that it made to the Japanese public was what it means to finally get to say all the things that you wanted to say to your kid, but you know it's too late.
16:57And what you're saying, albeit correct, is too much too late.
17:01Why didn't you do this years ago, and is there the remote possibility of a chance of reconciliation before time runs out?
17:11You don't have to be angry at the whole world.
17:18You can just be angry at me.
17:21Okay, you know what?
17:22You can't throw me away like I'm a piece of garbage and then suddenly just want to be my dad eight years later.
17:28You left me for your boyfriend.
17:31It's that simple.
17:33And if you've been telling yourself anything different, then you're lying to yourself.
17:36The pinnacle, the apotheosis of that movie is, will he get this story out to her?
17:43Will he make his confessionals, his reconciliation before time runs out and before he literally loses his life before her eyes?
17:50And that race to get it out, the urgency of that was palpable.
17:55And I just got to say this to Sadie Sink, and we already know this.
17:57She's starred on Broadway already and deservedly so.
18:01I had a front row seat to watch Sadie blossom before my eyes.
18:04I had the best seat in the house to watch this kid, young woman, show us how natural and good and talented.
18:12And I was hanging on to her with my fingernails, figuratively, but just for the sheer authenticity that she brings to the work that she does.
18:21And that gave me so much more context to be able to do my job as best as I could.
18:27Acting works best when you're making your partner or whoever you're working with look great.
18:32You know, you want to set that ball up, that volleyball, so they can spike it.
18:36She's one of those players.
18:38I'm sorry for leaving you.
18:42I was in love.
18:45And I left you behind.
18:49You did not deserve that.
18:52I don't know how I could have done such a thing.
18:58I felt astonishment.
19:00I was in company of nominees who were incredible actors.
19:03Could have gone any way, as far as I could tell.
19:05And, you know, ask me on whatever day, maybe I would have picked someone among that group apart from myself.
19:10And it would be the correct choice.
19:12I appreciate how lucky I was to be standing there.
19:15That's what primarily was my good fortune.
19:18But I also needed to acknowledge that, you know, if you're going to be an actor, it's not an easy job.
19:25It's a trajectory that is a corkscrew, sometimes worse.
19:28And it's not enough to just stay the course and tough it out because you still have to be accepted.
19:32And just as with the kid from School Ties, he had his nose pressed up against the glass, wanting to be a part of the good thing beyond it, but was disallowed.
19:45And I had to acknowledge that I have felt that way, and I was able to break the glass.
19:51And for what it's worth, I wake up with bruises.
19:55I think I pinch myself in my sleep, to tell you the truth.
19:58I demand to confer privately with Mr. Burkhardt.
20:03This is unheard of.
20:05Ernest Burkhardt is my client.
20:07The rules for him.
20:09I demand the opportunity to speak with Mr. Burkhardt.
20:12This man cannot represent both the defendant and the witness.
20:16It is a conflict.
20:16He has been missing for two months.
20:19That's Martin Scorsese.
20:20He loves actors.
20:22He moves furniture around during rehearsal.
20:25Loves to rehearse.
20:26We got on Zoom calls.
20:28He let me know he wants this lawyer who is an amalgamation of many different lawyers.
20:32And he said he has to be forceful and overbearing and large.
20:37I want him powerful.
20:39Of course, you're going to, yes, sir.
20:41I still had a bit of the giddy, I can't believe I'm working in a Martin Scorsese movie going on.
20:47But then again, so did everybody.
20:48So did John Lithgow.
20:49We would sit in the bus in the heat of Oklahoma, driving between camps or wherever we were.
20:54And John would be like, acting is hard.
20:57He's not wrong.
20:58They beat you.
21:01And they tortured you.
21:03No, no, no.
21:04They didn't.
21:04But they did keep me up for days.
21:06No!
21:07They beat you.
21:09They beat you.
21:10Yes, they beat me.
21:11They beat me, sir.
21:13You know, on off-camera lines for Leo, he would tell me, just let him have it.
21:17And so I did.
21:19And you'll never know it or see it, and you shouldn't.
21:21But I did let loose with a flurry of vitriol towards Leo and cut.
21:28And he said, that's not true.
21:30I'm sorry.
21:31I'm sorry.
21:32Did not mean it.
21:32He told me to.
21:33And Leo was like, I know, I know.
21:35It's Marty.
21:35But that's what he wanted.
21:36Martin was unafraid to put a joystick in the actors and make him do his bidding like that.
21:43And you absolutely feel privileged to be playing that game.
21:48If I have to guess, you sell people.
21:55No.
21:56No.
21:57We sell emotion.
21:59Oh, how?
22:01We play roles in the client's lives.
22:03After doing the whale.
22:04It's not, well, I've done it.
22:07I've arrived.
22:07It's, okay, well, what's next?
22:10And I wanted to make a polar opposite turn.
22:14Another sort of dogleg off into career choices that are maybe least of what you would expect
22:21or anticipate that an actor would do from whatever he did from the time before.
22:27And I think that's, you know, diversity is important, of course.
22:29But, hey, it'd be great if you had that material to choose from.
22:33I was lucky enough that I did.
22:35And I did see this script for this curious film, which was about surrogacy in Japan, using
22:42family members to stand in for one another, which on the surface could seem quite corny
22:48or fanciful or pejorative even.
22:50But I learned from meeting Hikari that it serves a purpose.
22:56It's okay to pretend.
22:57Sometimes it can really fulfill and nurture a need that humans have when they're bereft of company
23:05or they feel like they're not complete for reasons being that they can't enjoin all the challenges
23:12that they had and to be able to make this film, which does play into satisfying the need that
23:20these clients have for people to stand in in their lives, whereas it would have had been
23:24impossible in reality.
23:26The pretend, the make-believe of it all is what's most important.
23:43And I also love that, hey, it's about this profession of acting, which on the surface,
23:51it has kind of a hackneyed sort of adjustment to it when telling someone, oh, I'm an actor,
23:58especially when starting one's career off.
24:00Oh, really?
24:00What have you done?
24:01Oh, no, I don't know.
24:01I never saw.
24:02Oh, really?
24:03Oh, isn't that cute?
24:03Oh, that's cute.
24:04The feeling that, yes, acting is important.
24:09It does fulfill the need and it does have service to those who really just want to feel good
24:19about what they're missing, even if for only a little while, even if it's make-believe,
24:25until in the case of Hikari's film, the lines blur and the roles of a lifetime go from what
24:33the expectation was to something completely opposite.
24:39Being an actor, you have to have courage because without courage, you can't be brave.
24:44You can't be brave unless you have an obstacle, something you fear, something in your way.
24:51And the only way you're going to get through it, around it, over it is with courage.
24:58And it doesn't mean that you're lion-hearted.
25:00It just means that you have to have the strength to at least try.
25:08God damn it.
25:10Amen.
25:13...
Recommended
20:05
|
Up next
17:27
10:53
16:39
20:42
15:48
Be the first to comment