- 6 weeks ago
Tim Robbins joins GQ as he revisits some of the most iconic characters from his career so far: from his breakout role as Nuke LaLoosh in Bull Durham to his portrayal of Andy Dufresne in Frank Darabont’s critically acclaimed The Shawshank Redemption.
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00:00Success or failure in life has to do with your ability or inability to deal with challenges,
00:08struggles, obstacles.
00:09If you see an obstacle as a gift, you can come to a new level of being.
00:21Boulder.
00:24Ain't pissing nothing away.
00:26I got a Porsche already.
00:27I got a 911 with a quadraphonic Blaupost.
00:30Christ, you don't need a quadraphonic Blaupost.
00:32What you need is a curveball.
00:34Huh?
00:35In the show, everybody can hit a fastball.
00:37Well, how would you know?
00:39You've been in the majors?
00:43What's great about that part is that he's a talented kid, but he's also, in his brain, he's a superstar.
00:53The image, oddly, I used for him, because when we're talking about clothing and culture, when we're figuring out what
01:03he should be wearing and how he should look, I thought his favorite movie was Saturday Night Fever and John
01:09Travolta was his hero.
01:11That was his style icon.
01:13I went in and read for Boulder and that went well.
01:18But then my agent said, Ron Shelton, the director, he needs to see you throw a ball.
01:23So he's inviting you out to the lot out in Burbank and you're going to have to throw a ball
01:29around with Kevin Costner.
01:31And so that's no problem.
01:33I had my glove and just went out right outside the office and started throwing the ball around.
01:38I could throw pretty fast.
01:41I played third base.
01:43Got to have a rocket arm to get people out.
01:46I could throw it pretty fast.
01:48And then I had to start working on the mechanics when I got to Durham.
01:52But on top of all that, I had to also, once I start talking to Susan's character, have this kind
01:58of ridiculous, which I kind of modeled on Fernando Valenzuela, the eye roll before you pitch.
02:03But I was getting the ball up to into the 80s on the clock.
02:09Accuracy, not so much.
02:11But I had speed because I've been playing baseball and softball my whole life and had dreamed baseball.
02:19When I was a kid, I would act out entire Met games in my living room listening to the radio.
02:25One of the reasons I think that movie worked so well was everyone stayed in their lane.
02:31You know, Susan had her lane.
02:32Kevin had his lane.
02:33I had my lane.
02:34I was the fool.
02:35I was the, what would they say, the million dollar arm and the five cent head or something like that.
02:42Comedy is rooted in truth.
02:45You can't think you're funny.
02:47It has to come from some kind of unknowing.
02:50You know, you just don't know.
02:52You are the fool.
02:54And to relish in that.
02:56To not want to look cool all the time.
03:01Shawshank Redemption.
03:04Any favorite passages?
03:07Watch ye therefore, for ye know not when the master of the house cometh.
03:13Mark 1335.
03:16Always like that one.
03:17Frank Darbont wrote the best script I've ever read.
03:21Shawshank Redemption from beginning to end was nearly perfect.
03:27When I read it, I was, I'm in.
03:29I said, that's a first time director.
03:31Well, I'll tell you what, let's get cinematographer approval.
03:34And I was working with Deakins on Hudsucker at the time when I was reading Shawshank Redemption.
03:39I gave it to Roger.
03:41He loved it.
03:42He said, I'm in.
03:43Roger and I and Morgan, when we met, we all talked about how much we loved this script
03:50that Frank had written.
03:51We decided that we were going to fight for that script.
03:55If it was the producers that were going to try to cut days or scenes, we were going to fight.
04:01Even if it was the director that was going to get in the way of his own work, we were
04:06going to fight.
04:06And I think that's the tension that you've read about, is that we all loved that script.
04:12And we all wanted that script to come through.
04:15And there were times when Frank would, you know, have an idea or two that we didn't feel was going
04:21to realize
04:22what was on the page.
04:24I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really.
04:34When we were in the first rehearsal for that, he had us about 10 feet apart.
04:40It's a small thing, but it's a big thing.
04:42And as an actor, you have to pursue the truth of what you believe is on the page.
04:49You have to trust that instinct sometimes.
04:51You look at a kind of way to get to that without the conflict.
04:57And there wasn't conflict.
04:58Morgan and myself and Roger thought, well, you know, probably better intimate, you know,
05:06and what about over here?
05:08Sometimes directors have a shot in mind and the shot might be beautiful,
05:15but it might not get at the truth that the actor wants to bring.
05:21So that's the compromise and the dance that one has to go through, is how do we get to the
05:27truth?
05:28If I'm having a hard time as an actor getting to the truth 10 feet apart,
05:32it's kind of my responsibility to fight for what I believe the truth is.
05:38And the truth for me, that scene was very intimate, very quiet.
05:43I had secrets.
05:44I had to keep them even in this conversation with this good friend of mine.
05:49I also had to be playing a lie.
05:51We kind of wanted the emotion that he was feeling at that time to work in the truth of,
05:58I love this man and I, I'm not going to see him again versus what the audience might think was,
06:06I love this man.
06:06I might not see him again because I'm going to kill myself.
06:09Both those truths had to be told at the same time.
06:13And so now everyone's fearing that something bad might happen.
06:17Morgan's character feels something bad might happen.
06:21Nobody is suspecting that he's hiding a secret of a jailbreak.
06:29Dead Man Walking.
06:32You ever been the object of prejudice?
06:35No.
06:36What do you suppose people think about inmates on death row?
06:39I don't know.
06:39Why don't you tell me?
06:40They're all monsters.
06:41Disposable human waste.
06:43Good for nothing sucking up tax dollars.
06:44Yeah, but I ain't no victim.
06:45They're going to kill me.
06:46I'm innocent.
06:47I ain't whining.
06:47I ain't sitting on no porch going slavery, slavery.
06:50With Dead Man Walking, my job as a director was half done
06:56when I was able to cast Susan and Sean.
06:59Not to mention Celia Weston and Arlie Ermey
07:02and Ray Barry and Margo Martindale.
07:05All those people that came on.
07:07Doug Abel was my casting director.
07:09And all credit and kudos to him.
07:11My job as the director was to create a safe place
07:15for these incredibly deep emotions.
07:18And that has to be sustained over the course of however many weeks you shoot.
07:25It's almost like you are the curator of the temple to make sure that there's no noise
07:33so that these very talented people can get to a place that's very intimate
07:39so that the camera can capture that.
07:43And again, Deacon's being the one to capture it.
07:47The boy?
07:53Walter?
07:55Yeah.
08:01What?
08:05I killed him.
08:10So that scene I knew from the start had to be two cameras, both actors at the same time.
08:20Which is very difficult to do with lighting.
08:23But I talked to Roger about it and he said, I can do it.
08:26That connection, that vulnerability, that state of emotion that both of them had.
08:34I believed that if we were to get to the truth of that,
08:39we're only going to get to it maybe two times.
08:43Maybe three.
08:45Maybe three.
08:47What I was asking for and what they knew they had to get to
08:52was this intense intimacy.
08:56It's hard to confess.
08:58It's not something I would ask an actor to do over and over and over and over again.
09:05That was also done in order.
09:07So we did all the things in the death row sequence all in order.
09:13And it was on a stage.
09:15So we had a controlled environment.
09:18We had time to light it, to have quiet on the set.
09:26I look at it as kind of a spiritual moment.
09:31And that's what we were dealing with throughout the film.
09:34What does that mean?
09:35What does spirituality truly mean?
09:38We had Sister Helen with us as an advisor.
09:41We had the script.
09:42We had the story.
09:44We had our own belief systems.
09:46What the main thing was that there was a deep respect for all belief systems.
09:52There are people of faith that believe in the death penalty.
09:56There are people of faith that are against the death penalty.
09:59The film's job wasn't to say which one is right or which one is wrong.
10:04The film's job was to bring you to a moment where you had to make up your own mind.
10:09And that cannot be done if you disrespect either side.
10:12If you try to slant the argument.
10:14So our job was to make sure that when that final moment comes it's hard to make the decision.
10:24Because there's two legitimate arguments.
10:28And so really the argument goes from the brain to the heart.
10:34The heart's got to make that decision.
10:39The Hudsucker Proxy.
10:42It has economy, simplicity, low production costs, potential for mass appeal, and all that spells out great profitability.
10:48I had the boys down at R&D throw together this little prototype so that our discussion here could have
10:53some focus.
10:53And to give you gentlemen on the board a first-hand look at just how exciting this gizmo is.
10:59It's a very sweet film at its heart.
11:01It's probably the Coen brothers' most human film.
11:05They pretty much had storyboards for every scene.
11:08They knew exactly what they wanted and how they wanted to shoot it.
11:13And I had read with various actresses for the part that Jennifer Jason Leigh wound up playing.
11:19So I had already been in the practice of what the rhythm of it was.
11:24And we had talked a lot about 40s and 30s and 40s screwball comedies.
11:29About Capra.
11:30About Sturgis.
11:31Which I love because that's my wheelhouse for films.
11:35That's my go-to.
11:37My Man Godfrey is probably my favorite film.
11:39The madness of that energy.
11:42People talking quickly.
11:43Smart women, smart men, sometimes dumb men like Norval Barnes.
11:48Great energy.
11:50That's based around a theme that means something.
11:54That's about something.
11:55What is ambition and what makes a good person?
11:59There's a reason why people like to watch it around New Year's Eve.
12:03It's become this kind of touchstone for a moment in the year.
12:08And I love that.
12:09It's also really wacky.
12:11And I loved having the opportunity as an actor to go there.
12:16That's probably the hardest thing to do as an actor.
12:21Is to be a dope.
12:24And be real at the same time.
12:29Cap, can you be a dope that people care about?
12:31If I could just take a minute or two of your very valuable time.
12:35To show you a little something I've been working on for the past two or three years.
12:46You know, for kids.
12:48Roger Deakins shot that movie.
12:50Opposite another hero of mine.
12:52I had known Paul before I did Hudsucker.
12:56But then to be able to work with him and hang out with him.
12:59And you know, have beers with him.
13:01Was just another dream come true.
13:04There's been so many moments in my career where I have been becoming friends with people
13:12that I had admired so deeply when I was a kid growing up.
13:18I have to pinch myself.
13:20The luck I've had and the great good fortune I've had to be around really tremendous artists.
13:27And to have them affirm my right to be there.
13:33If I hadn't had that affirmation from these people, I don't know that I would be here today.
13:40The first time I was on a set with Robin Williams and throwing things back and forth in total improv
13:46with him was, you know, made my spirit lift so high.
13:51Because I realized I can do this with him.
13:53He's the best at this and I'm, I'm playing tennis with, you know, the genius.
14:05Mystic River.
14:08I think I could get that Sprite, Sean.
14:12Sure.
14:14Oh, I get it.
14:16You're the good cop.
14:19How about a meatball sub while you were at it?
14:22I hate you, bitch, Dad.
14:23Looks like you're going to have to wait.
14:26Yeah, but you're someone's bitch, aren't you, Sean?
14:29I based him on someone I know that had gone through abuse when they were a child.
14:36That is a grenade in the heart.
14:38That is a constantly vibrating energy that will always be potentially violent unless
14:52some light is shown on it.
14:54And in the culture that Dave Boyle grew up in, that's not possible.
14:58It's not possible to shine the light on something horrific.
15:02So, as man, stoic individuals, as people that don't want to acknowledge any kind of weakness,
15:11just culturally, there's a lot of people like that, holding on to secrets,
15:18holding on to this time bomb that eventually has to have some kind of release.
15:27That's why when I won the Oscar, I said what I said.
15:31I wanted to take those 20 seconds I had to say that a past abuse is not a weakness.
15:39It's a strength.
15:40It's something that's possible to lead you to a road of healing.
15:46And there are places you can call to start that road.
15:51And apparently that night, the helplines on all these places throughout the country just spiked high.
15:59So I saw it had a direct effect.
16:03Ignoring it just gives it more power.
16:05I had had experiences in my life with things that I had suppressed,
16:10and I was using those when I was playing in Mystic River.
16:17It is a secret, it's a dangerous, dark secret, that he's always, it's always here.
16:24It's always there.
16:26It's okay.
16:26I never got around to telling you.
16:33Did you talk to her?
16:35Just nodded low at one point.
16:38Next time I looked up, she was gone.
16:44But, uh, Jimmy, she looked, um, happy.
16:53There's not a lot of bells and whistles on the set.
16:56There's no, you know, rolling and, you know, action!
16:59It's all just very quiet, very zen-like from the moment you walk on the set.
17:05And you also know, as Clint has told you, we're not going to do a lot of takes.
17:10We're going to do one take of each setup.
17:12That's what you get.
17:13You get one shot at each setup.
17:16That means you have three chances of playing the scene.
17:19One in the wide, one in the mid, and one in the tight.
17:22That's it.
17:23Personally, I didn't take, I did a second take on maybe two, two setups.
17:28That's the discipline going in.
17:31And so the night before, we're, as actors, we're rehearsing.
17:34We're ready.
17:35We're getting ready.
17:36We know every word perfectly.
17:39We're not going to go to the set and say,
17:40Hey, Clint, I think about that.
17:42What about if this happens?
17:43That never happened.
17:45So we were in at 9 a.m. and out by 2 p.m. every day.
17:49It was beautiful.
17:50It was efficient.
17:51Here's the other good thing about it.
17:52When you know that your director is confident enough in you,
17:57it gives you great confidence.
17:59And when you know that you only have to do this scene three times,
18:04you can get deep emotionally.
18:08You can go all the way to an unsafe place because you know you got three times to do it.
18:17He's that way with all of his actors and all of his crew.
18:20He knows that they can do it.
18:22Imagine walking into that kind of work environment with a boss that is saying,
18:27You guys are the best.
18:30Let's do this properly.
18:32And then let's have an early dinner.
18:38Bob Roberts.
18:50I made the first version of Bob Roberts for Saturday Night Live.
18:55I did a five-minute film.
18:57And that was in 85, I believe.
19:01Because at the time, he was just a folk singer businessman.
19:05And as time went on, his ambition grew.
19:09And I conceived the idea of him running for office.
19:12But what inspired the original thing was moving back to Greenwich Village,
19:17where I had grown up and seeing the commodification of what it was before.
19:25When the hippies become commodified.
19:29When you can take on everything about that time and then turn it into a product.
19:34I just really resented that.
19:36The yuppies had taken over Greenwich Village.
19:39And I was like, I want to write a satire about that.
19:42And that's where it started.
19:44Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
19:47Thank you, Lucas.
19:49I am truly honored to be selected as the next senator of the great state of Pennsylvania.
19:56The signs were there.
19:58The signs have always been there.
19:59There's always been an Elmer Gantry in the political world.
20:04There's always been the con man.
20:06The person that uses subterfuge or adopts the characteristic of a popular movement.
20:14But really has other intentions.
20:16But also, Bob Roberts is not just about that.
20:19It's also about how the media creates that.
20:24And that's a story that had not been told.
20:26And that was really at the core of the reason why I wanted to do that story.
20:32Because I had noticed how the media can create a lie.
20:36And no one knows it's a lie.
20:38Because it's done very slickly.
20:40And I'd seen them sell wars.
20:42And I'd seen them sell soap.
20:46I felt like it was the same thing.
20:48That's why those media people are throughout Bob Roberts.
20:53They're creating Bob Roberts.
20:55And so the sex scandal that arrives has zero basis in reality.
21:00But everyone's talking about it.
21:02And that sways the election.
21:05Senator Brickley Paste angrily denied allegations today regarding a report that ran in the Pittsburgh Post Times.
21:10We saw that throughout American history.
21:13The last minute, is he having an affair with so and so?
21:16And just the question itself can create an answer that whoever's trying to subvert the election wants.
21:25The power of propaganda in selling unpopular ideas.
21:33St. Elsewhere.
21:36Where are you from, Stretch?
21:38Washington State.
21:39Washington State.
21:43You're all right, Morrison.
21:47You take good care of me.
21:48I was actually performing in a play called Ubu Wah, Ubu the King, an 1893 surrealist, weird Dadaist play that
22:00we were doing at midnight in Hollywood.
22:02And I'd been auditioning for showbiz parts for, you know, a good six, seven months at that point and not
22:11gotten anything.
22:11And for some reason, my attitude or my punk rock demeanor wasn't being cast in things.
22:23I auditioned for St. Elsewhere.
22:25And I guess because it was a horrible terrorist person, something clicked.
22:32What do you believe in?
22:34Class struggle.
22:36Armed insurrection.
22:38The rights of all oppressed people to overthrow their oppressors.
22:41As in innocent people in a bank.
22:44Nobody is innocent.
22:45I didn't know it was a big deal at the time because I was mostly interested in doing theater.
22:50But this one seemed to have a really good script.
22:52And so I did it and did my first day of shooting.
22:56My second day of shooting was the day after The Clash were playing at the Palladium in Hollywood.
23:06And that was my favorite group.
23:09And I got tickets and I got in the mosh pit and went hard for two and a half hours.
23:17Went home, went to sleep and overslept.
23:21And I was really late for my second day of work.
23:25Kids out there don't do that ever.
23:28Even if it's The Clash.
23:30I was told later, you know, by Bruce Paltrow, you know, would have fired you if hadn't shot that first
23:34day.
23:34It was a huge learning lesson for me.
23:37It was basically asking me, are you going to be serious about this or not?
23:41It was a good experience to have early on.
23:45Because it taught me a tremendous amount about the professionalism of the business.
23:51Of the dedication and hard work that crews do.
23:55And the respect that you owe them by showing up on time.
24:01Jacob's Ladder.
24:22There's great sadness in the character.
24:26There's a whole other level of reality that's happening that I was conscious of.
24:32So there was a deep level of a kind of acknowledgement of death and a fight against it.
24:42And so every scene, no matter what reality you were in, had that in it in some way.
24:49It was dark though, really dark.
24:52And I was shooting it in New York, which is where I grew up and where I was living at
24:57the time.
24:58But my new family was in St. Louis.
25:01And so I would finish work on Friday and take a plane, go see them for a day and then
25:08come back on Sunday.
25:10I was tired.
25:11I was emotionally exhausted as well.
25:15I think that was all good for the character.
25:18I'm very proud of Jacob's Ladder, having seen its arc over the years.
25:24When it first came out, it was not successful.
25:27It was the absolute wrong time for it to be released.
25:33It was released, I think, a month before we went to war in Iraq the first time.
25:39The zeitgeist was just not going to allow it to be seen.
25:44But that didn't diminish its importance for me.
25:47It, in fact, was the first film that made me realize that a film's release, the success of the release,
25:55has nothing to do with whether it's a good film or not.
25:58It means that you and your friends are wacko.
26:01You were all discharged on psychological grounds after some war games in Thailand.
26:05War games in Thailand?
26:06Don't you see what they're doing?
26:07That's a lie.
26:08We were in Danang, for God's sake.
26:10You gotta believe me.
26:11Go fuck yourself, singer.
26:13God!
26:13I try not to substitute when I act.
26:16I don't believe in doing that.
26:19Like, I've known actors that will kill off their children in their head to get to an emotional state.
26:26It's something I never wanted to do.
26:28It's cold.
26:29I always use my imagination because I believe that the degree of suffering, for example,
26:37in a great drama is hopefully a degree that we never have experienced as in our lives.
26:46I'm really not interested in moderate states of emotion.
26:51There's no great drama that was written about a mildly depressed person.
26:56You have to tap into the heights, the rage, the despair, the joy, the elation.
27:04That's where great storytelling lives.
27:07I already had that training, so when I was dealing with Jacob, I was dealing with
27:13what is happening in the transformation, this desperation to hang on to life.
27:21Jacob's Ladder takes place in five minutes.
27:25It's like holding onto a cliff edge and trying not to fall.
27:30That's the energy that had to be sustained.
27:33Even if he's in bed with his girlfriend, it still has this thing going underneath.
27:40So there's times in the film where it manifests and you can see it in a full way,
27:45like in the ice bath and the times when he's seeing demons.
27:48But it had to be there throughout.
27:54The player.
27:58It's about a writer, sort of.
28:01David Cahane.
28:05David Cahane.
28:06Who's David Cahane?
28:07Oh, you met him.
28:09Well, I meet a lot of writers.
28:12But this particular writer that you met was murdered last night in the back of the Rialto
28:16Theater in Pasadena.
28:17Murdered?
28:18I think 17 years old, I saw Nashville in the theaters.
28:23And it was the first time I saw a film and got truly excited.
28:29The idea that this could be made, that this kind of storytelling is what film could be.
28:36So years later, when I get a call saying, Robert Altman would like to meet you.
28:42I was like, tremendously nervous.
28:45And I said, well, what's the audition?
28:47What are the sides?
28:49And they said, there's no sides.
28:50He just wants to meet you.
28:52And so now I'm driving up to his house.
28:54I pull in the driveway and there's some very friendly people there.
28:59And I meet Bob.
29:00And it's basically, what would you like for lunch?
29:03We have this and this and this.
29:05So I sat down and ate with Bob.
29:08And he told me about this film he was trying to put together called Shortcuts.
29:13He said he wanted me to be in it.
29:15And that was it.
29:17Would come to understand later, I asked Bob, why me?
29:21And he said, well, you know, I saw that you're doing theater with the actors gang.
29:26There's been a period of my life just recently where I couldn't get a film made and the theater
29:33meant a lot to me.
29:34I just think we're kindred spirits.
29:36When he invited me to do The Player, I had to face down kind of a terrible choice because
29:44Jacob's Ladder had just come out, you know, no one had really seen it.
29:48And so I wasn't a viable leading man.
29:52And so Bob wanted me to do The Player.
29:56And I had gotten this offer to do this comedy that I wasn't too crazy about.
30:02And it was a million dollars.
30:04And I was broke and I needed the money, but I didn't want to do the film.
30:10I remember facing down the demons and saying, you know what?
30:15I just have to, I have to take a chance here.
30:18I have to turn down this huge amount of money because I might have the opportunity to work
30:24with Robert Altman.
30:25And I found out later that Bob had been offered the money to do The Player with a different actor.
30:33And he said, no, I want to do it with this Tim Robbins kid.
30:38You know, I promised him I was going to do it, so I'm going to keep my promise.
30:41And then now I'm sitting at pre-production with Bob Altman and I'm in his office.
30:48And he says to me, you know, I want to rewrite a lot of this script and I want your
30:55help.
30:55And so now I'm sitting in an office going scene by scene through The Player,
31:01offering ideas and becoming a collaborator with my hero.
31:05It was crazy.
31:08And then I'm watching him, you know, work and seeing people come into his office and saying,
31:14you know, Bob, what do you think about this?
31:16What are the prop department heads and costume heads?
31:19And, you know, it's pre-production, everything's getting ready to go.
31:22And Bob's response was, I don't know, what do you think?
31:26And I thought, wow, that's interesting.
31:29And when they leave the office, I'd say, Bob, you know what you want, right?
31:33Yeah, I know what I want, but why would I ever cheat myself from a better idea?
31:40I got to watch a master work.
31:42And part of what makes a master is, I understood for the first time, humility.
31:59I'm writing something now that's kind of inspired by the player, and it does feel very relevant.
32:09I think what it gets right is not only the subterfuge of Hollywood, which could be any business,
32:18but also the desperation that behind these powerful people lie incredibly vulnerable,
32:29kind of pathetic people that need power to make them feel whole.
32:42It tells that story, but it also does it with such good humor and a real satirical bite.
32:50As good satire does, it indicts you, the audience, that makes you a little uncomfortable.
32:57I remember when we were at Cannes, and the player was a huge success, and after the grand screening,
33:05I was at the party with Bob, and he says, you know, I think we might have been too nice.
33:18You got a blonde's voice, like butter and cinnamon, like those Danish cookies they sell in the round blue metal
33:33tins.
33:36Here's some water.
33:42Isabel Coisette, I thought, wrote a brilliant script and is a truly talented director.
33:50I loved it.
33:51I loved the idea of it.
33:53We're going to Spain and then Ireland, and we're going to, you know, do this weird romance.
33:59That's a guy in a hospital bed and a nurse.
34:03But the idea was also Sarah Polley was a big plus because I had loved her work as an actor.
34:11When I met her, I thought, wow, what an amazing, talented person, great mind, open heart, truly a special person.
34:25I had this great journey with the two of them into a level of beauty and truth and
34:35telling that story of what it is to love, what it is to overcome disappointment and pain and hold on
34:43to the human spirit and
34:45believe again in love.
34:47I mean, that's a valuable story to tell.
34:51There's a beautiful line in that film about, you know, Joseph, my character, can't swim.
34:58She's talking about how if she starts talking about something, she'll start crying.
35:05I may begin to cry and cry so very much that nothing or nobody can stop me.
35:10And the tears will fill the room and I won't be able to breathe.
35:14And I will pull you down with me and we'll both drown.
35:18And his response is, I'll learn how to swim, Hannah.
35:21For me, that pretty much sums up what it is to hold faith in love and its healing power.
35:31Code 46.
35:35I was hoping to hear you sing.
35:38Why?
35:38Well, someone told me that you have a very distinctive voice.
35:43What else do they say about me behind my back?
35:46You know, you can take a virus to make you more musical.
35:49It gives you a perfect pitch.
35:50You sing like an angel.
35:52It was a beautiful love story.
35:55It's almost Greek.
35:56It's like mythic.
35:58In a future world of too much regulation and too many decisions made by exterior forces,
36:05you get to a place where true love isn't possible because of the mechanics of the way that things
36:12are set up.
36:13That's a tragedy, right?
36:15It's a beautiful romance.
36:16It's a terrible tragedy.
36:19I just thought the epic nature of that was brilliant.
36:23And the way that it was pulled off was just so elegant.
36:27It was a bit challenging, to be honest.
36:30We got to a place where the tension was working, right?
36:35The tension that's necessary in a good romance was working.
36:39What we felt about each other was irrelevant.
36:43I didn't understand that at the time.
36:45But when I saw the film, I was really grateful for whatever that was.
36:53I can't kiss you now.
36:56We have to go.
36:57Come on.
36:59Something's happened.
37:01Okay.
37:02It's a weird thing.
37:03It's almost like this different alchemy.
37:07I don't understand it.
37:09You can have a blast on a film and then see the film that is kind of flat and dead.
37:14Then you can have a real struggle and see magic happen.
37:18I don't know what that is.
37:20I have no idea.
37:23Catch a fire.
37:27Get up.
37:32It's water.
37:35Slowly.
37:37Slowly.
37:42I met a Nick Voss, right?
37:44I met a guy that had done exactly what Nick Voss had done.
37:48I went to barbecue with them and hung out, had beers, which was a really important thing to do.
37:56Because anytime you're playing a character that might be ideologically different than you,
38:02you can't bring your politics into it.
38:05You have to bring your openness to their humanity.
38:09However much you disagree with them, however much you seek them out in normal life to hang out with,
38:16it's your job to go have beer and drink and food with these people.
38:23It was eye-opening.
38:26Because in their minds, they were protecting their families.
38:29In their minds, they were staving off communism.
38:33In the West, you know, hear the word communism and we think, oh, that's used as a propaganda tool
38:38to destroy kind of ideological movements.
38:42Well, yes and no. Mandela's mission was much bigger than that.
38:47But at the same time, the weapons the ANC was getting were being funded by the Soviet Union.
38:55So, both realities can exist.
38:58When I met Mandela, which was another one of those moments of like, how did I get here?
39:06I talked to him about this and I asked him what his inspirations were for holding on.
39:11And like, when you got out of prison, what lessons were you using to do what you did?
39:19Which is basically become the president of a country that could easily have descended into chaos and violence.
39:26The blood is flowing in the streets. Revenge being exacted on every white Afrikaner for all the years of oppression.
39:34Easily could have happened. And he didn't let it happen.
39:39And I asked him what his inspiration was for that.
39:42And he said, two men, Gandhi and Jesus Christ.
39:46Both who led through examples of non-violence and forgiveness and loving the enemy.
39:51Difficult. The most difficult lessons to enact as a follower or anyone of faith.
39:59How do you forgive your enemy?
40:01And he set up these truth and reconciliation commissions.
40:04And I watched them.
40:05These long tapes of people, one at a table, the other across from the table saying,
40:12you tortured me.
40:13And the person having to then rectify that situation, understand his involvement.
40:20He's saying, I'm sorry. I was trying to protect my family.
40:25So you saw it all acted out, which was the genius of what he did.
40:31He wasn't going to prosecute those people because even though he's justified in prosecuting those people,
40:37all that would do was prolong the tension and prolong the conflict.
40:41And that's what the genius of Mandela was.
40:45But at the same time, my job was to play one of these Afrikaners who did those terrible things and
40:53bring humanity to them.
40:55Secret Life of Words, Code 46 and Catch a Fire are the three movies that I made after I won
41:02the Oscar.
41:03They're the three movies I chose.
41:05I think those three films are really indicative of the kinds of stories I would tell if I had the
41:14cachet
41:16that an Oscar gives you.
41:18I value those three movies, mainly because they were pretty much ignored.
41:25And I'm not sure why, because they're great films.
41:29I love talking about, you know, Mystic River and Shawshank Redemption.
41:33I love talking about Bull Durham, all of those movies we talked about.
41:37But what I really want is for people to see these three movies.
41:44Silo.
41:47The founders left us with many mysteries.
41:55It's time we both dressed for the occasion.
41:59Congratulations, by the way.
42:00You've attracted the largest crowd we've ever had for a clean.
42:04Even larger than Holston's.
42:08Another secret.
42:10Man holding secrets.
42:11A man holding secrets clever enough to give a public face of
42:19not knowing, bumbling, clever enough to know
42:23that he doesn't have to be treated like he has power because he has power.
42:29I know I'm in control.
42:32That's my secret.
42:33I know everything.
42:34I can appear to be just the head of IT.
42:38I don't, I don't know.
42:40I don't know about the other stuff.
42:42But as you find out later, he's actually in this hub of information with the algorithm
42:51in that secret room behind this vaulted, locked steel door.
42:57Knowing that from the start then gives you the secret.
43:03And then you can appear to be someone that doesn't know what they're doing.
43:09But you know you do.
43:10And you chose to protect your family before the Silo.
43:13I suppose that is completely understandable.
43:19But now I wonder whether making you my shadow would be fair to you, your wife, your son, or the
43:29Silo.
43:29I've always been fascinated by what it takes to be a person in a position of power
43:37that holds the truth, yet ignores the truth.
43:41And embraces the lie as a way, an unfortunate, necessary thing we have to do.
43:48Because if we don't lie, it'll be a lot worse.
43:52That was the rationalization for the Iraq war, for pretty much every war.
43:58That's the rationalization for providing these little gulf of Tonkin moments
44:04that gives everyone on the surface a rationale for responding with violence.
44:11But underneath was totally orchestrated and done by people that wanted that war to happen.
44:19That kind of Machiavellian double think is just fascinating to me.
44:24Like, what the hell?
44:26How do you do that?
44:27How do you maintain a sense of morality when you are that person that's doing it?
44:34It is a sociopathy.
44:36But there are systems in place for the sociopathy.
44:41I know it's difficult, but people won't understand it.
44:45But without you, everything would collapse.
44:48It's almost like they're being elevated to this kind of mythic godlike status
44:54that in their own minds allows them to do awful things and sleep at night.
45:02This is what's brilliant about Silo.
45:04It's because it is talking about everything about now,
45:08but it's doing it in a fictional context in the future.
45:13When I got this script, I was stunned.
45:15I was like, wow, they're actually, I was in, we were in the middle of lockdown
45:20when I got this script.
45:21And I thought, they're telling a story about a society that's completely locked down
45:28that you can't speak your mind in, that will punish you if you step out of the narrative
45:36and will expel you from society.
45:39Wow, how relevant is that?
45:42And they're going to pay me too?
45:45What?
45:46And again, one of those lovely moments that have happened throughout my career where,
45:52I don't know why, but it just, it seems to just keep flowing in that direction of like,
45:58gifts that keep coming.
46:01I get the opportunity to play a character in a piece that is talking about right now.
46:08And it's done by real great professionals that are also kind and also not working you to death,
46:17working 10 hour days in a world where you're working 16, 17 hour days in a very human way,
46:24in a very human place in London.
46:26All of the directors, all the writers, all the actors, lovely people.
46:31I'm having a poker game every Friday night and we're doing relevant work.
46:35I mean, what a gift.
46:37All right.
46:40All right.
46:40You