Posted by Mr. Beaks

Rodrigo Garcia’s feature film follow up to Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her (he’s done a good deal of television work since then), Nine Lives is an omnibus of nine stories depicting nine pivotal moments in the lives of numerous characters as they love, hate, grieve, fight, fail, cheat, yearn and break the Olympic dead lift world record.  Ambitious stuff.  (Check out the official site to get a better sense of what Garcia's attempted.)  More astonishing than the director’s technically adroit execution of the nine tracking shots in which these episodes are presented is the cast he assembled to help tell his brief, interwoven tales:  Glenn Close, Stephen Dillane, Ian McShane, Sissy Spacek, Holly Hunter, Lisa Gay Harden, Jason Isaacs, William Fichtner, Amy Brennemen, Aiden Quinn, Miguel Sandovar, Robin Wright Penn, Dakota Fanning… and that’s just scratching the surface. 

Also along for the big thespian orgy are Joe Mantegna and Kathy Baker, two absolutely brilliant performers who certainly don’t lack for work, but could do with a bit more respect (even though they’ve both won multiple acting awards).  I had the chance to attend a roundtable where a quarter of the actors involved in the production participated along with the writer/director, and most enjoyed the time spent with these two stage and screen stalwarts.  In the film, Baker plays a cancer patient about to undergo surgery, while Mantegna plays her supportive husband who, in ten minutes, gets beloved and berated in equal measure. 

Below is the transcript of our roundtable discussion, which proved to be an enlightening chat about the acting craft, and how this project offered a perfect melding of stage and screen.  Give it a read, why don’t you…

Kathy, have you had any experience dealing with cancer survivors and the treatment they go through?

Kathy:  I have not personally, but two of my dear have, and I called them and asked them about the piece when I first read it so that I could do it right.

What sort of insight did they give you?

Kathy:  This one friend of mine read the piece, and I said, “Do [cancer patients] really act like that?”  And she said, “Oh, yeah!”  Then, actually, for specific medical things, I talked to my OB/GYN to see where are people medically, when they’re [at that stage] – what have they been through already, what have they taken, what are they about to go through, what questions have they asked?  I just wanted to know what we had done already.

Joe:  That’s a good idea.

Kathy:  Yeah, well, I do my homework, Joe.  (Laughter)

Joe, have you spoken with anyone?

Joe:  No, but my best friend died from cancer two years ago, and I was there for the whole thing – I mean, right up until the moment he died. 

Kathy:  (Genuinely surprised)  Oh, Joe, you didn’t tell us that.  This whole time?

Joe:  But it wasn’t something that I was on my mind when we did our thing, to tell you the truth.  But I think, now that you ask the question, it makes me think… well, yeah.  Just the fact that that happened, and then I kind of saw… you know, it had a different result, though.  I mean, [the scenario in the movie] was taking something that we’re hoping that when it’s all over it’s all going to be okay.  But just to go through that and see the range of emotions that happen maybe was helpful in some way.

Is that often your process:  drawing on past experiences?  I know you came up with David Mamet, and he kind of preaches against that.

Joe:  Yeah, well, I often base characters on a pair of shoes.

(Laughing)  Seriously?

Joe:  Yeah, seriously.  In other words, if I see a pair of shoes, I’ll go, “Yeah, [my character]’d wear those.”  And then from that moment on everything else starts falling into place.  So, yeah, I would probably say that I’m not a “method” guy or anything like that.  But, on the other hand, you can’t help but throw on experiences one has in one’s life, because before actors we’re people, so you draw from what you have, what you are, that’s all.  So, in this instance, there was something there.  But what’s great about [Garcia’s] writing is that it’s all very naturalistic.  It was almost like he went in and—

Kathy:  Almost like he was behind the curtain, or something.

Joe:  Yeah, or that he had taped a real incident where this really happened and said, “Okay, now do this.”  There was nothing phony about it.

How do the two of you feel about the way it was shot in one take?  Was that easy for you guys, or was it a lot more nerve wracking?

Kathy:  I just loved it.  I think we agreed that we both loved it because it was like the theater, and we’re both from the theater.  It’s so joyous to know you’re going to go somewhere and get to actually get there.  Lots of times, you don’t get there until next week or next month.

Joe:  Or you already got there yesterday.

Kathy:  (Laughing)  Exactly.  But, by the same token, when you do a play you do it once – you know, the arc.  And this was doing the arc over and over and over.  So, that was the hard part, but it was just great.

Joe:  It was that combination of almost like live theater and film experience… which was unique.

Joe, how did your friend’s experience not occur to you when you were reading and shooting this?

Joe:  I don’t know.  I guess because… (long pause) mainly because it had such a different result in the sense that this phase of it [depicted in the movie], in retrospect, seemed very short.  Very early on, I knew it was going to be terminal, so you have to shift them through a whole other kind of mode.  Also, it was the first time someone that close to me… where I did that.  I wasn’t around when my father died, and my mother is [still living] at ninety, so I haven’t really gone through that.  But here was a case where you literally go through the whole thing right up until you’re at the bedside when the person expires, and then wake them at their house.  He married his girlfriend the night before – it was just the three of us there – and then the next day he dies, and then you have the wake in the house.  And then, at the end of the day, everybody leaves, and there’s just me and two guys from the mortuary wrapping him up in a sheet and putting him in a bag and carrying him into a van.  That was a whole… I mean, it blew me away.  It was a great thing; the perspective it gave me on death and all, like I said, maybe because I have it in a special place in my head and that’s where it is.  But subconsciously I think it might’ve been there, but I didn’t think of [this scene] as being a thing about death.  This scene didn’t reek of that; it reeked more of acceptance and love and crisis.  There’s a lot of humor in this scene.  I felt hopeful about it, as opposed to the other thing which was like, “This is going to have a bad end; this is not going to come out good.” 

Do you think this guy was normally such a passive, supportive husband, or do you think that’s just the mode he got into?

Joe:  He’s a husband.  I don’t think of myself as a passive, supportive husband.  I’d like to think I could be if I need to be.  I’ve been married almost thirty years, and I’d like to think I can go to that place if I have to.  Not that you really have to, but in that position where you need to.  If you’re in a relationship that long… I don’t know how long this relationship [has lasted], but we’re not kidding anybody.  It’s not like we met yesterday.  It’s not like people are going to go, “Oh, look at those two young lovebirds!” 

Kathy:  It’s got to be at least twenty-five years.

Joe:  That’s what’s great about it.  That’s what you have to do in a relationship that long.  It’s a lot of give-and-take.  And, at this particular moment, she’s doing a lot of taking and I’m doing a lot of giving.  (Laughs)

Kathy:  I’m actually giving a lot of… (whispering) I’m not going to say a bad word.

Joe:  Grief!

Kathy:  And you’re taking it.  (Laughs)

Kathy, those mood swings, those violent highs and lows—

Kathy:  I have no experience with that in my real life whatsoever.

(Laughing)  I bet. 

Kathy:  I read a book about it, and I could sort of picture it.

Joe:  She’s an actress.  We all know how even-tempered they are.  (Laughter)

How many takes did you do of the scene?

Kathy:  (To Producer Julie Lynn, who’s hanging out in the roundtable room:) We think we did six, Julie.  What do you think?

Julie:  This was the shortest day.  I know that we went home early that day.  It was the only day we went home early.

Kathy:  That’s what we keep hearing.  We thought we had it the first take, but Rodrigo made us do it again.

Julie:  I think he used the second take.

Kathy:  Did he seriously?

Julie:  No, I’m not sure.   

Kathy:  I actually heard that he liked that one the best.  I don’t know which one he used, but—

Julie:  It was an earlier take.

Kathy:  Well, I was just contained physically.

Would you have gotten any satisfaction from doing a walk-off one-take.  Just like, “We nailed it!”

Joe:  It if had been Sinatra, that’s what it would’ve been.  “Can we do that again, Mr. Sinatra?”  “Did you get it the first time?”  “We got it, but—“  “Well, okay!”  (Laughter)

Did you do it any differently each time?

Kathy:  Oh, yeah. 

What were some of the things you tweaked?

Kathy:  Gosh.  I guess it kind of depends.

Joe:  Well, also when you’re shooting a complete thing like that, you go where it takes you.  Sometimes you don’t even know where it’s going.

Kathy:  I think one time Mary Kay [Place] was actually late on her entrance.  Am I right about that?  Somebody was cued late?  I mean, it wasn’t her; it was a cue thing, so you have to just adjust a little.  If you were doing a scene where they were going to come around on her side, you’d think “It doesn’t matter if she’s late, I’ll just dance for a minute.”  But since you know you’re on camera when she’s late… I can’t remember specifically what I did.  It was a year ago, and I have no memory from yesterday.  But that’s the thing:  it is what it is, it happens the way it happens—

Joe:  It takes on a life of its own each time you do it.

Kathy:  Much more so than something you shoot in… what’s the word for the different way we shoot stuff, with different camera setups?

Joe:  Shoot in segments.

Julie:  Coverage.

Kathy, Joe was saying that he didn’t view the scene as a downer.  What was your take on it?

Kathy:  When I was listening to him talk, I was dying to interrupt like a real wife.  To me, it wasn’t a story of cancer or cancer surviving, and I wonder if that’s why [Joe’s friend] was in the back of his head.  It’s a story of a moment in a marriage, and it could be any crisis.  Some of the other interviewers said to us it felt like it could’ve been childbirth.  It could’ve been, god forbid, one of our kids was either sick or had died.  It’s a moment of crisis in a marriage, and it almost didn’t matter what the crisis was in a way.  But then, of course, I’m the one going through the surgery, and so I had to put that on it.  I mean, she’s scared, and that’s why she acts the way she is, but she isn’t thinking about that; she’s thinking about surviving.  And he’d better do what she says today because she’s in a bad mood, and she deserves a little room.

Joe:  In a way, these are the times when marriages are as close as they can possibly be.

Kathy:  Yes.  This is as intimate as you can get.

Joe:  I mean, you’re close when everything is just great, but it’s like that saying, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”  It’s the same thing:  get close in the good times, get closer in the bad times. 

Do you think it matters what order the stories go?

Kathy:  I don’t know.  I haven’t seen the movie yet.  When I read the script, our segment was earlier in the script, I think, but now it’s second to last.  I can’t actually answer that without having seen the film.  It must matter.  Julie Lynn and Rodrigo Garcia must’ve decided.  There must be a flow to it that it needs, but I can’t really say.  Sorry.

You speak so profoundly on two characters for something that’s about ten minutes in change.  How long did you have the material beforehand?

Kathy:  Oh, I don’t know.  A couple of months.

What’s interesting is the level of preparation that you had with this as opposed to theater.  Here, you get it up on its feet and you do it maybe five or six times.

Kathy:  And then it’s gone.  I know.  It’s like most thing you do in film.  When you think about it, to have ten minutes in a film – I don’t know how it breaks down, but lots of times you can do a movie where you don’t have ten minutes in the film.  Would I be right about that?  If you play a relatively small character, you wouldn’t get ten screen minutes in the film?  I worked as hard on this as I would on anything, even if it was one scene in a T.V. episode that I didn’t like very much. 

But there’s that thing when you first get it up on its feet and you get to play around with it a little—

Kathy:  Yeah, but in movies we don’t get to do that.  In movies and T.V. we don’t get to do that at all.  We don’t get to play.  This was more playing.  We rehearsed one day and shot one day.  But it is kind of sad to say goodbye to the part.

Joe:  I think this was a good combo of the two mediums.  It was like theater in that we do it all in one take, but it also was like film in the sense that “Oh, we don’t have weeks to rehearse this; we have a whole day.”  You never get that in a film, or, at least rarely.  So, it kind of was a hybrid.  That’s what made it interesting.

Kathy:  But it’s also true that when it was over, it was over in one day, and I’d wished we gone longer.  “Do we have to stop now!?!?”

Kathy, do you know if there are any plans to put Picket Fences on DVD?

Kathy:  I don’t know.  I wish there would be.

Would you up for doing commentaries or interviews?

Kathy:  Sure.  I’ve never done that.  I keep wondering when that’s going to happen, and I’m sure it will.

Joe, you recently reunited with some of the Organic Theater guys to do David Mamet’s Edmond.

Joe:  Yeah. 

Stuart Gordon, who’s been doing genre stuff for so many years, is back doing Mamet; although, this probably is the darkest thing Mamet ever wrote.

Joe:  Right up there.

How did that go?

Joe:  I thought it went well.  All I’ve seen of it so far was a trailer, but what I saw was pretty powerful.  You know, if they can get past the scene I do in the first five minutes without people burning down the theater and forming lynch mobs and stuff, we’ll be alright.  I think I’ll come close to offending half the population with that scene.

Kathy:  Really?

Joe:  Oh, yeah.

Joe, you also won the Tony for the original Broadway portrayal of Richard Roma in Glengarry Glen Ross.  In the interim there’s been Pacino’s version, and Liev Schreiber’s.  Did you get to see Liev do it?

Joe:  No.  I notice he won the Tony for the same role in the same play twenty-one years later, so now I feel like Lee J. Cobb.  (Kathy laughs)  I think, “Oh, this is great!  They’re doing revivals of plays I did, and the guy’s winning the same Tony for the same role.”  You know, I feel like Edwin Booth, or something.  (Imitating a decrepit Booth:)  “Oh, yes, when I was a lad I remember doing that same role.”  I wrote [Live] a letter, actually, because I’ve never met him.  And I said, “Dear Liev, I know it’s a common phrase, ‘I know just how you feel’, but in this instance I think I really do know just how you feel.  Congratulations.” 

Kathy:  But you were the first, Joe.  You were the original!

They say Lee J. Cobb was the best Willy Loman. 

Joe:  Whatever.  I’m glad I did it.

You can see Joe, Kathy and a huge roster of brilliant actors this Friday when Nine Lives opens in New York and Los Angeles.  It will begin expanding throughout the country on October 28^th.