Did you go back to read the book at all before…?

Josh Brolin: Again?

Or had you read it before?

Josh Brolin: I had read it.  Sam Sheppard turned me onto the book when I was doing Grindhouse before I even knew about the movie—2 months before I heard about the movie or a month and a half.  I was out drinking with Sam at one point and he said “man, I just read this Corman McCarthy book.  It’s phenomenal, you have to read it.”  I went and got it the next day and I read it and just loved it for this great weighty literary piece of art.  It wasn’t until later that I heard that they were making a movie and what that was.  I didn’t revisit the book until I actually found out that I was doing it and after I was over the initial collarbone pain.  Then I could fix my eyes enough to read it.

Is it 100% now because I can see you moving it?

Josh Brolin: 100%. 

Very good.  Good rehab. 

Josh Brolin: And there was no rehab by the way.

Really?

Josh Brolin: No, people ask me that even doctors they go “it doesn’t heal like that.  When you have a floating collarbone it doesn’t heal like that.”  They said “what did you do for rehab?” and I said “I swam away from a rabid dog.  I got shot.  I got this and that.  I ran away from the Mexican’s in the truck.  I don’t know if you’ve heard of that technique. It’s a good one.” 

Before I ask my question, I broke my shoulder…

Josh Brolin: Oh you did?  Your collarbone?

Yeah.

Josh Brolin: Do you mind if I touch you?  I don’t want to get hurt and or sued.

It still hurts and I cannot kind of put…

Josh Brolin: You can’t?  Oh, that’s the majority of the people that’s how it works.  I’m sorry.  I won’t do that again. 

By the way, your character knows about how to shoot and how to use weapons.  Did you have training and did you talk with someone who had weapon experience?

Josh Brolin: Yeah, the props guy.  Keith, that we talked with about guns and all that kind of stuff.  But no, you know, when you can draw your own antelope you can basically shoot anywhere and you’ll hit them. You know what I mean, because they’re fake.  No, I’m not particularly a good shot.  I don’t like to hunt, personally.  Yeah, I’ve worked with guns a lot having done a few westerns and real westerns.  I don’t consider this a western.  I think it takes place in the west and there’s a cowboy hat and a horse in it, but westerns I always think of like the turn of the century kind of thing.  Yeah, to answer your question, I’ve worked with guns for a long time. 

Talking with some veterans like who went to Vietnam and…

Josh Brolin: Oh, did I talk to any Vietnam vets?  No, I didn’t actually.  I know a lot of Vietnam vets personally, but did I go and specifically talk about what was it like?  No, no.  No, I should have though.  I did a lot of research but it was more about the vernacular of the place, the feeling of the place, how people held themselves in San Saba and Tommy’s from San Saba so I felt a real pressure to do it justice because Tommy would say “you realize that your character is from San Saba, right?”  I go “yes sir”.  He goes “You know I’m from San Saba.” I go, “You keep telling me every couple of days.”  He goes “yeah, have you thought about your clothes?”  I go “personally or character?”  Long, long pause.  “Character.”  I said “yes, I have.”  And he’d just go into these tangents and I’d just be like “fuck, get me out of here, man.”  But later on it turned out where he’s an extremely sweet nice guy.  He left a message—he was the first guy to leave a message on my voice mail to say…giving incredible compliments about the movie and the performance and all that.  He said “extended moments of originality” which I’ll never forget.

Many people in the press have been talking about it—this is your year with Grindhouse and your cameo In the Valley and American Gangster and this obviously.  Do you feel like this has been a culmination in many ways of your career like its sort of all…?

Josh Brolin: Come together?  I’m starting to feel that because you guys are saying it so much, but no.  No.  Honestly, if I strip all that away and pretend that I haven’t spoken to anybody about it, no.  I really enjoy the work that I’ve been doing and I’ve always enjoyed the work that I’ve done and I’ve been picky before now and it’s not that I’ve gotten pickier, I just met a lot of really great filmmakers in a very condensed amount of time who were doing really great films, and for some freaky reason they saw me as that character.  The greatest compliment for me is the Coen’s saw me as this character around the same time that Ridley saw me for that character. That I don’t quite understand.  It’s the greatest compliment that I could get as an actor because there couldn’t be two more opposite opposing personalities and then Robert’s character is so extreme and it was so much fun and ridiculous and over the top.  I’ve just been extremely fortunate.  People say do you feel pressure?  No, I don’t feel pressure.  I just really enjoy the year and the collaborative effort with these guys.  It’s a great year.

So obviously you said you’ve been very picky.  Have you been picky enough to find something to shoot over the next couple months?

Josh Brolin: Well, I shot my short recently so I’ve really been focused on that. We’ve been really focused on our theatre company here in Los Angeles.  Yeah, there’s been things that have come my way.  Things that I really haven’t responded to yet and there’s 3 movies that we’ve been looking at for January and they’re all great. I know I’ll be working soon, I just don’t know exactly on what yet.  We’ll see.  I may never work again. That would be a more interesting story wouldn’t it?

Do you and your wife—do you trade off in terms of one of you will work and one of you will be home with the kids?  Because I know the kids are like teenagers now.

Josh Brolin: Yeah. I have a son in college and I have 2 kids in high school, so yeah, no.  No, no, no.  I mean, Diane’s worked a lot. She’s been working a lot, which works for me, because I’m at home trading downstairs and so that’s all good so I can take the kids to school and pick them up from school.  The last year has been a little bit different.  I’ve worked 9 months non-stop. I mean literally non-stop and I was working before that too with a little bit of break in between. Enough to break my collarbone.  But you know now Diane’s slowed down.  She feels like she’s had enough that she’s done and then I know come January I’ll start working and I don’t know.  It works itself out. We don’t sit down and have pow-wows about it because we both have a need to be with the kids so it’s not like you have to be with the kids so I can go have fun working.  I think it’s quite the opposite… we have to go work because we haven’t worked in a year now, so I guess I should.

So it’s just been kind of serendipity the way things worked out?

Josh Brolin: Yeah, luckily.  I miss my wife now. 

Can you talk about the challenges of filming in that river though with the dog?  I was just going to ask you about the challenges of on-location filming and that authenticity that only comes with filming on location.

Josh Brolin: You know, man, it’s better being home but the Coen’s just went through it  and I watched them go through it because they just shot in New York and they haven’t shot in New York I don’t know if ever—the movie with George Clooney and Brad Pitt and Frances and it pretty much drove them insane because you have your household responsibilities and then you’re working and consuming yourself and especially if you’ve been on-location a lot, you really allow yourself to become totally myopic in what you’re doing and you can do it for 3 months and get completely exhausted beyond believe and get home and like “okay now I can get back into my life and I can just focus on that”.  I love location because it does—it lends a certain—I can’t imagine doing No Country in the back lot of Universal with some kind of painted background, you know?  It really, for me, lends to what’s happening in the story.  It’s a character unto itself that I think really helps the tone of the movie. And the river, you know, the river’s a pain in the ass truthfully. It looks great and I love the way it turned out, but you know when you’re waking up at 4:00 in the morning because Roger Deakins wants to get the light just right and you’re doing that for a full week and you can only shoot from 4-5 because that’s when the light’s perfect and you’re freezing your ass off and you’ve only slept from 1:00 because you couldn’t go to sleep because you’ve been doing nights and you wake up at 4:00 completely discombobulated and then they say jump in the river when it’s freezing and then we’re going to throw the dog after you.  There’s moments where you go “why, why? I could trade and I could never do this again and it would all be okay. And they’ll still eat and go to college.  It will be fine.”  But when you look at it, Javier and I watched the movie together for the first time and we kind of supported each other because we didn’t know.  How is the movie going to be?  Don’t know and they’re not going to tell us—the Coen’s.  They don’t call and say “oh my God we just cut it, we just locked it, and it’s amazing. Good bye.”  But we watched the movie together and we were deeply satisfied.  Javier leaned over and goes “this is a pretty good fucking movie.”  I said “yeah, man.  I think it’s pretty good”.

Was there anything that surprised you in the translation from the page to the screen?  Because Kelly had said that she read the script and she thought it was very funny.  Then when she watched the film she realized how brutal everything was.

Josh Brolin: How brutal it was.  Yeah, well, Kelly wasn’t around the whole time, you know.  Kelly was focused on her accent.  Kelly would do this thing, man I’ll never forget.  We were doing the scene on the bus and she kept popping her button so we’d be in the middle of this scene and she’d be doing this great accent, you know this Texas accent and you’d hear pop, and you’d see the pop and she’d go “ooh” and she’d go right into this—fuck my head up so bad, I didn’t know who she was or what.  Was there anything surprising?

Yeah, or just something that translated differently.

Josh Brolin: Oh, from the book?

No, from the script.

Josh Brolin: Oh, from the script?

Or from the book.

Josh Brolin: Honestly it was much funnier than I thought.  It’s the opposite for me.  I was very, very happy because the humor’s very, very subtle.  It’s very absurd and it’s very subtle and I think that that’s so needed in movies like this because it allows you to go back to a base and allows the tension to build once again and all that so you get to go through all those fluctuations.  You know, like the story I told you about the mm-hum.  I think that that’s a necessary moment.  It’s almost like a breather, so I feel quite the opposite.  I was very happy to hear people laughing where they were laughing as opposed to places where they were just laughing out of tension.  I think it was more intentional than that.  Okay, thank you guys.