Q: What’s with the little facial hair there? Is that for a role or-

CT: Yeah, I’m doing G. I. Joe right now.

Q: Oh. You’re the other G. I. Joe guy?

CT: Yeah, I’m the other guy, but I’m just trying to grow up a little bit. (Laughter)

Q: Channing, I’ll just throw this question at you. In the last few years your career has definitely exploded. You are doing G. I. Joe right now and you are also gonna be in Public Enemies-

CT: Little part, little part. I have a really cool, little part in that.

Q: Can you talk a little bit about what attracted you to G. I. Joe and what the experience has been like and also are you looking forward to working with Christian Bale and Johnny Depp?

CT: Oh man, that goes without saying. That’s obvious. I’ve been a huge fan of both those guys and Michael Mann. You know, G. I. Joe, I was originally opposed to it. Especially coming off of Stop-Loss, playing a soldier about a really sensitive topic? I had no interest in going to play a fake soldier in a hyper-real kind of fantasy war. I was just like, “Nope. No thanks”, and then it came back around and I met on it and I read the script finally and the script was great. It actually has nothing to do with war, nothing to do at all. It’s like X-Men, Mission Impossible, and Star Wars. That’s how it is. I got kind of excited about it and jumped on. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in it so that was kind of more of an incentive. I love him. He’s one of my best friends and to get a chance to work with him for a long time is really fun. Then I get to play Pretty Boy Floyd in the Michael Mann thing and Christian Bale gets to shoot me so- (Laughter) I never died in a movie. I’m a little nervous. I am like, “Oh god!” That’s a tall order, you know?

Q: Joseph plays the opposite side of you. Are you guys trashing off each other?

CT: Oh, you have no idea. (Laughter) You have no idea. In this he gets the better of me. I’m strapped to a table and he’s torturing me so it’s not gonna be fun. It’s not gonna be fun. I’m like, “Great, wait ‘til number two”. I’m like, “Mmm, you’ve got it coming.”

Q: What’s Franklyn? That’s something you’re doing?

RP: Yeah, that’s something I’ve finished. It’s a strange movie. It’s hard to describe. It’s essentially four different characters whose lives intersect in London. It’s with Eva Green and Sam Riley who’s really great.

CT: What was that now, what you said yesterday?

RP: Batman meets Magnolia. (Laughter)

Q: It’s a futuristic film?

RP: My role, yeah, sort of takes place- I play two characters and the majority of it takes place in a sort of alternate reality, but the whole movie isn’t set in the future.

Q: Do you have something coming up on the next few months?

RP: No. Nothing I’m starting on right now. I’m writing, but-

CT: babies. He’s taking care of his babies.

RP: Yeah, my kids. Just hanging out.

Q: Ryan, you’ve done two military, “coming home” sequences. One in Flags of our Fathers, one in this film. Both have an undertone of irony. How else do they differ?

RP: I think they differ in their capacity. That war was absolutely necessary and I just would have given my life for. That generation kept a lot more to themselves. That displacement the soldier feels coming home and the notion of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), those things weren’t really an aspect of World War II soldiers’ reality. I think everyone came home and kept it to themselves. I know my grandfather didn’t talk about it. The guys today, I found, that we talked to that have served over in Iraq are much more forthcoming and there’s a lot more acceptance of them dealing with what they have experienced. The other aspect that I think is incredibly different is the modern soldier. In World War II a kid was plucked from a neighborhood and put on a battlefield within the space of a month. Now you go through extensive training and you’re a machine. You’re a professional soldier now and that’s certainly not how it was in World War II.

Q: Did it surprise you to find out that Americans are inn hiding? That people that served our country are having to live under the radar now?

RP: It did, but I guess I would draw that same parallel to the ex-pats who are up in Canada or went off to Mexico. That was choice they were faced with when the draft was instituted and now there is no draft. I think is sort of a similar notion. I know it’s surprising and hopefully that will change.

Q: A lot of these guys, like your character, are feeling that they are at the top of their limits and they are going to flip and they shouldn’t be sent back when they are in that state.

RP: It’s a dangerous thing for the soldiers. It’s a dangerous thing for the civilians on the foreign soil. There’s also this thing to me that is really disturbing. The army now will accept people that have legitimate injuries and legitimate deficiencies and put that back into combat because they can’t get enough people over there. I now people who are in the National Guard in their 60s, they’ll take them to Iraq. They may put them in a desk job, but back in the old days if you had a strain or a bad back you couldn’t even get in the army. Now you can be blind in one eye and be put on the battlefield. That disturbs me.

Q: Have either of you made any trips over seas? I know a lot of actors have gone with the U. S. O. or whatever.

RP: No. I haven’t.

CT: I haven’t. I plan to though. Me and Joe and a few other guys are planning n doing some sort of documentary. We’re still shaping what it’s really gonna be about. I just want to know what they think. What do they think about all these war films coming out. I want to give them the camera and let them ask me questions. What do they think? Do they think Hollywood is doing a good job? Do we get it right? I know we can’t get it right. That’s impossible. We can get it close and we can try our hardest, but we are never gonna know what it’s like to be in war. All we can do is create a real person and try to be a real soldier.

Q: You talked to Kim’s brother who was a soldier over there. Is he okay about it? Does he seem like a regular guy?

RP: He seemed regular to me, but he’s really close friends with Channing.

Q: Did he have one tour or two?

RP: I don’t know. (To Channing) Was it once?

CT: I know he was in for four years. I don’t know how long he was over there.

RP: He was one of the ones that signed up after 9/11 with the intent of getting back at the people who aggressed against us. The thing is when he was over there Kim would I. M. him when he was in Fallujah, whatever it was. His closest friend over there was a guy who served as the inspiration, the guy who was stop-lossed. His life was put on hold so everything began there for Kim. She started to go around the country and researching. She’d go to actual homecomings and did extensive interviews and it kind of all built. Brett was around for quite a bit of the movie and really helped out in the beginning and we had guys who were there with us, soldiers that we spent our free time with, and I think it really enhanced the truth.

CT: Brett got out because of a soldier injury and he couldn’t- his shoulder was all messed up and when he got out the guy that replaced him died. He died, actually, during the filming. He was the leader of a tem, of a sniper unit and they ran into an L-shaped ambush.

Q: Because your guy was a sniper too, did you get to talk to him?

CT: He wanted to be a sniper. He didn’t actually get in. He was going back in to be a sniper.

Q: Ryan, you said you are going to write?

RP: I am writing right now.

Q: Is this a project you want to write and direct?

RP: It is something I’m hoping to direct this fall, a small, kinda dark comedy based on a true-crime story, probably set in Texas.

CT: The kid should write. He should direct. I wanna work with him too. I want him to direct me one day.

Q: Do you have a boo-boo? (Laughter)

CT: Interesting story. (Looks around) Make sure my publicist isn’t in here. He’ll kill me. I got into a head-butting contest with one of the soldiers last night.

Q: A real guy?

CT: Yeah. I lost (Laughter)

Q: So you haven’t left it behind yet?

CT: It’s not totally gone!