The part was written for me. Tom McCarthy, the writer-director, [and I] have been friends for almost ten years. [We're] really good friends, and when he started writing, he called me and asked me little things like, "Give me the name of a Cuban dish. Tell me a little bit about the culture." That kind of thing.
I would say the one thing we have in common is I'm very talkie, and inquisitive, and sort of relentless that way. I would say the [similarity] stops there. For me, the work part of it was trying to identify with this guy's loneliness. I was really impressed with how, on the surface, he didn't seem like a lonely person at all. That's what I loved about it. You had Fin and Olivia who were actively trying to be lonely, and this guy who was lonely and not trying to be. So that for me was kind of the hard part. We'd be shooting and Tom would say, "Just remember don't force any of this stuff, just really, genuinely ask these questions like a kid would want to know."
Who do you think is the right audience for this movie?
You know, I don't know. We've now seen it with so many different
audiences. There was the Sundance experience of course, which, you know,
could be deceiving because it's such a 'film' audience. It's all
people in the business. We got a great reception at Sundance,
but until we went to these other cities and saw it with regular
folks, we didn't know. Everyone seems to really like it. I don't
know. We went to Spain and there were 1,800 people in the
audience - none of them spoke English - and they reacted the same way they did at Sundance. They got everything.
It's definitely a word-of-mouth film. People in this country don't go and see movies unless [they star] Cameron Diaz and Brad Pitt. But I really think it can appeal to everybody. People come up to me who have seen the movie and say, "I didn't know where this movie was going and then slowly I started to really identify with all these characters." And I think that's such a cool thing that Tom was going for. Everybody can identify with being lonely at some point in their life, and for me the movie was always about adults. That's why I really liked; it wasn't about 21-year-olds. It's people in their 30s. I think when you get to be that age it becomes harder to connect. Particularly when, like Joe, you're 35 years-old and you don't have a career and you're not married. You have a tendency sometimes at that age, to sort of look inward and go, "What am I doing wrong?" That pushes people away and I think people can really identify with that.
How were the shots of the trains filmed?
All the scenes in the movie, except for the train chasing, we stole. We'd have a kid - a P.A. - a quarter of a mile down the track with a whistle. When he blew that whistle it meant the train was coming. We'd just
throw [everything] together, put on different wardrobe, and just
sit there. Those were the shots we got. With that [one scene], we didn't know what the train was going to look like and it was only those two cars. So that was just [improv]. Tom said, "Stand there and react to whatever comes. I don't know what's coming but whatever comes, just react." I was like, "Wouldn't you react that way? We were waiting for like two hours for this train to come and then it was bullshit. It was nothing."
Bobby Cannavale on His Role in "The Devil and Daniel Webster"
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Interview with Peter Dinklage
"The Station Agent" Photos, Credits, Trailer and Websites
