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MARTIN LANDAU (Harry Trimble)

Can you talk about how you came into this role?
I got a note from Frank Darabont saying that we'd met at functions and things, and it's about time we met on a set. Along with that note came a script. I read the script and I was very moved by it. It was like Frank Capra had put this on his shelf in 1951 and forgot about it. That's what it seemed like.

Then you heard Jim Carrey was going to be playing the lead, and thought about “Me, Myself and Irene?”
No, I saw Jimmy Stewart and I saw Henry Fonda, because I immersed myself in it and I found it moving, and I found it courageous, and a lot of things. This was a year and a half ago. Then Frank and I had a four-hour lunch at a hotel and talked about it, to see if we were on the same page. And we were joined at the head. I was kind of aware of certain things that I felt I had to do, to avoid it becoming too sentimental. There was a line that I felt was necessary - it is an homage to Capra, there's no question about it, but it's also could be a little saccharine, a little over done. I discussed those kinds of things with him, and said we had to be careful.

I liked it a lot because I felt it was a film where the camera stays on the actors. I knew Frank having seen “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile,” I felt in both of those pictures, the casting was wonderful. If you think about Capra movies, the townspeople in those pictures - even if a character was onscreen for three minutes there was such an indelible stamp about that character that you knew everything about that character. I felt the same thing as I was shooting this picture. He (Frank) brought great actors. Guys like Jeffrey DeMunn, James Whitmore, David Ogden Stiers, terrific Chelcie Ross - Chelcie is out of Chicago. Brent Briscoe, if you've ever seen that picture “A Simple Plan” - really terrific people. Jerry Black, down the line, really terrific - and Jim. At that lunch Frank said the only one who has agreed to do this and is set to do it is Jim Carrey. Watching Jim and having met Jim way back - I went to the Premiere of “The Mask” and there was a party at the old Chasen's afterwards and I sat with Jim that night. Along the way he said, “You know, I can't keep doing this until I'm 60.” And I said, “A lot of people can't do what you do. There's Robin Williams, there's you, there's only a couple of guys.” But I also found him to be incredibly intelligent. A lot of great comics have a lot of darkness in them, and they just sell it differently and turn it into other stuff. This is clearly a leading man role from the 1950s. When you think of leading men in Hollywood movies, there were certain guys who didn't have a lot going on. But then when you got to Jimmy Stewart and Hank Fonda - look at the character in “It's a Wonderful Life.” The leading man is about to jump off a bridge and kill himself. So, I mean, that's not your conventional Hollywood leading man. I felt, “Wow, what an interesting choice.”

Can you talk a little about the 1950s? You were a young actor during that time of the McCarthy hearings. How do you think it compares to current events?
I think it resonates - there's an extra layer of stuff that's happened since September 11th, there's no question about that. It also had a lot of that anyway, because obviously you see a guy - it's almost as if a month after the World Trade Center and someone emerges out of the rubble, alive. That would be a miracle and that would certainly capture everyone's heart and mind. It's also very patriotic. A lot of young people don't know anything about that time (the 1950s), the awfulness of that time. Just five years before that the Russians were our allies. I remember as a kid going to school on Tuesday's they'd come around with a can with a slit on the top for Russian War Relief. Children of Russia were freezing to death. Then all of a sudden the Cold War started and all that started.

I like this piece because it doesn't preach. It's a guy who we meet in the early part of the movie who is a real jerk. He's a hack writer who is not political at all. He dug this girl and went to six meetings and he's going to name names of people he doesn't even know. He's a guy who's obviously been brought up without a lot of stuff. Then he has the accident and winds up in this town. It's like a blackboard. Someone went to the board and erased everything and he's exposed to stuff he never had been, love and other emotions. My character is a character who is ready to die. He lost his son, he lost his wife, the theater is decrepit and closed up and he's waiting to die. And the entire town is in a terrible state of depression. They've got this monument they haven't even put out because they don't want to be reminded of all the young guys who died, the disproportionate number. There was a town like that in the Carolinas, a very small town that lost 60+ people. So his coming into that town re-enlivens that town and my character. Again it's a metaphor that theater represents.

There were a lot of things that attracted me to this film. As a kid growing up in Brooklyn, the movies were kind of a magical thing for me. It's not an accident that I became an actor. You look at Chaplin's movies - sure he shot them on a set - but that world that he created was like nothing I'd ever seen. I thought, “What was that place that he wandered around in?” The New York I grew up in - there was the 6th Ave. L, the 8th Ave. L, and the 3rd Ave. L - those streets were dark and noisy and very hot during the summer. You walked into a theater, the curtain went up - I'm talking about legitimate theatre - and it was like “Look what you can do! Look what these people do.” It was kind of amazing. Films also had this ambiance, this not quite real quality, and there were a lot of heroic characters. And the writing was quite literary writing, the comedies were very well written. I worked with Joe Mankiewicz in “Cleopatra.” Those guys had intelligent writing. The characters had amazing stuff come out of their mouths. And they made you want to strive to be like that. I grew up in a neighborhood where my graduation picture looks like the United Nations. It wasn't about what you were; it was about who you were. It was a great place to grow up and I was very fortunate. Then when I got into the theatre it's been the same thing. All the plays I did as a kid, the leading lady was as important as the leading man, you depended on that. Suddenly there was women's lib. I said, “What are they complaining about?” Because the theatre always had room for everybody, more so than films in a certain sense.

Laurie Holden looks like an actress from the 1950s. What did you find interesting about working with her?
She looks like a movie star from the 1950s; there is no question about it. She studies and she's very serious about her work. She works with Larry Moss who is a terrific teacher. He worked with Jim on this picture. Helen Hunt thanked Larry. I had a lengthy time as a teacher acting too. I started teaching in my 20s because Lee Strasberg said, “I want you to teach,” when I got into the Actors Studio. Steve McQueen and I got in at the same time and he was much kinder to Steve than he was to me. I used to say, “If you've got friends like that, you don't need enemies.” He expected a lot from you, and he beat me up. The day I stopped trying to please him, I started to please him. About three years later he said, “I want you to teach.” He sent students to me.

I was talking to Jimmy Woods recently and he asked, “How do you explain to people what it is we do for a living.” I said, “I try not to but if you have to without getting verbose, then say in a well-written script, what people say to each other is what people are willing to reveal - what they are willing to share with others. And the 90% they are not is what I do for a living.”

Isn't it a little unusual to have an acting coach on the set, like Jim did?
Well, think about it. Jim is very perpendicular in this role. When you think of Jim Carrey, you think of angular, you think of horizontal. Great comedians have a very dark side and they take it and distill it into other stuff. That's where you say, “Yeah, right, spot on.” A lightweight comedian is one who is sort of frivolous. The real good ones, I mean Chaplin would make you laugh and a second later, cry. This is a different thing for Jim. This is a whole other thing. He's really playing two roles. This is a guy whose got a lot of demons, a lot of stuff. As I say, “Bad actors try to cry, good actors try not to.” They fill up and do what people do. How the character hides his feelings tells us who the character is. Bad actors try to laugh, good actors don't. People don't try to laugh. They cover their mouths and hold their stomachs. What I'm saying is, Jim smartly, intelligently, said, “Sure, why not get all the help I can?” The reason Frank Darabont suggested Larry had to do with Michael Clarke Duncan's performance in “The Green Mile,” - here's a guy who played bouncers and monosyllabic characters - he had a huge emotional load in that picture. Larry Moss worked with him. So Jim is intelligent enough not to say who needs that. Jim would not always agree with Larry and they would discuss things. But when Jim came to work in the morning, he was ready to work. And he had thought about all kinds of ways, and wasn't totally agreeable to everything Larry suggested to him. But the dialogue they had, I understand that. Nicholson was my student for three years, and Harry Dean Stanton, Shirley Knight, Anjelica Huston - I've worked with a lot of actors over the years. It's crazy to be resistant to something that's beneficial. Why would you not want help, particularly if you are embarking on something that's very meaningful to you and this guy could probably be helpful? It's not peculiar. Marilyn used to have Strasberg on the set; he got everybody crazy. But Larry Moss was very unobtrusive. He'd work with Jim on weekends. They'd get together and look at the advance schedule and go over scenes and stuff. Larry would make a suggestion and Frank was open to that. Sometimes I would make a suggestion. It's really a community and let's make it as good as we can. I always treat each take as a rehearsal for the next take. That way you can find stuff, and keep adding and playing until they tell me to stop. It's like tennis - in the beginning you can be a little stiff. When you play tennis with a good player you play better. Jim and I had a great time and we really like each other. I enjoyed the experience. I still just saw him in the hall and we don't want to leave each other. He's really a very gifted actor. So it's not strange at all. Larry was an actor and a director; he has a play and a one-woman show in New York, all that stuff. No, I don't think it's peculiar. I think it's intelligent of Jim to have embraced the idea as easily as he did. “Sure” he said. That shows a very healthy ego and a very intelligent fellow.

This movie is about amnesia. Do you have any moments you'd like to forget?
What did you just ask me? (laughing) No. I actually have found that everything that has happened to me is of value to me. As painful as certain things are, and have been, and were, there's a use for those things in my life and in my work. You can have immediate regrets, but if you look at stuff and say, “Things happen for a reason.” There's a fatalistic thing about it. Something will happen that will justify it in some way. Life is not a cabaret, life is not a bowl of cherries, and I've learned that a long time ago. I've always said to my students that one of the important things an actor has to embrace is pain because out of pain a lot of feelings occur. It's good to have a dose of it. It doesn't hurt you. Don't live to regret it.