Braff wanted Peter Sarsgaard to play the unmotivated gravedigger who knows everything can be had for the right price after seeing him in “Boys Don’t Cry.” “One of my pet peeves is when uber-famous actors play regular guys because they want to stretch – and the whole time you’re watching you’re thinking ‘I don’t believe for a minute he’s really that guy.’ Peter is a great everyman and he’s a chameleon, he just becomes the part,” says Braff.
INTERVIEW WITH PETER SARSGAARD:
Were you able to develop this character more?
Yeah, he was tougher probably on the page. Zach wanted me to get a tattoo and stuff. I think he thought of him as a little more menacing. He wanted it on my arm, and I told him that I would get a tattoo if I could have a frog or something. I didn't want to have like barbed wire on my arm, it would be too much (laughs). …I didn't want to have to come 45 minutes before to have it put on. I've done tattoos in movies before, and it's no fun.
How would you describe this character?
I think of the character more like Eeyore, you know, slogging along. Menacing, maybe to some people who are insecure, but not really out to intimidate.
Have you ever tried that scam where you take something off the shelf and try to return it?
No, but I had a friend who, when I was growing up, you know that store, EMS, or like REI? We'd go camping and I'd be like, “How'd you get all this great equipment?” He would buy all this equipment and then return it. They had a ‘return any time’ policy. He wasn't getting money, but he was getting -- you know.
What's surprised you about working with a first-time director?
What surprised me? I worked with so many. I think half of them have been first time directors. The great thing about working with someone like Zach is that the script itself is not written like a normal Hollywood professional script. It's so meandering. It doesn't all go in a straight line to a surprising yet inevitable conclusion that happens on page 78. It's got its own rhythms. And I think as a director he has his own idiosyncratic style, too. That's kind of the thing that gets beaten out of someone at a certain point - or it doesn't. Like Terry Gilliam has sort of held on to his own idiosyncratic ways that doesn't adhere to any normal sense.
Was the press junket line yours or in the script?
That was in the script. There was almost nothing improvised in this movie. There's been a couple of movies that I've thrown a couple of lines in, but I don't usually do much improvising. I'm always kind of game to, but no one….They're always afraid. The actors are afraid. Nobody likes that.
Do you have friends or family members who say they’ve seen your indie movies when they actually haven’t?
It's very hard to get my friends to see my movies (laughs). Except the porn ones - "Center of the World," they had a screening up at Yale and a bunch of my friends went up there and saw it. They're really only interested if it makes me look like a jackass.
Is that because they’re shown in markets where they can't see them?
No, I think a lot of times my friends think it's weird if you know a person in a movie. It takes away something from the movie. You're watching it differently. You're watching it, like, “Oh wow, he's supposed to be killing her. Let's see, look at him trying to kill her.”
My parents you know - I don't think they've seen “Center of the World” - they are totally unable to believe my performances. Even if I have given a great performance, it's lost on them. Because they know me too well, and they've seen me do things in the movie or something, and it takes them out of it.
Which of your roles has been close to the real you?
They're all so reasonably close to me, I would be hard-pressed to say which one is most me. Not this one. But you know my friends who saw me do "Shattered Glass," they thought that was ridiculous.
Someone came up to me the other day - Val Kilmer - I saw Val Kilmer, we had done "The Salton Sea" together so long ago. He thinks of me as the guy from that movie, as kind of a sweet-hearted wasted guy. He said, "Oh it's hilarious watching you in a tie and stuff," and I grew up wearing a tie in an all-boys school. Wearing a tie for me is a fairly normal thing, but [not] to him, so that's bizarre.
I'd like to convince everyone on the movie that I'm doing that this is the character that I'm finally playing that is most like Peter, if I can. And that way, they'll treat me like that character.
