You also produced Civic Duty. What did you do in that capacity?
“Well when I first read the script, I enjoyed the core idea but I wanted to change some things. I said, ‘If I’m going to do it, you guys have to let me be involved creatively.' I wanted to be able to re-write it with Andrew Joiner and Jeff Renfroe; Andrew Joiner being the writer and Jeff Renfroe being the director.”
What specifically did you want to change?
“I wanted to change the nature of Terry, in terms of who he was. He was drawn as a very conservative guy initially, and I wanted him to be moved more towards the middle. I wanted to sort of stand up for the silent majority. The film is meant to be very provocative and open to interpretation, so certain people will experience him as being more conservative. But there are reasons why we have him golf, certainly, and this and that. He also says to Marla [played by Kari Matchett] at one point like, ‘What do we have, some pot in the house?’ about calling the FBI.
We tried to kind of create a character that you can’t easily say is either liberal or conservative. It’s just somebody that’s like most Americans, kind of living life beneath the political radar of the country and trying to work on his golf game, have a happy home life and get left alone.”
What else were you trying to convey with this character?
“Well, you know, I would say that the film is also attempting to explore the role the media plays in the relative psychological health of people in the country. And for Terry, I think that the media served to amplify his own fears and suspicions.”
How collaborative was the process of making changes with the writer and director?
“Really easy. We worked very well together. It’s a big collaborative effort the whole time.”
If you took a look at the initial draft of the script and compared it to your shooting script, would we see a lot of dramatic changes?
“Some things yes, others no. Especially I wanted to change the character and we also wanted to also the ending. The ending was different originally.”
There was a totally different ending?
“Not totally. I don’t mean that, no, I meant in the writing. We did some alterations on the ending since the Tribeca Film Festival. They were things we couldn’t get to because of time and money. The one that we’re seeing now, it’s just been augmented. It hasn’t really changed. There are just things that we couldn’t get to because of time and money, by the time we had to get the film to the Tribeca Film Festival. For instance, the reflection in Terry’s eyes – we didn’t have the time or the money to do that – that was always intended to be in there. What I’m talking about is in the script, before it was ever filmed, the ending was radically different than the ending we have now. The ending at the Tribeca Film Festival and the one now are really the same; it’s just that we didn’t finish it.”
You seem to gravitate toward characters who have a darker side. What is it about that type of role that just grabs you?
“You know what? I don’t know. I think they find me and make me pretend to be them. I don’t seek them out. I don’t really. I make my choices based upon material and I guess the stories that I find interesting are not escapist fare. I mean, I did enjoy doing my mini-series The Lost Room for the SciFi channel and I got to play a really standard hero who knows right from wrong, and is very uncomplicated, has a clear objective. His daughter’s lost in another dimension, he’s got to get her back. And those types of stories do sell. We know lots of actors out there, very successful, playing those types of roles. I really enjoyed it. It’s psychologically very healthy, but it’s so not like life.”
Would you go back to doing more television projects?
“Oh yeah. I just did a TV pilot for ABC called Dirty Sexy Money. One of the writers from Six Feet Under, Craig Wright wrote it. Donald Sutherland, Jill Clayburgh, William Baldwin are doing it. It’s a terrific show. It’s a drama with comedy in it. It’s an allegorical TV series, I would say.”
