Bloom and Lewis' characters become involved in the drama when Delicious gets involved with their punk rock band. Together to discuss Sympathy for Delicious at the film's LA press day, the twosome talked about getting into their characters, the appeal of the project, and working with Ruffalo as a director.
On the band in the film:
Juliette Lewis: "You understand all these prototypes within bands, like bassists being diplomatic in nature, the egocentric lead singer, and all of that. But, this band is very extreme and deals with fame, success and failure and decadence. The band I have is all heart and hunger. It’s a little indie band, against all odds and making something work. It’s a bit different. But, I do understand fractured dynamics and all that, when stuff starts to implode."
Juliette Lewis on her character:
Juliette Lewis: "I enjoyed being the bassist. This is a different personality for me. She’s someone who is a bit self-destructive, distant and checked-out from reality. That was the scariest part for me to play, to wander in that energy and that apathy. As a bassist, it’s about what your role is. In this particular band, she’s supportive of the vision of The Stain, so that was interesting."
Orlando Bloom on the source of inspiration for playing a rocker:
Orlando Bloom: "I was thinking of some of the great musicians in England who came from the North. There’s The Beatles and The Stones and stuff, but for me, my generation had Ian Brown from The Stone Roses and the Gallagher brothers from Oasis. They had that attitude of, 'We are the best f--king band in the world! We don’t give a sh-t what anyone says, or whatever anyone else is doing. We are the band.' It was that front for that 'I’m going to have it' energy that was something that I really thought would be great for this character. There were some particularly hard lines of dialogue to put across, so that really helped me. Also, there’s the band called The Brian Jonestown Massacre that was the band that Mark [Ruffalo] and Chris [Thornton] were thinking of, and the lead singer Anton [Newcombe]. He was somebody who I looked at a bit. But, really, I found myself falling into that North of England attitude, which is why the dialect is a broad Northern accent."
On the appeal of Sympathy for Delicious:
Orlando Bloom: "I was coming from a place of desperation. I was desperate for an opportunity to break out of a preconceived idea of who I was, as an actor, based on finding myself in two of the biggest trilogies of movies [with Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean) of all time. It was about making big movies and not having really had the opportunity to do some of the small, interesting, different movies, where you do get to break out. So, when I sat down with Mark Ruffalo, I was just like, 'Dude, this is terrifying to me in many ways, and also exactly what I really want.'"
"Mark is a phenomenal actor, but he’s an even better director - if you can believe that. I hadn’t been directed by an actor before, but he had the sensitivity, the understanding, and the guidance into some of the areas that you really don’t want to go to, because it’s a painfully uncomfortable thing to put yourself out there often. It was amazing to be helped through that process with somebody like Mark Ruffalo. He was going through all of his own stuff while directing and starring in the movie."
Juliette Lewis: "It’s a trip because we all had this personal backstory. My old band was imploding and disbanding, and there was this sense of betrayal. So, to be playing in a band that has a heightened sense of all that, I felt like I was in my own Charlie Kaufman movie – a band within a band within a band. That was really interesting for us all. And then Mark had tragedy hit, right before he was about to have this happen, and we were dealing with themes of faith and belief. It was like the little engine that could, this project."
On what surprised them the most about Mark Ruffalo as a director:
Juliette Lewis: "The big revelation for me was his cinematic eye, as a filmmaker. I went, 'There’s a filmmaker!' I’ve worked with other actor-directors, and you can get into story and analyzing the characters and the scenes, and I knew he was going to be spectacular at that because of how natural he is as an actor, but his visual eye was so exciting to me. He was inspired by some paintings. He showed me different things, visually, for the movie. I love the care he took, in that aspect. It’s a really different looking movie, and very real and seductive and dark. That’s what surprised me about him."
On doing his own singing in the film:
Orlando Bloom: "Yeah. It was so much fun, I can’t even begin to tell you. Obviously, I’m not a singer. I don’t consider myself a singer. It was so great to just let it rip and have the freedom of just wailing and doing that. We really laid it all down when we were in Guadalajara, and I’d never really done that before. But there was that energy of being on stage, which there were bits of in the movie. There was so much freedom for me, playing this character, and the singing was definitely a part of it. I’m going to start a new career as a singer, I think. I’m going to go the way of Russell Crowe."
On learning how to portray a singer:
Juliette Lewis: "It was really Cedric [Bixler-Zavala], the singer of The Mars Volta, he helped[Orlando] a little bit with the phrasing and stuff. But, Orlando’s instincts were amazing and so was his pitch. He was really natural. He didn’t even have vocal lessons. It’s attitude singing and spewing poetry and being this messiah. Orlando is pretty great at it."
On actors wanting to be rock stars and rock stars wanting to act:
Juliette Lewis: "All the musicians that I know want to act."
Orlando Bloom: "It’s so weird. Wanting to be a rock star, I get it. I’m like, 'Oh, my god, dude! The freedom!' There’s a very different creative thing. My experience of singing, as an actor, was that there’s a different creative feeling of freedom. The acting thing is a bit more defined and cerebral. I can see why people would want to cross over. If you have so much freedom on stage, then perhaps you want to be confined a bit, and vice versa."
On performing in front of paying audience:
Juliette Lewis: "You’ve gotta have thick skin. When I first came out, I knew people were coming in the room to watch me fail. That was my laugh because, to me, I have my own taste in music and my whole attitude was, 'If you don’t like it, go watch some other band,' but I was going to find my believers. I was going to find the ones that did dig what I had to put out on stage. For me, it was all about being raw and exposed and flawed. I really cut my teeth on the live show. And then when I earned my stripes a little bit from touring, I played at festivals, like Lollapalooza and Leeds in Redding. I opened for The Killers. I opened for Muse. I really earned it off of touring, and there have been some heady experiences. When I was in Finland, half of the audience was singing along, and it was the first time that I had people singing along to my songs. I nearly stopped and cried because it was so moving. It’s so in my nature to be fighting for it and to prove it to you. That’s in all mediums of art that I would ever choose. It’s my nature to take the road less traveled, to be challenged, to be fearful and to get out of my comfort zone. I try to have a benevolent force to the musical equation, creating a sense of unity and connection, but it gets real heady. There are goosebump-inducing moments. It’s amazing."
On acting opposite writer Christopher Thornton who worked on this project for so many years:
Orlando Bloom: "He was amazing to work with. He owned all of his process and experience of this movie. As one of the writers, he was completely encouraging and all-embracing of anything that we brought to the table, as actors. It was very much a wonderful experience to work with him, as a writer and as an actor. It was such a painfully personal story, in many ways. Not that his life mirrored that, because he had a very different story, but because he’d spent so many years of his life writing this story and creating this character and this world for us all to step into, for him, it was all unfolding in front of him. He was very magnanimous and had the wherewithal to be like, 'Wow, I love what you’re doing with this. I had seen it completely different.'"
Juliette Lewis: "He wasn’t precious, even though he wrote it. He was very much an actor’s writer. Also, there was this incredible sensitivity that I felt because the themes of wanting to be healed were true themes for him. He had gone to healing services, so that was true. I did have logistical things. I lunge at him and he’s very strong. People who are in wheelchairs are really strong. There were things that I was sensitive to and talked to him about. That was really interesting."
On where he stands with his professional goals:
Orlando Bloom: "Well, this was the beginning of something completely different for me. I produced a little movie called The Good Doctor, which we’re taking to Tribeca. That’s a really twisted, dark turn for me. It was a really interesting thing to try. It shows the darker side and the shadow self, as it were. And, when The Three Musketeers came along, the Duke of Buckingham was a fantastic role because it’s a completely different thing for me, as opposed to being a Musketeer. I got to be the giant petulant child, in many ways, that the Duke of Buckingham turns out to be, and channel a little bit of The Stain, in a funny kind of way. So, I’m really embracing the other side and shifting the perception. I actually had no idea how hard it would be to shift the perception, and that’s really what it’s been about."
Did people tell him not to do Sympathy for Delicious?:
Orlando Bloom: "Mark Ruffalo is just an amazing guy and an amazing director. It doesn’t really work like that. Not really. They’re more inclined to say, 'You should do this,' than 'Don’t do that.' What I’m finding myself saying now is, 'No, I want to do this.' But, when you’re 21 and you find yourself in one of the biggest trilogies of all time, and then you’re 24 and you’re in the next biggest trilogy of all time, you have no sense of which way is up and you’re just like, 'Yes, yes, yes,' instead of going, 'What does this actually mean to me? What do I want to be doing? How do I want to be perceived? What do I want from my career?' All of that stuff comes in when you have the time to settle and think about it, which is what I’m doing now."
On whether he'll be appearing in The Hobbit:
Orlando Bloom: "Yeah, it’s looking like that. I’m really excited about going to see Pete [Jackson] again. It’s still a little up in the air, but the idea of working with Pete is fantastic. I can’t actually really talk too much about it, at this point. I just was given the script to piece through, so it’s quite exciting."
"I just have to grow my hair really long and blonde again."
* * * * * *
Sympathy for Delicious hits theaters in limited release on April 29, 2011.
