Jan 2008 - Brendan Fraser may be most recognizable to moviegoers for his starring roles in big-budget films including The Mummy franchise. But for every Mummy, there’s a Crash. For every Looney Tunes, there’s Gods and Monsters or The Quiet American. Fraser’s always mixed it up by going back and forth between studio movies and independent films, and now he’s back in the world of smaller budgets with a starring role in The Air I Breathe, written and directed by Jieho Lee.
The Air I Breathe is based on a Chinese proverb which posits that happiness, sorrow, pleasure and love are the key emotions that connect all humanity. Interconnected storylines find Fraser, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Forest Whitaker and Kevin Bacon bringing to life the four emotions. In Fraser’s ‘Pleasure’ piece, the actor plays a man who can see everyone else’s future but not his own.
“I can attest to having had the hair stand up on the back of my neck a few times,” admitted Fraser when asked if he’s ever had a ‘psychic’ experience. “Have we all not had hunches or, I don't know, if people feel they have premonitions then be that as it may. But there are coincidences, we all know. In the case of the character, it's a work of fiction. It's an attribute that’s ascribed to him for a specific reason, because it's something that he doesn't want necessarily. And it's also done to show where he started and where he ended when we see him as a child, as a kid, in tragic circumstances. Then as an adult, having that prescient ability - whatever you want to call it - we see that he's used it for rather nefarious reasons in a very shady world.”
A mob boss named Fingers (played by Andy Garcia) plays a crucial role in each of the four stories. Analyzing his character, Fraser has an interesting take on Fingers and on what makes ‘Pleasure’ tick. “‘Pleasure’ has lost his sense of self-respect because he's so unhappy and he's never had a sense of it. He doesn't know what it is. He wouldn't know what it is even if it showed itself to him so his stoicism is what he exists on, slowly killing himself with cigarettes. He wants to be where he is when he finds himself in a station in the world. He's looking for a father and he sees that in Fingers who gave him a job, relies on him, ironically wants to please him, looks for his approval, stands up to him, defies him, takes something from him that wasn't his to take. It's an interesting relationship. They're diametrically opposed.”
“Given the four cornerstones of the philosophical view that Jieho has taken inspiration from, from a principle that our existence as human beings is comprised of happiness, of joy and sorrow, of pleasure and you can't have one without the other, what he's done is sort of deconstructed that and creates characters who have had neither of those things. [He] puts them in a world, a universe of his own devising, and we see the film story examine the journey that those four individuals must take in order to redeem themselves towards those things that the audience only knows them as, through title cards. The characters, if you recall, never refer to one another on screen by name.”
Despite the fact his storyline in The Air I Breathe is more action-packed than you’d expect in an indie film, everything else about the shoot was what Fraser’s come to rely on when he takes on a project not backed by one of the major studios. “The character work that we did was as far removed from what you would see from a studio picture standpoint,” explained Fraser. “That's much more liberating, and a good reason that I keep my eyes open for a piece like this to come along. Honestly, it doesn't come across my radar that frequently, so that opened my eyes. I think that the quality of ‘action-packed’ didn't really necessarily register with me until I saw it. Then I realized that it was really largely due to the cinematography. When we were shooting a movie like that, there's a sequence in it like a chase or a fight or something like that, it always kind of comes off like a slow-motion ballet. You feel clumsy and a bit oblong while shooting it. Films have that quality, what with editing and pacing, saturation of color, etc. etc. Filmmaking can create the image of something that's not what you imagined it to be, and this result I think was very remarkable from my place.”
A lower budget normally makes the project more liberating for the director as well as the actors, according to Fraser. “You don't have too many cooks in the kitchen. Big budget pictures, having just finished one about a month ago, if it's a director who is well-heeled, has a titanium backbone and knows how to navigate the political waters of quarters of power, studios, then it can have the same creative liberty. So with Air I Breathe, because it was financed by the branch of a new company from Mexico, gave Jieho Lee - an emerging talent - a great deal to work with, in terms of the support that we could get for not working in Los Angeles and turning things around that one would expect to be challenges.”
“For instance, was it a story that was shot in LA? Was it meant to be? I don't know,” says Fraser of the film’s ambiguous setting. “I don't really think it matters. I think it's meant to be an imaginary west coast city, maybe southeast. It doesn't even matter. It's a philosophical film in many ways, so in that way it's more of a state of mind.”
Fraser will next be seen in the third Mummy movie, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, and the first film of the series to have an actress other than Rachel Weisz playing the part of Evie. Talking about his new onscreen wife, Maria Bello, Fraser said, “She's great in it, great. Great, great, great. She loved it. She ate it up with a spoon. She's got moxy. She can take care of herself. Her set of baddies, she gave them good news.”
The audience may miss Weisz, but Fraser believes it’s possible for Mummy fans to adapt to the change. “It's a role. Rick O'Connell could be played by…you tell me. I just had such a good time making those movies, I just couldn't resist coming back to it, even if it is seven years later. It's good because then it allows you to reinvent.”
Page 2: Fraser on Journey to the Center of the Earth
