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Tackling Heavy Emotional Films: Both We Own the Night and Reservation Road, which open within a week of each other, are very heavy movies. Asked if there was a special attraction to going darker this year, Joaquin Phoenix replied, “Honestly, how is this year different than any other year? (Laughing) I think, you know, I’ve always… but clearly we have been talking for f--king decades and for decades I’ve loved, I don’t want ‘regular life’ in my work. I have ‘regular life’. I want like f--king intense sh--. You know what I mean? If you were a f--king mountain climber, do you want to just like walk up a big hill in the Hollywood Hills or do you want to f--king go and climb a cliff?
To me, I’m not going to spend three months working on something that’s not difficult or that’s not intense. It’s just not worth it to me. I’d just get f--king bored, to be honest. I like that. Those are things that I’m interested in life. I’m interested in what we all are. In every kind of art form we’ve explored death, love. It’s the same f--king themes over and over. It doesn’t matter if it’s a photograph, a film, a painting, a poem. It’s like we just talk about the same things over and over, because we’re all pretty much consumed with the same ideas, primarily death, because we all know we’re going there inevitably. Those are the things I enjoy exploring in my work.
I don’t really want to explore, well, I won’t say anything specific but let your imaginations run to all the different movies you’ve seen. I don’t want to have that experience. I don’t care to kind of understand more about the characters that are portrayed in most films.”
On His Approach to Acting: Phoenix finds it hard to explain how he gets into roles. “I don’t know. Anytime anyone asks me about an approach or a method, I kind of feel like it’s like asking somebody that’s survived a 60 foot fall from a building like, ‘What was your approach for survival? What was your method?’ ‘I don’t know. I was upside down. I screamed out loud for my mom. I hit my head. And then somebody said you’re out.’
It’s kind of like I wouldn’t know, I’m not aware enough necessarily of a particular method. Or I don’t think that there’s ever been one thing that was consistent from movie to movie, and so it’s hard to say. I don’t think you can really apply what you’ve learned necessarily from one experience to another. At least not directly, at least that’s for me. Everyone’s different. There are actors who literally walk in and hit a [mark] and say their [line], and it’s amazing. And then others who spend a lot [of time] to work on it. One is not right. It’s whatever kind of works for you.”
There isn’t any one thing that fuels Phoenix’s creativity. “I don’t know what it is,” admitted Phoenix. “I honestly will go through thinking about, ‘I’ve got nothing. I’ve no desire to work again. I don’t have the desire to do it.’ And then I’ll read a script and suddenly get inspired by the script. I mean, James and I are starting a movie in November. Since I finished We Own the Night and Reservation Road, I haven’t worked in like a year. I honestly read a bunch of scripts and thought, ‘Well, I may never act again.’ There’s nothing that good, and that’s fine. And then suddenly I’ll get this script from James and we’ll start talking about it. And that’s it.”
Phoenix would actually stop working if he didn’t find the right project. “Yeah, but I mean I think I’ve done… I kind of like -- and if it wasn’t planned early on and I was just fortunate but I would just do a couple movies, three movies, and just go, ‘Well, that’s enough.’ You take a break. And then of course if you do two movies and they come out in the same year, that’s a lot of press as well. You know what I mean? That’s what you always have to balance out. Even if I’m not making a movie, I might be doing press.”
He’s considered giving up it all up. “I think everybody does. I don’t know. It’s ridiculous to say, ‘I retire.’ When I get tired, I take a break. It is something that you have to be excited about. You have to want to be there on set. I’ve found myself at times on movies in the last few weeks where I start going like, ‘I want to get out of here. I don’t want to wear these f--king clothes anymore. Stop touching my hair.’ It just starts getting ridiculous. And I remember the time where I was like, ‘I don’t care what it takes. I’ll sleep outside in the f--king cold. I’ll do my own wardrobe. I’ll do my hair. Anything.’ I promised myself when I was younger that I would either continue to be passionate and want to do it and enjoy doing it, or I wouldn’t do it. And so if I get to the point where I start thinking that, then I won’t work. Now I feel like in the last couple weeks I’ve been getting excited about working with James on the next piece. We’re starting to talk about it.”
And Speaking of Doing Press…: It’s never been one of Phoenix’s favorite aspects of being an actor in Hollywood, but he seems to have mellowed and accepted it as part of the job. “You know, I was really f--king green (laughing). It’s amazing that I had been acting for so long, was in the business and it was something that I was familiar with since I was very young because I had no idea,” said Phoenix. “I remember when I did To Die For and they went to like Venice or Cannes or something and I was like, ‘No, I’m not going there. Are you kidding me?’ And now I realize like to just say, ‘No, I’m not going,’ was like a pretty big deal. I’ve tried to weasel out of them now and noooo! I didn’t really realize what this was all about. I think it’s taken 10 years for me to go, ‘So it’s like after every movie I have to do press.’”
On the Moody and/or Broody Misconception: “Moody or broody? I don’t know," laughed Phoenix. "It’s hard to be self-analytical. It’s hard. I have no idea how people perceive me. I don’t read any of my press. I don’t watch movies so I have no idea. Of course to me, I’m completely normal. I think it’s something that’s totally subjective. So I wouldn’t know how to answer that. To me, my emotions are completely normal.”
