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Dr Pepper
Nättidning: Chud.com Barry Pepper's already worked with Spike Lee, Steven Spielberg, Frank Darabont, Tony Scott, Randall Wallace in his short but solid career. In addition, he's also managed to shine in those star studded films. His work in Saving Private Ryan, *61, and The Green Mile has only tipped us off to the potential for the young actor and his work in Knockaround Guys (opening this weekend) and Spike Lee's upcoming The 25th Hour looks to only further enhance that. I dug Knockaround Guys quite a bit (here's the chat I had with the film's writer/directors), and was especially impressed with the work of Pepper as the film's lead. In the story Barry plays Matty Demaret, the son of a notorious gangster (wonderfully played by Dennis Hopper), a guy with an education that means little to employers who only know him as the son of the ruthless criminal. As a result he and his buddies (including Seth Green, Vin Diesel, and Andrew Davoli) decide to accept their fate as cons. I spoke to Barry this Wednesday, the results are here: The conversation started, oddly enough with a discussion on Bazooka Joe comics and fortune cookies... Barry Pepper: It's like those Bazooka Joe comics are like the modern day fortune cookie. Have you ever thought about making a fortune cookie company with funny, crazy stuff like "The stuff you ate was not chicken". Nick Nunziata: The more macabre the better. Mine would be unfit to print most likely. Barry Pepper: They must have done something like that on Seinfeld at some point. It seems familiar. Nick Nunziata: Speaking of, I just reviewed the Stephen King miniseries IT DVD. There's a scene where they open fortune cookies there and one has a bloody eye... another has a bird fetus. Barry Pepper: Nice... Stephen King. Nick Nunziata: You have a little connection to that guy. Barry Pepper: yeah, a little bit. We actually celebrated his birthday on The Green Mile. Nick Nunziata: I think I saw photos of that in a magazine. Him sitting in the electric chair. Barry Pepper: He's an interesting dude. We then spoke about how crappy it was that he's retiring for a while and the conversation shifted towards the author's lighter work. Barry Pepper: I guess he's cleansed and purged himself of all his darkness. Nick Nunziata: Well, he's a lot more than just a horror writer. Barry Pepper: Of course! What I wish he'd done more of, and maybe made more films like Stand By Me. What a great story, and I'm sure he's full of them. He's the kind of guy who could spin that stuff out in a weekend. Nick Nunziata: I think what makes his horror stuff work so well is that he creates such amazing characters and balances the horror with some amazing emotional stuff which makes it that much more effective. The Green Mile must have been an amazing experience. Barry Pepper: It really was. It was a long shoot. We shot that in five months. We shot *61 in thirty-six days which should let you know how different those shoots were. It was great. I'd worked with Tom Hanks before on Saving Private Ryan so it was really comfortable to work with him again. Frank Darabont is a very meticulous, precise technical director and that was interesting. I loved the material, I didn't have a really big role but it was just enjoyable to be a part of it. I was actually originally asked to play Percy (the villain, eventually played by Doug Hutchinson) and I passed because I was uncomfortable taking that role so early on in my career. It's like taking Hannibal Lecter right out of the gate. Nick Nunziata: It worked out though. Barry Pepper: Yeah. I find that you tend to get pigeonholed, and it's no fault of the audience or the industry. It just happens because people have a myopic view on your abilities. They'll love you as the psycho and that's all you tend to get. So, I passed on that and the only other role available was Dean Stanton, the young father... nice guy guard. It was such a great script and project, to not be a part of it wasn't even a consideration. I didn't have a great role, but I had a wonderful time. Nick Nunziata: You've got a knack for appearing in these amazing ensemble casts. Saving Private Ryan, The Green Mile, We Were Soldiers, Enemy of the State, and now Knockaround Guys. Barry Pepper: This new Spike Lee film The 25th Hour I just finished too. Ed Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rosario Dawson. Nick Nunziata: I've heard it's phenomenal. Barry Pepper: I just saw it when I was at the premiere of Knockaround Guys in New York. He'd just screened it for the first time to a test audience and the response was overwhelming. I was blown away. It's equally disturbing, the subject matter because it deals with post 9/11 New York. It's heavy. It's a heavy, heavy film but what a masterful filmmaker he is. Nick Nunziata: You've worked with some heavies. How would you say Spike Lee compares to Spielberg? Barry Pepper: That's a tough one because they're very similar. Spike is consummately technical just like Spielberg. If they had the time in their day they could everybody's job as good if not better than they could. They know the filmmaking process like the back of their hand. They're so totally prepared but also so willing to shoot organically. "Whatever. Don't worry about the script. Just make it up. Let's make it better!". You have to be able to argue your point. If you can make it better then they'll go with it but if they see through your horseshit it's not going to fly. They're also celebrity directors so they bring this pedigree or aura to a set that raises the bar and it challenges everyone to step up and deliver. I think that's what sets them apart. Nick Nunziata: Do they have a firm release date yet? Barry Pepper: The 25th Hour? December 20th. It's amazing too. There again, how fast some directors work. We shot that in three months in New York this summer. We wrapped July 20th and he's already got the film done three months later. Usually it takes most directors a year to do post. He's fascinating. One of the best parts about making that film was playing baseball with him in the city. Every weekend we'd get together and play a team. We played DeNiro and Billy Crystal who were shooting Analyze That. Nick Nunziata: Real baseball? That's awesome. Plus you'd had experience in *61 with Billy. Apparently he's pretty hardcore. Barry Pepper: Oh, he is hardcore. So is Spike though, man. There was a real rivalry there. Nick Nunziata: What position do you play? Barry Pepper: I float. I can play any position. I played short... whatever position someone couldn't play for whatever reason I'd pick it up. It comes naturally. I love baseball. Nick Nunziata: Do you follow any teams? Barry Pepper: The Yankees. I just always have been because my brother was a fan growing up. I still have the baseball cap he gave me 25 years ago. Nick Nunziata: You're talking to a guy who grew up in New York and now lives in Atlanta. Both of my teams just got wiped out. Barry Pepper: I know how you feel, man. Nick Nunziata: Back to Knockaround Guys. I really liked the dynamic between you and Dennis Hopper. Any fun stories about working with those guys? Barry Pepper: Everyone was expecting John Malkovich and Dennis to be really quirky and weird and far out... and they certainly didn't let you down in some respects. They were just so smooth and professional that they made the working environment so effortless. It really was like being taken to school. Here's Dennis, who's had this 50 year long career, that's everything a young actor strives for. That's not an ever-replenishing commodity in this industry, longevity and legitimacy. Just to watch them and shut up and listen was a real treat. If you were in a difficult scene with them and having a tough time Dennis or John would take you aside and say "hey, focus on this or that". It would just be these pearls of wisdom that guided you though the scene. Nick Nunziata: What's next? After The 25th Hour, when will we see you again? Barry Pepper: I'm producing and starring in a survival adventure that I'm shooting in the Arctic and Canada. It's been a triple split shoot, we shot part in the spring, part in the summer, and now we're going to shoot in the winter. See, it's a plane crash film based in the 50's. A plane crashes in the tundra, in the middle of an endless wasteland of nothingness. Back in the 50's there was no black box, no pinging system, GPS, all that stuff so it was logistically impossible to find planes that crash out there. He crashes out there with this young Inuit woman he's transporting to the hospital. He's kind of a prejudiced young prick who won't have anything to do with those people or their culture or language other than what fur or ivory he can trade off with them. Now here he is forced to deal with one of them on a totally intimate level. She's the key to survival. She teaches him how to hunt and fish and build fire and shelter. It's really an incredible journey they take together. Nick Nunziata: How did you find the project? Barry Pepper: It's a totally indigenous Canadian project. It's the biggest budget Canadian film ever made and believe it or not it's only ten million bucks. That sort of shows you what stage of infancy the indigenous Canadian film industry is. It was sent to me by a local producer/director team and I fell in love with it. Nick Nunziata: What part of Canada did you shoot in? Barry Pepper: It's the 63rd parallel so it's above Winnipeg. Manitoba, Churchill, Rankin, Igloo Lick, all those areas where the Inuit people still live the same way they have for hundreds of years. Nick Nunziata: So you're producing as well? Barry Pepper: Yeah, which has been really humbling and exciting. I've never been invited this deep into the artistic fold of filmmaking before and it's a real eye opener. Actors usually show on set from their fancy trailer and say their lines and go back to their five star hotel. It tends to be pretty cushy, but to realize all the multi layered aspects that go into filmmaking. It's been intense and eye opening. Nick Nunziata: It sounds like it could be a really cool film. Barry Pepper: I hope so., I heard that he rushes were amazing. Whatever, I don't want to blow smoke up my kilt. That's a good way to set it up to fail. Nick Nunziata: What's the title? Barry Pepper: The Snow Walker. Nick Nunziata: Are you the only person whose name I'd know in the film? Barry Pepper: Yeah, because the woman we hired...actually no. Three quarters of the film deals with myself and the female lead but James Cromwell is in it. He plays my boss and father figure and there's a few other really strong actors in it. A large portion of the film is just her and myself and she's a totally full blood Inuit native who's never acted before and we're really proud to have found someone in this massive casting call across the Arctic that could pull off an emotional piece like this. She had to speak full fluid Inuktitut and you can't just hire a Chinese supermodel to pull of a role like that. When we hired her she was on a seal and walrus hunt with her parents. That's how they live. They still build igloos and make sealskin boots and caribou parkas and the whole cliché nine yards when you think of that Northern lifestyle. They've been modernized a bit but they can and they DO live that way. Nick Nunziata: It's not based on a true story, is it? Barry Pepper: No, it's a Farley Mowat classic. He wrote Never Cry Wolf, Lost in the Barrens. Films like that which Disney has done. Nick Nunziata: Those kind of films are timeless. There's not enough of them, though I did enjoy The Edge and Limbo. Barry Pepper: You know what's funny, Brother? I've been thinking the same thing. I've actually started to put pen to paper and jot some of those ideas down. I used to love those kind of movies too. Not the Rambo stuff as much, though they were fun when they came out. The real wilderness survival films. I don't know if you remember Jeremiah Johnson... Nick Nunziata: Oh yeah. Barry Pepper: Things like that, but they're far and few between. Nick Nunziata: Cast Away had a taste of it, and I just re-watched Alive. When you strip away the niceties and technology there's the core for some amazing stories. Barry Pepper: Yeah, have a really good story like The Snow Walker or Never Cry Wolf... but unless you have a good fictional story like those they have to be a true story to get audiences in. Nick Nunziata: I think also it needs to be a true story for studios to want to bankroll it because there's an existing commodity to work from unless it's based on a bestseller. Before I let you go, is there any films you've seen lately that blew you away? Barry Pepper: I'm a father of a two and a half year old so I don't get out much. You know, I haven't seen a movie in a while. I think the last films I've seen were The Man Who Wasn't There and Monster's Ball Both are films you can rent on DVD now. You have to see these films... well not you but your audience. Great movies. Nick Nunziata: That's who you need to hook up with, the Coen Brothers. Barry Pepper: That would be amazing. Knockaround Guys opens all over this Friday. See it, won't you?
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