Mister Sinister
Picture of Paul McCartney
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http://www.aintitcool.com/node/37561
Capone: So you realize I'm only going to be asking you WATCHMEN questions, right?
MG: Perfect! I'm so happy to do that.
Capone: So are you going to San Diego for the big ComicCon presentation?
MG: Yes, I am.
Capone: I'll probably see you there. Do you have any idea what [director] Zack Snyder will be showing?
MG: I would imagine, considering the trailer is going out with DARK KNIGHT. That makes good sense for Warner Brothers. So I'd imagine they're going to be showing extra material, otherwise people who made the effort to get down there will go, "I'm pissed. This is the **** we've already seen." I haven't seen anything myself really. I've had to looping, some re-recording of sound on one or two tiny scenes in it, so they've either cut me out of the movie or the original recording was as good as it needs to be. So I've seen so little, but the stuff I've seen has been "Oh, **** me! Wow! There's Bubastis; there's my ****ing cat!" Because there's very little CGI in it.
Capone: I noticed that just from the video diaries that Zack put on line. I wasn't seeing, like he did with 300, the green screens every single shot. Everything looked very real and practical.
MG: Well, we had these huge, huge sets. There's so much attention to detail, and they had this massive backlot, which was New York. It was incredible. And thank God because it is the CITIZEN KANE of graphic novels. It needs to be visionary and real. We're actually not as accepting of false things these days. We want to go back to old school and the scale of a CITZEN KANE. I ****ing hate CGI.
Capone: You mentioned DARK KNIGHT a minute ago, there's hardly any CGI in that.
MG: Yeah, we want the sets, we want the kind of old school visionary. And the minute some crap CGI comes on [in other films], it takes you right out of the story. Obviously, when we have things like a 100-foot Dr. Manhattan, sorry to disappoint you, but that's CGI. Having not seen it myself and having spoken to Zack, he said, "The running time is about three hours right now, and what Warner Bros. don't really get yet is that I've made a three-hour arthouse film." [laughs] "That sounds great!" So I think his integrity with it, and even the color palate he's using, it's trying to serve only the novel and the fans. It's not something he's come on board and reinvented. Obviously, you have to have your own vision, but you've got it storyboarded there, right there for you. He's done as much as he can with the way he's cast it and give as much of the budget as he can to fulfilling the vision of the film. And there were other directors attached like Paul Greengrass [and Darren Aronofsky and Terry Gilliam], who have a great back catalog, and with Zack, other than 300, he's very new. He's been working with a camera for however many ****ing years, but to the film world, he's only done two films. But I honestly think we've got the best man for the job.
Capone: Zack was kind enough to bring a nearly completed 300 to our Butt Numb-a-Thon a couple of Decembers ago, and I know more than a few of us are hoping he bring WATCHMEN this year.
MG: The movie is cut now. He's just doing the CGI now. I could imagine by December, it could well be done. It goes out worldwide in March. It just depends on how secretive they're going to be.
Capone: It must have been pretty much impossible not to want to play the smartest man in the world. That's not a title that is bestowed upon many actors in their lifetime.
MG: My God. And it certainly won't be when this interview comes out, will it? [laughs] It's one of those weird things, I didn't have any knowledge of WATCHMEN. It's not a world where I came from. And a lot of my friends did have knowledge, and I'd say, "I've been given this job. I'm playing this guy called Ozymandias in WATCHMEN." And they're like, "I ****ing hate you." "But I don't know anything about it." "READ IT!!!" It was only after I read it that I was like, "Oh my God." I then understood the enormity of what I was undertaking, because it's the best graphic novel out there. I don't have a huge amount to compare it to, but the depth of the story, the way it's written, the peculiarities in the structure of it. It's the most thought-out, deeply intelligent of the lot of them. So you sign on. And I was one of the last to be cast, and knowing the interest of other, much larger actors who wanted the role, combined with the fact that Zack just gave it to me on a plate really, I would have been an idiot to turn it down. I was scared, for sure.
Capone: Your character is one of those classic comic book villains who isn't evil per se; he thinks what he's doing is for the greater good. He does see some righteousness in what he's doing.
MG: For sure. He's morally ambiguous. He's kind of a crossover to Rorschach really, because people go right to him; he's the character people love. And by the end, people realize there's a sociopathic-ness between both these characters, but really you just want to be right and you would forsake the world's safety because of that. As opposed to Ozymandias, who's like, "I get it, but we needs someone to be ****ing practical about this." It's the reverse of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. I've done it, I save the world, and I've done it in the way, but it's pretty much the only way it could have been done. I don't know about you, but I've sat around and joked with people about how it's going to take some outside force for the whole world to unite, which is giving a little bit away. It may or may not be this rather large creation of Adrian Veidt that comes to attack and kill people. I loved the character, and I love that you don't know anything about his real backstory, and that may or may not upset the fanbase. I mean, you know his parents were very wealthy, you now that he gave that wealth away and went on a trip, and he took some hash, and he had these vision with the Ozymandias, the King of Thebes. But we said there has to be some understanding with it.
And I came in to Zack one day because I'd gotten quite drunk--I find that always really helps, as I learned from Paul Newman, go get drunk and think about your character on your own--and I said to him, it would be interesting in a very comic book kind of way to ask why did he give his parents' money away? Perhaps it's because his parents were Nazis, and he was ashamed of that wealth. And also it would be a way to challenge his own intellect. Did he live in Germany before? Wouldn't it be interesting if he did come over here post-WWII after having grown up there as a child? He speaks the German language, and he has an accent. So when he comes over, he works himself up into being this very successful man when we first see him, but how can we distinguish between the public and the private persona? That way, he's the epitome of the American dream. He's built himself up as a self-made man effectively. So the entire world knows him as this guy who speaks with a perfect American accent hopefully [laughs], but actually with the Watchmen, there's a hint of German, which grows a bit stronger. But that's more from a technical standpoint for me. But having that sort of duplicity made it much more layered and interesting.
Capone: Is that something you came up with or something you and Zack did together?
MG: My idea, but he let me do it.
Capone: Something else I remember from the last time we spoke, you told me that you always create backstories for the characters you play, but that you never reveal them.
MG: Well, I'll only be telling you now. This isn't in the script.
Capone: When I asked you for a little bit of the backstory for your character in THE LOOKOUT, you got very serious. I thought you were going to hit me for asking.
MG: [laughs] No, not at all. It doesn't really serve the story of THE LOOKOUT for me to have told you, and it actually looks a bit self-indulgent as an actor, which I try to stay away from. I don't really talk about process. I can't really describe what goes on in my imagination. We have all one, and I think the more you let someone in there, the more danger there is that they might let you explore that imagination to do other characters. I sound like a dick already. But with this, it needs a little explaining because otherwise people will be like, "What the **** is going on?" I think they'll get it; I think they will. I hope they don't think I'm being self-indulgent because I think it really serves the film. And it comes from the idea of this comic book world.
Capone: The comic book world loves its backstory.
MG: Exactly.
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