Adrien Brody Discusses "Splice" and "Predators
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"I think what I love about film is that you have this wonderful connection and so many people can see the hard work that you’ve put into something, and you can actually have this connection," explained Adrien Brody. "It’s a wonderful experience to be in a theater. I feel it, we all feel it. When you are moved by something and a performance and you’re taken down that road, it’s what we hope to see in the theater and it’s what an actor really strives for.
My point is that doing certain films, after that, kids started knowing me and I’d go to the bank and there’d be kids there like, 'You’re the guy from King Kong,' and 'awesome' and high-fiving me. Then when I’m hanging out with Tony Hawk and going around, I’m not the strange guy that’s hanging out with Tony Hawk. I’m the guy from this movie or that, and I love that."
"That’s one element to it, but my choices have been to constantly try and find things that are different, that challenge me, that are unusual and to take some risk with it. I thought this was such a unique film and such a complex genre movie, I loved horror movies when I was a teenager. I loved them. I saw every Nightmare on Elm Street in theaters. I saw Predator in theaters when it came out and was in awe. So for me to have an opportunity to go in there and bring what I do to that and try and bring the level of complexity to the role... In Predators, for instance, to make Royce a kind of tragic, flawed antihero character within this setting, and also put on a certain degree of muscle mass and kind of do this, that’s very exciting to me.
That’s a really exciting process. So on one level, I can see how there’s like, 'How can you do that?' Show me, give me access to a movie that’s comparable, a dramatic film that’s comparable to The Pianist and I’d love to do it. But if I’m not finding that, I have to also find new things and experiment with that. And I love that process."
Brody is trying to mix things ups, and he doesn't automatically rule out scripts just because they're sequels, prequels, or of a genre you don't normally associate with the 37 year old actor. "Well, I do many independent films. If you look at my resume, they’re still the majority and this, by the way, is an independent movie," offered Brody. "This is a wonderful situation where you do a film with a great director who’s very passionate about it who has a real point of view, who’s worked on it for 10 years. You make it the best you can with limited resources and then it goes to a film festival and then it gets picked up by something like Joel Silver and Warner Brothers and sees the light of day and gets a marketing budget. That’s remarkable and that’s really rare, almost unheard of in this economy and the way this business is. So if you look at it, this is just another kind of independent movie but it’s kind of given its moment, which is really amazing."
"The problem is to find roles within these films that speak to you. Unfortunately, most of them don’t. They don’t and most of them aren’t interested in me because they don’t care if... [...]The whole vision of the success of the film is based on kind of a formula and if I don’t fit in that formula, it’s very difficult to persuade people to alter it because it’s like a business model. It’s counterintuitive to creating art, so you have to find something where you’re allowed to have some artistic freedom and the character can have some depth but also fit in that."
"I’m grateful for Fox, Robert Rodriguez, Nimrod Antal - who directed Predators - to give me that opportunity. I campaigned very hard. They were not believers at first. I told them, 'I will deliver and I’ll prove myself.' That’ll be determined to some degree by how the film does or by what the response is to my work. But I approached it with the same intensity that I would approach anything like The Pianist. I locked myself in the forest and I changed my whole diet. I didn’t do a lot of things. I didn’t eat very much, I handled it with a great deal of seriousness and I did a lot of military training and all that stuff."
* * * *
Splice hits theaters on June 4, 2010 and is rated
"I think what I love about film is that you have this wonderful connection and so many people can see the hard work that you’ve put into something, and you can actually have this connection," explained Adrien Brody. "It’s a wonderful experience to be in a theater. I feel it, we all feel it. When you are moved by something and a performance and you’re taken down that road, it’s what we hope to see in the theater and it’s what an actor really strives for.
My point is that doing certain films, after that, kids started knowing me and I’d go to the bank and there’d be kids there like, 'You’re the guy from King Kong,' and 'awesome' and high-fiving me. Then when I’m hanging out with Tony Hawk and going around, I’m not the strange guy that’s hanging out with Tony Hawk. I’m the guy from this movie or that, and I love that."
"That’s one element to it, but my choices have been to constantly try and find things that are different, that challenge me, that are unusual and to take some risk with it. I thought this was such a unique film and such a complex genre movie, I loved horror movies when I was a teenager. I loved them. I saw every Nightmare on Elm Street in theaters. I saw Predator in theaters when it came out and was in awe. So for me to have an opportunity to go in there and bring what I do to that and try and bring the level of complexity to the role... In Predators, for instance, to make Royce a kind of tragic, flawed antihero character within this setting, and also put on a certain degree of muscle mass and kind of do this, that’s very exciting to me.
That’s a really exciting process. So on one level, I can see how there’s like, 'How can you do that?' Show me, give me access to a movie that’s comparable, a dramatic film that’s comparable to The Pianist and I’d love to do it. But if I’m not finding that, I have to also find new things and experiment with that. And I love that process."
Brody is trying to mix things ups, and he doesn't automatically rule out scripts just because they're sequels, prequels, or of a genre you don't normally associate with the 37 year old actor. "Well, I do many independent films. If you look at my resume, they’re still the majority and this, by the way, is an independent movie," offered Brody. "This is a wonderful situation where you do a film with a great director who’s very passionate about it who has a real point of view, who’s worked on it for 10 years. You make it the best you can with limited resources and then it goes to a film festival and then it gets picked up by something like Joel Silver and Warner Brothers and sees the light of day and gets a marketing budget. That’s remarkable and that’s really rare, almost unheard of in this economy and the way this business is. So if you look at it, this is just another kind of independent movie but it’s kind of given its moment, which is really amazing."
"The problem is to find roles within these films that speak to you. Unfortunately, most of them don’t. They don’t and most of them aren’t interested in me because they don’t care if... [...]The whole vision of the success of the film is based on kind of a formula and if I don’t fit in that formula, it’s very difficult to persuade people to alter it because it’s like a business model. It’s counterintuitive to creating art, so you have to find something where you’re allowed to have some artistic freedom and the character can have some depth but also fit in that."
"I’m grateful for Fox, Robert Rodriguez, Nimrod Antal - who directed Predators - to give me that opportunity. I campaigned very hard. They were not believers at first. I told them, 'I will deliver and I’ll prove myself.' That’ll be determined to some degree by how the film does or by what the response is to my work. But I approached it with the same intensity that I would approach anything like The Pianist. I locked myself in the forest and I changed my whole diet. I didn’t do a lot of things. I didn’t eat very much, I handled it with a great deal of seriousness and I did a lot of military training and all that stuff."
* * * *
Splice hits theaters on June 4, 2010 and is rated
