LiC Interview: Bill Pullman – Surveillance

(Image courtesy of Magnet Releasing)

“He has this way of speaking in hyperbole and quotation marks at the same time, which is a genius thing. There’s this sense of the postmodernist about his very compliments where it’s slightly removed from earnestness, but earnestness is there too. It’s kind of great.” – Bill Pullman on working with David Lynch

This chat with Bill Pullman is the second of the round table interviews I participated in for Jennifer Lynch’s Surveillance. Mr. Pullman was a very nice guy and he seemed happy talking about the project. He has a laid back personality that you’d almost confuse as befuddled, but he’s sharp and thoughtful. It’s similar to how he often comes across in the movies.

He also does a great impression of David Lynch.

Jennifer was just telling us that you had turned [the role in Surveillance] down the first time…do you want to tell us about that a little bit and then what drew you to it the second time around?

You know, I’m not quite sure. Since I’ve basically known her for a long time I really wanted to work with her. When she first showed me the script I really think I was leaning in, but I just couldn’t figure out how I was going to be delivering this character to her benefit.

Maybe it was a time sometimes where you have those feelings in which you’re not quite filled with your own moxie enough or something. I just need to have a strategy – and I go after very smart parts too, it’s not the size of the role it’s a good size role – but I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t figure out the movie really.

When she came back, I think there were some adjustments in the script. I heard her voice in it, which I didn’t hear in the other version. I just couldn’t hear her words. She says the script didn’t change that much. I think it did change – maybe not structurally but I just didn’t hear her specific voice and once I read the script I could see it was a movie that she wrote.

I think she co-wrote it and went through a bunch of drafts. For somebody who has so much moxie and everything herself, there’s also the side of her that’s the opposite and I think she’s ready to give away everything. She’ll give away the farm practically, which is a strange thing in somebody who is also very insistent and the movie is what it is because she’s insisted on things that people are trying to dissuade her from.

But I think I heard her voice and when I talked to her on the phone, that really made me think I can’t wait to do it.

How much time transpired from when you originally turned it down until you finally agreed?

I think it was a year. It was like the year before she first showed it to me.

You were once lined up to be in Jennifer’s first film Boxing Helena, right?

Yes. It was in the early casting of it – I think she was like 19 or something like that – but it was Madonna and I and I forget who else was in it. We went to Madonna’s house and we rehearsed the scenes and everything and it was looking good, but then financing didn’t come together and by the time it did I was working on something else and I imagine Madonna was too. And then she had to cast it another way, but I really liked her and she was the one who then mentioned me to David for Lost Highway.

I’ve really known her for a long time. There’s a lot of different reasons why you are in the movie business and I certainly really treasure this experience, as other ones, where you work with the offspring of somebody that you worked with – the same way with Jake Kasdan after having worked with Larry Kasdan.

Can you compare working with David Lynch and now Jennifer?

Yeah. Both of them are people that I really find the most enjoyable people to be on the set with. They’re very vocal about transmitting a sense of joy for everybody on the set, in different ways, but you know people loved being on Lost Highway. He does it by talking. He narrates the day a little bit for everybody (in a dead on Lynch impression): “That was byew-tiful! Sooo byew-tiful!” He has this way of speaking in hyperbole and quotation marks at the same time, which is a genius thing. There’s this sense of the postmodernist about his very compliments where it’s slightly removed from earnestness, but earnestness is there too. It’s kind of great.

Jennifer has that ability too, but she’s a sailor. She can talk like a sailor and a lot of what she says is totally uninhibited, joyful foulness and it’s pretty funny and shocking and even in Canada where they don’t like that stuff generally it played pretty well.

She went through a dark period after Boxing Helena. There was something about it that people didn’t just dislike, they disliked her personally. She went through a dark door and then came back. She’s quite an extraordinary mother. Sidney (her daughter) is an amazing girl…These two have gone through a lot together.

That I think is what I think I heard more when I read the script a second time is that child’s watchfulness and that innocence that stays conscious when everybody else is deluding themselves about various things. I think that’s what I heard. I think that’s what makes it an amazing movie for a woman to have written and directed – not the usual subject matter for a woman to investigate, but she sees a lot of horrible behavior and she has this unusual instinct to have a kind of a laugh about it all that’s both acknowledging of horror and also some kind of contradictory joy at the horror – that you can actually name it – I guess in naming it becomes the joyfulness. To be able to say truths is joyful.

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Round table interviews are kind of hit and miss affairs where it’s not easy to control the flow or the focus. Sometimes the group of people you’re with ask fruitful questions and other times not so much. In this case there were a number of dubious questions (one of them belonged to me) that didn’t really result in answers worth transcribing. As a result, though this conversation was the same length as the others, I’ve only transcribed the best parts.

Filed under: Interviews
Tags: Bill Pullman, David Lynch, Jennifer Lynch, Surveillance