SEX, MURDER AND CELEBRITY: An interview with Auto Focus director Paul Schrader and stars Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe.
By Warren
Curry
10/08/02
Part 1 of 2
|
SEX, MURDER AND CELEBRITY: An interview with Auto Focus director Paul Schrader and stars Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe. By Warren
Curry Part 1 of 2 |
|
In a business where nefarious activity and sordid behavior are commonplace, the exploits of late television star Bob Crane are still able to create ripples of surprise. The radio DJ- turned-actor played the lead in the hit television series Hogan's Heroes, which aired from 1965-1971, and his everyman good looks and family man image (he was married with children) earned him a legion of fans. But Crane's public persona was contrasted sharply by a private life, which saw him drown in a sea of sexual obsession and deviant conduct that eventually led to, first, the effective end of the man's career (years after Hogan's Heroes was off the air, he was relegated to performing in a traveling dinner theater show) and, ultimately, his brutal, and still unsolved, murder in an Arizona motel room in 1978.
Obsession and deviance? It's hardly new
territory to acclaimed writer/director Paul Schrader (American
Gigolo, Affliction), who has brought Crane's story
to the screen in the new Sony Pictures Classics' film Auto
Focus. Working from a screenplay by Michael Gerbosi, Schrader's
sensibility seems perfectly suited for this dark Hollywood tale.
"In art, sometimes you run into characters in real life or
in fiction who are living this very drama -- who are behaving
in a way that is counterproductive to their own desires,"
comments Schrader about his career-long affinity for characters
who exist on the fringes of society. He continues, "When
you find one of these characters with both headlights on, there
is a lot of wonderful exploration you can do. You get into their
lives and into their psyches and start exploring." In Crane,
Schrader found a character who is similar to the ones that have
inhabited his previous work. "I think (Crane's) not that
different from Wade Whitehouse in Affliction -- these kind
of deluded, clueless guys. In one it turns about to be a conspiracy
theory, in another it turns out to be home porn," observes
Schrader.
While Schrader's connection to the project seems quite natural,
the actor who tackled the task of playing Crane may strike some
as an odd choice, despite the obvious career parallels he shares
with the man. Enter former television talk show host-turned-thespian,
Greg Kinnear (Nurse Betty, As Good As It Gets).
"(Greg) was suggested to me. I thought for a moment and realized
it was a brilliant idea. I never regretted (the decision) and
never thought of anyone else," says Schrader of the choice
to cast his lead. "That's primarily because he had all those
attributes that Bob had that I needed: (he is) funny, ironic,
liked comedy, and has a kind of DJ, glib, hip sensibility. That's
not easy stuff to do and Greg knows how to do it." Schrader
also warmed to the idea of Kinnear due to the actor's experience
in comedy; a world the filmmaker admitted was a bit foreign to
him. "I've not done much work in comedy, and that light stuff
I don't do. I wanted Greg to protect that," he mentions.
"On the other hand, I'm pretty comfortable in the deep end
of the pool, and I'm comfortable getting an actor out in the deep
end and then turning off the lights. So I felt that Greg would
protect me on the shallow end and I'd protect him on the deep
end, and we'd be just fine."
Kinnear's somewhat risky choice to star in the film was readily apparent to just about everyone but the actor himself. "I was pretty stupid; my own naiveté worked out quite nicely," he reveals with a smile. "I didn't give it a great deal of thought. I thought the script was good, and I thought the story was one that I was interested in and dealt with issues and subject matter that are relevant today." Like most performers, Kinnear relished the opportunity to take on something different from the norm. "As an actor, you're always trying to find new roles and new challenges. This was a little scary, but that's not always bad."
The film depicts Crane's life to have taken its drastic turn when he meets and befriends an electronics technician named John Carpenter, who is played by Willem Dafoe (The Last Temptation of Christ, Spider-Man). Carpenter, a friend of fellow Hogan's Heroes cast-member Richard Dawson (played by Michael Rodgers), introduced Crane to the latest advancements in video technology and also shared Crane's voracious sexual appetite. As the two grew closer, they enlisted a variety of women to take part in countless erotic escapades, which the duo documented on videotape. "One of the things that attracted me when I first read the script was that there were these scenes where these men were so intimate, it was like scenes between a couple." explains Dafoe, who starred in Schrader's 1992 film Light Sleeper and had a supporting role in Affliction. "It was intimate and tinged with sexuality, but not homosexual." As for his interest in playing the character, who on the surface appears to lack any redeeming qualities, Dafoe comments, "There are John Carpenters in the world. We all have John Carpenters. One of the things that interested me about John Carpenter was that there was something sweet about him -- something sweet in the respect that he really wanted everybody to have a good time. He also wanted to be useful and help people get stuff, and if he got a little thrown his way, that was cool." He adds, "In some ways, we're really disgusted by that because it feels like an opportunist, but somehow given our story, how we tell it and even the real life John Carpenter, he seemed like basically a kind guy that was just searching for his piece through this particular vehicle. I think we all can relate to that."
Playing a real-life figure is never an
easy chore, especially when it's someone who was as public, yet
also as private as Bob Crane. So, how did Kinnear prepare for
the role? "Paul educated me, in what didn't take a long period
of time, in the dark, seedy world of Bob Crane home movies and
a little goes a long way," recalls the actor. "The most
startling thing about Bob's collection was less about the sexual
nature of it, because it was what it was, but more the volume.
It was just reams of documentation and chronicling all of these
events." He also received help from Bob Crane Jr., who is
credited as a consultant on the film. "He provided me with
the smaller details to kind of fill in the blanks of who Bob is,"
says Kinnear of Crane Jr.'s help. "I looked at a lot of the
stuff he had. He showed me family albums and early recordings
of his father. He showed me this amazing logbook that his dad
kept of the water polo games they would play on the weekends.
Bob would keep these detailed ledgers of what kid scored how many
goals, how many had shots on goal, who was guarding who, the win/loss
ratio of each team. They were so fascinatingly detailed that it
was clear to me that this was a guy who had an obsessive nature
about him."
|
|
|
|
|