MARTIN DONOVAN: Thank you. Did you like the, uh, what Hal Hartley film was that?

MARTIN DONOVAN: You’ve got your work cut out for you then.

MARTIN DONOVAN: Well, you’re talking to someone who hardly ever goes to the movies at all. I’m really behind. Heaven, I was really proud of that film. It was playing on cable a little while ago on the film channel or something and I was flipping through the channels and started watching it. That movie was completely dismissed by everyone and Miramax didn’t promote it, they tossed it on the trash heap. But I really think the director, what was his name?

MARTIN DONOVAN: I’m blanking, it’ll come to me. Anyway, the use of time and be way he told the story, before Memento and all those things, it has a kind of B movie feel about it, but it’s really well done.

CHRIS NEUMER: It seems like it has a B movie feel to it, simply because of the plot material.

MARTIN DONOVAN: Yeah, yeah.

MARTIN DONOVAN: Yeah, but that’s not by choice. I don’t know whether I said that exactly or… I have never been in a position to choose big budget movies or not. I’ve never made anybody a lot of money and I’ve never–and so therefore, the powers that be, the powers in Hollywood assume that I can’t make them any money. So they’re not–they haven’t been told that I’m a movie star or whatever, because I’m not. So they’re not offering movies. It’s not like I’m turning down big budget movies. Things come to me because usually of the film I did before. I’ve been very lucky to work with really talented directors and filmmakers over the years. That’s what an actor–to be as lucky as I have been to work with the filmmakers I have worked with, it’s going to make any actor look good. The people who see Heaven and like it are a certain kind of film goer. Certain kinds of directors are going to respond to that and those are the guys who are going to call me and say, "I’ve got this movie going on." Hal Hartley–I did a Hal Hartley film, Jane Campion saw that and responded to that and cast me in Portrait of a Lady. Not because it made a lot of money or because I was a big movie star, far from it, it was a tiny little film and she gave me a great part on a much big budget movie. So I just want to clear that up. I would happy to do bigger budgeted movies and be paid more money so that I wouldn’t have to worry about feeding my kids.

MARTIN DONOVAN: I didn’t say that either. I’m just saying that I would be happy to be paid more money. I’m not going to turn down money, but I think what I’m saying is–for instance, Insomnia is a bigger Hollywood movie, it was a lower-middle budget for them, but by independent standards, it was a big budget. Most of that money went to Al and Robin, but it was Chris Nolan and everything about it felt like an independent film to me, because it comes from the top down and Chris Nolan brought this–his background and he has a passion for making movies and shooting a certain way and he made it feel like any small budget film I’ve ever done. The producers were classy people and Al was a real serious actor, so the feeling around that set was similar to any small budget independent film I’ve ever done. There were bigger trailers for Al and Robin, but they’re movie stars.

MARTIN DONOVAN: I guess it’s all about the priorities. An independent–by the way, just because it’s independent doesn’t mean that its priorities are straight.

MARTIN DONOVAN: yeah, an independent movie can be made for all the wrong reasons, just like a big budget movie. Just like a big studio movie. There are big studio movies that are made for the right reasons, they have a sense of integrity about them and are made in spite of all the corrupting influences, money and star wattage and all. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. And there are small films that are made for all the wrong reasons and that are really bad. Having said that, wherever you are, if the emphasis is on making a really interesting film and not trying to–bottom line is making a good film, not a huge opening weekend. That’s a more satisfying place to be. I would rather be in that kind of environment. That’s not to say that there isn’t a place for entertainment movies if they’re well made and people are honest about what they are doing, you know? Whatever you’re doing, if you’re being honest–"Hey, I want to get fucking rich" or "I just want to make the biggest selling movie of all time, but it’s going to be entertaining of fun"–if you’re honest about what you’re doing it has a kind of integrity. But if you’re dishonest to yourself or to your movie people that you’re selling it to, or misrepresenting what you’re doing or if you’re really only interested in making the movie star, you’re just interested in hanging out with a movie star and making any kind of piece of shit you can with them, or you can’t distinguish between competence and incompetence between the people you work with, then it all goes south. I don’t know if that makes any sense.

MARTIN DONOVAN: Whatever. Yeah.

MARTIN DONOVAN: Right.

MARTIN DONOVAN: Actually, what I thought about more was, not the director, Dave doesn’t know anything about directors, but more about the people I know who I’ve encountered who–how can I put this?–relatives, uncles or cousins who are absolutely clueless about the process, who don’t understand the language of film or the decorum on the set, for instance. Bull in a china shop kind of thing. It’s kind of like a first time golfer not knowing golf etiquette. Saying all the wrong things, making noise, tromping over things. Those kind of things. There’s that clumsy kind of ignorance that people who–fish out of water kind of thing–that was what I was going for. That’s not saying that my knowledge of the set and directors didn’t help, but… I had a lot of fun playing that ignoramus on a movie set thing. I had a chance to behave the way that I had always thought would be funny.

MARTIN DONOVAN: (laughs) Yes.

MARTIN DONOVAN: That, actually, that is somewhere in my consciousness, in my memory of somebody. I know somebody, some director used that rhythm, that melody to their "And cut". That was something I stole from my own personal experience.

MARTIN DONOVAN: Right. That’s true.

MARTIN DONOVAN: Yup.

MARTIN DONOVAN: You’re comparing this to studio films or to independent films made in LA?

MARTIN DONOVAN: I don’t know that there is a difference necessarily. Certainly there’s a difference in the life style, I was born and raised in Los Angeles and have lived in new York City for 18 years, so… I kind of know both cities well. Obviously there is a huge cultural difference and just life style difference, but I don’t know that you can pinpoint any difference in talent. You might also, because of your orientation, be more drawn to films that have more to offer than the Hollywood studio movies. It’s not necessarily that they’re made out of New York, but you may be missing the bad ones made in New York, I guess that’s what I’m saying.

MARTIN DONOVAN: Honestly, I don’t know. There is something about Los Angeles that makes it very difficult to–in part the city itself, the city, the geography and the dominance of the studios–that to me makes it very difficult to get people focused on a film set that aren’t made to please a huge audience.

MARTIN DONOVAN: It’s hard for me to describe, but I think that there is–the big budget, Hollywood behemoth, it’s very hard to escape it in Los Angeles. All the cliches you’ve heard, that are beaten to death, everybody has a screenplay, everybody has a three picture deal and you overhear conversations at the supermarket about the upfronts, everything is the business. And that business is about making money. The measure of success is by how much money the movie generates. To me, for me, it’s very difficult to, in the middle of that environment, gather a bunch of people together and get them to focus on making a film outside that system for the reasons that we talked about earlier. I just think that–in New York, Manhattan, it has so many other things going on about it, that just because you’re a filmmaker or an actor, it’s like "that’s interesting," but there’s the rest of the art, there’s music there’s Carnegie Hall, there’s theater, there’s dance, there’s Wall Street–talk about generating money. And there are stars and these is a star system, there are so many different ways of making a living there. There is so much more complexity to it–that’s not true.

MARTIN DONOVAN: Yes. I should say that because LA is very complex. But the Hollywood system is very monolithic in LA and it isn’t in New York. There are a lot of other things going on in New York. It’s easier to be anonymous in New York than LA as far as I’m concerned. And then there’s just the energy of New York, the way it makes you feel. If you’re attracted to Manhattan and you want to live there, then you’re priorities are probably different than somebody who wants to play tennis in Bel-Air.

MARTIN DONOVAN: There’s this feeling in LA that it’s just a huge machine, it has this voracious appetite. It just sucks up talent and spits it out very quickly. They are just churning through actors on a yearly basis. There’s always the next hot young stud actor who is going to be the big star. There are young women by the dozen that they trot out as the next big thing. And it really goes for directors and writers and everyone. It’s, in some ways, very dehumanizing and can be very humiliating. It can also be very rewarding. Hollywood is also populated by a lot of very smart people and very talented people. I’ve worked with them, I know. They’re there and you think of the great movies of the last 50 years and a lot of them are made in Hollywood. Not all of them, but a lot of them were made under the old Hollywood studio system. All the way through the ’70’s they were making good movies.

MARTIN DONOVAN: Of course I’m going to pick a movie that is made by a studio that made no money and a lot of people hated–

MARTIN DONOVAN: (laughs) No, The Thin Red Line, I absolutely loved that movie. I know people didn’t like it but I think because I was raised Catholic, the movie is literally a prayer. If you don’t know what prayer is or weren’t taught to pray, you’re going to hate that movie. I totally understood it.

MARTIN DONOVAN: It also had a different–everything about it was different.

MARTIN DONOVAN: I find that movie absolutely great. I love that movie. Now I’m trying to think what else… Can’t think of any more right now.