Thanks to 'areyouwatching' for taking the time to do the transcript!
(parts in brackets are uncertain)
Part one - Working on location in New Mexico
Interviewer: Were all the exteriors shot in New Mexico?
CB Yes.
Int. Okay. All over, or just in a tightly (kind of) restricted area?
CB Ehm, I mean, all within probably a couple hours of each other. It was stunning. You know, it couldn’t be better for getting into the whole feel of it, you know, because when I was in LA, you know, you do this kind of thing, you (‘re starting?) to think about it too much. You get out to New Mexico and you’re actually riding horses for three, four hours every day, and you’re out, you know, up at four in the morning and it’s freezing and night time in the desert, in the high desert, you know, is really damn cold and gradually your skin starts to look like you’re somebody who’s been out and getting weathered. Became a very seductive way of life really, you know, there’s something, I’m not somebody who ever really rides horses or anything, I have done, you know, but I don’t do it regularly. But it (certainly) became this very relaxing thing, just sitting out there, you know, with the real cowboys and wranglers and everything, just riding for hours and chatting with them and stuff and pretty soon, you know, you’re acting like a cowboy, you know, without even trying, you got all the dirt in your throat and I so much prefer filming any movie on location rather than in a studio, you know, I think it just feels right.
Part two - Director Jim Mangold
CB I think that with Jim it’s very much that we have the hard lives, that we have the, you know, the battle just to get through each and every day and we’re gonna be having the gun fights etc., you know, he wasn’t a guy who, you know, he’s not like a Sam Peckinpah some(thing?) who, you know, the gunfight is really the thing, you know, to him it was, if it didn’t benefit to the actual story and tell you something about the characters, then forget it, you know, for him it was the kind of still moments of the characters themselves, so it’s very much in delving into these people in isolated situations and who you could become in those places. And Jim also, though, is a very, you know, dedicated director but also somebody who likes to create levity, you know, on the set as well in the midst of, you know, maybe some heavy scenes or whatever, there’s actually a great deal of jokes and everything going on with Jim’s set, so it was a good, you know, it was a good set in that, you know, you (don’t think something like a, you know, a Western gives a lot of opportunity for a lot of comedy and things and here we’re on the set and everything), you know, just as it should be, as well. Didn’t have to be deadly serious the entire time.
Part three - Director Terrence Malick
Int. ... with Terrence Malick, sort of his tone setting in a sense.
CB Well, Terry is unique in his absolute response to the environment completely, you know, instead of trying to control the environment to what he thinks the movie should be, he doesn’t, he just can’t stand forcing anything. Everything must feel entirely natural, if it has to change from what was originally thought, then so be it, you know, if the room doesn’t feel right for a certain thing or the outside has changed or, you know, he’ll go with whatever weather we have, just let’s adapt to it but let everything command, the way it does in life, you know, really, you don’t, you’re not able to control life quite so much and I think that he embraces that. He certainly likes accidents very much, you know, and so will just start filming off without even telling people, something which may sound a little nerve-racking when you’re, I’d been speaking with Terry a number of times on the telephone before I had gone to start filming “The New World” and the I spoke with a couple of friends of mine who were on the crew already, and they said something to me which really got me thinking that I just, I wasn’t prepared enough because they said oh, Terry likes the actors to improvise a great deal, and I thought, well, it’s one thing to improvise in a contemporary situation but when you’re dealing with the 1600s I thought oh my God I haven’t done the research I should have done, you know, he’s expecting me to absolutely without thinking to be fluent in the language of the day, with the history, you know, of the day, and I’m gonna have to improvise and (it) turns out it was the easiest thing in the world, you know? He, in his way of not forcing anything, really what improvising meant was, say whatever you want, you know, if you wanna come out with something. And I said a number of things which were anachronistic. He just pointed it out to me that for instance gravity hadn’t been discovered so (didn’t) speak at that point, I mentioned it at one point and it was, yeah, okay, but the point was to create such a relaxed feeling that, what I like very much with Terry is there’s no sense of hey everybody tense up, we’re about to roll, get ready, action, let’s get this right, film costs money here, you know? It does, he has to deal with all the same realities that everybody else deals with but he’ll just start rolling and nobody’s even said anything, you know, and you just realize they’re rolling and then when you feel like it, you start doing the scene and on numerous occasions Terry would say to me, you don’t feel like saying the words I’ve written, don’t say ‘em. He said if you wanna say something else, say something else. If you don’t wanna say anything, don’t say anything. He just said, just really, if it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it. Do whatever you feel is right and that’s what I’m gonna, you know, respond to. And he truly means it, you know? You get some directors who say hey it’s yours, you own it now, and then when you really truly show them that you own it they say, what the hell you’re doing? That’s not what’s here. Terry is a real original with that.
Int. (??)
CB Absolutely he is, yeah.
Part four - Acting
CB ... human instinct you wanna turn in the middle of a take, so what are you looking at? You know, because they’re drawing your attention away, whatever, whereas when you can(‘t) create the intimacy and it’s, that’s why I think it’s, I think that, with absolute respect to the crew and the desire for everybody to feel involved and excited because every job that they do is essential, they have to feel excited and involved in the movie but it’s often to me the best work when you do clear everybody out and you really just have very few people because you get, you just get more of a sense of, what the hell, just try it, you know, don’t worry about having a, kind of, get it perfect or, you know? I think as soon as you start feeling that sense of needing to get it perfect then, then it’s gone wrong somewhere, because, you know, you and I sitting here, we’re not thinking here, oh, I really want this to go perfectly, and if I was, you’d be noticing I was a very affected, you know, individual, whatever. And that was one thing very clearly that I remember most vividly with Terry was that, that he, it was quite funny because as soon as, whereas (with?) a lot of directors, you start getting into a rhythm and you can feel the piece kind of forming and gelling and it’s like, ah, right, yeah, we’re about to hit it and then you kind of get a sense of, right, that one really, that went. The minute that Terri would see that happening he’d say, forget this, let’s go somewhere else and put something in there just to throw you a little bit and, you know, not intensely, it was just --
Int (buff) it up a little.
CB just set up something so that you were responding truly again, you know? It’s interesting because there’s many actors who view it as essential to rehearse a great deal and they’re very wonderful actors, you know, and love to really get it down and narrow it down and then, and I think there’s certain physical scenes where, yes, you have to do that. Otherwise you end up with a tangled mess and people actually getting hurt or whatever, you know, but if you’re not dealing with something physical like that then I personally, yeah I don’t like to rehearse. I think it’s nicer just (to) do it and there’s also a sense with people rehearsing that I get, they’re not really thinking about, oh anyone’s gonna be watching this, you know, it’s just (3 words unclear) and half the time that’s better, you know, I think for me a lot of the effort is often trying to pretend when you are on a set when it’s necessary to have the big clapping board and the loud action! and you’re immediately feeling like, okay, you know, everybody on deck, you know, battle stations, to try and kind of ignore that completely and try to just view it as just another rehearsal, doesn’t matter, you know, something goes wrong, let it go wrong, (why would it)? who cares, you know? I think those are always the best.
Part five - child actors
Int. The two young actors who play your sons in 3:10?
CB Yeah.
Int. I think, well, the older one is what, probably 15, 16 years old?
CB Logan was 14 at the time.
Int. Good, I thought he was good.
CB Yeah. He’s somebody who definitely I think you’re gonna maybe, as long as it’s just not kind of adolescent talk right now, I think that, I mean he’s so into movies, much more into movies than I’ve ever been, knows so much more, strike up conversations with me as though I knew what the hell I was talking about and assuming I was a movie buff and watched, you know, the guy watches five movies a day or something, you know? I’ve just never been that kind of a person, I guess I just don’t like watching other people do things that much, I like to do it myself. But he’s somebody who, you know, if he continues in the interest that he has, I would very much expect to see him wanting to go into directing or something when he’s older.
Int. So you would assess him as a very different sort of kid as someone your own age with “Empire of the Sun”?
CB Yeah, no, it was very different, yeah. ‘cause I kind of felt I needed
to pretend like I gave a crap about movies just because I realized how lucky
I was and how many people would have liked to have been in my position, so I
kind of felt, if I just kind of sit there and say, I don’t know, I never
really cared much about them, (I would sit,) I felt bad about that so I kind
of pretended a little bit like, yeah, no, love movies, you know, that’s
my thing, a little bit, but it was just me being young and kind of, you know,
feeling like it was just unfair for me to be in that position and not actually
give a damn that much about it, you know, in effect to a degree where I would
all the time be saying, (I know) this has been good, but this ain’t for
me, you know, I won’t be doing this. There’s something else out
there that I think I’m gonna be doing instead of this.
The younger son in the movie, he was very good, I liked him very much ‘cause
he was absolutely natural in his responses and he couldn’t give a damn
about me, Russell, anybody else on the movie set, just, you know, he was a local
kid, he’s doing this movie, what the hell’s this, his grandma was
there looking after him, you know, he just wanted to go like throw stones at
stuff and, you know, and he had great banter and stuff, and he was terrific,
precisely because he had no interest in movies whatsoever.
Int. He was a New Mexico kid, if he was an LA kid, he’d be texting his agent the whole time.
CB Exactly, yeah.
Part six - Parents on set with their children
Int. Well you and Russell Crowe are both relatively new parents, too.
CB Yeah, yeah I know, it’s quite a family environment we’d have, you know, we’d have weekends with our kids all playing together and --
Int. That’s nice. I think a lot of sets aren’t like that.
CB No. Well I’m finding they are more as I’m, as I’ve become a parent, I find I’m working with more parents or at least maybe what it is, is that I’m gravitating towards the ones who are parents as well, you know, instead of before I didn’t feel that connection or understanding so I was more gravitating towards other people, now I’m finding that almost every set I work on feels like family set because, you know, also, you know, Chris, Hugh Jackman on “The Prestige” as well, on this, Gary’s a father, Heath is a dad, you know, Maggie, you know, everybody. So we’ve all got, you know, our kids come to set and everything. It’s nice, it’s a whole new chapter for me and again, very nice to have visits from these little characters who again do not give a damn about the protocol of a movie set, you know? They wanna shout and scream and run around in the middle of the take, they’re gonna do it, God damn it, you know, and I like that kind of, these little punks running around who just flat won’t take any instructions from anybody.
Part seven - Work and family balance
CB Something other than my work that I’m intensely absorbed in and I think, I feel myself that it’s really helped with the work to have just more responsibilities and duties outside of my work, you know, you can definitely overthink things when you have too much time. You know, again, like I was saying, every actor is very different, but I’m somebody who quite, I quite enjoy it when I turn up on set and the schedule says one thing but oh, actually we’re gonna be doing this other scene completely and it’s an enormous scene, and I don’t even know the lines or anything, and I usually like that very much, you know, being kind of thrown in with a slight sense of I’m not completely in control here as I’m going into the scene because you never are in life, you know, never know what people gonna say, so it, like I was saying about listening, you really gotta listen, ‘cause if you haven’t rehearsed those lines down and down and down and down and down again, then you gotta listen to what that person’s saying in order to know, right, what is my response at this point, and I usually prefer that and I think that with me, you know, choosing and loving to have my time absorbed with, you know, my wife and daughter, I’ve actually enjoyed, I think it’s helped me enjoy work even more.
Part eight - LA is home
CB Certainly, for me, LA has become the one place where I’ve lived in for the longest by far in my life. You know, even, I first came to LA when I was 17, you know, I got a job there, I wasn’t planning on staying, in fact I hated being there and left as soon as I wasn’t working. It just became clear that that was gonna be the place where I was working because nothing was going on in England at the time. And it grew on me, you know, gradually, gradually that, you know, became home. But, yeah, I mean, on and off, I’ve been there for, you know, coming on 17 years and I’m 33 so, yeah, it’s actually majority of my life. And in England, even though, you know, I mean, England’s always gonna be, you know, I’m always gonna be getting goosebumps when I hear the national anthem no matter how much I hate the fact that it’s talking about the Queen and I just can’t help it, you know, (what if) I see England play in soccer, you know, I know enough to adapt to when I’m talking with an American to call it soccer instead of football, you know what I mean, so I have this kind of slight Jekyll and Hyde thing of when I know I’m speaking with an Englishman absolutely bang him in the English terms and when I (was talking) with (an) American, I don’t wish to confuse them and so use all the American terms. So it is, yeah, I’m very much at home in either place but I would say that definitely in terms of permanent residence being somewhere America’s become my home for that, you know, even more so now that I’m a father as well, this is where I want her to be.
Part nine - Rooted vs. rootless
CB To me, I’ve never given a damn about where I lived, quite literally, I couldn’t care less where I lived, and I guess that just comes from moving around a lot as a child that this doesn’t make any difference to me. I know that I’ll find something that I like about anywhere and a massive change came over me when I became a father. I suddenly said I really want her to know that she has a base. She may not have to be there, you know, but with the nature of what I do and the fact that I really want and hope that my family will, you know, continue to come with me when I work, I don’t want her ever to feel at a loss, you know, or not having any kind of roots whatsoever. It was something that I actually came to thrive on and I enjoy, the fact that I don’t really look at any place as being my roots, at all, because I was never anywhere long enough, but that’s me personally. I find most people who’ve had that kind of situation, it’s not good for them. And I certainly do look with a lot of interest and intrigue and sometimes a little bit of envy at people who have that, who absolutely know, who say, no, my hometown is this and this is who I am, this is where I’m from. And as somebody who just doesn’t have that, as somebody who, (well) my entire life it’s been kind of just moving on and moving on somewhere else and changing and adapting to whatever, you know, situation I find myself in, I just felt no, I wanna have somewhere, a good solid base that she knows is there if she’s the kind of personality that needs that.
Part ten - Being a father
CB ... had no interest in. It’s a funny thing, I was talking to somebody just the other day, we were just talking through hypothetical situations and I realized, I said, you know, I have a set of principles and ethics that I live by and when it comes to my daughter, I throw ‘em out the window, it’s a whole different set of principles and ethics, you know, I will do things that I would not generally as a universal, you know, rule consider to be correct. But for my daughter, I don’t give a damn, you know? And I think that that’s probably a common experience with many parents and something that I certainly never understood until I actually had a child, myself.
Int. Can you give an example?
CB How far you will go just to make sure that your child is happy, you know?
Because obviously as an individual I know my limits and I can understand and
I can deal with a great deal and, you know, it’s, in many ways it’s
a bit similar to, you know, what we were talking about with Dan in “3:10
to Yuma”, you know, to me it’s one thing, ethics, principles are
a very different thing when you’re a single man because if you wish to
suffer or sacrifice things for yourself, go ahead, do it, you know? Lose everything,
be ostracized by people, be laughed out of the room, do it, and very much I
believe it’s a great example for a child to see a parent who has a great
belief in something but to push that belief onto a child I think is a terrible
thing to do and also to then have the question of well, am I just selfishly
doing these things because of my pride and is it gonna affect my child in an
adverse way? And am I gonna wake up one morning and realize I was doing that
for me, I wasn’t thinking about them first. And (I don’t ??? use
the word), I guess cutthroat, you know? I would be much more cutthroat in the
pursuit of getting what I want for my daughter than I ever would for myself,
you know?