Willem Dafoe, nice guy? Yep, in ‘Florida Project’
Some actors excel at playing creepy bad guys.
“Like me sometimes,” Willem Dafoe says with a laugh. True enough, if you’ve seen certain “Spider-Man” movies, or (sort of) “Shadow of the Vampire” or any number of other films. “Intense” is a word you could use to describe Dafoe.
Which his why “The Florida Project” is so different. In Sean Baker’s brilliant film about life on the margins in a motel near Disney World, Dafoe plays Bobby, the kind-hearted manager who tries to look out for the people living there.
Dafoe, 62, talked recently about the role and the film.
Question: “The Florida Project” is a terrific movie. Could you tell it was something special when you were shooting it?Answer:
Well, yes, but there are too many variables. You have no assurances it’ll be handled properly or that it’ll reach people at the right time or that it’ll resonate with people. There have been movies where I’ve been very engaged and I felt like we were making something beautiful and it never really reached an audience. Or it reached an audience but it didn’t really respond. So you never know for sure. But definitely this one felt special. It felt special from the beginning, just in terms of the kind of filmmaking and the subject material.
Q: Your character in this is so humane, the real moral center of the film.
A: Yeah, now that probably is a surprise, because I just play scenes. You don’t go into something judging or knowing necessarily how the guy is going to function in the landscape. You just sort of see what the world is and you try to function in that world in a truthful way. In this case that kind of sneaks up on me, when people say that. I saw the movie. Yeah, I understand that. But that wasn’t an agenda when I was doing it, you know? I didn’t know how I was positioned in the relationship to other things. I just knew that character was a bridge, kind of structurally, to hold things together. Q: A lot of actors say, good guy or bad guy, they don’t judge their characters. They just play them.
A: Yeah, I’ve said that. I say that and I believe it. You don’t judge them. I don’t say, oh this guy has to really be a compassionate person. You play the scenes, because the scenes are what make sense to you when you’re playing them. You play the events. You let something happen. I think if you get too far ahead of yourself and know how things function, then you rule out a certain kind of chemistry that’s organic. You don’t let stuff happen. You have to let stuff happen, because that’s what gives anything life . ...
Now, you have a structure, you have a beautiful script. But you don’t know, because it’s always transformed in the filmmaking, particularly in this case. It was a very strong script, but there was also some room for improvisation, and also Sean is very good at inviting things to happen, accidents. He often embraces problems as assets, and turns them into a texture in the movie.
Q: He really has a knack, in this film, or “Tangerine” or “Starlet,” for bringing you into a world that may not seem inviting, but he makes it so.
A: I think that’s true. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to work with him. That’s his gift. He’s a very kind, thoughtful guy, and I agree that sometimes the most interesting stories come from people that are marginalized or sometimes don’t get to tell their stories. He’s attracted to those kind of stories, but he also doesn’t wear them on his sleeve.
Q: Bobby is one of those characters that just kind of gets up every day and does his job, and there is a kind of nobility in that.
A: I think what always moves me in movies is not always the big dramatic scenes. It’s the little tiny things that people do, and the kind of determination that people try to find meaning in their lives and reach out to people to help them – in very little ways. That’s sort of Bobby’s job. He’s got to make sure things go smooth. It’s almost like he has a deep understanding that his happiness is contingent on their happiness, and their happiness is contingent on his. He understands something deep about interconnectedness. That’s something he knows instinctively. He’s not a New Age guy. He doesn’t even strike me as a religious guy. But he’s a guy who wants to do his part to make things better. I think that moves us, because that impulse, the human impulse, is not a story that we tell very often.
Q: You worked with a lot of non-actors and children in this. Do you have to do anything different for that?
A: I just try to fit in (laughs). No, every time you do something, your job changes. And I say it a lot, but I think it’s true, you can never say it enough, because one of the beautiful things about performing is you don’t haul out your bag of tricks. You really want to leave your bag of tricks behind and kind of reinvent your process each time. Or at least I do. There’s pleasure in that. There’s more possibility to stay engaged, more possibility to learn something, have fun (laughs).