TOTAL FILM INTERVIEW
Edward Norton reflects on an epic career.
I’VE MADE FILMS THAT HAVE A REPUTATION AND A PLACE IN THE CULTURE THAT I’M VERY PROUD OF, BUT THEY NEVER GOT AWARDS OR AN AUDIENCE
Smart and uncompromising, Edward Norton has a career that has taken in modern cult classics, Oscar nominations and some much-publicised creative differences. But as he releases Motherless Brooklyn - his self-penned, self-directed noir - the zen New Yorker tells Total Film that something good comes out everything…
Edward Norton is famously known to not suffer fools gladly. His media profile over the years has been, by turns, one of a meddling actor locking directors out of the edit suite (American History X), a contrarian who couldn’t play nicely with Marvel (The Incredible Hulk) and a snob who refused to promote a film he’d been forced legally to make (The Italian Job). But as we all know, the clickbait headlines aren’t necessarily the whole story.
When Total Film meets the New Yorker in London’s Soho Hotel in July, we’re braced for possible spikiness, but find Norton a warm, twinkly eyed realist who proffers a crushing handshake and laughs freely while musing on his many career triumphs and tribulations. Dressed in an unremarkable denim shirt and navy slacks, his still-boyish features make him appear far younger than his 50 years and though he’s erudite and self-aware, his absent-minded pushing of the coffee table backwards and forwards between us with his feet suggests a certain nervous energy. It’s perhaps no surprise he’s feeling antsy – his latest film is directed and written by him (he also stars) and has taken 20 years to come to fruition.
The story of a ’50s gumshoe with Tourette’s syndrome who unveils the dark underbelly of New York corporate corruption the deeper he digs into investigating the murder of his mentor and father figure (played by Bruce Willis), Motherless Brooklyn is the culmination of all of Norton’s interests. The ugly history of the Big Apple; the learnings he’s taken from working with directors such as David Fincher (Fight Club), Spike Lee (25th Hour) and Alejandro Iñárritu (Birdman); his love of music (a soulful jazz soundtrack and a title song by Thom Yorke). Creatively, it’s Norton with full control, crafting a serious film with things to say. “The thing is, when dark things are going on…” he says, leaning forward, blue eyes intent. “Spike used to talk about this, actually. If you’re going to make a big movie, you have to say, ‘We’re making a big movie. We’re going for it. We’re treating it with grown-up seriousness. We’re not baulking at it. We’re not going to be ironic about it.’”
Since he began noodling with the project back in 1999, the subject matter (one-percenter NY billionaires steamrolling poor neighbourhoods, racism, whistle-blowers) has become even more pertinent and resonant. It could mean another awards campaign for Norton (he was Oscar-nominated for his chilling debut as a choir boy accused of murder in 1996’s Primal Fear, his terrifying Nazi skinhead in 1998’s American History X and again for his portrayal of a difficult actor in 2014’s Birdman). Though he admits to being cynical about such things, the mellow multi-tasker also says with a knowing shrug, “But I think that you have to be a good sport about it.” Meet, Mr. Norton – the good sport…
Why did it take so long to fix on your next directing project, after making
back in 2000?
Keeping The Faith
The interim wasn’t intentional. I read the book around the time that we were making Fight Club, I told the writer of the book [Jonathan Lethem] that I thought there were some challenges because the plot was very meta. It was guys pretend-acting like ’50s gumshoes in modern New York. I said to him, “I think, in a film, that would feel very ironic and wink-wink-y.” And he agreed. So I proposed to him the idea that maybe it would be set in the ’50s, so that it could just be played a lot straighter, which he liked. But I needed to think about that. I told him, “I’m not going to work on this for a few years.”
So what brought you back to it?
I started getting this tickle of an idea that [lead character] Lionel would be a great vehicle that could hold your focus, your sympathy, your interest in taking you through a murky mystery plot. By the time I wrote it, Obama was winning his second term. And I sort of had this feeling for a moment of like, “Wow, maybe… We have a black community organiser as president. Maybe racism and authoritarianism are really in the rear-view mirror.” [laughs] From about 2012, I was actually actively trying to make it. And it took about five years of perseverance: trying to find the money, and to get a studio to back it. And I had a kid [Atlas, born in 2013]. Life comes in, and then, weirdly, lo and behold, right around the time we pulled it together, all of the things in the rear-view mirror came right up into the front again. It just felt like this is the right time to do it.
It certainly does feel timely, despite the ’50s setting...
It deals with huge corruptions and machinations that were very antiAmerica, anti-democratic and racist... that really, in a way, are the dirty history of New York.
It’s been a big chunk of your life, thinking about and making this film...
You know, when I was a lot younger, I used to look at directors I love, like Miloš Forman, and wonder, ‘Why does he spend so much time between films?’ But I understand it more now. I remember talking to Alejandro Iñárritu about it.
Alejandro used to say he couldn’t do one more than about every five or six years. And when he did The Revenant so quickly after Birdman, he said it almost killed him. He said it was just too consuming.
Is that how it should be, do you think, in order to do it right? It should be your everything?
It is, it is. And by the way, I was lucky in many ways. I was making the movie at home. I wasn’t in South Africa making my dream project. I was at home, making it about my town, my city.
corruptions and machinations are the dirty history of new york
It must be especially tough to direct and star – why did you want to play Lionel?
Although I had changed much of the book, what I did not change was that the essential emotional core is Lionel. The genius of the book is that from square one, you’re inside his head with him. He says, “This is going to be a slightly different gumshoe story than the ones you’re used to. But I’m going to tell you this story on the move, and this is what happened...” He also says, “Here I am. I’m a person with feelings, and a voice, and you can know me... I am telling you I’m messed up in a really weird way.” That’s very compelling.
It’s crucial that Lionel’s Tourette’s is sympathetically realised, yes?
You read the book, and you’re on his side. You have empathy. I love that device. I hope that works in the film, too.
This is an amazing cast: Alec Baldwin, Bruce Willis and Willem Dafoe…
Willem did this for me. He was very busy. He had The Florida Project and all the Oscar shit coming up. And he goes, “You know what? Fuck all that. That’s just noise. As a New Yorker, I want to do this.” He came in, and we scheduled him very tight. I felt, as an emotional mechanism, the plot is secondary, and you’re not going to follow all of it. That’s the way these films work. Hopefully, at the end, you take away an essential sense of the magnitude of what has shaped something in a dark way.
There are parallels to be drawn between New York real-estate billionaire Moses Randolph and Trump…
I think that’s because of the nature of what’s rising around us. But I definitely wrote it five years before any of that was transpiring, so it really wasn’t intentional. I think the insights in it, and the characterisations... I wanted it to be resonant. And it’s a little bit disconcerting that these things are such big factors again now. But, you know, in his dreams, Trump is as brilliant as that character. Trump is more of a populist authoritarian clown, whereas the character that we have is portrayed as almost a once-in-ageneration genius, more of a Darth Vader figure behind the scenes, doing things that people don’t even understand. It’s more in the general sense that noir, when it’s really good and actually playing its healthy role, it’s about saying, “Hey, we say these things about ourselves, but when we peel the corner back, there’s a lot going on underneath that should give us pause.”
Do you think it will take you this long to direct again?
I’ll be too old to have the strength to do it again! I think the people in my life might say they need me to take five years off
before doing it again. But, no. I suspect I’ll shorten the duration this time. In part because the experience of completely constructing a movie on your own is compelling. It’s fun. When someone like Alejandro rings up with something like Birdman, there’s no way I’m not going to do it. It’s when something is as creatively compelling, with someone who’s as brilliant as he is. But I’m very content with the way I’m making things.
You mentioned awards-season buzz, with regards to Willem. Are awards important? Do you play the game?
It’s like chasing a ghost to try to play into those things. No matter what anybody says, the pre-chatter of all that is clickbait. But having been in the Guild for a long time, and having been lucky enough to be a voter and everything – one thing I like about it all is, for all the sort of repetitive and somewhat silly noise of all these different organisations, the Academy, at the end of the day, is about 6,000 people who’ve actually made films. So to be nominated – that’s always a great compliment. The rest is sort of a certain kind of jockeying by studios – you can’t take it too seriously. And I think one can get a little cynical about the proliferation of these things. It’s like, people who win the Nobel Prize get it once in a career. Our industry has let these things metastasise through critics’ awards, and all these things, into the same films being celebrated like a dozen times a year. It’s somewhat grotesque.
THE EXPERIENCE OF CONSTRUCTING A MOVIE ON YOUR OWN IS COMPELLING
But it does help to shine a spotlight on smaller films and get them before a larger audience…
It can. Look at Birdman. It’s arguably a very challenging film for a lot of people. And there’s no question that [awards buzz] helped elevate that film, and more people came to it. So that’s a very beautiful thing. But I also think that having made many films that have a reputation and a place in the culture that I’m very proud of – or they’re exactly what you set out to do – but never got anywhere near that kind of stuff. Fight Club was booed at the Venice Film Festival, and it didn’t do well at the box office. And I would hardly say that we didn’t achieve what we wanted to achieve with that film. In many ways, of the films of the late ’90s, it’s probably one of the signature ones. 25th Hour is a film that I think is one of Spike Lee’s very, very best films – as a lifetime fan of his, 25th Hour was a masterpiece. But… [shrugs] Biutiful, Rust And Bone, Un Prophète… you can’t put too much stock in it when some of the very, very best work out there isn’t [recognised]. I remember the whole cast of [The] Grand Budapest [Hotel] sitting around, while making that film, talking about Biutiful, and all of us just in awe of it. You kind of say to yourself, “How does something like that fail to be seen?”
Let’s talk about Fight Club – not a hit, but now a certified classic. Were you confident it would find an audience?
We were happy with it – very. I remember, when it was booed at the Venice Film Festival, Brad [Pitt] turned to me in the dark, and he goes, “That’s one of the best movies we’re ever going to be in.” I said, “I know it.” But at the same time, to say “we knew” – you don’t. [Director David] Fincher was very stung by it – I think more than he would admit. He knew he’d made something at a level that very few people can pull off as a filmmaker and it was getting smacked around. It took time for it to leak back to us, like, “Wait a second, people are writing their PhD dissertations about this film?” But there’s something in that too that’s very armouring.
American History X had a similar story…
American History X was a little bit like that. I got nominated for it, but the film made more money in France than it made in the United States. We didn’t care, because we knew it was tough. You put a little less stock in the metric of the immediate success of something. And I think it’s gratifying. I think a lot of people would say, in 1999, that Fight Club and The Matrix and Election and Magnolia and Three Kings and Being John Malkovich – that was all that year. And a lot of times, I’ll say to people, “What won Best Picture [from] that year?” And they really have no fucking idea.
We have no idea!
It was none of those movies. American Beauty. So, you have to take a long view.
Speaking of American History X – talk us through the process of getting into the physical and mental space of a neo-Nazi…
I thought that the physicality could be an access point. It was very important. It
changes the way you move. It changes the way you feel about yourself. It’s a tool. But even putting on all the ink, it’s a very psychologically powerful thing. You feel tribal in it. And shaving your head. All of these things are part of a psychic trick to put yourself into the headspace of a thing. We made that film very fast and very focused.
You obviously became instrumental in the editing of that film. Was that when you first started to get this idea that you wanted to – and could – direct?
Somewhat. Mike De Luca, who ran New Line at some point, just said, “Why don’t you just direct it?” It wasn’t that I didn’t think I could. It was that I wanted to stay focused. I wanted to really live in the character, and that kind of thing. And [director] Tony Kaye was a very unique kind of personality. He and I got along very, very well – for all of the later stuff between him and the studio. We were very bonded, making that. I helped him, and he helped me. He was actually always very positive towards me, and very grateful. You know, watching things get reduced to copy is always a fascinating thing, because you’re like, “This is not what’s going on.” In the middle of all that, he cried one time, and hugged me and thanked me for the way I’d supported him through this process. But people create antagonisms where they don’t exist. Tony struggled a lot with letting it go, and then he got into a little bit of a performance-art kind of struggle with the studio. But I’ve even heard him say that he’s quite proud of it. I treasure that whole experience. I think it was really, really amazing.
You made Rounders after that – and there’s always talk of a sequel. Is that something you’d be up for?
Yeah, absolutely. But to me, distance is good. The Color Of Money, as a sequel to The Hustler, is beautiful for its distance. It’s an underrated film. It’s really quite a beautiful film about ageing. I love it. Where’s [my character] Worm now? He’s totally still alive. You can’t kill Worm. I’m sure he was involved, somehow, in the credit default swap scandals… If it’s a scandal, I’m sure he was in the middle of it. But it’s really down to [screenwriters] Brian [Koppelman] and David [Levien]. There’s rights issues, too – it’s boring but I think Matt [Damon] and Brian and David… If they came up with the right idea, I think they would want to do it. But it’s a bit of a mirage.
You mentioned 25th Hour earlier. What are your memories of making that film?
Spike works in a way that I profoundly admire. We made that movie in less days than any film I’ve ever made. We made that film in 27 days, which is staggering. It was five or six weeks of rehearsal, like a play, from nine to five, every single day, with a lunch break, and then a movie screening in the night, for Spike to talk about inspiration and other things. It was the kind of serious creative focus and a level of preparation that was communicated well to the total crew and ensemble. Phil Hoffman and I had both come up on Spike’s stuff. We revered him. He’s everything you hoped and dreamed. When I was making Motherless Brooklyn I had times I would think, “What would Spike do?”
The Italian Job and The Incredible Hulk were not such great experiences for you... Are projects like that something you regret, or do they now inform your choices?
I did Red Dragon with a great cast, and that was a stab at doing a big commercial film. I did The Score in that period, because Marlon [Brando] and Bob [De Niro] were doing it. I’ve done lots of things because I was interested in the genre, or because of the people who were involved. The Italian Job is a lark, in a way. It was a film I had to do to fulfil a contractual obligation, but I became friends with – and I’m still friends with – Jason Statham and Mos Def. So, you know, something good comes out of everything. And it’s not like, you know, these are people getting in boats to flee war-torn countries. Making a movie that wasn’t your choice is not the worst problem in the world. [laughs] I definitely don’t regret them. And Hulk? The Hulk was… I felt sad that what [director] Louis [Leterrier] and I set out to do, in terms of taking more of a Chris Nolan approach to making something that was a little more dark and serious, they ended up sort of neutering. I wanted to make a big CGI movie and learn and see stuff. I grew upon the Hulk, I loved it. And actually people really liked the movie. You know, kids love the movie. It’s another one of those things: the amount of noise that people whip up around it. It’s so silly. I couldn’t be more happy to have been part of that whole tradition. Mark Ruffalo is one of my oldest and closest New York colleagues. He’s one of my best pals in the business. I love him. And what Marvel have gone and done is unbelievable. But
I’M OPEN TO DOING EVERYTHING. I MEAN, I DID THE STORYBOTS
the script I wrote for them had a twopart almost Batman [Begins]/Dark Knight kind of vision. When it was like, “OK, that’s not what you guys are into doing?” To me, it just becomes a pure thing of time and life. You can’t do everything, and I wouldn’t have made Birdman and Grand Budapest, and I definitely wouldn’t have made this film if that [franchise] was filling up my time. It’s silly to manufacture negativity when it isn’t there. You know, I loved being a part of it, and I think [Marvel] achieved everything they wanted to achieve. So God bless.
Would you be interested in returning to Marvel now? Maybe as a baddie?
[laughs] Maybe I’ll write my own. I don’t know, I’m open to everything. I mean, I did the StoryBots on Netflix.
Your character in Birdman plays on that idea of the difficult actor. Was that fun?
I read that script at two in the morning, literally on the night my son was born. Everyone was asleep. Alejandro had sent it to me and said, “Can we have coffee in the morning?” I was like, “Of all the mornings…?! What?!” He was, “Cabrón, I’m leaving in the morning. We’ve got to talk. You always told me you’re in.” I was like, “I’m in, I’m in.”
But he’s like, “No, but we’ve got to talk. You’ve got to read it.” I’m like, “Alejandro, not tonight.” So then everyone goes to sleep. I read it at two in the morning. I’m howling with laughter. I’m like, “Goddamnit, I have to do it.”
It was, without a doubt, one of my favourite creative experiences on a film, full stop. It was one of the most joyful, most exuberant, risk-taking... I mean, just to be in the presence of him and Chivo [cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki] as they were choreographing that. If you’re an actor and you love Withnail & I or The Dresser or any of the great films about actors and their craziness – it was like, we’re making one of those things, where we’re getting to say things like, “Previews are for people who are dumb enough to watch us rehearse.” [laughs] I love it. It was so much fun – a pure joy.
Was fun also the driving force behind doing the cameo in Alita? Comparisons were being made between Nova, your character, and James Cameron…
[laughs] I am friends with Jim, and actually enormously admire and kind of adore him. He’s a character, a figure who is very misunderstood by a lot of people. He’s one of the boldest, most contrarian, determined people. When I had an issue on Motherless Brooklyn, he was one of the first people I showed it to. He was hugely supportive and I could never have figured out something without puzzling it out with someone like him. So when he wanted me to do something in Avatar 2, I basically told him, “If I’m not a Na’vi, I’m not doing it. I’m not being part of the cunty industrial world, coming in to destroy Pandora. I’m either a Na’vi or nothing.” He was like, “OK, maybe in 3, 4 or 5, then.” In the meantime, he asked, “Well, do you know Robert [Rodriguez]?” I was like, “Whatever. Let’s do something. I want to do something with him.”
Final question: it’s the Oscars, you’ve died. What do you hope they pick for In Memorium, to represent your career?
Well, obviously Death To Smoochy. In the rhino suit, when I hold up the cookie shaped as a cock. I think that’s perfect.
That’s going to sum up your career.
[laughs] Yeah.
Motherless Brooklyn opens on 6 deceMBer.