Another month, another series of Gothamist Interviews, and the ones we’re doing for September are a great group starting today with a chat I had (just yesterday, in fact) with Liev Schreiber. target=”_blank”>Schreiber is one of today’s most talented actors working in both film and theater. His recent performance on Broadway as Ricky Roma in Glengarry Glen Ross, for which he won a Tony, was simply amazing, especially considering that throughout the run of the show, he was in post-production on his first effort as a feature film writer-director with the adaptation of Everything Is Illuminated.
The first thing one notices when speaking to Schreiber is how damned articulate he is. Sure, he’s an actor, and speaking is how he makes his living, but not all actors can present their ideas verbally as well as he does, at least in my brief experience with him. As I transcribed and edited the interview last night, I kept kicking myself for not asking this or that follow-up. For example, in response to one of our generic questions, Schreiber mentions how terrible his memory is. Well, duh! Might it not have been a good and obvious idea to ask, “Hmmm, how does that affect you as an actor?” And each time I read through it, I see at least two or three other moments like that.
But whatever — when one has only 30 minutes on the phone with somebody, it’s hard enough to keep everything organized and cover the topics you want while still retaining the freedom to take the conversation wherever it may go.
And what of the movie, which opens today? Well, as I mentioned in Gothamist’s Weekly Movie Guide yesterday, Everything Is Illuminated is a solid even accomplished first-time effort that will taste better, if you’ve read the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, if you do your best to forget the novel upon which it’s based. In fact, I didn’t know — and I’d assume a majority of people who read Foer’s book don’t know — that Schreiber started work on the script before there even was a published novel. Instead, his script was adaptated from a short story called “The Very Rigid Search” published in the New Yorker which Foer later expanded into the novel. I was particularly impressed, in fact, with Schreiber’s seeming recognition of his own limitations in adapting Foer’s story both as a writer and director, and his intelligent thoughts on the very idea of interrupting the relationship between reader and book by creating a filmed adaptation. Although people don’t watch movies with director’s notes nor should they have to, his comments do, in fact, clarify some things that aren’t so much questions the movie itself presents as much as concerns a viewer might have in trying to connect the film to the novel.
I was also struck by the fact that, while not ruling it out, Schreiber doesn’t seem to have a burning desire to direct again. He quite bluntly states that unless a particularly personal piece of material comes his way, he’s content exploring his creative and artistic tendencies through acting. That’s certainly refreshing to hear from an actor, and helps illuminate (yes, I know) one reason why he may have in fact been successful in this first effort: it wasn’t a vanity project for him. It was something that came his way about which he felt connected and passionate. It’s certainly refreshing to hear an actor speak in this way, and it’s also probably why this conversation joins a small group of my favorite interviews. Go check it out.
Out of Focus 