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Amy Irving Interview
IGN FILMFORCE: In accepting a role like you did in Traffic, how would you compare your decision making process in regards to going out for a role now, as opposed to when you first started out in the business? AMY IRVING: Well, when my career first began, I didn't have children so there's a whole lot of difference in the way I choose roles now. Not just films for my children, but how long I'm going to be away, and is Dad going to be home while I'm gone. That sort-of factor plays a part. As far as Traffic went, it was Steven Soderbergh. There really wasn't much to think about on that level. He's just a great director. And then the script was so smart and so wonderful and so... important. The role itself was something that I'm living not to the extent that Barbara Wakefield lives it, but all mothers parents are living with what this film dishes out. It's all out there, and there are these gigantic businessmen wars going on, and they're targeting our children. It's not something that you can ignore it's something that you have to pay attention to very clearly, and that's what I'm doing... Paying attention. IGNFF: How would you compare the choices you would make yourself, as a parent, to the choices that Barbara Wakefield makes in Traffic? IRVING: I have to keep saying to the fathers of my boys that I am NOT Barbara Wakefield. Please do not mix me up with her, because the problem with Barbara, and with what a lot of people who lived through the '60s are doing, is they're relating their own experiences with what's going on with our children today. It's not the same. It's not the recreational days of experimentation. The drugs today are stronger, and they are there to cause addiction. It's no longer a "new" thing, and in order to keep those cartels busy, they need addicted children just like the cigarette companies used to advertise to target the 12 year-olds so they would have addicts for life... That's what the drug world is about. So there's a blanket that you have to put over the kids, somehow. You think, "Oh, let them experiment. Let them make their mistakes," and they'll have their little marijuana or whatever, but it's different. In seventh grade, there are 13 year-olds selling clove cigarettes to the school kids because they can't get cigarettes over-the-counter but they lace these clove cigarettes with drugs so that they'll addict you without you even knowing that you're doing drugs! The clove aspect makes it so that you have no idea of the flavors that are going in, and BANG, they got one. IGNFF: Was there anything from your personal experience that you brought to the role? IRVING: Oh yeah. A lot. As a mother in the film, I've got the nightmare of waking up and having your home ransacked by your child. If you put into your own life the depth of pain that that would inflict it's something that I can only imagine, because, luckily, my kids have not gone off the deep end yet, but I do have a lot of friends who have had experiences. Very close friends. I actually have one experience where a friend's daughter's school called her and said, "Your daughter's best friend has just been kicked out of school for heroin addiction and she's in rehab, and word is that your daughter is on it, too." The first thing she said was, "My daughter's a straight-A student. She's not on drugs." She said this to me just after I read the script, and I'm thinking, "That's just like a line right out of this film." She was in denial, denial, denial, but I actually took her to the film, and I said, "Does that sound like somebody that you know?" And it made her question it it made her pay attention. There was another experience with another very close friend of mine whose daughter ended up in jail for a night not drug-related, but got involved with a felon by accident and she said to me that when she went to the prison to pick up her daughter the next day if her daughter was crying, she knew she had a chance to communicate with her and guide her, still. But if she was cold and she wasn't emotional, then she felt like she'd lost her. So when my character went to the prison, I had all of that to go with. IGNFF: As far as personal experiences in the experiences you've had, do you encounter the lassaiz-faire "Wakefield" attitude more often than a realistic approach to the drug problem? IRVING: You see it all. Not everybody I know was a product of the '60s, but I do see it. There was a time that I might have thought that way myself, but knowing how harmful the drugs are and the basic common sense of the idea of drugs when kids are in school learning it's a ridiculous thing to be doing. "Let's learn something and then take something that will kill our brain cells so we forget it." It's just common sense to know that this is not the direction that you want your kids to go. IGNFF: There are multiple facets to the character when you read the script, did you get a sense that no matter where Barbara Wakefield turned, any action she decided to make was going to be hypocritical to some component of her past experience or personality? IRVING: You know, nobody knows how to deal with it. You talk to all these mothers in these various situations, and there are no answers. Nobody knows what to do. It's just such a gray area, still. I think in the end of the film when they end up in rehab together and that the family is broken up because of it they're one of the lucky ones. But you can see how all the blame and the guilt and all the various complexities that come out of a situation like that can tear a family apart. It was interesting that Steven showed the tension between the parents and what could happen. In the car scene, you see them starting to fall apart and then the fact that he comes back and says, "I was out of line" you can see how easily a family can dissolve in a situation like this, or they can come together. It's the ones that come together that will give that child a chance of survival. IGNFF: Exemplified by that coda at the end of the film, with the entire family in the counseling session... IRVING: Yeah. IGNFF: At what point in the process did you sign up for the film? IRVING: I guess Steven was still scouting locations in Mexico, and I just got sent a script and an invitation to be in the film. I'd never met Steven before I didn't meet him until I showed up in Ohio to shoot. We spoke on the phone once and that was it. IGNFF: Was Michael Douglas already attached? IRVING: Yes. IGNFF: How would you describe working with Steven [Soderbergh]? IRVING: Magic. Steven creates an atmosphere on the set of such calm he gives you so much confidence and belief in what you're doing... He sends you in front of that camera with total freedom. He loves to shoot accidents. Whatever happens... change the lines... Whatever comes out of you. At the same time, instead of being behind the camera watching a monitor his eye right there. There you are in close-up to him, because he's shooting the film. It's almost as if he and that camera are going right into your soul and you can give nothing but the truth. I think that's why you see so much truth in Traffic. IGNFF: How would you compare that to other experiences you've had? What's the type of director you don't like to work with? IRVING: I'd rather not say... (laughs) My mom told me not to do that... IGNFF: Not naming names... Just the type of direction... IRVING: I'm not very good when people work out of friction... tension. Shouters. Even it's not at me, but just around me if I get tense, my creative juices don't flow as freely. I really like kindness. I also don't work well with directors that smoke cigars. Michael Douglas and Amy Irving in Traffic. IGNFF: If you were to pick one scene in Traffic either from an emotional or technical standpoint that was the most difficult to do, which would it be? IRVING: I don't really think of any of it as being difficult. I found it all painful, though. I think the day that Barbara woke up in the morning after her daughter had ransacked the house preparing for that, I almost wanted to wait until the very last minute just because I didn't want to go there, because you have to really draw on "Can I imagine waking up and Max has stolen all of our electronic equipment so he can go buy drugs?" As a mother, it's hard for me to go there. I just don't want to experience that. IGNFF: Is there anything that you brought home, in a sense, after doing the film? IRVING: Unfortunately for my children, yes. I mean, I'm militant. I was pretty strict and outspoken about my feelings about them experimenting with drugs at all, but there's a cup by the door that they have to piss into when the come home (laughs). IGNFF: But how do you be strict without alienating the kids or forcing them into a position where they do drugs just to spite? IRVING: What I figure is that you have to be so adamantly against it that if they go off and they taste marijuana and they feel like they're getting away with something, that's great. If you're like, "Well, I'm okay with marijuana..." then they taste it and go, "Well, I didn't do something behind their backs, so I've got to do something stronger." IGNFF: So they figure, "Hey, if mom and dad are okay with that, I'll do something stronger..." IRVING: Exactly. So I'm not okay with anything. I'm smart enough to know that they're going to try something – but I send them out into the world with good values, and they both have really good heads on their shoulders. I just hope for the best. IGNFF: Do you find that the dialogue with your kids has increased? IRVING: Yes. We talk all the time about it. I think that in the Wakefield family, there wasn't a lot of dialogue – the father was kind-of clueless about his kid and the mother was relaxed about it. I think the most important thing for both parents is to pay attention. I think that you have to let their wings go and you have to give them some trust, but you have to pay attention. IGNFF: The Wakefields definitely seemed to have closed their eyes to the outside world. IRVING: Yes. Luckily, there are films like Traffic to wake parents up. IGNFF: If you look at the impact of Traffic and the kind of feedback that you've gotten since it came out, what do you think has been the greatest impact of the film? IRVING: I think that a lot of people go through life thinking that "this could never happen to my kid", and I think that when you see an upper-middle class family in Ohio affected to the extent that it's affected it's an eye-opener to say, "Maybe I can't be in denial about this." I think it just raises people's consciousness about the possibilities of what our children could be up to -and they have to pay attention. IGNFF: And possibly present... I hesitate to say "solutions"... IRVING: Who's got solutions? If we had solutions, we'd all be using them. IGNFF: I guess the best phrase would be "possible courses of action"... IRVING: Well, yeah if they need rehab, you go into rehab. But sometimes it's not that delineated. It's still challenging to figure out "What's the best thing to do?" IGNFF: But the starting point would be to talk about it... IRVING: Absolutely talk about it. I took my 15 year-old to see the film he was my date for the premiere in New York and I think it really shook him up. He thought it was an awesome film so he wasn't feeling that he had to be there for an educational experience he was totally caught up and intrigued by it. At the same time, it doesn't paint a pretty picture. I think it's responsible in that way, in that it just say, "If you go that route, look at how ugly your life can become." It's scary. IGNFF: From your son's point of view, did it prompt him to want to speak with you? IRVING: I think he talked to his friends about it. He's got friends who do them... There's a lot of experimenting that goes on in the high schools. I know he told people to see it. Normally he doesn't want anyone to see his mother acting it's very embarrassing that his mother is in films. I ruin everything that I'm in, for him. But this one he didn't feel that way. IGNFF: Is it perhaps because it hit closer to home, or because it was more realistic? IRVING: It was because it was more realistic, and it was because it wasn't a film he had to see because his mom was in it it was a film he would have wanted to see anyway. IGNFF: And it's a film that hits close to home, no matter who you are... IRVING: Yes. It may not be what his world is about, but he certainly sees it. IGNFF: So, when all is said and done, Traffic was a positive experience for you... IRVING: Totally. IGNFF: And it goes without saying that you would work with Steven Soderbergh again... IRVING: Yes it does. (laughs) I just hope I stay on his wish list. IGNFF: So what is next up on the plate for you? IRVING: I did a film called 13 Conversations About One Thing here in New York with Matthew McConaughey, John Turturro, and Alan Arkin. It's a beautiful story of love and loneliness in New York. I'm off to shoot a film of the book Tuck Everlasting, which is a children's book that Disney's shooting with Sissy Spacek, Bill Hurt, and Ben Kingsley. Right now, I'm also shooting Law & Order: Special Victims Unit with my friend Mariska Hargitay. I haven't done episodic television in a long time, and I'm really enjoying it. It's been awhile. Right now, because my husband's making a film, I've only been taking work in New York, so I went for anything that came up in New York. IGNFF: That's certainly an easy way to choose parts... IRVING: There were a lot of things offered in New York, but these are the ones I took. IGNFF: Are you content with where your career is right now, or do you have greater aspirations? IRVING: Actually, I've been very busy lately, and busy enough as I said because I have to stay home and pay attention to these kids! (laughs) You think when they're really young is when you have to be home, but now is when you've got to be home. I like exactly what is happening right now. I'm doing a little bit more, now, because my husband's home editing so he can keep an eye on them. I'm going to go do this film in Baltimore, and then I'm going to go to London to do "The Vagina Monologues," and I've optioned a play that I want to do but that's in New York. IGNFF: I hesitate to call it a resurgence, but you're certainly out there a bit more than you have been in the recent past... IRVING: It feels good to have a little bit of energy back in my career. It feels nice. |
