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Daryl Hannah Interview - from Underground Online
Dan Epstein: Hi, how you are doing? Daryl Hannah: Good, thanks. DE: What made you want to be in Cowboy Up? DH: It's always a combination of things. It was that I got to ride a horse in a film, which I've never done in a film, and I've been a horseback rider since I was three. I was real excited to do it. Also, because [the director] Xavier Koller is an Academy Award nominated director, and it was a really good story. It's a Cain and Abel story. DE: You worked with Kiefer Sutherland before [on The Last Days of Frankie the Fly, released in 1997], so it must be nice to work with him again. DH: Yeah. DE: What is he like to work with? DH: He's a very passionate actor. Very professional and committed. He takes his job seriously; that's important. A lot of people who are just acting because they want some attention, and they don't really care about the job. DE: Did you go to bull riding shows for research? DH: I've been to rodeos before, because I've been a rider and I used to do a lot of cutting [rodeo competitions]. Occasionally, I've done racing as well. DE: Were you scared of the bulls on set? DH: I'm always terrified of bulls. I was at one point going to do a documentary on the rodeo world, so I shot a lot of bull riders. They are just crazy and insane. You really get a sense of how powerful bulls are, and how insane it is to get up on one and ride it, y'know [laughs]? DE: Why is Cowboy Up going straight to video? DH: It has some kind of screwy history. I think the production company that financed it went out of business just as they were finishing editing it. Then, somehow, it got picked up and saved by Sony. They saw it, and thought it was a good movie. At least it's getting out on video rather than just being shelved. DE: Some actors don't seem to mind what happens to a film once they're finished. DH: Particularly for this film, I would like it to have some kind of acceptance, y'know? It would have been much nicer had it got a theatrical release, because more people would see it, and it would have a longer life. Unless I am the one responsible for making the film ,I kind of don't really follow that aspect of the process. It's just too much [laughs]. I can't be working with the kind of schedule I am working and know what's going on with the movie business, y'know? DE: I saw the episode of Dinner for Five [Independent Film Channel show with Jon Favreau] you were on with Marilyn Manson and Andy Dick. Someone cancelled. Who was it? DH: It was actually quite tragic, because Ted Demme had just had his heart attack and Michael Rappaport was playing basketball with him. DE: What was that like having dinner with Marilyn Manson and Andy Dick? DH: It was really funny. DE: Anything happen that we didn't see on camera? DH: I can't tell you about that [laughs]. I'm not at liberty to say. DE: Have you started shooting Kill Bill? [The new Quentin Tarantino movie starring Uma Thurman] DH: No, but I've been in training for a couple of months. I leave on Friday to go shoot a movie with John Sayles first in Mexico called Casa de Los Babys. Then, from there, I go to China to start on Kill Bill. John Sayles, nice! DE: Did Quentin sit you down and make you watch a lot of movies? DH: Oh, yeah. How did you know that? DE: That's just what he does. What did he make you watch? DH: Well, our movie has a lot of martial arts in it, so we watched a lot of kung fu movies, samurai films. I think we watched, like, 70 films. It was a lot. DE: Obviously, working with Quentin is the big draw for doing that. DH: I love the part, the script, the cast, everything. You can't really go wrong. DE: I don't think you've ever done an action movie like that. DH: Other than Blade Runner, which is ridiculous, because I'm so athletic. It seems like a natural thing. DE: Well, since you brought up Blade Runner. DH: OK [laughs]. DE: Tell me a good Blade Runner story. DH: Well, the most memorable thing for me about Blade Runner is that I would go to work every day, and I would have to fight to get on the set, because no one recognized me. They would say, "This is a closed set, ma'am." But as soon as I got my makeup on, people would say, "Good morning Daryl." Even on the set, people didn't know me unless I was in character, because I looked so different in the film. That punk rock wig. I was very young when I made that movie, it was just paradise for me. DE: It was a different kind of movie, even then. Did anyone think it would have that long of a life? DH: No, god no. Especially when it came out. It didn't have the kind of box office success that would warrant a long life. DE: I was reading about Strip Notes. What is it, exactly? DH: It's a documentary I shot about the making of Dancing at the Blue Iguana [released in 2000]. I directed, shot and edited it. I shot it during Iguana and afterwards. I'm still friends with a lot of the strippers from Dancing at the Blue Iguana. The girl who taught me how to dance, I ended up hiring her to help me with the documentary, because I needed somebody to operate the sound equipment while I was shooting, and vice versa. She's been staying with me for about six months; she had a baby and stopped dancing. Also Strip Notes just aired on Channel 4 in London DE: A lot of actors will do nudity early in their career, and then stop later on. You took the opposite route. DH: [laughs] Basically, I kind of avoided it most of my career, and occasionally it came down to whether or not I wanted the part. Sometimes, I would opt not to, and other times, I would bite the bullet and do the minimum amount. It's nothing that I was ever comfortable with, and it's nothing I would ever choose to do. But on the other hand, in Blue Iguana, the story demanded a certain amount of it. So that made sense. DE: You seem to be doing more interesting and more daring stuff now than you ever did. DH: Well, I am lucky that I don't have an agent. I only have a manager. When I had an agent and I was making films that had huge budgets and were big grossing films, your agents will manipulate the hell out of you. They won't tell you about certain films because they know they will be artistic and not big blockbusters. They will encourage you to do things that are good deals for them, but not necessarily creative decisions for you. It can become quite a nightmare. So I'm just lucky right now, because I'm not in that cycle, so I'm getting to do a lot more interesting things. DE: Now that you are picking things that way, are more interesting things coming to you? DH: Well, they are just coming to me. I'm not sure how. I'm not soliciting them or going out on meetings, which is great. DE: Your short film, The Last Supper, won a few awards. Do you plan on directing a feature anytime soon? DH: I am. I'm hoping to start shooting it at the beginning of next year. I'm still writing it. DE: Will you star in the movie you direct? DH: God, no. DE: What's it about? DH: I can't tell you. I'm too superstitious. DE: They love you over in England. What was it like reviving the role made famous by Marilyn Monroe in The Seven-Year Itch on stage in London? DH: It was a play before she did it in the movies. It was so much fun; it's a really interesting thing to do theater. I had never done it before. I was terrified, so I decided that it was now or never to do live theatre. I had to conquer it. I went for it, and I really loved it. That play was also directed by Michael Radford, who directed Dancing at the Blue Iguana. That play was a really good one to do it with. It's a fun and light play. So I got to really have fun with it and I didn't have to torment myself with it. The tone of the material often dictates the tone of how you are feeling when you are doing it, y'know. The bubbliness of that material was fun. DE: Dancing at the Blue Iguana was all improvised. DH: We not only improvised our dialogue, but we also improvised our own storylines and costumes. It was great. DE: So did you get mad at Michael Radford when you were doing the play because you have to stick to the script? DH: No, it's all part of the same thing, which is becoming someone else and trying to be moved by them. In one, you have to create it yourself in your own imagination and the other you take the structure given to you by someone else ands make it your own. DE: I read that when you were younger you almost got stuck in a white slavery ring? DH: [laughs] That's kind of true. When I first got to Los Angeles, I got invited by these girls I just met to go to Las Vegas to do a photo shoot. It turned out that it was a white slavery ring where they would try to get girls who are destitute down there. We would be taken to this hotel room. Then, they would put these girls up in a hotel room with their names on the bill so they would immediately form a huge debt and they would have to work it off by going on "dates". They didn't realize that I wasn't destitute and, luckily, I was naive enough to not know what the situation was and get the hell out of there. DE: I also read that you're missing part of your Index finger. DH: Yes, I lost it when I was three. I had an accident at my grandmother's house. DE: Do you think you will need to do another big blockbuster movie anytime soon? DH: It definitely doesn't hurt to do a big movie, but generally they aren't as satisfying But they don't hurt your bank account. One of the good things about growing older is that you realize that life is short, and it is more important to do things you care about. It's important to me to do things that mean something to me. Occasionally, I will need to do a big movie to pay the bills, but my focus is on stuff that allows me to express myself. DE: Is it fun to undercut people's expectations? DH: It's awesome if you get to do that [laughs]. DE: You're working with some pretty choice directors, like Michael Radford, John Sayles and Tarantino. Who else do you want to work with? DH: I'm lucky right now. There are tons of people. I would love to work with the guy who made Central Station [Walter Salles]. I really Sam Mendes, Paul Thomas Anderson. I love Wes Anderson; Bottle Rocket is one of my favorite movies. DE: Me, too, Daryl. Thank you so much. DH: Thanks, Dan. |
