| Paul Dano Delivers The Burgers And Goods - Page 2 |
| Written by Danny Peary | ||||
| Wednesday, 13 December 2006 10:21 | ||||
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Q: Brian and his coworker talk about possibly robbing the Mickey’s they work in. Are they just mouthing off, or do you think they’ll have the nerve to do it? PD: I don’t know if they have the balls to actually do it. It’s a pretty big thing. But it was fascinating to learn that a lot of employees do end up holding up the places where they work, and sometimes they harm their fellow employees. That blew me away. I don’t know what Brian will do. I think he has a crush on Ashley Johnson’s character, Amber, who works the counter, and once Amber quits, that place will really be miserable. He has a shit job and is paid crap and I doubt if anyone has given him much attention or respect, especially in the work situation—and all that of that adds up and causes him to act the way he does. Brian wants the easy way out. I certainly know where he is coming from.
Paul Dano
Ashley Johnson in "Fast Food Nation"
Eric Schlosser, Author of "Fast Food Nation," he also wrote the screenplay
Greg Kinnear and Kris Kristofferson
Greg Kinnear in "Fast Food Nation" PD: I didn’t feel the need to do it. Brian is just a small piece of an ensemble and I didn’t want to overdo anything. But I guess there were moments in the restaurant when things weren’t planned. I was really making those burgers, throwing frozen patties on the grill. It wasn’t in the script for me to drop a patty under the grill. I was supposed to spit on Greg’s hamburger earlier, but dropping meat and putting it back on the grill wasn’t supposed to happen—I just did it. Q: “Fast Food Nation” is a depressing film, but was it fun to make? PD: Yeah, yeah. It was a lot of fun. Rick was great and my scenes were with Ashley, who is a really cool girl. It was good people. Brian was in a state of languor; feeling less than anyone else, but it certainly wasn’t a depressing experience for me to play him. Q: Some of the films you’ve been in—“L.I.E.,” “Little Miss Sunshine,” and “Fast Food Nation”—don’t give us a glowing view of the suburbs. Did you grow up in the suburbs? PD: I lived in Manhattan till about the third grade and then we moved to Connecticut, into suburbia. There were things I absolutely loathed about it, but I had a great time in high school and wouldn’t give up that experience overall. Suburbs do suck but there is something good about that “suckiness.” You learn from it. When you’re in high school, you just want to get out fast, but a few years later you can look back and see that it wasn’t such a bad place. Growing up there is what made me who I am. Q: What’s the worst job you had back then? PD: The worst, most unpleasant job I had was wrapping gifts. My little sister worked at a bookstore and she got me a wrapping job for a few weeks. And everyone in town that I knew seemed to be coming there to buy presents and wrapping their gifts was a humiliating experience. Q: You’ve played “bad-ass” teens in movies, so is that because you were a bad-ass then? PD: I’ve never considered myself a bad-ass! But every teenager knows what it’s like to be angry, and not be angry about something specific, just things in general. Most kids know what it’s like to be alienated and want the easy way out. Brian isn’t very smart, but he knows he wants to escape. Dwayne in “Little Miss Sunshine” is a very smart guy but he too is looking to escape. Q: Did you do any preparation to play a boy who refuses to speak in "Little Miss Sunshine?" PD: I tried a couple of days of not talking in my house with parents. The first day at dinner was the worst. It was totally infuriating not being able to defend myself when they’d say something that took me 20 years back—I felt I had to say something to them but all I could do was twitch. So it started out being very difficult. But then it became kind of liberating, a thing of power in fact because I wouldn’t give them anything to fuel the fire. So that was interesting. Then we did some rehearsals where we’d stay in character, driving around doing family activities and improvising—which I really like to do. During the first day of filming, I was not talking. I had planned on not talking for about thirty days, but Toni Collette said, “Paul, we’re going to have some fun, too!” And that made sense, so I started talking to everyone and I’m glad I did because I built some great relationships. Q: Are you surprised at the movie’s tremendous success? PD: Absolutely. After I read that script for “Little Miss Sunshine” years ago. I wanted to be part of it and was glad that happened even though it took years to be filmed. We all got along working together and as people, and we had a really excellent time making the movie, but nobody knew if anyone was going to go see it. Then it got a good response at Sundance and we thought there was a chance it could be a modest success. I didn’t want to expect too much. I had no idea that so many people would see and like it as much as they do. Q: You have two films out now, and word is you have several more on the way. You are incredibly busy. PD: This summer I filmed “There Will Be Blood” with Paul Thomas Anderson. And there’s an independent film called “Weapons” by Adam Bhala Lough, that I hope will be playing at festivals. Also, I finished my part for Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are,” but he’s still working on it. I play one of the Wild Things, and we work-shopped the script like a play almost, breaking up scenes and improvising to develop their histories. Meanwhile they filmed us with a lot of cameras—there was a ton of footage—and have based the movements and dynamics for the puppets off of that. They’ll ultimately just use my voice but it was a real acting experience, unlike something done in a voice studio situation. So those are the films that I have coming out next year. I have been very busy, but it’s been great. foxsearchlight.com/fastfoodnation |
