Max: Try to equal the down
time.
Bruce: Yeah. So you
don’t burn yourself out…just a theory.
Max: Have your kids seen all your movies?
Bruce: I think my kids
have seen most of the movies. At one point, when my daughter could
get in her car and drive down to the video store, that’s when I
figured she could see whatever she wanted. But they know how fake it
is…I really went out of my way with the kids to show them that a
severed hand is all foam, and latex rubber, you know, and pain, and
karo syrup; it’s not what it looks like. They learned that pretty
early.
Max: In your book
you stated that you and method acting were “strange bedfellows.” But
do you have any particular technique that you use to get into
character?
Bruce: Just
concentrate. Just prep-it’s the real basics. If actors just did 1-5
of their basic prep of go through the script and make sure that
their characters can…that their character has its own sort of arc
through the course of it-that their character learns something by
the end. And obviously the fundamentals of learning your lines.
You’d be shocked at how many actors showed up to work and they
didn’t know their lines. You can’t start to have any confidence or
build a character if you don’t know your lines, so you have to have
your own prep time, I think, before you show up on set. You can’t
show up on set and expect it all to come together. You have to have
a plan, much like how the director can’t just show up and go, ”Well,
where should I put the camera?” That’s gonna determine how it’s lit,
you should have already been in the room looking at it earlier,
pre-lit the room, you know there’s a lot of prep that goes into it,
so it’s the same thing with acting. You can’t just show up.
Max: Obviously acting is
your bread-and-butter, so to speak, but do you have any fun with
your job? Any recent memories you’d like to share?
Bruce: Mm-hm. Well, I mean fun is running
into people with weird jobs. I wrote about it in the new edition (of
Chins), because I’m promoting the paperback, so I wrote 40 new pages
about the book tour, and another chapter is “Odd Job.” It’s like all
these strange people. One guy is a foam injected tampon applicator;
you know, someone’s gotta do it. There were people who play Walt
Disney characters. A guy who manufactured “Monopoly” pieces. Another
guy couldn’t tell me what he did. It was classified, and he couldn’t
even tell his wife. His wife walked by after he left, she said,
“I’ve been married to him for 30 years and he can’t tell me.” And
you get to travel, so every once in a while that’s the upside of the
business; that you travel and see places that you wouldn’t normally
see. It sort of broadens your horizon. You get a better sense of the
country, which is good because I traveled right after 9/11. I went
to Miami on September 14th, which was the first flight out of San
Francisco. We just kept going.
At this point I told
Bruce a little story about how 9/11 affected my life as relates to
travel; my fiancée was stuck in Italy for another week-she was
supposed to come home on the 12th. But I moved on:
Max: Does traveling ever remind you of
being a taxi driver, meeting different, odd people?
Bruce: Sure it does. It’s a very gypsy
life. Very modular…you’re always on the move.
Max: As an actor, do you have any role
models?
Bruce: Role
models…I like William Holden. He was pretty cool. I liked all his
movies, basically. He’s just a cool cat, and he wasn’t trying. Too
many actors are trying to be cool: they’re trying to do it with
their hair, trying to do it with the color, trying to do it with
clothes, or some bullshit attitude…you’re either cool or you’re not,
that’s my theory. If you have to try, it’s too late.
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