Implex Verlag: New SMG interview, Best interview ever Options

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The Amber Benson interview they are talking about:

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An Interview with Sarah Michelle Gellar

This Interview about »The Grudge« and other recent and not so recent aspects of SMG’s career was conducted in December of 2004. Differently edited and re-mixed versions have appeared in the »Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung« and »Spex«, but this is the most extended & nearly complete version which tries to stay as close [i.e. almost verbatim] to the transcript of the actual
interview.


1. Challenging and helping audiences

I’m still trying to wrap my head around that very nice day/night/
present/flashback scene you had with Bill Pullman. A very neat thing
indeed.

This was in fact one of the most interesting reasons to do the fi lm
because on paper that scene… it doesn’t really work on paper and it’s one
of those things where it’s up to the actors and the director. And if the
director doesn’t… when you… basically, when you have that non-linear
aspect and you have these two very different times, I mean literally Bill
Pullman and I would have to ask each time: does he see me, do I see him,
where am I, am I in his vision…

And you’re not talking.
Yeah. We… You know, we knew that the movie hinged on that and
I think one of he fi rst things that Bill and I said when we saw that sequence
was: Whew! It was defi nitely… if that scene didn’t work…

The fi lm would fall apart.
I like your hat. (It’s a grey »Dawson’s Creek« cap.)

Oh, thank you.
The movie would completely fall apart. And for me it was one of the
greatest challenges of the film because – you know, the last year or so
I really sat back and you think about films and a lot of American films
give you excessive information. They’re so petrified that people don’t
follow…

With music, with everything… it comments on itself all the time.
And you know, as an audience member, the more information you
have coming at you the more you just sit back and you take it. But the
second you take that away, the second there’s silence, if you watch the
audience, then everybody leans forward because it becomes participation.

It sucks you in.
Yeah, because you’re experiencing everything for the first time with
that character and I know as an audience member, I would rather have
that. To me, that is why »Sixth Sense« works so well because you’re watching
something and the you realize…

Bruce Willis is not…
You’re not even…

Out of the corner of his eye…
You’re not even really watching it. And to me, that was some of the
fascination I had with it – as well as the fact that the second you bring
two different cultures together, you’re seeing two very different viewpoints,
especially when you bring eastern and western. You have western
culture which is so literal just in terms of what we believe and what we
think, everything is very black and white.

That’s Bill Pullman. He’s just so western…
And then you have the grey which is the detective to me. He’s the
character…

He’s the director. Sort of has that function…
In a sense. And he had the only explanation scene which to me kept it
interesting because Shimizu moved the camera so much and one thing
that I always in the beginning would wonder was: How come Shimizu
never has the camera on anyone that’s speaking – I kept thinking, does
he not like me, am I gonna be getting a close-up. But part of what
Shimizu does is very stylish – when you take an Asian film, a film that
really at its heart takes the tradition, takes the custom, takes the believes,
and you put in an American director, then it’s really an American view.
It’s what we see, it’s how we perceive, versus when you have Shimizu it is
what he sees, it is what he believes, it is what he knows. And as the American
actors in the film it was our responsibility then to bring truth to the
western characters, and this is how we were looked at.


2. What do I look like? Telling vs. showing.

I think that generally you’re an actress who employs facial expressions,
gestures, physicality in interesting ways – how is it that… I got
the feeling, both from your way of delivering the lines and from the
physical acting, that you’re giving the people not just more information
than they knew before but sometimes more than the character herself
knows…
Well, I think…

Like telling us what she doesn’t acknowledge, in a lot of your films
you have these moments… how do you prepare that?
I give lot of credit here to Shimizu because he was willing to give up a
lot of the work to us and you don’t do that in Japan. In Japan, an actor
comes on set, the director says what you do and you just do it. It think
the first week he was a little put off by the fact that I said: Well, this is
how I see this… and I didn’t know that you didn’t do that. Nobody prepared
me…

That you were not to co-create…
Yeah, nobody told me that’s inappropriate. And so I didn’t realize at
first that I was overstepping bounds. And by the end I think Shimizu realized
how collaborative the process can be. And I just always find that…
dialogue is good and great, but again it’s that whole idea of… telling
versus involving I guess it would be and I would much rather have less
dialogue and let the audience have that experience with the character.

It’s like the photos in Entertainment Weekly that you did. Not many
actresses could do that so effectively.
Well, thank you. It was so much fun and part of the growing part of
the process is that part of it and I was very lucky that Entertainment
Weekly which is a magazine that I respect so much gave me the freedom
to do something… well, I think when we finally looked at it, it was a
stylish version of sort of the Italian idea of scaring people…

Argento.
Yeah…one of the things about Argento specifically was everything was
really beautiful…

Lush.
Everything’s beautiful. And we just loved that idea of, umm… you
know, to me, art is art, and art is expression, and it doesn’t matter
whether you’re looking at a painting, a picture, a film, a book, it’s about
ways of expression and the hope is that each person takes away from it
something else and to me, if I can continue to do that then I will have
succedeed in what it is that I love to do.


3. Playing a Western couple & other non-method-acting-jobs

Jason Behr – Given that you both starred in tv shows which end with
the principal characters leaving their town in a bus…
Really?

Both shows end the same way…
I never knew that.

Of course it doesn’t mean anything.
No, but it’s interesting.

Yeah, sort of funny. So, you and Jason Behr: Those were the Americans
in Japan, both literally – on set – and in the movie, so I got the impression
that maybe that was sort of a nucleus, this relationship between
the two characters, that you built your story around.
Jason and I have known each other for… like… probably like thirteen
years.

You worked on »Buffy« together…
We knew each other before that. I was very lucky to have him as a costar
because… there you are in this new environment that’s so different
and it’s not like you’re fighting the environment but you’re trying to
kind of find your way through it, but if at the same time I was trying to
get to know my co-star: So, where are you from, you know, what do you
like to do… that can be a struggle. And one of the hardest things that we
found was communicating the difference between an American couple
on screen and a Japanese couple on screen. And again, as Americans
in the fi lm it was our responsibility to bring truth to those characters.
Young kids in Japan don’t really co-habitate, they don’t…public displays
of affection are considered rude in Japan, all those things… it was our
responsibility…

So you holding hands there was sort of a comment because it really
jumped out of the screen in the traffic moment…
Because it looked so different, and you know, I remember, the opening
scene when you see us in the apartment together, Shimizu really wanted
to move that scene into the kitchen. He did not like that much physical
intimacy, it’s not something that they like, and again that was something
that was important to the Americans because the whole idea… why remake
it if you’re just gonna do the exact same movie? And to me the idea
of remaking it was taking what is essentially a Japanese film and bringing
these Americans into it and their viewpoints but not only how they see
this experience but how do they react to it.

I’ve talked to Amber Benson a year ago and she praised you as the
consummate professional and she said that for her there were basically
two kinds of actors: those that just get absorbed in the moment a lot of
times and those others that… she praised you as very controlled. Is this
valid, this distinction?
Amber said something to me a long time ago and I’ll never forget it
and I steal it from her all the time is… we were talking about method actors.

Okay, yes, that’s it.
And we were talking about people that like don’t take a shower or
don’t do that and…

Get tattoos…
We both come from the school of: Well, just act! Act like you smell,
why do you have to offend everybody else? And Amber said something a
long time ago that I love which was: I’m an actor, I don’t channel.

Great.
Definitely I’m with Amber on that. And I’m not saying there’s
anything wrong with method acting, it’s certainly a whole ’nother idea
but I just, you know… when my character doesn’t take a bath I don’t see
the need to offend everybody else on the set with my stench. I would
rather just pretend like I smell.

And it’s harder to do that.
I think so. I mean I think it’s more challenging…

To project something.
Yeah. I mean, we can all experience what it felt like when our dog died
when we were six years old – or I can experience my boyfriend dying in
front of me, Karen experiencing Jason’s…I mean, Doug… a little jetlagged,
I’m sorry. But I think it’s every actor’s choice.

4. The quest for variety

Coming from that non-method acting-approach, it’s very interesting
that you spread your…I mean, we’ve seen you as shy characters or…
»I knew what you did last summer« was something completely different
from »Cruel Intentions« where we saw more of a mean streak and…
how difficult is it to orchestrate the quest for range, for a wide spectrum
of characters to play in a movie market like America?
Very difficult. Especially as a female. It is incredible.

You tend to get typecast.
It’s not even that so much, it’s just that I don’t know if in films the
three-dimensional female characters are as prevalent. They’re harder to
find. I mean if one more person asks me today: How come you don’t
make a romantic movie? But the truth is: I find it very clichéd, I don’t
understand what is interesting about watching a woman pining away for
a man and do silly things to get his attention, I don’t appreciate that, I
think we’ve come way past that. You get a movie every once in a while
like »Pretty Woman« where a woman stands alone or Bridget Jones where
there’s an individual, that I find interesting, but those a very far and few
between.

There are not very many Jodie Fosters in Hollywood.
I don’t even know that so much… pardon me, they haven’t fed me,
pardon my growling stomach. I don’t think it’s that much about the
actors as it about…

Oh no, I don’t mean… I mean, they don’t make them, they don’t let
them do that. I didn’t mean that there aren’t many actresses that…
I don’t know…
Well probably not of Jodie Foster’s character calibre but you know, it’s
diffi cult. When I wanted to do »Cruel Intentions«, a lot of people tried
to talk me out of it: Why would you do that? You’re America’s sweet-
heart, you play a lovable character, people aren’t gonna accept you, why
don’t you play Annette? And I kept saying: Why? I play Buffy! Why do I
wanna do… On my downtime I wanna do stuff that’s different and characters
that are different. And I think I’ve been very blessed considering
that for the last eight years I worked ten months a year on a television
show and I only had two months to do something else. So not only is it
about fi nding something that I fi nd interesting but about fi nding something
that fi ts into that schedule. And I sort of look at now as the second
movement of that. Now it’s about… now I can pick projects… It used to
be, the first that came fi rst is when does it shoot? Then: do I like it? Now
the only thing that’s important is: do I like it, do I like the filmmaker, is
there something to say, is there a reason to do it? And I don’t care what
genre it is. The only people that label people… are journalists, and I’m
not saying you, but I mean that’s where it comes from.
The do so desire… they want a headline so badly.

And it has to be produced fast, you have to have copy, you know we
don’t care much for careers or for, for…
And so that’s the only way people get pigeonholed. And that’s unfortunate,
it’s like… it’s like in high-school, I mean it’s the same thing,
people just wanna label other people. Well, get to know them and you’d
be surprised how much… you know, how three-dimensional and how
many different facets there are to people.

I always found it quite courageous that you…scenes like, you know,
the ending of »Cruel Intentions« where she gets found out and she just
ages twenty years in twenty seconds, that was really courageous to do
that, to step out of the cliché so far, because it’s really in a sense ugly but
it’s also very raw, it communicates a lot.
I mean I’m not gonna lie and not say that at one point they wanted
to change the ending, but I… we were all very adamant. We’re talking
about »Les Liaisons Dangereuses«, I mean who doesn’t remember the
movie version when Glen Close walks into the Opera. That to me is one
of the sadest, most tragic scenes on fi lm: There is this character that does
all these horrible things to people, there’s no reason to feel sympathy for
her, yet when she walks into that opera house you feel badly, and to me
that was the most important thing with Kathryn, that she does all those
unlikable things and I wasn’t trying to make her likable, it wasn’t important
to me, but what I wanted people to do was understand. I don’t wanna…
I don’t like stereotypical characters and to me she was lonely, she
was neglected, all the money in the world does not give you security…

And she really wants her half-brother to love her…
Oh absolutely.

Even when she sees she’s lost him…
Absolutely… step-brother, not half-brother, that’d be really disgusting.

Okay, I’m sorry.
That’d be really inappropriate and a whole ’nuther movie.

We had a case here in Germany, we’re not that good with these distinctions.
Okay, maybe you can have that kind of movie in Germany, we just
can’t have that in the states.

Well I won’t propose it.
[laughs]

Alright. Joshua Jackson, with whom you sadly didn’t have a scene
because I…
I worked in so many movies with him and not having a… no, I worked
with him, I did have a scene with him, you know I had a scene with
him…

Where?
Scream 2!

Right.
We had a scene together.

So… he’s going to do theatre work there early next year, was that
every something that you…that’s why I mentioned Joshua Jackson, because
I’ll try if I can see him…
In Germany?

No, no, in London.
I thought you meant in Germany, I’m like: really?

No, no, no.
I came from theatre. I mean that’s why I started. I was a teenager. You
know the one thing with theatre, when you’re on television with Buffy,
you can’t get that commitment, and right now as well, I’m not ready
to give up nine months to anything. I need a little more freedom right
now, eventually it’s something that I do like to do, I love live stage and
I’ve been lucky that I’ve gotten… to’ve been able to do things that are
live in the meantime, uh, but I also like to do things that are different,
and it seems to me like everybody I know is going to London to do stage
[laughs]

I’ve seen Alyson Hannigan there…
Yeah, you gotta keep… you gotta keep it different, you know, you
gotta do stuff that’s…

Go to Paris!
Yeah, go to Paris, I’ll be in the Moulin Rouge stage show.

Great.
That’d be a disaster.

5. Coming Attractions & fi nal words on »The Grudge«

Is there anything you can already say about »Southland Tales« with
Richard Kelly?
Well, Richard Kelly is… you know I always say to people: could you
imagine to describe »Donnie Darko« bevor it came out? I’m making
a movie about a six-foot mean bunny. People would look at you like
you were nuts and it was career suicide. I always say the best person to
de scribe Richard Kelly is Richard Kelly but I will say that he’s crafted
another really incredible world, a really different world. I think he’s incerdibly
smart, he’s incredibly innovative, he scares me just a little bit,
he’s a little on the insane side but, you know, more than anything I’m a
fan.

You’ve worked for and with people who have very distinct visual and
other styles, you had a Kevin Williamson script, you had Joss Whedon…
I’m working with Asif Kapadia right now who directed »The Warrior«.

You’re… and what is that?
Umm… it’s getting this… it’s so hard, I’m so bad at describing them
before you actually have like really gotten into them, it’s…it’s sort of
on the idea of true love and what happens when a love is taken away
and it… can it transcend, I mean, does that continue, do you find that
person? He’s really…what I find interesting about him is the worlds he
creates, he’s about very… open space, it’s very vast, it’s very empty where
Richard Kelly is so full of everything I mean I love the idea of sort of…

Cluttered.
Yeah it’s really as opposite as opposite can be are the two.

For you, as an actress, you know working with all these people who
have very clear visions you know, visually, narratively, military, whatever
– does it change when you’re to deliver a line by Williamson or…
or do you try to, you know, do you have in mind your own continuity
of… playing different characters…
I think as an actor it’s your job to bring the director’s vision to the
screen. And one of the things about Shimizu, especially with the
language barrier, it was so important to me…it was so important to me
that I was speaking for him because that’s essentially what an actor does.
In the end, you’re the one putting forth the directors vision. And that’s…

So how did you communicate?
It’s funny you know, in the beginning through a translator but at the
end you realize, I mean for me it was an education in communication,
I mean you learn how little language is really necessary if actually spend
some time to get to know someone.

So on set it was like glances or…
You just…

You just knew when you did it right.
You just know, it’s like even the way he would say: Cut! You knew the
difference. You could hear it.

If he was satisfied or…
And that’s about when you really get to know someone and I think
when you speak the same language you take for granted they’re just
gonna tell you. And you don’t really spare the time to get to know lilts
and voices or even the way they sit, if they’re like this [sits up differntly]
or if they’re like this [hunches forward] or you know whatever that is
and you know because we didn’t have language, so much more time was
spend on getting to know the other person.

Music. I mean when you do a movie, you don’t know the music and
when you fi nally see it… I thought in »The Grudge« it was very much
like »Suspiria«, it was very Argento …
Shimizu fought so hard for the music, both Shimizu and Sam I mean
they spent… that was one of the things that they spent the most time on
because it was so important that you didn’t have this very stylish Japanes
movie and then an American soundtrack, and that silences were allowed
to be had. That is one thing that American moves are petrified of is just
absent sounds. One of the scenes in films … I just thought sometimes…
My favorite scene in a film I wasn’t in this year was Kill Bill Two, was
Uma Thurman in the box…

In the box, that was…
That scene to me when, I mean… there had to be just two minutes of
just blackened silence, I thought that was one of the most, I mean hands
down, in years… but of the year it was hands down my favorite scene in
a film.

It also reminded me of a television show where someone clawed herself
out of a grave…
Yeah, little bit, little bit, I could see that, although that scene when she
walked … she asked for a glass of water almost killed me, almost killed
me.

Anything else you would like to say, you know on »The Grudge« or…
Well just that I’m… I’m really proud, this was a true American-
Japanese partnership, and it’s never been done, and I’m just, I’m really
proud of Shimizu and proud of the cast and proud of the crew, this was
not an easy experience for anyone, everybody had to work really hard…

How long has…
Three months. It was three months of work, ten times as hard as they
normally do which of course for Japanese is not saying that much ’cause
they work so hard anyway but for me it’s a good complement and there is
so much love in this fi lm that I’m just proud of the work that went into
that.

Actually there is one more question, I just saw it [on my notepad] ,
umm: crowd scenes or scenes with many participants as opposed to very
intimate scenes. I mean in »The Grudge« obviously you have a lot of
very intimate stuff going on…what do you prefer because again, thinking
of the last scene in »Cruel Intentions« when she is confronted by
all these people…
You know what, that is so dependent on the environment I will say one
of the things that I remember very distinctly about that was they worked
so hard to get a group of extras on that scene that very so into it, I mean
these people were so into it, I have never seen, you know, so if you get
lucky, I got, it’s great, sometimes you get so unlucky that it becomes so
diffi cult that you wind up doing it by yourself….

Carrying everything.
Even the other side, yes, so I was very lucky in that scene, so I think it
just depends.

Okay. Good.
Thank you very much.

It was very nice talking to you.

found the link via whedonesque

Well thanks once again for a great find

I like this interview, there are some different and interesting questions in there

that was really good! great find! sarah is so smart and I thourougly enjoyed reading this interview

"...that you’re giving the people not just more information
than they knew before but sometimes more than the character herself
knows…"
I really liked what the interviewer said. shows that sarah is really tallented. i cant wait to see southland tales!

That was a really great interview! Interesting

Thanks

This was an awsome interview. There were actually questions in there she hasnt gotten b4, u know? Like it wasnt all the same questions, refreshing and Sarah is so damn smart!

That was such a great interview...though sarah allwase gives great interviews I loved it lol

That was a great interview, I get the feeling that a lot of the journalists enjoy interviewing Sarah

Thanks so much for that Sanrevelle

Thanks great interveiw.

That was excellent Thank you!

Thanks for that! It's a great interview. The interviewer asked Sarah lots of original questions, but didn't try to inject himself/herself too much into things - they let Sarah do all the talking.

Thanks so much! for the interview it was GREAT!! it's the best i've ever read.

that was a great read thanks for posting it....

Thanks for that! Wonderful find.

Thanks for sharing. Great read.

Great interview.

Okay, so according to Sarah - she ain't a method actor. There's your answer.

The concept still confuses me though. I remember reading an article a while back where Sarah discussed very emotional scenes on BtVS and she said that she doesn't know how someone who hasn't been in love could portray those scenes. Is that not method?

The concept still confuses me though. I remember reading an article a while back where Sarah discussed very emotional scenes on BtVS and she said that she doesn't know how someone who hasn't been in love could portray those scenes. Is that not method?

I think that's what Sarah calls channelling. Method acting tends to be more physical than emotional. Of course, what would I know.

Method acting is a complicated process and would be impossible to explain in a few words. However, I can give an example that would apply to Sarah.

It is sometimes argued that her acting tends to be robotic. Other actors often mention that she rarely flubs her lines. If you look at 'dailies' from old BtVS episodes it is possible to see the same scene acted several times and on each occasion Sarah's performance will be almost identical. That is a particular approach to acting, which supposes that the job of the actor is to 'act out' what is in the script and what the director is specifically looking for.

Method actors will sometimes talk about acting 'moment-to-moment'. The argument is that in real life you cannot predict what is going to happen in the next moment and, therefore, everything you do is a reaction to what takes place around you. A method actor will deviate from the script as a reaction to other external influences, making the performance seem more 'real' and less 'staged'. That's the theory. A method actor will often 'stay in character' between shots. (This is not the same as improvisional acting).

There is no right or wrong way to approach acting, although oddly enough method is (contrary to its intention) often a more 'stagey' approach, simply because the audience is always aware that it is a performance. It's very much about technique and tends to be less 'naturalistic'.

alien lanes - Thank you for explaining! I posted a topic about this a while ago but there were still so much contradictory evidence so I was still rather confused. I suppose when we read about Sarah getting emotional over scenes, it's more getting caught up in the moment then channelling. Though I think she may switch into method at times.

I just love that gal!

alien lanes - Thank you for explaining! I posted a topic about this a while ago but there were still so much contradictory evidence so I was still rather confused. I suppose when we read about Sarah getting emotional over scenes, it's more getting caught up in the moment then channelling. Though I think she may switch into method at times.

I found that quote from James yesterday about method actors :
Q: [muffled question about Sarah Michelle Gellar]

JM: What, what, what? I'm sorry… Sarah Michelle Gellar, love scenes, what?

Q: [getting the mic] I read that Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz used to eat onion and stuff to throw each other off. Did you guys ever do anything like that to try to throw each other off?

JM: Well, yeah. Sarah would love… does Sarah like to throw you off before a love scene or a serious scene in general? Yeah. Sarah and I work very differently. I tend to go a little more for Method, which is I don't want to drop character so much and I take it so, so d**n seriously. (laughs) Sarah is always making fun of me, (funny, mocking voice) "Oh, I'm a tree." You know, she has the ability to go from 0 to 60 in one, you know, and I never did. So yeah, she loved that. I think that probably the way I work made her feel uncomfortable. She probably didn't understand why I had to put myself through all that stuff. So, she probably… I think the reason that she messed me up so many times (laughs) is that it probably seemed a bit freaky to her, what I was doing.

And Method acting, by the way, is NOT designed for television. Because Method acting basically… what the Method is… you develop a fantasy world that is as complete as possible so you can release into it and improvise in that world. I sustained that fantasy, like Season 6, way too long and it ate me alive. That's why I got so skinny. I was living in this state of hunger and I wanted to perpetuate that and it was not healthy, it was not fun. It got some really great acting - some really great scenes came out of that - but it was destabilizing to my life. (laugh) So, yeah. Method acting… actors out there…Method for film, fine. Stage - fine. TV - it will kill you.

Great interview. Thanks for posting.