The Road should get an expanded release in the U.S. tomorrow, so check your local listings if you haven’t had the chance to see it yet.

Is it true that villains get the best lines?

I guess they get a lot of good lines, huh? I like them — they’re complex, and I like complex characters. Sometimes the villains are the only ones that are completely drawn.

It’s funny, because I’ve actually played a ton of good guys, funny guys — I played Jesus Christ (in the short-lived and controversial series “The Book of Daniel“). But people remember the bad guys (laughs).

Your character in “The Road” is particularly unsavory. What is the challenge to playing such a role?

There have been a lot of discussions about it online — people wondering what would they do to survive. To what level would they stoop if there was no food, no vegetation, no animal life. What would you do? Would you just forage for canned goods? And when they ran out, then what? How bad would you want to feed your child?

He’s just a guy with a little bit weaker moral fiber than Viggo [Mortensen]‘s character. He didn’t choose the noble route, like a lot of people in that world. And the result of him ignoring his soul is what you see on screen.

So is that what moves you from medium to medium? Because you’ve found some great projects in both television and film.

Yeah, I like to have fun — I think that’s a good way to live. I think you’re better at your job if you like it. And I’m a bit of a frustrated writer — I’m not very skilled at that, and I thought that was what I was going to be. So it doesn’t seem like such a big coincidence that a lot of stuff I’ve done has been adaptation of [books by] my favorite authors. I was planning to make Ron Hansen’s “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” for about 15 years. I thought I was the only one to know about it. I was going to play Jesse James, of course. (Dillahunt played the outlaw Ed Miller in the 2007 film version with Brad Pitt).

But you just find these stories, and I don’t care about the size of the part, you know? In the end, it’s got to be about the story. I can’t speak for every actor, but I imagine that’s what everyone wants when they sign on to do a role.

You’ve said in interviews that you are a fan of Cormac McCarthy’s work. What is the appeal for you?

The first one I read was “Blood Meridian,” like a lot of college guys. I was just blown away by that one-sentence paragraph where the Comanches come upon the scalphunters. It’s just stunning — the image of the guy wearing the blood-stained wedding veil — the way he would describe things was so evocative to me. Each line was somehow laden with emotion and history. I think my favorite of his books might be “Suttree.” If you read it, you can tell me why that guy doesn’t die (laughs). There’s something larger and thematic [in his work] than what’s going on, and that’s appealing to me.

“The Road” might be a challenging film for a lot of viewers, who could see it as having very little light in it. What do you hope that audiences take away from it?

I’m kind of sad that people might have that sort of knock on it — that it’s a bleak film. I think it’s actually more hopeful than “No Country for Old Men.” That felt like it was saying, “This is how it is, and there’s no change.” At the end of this, as it is in the book, it seems to be about the unquenchable spirit of man. [Viggo's character] finds another home and more good guys. Maybe they have a little garden.

What’s your general response to critical praise and talk of nominations and awards?

I’m an ensemble guy, I guess — that comes from the theater. If I ever won some kind of award someday, I imagine I’d try to be very gracious, but in the end, I just want to keep working. I don’t see why that, if you just put your mind to it and keep sowing the right seeds, you can’t keep doing the things you want to do. When we won the SAG Award for “Old Men,” that was the perfect award, because it takes so many people to make a movie. Someone’s always going to argue with the individual awards. [LA Times]

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent interview with Cormac McCarthy and John Hillcoat, posted in two parts. I’m posting a few snippets below. To read the whole thing, follow the WSJ links. The Road opens in 10 days.

WSJ: When you first went to the film set, how did it compare with how you saw “The Road” in your head?

CM: I guess my notion of what was going on in “The Road” did not include 60 to 80 people and a bunch of cameras. [Director] Dick Pearce and I made a film in North Carolina about 30 years ago and I thought, “This is just hell. Who would do this?” Instead, I get up and have a cup of coffee and wander around and read a little bit, sit down and type a few words and look out the window.

WSJ: But is there something compelling about the collaborative process compared to the solitary job of writing?

CM: Yes, it would compel you to avoid it at all costs.

WSJ: When you discussed making “The Road” into a movie with John, did he press you on what had caused the disaster in the story?

CM: A lot of people ask me. I don’t have an opinion. At the Santa Fe Institute I’m with scientists of all disciplines, and some of them in geology said it looked like a meteor to them. But it could be anything—volcanic activity or it could be nuclear war. It is not really important. The whole thing now is, what do you do? The last time the caldera in Yellowstone blew, the entire North American continent was under about a foot of ash. People who’ve gone diving in Yellowstone Lake say that there is a bulge in the floor that is now about 100 feet high and the whole thing is just sort of pulsing. From different people you get different answers, but it could go in another three to four thousand years or it could go on Thursday. No one knows. (…)

WSJ: “The Road” is this love story between father and son, but they never say, “I love you.”

CM: No. I didn’t think that would add anything to the story at all. But a lot of the lines that are in there are verbatim conversations my son John and I had. I mean just that when I say that he’s the co-author of the book. A lot of the things that the kid [in the book] says are things that John said. John said, “Papa, what would you do if I died?” I said, “I’d want to die, too,” and he said, “So you could be with me?” I said, “Yes, so I could be with you.” Just a conversation that two guys would have. (…)

WSJ: What was your relationship like with the Coen brothers on “No Country for Old Men“?

CM: We met and chatted a few times. I enjoyed their company. They’re smart and they’re very talented. Like John, they didn’t need any help from me to make a movie.

WSJ: “All the Pretty Horses” was also turned into a film [starring Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz]. Were you happy with the way it came out?

CM: It could’ve been better. As it stands today it could be cut and made into a pretty good movie. The director had the notion that he could put the entire book up on the screen. Well, you can’t do that. You have to pick out the story that you want to tell and put that on the screen. And so he made this four-hour film and then he found that if he was actually going to get it released, he would have to cut it down to two hours. (…)

WSJ: People have said “Blood Meridian” is unfilmable because of the sheer darkness and violence of the story.

CM: That’s all crap. The fact that’s it’s a bleak and bloody story has nothing to do with whether or not you can put it on the screen. That’s not the issue. The issue is it would be very difficult to do and would require someone with a bountiful imagination and a lot of balls. But the payoff could be extraordinary. (…)

WSJ: Because “The Road” is so personal, did you have any hesitations about seeing it adapted?

CM: No. I’ve seen John’s film ["The Proposition"] and I knew him somewhat by reputation and I thought he’d probably do a good job in respect to the material. Also, my agent [Amanda Urban], she’s just the best. She wasn’t going to sell the book to somebody unless she had some confidence in what they would do with it. It’s not just a matter of money.

JH: Didn’t you start “No Country for Old Men” as a screenplay?

CM: Yeah, I wrote it. I showed it to a few people and they didn’t seem to be interested. In fact, they said, “That will never work.” Years later I got it out and turned it into a novel. Didn’t take long. I was at the Academy Awards with the Coens. They had a table full of awards before the evening was over, sitting there like beer cans. One of the first awards that they got was for Best Screenplay, and Ethan came back and he said to me, “Well, I didn’t do anything, but I’m keeping it.”

WSJ: For novels such as “Blood Meridian,” you did extensive historical research. What kind of research did you do for “The Road”?

CM: I don’t know. Just talking to people about what things might look like under various catastrophic situations, but not a lot of research. I have these conversations on the phone with my brother Dennis, and quite often we get around to some sort of hideous end-of-the-world scenario and we always wind up just laughing. Anyone listening to this would say, “Why don’t you just go home and get into a warm tub and open a vein.” We talked about if there was a small percentage of the human population left, what would they do? They’d probably divide up into little tribes and when everything’s gone, the only thing left to eat is each other. We know that’s true historically. (…)

WSJ: Is there a difference in the way humanity is portrayed in “The Road” as compared to “Blood Meridian”?

CM: There’s not a lot of good guys in “Blood Meridian,” whereas good guys is what “The Road” is about. That’s the subject at hand.

JH: I remember you said to me that “Blood Meridian” is about human evil, whereas “The Road” is about human goodness. It wasn’t until I had my own son that I realized a personality was just innate in a person. You can see it forming. In “The Road,” the boy has been born into a world where morals and ethics are out the window, almost like a science experiment. But he is the most moral character. Do you think people start as innately good?

CM: I don’t think goodness is something that you learn. If you’re left adrift in the world to learn goodness from it, you would be in trouble. But people tell me from time to time that my son John is just a wonderful kid. I tell people that he is so morally superior to me that I feel foolish correcting him about things, but I’ve got to do something–I’m his father. There’s not much you can do to try to make a child into something that he’s not. But whatever he is, you can sure destroy it. Just be mean and cruel and you can destroy the best person. [WSJ 1]

There is a moment in “The Road” where the man discovers a can of Coke and gives it to the boy. McCarthy was asked why that particular brand name shows up in the book.

“Well, it just struck me. It’s the iconic American product,” he said. “The one thing that everybody knows about America, the one thing above cowboys and Indians, above everything else that you can think of, is Coca-Cola. You can’t go to a village of 18 people in the remotest part of Africa that they don’t know about Coca-Cola.

Hillcoat interjected. “Here’s the irony,” he said. “There’s some people who don’t know the book and have picked up on this in the film and say, Why did they go for such a blatant product placement?’ Of course, we had to get permission, and every soft drink company was saying, ‘We’re a family brand and we do not want to be associated with cannibalism.’ That’s what they all said.” [WSJ 2]

Dimension Films has confirmed a Nov. 25 wide release for Cormac McCarthy adaptation “The Road,” which premiered at the Venice Film Fest. (…)
Weinstein is planning a multi-layered marketing operation for “The Road,” targeted at both fans of McCarthy’s book — which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007 — and auds fascinated by the more ghoulish aspects of the tale such as the hordes of cannibal killers roaming the barren landscape. Pic will go out in 1,200 to 1,500 locations. (…)
“I can work with my brother Harvey on the artistic side of the film, which has the potential for awards,” Bob Weinstein told Daily Variety. “There are also people out there who may not have read the book but would love the aspects that deal with the basic survival story and are like an action thriller.”

Peter Sciretta over at Slashfilm reported the same, confirming that the Weinsteins indeed meant this Thanksgiving.

Just received word from my local San Francisco reps that Dimension Films will be pushing back the release date of The Road, yet again, this time for a Thanksgiving release – November 25th 2009.

The film has so far been screened in Venice and Telluride and will be shown this Sunday/Monday (Sept. 13 & 14) in Toronto. It’s also been added to the London Film Festival lineup, so those in the UK will get an early chance to see it in mid-October (Oct. 16, 17 and 19 – details here). The film doesn’t open wide in the UK until January 8.

Here are the new posters:

[See post to watch Flash video]

For more clips from the film, go to TrailerAddict.com.

John Hillcoat, Joe Penhall, Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee were at the premiere. For some pics, visit Zimbio.

The Road has also been added to the Telluride lineup. The festival opens tomorrow.

Here are some initial reviews from the Venice screenings:

In “The Road,” director John Hillcoat has performed an admirable job of bringing Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to the screen as an intact and haunting tale, even at the cost of sacrificing color, big scenes and standard Hollywood imagery of post-apocalyptic America. [The Hollywood Reporter]

John Hillcoat’s superb adaptation of the prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy leads its audience on a road to nowhere. The route takes us through blighted forests and past derelict homes, all this way to a grey and barren ocean that breaks against the shore. (…) What a haunting, harrowing, powerful film this is. Before last night’s premiere there were rumours that its lengthy post-production period (the movie was actually shot back in February 2008) spelled signs of a troubled, sickly production. By and large, those fears have now proved to be unfounded. [Guardian.co.uk]

As heartbreaking on screen as it was on Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer-prize winning pages, The Road is an almost unbearably sad film, beautifully arranged and powerfully acted – a tribute to the array of talents involved. There is so much in this picture, from dread, horror, to suspense, bitterly moving love, extraordinary, Oscar-worthy art direction and a desperate lead performance from Viggo Mortensen which perfectly illustrates the wrenching desperation of parental love. But its hopelessness will make The Road hard going for general audiences: critical and awards support are vital to its commercial success or failure and even still The Road will be a challenge. [ScreenDaily.com]

John Hillcoat has made a film of power and sensitivity that works remarkably well on the big screen. It plays like a Dystopian version of Huck Finn. “Tattered gods slouching in their rags across the waste,” was how McCarthy described the father and son on their grim odyssey south across America toward the coast.

The film captures well the strange mix of heroism and seeming futility that characterises the journey. What is most impressive is the restraint the filmmakers bring to their material. The look of the film is muted and grey other than in the flashbacks to the pre-apocalyptic moments that the man (Viggo Mortensen) enjoyed with his wife (Charlize Theron) before the world ground to a halt. [Independent.co.uk]

The Road is harrowing and beautifully composed. It aestheticises horror, thus getting away with ugly, disturbing, even ghoulish scenes by turning them into the cinematic equivalent of those Sebastiao Salgado photographs of Brazilian gold miners.

McCarthy’s novel worked partly because of what it left to the imagination. The film leaves nothing to the imagination — not even a cellarful of desperate human cattle who are being kept alive for slaughter. So although Joe Penhall’s script is remarkably faithful to the original, it doesn’t feel quite right. The film is bleak and visionary, but it leaves a faintly nasty taste in the mouth, as if it wanted to rope in the horror fans under its arthouse cloak. Yet there’s no denying its raw power. [London Evening Standard]

Hillcoat has done justice to McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winner. “The Road” is elegiac and moving, artful and yet suspenseful. No, it’s not a raucous good time. It can be thoughtful and grim. But here’s the interesting thing: Viggo Mortensen’s performance as a father walking through a post-apocalypse America with his young son is just fascinating. It stays with you long after leaving the theater. Mortensen is that good.

There aren’t a lot of other actors in “The Road.” Charlize Theron is very good as Viggo’s wife, in flashbacks. Both Robert Duvall and Guy Pearce make cameo appearances. Eleven-year-old (he’s 13 now) Kodi Smit-McPhee is just right as the couple’s son.

What Hillcoat and screenwriter Joe Penhall do is accurately capture McCarthy’s tone and lauguage. This isn’t easy to do. “The Road” is a bleak trip, told in muted blacks, blues, and grays. There are no blue skies after whatever caused the apocalypse (is it nuclear war? we don’t know. Everything left, including the trees, is dying.)

You can read the full article here.

The Road is no tease. It is a brilliantly directed adaptation of a beloved novel, a delicate and anachronistically loving look at the immodest and brutish end of us all. You want them to get there, you want them to get there, you want them to get there — and yet you do not want it, any of it, to end.

You should see it for the simplest of reasons: Because it is a good story. Not because it may be important. Not because it is unforgettable, unyielding. Not because it horrifies. Not because the score is creepily spiritual. Not because it is littered with small lines of dialogue you will remember later. Not because it contains warnings against our own demise. All of that is so. Don’t see it just because you loved the book. The movie stands alone. Go see it because it’s two small people set against the ugly backdrop of the world undone. A story without guarantees. In every moment — even the last one — you’ll want to know what happens next, even if you can hardly stand to look. Because The Road is a story about the persistence of love between a father and a son, and in that way it’s more like a remake of The Godfather than some echo of I Am Legend.

Only this one is different: You won’t want to see this one twice.

The other certainty is that everyone involved in this movie is working against the predictable imperatives of perhaps the most predictable movie genre of them all: the apocalyptic thriller. The great experiment of the movie is that it hangs on nothing if not the subversion of the conventions of the genre. These people want the same thing from The Road that Busby Berkeley wanted, the same thing any artist with a sense of urgency wants. They want for people to walk out of the theater feeling it in their chest plate. They want them to say, perhaps for reasons they cannot consciously fathom, to everyone they know: You have to see it. Really.

You do. Not because it’s grim, not because it’s depressing, or even scary. The Road is all of those things, both acutely and chronically. But there was not a single stupid choice made in turning this book into this movie. No wrongheaded lyric tribute to the novel. No moment engineered simply to make you jump.

The terror of it is in a normal world made vacant. There is a surprising terror in a landscape of farmhouses full of possessions that have no function, a remarkable danger in a pile of old hammers, in the possibility of forgetting what things were once for.

The article also raises some concerns about Bob Weinstein’s marketing strategy for the film:

Weinstein acknowledges that loyal readers of Cormac McCarthy’s book, which was published in 2006, are probably worried. He’s sitting in a conference room in Manhattan, about to pop in a DVD containing two potential trailers. He seems to be figuring out how to talk about the film as he goes, fighting contrary tugs from some internal narrator, giving in only by the slenderest of degrees to the urge to mollify two, three, four different audiences.

First, he calls it a literate action movie. At one point he calls it a zombie movie. Then he starts talking about his kids. “When I had my kids, I was grateful. I was like, Now there’s something other to think about than me,” he says, and that word — me — echoes in the star chamber. “Every parent has that. You don’t have to have kids. You’re human. If you can’t relate to this story, then check your humanity somewhere. I felt this whole relationship with this father and son. Yeah. And yet it was thrilling.”

When Bob Weinstein rolls those trailers, each one assumes the predictable arc of a story compressed to its essence. There is a speed to them that the actual movie — which I saw before seeing the trailers — does not possess or seek to possess, an urgency that feels manufactured. The music is pulse-pounding and urgent, driven to create absurd expectations of action in a movie that quietly elicits worry about the relative friability of the invisible paths that exist between people and what they need. Still, every utterance, every cry for help or hand clasped across the mouth of the boy to suppress a sob, is a fair-enough emanation from the heart of the movie.

The odd thing is, the start of each trailer includes glimpses of a storm, panicky news footage, little puzzle pieces of the world before it ended. No one — not the director or the myriad producers, not the novelist or the screenwriter — had ever even hinted at how it happened, until this.

For someone who loves the book, for anyone who knows the story going in, this is a moment you hoped would never come. Why remind us of the reductive logic of cause and effect? Before the question can be asked, Weinstein stands up, offers his hand, and says, “Okay, we’re going with the first one.” He gives no rationale. And so it seems the metonymic references to the national news, to the weather, to presumed military conflicts laid in as a tonally quiet explanation of what is never known in book or movie, for now will stay in the trailer.

The Road also finally has an official release date: it’s October 16, 2009.

The second one is just Garret and AICN’s Capone. It includes some Sarah Connor spoilers and finally the info about the character he plays in Winter’s Bone. Snippets below:

In many ways, the character you’re playing in LAST HOUSE, especially in the way he was played by David Hess in the original, marked a turning point in the way evil was depicted on screen, and the evil that men do. Where is the starting point for you in bringing a character like that to life?

Garret Dillahunt: I guess it’s different for every part. Some you kind of know. Sometimes you’re like, “I’ve met this guy.” I’ve certainly never met this guy. I did read a lot. I got one of the Amazon Kindle things, which I thought I would hate, but I really love, and I packed it with 15 or 20 books I thought would be of interest, about serial killers and spree killers. There’s one in particular, and I can’t remember which one it was now, that kind of detailed a whole bunch of different killers. I think I was looking for little clue to explain why he was the way he was. I do think he’s a spree killer, not a serial killer–I learned the difference in that. Do you remember Andrew Cunanan?

The guy who died in Florida, sure.

GD: Yeah, the guy who killer Versace. I never would have thought that I’d find a lot for my guy in him, but I did, because there was this one story, really horrible. I guess I didn’t really know about all of the other people he’d killed on his way to Florida. There was one in particular that was a home invasion–I think he needed a new car–and he must have surprised someone at home. It was an older gentleman who had a military background, and they said he killed him so viciously and it was odd because that kind of cruelty is usually reserved for people that know the victim.

Did having worked with her before help at all in staging that horrific rape scene?

GD: It was helpful. But it was both, I think. Because you don’t want to do that to your friend, and I considered her my friend. I kept saying how nervous I was and that I was more nervous that she was, and she misunderstood my nerves. It wasn’t that I was nervous that I could do it; I was nervous that she wouldn’t like me after I did. Because I like her. She was 15 when we worked together the first time, and she was 19 or 20 now, and I like her and feel protective of her. So in the end, I think that it was helpful. That scene has to be about her. She’s going to go to a real dark place all day long, and I’m going to grind her in the dirt. There’s no room for joking around between takes. Let’s just be focused and not to this 100 times. We’ll do a good job, and between takes, I’ll help her up and put a blanket around her and make sure she’s safe. I think we made it the least weird we could. She was real nice to me and grateful.

That’s especially good to hear because, if you believe the stories, the actress to played the role in the original essentially lost her mind because of those scenes.

GD: Yeah, there are different philosophies about how to act. I personally don’t think it should be psychologically damaging. There’s no money in that. [laughs] That’s not acting. I prefer a little more craft than that. I don’t see why I would be needed if I actually had to become that thing.

I’m also a fan of “The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” so I have to ask about John Henry. There’s so much being made about how the shift to Fridays is a bad sign for the show’s future and the rating, and they’re kind of missing the point that the show has never been better, especially those scenes with you and Shirley Manson.

GD: I guess I like to be different with each character if I can, and I’ve been fortunate to have some options that way. Krug was certainly a departure from the last thing I did. And since I got to do something like four characters to play on “Terminator“–John Henry, Cromartie, George Laszlo, and that Beastwizard character–I just wanted John Henry to be very different. I thought, he’s going to be so much smarter because he’d plugged into this supercomputer, and he seems interested and curious in humans, so it seemed like a great opportunity to explore human emotions and learning and what I don’t know at times. And I like Shirley a lot, really fun, very well read and articulate, and everything just sounds cool with a Scottish accent.

So where does John Henry go from here. Does he finally get to leave that room?

GD: He does get to leave the room. I wish it had been a little earlier, but I will eventually get to leave that room. There are big fingers crossed for next season where I’ll be going, but I don’t know; we’ll see where that goes.

Is there still more learning to do for that character?

GD: I don’t even know what episode we’re on. I play with lots of toys. Later I get in a fight, a computer fight, that is quite traumatic for him. He loses his innocence a little bit. I’m sorry I’m being so vague.

Speaking of being in a separate story from the main plot, you and Tommy Lee Jones had your own little movie going on in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.

GD: Javier [Bardem] was talking about how wild it was that we won this ensemble award at the SAG Awards and we barely got to work with each other. Each of us had our own movie. That’s not really what ensemble means but it was interesting. I never crossed paths with Javier or Josh [Brolin].

Being a part of that film had to mean so much to you…

GD: Yeah, I was just happy to be a part of it. I’m a big fan of Cormac McCarthy’s work, and I was determined to be in every Cormac McCarthy movie there every was. So far two! It was actually “Deadwood” that made me just want to do stuff I was proud of.

And with “Deadwood,” they loved you so much, they couldn’t let you go even after your character died.

GD: I know. Thank God, right? That’s my niche. I’m dying for a niche.

Who do you play in THE ROAD?

GD: Well, it’s weird because it’s really about The Boy and The Man. No one has names in the book. Viggo Mortensen plays The Man, and Kodi Smit plays The Boy. I play The Gang Member. We all had two days if we’re not Kodi or Viggo, and it’s a great group of people who are willing to do that. Robert Duvall is in it, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce is great. Molly Parker from “Deadwood” is in it as well. It was just cool to be a part of. I’m a big fan of THE PROPOSITION.

I sat down with Viggo in October right after they’d announced that THE ROAD was not coming out at the end of last year as originally intended. He just really wanted to see it because he hadn’t at that time.

GD: I think it deserves awards. I’m sure he’s seen it by now. I saw a screening here about three weeks ago, here in L.A. I think it’s pretty beautiful. If you’re a fan of the book, you’ll be a fan of the movie.

Aside from THE ROAD, what is next for you?

GD: I’m filming a movie right now called WINTER’S BONE, based on a book of the same name by this guy named Daniel Woodrell. He wrote the book RIDE WITH THE DEVIL was based on. Do you remember that?

The Ang Lee film?

GD: I think that film is kind of underrated. I like that. Same author, but it’s a little more contemporary. It’s about hillbillies cooking meth in the Ozarks. I’m a sheriff in that one, back to playing good guys again. I’m not always bad guys.

Well, you did play Jesus.

GD: Can’t get much better than that. You played him, you can play as many bad guys as you want.

Why do you think guys like ["Deadwood" creator] David Milch or ["Terminator" creator] Josh Friedman or Wes Craven see you as the bad guy? Are you giving off some vibe?

GD: I don’t know. I just like interesting role and good stories. And often, the villain is the most interesting role. Maybe they understand that no one is just good and just bad. It’s always surprising.

You tend to alter your facial hair for each part, does that inform you into the character’s state of mind in any way?

GD: [laughs] I guess I do. I don’t know if it specifically it does, but it is like any other part of your costume. I need the right shoes. I remember reading about Michael Caine. If his feet aren’t in a short, he’s going to wear his old comfy tennis shoes, even if he’s wearing a suit or something. That’s the kind of thing that throws me off completely. I need my heavy boots on for Krug. [Ain't It Cool News]

Q: How do you go about playing such a dark, twisted character without dehumanizing him? As an actor, how do you approach that?

Garret: I guess you can’t think of him as that. I thought he was just a guy who’s had some bad luck in his life and it really makes him angry, the way the world has treated him. He’s just not responding to that bad luck, in a healthy way. He’s not seeking therapy or retraining. He’s blaming everyone else, and he really can’t let it go. He’s physically incapable. It’s everyone else’s fault, and he gets obsessed with punishing them. He’s mete-ing out his own twisted justice.

Q: Does the material tell you when it’s important to bring that characterization, as opposed to just letting him be the monster?

Garret: Maybe sometimes I should do that, but I feel like that’s easier. I have to be careful how I sound because it sounds like I’m good at doing it, but what I want to do is bring humanity to things. I feel like it’s more interesting if there’s a little complexity and, in a way, more monstrous because it could exist in the world, like Ted Bundy or the BTK killer or the Green River killer, where you’re just like, “What? How can you have that stamina, to do this over decades, and still wake up and dress yourself, or think you’re all right?” I don’t think Krug is a serial killer. I think he’s a spree killer. He’s just got some wrong ideas about how to exist.

Q: Did you do an entire backstory for this character?

Garret: I think it’s helpful to. I don’t think it matters, if the audience knows what it is. It’s probably better, in this case. You can be that monster. It doesn’t really matter, does it? He’s come to your door, for whatever reason. But, it was helpful for me, yes.

Q: On Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, you play this guy who is a machine and he’s detached. And, there is a little bit of that in this character that makes him a monster. Do they have anything in common?

Garret: I was hoping to be completely different from that. It was refreshing for me to play someone that’s so emotional. The machine doesn’t care. He’s almost not a bad guy. He’s just doing what he’s programmed to do. He doesn’t hate the Connors. He doesn’t have any feelings for them, whatsoever, which is what makes him scary. “I’m going to do this thing ‘cause it’s what I’m programmed to do, and I can’t be reasoned with.” But, this guy has rage and feels some kind of release from what he does. He needs to feel like the leader from the pack, and powerful. That’s what rape is. It’s a power game, and Mari won’t give him that. She keeps trying to escape. She wrecks the car and she burns Sadie. Those girls are something else. They do not stop fighting. From the moment we come into that motel room, they’re trying to get out. It’s pretty impressive. They’re impressive girls.

Q: What was the hardest thing, emotionally, for you to do in this?

Garret: I suppose it would have to be the assault. I would almost feel bad, saying anything else. But, it was oddly focusing as well. It was one of the most focused days I had because I was determined to do it right and do it on time, and bundle Sara off to a hot bath.

Q: How was working with Dennis?

Garret: I liked Dennis very much. He’s only done Hardcore, which was a really good movie. He handled the sexual stuff in that really well. It’s about teenage prostitutes in Greece, who go mad and go on a killing spree. But, it’s so sensitively handled and so believable, I thought he could do this well. I had absolute faith in him, in short order, because we have similar tastes. We like things messy, and we like things believable. He wasn’t going to let anything cheesy, on screen, and that’s a really freeing feeling, especially doing a horror movie, although I don’t know if it is pure horror. That he wouldn’t put anything dopey up there was great. How many times have you screamed at the screen, “Don’t go there! Why? That’s stupid. Now, I’m out of this movie.”

Q: Are there feelings that you’ll get a Season 3 (T:SCC), or is there disappointment because of the Friday night ratings?

Garret: I don’t know. I always feel like shows are going to be canceled. That’s probably a knee-jerk response as well. I prepare for the worst and start looking for another job, just in case.

Q: Do you have a satisfying resolution for John Henry, if this is it?

Garret: It’s never satisfying, is it? I’m usually dead when series end, so this will be my first time living.

Q: Have you seen a cut of The Road yet?

Garret: I did. I saw one about three weeks ago. I think it looks great. I’m a big fan of Cormac McCarthy, so I might be an easy audience. But, I think that kid is something else. Kodi Smit-McPhee is his name. He’s an Australian kid. Talk about clicking in and out of character. He was like, “It’s fun, I reckon,” and then they’d call action and he’d be a little American kid, all intense and sad. They called him “the alien” on set because he was so good. It’s annoying, really. I was like, “I’ve studied for years. You can’t just show up and be good.”

About The Road:

“No one writes better stories than Cormac McCarthy. I think Cormac had just had his son [when he wrote The Road]. He had his son fairly late in life, and there was a fire on the hill, and he was watching it from his back door, and his mind just started to wander (…) I think he thought because of these feelings of protectiveness for his son, he just started thinking about what he would do. That fire made him think about what if that was the end coming. What if that was a meteor shower that disrupted the whole atmosphere? This story started to develop about this boy who would then grow up never knowing anything but that [bleak] world. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful. He started to see the world again, and its magic and mystery through the eyes of this boy, and that’s what the book’s about. “

About his character in Burning Bright:

“A hurricane is coming, and I need some insurance money. Again, I’m a bad father.”

About the science fiction genre in general:

“That’s my whole job. I ask ‘What if?’ all the time. What if I was this guy? What if I was that? I just like good stories. I am a science fiction fan. I have 11 boxes of comic books at home. I read Isaac Asimov when I was in eighth grade, and all these incredible, mind-bending kinds of things. I think it’s an excellent way to think outside the box. The most intelligent people I know are science fiction fans and writers.” [SCI FI Wire]

Cave previously worked with director John Hillcoat on The Proposition, the Australian western starring Guy Pearce and Ray Winstone, for which he wrote the script as well as the score.

Also included in Jones’ report are a few audio clips from Irish writer John Banville, who won the MAN Booker Prize in 2005 for his novel The Sea and is a fan of the book, and from Cormac McCarthy himself.

You can hear it here.