Adam Goldberg director of I Love Your Work
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

Adam Goldberg usually plays slightly neurotic, manic Jewey characters. So it was interesting to find out that in person he’s very neurotic, slightly manic and not as Jewey as I thought.

Goldberg first found fame in the films Dazed and Confused and Higher Learning. In the past few years he’s moved into more leading roles with the cult classic The Hebrew Hammer and the TV movie Frankenstein.

Now Goldberg has directed his second feature called I Love Your Work and it chronicles the disintegration of Gray Evans [played by Giovanni Ribisi], a movie star losing his grip on reality, unable to adjust to his own celebrity, and consumed by a twisted nostalgia for love and simplicity lost.

Daniel Robert Epstein: How autobiographical is I Love Your Work?

Adam Goldberg: To the extent that if I was as famous as the character that’s depicted in the film, I would have an adverse reaction. I probably wouldn’t go crazy, but I’ve always felt like whatever my level of notoriety is, it is precisely where it needs to be. Except of course when it comes time for me to buy a big screen television. I primarily observe life, but I thought it would be an interesting concept to have this guy who is very much immersed in this world, but yet is still observing it in a somewhat dangerous way. That is to say that he’s obsessed with everything that’s outside of himself this non reality, his past, movies, that kind of thing. So if you take somebody like that who’s supposed to be the object of people’s obsession, it can be a dangerous combination.

DRE: How long was shooting on this?

AG: Three weeks. It was all fairly normal. The only romantic independent film story about this is that it got held up in this corporate quagmire.

DRE: Why did that happen?

AG: One of the producers made a deal with the people that came in for the second half of the financing. I have no fucking clue what their logic was. It was this crazy all inclusive deal and these guys realized that they own this movie and wanted to try to dump it to DVD. It was a fabulous waste of a year and a half of my life.

DRE: You’re credited with so many things on this film besides writing and directing.

AG: Well I don’t see any separation between directing and things like sound design and music. You’re just making your movie.

DRE: What was the writing process for you and [co-writer] Adrian Butchart?

AG: It was my idea. I wrote about 45 pages before Adrian showed up in New York. He stayed with me for a couple of weeks and we hammered out the outline and the structure and he wrote a working draft that was much more kind of genre-ish. Then I used that as a template to then pile on stuff for about a year after that.

DRE: The poster reminds me of Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom.

AG: Yeah. I’ve always loved that film.

DRE: There are a lot of film references in this. Were those in the script?

AG: Some were in the script and then I think other things would pop up here and there. They’re integral to the character’s psyche. I read something that said I was showing off my film literacy, which in fact really isn’t that expansive.

DRE: I read that too. It sounded like horseshit.

AG: Well people get annoyed at you for things. But the character’s whole life is being destroyed by his obsession with film, so it seemed appropriate.

DRE: Do you have an obsession with film?

AG: I’ve felt like at a certain point I stopped watching movies because I just felt like I really wasn’t a crazy cinephile. But I definitely feel like I’ve gone through phases where you cease to actually experience things and need to live a little bit. You get so caught up in the kind of romance of these other worlds it’s sometimes dangerous.

DRE: Last time we spoke you mentioned that you used to get much more into your characters. Have you found easier ways of doing that now?

AG: I thought you had to do a lot of work and that’s what you were supposed to do. Let’s face it, actors for the most part don’t get to work that often. So when they do, they just want to do everything they possibly can. I think as my interest or passions began to expand a bit, that became less of an urgency. As far as acting, whatever, it pays the rent.

DRE: Have you ever been stalked?

AG: Not even close. I wish. Get some of those SuicideGirls.

DRE: I read you started this script when you were working on the TV show The Street, was it because you had more free time and didn’t have to worry about work?

AG: I moved to New York for that show and I remember being really hungover. When you’re hungover or sick or whatever, you end up being very vulnerable to feelings. I remember calling Adrian from a pay phone on this sweltering hot day among a sea of people because I was overwhelmed by the idea that I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing. I think it was compounded by the fact that I was about to start working on the TV show. I was like “What the fuck am I doing? I’m supposed to be making films.” In fact it did act as a minor catalyst, much in the same like the cancellation of this TV show, Head Cases, has allowed me to start writing again.

DRE: Head Cases got more press when it got cancelled than did when it was launched.

AG: I know, which is awesome. You think “God, if they had put that much into promoting the show, we’d be a hit.”

DRE: Was the show any good?

AG: I can’t be objective about it. Some people liked the pilot. Others thought the pilot lacked cohesion, with the second episode I felt like it finally hit its stride and then it was cancelled the next morning. It certainly wasn’t horrible and that’s not why it was cancelled. It was cancelled because I don’t think the network liked it.

DRE: So it was always your intention to direct?

AG: Always, since I was a kid. I feel really compelled to write the stuff that I direct, so that just doesn’t happen very often plus it wouldn’t be the easiest way in the world to make a living.

DRE: Are your films more indicative of your personality?

AG: Oh yeah. It’s everything. There’s a lot stored up.

DRE: What are you writing now?

AG: It’s still kind of forming. I think it’s essentially a relationship exploration, but it’s trapped in the body of a film noir so. A kind of gaslight meets Annie Hall.

DRE: Would it be bigger budgeted?

AG: Nah, probably not.

DRE: Do you see a part for yourself in anything you direct?

AG: No, I don’t want to do that again.

DRE: Actors always say no until they realize that you can’t find somebody.

AG: In my first movie [Scotch and Milk] I’m in every single frame because it was easy not to have to direct a guy who’s in every single scene. That seemed like a logical extension. But now I know I don’t want to write the great role for myself. I really view acting as the career and this is the passion. I don’t see them connected the way that I used to.

DRE: Is The Hebrew Hammer the movie a lot of people ask you about?

AG: It is. In trying to assess how interested people would be in financing such a thing, you have to supply them with numbers of how well something did. But presumably it wasn’t any kind of hit or whatever and yet every fucking body seems to know it. It is weird because it’s such an odd film for people to have seen. It must just be that it aired so much on Comedy Central.

DRE: A lot of people want me to ask you about The Salton Sea. How was working on that?

AG: It was fun but I was only there for a few days.

DRE: People love that movie.

AG: Oh yeah but I just happened to not do very much in it. DJ Caruso, the director, is very nice. I got to know Peter [Sarsgaard], who I see every once in awhile. I did film that sequence where I got hit by the ambulance but they didn’t use the shot. I was strapped to a dolly that was hinged to the bottom of the ambulance because they were going to be shooting down at me while I’m looking up at the grill of the ambulance. So it hits me and I’m stuck to the grill and then this guy underneath the ambulance pulls me under. It was pretty fucking elaborate and scary because it was a moving ambulance but they didn’t even use the shot.

DRE: There’s a rising group out there that consider you a sex symbol.

AG: Oh good. Do what you can to continue to promote that strange delusion.

DRE: Do you visit any of the Adam Goldberg fansites?

AG: There’s one that I don’t think has been updated since I think the mid 1950’s. But I think that if you’re in the public eye in any way, there’s always going to be people that like you just for the fact that you’re there. They’ll like you or they will hate you. It won’t really be founded in anything. It seems often times it’s pretty arbitrary. There’s a fansite for everyone including somebody who passes by a bank security cam.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Adam+Goldberg+director+of+I+Love+Your+Work/