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RADIO
Matthew Fox: Racer X and LOST
By Erin Broadley
May 8, 2008
Matthew Fox breaks the law all the time. In fact, earlier this year the actor told Empire Magazine, "I can't imagine living my life abiding by the law completely. That'd be tough to do." Amen, brother.
Despite whatever shenanigans he likes to get into, most know Fox as the troubled Dr. Jack Shephard on "Lost" who has been struggling to keep himself, and his comrades, alive since Oceanic Flight 815 crashed into the Pacific in 2004. During a hiatus between Season 3 and Season 4, Fox took on a decidedly different role, that of Racer X in the Wachowski brothers' upcoming Speed Racer.
"One of the first things [the Wachowskis] said was that they wanted to make a movie that their nieces and nephews could see. They had never really done anything like that...," Fox told SuicideGirls during a recent roundtable interview. "That really hit a chord with me, you know. I have kids and haven’t done anything that I would feel comfortable for them really watching."
Fox's Racer X is a dark and brooding counterpart to Emile Hirsch's Speed, and though kid friendly, he definitely breaks a few laws (and bones). SuicideGirls got details on the new film, Fox's passion for building hot rods, and... yes... the future of "Lost" and what to expect in this season's finale.
Question: The notes said you never watched [Speed Racer] as a kid because you had no TV. [Laughs] So what was the attraction?
Matthew Fox: The Wachowski brothers. That was the first way into the project, meeting them and hearing their thoughts on what they wanted to try to accomplish in the movie. One of the first things they said was that they wanted to make a movie that their nieces and nephews could see. They had never really done anything like that and wanted to make a family movie. That really hit a chord with me. You know, I have kids and haven’t done anything that I would feel comfortable for them really watching. I went and did some research on the original source material and I had definitely seen those images, I recognized them, they were familiar to me though I don’t think I’d ever really seen an episode. So I went out and watched a bunch of episodes and got a feel for what made that series in the 1960s so catchy. Larry and Andy wrote a script that I thought was just absolutely amazing… it was really the only project that I wanted to be [involved in]. I was looking at a few things last Spring but the minute I met with Larry and Andy and started going down the Racer X route, I didn’t want to do anything else. I pretty much said, if I don’t get this role I’m not going to work this hiatus [from “Lost”].
Q:
So why do you think that Rex leaves home? It’s not like his father is that nasty or anything so why is it so rebellious? Why does he have that streak in him?
MF:
I think it’s more than just rebellion. I do think that my experience of my brothers and I and my father and our relationships with father son… ultimately, that’s the way that you leave the house. There has to be that sort of… and it can be something large or it can be something small. I think it was also the realization that the system was corrupt. I think he was recruited out of that house on some level as well. So it was a combination of feeling like he wasn’t being understood and wasn’t being supported at home -- which is what every young guy goes through with his father pretty much and has to, to make that break -- in conjunction with the feeling that the system that he loved and lived for was flawed, corrupt, fixed and sent him down this road of trying to do something to fix it and to be a part of the solution.
Q:
So you’re sitting in a gimbaled race car, in front of a green screen, with a leather mask and goggles, and obviously you trust the Wachowskis because you’ve seen them at work, but on set, what is it that they’re saying to you that makes you comfortable in that moment?
MF:
Well, you hit it. I did, though the entire process, have complete and utter faith in the Wachowskis making me look good [laughs]. I really did. There were moments where you’re like, “Wow this is pretty intense.” Honestly, going into it this was one of the most terrifying experiences… there’s so many ways that you wrapped in a leather suit can be very bad. [Laughs]
Q:
[Laughs] Didn’t you have to take breaks because it was so hot?
MF:
The comfort level, yeah, it was incredibly hot and doing the fight sequences in the suit was incredibly difficult and I was very dehydrated. I’m talking like, on a creative level, there’s a lot of ways that can go terribly wrong. But I did have complete faith in them and also had my own really strong idea after the conversations with them, what they were going for, tonally, what this world would look like and what I wanted to try and do within that leather suit that would be really cool and trying to create this mysterious thing with a voice that was sort of anime that went along with it. I felt that the way that Larry and Andy wrote the way that X talks, the rhythm of his speech, was starting to give me all these hints.
Q:
When you don’t have the eyes and you just have this part of your face, does that sort of make you have to adjust the way you’re acting?
MF:
There’s no question. Again, the first meeting that I had with Larry and Andy was a bunch of warnings on their part. They’re like, “This is why this is going to be very difficult. This green screen, this technology that we’re doing, the way we’re shooting it is going to be tough, are you comfortable playing a role where the audience isn’t going to see your eyes for a majority of the [film]?” I was really intrigued and challenged by it. It was an incredible experience, the wardrobe was a really important part for me of getting into something and finding my way into it… it informs in so many ways. I got two weeks into it and when I would put the suit on and drop that helmet on, man, it was like, bam, I was right there. It was so cool. And watching the way people would deal around you, when you put that on, it was pretty cool. [Laughs]
Q:
You didn’t grow up with the show, you weren’t familiar with it, but at what point did someone tell you that Racer X is actually the coolest character?
MF:
[Laughs] One of my closest friends who was just the hugest Speed Racer fan in the world, we were having dinner when we heard that Larry and Andy wanted to meet me on this project and he just flipped. He’s pretty discerning about the kind of things that he would like so I knew watching him get that excited that there had to be something really cool.
Q:
Did you enjoy having the chance to use your martial arts training?
MF:
I did, very much. That part of the shooting was really rewarding to me. I did all the stunts in the movie myself, which I’m proud of. I worked really hard to do that and Dave and Chad, the guys who did all the stunt work and did all the stuff for The Matrix as well, they put me through a test and wanted to see how athletic I was and what I could do and what I couldn’t and they felt that I could do it all and did I want to. I was like, “Of course I do… to the degree that I can make it look good,” and they were like, “Well trust us, we’ll tell you if it doesn’t look good.” [Laughs] They also told me that if I do it all, that Larry and Andy would be able to shoot it in a much cooler way, which was the case.
I studied [Taekwondo] for a couple years when I got out of college in New York and did some tournament fighting… but I hadn’t done any training in a long time so it was hard work. For six weeks in Berlin I was training pretty much every other day and learning a lot of the sequences, which kept changing. The stuff in the suit was particularly difficult just because… the heat was really intense. And having your head covered, the lenses would fog up really quickly which lead to a few misjudges on my part. A couple of stunt guys got knocked on their ass.
The gimbal was really intense… as an actor you just got in there and hung on for dear life. X has to be the “Harbinger of Boom,” he has to be kicking some hard butt, he’s got to be doing big moves so I was getting thrown up against the door really intensely, to the point where my shoulder was pretty sore and bruised. But I really had a good time doing it.
Q:
Some of your cast mates in “Lost” got in trouble for speeding. Were you ever a speeder?
MF:
Uh, yeah, I enjoy driving fast. That’s the running joke: if you get pulled over by the cops, you’re pretty much killed off the show.
[All Laugh]
Q:
What would you have if you could have any kind of car?
MF:
I build hot rods so I'm taking a 1950 Mercury Coup and turning it into a hot rod. I enjoy the ‘50s styling I thought was really cool. Putting all the modern technology into it was really fun.
Q:
You’ve said before that you can’t imagine living your life completely abiding by the law the whole time. Where do you think, for your character, you would draw the line between breaking a few laws for the sake of the greater good versus complete corruption?
MF:
I think X breaks a few laws [laughs]. I think he is definitely the end justifies the means… That’s part of the reason why he has that reputation, a lot of people think he might actually not be technically a really good guy. Obviously we find out or we think that he is. Yeah, he’s walking in the shadows.
Q:
Any road rage stories of your own?
MF:
No, I’ve always really enjoyed driving. I grew up in Wyoming where the roads are really open and there’s not a lot of traffic and there are speed limits but there’s not a lot of enforcement of those speed limits. And it’s always been just… a sense of freedom in it and I enjoy that. I actually recently got a chance to drive some Porches on the Willow Springs track… and I got some instruction from the Penske/Porsche driver Patrick Long, who’s just awesome. It was two days and really one of the most fun things I’ve ever done.
Q:
More or less freeing than riding horses when you were growing up?
MF:
I love getting on the back of a horse but this is the first time I’d ever really driven cars on a track and been able to really push the limits of an automobile. Driving a Porsche GT3 RS, it’s unbelievable what these cars can do when you’re in an environment where you can really start to push the car.
Q:
Did you get to keep the mask?
MF:
I dress up in it all the time.
[All Laugh]
Q:
What about the next hiatus [from “Lost”]? Is there going to be a movie or would you rather just kick back?
MF:
This hiatus coming right now I’m going to take off. I haven’t taken any break for two years. Done four films and “Lost” in that period of time… And I’m looking at material to do next but I’m going to take this one off and just spend some time with people that I care about.
Q:
With TV shows, usually the way that it works as an actor is that it’s always an open-ended story line where you’re going forward and discovering what’s happening as you go. With “Lost,” obviously that’s all changed because not only are there flash-forwards but because it has an end date now, does that sort of change the way that you’re approaching your work on the show?
MF:
Not really. We’re going to catch up with the flash-forward here in this year and then we’ll be back… it’s going to be really interesting to see with Season 5, how time is structured in that. We will have closed those two points of the finale of last year where you had that juxtaposition of him on the island, feeling like he’d finally accomplished rescue and this future where he’s desperate and at the pit of despair and feels like he has to go back and we don’t know why and what’s transpired in between. We will have closed that whole thing so we will have gotten back into a situation where we’ll be in the present.
Q:
How much gets resolved in the finale?
MF:
Huge, huge, huge stuff. We’re shooting pretty much three episodes that are… it’s really like a three episode finale, simultaneously. It’s huge.
Speed Racer opens in theaters this Friday May 9. For more information go to the official site here.
Matthew Fox breaks the law all the time. In fact, earlier this year the actor told Empire Magazine, "I can't imagine living my life abiding by the law completely. That'd be tough to do." Amen, brother.
Despite whatever shenanigans he likes to get into, most know Fox as the troubled Dr. Jack Shephard on "Lost" who has been struggling to keep himself, and his comrades, alive since Oceanic Flight 815 crashed into the Pacific in 2004. During a hiatus between Season 3 and Season 4, Fox took on a decidedly different role, that of Racer X in the Wachowski brothers' upcoming Speed Racer.
"One of the first things [the Wachowskis] said was that they wanted to make a movie that their nieces and nephews could see. They had never really done anything like that...," Fox told SuicideGirls during a recent roundtable interview. "That really hit a chord with me, you know. I have kids and haven’t done anything that I would feel comfortable for them really watching."
Fox's Racer X is a dark and brooding counterpart to Emile Hirsch's Speed, and though kid friendly, he definitely breaks a few laws (and bones). SuicideGirls got details on the new film, Fox's passion for building hot rods, and... yes... the future of "Lost" and what to expect in this season's finale.
Question: The notes said you never watched [Speed Racer] as a kid because you had no TV. [Laughs] So what was the attraction?
Matthew Fox: The Wachowski brothers. That was the first way into the project, meeting them and hearing their thoughts on what they wanted to try to accomplish in the movie. One of the first things they said was that they wanted to make a movie that their nieces and nephews could see. They had never really done anything like that and wanted to make a family movie. That really hit a chord with me. You know, I have kids and haven’t done anything that I would feel comfortable for them really watching. I went and did some research on the original source material and I had definitely seen those images, I recognized them, they were familiar to me though I don’t think I’d ever really seen an episode. So I went out and watched a bunch of episodes and got a feel for what made that series in the 1960s so catchy. Larry and Andy wrote a script that I thought was just absolutely amazing… it was really the only project that I wanted to be [involved in]. I was looking at a few things last Spring but the minute I met with Larry and Andy and started going down the Racer X route, I didn’t want to do anything else. I pretty much said, if I don’t get this role I’m not going to work this hiatus [from “Lost”].
Q:
So why do you think that Rex leaves home? It’s not like his father is that nasty or anything so why is it so rebellious? Why does he have that streak in him?
MF:
I think it’s more than just rebellion. I do think that my experience of my brothers and I and my father and our relationships with father son… ultimately, that’s the way that you leave the house. There has to be that sort of… and it can be something large or it can be something small. I think it was also the realization that the system was corrupt. I think he was recruited out of that house on some level as well. So it was a combination of feeling like he wasn’t being understood and wasn’t being supported at home -- which is what every young guy goes through with his father pretty much and has to, to make that break -- in conjunction with the feeling that the system that he loved and lived for was flawed, corrupt, fixed and sent him down this road of trying to do something to fix it and to be a part of the solution.
Q:
So you’re sitting in a gimbaled race car, in front of a green screen, with a leather mask and goggles, and obviously you trust the Wachowskis because you’ve seen them at work, but on set, what is it that they’re saying to you that makes you comfortable in that moment?
MF:
Well, you hit it. I did, though the entire process, have complete and utter faith in the Wachowskis making me look good [laughs]. I really did. There were moments where you’re like, “Wow this is pretty intense.” Honestly, going into it this was one of the most terrifying experiences… there’s so many ways that you wrapped in a leather suit can be very bad. [Laughs]
Q:
[Laughs] Didn’t you have to take breaks because it was so hot?
MF:
The comfort level, yeah, it was incredibly hot and doing the fight sequences in the suit was incredibly difficult and I was very dehydrated. I’m talking like, on a creative level, there’s a lot of ways that can go terribly wrong. But I did have complete faith in them and also had my own really strong idea after the conversations with them, what they were going for, tonally, what this world would look like and what I wanted to try and do within that leather suit that would be really cool and trying to create this mysterious thing with a voice that was sort of anime that went along with it. I felt that the way that Larry and Andy wrote the way that X talks, the rhythm of his speech, was starting to give me all these hints.
Q:
When you don’t have the eyes and you just have this part of your face, does that sort of make you have to adjust the way you’re acting?
MF:
There’s no question. Again, the first meeting that I had with Larry and Andy was a bunch of warnings on their part. They’re like, “This is why this is going to be very difficult. This green screen, this technology that we’re doing, the way we’re shooting it is going to be tough, are you comfortable playing a role where the audience isn’t going to see your eyes for a majority of the [film]?” I was really intrigued and challenged by it. It was an incredible experience, the wardrobe was a really important part for me of getting into something and finding my way into it… it informs in so many ways. I got two weeks into it and when I would put the suit on and drop that helmet on, man, it was like, bam, I was right there. It was so cool. And watching the way people would deal around you, when you put that on, it was pretty cool. [Laughs]
Q:
You didn’t grow up with the show, you weren’t familiar with it, but at what point did someone tell you that Racer X is actually the coolest character?
MF:
[Laughs] One of my closest friends who was just the hugest Speed Racer fan in the world, we were having dinner when we heard that Larry and Andy wanted to meet me on this project and he just flipped. He’s pretty discerning about the kind of things that he would like so I knew watching him get that excited that there had to be something really cool.
Q:
Did you enjoy having the chance to use your martial arts training?
MF:
I did, very much. That part of the shooting was really rewarding to me. I did all the stunts in the movie myself, which I’m proud of. I worked really hard to do that and Dave and Chad, the guys who did all the stunt work and did all the stuff for The Matrix as well, they put me through a test and wanted to see how athletic I was and what I could do and what I couldn’t and they felt that I could do it all and did I want to. I was like, “Of course I do… to the degree that I can make it look good,” and they were like, “Well trust us, we’ll tell you if it doesn’t look good.” [Laughs] They also told me that if I do it all, that Larry and Andy would be able to shoot it in a much cooler way, which was the case.
I studied [Taekwondo] for a couple years when I got out of college in New York and did some tournament fighting… but I hadn’t done any training in a long time so it was hard work. For six weeks in Berlin I was training pretty much every other day and learning a lot of the sequences, which kept changing. The stuff in the suit was particularly difficult just because… the heat was really intense. And having your head covered, the lenses would fog up really quickly which lead to a few misjudges on my part. A couple of stunt guys got knocked on their ass.
The gimbal was really intense… as an actor you just got in there and hung on for dear life. X has to be the “Harbinger of Boom,” he has to be kicking some hard butt, he’s got to be doing big moves so I was getting thrown up against the door really intensely, to the point where my shoulder was pretty sore and bruised. But I really had a good time doing it.
I studied [Taekwondo] for a couple years when I got out of college in New York and did some tournament fighting… but I hadn’t done any training in a long time so it was hard work. For six weeks in Berlin I was training pretty much every other day and learning a lot of the sequences, which kept changing. The stuff in the suit was particularly difficult just because… the heat was really intense. And having your head covered, the lenses would fog up really quickly which lead to a few misjudges on my part. A couple of stunt guys got knocked on their ass.
The gimbal was really intense… as an actor you just got in there and hung on for dear life. X has to be the “Harbinger of Boom,” he has to be kicking some hard butt, he’s got to be doing big moves so I was getting thrown up against the door really intensely, to the point where my shoulder was pretty sore and bruised. But I really had a good time doing it.
Q:
Some of your cast mates in “Lost” got in trouble for speeding. Were you ever a speeder?
MF:
Uh, yeah, I enjoy driving fast. That’s the running joke: if you get pulled over by the cops, you’re pretty much killed off the show.
[All Laugh]
[All Laugh]
Q:
What would you have if you could have any kind of car?
MF:
I build hot rods so I'm taking a 1950 Mercury Coup and turning it into a hot rod. I enjoy the ‘50s styling I thought was really cool. Putting all the modern technology into it was really fun.
Q:
You’ve said before that you can’t imagine living your life completely abiding by the law the whole time. Where do you think, for your character, you would draw the line between breaking a few laws for the sake of the greater good versus complete corruption?
MF:
I think X breaks a few laws [laughs]. I think he is definitely the end justifies the means… That’s part of the reason why he has that reputation, a lot of people think he might actually not be technically a really good guy. Obviously we find out or we think that he is. Yeah, he’s walking in the shadows.
Q:
Any road rage stories of your own?
MF:
No, I’ve always really enjoyed driving. I grew up in Wyoming where the roads are really open and there’s not a lot of traffic and there are speed limits but there’s not a lot of enforcement of those speed limits. And it’s always been just… a sense of freedom in it and I enjoy that. I actually recently got a chance to drive some Porches on the Willow Springs track… and I got some instruction from the Penske/Porsche driver Patrick Long, who’s just awesome. It was two days and really one of the most fun things I’ve ever done.
Q:
More or less freeing than riding horses when you were growing up?
MF:
I love getting on the back of a horse but this is the first time I’d ever really driven cars on a track and been able to really push the limits of an automobile. Driving a Porsche GT3 RS, it’s unbelievable what these cars can do when you’re in an environment where you can really start to push the car.
Q:
Did you get to keep the mask?
MF:
I dress up in it all the time.
[All Laugh]
[All Laugh]
Q:
What about the next hiatus [from “Lost”]? Is there going to be a movie or would you rather just kick back?
MF:
This hiatus coming right now I’m going to take off. I haven’t taken any break for two years. Done four films and “Lost” in that period of time… And I’m looking at material to do next but I’m going to take this one off and just spend some time with people that I care about.
Q:
With TV shows, usually the way that it works as an actor is that it’s always an open-ended story line where you’re going forward and discovering what’s happening as you go. With “Lost,” obviously that’s all changed because not only are there flash-forwards but because it has an end date now, does that sort of change the way that you’re approaching your work on the show?
MF:
Not really. We’re going to catch up with the flash-forward here in this year and then we’ll be back… it’s going to be really interesting to see with Season 5, how time is structured in that. We will have closed those two points of the finale of last year where you had that juxtaposition of him on the island, feeling like he’d finally accomplished rescue and this future where he’s desperate and at the pit of despair and feels like he has to go back and we don’t know why and what’s transpired in between. We will have closed that whole thing so we will have gotten back into a situation where we’ll be in the present.
Q:
How much gets resolved in the finale?
MF:
Huge, huge, huge stuff. We’re shooting pretty much three episodes that are… it’s really like a three episode finale, simultaneously. It’s huge.
Speed Racer opens in theaters this Friday May 9. For more information go to the official site here.
Speed Racer opens in theaters this Friday May 9. For more information go to the official site here.
