Dan Epstein: Was this an easy character for you to get into?
Ray Liotta: I wouldn't say easy is the right word. It's just written so well and there is so much to it. It obviously feels one way. There is an edgy side to him but there is also this great monologue I have that gave me insight to him. It's when I am in the car talking about my wife and that time was the best time of my life. I basically think the guy is a good guy at heart. Even when he was beating the guy in the beginning with the pool ball I am saying "Don't ever touch your wife and kids again."
He's not Dirty Harry and he's not a vigilante cop and it comes out in a very professional way. He does things on his own. He has a 93 percent conviction rating but his methods are not always the department's. There's a great line in the film "It's not always about rules and regulations, it's about right and wrong." He crosses the line but his reasoning is not wrong.
DE: How did Narc come to you?
RL: Well I found Narc. I wanted to take a more proactive line with my career. Some of the parts I had been getting I wasn't too crazy about. I changed agents. I was with one of the alphabet agencies and I had enough with them. I said I wanted to produce my own movies. This was the first movie that I read and I really responded to it. It reminded me of a 70's movie. My idols from that time are Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. They were anti-heroes in their films. There was a lot of gray in what they did and who they were. I didn't see the twist coming in Narc. I was surprised and moved by it.
When I met [writer/director] Joe [Carnahan] I just loved his sensibilities and I wanted to give him a shot. Just as I was starting to get going on Narc I got Hannibal, Blow and Heartbreakers. I had some good supporting parts in studio movies that I felt I could give Joe his shot. Our whole intent was to make it as raw and real as possible.
I put on 25 pounds for Narc. I used all these different wardrobe tricks. Joe was fixated on me having a goatee so I grew a goatee. As an actor you take this character and think it all through. After my character's wife died he replaced all of that with work. He didn't do anything else. After chasing down the bad guys he didn't go home and make a salad. He was a fast food, pizzas and burgers. He's not the happiest person in the world.
I used a lot of makeup under my eyes to just show a tired kind of guy. We added shoulder pads, lifts in my shoes because the character is named Henry Oak. A big bruising guy.
DE: Do you have a second wind on your career?
RL: Yeah I have definitely had an up and down career. I came out of the box real strong with Something Wild, Field of Dreams and that thing with Marty [Goodfellas].
DE: But you've never stopped working.
RL: No but it's not a meritocracy. It's not how well you do in a movie it's how well the movie does. I definitely had some hits and misses. With Hannibal, Blow and Heartbreakers they were high profile movies that did well. Narc is getting a lot of attention and hopefully this will keep turning things around so I don't keep losing things to people I feel as adequate as.
DE: Were you responsible for hiring Jason Patric?
RL: That was more Joe's idea. We had gone to a couple of other actors. Some wanted to do it, some didn't understand and some thought it was too rough. He was not the first person we went to. Joe obviously remembered Rush [released in 1991] and the part is somewhat reminiscent of what he did in that. When we met Jason we found that his energy is very different than mine. He's very cerebral, he thinks things out. My character is just extremely wound up. What was good about that is he's mature enough to not be afraid of me upstaging them. He knew what his part was. When Im yelling at him, he knows he can only go to a certain degree because he knows I'm a live wire. In the script his character says "wouldn't don't want to go out with a guy who is playing 9 ball on a perp's skull." When he tells me to get my hand out of my face, a lesser actor would want to show off that he could be tough too. That wouldn't have made sense because my guy would have never been talked to that way. To me I can't think of anyone else in this role. I'm so glad Joe thought of him.
We did this movie for under five million dollars, we shot in 28 days in Toronto in the middle of the cold and the money ran out. It was a very difficult shoot. Once we got into Sundance we got a lot of attention and we started getting calls from these major people like Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman and Harrison Ford. They were telling us how much they liked the movie. Then Paula Wagner saw it and she told Tom Cruise about it. Tom really flipped out over it. Tom called us and asked if there was anything he could do to help us out. He wants the movie to get attention. They came on as executive producers and got Paramount to buy it. Sherry Lansing [head of Paramount] and her husband William Friedkin flipped out over it too. William Friedkin said it was one of the best cop movies he had ever seen. This is the guy who made The French Connection. All this stuff from this little independent movie just took on this whole life of it's own.
DE: When the money ran out how serious was that?
RL: Very serious. Every day the crew was threatening to walk out. They thought they might not be getting paid; Jason, Joe and I deferred our salaries. We never saw dailies because they never paid the lab. It was handled because Joe said he wanted to shoot it realistic like a [John] Cassavetes film. Because the camera moved so much we never knew if the camera was in focus half the time and then three months later we still never saw dailies because of no money.
DE: How did the money issue get resolved?
RL: Well when you see the movie and you see how many producers on this thing. Joe would go to his so-called friends; nobody in Hollywood does something for nothing, when they did give us a few dollars they would ask for producer credit. They never were on set, they never saw the script. All these people became producers because they gave a friend some money.
DE: You've played a lot of angry characters. Where does that come from?
RL: I'm an actor. That's my job. I had as good a time with Miss Piggy [in Muppets From Space] as I did with beating up somebody. I'm not some freak. My job sometimes is to be wound up. I've only been in one fight in seventh grade
DE: How'd you do?
RL: I won [laughs]. We're still friends.
DE: So is it easy to leave those tough guy characters behind?
RL: In the beginning on my career not as much because you don't trust yourself. You want to make sure it's there the next day and you get too methody. Now having done over 25 movies. I was in acting class all through Goodfellas. It's not that you take it off and it's gone but it's always with you. I don't go into a bar and say, "Give me my fucking drink!" I just ask for the drink.
DE: You were very funny in Heartbreakers and the episodes of Just Shoot Me you were on. Did anyone offer you a sitcom?
RL: No, they offered me Sopranos but I did Goodfellas. Why would I want to do Sopranos? I would like to do more comedy. I had a blast doing those comedies.
DE: Do you wish there were more cops like the ones in Narc?
RL: Jason accidentally kills somebody and then he becomes a junkie. So not a cop like that. But if somebody harmed my family would I want a cop like Oak to chase him down? No question about it. All he did was slap a couple of heads. I've ridden around with cops before and most of the calls we went on the people were either drunk or on drugs.
DE: What was it like producing this film with your wife [Michelle Grace]?
RL: She was a real champion of the film. When I read it and I wasn't sure of it because I didn't want to do another movie people might not see. I had seen Joe's previous movie Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane and it was okay. But it wasn't until I met him that he was a talented guy and I trusted him. Through the while time Michelle was calling my agents and telling them that no matter I did I'm doing Narc. It was a great experience.
Ray Liotta: I wouldn't say easy is the right word. It's just written so well and there is so much to it. It obviously feels one way. There is an edgy side to him but there is also this great monologue I have that gave me insight to him. It's when I am in the car talking about my wife and that time was the best time of my life. I basically think the guy is a good guy at heart. Even when he was beating the guy in the beginning with the pool ball I am saying "Don't ever touch your wife and kids again."
He's not Dirty Harry and he's not a vigilante cop and it comes out in a very professional way. He does things on his own. He has a 93 percent conviction rating but his methods are not always the department's. There's a great line in the film "It's not always about rules and regulations, it's about right and wrong." He crosses the line but his reasoning is not wrong.
DE: How did Narc come to you?
RL: Well I found Narc. I wanted to take a more proactive line with my career. Some of the parts I had been getting I wasn't too crazy about. I changed agents. I was with one of the alphabet agencies and I had enough with them. I said I wanted to produce my own movies. This was the first movie that I read and I really responded to it. It reminded me of a 70's movie. My idols from that time are Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. They were anti-heroes in their films. There was a lot of gray in what they did and who they were. I didn't see the twist coming in Narc. I was surprised and moved by it.
When I met [writer/director] Joe [Carnahan] I just loved his sensibilities and I wanted to give him a shot. Just as I was starting to get going on Narc I got Hannibal, Blow and Heartbreakers. I had some good supporting parts in studio movies that I felt I could give Joe his shot. Our whole intent was to make it as raw and real as possible.
I put on 25 pounds for Narc. I used all these different wardrobe tricks. Joe was fixated on me having a goatee so I grew a goatee. As an actor you take this character and think it all through. After my character's wife died he replaced all of that with work. He didn't do anything else. After chasing down the bad guys he didn't go home and make a salad. He was a fast food, pizzas and burgers. He's not the happiest person in the world.
I used a lot of makeup under my eyes to just show a tired kind of guy. We added shoulder pads, lifts in my shoes because the character is named Henry Oak. A big bruising guy.
DE: Do you have a second wind on your career?
RL: Yeah I have definitely had an up and down career. I came out of the box real strong with Something Wild, Field of Dreams and that thing with Marty [Goodfellas].
DE: But you've never stopped working.
RL: No but it's not a meritocracy. It's not how well you do in a movie it's how well the movie does. I definitely had some hits and misses. With Hannibal, Blow and Heartbreakers they were high profile movies that did well. Narc is getting a lot of attention and hopefully this will keep turning things around so I don't keep losing things to people I feel as adequate as.
DE: Were you responsible for hiring Jason Patric?
RL: That was more Joe's idea. We had gone to a couple of other actors. Some wanted to do it, some didn't understand and some thought it was too rough. He was not the first person we went to. Joe obviously remembered Rush [released in 1991] and the part is somewhat reminiscent of what he did in that. When we met Jason we found that his energy is very different than mine. He's very cerebral, he thinks things out. My character is just extremely wound up. What was good about that is he's mature enough to not be afraid of me upstaging them. He knew what his part was. When Im yelling at him, he knows he can only go to a certain degree because he knows I'm a live wire. In the script his character says "wouldn't don't want to go out with a guy who is playing 9 ball on a perp's skull." When he tells me to get my hand out of my face, a lesser actor would want to show off that he could be tough too. That wouldn't have made sense because my guy would have never been talked to that way. To me I can't think of anyone else in this role. I'm so glad Joe thought of him.
We did this movie for under five million dollars, we shot in 28 days in Toronto in the middle of the cold and the money ran out. It was a very difficult shoot. Once we got into Sundance we got a lot of attention and we started getting calls from these major people like Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman and Harrison Ford. They were telling us how much they liked the movie. Then Paula Wagner saw it and she told Tom Cruise about it. Tom really flipped out over it. Tom called us and asked if there was anything he could do to help us out. He wants the movie to get attention. They came on as executive producers and got Paramount to buy it. Sherry Lansing [head of Paramount] and her husband William Friedkin flipped out over it too. William Friedkin said it was one of the best cop movies he had ever seen. This is the guy who made The French Connection. All this stuff from this little independent movie just took on this whole life of it's own.
DE: When the money ran out how serious was that?
RL: Very serious. Every day the crew was threatening to walk out. They thought they might not be getting paid; Jason, Joe and I deferred our salaries. We never saw dailies because they never paid the lab. It was handled because Joe said he wanted to shoot it realistic like a [John] Cassavetes film. Because the camera moved so much we never knew if the camera was in focus half the time and then three months later we still never saw dailies because of no money.
DE: How did the money issue get resolved?
RL: Well when you see the movie and you see how many producers on this thing. Joe would go to his so-called friends; nobody in Hollywood does something for nothing, when they did give us a few dollars they would ask for producer credit. They never were on set, they never saw the script. All these people became producers because they gave a friend some money.
DE: You've played a lot of angry characters. Where does that come from?
RL: I'm an actor. That's my job. I had as good a time with Miss Piggy [in Muppets From Space] as I did with beating up somebody. I'm not some freak. My job sometimes is to be wound up. I've only been in one fight in seventh grade
DE: How'd you do?
RL: I won [laughs]. We're still friends.
DE: So is it easy to leave those tough guy characters behind?
RL: In the beginning on my career not as much because you don't trust yourself. You want to make sure it's there the next day and you get too methody. Now having done over 25 movies. I was in acting class all through Goodfellas. It's not that you take it off and it's gone but it's always with you. I don't go into a bar and say, "Give me my fucking drink!" I just ask for the drink.
DE: You were very funny in Heartbreakers and the episodes of Just Shoot Me you were on. Did anyone offer you a sitcom?
RL: No, they offered me Sopranos but I did Goodfellas. Why would I want to do Sopranos? I would like to do more comedy. I had a blast doing those comedies.
DE: Do you wish there were more cops like the ones in Narc?
RL: Jason accidentally kills somebody and then he becomes a junkie. So not a cop like that. But if somebody harmed my family would I want a cop like Oak to chase him down? No question about it. All he did was slap a couple of heads. I've ridden around with cops before and most of the calls we went on the people were either drunk or on drugs.
DE: What was it like producing this film with your wife [Michelle Grace]?
RL: She was a real champion of the film. When I read it and I wasn't sure of it because I didn't want to do another movie people might not see. I had seen Joe's previous movie Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane and it was okay. But it wasn't until I met him that he was a talented guy and I trusted him. Through the while time Michelle was calling my agents and telling them that no matter I did I'm doing Narc. It was a great experience.
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
vlora:
I love Ray, I sometimes think he doesn't get enough credit for his work. He's a great actor and he's really nice on the eye in my opinion!
jeffyjr:
Ray Liotta! enough said when find out that he's in the movie. That's all just Ray Liotta's in it this film this will be interesting.