anderswolleck

Nine Lives is a fascinating movie broken up into nine scenes that seem unrelated at first but as you continue to watch you will find that they are all connected sometimes by certain characters and always by themes of isolation and regret. Writer/director Rodrigo Garca makes it even more powerful by shooting each of these scenes all in one take.

This is Holly Hunters second collaboration with Rodrigo Garca after the film Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her.

Check out the official site for Nine Lives

Daniel Robert Epstein: What did you take away from the other scenes that you werent in to help with your scene?

Holly Hunter: It helped me a lot. One of the reasons I wanted to play Sonia is because the temperament of the piece was very different from the other pieces. Sonia had more of a playful, childlike persona, one filled with life and curiosity. She provided a great foil to the guy she was so attracted to played by Stephen Dillane who's aloof, cool, English, sophisticated, withholding, and the kind of man that a woman like that would try to change. I was entertained by that. That's what I loved about it.

DRE: When did this process originate?

HH: It started when I read it. That spark was originated from the first time I read the story. There was a lack of somberness to the story that I really liked. It was more kinetic and wandering. It had a physical life to it that I felt stimulating. It was a very incomplete process for me because I only had two days to work on it.

DRE: How was the challenge of your scene being done all in one take?

HH: The aspect of doing it in one day shooting was difficult. I embraced it under duress [laughs]. I would have preferred a more luxurious time. There is a luxury of time that you truly get to marinate in a character when you're doing the theatre. You can really just tread water and loll in a character's life, but that wasn't including in this process.

DRE: How was it working with Rodrigo Garca again?

HH: It was as great as the first. Second-time directors often lack confidence. This lack of confidence manifests itself in the chokehold of "I can probably do everybody else's job better than they can because I have the answers". There's a certain desire to control the film. Before he was a director Rodrigo was a cinematographer and a camera operator so he's very at home with the deadline of a movie set. So he was very comfortable with giving the actors a chance to be in the driver's seat.

DRE: When you saw Nine Lives assembled, were you amazed at how the parts fit together?

HH: Yes, there were things that came together. There is both an external and internal world that prevents these characters from experiencing the intimacy that they crave. That was made more potent when I saw the movie put together. It is about people trying to connect and having a difficult time making that connection. With my character, it's purely internal. I choose this guy that cannot give me the intimacy that I want. That's always the case; we sabotage ourselves. That's very provocative to me.

DRE: How was the experience working on Thirteen?

HH: Totally different. The two directors are so different. The manifestation of both directors is exemplified by their two movies. [Thirteen director] Catherine [Hardwicke] is filled with energy, like a 13 year old. She understands her movie from the inside out. Rodrigo does, too. But their stories are diametrically opposed because they are diametrically opposed as people living in this world. I loved working with both of them for completely different reasons.

DRE: Do you like the chance of working with a director more than once?

HH: Yes, very much. There's just an established intimacy and trust that you can't get otherwise. The only way you can get it is time spent. It's a wonderful experience that Rodrigo is obviously comfortable with. It's such a drag to not be able to do it more. Directors feel pressure to originate. It needs to never have been done before. So working with the same people again is not a template anymore.

DRE: Do you feel like you're one of those actors that can help a film get made?

HH: It depends on the size of the movie. A movie like Nine Lives, I could help. But I did do my own hair and makeup and I wore my own dress [laughs]. There's a limit to what I can help. Crash was the biggest movie that I could help, but that's because I had just won an Academy Award, so the timing was really good. It's nice to be able to help films like Thirteen and Nine Lives because I believe in them as fully as anything.

DRE: What kind of stuff gets sent to you?

HH: I read everything, which is unfortunate because it's probably corrosive to my brain and to my spirit. If you spend all day ready screenplays, something happens that's profound and regrettable. Sometimes I want to do something that they don't want me to; they'd rather have somebody who means more at the box office. My taste is without category. I don't judge a script because it's coming from a studio. I read it openly, hoping that there will be something in there galvanizing for me.

DRE: Would you do a superhero movie like The Incredibles if it was live action instead on animated?

HH: If the director were as gifted as Brad Bird then, yeah.

DRE: Is there something consistent in the good choices you've made with your roles?

HH: There are always unfortunate things. Rodrigo is the prefect example of that. After Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her came out at the film festivals, it when straight to Showtime. There are things about the movie that were just fantastic, worthy of a release. But United Artists didn't know what they wanted to do with it. There are all these events that are simply beyond my control. After a while, I understood the certain limitations of my own contribution to movies as an actress. I've been very lucky that some of the things that I've decided to dive into have turned out okay.

DRE: Do you feel like there are increasingly better roles for women in films these days?

HH: There are not enough women's roles out there. Not even for 20 year-olds. As you get older, it gets worse. However, I have experienced some kind of renaissance in terms of the offers I get. Right now, I am getting more offers. I don't know why. It doesn't make much sense. But, there is a real ceiling which is rather low for women that get older as opposed to men who get older. Nobody can argue with that, it's a fact.

DRE: What attracts you to a movie?

HH: I don't know what comes first in a movie. Distribution is a huge world that I don't know much about. We've all seen how a movie is distributed that doesn't have any of those standard qualities. Crash is a good example because it certainly is not an easy resolvable story nor is it easy describable. But it did extremely well globally. It's mostly about how the distributors understand it and release it to the public. For example, Russian Ark, played for nine months at the Cinema Village. It was extraordinary. It was a coup for the movie that cost very little.

DRE: Have you considered any comedic roles lately?

HH: There's a movie I did called The Big White where I play a comedic character. Those kinds of roles are harder to write. It's hard to make me laugh when I'm reading a script. Very few of them are really funny.

DRE: What was that experience like?

HH: Robin Williams is so unbelievably funny at times. There's something about spending months with him when he goes into phases of being astronomically funny. It was a pure joy to do that movie. It was really fun.

DRE: Would you laugh as much now at the Raising Arizona script?

HH: Oh yeah. Raising Arizona to me is one of the best scripts that the Coen Brothers have written.

DRE: Who would you like to work with in the future that you have not worked with before?

HH: Charlie Kaufman is extraordinary. I love everything that he's ever done.

DRE: Will you be doing theater any time soon?

HH: I was in London for the first six months of the year doing an English version of Medea. I love to do plays. They are very challenging.

DRE: Do you see yourself as a producer?

HH: No; that demands reading books, but I can't seem to get away from these screenplays.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

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