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Lola
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Joined: 30 May 2007
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Location: Ontario
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| Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 1:48 am Post subject: RR Review |
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ROBERT W. BUTLER BBUTLER@KCSTAR.COM
Joaquin Phoenix stars in ‘Reservation Road’ and ‘We Own the Night’
By ROBERT W. BUTLER
The Kansas City Star
Joaquin Phoenix made up a detailed history of his character’s son from birth to age 5 for “Reservation Road.” He stars with Jennifer Connelly. Joaquin Phoenix may have a couple of Oscar nominations on his resume (for “Walk the Line” and “Gladiator”), but he admits that acting remains a mystery to him.
“When people talk to me about my process, I have to laugh. I have no process,” the 32–year-old actor said in a recent telephone interview from New York.
“The process for me is a complete act of desperation.”
Phoenix was promoting his new film, “Reservation Road” (opening Friday), in which he plays a college professor whose young son is killed in a hit-and-run incident. He becomes obsessed with finding and punishing the perpetrator. Meanwhile, the driver (Mark Ruffalo), who lives just a few blocks away, wrestles with his conscience.
Another Phoenix film, the crime thriller “We Own the Night,” opened a little more than a week ago. You can’t go to a movie theater without seeing his face on a poster.
The problem with having a grand theory about acting, Phoenix said, is that it’s always changing. At the beginning of a movie he makes certain assumptions about the story and his character, and by the end of shooting he has changed his mind about nearly everything.
“When I’m envisioning my character, I’m desperately reaching out for ideas,” he said. “I’ll start out scribbling all these ideas on the margins of my script, but 99 percent are pure garbage.
“It’s very hard to get the big picture on a character right from the start. It’s more about the details you pick up along the way, a sort of evolution. It’s about purging the bad ideas so you can really start defining the boundaries of your character.”
People overestimate how much personal history an actor brings to a role, Phoenix said.
“It’s funny when people say, ‘You don’t have any kids. Wasn’t it difficult to play a father?’ And I’m thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be more difficult to play a murderer? Or a mad Roman emperor?’
“You don’t have to have a shared experience to find the right details for your character. I don’t believe in general states of emotion. I don’t believe in just anger, just laughter, just crying. … It has to be specific to what the character is going through. It’s about finding something specific.
“So I love having a director talk to me about the history of my character. For ‘Reservation Road’ I had to make up a detailed history of my son’s life, from birth to age 5. Things like he was a premature baby. So when I’m on the set, it’s not just like he’s my dead son in the general sense. It’s about my son Josh who I saw being born.
“I need those details.”
The actual process of making a film, Phoenix said, is uninspiring.
“I don’t enjoy making movies — just the part between ‘Action!’ and ‘Cut!’ Wardrobe, makeup, sitting around waiting — what I call the ‘trailer life’ — I despise all that. I don’t enjoy being looked after or being the center of attention.
“So much of making a film is designed for actors to not do much of anything but show up. If I was playing a role that wasn’t intense or required concentration, I’d be completely bored. So the scarier it is, the better. I never want to go in and feel comfortable.”
And then there are the oddities of celebrity. Phoenix laughed when he recalled how during the making of “The Village” he got a reputation for extreme acting.
“The set wasn’t ready yet, but we all thought it would be a good idea if we went out and lived in sort of primitive conditions for a while to get us ready to play people living a rural 19th-century lifestyle. So the cast went to a campground to live in tents for a week.
“I’d been out there four days and was really missing my girlfriend, so I arranged to have her snuck into my tent. On the way to see her I bumped into Bryce Dallas Howard, who asked what I was doing. Thinking fast, I told her I was going into the woods to sleep alone for a few days.
“Months later Bryce is doing interviews and starts talking about how Joaquin Phoenix slept alone in the woods to prepare for his role. Next thing you know there are stories about how I challenge myself to face my fears, about how dedicated I am to my craft.
“I just wanted to see my girlfriend.”
•••
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Mina
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Joined: 06 Jun 2007
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Location: Germany
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| Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 8:07 am Post subject: |
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thank you so much for that interview!
I would love to entertain his ‘trailer life’ a little bit  ...
but he is so cute speaking about his girlfriend  (yes I'm jealous but anyway... it is cute!!!)
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jpfan4life
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Joined: 29 Sep 2007
Posts: 337
Location: San Antonio, TX
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| Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 3:38 pm Post subject: |
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I enjoyed the interview, thanks....Joaquin, you sneaky dog, I would have sneaked in my honey too! LOL! LOL! LOL!
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hazeleyes
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Location: Texas
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| Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 4:45 pm Post subject: |
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Thank you Lori!
I would love to go camping with him sometime. 
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maya
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Joined: 07 Oct 2007
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Location: Birmingham(UK)
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| Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 5:31 pm Post subject: |
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Great interview, who wouldn't want to be in a tent with him, i,d have to bust the sip from the inside accidently of cause, so we could be stuck there  |
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