Having won the best screenplay award at
Sundance and just back from the Toronto Film Festival, actor Frank Whaley (Born on the
Fourth Of July, The Doors, Swimming with Sharks, Homage) speaks with NY Daily News Critic
Jami Bernard about his directorial debut. Joe The King, starring Val Kilmer, Ethan Hawke
and John Leguizamo is an immensly personal yet courageous piece for Frank and is a
semi-autobiography about growing up in upstate NY. Interestingly enough, the live audience
discussion, precipated the first time writer/director's inner thoughts about his homage to
Truffaut and films such as The Little Thief
JB:
Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome either Frank Wally or Whaley we’ll
find out soon. The pronunciation there?
FW: Actually it's Steinbrenner, Actually its Whaley. (whale-ee)
JB:
Val Kilmer is not related to you through Joanne Whaley Kilmer?
FW:
No. He owes me a lot but I can’t say anything.
JB:
Well, you know how to collect.
FW:
That’s right.
JB:
That’s what the movie’s about.
FW:
Well, I know (that’s his
ex-wife) Joanne Whaley Kilmer. Actually I
used to call myself Frank Whaley Kilmer to maybe get some more roles. You know I call myself Frank Whaley Pitt, Frank
Whaley Cruise, Frank Whaley Norton.
JB:
Right because that’s how you get them to all star in your movies
because you tell them that you’re related,
FW:
I actually tried Frank Whaley Doogie Houser but it didn’t work.
JB: Didn’t work?
FW: None of them worked.
JB:
Is Frank short for Francis by any chance?
FW:
Yes it is. Yes it is.
JB:
How did I know that?
FW:
Because you’ve been reading my mail.
JB:
But then I throw it away in the street.
FW:
Ah that’s right.
JB:
Did you know that… Well I
didn’t do a proper introduction as usual. I have a list of some of your credits. I
interviewed you once before, you probably don’t remember. It was for The Freshmen.
FW:
Ah yes. I remember.
JB:
Funny guy. Oh yeah I stood out
from all the people at the round table.
FW: I remember you because you sat a
square table just to be different.
JB:
That’s right all by myself with no one to talk to.
FW:
I had very big hair back then, back in the old days.
JB:
You did, you did. It’s
calmed down a little now.
FW:
It’s not my own, this is Alan Alda’s hair. We made a trade and I’m not gonna tell you
what he got in the deal.
JB:
I’m looking for the credits, and The Freshmen stands out in my mind and
also Pulp Fiction.
FW:
Yes.
JB:
Look at the big brain on Bret.
FW:
Ah.
JB:
I believe that was the line.
FW:
Yes, people were screaming out from cabs at me for like a month.
JB:
Oh, isn’t that fun?
FW:
Oh yeah it was wonderful. They
were throwing things at me all for different reasons.
JB:
Hahahaha. Hehehe.
FW:
I better bring these people into your office.
JB:
Did you know that there’s a fan website devoted to you?
FW:
You know somebody told me that but I don’t have a computer. I
have a cell phone but it’s a rotary cell phone, so… I don’t even have a cordless phone, I got a
cord that goes like 2 blocks from my house but I’m not into technology.
JB:
Sometimes you just have to stand outside their window and shout.
FW:
I still have to get up and change the channel. Someone said get a laptop, I got a dog. I
don’t know what they mean.
JB:
I won’t have to do any work tonight.
FW:
Thank you very much. I’ll be at Chuckles downtown.
JB:
Well I’ve printed out the thing from your website. I thought maybe you stayed up late at night until
maybe midnight..
FW:
Drinking?
JB:
Drinking, voting…
FW:
Because that’s not true.
JB:
No, who told you that? Looking up your fan website.
FW:
No. I try to get the cobwebs
out in the morning and that’s about as close as I get to webs.
JB:
What about your feet?
FW:
Uh…Goodnight ladies and gentlemen.
JB:
Well here is the fan website, and it says welcome Frank fans.
FW:
Yeah there are three of them; two nuns and a shut-in.
JB:
Right. Well, they’re all
represented here. There is actually a Frank
Whaley game, which I didn’t call up. So
I don’t know. I was gonna ask you what
it was gonna be about.
FW:
I don’t know I mean I’m intrigued by it because I understand that
there are photos and stuff like that. They
put my face on a nude body of Alyssa Milano. Stuff like that.
JB:
Yeah that was an effective thing that they did.
FW: A friend of mine, I went over to
his house and he showed me this thing and it’s amazing that. Well, I’m an incredibly good-looking man and
I was a model in Paris for 16 years but I had no idea that I had the fan base that I do.
JB:
Yeah, well those three of them they’re very hot on you.
FW: They’re wonderful. They’re very high, I think that’s the
term.
JB:
It says on here that you’re a cuty-patuty. That worries me.
FW:
That scares the hell out of me.
JB:
Is the stalker here in the audience?
FW:
They must be referring to some of the after school specials I did in the
early days.
JB:
Yeah you know that on your list of credits you have like ten things in the
past year.
FW:
You mean acting?
JB:
Well, Yeah.
FW:
I got to a point in my life where I was taking every single job that was
offered to me like stuff for the sci-fi channel.
JB: Look at this list.
FW: My Goodness. Ah yes, very few of
these films ever came out to the public, well thank god.
JB: Well, I don’t recognize any of
these films.
FW: Like Glam was me with Tony Danza
and Ally McGraw. Not a film that is going to be played. Double Jeopardy is in no danger of
being beaten up by that one. “Went to Coney Island On a Mission From God, Be Back By
Five”, a small character called “Ski Ball Weasel”. It was brilliant film.
JB: You reached deep inside for that
one.
FW: Yeah, they couldn’t afford
film, they shot on a Polaroid and strung them together.
JB: If you look through it quickly it
seems to move.
FW: Retroactive, a wonderful film I did
with James Belushi with Japan- English titles released in Japan, I think it was a huge hit
over there. Bombshell, another wonderful film you might want to look at.
JB: So those are the credits, folks.
(FW starts fake crying) No it’s ok. You are redeeming yourself with this movie.
FW: Yes.
FW: Yeah, it was kinda my first script
that I wrote so I kinda wrote from what I knew… I don’t know about trains that
blow up, or people falling out of airplanes, anything like that, so I wrote about my
childhood essentially, Although much of the plot is fictional. I had trouble with the law when I was a kid. I had sort
of an extensive criminal record before I was eighteen.
JB: Are you serious?
FW: Yeah
JB: Well, doing what breaking and
entering?
FW: Mostly, insurance fraud, no like
petty crimes, I was…
JB: Did you steal things?
FW: Well, I stole, because I needed
something, so I stole it.When I was a kid, I grew up very poor. This is much like the
Disney version of the environment that I grew up
in, it was a pretty brutal environment. So I became a thief, I was sort of born with a criminal mind, I wasn’t a very good thief,
though I was a very prolific thief. My brother and I
we sort of ran these scams and stuff like that and we would walk into a
store and pick something up and bring it to the counter and say “yeah I got this for
my birthday but I doesn’t fit.” And they would give me money back.
JB: That’s a good one, I will have
to keep that in mind
FW: Yeah, keep that one in mind and so
stuff like that. I eventually graduated to sort of more higher crimes like, I would steal
cars and that’s when things started to change because that’s when they would
always put me in front of the same court, same family court judge. And he said at one
point, “If I see you one more time I am going to send you to jail.” It’s
just that simple there’s no more questions, you know no more alibis, no more ,
we’re not gonna talk – you just gonna go to Jamesville. So that kinda scared me
cause friends of mine had gone and done time at these places and they came back and
that’s kinda weird. They were messed up and beat up and stuff like that and I
wasn’t a big guy and so I never went to jail but I should have probably had to now.
JB: We could arrange for it now as sort
of a publicity stunt.
FW:
Well, there are a couple things pending at the moment but they’re not
gonna make any of it stick because they can’t find me.
JB:
Because you change your name all the time.
FW:
That’s why I’m doing movies like Glam so nobody knows what
I’ve done or where to find me.
JB:
They can’t be the same guys.
FW:
So the characters are very vividly close.
JB:
And you must have been very close to your brother, also.
FW:
Yeah, the family is based on my family and the characters are based on
people that I knew but I kind of dramatized things. I’m
also a little careful cause my mom still lives up there.
So I try to be careful and there are 400 people here and they’re gonna
tell my mom.
JB:
No they’re not gonna tell anyone they’re sworn to secrecy even the
TV cameraman.
FW:
You can walk to any singles bar and you’ll find her but God blesses
her. I do want to kind of protect her from
all the people. She has obviously heard
things and read about the film and stuff like that.
JB:
Has she seen it?
FW:
No she hasn’t seen it and most likely she won’t be discussed in
it. There is a possibility of her seeing it
but I don’t think it is a good idea for her to see it but I meant it to be a love
poem to my mom.
JB:
I think that that definitely comes across.
FW:
I think so too but I think on the surface and this is 30 years later, my mom
doesn’t really mind the people she goes to work with. She still goes to work and she
doesn’t want them to know 30 years ago she marries to Val Kilmer.
JB: You were so young then
FW: A guy that like Batman with a beer
gut, so I also think that she is very proud of me and my brother and I have two sisters. I
think that she would to hold onto the twilight of her life and hold onto the fact that she
succeed in raising four kids who are all happy and healthy and I love this women and I
admire her and respect her dearly for what sacrifices that she made and what she went
through to make a roof over our heads and food on the table, and so I want her to think
that; I want her to know that I feel that I know that way for her now and not for her to
look at this film and say “oh my god, he remembers when his father found rubber
condoms in the purse. Things like, things that she doesn’t want to remember and she
certainly doesn’t want to like that I remember, you know, these things. Sometimes
people, I think it’s easier not to look at the pain especially I don’t think if
it’s something she needs in this point in her life, the kind of therapy that this
film has meant for me, a carthorses that it meant for as a young adult as it meant for me.
I think that she has wrestled her own demons in her life and she has her family her sons
and her daughters to look at and to be proud of rather than to dwell on these small things
that have hurt her life 30 years ago. As I said I think of all the things that she did and
look back on those days as dark but I think of her as a heroic person in the scheme of my
life.
JB: Well I know what you mean about
like the…
FW: Also incredible exotic dancer.
JB: Ok. Well I know what you mean about
your parents don’t really want the cans of worms opened again. But since I told them
before you got here that I had therapy, just a little, I didn’t need very much but I
try and drag my sister and my mother to family therapy.
FW: Listen I have 7 therapists for
everyday of the week and just in case an 8th if somebody gets sick.
JB: Well, bringing my family into
family therapy was the best thing for me. Everything gets aired and to them was the
nightmare the thing I put them through.
FW: Well it’s tough I mean I mean
I think to this day a real essence of the film is this small family’s inability to
communicate with each other anything, let alone their feelings for each other and
communicate intimate thoughts or love or support and you know those things are difficult
even at this point in my life for my family to come to and those are the most, it’s
more things change the more they stay the same and although I am closer with my mother now
then I was obviously when I was a kid still you know this would be…
JB: Well, some of the most poignant
moments in the film are the little bits of communication when Val Kilmer’s sort of
barely gets the words (mumbles the words “love ya”) out of his mouth because the
kid is stunned cause he’s never heard anything like this before.
FW: That’s right. Um, I thought of
that moment as the emotional climax for the boy I think that through the whole story the
things are so bleak and people are so sort of mean to him and there are a few subtle
moments as the film comes to a close, beginning with that waitress that sort of smiles and
bring him some gravy and the guy who tries to help him when he falls. I wanted to give the
audience an idea of hope for his kid and very small moments, that moment where Bob, his
father under the din of the muffle drives away, expresses this and I think and I told the
boy this while we were shooting the film. That these are two words you have never heard
before and they are words that will not only get him through the next six months,
difficult months to follow but also to begin to shape him as a man, an adult and
they’re very important and they are what enable him in the scene following to embrace
his mother.
JB: Yeah, he pulls the mother to him
when she can’t reach out.
FW: Yeah, and it affects them all and
it’s the hope and the message of hope in the film that their hearts are beginning to
open and I equated it with him and I equated with the boy through this sort of ghouling 90
minute journey we see, this 90 minute part of his life where he has been in this black
dark room and suddenly somebody pokes a hole in it and the wall and the stream of light
comes through this darkness and there is not a lot, there’s not much but it’s
enough for him to see clearly and for him to build on and when your young adolescence is
such a difficult time this bridge between adolescence and puberty, adulthood is such a
difficult time when your lost in the loneliness and alienation and isolation not only from
those around you but from your family also and it’s compounding, difficult and
painful and just a little bit of love can just mean so much.
JB:
Well, it’s a very hopeful ending because you’re left with the
sense that this kid is gonna be okay because he really knows what he’s doing when he
tells the other kids get your own bike he’s finally instead of trying to help
everyone he is trying to do something for himself and that he excepts his mothers sandwich
is of course a big thing because he hasn’t been nourished through this whole movie. Actually I heard some tears around me like
“oh, she’s still crying.” It
still gave me a very hopeful feeling.
FW: Well, I want the audience to walk away feeling that this boy is gonna be okay that I mean he has to be otherwise there has to be hope in the story and I think that it’s so sad that you want to believe because he does so much for everybody and struggles so hard to hold them together in quiet ways and by the end of it, if I’m an example, I came out of it in a very similar situation and it works in many ways and somehow found the _______ to persist where I could have and a lot of guys that I grew up with ended up dead or in jail for the most part.
JB:
And how did your brother turn out?
FW:
Very well, very well. He can
drink a bottle of wild turkey in about 35 seconds and he loves mashed potatoes and he eats
raw and last time I saw him he had a nice bench on 42nd street. No, he’s
doing great, he scores the film, he acts in the film and my brother really…
JB: Who does he play?
FW: He plays Jerry the guy who owns the
restaurant, that Robert my older brother and he also wrote the music and performs the
music. He is incredible musician and incredible actor, you know I credit my brother for
where I am today, he quite literally, figuratively saved my life growing up and one day
when he was 15 or 16 he decided he would join the drama club because he had this thing for
this girl and like in those days I did the same thing and it was me and him and eight
other girls that was it, it was the happiest time of my life,
JB: So acting has been berry berry good
for you.
FW: And it began there and a woman
named Betty actually, she was so wonderful, god bless her, an Eskimo not a small woman and
he and I were the only boys in the group and we were playing Hamlet and it changed my life
I mean my brother also had other than pretty surface reasons for joining the drama club at
one point he just wanted to be an actor and so when I started doing it the moment I
started doing it just sort of changed my whole life and he, my brother decided he was
going to go to college and at that time 1980 there was educational opportunity program
that Jimmy Carter started a government program for city that was geared toward minority
students and kids who were white trash like myself that would have never gone to college.
JB: And now you are rich white trash
FW: Yeah you look at the resume, Glam,
I got a tuna sandwich and 35 cents.
But I went to college cause he did and
I studied theater that was what turned my whole life around and I fell in love with
theater, I started reading plays and every book I could get my hands on and…
JB: Was there one epiphenal moment that
made you stop stealing?
FW: Well, I mean those habits are tough
to break, I...
JB: So just tonight…Is there an
owner of an Audi…
FW: Like sometimes if there are things
that are unsupervised I just take them but no, I mean still to this today I was in the
Toronto film festival and this room I got off on to the wrong floor and there were all
these conference rooms that people were doing their press junkets in and there’s food
on the table and went in there and I started taking it and I thought I can have this any
time I want and put in down. I stole a lot of necessity I mean sneakers to wear on my
feet.
JB:
You really did use old shoes for him in that movie cause I saw a shot of him
walking in the back you can see the pronation in the shoe.
FW:
That’s right the Chuck tailors and the details are so important and
I’m glad to hear that you noticed it because the details are so important. I remember those moments and it was very important
to have white Chuck tailors when I was a kid. I had the same pair for so long that the
canvas started to come off the rubber and I’d staple them and use tape and every day
I’d glue the heel back on. My mom tried
once to give me the K-Mart equivalent to Chuck tailors and I nearly was lynched. I tried to take the Chuck tailors patch off and put
it on to K-Mart specials and nobody bought it, nobody believed it.
JB:
Did you have in mind for the closing shot, four hundred gloves?
FW:
Well, I probably acknowledged that I stole that idea from __________.
Mainly cause he’s French and
mainly because he’s dead.
JB:
But he’s not coming after you?
FW:
He’s not coming after me.
JB: It worked for him and it’s
working for you.
FW: I’m actually surprised how, I
mean your cinema-file, most people I didn’t know that people knew _______in this day
and age. What did I know, I went to see _____ when I was a freshman at College and it was
the first foreign film I had seen because I wasn’t exposed to films and we
didn’t have a television as a kid and television wasn’t like it is now. I saw that film and it resonated with me and it
had quite an impact on me and I realized after I went back to see it for a week art house
in Albany, every show and I realized that it was just like looking at a home movie and I
thought that’s me and I know about that and I said to myself one day I want to make
my own version of it. So I make no bones about it there was no mash to the ______ and I
wanted to make it the same and I read a lot of about _____ and how he worked with that
kid, Jean Perleaut the actor who played the role and visually I wanted my film to be
reminiscent of that the French new (haven?) way in general ___, specifically _____. The last shot if you have seen ____ there
was this myth that they ran out of film which I believed for many years; cause he is
running the last shot there is this shot of a little boy running off to reform school
across this beach and suddenly he just stops, just this freeze frame its so incredible
because it’s over before you know it and I wanted that same sort of feeling sort of
looking into the lens in a way.
Well, yes that’s your question.
JB: Well it’s not reminiscent of
____ but it’s not a freeze frame and you are cross cutting with the mother with
cameras moving back from her and the cameras moving towards the kid I thought was very
interesting. So we are getting closer to the kid and he is getting closer to the audience.
FW: Also what I had, what I had in mind
was with that cross-cutting sequence is and a lot of people asked me why he turns that way
I kinda want to give the idea that he is hearing that music and the boy, this was a very
difficult part for a kid that age, because it’s very written very subtlety and
there’s a lot I wanted it to be simply told there is sort of a subtexts to some of
the things he does, when he kicks the mirror in that sequence, when he is robbing that
house. He would say to me “hey Frank, why am I kicking that mirror?” he talked
like that and he was a very sweet kid but he is from New Rochelle, his mother is a
psychologist and his father is sort of this goofy guy and he’s happy…
JB: You taught him to be unhappy
FW: Oh yes I did
JB: Oh yes a lesson he will never
forget.
FW: He slept three hours during the
making of this film and he would ask me questions, very challenging questions you know
kids say the darndests things he would say, “why do I kick the mirror?” and
stuff like that I would have to think about it because I knew why but it’s hard for
me to articulate that and I found the most simplest responses to those types of questions
would be the easiest for them and I found actually for the all the actors the simplest
most direct responses to those types of questions rather than getting into detail.
JB: What was the most simplest response
to that?
FW: It was go have another frappucino,
no I said to him…
JB: There are a lot of levels…
FW: I said, you don’t like what,
cause he stops in front of me and looks at himself for a moment and then he kicks the
mirror, you don’t like what you are you don’t like what you see you are doing
something that I wanted at that moment for the audience to see to know that this boy
wasn’t happy with this feeling and he did have some semblance of an idea of right and
wrong and I told him, “you don’t like what you are looking at” and for the
first time in your life you look at yourself and you see this thief and that’s not
who you want to be it’s a moment it’s sort of a epiphany and he reacts with rage
and I think he understood but the other moment that he couldn’t quite understand or
grasp and I would say “just do it we don’t have time” but there was another
moment at the end of the film where we shot that and it was a difficult shot because
it’s the camera moves like from here to the exit door back there and it’s very
difficult to get that shot and keep it in focus and we had to do it a number of times and
one time he said, “why, who am I looking at?”. I said to him you hear your
mother you know calling you or you think you do and it’s nice it’s not sad you
know its, is she there and when you don’t hear her you realize the music you got her
playing like the words he heard from his father those shiny ray melody sits in his head
and soothes him and I think he seem to understand that.
JB: I saw him when you got up to
Sundance for the first screening and he was there and Val Kilmer was there and he seemed
like a regular kid you know, he was in the Jodie Foster movie, right? Wasn’t he?
FW: Little Man Tate, no he was in,
likes to say publicly he was in Touched By Angel and I forbid him to reveal that to the
public’s ears. But he did do a movie called Josh and Sam, and he did some TV stuff
but that kid…
JB: Which one is Josh and Sam?
FW: I don’t know but that kid came
into audition for the movie and is very good but he is very tall now and they grow like
that at that age and the kid was like this tall and he grows like this he wears pants but
I don’t understand this or maybe I am getting old now, but there’s this phenomen
wearing pants that are seven times too big he looks a carpet bagger.
JB: Which is worse, that or pants that
Ethan Hawke had to wear?
FW: Well, I don’t know man, he
came to the set that day it was a very funny story cause I wrote that part for Ethan, I
wrote as a very idealistic ivy league guy you know who kinda went to…
JB: He’s an Ivy League guy?
FW: Ethan? No, well I wanted…
JB: No I mean the part that you wrote.
FW: Well, when I originally conceived
the role this is going to be a guy who came from a well to do family, went to college like
at Brown or something like that and decided to come to the city to teach troubled kids and
try and help them and Ethan, I have been trying to work and try to make my movie and he
had gotten married and his wife had gotten pregnant, so I hadn’t seen him in about
five months.
JB: That would Uma Thurman.
FW: Right,
JB: The name dropping portion of our
evening…
FW: Uma Thurman Whaley Kilmer and she
came…
JB: Aren’t related to him…
FW: And she came, Frank Whaley Uma
Thurman, and she came. So anyways I hadn’t seen and in a long time…
JB: The baby is Whaley Junior
FW: Yes the baby’s name is Frank
Francis Kilmer Whaley Uma Thurman and at six feet tall and has very large breasts. But I
hadn’t seen him in a while so I expected him to come like he looks in what movies did
he do, oh Dead Poets Society or handsome he’s handsome guy. He looks Ivy League and
but he showed up.
JB: He’s a slob.
FW: He looking fifteen pounds over
weight, he smelled like a cheese sandwich that he had left in the trunk in August.
JB: I am telling you I ran into him on
the subway and he looked a bum
FW: The kid doesn’t know how to
take care of himself he stinks. I am serious he is worth five billions and he smells and
he showed up like he was tired and I didn’t know who was pregnant between the two of
them and he shows up all tired cause she was about a week away so she was having obviously
but I don’t know about womanly things and I don’t want to talk about it. But
evidently she was having some discomfort and he was staying up with her not sleeping and
he came in really tired and his eyes looked they looked in the film and he had this
bizarre moustache on his face which I became fixated on for about 30 seconds.
JB: So that wasn’t an invention
for the film but his own
FW: I like to take credit for it but I
only had him one day to shoot those scenes so we went in blocking those scenes and I got
the crew working and we went into the cafeteria of the school and I said to him
“buddy you look fat.” And he said “yeah I know I been eating a lot of ice
cream.” I said “well I don’t know what you been eaten buddy but it’s
going right to your ass.”
JB: I noticed in the movie he had a big
ass.
FW: You could’ve shown the
Godfather on that ass. I said to me at one point on the set he came up to me and said
“do these pants make me look fat?” and I said, “no it’s your
ass.” But you know he said…
JB: If you want to be straightforward
with actors
FW: Yeah, I am not trying to pull any
punches. I hadn’t of slept either but I didn’t have the ass the size of
Peekskill. So he, we sat down and I said, “we should rethink it.” And so we
literally rewrote all those screens in hour and we decided just to make a back story that
he was not from Connecticut and Brown educated but that he came from, he was a student in
the same high school, you know ten – fifteen years earlier he was a football star who
injured his knees or something and couldn’t play college football. Got depressed and
started drinking a little bit himself and bottom line he is just as troubled as this kid
and but unlike the other teachers that I portray he sort of tries to do good and but
looking at the kid is sort of looking in a mirror or looking at his own life.
JB: I had sort of the impression that
he was something like the Val Kilmer character but turned out well even with the problems
instead of turning out badly.
FW: Yeah, he just a product of the same
chronic town but only he was holding on and when he took this job, and when I was a kid
maybe it is different now, a lot of times he would hire these people to be guidance
counselors with no qualifications really they were gym teachers and they were guidance
counselors and so they’d teach dodge ball and then you know guide me. And he was
trying to do ok and we threw that thing in there where he smokes in the hallways of the
school which is taboo to say the least and that little accident coming in smelling like
stale chicken being fifteen pounds over weight gave that role dimension. But somebody at
Sundance or Toronto said wrote that two of the most glamorous guys in Hollywood looked
disgusting in my film and that ought to add box office to that. I heard Ashley Judd is
going to put on 35 pounds for her next film, Triple Jeopardy.
JB: Now did Val do this for the film or
did come in smelling like cheese and have a big beer gut?
FW: Well Val, when I talked with Val,
you know we, all the adults in the film, John Leguizamo, Ethan, Camyrn Manheim, Austin
Pendelton, and Karen Young, all these are people I know and have been lucky enough to have
worked with in the theater or film. They all work for free, Ethan, Val however, free
meaning scale. Ethan, I mean that’s 1500 bucks that’s like two days worth of
Haggen Dazs. But Val,
JB: You should of withheld his paycheck
FW: Is like he withheld the deodorant
from his body but I, Val was a little trickier, Val needed to get paid a little bit of
money cause this guy gets paid like 10 millions dollars a movie. And when I ran into Val
about six months before preproductions I needed to have a name in that role and I was
offering it to actors and a lot of actors don’t want to do roles like this were they
get paid to look like hell and I ran into Val in New York where I live and he was doing
that movie where he played a blind skater or something like that…is that right. He
just hope next time he plays a mute. But he was doing that movie and he had two weeks off
as luck would have it and I sent him this script and he said that he would do it. So he
actually finished the film and I said to him and it was about a month before we had to
shoot and we finally worked out a deal where needed to get paid some money and would need
a trailer bigger than this theater with croissants and muffins and 8 3 year old boys to
rub his feet on an hourly basis, one of them got sick and we had to have one packaged from
Pakistan and he had certain demands and we were more than happy to abide by those demands
but I felt a little at ease to call him and asking him “if he would mind putting on
some weight?” And he said “Frank, I am already fat.” I said, “how fat
are you?” and he said “I have a pretty big gut” and I said
“Well’s really good.” And I think he actually did put on about 5 pounds for
it but more than that he allowed me to make-up, like age make-up but he’s not that
old but he really does glam down for the part that much I really respect him for, he was
very giving plus in that regard he took the shirt off at one point otherwise people would
thought he was padded and I really wanted them to see that there is a scene where he comes
out in front of the house that was his first shot of the film and I said to him “you
know we did one with you shirt on .” and I sheepishly from across the street said
“Hey Val, take off the shirt.” And he said “What?” I said “take
it off, take it off the shirt.” He said “’all right, man.” And he just
took off the shirt and he did and people started to scream and ran down the street.
JB: Did you know he has this weird
piece of skin under his elbow?
FW: Yeah and I featured that in the
film.
JB:
I saw it and every time I see him now I'm looking for the skin.
FW:
Well, it's actually scar tissue and I met Val doing the doors, we did the
doors film together and actually it's a stand in injury that I guess he never properly had
taken care of. He fell off an 8-foot stage at
central barn room which is now the viper room, we were shooting there and I guess his boot
got caught on the edge of the stage and he fell on his elbow and he didn't brake a bone or
anything but it was very swollen and dense evidently left over tissue and he can put it in
and out.
JB:
That's disgusting. You should
have had a scene of that.
FW:
Again but it meets box office.
He said "Frank, do you want me to take my elbow off?" And I said sure.
So he did and we took a shot of his gut and his elbow.
JB:
Okay, now I've hogged all this and I want to turn it over to people who have
questions and of course we can't see the people who have questions so if you could stand
that would be nice. Where is the microphone? Where are the people? (Over here) Where is the staff? Oh okay here is a question.
Audience Member #1: I noticed in the
film that food played a big role, oh I'm supposed to stand but I don't need to, did that
mean anything? Did it represent something to
you?
FW:
What played a big role?
JB:
Food.
FW:
Oh, food. I'm glad you noticed
that because when I was a kid we were always hungry and kids that age were rapidly hungry
to begin with and there was a real shortage of food in my house and a lot of times of the
week we go to bed hungry and my mom tried to keep food in the house but I would go to my
friends house and I would open the cupboard and there would be all this food and I'd say
"Wow, let's have some." And he'd
say, "No, we already had dinner." I'd say "Well, let's have some of that
soup." So I wanted there to be this under tone of this kid always being hungry and
sort of stealing food and like he stole those cookies in the beginning of the film and
from my experience working in a restaurant washing dishes I was a dishwasher short of a
cook I just eat up off these plates stuff like that and to take food from that place and
it was sort of a Dikinsington atmosphere in this restaurant because they didn’t like
me stealing but they knew I was this hungry little kid but you’d think they’d want to give me food and like sauerbraten or
whatever the hell they served in this god awful place but yeah to answer your question I
wanted there to be this riding theme of hunger, sort of literally and figuratively and in
the end when he is able to order all his favorite food he can’t eat it, it
doesn’t supply what he needs.
JB: There’s question over here.
AM: Frank, I wanted to thank you for
the portrayal of kids who are disadvantaged or at risk, I work with at risk students and I
know the horrible things that go on in their lives that we who come to the theater
don’t realize and you have a perfect portrayal of that. I live with that everyday so
I recognize a lot of stuff from my students, now I have a stupid question, your wardrobe
person went shopping in New Jersey, I saw I shirt that said Sussex-Wantage and another
that said Marboro but I said the car license says New York, where are we?
FW: So we can work in this car business
together for just that reason. Well, we shot the film on Staten Island but we actually
shot a little bit in Jersey but it’s cheap to buy that shirt that said Marboro like
that in New York it would cost 95 dollars but you come to you know, but it’s very
astute of you too notice that.
JB: Are you going to like Taian
merchandising with those clothes?
FW:
There’s actually an Austin Pendelton dowel. Well, it’s actually
Val in his Batman costume with that elbow. Yeah its called Elbow Man
JB: I just wanted to say that scene
with Austin Pendelton I loved this use of language in this movie you just learned it by
wrote you just parrot it back and the way they both say but there’s TV now, so can I
say it…
FW: No you can’t say, “suck
my dick” and if I am not mistaken you can’t say,
“fuck you” either, last I checked well they did say
“cocksucker” on Dawson’s Creek last week, well I am sorry.
JB: So you know…
FW: Well that’s pretty
effective…
JB: Because they are not thinking about
what they are saying.
FW: Well you noticed how everybody
laughed cause it’s sort of their vernacular and just wanted to after a while because
my producers were this sort of very upper crust kinda, god bless them…
JB: Your producers were John Leguizamo
and…
FW: The only thing he produced before
he came to work was a bowel movement. He was sort of my producer but really my producers
are these two wonderful women named Jennifer Dowese and Lindsay Marks. They would say
“do they have to swear so much?” “They’re kids they shouldn’t
swear so much.” And I would say, “now what the fuck am I supposed to do about
that?” “This is in the fucking goddamn script you stupid son of a bitch.”
“Okay Frank, that’s enough. Ok?” But I wanted to try to explain to them is
that, I think immediately well first of all, kids in movies today like if you look at
these green movies whatever they, I don’t know I don’t know whatever these
movies are that these kids are in are very violent and very sexual or there’s a lot
of sex in them and on TV, so I think it’s very mild and I think at one point
it’s sort of funny I wanted it to be tongue and cheek that’s what I am saying
and it’s the way they communicate.
JB: Yeah it’s a way for them to
communicating and words don’t mean anything except a back and forth. There’s a
question over in the back.
AM: Hi, I just had a quick question, at
one point he’s talking to the guy’s counselor who say’s he’s related
to Jack who is the principal, he says, “Tell him Joe the king he’ll what he
means.” Why did you name the movie, Joe the King?
FW: Well, the movie was originally
titled Pleasantveiw Avenue and I liked that title because of the irony but also it’s
the street that I grew up on, I grew up on a little street called Pleasantveiw Avenue and
my mom still lives on that street as we speak and cut to the 45 people looking at my
mother on Pleasantveiw Avenue throwing eggs at her house but I couldn’t use the name,
she asked me not to and my brother said no and I didn’t want to use that name so I
had to think of a title. As I was talking
about earlier Ethan and I we wrote those scenes while he ate yet another bowl of rice
Crispies
And I thought well here is a perfect
time, cause I had thought of Joe the King and that was the closest I’d come to
y’know the closest title I had and I had a few title’s in mind but Joe the King
sounded kind of cool to me and It had no real relevance and I thought maybe here’s a
time where I can throw it in. So, I came up with this idea that Joe likes to hang out with
like his father’s friends. And the kid
liked the idea that he had this nickname and it was sort of a term of endearment.
(Side 2)
JB:
A quick question over here.
AM:
Yeah there was a scene in the restaurant, after the restaurant was closed
where the knives were sort of spread out, I worried about the knives for a whole while was
I supposed to?
FW: Well I hope not to distraction but
yeah I threw you know I wanted to, the film is relatively plotless that I kind of wanted
to throw in little ideas that could have gone in one direction or another and to get some
brimming violence at any minute that could occur and maybe give the audience because the
film is only 96 minutes long but it moves at a very slow pace and that’s the _____
influence and the European influence that I grew up with in film, not that I’m from
Sweden or anything. I wanted the film unfolds very slowly and demands patience from the
audience at times I kinda wanted it to sometimes throw in something that will say now will
that happen. So yes, that was conscious but if not I will take credit for it.
AM: Frank, I first like to congratulate
you on your directorial and writing debut being a psychiatrist myself I thought it was
brilliant portrayal of this kind of family, and the two questions I have are one is you
mentioned ____ before do plan to have a Whaley trilogy as ____ did as the boy grows to
continue to use him did you have a fantasy about that?
FW: Well I am not sure if fantasy is
the right word to use but yeah I am really interested in these types of characters and
it’s what I know and it’s best to write from you know I think there’s real
big opportunity to continue on with Joe’s life in my next film and it’s not a
direct sequel so to speak but the main character is a guy who could be Joe fifteen years
later, I think that people will see this film and see my next film and see the correlation
this sort of sequential order that films come in so
what I plan to do is to make this film as Joe fifteen years later than it’s a point
to make him fifty years old the age that I am now, 53 and then continue on…
JB: Did you write the Ronald Reagan
biography?
FW: No, but Nancy and I had brief
interlude in 1987 that I don’t want to talk about publicly but yes I would like to
continue on.
AM: The last question I have is about
that Johnny Ray song that you used, was there any significance to that with the crying?
FW: Well, I have always loved that
song, The White Cloud that Cried, is what it’s called. The words to that song are so
fitting it’s all about this cloud in this vast sky that’s really sad cause he
doesn’t think the world loves him because when he cries it rains on everyone he feels
lonely and he wants this guy that he’s talking to, to tell the whole world that
he’s lonely and I always thought of it for the movie and for this film I drafted
Frank Sinatra that she likes and my mom actually likes Frank Sinatra but it’s
impossible to get the rights to Frank Sinatra’s songs and it’s also an over
played idea in movies so my idea, suddenly came to me which was Johnny Grey’s song,
so I think the significance is that what Johnny Grey’s singing about is really
relevant to the boy and also in a deeper way that this life of Johnny Grey is very tragic,
he was a very sad guy himself.
JB: We have time for one more question
that’s over there.
AM: Loved the movie Frank it was very
good, you mentioned before that the movie was a cathartic experience was there anything in
the film that was emotional hard for you to film?
FW: Well, a lot of it was because the
production designer kinda verbatim made it seem like sitting in my own kitchen but I guess
the moment that really difficult that I was actually moved was the tears not only because
of her performance but how it effected me the moment where the judge asks her what she
should do with her with the boy and at that moment she looked so much like my mother and I
saw much in her the way she was playing this role I just went back in time and saw all the
pain that mother must have gone through being mid thirties and having married this guy
that she loved who allowed the demons to get to him, the booze to get to him and how she
saw her family being torn apart by it and at that time with three kids and a falling down
house being so ashamed to walk down the
street because everyone knew how terrible things were inside those walls and so at that
moment when I had finish that scene I had to take a moment and that was really out in the
shooting and at one point I numbed myself to it because I didn’t want to give the
kids any indication that I was sad myself I was so hard its so noble of our forms to
making a film cause it’s so demanding and its crew is half the size of this audience
and to keep them all together and make the vision one and make my vision one vision and it
was working with actors it was so difficult that I couldn’t succumb to any emotion
however we shot on Staten Island, with a fifteen minute ride back to New York so times
I’d get back to my house and break down and cry so it was a good catharsis it
wasn’t a bad pain for me at all.
JB: Well if that’s cathartic now
we going to have you choose these winners of these t-shirts and this is going to be great.
What are the release plans?
FW: Oh, it comes out October 15th
in New York and full release on October 22nd and it will god willing to open up
wider.
JB: Thank you, Frank.