Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with an interview I was very excited to lock in at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. I’m a massive, massive fan of Oliver Platt’s work. Big time. The problem with almost any movie he’s in is that there’s never enough of him. He’s in Park City for a movie called PLEASE GIVE, a romantic dramedy set in New York where Platt is married to Catherine Keener and gives into temptation when Amanda Peet starts to flirt. I didn’t feel the movie was 100% successful, but where it did excel was in the Platt/Keener relationship, which we go into in the interview. We start by discussing Platt’s previous trips to Sundance. Enjoy!
Quint: For what movies, do you remember?
Oliver Platt: I first came here for FUNNY BONES and then I came here for BIG NIGHT as a producer and then I came here for PIECES OF APRIL and now I’m here for this.
Quint: Nice. BIG NIGHT, the Stanley Tucci movie, right?
Oliver Platt: Yeah.
Quint: That’s a…
Oliver Platt: It’s a Sundance classic.
Quint: And it’s a great movie, too, and especially for food lovers like me, obviously. Have you heard of The Alamo Drafthouse? It’s in Austin and they serve food and beer with the movie. The original location was like this iconic structure in Austin and they ended up having to tear it down and move it.
Oliver Platt: So, they did a BIG NIGHT party?
Quint: They do these big elaborate meals, they call them Feasts, and it’s multiple courses that match what’s on the screen and they did that with BIG NIGHT on the last night of the original Downtown location.
Oliver Platt: Oh, cool. I’ll tell Stanley, because he loves hearing stuff like that.
Quint: It was classic. So yeah, I saw the movie…
Oliver Platt: Did you see it last night?
Quint: I saw it at the premiere, yes.
Oliver Platt: That was a great screening. It’s always so much fun to see it with a crowd for the first time.
Quint: Yeah, especially a crowd that big where the comedy, when it hits, it’s like a wave through the audience. I would say the thing that I liked the most about the movie and the thing that actually pulled me into the movie was watching the relationship between you and Catherine [Keener]… just that quiet moment on the bed, where it’s not this big elaborate scene, it just seems to be a relationship made up of small moments.
Oliver Platt: That’s the beauty of Nicole [Holofcener]’s work, honestly. It’s classic “Whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts” situation, you know? It’s these beautifully observed little moments, these little scenes where it seems so innocuous, but so much stuff happens in it. That’s what I think is so artful about her work.
Quint: You just get to know the characters and it just lends an authenticity to it, where anybody that has ever been in a relationship will recognize the scene where it’s not like this big moment… It’s the same thing with the adultery subplot. It’s the typical adultery thing. I have never been in a cheating relationship, so I can’t really compare personally, but…
Oliver Platt: I haven’t either, but if I was going to be in one, it would be similar to that in the sense that he wasn’t looking for it, I don’t think he understood it. I don’t think he knew what the fuck he was doing and if you asked him to explain why it happened I don’t think he could. It was very opportunistic and I don’t think he felt good about it and I think it made him appreciate what he had.
Quint: You can say the same thing for Amanda [Peet]’s character as well where it just seemed to happen.
Oliver Platt: I think that’s absolutely right. I don’t think either of them could explain to you why it happened.
Quint: Yeah, that there was that weird spark. Again I love that scene with you and Catherine in the bathroom where you are like “Yeah, I was flirting with her, wasn’t I?” It’s obviously not some deep secret…
Oliver Platt: “What a bitch,” I know. “She was such a bitch. I don’t know why, she’s such a bitch,” you know? You see and I think he is very honest about the way it unfolds.
Quint: I like that it doesn’t all culminate in a big reveal or a big typical romantic comedy/drama type relationship thing where it’s…
Oliver Platt: Right, right. We just did this Q & A at our second screening and somebody said “Why didn’t you resolve the affair?” I think the affair is beautifully resolved.
Quint: “I’m not fucking you anymore.”
Oliver Platt: We kind of reject each other simultaneously and also I think that I say something very… Unwittingly I say something very insulting to her which is like “Wow, this relationship is going to help my marriage,” which I think it’s very insulting.
Quint: And you get the feeling that Catehrine’s character is picking up on something, but it ever gets to the point where it destroys the relationship. You don’t have that big explosive moment and that’s what I liked.
Oliver Platt: Yet it’s resolved.
Quint: It is, absolutely.
Oliver Platt: On a poetic level and I think on an emotional level, too.
Quint: Can we talk a little bit about working with Anne [Morgan Guilbert], because I think she totally stole the movie and…
Oliver Platt: Totally. She runs away with it.
Quint: You have a few scenes with her in the movie, so how did those go? Catherine was saying off screen she was very elegant and very composed and then when she went into character it was almost like playtime for you guys.
Oliver Platt: She was very present. My favorite scene is the scene at the door. “You’ve gained weight.” “Excuse me?” (laughs) And then at the party, too. She was wonderful and the thing that’s great about working on a movie like that is that… We shot the whole thing in 24 days and because the script is so good and you are so comfortable with all of he people, we rehearsed very little. We would barely run through the damn thing. We often said, “Shoot the rehearsal,” because why not? We didn’t have a lot of time and everybody trusted Nicole, so a lot of the stuff would happen in front of the camera, but I love that. I thought she was real. She brought a lot of energy and it was all good.
Quint: That’s really interesting to me to hear just how she seemed to want to capture the spontaneity. It’s interesting to hear the different dynamics between different directors. Some of them just want to rehearse for months and some just want to capture the spark. Which do you prefer?
Oliver Platt: I like the latter. I like to talk a lot before we shoot, just so we know we are all on the same page and maybe ask questions about the script and figure out getting everybody so we’re all telling the same story. If you do basic actor work, like Catherine and I talked about “What has happened up until now in our relationship?” “Where did we meet?” Just talk about things, but not rehearse, because you have got to save that for the camera. You have got to save that. The weird thing is you shoot, not so much a movie like this, but you shoot a lot of takes, especially a scene around a table… What if you get covered last? You are fucked! You have got to keep it fresh, you know?
Kraken: They always say “A great rehearsal is a wasted take.”
Oliver Platt: Exactly!
Quint: Yeah and especially for you. I love your persona on screen. You seem to bring a real humor to everything. I was a big fan of HUFF. I thought HUFF was a very underappreciated show.
Oliver Platt: It was actually very appreciated, just under watched.
Quint: Humor, I would imagine, works best fresh as well in that if you don’t have that spark, then you are forcing it.
Oliver Platt: Totally. It’s always funniest in rehearsal. If something starts to be funny its like “Leave it! Leave it! Leave it! We will kill it!”
Quint: Cool, so do you have anything coming up?
Oliver Platt: I’ve got this Ed Zwick movie in the can with Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway called LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS.
Quint: I’ve got a giant crush on Anne Hathaway.
Oliver Platt: Yeah, join the club. And then I’m going to start working on this Laura Linney series for SHOWTIME in a couple of months.
Quint: Oh cool, what’s that called?
Oliver Platt: It’s called THE BIG C. Laura plays a woman who finds out she is going to die of cancer and I play her husband.
Quint: So, it will be a light show.
Oliver Platt: It’s beautifully written, because it’s shot through with the absurdity of life and shot through a lot of irony, but it’s still very respectful of the disease. It doesn’t take the suffering that it causes people lightly at all.
Quint: Cool, well I think that’s about all I’ve got man.
After the interview ended Platt and I had a little small talk as I packed up my computer bag and gathered my warm weather coat. We talked about SXSW, how he wants to have a movie there so he can have an excuse to visit Austin, which, of course, led to a conversation about the awesome BBQ and Tex Mex in the city.
I gave him my card and it was then that he realized what my pseudonym was. I was introduced, as I usually am, by my given name and I never in a million years would have figured Platt would give a shit what name I write under, but he absolutely made my day/week/month by getting very enthusiastic and complimentary over the site and my work on it.
I guess this is a bit name-droppy and egotistical to include, but it really did put a gigantic fool’s grin on my kisser for the day considering how much I personally adore Platt’s work.
Look out for my interview with Platt’s co-star, Catherine Keener, which is unusually frank and goes off topic a dozen times, which I always like. It’s very conversational. I’ll try to get that posted soon as I juggle my movies and reviews today.
As usual follow me on Twitter to get my instant reactions to the flicks I see and the insanity of Park City!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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