Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
There's no getting around the fact that Radha Mitchell, currently lending her talents in the terrifying remake of THE CRAZIES, is a gorgeous woman that also happens to possess a great deal of talent as an actress. I first remember spotting her in the 1996 Australian comedy LOVE AND OTHER CATASTROPHES, but it wasn't until her American debut in HIGH ART that I realized what a talent she was as Ally Sheedy's lesbian lover. Most of you probably remember her best (or at least first) opposite Vin Diesel in the truly scare-worthly PITCH BLACK.
She has since continued impressing us with a series of usually angst-ridden performances in such films as PHONE BOOTH, MAN ON FIRE, FINDING NEVERLAND, Woody Allen's MELINDA AND MELINDA, FEAST OF LOVE, and THE CHILDREN OF HUANG SHI. Two more recent roles have secured her spot as a genre movie queen--Rose in SILENT HILL and as three characters opposite Bruce Willis in last year's SURROGATES. Despite the fact that most of the characters she plays in films never smile (a fact I bring up to her in our talk), she's an extremely personable, inquisitive person who is rarely without a smile on her face. And her Australian accent is adorable, which is good to keep in mind as you watch her go through a series of scared-to-death expressions as a small-town doctor and wife to the local sheriff (Timothy Olyphant, who I interviewed about this film last week). Please enjoy Radha Mitchell…
Radha Mitchell: What did you think of the film?
Capone: I loved it. I think everyone at our site who has seen it has really enjoyed it.
Radha Mitchell: I do too. I only saw it two days ago with an audience. It was just the people who made the film, but it was so… Everyone was following every beat, and it was much more witty than I thought it was when we were shooting it actually, but shouldn’t tell you that.
[Both Laugh]
Capone: I was going to saw I thought it was like so bleak, and the cool thing about this Q&A tonight is we can actually talk about the ending if we wanted to, which we probably shouldn’t do here, but it is such a bleak movie. I talked to Timothy [Olyphant] the other day on the phone and I was talking to him just about how surprised I was that I liked it so much, because as a rule I’m not a big fan of remakes, and I’m such a huge Romero worshipper, but I do consider this one of his lesser films, so a slightly updated version of it is actually okay with me.
RM: Oh, good. Someone I was talking to had heard that he was quite happy with the remake. He was satisfied with it, which is good. It’s a lot different when you hand your story over, because you don’t know what’s going to happen.
Capone: Exactly. I know it’s set in Iowa, but you didn’t actually shoot it in Iowa did you?
RM: We shot it in Georgia and Iowa yeah, in winter.
Capone: Yeah, I saw some set-visitt footage of you, and you are wearing a big parka.
RM: Oh yeah, I was getting around in those blue pajamas, and it was really cold, but yeah I don’t know how Georgia looks anything like Iowa, but somehow they kind of married the two landscapes, and you can’t tell.
Capone: I know you live in the states now, but have you been to that part of the South before this?
RM: No, so it was my introduction to pig hunting and skeet shooting… No, I didn’t get to go pig hunting, but I was invited to go pig hunting. But what else was going on? There was really nothing going on. Half the time, we were at a truck stop that was empty in this town called Warner Robins, where every chain in America was represented on this strip and nothing else. Yeah, that was our experience of Georgia.
Capone: At least setting it in Iowa, you can explain why everyone has a gun. It would actually make a degree of sense that people there would be able to fortify themselves and become dangerous when they become infected. There’s a lot more gun per capita.
RM: That’s true. There was a guy that was driving me to work. And one day he was just a guy driving me to work, and the next day he had a gun and handcuffs and he was driving me to work. I was kind of concerned, like “Can I get someone else to drive me to work? He’s showing up with handcuffs.”
Capone: Why?
RM: He had been a cop in the past, so he was allowed to carry a gun, but it seems to me unnecessary. In LA you never see anyone walking around with a gun.
Capone: It’s illegal.
RM: Yeah, it is!
[Both Laugh]
Capone: But it’s not in a lot of states. I'm pretty sure in Texas that you can get a permit to carry one with you around town.
RM: It’s a great style accessory. [laughs]
Capone: I think it’s fair to say you’ve never shied away from physical roles. You seem to like to get pretty active in some of the films that you have done over the years. Do you sort of seek those kinds of things out?
RM: Being physical? Wow. What don’t you enjoy? When do you get to fight with crazies in your real life? There’s a fantasy element to this kind of stuff that’s really fun, and physically it’s fun to be that in your body and not in your mind to act that kind of thing out. It’s great. I would always hope for more physical scenes. In this movie, I was hoping that Judy would get the gun and keep the gun. She had it for a minute.
Capone: The scene where you are strapped to the gurney looked really stressful. It’s an intense scene to begin with, but what do you remember about that scene in particular?
RM: I just remember reading it thinking, “Wow, this is like JACOB’S LADDER.” I don’t know if you’ve seen JACOB’S LADDER, but yeah it was kind of homage to that sort of sequence in that film. On that day, it was just really interesting to see what the set had become, because there were HAZMAT suits and helicopters. It was a big day with a lot going on, so it was just kind of easy to imagine what we were going through, because physically we had just been through the tent and ripped apart and all of the stuff that was happening in the story, but other than that I was just lying on my back you know.
Capone: There's another scene where you get tied to a chair by some of the crazies…
RM: I kept getting tied up. Yeah, there’s a scene in the nursery where she goes into the baby’s bedroom, and she’s pregnant and she sees the little cot and it reminds her of what their life might have been and then suddenly she’s attacked by this crazy woman behind the door. The next time we see her she’s tied to the chair and that wasn’t in the script and suddenly I'm tied to a chair. They had to truncate that scene, because there was actually a whole lot going on in the scene, and there wasn’t that much time to shoot it, so that was one where we simplified.
Capone: That’s an interesting scene to, because that’s the scene where you realize that the crazy people are not mindless zombies, they are thinking…
RM: They are not zombies; they're alive and have memories. They’re sentient zombies.
Capone: Exactly.
RM: Yeah, you’re right. You can’t trust them, and they talk to each other. Yeah, you don’t really know what they are, and we were trying to figure them out.
Capone: I like that it’s not all explained and that so many elements of this story you kind of have to figure them out for yourself. A character doesn’t enter the picture and just explain the whole thing to you; you actually have to think for yourself a little bit, which is very rare.
RM: It’s not that dense of a plot.
Capone: True.
RM: There’s not that much dialogue, but somehow it does maintain your attention, because it does feed you the information sort of slowly and just when you’ve had enough of something, then you start to learn something else, and I think that is kind of why it works.
Capone: I’ve noticed over the years that in a lot of the films that you are in that you don’t smile that much.
RM: Oh really?
Capone: The first time I think I really remember seeing you was in LOVE AND OTHER CATASTROPHES, and I'm pretty sure you smiled in that. But the first time I really remember thinking "I'm going to remember that person's name was HIGH ART. That’s a really serious movie form what I remember, and then a lot of times after that I just remember thinking, “She's a serious actor.”
RM: I don’t know. I guess I can become quite intense sometimes when I’m working, and maybe I don’t smile or yes some of the stories have been quite intense really. I kind of enjoy getting into those complex parts of the psyche, I guess, and sometimes you are not smiling when you are there and sometimes you are.
Capone: I think one where you do smile, at least a few times, was MELINDA AND MELINDA, and even though I know a lot of people don’t think about that film when they are talking about the works of Woody Allen, I’ve always said “What Radha Mitchell does in that movie is really cool, and you should see it for that. It’s this great idea.”
RM: It’s a great conceit.
Capone: I actually really like the film.
RM: I thought it was very interesting way of looking at any situation. It’s all about interpretation and perspective, so yeah, it was an interesting part to be playing for sure.
Capone: Everyone seems to have similar stories about working with Woody Allen, he’s kinds of hands off unless you are doing something wrong. Is that about right?
[Both Laugh]
RM: Yeah, I think I was working with Will Ferrell and both of us were like “This is the last time…” He doesn’t really communicate, and I had actually had the privilege of reading the script where a lot of the actors hadn’t even read the script, so they would just come on and do their scenes. I don’t think I could have played the role without knowing what was happening, but yeah he’s got a very unique approach to directing; that’s for sure.
Capone: Back to THE CRAZIES, one of the things that I thought was just so scary about it is that there is a high believability factor to this. If these events occurred, I believe this is exactly what would happen. It would not be about separating the sick from the healthy, it would be about containing everything and that’s why I think it’s such a bleak film.
[Both Laugh]
RM: There was another ending that was even bleaker before. It’s always been a sort of ironic, bleak kind of beat at the end and it was bleaker before and somebody had the idea it was too bleak, so they changed that, but it’s open to interpretation. Who knows what’s going to happen when they get there. Did you stay until the end?
Capone: I did and that’s why I was going to say there’s a little coda at the end where it seems like “Oh, Iowa is dead.” I like also that you and Timothy play these authority figures who would know everybody in that town, because of your jobs. That puts you in a very unique position where you can, when you come across somebody who may or may not be infected, you know these people so you can sort of interpret their behavior a little faster than people who might not know them.
RM: Yeah, I guess that’s why she’s so upset when Bill comes in and he’s catatonic, next thing she knows he’s killing his family. It’s kind of her fault, because she didn’t do anything when he was in the office, but you would imagine that there would be more scenes where we are trying to communicate with the crazies, “Don’t you remember? But we’re friends!”, and that kind of thing, but there wasn’t a lot of time. One of the things I actually quite like about the script is it’s quite sparse and there’s not a lot of dialogue, so it’s just driven by action and driven by visuals.
Capone: The car wash sequence is so scary.
RM: Did you find it scary?
Capone: I did, because there’s nothing but movement.
RM: Yeah, “Everything is fucking moving!” It’s true and to shoot that took quite a long time. There were lots of different angles. Breck [Eisner] is fairly meticulous in the way that he shoots, like he just keeps rolling and rolling and rolling and everyone is totally frustrated. “Haven’t we got it?” “No, we haven’t got it.” So we were soaking wet for a long time in the freezing cold trying to get that right, but it was really fun. I have this one sequence where I get to sort of kick ass and smash this guy’s head on the thing, and that was probably one of my favorite beats in the movie for me.
Capone: Right and then of course the way that that scene ends is even greater.
RM: Oh God, it’s just relentless!
Capone: I don’t remember the actor’s name who plays the deputy…
RM: Oh Joe Anderson, yeah.
Capone: He has a really interesting story arc…
RM: He has a great role in the movie and he really plays it well.
Capone: And we never really know if he’s been infected or not? That’s my interpretation.
RM: We know by the end.
Capone: Do we?
RM: Yeah.
Capone: At the end, it just looks like he’s letting them kill him.
RM: Oh no, you’ve got to watch it again.
Capone: I guess I do.
RM: You missed the line where he says he’s infected. I think it’s a really interesting performance, because you see the decay and the starting to not quite be in tune with what’s going on, and then you see him go bad and attack us.
Capone: For a while it almost seems like that could just be him being incredibly paranoid and sleep deprived…
RM: And stressed out…
Capone: Exactly…
RM: So we don’t know, until the end when he admits, “I’m not right, am I?” You’ve got to watch it again.
Capone: I remember the line, but I always interpreted it, as maybe he doesn’t even know himself.
RM: I had a fairly literal interpretation about “Oh, he’s gone bad.”
Capone: You would be in a better position to know than I would, so I’ll take your word for it. What do you remember about connecting with this character initially when you first read the script?
RM: I was actually shooting a movie in Calcutta, and there was a lot of dialogue in what we were doing and I kind of couldn’t process this, because the script has so much… it’s all description, so it’s really hard to read a description script and imagine what’s going to happen. So then I spoke with Breck, and he was fairly clear that it was going to be played in a fairly naturalistic way. He was referencing this really cool movie… Cowboys in the desert, with the guy zapping everybody on the head…
Capone: Oh, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. I can see that.
RM: I was like “How is this anything like that?” on paper, but then you can sort of see it. There’s a tonal similarity, but then I was like “What are you going to do with the gory sequences? Are you going to go with it or not?” He was clear that he wanted to be quite extreme, so I liked the idea of something naturalistic and then kind of theatrical in that way, so that was interesting to me.
Getting into the character? How do you play a doctor? I was interested in the idea of what a doctor does and I really didn’t know anything, and I needed to take this blood pressure in this scene… That was my most complex character move. The rest is just me running and screaming basically. Anyway, I wanted somebody to teach me how to take blood pressure, and they ended up putting me in the office of a doctor who happened to be a gynecologist and I was like “I just need to take blood pressure…,” and this doctor decided he wanted to show me the ropes, so he took me into five rooms with different people in the stirrups and it was quite intense. It was probably the scariest day on set I would have to say. But what I liked about the character I guess is that it’s a couple. They are together and they are adults in this crazy reality, they're not teenagers… All of that I think is kind of interesting to me. It’s not so outside of the genre, but it does bring in characters that you don’t normally see, adult responsible characters that can somehow…
Capone: Who aren’t acting like idiots!
RM: [laughs] And you care. You do care about the characters. You don’t just wait for them to die, so that’s always nice.
Capone: You mention the NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN reference. There is a Western feel to parts of it. There’s a scene where Timothy is just standing on the main street there by himself like the sheriff at one end of a long street.
RM: And he’s a sheriff with a gun!
Capone: That’s a Western image.
RM: It’s very much shot like a western. I think the DP did a great job, Maxine Alexandre--he’s Italian, and I’m sure he was influenced by Sergio Leone and some of these classic movies I think were part of the style of the piece. I was really happy to see the way it was cut up, because I think he did a great job in shooting it.
Capone: Yeah, talk a little bit about Breck. He's still a relatively new feature director, so…
RM: Yeah, did you see SAHARA?
Capone: Absolutely.
RM: Yeah, that’s his only other feature, and that’s a huge kind of thing to take on as your first movie. It’s pretty ballsy.
Capone: And that movie had so many problems, and they’ve been well documented.
RM: There were certainly issues attached to the movie I think he had to carry around as part of his reputation, so he probably had a bit of that on his shoulders beginning this project. He’s a perfectionist who will not stop until he’s dragged off set basically, and I think it’s paid off. I think he got all the beats in a really precise way that he wanted.
Capone: Speaking of reputations, most American audiences first saw you in PITCH BLACK. Since that film Vin Diesel has gotten this reputation for a while of just being difficult. What do you remember about working with him? Did you experience that?
RM: [dripping with sarcasm] Ah, he’s such a sweet heart. It was the vehicle to his success, and I think he was kind of ready for it at the time, and he had a particular vision about where he wanted it to go even then. As much as he was kind of a pain in the ass, he was also I think the force that drove the movie forward, and I think he did a great job. Those kinds of macho movies are always kind of weird to be on set, because you’ve got Cole Hauser, you’ve got Vin Diesel and Cole’s kind of the cold icy cop and Vin’s the tough guy and you know there’s always tension on set.
Capone: You’ve managed to hold your own, both as an action star and you’re not just running around screaming, you are fighting and you are physical again and you…
RM: That was my second American film, and the first one obviously was this tiny little independent film and…
Capone: Still a great calling card film, HIGH ART is great.
RM: Oh yeah, I think it’s a beautiful movie and I’m really glad to have been part of it. So my experience up until PITCH BLACK had been like “Well, it’s a bunch of people, and we’re all together, and it’s really cool, and we hang out and tell the story…” It was kind of a wake-up call for me doing PITCH BLACK, because I realized that everyone takes themselves very seriously, and there is a lot of pressure with the studios involved, so it was a different experience for sure.
Capone: Those are the two extremes I think. Was that kind of good to get those out of the way, The small laid-back indie and the ultra-high-pressure studio film?
RM: I think in a way it’s defined my career constantly going between those two things. I seem to go between little things and bigger things. I recently did this movie with Bruce Willis [SURROGATES], which was a Disney thing and then I did a tiny little movie in Calcutta recently.
Capone: Which one was that?
RM: It’s a movie called THE WAITING CITY, which is coming out… I don’t know if it’s going to come out here. It’s coming out in Australia. It was in the Toronto Film Festival. It’s actually a beautiful little film and it was so nice to work with a tiny crew and focus on just two characters and develop the piece in a really intimate way.
Capone: Who was the other actor?
RM: This guy called Joe Edgerton, who is quite a sort of well-known Australian actor who was in "Cat on a Hot Tim Roof" recently in New York with Cate Blanchett.
Capone: Oh right. Is THE WAITING CITY an Australian production?
RM: The one we did was and Australian production; he’s staring in THE THING next.
Capone: The remake of THE THING? That’s cool, or is it?
RM: I don’t know. You probably know more than me.
Capone: It’s a remake of a remake.
RM: Is it a remake of a remake?
Capone: The John Carpenter one was a remake of something from the early 50’s called THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD.
RM: What is it with remakes? What’s your perspective?
Capone: When I was talking with Timothy and I told him I was surprised how much I liked it he goes “Well, thank you. Why were you surprised?” and I said, “I’ll tell you why,” because a lot of the remakes add an unnecessary backstory and they add all of these elements that weren’t there in the first place, usually because they didn’t need to be there. And it's so rare that they just tell the story or make actual improvements to justify their existence. Most of them reek of cashing in on a brand name. That’s what I like about THE CRAZIES, that it’s updated without thinking that they need to “flesh it out” anymore with unnecessary details and the compelling story is left intact. Plus it's not exactly a title most people are that familiar with.
RM: How do you feel about watching something again, like a recycled story? It kind of makes sense to me. I think we constantly…
Capone: That’s true and you can make the case of every time you see a Shakespeare play…
RM: You’ve seen it before. It’s just like that I think. It’s like there are certain stories that are part of our subconscious and we want to kind of hit them again and again.
Capone: What's that old saying about there only being four stories that every book, play, movie, television show is really telling?
RM: And THE CRAZIES is one of the stories! [laughs]
Capone: But I think to dismiss THE CRAZIES as a zombie movie is a mistake.
RM: Firstly, they’re not zombies.
Capone: That’s true but it does adhere to some of the zombie movie devices, the same way 28 DAYS LATER is not a zombie movie, but it is.
RM: And why are zombies cool? Why? How did that happen? Is it just because vampires are boring now? What happened? Vampires have had their day.
Capone: You think so. They seem more popular than ever.
RM: I think it’s over now with vampires. How many vampire things can you look at? It’s time for zombies.
Capone: Zombies never went away. Zombies never go away.
RM: Well, zombies aren’t sexy I think is the issue.
Capone: That’s what Catherine Hardwicke, who directed TWILIGHT told me, “Vampires are sexy. Zombies are not sexy.”
RM: Zombies are just weird.
Capone: I couldn't have said it better myself.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcool.com
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