Demetri Martin & Emile Hirsch On Taking Woodstock

4 March 2010

Taking Woodstock

From Academy Award winning Director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and featuring an outstanding cast including comedy genius Eugene Levy (American Pie), Emile Hirsch (Milk) and Liev Schrieber (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), comes the entertaining comedy Taking Woodstock - available to own on DVD from March 8.

It is 1969, and Elliot Tiber, a failing interior designer in Greenwich Village, New York, has moved back home to help his parents run their dilapidated motel.

The bank is about to foreclose; his father wants to burn the place down, but hasn’t paid his insurance; and Elliot is still deciding how to 'come out' to his parents.

Three weeks later, half a million people turn up at his neighbour’s farm and Elliot finds himself swept up in a generation defining experience that would change his life, and American culture, forever.

- How did you research the period?

Demetri: Ang did a lot of research and he helped us research our roles. He started with a binder full of information, a big binder that had different sections: music, culture, politics, television, movies... I watched some DVDs that he thought would be appropriate for my character, and I know Emile did the same.

-What kind of movies did Ang recommend?

Demetri: I saw Midnight Cowboy, Bob And Carol And Ted And Alice... I'd seen Harold And Maude before... Now, what else was there...?

- Any music movies? Woodstock?

Demetri: We had that as well. We saw Woodstock anyway. I also watched Coming Home. I don't know if that was on my list, but I became curious about it. (To Emile) I don't know if you had watched that to prepare for this film or had seen it before...

Emile: Yeah. I really love Coming Home. Hal Ashby is one of my favourite directors, and Being There is another great movie.

Demetri: Love that.

Emile: Peter Sellers...

Demetri: Peter Sellers, man! Unbelievable.

Emile: Dr Strangelove!

Demetri: So, yes, there was some research media. By the time people came and got into costume, and we were on set with all these old cars, it seemed pretty authentic. We could never know. I mean, I wasn't there. But it definitely looked right.

Emile: Yeah, Ang is so thorough about being authentic to whatever he does. He had a huge chart that he had the script supervisor draw up on the wall, monitoring every aspect like, the extras and the trash dumpsters so that through the course of the shooting, every little detail was there.

It literally took up a whole wall, and by the time the movie was done it was covered in notes and Post-Its. It looked like an insane person-slash-genius had done it. It looked like something the guy in A Beautiful Mind had spent, like, a week on!

And this was just something Ang wanted to do, because Ang wants to do something different every time. (Laughs) He's like, 'Hmm, I've never made a massive chart that makes me look like I'm crazy. Let's do that!'

- Do you both wish you'd been at Woodstock?

Demetri: Yes, I do. Provided that I had a good tent or a friend who could give me some sort of shelter. And enough food and water. Yeah! I mean, I'm more than a baby when it comes to that stuff, but with those things provided? Definitely.

Emile: Yeah. I think it would have been great to go. It would have been quite an experience. You know, though, there are concerts these days of course, nothing can compare to Woodstock, maybe that are also pretty crazy, groovy rock concerts.

Some of these concerts that go on are so in the middle of nowhere. There's this concert called Burning Man in California... I mean, they have cellphones and stuff there, but a lot of those people look like they're from 1969.

Demetri: I read an article once about a journalist who had to drive across the country. It was 1967 and he was driving across America on the weekend after Sgt Pepper was released. And he said that everywhere he went, people were playing that record, in different bars and stores. That must have been amazing. That must have been a cool time.

- Ang has a track record of quite dark, intense films. What was he like to work with?

Demetri: I keep mentioning The Karate Kid! It was like having a teacher, who kept saying, 'Do this, do that...'

Emile: He plays a hell of a game of beer pong, I'll tell you that! (Laughs) He's just meticulous and thoughtful when it comes to how the actors play the characters. he really encourages the actors to dig as deep as they can and give something special.

He doesn't want surface acting, when people are winging it or relying too much on their craft. he really wants something personal from all his actors. He's really a sweet, delightful but very thoughtful guy.

- How does he get that something special out of you?

Emile: He'll be like: 'In that take you were acting. That was only 20 per cent of what I need.' And I'm like, Man, I've gotta come up the other 80 per cent by Friday!!!

- Demetri, how was this for you? You were thrown in at the deep end, really.

Demetri: Yeah, this was different for me. They were taking a risk with me. I don't know much about what I'm doing up there on the screen. I like writing jokes. I know how to tell jokes, I think.

Or at least, at the times when an audience laughs, I feel like that audience approves of the joke that I told. (Laughs) So it's a little easier for me to quantify what I'm doing, as subjective as it is still.

But in this case, my job seemed more to just trust and to listen, try to learn and just do my best. And if it worked out, great. And if it didn't, I thought, 'Well, I can learn from the things I didn't do so well, or need to work on, if I want to act more.'

- Did you ever think of turning the role down? Did you say yes immediately?

Demetri: Yeah. I had a general meeting with James Schamus I didn't know there was any eye to me being in a film and then a second meeting with Ang and James, which was when they mentioned this film project. When I heard 'Woodstock' and '60s', I was immediately interested.

Then I saw that the character was gay, which was central to the storyline, I thought, 'Well, that'll definitely be challenging.' Not because I'm particularly homophobic, more that I was thinking, 'I hope I can sell that.'

I'm not trained. I just don't know how to do that stuff. But I was excited, because I thought, 'This is cool.' I always liked Woody and Albert Brooks. In America, if you think of Woody Allen and Albert Brooks as younger men, you have two guys who figured out their comedic voices on stage and then tried to translate that into a narrative structure and then developed it for more and more complicated stories.

When I think of Crimes And Misdemeanours, I think of a very mature storyteller, but one that comes from a purely comedic background. I don't picture Woody Allen auditioning for a lot of people's movies, and I'm sure he did... (Laughs)

Not that I'm Woody Allen! But for a guy like me, who's kinda dorky and doesn't particularly look like an actor, that's a template, if there is one in my head. It's like, 'Well, I go onstage and I develop a comedic voice.

Eventually maybe I'll write my projects and then I can tell stories as a certain guy that I'll figure out.' So this was an unexpected opportunity. I feel like a guest, an honoured guest.

- How much is the character like you?

Demetri: I don't know how much... I'm pretty quiet, I guess. I'm not internally so quiet, though, and I don't think I'm that afraid of things. I don't know how afraid of the world I am: I'm happy to try things and give things a shot. I think the Elliot character has a lot more anxiety than I do. I don't particularly have much anxiety.

I'm not gay, but, more importantly, I don't know if I have anything that I'm that afraid of telling anybody. Do you know what I mean? In 1969, for that character to be gay, there's a burden that guy's carrying that I don't think I've ever felt in my life.

Short of when I decided I wanted to become a comedian. I had to tell my mom that I was going to drop out of law school. That's not really like telling your mom you're gay in 1969!

- It's still 'coming out', though!

Emile: (Laughs) 'Mom, I'm dropping out of law school and I have something to tell you. I'm gonna be poor...'

Demetri: My mom isn't like Elliot's mom. Luckily. Thank God! But at the same time, I know a lot of comedians who are much louder than I am. They're much bigger, a little more crass, more confident in a lot of ways.

I think I'm kinda soft-spoken. Maybe more than I want to be. But I think the Elliot character that Ang was looking for, in a lot of ways, is like me, at first glance. But below the surface we're pretty different.

- Emile, how did you feel about playing a gay man in Milk?

Emile: It was great. I had a great time making Milk, hanging out with Cleave Jones. He was a great guy, really interesting. He'd had a crazy, amazing life.
Demetri: One of the delights that you get as an actor, from the little I've done it, is that you get to be a student.

You have a very specific motivation and a reason to learn as much as you can about something, as fast you can. And in life, as a grown-up, many of us aren't challenged in that way. You don't have to go learn about something, you don't have to go empathise with someone if you don't want to.

But as an actor, it's you're job, if you're going to try to do it well. So it's a privilege, and you can find surprising things that are delightful, and you maybe end up being a little more empathetic.

You know, Emile trained with a couple of Vietnam veterans. I don't know how many guys who are 24, in today's day and age, would get to have an in-depth conversation with someone who was in Vietnam, probably killed some people and was almost killed themselves. It has to change you, if you pay any attention.

Similarly, to portray a real person who's a gay man, you find out about Stonewall, and that it came from a culture where being gay was criminalised in America. So you end up feeling like you really learned something, and by the time you're portraying it, hopefully it's as someone who knows a lot more about it.

- Emile, how was your time with the Vietnam veterans? What kind of stories were you hearing?

Emile: Just about their time on duty and certain fire-fights that they had, what it was like for them when they got back... One guy I was talking to, he was kind of pissed about how people treated the soldiers when they got back. he was still angry about that.

He was still proud to have served, and he felt a lot of the stuff was made up about Vietnam. He had his opinions about Vietnam, which I didn't really agree with at all, but he had his opinions.

And the Iraq veteran I talked to, he wasn't like some shell-shocked veteran, he was a career military guy, and I'd ask him about the flashbacks and stuff. I was like, 'Is that real? Do people get that?'

He told me that it's very real, and these guys do have full-on flashbacks where they're literally lost and back in the fight. They think they're still in battle. He said that even after a couple of minutes, some guys literally think they're still in battle. That was really important, learning that element.

- If you both had to choose a song from Woodstock, what would it be?

Demetri: Hmm... I really like that Richie Havens song, where he plays Freedom, and he just keeps playing the guitar. It turns out they had to fill time, because they couldn't get some of the acts there, so he had to improvise.

He's in front of all these people, strumming! As a performer, I've been on stage a lot, and I was like, 'That's pretty badass!' The easy one, I guess, for me, is Jimi Hendrix's version of the national anthem.

But what's interesting is that I didn't realise he played it in the morning, I think, on a Sunday. So a lot of people were just waking up. Which is kind of cool, when you picture it in that context.

Emile: I'd like to hear some of Janis Joplin's songs, like Summertime, and also some of Hendrix's, like Voodoo Chile. I'd like to have seen Hendrix. Hendrix was a big guy, wasn't he? He had big hands. In the Woodstock documentary, I remember looking at his hands, and his hands were massive.

- Demetri, this is a comedy and you are a comedian. Did you ever feel the need to be funny or the need to avoid being funny?

Demetri: Ang said at the beginning, 'I'd like you to bring some of your creativity to this,' but it was pretty clear that it wasn't about me going for the joke, and often it was about not trying to be funny at all, and just trying to believable as the person in the scene. And then if the scene required it, to service the scene.

Which was a good lesson, because my first instinct is to improvise and to change words to kind of write, because it's what I know how to do. But I didn't change any words. I don't think I said anything that wasn't written, that I had to just learn and say to try to make it sound alive. You know what I mean?

You get comfortable as a comedian. Because you can improvise not well all the time but at least you're not afraid to try it. You make choices, you say it and it's gone. But this was a very different task. I think I was more the straight man ironically, the gay character is playing the straight character in a comedy set-up. I thought there some very funny moments.

Liev [Schreiber] came across really funny, and what was cool about that was that he was really just trying to be that guy. He's got a good comedic sense he was going for jokes but it wasn't like he was just trying to be funny. He's a complicated guy.

Emile: He's great. His line, 'Oh, I've got uniforms...' At the premiere in Cannes, everyone in the audience started cheering and clapping. It was one of those moments where people burst into applause.

- Demetri, how did you cope with the gay kiss?

Demetri: Well, I was dreading that a little bit. First, it's not my taste I don't usually kiss guys but second, as far as the job goes, I don't want to not sell it, I want it to look real. And third, my girlfriend was cast as the girl who kisses me before I kiss the guy, which was nice of Ang because it meant my girlfriend got to be there that day and she got to be in the movie.

But it just got weird after a few takes: it was like, 'Kiss your girlfriend, kiss the girl. Do it again. Now be repelled by your girlfriend and like the guy...'

Demetri: So... Yeah, the way I coped with it was I just had a lot of Altoids. (Laughs) I don't know what I thought mints were gonna do! But it wasn't so bad once it was done. The funny thing is, I felt ambivalent when I saw the scene, because part of me was relieved that it wasn't too graphic. But the part of me was like, 'Oh man, I did that show more of that! I want points for that!'

- Do you both think there's same optimism in the world today as there was in the 60s?

Demetri: I think there is. I was 36 on May 25. My generation was called Generation X in America, and grunge was really big when I was in college. And I didn't feel as much idealism from the people around me.

That's not to say my generation was not idealistic, but it didn't seem as pervasive as it seems from the generation at Woodstock. The generation now, when I perform at universities, they seem more idealistic than the people I went to school with.

I'm generalising, but they do seem to be more so. So it's nice to think that there's still a spirit of idealism and hope. I think the easy shorthand is to say that we elected Barack Obama as our president, so that seems a step in the right direction for our country. So hopefully it's there. Emile and I have been talking about it...

Emile: ...And talking about it! And talking about it...

Demetri: But there are greater challenges now, because of cellphones and the internet, all that stuff. Like, in the movie, Bill and Elliot can have a conversation, but neither of them has a cellphone.

They're just sitting in the woods together, and their attention is on each other. And that's where it stays. It's easier to be present when you don't have a phone vibrating in your pocket.

But we all deal with it, and it is our world. I don't know how those things relate to idealism, but it makes just being present and focused just a little bit harder.

Taking Woodstock is available on DVD on March 8th