Why do you think drug movies are so appealing?
Liotta: I don't know if it's drug movies per se or more about a certain element of society who are doing them. I think drug movies free the director to make intense films. I know when I go to a movie I want to experience something, whether to laugh, to cry, to feel bad. But you want to feel. Not like Chinese food, where you eat it and then you feel hungry an hour later. You want to have an experience and people can relate to these kinds of movies--whether they've done drugs or not. I think people like watching edgy things.
I have to admit after seeing you in Something Wild way back when, it took me awhile to get over your psycho-guy persona. You were so very scary.
Liotta: You know what it was, that was my first movie. It was coming out of nowhere; no one had an idea about me. I was on a soap opera before that for three years, where I was the nicest guy on earth. Suddenly playing the charming bad guy was my thing.
But then Goodfellas erased that psycho from my head. You were OK again.
Liotta: Field of Dreams too [in which Liotta played baseball legend Shoeless Joe Jackson]. Interestingly, a lot of people didn't put it together that [Jackson] was me. I never understood that.
And now you've enter the wonderful world of producing. Was Narc closer to your heart, being one of its producers? Did you feel like it was your baby?
Liotta: Not really. I was ready to have my opinions about this, story-wise and my character. But Joe knew what he wanted. We shot in 28 days, which is really short. As rough as it was shooting in Canada, we found good people. But they kind of love us and hate us [in Canada]. They like that we are there but they don't like how intense we are about moviemaking. For them, it's just a job. It's a very weird dynamic. I think Robin Williams made the joke that Canada is like the loft above the party. They want to be invited down but they are really pissed off there's a party going on.
What was the hardest part about producing?
Liotta: When the money dried up. It was tough keeping it all together. We forwent our salaries because we felt like if we stopped to demand our money it would take the momentum out of everything.
What happened then?
Liotta: Well, two weeks into it, people weren't getting paid. We were persistent, my partner and I, and every night after shooting we'd have to beat the s**t out of this little weasel [the original financier]. At first no one wanted to make the movie. Joe sent it around before I became attached and everybody said no because he was a first-timer. Then I attach my name to it and we were able to get a couple million bucks. So, fine, we'll make it for a couple million bucks. We'll do real guerilla filmmaking. But then the money just suddenly stop showing up. Ended up we needed $70,000 just to make it to the end of the week, to pay the Canadian crew. The checks weren't coming and there were rumbles. So then we are scrambling, and people are saying, "We'll give you the money, but we want to be a producer on it." Hence, there's a s**tload of producers [getting credit]. And they had nothing to do with it but just sign a check and hand it over to us.
So, the whole thing was a brand-new experience for you.
Liotta: Totally, yeah. I don't think it's the way you want to go into [producing]. You don't want to have to do it when the money doesn't show up. And then it still didn't come almost two to three months after we finished shooting! I finally had to take a lien out on the movie. And poor Joe, who directed what is really his first feature film and he's staying up at night worrying if we got the shots or were they in focus? Because they weren't paying the lab, we never saw the dailies.