'The Matador' Cast Interviews
By Mike Szymanski, Special to Hollywood.com
|
Friday, December 23, 2005
Pierce Brosnan stars in The Matador |
Screenwriter Richard Shepard really wanted the job to write a sequel to The Thomas Crown Affair which starred Pierce Brosnan in the remake. So, he handed in a writing sample that was sort of an anti-script--a plot that turned the overdone hit man-with-a-heart story on its head. "I don't even like hit man stories, I hardly watch them," Shepard said.
Although Shepard didn't get the job, The Matador was sold and he got to direct the former Bond, James Bond in his most gritty, raw, crass and foul-mouthed performance ever put on screen. Brosnan loved the script, wanted to play a different kind of role like this and didn't mind having a bit of gray in his scruffy beard nor mind walking through the hotel lobby in Mexico in his underwear for the part of down-on-his-luck hit man Julian Noble.
Now in limited release, The Matador is getting some dark horse Oscar buzz, to which Brosnan smiles and says, "From your lips to God's ears. I'd be over the moon!"
Pierce Brosnan
Hollywood.com: Julian Noble is a very different role and it's hard to imagine any of Pierce in him…
Pierce Brosnan: There's me in every role I play. Sometimes I haven't been given much to act with, but nevertheless I've gotten by. Richard Shepard came bearing gifts with this piece.
HW: What parts of the script jumped out at you?
PB: I thought that it was a tight kind of ensemble of people. I love the twists and turns and the flamboyancy and the sheer vulgarian way of Julian Noble's mouth. It just made me laugh.
HW: And what about that scene in your underwear?
PB: It was the hotel that we were living in for God's sake. So all these men and women would see every day and say, "Buenos dias, Buenos noches, Mr. Brosnan or Mr. Bond." Whatever. I can never escape him. So the day came to do the scene and I had the bathrobe on and as I was getting ready I had the old knickers on and I thought, "Well, I'll keep the boots on as well because it looks so funny." I look so silly with my skinny legs hanging out.
HW: Were you trying to do something completely different from Bond?
PB: No. No. I didn't see it like that. I thought that it was a wonderful, quirky, could be hip, cool, independent movie with a bunch of actors that I really admire and respect. And when we said lets go do it Hope Davis was there, and it was incredible working opposite her and then Greg Kinnear came onboard and then we had a movie. I wasn't trying to do the anti-Bond or anything. I was just trying to honor the piece that Shepard has written.
HW: Was the margarita scene a nod to Bond?
PB: It was in the script already. Of course the emblem of it didn't go unnoticed. None of it has gone unnoticed. You're fully cognizant of you're doing especially when you've played the same role and created an image for yourself whether it be Thomas Crown or Remington Steele or James Bond—you're always aware of how you're perceived and the image that you've kind of painted yourself into a corner with.
HW: You and Greg Kinnear seem to have a good time together.
PB: Yes. Really. I admire the guy's work and he's just one of those wonderfully funny people who makes you funny because he's so deftly sharp at it. If hadn't been as great, as giving, as generous as an actor it would've been for naught, my part. I would've just been rudderless. But he was so open and vulnerable that it just made Julian—it highlighted his own vulgarity and barbaric ways.
HW: Is there any part that you really wanted that you couldn't get?
PB: Yeah. The Da Vinci Code. I wanted to do that. Some chap named Tom Hanks is going to do that. He's done a few things. But yeah, I did want to do that because I was doing After the Sunset in the Bahamas and every time that I looked around every man and their dog was reading this book. People said, "You should play this role." And so I read it and I thought, "I should play this role." I didn't get it and so there you go.
HW: Did you talk to any real matadors while making the movie?
PB: Yeah, we did. There was a young man who was a matador who out there in the tight pants. He's one of the top matadors. But I didn't go see it. Didn't go near it. I thought that the mythology of the bullfight, the metaphor of it, I thought that it was well used in the film by Richard. But to actually see one go down? I have no desire.
Photo(s) by Special to Hollywood.com- © 2005- All Rights Reserved