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!”
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.
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Greg Kinnear
Hollywood.com: You have all the great lines in the movie.
Greg Kinnear: It felt fresh and original and somebody had to be Danny and they are two very opposing life forms. I thought it was a cute idea. Richard the writer/director is really an inspired guy.
HW: You come across as all American guy in this…
GK:Doesn’t that say something about America? When I read the script I thought it wasn’t right for me, if I don’t see it I will definitely go see it in the theater, and so it was cool to be there with James Bond in cowboy boots and skivvies. A little bit of trivia, by the way, when we were shooting there in the Camino Real, they didn’t shut the hotel down for us. And what you don’t realize is that only about half of the people who look horrified are actors, the rest are customers. I’m not big on showing up on the set. I don‘t happen to hang around sets very often, but I did happen to mosey down to the lobby for that. And I thought, “Boy, he’s committed.”
HW: You made a rare transition from talk show host to film star. How did you do it?
GK: I was given very lucky break with Sabrina, Sydney Pollack gave me a break with that. And leaving the talk show is one of the things, you have to quit being a talk show host.
HW: Did you ever feel like a loser like your character?
GK: To me there was a quiet simplicity to the guy, I liked that he seems so simple at the beginning and like everybody when you start peeling back the onion there’s an unexpected side to him. He does seem to help a hit at the end of the film. I like it when the character changes a bit. I liked this kind of three-way love story. It’s like Brokeback Mountain, and it’s a great love story between these two guys. It’s this strange triangle.
HW: Are you saying this is a gay movie?
GK: It’s the gay assassin movie, huh? In the early script apparently it was way way out there, that character looks like if he’s a 7 now he was a 9 ½. Richard calls him a tri-sexual—he’ll try anything, and that’s still in there. You’re a little off your balance of what that relationship is, but by the end, they’re friends and they have a fondness for each other.
Hollywood.com: So you were pregnant while filming this in Mexico?
Hope Davis: Yes, I was. I was pregnant during this one. I was about eight or nine weeks pregnant.
HW: Were you sick at all?
HD: I was really the sickest I’ve been in my life which is not how you want to feel when you’re going to meet James Bond and Greg Kinnear, and yeah, Mexico City, the most inhospitable city in the world for pregnant people. Don’t ever go there if you don’t feel good because, you know, the water, you can’t brush your teeth in the hotel with the water because you might some sort of poisoning. And then there’s the air in the city, and the food is the most greasy and heavy there in Mexico City. That’s the only thing about this, that part was really rough. Thank God I had Greg and Pierce who made me laugh so many times and really took me out of myself because it would’ve been hard for me.
HW: So how did you get through it?
HD: Well, luckily I wasn’t there for very long. I think that I was there for 14 days total and I think that my longest stint was nine days. I was just incredibly ill the whole time. At one point said, “Please, bring us a snack. Bring us something.” And the sweet craft service people sent over this cured meat quesadilla. I just looked at it and I was like, “Ugh.” I still remember how bad it was.
HW: Do you think your character is falling for Pierce’s character in the movie?
HD: I don’t think that she would ever cheat on her husband, but he is awfully fetching. I think that they are flirting a little bit, but there’s nothing wrong with a little harmless flirtation. I don’t think that it’s going to end in a threesome. Richard Shepard was really invested in portraying this really happy marriage which he said he never sees on screen. You only see people fighting and having problems and cheating on one another and he wanted to show two people who were really desperately in love and really happily married. So I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t so wild about all the flirting that Pierce and I did onscreen, but it was just natural and maybe he didn’t intend for that to happen at all.
HW: Did you ever feel in danger filming in Mexico City?
HD: Well, I never ever went out on the streets. I had two bodyguards. I was very naïve before I went down there. I didn’t understand it, and had heard that Mexico City was dangerous, but I’d never been there. And when I called and asked if could bring my daughter with me they were like, “Well, you have two bodyguards, and I guess we could get another one if you’re going to bring her.” So it wasn’t exactly a city where you could walk around, and I was alone. So I didn’t feel like I could walk around. Our crew was almost entirely Mexican and they were so good to us and seemed to have such a good time working on the film. It brought a lot of business into the places that we were. So everyone was very nice. My baby is 11 months now, and I didn’t bring my daughter, I felt like she was going to kidnapped, and during the shooting a wardrobe guy [from Mexico] got kidnapped. We got to work and everyone was saying that he’d been snatched. He was dropped back off that evening from the place where they took him. I think that the common thing is that they pick you up and take you to an ATM and make you take out all your money and then they drop you off. It’s not about people getting killed.
HW: What did the guys do to cheer you up?
HD: Well, Greg Kinnear can’t stop making jokes. He just won’t stop even right before the camera starts to roll. He’ll make a really silly joke and everyone stops laugh and then Pierce and Greg will stop laughing and I keep laughing and the camera is rolling. I don’t have very good control in that way. He’s just filled with one liners. I don’t recall any of them off of the top of my head because it was as blurry time for me, but the sex scene on the dryer was just ridiculous. We laughed and laughed, and I had planned on doing all of these funny things that I wanted to do, but I didn’t get to do any of them because I was just trying not to laugh the whole time at what he was doing with his foggy glasses and his strange moves that he was making.
HW: Were you there during the scene with Pierce in his underwear and boots in the hotel lobby?
HD: That happened before I got there, but I arrived at the tail end of the shoot which is always strange because you have no idea what kind of a movie that you’re jumping into and he said, “Oh, I’ll send a piece of film to your trailer to watch.” And that was the piece of film that he sent me. It was Pierce walking around in his underwear with this incredible music going on in the background. I was like, “Oh my God, what is this?” Those were all hotel guests that you see at the hotel, and I think that they’re probably still talking about it, about how James Bond came through in his skivvies. It’s still beautiful.
HW: What do you think of there being a sexual relationship between Greg’s character and Pierce’s character?
HD: Well, we did all love one another. Yeah, there was definitely the shot of his hand on his thigh and the joke about “margaritas and cock” and that type of thing. There’s definitely a lot of innuendo. I’m not sure if anything was taken out of the film, but I think that there was a lot of innuendo in there. I don’t know.
HW: What’s next for you?
HD: Oh, I’m throwing in the towel and staying at home. No. I’m going to be in Lasse Hallstrom‘s next movie next fall called The Hoa with Richard Gere.
