[IMG:L]Josh Brolin’s leading man looks get turned inside out when he becomes a victim of the Planet Terror plague in director Robert Rodriguez’s half of the double feature Grindhouse, and he tells Hollywood.com just how much fun it was to get downright ugly – inside and out.
Hollywood.com: How is it working with Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez?
Josh Brolin: They created a very particular palette for us to springboard from. Quentin asked us to go to his house and watch these Grindhouse movies. He would kind of go off on educational tangents of what was great in the movie and what to look for in the story, the positives. Just to see beyond the low budget or the bad acting in some of these films…There is such a confidence in what their result is going to be that it is really malleable while you are filmmaking. There was a lot of experimentation and a lot of collaboration.
HW: What did you love about Rodriguez’s filmmaking method? And what maybe threw you for a loop at first?
JB: There is nothing that threw me for a loop. I have known Robert for a long time, so I know how he works. It keeps you on your toes. You know that everything that they do is going to be original…If you don’t let go you won’t survive in it…That is the great thing about great filmmakers is that all their anxiety goes into casting and then once they cast they let it all go.
HW: You play such a jerk – was that weird for you?
JB: What if I said no? [Laughs] No, it actually came very naturally. Yeah, it was tough during that scene, [Marley Shelton] made it so much easier on me than it would have been because I hated playing that scene where I am stabbing her. We went for it and she is this kind of maternal force that was walking me through that scene along with Robert. It is their faults, not mine.
HW: When it comes to splatter movies, you took a pretty bad hit from Nicky Katt’s infected tongue. Tell us about that.
JB: That is funny…I know that Robert, when he was talking to [makeup artist] Greg Nicotero he said “Look, I don’t want a little tiny pimple on the guy’s tongue. I want the whole thing to be grotesquely massively infected and I want it to hit Josh with such force.” And I was over in the corner like “Man, what?! Are you sure you want to go that far with it?” It actually turned out to be great, so I enjoyed it very much. It was very laughable during it and it was fun to be serious during those scenes. Because you know the minute they yell cut you could start cracking up which we did.
HW: Do you have any films on your resume that you think might inspire a future filmmaker the way the Grindhouse tradition stirred Tarantino and Rodriguez?
JB: The Goonies. People are asking “Is there going to be a Goonies 2?” and I said only if Robert and Quentin do it.
