Hollywood.com: What was the casting process like for you?
Wes Studi: Rene Haynes, who has the distinction of being the only–if you’ve ever noticed, you’ll see each time there’s an Indian picture, you’ll see [in the credits] “Native American Casting: Rene Haynes.” Do you ever see African-American Casting or Asian-American Casting? You don’t. She’s carved herself quite a little niche. So, she came to me and said Terrence wants to make this film and this is a great part for you. What you’re doing is reprising an angry guy who makes war… very much like the Toughest Pawnee (Dances with Wolves) and Magua (Last of the Mohicans). I said, “Well, I’ve done that many times before. Do you think that’s a wise casting choice?” She said, “Terrence wanted to do it that way.” She put Terrence and I together by phone. I come to find out Terrence is from small town, twenty-five miles from where I grew up in Oklahoma. Turns out we know a lot of the same people. Of course, we’d never met. We had a nice talk and he told me about the language. At first, we’d talked about doing this in English and not having subtitles. I don’t know. Subtitles scare people sometimes. With this film, they got cut down so much. There are only… What? 12 or 15 subtitles that happen throughout the whole thing. That’s what I found intriguing, the use of that. Otherwise, it’s an often told story. You just wonder, “What in the world can you do to make different?” Myself, I think I would’ve darkened it up quite a bit, but this is what we have.
HW: One of things the filmmakers did to make it different was cast a 14 year-old girl as Pocahontas. How did you feel about the decision when you first heard about it?
WS: I knew it would cause repercussions. I feel mainly for Colin. That fact that he’s like a thirty-year-old man who’s on film with a fourteen-year-old child. On the other hand, it was totally normal in the 1600s. Twelve year-old women were women. Twelve year-old men were men. Things have changed. We’re in 2005 and we look askance at that. That was the reality of the time and that’s what we’re doing.
HW: What was the biggest challenge?
WS: The language was a heck of a challenge. And some of that darn grass was sharp I tell you. And we were running around in skirts. Skirts and no shirt and that grass. I did it page by page. Day by day. The night before. After a while, some of the words become familiar and you’re glad to see one you’ve said before or that you’ve mastered the sounds of one. We had the language coach there with us all of the time. The guy who put it together. Though he was totally monotone in how to speak it so we had to add the emphasis to the whole thing. Those Indians around there have adapted that particular language and are teaching it amongst themselves. It’s a good thing. Plus, the professor there, he’s putting together a language for the Mashantucket up in Connecticut. He’s doing a lot of work.
HW: Were you limited in that you had to get everything across in your performance?
WS: Actually, I work with a group out of Santa Fe that is a spokesman for Indigenous Language Institute. It’s an organization devoted to the maintenance and revitalization of Indigenous languages throughout the world. Right now, we’re mainly in the Americas. What intrigued me, at the beginning, about this film is that there’s a language used for us, the Indians, in the film, that is totally revitalized by a fellow from the Smithsonian. He’s a linguist. He took a list of something like 27 words that these English guys wrote down back in the early 1600s. That and interviews with surrounding tribes in the area who still had a smidgen of their languages left. He took all that as well as whatever else he could come up with in terms of re-creating this language that we used. I’m a bit disappointed that so much of that particular reinvented language was used in the film because there’s a lot of dialogue missing from this theatrical release that will, perhaps, be in the DVD, which is an added 30 minutes or something like that. That’s what Terrence is working on at this moment. A lot of effort was put into the recreation of this language as well as–around the Indian country, it’s been touted as having a lot to do with that–with that language and the use of it. This was the first time I’d seen this cut. I have to tell you I was a bit disappointed. Not only because a lot of my scenes are on the cutting room floor, but there’s not a lot of use of that particular language.
HW: So, in the film, you spoke more dialogue than what was in the final cut?
WS: Actual scenes. Oh geez, I don’t know how many. I knew they wouldn’t all be in there. There were a lot more scenes in there that I had with Q’Orianka as well as some of the other characters. People are either going to love it or not. I’m sure that’s true of any film that’s made, but I think many people can simply say, “It’s not my cup of tea.” It’s absolutely gorgeous, but–just not my cup of tea.
HW: Do you feel like the native perspective was minimized in this cut?
WS: Oh yeah. I think that’s more or less what I said about the language. Rather than put it in terms of the native perspective–we didn’t expect that, but there was, in the beginning, with the original script, there was more involvement where we got to know these characters a little bit more and we knew of the intrigues that were going on. The story itself has plenty of political intrigue that goes on, but what we saw was a love story of sorts. And I’m an action kind of guy myself. That’s been most of my stuff. I thought, “Oh. One battle.” [Laughs] And I have some really great scenes of swinging and kicking and clubbing.
HW: The cut really seems to accentuate the nature. There are a lot of shots of the wind and walking the grass, which isn’t action, per se, but obviously seems to be something he found attractive.
WS: Yeah. He shoots some really great grass. Remember Days of Heaven and Richard Gere? They were in grass like that too.
HW: The production notes make a huge deal over the authenticity and the experts…
WS: And we don’t see that on the film, do we?
HW: What’s it going to take to tell the story differently?
WS: What it would take would be for me to edit it. I don’t know. I don’t know if they’ll ever let me in an editing room.
HW: Less grass?
WS: Less grass.
