[IMG:L]As an icy cool doctor drafted into battling a legion of zombies, Marley Shelton brings the pain in director Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, part of the exploitation extravaganza Grindhouse, and she pops up for good measure in Quentin Tarantino’s contribution Death Proof, too. The actress compares and contrasts the kings of cinematic cool—and formulates a return for her dead character in Sin City—for Hollywood.com.
HW: What did you love about Robert Rodriguez’s filmmaking methods and what threw you for a loop at first?
Marley Shelton: If anything you just have to get over yourself. You have to leave your ego at the door. The way he works also is you shoot the rehearsal and then he beckons you back to his giant monitor which is a huge flat screen TV and he shows you what he likes and doesn’t like. He adjusts you by literally your performance. All that stuff about actors not wanting to watch themselves, you have to throw that out the window, you have to get over yourself, get down to business, and roll your sleeves up. I love that about him but it is also a little challenging…There is no preciousness either, he invites P.A.s – everyone is watching the monitor. It is cool, it is so collaborative, and one big family, and I love that.
HW: Like a lot of Grindhouse your performance felt sort of familiar and yet totally original, too – were you working from something specific as a template?
MS: I referenced the classic Hitchcock ice queen blonde, like Tippi Hedren, for the beginning just as a starting place, and then obviously she devolves as she evolves. I think it was more of a subconscious thing and more about osmosis, of just watching all of these movies and inundating them…There was an earnestness and Josh [Brolin] and I set out to really play things as straight as possible. The effect is very melodramatic because of the circumstances and the absurdity of everything, but we were not winking at the camera, believe it or not.
[IMG:R]HW: The zombie film genre is hotter than ever. Is it the metaphorical quality or…?
MS: Funny, one of my first talks with Robert I was like “I get it – you’re referencing the war in Iraq with this violence.” And I get on this whole deep speech. And he was like “Nah. It’s just a zombie movie.” [Laughs]
HW: Speaking of seeing yourself what is it like to see yourself looking so just terrible?
MS: It is totally weird but it was also really liberating to not have to deal with that normal stuff that female actors have to deal with. We just got to let it all go and roll our sleeves up and play. I don’t know if you guys saw the poster art where I have the black tears but there is actually a scene that will be in the international version they didn’t have time for in the double feature where Michael Parks and I are actually burying Tony. That actually did happen, I had a black tear that rolled down my cheek so yes, and there was a lot of that.
HW: How did you first get into Robert’s inner circle of actors? You pitched in to act in the Sin City test film, to help him sell Frank Miller on his approach.
MS: Well, I had been auditioning for him for years. I guess the first time that I auditioned for him was for The Faculty and he told me later the reason that I didn’t get the gig was that he thought my eyes were too alien-like, and that would’ve ruined the reveal at the end, the twist that the popular girl is actually the queen alien. He thought that I would’ve given it away, because my eyes are so weird. So when it came time for Sin City my character, The Customer, was actually very specifically drawn with these eyes and her eyes are talked about – “The crazy calm in her eyes,” and whatnot – and so that time it was to my advantage. So we finally go to work together and it was a love-fest. He’s just a fantastic filmmaker. It was then also interesting that when I finished Sin City he gave me a framed comic book cell of my character and on it he wrote, ‘I’m already looking forward to our next movies together.’ That’s a very common pleasantry when you work with someone, but he actually made good on it and literally his next movie he cast me in.
HW: How radically different from the typical Hollywood types are Robert and Quentin?
MS: Well, first of all they have creative autonomy, and so in that way they definitely buck the system and there’s very much the spirit of the West with them. Obviously, Robert lives in Texas, but Quentin is a Californian and grew up here, and they sort of march to the beat of their own drums. They’re these renegades who do it their way, and there is just an originality that I think is extremely unique.
[IMG:L]HW: You’re one of the few actors to appear in both of their Grindhouse films, and you get to be the same character AND you turn out to be related to a character from other Tarantino and Rodriguez films!
MS: Yes, I know! I was so excited when I first read the script and saw that when it comes time for the big reveal that I’m actually Dakota McGraw-Lock. I was like, “Oh, that means that I’m Earl McGraw’s daughter. So does this mean more future cameos in Quentin and Robert movies?” Earl McGraw [played by Michael Parks] is always Earl McGraw in all of their movies, and that’s how the cameo in Quentin‘s happened. Robert wrote me as Dakota McGraw and then when we were shooting Quentin said, “You know what? I think that I’m going to put you in that scene with Michael Parks, because you’re his daughter and that would be really funny.” So I’m part of the royal McGraw clan. For the people who are really in the know of the world of Quentin Tarantino, I think that’ll give them a chuckle for sure.
HW: Can you shed a little light on the backstory – there seems to be some unexplained issues between Ranger McGraw and his daughter.
MS: Yeah, it was so funny, and it’s sort of retroactive. Robert built this whole story that for some reason me and my dad have this estranged relationship and we can’t stand each other, and it’s very mysterious why. And part of it is obviously to do with him hating my husband and hated the fact that I married this guy, and I think that caused us to not speak to each other. So then when we go back to, I guess, to what’s the prequel in Death Proof you kind of see more of this seething interaction between me and Daddy, but it’s still slightly mysterious exactly as to how it originated.
HW: It seems easy enough to see how your two directors are the same, but how are they different – other than the volume level with which they communicate?
MS: [Laughs] Well, I know, that’s true. Robert is a man of few words, whereas Quentin is very verbose, as we know. Robert is on the cutting edge of technology and he’s a real visualist, and he was a comic book artist back in the day. As we know he writes and directs and DPs and scores and edits. He mixes his own movies. So he already sees the movie in his head before we’ve even started shooting, and the way that he directs is by showing us our work. He films everything and then he’ll show us on a huge flat screen monitor everything that we’ve just done, and he directs us and gives us adjustments by showing us our work. Quentin is very kind of classic and old school. I think he’s really into the old school style of filmmaking. He shoots on film. He doesn’t have a monitor at all, and he stands next to the camera with his naked eye and directs that way by literally watching a scene with his own eyes. And so you have a new school and old school, but somehow they find a cohesiveness.
HW: What do fans of your work first want to ask you about when they encounter you?
MS: It really depends on what movie is on cable at the moment. I do get a lot of Sin City. I still get a lot of Sugar and Spice, which I think is probably on cable a lot. I used to get Heather Graham [Laughs].
HW: Have you talked to Sin City’s co-director Frank Miller at all since doing the film?
MS: Well, yeah, we saw him in Los Angeles. Rosario [Dawson], myself and Rose [McGowan] hosted The Scream Awards and we did a kind of thing there. Frank was being honored and he flew in for that and so we all got to hangout that weekend and then I just called him with a dear friend of mine to congratulate him on 300, which is so crazy. So we spoke on the phone and he’s elated with the success of that movie.
HW: He’s about to take on his first film as solo director with The Spirit– how do you think he’ll be on his own?
MS: Oh, I think that he’s so intuitive and perceptive. It was really amazing…he took to directing like a duck to water. What he does is so isolated. He’s an illustrator, he’s an artist, and I think that he loved the collaboration and actually getting to interact with other human beings. He was very gentle as a soul, but very, very precise with an acute vision.
HW: Any room to revisit The Customer in one of the sequels to Sin City? We never do find out why she wanted to die.
MS: Exactly, yes. I keep on hinting to Robert that we should do a prequel so that we can find out the back story of The Customer, and I think that Bruce Willis was into doing a prequel as well. So there’s definitely been some rumors. I don’t think that it’ll happen in Sin City 2 but perhaps.
HW: Do you think you will be part of the Robert Rodriguez Traveling Troupe of Actors for the rest of your career?
MS: Listen, from your lips to God’s ears. I couldn’t think of a better fate. As far as I’m concerned I would love to work with him for the rest of my life. I just think that he’s so talented and such an original. He’s got such an amazing imagination. When I read Planet Terror it was like nothing I had ever read before remotely, and yet it has so many references.
