TV critic David Bianculli

DATE March 26, 2002 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Michael C. Hall talks about his role as David Fisher
on "Six Feet Under"
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest, Michael C. Hall, is one of the stars of "Six Feet Under," the HBO
series about a family that owns a funeral business. The father, who ran the
business, died in the first episode. The two sons have taken over. One son,
Nate, became a partner very reluctantly. The other, David, played by Michael
Hall, had already been active in the business. David is more strait-laced,
business-oriented and uptight than his brother. He's also gay, which until
recently he kept a secret from everyone, including his family.

In the first episode of this season, his mother was trying to be supportive of
his sexual orientation. At the same time, she wanted to let her children know
that she's having a relationship with Nikolai, the owner of the flower shop
where she works. In this scene, she's telling the family that she's invited
Nikolai to a family dinner. She wants each of her children to bring someone,
too.

(Soundbite from "Six Feet Under")

Unidentified Woman: Nate, I'd like you to invite Brenda. Claire, I'd like
you to invite Gabriel Dimas. And, David, if you have a special friend, I'd
like for him to come, as well.

Mr. MICHAEL C. HALL (Actor): (As David) Why is my friend special?

Unidentified Woman: All right. If you're having sex with anyone, I'd like to
meet him. Is that better?

Mr. HALL: (As David) Not really.

Unidentified Woman: Stop acting like children!

Are you seeing anyone?

Mr. HALL: (As David) No.

Unidentified Woman: Well, why not? Sex is an important and healthy part of
life. It's nothing to be ashamed of.

Mr. HALL: (As David) Yes, I know that. Unfortunately, I'm not having any
right now.

Unidentified Woman: What happened to that cop, the black man?

Mr. HALL: (As David) He met someone else.

GROSS: Michael C. Hall has developed quite a following, but most of his fans
know little about him, since his previous work was in theater. In the
Broadway revival of "Cabaret," he played the emcee after Alan Cumming left the
role. In the revival, the emcee is very sexually insinuating. I told Hall it
was hard for me to imagine him in that role after seeing him portray someone
so inhibited in "Six Feet Under."

Mr. HALL: I guess I sort of was required to close every door that I'd opened
while doing the emcee when I came to play David, and the road map was there.
I'm obviously different from Alan, and the emcee is a role that you're
certainly, as much as any role, required to personalize. But I definitely was
someone who was maybe a pansexual, up for anything, and when I did the
pilot--I went back to New York to do the production of "Cabaret" for another
month before we came and did the 12 other episodes for the season--and I would
sometimes take a break onstage and realize that I was maybe playing David's
fantasy of himself in a way, and it was really interesting to go from such an
extreme to someone who's so shut down in so many ways.

GROSS: When you auditioned, did you know which brother you were auditioning
for?

Mr. HALL: Yeah. Yeah, I was asked to read for the part of David from the
beginning, and when I read the script, I think I responded to that role
because, of course, I had it in mind, but I think I would have anyway, just
because, you know, if drama is conflict, David is inherently dramatic, because
he's conflicted over his sexuality, of course, but also his relationship to
his family, to his work, to his religious life, even. They're all
characterized by conflict.

GROSS: So what did you have to do to prove yourself against the other David
Fishers?

Mr. HALL: I don't know. I think in spite of the fact that on paper, I
suppose I'm very different from David, there was something that I did
immediately respond to in terms of having a sense of how he might express
himself, or how he walked or breathed or--I don't know, that sense of
resenting what you imagine to be a lack of appreciation for all the sacrifices
you've made for all the other people in your life, and--not that I'm fueled
by resentment, but I guess I knew what that was about, somehow, and took that
as a starting point.

GROSS: In "Six Feet Under," you play someone who runs a family funeral
business. Had you already had the experience of going to a funeral director
and organizing a funeral, choosing the coffin, making all those horrible
arrangements?

Mr. HALL: I'd been sort of on the periphery of intake meetings. I was never
the person who was making the decisions, but I'd been through that with family
members and the like, and I've been to wakes of friends and family members,
and could draw on that, just that atmosphere. I've heard Alan talk about it,
and I think they do this in terms of the way they shoot the show, that
everything's real, but there's just some sort of peppering of surreality when
you're in that situation. Of course, David and Nate are on the other side of
that, and maybe are creating a space for people to exist in a place where they
can feel whatever they need to feel, but there remains that element of
surreality, or timelessness. Time stops and I remembered that.

GROSS: Did you meet anybody who reminded you of yourself on the other end of
the desk when you were arranging the funerals?

Mr. HALL: Well, my father passed away when I was 11, and I think my most
intense memories of spending time in a funeral home come from that time, and I
guess we haven't had someone quite that young, but I know when Gabe Dimas,
whose younger six-year-old brother shot and killed himself accidentally, was
there with his mother, of course he felt an incredible amount of guilt and
responsibility, because he was looking after a kid who shot himself. But when
my father died, just because of the confusing feelings that come up, I dealt
with some of that sense of guilt or vague responsibility as well, so I think I
did relate to that, yeah.

GROSS: Well, so far this season, the good news is, you don't have AIDS,
although you've been having unprotected sex. The bad news is, you do have
gonorrhea.

Mr. HALL: Right.

GROSS: The other bad news is, your ex-boyfriend appears to be in a solid
relationship...

Mr. HALL: Yes.

GROSS: ...with a new guy, and you still have feelings for him.

Mr. HALL: Right.

GROSS: When did you find out what the story for this season would be?

Mr. HALL: Well, we really find out about things on a script-to-script, or
episode-to-episode basis, so I wasn't presented with an arc for the new
season. I was presented with the first script, and while shooting that
script, about halfway through we'd get a copy of the next, and so on and so
on. So it's kind of like leading a second life. You have a little bit of
warning, and sometimes you'll maybe want to get a sense of where things are
going, just so you can have that in mind. But I think one of the unique
challenges of doing an episodic serial like this is that you don't rehearse it
as an entire piece as you would a play, or don't shoot it with an entire arc
in mind. At least when you do a movie, you have something that's very
open-ended. And every script is a page-turner, you know. You never know
exactly what's going to come next, but that's the fun of it, too.

GROSS: What do people most ask you about in terms of the plot? What do
people most want to know?

Mr. HALL: Early on, people were interested in who burned down the house.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. HALL: But I guess usually specific questions about the show have to do
with my character, because, of course, they're talking to me, and I've had a
woman recognize me and tell me she loves the show and then put her hand on my
arm and tell me that she hopes that I'm going to be OK. This was about
halfway through the first season, which was kind of exciting and creepy,
simultaneously. There was a guy who walked by me in the locker room of a gym
in New York, an older guy, and this was after the season finale when David had
had his epiphany in church, and he told me he was glad I was finally starting
to behave myself. That's all he said, just said that and walked away. And
you know, like a New York fireman walked up and recognized me from the show
and said, `Are you going to get back together with that cop? I like you
guys,' you know, which is great. I think it's...

GROSS: Yeah, I do, too. I also think you should get back together.

Mr. HALL: Good.

GROSS: You know, here comes a question that you might not want to answer,
so...

Mr. HALL: OK.

GROSS: I wanted to remind you, you don't have to answer this if you don't
want to.

Mr. HALL: Right.

GROSS: Because you play a gay character...

Mr. HALL: Right.

GROSS: ...probably a lot of viewers wonder if you are gay or straight
yourself, and how you feel about playing a gay character in the series.

Mr. HALL: Right. Well, you know, my first impulse is to say, `Well, what
does it matter?' But I think the fact that the character has residence is why
it matters. People inevitably have varying degrees of preoccupation with
sexual orientation. I'm not gay. No one ever asks me if I'm a mortician, you
know. But...

GROSS: We know you're not. We know you're an actor.

Mr. HALL: Right, I'm an actor. Right. You know, I'm not gay, I'm not a
mortician, I'm an only child, not a middle child, so you know, it's a bit of
internal alchemy and imaginative work. That is why I do what I do, and I'm
really honored to breathe life into the character, because I recognize, as I
think a lot of people do, that he's a pretty unique creation in terms of a
character on television or film or really anywhere I've seen, and he's a
complex, flesh-and-blood, you know, person who's not incidentally gay and
who's not the understanding neighbor upstairs or the comic relief. And he
also is--his relationship to his sexuality is very complicated and I think
that's unique. So I feel a sense of responsibility and I'm honored to play the
part.

GROSS: Is it an issue anymore playing a gay character and how that may or may
not affect future casting roles? Is that...

Mr. HALL: I don't know. I mean...

GROSS: Is that just a thing of the past now, or is that something...

Mr. HALL: Maybe, maybe not. I mean, I think it's certainly not enough of an
issue for me to not play the part. And when I read the part, it's--I'm not
playing David in spite of the fact that he's gay. I mean, because he's such a
great character--he's such a great character because of his conflict. And his
conflict is rooted in his relationship to his sexuality. So I guess in that
sense I'm playing the part because he's gay.

But I don't know. You know, if anybody out there lacks the imagination or is
holding on to whatever bigotry that would keep them from wanting to work with
me, I don't really want to work with them anyway. So...

GROSS: My guest is Michael C. Hall. He plays David on the HBO series "Six
Feet Under." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest Michael C. Hall plays David, the gay brother, on "Six Feet
Under," the HBO series about a family that runs a funeral home.

Have you been in movies?

Mr. HALL: Nope. I...

GROSS: None at all. Not even a small part?

Mr. HALL: No, I--no, this is really my first thing other than I did--a couple
days I delivered some room service on an episode of "All My Children" in
between theater jobs back in New York. But other than that this is it. This
is--I mean, they definitely took a chance because I didn't have a reel or
anything when they hired me of screen work, so this is my first chance to get
in front of a camera. I'm just glad that I was able to play a character who
was so tense because I didn't have to try to get over it. I could just
incorporate it into what I was doing and hope that as David relaxed, I as an
actor would relax as well.

GROSS: Do you have a favorite episode from the series so far?

Mr. HALL: Well...

GROSS: Or a favorite scene for yourself?

Mr. HALL: Huh. I guess some of my favorite scenes, and one of my favorite
episodes is the Las Vegas episode--I guess, the third-to-last episode of the
first season. I think because in that episode, David's coming out to his
mother and his epiphany at the church. And the final episode notwithstanding,
it's one of his biggest triumphs, in that he goes to Las Vegas, steps in and
gives the speech that his father was scheduled to give and goes off the cue
cards, throws them in the air and improvises, which is something that he's not
so inclined to do. And it's a triumph. And his dad's former colleagues
embrace him and take him out. Then he's outed by a stripper. They turn on
him. And David in turn turns on himself and acts out in the most extremely
self-loathing way that he does up to that point and solicits the prostitute in
Las Vegas. So as far as David goes from the top of the mountain all the way
to the bottom in that episode, and that was fun.

GROSS: What did you do to prepare for it?

Mr. HALL: Well, with a job like this, I did--I guess I can say that was the
11th episode, so in a way, I did the first 10 episodes. I've played...

GROSS: Good answer. Yeah.

Mr. HALL: You know, I played David for 10 hours, and I found myself very, you
know, preparing. And I was very on top of things early on and I had a real
sense of how it would all unfold and, of course, would modify that as we
actually shot the scenes. But towards the end, you really do have to
surrender somewhat. You can't do that kind of preparation again and again and
again because in a lot of ways all the work you've done up to that point is
that preparation.

GROSS: Now you said you'd never done any movies, and really not any
television either...

Mr. HALL: Right. Right.

GROSS: ...before doing "Six Feet Under," but you had done stage work. The
transition from stage to camera can be difficult. What was that transition
like for you because you had to learn what it's like to be in front of the
camera, and you had to learn for real really quickly?

Mr. HALL: Yeah. I think I've done my share of auditioning before getting
this job for television shows or small parts in movies. And I think having a
character that I could so completely absorb myself with helped me to forget
about the camera initially whereas sometimes reading for a sitcom pilot, my
self-consciousness would be a larger presence than my sense of the character.
And as I've gone on, I think I've realized that the camera can be your friend
and you have to sort of accept it. It's very much in the room with you, and a
lot of ways a character in the scene because it's the point of view, you know.

GROSS: How aware are you of where the camera is, what it's looking at?

Mr. HALL: It varies. You know, "Six Feet Under," we do a lot of different
kinds of shots. There's a standard shot that you may notice that there'll be
someone in the foreground and someone in the background. And they'll do
raking shots sometimes--two characters in profile, but they're both in focus.
Sometimes during intake meetings maybe you'll see David and Nate one--you're
almost close enough to whisper into one character's ear and then the other
one's a little bit beyond that. And when a camera's that close to you, you
definitely need to keep in mind that it's there and maybe modify what you're
doing, or the degree to which you're doing it and, rather than pretending the
camera isn't there, very much embracing the camera and where it is. I don't
know. People always talked about making love to the camera.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. HALL: I never really had a sense of what that meant until--I think it's
about that. It's about not shutting it out but rather opening yourself to it.
And you know, I think Frances Conroy, who plays the mother on the show, is an
amazing example of that. She's just so sort of wide open in terms of her
screen presence.

GROSS: Are there things that really surprised you about how you looked on
camera?

Mr. HALL: I thought I looked like an alien.

GROSS: Why?

Mr. HALL: Well, I wasn't used to it. It's kind of like the first time you
hear your tape recorded voice or anything.

GROSS: Uh-huh.

Mr. HALL: I watched the pilot and I thought everyone was wonderful but there
was this alien in a suit walking through the scenes. But at the same time I
tried to get over that, because I know some actors say they don't watch
themselves, but I feel like there's a great deal to learn in that. And I've
gotten a little bit more used to it. Inevitably I cringe at some points, and
sometimes that's about acting; sometimes it's about vanity. But...

GROSS: Well, those two things can really be in conflict if you're
self-conscious.

Mr. HALL: Right.

GROSS: When you feel that the way to learn is to watch yourself, you know,
those two impulses...

Mr. HALL: Right.

GROSS: ...are a little bit at war.

Mr. HALL: Yeah. It's interesting because the look of the show is--we have
different directors for almost every episode. But because the look of the
show is somewhat consistent, now when we shoot shots, at least on a set that's
familiar to me, I really--when I watch them afterwards, I realize that I can
totally see them in my head. And so that's nice.

GROSS: Now earlier we were talking about how before you got the role of David
Fisher on "Six Feet Under" you played the emcee in the Broadway production of
"Cabaret." Have you done much singing and dancing on stage?

Mr. HALL: When I was a kid, my first experiences performing were in choirs.
I was in a boys' choir like in fifth grade and did a lot of choral singing
through college. I was in a chamber choir that sang in Vienna and I did a lot
of that and did high school musicals. But when I got out of college, I went
to grad school at NYU and really focused strictly on acting. And I guess it
wasn't until a few years out of college that I started to do some workshops of
musical theater pieces in New York and came back to the musical theater. But
I think I always knew that I probably would.

GROSS: What were your biggest parts in musicals when you were in school?

Mr. HALL: It's--I mean, I went to a private day school and so there was a
big musical that I was a part of every spring from sixth grade through my
senior year. So I did--let's see if I can remember them. "The Sound of
Music," "The King and I," "South Pacific," "Bye Bye Birdie," "Oklahoma!"
"Fiddler on the Roof" and "Annie Get your Gun."

GROSS: So what were the songs that were best suited to you?

Mr. HALL: Best suited to me?

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. HALL: I would say--I would say my favorite performance--and it was
ultimately just a chance to show off--was in ninth grade when I got to play
Conrad Birdie in "Bye Bye Birdie." Got to walk into the audience and
spray-painted my hair black. And...

GROSS: Did you get to sing "Sincere"?

Mr. HALL: Got to be--yeah. You got to be sincere. And what "A Lot of
Livin' To Do."

GROSS: Oh, yeah.

Mr. HALL: Which ironically enough I sang the Ann-Margret verse of in the 10th
episode of "Six Feet Under" in the first season when I was dancing with the
vacuum cleaner.

GROSS: Oh, yeah.

Mr. HALL: Yeah.

GROSS: Michael C. Hall plays David on the HBO series "Six Feet Under." I'm
Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

Well, we don't have Ann-Margret handy, but here's music from the original cast
recording of "Bye Bye Birdie."

(Soundbite from song)

Unidentified Man #1: There are chicks just ripe for some kissing. And I mean
to kiss me a few. Man, those chicks don't know what they're missing. I
got...

(Announcements)

(Soundbite from movie)

Unidentified Man #2: (Foreign language spoken)

GROSS: Coming up, independent filmmaker Hal Hartley talks about his new film
"No Such Thing." It's his version of a monster movie. His other films include
"Henry Fool," "Trust" and "The Unbelievable Truth." And TV critic David
Bianculli reviews two new Fox comedies, "Andy Richter Controls the Universe"
and "Greg the Bunny."

(Soundbite from movie)

Unidentified Man #2: (Foreign language spoken)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Hal Hartley discusses various film projects
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest, Hal Hartley, is an independent film director and screenwriter. His
movies include "Trust," "The Unbelievable Truth," "Amateur" and "Henry Fool."
He's described his ongoing theme as societies, families and groups of
individuals and their relationship to what they consider the worst in them.

His new movie is his version of a monster movie. It's called "No Such Thing,"
as in the expression `There's no such thing as monsters.' The monster is a
very human-looking entity that lives in Iceland. The other main character is
a young woman, played by Sarah Polley, who works in New York at a tabloid TV
news magazine. Her boyfriend was with a crew from the show that went
searching for the monster and is believed to have been killed by the monster.
She soon sets off for Iceland to find out what happened.

From the opening of the film, here's the monster speaking.

(Soundbite of "No Such Thing")

Unidentified Actor: I'm not the monster I used to be. I admit that. I'm
tired. I'm weak. I'm losing my memory, and I can't sleep. Still, these
friends of yours, well, they're dead now. I tore all three of them to pieces
and tossed the whole mess off the cliffs out back, let the vultures fight over
what's left. This is ridiculous. I try to withdraw. I retire. I hide. But
still you find me out. Even in my dreams, polluting my solitude, filling the
air itself with your unending and pointless noise. Go ahead! Kill me! Try
it!

GROSS: I asked Hal Hartley about creating a contemporary monster.

Mr. HAL HARTLEY (Director/Screenwriter): Of course, you know, monsters you
always have to find out first what is their Achilles heel, what can kill them.
And I started to work from there. And then I thought information--this is
what everybody calls the information age. I just thought, `All right. So
maybe I'll dream up a monster from that perspective. First find out what his
Achilles' heel is, and then work backwards to shape him.'

Later in the film, you know, it's even brought up that perhaps the monster
doesn't even exist, that humanity brought him into existence by sheer will,
imagination. But his Achilles' heel is that he doesn't know why he exists,
and he can't die, but he can endure untold amounts of pain.

GROSS: The monster doesn't exactly look like a monster per se. He looks like
a human, but a human who hasn't kind of bathed or shaved in a very long time
and is wearing a kind of, like, filthy blanket type of thing and has horns.
But still, he looks pretty human. His opposite in this is a very, you know,
beautiful, very kind of seemingly innocent and maybe naive young woman played
by Sarah Polley. Do you see a connection between your story and "Beauty and
the Beast"?

Mr. HARTLEY: Not directly. I mean, I looked at every monster movie, you
know, when I began and I said, `What could I use?' And the first one I looked
at was "Beauty and the Beast." I thought, `Well, given what I'm thinking
about, perhaps this is the best place to start.' But I found very little I
wanted to bring from that. I actually found more material to kind of converse
with in the Japanese monster movies, like "Godzilla" and "Mothra." The fact
that, yes, there is a beautiful young girl and this monster and they kind of
are attracted to each other for different reasons, but it's not a romance, I
think.

GROSS: Your movie "No Such Thing" is set, in part, in Iceland and part in New
York. In the opening New York chapter, the young woman, played by Sarah
Polley, wants to get out of New York and find this alleged monster in Iceland,
but she is in a plane crash on the way. She's the only survivor. She's found
in the ocean and she manages to survive, but she has great damage done to her
body. And in order to restore her body, she has to have this very painful
operation. And it sounds like an operation that you invented. I've never
heard of such an operation. Is this something that you dreamed up for the
movie?

Mr. HARTLEY: Absolutely. And it worked well.

GROSS: Why don't you describe it? It's quite awful.

Mr. HARTLEY: The idea was that eventually this young woman would meet the
monster. I knew that. And I wanted the monster to be impressed with her in a
way that he's not impressed with other members of the human race; that in some
way he recognizes that she's unusually strong on a number of different plains,
you know. Certainly emotionally, intellectually, spiritually she's strong.
But I wanted her also to have physically, you know, gone through something
very intense.

So, basically, she's the only survivor of this plane crash, and they drag her
out of the ocean, the North Sea, and she's, you know, obviously got frostbite
and, like, every bone in her body's been banged up and her spine is in pieces.
And so the idea was that they put the girl in this rig, and they are going to
put her spine back together again, but there comes a point when they--well,
first of all, they can never let her sleep during this. They can anesthetize
her in stages, but the anesthesia has to be diminished in stages so that as
they get to the end of the very long operation, when the critical work is
being done, she has no anesthesia at all. And this is when they're actually,
like, you know, sticking needles and stuff in her spine, in her spinal cord.
So it's about as painful as anything you can imagine, and you have to endure
it. And...

GROSS: Why did you dream up such a horror?

Mr. HARTLEY: Well, I was actually trying to imagine just the most painful
thing that a person could go through. Two things informed it. One, when I
was a kid, I had a friend who had a spinal tap, and I didn't know what that
was; he didn't know what it was, you know. And it took him, like, three, four
years, little by little, to describe it to me and my other friends, you know.
It was like he didn't, at 14, you know, have the language to discuss with his
best friends the nature of the pain that he had endured, you know. It was
almost like he was embarrassed. It was odd. We were, you know, 18, 19
before, you know, he finally, you know, could talk about it.

Another very--I had gotten attacked by a dog when I was about, oh, 24, I
guess. And it was--What do you call it?--one of these killer dogs that people
like to have these days, you know, attacked me, bit me right in the face and
had torn up my mouth above and below. And I had to have plastic surgery
immediately without anesthesia because they needed me to be awake to work with
them to stitch inside and outside my mouth and down my chin and up the side of
my face. And, yeah, so that was like a six-hour ordeal. And the
Novocain--whatever they could do--the local anesthesia would just pour right
out because there was no--you know, the body wouldn't hold it. It would just
run out of my mouth.

GROSS: That sounds horrible.

Mr. HARTLEY: Yeah. And, you know, I endured that.

GROSS: Gee.

Mr. HARTLEY: I never would have given myself a lot of credit for being, you
know, very stoic with pain, but people surprise themselves. They really do.
So, anyway, that was the idea, and those were the things I reached for.

GROSS: So you took the inspiration from real life and then made up something
based on it, but totally different from it.

Mr. HARTLEY: Yeah. It needed to be larger and mysterious. And the difficult
thing about writing that scene was sort of like saying enough to affect the
audience, you know, so that they can, you know, in a sense, feel the pain, but
no saying so much that you give it away. You have to sound authoritative, but
basically be, you know, blowing smoke rings.

GROSS: And you're also not showing her being tortured. I mean, it's not a
sadistic scene.

Mr. HARTLEY: Yeah.

GROSS: You don't see very much.

Mr. HARTLEY: Yeah. No, it's a kind of ceremony, that scene, its pace, its
steadiness. And we were thinking very much--Sarah and I and the various
designers--about the "Bride of Frankenstein"; that we felt like this was the
scene where Sarah becomes the bride of the monster somehow, even before
meeting him, you know; that they have to become equals on some level.

GROSS: Because of what they've endured.

Mr. HARTLEY: Yeah. Pretty much pain is at the heart of it. I mean, he's
enduring all of this pain, the more information there is in the world, more
radio waves, I guess, and things like that. Like, one of the other doctors
later in the film says that he's sort of like a radar dish, and all this
human-generated information kind of gets directed at him. He picks it all up
like he's an antenna, and it manifests itself in him as this incredibly
intense pain, which is why, I guess, he's in such a bad mood and he drinks a
lot and he curses a lot.

GROSS: Right. A real crabby monster.

Mr. HARTLEY: Yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: Did you watch monster movies as a kid?

Mr. HARTLEY: Not many. No. I was scared of monster movies. I didn't...

GROSS: That's the reason why you watch them, though, 'cause they're scary.

Mr. HARTLEY: Yeah. Well, not me. I think I was a much more sensible kid.
I stayed away from what scared me. But I began getting very interested in
them when I got older. And, in fact, one of the first movies that I became
very interested in and watched again and again and again was "Nosferatu" by
Murnau, the original silent, you know, vampire movie. And we thought a lot
about that film and Werner Herzog's remake of it from 1978. We thought a lot
about it for a couple of reasons: one, that we wanted a monster who was sort
of like not mechanical and basically a monster where the actor could just act,
you know, and they wouldn't be two burdened down with special effects and
stuff. And so we said, `Yeah, all right. So he'll be a man, you know.' Like
look at "Nosferatu." It's really just a hand treatment and a face and head
treatment.

GROSS: My guest is independent director and screenwriter Hal Hartley. His
new film is called "No Such Thing." We'll talk more after our break. This is
FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Hal Hartley. He wrote and directed the new film "No Such
Thing." His first film, "The Unbelievable Truth," was about two misfits, Josh,
a convict getting out of prison who hitchhikes to Lindenhurst, Long Island,
and ends up working for a garage, and Audry, the garage owner's daughter,
who's not cut out for a conventional life and is attracted to the convict. In
this scene, she brings a book to the garage for him.

(Soundbite of "The Unbelievable Truth")

Unidentified Actress: "Life of George Washington, Father of our Country."

Unidentified Actor #2: Thanks. What's this one?

Unidentified Actress: "Misanthrope." Moliere. It's a play.

Unidentified Actor #2: What's a misanthrope?

Unidentified Actress: Somebody who doesn't like people. I star in it. I
mean in class--we read it in class.

Unidentified Actor #2: Are you the misanthrope?

Unidentified Actress: No. I wanted to be, but they wouldn't let me play a
man. So instead I play a flirt.

Unidentified Actor #2: Is it an interesting role?

Unidentified Actress: Being a flirt?

Unidentified Actor #2: Mm-hmm.

Unidentified Actress: Well, sometimes. But the thing about flirting is that
it leads to harder things.

Unidentified Actor #2: Is that bad?

Unidentified Actress: No, it isn't bad. It's just that it turns out pretty
badly for the woman I play.

Unidentified Actor #2: What happens?

Unidentified Actress: She can't stop flirting.

Unidentified Actor #2: Ever?

Unidentified Actress: It's just the way some people are. She flirts herself
to death.

Unidentified Actor #2: It's a sad play.

Unidentified Actress: Well, she doesn't die actually. It's just that the
only man who really loves her has impossible standards.

Unidentified Actor #2: That's too bad.

Unidentified Actress: Yeah. It is.

Unidentified Actor #2: But does it have a happy ending?

Unidentified Actress: Nobody gets what they want, and they all go away
frustrated and sad.

Unidentified Actor #2: A tragedy.

GROSS: "The Unbelievable Truth" was set in Lindenhurst, Long Island, where
Hal Hartley grew up. I asked why he set his first film there.

Mr. HARTLEY: Like everything else, it's practical and aesthetic. It was a
very, very small-budget film, and I had to shoot it very quickly and I needed,
you know, whatever support I could get. And luckily my extended family--my
cousins and my aunts and uncles--were able to help me, you know, give me
places for the crew to sleep, let me shoot in their houses, etc.

And then aesthetically, it's just I grew up there, and, you know, my
imagination formulated stories and images there. It was very easy for me to
write a scene of a certain type and place on this street corner or in this
back yard or at that beach. I guess, you know, making my first film was this
very quick opportunity that came up. You know, I was pretty much just
standing there, you know, prepared to make another short 16mm film, and then
this opportunity came up, you know. Someone was going to put money up for me
to, you know, make that same film on 35mm as a feature. And, you know, I had
to think on my feet. I just said, `OK. It's home, these places that I know,
this subject matter, which is pretty much my basic preoccupation all the time
now at the age of 28. Let's just do it.' I think I just told people what the
story was out loud before I'd even written the script.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. HARTLEY: I sort of used telling people what the story was to convince
them that it was a legitimate situation. And that was sort of like how I came
up with the story. It probably changed a little bit every single time I told
it to a different person. And then by the time I'd said it three or four
times I was like, `OK. Now I have something to write.'

GROSS: Dialogue is a very important part of your movies, and it's very
colloquial, the dialogue you write, and yet it's not quite naturalistic
because a lot of your stories aren't quite naturalistic. They're often...

Mr. HARTLEY: That is, really, an excellent way of saying that. It's
colloquial and, you know, not naturalistic. You know, I'm going to use that.

GROSS: Oh.

Mr. HARTLEY: If somebody asks me what I try to do, I'm going to say--that's
exactly it. Again, you know, it's sort of a method that you don't dwell on
that much as a writer. You don't, like, get up in the morning and say, `OK,
I'm going to write colloquial dialogue that's non-naturalistic.' But, in
fact, that's a very good way of saying it.

GROSS: Well, could you talk about why you write in that way and what your
process of writing dialogue is?

Mr. HARTLEY: Sure.

GROSS: And when I say it's not quite naturalistic, I mean, that's because
your stories aren't quite naturalistic. I mean, they're kind of about real
people, but real people who are extreme in one trait or another. The stories
are often, in their own way, almost parables, even though they're set, you
know, in the contemporary world.

Mr. HARTLEY: Well, the colloquial part is certainly that I just love the
music of language and I like hearing different people talk, talk in different
ways, their accents, you know. And I love the misunderstanding of language,
sort of how it works. Earlier in my career anyway, I wrote a lot of scenes
where people would be talking about two entirely different things to each
other, but somehow they're communicating to teach other, but they're actually
saying all this other stuff, or, you know, they're talking at cross-purposes
and just misunderstanding that they're understanding each other. I sort of
like that kind of Rubik's Cube construction of language.

GROSS: Your first film was in 1988. You've made independent films through
your career. Are you ever frustrated...

Mr. HARTLEY: You know...

GROSS: ...that you're still making independent movies? Some people who
started with independent movies have ended up, you know, making big budget
studio films.

Mr. HARTLEY: In the sense that there's not as many people to talk to. Yeah,
I just do what I have to do. You know, I work in a very particular way, and
the way I work has been very successful for me. But it does make it harder
when there's fewer people working the way, for instance, I work generally.
It's harder to get the films made, because, you know, you begin to be seen as
an iconoclast when you have no intention to be that. You know, 10 years ago,
making films like "Henry Fool" or "Simple Men" or "Trust" or something was
just--you know, these are like these smaller films made by individuals, and
that's exciting and interesting and a great alternative to movies that are
made by corporations, which were designed to meet, you know, the expectations
of the widest possible demographic. Now you're seen as some, you know, kind
of oddity, and we didn't feel odd 10 years ago.

GROSS: One last thing. I recently saw a documentary about Iranian directors
and the kind of censorship that they're up against in Iran.

Mr. HARTLEY: Yeah.

GROSS: And one of the young women directors interviewed in the movie, when
asked who her favorite filmmakers were, one of them was Hal Hartley. And I
thought, `Gee.'

Mr. HARTLEY: Yeah.

GROSS: `Are his films getting into Iran?'

Mr. HARTLEY: Yeah. No. They are. And I'm very happy about that. I mean,
this is a very, as I'm sure you probably have heard--I mean, there's a real
great cultural--well, I guess it would be called countercultural movement
there in Iran; you know, very interesting people, interesting filmmakers,
great actors, poets--everything. Yeah, and they're up against a pretty
strict censorship. But they do make their films, and people like McMalbath
managed to make films that challenged the government's position on things
pretty dead-on, but his success as an artist and a commentator in his country,
unbelievably enough, is respected. I mean, you know, I think it could be
pretty tense for him. But anyway, yeah, I correspond with people in Iran and
in that part of the world.

GROSS: Hal Hartley wrote and directed the new film "No Such Thing." It opens
in six cities this weekend: Los Angeles, New York, Washington, DC, Boston,
Chicago and San Francisco.

Coming up, David Bianculli reviews two new Fox comedies, "Andy Richter
Controls The Universe" and "Greg The Bunny." This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: New Fox Network comedies, "Andy Richter Controls The
Universe" and "Greg The Bunny"
TERRY GROSS, host:

The Fox Network has invested heavily in fantasy with its midseason TV series.
Tonight Fox presents the second installment of "Andy Richter Controls The
Universe," about an office worker with a very active imagination. Tomorrow
night Fox presents the premiere of "Greg The Bunny," a new comedy mixing
people and puppets in a very unusual way. TV critic David Bianculli has a
review.

DAVID BIANCULLI reporting:

These days on television, fantasy is becoming easier to come by than reality.
"Ally McBeal" got a lot of notice for it five years ago when the idea of
seeing inside a person's head was still somewhat novel on television. Now,
whether it's voiceover narration or flights of fancy, internal thoughts and
external silliness are all over the place. When it becomes more common, it
also becomes devalued, but these two new Fox comedies are worth sampling.

"Andy Richter Controls The Universe," starring Conan O'Brien's former
sidekick, owes more to James Thurber than "Ally McBeal." And "Greg The Bunny"
is like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," but with puppets instead of cartoons.
The idea is that puppets, without being controlled by humans, co-exist in the
same universe and that one of them, Greg The Bunny, talks his way into his big
break as the new star of a children's TV show. Greg isn't that terrific a
personality. He's no Alf and--now I know I'm dating myself here--he's no
Bunny Rabbit from "Captain Kangaroo." But it's a clever concept, and the
human co-stars--Eugene Levy from "Second City" and "American Pie" and Seth
Green, from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Austin Powers"--make me laugh.

Almost no one in prime time right now, though, is making me laugh as much as
Andy Richter. It's very easy to make a bad show about a guy with an
overactive imagination. If you remember "The Hank Azaria Show" from a month
ago--and there's no real reason you should--you know that for a very painful
fact.

What's difficult is to make a good show about a guy who dreams too much.
"Andy Richter Controls The Universe" does just that and does it by succeeding
in two different, but equally important areas. First, the fantasies
themselves--some visual, others verbal--are clever and unpredictable and often
pile up like cars in a traffic jam. A single fantasy can go on for quite a
while before reality intrudes again, as in this sequence when Andy's
colleagues from work drop by his apartment to ease the tension between Andy
and a new employee named Byron.

(Soundbite of "Andy Richter Controls The Universe"; music)

Mr. ANDY RICHTER: The problem was Byron was a good guy, and the four of us
had a nice evening together.

(Soundbite of laughter; "Get Together")

Mr. JESSE COLIN YOUNG (The Youngbloods): (Singing) Love is but a song we
sing...

Mr. RICHTER: We played folk songs...

(Soundbite of people cheering and yelling)

Mr. RICHTER: ...wrestled...

(Soundbite of people yelling; "Get Together")

Mr. YOUNG: (Singing) You can make the mountains rings or make the angels cry.

(Soundbite of banging noise; cheering)

Mr. RICHTER: ...wrote letters for Amnesty International on behalf of
political prisoners...

(Soundbite of crumpling noise; "Get Together")

Mr. YOUNG: (Singing) Come on, people, now, smile on your brother. Everybody
gets together...

Mr. RICHTER: ...and danced, danced, danced.

(Soundbite of "Get Together")

Mr. YOUNG: (Singing) ...try to love one another right now.

Mr. RICHTER: Then we all hugged each other goodbye. All right, none of this
really happened. But we did have Chinese food and we all liked Byron...

(Soundbite of door closing)

Mr. RICHTER: ...and I felt awful.

BIANCULLI: The most impressive success of "Andy Richter Controls The
Universe," though, is that the scenes of Andy's reality are as good as the
scenes in his head. The characters are strong. The cast members, including
Irene Molloy from TV's "Grosse Point," are talented and the plots, though not
very complicated, are full of jokes and twists of their own. In this sluggish
TV midseason, it may sound like a fantasy, but these two shows, especially
Andy Richter's, are worth checking out, really.

GROSS: David Bianculli is TV critic for FRESH AIR and The New York Daily
News.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.