ROUND-TABLE: Perma-tan Hollywood legend George Hamilton

“Everybody knows who he is, right? He’s so famous. His tan is… so famous.” George Hamilton has decades of Hollywood experience to his name and still the first thing that the actor playing Hamilton in My One And Only can think to mention about him is his tan. In all fairness, however, this is probably true of almost everybody: Hamilton himself is an icon—but his tan is legendary. At the press day for the aforementioned film, which chronicles the cross-country trek on which an adolescent Hamilton (Logan Lerman—seen on this website last week) is taken by his mother Anne (Renee Zellweger), the man himself demonstrates a quality that deserves to be at least as legendary as his tan: his penchant for storytelling.

I imagine you’ve done a million of these roundtables…
It’s actually fun to do it because, first of all, you’re talking about your favorite subject, yourself, and second you don’t have to really move, you know. The trick is not to say the same things because it becomes boring then, you become too pat, so I try to reinvestigate everything I’m saying, to reinvent it so it doesn’t sound like I’ve said it all before. Otherwise it’s deathly boring to do it, and you don’t want to do that.

Is it fun to be an icon?
[laughs] It’s interesting, because automatically at a certain point—I was growing old two weeks ago, and now I’m called an icon, and that’s because I’m 70 years old all of a sudden, and I get a star on Hollywood Boulevard, and my book is out, and my movie is being made about me and my mother. All of a sudden I’m being called an icon where before I was just an aging actor.

Does anyone ever think that the tan is a tattoo?
Yes, I’m sure, or they keep saying “What ethnicity are you?” and I have to pull out my tan line, but I think certainly it’s fashionable now to be this color, don’t you think? I think Obama’s even jealous of me.

That’s right, now you have an even wider political base!
And everybody I know of color will always say to me, “I always thought you were a brother.”

It’s easy to ask whether you prefer to do the comedies or the dramas but I think it’s the comedies.
I adore comedy and I think comedy is so much harder to do that drama because it’s all that you do in drama with split second timing, and I couldn’t for the life of me get anybody to let me play a comedy until I produced it myself. Love At First Bite, Zorro the Gay Blade, I actually put it together, saw the description written, and then got into it. And then they said, “Oh, he’s only good for comedy,” ya know? It’s always that way. And so at this point in my life I don’t get up and think about going to work; I’ve gone through that period where you think your last job may have been your last job and then they wake you and say, “Oh no, there’s still another one.” So, for me, if I didn’t work again from this day on, I would be just as happy as if I did work—except now I have some control. By producing something I can make it like, “There’s only one actor I think who’s right for this role: me.” [laughs] You have some control! But at the same time, I’m producing a movie, it’s a sequel to Love At First Bite, it’s called Batrimony: Love At Second Bite.

[very loud laughter]
And what it is is Birdcage meets Meet The Parents. And it’s terrific, and it’s all about that old school world of Dracula in the Bella Lugosi forties thing against the Twilight Cullens—with humor. And it’s hard to do, but it’s great fun. So that’s what were working on right now, and then I have this other movie about Errol Flynn and his son, who disappeared in Vietnam and was captured by the Khmer Rouge, and it’s a wonderful story, and I have two television things offered, one with my son, who’s doing Dancing With The Stars as we speak. Love it. He calls me up, “Dad, what do I do?” I said, “Well, you can be good for a minute fifty-five always if you get a Red Bull. Just step down those stairs, drink that Red Bull right before you go onstage, and when they say ‘And now, dancing the Cha-Cha,’ you feel that Red Bull kick in, that little ringing in your ears, for a minute fifty-five just smile: you’re on a good ride, pal.”

[laughter]
And he said “What do I do then?” And I said “Find an attractive girl; flirt with her instead of worrying in the green room about what the board says. You just flirt with the girl and they’ll like that.” And he said he had a great time with it. When I went into the show, I had a busted knee—I’d had it replaced already—I had four broken ribs, my shoulders were frozen, and they just looked at me like Seabiscuit. They just thought I was going to go down at some point and they wanted to have it on film. And I didn’t! And then there was Jerry Rice saying “Oh, my back’s hurting, my knees are hurting,” and I said, “Jerry, you are the best football wide receiver we ever had in history, and you’re forty-two years old, pal, suck it up. I’m sixty-eight.”

[more laughter]
And he would laugh and we’d go down and do it. And he won that night and was so happy and I thought I couldn’t go another inch, I didn’t want to do it. The jitterbug was coming up and no way. But my son’s got the energy, and I he asked me what he should do, and I said, “All you need to do in this thing is be yourself. If you make a mistake, make the mistake. People will love you for that. Don’t try to be cool, just go in there, because you’re a wonderful human being. Don’t be slick.” When I did it I said “I know how to be slick,” and every moment I found I was about to fall—I had Edyta as a partner and she said, “Don’t worry, my little prince, if you fall I’ll be there.” And I didn’t believe her until one time I found I was about to fall and this arm of steel came out of the ground and stopped me. She said, “I could spin you on this, my little prince.” I thought, “She knows her stuff.” And, lo and behold, he’s dancing with her! So father had the great Polish princess and now he’s got her, so it’s interesting. And fun, fun to see it.

Unlike Seabiscuit, at least you don’t have to worry about being put down.
It ain’t over yet!

How did your own upbringing prepare you for Dancing With The Stars?
Well, I was about thirteen or fourteen in New York City, and just about two blocks away there was a club called the Colony Club and there was a guy named Willy Durham, and Willy Durham was this kind of forties lothario dancing instructor. And it was important that boys who are in these debutant parties learn how to dance. And the girls too. So they sent me to Dr. Durham and he said, “There’s no way I’m going to be able to teach you dancing; you’re going to have to dance with a chair or a shotgun.” And I thought “What?” And he gave me a chair and he made me dance with this chair all the time and then he would give me a shotgun and I would have to hold it. And I kind of got the idea that I didn’t want to do this, that I kinda liked my arms around the girl, so I got pretty good at it and the dancing was pretty simple. You just learned the box step and the cha-cha and the mambo and the tango and it was all pretty simple. And then when I was about eighteen I was in Palm Beach and I took a job at a dance school being an instructor. And all you needed to do was learn one step above what you were teaching, and all these older ladies whose husbands had gone, all they would want to do was just dance with you or some young man, and the trick was you would wear your watch on the inside of your hand and then you would say “Oh, I’m sorry Mrs. Goldman, our time is up. But if you sign up for the life class we can dance forever!” And they would all say “Well let me think about it.” So I started learning that way, and then there was a place called the Roni Plaza in Miami, and in the summers, in the worst of heat I would go down there and you could dance on the beach. And there was always a dancing instructor, this guy Ramon, he was unbelievable. Ramon was a Cuban dancing instructor, and I would come down and we’d have these ladies, and he would always do the same thing. He would say “Alright, ladies, please come down, we about to dance now,” and he would always say “Mrs. Goldman, tu-ti the cabana, and tu-ti the pool. Tu-ti the cabana, and—Mrs. Goldman, cabana this way, pool that way.”

[mad laughter] I have no idea how I’m gonna transcribe that.
And we’d go through this every day, and the ladies, they loved him, and so I would just get that one step and that’s all I would do. And every day, in those days, I made like a hundred bucks going down there. So I was prepared when I got into it, but it’s a different style of dancing; you have that guy Lynn Goodman who says “You’ve got a lovely smile, but the problem with you is that you got to hold her firm, you got to hold her firm, and your footwork is just a mess.” So I’d go “Okay, Lynn,” and he would always look at me and then Bruno would say “You are furious! You are such a lovely entertainer!” And Bruno Tonoili would go crazy. So every time I went there I thought “The only way to make this work would be to be entertaining. Don’t try to be a great dancer.” And the audience kept me on because I was having fun, I was entertaining.

So what would you give—
I think I’m over speeding from Coca Cola.

[laughter] Maybe someone slipped you some Red Bull.
Could be the Red Bull.

We were told that you guys didn’t get a chance to meet, you and Logan Lerman, the kid playing you, that you met an hour ago. What would you have told him about seeing you on a screen, even if it’s a fictional you? Are you pleased with you?
Well, I am. I would love to be him and start my career over at that age, knowing what I know. I don’t think I would have told him anything, just as I didn’t tell Renee anything. You don’t have to be told that. They got it from the script. And they interpreted it their own way. And it’s interesting. When a director directs a movie he wants an accident to happen that’s not planned. He wants an actor to bring something to it that he hasn’t thought of to do it that way but, by god, that’s the way it should be done. That’s the way I would have done it. George in the film had that tenacity to come back and pretend that he wasn’t going to come back. My mother sent me to my father and she put me on an airplane in Memphis to come to New York and the plane took off and we lost an engine. And we came back and sat on the runway. And I wouldn’t get off the plane. I said “Mom, you wanted me to go to New York, I’m going to New York.” She said, “Well, you’ve gotta get off this plane.” I said “I’m not getting off until they fix this engine.” I had set that in my mind and nothing was going to shake me. And I was supposed to go and spend two weeks with my father and instead I spent a year with him. It saved my life, it saved my sanity, it gave me my masculinity, my understanding of what my mother and father’s relationship had been. And I saw both sides, not just my mother’s. My younger brother never saw my father’s side. I did. So what Logan did was he got it and the director allowed him to do it that way, and what Renee did was just wonderful. I mean, she should get an award. This is movie that she should get an award for. I feel strongly about it. And I can afford to be detached from this in a strange way; as much as I’m attached, I’m not attached. I was not on the set for one day; I didn’t give them one note. And as the producer I am there in a titular way. I didn’t shepherd it. I shepherded the script, that from the very beginning, but now I’m in it because I believe in it now, I think the movie’s wonderful. And I think it’s a sweet movie and so fragile, and in this day and age to have a movie like that come out—last night I was at Tarantino’ movie, Inglourious Basterds, and it was just—I mean, there’s not another twist you could put in a rope. And I went and talked to Quentin about it and I said “God, there’s nothing I’d like to do but work with you, but I was exhausted from the amount of things that went down in that movie.” And I went with my girlfriend, who’s German, and my best friend, who’s Jewish, so I’m sitting between the two of them thinking “God knows this is going to be an evening.”

[laughter] Oh, man.
But I thought the film was really a fine, fine film. But this is a different kind of film. This is a sweet, sweet film. We don’t make films like that. And also the pace of the movie—you know, now they’ve got a very hip cutting technique. They don’t dissolve; they come into the scene deep. They just know how to do it differently. This movie is edited the way movies would have been in the era. There’s an entrance, there’s an exit, there’s a pace to this movie, his very language. And it start out with— “Uh-oh, this is going to be one of those long, tear-jerker movies,” the guys are saying. But you’re caught up in that, in the humor and the outrageousness of it. So many switches come back in this movie. And that has nothing to do with me. I take credit in being involved in the script being written, but that is it.

Why do you think she was perfect to play your mom?
I didn’t think she was perfect to play my mom. At the beginning there were three, four, Annette Benning—my mother was a dark, raven-haired Scarlett O’Hara. And Renee’s played it in a totally different way. But it’s a testimony to her ability to arrive at the same place with totally different equipment. That’s what’s great about acting. I’ve seen people play Chicago; I mean, god knows I played Billy Flynn in Chicago. And everybody has a different way to get to it. It’s really interesting to see—I have to tell you a fast story. I busted my knee onstage in Chicago. I’m in the scene and they said “We’ll bring on your understudy,” and I said, “No, let me finish,” and they said “You can’t; you can’t walk!” and I said, “I know, just let me stand here and we’ll choreograph it all around.” It was a mess. The curtain finally came down at intermission. And my understudy is a guy name Eric Jordan Young, and he’s just wonderful. He’s about five six, and he’s African American and a wonderful performer, he does Sammy Davis in a show, and I thought “God, this guy’s great.” But I didn’t know what he’d be like playing me. And they couldn’t operate on me the next day, they had to wait a week, so I said “I want to go back to the theater tonight,” and I sat in the back and they didn’t change the Playbill to say I was being replaced by Eric Jordan Young. So two ladies were in front of me and I heard them say “Well I knew he was dark but I didn’t think he was that short.”

[laughter] When you wrote the script for Love At First Bite did you think vampires would be in vogue again?
You know, there was a play then that Frank Langella was doing called Dracula. And it was a very fine Broadway play and they made a movie and the movie was a big movie and Frank was coming out with this movie. I had this idea to do a spoof of it and it was Lenny Bruce who made me do that because I remember Lenny had a thing— [in a Transylvanian accent] “Good evening, allow me to introduce myself. We are but a small showbiz group, traveling through Transylvania. You know my son, Bela Junior? Bela, get off the dog.”

[laughter]
And I remember this whole thing that Lenny did and I thought “What if Dracula was alive, and he’s in New York? He’d be the victim!” At that time New York was a disastrous place to be, you remember, and I started playing with the idea. And I thought, “He’s just a wonderful old-fashioned fish-out-of-water gentleman who has one little problem: he needs blood. Otherwise, he’s just a great guy. This would be a great movie!” And we set it up and started working on it and I remember Dracula used to say: [in a Transylvanian accent] “I do not drink vine.” He always had a secret in his eyes. So I said to Susan St. Jane— “Ask me to come in, in that era, in that parlor, and have a glass of wine and maybe smoke a joint—smoke some shit.” And she did and then I said [in the accent] “I do not drink vine, and I do not smoke shit.” So I thought, “There is my character.” He is so out of date that he doesn’t get it, you know? And so it was an era for me that I wanted to get that fish out of water guy into. Because I was a fish out of water. I dressed in forties clothes, I should have been in those movies, I’m not in date. And… please give me the question again.

Did you think vampires would ever be in vogue again?
When Langella was going onstage, it was already in vogue. What was really the shot was “Could I make it funny?” I could make it funny, and I did. I came out a week or two before Langella, and when people went to see Dracula they laughed in the wrong place and ruined the movie. Frank will tell you to this day I stole that movie. Mine cost three million or something to make and his cost twenty-some-odd million, and it just destroyed his movie. And I think Twilight is a wonderful series of books. It’s so important for young girls with hormonal changes and this love that’s beyond giving your life for. But now I have to find a way to bring my character into that and make it funny and not be at all of Twilight, it can’t be that, but I found a way, I think, and that’s why I think it’s in vogue again to do it.

So were you as funny back then as your fictionalized self was in this movie?
Well, I think that the dialogue was funny, and we made it like a suit. It fit. It’s tricky—if you didn’t have a great script, you would really have to have time to play with it.

My One And Only is in theatres now in NYC and LA and will open wide on September 4.
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ROUND-TABLE: 'My One And Only' actor Logan Lerman

Teenagers are hard to come by in Hollywood. I don't mean nineteen-year-olds pretending to be in high school; I mean real live honest-to-god teenagers. Logan Lerman, at seventeen, is one of them. He's certainly sharp, but he hasn't let the industry age him to the point of being an adolescent with the maturity of a 40-year-old; he's his age—he's simply intelligent. He's also articulate, talented, and portraying George Hamilton in My One And Only, a film very loosely based on Hamilton's own adolescence. Here he sits down to talk about the film and about the others he has coming up.

Earlier in the day you were saying—Logan, is this the first time you’ve done this kind of press drill?
Oh, no, no, no, no, no. No-o-o. I’ve done this for a long time. I’ve done this kind of stuff, but it’s been a while; that’s what I meant. I’ve been away in work mode for the past… actually, it’s really been since December that I’ve been working on this one movie, trying to make it the best that I can make it, being really collaborative and just in that zone the whole time. So going back to doing press is just such a—such a—

Exciting? [laughter]
It’s exciting, but it’s a slap in the face because to process that you have to get used to it. It’s not something you can just jump into and feel comfortable; you have to build that comfort zone.

What was the movie?
That I was gone for? It’s called Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. It’s a cool film. Really awesome.

Since two years old you wanted to be an actor—
I don’t know if that’s true.

Oh, okay. [laughter]
To be totally honest, there’s all this stuff that my friends and family—they go online and they go to those little biographies where people type in wherever they want, and I really don’t know what’s true. I don’t play soccer; that’s not true. I don’t do any of that stuff. I’m not named after Wolverine. [laughter] Or any crap like that. Most of it’s bullshit. But I probably did; I probably wanted to when I was two. I started when I was seven, technically, because I just wanted to get out of school and do something else. I’m a creative person; I don’t like to be in a classroom very much. I teach myself everything, usually, and when I was like twelve years old my mom sat me down and said, “Do you really want to do this?” and I said, “Yeah. I really do. I actually have a passion.” So that’s when I really started. And I sound like an ass for saying that. [laughter] Started really young. Sorry.

Are you homeschooled?
No. Oh, no, no, no. I go to a regular school, yeah. I go to high school.

Earlier Renee Zellweger said that she hadn’t met George Hamilton until a few days ago. That she had done all this work—
Oh, I just met him maybe an hour ago. [laughter] Just a little while ago.

And you play him!
Yeah—which is strange, right? To say that.

Did you know who he was as an actor before going into this?
I mean, everybody knows who he is, right? His tan is so famous. His face is so famous. I had seen Zorro: The Gay Blade and movies like that beforehand. And, yeah, I knew who he was but nobody knew his background. And I did want to meet him. I did want to meet him when we were in preproduction for the movie; every little thing helps, right? But I didn’t have the chance. Or he didn’t have the chance. It just didn’t work out. Something happened. No, but it also gave me the opportunity to take what was on the written page and make it my own a little more. Figure out how I wanted to play the character, that kind of thing.

So I assume he’s seen you in the movie, right?
Well, I hope so! [laughter] Oh, no, I’ve been hearing from everybody and he even sat down with me—I walked into his room where he was doing his interviews, and I said, “Hi, nice to meet you,” and we sat down and he said that he really loved the movie and the performance and was really moved by it, and that’s just the nicest thing you could ever hear from anybody, especially the person you’re portraying. So that’s a burden taken away from me. But would he say if he didn’t like it? Probably not. He probably wouldn’t go out to the press and say, “Hey, guys, I didn’t like the kid who played me in this movie!” [laughter]

Now that you’ve met him and played him in a film, what would you ask about him? Like, “Did you really…?”
Oh, no, I know that most of it was fictional. The overall storyline and central characters are real, but most of it was written by Charlie Peters and I think a lot of it came from his personal life. It’s kind of like a cross of both of them. Don’t quote me on—[gesturing to the recorders] oh, you will. [laughter] But I’m not positive that it is; that’s what I think. It’s kind of a mystery.

So Renee plays your mom in your movie…
I’ve gotten the chance to know her really well. And Mark Rendall. Whenever you do a movie you’re forced into bonding with all these people and whether you like them or not you’re going to be with them for a long time. But fortunately we all really loved each other, and that’s one of the big things about the preparation for a movie like this. Despite the time period or the hairstyle or the way people talk or walk or whatever or dress, it’s more about if you can actually bond or become a little family for the time that you’re working. So we all got along really well, and she’s one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet. She’s a great person.

Did she… bring cookies to the set? [laughter] Have a nurturing side?
Um… she was very motherly. I mean, instead of cookies it would be glasses. I swear to god, I think her way of showing affection to me was—I swear she’d come so often and buy me glasses. I think I said “I don’t look good in glasses” once, and every day after that she’d come and—“Here’s Ray-Bans. Here’s this pair.” Sunglasses. We all went to a concert together.

What did you see?
John Mayer. It was amazing. We all went. Mark and I and her… it was a good time.

Seeing as the movie involves a road trip, were you moving around a lot on this shoot?
Not really. We were in Baltimore. I guess during the… I know, right? You wouldn’t really think it, being that it takes place in so many different places. With one exception: we shot a week in New Mexico. And she… oh, what am I saying? Not “she”, sorry. Baltimore during the turn of the century had so much money because it was a big port town, so they built a lot in the early 1900s, and a lot of it’s still there so it was really easy to dress the city as if it took place in the time period that it’s supposed to, so it’s got that older feel. It’s nice.

Could you talk about working with Mark Rendall? Because you two had such a great relationship in the film and such a great brotherly camaraderie.
Well, it’s all about the comfort level. And you do have to build that artificial comfort level, so you can do your job and try different things and experiment, but there’s also that comfort level of knowing the person so you can play off of each other and know how they’re going to react and have the freedom to do it. So, Mark and I, we would hang out all the time and we got to know each other really well. Same with Renee; it became very comfortable to work together. And we all knew our characters very well, so…

Do you have brothers and sisters?
Oh, yes I do. Older brother, older sister.

So how do they view you as a brother in this film? Do they go “Yeah, you’re just like that!” or “You’d never do that”?
Oh, no—

Oh, wait, you said you haven’t seen the full movie.
Well, I’ve seen a rough cut without music. I’m not sure what they added in, if they added anything else in, or cut parts out, or… but I saw a version that was pretty much cut together but it wasn’t the final product. And it was great. But it can only get better from there, so I’m excited to see it tonight.

And your brother and sister, are they—?
My family and friends, when they see the movies, they’re like, “…Man…” [laughter] “…You’re nothing like that in real life.” It’s a really strange thing because working’s a whole different life. I remember talking with mark about this while we were filming a while ago, and I wonder if he’ll remember this conversation but we were out and we were like, “Yeah, when you get on a plane and you’re going to shoot a film, it’s kind of like—like dying and a rebirth into a new life. You’re in a whole different environment; it’s the Hollywood environment, where it’s like fantasy land. And when you go home it’s like a slap of reality—where you’re really from and your real family and your really friends—and when you look back at these movies it’s a little strange. It’s like living a whole different life and then going back to your normal life. So when you’re with your family and friends and you’re seeing those movies it’s strange to think that you lived that life for a period of time. [laughs] So it’s kind of weird to watch it.

Seeing as you were playing a young adult in the forties and fifties, were there differences that you tried to incorporate into your performance?
A little bit. It would have been more drastic if I had been playing… a more… troubled rascal. Back then in comparison to now, those would be some dramatic differences. But, really, George was a very complex character but at the same time he was just a deadpan, really serious guy. Realistic—which could also be taken as pessimistic. So it wasn’t like I had to really play a character from that period of time… rather than sport the look and play a character that was complex for any time period. It drags on into many eras; I can’t really explain—but it’s a very complex character.

And your character was also very literarily-minded and especially into The Catcher in the Rye. Was that something that you related to?
Well, I loved the book. I loved The Catcher in the Rye. One of the big parts of preparation for this role was reading the book a couple times, over and over and over again, because that’s what he did. Of course he takes the book with him on the trip and tries to see if his mother notices that he’s even reading it; The Catcher in the Rye kind of shapes the way that he thinks, so it’s a pretty big part of his character development.

And you’d read it before you did this?
Yeah. It’s a, a must-read in school; it’s on the list of books you have to read. I think it was a couple of years before doing the movie that I read it. I loved it.

Do you have a book that shapes you?
No.

Not George Hamilton’s autobiography, or…? [laughter]
No, I’m shaped by movies. I’m a movie person. That’s all I do is I watch films. Movies kind of influence me.

Such as?
Well, just movies I love. The Eternal Sunshine [of the Spotless Mind]; you could say American Beauty; you could say Defending Your Life… I don’t know. Just movies that are I really enjoyed.

And what else?
I—a whole long list. I’d bore you for hours. I will. Yeah. [laughter] Just movies that really—

We’ve only got twenty minutes. You wouldn’t be able to go on for hours. [laughter]
Oh, okay! I’ll just keep on naming films and then you’ll have nothing left but just a long list of films—

Let’s talk about Percy Jackson, because this is supposed to be a big deal, right?
Yeah, it is. It is.

It’s a putter-onner? On… the map? Putting you on the map?
It could be. The truth is that I take the best things that are given to me at the time. So I just want to do the good movies. It’s not the kind of movie that you do to just—I mean, some people do it to just get your face out more or something like that. The truth is that, when I read it, Chris Columbus—I mean, I saw Chris Columbus was doing it, and I was like, “Oh, I wanna work with this guy.” I’m such a big fan of The Goonies. And Harry Potter. And Mrs. Doubtfire and the Home Alone films. I’m like, “You know what? He could make a really cool movie. I want to be a part of that.” Because those are the movies that make me jealous that I wasn’t a part of that or didn’t make them. So I met him and we just hit it off right away, and it’s the most collaborative feel when you’re working with him. We would just sit around and talk all the time. I’d force him into meetings. [laughter] And we’d just talk about everything, whether it be the movie or personal; we just really got to know each other very well. And we made an awesome movie. All of us. Everybody who was a part of it.

So it’s done?
We finished shooting like a week ago and now they’re into the post-production and digital effects and it’s just mind-blowing. It’s going to blow people’s minds when they see this. It’s unlike anything they’ve ever seen in a long time. To me it brings back movies like—well, it’s different, but it has the tone of a Back to the Future. Or a Goonies. You know, it’s got that tone. People don’t know much about it yet, but once it starts getting out there and the trailer comes out I think people are just going to fall in love with it. It’s an incredible movie and we’re really proud of it.

It’s been compared a lot to—
To Harry Potter?

To Harry Potter, yeah.
Well, that’s only because Chris did it. And there’s that similarity where a kid finds out that he’s… the son of… I mean, I find out that I’m the son of a god in the movie, but it’s like the kid-thrown-into-a-big-situation kind of thing. But it’s pretty different. I mean, of course there are similarities in storyline, but the tone is completely different. The movie’s way more mature than Harry Potter. It’s… just complete entertainment. It’s the perfect movie to go see if you want to be entertained. It’s awesome. [laughs] I’m so proud of this movie. I’m sorry.

[laughter] Yeah.
You’ve gotta go see it when it comes out.

What about Gamer?
Gamer is awesome. I did that movie about three years ago. It was a really long time ago when we shot that. And it’s taken a really long time for it to come out.

Oh—sorry to bring it up, then!
Oh, no, no, no! No, I loved that movie! I was just going to say that everybody’s been comparing it to Death Race. There’s always going to be comparisons about every movie you do. And it is… you know, I guess it is pretty similar to Death Race. But it’s different. When you see it, the art of how they made it is completely different, and at the end of the line it’s different; I don’t know why all these comparisons are coming up. But it is… it’s an awesome movie. Like, if you want to see Gerard Butler go on and kill a whole bunch of people— [laughter] —this is the movie to go see! This is that badass action film where it’s all explosions and amazing action. So that’s that movie, which is really cool.

What’s your part?
Oh, me? Yeah, I’m just the cheerleader, almost. And the controller. It’s really just Gerard Butler just kicking some ass. It’s awesome.

What roles do you want to do next?
I want to do anything that’s good, you know? There’s no preference as to anything I want to do, just the best that’s around. If there’s a good script that’s different, then I want to do it. Like this movie is different. When I read it, it was like… [makes a show of inhaling deeply] There are so many different scripts out there that are so similar. They’re all carbon copy replicas of the same exact structure and storyline; it’s just that high school kid who gets the girl in the end or some stupid thing like that, which can be done well, but it’s pretty generic. Everybody does that. So it was really refreshing to read a movie that had a complex character that was different rather than doing Dragon Ball Z or something like that.

[laughter] So you’re directing next?
[laughs] Me? Yeah, I will be. That’s what I want to do eventually.

My One And Only is in theatres in NYC and L.A. and opens wide on August 28.
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ROUND-TABLE: 'Burn Notice' stars Bruce Campbell and Sharon Gless

Burn Notice has been heating up the television set since the premiere of its first season. An original USA Network series in its third season, the show tells the story of secret agent Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan), who wakes up in Miami to find himself blacklisted; with the help of his friend Sam (Bruce Campbell), his ex-girlfriend Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar), and sometimes even his mother Madeline (Sharon Gless), he is determined to find out why—and how to reverse it. It's smart, sexy, funny... basically the perfect TV show. Campbell and Gless totally agree, and during a recent roundtable-by-phone they proved themselves more than eager to talk characterization, interrogation, and intoxication. Enjoy.

So wonderful to speak to both of you. Bruce, I know that you played in Xena and Hercules as sort of a rogue who helped out the good guys as well. And Sharon, obviously in Cagney & Lacey you played Cagney, a bad-ass cop, and she also knew her way around bad guys. So I was curious how these roles and others may have helped to cultivate the characters that you play on Burn Notice.
BRUCE CAMPBELL: Go ahead, Sharon.
SHARON GLESS: Well, the only bad guys I have to find my way around are Jeffrey and Bruce. I mean, my job on the show is the mother from hell. I don’t get involved in the heavy stuff like they do.
BC: Sharon, your character is scarier than some of the bad guys.

You helped out in that case when Michael got captured and you were sort of interrogating the one guy.
SG: Right, that was very, very funny. It’s not often that I get to do one-upsmanship on Bruce Campbell.
BC: What’s amazing is she turned out to be a very good interrogator. Who knew? I actually think we’re going to see in the scenes that come—because, Sharon, you were also on a stakeout and you had to spot somebody. You had to be a lookout.
SG: At the bingo game.
BC: Right. So don’t kid yourself. You’re going to be an operative before too long, maybe.
SG: Okay, look out.

How about you, Bruce?
BC: Well, I mean, I’ve always enjoyed playing a little left of center characters. Otherwise I’d be on a soap opera, you know. What’s attractive to me was that these are real characters. These are characters who drink and smoke and make mistakes and have foibles in love and try to fix their mother's garbage disposal. That’s what’s attractive to me. That’s what got me into this show—and knowing that I’m with four, three other kind of seasoned adult actors. That’s always attractive, when you know you’re going to be working with people that it’s going to be worth showing up for.
SG: It’s true.
BC: It’s made a big difference. And this show—I can’t speak for Sharon, but this show came out of nowhere.
SG: Yes.
BC: The things that I plan never happen. Things that I don’t plan do.
SG: Exactly. That’s how I thought. I think that when Bruce and I first—we were interviewed together. Do you remember that, in Pasadena or somewhere?
BC: Yes.
SG: And I was actually sitting in the fat farm and this script arrived and I was sitting all alone in my room and it made me laugh out loud and I was all by myself. And I thought, “This is funny. This is fun, I like this.” It had substance to it, too.
BC: It probably didn’t hurt that you live in Miami, too.
SG: I forgot about that, but I didn’t tell them that during the interview. I wanted to live in a hotel like you guys. And then when it sold, I had to ‘fess up. I do, though. I do live here in Miami.

I was wondering, what sorts of methods and what type of influences do you use to kind of inform your characters and your portrayal of each of your characters? What do you draw upon in your characterization?
SG: What do I draw on?

Yes, for your characterization of your character. What informs that?
SG: Well, my husband said, when he read the script, “You’re chain smoking half the time! How lucky are you? They’re paying you to smoke.” So he said, “Wow, you do all the things with the cigarette.” I said, “Well, yeah, I already knew how to do that.” What do I draw on? I’ve never actually had children, myself, but I just connected with Jeffrey’s character and every week it’s different and as the show goes along, Madeline, my character, first she’s totally in the dark and very needy and very sort of just all sort of emotional things that are unattractive. And as time went on, [writer] Matt Nix said, “Sharon, she’s smarter than what I was writing.” And he gave me one clue, he said, “Remember, he gets his smarts from her.” I said, “Oh, okay.” So I just took that information and it gave me and my character a little more confidence. But I don’t know, how do you prepare for playing someone who’s manipulative? Is it built in? I don’t know.
BC: When you’re in show business, you know lots of manipulating people.
SG: Yes, that’s true. But I try to do the manipulation with humor. Hopefully, that’s how it’s coming across.

Bruce, why doesn’t Sam Axe’s personality match the normal ex-military stereotypes? He seems really upbeat compared to how most shows depict characters that have been in serious military situations. I was just wondering why that was.
BC: I think my character is actually more accurate. I think I run into some of these guys. My first wife remarried a police officer, and I’ll tell you these guys like having a good time when they’re not working. They don’t sit around all mopey-dope, they sit around and crack gallows humor, lots of gallows humor, dark humor. Frankly, I think they’re happy that they’re alive, most of these guys, after going through all of this, and they have a good joie de vivre that the average executive might not have. So I should think Sam is very indicative of the real guys, you know, guys who are my age who have mustered out in their 50’s. Believe me, most of them are drinking beer and sitting around a pool cracking jokes about the old days.
SG: In my experience in having done Cagney & Lacey many years ago, we had technical advisors on the set and we had detectives and police. Not exactly in the role that Bruce is playing, but these guys who see so much really do have a very macabre sense of humor. And I do think that’s how they stay sane.

Sharon, Madeline seems to go with the flow a bit more nowadays with Michael’s past. Will she eventually come around to just trusting him blindly or will curiosity get the best of her and she’ll find out on her own where her son has been for the past ten years?
SG: I think Madeline is slowly figuring it out. I don’t think, to this day, she really understands the full impact of what it is he really does. But she knows he helps people. That’s how she phrases it. That’s how she lives with it. And yes, she is getting more informed. I think there are moments where she does trust him. She has to, she is, despite what you see, she loves him. It’s her boy. But I think there’s always a bit of doubt because he’s never completely forthcoming. So what she finds out she sort of finds out on her own. He’s a little vague when he explains things, enough to calm her down or to get her to help in an indirect way.

Bruce, is there a beer or cocktail that Sam has yet to meet and enjoy and if there is, what is it and why haven’t they met yet?
BC: I don’t think there is a cocktail that he has not found yet. I think Sam has been making them up, he knows so many of them. But the one thing I want to point out is you never see him drunk. You know, a lot of people go, “Oh, Sam’s an alcoholic.” Hey, he’s a guy who likes to drink like a lot of Americans. So that truly is—sometimes we pick our battles. If I’ve got a morning meeting with the feds, Sam will have a cup of coffee. He’s not a complete party boy.
SG: Bruce and I are still trying to get Matt Nix to write us a . . .
BC: He promised us, season two, he promised that we would get drunk together.
SG: I know, he lied. When Sam babysits with Maddie, wouldn’t it be a fun thing to sit there and get loaded and not talk about anything that has to do with the work?
BC: Exactly.

Sharon, I think it’s interesting that Matt told you specifically that his idea was that Michael’s skills might have come more from his mother than we first thought. Talk a bit more about how you think that might play out. It’s quite clear from watching the characters over three seasons that there’s a lot of Madeline in Michael. So talk a bit more about what other skills Michael has that he might get from Maddie.
SG: I don’t know. I can’t say he gets his skills—I mean, his technical skills he certainly doesn’t get from her. I think what Matt wanted to establish is that he gets his smarts from her. The father was a loser, and I don’t think there’s a lot he got from him. And Maddie is smart, she can be very keen and sometimes she plays a little manipulative. No, she doesn’t play dumb, but I’m very pleased that you see that she is very smart. She’s not totally informed as to what he’s doing, but she knows him. It’s her boy, it’s her son.

I guess we really get the sense that Maddie knows more than she’s letting on, like most mothers.
SG: Yes, and she knows when to use it and when to not, but I don’t think at this point—I think the story would start to end soon if she was totally understanding of what has happened to him and what it is he’s attempting—that is, to find his way back. So I don’t think she knows all of that yet. She just knows that he’s doing stuff that’s not ordinary and I think she fears for his life, I’m sure.

I’d like to know if Sam’s role of making the blood in “Shot on the Dark” was given specifically because Bruce Campbell has experienced making blood, and did you use the Evil Dead recipe?
BC: I don’t know if that was assigned to me. It just sort of fell in. Every week we make stuff, so we have different things where you hold this and someone does this. It made sense that I made the blood, certainly. It wasn’t the exact Evil Dead recipe since I wouldn’t want to give it all away. It’s far too secret, just like military secrets, ... this shows you how in this show you really can make an incredible amount of different things in your kitchen and fake blood is certainly one of them. It’s one of the cheapest—for anyone making a horror film, it’s probably the cheapest prop you can get. It’s mostly Karo syrup, red food coloring, a little bit of cremora, and a drop of blue to make it not get too pink, you know, too bright.

Aside from you two getting drunk together, how do you want to see Sam and Madeline’s relationship evolve?
SG: Well, I think Sam and Maddie have kind of a really cool relationship. We were given a chance to live together. That helps. I didn’t tell you this, Bruce, that I really miss the fact that you moved out.
BC: I know.
SG: But that gives you a chance to come back. How do I see the relationship evolving? I see it as all good. I see that it can get rougher, it can get more tender, and I think there’s a myriad of things that can come out of a relationship with two people who do respect each other and who both love this one man, this boy, my boy and his friend.
BC: I can’t speak for other actors, but I don’t really probe the writers, I honestly don’t. I haven’t bugged them in three years about what’s coming up with Sam—whether he’s going to have a home or a girlfriend. I like to sit back, just like the audience, and let it happen. I get excited reading the next script, because I don’t really know what they have planned. The season finale, I couldn’t tell you sitting here right now what’s going to happen. Not because I’m lying or I’m not supposed to; I don’t know because I haven’t asked, I don’t want to know.
SG: I’m the same way. I never ask about what’s going to happen with my character.
BC: As we’ve seen, they’re good writers, so I get out of their face. We don’t like them in our face, I don’t get in their face.

Burn Notice has been renewed for a fourth season, and as we all know, the show is extremely successful. How many seasons do think this show will have and do you both plan to stay on the show through to the very end?
SG: I don’t know. I mean the show – it used to be in the old days when you signed a contract, it was for seven years. But in this day and age, I don’t know. I do think it has some longevity.
BC: Come on, Sharon, pick a number, pick a number.
SG: Okay, seven.
BC: Seven. I’m going eight.
SG: Okay, baby, I’m sticking with you.
BC: The reason I say that is because Monk went eight and we’re outpacing Monk in the ratings. So we’re kind of the new tentpole for USA, and I think we’re going to be around for the long haul. And mentally, I have to say, I’m not looking over my shoulder. I’m fully prepared to ride this show to the bitter end because what would I be looking for? Actors always seem like they’re looking for a better gig. This time I can’t—there is no better gig. This is a good gig, and I’m happy to ride it until it ends.
SG: Yes, me too. I want to stay. My husband, who is a producer, used to tease me and he’d say, “You know, I wouldn’t give these people any trouble, because how I would open the next episode is—there’s this rainy morning and everybody’s just standing in this rain under umbrellas. Is that a tear on our hero’s face? You pan down and the tombstone says ‘Madeline’.”
BC: In a season finale or a season opener. Exactly.
SG: Yes, right. So I’m just playing myself and I hope they let me stay the whole time.
BC: Yes, gee, Sharon, do you think they’ll let you?
SG: Well, you know, you never know. They may want to move somewhere. But knowing Madeline, she’d pack too.
BC: Yes, she probably would.

For more about the show, which returns with the second half of Season 3 in a few months, check out the official website.
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Anti-folk singer-songwriter Emmy the Great

Do you remember the interview Good Prattle did with Laura Marling a few months ago? Well, Miz Marling is going strong and scarcely needs a successor, but it has been long enough since her first album that maybe her fans are getting restless... which is why I would like to introduce Emmy the Great. Her first album, First Love, was released in February and it contains some of the most beautifully lyrical songs you will ever have heard. Here I speak with her about the things going on in her head.

Hey, this is Keely.
Oh, hi! Hi you!

How are you?
I’m good, thank you! How are you? Are you on [web-based phone service] Skype?

I am.
Oh, that’s the delay I'm hearing. Cool!

All right, let’s talk about your music. Your debut album came out in February, but you were making music for years before that. Why did you wait until now to release your first album?
Well, it wasn’t recorded until this year. When I first started that I was very naïve; I didn’t really have the experience to be making a record. I was very afraid. It took quite a lot of time and quite a lot of learning before I was in a place where I could make this record.

And in the past you’ve also collaborated with Noah and the Whale and other musicians, haven’t you?
Lightspeed Champion, mainly. As for Noah in the Whale, it’s complicated. It was very early in their development and we fell out before they became Noah and the Whale, as you know them now. So I’ve never been on any official recordings or played gigs while they were famous or—not at all.

All right. Well, your music has a very distinct sound and it focuses a lot on lyrics that aren’t necessarily about your life but seem to be drawn from it. How do you develop your songs?
Um, I usually… I get inspiration because I want to express something to someone. And I’m really inarticulate in person about my feelings. And I’ll wish I’d said something to a friend, or an ex-boyfriend [laughs], and I’ll go and I’ll write a song and it sort of releases it. Even if it doesn’t seem like it’s about that situation, the way I look at it is that it is.

You’ve got a wealth of material and you’ve penned so many songs; what made you choose the songs that you did for the album?
Well, it’s very much like—they belong together. The feel of them all works. I had felt it very deeply at the time: they were all about this one experience, pretty much, that I’d had, peppered with the countryside and England that I wanted to sing about, and the other songs just didn’t apply. There are plans to record those songs that people know about that haven’t been recorded and put them out.

Like ‘Two Steps Forward’, which you played in the Black Cab Sessions.
Yeah. Yeah, we never put that on the album because it doesn’t fit. To me an album has to be connected; that’s why that song will never be on the next album either, because they all have to match each other, all the songs.

On First Love there are a few songs that draw from older songs: the title song of course samples Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, and ‘The Easter Parade’ seems to be a riff on Patti Smith’s ‘Gloria’.
Actually, it’s not! ‘The Easter Parade’? That’s like a hymn, a Christmas carol: “Gloria, in excelsis deo.” That’s what that’s a ripoff of. Like, a loving ripoff. [laughs]

Well, the reason it seems like it plays homage to ‘Gloria’ is because of the line that’s along the lines of “Jesus died for everyone but not for me.”
Oh, I didn’t realize that was in the Patti Smith song! That line is more about wanting to be a Christian but not being able to because it just doesn’t speak to me. And that’s awesome that she has a line like that too. But when I first started I did write a song called ‘Gloria’ which was about the Patti Smith song, but this one is completely separate.

That’s interesting, because the opening line of the Patti Smith song is “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine.”
Oh my god! That’s really interesting! You know, I wrote that one song about that song and then I just completely forgot about it. I moved to a next phase in terms of what I listened to, and then I just didn’t think about it. And this song, I had no idea that it referenced—sometimes people find references in my songs that I didn’t know about, but if that’s what they think about while they hear it then it’s good that they have that reference.

Then there’s ‘Hallelujah’ on the song ‘First Love’.
Right. That’s not so much a homage as it is for the effect of the story. When I was writing the song I was like, “She goes to the room with this guy, and then there’s only a tape. And a tape player. What’s the most obvious tape that everybody would have in their tape player?” And I just thought of 'Hallelujah'! [laughs] And I thought people’d probably have the Jeff Buckley version, but I’ve gotta stick to… gotta represent the original.

In the song you mention that it was the original Leonard Cohen version.
Yeah. I changed it, because [laughs] I’m not gonna put the Jeff Buckley version in my song! Because I’ve got to nod to the greatest songwriter of all time.

I love him. In terms of that song, Leonard Cohen gets overlooked a lot. People always forget that it was his song.
His lyrics, I could just read them and listen to them every day and it still knocks me back, you know? There’s a purity in what he writes.

I love ‘Chelsea Hotel No. 2’. I think it’s one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard.
I saw him a few times this summer and I fell in love with ‘Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye’, which is from the early really folky stuff, which I didn’t think I was that into… but oh my god, just the lyrics in that. “I see you on the other side / I don’t know how the river got this wide”… I was moved. [laughs]

I’m so jealous! I can’t believe that you saw him live.
He’s playing a lot of gigs!

Yeah, I know, I’m just in school so I can’t really plan around that—which is highly frustrating because I would give anything to see him live.
I highly recommend it! Before he stops playing, I would just go and see him. Because it was just such a once-in-a-lifetime thing—well, three times in a lifetime! [laughs]

He has this one song… I forget exactly what the song is called, I think ‘Little Viennese Waltz’, but it’s based off Federico Garcia Lorca’s poem ‘Little Viennese Waltz’.
Oh! ‘Take This Waltz’! Cool, I love that album. That album has some of the greatest lyrics.

I’m so glad he doesn’t disappoint live. Because some musicians, I mean… for example, I’ve heard that seeing Bob Dylan live—except for the fact that you’re seeing Dylan live—is a complete disappointment these days.
I’ve heard he just doesn’t have his voice anymore. I mean, he doesn’t have the greatest voice, but he just doesn’t have it anymore. He smoked too much. But Leonard Cohen is very chaste. He’s like a Buddhist, so.

[laughs] It means that we get to keep him around longer.
Yeah. I mean, I love Dylan too, but… in terms of songwriting there’s just nobody like Cohen. Romance as well... Leonard Cohen is so romantic.

For more about Emmy the Great, and to listen to some of her own lyrically and romantically exemplary music, visit her MySpace.
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