ROUND-TABLE: 'The Last Station' star James McAvoy

James McAvoy enters the room right after Paul Giamatti leaves and his third sentence contains a joke about blowjobs. This should give you a good idea about the sort of person with whom we're conversing. He stars in The Last Station as Valentin Bulgakov, secretary for Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) toward the end of the great writer's life, alongside Giamatti, Helen Mirren, and his wife Anne-Marie Duff; in this article he discusses Scotland's curious predilection for Tolstoyism, his experience co-starring with his spouse, and... well, he makes loads of pseudo-inappropriate comments and it's great fun. Enjoy!

Paul was just saying some very nice things about you.
He’s very nice, Paul. I pay him a lot of money to do that. [laughter] And I’m very good at oral sex, so he enjoys that.

Can you repeat that? [laughter]
Oh, god. [laughs] He’s lovely. We had such a nice time working with each other. He’s so amazing.

He said you kept him on his toes more than did working with Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren.
That’s very nice. That’s because I was standing on a chair and he had to be on his, uh, tiptoes to be the same height as me.

He said that you had an interesting line to walk with the character of Valentin.
Yeah. It was quite… I don’t know, actually. Yes, I suppose I did. He’s that figure that you can project onto, a little bit, and so you need to leave enough space for the audience to get inside but you also need to do something with it as well, so that’s kind of a fine line in itself, but also between comedy and drama—I think everybody had to walk that line. That’s another fine line that we all had to walk, and that’s one that’s always enjoyable to balance and risk falling off of.

Yeah. He’s so naïve, but you have to see him grow by the end of it.
Well, I hope so. I mean, my favorite movies and my favorite stories are the ones where people change because it’s about things happening and changing. In the interesting stories, I think, you need to have one character who has a different point of view or a different opinion or a different haircut, at least, by the end of the movie. So, yeah, it’s nice to play that, and I always look for a bit of an arc or change for the character. Even bloody Wanted had one, d’you know what I mean? I like that a lot.

Were you a fan of Tolstoy?
Eh… I’d be lying if I said I was a humongous Tolstoyan fan. I never got through War and Peace when I read it. I got nearly the way to the end, but I read it when I was… what was I? I read it because I thought I should, not because I wanted to, either. I think I’m finally probably ready to read it, maybe, in five years. [laughter] And get to the end. But what I didn’t know was all about his political and spiritual sort of leadership that came after his fiction writings. And that was just such an eye-opener. Also to learn that my country, Scotland, had the largest concentration of Tolstoyan communes outside of Russia. I know, it’s kind of strange. We got him in Scotland, we really dug him in Scotland, it seems. So hopefully, on a subconscious genetic level or something, that made me love him.

Your wife is also in this movie.
My life?

Your wife—
Oh, I thought you said my life. My life! [laughter] My life is in my performance! Every minute of it is—yeah.

So what was that like, being on set together?
It was fine. It was nice. We’ve done it before; we met on a TV show, so it was no new shakes, really. It was nice to be together. We didn’t actually work with each other that much, which allowed us to accept the job together, because if we had lots and lots and lots of scenes with each other that could maybe get difficult. But we didn’t actually do much acting together, so it was nice.

Can we go back to something you said about Tolstoy and Scottish people? What is that?
No idea. But I do know that we are both from very cold countries. Maybe that’s something. And we have a left-wing-leaning country that leans toward socialism and socialist democracy; we were a socially democratic country for… up until Thatcher came, really, we were quite a socialist democratic country. But, before that, I believe the Scottish people were quite up for communism at some point. I mean, not all of us, and Tolstoy wasn’t a communist, but I think his movement really helped cultivate an environment in which communism could be born. And we really liked that, I think. The idea that the disenfranchised Scots could—somebody was saying, “This land doesn’t belong to the English; the land belongs to you. It belongs to nobody but everybody.” That was hugely interesting to Scottish people, Irish people, Welsh people—anybody who was part of a union that they didn’t want to be part of.

With a role like this, where the source material is so dense and there’s so much of it, how do you go about preparing? Because, obviously, you didn’t go back and reread War and Peace or anything, so how did you get into the skin of this guy?
It’s not about… I think it would have been a total waste of time to go and read War and Peace as preparation for this film. It wouldn’t be a waste of time; it would be a wonderful time spent reading an excellent book, obviously. [laughter] However, this was about a different time in Tolstoy’s life, and my main source of information was unparalleled in anything I’ve ever had as an actor. It was incredible. I had a direct link to exactly what my guy thought. He was a real person, and in the film we show that he kept… five thousand diaries, and he did keep a lot of diaries but he did keep one that was the—I know how he felt when Countess Sofya Tolstoy climbed along the balcony. And I played it, because I knew exactly—I just knew, because ten minutes after it happened he wrote down how it made him feel! I mean, I’ve never had that kind of connection to a character before. It almost made it too easy; I was just like “Pppfft.” [laughter] “Okay, I really just have to try and execute what he says he felt. Okay, my imagination doesn’t have to be engaged to connect to it all that—” I mean, my imagination was engaged, but it was so different to have that direct link to somebody. I don’t think I’ve ever played a real person before. Maybe I have; I’m not sure, but this might be the first time I’ve played somebody real.

So, now that you’ve gotten to do that, how do you like it as opposed to playing a fictional character?
D’you know what, it wasn’t that different. The only difference was I had, like I said, this link to how he felt about things, but other than that it wasn’t that different. You’re playing scenes that actually happened; whether we’re playing them exactly how they happened or not, we’ll never know—so you’re still engaging your imagination completely. But it wasn’t any harder. The only thing is, I suppose, when you’re playing a real person you’re bound by reality, although sometimes that’s a very freeing thing. Maybe you can’t make some bigger dramatic choices, and a story could maybe use them to make it more interesting or something like that, but you don’t do it. But playing Valentin—he was so strange anyway. The guy did sneeze when he was nervous! Like, hugely! I mean, it sounds like a kind of Chekovian device, but it’s true. He was a bit of an odd fish. And I didn’t feel constricted at all, but I imagine you can be constricted by reality sometimes. But yeah.

The Last Station is in theatres now.
Read the rest of the article.

ROUND-TABLE: 'The Last Station' star Paul Giamatti

Paul Giamatti has played John Adams; he has played a wine aficionado; he has played himself. Now, in The Last Station, he gets to play an antagonist who literally has a habit of twirling his mustache. The Last Station is a film about Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), the young secretary whom Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) employed toward the end of his life, but the film also explores Tolstoy's own relationship with his wife (Helen Mirren) versus his relationship with his confidante Vladimir Chertkov (Giamatti). Herein he talks about his character; War and Peace; and the joys of being vile. Enjoy.

Hi.
Hey. How are you?

So can you tell us a little bit about what attracted you to the role?
Uh… well, I guess I was in love with the script, and I liked the period thing; America doesn’t do a lot of period stuff. And the Russian stuff was interesting to me: I’m interested in the whole Tolstoy stuff, even if this film isn’t really necessarily about Tolstoy. It’s just a love story that happens to take place near him. And then the part of Chertkov, I thought, was a good kind of ambiguous bad guy, which I thought was interesting. I don’t know what to make of him, and I hope the audience doesn’t know what to make of him either.

You’ve got to admire his loyalty, though.
Yeah, and he’s pretty dogged about it. Absolutely. There may be people out there who actually sympathize with him and think he’s doing the right thing, I don’t know, but I think most of the people will fall on the other side and sympathize with Tolstoy’s wife.

Is that how you kept him from—because he can easily read as a complete bastard.
Hopefully he doesn’t read as a complete bastard, but hopefully that element is there so the audience can be confused about whether he’s a complete bastard or not. I tried to make him out as a total… dick. [laughter] But I tried to really make it believable that he believed in what he was doing, for whatever twisted reasons he thought he was doing it.

Were you a fan of Tolstoy?
I’ve read a lot of it over the years, yeah. I liked it a lot, yeah, and I read a lot of the religious stuff for this, which was kind of tough going. I thought I should read it, but my not being a religious person made it kind of rough going, all of that stuff. But, yeah, I do like him. He’s amazing.

You get to literally twirl your mustache. [laughter]
I know. That was in the script, too, and the director… I mean… [laughs] Part of the idea with this is that he should be somebody you can laugh at, too. I mean, he’s an ass in a lot of ways, and he’s pompous and sort of a dick, and when you see pictures of the guy—he was a very wealthy, high-born guy, and there was a rumor that he was the illegitimate son of the Czar. And he was very vain. You see these pictures of him and he’s beautifully turned-out; his hair is perfect and his mustache and everything. So part of it was that I wanted to look sort of silly and vain, and it also becomes a bit of a neurotic thing that I do when I get nervous. But that was the director’s idea. [laughs] But it does make me a bit of a mustache-twirling fiend, but it’s supposed to be funny. You know, hopefully people get that it’s funny.

Have you since adopted that habit on your own? [laughter]
No, I couldn’t imagine, no. It’s such a weird thing to do. I don’t know.

And it requires special equipment!
It requires special equipment, and my mustache was not real, too, so it was really hard to do without pulling my mustache off all the time. It was not easy to do; it was a tricky thing.

Do you prefer playing the mustache twirling villain? [laughter] Or the hero?
…I don’t think I’ve ever played a hero. [laughter] I don’t think I’ve ever actually played the hero in anything, so I wouldn’t know what that was like. But I would say, yes, I do prefer playing characters like that. Definitely.

As you said, though, your character’s ambiguous.
Yeah… although it’s fun to play an out-and-out psycho bad guy, too, which I’ve done a couple of times. I used to do it a lot when I was younger, but I’ve done it a couple of times.

Like Shoot ‘Em Up.
Yeah. And what’s fun about that is there’s no conflict about anything. It’s all about—just keep going and shoot somebody in the head ‘cause it’s fun. [laughter] And you break somebody’s fingers ‘cause it’ll be a good time. It’s just no conflict, and in that way it’s sort of fun to be able to do.

This is gonna date me, but I think the first film I ever saw you play that character in was Big Fat Liar. [laughter]
Yeah, yeah! No, that was a fun, ridiculous bad-guy part, and all I do in that is go off on people for being fat. And stupid. [laughter] So it’s fun. I think that’s why those guys are fun: because they have no problem just being vile to people.

Could you talk a little bit about this amazing cast that you’re working with? Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren…
The two of them are amazing. I think they’re both great. He… he… I’ve always had a thing particularly about him. I’ve always thought he was great. In anything, everything he’s ever in, he’s great in it. I went off to him about being the guy in Star Trek with the patch on the eye… [laughter] He’s so great in that movie, though! He’s so great in it. And what’s great about him is he’s completely unpretentious, you know? I mean, he does goofy stuff like that, and he’s clearly having such a good time. It’s so great. Um, I think McAvoy is actually kind of amazing in this movie. They’re great, but I really think he’s kind of remarkable in it. He’s an incredibly charming, really good actor, and it’s hard to play the innocent guy like that and not seem stupid or not seem vapid or something like that. He’s really good in it, I think.

Russian literature is probably some of the densest literature that’s out there. I remember trying to get through Crime and Punishment and wanting to kill myself. When you were getting ready for this role, did you revisit War and Peace? Did you try to go down that route, or…?
I feel like I did read some short stories that I’d never read before, and for him short stories are like seventy, eighty pages long. Or, you know, a hundred and twenty pages long. But I feel like I did reread some… I can’t really remember. Like I said, I read the religious stuff because I’d never really read any of that, and I also ended up taking some things out of them to put into my dialogue to just give it more authenticity. To actually quote him. I have some line in it about how love can’t be stupid and can’t be weak-minded, which is right out of one of Tolstoy’s writings. So, um, no, but I didn’t go back. I didn’t have time. And War and Peace is amazing; I read it in college, but I don’t think I could probably do it again. But I certainly did like his short stuff, and I can’t remember what I reread but I did reread a couple of things.

Did you study up on the utopian movement that involved these characters?
No, but I got the idea of what it was supposed to be. Like I said, reading the religious stuff, there’s a lot of stuff about how to conduct your… I mean, it is all utopian writing. So I got some of it from that. But I find that stuff really interesting. I don’t know that much specifically about the Tolstoyan commune, but it’s interesting. At one point I think you see them doing Tai Chi, and I think they really did, and I think it was an early… and he was bringing a lot of Buddhist stuff into it, I think, which was interesting and sort of ahead of its time, and it was very unusual at the time to be doing that sort of stuff. But I would like to have done more about it.

Is there a lot of information about Chertkov?
Not a ton. I mean, the biographical facts are known about him. He lived for a really long time; he died in like 1938 or something like that. And the one thing that was most useful is he wrote an account of Tolstoy’s death which is really strange. It’s written in third-person and it’s written like one of the gospels or something, and it’s really peculiar! [laughter] It definitely tells you a lot about what a weird guy he was. And some of the other people’s diaries talk about him, and he was definitely a peculiar, strange man.

The Last Station is out now in select theatres.
Read the rest of the article.

British musician VV Brown

Welcome to 2010! Good Prattle's first interview this decade is with VV Brown, a singer-songwriter whose music hearkens back to the 1960s... if, y'know, 1960s musicians incorporated electronic Gameboy blips into their music. Herein she and I discuss the greatest influences on her album, late R&B legend Ruth Brown, and the days of Super Mario Land. Enjoy this interview; she's a doll.

How are you?
I’m great, thank you. How are you?

I’m good! Let’s talk about your new music. When you were writing these songs, was there any overarching theme you had in mind for the record?
Uh, yeah! I wanted to incorporate the influences of my British heritage, which is quite punk and indie, and I wanted to also incorporate my love for the sixties, which I was getting really into at that time. Those were the main things that I was listening to; I was collecting a lot of vinyl records. That was pretty much the gist.

Well, the sixties influence is very much apparent in the way you present yourself in music videos and photoshoots.
Yeah, when I was making the album I was just so obsessed with that world: the fashion, the grace, the energy, everything about it. It definitely seeped in and skewed my ideas, but I wanted to make sure it wasn’t completely sixties. That’s why I incorporated more colors and this very colorful sort of image of popular culture.

Were there any particular musicians during your sixties phase whom you were emulating more than others?
I’m really in love with this singer called Ruth Brown, and she was kind of an underdog in relation to other top artists that were there at the same time. She was not as well-known; she had an amazing voice, and she was so chi-chi, and her lyrical content was very similar to how I write my songs in that the melody line is so happy but the lyrics are quite dark. She talked about how her boyfriend treated her meanly, but in a very joyous way with her tambourine. And I kind of related to her use of that contradiction.

Yeah. I think that’s a powerful contrast.
I agree. It’s kind of more psychotic and less predictable.

On the Wikipedia page for your album, Traveling like the Light, there’s a particular quote that really stuck with me. It says that, as well as sixties music, you were also inspired by sounds emitted from Gameboy and Nintendo.
Yeah… Around then I was so broke I really couldn’t afford to work with any producers, and that catapulted me into more hands-on forms of production and I started making my own music. And I experimented with the sound played in video games, in Nintendo games. There’s a real beauty in the sounds emitted from video games, and the music playing on video games as well; it’s almost like if a violin were playing the melody line it could be considered extremely classical, and it’s because of the beeping sound that people take the beauty of it for granted. I just left it subtly in the mix of my record; it’s not like you can hear it, like, outstanding. But that kind of found its way into the mix. I guess I’m experimenting more because I’m a huge fan of Imogen Heap; I met her the other day, and she’s very much into her electronic style. Not in a very predictable way, just little bits of electronic music, which is great, but it motivated me to look at it in a different way. A bit more, I don’t know, technical; that’s how she does it, and I like that.

I mean, I was never a really big video game person, but I always loved the Pokémon games on Gameboy and the music would always get stuck in my head.
Yeah! That’s the thing about them; the frequency is off with video games. They’re very hypnotic. I used to play Mario Land; I got it when I was about twelve and I remember playing it so much that when I turned it off I could hear the song playing clearly in my head. It was like I was psycho.

I remember my first Gameboy color, one of the big clunky ones, and one of the Pokémon games—that was my present for my seventh birthday and I was so excited! They couldn’t tear me away from it for like weeks.
[laughs] Wait, how old are you?

I’m seventeen.
Oh my god! You’re young! [laughter] I’m a lot older…

I guess my having been seven when Gameboy color came out would date me pretty well, yeah.
Yeah, ‘cause I remember my first Gameboy, and it was a massive one and it was black and white! [laughs]

I always liked the black and white ones. I never played one, but they came in better colors, like solid yellow and solid gray or whatever and the Gameboy colors were all see-through.
[laughs] Yeah. That was a bit weird. I remember that.

I know in the UK Traveling like the Light actually came out this past summer, yeah?
It did. It came out earlier this past year, and it got really great responses. I think I was put in the same sort of box as MIA and Santigold, and I feel like mine’s going to be a different journey. Like with Amy Winehouse: nobody knew her before Back to Black; they thought it was her first record, but she had one before that. I think my journey is similar to that. It’ll be a very evolving journey because I’m not making music that’s like everybody else. I’m trying to be different.

Right. Well, with artists like Amy Winehouse, I think it’s great that you can get introduced to some of their music but there’s still a past that you can discover on your own.
Exactly.

Are you a fan of Amy Winehouse’s?
Yeah. I think she’s amazing. I think she’s a very honest artist; she writes music that’s very true to her life and to what’s going on in her life, and I think any artist that’s able to do so you have to comment them for that. Her music is beautiful, and her voice is piercing… yeah, I think she’s very lovely. I think she’s a wicked artist. I hope she gets better and records another record.

Me too. I feel like she’s probably going to be remembered for a while. Her music has such a timeless sound to it.
Right. Yeah, I agree.

With your album’s upcoming release in the States—I don’t know whether you’ve played the material here in the US yet, but I was wondering whether your music is received differently in different places that you’ve played.
Well, yes, generally I think different cultures are based upon different perceptions and they’re socialized differently, so in the UK I think it’s been slightly different. I’m not sure what to expect from America, but so far we’ve received so much love; my music has been played on The Hills, The City, and all these other places already.

I know—which is fantastic.
But I don’t know. I think when you’re a black female and you’re making music that’s not necessarily R&B, I think wherever you go it will be a slight challenge. All over the world the stereotype for black female singers is that people automatically associate you with R&B music, and you’re not necessarily doing that. I think wherever we go we will have to challenge people’s perceptions. But that’s the fun thing about it, and I think we’re in a time at the moment in music where people are really screaming out for something different, which is why we have the likes of Lady Gaga, Florence and the Machine, even Rihanna. Our artists are being artists with the visuals at the moment, so I don’t think it’s going to be as difficult as it might have been maybe ten years ago.

Traveling like the Light will be released in the U.S. in February. In the meantime, check out VV Brown's website or her MySpace.
Read the rest of the article.