There's no question Edward Norton can act - the 30-year-old actor has already received two Academy Award nominations
in his short, four-year film career - the question now is: Can he direct? Judging by the critical and audience response
to his first film, Keeping the Faith, the answer is yes. No one's telling him to quit his day job, but to quote
Mr. Showbiz critic Kevin Maynard, "Norton's first film is crisp, confident, and considerably more entertaining
than it has any right to be."
Faith is just the latest notch in an offbeat but always upward career trajectory for Norton, whose performances in American History X, Primal Fear, The People vs. Larry Flynt, and Fight Club have consolidated his status as his generation's most talented actor. And while it makes sense for Hollywood's new Brando to comply with the current Hollywood dictum that decrees all actors want to direct, helming this high-concept comedy was not initially Norton's goal.
It was Norton's fellow Yalie and writing partner Stuart Blumberg who convinced the actor to direct the film, in which two boyhood friends grow up, become a rabbi and a Catholic priest, and then both fall in love with the same girl. Norton says Ben Stiller was always his first choice to play Jake, who wants to move and shake his congregation as a rabbi - and whose congregation wants him to settle down with a nice Jewish girl. Jenna Elfman's Anna completes the triangle, as a woman who, like many Gen-Xers, finds a cell phone where her heart's supposed to be.
Dressed all in black - in a V-neck T-shirt and jeans - Norton met Mr. Showbiz unaccompanied by handlers or an
entourage. Animated and friendly, he resolutely refuses to discuss his eligible-bachelor life. (Previously linked with
his Larry Flynt co-star Courtney Love, he went public about his current liaison with Salma Hayek at this year's
Oscar ceremonies.) But he does discuss the failure of Fight Club, what it was like to direct himself, and the
brouhaha over his current asking price ($5 million).
Were you surprised that Fight Club was knocked out at the box office?
That didn't surprise me. I felt very happy about that movie, and
I really didn't have any regrets about that. When you make things that are dense and provocative,
it would be nice if they caught a wave. But a lot of my favorite films, the kinds that made me
want to get into movies, like Dr. Strangelove and Taxi Driver and Raging Bull,
they all took a long time [to find their audience] if you really look back.
A lot of those movies were proactively savaged when they came out, let alone not making any
money really. And over time, people came to find them and see them as signatures of a certain
zeitgeist and appreciate them as such. I always had faith with Fight Club. I feel that
in the people my own age, it will find its audience over time. I think Fincher was disappointed,
but I said to him, "The movies that inspired you went through this process," and I felt very,
very proud of the film. I felt it reached a lot of people.
So how do you feel when you see Entertainment Weekly's "What Are They Worth?" issue, and after your name it says, "Hasn't had a hit since Primal Fear and his asking price is $5 to $6 million." [Norton laughs.] Do you worry about this? Do you say, "I've got to get something that will make $150 million?"
Not at all. If you look at the movies I've made, it's clear that's not my objective. [Laughs.] If they pay me based on my box office, I don't know that they'd pay me orders of magnitude less. That has to do more with the directors who scream at studios and say, "I really want him in my movie." If I have something to leverage, it's more people wanting to work with me, and you can only do so many things. So they try to pay you to get you to come and do it. I don't go talking about that, but people find out, and it's, "Oh, Jesus, they're so overpaid."
I'd think it is your agent who is proud that you've gotten these paydays.
I'm trying to figure out where it all came from. But it's not relevant, and I don't worry about that. Also I've made a lot of movies, Rounders, American History X, and Everyone Says I Love You, and even this, that we've made for very low budgets. I've felt good on the whole, because those movies were made for a price and did well. I totally understand studios not wanting to make American History X for over $10 million. That was the perfect level to make that money. We did a good job with Keeping the Faith too. We tried to make a real New York movie.
Shot in New York?
Yeah, all shot in New York, and not doubling Toronto for New York. And [you have to] give it all that romantic value of New York, but for ...
Ten million?
No, $30 million, which I think is modest by today's standards. When [New Line's yet-to-be-released Warren Beatty film] Town and Country is costing $80 million, I feel that's really good.
But that's because it had a megalomaniac running loose who was fighting with the director! You of course didn't fight with yourself as one of the stars.
I was the biggest pain in the ass of all the actors.
What about you and Stuart Blumberg, who I understand was your Yale roommate and good buddy?
Not my roommate, but my college friend.
Are you and Stuart Blumberg the new Matt and Ben, college buddies who make movies together?
Good lord, no! If Stu starts showing up in big action movies I'll be shocked.
Like Armageddon?
Yeah. No, no, I certainly don't think that's our M.O., but it was really fun to get to do this. It was a long-time aspiration. We've known each other 12 years, and we've written together for a long time, and so it was a fantasy for us making a film together in New York. We decided after Stu wrote the script and we rewrote it, to just do it ourselves and produce it. He was the one who said to me, "Why don't you direct it?" I said, "Maybe we should look for somebody." And he said, "They won't like the same parts of New York that we like. And they won't get our Bella Abzug jokes." Instead of tearing our hair out hoping someone else understands our vibe, that's why we jumped in and did it. It was really fun, we were shooting two blocks from our first apartment in New York.
Which was where?
On the Upper West Side, where we shot most of the movie, on West 78th Street, right by Stand-Up New York.
What do you get out of directing that you don't find otherwise?
Ulcers. Gray hairs. It's a high-stress job. It was a lot of fun, but it's fun in that "occasionally-curl-up-in-the- fetal-position-and-whimper" kind of fun. I think Bob Hoskins said it's like being pecked to death by 1,000 pigeons. You have so many people coming at you from so many different directions, trying to get you to orchestrate the unification of a lot of people's ideas and all kinds of things, and that's what maddening, but also rewarding, about it. The collaborative dynamic is what's exciting, and it leaves you with a good feeling at the end because you've had all these people you've worked with. You've tried to tell a good story at the end of the day.
How personal is this story?
More personal for Stu. It comes out of his experiences a little more. In terms of the tension of being a young, modern, progressive, humanistic person who is going to date people of different backgrounds and then being Jewish and having a strong familial connection.
Isn't it ironic that nobody ever questions the multi-hued, multi-ethnic society filled with interracial couples they see in the movies, yet interfaith marriage is a very relevant topic. Is it that most people gloss over the issue for the P.C. version?
I don't know the answer to that question.
Maybe it's a little bit of the "Not in my neighborhood" syndrome. As long as my boy marries
a nice Jewish girl, I'm all for it. It is interesting. I don't think the film hyperbolizes
those tensions. There was a great piece in The New Yorker a month ago, a profile of a
young Indian girl and the same thing, the pressure to be in an arranged marriage, and as I
was reading it, I felt it was another spin on the same theme.
What about casting Ben?
Well, we had Ben in mind when we were writing it, and the character was originally named Ben because we were thinking of him so specifically, and when we got him we had to change the character's name to Jake. Ben is one of the few people in my peer group of actors who could easily balance the broadest of the broad comedy and a scene like the one where he apologizes to his synagogue, which is relatively serious. He's got both of those capacities and that's unusual.
Did you go out for casting years ago when you were working on this?
Stu only gave me the script three years ago, and we worked on it for about a year and then he sold it. Then we worked to set it up, but basically we didn't think of casting until I finished Fight Club and had an opportunity to make it. We said, "What are we going to do here?" I talked to Ben late in 1998, and we shot last spring. He liked it almost immediately.
He's been a director as well, so is it awkward to direct an actor who's directed when it's your first time out?
No, in some ways it's nicer. You know they empathize with the demands that are on you. Also, he has good instincts about scenes, and you have to have the confidence at the end of the day to make the final decisions, but you'll get good ideas from Ben. He'll say, "What about this and this?" I enjoyed working with him because he's extremely talented. It was fun, we'd do scenes together and then walk to the monitor and watch it.
How did you work with yourself in the scenes? Did you have a stand-in do scenes sometimes?
No! No, we rehearsed. I had a lot of things storyboarded, so that at least there was an idea of how it could play and we'd rehearse and then change it if we didn't like it. But Ben was a good third eye for me as an actor. The first day was the Barnes & Noble bookstore scene where he's trying to have us come on his date and I did that sort of Rainman thing. That wasn't in the script and the scene felt a little flat to me.I turned to look at him and he's laughing and I said, "Is that funny?" and he said, "Definitely." It helped to have someone whose comic judgment I trust a lot lend a third eye when I had to be in the scene.
What about casting Jenna Elfman?
Well, Jenna, I had never seen her show. She came in and I was very impressed by her seriousness and she reminded me of Doris Day.
Jenna was very good in EdTV too.
Yes, she was, and that was the only thing I saw. She did subtle little things there; it reminded me of Holly Hunter. She'd put a twist on a straight line or an elbow [into it]. I felt it was important that when the girl comes off the plane, you know what you're going to get. I wanted someone familiar but unfamiliar, who you could feel you were going to meet for the first time. Jenna was the only one who had the sense to say, "I don't think she should walk in and charm you off her feet. She should be a little cold even, and we watch her warm up in the presence of these guys and get back to being the kid." That was a good take on it. It impressed me she was willing to look at it that way. I think a lot of people would walk off the plane and like to hit you with a Meg Ryan charm, not to disparage Meg Ryan or anything. That was just other actresses' instincts, to charm you right away.
And you really speak Spanish, as you did as this priest in the Hispanic neighborhood?
A little. That 8-year-old in the confessional helped me.
It's okay for a rabbi to fall in love with a woman. Was the Catholic priest falling in love a worry? You didn't want protests.
We sent the script to the Catholic public relations office in New York. We really wanted to shoot in a Catholic church, and we said, "Look at the script and tell us if there's anything that would keep us out." We got this phone call back saying, "This is wonderful, a wonderful affirmation of this priest's faith in the end." They got it. We took this to a Church on the Upper East Side, where the pastor became our technical advisor, and he was wonderfully candid. He gave us the line Milos [Forman] says, "I've been a priest over 40 years and I've fallen in love once a decade." He was very sophisticated and was able to discuss his humanity and the challenge and the commitment being a priest involves and not in denial of the complicated challenge that that represents. I was very appreciative of that. We got a lot of support from both communities actually, rabbis and priests.
You shot in a synagogue as well.
We did. We were able to make it clear our goal was for people in those traditions to laugh with it because they could identify the funny foibles without ever feeling they were being made fun of. I don't know if that makes sense. The idea was: Let's have the Catholics laughing harder than anyone else at the Catholic jokes. And the same for the Jews. We weren't trying to ruffle feathers, but instead have a piece that explores the challenges of faith in the context of being funny. Not that it's a bad thing to offend anyone ...
As you've done ...
In many other films. [Laughs.] I wasn't concerned about that with this.
What are your plans then for summer? Making a movie or taking a vacation?
I'm doing a film called The Score with Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando in Montreal. It's a heist picture.
One's a godfather and one's the old guy on the team and you're the young guy?
Something like that.
If you have new information on Edward Norton (and you can provide a verifiable and reputable source), please email me- Susan
Note: Articles and images have been posted without permission for noncommercial and nonprofit use
with no intention of copyright infringement. The purpose of this reprinting is to disseminate correct information about the
actors, films, and studios. I have included author names and links to sources whenever possible.
