IN THEATERS
ON DVD
OTHER
ON TV
TO THEATERS
TO THEATERS
TO DVD
« Article about ‘Beyond Wiseguys’ | Main | More details about Top Girls »
Marisa interviews
By Lisa | January 16, 2008
First, I wanted to remind everyone about this post. Nathaniel has a great audio interview that every Marisa fan should listen to.
Next, I found another great interview at Awards Daily. This one features an interesting tidbit about Marisa that I had no idea about.
A performance is in many ways a collection of fragments: Take one versus take five; an edit here or there; a close-up versus a long shot. The filmmakers decide what the audience will see onscreen. Yet elements that don’t reach the final cut can still inform it.
For actress Marisa Tomei, some of her personal pieces in this process are literally collecting dust. That’s because with each role, she keeps a black-and-white composition notebook. It’s her way of finding time to “daydream” about the person she must become.
“I’ll have ideas or images or the timeline of the character’s personal history, or just questions [in the notebook],” she says.
Once she moves on to the next persona, she throws the books down into her basement. Who knows, maybe that’s one reason Tomei, who turned 43 in December, looks so damn good. Perhaps those notebooks are a kind of “Picture of Dorian Gray.” In addition to the immortality offered by movies, her filmography lives on, discarded but not destroyed in those books.
There’s her portrayal of spunky mob daughter Lisa Provolone, which turned the gangster spoof Oscar into a guilty pleasure. As pregnant reporter Martha Hackett in The Paper, she nailed the nagging persistence that drives daily reporters to get the story. And in her Academy Award-winning turn as Mona Lisa Vito in My Cousin Vinny, she created a memorable character with every stomp stomp stomp of her stiletto heels.
I felt an instant kinship with Brooklyn-born Tomei when she told me about those composition books. My own tendency to hang on to notes and papers often threatens to overtake my small studio apartment. I was glad to hear she’s kept each one, even if she’s never opened them again.
“I ask myself why am I keeping these,” she says, her own laugh track a constant presence as she speaks. “It’s like I’m superstitious or something.”
I wonder aloud if they’re a part of her experience she doesn’t want to get rid of completely.
“Yeah, exactly,” she says. “It’s also ephemeral like, ‘okay I did something.’ I didn’t build a bridge, but I did something that year.”
This year she added several new pads to the pile, most notably the part of Gina Hanson in director Sidney Lumet’s bleak morality melodrama, Before the Devil Knows Your Dead. Caught between her husband Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and her lover, his hapless brother Hank (Ethan Hawke), her specter lingers despite only a few scenes. She’s a catalyst for both men in the non-sequential story that offers different perspectives of a jewelry heist-gone-wrong as it morphs into family tragedy. The film also features Albert Finney and was written by Kelly Masterson.
Filling in the Blanks
Tomei was thrilled by the notion of working with her co-stars and the legendary Lumet, but had some concerns about the part. She says the intensive two-week rehearsal sessions prior to production (which the 83-year-old director is known for) proved invaluable.
The sessions took place in a large Ukrainian dance hall.
“It was almost like the old live TV sets where you roll from one set to the next in the same space. Each set would be mapped out on the floor. You’d walk from one scene then across the room to the next scene, all within the same giant space,” she says. “It’s great because the film is out of order, but we got to do it in order to really understand where our characters were before it became dismantled.”
In some ways, she says the process raised more questions.
Some of Gina’s motivation is clear—the power struggle with her husband and the way in which his brother’s love impacts her self-worth—but other aspects are outside the text. “Her energy is very integral to the motivation of the guys, but there’s not a lot of screen time to find out what she’s about,” she says. “Sometimes she seems to know what’s going on and sometimes she doesn’t. It all adds to the mystery of the film, which is great, but what does it mean for her? Who is she?”
Part of the answer was that Gina’s more like a leaf in the wind than someone standing on solid ground. “She’s in the moment and she’s where she is at any given time without a lot of forethought or afterthought,” Tomei explains.
Playing a part like that was a little scary, she says, because she wasn’t sure it would add up.
Addressing those gaps—or perhaps accepting them—was a lesson she took from the rehearsals. “One thing that I always have to remind myself when I’m working on a piece is that life is so untidy and we never really know ourselves,” she says.
Despite narrative ellipses, what wasn’t hidden was the character’s body, with nearly every inch before the camera’s gaze. While Tomei had some reservations when she read the script, she came to realize this was also an integral part of Gina.
“I think the impact of the nudity visually says a lot more than I realized it was going to say,” she says. “Seeing it you get ideas about her self worth [how comfortable she is] or what makes her tick or what turns her on. Just because of the starkness and boldness it says more in terms of how she relates to both men and in terms of who she is.”
Oscar’s Blessings
Tomei left Boston University for a gig on the soap As the World Turns and did time on Cosby spin-off A Different World before her big film breakthrough. Winning an Oscar early on was a defining moment.
“It let me begin to do what I really wanted to do,” she says.
Like any performer her career has had its ups-and-downs, but Tomei has proven her longevity and that the award for supporting actress—while considered a surprise at the time—was no fluke. Despite no runaway hits, her work over the years has included effective turns in films like Welcome to Sarajevo and Slums of Beverly Hills. She was nominated for her second supporting actress Oscar for 2001’s In the Bedroom. This year her Oscar fate is unknown, but she’s up for an Independent Spirit Award.
While she’s shown her dramatic abilities among her most recent attention-grabbing roles, it would be great to see Tomei get a plumb comic part again. She says that’s easier wished for than done.
“Really great comedy with intelligence and some wit is hard to find and it’s also hard to find directors who understand it and know how to shoot it,” she says.
There are plenty of good comedies written for men, but she says the parts for women are usually less interesting.
That’s why she thinks audiences respond so strongly to exceptions like Leslie Mann in Knocked Up and Ellen Page in Juno.
“Give her a mouthful to say and it’s fantastic, but it’s rarely written,” Tomei says.
Regardless of the type of role, she says she tries to align her spirit to that of the character. “One of my favorite things about acting is that you’re forced to see that you actually can transform. You can transform your mindset, you can transform your mood, you can transform your outlook,” she says.
Staying Busy on Stage and Screen
Tomei has a full schedule this year. First, she’s in the new Darren Aronofsky film The Wrestler (which starts shooting in February). She says the film, which stars Mickey Rourke, is about a man whose love and livelihood come from his body and what happens when he can no longer depend on it. She plays a dancer who serves as a parallel to the main character.
Then beginning in April, she’ll appear in the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Broadway production of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls. The play features an all-female cast and focuses on the role of women in the modern working world.
Tomei returns to theater frequently, having recently finished a well-received run Off Broadway in playwright Will Eno’s Oh, the Humanity.
Performing live offers a palpable experience she can’t get in movies. “Even though [the audience] can be really quiet, I’m hearing every little laugh or move and there’s a dialogue that we have,” she says. “There’s something sacred about that to me.”
More like this...
Yet another 'Before the Devil' review on November 17th, 2007
Starkers Marisa Tomei felt 'safe' on November 24th, 2007
Brief but funny interview with Time Out New York on June 3rd, 2008
Topics: Articles & Reviews |