In another life, the 39-year-old star of Sideways and Cinderella Man would be in a Peckinpah western or a B horror movie. And although Giamatti is the star of M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water, he’s secretly planning his escape back into the weird niche of wonderful character actors.
Building (Giamatti) Character
Paul Giamatti doesn’t want to be your typical leading man.
“I’m not drinking any fucking merlot!” shouts Miles, the loathsome, middle-aged wine snob in 2004’s Oscar-nominated Sideways. The following year, sales of merlot declined. Coincidence? Or is Paul Giamatti just that good?
The New Haven–born actor had a supporting role as Jim Braddock’s sideman in Cinderella Man and the male lead as misanthropic comic-book genius Harvey Pekar in American Splendor. He’s been the villain (Private Parts) and the extra (Singles). He’s also the son of Bart Giamatti, former president of Yale University and the seventh Major League Baseball commissioner — a tough role model for any kid to live up to.
So far he’s typically been cast as the lovable loser, but Giamatti has his sights set on something completely different: the sequel to Bubba Ho-Tep. The campy horror flick about a geriatric Elvis and his cohort fighting a mummy is getting a sequel, Bubba Nosferatu, and Giamatti would like nothing more than to be the lead vampire.
His role models aren’t stalwart actors like Gregory Peck or Paul Newman; they’re the freaks of cinema, like Casablanca’s toady Peter Lorre or the British vampire, Peter Cushing. This year we’ll see Giamatti as a detective in The Illusionist with Edward Norton and in the thriller Shoot ‘Em Up with Clive Owen. In M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water, Giamatti is still in the lone loser role. But we suspect that with the new master of suspense behind the camera, the actor is a little closer to becoming one of his horror heroes.
Tell me a little about your character in Lady in the Water, Cleveland Heep.
Giamatti: He was a doctor at one point in his life, and for various reasons and circumstances ended up being a superintendent of an apartment building. He’s kind of a quiet and reclusive guy, and chose this slightly hermitic life. He kind of tried to get away from the bad things that have happened to him in his life.
I love that you’re becoming a star character actor. They have long and interesting careers. You get someone like Peter Lorre, who started off in German expressionism and then went into Roger Corman films.
Giamatti: [Laughs] Right, right. It’s true — you do end up doing a variety of bizarre stuff.
When you were a kid, what sort of movies interested you?
Giamatti: You know, my parents took me to see a lot of stuff. It was funny, I went and saw The Conversation when I was six and didn’t know what the hell was going on. My mother had this idea of just taking the kids to see everything, and not worrying whether it was violent or dirty or whatever. When I really started seeking out movies on my own, I loved the James Bond movies … Where Eagles Dare, and stuff like that. I liked lots of weird horror movies: the Universal horror movies, the Hammer [Film Company] horror movies.
When did you go from watching movies to wanting to act in them?
Giamatti: I always enjoyed being in the school play. I don’t think I said it out loud because it was kind of a geeky thing. Then I started doing it in college, just as an extracurricular. I didn’t major in theater. My older brother’s an actor, and I guess I watched him doing it. It was always sort of in the back of my mind. I left college and thought about doing other things, but just ended up acting.
Do you ever feel anachronistic as an actor? Like you wish you were working in the golden era of cinema?
Giamatti: I often do. I definitely sometimes wish I was one of those contract players at a studio, always playing the angry boss or something. I love those guys. A lot of times those were the guys I liked when I saw movies. We mentioned Roger Corman … that kind of thing, too.
Back then, films had amazing actors who are still respected today, but at the time they were just in these grade-Z horror films.
Giamatti: I know, I know. Nobody would do that now. It’s looked down upon to be in a horror movie now. But nobody seemed to care then. I don’t know why there was less of a stigma…. Maybe it was just as much of one. I don’t know. Did people look down on Peter Cushing for being in those things? He’s great in them and he’s a great actor. Did people sort of disdain him for that?
Take a look at someone like Vincent Price, who is one of the greatest character actors to ever be a horror film star. When he was doing horror films, his work was supreme. But even while acting, he was an art buyer for Sears. He was the man in charge of America’s living room art.
Giamatti: That’s right! I forgot about that. That’s very bizarre. But Peter Cushing and those guys … they took it just as seriously as anything else they did. Whether they were disdained for it or not, I don’t know, but they put their backs up to it the whole way.
What’s your philosophy when you’re looking at roles? How much of it is an agent pushing you or what the studios want you to do?
Giamatti: For a long time, I wasn’t taking the film stuff that seriously. It was just a job. Now, I have the luxury of being able to choose a little bit more. People still want to see me do a similar kind of thing, but what’s been very nice for me in the past couple of years is that I have gotten to play lead roles. They’ve tended to be similar kinds of roles, but the supporting stuff I’m getting now is fantastic.
What kind of supporting roles?
Giamatti: I’m in this movie called The Illusionist. It’s a different kind of role, but something that was really fun and interesting. I just did Shoot ‘Em Up and got to play a very different kind of thing. The supporting stuff has gotten more interesting, which is great. I think I enjoy supporting a little bit more.
You played Harvey Pekar in American Splendor. I knew Harvey from seeing him at comic-book conventions for years and years. I was reading underground comic books as a little boy….
Giamatti: We were on parallel tracks. I remember reading that underground stuff, too, except my brother was sneaking it to me.
American Splendor was such an amazing film because Pekar was so underground. Point-zero-zero-nine percent of the populace really had any idea of the comic version of him.
Giamatti: It’s such peculiar stuff, actually — so seminal and strange and specific to its time. Those comics are very weird. They’re wonderful, but I still don’t know if anybody who sees that movie has a grasp of what his comics are like. Hopefully it makes people go read them.
What would you love to do that you haven’t done yet?
Giamatti: I sit around going, “Goddamnit! I wish I could have been in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia,” or something like that. I don’t sit around going, “Well, I’d like to do blah-blah-blah.” I sit around regretting that I wasn’t around to be in any number of weird-ass movies.
Maybe you would have liked to have been one of [bloody western director] Sam Peckinpah’s contract guys?
Giamatti: Oh, I would have loved that! That would have made me so happy! I would have gotten to hang out with Warren Oates, man! He’s my favorite! You can just smell the alcohol on those guys. I happened to see Race With the Devil and Warren Oates looks like he’s barely able to sprawl out of bed to get to the set. He just looks hungover. That’s hilarious!
And look at those movies made from Richard Stark’s “Parker” novels, like The Outfit and Point Blank. Those are just sweaty seventies crime films. I miss that.
Giamatti: I completely understand what you’re saying. I started a little production company with a buddy of mine, and the big goal is to just make some good crime genre movies for not a hell of a lot of money. Just make good low-budget genre movies again, you know?
Let me ask you something: When I watch some George Zucco movies [like The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939) or The Mummy’s Tomb (1942)], why do they not feel narratively thin, as a lot of big-budget movies do now? Is it just a nostalgic thing I’m throwing back at them?
They were making movies that were 68 to 78 minutes long. Nobody makes hour-long films anymore. Now, many movies are pushing two and a half or three hours. You have to have a lot of stuff to fill the time. They remind me of classics like Dr. Zhivago. There’s a lot going on in that film.
Giamatti: But at the same time, when you go back and you take a look at the detail for the era, their world, it is so fascinating to the eye. I’ll see a similar genre movie made now and it just feels like it sort of collapses.
Now that we’ve talked about how shitty modern film is, what’s it like to work with M. Night Shyamalan?
Giamatti: He’s a really great leader of people. His crews love him more than anybody else I’ve ever worked with. He’s a lot of fun, actually.
If you sat down and talked film with him, what would you discuss?
Giamatti: He had movies in mind while he was making [Lady in the Water], so he’d talk about those. He would talk about E.T. and The Wizard of Oz a lot. There is a kind of weird way in which The Wizard of Oz is relevant to this movie.
Admit it. There are flying monkeys, aren’t there?
Giamatti: No. Well … there are kind of flying monkeys in it. He was trying to sell the mythic thing with this in the same way that The Wizard of Oz has a weird folk-myth thing going on. But we didn’t do a whole lot of talking about movies. Funny, I think he’s a guy who is only engaged with the movies he likes. Otherwise, I don’t know how interested he is. I don’t know that he saw The Outfit, you know? [Laughs] I don’t know if he’d sit here and have this conversation with us. I think he’d be kind of like, “Whatever the fuck you guys are talking about … whatever.”
He would love The Outfit.
Giamatti: He would like it, but he’d think about it in a different way. He’s very specific about things — about the script and about how he’s going to shoot it. He’s controlled about it, and that’s great because you sort of give over to it.
Are you a DVD enthusiast?
Giamatti: I am a DVD guy. I keep hoping that somebody will put The Outfit on DVD. I just got a whole bunch. Castle Keep and The Driver, which I’ve never seen.
Yesterday I was sent Day of the Animals. At one moment I realized I was watching Leslie Nielsen, bare-chested in the rain, raping a woman and then getting interrupted because he has to wrestle a bear.
Giamatti: This is mad! This is what I’m saying! Nobody’s making crazy fucking movies like that anymore!
Can you imagine getting to play a role where you’re raping a girl and wrestling a fucking bear?
Giamatti: I would love it! That’s why I want to do something like Bubba Nosferatu. My wife is very happy for me these days. She’s like, “You’re finally going to get to play in monster movies!” This is what I really want to do, actually. In a weird way, I would have loved to have done it before. But now I feel like I can do these kinds of things if I want to.
Who are your favorite actors?
Giamatti: They’re all long dead. Peter Lorre was one. Boris Karloff and all those guys. A lot of those great character actors. William Demarest was great. Warren Oates is probably my favorite, though.
Is there a part of you that misses being an obscure character actor?
Giamatti: Yeah. There’s a part of me that also goes, “Look at the weird world we live in, where basically I’m just a character actor and people want to give me awards!” Seventy years ago nobody would have fucking cared!
M. Night’s big leading men have been Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson …
Giamatti: And me! [Laughs] I do enjoy how much it puzzles people.
It makes absolute sense to me. I mean, he’s essentially been casting Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson to play Paul Giamatti roles.
Giamatti: You’re right, actually. I should have been cast in the first place. But only you would actually think of that. I do interviews a lot of the time with people, and I feel like they don’t know what the fuck to make of me. I don’t know! I have no explanation for it. I wanted to be Sydney Greenstreet and Charles Laughton, and I still want to be those guys.
I imagine everyone else would ask, “How great were the Academy Awards?” I want to know how miserable they were.
Giamatti: It’s a drag! [Laughs] I’m not good at it. I tried to go along with it, but it’s this constant free flow of anxiety in the back of your head. No matter how much you try to ignore it, you can’t get away from it. I went through it three times in a row. The first time was the best, because it didn’t have very much to do with me. American Splendor was enjoyable because it was kind of a fluke. The Sideways experience was the actual experience of it. And I didn’t even really do very much for Cinderella Man; it was all the goodwill off Sideways.
What do you collect?
Giamatti: I’m a book guy. I have lots and lots of books — lots of crazy old pulp stuff. Books and DVDs. I grew up in a university town and there were lots of great used bookstores around. A used bookstore was heaven to me, and it still is.
Your father was the president of Yale and one of the foremost scholars in Renaissance literature. What did he think of your taste in pulp?
Giamatti: The greatest fan of pulpy shit was my father. Considering he was a fairly conservative guy academically, he was a little bit ahead of the curve with pop culture. He loved anything like that: shitty westerns, pulp detective stuff, spy novels, kung-fu movies, anything. Loved it. So that’s who I get a lot of it from.
Wait, you mean a guy like that was in charge of Yale?
Giamatti: That’s why he was an unusual guy. I mean, he was also sitting around reading Elizabethan poetry and stuff like that. But one of my fondest memories of the guy is sitting and watching The Day the Earth Stood Still on “Chiller Creature Feature” in the afternoon. He loved the first Star Wars movie. He could give you a whole deep reading of it. He knew from the first movie that Darth Vader was going to be Luke Skywalker’s father, because it followed a traditional pattern of epic poetry.
Did he ruin that for you?
Giamatti: Yes! He did!
So, this has been fascinating, but we didn’t talk about Lady in the Water that much.
Giamatti: Fuck it! My publicist said to me, “Do you want to talk to Harry Knowles for Penthouse?” I said, “Fuck, yeah! I want to do that more than any of this other shit you’re giving me! That sounds like a good time.” And it has been.
A wise person once said that you should always be yourself no matter what you do in life. At least if you fail that way you will not always wonder what would have happened had you just been yourself. … OK. So maybe no wise person ever said that, but they certainly should have. And this wise person would benefit from watching all 125 of his acting roles (as of this writing). It may be possible that if you wish to become a character actor, being a bit of a character yourself cannot hurt.
Excellent photographs by Larry Busacca / Countor Photos by the way.
