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 Banner by Wes Vance |
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Andre Braugher has spent the bulk of his storied career playing pioneering roles on television, winning two Emmys in the process. From HOMICIDE to THIEF on the small screen, from GLORY to CITY OF ANGELS on the big screen, Braugher has a magnetic screen presence with such an understated flair that he run a gauntlet of emotions without showing any effort. When it came to THE MIST, the opportunity to work with the talent involved became too good to pass up. Having worked on a Stephen King adaptation before with the SALEM'S LOT remake, Braugher's interest and fondness for Stephen King has led him into the horror genre, and his role as Norton serves as an antagonist to David Drayton in terms of dealing with the situation of THE MIST at hand with plausibility and stoic realism. Braugher took part in a special press weekend for THE MIST and sat for a roundtable interview that the Colonel's Crypt was a part of. The following are highlights from this discussion.
What was it that attracted you initially to THE MIST? AB: Great pedigree. Stephen King, Frank Darabont, he’s done a lot of adaptations of Stephen King’s work. Frank seems to have a terrific insight and his adaptations soar. I began to realize that we had something potentially special on our hands so I wanted to be a part of it. Frank sent the script with this role outlined for me and I read it and said, “Yeah I wanted to be a part of it.” What was the experience working with Frank Darabont? AB: Frank’s a real sweet guy and he’s planned well to set this up so we could have the kind of freedom to create the panic and the madness that inspires us. I enjoyed working with him. He works with a lot of cameras, he’s very quick, but having worked on HOMICIDE for six years it’s a style in which I’m very comfortable shooting. Other people might be uncomfortable but I’ve been at it for fifteen years in this style and it’s very comfortable for me. How would you describe the character of Norton? AB: He’s a hard charging, type A personality. He’s a lawyer from New York. He bought himself a little place in the country. He has been in a property dispute with a neighbor. He wants a real connection with other people and this mist ultimately drives him mad. He’s trapped in this place too. He’s wondering how to do get out, he’s wondering how dangerous it actually is. There’s been intimation of how dangerous it is. There’s no even remote confirmation that the mist is actually dangerous, so at some point you gotta go out. What are the best and worst qualities of Norton? AB: It’s like a coin, so the logic that has allowed him to be a leader and has provided him a good living. It’s the same thing that drives him out to the mist. Every quality he has there’s two sides of it. The power of reason would be his support as well as his downfall. With the character of Norton, how were you able to ground him to humanity, being he was such an intense and angry character? AB: There’s really nothing wrong with Type A personalities that don’t get in the way. Depending on where you’re from, you need a smart lawyer who likes to fight. It’s the right thing to do so I don’t find it hard to look at these superficially sort of disagreeable characteristics and understand where they come from, how important it is to be a fighter. That and the logic that sends him out into the mist, these things are not stretches for me. If that same thing would happen to you, would you question it the same way? AB: I’m not this character so I don’t know what I would do. We all like to speculate as to what our response would be in some sort of disaster and it’s really impossible to foretell. I’ve never been in a situation as dire as these people but this is a situation without hope. Eventually as crazy as it becomes, people are rescued from New Orleans. Eventually the fires will be contained in San Diego. Eventually if a tsunami hits the east or west coast we would be able to recover from that. What is particular about THE MIST is that it seems to be the ultimate of despair. You only have to stop and think what if this mist is continuing and people are trapped all over the world by this mist. It’s really the end of the world and that brings out a lot of craziness in people, a lot of despair in people. IN the same way for me, it’s a sense of coming to a hotel for a press junket so if a mist rolled around that window right now, I would not be going home, I would be in despair. So we may huddle together or we may plunge out into the mist, I don’t know but it forces us to do something and it will ultimately drive us mad whether we like it or not. What was the atmosphere on set in terms that you all had such stark personalities that countered each other? Did it affect the camaraderie that you normally get on a set? AB: No, we had under no illusions that we were under this trap, it was all imagination. We were not actually scared when we’re on set by the amount of makeup because we just spent five hours putting it on. So it didn’t destroy the camaraderie and there was never a feeling like there was a shark in the jets. It’s all of us in these difficult, imaginative circumstances really trying to communicate the tale and really be true to the characters we created. Frank gave us a lot of license. He’s not the kind of director who’s lassoing his actors and pulling them back from some abyss. His spirit is such that he likes to say “go ahead, knock yourself out, do what you think is appropriate to the character.” Did he feel like the outsider because of this tight knit community inside the shop and that he went out into the mist because he didn’t feel safe in the supermarket? AB: Well if I said to you if I went to the bathroom with another gentleman and something came out of the bathtub and ripped him to shreds and I came to you and said “He’s not here because something came out of the drain and took him,” you would think it’s absurd. Something’s going on but it’s not the tale I just told you. The same thing happens with my crazy neighbor, the assistant store manager, and the two blue collar drunks are now telling there’s something with tentacles out in the mist and they just killed Norm the Bag Boy. What they’re saying is impossible. It’s just not possible for something with tentacles to come out of the mist and rip Norm apart, it’s just not possible. So this must be something else and what my mind springs to is that outsider thing that you talked about. We use the information in our lives that we know to be true to form a coherent hole. Mrs. Carmody does the same thing so in her mind it must be the power of God and she felt she was chosen to speak for God. We take all these things that we know into a mental coherent hole because the mist is unyielding, it’s mysterious. It gives you no answers. It’s just a fog. Upon that white canvas, you can put any image that you want, so people make up their own world of their choosing inside this supermarket. We’re free to create our own worlds. Did you talk on set about the political implications of the story? AB: To me it’s an old sort of theme, the evil military and experiments of that kind, it’s commonplace. Being that the film was made this year, isn’t that a statement against fear of the government? AB: The core of that fear came out on September 11, 2001. Every time you’re going to have a government of some kind who is unpopular, if this film was made 40 years ago you would have political implications in the script and 40 years from now when the Super Hyper DVD version is up again, people will probably say “Isn’t this about our times politically?” This seems to be universal A hundred years ago it was true and a hundred years from now it will be true. Our government doesn’t always represent our interests, and that’s just the fact of it. In FANTASTIC FOUR, there are misguided military men trying to get the Silver Surfer to use as a weapon, THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN, “We need this as a weapon.” What movie doesn’t have an evil government plot to develop a weapon? That seems to me to be the least of our worries and Stephen King doesn’t allude to it. Did you feel that the resolution for Norton was enough for the film? AB: It was a small role. I knew that from the moment I took it. He’s only in for a third of the movie but it was appropriate. If you show too much at the very beginning than you lose the ability to create more horror. When I was looking at the film for me, there are a lot of tentacles under the door and since they’re predators I said to myself it might be a little too much, but that’s the way they chose to do it. I think the thing that’s quite disturbing thing about this film is that it’s not something evil. They’re not trying to enslave the human race, they’re just trying to eat them. You’re not dealing with a master race from Mars, you’re dealing with bugs who want to eat. It’s not possible to appease them, it’s not possible to do anything other than run from them. When the crowd mentality kind of takes over in the religious fanaticism, is that more evil than what is outside? AB: Well are you more scared of the eight people in this room or the bugs that fly on the window? The eight people in this room can do more damage (Note: the reporter looked at me when he said this). AB: There you have it. You’re right to be afraid of people. There are no bugs and we’ve slaughtered each other since probably that monolith appeared in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY to today. There’s nothing unique about human beings slaughtering each other and basically we make up the world that we want to. Most of it involves choosing another to slaughter. What do you make of the ending of the film? AB: It is quite unusual, I can’t really discuss it. I’ll leave that to the audience to decide for themselves, it’s best left for other people to interpret. When you read it, what did you think? AB: That wasn’t the ending I read. From what I read and what they filmed, they were different endings and like I said, it’s best for other people to interpret. Are you a Stephen King fan? AB: Indeed. I saw CARRIE when it came out. Just his body of work, THE SHINING, THE STAND, MISERY, SALEM’S LOT which I was in (the remake), and IT, actually I haven’t seen IT. I started reading IT though. It is one of the most frightening books I ever read. I read six pages of IT and I threw it down. I had enough. I met him. he’s a sweet guy, a really sweet guy. What was the most challenging scene to film? AB: It was that absurd moment where I’m told that Norm the bag boy has been taking by something at the loading dock. That was a scene I puzzled about for the longest time and thought and wondered how I am going to play this but it became apparent that I’m not going to believe this. Would you say that the character development in understanding Norton that by the time he is given this news, we as an audience understand Norton’s reaction? AB: I would say so without a doubt. I puzzled for too long over this thing. It used to be described by my acting teacher as going around the block to get next door. That’s what I did and I arrived right back at the place where I thought at the end. You just present it with unbelievable information, and that’s how I chose to play it. There really is no boogeyman, I don’t care how many ways to tell you. Thank you. AB: It’s been a pleasure gentlemen. Special thanks to
Heidi Martinuzzi at
www.pretty-scary.net and to
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