|
|
|
 |
||
|
British born and raised Chiwetel Ejiofor is quickly becoming one of Hollywood's brightest stars, and with his scene stealing turns opposite Hollywood's top guns, it was only a matter of time before he made the jump to leading man status. The actor has already amassed an extraordinary resume, working with legends Sir Ridley Scott (AMERICAN GANGSTER), Woody Allen (MELINDA AND MELINDA), Spike Lee (INSIDE MAN), and Steven Spielberg (AMISTAD, his film debut). Last year alone, he was nominated for two Golden Globes while appearing in the classic CHILDREN OF MEN opposite Clive Owen and Michael Caine. Ejiofor's next project is his most prolific as it is his first leading role in Hollywood and it's with another legend, David Mamet. For the world of REDBELT, Ejiofor stepped into the realm of Mixed Martial Arts, playing the role of Mike Terry, a Jiu Jitsu trainer grounded in the moral code of honor and integrity around a world that isn't so receptive. To promote REDBELT, the Crypt met up with Ejiofor at the luxurious Regency Hotel over lunch to discuss REDBELT, the magic of Mamet's dialogue, working on SERENITY and CHILDREN OF MEN, and filmmaking today in this Colonel's Crypt exclusive.
COLONEL’S CRYPT: How are you today? CHIWETEL EJIOFOR: I’m doing very well. CC: In your career you’ve worked with a lot of visionary directors such as Sir Ridley Scott, Alfonso Cuaron, and Joss Whedon. How was it being introduced to the world of David Mamet? CE: It was great. It was sort of easy, a gentle experience actuality. I haven’t met him before. We spoke on the phone about this project and then he sent me the script. I was delighted to be a part of it. We finally met in Los Angeles and he was very gracious and charismatic. We had dinner a few times I think and we started the process of getting stuck into this project. It was a gentle easing into his world, his way of working, and I was just thrilled to be part of it. CC: What would you say was more challenging, learning the poetry and complexity of Mamet’s dialogue or training in Jiu Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts? CE: I had some familiarity with Mamet’s dialogue just in terms of his plays and screenplays and him as a director so I was aware of him in a sense so I found it a touch easier in some ways to get into it than Jiu Jitsu. I’ve never done Jiu Jitsu, I had never done any martial arts. I did boxing as a teenager but that was it. It was a completely new area for me so I would have to say that learning martial arts was more challenging. CC: How long did you train? CE: Well as you know in reality it takes several years to become proficient in martial arts. I had a few months which was how long I trained for but I had an incredible amount of help from some of the greatest practitioners in Jiu Jitsu in the world. They gave me a lot of confidence and ability in grounding of martial arts. CC: Your character of Mike Terry is a positive and sympathetic character who has all these bad things happen to him not by his own fault but from the fault of others which is a staple of Mamet. What were some of the benefits while shooting on playing such a positive character of Mike in that he doesn’t lose his resolve? CE: It’s exciting to play this central character who’s also a narrator of the story in a way and the audience is seeing the story and the narrative through this person, to find that you are on a journey with an audience in a sense that when things happen to Mike that he reacts the way an audience would react. They are equally surprised by the events as they unfold. That’s an exciting thing to do. I think when you are playing a bad guy, you are not in that position sometimes, or if you are playing somebody who is a classic hero in a much more conventional way where the audience is observing the heroism of the character as opposed to going through the narrative and going through the story with the character. I thought David was able to have the audience align with Mike Terry because there are points in the film where they are just as shocked as he is. CC: It’s very similar to life in that you see good people suffer as the results of the actions of bad people around them. Would you say that was a benefit of working with Mamet on how he is able to characterize so profoundly? CE: I think that he’s somebody who can really write the hell out of a story and he knows how to develop a character and chow to create a narrative, how to have somebody put into a situation which turns into the most important situation of that person’s life and it starts in an innocuous way. These things just unfold and that’s the way life happens sometimes. These events just unfold and it’s uncontrollable. CC: The character of Weiss, a movie producer, screws Mike over a story he tells him. Playing a sort of Devil’s Advocate, did you have any experiences like that within the Hollywood system? CE: No, not really. I haven’t been in a position where I could really bang the table and say that those guys did me over. The truth is there isn’t anyone who hasn’t come to Hollywood who doesn’t have any degree of knowledge of the system. You are very protective of yourself with agents or managers or lawyers. Most people have if not one then all of those things so in a sense you know you are entering a litigious society. But for the newcomer who is naïve at the way things run in Hollywood, to come in without any of those things, to come in without any kind of protection, to come in without having any sense of anybody to hold your corner in terms of litigation, you do leave yourself vulnerable to exploitation and that is there and it’s not long before you’ll come across somebody who is prepared to exploit you if you enter the Hollywood thing without any backup if you like. So that’s Mike Terry’s experience which I think is very true if you have that naïveté coming into the Hollywood system and they would very quickly work out that you need sort of this X, Y, and Z factor going into the whole thing. That’s not to say that everybody is like that and that there is this general culture of that, it’s just that there is enough to warrant that. It is a business after all. CC: I have to talk about SERENITY. I think that both Mamet and Joss Whedon are similar in both dialogue and characterization. CE: I think that’s so true. That’s really great that it is spotted. I’ve worked with both of them and they are incredibly gifted writers and they bring a panoramic knowledge of filmmaking to a movie set in their directing capability. It’s very exciting to be on that set. It’s very rich. They’re both very detailed in their dissection of every aspect of the filmmaking process from design to the action. They are very knowledgeable and a lot of experience and a lot of ability, so there are definite connections. CC: With SERENITY, the majority of the cast and crew had worked before with FIREFLY. Being that Mamet works with the same actors and crew in all of his projects, did you get the same feeling on REDBELT as you did with SERENITY as far as that camaraderie in everyone getting along so well with each other or were the different tones of both films make it different? CE: It is different. The SERENITY set was a very relaxed set, the people were very busy with each other. The same could be same for Mamet. There was more of a robust, solid energy on a Mamet set. The intricacies are more harder around the edges. There was something very detailed and very nuanced, there was this relaxed, flowing energy on a Whedon set. CC: Are you a fan of science fiction being you worked on SERENITY and CHILDREN OF MEN? CE: Oh yeah. I love that genre actually. It’s boring now in a way because I’m one of those people that go “You have to read V FOR VENDETTA,” and people are like “Oh come on, that’s a graphic novel, what are you talking about?” That was out a decade ago. I read THE WATCHMEN. Of course now, there are people saying that. I was wearing combat pants before anybody, there’s that kind of sense of it. When I was growing up, I was excited by 2000 AD and was into visual sci-fi and the comic book era. It was just big for me. I was just a big fan of it. There’s a part of me that’s always drawn to that. Even though now I’m out of touch a little bit more than I was before. For example I hadn’t watched FIREFLY when I was hired for SERENITY. It wasn’t on in London, we didn’t have it. I was sent the tapes of FIREFLY and I remember my girlfriend at the time was carrying something walking past the room as I put on the first tape of FIREFLY. At the end of the first episode, she was in the exact same position. So was I, so she put her stuff down and sat down next to me and said “Put on the next one.” We watched the entire series that day and loved it. CC: I think CHILDREN OF MEN is the start of a new kind of science fiction. With that said, where do you see filmmaking going within the next five years? CE: I think it takes people to really pick up where Alfonso Cuaron left off with CHILDREN OF MEN and I think for me that it’s a very exciting direction for film to head into. I love the combination in CHILDREN OF MEN of financing and independent spirit. It was kind of a headache combination and I love the fact that that’s how he shot it as well. It almost looks like it was being shot on a shoestring, you know, where the cameras are handheld, you’re following people around like a documentary and then all of a sudden a whole building blows up. You’re like “Did that happen?” You realize that financing on an independent mind and on a visionary independent thought can combine to create some of the most exciting cinema. My hope is that this continues and that independent films are able to get the financing and get the people behind them into a these big scale, budget releases and move those movies up to a kind of level where they can get out there and compete with the market. I think that when that happens, then I feel that it’s going to be a very exciting time for cinema and visionary directors will really be given a chance to fly. That will be a great thing. CC: What’s coming up for you? CE: I’m going to be doing a film about the end of Apartheid in South Africa. It’s a terrific script. It’ll be with myself and William Hurt and will be directed by Pete Travis. It’s just a great story about how people really got to negotiating and it’s a terrific part. I am playing Kobie Coetzee when he was a younger man and his efforts to release Nelson Mandela and to legalize the ANC (African National Congress) in South Africa and to create free, Democratic elections. CC: I remember when Mandela was released. Even then, it was such a significant event. CE: I think there are things we look at now that happened 14-15 years ago, such as the end of Apartheid, things that happened in our generation, but they feel as if they happened hundreds of years ago. I include in that things like Apartheid, that we lived in a world where there was officially Apartheid. CC: Yes, the fall of the Soviet Union as well. CE: Right, and the fall of the Berlin Wall and you feel like “My God.” It’s so funny how we become so acclimatized to the modern world to the point where you feel that it’s always been like this. It just hasn’t and it’s important to go and take a look at those specific moments to see if there was anything in them that we can learn currently. CC: Being we live in a cynical time, although these things happen to Mike, who is a good person, he gets rewarded in the end. Do you see this as a metaphor of things to come? CE: Yeah I think that there’s a sense that honor and integrity prevail even in the most difficult circumstances and I like that in a concept. There is something that is fantastic about it and everyone hopes that that’s the reality of the truth. I feel that it’s always a tricky area. Everyone feels that people are inherently good. I do and I feel that there is a lot of possibility in the world and there are a lot of exciting ways in which the world can progress and continue to progress. I’m happy with the film’s fantastic message and I also think it’s fair and accurate. CC: I leave the last word for you. CE: Thank you very much Scott. CC: Thank you and I wish you the best for REDBELT. CE: You’re very welcome. REDBELT opens in limited release on May 2nd courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics. (Special thanks to Caitlin Speed and Steve Beeman at Falco Ink)
|
HOME
BLOGS
|
|||
