Russell Crowe on ‘State Of Play’
RUSSELL CROWE IS CAL MCAFFREY IN STATE OF PLAY
Born in Wellington, New Zealand, Russell Crowe ranks among the finest actors working in Hollywood today. His career began in the early 1990s with roles on Australian TV and in films like the cult favorite ROMPER STOMPER (1992). He broke through internationally in 1997 with L.A. CONFIDENTIAL and, in 1999, earned his first Academy Award ®nomination for THE INSIDER. In 2001, he won the Academy Award ® for Best Actor for GLADIATOR and forged a close working relationship with the film’s director, Sir Ridley Scott. Russell subsequently joined Sir Ridley Scott for A GOOD YEAR (2006), AMERICAN GANGSTER (2007), BODY OF LIES (2008) and the forthcoming UNTITLED ROBIN HOOD PROJECT(2010). Likewise, he has enjoyed a good relationship with director Ron Howard, earning another Academy Award ® nomination for A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001) and huge critical acclaim for CINDERELLA MAN (2005). Other recent works include MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (2003) and 3:10 TO YUMA (2007). In STATE OF PLAY, he stars as Cal McAffrey, a veteran reporter in Washington, D.C.
Q: Why did you want to make STATE OF PLAY?
In fact, I was not predisposed to do this film at all in any way, shape, or form. I was back in Australia. The sun was shining. I was looking forward to a very long summer at home, and I got a call from the studio [Universal Pictures], with which I had a working relationship that covers GLADIATOR, A BEAUTIFUL MIND, CINDERELLA MAN, and AMERICAN GANGSTER. They said Brad Pitt had left the project and asked if I would please look at this project.
The first thing I did was to look at the work of Kevin Macdonald, and my absolute desire was to dismiss it completely. Do it quickly. Do it in a day and get on with my holiday. But you can’t dismiss TOUCHING THE VOID, and you can’t dismiss THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND. It’s as simple as that. They’re both great pieces. So, that was my first bothersome moment.
Then I read the script, and I have a rule that I’ve had ever since I was a kid: if I have a physical reaction to a script, if I get goose-bumps, if a tear comes to my eye, then that’s the project that I have to do. I’m compelled to do that; it’s being respectful of the gods of film. That’s the reason I got into the job in the first place, because I want to tell the stories that emotionally affect me. So, it became: “There goes my summer holiday!”
Q: Where in the script did you have a physical reaction?
I gave two examples of a physical reaction, and in this case it was goose-bumps. I was definitely engaged by the variety of subject matter within the film: friendship and loyalty before profession, the myth of objectivity in journalism, and the privatization of war. This was a piece that covered a lot of things that were interesting to me, but there was a certain sequence of events within the script. And I was so engaged while reading it that I got the goose-bumps, which means “This is the job I’m doing.”
Q: Do you like Cal McAffrey? Do you have sympathy for him?
I think he goes on a journey of rediscovery and finds out just how far away he is from his ethical standards, just how far he’s allowed himself to drift. I think it’s a very telling moment when Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck) comes to Cal, explains the situation he’s in, and Cal’s instinct is to create a smokescreen. So, he has become very cynical, and he doesn’t live up to the ethics that he talks about. But I think through the course of the story, he re-achieves that. I’ve sat in front of journalists for 30 years of my life, so I have a lot of observational material to call on. I’ve been praised, flayed and betrayed, and those experiences obviously are going to color the way I think.
Q: Has playing a journalist changed your opinion of them?
No, not really. But the fact that I may harbor disappointment and anger about journalists in certain situations, does not preclude me from having a deep personal opinion that it is a noble profession. However, it has to be ennobled by the people who do it. Just like anything. If I make a great film, it takes passion and commitment. It just doesn’t pop out of the microwave. We all have our faults; we all have our predilections and our preferences, but that’s what you want from any creative artist. And I will put journalism under the heading of creative artistry without that being a cynical term. You want the writer to be personally involved, just as you want the painter and the filmmaker and the actor on the stage to be personally involved in what they’re doing. But I also do think that there’s a seriousness to that job which can prevent the individual journalist from achieving that. It could be the schedule or whether a subeditor rips the heart out of things after he’s had his two pints at dinner time and makes sure the article fits in neatly on page five next to the ad for women’s lingerie!
Q: Do you have a view on the future of journalism?
If there is a crisis in serious journalism, it’s been created by journalists because we’ve been trivializing news for at least a couple of decades. We have been blurring the line between news and entertainment in order to try and achieve a larger distribution, more sales, and better ratings. But in every newspaper, no matter what level of seriousness that newspaper has a reputation for, there are pages of absolute tripe that the editor knows to be untrue, but they will titillate the readers. Even if that is the evisceration of the character of a person who has become popular, they’re fine with that. There’s a sort of elbow nudging, or giggling, like “Did you see what we wrote about such and such?” And once you allow that, you may accept information from a source you know to have no credibility, but you can now safely reprint because it’s been printed before and you can always take that as your defense. The desire for new information, which we could use in a very healthy way, has been replaced by supplying trivia.
Q: You mentioned the political aspects of the film. Do you have an interest in politics?
You can’t ignore it. You ignore politics at your peril. But I think there are so many blurred lines, so many secret hatches between news organizations and politicians, and so many strands and plans afoot at any given time. I think you really have to develop your own — for want of a better expression — “bullshit detector.” It is an odd situation that we are in because I think for the last generation we have been teaching people this thing where they cannot discern truth. We emphasize truth only for it to be uncovered a few years later as false, and yet people sort of giggle about it and have a cynical tap at the elbows, like “Wasn’t it funny that we did that?”
Q: Would you like to direct a film yourself one day?
I think about directing. I see it as a natural progression some day, and my next film represents my first major film as a producer. I’ve never produced a film of this size. I’ve done little documentaries and TV shows, things like that, in the past but nothing like this. Obviously, I’m down the pecking order below Ridley Scott and Brian Grazer!
Q: That film is obviously the UNTITLED ROBIN HOOD PROJECT. Have you always liked that story?
Yeah. I have read maybe about 30 or 40 books about Robin Hood – some frivolous, some fictional, some studious, and some academic examinations of the mythology. So, I know the story from a background of myth, a ballad, a political tool, a legend, a religious tool, as the power game, and then a hundred years of the cinematic history of Robin Hood where names and places have entered into the minds of people that have absolutely nothing to do with what it was a thousand years ago. What I really like though is that this is a fictional story that has lasted a thousand years. It is all myth, and yet it is probably the oldest fictional story that has lasted in the English language.
Q: Do you like any of the existing Robin Hood films?
I am not a fan of any of the Robin Hood movies, but as a child I was a massive fan of the Richard Greene television series [from the 1950s], a massive fan. I have thought about this story since I was five years old and here it is. I am in a situation where I get to play my part in it.
Q: Are your boys excited about the film?
Charlie is so excited about the ROBIN HOOD PROJECT. He actually came to two costume fittings with me, and the costume department, run by a dear friend, made him a set of chain mail. He was made up, you know? It’s like a little Charlie Crowe size set of chain mail (laughs). He was very happy about that.
Q: Has he seen any of your other films?
He has seen only one; it’s called THE SILVER BRUMBY. It’s a kid’s film that I’ve made, and he’s very confused by it because, in the movie, I’m running and galloping around on horseback chasing a horse, but when he’s with me on the farm, I just call and the horse comes. So he asks, “Why are you doing all that? Why don’t you just call?” (laughs) Also I showed him 30 seconds of MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD, which just happened to be the storm sequence when I’m hanging off the side of the boat and the waves are crashing all around. And I asked, “What do you think of that?” and he goes, “Way too scary, daddy!” (laughs) So, there’ll be a time; hopefully, it’s not too far in the future. And we’ll probably find that the technology of the films that I’m in is clunky and out of date, so maybe then he’ll watch more of them.
