Steve Buscemi Masterclass

This is exciting. Steve Buscemi has just leapt forward from some dimmed-out corner of NFT1. Technical setbacks are withholding the scheduled preview of his latest film ’Interview‘, so casting shadows against the screen with a pair of raised arms, he offers a solution: ’I‘ll act out the trailer!‘ A full house bursts into animated giggles and will continue to do so throughout this hour-long Masterclass hosted by The Script Factory

Buscemi’s jokes are possibly a byproduct of his short-lived career as a stand-up comedian during the late ’70’s before he began appearing in films as the poster-boy for all-American misfits. Asked by chair of the event, Briony Hanson, whether this provided a form of training in terms of acting, he was eager to dismiss the suggestion, joking instead how, ‘It helps me in situations like this’. Right now he wants us to focus more on Steve the director.

When asked how he identifies himself these days, he rolls out another one-liner: ‘I see myself as a tree’, perhaps referring to the first full-length feature he wrote and directed, ‘Trees Lounge’ (1996). ‘I do think more of myself these days as a director. I’m not known as a director; in the States I’m never introduced as an ‘actor-director’, he says with a slight air of disappointment.

After being approached by the late Theo van Gogh’s production team, Buscemi agreed to remake one of the three pictures the Dutch filmmaker had intended on adapting for a US audience before he was murdered in 2004. ‘I was just really fascinated that he could pull off these films that were basically about only two people’, says Buscemi. Katya (Sienna Miller) is the archetypal Hollywood trinket who in the eyes of journalist Pierre (Buscemi) is predictably beheld as ‘Cuntya’. A formal interview transgresses into a dialogue-ridden slumber party where the characters get to piggyback each other’s delusional presuppositions while a noticable sexual tension is present throughout. Soundtrack enthusiasts should also listen out for Noonday Underground’s classy ‘Boy Like a Timebomb’.

Part of the deal when signing-up to the project was that Buscemi had to remain loyal to the methods employed by van Gogh; fast-pacing, uninterrupted sequencing and footage shot from three individual cameras. He did, however, add his own brushstrokes; semi-twirling in his seat, he says ‘What’s really hard for me is structure, but I like writing dialogue so this had a readymade structure and story’. When we reach the audience Q&A session, there are inescapable reservations about a director casting himself in a movie, to which Buscemi replies ‘When I direct on ‘The Sopranos’, it’s a relief not to be in it. It’s really fun to just be the director, not have to get into wardrobe and makeup. I’m really not looking for projects that I can act in as well as direct’. Having said that, if he had the choice to either star or direct ‘Interview’, he’d always choose the latter.

‘One of the earliest films that I made was “Parting Glances” (1986)’, Buscemi recounts after being asked about his career as a performer. ‘I love the character I play in it. He’s just a really smart, funny, acerbic guy with a lot of heart. After making that film I sort of expected to play more parts like that. It was a big surprise to me after that to get cast as drug dealers and criminals’. Hanson points out how he’s now come full-circle with Pierre, the smart, funny, acerbic character, to which Buscemi teases: ‘I have to do it myself now if people wont cast me that way’.

To those who doubt Buscemi’s ability to 'do romance', we recommend you catch a screening of ‘Interview’ next month, or as one member of the audience suggests, flick through the recent issue of a popular US magazine where, apparently, he’s been voted the sexiest man of the moment. ‘What magazine?’ Buscemi is adorably astounded, ‘That’s not true, this cannot be true. Thank you so much for that, you had me going there for a second!’

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