Chris Evans Interview

Chris: Yeah, right! We smacked each other around. It was really great, you know, Cillian, Danny, they're committed you know. So it was one of those scenes we were just like "Want to really just fight? Let's just fight." Screw it. Fuck it. Let's just go for it. You know, we beat each other up.

Q: This is not something that started when you all lived together in that dorm?

Chris: Yeah, no this wasn't some deep-seated dwelling anger. No, this was pure love for acting.

Q: How was this experience, this sort of boot camp, for you?

Chris: It was great. It's the way I think a film should be made. I mean, this type of attention to preparation, respect for rehearsal, is what I almost need for films. It was really nice, the director and other actors shared that desire and passion.

Q: This doesn't happen often in movies, does it?

Chris: Almost never. Almost never, which is really unfortunate. It's really unfortunate, that's why when you get an opportunity to work with somebody like Danny, and you know that's what's going to go along with it, you jump at the chance.

Q: It's sci-fi and mixed drama isn't it? Like more heavy on actors. What did he tell you about your character?

Chris: Yeah. What did he tell me? I mean Mesa is a morally uncomplicated guy. He's a very cut and dried. He says what he means. He doesn't care what anyone thinks. He has no vanity. I think he comes from a military background. Yes. So I think he just wears his emotions on his sleeve, which allows him to almost be a bit of an anchor. I think he's logical and calculated and might appear at times to be a bit cold.

Q: His mind is on the mission.

Chris: Exactly, I think he has a task at hand and that's the task he's going to do regardless of whether it pleases the masses.

Q: So you got to hang out with astronauts?

Chris: Yeah. I flew up to northern California to sit down with this one astronaut who has the American record of longest time in space, which is pretty unbelievable. We talked about some lingo and terminology, but what I really learned was, this guy was so mechanical. When you would ask him a question that you would expect an emotional response to, he was very just matter of fact about it. I think that you realize is, these astronauts are put through so many tests to make sure that their psyche is stable and grounded, and not from an emotional place, or a dramatic response. You're not going to get him to start crying about how lonely he was. I mean these guys are put through the wringer. These guys really are analyzed and tested to make sure they are fit to withstand these long stints in space where I think your psychological game might get a little out of control. This guy was just a rock.

Q: Did it freak you out?

Chris: It didn't freak me out, cause I don't have to go. But it was nice to have that as a bearing to know that this is who Mace probably is. This guy probably has been tested a hundred times, and knows that he will not crack under the pressure.

Q: What kind of things would you take with you if you did have to go into space for a few years. What would you do to entertain yourself?

Chris: I've thought about that question, I mean what would I… I would take as many books as I could find that I haven't read yet. So I can't really tell you what books they would be. I'd take my iPod.

Q: What would be on your iPod?

Chris: Ah, I think I'd get sick of all of it so I'd probably get as much music as I can. I'm a big fan of classic rock. I'm a big fan of alternative. I like singer/songwriter stuff. I would probably ring a couple of instruments too. That much time in space… I'd probably learn the harmonica, guitar…

Q: I thought what was interesting was one of the scenes in the film is that someone is reading a paperback book, and this is so far in the future. How much did they think about, and tell you about that would bring tangible things that we could relate to.

Chris: Enormously. There was one guy who came to give us a lecture. This was the best. We had so many lectures from guys from NASA physicists and scientists. This one guy came, this guy was like on the Fortune 500, some list. He's one of the richest guys in the world. This guy is hired by companies, he's literally one of the closest things to a genius that I've ever met. He's hired by companies, major companies, Nike, Toyota, Apple, to study trends in the world and predict what will happen in the future. Will we ever abandon gas for cars? Will the keyboard ever become obsolete? Will we ever have a pill that can change your face? These are the things that he studies specifically to tell these manufacturers what to put out. We asked him, his purpose was to tell us how realistic area we? Our ship talks. Our ship talks to us and we were saying, "Is this realistic?". He said "Yeah!" along with some other things that blew our minds. He was telling us things that, I mean it was insane! It was crazy, some of the things they are developing and coming out with within fifty years! I mean, think about it. Ten years ago, ten years ago, I didn't have a cell phone. I guarantee if any of you did it was bigger than that. I didn't have an I pod, I had a discman that was this big. Now you can buy an I pod that's the size of that. I mean in ten more years, ten more years, ten more years… In fifty years, things are going to be, your going to have an I pod that's this big. Cell phone chips are going to be in your skin. You know, click it on and…

Q: Are you afraid of that, or are you looking forward to the technology?

Chris: I'm not afraid of it. You don't have subscribe to it if you don't want to. If it ever gets beyond your control you can always just turn it off.

Q: We're talking about space travel and future here, but would you ever be interested in going back time?

Chris: Oh, man! Um, I think there was a time prior to this global integration. I mean, you look in history, you know, empires would rise and fall. Essentially that is going back. That was in a time where the world wasn't so interconnected. Now you don't have… it's not like the Roman empire can rise and fall because this land mass is isolated from the entire world. Now every bit of land is connected to everywhere. Everything is interwoven with the internet, you know, money, transactions, I mean everything is connected. It would be hard for something to rise and crumble and re-build again. I don't see that really happening the way it used to in history. I don't know. I'd probably say no. Who am I to speculate?

Q: Would you do what Mesa does in the movie, or would you stay on earth?

Chris: Well, to save my own hide and people that I loved, I would be more inclined to make the trip. But nature wins. Nature will eventually win. So it's not what I do or don't do will change the course, it might just delay it a little bit. Yeah, I'd probably make the trip.

Q: Did this film change your perspective a little bit, of being sort of just a sort of dust in the universe?

Chris: You really do understand your own insignificance. You understand the vastness of space. You really realize how insignificant and obsolete you are. It's humbling but I think that's one of the main undertones for these characters. They're on a mission to save mankind yet confronted with they're own irrelevance. I mean, that's a major contrast for your ego to try and tackle along this journey and I think that's what makes their psyche on edge.

Q: How hard was it for you shooting the space scenes against a green screen?

Chris: It was pretty easy. I think for the most part, there wasn't too many special effects that like required imagination. Most things were tangible. We had amazing sets that you could touch and feel and smell. Most of the special effects were kind of put in, in post so… So for the most part we all kind of had a playground to have fun on.

Q: Do you think that movies can help human beings to be better?

Chris: I think movies are more capable of that than anything else in the world. I think that movies have a way of touching people that nothing else can, whether it's a piece of art, a political speaker, even maybe second to personal experience. Movies have a way of really transcending those things and hitting the human core.

Q: For instance? For you.

Chris: Well, I mean, for me, it's not like I'm racist, but if you go see American History X, that's a movie that opens eyes. Those are the types of movies that I think can change people. I remember the first time I saw American Beauty. It was such a wonderful movie. Such a great movie. It has a way of explaining something that no book could. Movies are so integrated with music and tone and performance and color and you get lost in it. You literally lose yourself in it.

Q: When you choose your roles, do you have this in the back of your mind?

Chris: Absolutely.

Q: That is sort of responsibility.

Chris: Well, the tricky thing is that I'm at a point in my career where I kind of am taking whatever work I can get. If you're Tom Cruse, or Tom Hanks and you get every script under the sun, sure, then you can choose to do a movie like Philadelphia that is so politically driven with a deep message that people can wake up to, then you are blessed. That's a luxury. At this point if one of those scripts came my way, I'd be doing back flips you know. That's like the dream. For now I'm just trying to do whatever I can to pay bills and keep the trajectory going the way it is, but that is obviously the goal.

Q: You know the new generation changes. They want something very easy in their movies: action, science fiction. Very easy, no implication, they refuse to go see Babel. Babel was a flop here. So, don't you think that too much ideas in your movies.

Chris: Too much Ideas?

Q: Too much. Religion, aliens, science...

Chris: Meaning for that audience?

Q: Yeah, for the new audience. It's just a question. I can make a mistake but looking at a new box office every week?

Chris: Well I think… It's a tough question.

Q: We don't know but they just wanted an opinion about new generation because you know in the seventies, all the young people went to see…

Chris: Are you talking about the Americans?

Q: It's the same all over the world. Perhaps just in France. (International reporter's question) Yeah, I know but you have a different type of politics and you produce so many movies of quality.

Chris: Are you French?

Q: No, I am Italian but I live here. But all over the world it is the same. Movies like Eddie Murphy are first from the first week.

Chris: Absolutely. Well some of that responsibility has to come upon the film makers. I mean how many Babbles are out there? For every one Babel there's ten Norbits. So it's not like we fold the market with stellar film. I think that's part of the reason. I kind of feel like that when a good movie comes out, people do go see it. Maybe I run in different circles that are more film oriented but I saw Babel. Everyone I know saw Babel. I don't think the box office has ever really reflected… I'm sure even in the eighties, you know, look at the crap that came out in the eighties. Have the politically charged films with the right messages ever dominated in the box office? I don't know that they ever have. The 70s was the golden era of films. I don't think any era will ever be like the seventies. We couldn't make a bad movie in the Seventies. Movies that came out in the seventies were iconic. I mean the list goes on and on. I don't know whether it's the director or the studios or the scripts. I can't tell which came first, the chicken or the egg. I don't know where the buck stops.

[spoiler alert]

Q: You sacrifice yourself in this movie.

Chris: Well if I was given an opportunity…I mean everyone dies it's a nice notion to think that if you could somehow calculate your own death… I mean if it's random, if all of the sudden someone's in the middle of the street and a car's coming, do you have the impulse to save them. That's different than someone actually saying, "All right, I'm giving you the option, you have time to reflect, think, make a decision. You can sacrifice yourself for mankind. I mean I would probably do it for one human being I mean the fact is like I said everyone dies. It's pretty rare that you get a opportunity to die for someone or something.

Q: Have you heard anything about the marketing of the film? How it will be presented?

Chris: I don't know. It'll be tricky because it does have a… but like most any Boyle films, I mean you can watch Twenty Eight Days Later and it seems like a zombie movie. The fact is that it really has undertones of morality and responsibility and you know, real beautiful undertones to it but on the surface it looks like a zombie movie. So I don't know how they'll market this but they will try to incorporate god and religion and anger. It won't be easy.

Q: How would you sum it up then?

Chris: Um, man… I don't know.

Q: What was it about the movie that made you want to take it, aside from working with such incredible talents, what about the story connected with you?

Chris: To be honest, the story wasn't my favorite. It's not exactly a script that I would jump to do. It's Danny that kind of persuaded me. For the most part, whenever you can kind of dance with an internal struggle, I think your ego is a major part of this. I think one of the major things is each character has a different process of experiencing what's happening to them. For example, Cliff's character Searle becomes kind of obsessed with the notion of god and enveloping in light and literally, I don't know if it came across in the film, he starts teetering on a very borderline obsession with it. With dying, with giving himself over to the crew. He did it blindly. There was no obsession with self. His level of self relevance was still at a healthy kind of place to do it. Pinbacker, kind of the other end of the spectrum, where someone who has been drunk with this power, drunk with life, drunk with the notion of… essentially what the son is regardless of what you believe in god, whether you think it's a man in the sky with a beard and a robe or whether you just think god is the energy that connects all of us in the universe you know. The common thread that binds us all. That's essentially what he becomes drunk with and doesn't want anyone else to have it. His psyche is warped and I think that is where each persons ego has to play this dangerous dance along the way. I don't know how to sum that up in a nut shell.

Q: That's why you're an actor and not in marketing! [laughter]

Chris: Yeah, exactly!

[end]

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Staci Layne Wilson reporting