"Where Movie Critics Get A Taste Of Their Own Medicine"
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AN INTERVIEW WITH:
DARYL HANNAH
by Peter Sobczynski

July 12, 2003

Daryl Hannah walks into the room where we are scheduled to talk but almost before anything can be said, she groans and collapses to the ground with a full-body flop that would have done Chevy Chase proud in his heyday.

As interview beginnings go, having your subject crash to the ground before a word is spoken is a less than auspicious way of kicking things of. Before I can call the concierge, however, she picks herself up and brushes herself off. The collapse was a joke partially inspired by the exhaustion caused by a combination of a long bike ride, a sweltering early July afternoon and the possibly ill-advised stop at a pancake house which involved sampling the vast majority of the menu offerings.

Hannah, best known for her iconic roles in films such as "Blade Runner" and "Splash", has returned to her hometown of Chicago to talk up her latest film, the weird and wonderful "Northfork". In the film, written and directed by the Polish Brothers (whose previous works include the Siamese-twin drama "Twin Falls Idaho" and the karaoke-themed "Jackpot", which Hannah also appeared in), Hannah plays Flower, an literal angel who is in the town of Northfork, Montana (which is being evacuated so that it can be flooded to make way for a hydroelectric plant) searching, along with other angels (including one played by Anthony Edwards), for an unknown missing member of their group. Strange and beautiful, the film mixes silly comedy, moving drama and surreal imagery into a film that defies description (the closest comparison might be that it suggests a cross between "Wings of Desire" and "Days of Heaven" as conceived by David Lynch) but once seen, it will linger in the mind for a long time afterwards.

"Strange and beautiful" are also perfectly adequate words to describe the characters that Hannah tends to gravitate towards-she has an off-kilter spaciness to her that is genuinely fresh and appealing and when she is playing characters that are not quite normal by ordinary standards, as she does here, the results are usually quite striking. Here, Hannah discusses the appeal of oddball characters, her work on "Northfork" and also talks about her upcoming role as a one-eyed assassin in Quentin Tarantino’s eagerly anticipated "Kill Bill".

Daryl Hannah

What got you interested in acting in the first place?

I started acting when I was living here and I was about 11 and the whole impetus was that I could live in an imaginary world. Most of the time, I don’t really get as thorough of an opportunity to do that as I would like. "Northfork" was a really good opportunity to do that as was "Blade Runner" and a few other things I’ve done like "Dancing at the Blue Iguana"-which wasn’t an imaginary world but it was a world that I had certainly never experienced before-where I can just submerge myself in a different reality.

Seeing as how "Northfork" is so decidedly odd and unlike most other films in its mixture of comedy, wrenching drama and surreal fantasy, what was your reaction upon reading the script for the first time? Were you able to fully grasp what the Polish Brothers were going for right off the bat or did it take a while to sink in?

Well, I was privy to the entire evolution of the script. This was the first script that the Polish Brothers had ever wrote-it even came before the first short film that they did-and they were living in my guest house while writing the first draft. They obviously were unknowns and couldn’t get the budget together to make the film at that time. It was a different version of the story; a lot of it took place in a circus and a lot of the backstory of "Twin Falls Idaho" grew out of that as well. After they did "Twin Falls Idaho" and "Jackpot", they established enough of a reputation to do "Northfork" and over that time, they continued to rewrite it a few times. I knew the boys for a long time and I knew their aesthetic and sense of humor and taste and I knew that it would be an interesting movie. I didn’t have the reaction to it that I might have had if I came to it cold turkey.

It reminds me of "Blade Runner" a lot because in "Blade Runner", I was taken to a different reality. When I would walk onto that set every morning, I was in another world and that was similar to this experience. The sets were something from our own world and the costumes were made for me. Nobody went out and bought the clothes-they were made for each character’s body and everything was creatively thought out and planned out. To me, that is the epitome of filmmaking-you take something that you can only imagine in your head and make it visceral.

Obviously there are great films that are reality-based like "Dog Day Afternoon", but if you have that cinematic tool, it is a shame that people don’t occasionally use it to make something that can only be imagined. In "Blade Runner", the vision of the future was not the vision that we were used to seeing where everything was clean and perfect. Nowadays that is typical but back then, it was weird to think of the future as the dirty, grimy place with punk rock and Asian influences. To me, "Northfork" is like that because most films present angels in a certain way and that is not how Michael and Mark imagine them.

In many of your best known films-certainly "Blade Runner" and "Splash", as well as "Northfork"-you play characters who are outsiders visiting strange and unfamiliar worlds. When you are playing a character along those lines, do you find yourself approaching it differently than you would a role in which you play an ordinary person?

There is a lot more leeway because you aren’t limited by anything. It is a lot more fun. I find that when I play reality-based characters, it is only as fun for me if I have a lot of time to do research. If I don’t it just isn’t exciting but if I do, it can be fun because I can learn about that person and the world that they live in and I can become somebody else. It is not as difficult to do that if the character is only based in your imagination.

You’ve worked with a lot of famous directors over your career, such as Ron Howard, Ridley Scott, Brian DePalma, Oliver Stone, John Sayles, Quentin Tarantino. In general, what is it that makes up a successful actor-director collaboration and, more specifically, how has your working relationship with the Polish Brothers themselves evolved over the course of the films you have done together?

I think that a successful actor-director relationship-being a burgeoning director myself-has a couple of aspects to it. The first thing is to create a safe and positive environment so that people can create and take chances without being afraid of making fools of themselves. The second thing is to understand the actor’s process. John Sayles is brilliant at that: he used to be an actor himself, like Quentin, and he gave me this huge backstory for my character. He did all my homework for me, he wrote out all the stuff that actors spend hours and hours trying to make up.

With the Polish Brothers, I have known them for a long time and I have a good friendship and relationship with them. They are very quiet and subtle. They don’t do a lot of takes because they know exactly what they want. In "Jackpot", there was a lot of improvisation but this film was quite a bit different because it was much more structured and written. They would place us exactly where they wanted us to stand.

Later this year, you are going to be appearing in Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, "Kill Bill", which is already being described as one of the most violent American movies ever made...

I’m the kind of person who goes to a movie and if there is anything violent, I have to cover my eyes. I’ve seen some of "Kill Bill" and I haven’t had to do that once, which is pretty weird for me. Quentin’s violence in the film is done with such a specific style and humor that it is violent, but it is almost like watching a cartoon because it is so stylized...

Sort of what like Brian DePalma does in a lot of his films?

Even more so because this has Quentin’s pizzazz and humor in it. Brian DePalma is flashy but there is a lot of darkness. With Quentin, there is something funny about it.

From what I’ve read, "Kill Bill" is sort of his homage to 1970’s Hong Kong action films...

It is an homage to 70’s Hong Kong films, Japanese anime-which there is quite a bit of in the film-and spaghetti westerns. He made us watch all of these things. I think I have 75 videotapes of those genres lying around now.

Assuming that you didn’t have much of a working knowledge of those genres before, did going through what amounted to a crash course on them allow you to develop a taste for those kinds of films?

Totally. I love the "Fistful of Dollars" trilogy. The other day, Quentin and the editing staff were all going to see the re-release of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" with a bunch of added scenes. Everyone was going and Quentin called at the last minute but I had to take my dog to the vet and I couldn’t make it. I was so bummed because I have become obsessed with them.

Time for the obligatory "Blade Runner" question. Obviously, the film was not particularly well-received on its initial release by either critics or audiences but it later became an enormous cult hit throughout the world. For you, was there a specific point when you realized that the film had gone from being a flop to one of the most studied and analyzed films of the past twenty years?

When the re-release of the director’s cut came out, I went to go see it at the Nuart in Los Angeles and I couldn’t get in because the line was around the block. I had no idea that it was that popular. I was standing in line forever and they were turning away so many people!

Back to "Northfork", what is it that you hope that viewers take from the film after seeing it?

I hope that they hold these images that they see like they would a beautiful painting or an Ansel Adams photograph but I hope that they are also moved by it. I hope that they are moved even if they don’t quite know why.

-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2003 Peter Sobczynski
All rights reserved.
Used with permission
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