Monsters and Critics
by Maura Reilly
May 10, 2008
Four years ago a then relatively unknown actor, Lee Pace, put his trust in director Tarsem, packed his bags and strapped himself in for an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Finally, after all that time and 17 countries later the film they created together, THE FALL, is opening in LA and New York on May 9th. Pace sat down with a group of journalists recently to talk about the experience.
From their first fateful meeting, the actor and the director’s relationship proved to be a friendly one:
“There wasn’t really a script that we would be shooting from, but they sent me his commercial reel and they sent me the French movie Ponette. I said, ‘I can fit a meeting in at 8 o’clock on a Saturday morning.’ Which if you know Tarsem 8 o’clock on a Saturday morning doesn’t exist in normal life. I came down and he pitched the whole movie to me, showed me some pictures and talked about how he wanted to work with the little girl.
He mentioned that I would be in a wheelchair for two months. [Through a series of misunderstandings with a casting agent, the rest of the cast and the crew were led at first to believe that Pace, like the character he portrayed was a paraplegic.] It sounded like such a crazy, big adventure that I was like, yeah all right, I’m game! It sounds fun. I’m really glad I did take that leap of faith with him.”
The actor wasn’t entirely sure how his resume ended up on the director’s desk.
“I don’t understand because the only thing he’d ever seen me do was “Soldier’s Girl” which is a movie I played a transsexual in. Somehow he saw that and decided I was a good fit for this. I’ll never know why but I’m grateful that he did. Literally in that meeting he gave me the pitch and was like, ‘I just wanted to make sure you had a penis.’ I didn’t have to show it to him or anything. He’s like, ‘You’ve got the part.’ And that was it.”
THE FALL is about Alexandria (first-time actress Catinca Untaru), a young Romanian girl living and working in the orange groves of 1915 Los Angeles with her family. She has fallen and broken her collarbone. While convalescing in a hospital, she meets Roy (Pace), a Hollywood stuntman, who has similarly had a fall and now cannot walk. The charismatic but jilted Roy begins to tell Alexandria as he describes it, an “epic tale” of heroes, villains, action and adventure. We witness the fantastical world Alexandria envisions, using people she interacts with at the hospital as characters in the story.
“The thing about THE FALL that was so interesting was that it was kind of like shooting two different movies. We shot all the reality stuff and then we went away to shoot the fantasy stuff. The reality stuff is all about what I know: all about connecting, trying to get things simple and honest. It was just me and Catinca on a bed with a curtain around us. It was very private. All the fantasy stuff….it was these incredibly big pictures.
There were times that Tarsem was on one mountain, we were on another mountain and then there was that red carriage way down in the valley. We spent the whole day, ‘A little bit to your right! Ok, now turn and say your line!’ It’s not a really easy way of working. What I learned from this movie is that you’ve got to be game for anything. If you take yourself too seriously…I know a lot of actors who would have been like, ‘You could have had a double do this. I don’t need to be here for this!’”
“I think to a large part it’s a movie about movies. The little girl has a pre-cinematic imagination. I know now when I imagine things I honestly think I imagine things in coverage sometimes. I’ve seen so many movies now that it’s so part of the way I tell a story that I think when my dreams happen it’s a master and then it goes into coverage then there’s a fade out. But she’s never seen a movie before so she hears Indian and she uses whatever association she wants to it. She doesn’t imagine it in a literal way. I think that’s one of the special things that Tarsem caught in the movie.
He let it be anything he wanted and followed ideas he thought were beautiful and interesting; like that red carriage in the middle of the desert. I remember when we were shooting it thinking how striking an image it was. I think that’s what he was going after, that striking, bold idea. But I look at it now, after the four years and knowing what he was going in his own life, and I see a visual representation of loneliness and isolation. [That’s] what the movie is about, these people trying to connect.”
“One thing I also love about the movie is that it follows his idea of shared imagination. So although you’re meant to think it’s her imagination, I think it’s also a little bit of Roy’s imagination, especially how bloody it gets at times. You can’t imagine a little girl would think like that. I think he does. When he’s killing off the bandits in those brutal ways I think that’s his cynicism and his lust for death that’s finding its way into the story.”
Did that mean the subject matter was going to be pulled back for that all-important PG-13 rating?
“Every decision made was all Tarsem. He didn’t have a producer telling him what to do. I remember when we were up in the Himalayas, in Ladakh, and he wanted the elephant to come up there. That scene where they get off the elephant and the Mystic pops out of the tree, that was shot at Pangong Lake which is right on the border of India and Tibet. It was something like 19,000 feet. It was incredibly high up. The elephant made it about half way up and was passing out because of the oxygen. He had to turn around and go back down.”
“Anything Tarsem wanted he got. If he wanted a certain orchestra, he paid for a certain orchestra and he got it. That makes the music as good as it is. If he wanted it this way it was going to be this way. There was no watering it down. He wasn’t thinking about his audience. He wasn’t thinking about making a movie that kids could go see. He wanted to make the movie he wanted to make. I admire that.”
Pace has nothing but glowing words for his director: “We’ve talked so much and he gives really great movie recommendations. You can kind of see the things that have inspired him that have found their way visually [into the film], little quotes in the visual vocabulary of this movie. He’s an incredible person to work with and I’d do anything for him.”
The film was shot over the course of four years. Tarsem would be working on a commercial in some exotic location and tack on a shot or two for THE FALL while there. Pace was really only present for the four months of principle photography. For these additional shots done over time, body doubles were used.
“The funniest thing is that the producer who went around the world getting these shots of the bandits going to Paris and the bandits going to Egypt and the bandits on The Great Wall, he’s got this collection of photos of all the doubles that they used and it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever seen: all of these crazy costumes on the weirdest little cast of people. The hardest person to find a double for is Marcus [Wesley] who played Otta Benga because he’s got this incredible body. They’d always [find] this pot-bellied little guy. They put the horns on him and no one is ever going to know the difference in the movie.”
Working opposite a youngster who was not only not a professional actress but also didn’t speak that much English was all part of the journey for Pace.
“It was a mixed bag. There are some things that were great because she’s totally pure and she doesn’t have a bunch of baggage. The experience of shooting with her over those two months that we shot the reality stuff changed a lot. At the beginning you actually see us meet on camera in that first scene where she comes in and takes the note, her being scared and hanging in the doorway and not really knowing how to approach me.
But then we got closer. We would pull the curtain around [the hospital bed] and she really had no idea that she was being filmed. We put a hole in the curtain to get the coverage. She would complain about Tarsem and there would be laughter in the next room. And she’d be like, ‘What are they laughing at?’ She just had no idea that there was a mic on her. But then she figured it out and that was totally a different way of working with her.”
“I remember we were doing that whole scene where I was drinking and she was crying. She was just not paying attention. She was messing with her head band and we’d have to cut. Or she decided that she was hungry and we’d have to cut. She’d whine and be like, ‘Roy I don’t want you to die.’ It was the worst acting you’ve ever seen. I remember saying, ‘Catinca, we’re all here to get your performance right now.
You have to really look at me like you love me and you have to fight for me to live. You have to act now. This is what I am doing. I’m playing a character so that’s what you need to do. And you can do it. You’re a good enough actress that to do that.’ Once she kind of thought [about it] I remember looking at her, and she did a take where in her beautiful way she says, “I don’t want you to die.” It was an interesting progression working with her.”
“Catinca’s got a big imagination and I think she doesn’t edit herself. She doesn’t think about how this is going to look. She doesn’t think about how she’s being perceived really. That’s kind of neat. I wish I had that again. Maybe if I work on it I can get it back.”
Lee was asked about his first foray into network television: the short-lived cult-favorite show, “Wonderfalls”:
“We were all trying to do our best on it but everyone knew that it was a fight with Fox. Fox did not like the lesbian story line in it. We were on the same year as “The OC”. We would do a whole episode and the cast would be like, ‘Well are there any notes? Is there anything we can do differently?’ And they’re like, ‘No, you’re great.’ But you know that there are probably 10 executives on the set of “The OC” debating whether or not Misha Barton should wear espadrilles. It was a frustrating experience.”
With “Pushing Daisies” it’s been the complete opposite: [“ABC has been] been nothing but encouraging and supportive on whichever way we wanted to make the show happen. They still have opinion, the studio and stuff. I think it’s the idea of this show and the idea of the show [that] really works. It makes people feel good. I think the executives have got really great ideas. So that when there are those note calls they bring really cool ideas to the table as well. It’s not like, ‘Limit that,’ ‘Don’t do that,’ ‘That’s a bad idea,’ ‘Can’t you do that instead?’ Everyone’s pitching in and trying to let it be as good as it can be. Part of that is making it maybe a little less weird. It doesn’t have to be so bizarre that it turns people off. It’s a pie maker that brings dead things back to life. It’s a weird idea already. Any way we can make it palatable is good.”
Before heading back to work in June, Pace has been touring the world, promoting for the show.
“I went to London and Australia and South America. I’m going to go to Mexico next week. That’s been really fun. They give you a couple of days to go and look at stuff. I brought my dad to Australia and we went fishing. I had a great time in Brazil. What happens in Brazil, stays in Brazil. It’s neat to see how much they like the show in other places. You put Japanese in our mouths and we’re Japanese. You put Portuguese in our mouths and we’re Brazilian.”
Lee has been in the enviable position of having played a number of diverse roles; from his Golden Globe nominated performance as a transsexual chorus girl in “Soldier’s Girl” to his recent foray into romantic comedies opposite the adorable Amy Adams in MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY. But it’s Ned, the pie maker on ABC’s series “Pushing Daisies” that’s the most recognizable for Pace on screen.
“The odd thing is that ‘Pushing Daisies’ is the closest to me and, at that same time, the odd man out. All that I’ve done is kind of weird. It’s a great character written for me and a character similar to me. I don’t touch dead things back to life or I don’t bake pies very well, but it’s similar to me in a way. It’s odd to me that that’s the most popular thing I’ve done because it’s not representative of [my work].”
With stardom at hand are the offers getting bigger and better?
“The funny thing is the parts that you want you still have to fight for. I think that’s true for every actor. You start getting the parts and then you don’t want to be perceived a certain way. Ned is this sickeningly adorable character. I love doing it with ‘Pushing Daisies’ but the kinds of romantic comedies that came my way I’d read these and I’d be like, ‘No one is going to want to watch this movie. I will slit my wrists if I have to try and pull something like that off. I can’t do it!’ The good thing about it is that I’m making money now which I’m able to say, ‘I don’t want to do that movie’ and I’m not going to feel guilty about passing on it. I can wait till the good movie comes around.”
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