| IESB Exclusive Interview: Michael Stahl-David, Star of Cloverfield! | ||||
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Michael Stahl-David stars next month as one of the leads, Rob Hawkins, in the ever-enigmatic Cloverfield. {sidebar id=1}He talked 1:1 with the IESB about what it was like participating in such a secret project, how he and his character are similar and where hed like to see his career go in the future. IESB: How did you become involved with Cloverfield? Stahl-David: It was just another audition that I went on. There was no script and I put myself on tape in New York. Right from the beginning I felt that this was a character that fits very comfortably with me. Then they said, Ok, we like the tape. Why dont you fly yourself out to LA? So I coughed up the money and flew myself out. I met a bunch of people there and then came back to New York. Then they flew me out again. Then I got the offer after that round. IESB: Was the audition a lot of improv? Stahl-David: No, theres a good story. In the final round of auditions, the scenes that they had were these scenes that kind of showed the tenderness between the two characters which, you know, is kind of the backdrop for the main action of the film. They wanted to see what we would do in very specific circumstances so they had this scene from so weird -- I dont know an episode of Alias. It was totally convoluted and strange. It was, I heard you were a spy and you wake up in Russia and youre gonna get killed! It was the weirdest and hardest thing to do in an audition and I think they realized that. So JJ said, Alright, Im gonna write a monologue if you could just hold on ten minutes. He walked over to a computer and sat down and, in ten minutes, wrote a monologue and handed it to me. So then I paced around the room and learned and did that. IESB: Can you talk about your character at all? Stahl-David: Sure. So, Rob is a 20-something guy who is not a very extraordinary guy. He kind of has amounted to about as much as people thought he would. But now hes got this great offer for a job in Japan so hes gonna leave his friends and this girl that hes always kind of been in love with but has been too afraid to do anything about and go to Japan. And thats what the movie is about, at the beginning. Were seeing a going away party for him. When catastrophe strikes, things become clear kind of quickly whats important to him. Then he spends the rest of this movie trying to get to this girl. IESB: Were you surprised how big the movie has gotten just through its marketing? Stahl-David: Yeah, I was. I wasnt quite prepared for that. We shot the trailer before I had even seen a script before the script was done, I think. I thought, this is strange. I didnt realize how well it was going to work. Its hard to withhold information in the information age. It just excites people. Stahl-David: No, not really. My better friends, actually, would rather not know. I think they enjoy the surprise of it. I did always feel like its a really well, I have no temptation to tell any secrets. I dont want to disappoint JJ and also its just so much fun. IESB: Are you a monster-movie fan? Stahl-David: No, not particularly. I actually havent seen very many. I saw The Host last year with my girlfriend and that was fun but its not a genre that has ever really appealed to me. IESB: So you never imagined, when you pursued an acting career, that youd be doing something like this? Stahl-David: No. This is never what I expected myself to be doing. I didnt even see myself doing films. Im a theater actor. I moved to New York hoping to get on-stage which Ive just now finally done, really. I ended up doing tv and now movies. It was not at all what I expected and I really didnt know how it was going to turn out. I think we were all kind of unsure how this would turn out. But as we started the film as the trailer came together we got a sense as to really what the vision was coming together and we all felt pretty confident in what we were doing. IESB: Matt Reeves mentioned that there was a lot of improvisation in the script, both in dialogue and in physicalization. How was that experience? Stahl-David: In certain scenes, if you could physicalize something, it would give the animators something to do. Give them something to play off of really strong. Normally in a scene, youre thinking about what you give your scene partner to play off of, but in this there was this invisible scene partner that if you did some big motion that was really going to help them, you know, it might feel ridiculous for you, in the moment, to do it but it was really to help them. IESB: Did you end up doing multiple takes and having to repeat great moments of improv? Stahl-David: It wasnt exactly really clever stuff that wed have to repeat. It was more like us trying to make the dialogue as fresh and believable as possible and that didnt really involve a lot of clever writing so much as just rewording to make it feel like something I would say. Movie lines that would work in a traditional Hollywood movie wouldnt work in this context. IESB: After you were hired, were you given the script bit by bit or did you get to read everything right away? Stahl-David: It was everything on the first day of rehearsal. The first four days of quote, unquote rehearsal. It was really just us sitting around. So I didnt get the script until I was already out in LA ready to shoot the movie. Well, I dont know if I would say ready. But we didnt get the script until right before we were going to shoot. IESB: How much was involved before shooting getting to build the relationships with the other actors?
IESB: Are you still aiming to pursue theater or has the experience made you more interested in doing films? Stahl-David: I think Ill always do both. Or I hope Ill always do both now. I did just finish doing a play and it was a good experience to do but it also makes me value what it is to have to do a scene for just one day. Its a different challenge on-stage. Shooting a scene one day, you might do twelve takes, yeah, but thats it. Theres a freedom in that. IESB: Film-wise, do you have anything coming up? Stahl-David: Ive got a movie called The Project thats being screened at Slamdance. Actually, its like the week after Cloverfield comes out. Theres that and then, no, Im not sure. Theres a couple of things Im interested in doing but nothing I know about right now. IESB: Any chance of a Star Trek cameo? Stahl-David: (Laughs) I think that ship has sailed. But thats ok. One JJ Abrams movie a year is good enough for me. IESB: Is there any role that youve always wanted to play? Stahl-David: Honestly, for years I wanted to do Warren in This is Our Youth, which is a Kenneth Lonergan play. Now its more about the story to me than the role. Im interested in doing stories that will spark a conversation across lines. Something about Iraq that maybe looks at the Iraqi point of view or something like The Wire that looks at the point of views of both the drug dealers and the cops. Theres something about that that is challenging and, politically, is artful. Its not too heavy-handed and its not trying to teach you a lesson necessarily. I like stuff that has to do with whats going on in the world. IESB: Any interest on getting on the other side of the camera? Stahl-David: Maybe someday. I dont really know how films work yet. Im learning, but it would be a long time before I got on the other end of a camera. I can see myself directing a play, though. I hope I get to do that someday. IESB: When youre working on film like these where the creatures are not only CGI, but also top-secret, did you have any idea of what you were reacting to? Stahl-David: We got to see renderings that they had on the computers and, in one case, a really amazing model. A wax model they had built that looked just terrifying. So we had somewhat of sense. We got to know the style. But they were good about that. Of letting us have some idea of what it was going to be. IESB: And you shot entirely in LA? Stahl-David: No, we shot ten days in New York as well. IESB: Was the LA shooting a lot of green screen sets? Stahl-David: We only did one sequence, actually, that was mostly green screen. Mostly it was fully built sets. Then we did a good amount of stuff, actually, on-location in LA. Downtown LA that dressed to look like New York and other places. We did a shot that was literally on the grass at the Paramount lot. IESB: When you went in for auditions, did the film have a title? Stahl-David: Well back then the industry name was Cloverfield. That was the secret title that quickly became the real title. IESB: When you were telling friends and family what you have been cast for, did you have any idea how big it was? Stahl-David: Not really. I mean, people stressed to me that JJ Abrams was a big deal but I didnt really realize how big a deal he was. I didnt know, really, much about him. I knew it was a big movie, but I didnt know if it was something I was going to be embarrassed of or what. It wasnt until we got the script and that I met them and talked to Matt that I realized they were really smart guys and knew how to work with actors. IESB: Did you bring a lot of yourself to the character? Stahl-David: I think we always do that. I use substitutions from my own life to try and really put myself in the position that the characters in. In different scenes, I would imagine people in my own life. You do whatever you need to get where theres trouble. In a more general way, theres a part of myself that is Rob. The whole time, hes someone whos not particularly macho or brave or an alpha male kind of guy. So I guess I used that, too. Related Articles: IESB EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Cloverfield Director Matt Reeves! In case you missed the 5 minutes of CLOVERFIELD that were released late last week, check out the widget below! Grab it and enter a sweet contest to win a hometown screening of the film for you and 30 of your best friends!
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Stahl-David: We were all in town together for about a week and half beforehand. We definitely spent some time together. We kind of, you know, commiserated with the weirdness of being involved in this thing that we didnt know what it was. That was definitely a bonding agent for us. Its a great group of people so we all got along. We went out and had drinks together. Wed stay up talking and it was real good. 
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