|
James Marsters is taking
on yet another villain, this time the evil Lord Piccolo in
DRAGONBALL: EVOLUTION, a live-action motion picture based on the
popular Japanese manga created by Akira Toriyama.
{sidebar id=1}Bringing a rich mythology
to a cast of rising young stars and veteran acclaimed actors,
DRAGONBALL sees Justin Chatwin take on the role of the heroic Goku, a
powerful warrior who protects the Earth from an endless stream of
rogues bent on dominating the Universe and controlling the mystical
objects from which the film takes its name.
At the press day for
DRAGONBALL, I sat down with James Marsters to talk about why its
so good to be bad.
IESB: How did you first
become aware of Dragonball?
James Marsters: I was in
Toys R Us with my son, who was 7 years old at the time, which was
about six years ago. He picked up a DVD off of the shelf and said,
What do you think about this, Dad?, and it said, 13 and
over. I looked it over and said, Tell you what, lets watch
it together and, if it gets too crazy, I might have to pull the DVD
out. The very first scene that we saw was between Piccolo and
Gokus son.
In that story, Goku had been killed and the only person
that could train his son was Piccolo. He has to get trained because
there are these villains that are coming that are going to destroy
Earth and he is the only one left on Earth who can help. So, Piccolo
is on the cliff meditating, as Piccolo does, and thinking deep
thoughts, and the little kid climbs up the cliff and says, Train
me! Youre the only one who can! The Earth is in peril! My dad is
dead. Theres no one else. And, Piccolo looks over and goes,
Get away from me kid! Leave me be! The kid says, Train me!,
and Piccolo just looks over and goes, Okay, and then he smashes
the kid with his fist, down into the granite. He comes around,
drop-kicks the kid back up into the air and blood is flying off the
kids lip, and then he comes back around and drives him like a
comet, back into the ground.
At that point, I almost ripped the DVD
out. I thought, My son is 7 years old. This is insane! What was I
thinking? And then, this shot comes along of the little kid laying
on the ground, and the dust parts and you see that his eye is swollen
and hes bleeding, and he starts laughing at Piccolo, as if to say,
I beat you. You will do as I want. I wanted you to train me, and
now you will. Haha. I looked over at my son and he wasnt
terrorized or frightened, but he was just entranced by the strength
of this kid. I thought, Lets buy another one of these DVDs and
keep watching this. At this point, I think Ive seen about 85%
of Dragonball,
Dragonball Z and GT.
Ive seen everything that I could find.
IESB: When you work on
something that already has a following, how do you strike a balance
between being respectful of the material while still being creative
as an artist? How much input did you give into the creation of
Piccolo in this film?
JM:You have to be aware of the main themes and
the larger things that drive the character because some of the
surface things are going to change. I wanted to remain as close to
the anime as I possibly could. I wanted to change as little as
possible. My fight was just to make my character old, decrepit and
ugly. In the anime, Lord Piccolo has a walking stick and a hood, and
hes an old, cowered man. Its only at the end of the season that
he rips off the hood and you can see that hes all muscular, and he
fights Goku, and its a big surprise.
The only difference is that
we dont do the reveal. We just start him revealed, and you can see
that hes muscular. For me, I kept saying to the make-up people,
Older, uglier, more lines. I dont want my girlfriend to kiss me
when she comes to Durango. I want her to run for the hills. And, I
was also very specific that I wanted to be green. Earlier on, there
was some discussion of whether or not I should be green and I told
Jim, Unless Piccolo is green, both of our careers are over.
Its still the Piccolo that everyone knows, hes just really
angry.
IESB: What did you like
about Lord Piccolo? Is there any upside to him?
JM:Oh, very much, yeah. Piccolo is not a nice
person. Hes not trying to make friends, but hell never let you
down because hes living up to his own code. I always thought he
was a really wonderful character because of that. I just took the
character and asked, What would make me so angry that Id want
to destroy every human being on earth? Everybody has buttons. You
can do something to anybody and theyll get that mad, so what
happened to him?
IESB: How many hours did
you end up in make-up?
JM: The first time we did
the make-up, it took 14 hours and it was nobodys fault but my own.
I kept saying, Uglier, more lines, more age. Finally, after 14
hours, the make-up artist just slapped me upside the head and said,
Im done! Go to set! That was it. But, then we got Edward
French to come in and do the make-up and he got it down to 4 hours. I
shut up and let him do his job.
IESB: Did you do much
fight training for this? Does having previous experience make that
any easier, or is each experience different?
JM:This was just a whole other level. When I
graduated high school, I thought I was ready for college. And then,
you get to college and its just a whole, huge universe. I was
actually a little bit over-confident as I approached the project and,
when I started training at 8711, I thought, Hey, I can do all of
this stuff. Ive worn make-up. Ive done wirework. Ive done a
lot of stunts. None of this is going to be too much of a stretch.
Then, I got in with these guys, who have done 300,
the Spider-Man movies
and the Bourne movies,
and most of the really great fight scenes that Ive seen in the
last 10 years, and they introduced me to what the level really was in
Hollywood. For the first month, it was just standing in my own sweat,
day after day, conditioning. Then, it was practicing on the wire and
starting to get the choreography in, when we got to Mexico. And,
thank goodness for the conditioning because Mexico was at high
elevation and I fainted, on the first day. I was flat on my back.
IESB: How was it to work
with Justin Chatwin?
JM: We were told that we
would be doing a lot of our own fights and wirework, so it was really
about building trust. You need to know the person. What I found with
Justin was a really clear mind. He was very brave and willing to
fight through pain. At one point, he broke his toe, which sounds like
a small thing, but if youre doing Kung Fu, a toe break is almost
as bad as a groin pull, as far as taking you out of the game, and we
didnt even shut the set down for half a day. He went to a trailer,
got taped up, and was right back on the set. I dont even think he
took any Tylenol. They wanted him to take some morphine, but he was
just like, Give me an aspirin. Lets go!
So, I developed a
strong sense of respect for him. A lot of times, when you put actors
in large stunts, theyll just freak out, but he never did. When
youve got millions riding on you and youre Goku, you have to
keep going. A lot of the time that hes screaming in the film, its
because hes stomping on a broken toe.
IESB: Did Justin hurt you
at all, during the stunts?
JM: Justin can punch. Ive
still got a separated clavicle. Every hit was always to the right
chest. He hurt me good.
IESB: How did playing Lord
Piccolo compare to playing Spike?
JM: Piccolo is less
tortured than Spike. Piccolo is asexual. Spike was always confident,
except for his love life, which mixed him up a little bit. Piccolo
just does not have that side to him. He is not male or female. So, he
has some of the same colors as the darker aspects of Spike because he
enjoys hurting people and being really angry, but just take the sex
away.
IESB: Is it past the time
where you would do a series for Spike?
JM:I think if we did that wed have to do some
camera tests with lighting because Spike doesnt age and I have.
Or, you could say hes drinking pigs blood, so hes aging
slowly. I always thought that one of the cool things about being a
vampire is that youre immortal and, if you take that away, its
not quite so cool. The good news is that I never got any fill-light.
Sarah Michelle Gellar got all the fill-light and I got all the slant
shadow light because they wanted me villainous, which was cool. If
they put me in that costume and actually gave me some fill-light, it
might actually look about the same now. But, wed have to test that
because I dont want Spike to age.
IESB: Having played Spike
for so long, what did you learn about yourself, as an actor, getting
to play so many sides of that character?
JM: Buffy
really cracked my head open. Ultimately, I grew a lot, but I had to
come face-to-face with a lot of my fear and a lot of the fountain of
my anger. The truth is that the writers on Buffy
were extremely brave. They were writing about
the most embarrassing, the stupidest or the scariest thing theyd
ever done, or the thing that they were most ashamed of, and then they
would put a gossamer of fangs over that and send it out to the world.
Everyone on set knew how they were writing it. It was real. They just
stripped themselves naked, so to speak, week after week, and gave us
their souls. A lot of those things are universal, so to play it, you
have to own up to your own weaknesses. Usually, on television, you
basically tell the same story, every week.
You just dress it up with
a different guest star. Whereas on Buffy,
we really didnt have any idea what we were going to be doing the
next week. Buffy could be turned into a rat. People could fall in
love with each other. Anything could happen, which was actually very
scary. After they wanted my character to try to rape Buffy, I
realized that there really were no rules. I had to show up anytime,
five days a week, 24 hours a day, and do anything that they told me
to anyone that they told me to, and wear or not wear whatever they
told me to.
 Suddenly, I felt very, very vulnerable. And, normally,
thats not the case on television because its just the same
boring thing. You know what going to happen. It was a gift not to
know what was going to happen, but it was also terrifying. These
writers were writing about terrifying things, so we never knew what
the next terrifying thing was going to be.
IESB:
Torchwood, on the BBC, is really the first
show since Buffy that
has taken those same kinds of risks on television. How did you get
involved with that show and what was that experience like?
JM: The creator of
Torchwood, Russell T.
Davies, was the creator of the British version of
Queer as Folk, so I knew he was a writer of
substance and I had already heard what he was doing with Doctor
Who, but I was not yet aware of how deeply
subversive he was, as an artist. I went on the show once, and it was
a fabulous time. And then, a couple months after I shot it, I started
to hear that there was a homophobic backlash against the show, at
which point, the subversive artist in me went, Oh, my God, I drew
blood? Lets go back there! Lets cut deep this time!
At the
point that I found out there was a backlash, I became addicted to the
idea of getting back on the show. And, I will go back on that show as
many times as theyll let me, specifically because its
subversive in the same way that Buffy was
subversive. There are things that were told are true, like you can
shop for happiness, that are not true, and an artist has the
responsibility to tear away those lies. The show doesnt make
apologies and it doesnt mind if it freaks you out a little bit
IESB: How was John
Barrowman to work with?
JM:Hes great! Hes so like his character.
Hes a real natural-born leader. Hes very good at it, and really
naughty. He really is Captain Jack.
IESB: Youve played
villains so many times, but theyve all been so different from each
other. Are there specific things that you look for, when you take on
a role like that?
JM: Its just about
whether I understand the person. I dont really think of the world,
in terms of there being villains and heroes. There are people that
are destroying, for different reasons, and there are people that are
creating, for different reasons. Sometimes, you can be a villain one
year, and then learn your lesson and be a hero the next year. So, I
just have to read the script and say, Whats bugging this
person? What is the thing that theyre afraid of, thats making
them behave in this destructive way? And, if it makes sense, as a
human being, then okay. Thats why Ive played a lot of different
kinds of villains. Everybody has a different reason for wanting to
protect themselves, or wanting to attack before they get hit
themselves.
IESB: What was it about
Brainiac on Smallville
that appealed to you? Did it make it more exciting that you were the
first person to play him as a live-action character?
JM: Yes. I was interested
in the idea of playing a robot who really doesnt care about
people. Its all about objective. Hes such a complex program
that he can fake it, so it became kind of like playing a sociopath
whos pretending to be a nice guy. He can charm everybody and
really just try to seduce Clark Kent into becoming evil. It was
delicious! I had a secret that none of the other characters knew, and
I got to run them around the whole time. It was fabulous!
IESB: And, you can tell
that you really enjoy playing all of these different villains.
JM: Yeah. Its fun to be
mean! Im sorry, but it takes maturity, self-control and discipline
to be a decent person. Its almost like swimming upstream against
your own humanity, or the darker parts of it. Its great just to
release and be mean, like we are in our dreams sometimes.
IESB: A lot of actors
might be hesitant about returning to sci-fi, after having played a
character for as long as you played Spike. Was that ever a concern
for you, or is it really just all about the character for you?
JM:The only thing is that I may not want to play
vampires, frankly. But, other than that, no its not a concern for
me. My first favorite film was Planet of the
Apes, and the second one. The ones after
those were not so amazing, but the first two were actually
interesting. As a kid, I went and read the French novel that the
first film was based on, and that was a piece of art. It really
became clear to me that there are ways to talk about important
things, and you can put a gossamer of fantasy over it, which keeps
you from being preachy about it.
You can address very important
themes directly, and thats just gold. The jester in a medieval
court was called The Fool. No one took him seriously. He tells jokes
and juggles. But, he was the only one that could tell the King that
he was a fat idiot. As long as it was with a joke, he got away with
it. And, I feel like genre is that. We can tell society exactly
whats going on because its just a joke.
IESB: What was it like to
take on playing a real-life person, with Buzz Aldrin?
JM:I was playing a guy thats a Triple Ace
fighter pilot who shot down MiGs over Korea. Theres a piece on
YouTube, called Buzz Aldrin Punches a Journalist, and its
this guy following Buzz, all around the world. He wont leave him
alone, saying, You never landed on the moon! Its a big fake! I
dont believe you! Youre a liar! You betrayed us! And, Buzz
just says, Leave me alone, man. Just leave me alone.
Buzz was
like 76 years old and 5'9, and this guy was 35 and 6'5. The guy
just keeps haranguing him, from about half a foot away from his head.
Finally, without warning, Buzz turns around and decks him, just
putting him out, like a sack of potatoes. So, my fear is that Im
going to meet Buzz Aldrin someday and hes going to say, You
didnt play me right!, and punch me. Hes fabulous!
I think
hes the most interesting of the three that went to the moon on the
Apollo 11 mission. They were all amazing people, but Buzzs story
is just fascinating, both for what went on before the launch and what
happened to his life after he came back. Hes just incredible. I
think he did something more amazing than getting to the moon and
back. He saved himself as a human being, and that was probably a
harder journey.
IESB: What was the appeal
of High Plains Invaders?
JM: Its hard to do a
Western because there are certain elements that have to be in there,
for the audience to recognize it as a Western. You need the train
robber, who feels guilty about it. You need the kindly shop owner.
You need the drunken sheriff. There are probably 25 or 30 things, and
you have to include some of them, for people to say, Thats a
Western. The thing with that is that it forces us to make the same
movie, over and over again, so Hollywood is always trying to find
that little flip that you can do to refresh the genre.
And, I was
reading this script and it occurred to me that the Sci-Fi Channel
found the switch. We dump alien bugs on these people. It is a normal
Western and then, suddenly, the bugs drop and now we have the thing
that freshens up the genre. So, I said, Thats a fabulous way to
turn the whole thing on its head.. Its pretty cool, and the
network actually likes it a lot.
IESB: Actors always say
that theyd love to play a villain and do a Western. Since youve
done both, is there anything that youre still looking to do?
JM: After playing a hero
cowboy, and playing Buzz Aldrin, who was a hero in his own right, it
is so much easier to play villains. When youre a hero, youre
running, youre being chased, youre sweating and you have fear,
self-doubt, recrimination and guilt. When youre a villain, you
have none of that. You are just lurking in the shadows, waiting for
the hero to pass by, all huffing and puffing, and then you just wack
him with a 2-by-4. Its much easier to lurk than it is to run.
 |
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
