Greg (Danny Wright) is a businessman visiting Mexico with his partner trying to finalize an advertising deal; Pierce (Julian Noble) is there as well to ‘do the dirty work.' In a chance meeting at their hotel bar, a drunk Pierce meets up with Greg, and their partnership is formed; well, at least a friendship, the partnership comes later.
Julian is all over the place, drunk almost all the time; but when it comes to carrying out his ‘deed,' he seems to be right on focus. When we asked Pierce to describe his character, he was a bit more diplomatic about Julian:
Pierce Brosnan: “I think Richard (Shepard) wrote with a stream of consciousness which was uncensored and that's why we got the beauty of these characters and people; everything that came out of my mouth was on the page, the rest was up to me and how he looked. He's a bi-sexual, tri-sexual, try anything; he's all over the map, he's an alcoholic, he's a man who's at the end of his rope. That allows you free fall into any kind of madness.”
Greg echoed the sentiments about his character, Danny:
Greg Kinnear: “He wants to walk the happy line of just having everything in order, everything in its place, and of course, as you start to peel it back, he's a little more complicated than that. I sort of responded in the script to how he was going to possibly find his way out of that, and especially through a friendship forged with a guy who is pretty despicable, but it seems funny and uncertain where it was going. That was one of the good things, was that Richard crafted a script that was a buddy comedy, but it seems to avoid a lot of the clichés in obvious places where it could go, which was really one of the strengths of it.”
The friendship between Danny and Julian started with Greg and Pierce way before they even got to Mexico to start shooting:
Greg Kinnear: “Well, it was in the script that there needed to be kind of a relationship between these guys. I like Pierce; we did have a great time doing the movie, he's a nice guy. We were a couple of Irish lads down there in Mexico City, it was good; I think we both had a piece of material that we were both kind of excited about in different ways, so it was fun, really fun.”
Pierce Brosnan: “My eye was always on the magic of what could happen there, good, bad or indifferent; the sheer alchemy of it, when you get it right. To be in a position where you get a script like this and say ‘Well, I really want to hang with and make the movie with Hope (Davis) and Greg, go off to Mexico City and prepare the film.' We had a beautiful canvas and the look of it is so sharp; it's a hot looking palate.”
And what did it look like; oh yeah, those mustaches. Pierce thought his character, Julian, was supposed to have one, and Greg decided Danny needed one too:
Greg Kinnear: “Well, the funny thing was we were in rehearsal; we had a rehearsal here in town just to read through the script once. I had been away for about a month and I came down to his office with Richard. There was nothing in the script that Julian has a mustache, and there was nothing that Danny has a mustache. I walk around the corner, carrying my latte, and almost bump into Pierce, he's looking at me, I got a mustache; and I'm looking at him, he's got a mustache. He goes ‘Character assassination!' And we realized, for whatever reason, and I don't know why we both had this similar response that somehow a mustache belongs on our characters; that's how we kind of took our lead - he won. He gets it through the whole thing, but we did find a way to bring Danny's back, which is one of my favorite jokes in the movie; it's such a small moment, I just love it.”
Writer and director, Richard Shepard had a different perspective about the whole mustache thing:
Richard Shepard: “I wanted Pierce to have a mustache, it was enormously important to me and I wanted him to have grey in it, I wanted him to have a crew cut. Once Pierce agreed to do that, then Greg said ‘Maybe I should have a mustache!' Once that happened, maybe we should all grow a mustache, so it was a requirement if you on the crew and you were not Mexican, you had to grow a mustache. Of course, all the Mexican's had mustaches to begin with, so it was a very mustache heavy film.”
But it's a scene with Pierce that triumphs anything in the movie. Julian wakes up drunk the morning after the two meet; he's not wearing much and walks through the hotel lobby and straight into the pool:
Pierce Brosnan: “It was in the text; I had to do it. I'll just walk across in my knickers. It's such an iconic image with the film now, if the film does any business and has some lasting memory with people. Here's this man who's having a crisis of confidence and it's the pinnacle of his neurosis, he gets out of bed, in a drunken stupor, and he wants to go for a swim and he's in his underwear. When we went down to the set, I had a bathrobe on, we shot it in the hotel lobby, the one I'd been living in for the past 10 or 12 weeks. My producing partner said ‘You don't have to do this, you can keep the bathrobe on.' I said ‘that's boring.' I thought I'll keep the boots on, that's really silly. Cat Thomas, who did the costumes, she said ‘Do you have any ideas on the wardrobe?' And I said ‘Cowboy boots.' She bought these phallic, sleazy Italian zip-up, Cuban-heeled boots. I thought my skinny legs would just embellish it all; that was it. I said ‘give us a cigarette, a fag, the old beer and Bob's your uncle, you just say, Action.'”
When you see the scene, you'll see actual hotel guests checking into the hotel:
Pierce Brosnan: “They hadn't a clue what hit them; Pierce Brosnan/James Bond was in this movie and (laughs) I forgot to suck the stomach in, that's all. I certainly didn't work out for this role; we did it a couple of times. It catches people by surprise, then it goes outside the lobby and trying to get the boots off and into the swimming pool. Then what you see inside the swimming pool, that just kind of rocked my boat, that's really clever. Then you're into cinematic, Arabeques and imagery and it just adds to the whole surreal movement of the piece.”
Once again, Richard Shepard has a difference of opinions, but knew that scene was going to be the ‘classic' moment of the film:
Richard Shepard: “It was not even in the script; we were working and staying at that hotel. I said ‘Pierce, this is a really good lobby. Do you have any interest in walking through it in your underwear?' ‘Can I wear my boots?' I said ‘Sure' and it was a one take wonder. There were five extras and the rest were hotel guests checking into the hotel. They were like ‘What the f*ck's going on?' They couldn't believe it.”
The entire film was shot in Mexico City ; a week before they went down there, an article in the Los Angeles Times reported Mexico City is one of the most dangerous cities in the world. But that still didn't delay anything and mostly everyone had a great time:
Greg Kinnear: “Loved it! We had a great deal of our crew and some of our cast was from there; they were fantastic. There's been a lot of more movies done there in the last few years, and I can see why. They really are great crews, it's an incredible city. I kind of think of it as a fourth character in the movie. I really thought it was a nice postcard for Mexico City . No Man on Fire here, man, nice things.”
But it was the end of an era when Pierce was not brought back as Bond, James Bond. He seemed genuinely ok with his decision and thought the choice of Daniel Craig was the right one:
Pierce Brosnan: “It's a chapter of my life that's gone, closed. I have no bitterness; I have nothing but the greatest of memories of that decade. Daniel Craig is a fine actor and I wish him great success, great happiness, enough said. I'll probably be asked this question till the cows come home. Right now, The Matador has come at the perfect time to make the transition. I've never known where the career is going; that's the joy of it. When you have the security of a TV series, like Remington, or a franchise like Bond, you can become complacent. And to have the hunger and bite again, to have that desire and want to give a performance, that's a good feeling to have, especially from The Matador.”
This is definitely a movie you should check out! It's funny, great one-liners, and a Pierce Brosnan you'll be talking about for a long time!
The Matador opens in New York and Los Angeles on December 30 th and in more cities in 2006; it's rated R.
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