Oscar Isaac, "PU-239" actor: The Mr. Media Interview, Part 2 (Return to Part 1)

BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: Do you have any concerns in taking a role like this? The Russians are not exactly portrayed in the best light here. When you take a role like this, is it a job, or do you think about, “Oh, you know what, someone may not be too happy with the way I’m portraying this guy, or the way the movie is portraying this guy?”

OSCAR ISAAC: I think that would maybe come into my mind if I felt that that was happening in some little way. But I think that it’s less about the Russians and more about, if anything, capitalism. I think it does in a way make the argument that plutonium in the wrong hands is just as deadly as capitalism in the wrong hands, and not to say that the Russians are the wrong hands but this idea that if unchecked, it’s kind of an anything goes mentality. And I think that, for me, the political aspects of it were, that was the strongest as opposed to Russians or crazy gangsters or even the good ones are going to sell plutonium.

ANDELMAN: That’s kind of a scary notion.

ISAAC: Again, the main sympathetic man that you feel so much empathy for is actually doing a very vile, horrible thing, which is selling plutonium on the black market to who knows, for what reason.




ANDELMAN: He knows he’s going to be dead, and he doesn’t seem to be thinking five steps, even two steps ahead of, “Well, if I’m dead and I sell this, I get the money for my family, but gee…”

ISAAC: “What about everybody else?”

ANDELMAN: Yeah.

ISAAC: Yeah, my family can fly to Costa Rica, but…. I think that’s a very real thing. I think when you’re in survival mode, I mean, look at what happened… I was just watching television, and you can see the ivory trade and they kill these elephants and all sorts of different horrible things that happen, and I think it’s just because it’s the mentality of survival.

ANDELMAN: Is this the first time you’ve had a role where you’ve had to answer questions that were political?

ISAAC: No. Nowadays, everything has a little bit of a political undertone, but no, I did a play where I played Lorka, and he obviously is considered quite a political figure, being killed by the Franco regime, and so there were those aspects in there. Yeah, I’ve done some of that already.

ANDELMAN: And then you mentioned the producers. Three of the executive producers, George Clooney, Steven Soderbergh, and Peter Berg -- pretty big names. Clooney known for political stands. Did these guys, are they just names on the film, or was there any hands-on with these guys in your part of the film?

ISAAC: In my part, no, not the actual filming of it. I know that Steven Soderbergh -- I could end up working with him as well on a film, and we talked a lot about it, and I know that he was integral in the editing process. I don’t know exactly what George Clooney and Peter Berg, exactly what their roles were.

ANDELMAN: It’s interesting. I could see, thinking back on it, I could see Clooney actually in Paddy Considine’s role.

ISAAC: Oh yeah? Yeah? Definitely. I could see that.

ANDELMAN: You could have been doing a buddy film with George Clooney.

ISAAC: That’s right.

ANDELMAN: Oscar, you were born in Guatemala?

ISAAC: Yeah.

ANDELMAN: Were you surprised to be offered a role as a Russian?

ISAAC: No, not really. I was born in Guatemala. I did grow up in the States. I’ve been here all my life. I’m pretty, I guess some would say, ethnically ambiguous, so no, I actually wasn’t. My father is Cuban, and actually my grandfather worked for the government, the revolution, and he actually had quite an obsession with all things Russian, all things Soviet, I should say. I don’t know if that kind of translated into my blood somehow, but I feel somewhat similar. I love, my favorite playwright is Chekhov, I read it all the time. I just read Crime and Punishment again, and there’s something about that soul and that voice, I don’t know, I really relate to. So actually, I kind of felt quite at home.

ANDELMAN: It wouldn’t be hard to see you go in either the direction of playing like another gangster, maybe even a more serious gangster, or going and playing more in a comedy kind of thing. What would be more comfortable for you?

ISAAC: When I read something, I look for the humor in it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I want to do some sort of broad comedy. I’m really interested in being, I don’t if this will sound somewhat pretentious, but truthful but something that really has some sort of… Mike Nichols said that, “A laugh is just a really loud yes.” I think that’s great. I want to do films and plays that give the audience that feeling of saying, “Yes, yes, that’s true, that is the truth! I recognize that,” and whether that’s as a gangster or as a very comic role, that’s okay with me.






ANDELMAN: Where did you train? Where did you learn your trade?

ISAAC: I went to Julliard.

ANDELMAN: Wow.

ISAAC: I went up here in New York for four years.

ANDELMAN: That tends to open a lot of doors for people.

ISAAC: It can, it can. It’s a great school. I really learned so much. It gave me a huge love and understanding of Shakespeare. I had a great time. I really grew a lot. It’s also very difficult. It’s kind of drama boot camp. We called it “The Yard.”

ANDELMAN: Any particular uncomfortable experiences from that?

ISAAC: There were so many. I did remember finally breaking down and crying. It’s tough, because a lot of times they’ll kind of get into, “You made that choice because you are the kind of person.” It’s kind of a mind to mind game there, but it’s all in the goal of becoming a better artist, and so I forgive it all, but yeah, it’s just the name of the game. It’s very hard training.

ANDELMAN: What would a hazing at Julliard be? Would they make you re-enact Pauly Shore roles? How would that work?

ISAAC: They had all their own little weird games they do with masks and Dionysus and Greek gods and all sorts of silly things.

ANDELMAN: So you’re saying it’s like a Stanley Kubrick movie?

ISAAC: Yeah, exactly, exactly. More like that than Pauly Shore.

ANDELMAN: I suspect a lot of people will be introduced to you for the first time through this movie, and they are probably going to wonder a little bit more about your background. You talked about having kind of an ambiguous ethnic background. How old are you?

ISAAC: I’m 27.

ANDELMAN: A young guy. Are you married?

ISAAC: No.

ANDELMAN: Why acting? Why not anything else?

ISAAC: That’s funny. I was trying to think about that. A lot of people will say, “Oh, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” and in some ways, that’s true, but I was thinking back to what, something that Dostoevsky says, and actually Tolstoy says about the main character in Crime and Punishment, he says, “The mechanism of life happens in the barely imperceptible things.” It’s the tiny little shifts of consciousness, so when this main character in Crime and Punishment murders these women, that’s not real life. He’s just acting out. He’s just being a machine. The real shift happened when he was thinking about something completely other that made him become this person. So I was trying to think about that in my own regard as far as acting is concerned.

I’m doing this Ridley Scott film right now, and I actually realized that the first time that I really started to shift my mind into this world of movies and acting was I think with the film Legend. I think that’s the first time that I consciously remember thinking, “Wow, people made this. There are guys that said, ‘I want lights here. I want you to do this, there are cameras, and there’s maybe one guy that this was his vision, and I think from that point on, I started seeing movies differently and grabbing video cameras and trying to emulate that and performing in…. I think there was definitely a small shift that happened.




ANDELMAN: What it is you are working on now? You made reference.

ISAAC: It’s a film called Body of Lies. It’s Ridley Scott’s next film. It’s with Leo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe.

ANDELMAN: Wow.

ISAAC: Yeah. Great film.

ANDELMAN: That’s definitely big-time stuff.

ISAAC: It’s good. It’s very exciting. We’re shooting in Morocco.

ANDELMAN: What is your role in that?

ISAAC: I play the partner to Leo’s character. We start off the movie together. I get to do some car chases, and it’s a very explosive character.

ANDELMAN: I have to ask, I didn’t know you were doing this, what’s it like working with Leonardo DiCaprio?

ISAAC: It’s great. You know, you never know when you are going into one of these situations. You are like, “I hope they’re not jerks,” or whatever, but he’s a really nice, really funny guy. We were joking around right off the bat and already starting to improvise and doing different things, and he’s a really good, solid actor. He’s a great actor and seems like a really great guy.

ANDELMAN: A guy like that’s been around a while now. Is he a little, at first when you come on the set with someone like that, he doesn’t know you, you don’t know him I’m assuming until you meet on the set. Is he a little standoffish at first?

ISAAC: You know what? No. I think that’s what was the most shocking. That’s what I would assume, but no, he was actually incredibly humble, he was really warm, seemingly excited to meet me. I was honestly taken aback with the whole thing. I kind of felt bad for even expecting otherwise. He’s a really good guy.

ANDELMAN: And what about Ridley Scott? How is he to work with?

ISAAC: To see an auteur at the top of his game and still completely passionate about it, excited about it, and also, he’s very much about the best idea wins, so strangely, again, there’s this seeming lack of ego. He’s sure, he knows what he wants. It’s a well-oiled machine. At one point, the sun was going down and people are running around with their heads cut off. There was like a whole group of hundreds of people at barricades trying to catch a glimpse of Leo, and Leo is frustrated about one thing or something else, and I mean, things are kind of going crazy. The light’s going, and I see Ridley standing in the middle of it all, looking at it, and he looks over at me, and I wink at him, and he walks over, and he’s like, “This is where I shot Black Hawk Down. Oh man, it was awesome!” I was like, “So you like this, eh? It’s like anarchy.” He’s like, “Oh yeah, I love it.”

ANDELMAN: You’ve completed another film, Guerrilla.

ISAAC: Yeah. That’s the Soderburgh film that I shot about Che Guevara, with Benicio del Toro.

ANDELMAN: What is your role in that?

ISAAC: It’s two films, and I’m in the second film. I play Che Guevara’s translator when he comes to the United Nations. The film is in Spanish, except that this section is in English where I translate all the things he says and when he goes on “Meet the Press.” He had this actually son of a diplomat who wasn’t a professional translator translating for him. It’s kind of funny, because he listened to the tape, he watched the tape, and you can tell he got a little bit lost, which is good, because I was a little bit lost myself.

ANDELMAN: What would you like to do in the future? It wouldn’t be hard to see you jumping into a buddy caper, like a Rush Hour, but you seem to be heading into kind of more serious, from what we were just talking about, more serious roles.

ISAAC: I like the idea of doing “serious roles” but finding the humor and the humanity and the every man in that. I don’t necessarily see myself doing a broad comedy or action films necessarily. I want to do things that have something to say, whether it be political or whether it be about the human condition, but something that has something to say, like those films from the 1970s. You felt that they were made for a reason, not just to satisfy some sort of budgetary need or something.

© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

Labels: Che Guevara, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Julliard, Leonardo DiCaprio, Oscar Isaac, Paddy Considine, Peter Berg, PU-239, Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe George Clooney, Steven Soderbergh

  ¶ 8:20 AM