Political satire has been used to entertain,
outrage, and even enlighten audiences from the beginnings of performance art.
From Shakespeare to Charlie Chaplin, it has always stirred controversy for
filmmakers. And with WAR, INC., the latest from John Cusack, it continues
to do the same. But for Cusack and company, it has been a labor of love,
with a ultra low-budget (Hollywood standards anyway) and a message presented in
a unique, funny and a little bit startling way.
Before getting the chance to talk shop with John,
I read several of the negative reviews for the film. It is even rated
somewhere in the mid-twenties over at RottenTomatoes.com. But luckily I
got to see the film myself before the interview, and I can honestly say that I
really enjoyed it. It is a funny and irreverent take on the current
political situation. While not everything worked for me, for the most
part, I found the chaotic nature that it presents to be fresh and exciting.
I loved the performances, especially from the always great Joan Cusack. I
also found the almost awkward nature of the humor to be very addictive.
But more than anything, I respect the way Mr. Cusack is offering up the film
(which he also produced and wrote) to audiences through MySpace and Facebook.
I think in time, this may be a doorway to many other productions that don’t
fall into the “summer blockbuster” category.
After watching the film, I was able to talk to
John one on one via phone. I had never had the opportunity to speak with
him before, but I’ve always had a healthy respect for his career. He has
done a number of films that are some of my favorites, from SAY ANYTHING to THE
GRIFTERS to EIGHT MEN OUT and many, many others. His resume is incredible.
But I had no memory as to him going out of his way to talk about one of his
films as he has with this. And when we spoke I found him to be a
fascinating gentleman and frankly, a pretty cool guy. He is honest and
speaks his mind, while still offering up some of the old Cusack charm that has
given him a very successful career. I really had a great time talking with
him in regards to his belief in WAR, INC., I found it to be very strong, and it
will be interesting to see how well this film holds up with their “guerilla”
advertising.
WAR, INC. might very well be playing somewhere
near you, but then again, it might not. You can find out where by going to
www.myspace.com/johncusack.
He can also be found on Facebook. Both of those sights offer up all you
need to know on the film. I loved the humor and the irreverent nature of
the piece, yet it is clear than many will not like what the film has to say.
John and I spoke about that, the nature of the casting and of course, marketing
a satire such as this in limited ways. But it seems while many critics are
not on board, the film has found a number of supporters throughout its run.
It’s really worth checking out, and if you live in the following markets,
Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle or Austin, you will get your chance this
coming Friday the 13th… your lucky day.
John Cusack
First off, I actually like WAR, INC., yet
found quite a few negative responses on RottenTomatoes.com. Where do you
think that comes from? You’re obviously really proud of the film…
Well, a lot of the people we’ve had see the
movie, there’s a lot of snarky kind of stuff, and it’s alright. I’ve
benefited from that kind of stuff before so you can’t really be surprised when
you make a movie like this and it isn’t that kind of critical darling.
You know, [Bob] Dylan went acoustic and got booed, and I’m sure punk rock
wasn’t very popular with the easy listening crowd [Laughing]. And you
know, if you look on our MySpace page, which is where we have people who… some
of the best and brightest political thinkers and comediennes and musicians, and
people who have written kind of seminal books on Iraq and privatization and all
this stuff. They all think the movie is, you know, either good to really
good to visionary. So if a couple people who sit in movies and do junkets
all day think the movie sucks, you know, I don’t know… I would kind of
respectfully remind them that the mainstream press has been wrong about a lot in
the past eight years.
Some of the reviews I’ve read do seem to be
sort of “liberal bashing” the film…
Oh, I think that the amazing thing is… that’s
what is so interesting about it, you know, their comment is that it’s not
funny or too close to home or it’s not funny enough… like I even had one of
the reviewers came up to us afterwards and said, ’I want to show this to
movie to my film class. It’s this very radical film…’ right?
Then he reviews it and it’s awful.
Really?
Yeah! So I mean, it’s like one thing to say you’re doing an
experimental, out-there kinda film, it’s another thing to go against the herd
when you think the herd has got a little mentality of starting to diss
something, you know. So there is a little of that and then there's a
little bit of that thing which is, I don’t know if a lot of people are viewing
the movie and maybe they haven’t read quite enough about what is going on in
Iraq and how crazy it is. How crazy it is with Blackwater and all of that.
You know, they have these holding areas in Kuwait where the troops decompress,
and they have like, JVC video stores in ‘em and like Pizza Hut and all these
like, little cities for holding areas. And they give the soldiers, like
Halliburton dollars, like ‘funny money’. They can get like JVC
computers and shit and like Pizza Hut and go to the movies or whatever and they
dock that from the soldiers pay. Now in the meantime they are giving six
hundred million in contracts to Blackwater, at like, double or triple the rate
of the soldiers, and they got all their equipment, and they got all their stuff.
The amount of insanity is so insane over there, that I think the only way to
tell it is to really kind of craft absurd with a mixture of sophistication and
stupidity.
So you may not like the style that we did in the
movie, and you may think you can’t go from soap opera to melodrama to black
comedy to slapstick to surreal. But that’s what we wanted to do and
that’s what we did, because we wanted to mix all those things up. And I
think some of the critics just say, oh well, it’s this kind of movie and this
is what it is, and they don't even sort of look at it and what it’s saying.
And I’m like, alright, you may not like the fact that satire is also meant to
ridicule and just because it’s not WEDDING CRASHERS… WEDDING CRASHERS isn't
the only kind of humor there is. And I don’t want to bash critics, I’m
not bashing critics per say, but I’m saying that some people have… you know
there’s some stuff that kind of snarky, on-line kind of snarky reviewers
that… but even in some reviews like New York Times or whatever it is, where
they’ll do these reviews and they either are building it up or they’re
trying to tear you down in such a way that has nothing to do with the movie.
It’s hard to take those seriously, I think. It’s like, are you talking
about the movie or are you trying to break up with me [Laughing]? You
know, it’s a little too much about the reviewer being a tastemaker. But
I still love when people write about movies in the context of culture and where
we are at… I just think it’s a little bit of a lost art, you know, real
criticism. And I don’t mean everybody has to like my movie, my crazy
punk rock movie, they don’t…… I expected going in that a lot of people
wouldn’t. But I think with this movie it’s going to be like, this
painting may not look like the present but give it time and it will.
It actually reminded me of… did you ever see
the film back in I think 1979, WINTER KILLS?
Oh yeah.
It kind of reminded me of that with its
mixture of dark humor, a strong political satire. In it’s day, that was
an incredibly controversial film.
Yeah, I remember how anti-structural that was and
how crazy that really was.
There seemed to be a similar reaction with
WAR, INC.
Well, I think it’s like, to me, we had some
really, really great staunch defenders of the movie, and we’ve had people
who’ve really hated it. But it is, as you said, a lot of liberal
bashing. The right wing has just started to come after the film and
that’s probably because it’s kind of doing well.
Do you think maybe the hatred some people are
expressing for it may just be because it is in the now and they don’t want to
be reminded of it?
I think a little bit of that and I think it takes
some pretty hard shots at media and kind of intellectual criticism I guess, in a
way. Because, you know, we plant a journalistic experience and it sort of
shows you a propaganda machine. They have their own Brand of America Trade
Show and you sort of get a notion of mainstream press, with a complete
compliance to these corporations and are in fact an extension of a corporate
state. So I think there is that. And I just don’t think people
want…… I like stuff that makes you… I like humor, satire or
absurdity…… I like that feeling you get right at the edge of uncomfortable.
I think the movie is funny and fun and brings up all your senses that subversion
should be fun and all that, but I also like that space where, should I be
laughing or groaning? Is this funny? I think it’s funny but what
does it mean that I'm laughing right now? I like that area. I think
that is an interesting area to be in. Like, is this a Telemundo soap opera
or a black comedy or surreal movie or is this a sincere, naturalistic film?
I don’t know [Laughing]. We sort of like that. You know, there is
no reason to do a movie for like, five million bucks in Bulgaria unless it is
this provocative and takes risks.
There are moments where I was like, ‘Oh my
God, I can’t believe they are going there.’ Especially the near
‘beheading’. Damn, that was biting satire. I found it to be
insanely inventive and a lot scary.
Yeah, well it’s interesting because some people
who sort of ‘get it’’, have been people who get it in a deep way.
And the people that have been hating it, I haven’t looked at RottenTomatoes,
but I’m sure that people… I mean, on the MySpace we got people from like
Naomi Klein to Bill Maher to Sarah Silverman to the chief correspondent for
“60 Minutes”, you know, Lara Logan… this list of people who goes kind of
on and on who have seen it and given us quotes who are really, really smart
people. These guys are pretty bright, these cool artists and thinkers and
people so…… the interesting story is the chasm between people who like it
and hate it and that is one thing in the press that isn’t getting reported.
Everybody goes, ‘well, everybody hates it.’… well, not really, there are a
lot of people that liked it, but they just sort of report that it's gotten
horrible reviews. But we got a good review in the Los Angeles Times, USA
Today and Time Magazine. But no one ever says that, they just say that
everyone hates it. And that’s alright, people are finding it and they
can make up their own minds.
Well the one thing that I really think is
great, the way you are selling this. You're going out there… I’ve
never seen you do this for a film. Ever. Whose idea was it to just
use MySpace and basically go to the public and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this
movie. Go see it!’?
Well, you know it sort of evolved and I think the
nature of the film, it’s so controversial, we were so not gonna have the usual
backing for this. And we had some people that came on board that are
pretty cool people. We had like a journalist at Vanity Fair that saw it
[Vicky Ward], we had Arianna Huffington saw it and loved it, and she is really
supporting [it] on her space. But mostly it was people like MoveOn.org or
CrooksandLiars, a lot of the activists, political groups… we had a lot of
these people who write about politics and culture and foreign affairs, who have
never talked about movies before, calling and saying we want to do a story on
this movie. All the press kind of came from the outside in. People
who were writing about politics and culture and stuff, but never about
entertainment, wanted to cover it. And that drove the mainstream
entertainment people to look at it and take it seriously in a way. Because
at first, no one wanted to look at it or review it or see it, and everyone was
sort of like, ‘…what? No, we don’t want to do this.’ People
started to sneak around it and then all of a sudden people were like, ‘oh, we
better take a look at this.’ But it was very interesting, nobody wanted
to touch it in the mainstream media for three or four months.
Well did you expect when you were writing
it… did you think you would have a better reaction, a worse reaction, or kind
of what you expected?
It’s kind of turning out to be what I expected.
But you don’t really know what’s going to happen, but I couldn’t have
imagined that…… I think we would have done something wrong if we didn’t
have a lot of people hating us. I don’t think we would have pressed the
right buttons or hit the right nerves, you know. And people can attack the
aesthetics all they want, but I think that people don’t like it for reasons
beyond, that are just, ‘Oh, I don’t like the style.’ or, ‘I don’t like
the tone shifts.’, you know. They don’t like it for a deeper reason.
It is good to take a risk with a film.
And I actually did like the change in styles throughout. It felt sort of
dreamlike in some ways…
Yeah! No, that’s exactly what we… you
know, Mark Leyner, he writes very incredibly these sort of fever dreams, and you
know, he would… that would delight him. And that is like his aesthetic
if you ever read his books. He has these novels and stuff where he does
write these weird fever dreams with rapid tone shifts. And he never
explains them [Laughing] or warns you that they're coming, he just puts them all
in. I mean, he’s just a very provocative person. So Jeremy Pikser
and I, and the actors all were interested in doing a different… you know, you
can’t want to do something different and then say, well why is everybody
telling me that this is something that not everybody gets. By definition,
you’re doing something that’s outside…… you don’t know if it’ll
work, it’s outside your comfort zone, it’s outside your understanding of how
things work.
How much were you involved in the writing
process?
Oh, I was there the whole time. It was me
and Mark and Jerry.
Obviously this wasn’t your first time out in
the context or writing the script. What was it about this particular
story? I’d read that you had Naomi's book…
Well, no, actually Naomi’s book was made about
the same time we were making the War. Then the statue fell and then it was
kind of like the height of Bush when he was telling people, you know… there
were kind of lackeys on the post saying you better watch what you say and giving
all those McCarthy type threats. And we sort of were looking into what
they were doing. And we sort of knew what the neo-conservative ideology
was. You know, privatize everything in sight, because the world is a
business. And we own it, you can work here, you know, that's basically it.
And then when they started to actually try and expand this kind of version, this
version of free market where free markets aren’t really free, and we’re
going to have to start feeding this ideology, like we’re just gonna have to
literally invade a country and blow it up so we can make the money rebuilding
it. So then we were thinking, well you know, they say you’d better watch what
you say… well I don’t want to look back and think, you know, during the
darkest eight years in American history, I made romantic comedies and made a lot
of money. This is what I do, I make movies so I’m going to do something
that… it’s what I can contribute aside from voting and stuff like that.
So it kind of came out as a sense of activism,
and outrage, and this film plays a role in that. No one film is of that
much importance but I think reclaiming your sense of outrage and you’re going
to call things what they are. You know, that’s what we wanted to do.
We wanted to do that in a kind of experimental way. And people are really
responding to that, you know, we have a lot of enthusiasm on that MySpace, as
you can see. And it’s not like 20th Century Fox is going to
want to buy this movie and put it out, so it was going to be us and whoever
wanted to back it. And we knew it was going to be a grass roots, political
based activist case thing. And if people would hopefully find it and
hopefully find out that it’s a really fun, crazy movie and the more you watch
it, the more you start to get. And like I said, it’s like a painting you
get and the more you see it, the more you’re going to get, and the more stuff
you are going to see in it, I think. And we found that to be true
actually. So that’s really nice too.
Well when I watched it, I read a few of the
bad reviews and some of them didn’t seem like they were giving it a fair shot.
Yeah, I don’t think so either, I mean I
haven’t read a lot of them because, you know… but, I think that if you are
going to give… there's more ideas in five minutes of WAR, INC. then there is
in five big studio movies combined. So you may like the pyrotechnics, or
the superhero, that’s cool or whatever, but everybody says I want a movie that
takes some risks and has some ideas in it and takes some shit head on. And
then you get one and the only thing we can work out is a pretty low-budget, punk
rock movie, you know. I mean, I call it that just because it was like,
well we have this script and we don't have enough money and we don’t have
enough props, we have one tank. We can shoot it in Bulgaria and we got
about a third of the money we had when we made GROSSE POINTE BLANK fifteen years
ago. We were like, ‘F*ck it! Lets go do it. Lets just go
there and do it.’ So we did it and so people who dig it are really
digging it. And the other people are, you know…… well you can go see
IRON MAN and give it a good review. I’m sure IRON MAN was cool.
Now tell me about casting Hillary Duff as the
pop star. That seemed like a risky move just because of her pop
princess image.
Yeah, yeah, that was.
She did a good job.
Yeah, she’s really good.
How did her name come about when casting?
Was there ever the idea of maybe getting an unknown for the part? Or was
she at the top of your list?
No, you know, it was weird, it was one of those
things where we were talking about… there was all these things about corporate
brand. So we had heard that she wanted to, you know, that she’d liked my
movies and knew about me and she had heard about the script. They said she
wanted to read it and they thought she'd like it. And I said, well okay,
what does that mean, Hillary Duff is a pop star, I know, with Lizzie McGuire,
okay so what does that mean… I was trying to figure it out. Well she is
kind of like a huge one woman industry, you know, she’s like this big deal so
I thought, that’s kind of interesting having someone who is a young pop star
play a version in a fictionalized country, that wants to be what she already is
in America. Well, you know, maybe kind of a sluttier version,
because she’s kind of a good girl with a wholesome image. She’s not
like one of these vixens… So I thought that was pretty interesting, so she
read it and she wanted to do it and she went into it gung ho. She was
ready to go.
Yeah, I was surprised to see her in that role
which seemed pretty risky for her. I really wondered how her fans would
accept it.
Yeah, she’s very courageous. She’s a
very fearless kind of person. And really, really good.
Now with the rest of the cast, how much were
you involved in that process as producer?
Oh, it was all me, my friend Jeremy and Mark, you
know. And that was it… yeah.
With it’s first two weeks in limited
release, you did some terrific numbers. As it opens wider, what are your
goals to keep it moving?
Well I think that we… unfortunately it’s a
small company with a limited budget so we don’t have commercials everywhere,
and we’re trying to generate as much press as we can. I don’t think a
lot of people knew that it expanded last weekend. It all happened so quick
so we couldn’t get the posters in the theatres. So I’m thinking that
we’ll wait to see what happens this weekend but it might be something that
just happens playing in a few theatres in cities. And you know, if we can
pack those, then I think we can kind of expand a little larger. But
now, I don’t think we have the resources to open it nationally, one big swoop
in like, six hundred theatres. [At least] right now because we don’t
have the… there is no real advertising budget to do that. But if we can
keep the grass roots thing going, I think we can we can put it in two, three,
four, five, maybe ten theatres in the city, and go for that, and then have some
fun. And if we can keep it going, I’m game to play it all the way up to
the Republican National Convention and play it in the parking lot outside.
So it all depends on how far we can push it and keep it going you know. If
people keep going and we can keep some full theatres in these art houses and
people keep rallying around to it, you know, the skies the limit. I’ll
push it as far as we can go.
It's
amazing to see you do this, because literally, I’ve never seen you take on so
much responsibility in regards to one of your films.
I’ve done it before, but I tried to do it kind
of behind the scenes a little bit. Usually there is a big company spending
a whole bunch of money pushing the movie, whatever… but this one, it’s…
you know, it’s a very, very limited budget and they are doing the best they
can. They are cool people and everything but they can’t go buy TV
commercials, they can’’t go out and do all those things. We’re just
doing it grass roots, it’s just something that we are going to see how
far we can take it. If we can get it nationally, it’ll be a pretty cool
story and it can maybe help… it’ll be the first one like that, that will
work that way. You know, we’re giving it directly to the fans and we are
saying, here is our group of people and here is what they think. And you
know, here’s what the mainstream critics think. Here is why we’re
doing it, here is the information behind it, go read these books and then tell
us what you think. Go to the theatres, are you guys getting it? If
you are, call back and tell us what you think, tell the MySpace guys what you
think. And we’ve gotten these great reactions from people, like it’s a
party in the theatre. They’re groovin’ on it and once people watch the
movie, nobody wants to leave afterwards, they all want to hang out and talk.
It’s a cool vibe. And there are other fun things that we are going to
do, like a guerilla poster run with Robbie Conal. We’ll download the
images and have people put ‘em up themselves or something. But we’re
trying to work some of that stuff out too. We’ve got all these people
and all these cities that want to do it like Seattle, Boston, you know, San
Francisco, Chicago… everybody wants to get weird with the movie.
Well like you said, I think describing this as
a “punk rock movie” is a very good analogy. That is what it feels
like…
That’s the spirit of it. We made it and
it’s like, I hope we offend a bunch of people. There’s some offensive
shit going on too.
Now as an actor, how much of it is your
responsibility to be political. Because there are critics that say actors
should not tell people how to live their lives, they shouldn’t tell people who
to vote for. What is your take on that?
My take on it is everybody should do whatever the
hell they want. I express myself and see the world as I see it and I’m
going to put that into my stories and my art, and be as truthful as I can with
what I see and feel. So if anyone else has different opinions, you know,
bring it on. Let’s go. Whatcha got? But the idea that these
people are saying… I don’t even know what “being political” means.
But I will say, in 2008, if you don’t feel like you’re a bit of an activist,
I don’t know when you ever will be. We’re talking about a time when
people… with outsourced torture for profit. These people left the
constitution in shreds. So you don’t want people to be political, why?
Because I put make-up on and speak in front of a camera? When sometimes I
speak my own lines, sometimes I speak other peoples lines? Are you talking
about me or Bill O’Reilly? Its like such a joke. So their opinions
should matter, but I shouldn’t express myself? Are we twelve? You
know, that’s not how it works. I express something because that’s how
I feel. And you don’t have to like it, you can do whatever you want with
it.
Yeah, you can turn the TV off.
Actually, you don’t even have to listen to this
conversation. You can walk away. It’s like what is that… the
expression police [Laughing]? You know… ‘Don’t express that!’…
okay……
[At this point, he is called back to set,
currently shooting the film SHANGHAI]
Well, thanks man.
Yeah, thanks a lot man, it was nice talking to
you.
Nice talking to you too.
Let me know what you think. Send questions
and/or comments to JimmyO@joblo.
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