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By Mike Szymanski
Zap2It.com
It's nice to say you're talking about sex with Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen and Jude Law, but it's also appropriate with their new Mike Nichols film "Closer."
The Oscar-winning director of sexually frank films such as "The Graduate" and "Carnal Knowledge" tackles relationships again by casting Julia as a photographer, Natalie as a stripper, Clive as a dermatologist and Jude as a journalist.
In a rare opportunity, we conducted an interview with the four cast members of this Sony Pictures movie all together -- with Julia on the phone. Here's a window into the frank discussion.
JUDE: How are you?
JULIA: I'm good. I'm in Antarctica. [Laughs] No. Are you guys having fun?
JUDE: Yeah. We miss you.
JULIA: I miss you guys.
CLIVE: We've got a naked picture of you just above the phone.
This is, of course, not true in the Four Seasons Hotel room where the interview is being conducted in Beverly Hills. It is, however, the first time the cast has talked to Julia since she was hospitalized in late October during her pregnancy with twins.
NATALIE: Are you enormous?
JULIA: Am I enormous? Let me tell you something, my babies weigh six pounds each. That's 12 pounds of just baby in me right now and I still have miles to go before I sleep with them. They're bionic. It's pretty amazing. But my stomach is enormous and the bigger it gets the smaller my ass looks. So I'm kind of enjoying this. So you have been slogging through all the interviews today?
JUDE: We haven't done so many. It's been alright, actually.
JULIA: Jude, you must be on like a first name basis with these people.
She is referring to Law's spate of press interviews because of "Alfie," "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," "I [Heart] Huckabees" and "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" all coming out since September.
JUDE: I am. I haven't actually left. I just got a little camp bed in the corner.
QUESTION: I'm sure you haven't missed the junket interviews, have you Julia?
JULIA: Actually, I got up this morning and I had myself a little cry. No, actually, I'm not missing it at all. I just want to feel like I'm supporting my comrades.
She's being sarcastic. She didn't get to hang out with the guys (Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, etc.) from "Ocean's Twelve" during the press junket in Palm Springs just the past weekend.
JULIA: Somehow you feel bad and then amazingly you get over it.
QUESTION: This film seems that it can ring true for people everywhere, have any of you ever heard similar lines in your own life that were spoke in the movie?
CLIVE: Or said them.
JULIA: That had to be Clive that said that. Clive, when we did that scene, we did a lot of different versions of it. We rehearsed through it, and I think that I wept through one rehearsal. I laughed through about three more rehearsals. But at a certain point, it's not about saying these bad words.
Julia, and perhaps all the actors, have their most explicit sex-talk in their careers in this film.
JULIA: It becomes about the emotion and not about bad words or hard words to say or raunchiness or shock value or anything else. It becomes about two people in this house who's lives are kind of falling apart. Then it's like afterwards when you're able to have a coherent thought that you go, 'I can't believe that I just said all of those bad words.' But didn't it feel that way, Clive? The words fell away at some point.
CLIVE: Yeah. I think that it has to do with Mike's sort of maturity and intelligence and that feeling that you feel like you're in very, very good hands. Had 'Closer' been directed by a young, 25-year-old director you might feel less secure going into these areas and these environments because they can be a like loose cannons. With someone like Mike, you're given the freedom to explore them and feel that he's not going to f--- it up really.
JUDE: You're seeing the beginnings and ends of relationships. You're seeing people when they're at their most seductive or their most flirtatious or their most guarded. Then you're seeing them when they're being crushed or when they're destroying the other person because of their feelings being hurt or trying to be honest and trying to understand why they feel one way about one person and another way about another person. Because of that, the emotions are heightened and the language is heightened, but you're seeing glimpses of relationships, glimpses of people. It's been interesting today hearing people say, 'God, I don't know anyone like this,' or 'These people are so vicious.' I think that's nonsense. Everyone has been through this at least once. They've had an argument where God knows what's come out of their mouths. We're just seeing it first of all in the film genre, but also at those particular moments in their lives and in their relationships.
QUESTION: What about the fact that when men are breaking up with women, they want to know about the sex, asking "Was he better than me?"
CLIVE: That's a question for the women.
NATALIE: Julia?
JULIA: Natalie?
NATALIE: Well, I think that it's dangerous to generalize from any individual from the film. I mean, these are very particular situations and you know, people relate to what they relate to because of their own experience, but to generalize for an entire gender from one character is not useful.
JULIA: Well, and they're not really gender specific either. I think that all people when they're at their most desperate or their most crushed or hurt or in pain, you get very base about things.
QUESTION: What about the line from Natalie's character saying that "lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off?" Ladies?
JULIA: That was very well performed.
NATALIE: Yeah, again, I mean, the character generalizes, but it doesn't mean that what she's saying is true. Most of what she says is not true.
QUESTION: It seems odd right now that there seems to be a trend in films where there is experimentation with more sexually explicit themes and yet censors and ratings boards cracking down more and there's this new moral attitude supposedly. It's a weird dichotomy going on.
JUDE: Wouldn't you say that that applies to America across the board right now?
CLIVE: I think that it's very exciting to be involved in a movie that's an adult drama for adults. It feels like it's for grownup people. It's for people with a bit of experience and maturity. We're not patronizing or preaching. It's just about adults relating in very intimate ways.
NATALIE: But that's resting on the assumption that things move in a linear direction and aren't constantly shifting back. I think that the way these people see the world is much more reactive to what's happened before. So it goes back and forth between sides or cyclically or something as opposed to in a linear fashion. I mean, progress isn't just forward.
CLIVE: I'd say that we're probably more sensitive now than we were 20 or 30 years ago. Everything is a bit more sensitive.
NATALIE: It goes in phases. Our parents are like hippies and love-children, all that stuff. We're reacting and my generation is all conservative, right wingers. Hopefully our kids will probably go back to being free.
That's coming from Queen Amidala from the latest three "Star Wars" films, and the youngest of the bunch. The film explores how relationships can start through the Internet, so asking the stars about their experience with it seems pertinent.
JUDE: I've never been on.
NATALIE: Really? You don't email?
JUDE: I email, but I don't surf the net or look at shops and buy. I've never done that.
NATALIE: Yeah. I use the Internet.
QUESTION: Do you ever go into chat rooms secretly?
NATALIE: All the time [Laughs]. No. No. No. I go onto websites, but I'm not in chat rooms. They're boring to me.
JUDE: We were all on www.juliaroberts.com this morning.
JULIA: Is there such a thing?
No, there isn't such a site, but there are many Julia fan sites all over the world.
JULIA: Chat rooms, no. That would never occur to me. They're creepy, right? Whenever you see someone being carried away in handcuffs or something, it all started in a chat room, didn't it?
QUESTION: Robin Williams once told me he poses as a 9-year-old girl sometimes. That's like what happened between Jude's character and Clive's character.
NATALIE: That's the most common thing, men pretending to be women. The vast majority of women online are actually men.
CLIVE: I've never gone to a chat room, no.
QUESTION: Do any of you go see what's written online about you, do you dare to?
CLIVE: Oh, God, no.
JULIA: What would be the point of that. Why go and collect all that information from strangers.
NATALIE: It's amazing what people will do when they can be anonymous. It's like a great human experiment. I was on a chat once being at my deepest, my most profound self. They had a chat room there and I mean, people are disgusting when they can be anonymous.
JUDE: Listen, I get depressed enough about what's printed in the press let alone going into anonymous forum. Good Lord.
NATALIE: Yeah. When you're not held responsible for what you say it can be interesting.
JULIA: Why would any of us pursue the wealth of this information? Harmless, with [a fake] baby registry or not so harmless, 'Why doesn't someone chop her head off to keep her from performing.' I mean, why pursue that? There's no point. It comes to you enough. I mean, people can walk up to you in the grocery store and say, 'I'm so sorry about your haircut.' You don't need to look for it. It'll find you.
QUESTION: The public seems to look at movies to model their relationships after and maybe they'll do that with this film as well, but I wonder if any of you learn from the characters you play? Jude, you've played the man about town in "Alfie" and now you're the Sexiest Man Alive according to People magazine--
JULIA: Oh, that's right! Jude, the sexiest man alive.
JUDE: Do you know, Julia, you're the first person today to mention that.
JULIA: How does it feel to be a sex symbol, Jude?
JUDE: I learned everything that I know for you.
QUESTION: Do you think that doing these roles help you at all, or can help?
JUDE: What, with life? I think that first and foremost, you can't confuse the two. But if you go home and you feel that you've somehow, in someway at work or through conversation at work because of the subject matter resolved something or thought of something in a way or looked at something in a way that you otherwise wouldn't have done, sure. But I don't think that you can go into our work thinking, 'Okay, this is like therapy at work,' or life changing at work. You've got to look at it as a tool, as a craft.
CLIVE: Exactly. You reading this play or seeing this film or going to the theater has as much an affect on you in a way as a human being as it does if you play the parts. That doesn't necessarily mean that you go on any deeper journey of understanding. It's just then about executing it and trying to get it across to other people.
JUDE: What is interesting is how people can refer to film. They can say, 'God, this is just like that moment in "Apocalypse Now."' Do you know what I mean? Are you awake, Julia?
JULIA: I am, and you know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking, Natalie, how gorgeous and lovely and sweet and sexy you look in 'Elle' magazine.
NATALIE: Ah, thank you.
JULIA: Beautiful. Where was that, Tahiti or something?
NATALIE: That was Tahiti. Never do a photo shoot in a studio. I'm telling you.
JUDE: Do they take you there?
NATALIE: Yeah, they took me to Tahiti. You should go in there when you have the babies. It's the best place ever. It's completely empty. Are you feeling okay, Julia?
JULIA: I feel great and you really look beautiful.
QUESTION: So is everything OK as far as your hospitalization and all?
JULIA: Yeah. Just about everything has been an exaggeration. I'm riding that wave to get out of work though, I'm just kidding.
QUESTION: It's weird to see so many false things recently about you out there.
JULIA: Why is it weird? Are you new to this? Is this your second day on your job.
QUESTION: Hah, no, I was backstage when you won your Oscar, dear (in 2000).
JULIA: I'm just teasing you. But of course it's not weird. It's weird when they get it right. Are you kidding?
QUESTION: All of you have been photographed a lot, and you play a photographer, Julia, is there something that makes you feel comfortable when being photographed?
JUDE: Be quick. In and out, or take me to Tahiti.
NATALIE: Yeah. I would've done anything at that point. They could've done anything to me. It was awesome.
JULIA: 'They could've done anything to me?' [Laughs.] I just like working with people that I know. I think that's where your greatest comfort is, working with the same people whether it be hair and makeup or the same photographer.
Clive played Jude's character Larry on stage in the past, but they switched roles in the film, so it's natural to ask what he thought of Jude's portrayal.
CLIVE: I thought he was fantastic. Well, it's an odd piece because it's so well written that there are certain rhythms that you sort of adhere to. I found that certain things happened when I was playing Larry. He was very insecure and so that's what you play with. That's sort of the rhythm. I mean, good writing is often like that. Patrick [Marber] is a seriously good writer. So obviously, there are similarities in that way. But no, I think that Jude was brilliant casting and did a fantastic job.
QUESTION: Natalie, people are making a big deal about this being your first adult role, is that uncomfortable to hear?
NATALIE: I'm adult film star [Laughs] Don't tell my dad. I don't know, no one is ever fully an adult or fully a child. I guess that it's natural if you make your first movie at 12 and then people see you again at 23, there's going to be a little bit of that. I see it more as there being fluidity between adult and child.
QUESTION: Do you all think that honesty is the best policy in a relationship, or are there things that you just shouldn't say to your partner?
JULIA: I think that we don't know you well enough to answer that question.
JUDE: I think that the interesting thing about the piece is that you see both sides. You see how honesty has to be the best policy and also how honesty can be incredibly painful and destructive. The thing is that if you're going to be honest you need to know what you're being honest about and you've got to be certain of your conviction behind the honest thought. Is it a fleeting honesty or is an honesty that's got some roots.
CLIVE: I've just been completely thrown by the fact that you're wearing two different shoes.
In an apparent ruse to get out of answering the question, Clive points out the interviewer's obvious rush out the door and putting on slightly different loafers.
CLIVE: They're the same color.
NATALIE: [Laughs] That's awesome. JUDE: It's a funny visual you're missing, Julia.
QUESTION: All the characters in the film have ups and downs in their careers during the course of the film, and you're all in a profession where ups and downs are out of your control, how do you deal with those situations? [Jude buries his head in his hands and laughs, knowing that the intention is talking about how his "Alfie" seems to be tanking at the box office.] Is that a nice way to ask a hard question
JUDE: Yes thanks. So what you're saying is that we can all expect to go down from here?
JULIA: Meaning that if you're in reign as the sexiest man alive, Jude--
JUDE: I better enjoy it, right? I'll be in the turkey group next year. For me it's the time spent together making the film, I loved seeing this film. I was really proud of it and I think that there's amazing work in it. But it was my experience of working with these guys, having a great time and learning stuff and making acquaintances. That has to be the priority and not, 'Jeez, I hope that it's going to get a number one and win 20 Oscars.' You can't think like that because you'll be permanently let down. So to me the priority is enjoying it.
Jude says he didn't learn anything from journalists -- except dressing poorly -- that he didn't already know while doing interviews. The cast then blew kisses over the phone to Julia and finished their chat about "Closer."
