Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard, Sharon Stone Talk LOVELACE

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Category: Interviews

Created: Sunday, 11 August 2013 22:28

Published: Sunday, 11 August 2013 22:28

Written by Lupe Haas

The Linda Lovelace story comes to the big screen boasting a large ensemble A-list cast such as Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard, Sharon Stone, Chris Noth, Hank Azaria, James Franco, Debi Mazar, Wes Bentley and many others in LOVELACE. The cast talks about their new film and the challenges about making a movie surrounding the porn industry.

Q: Can you talk about what you feel about Linda Lovelace and what you thought were the biggest challenges in doing the movie?

Amanda Seyfried: I’m a pretty cynical person, so I knew right off the bat, when I entered into this project, that I was going to have to leave that at the door, because I’m involved. My job is to validate her in lots of ways. So I didn’t…I don’t know…The challenge was – the responsibility of playing her, especially because we were in touch with her kids, was to justify her. And to reiterate her – what she was trying to get across. Playing a real person in general is really hard, I’ve never done it before. It’d be even harder if she were alive, for sure, but that was the biggest challenge. Honestly I didn’t have that much hesitation, apparently a lot of people did, which is why I was lucky enough for it to come to me.

Q: First for Amanda – as a human being, I’m wondering, how did you shake off this role emotionally and physically? And for the directors, what do you think is so appealing about such a dark story?

AMANDA: I still haven’t shaken that off, in fact. I’m struggling every day. It’s – how did I shake it off? I did "Les Miserables" three weeks after this wrapped. And so I jumped into that, [where] I play an 18-year-old virgin. There are actually a lot of similarities between Cosette and Linda. But it was hard, it was really hard. I actually lost myself in it, I realize, for the first time ever in my career. I feel like a real actor now!

Jeffrey Friedman: I don’t think we started from that point. We really saw it as a story of a young woman who found herself in a circumstance not of her making at a very young age, and how she had to struggle to find her own power and her own voice within that. That was always the overarching theme for us. It was set in a [household] that took her into a very dark place by the nature of her relationship with Chuck Traynor, the fact that she was the victim of domestic violence. But for us it was really always Linda’s [hurt].

Q: Peter, there are some things in this movie that are really hard to watch. Were they really hard to film, and did you do anything different in addition to what you normally do to prep, between the two of you, in those kinds of scenes where there’s abuse and things like that going on.

Peter Sarsgaard: I mean, you choreograph scenes like that more than you would choreograph other scenes, either a love scene or a fight scene, you don’t usually just say – 1 -2 -3 – GO. You figure out what happens, who’s on top, who’s on bottom, who’s strangling whom. I think the challenge with scenes like that is to breathe life into a situation that could very easily be stilted and static, and to be loose enough – to be able to be loose within that, you need to be able to trust the person that you’re with, and I have total trust and faith in Amanda. I remember first meeting her – a lot of people who talk about her being brave and everything – I also saw that she was really going to put herself in the role in a complete way. I thought, all right, then I’ll meet you here. And when we did, I felt like we had the safety of the people we were working with, who were protecting us, and that makes it all possible.

AMANDA: Yeah, we kind of started at the beginning. We created foundations, where we felt safe and [could trust] each other –  

PETER: It was not gradual -

Q:  Did you guys sit down and say, okay, we’re going to do this, it’s going to be fine…?

Jeffrey: Well, the four of us had a week of rehearsal time together, and that was key, I think, for Peter and Amanda to get to trust one another as actors, get to know one another as actors and as people. Working on the characters, we weren’t on the scenes per se, but really working on the characters… And I think the hardest things for all of us were the violent scenes, particularly difficult for Peter to have to go to that dark a place… He said that really, really isn’t – it informed the performance, because there’s underlying guilt that goes along with all that…that’s one of the many dimensions that Peter brings out in the role.

Q: I’m wondering, are there any movies in your career [that you don’t want your parents seeing]?

AMANDA: I don’t want my dad to see my naked body ever, and so I’m going to sit through tonight and cover it up… It’s only the nudity, I don’t have any problems with him seeing me in violent situations. In sexual situations it’s a little though, but it’s more just the nudity. I think anybody can agree with that. That’s been it for me.

Hank Azaria: My parents, no way.  [laughter]

Debbie Mazur: I saw the film just because it was a press junket and I wanted to see the performances, but I can’t watch myself having an orgasm on a big screen…it’s very uncomfortable. THank:  God that was with my husband.

Q: Sharon, I read that you convinced the director to let you take on this role. Given that there isn’t a lot of footage of Linda’s mother available, where did you go to create this particular character?

Sharon Stone: First of all, I was very fortunate to get this part from these brilliant and thoughtful directors, so tHank:  you. They came to me with a lot of material, but there was material online…I did do some deep digging and found material, found pictures, found things written about the character. The guys brought me some great material, and I did find both pictures and some things written. But of course, you know, I grew up in that era. There were a lot of those kind of ladies where I grew up in deep Pennsylvania. It wasn’t that unusual to see working women in the ‘70s, women who worked in coffee shops, women who worked in diners, hard-working women who took care of their families. So it was a wonderful opportunity for me to play what this country is really based on, real hard-working women who are often single mothers, trying to raise their kids and coming from tough backgrounds.

Q: I want to ask Amanda – a lot of porn stars have been abused as children, and have been in those kinds of situations – did you meet any of them in preparation for the role; and did you meet anyone who was involved [in the original film]?

AMANDA: I’ll answer the second one – I didn’t meet anybody who had been abused and was actually in the porn industry, but we – actually, you talk about it –

Rob Epstein: Linda’s two grown children, Dominic and Lindsay, came to set one day. I just remember them being very moved by Amanda’s performance, they really felt like they were hearing their mother’s voice, which made us all feel very good.

JEFFREY: And also, Sharon’s performance, they felt that it really captured their grandmother. But the thing was that the most personally moving for both of us was that the daughter, Lindsay, said that she and Dominic, her brother, are each in long-term relationships and neither of [the people they’re with] could bring themselves to read the book because it’s so graphic and so disturbing, but now they could show this movie to their partners, who are important to them, will understand how important their mother was to them. So that meant a lot of us, and Dominic and Lindsay will be here with us tonight. The other part of your question, Jack and I did visit a porn set as part of our research.

DEBBIE: Sharon, you’re very protective of your character, I guess, so – the reconciliation scene – I was thinking you’d tell me I’m wrong, there’s no way that she would have gone to her to ask for forgiveness. Do you think it’s important to her to get forgiveness?

JEFFREY: That was based on my interpretation of a resolution that we know did happen, when Linda was on her deathbed, her mother and her father were by her side and they were reconciled at that point in her life, so that was our representation of the way in which they reconciled.

DEBBIE: But did she deserve it? I’m asking Sharon…

SHARON: Being a parent – and, you know – I had wonderful parents, I can say, who had four children. I can say that whatever happens with your children, they never stop being your children. And you love them. You may not always like them, you may not always like the choicest that they make, but I don’t think we ever stop loving our children. Or ever stop hoping that they will find their true north…so when your child does find the best of themselves, and does want you to help with that journey, I think the very best thing that you can do is to give them yourself, because that’s our job, that’s our journey, that’s the thing that we accept when we agree to be a parent. So from my personal point of view, I would say yes, resoundingly so.

ROB: One of the wonderful things about Sharon’s performance is that you really get the sense that she’s trying to be what she thinks is a good mother, and the way she goes about is horrifying at times. But it comes from a place of trying to do the right thing, and feeling like this is what she needs to do to get her daughter on track. And it’s partly the result of the times, it’s the result of her own upbringing… You never feel that it’s coming from a place of evil. It’s coming from a place of caring.

SHARON: Lack of experience. Her own – her own difficult journey. One of the reasons that I took this part is that a mother is a key element in all of our lives, and a mother is so tremendously important to us. And also women’s rights are so important, and what Amanda’s character did, what Linda did, by demonstrating that it’s not how you fall but how you get up, by what is so valuable, by how important women’s rights are – and again, women’s rights are in question now – is so important. One of the reasons I took this part is for that very reason. You see her mother in a time when women’s rights were not yet really clear, and when information for women was not clear and on the table. And you can see how desperately she needed that information, how much it could have helped her.

JEFFREY: It’s also, just to add to that, in a time when the culture didn’t have the language for domestic violence. When the mother and daughter are having that heartbreaking scene, neither of them have a language with which to talk about it, so it’s all the unspoken… Fortunately, we’re at a different place now with what we know…

Q: Kind of a lighter question – one of the things I thought brought a measure of levity was her hairstyle [describing the] timeline. Amanda, was that something you were [aware] of…

AMANDA: The hair is really insane. It’s super fun. I had quite a few transformations, and I love that.

ROB: When Amanda came out with the Afro –

AMANDA: That’s my favorite one!

ROB: She said, can I just wear this one for the whole movie? But Hank: Hank: ’s character Jerry had an awful toupee, really the world’s worst toupee.

HANK:  Well, what can you say about it? It didn’t change too much…I was able to do some deep cleaning on the set as well [laughter].

ROB: You know the story of the toupee, right? It’s a low-budget movie, we didn’t have the budget for the toupee, so our hair person took an old Afro and [made do] laughter.

HANK: Thing is, Jerry really wore his hair like that. And I think he was a hair dresser! An auteur [laughter].

Q: Did you do any background on your character?

Chris Noth: I just kind of felt that my job was to try to make him somebody who wasn’t just moving the plot along, a real person – although I didn’t have anyone real to base it on, except the times when it was on the page. The main motivation, which is the main motivation for many people – money, and his pursuit of that…although I think he has a soft spot in his heart, deep down,

ROB: Chris’s character, Anthony, was based on the man who actually helping Linda escape… Rape is such a difficult subject… Particularly Amanda, who has quite a range…from Les Miserables to Les everyone.

Q: Is it true that during oral sex scenes, a popsicle was used?  

AMANDA: I did use it – when you’re simulating something, sometimes it’s easier, as an actor, to actually be doing something. Technically, my lips would be red so it would be more realistic. It was a banana popsicle… It just seemed right in the moment to help. Simulating that is weird.

PETER: It’s even weirder to have popsicle juice all over you.

AMANDA: I felt bad about that.

Q: Question for Amanda – how did you relate to her in any sort of way, and what did you learn about your own life from your character?

AMANDA: I think a lot of women can relate to her in that she is kind of stuck. She made some bad choices and she was – she was escaping one bad situation and kind of entering into another bad situation. How can you foresee that? After she became famous, I feel like – she’s just a two-dimensional character, I didn’t really care about her story, when I heard about her way before this movie even came into existence, and it’s just important to know that everybody has three dimensions to them, and you can’t just project your feelings or opinions about things onto other people because everybody has – everybody’s a human being. In a lot of ways, she’s always just trying to figure out who she is and trying to find her footing in her life, like we all are. Her circumstances are pretty awful throughout the whole thing, which is why I wanted to play her, because I felt like I could do her some justice. She tried so hard to be heard, and here we are trying to tell her story again, make her a real person.

Q: Could you guys talk a little bit about the contradictions about pornography? Because [on the one hand] it’s sexual liberation, we can be free and all that, but actually there’s a lot of abuse…I would like to hear you guys talk about it, what you learned about it, what was the debate in the framework of your community in the film?

ROB: In the context of this film, pornography stands in for so-called sexual revolution, which is something that we remember, and it’s something that’s been mythologized. Even at the time it was mythologized, and it wasn’t exactly – it was a lot more complex than it seemed. My view of it is, it’s mostly beneficial for heterosexual men, although a lot of women probably had a good time too. But I think – it was a gradual process for women to claim their bodies and for gay people to claim a place in that freedom…so that’s how I approach the whole subject.

JEFFREY:  I think there was a little bit of an illusion, also, at that time, about sexual freedom, in the same way that they talked about not having language for domestic violence…I think there was – people jumped into it without knowing the dangers, and we celebrated one side of it, saying it was freedom, not knowing the damage that it could cause when you take it too far. That’s a start also. Obviously porn is becoming a bigger and bigger business, but at that time, it seemed to me, in looking at it, that there was almost an innocence about it. Like, yahoo! Let’s all do it! And they had all those clubs, the one in New York, orgy clubs, and it wasn’t yet – there wasn’t yet the knowledge of what could come from that.

SHARON: Disease wasn’t [around yet] but it was beginning to ramp up, they weren’t using condoms then, it was the ‘70s, there were tons of drugs, it’s sort of like the beginning of drugs and everything…but sex sells. If I’d made a sex tape, I think I would have a different life. [laugher]

ROB: Nothing’s changed but everything’s changed. But ultimately, from our point of view, as directors, we didn’t see ourselves as making a film on pornography or commentary on pornography, it was really a backdrop to telling a story, and we had to recreate the circumstance under which she was involved in Deep Throat. Ultimately, as we say in the movies, her career in pornography was only 17 days. She did 8 movies with her husband and then Deep Throat, and then spent the rest of her life feeling like she had to overcome that, so really, again, her story is just Linda’s story more than pornography, and at the same time that she has become a symbol of the genie that led all of this out of the bottle. We’re obviously in a very different cultural state with regard to pornography. You can get it for free on the internet, kids are growing up with it.

Q: Amanda, did you have any doubts in taking on [this role]?

AMANDA:  I mean, there’s always – how you’re going to perceived afterwards, with a role like this…but after I met Bob and Jeff, there was barely hesitation. It just seemed like the perfect challenge for me. I needed an emotional education and I also needed – I needed to lose myself in something, and I really believed in this woman. It really wasn’t that hard. There’s something that – there’s such a stigma about it among actresses that I know, and I just don’t feel like it’s that scary, we’re all human, so. That was the least of my worries.

JEFFREY: From our perspective, Amanda is a fearless actress, and from comedy that she has to do in a movie to really heartbreaking movie. We’re both very privileged…

Q: For Amanda, Sharon and Chris – can you talk about what was going on when you weren’t filming, music or dinners or anything like that?

SHARON: What I can say, we were making this film fast and on not such a high budget, so there wasn’t a lot of hanging out, but there was a tremendous support system. I can say that the wonderful thing about starting to play moms and playing with such a wonderful actor, is that being a mother, you bring that to the set. And seeing a young actress coming to work and giving it her all and moving into such a complex performance, it’s wonderful to see it happening with this kind of directing team. To see this intelligent, thoughtful, prepared, amazing guidance happening, I think for all of us… When you can work in a fast environment that isn’t a high budget, when you stay together, it’s just such a gift. And I think because of that, the downtime is really supportive. We felt like it was all happening.

AMANDA: Yeah, I don’t know that it would have gone quite as smoothly if we hadn’t started out with that scene – because I was terrified the first day, terrified. And it really would have been different had it not been you helping me through it, because especially with the maternal energy – it was amazing. The three of you, especially with that one scene

JEFFREY: Our second day of shooting, we had to shoot that scene with Linda coming home to her mother and asking her to take her in. That was our second day of shooting.

SHARON: It was smart to do that, though. It was smart to write it like that, it was smart to put it up front. These guys really know what they’re doing and how to pull us into it.

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