The Thin red Line - Interview with Jim Caviezel

 

The London Interview with Jim Caviezel

This interview originally appeared in This Is London on February 23, 1999. Interview by Steven Goldman. Copyright of Associated Newspapers, Limited.

Leading The Thin Red Line

If Jim Caviezel carries the translucent shroud of shell-shock about him, it's with good cause. The 30-year-old actor is, after all, a survivor of Terrence Malick's Second World War epic, The Thin Red Line - easily one of the most anticipated and perplexing films of the year. Still, it's hard to say if Caviezel's aw'-shucks farm-boy bewilderment is due to the sudden spotlight which surrounds his de facto stardom or the fact that his performance somehow managed to survive one of the messiest cutting-room floors in recent memory.

"My whole thing was to do the best I could," says the man himself, a virtual unknown outside casting circles until hand-picked by Malick for the central role of Private Witt - an AWOL grunt who returns to his unit for the battle of Guadalcanal. "There were many voices who said, 'We could get Brad Pitt. We could get Matthew McConaughey. We could get Johnny Depp ... Caviezel - we can't even pronounce the name'. Well, I told Mr Malick, 'You ask them if, when they first saw it, they could pronounce the name Schwarzenegger - I certainly bet they were able to do it after a few million dollars'."

In short order, Hollywood has learned to pronounce the name (it's of Swiss origin and sadly rhymes with "weasel"). All it took was rave reviews and a million-dollar-plus opening in the US, despite a release initially limited to a scant seven theatres. And so, all of a sudden, Hollywood has come to court an actor often dismissed in the past.

Dressed in a rag-wool sweater and sporting the requisite blend of humility and braggadocio, Caviezel certainly looks as if he's the new male lead. The fact that he is, in The Thin Red Line at least, is down to pure luck. Initially 20th Century Fox decided to build an early publicity campaign around newcomer Adrien Brody, who was central to the original screenplay, only to discover that his performance was largely excised from the final cut. (Among the other amputees from the million feet of footage: Gary Oldman, Bill Pullman, Lukas Haas and a voiceover narration by Billy Thornton; stars John Travolta and George Clooney survive, but enjoy less than six minutes of screen time combined.)

"I was so focused on the job at hand that I never thought beyond filming," says Caviezel, who spent 127 days on a shoot which moved from Daintree Rainforest in northern Australia to the Solomon Islands. "Every day I would say, 'Today is the last day of the rest of my life ... this hour, this moment, this scene right here'. So I never thought I'd be sitting here in front of you. Never conceived it ... I had simply promised the man who had given me the opportunity that I would give it all I had. And I knew what a responsibility it was."

A Catholic schoolboy from rural Mount Vernon in Washington State, Caviezel describes himself as a "shy kid" who developed a taste for mimicry at an early age and, soon after, the stage. "I would do Eddie Murphy, just about anyone to get a laugh. But then when I started doing plays in school, things began to change. All the nuns and teachers would come up afterwards and tell me I just had to go into acting. Of course there were two things I didn't want to be back then, namely an actor or a priest. I mean, if I had my choice, I would have been a basketball player."

Caviezel, nevertheless, soon made his break from hoops to acting with a bit part as an Italian ticket agent in Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho - securing the role only after fooling local casting agents into believing he was a recent Italian immigrant. With a Screen Actors' Guild card in hand, he moved to California with his wife Kerri (the couple now divide their time between LA and Mount Vernon), landing minor roles in lacklustre films like Diggstown, Wyatt Earp and Matt Le Blanc's monkey movie, Ed. To put it bluntly, Caviezel found himself going nowhere fast. "I was looking ahead through my life, where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. It was around that time I started thinking about going back to school to become a chiropractor, like my father. Fortunately it was around that time that I also got the call from Terrence Malick.

"I grabbed the phone and tears started coming out of my eyes," says Caviezel when asked about the summons from the maverick director of Badlands and Days of Heaven. "I told him that whatever he needed me to do, I had the confidence to do it. That I'd be there for him."

And in the end, it was Malick - returning with his first movie in 20 years - who remained faithful to Caviezel's performance. "Towards the end of filming, I'd get calls from my agent about new projects casting out of [20th Century] Fox. But they needed to see this film first and I didn't know who was going to be cut out. I could have been cut out, for all I knew ... I just happened to be fortunate that I ended up in the situation I'm in right now."

Whether The Thin Red Line can ignite Caviezel's career as Malick's Days of Heaven did for Richard Gere remains to be seen. But the formerly struggling actor will make dramatic inroads in the months ahead with Ang Lee's US Civil War drama, Ride With the Devil, and the American football pic, Any Given Sunday, which he is currently filming with Oliver Stone. The roles are notably supporting ones in ensemble films which may not give Caviezel the break-out he deserves. No matter, as far as the actor is concerned. "After being involved with a project like this," he says, "what could you possibly do to top it?"

 

The Lexington Herald-Leader Interview with Jim Caviezel

This interview originally appeared in the Lexington Herald-Leader on January 15, 1999. Interview by Heather Svokos, Pop Culture Writer. Copyright of the Lexington Herald-Leader.

`Thin Red Line' Star 'Accents' Role With Echoes of Kentucky

In The Thin Red Line, Jim Caviezel plays the movie's central figure, an idealistic Kentucky farm boy caught in the horrors of front-line combat in World War II.

Caviezel's performance is gripping, and as audiences watch it unfold they'll hear traces of Dave DeMarcus, a young Fayette County cattle farmer.

And see glimpses of Elhannen Stacey, Bert Goff, Frank Hickey, and Kelly Watkins, four World War II veterans from Breathitt County.

With the part of Private Witt in The Thin Red Line, Caviezel, 30, has snagged his first major part, after 10 years of plugging away in show business. And at least part of his critically acclaimed performance was shaped in Kentucky.

After director Terrence Malick selected him for the role, he suggested that Caviezel visit the Bluegrass.

No problem - he was bent on going anyway.

Caviezel figured one of his acting buddies might be able to help. So he called Josh Hopkins, a Lexington up-and-comer whom he worked with in G.I. Jane. Hopkins is also the son of former U.S. Rep. Larry Hopkins and his wife, Carolyn.

"I thought of Josh right away," Caviezel said from his Los Angeles home. "He was my only tie into Kentucky. Josh and I are very close."

Although Caviezel, like Hopkins, is a natural-born mimic, he hails from Mount Vernon, Wash . "I couldn't speak a lick of Southern dialect, let alone Kentucky."

Recalls Hopkins: "He wanted me to help him with the accent. I said: 'Jimmy, you gotta go to Kentucky.'"

Hopkins hooked Caviezel up with Dave DeMarcus, a Sayre School classmate who now raises cattle and tobacco at his farm off Winchester Road. DeMarcus and his wife obliged, and for two weeks Caviezel watched, learned and rolled up his sleeves. He milked cows and watched while DeMarcus oversaw cattle breeding and tested bulls for fertility.

So, was the Hollywood boy grossed out by the down-and-dirty business of farm life?

"Not really," DeMarcus said. "He was right in there."

The whole time Caviezel observed DeMarcus at work, he'd watch the farmer's mouth - he also video and audiotaped DeMarcus, so he could hone his speech pattern.

"Jim really worked on the sound," Hopkins said. "Dave has a pretty thick accent, and Jim came away sounding exactly like him."

DeMarcus thought so, too. "At supper, he'd say: `Tell me how I'm doing. Do I sound like you?'"

"Yeah, I guess you do," DeMarcus recalled with a grin. "My family thought it was hilarious."

Meeting with veterans

While Caviezel was doing his research, Hopkins' mother, Carolyn, took the actor to Breathitt County, where he met four World War II veterans.

"We just sat down and talked about what life was like before, and the Depression," Caviezel said. "They were poor - they walked to school for about 4 or 5 miles, so going into the military and having to run 15 miles - that was nothing - they were tough. For them it was like going into the Boy Scouts."

One of the veterans was Elhannen Stacey of Jackson, who saw frontline combat in Italy and southern France.

"He asked a lot of questions to get a better understanding of what the people were like in this area," Stacey said. "He seemed to be very sincere about doing his research. He wanted to be as realistic as possible in the part he played."

Stacey says he and the three other veterans who met with Caviezel plan to catch the film when it opens this weekend, and they'll be rooting for Caviezel. "I understand it's a blood-and-guts, front-line type of part," Stacey said.

Caviezel extracted a few things from each of his research subjects to help him find Private Witt's foundation. He used DeMarcus' work ethic, his youth and his physicality. From the veterans, he got an idea of their experiences during the war, and what it was like growing up in pre-World War II Kentucky. "That right there was the heart of the whole trip," he said.

Caviezel has already received excellent notices for his work - Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers said he gave a performance of "shattering intensity."

The actor seems elated that he landed such a major role in a Malick film. (The acclaimed director has steered clear of moviemaking for 21 years. His two previous films were Badlands in 1973, and 1978's Days of Heaven.)

When he describes the emotional roller coaster that led him - a self-described "no-namer" - to being selected, he loads the saga with tales of letdown, basketball metaphors, fate-filled meetings and games of career roulette. But it boils down to this:

10 years of trying

One night, perched on the edge of his bed, he told his wife, Kerri: "This is it. If it doesn't happen, it's over."

"It wasn't about quitting," he recalled. "It's just that it's been 10 years. I look at the future and I want to have kids some day, and I want to feed them."

"It comes to a point where play time's over."

Then, after months of pins-and-needles, Malick finally rang him up.

"He just said," and here Caviezel breaks into a Texan-meets-Kermit the Frog imitation of Malick: "`Well Jim, I was wondering if, uh, you know, well, you know, you would like to play the role of Witt.'

"If my eyes had flood dams, they were released - they broke. I pulled the phone away, because I didn't want him to think I was desperate."

He told Malick: "You made the right decision. I will give you more than you expected, or would ask of anybody."

"He said, `I know.'

"I just walked around, I could see colors differently - I noticed the dirty colors of the smog. ... It's always an asphalt jungle, but the Hollywood signs - I just wanted to go over and kiss them."

Hopkins is thrilled for his friend. Both actors agree that it's great to see the guys you struggled with make a breakthrough. (Incidentally, Hopkins has another Thin Red Line connection: his L.A. roommate, Dash Mihok, has a part in the film.)

Caviezel's Private Witt, is an idealist who proves to be a thorn in the side of Sgt. Welsh (Sean Penn).

Similar to character

"I think Terry (Malick) casted a lot of guys who are similar to their characters. I'm not as good as Witt, but I have idealistic leanings. I think Sean's character is a lot like him - he doesn't trust people, and he thinks you've got to get what you can, but deep down, he's got a heart of gold.

"If you had to go to war and fight with someone, I'd definitely pick (Penn). He's the kind of guy that works when everyone's got their back turned. He's very brash - he doesn't come off pretty - but he's the very thing a coach would love."

With all the sweat and homework Caviezel put into his part, his coach - Malick - might think the same of him.

"He came away really treasuring his time in Kentucky," Hopkins said. "He wants to come back. He said, `Someday I'd like to have a big house and a horse farm in Kentucky.' He loved it.

"I knew he would."

The Thin Red Line - Interview with Jim Caviezel

 

The Houston Chronicle Interview with Jim Caviezel

This interview originally appeared in The Houston Chronicle on January 14, 1999. Interview by Louis B. Park. Copyright of The Houston Chronicle.

A 'Thin Red' Puzzler

Moviegoers seeing The Thin Red Line when it opens this weekend will know they've seen something impressive and harrowing. They may also end up scratching their heads, wondering just what it was all about. Unlike 1998's other big World War II movie, Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line sometimes seems to need, if not an interpreter, at least a tour guide.

"It's nonlinear," said Jim Caviezel , who plays one of the U.S. Marines who hit the beaches of Guadalcanal, finding themselves in a desperate struggle against the Japanese, their incompetent officers and their private demons.

Caviezel was in Houston last week to talk about the movie. "It's like if you woke up from a dream and I said, `Tell me about it,'" he said. "And you said, `I started at Point A, and then went to Point B, and then to Point D.' And I said, `Wait a minute, what about Point C?' And you said, `It doesn't matter.'"

A dream - or nightmare - is a good explanation for what viewers experience in The Thin Red Line, which is based on the best-selling 1962 book by James Jones, author of From Here to Eternity.

The book begins with Marines below deck on a ship, waiting to invade Guadalcanal. The movie starts with Pvt. Witt, Caviezel's character, doing an introspective interior monologue while on a tropical island where he and another Marine have gone absent without leave. The two are soon captured and sent back to their unit.

Throughout the film, harrowing combat scenes as realistic and frightening as those in Saving Private Ryan are mixed with memories of stateside lovers, considerations of the meaning of war and life, and intimate, personal moments that are more literary in tone than what we usually see on screen.

Often it seems like the soldiers are fighting themselves - or war itself - rather than a tangible enemy, a notion emphasized by our not even seeing the Japanese except as vague shapes or gun flashes for the first hour of the movie.

"It's a meditation on the evils of war, as powerful as any personal prayer you could say in a moment of tragedy," Caviezel said.

"Terry Malick is like the professor Robin Williams plays in Dead Poets Society, and he tells his students, `Open your book and read the first couple of pages on how to write a poem.' The kid starts to read it, and the professor says, `Tear it out. Don't let anyone tell you how to make a poem.' This is what Terry does."

Another thing Malick does is attract stars like metal shavings to a magnet. The movie-star lineup in The Thin Red Line is impressive: Sean Penn, George Clooney, John Travolta, Nick Nolte, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson and John Savage.

Aside from Penn and Nolte, most of the stars have very small roles, appearing in the movie just for a chance to work with Malick.

"I just wanted to be in it," Clooney said about his one-minute role in the film.

Malick, who lives in Austin, built a good reputation as a director in the 1970s, based on only two films, which he also wrote. They were the haunting young-criminals story Badlands and the heartbreakingly beautiful Days of Heaven. Neither was a box-office hit, but both received very good reviews and made it clear that Malick was a filmmaker of unusual vision and extreme technical skill.

Since Days of Heaven in 1978, for which he won several major awards, Malick, a Rhodes Scholar, has been the J.D. Salinger of cinema, retreating to Paris and almost completely from filmmaking. His reputation as a recluse and the enforced absence from filmmaking enhanced his status to near-legendary status.

When word went out that Malick was again making a film - a war movie - just about every male actor in Hollywood took notice.

Which explains why there are so many stars in the movie, and why Malick was able to turn what the studio probably hoped would be a straightforward, audience-thrilling war film into a complex, highly personal "meditation on the evils of war."

Which brings us to back to Caviezel. With all these big names in the cast, why is it that this virtual unknown has the largest role in one of the most eagerly anticipated films in years? The movie is an ensemble piece, with no real lead role, but Caviezel's Witt is at its center.

If the name of this rather shy young actor - clearly uncomfortable doing interviews - doesn't ring any bells, don't feel bad. You're not alone in not recognizing Caviezel, who was on the verge of giving up acting before The Thin Red Line.

Prior to playing this, Caviezel's most prominent role was probably that of brother Warren Earp, in Kevin Costner's Wyatt Earp in 1994. Most recently he was a minor character in G.I. Jane.

"I told my wife, in another six months I'm seriously considering wrapping this up," Caviezel said. "Although I loved acting, I felt it was important to be working. If we have kids, it will be important that I pay bills. It would have been very difficult (to quit) because I loved it, but I could always do theater on the side."

Caviezel, 30, is tall and lean, but not as gaunt as he appears in The Thin Red Line, where his tall frame - "On a good day I'm maybe 6 feet, 2 inches; on a bad day maybe 6-1 1/2" - carried only 170 pounds, because the Marines were supposed to look like they have not eaten well. His now clean, handsome face looks haggard and dirty in the movie.

Caviezel didn't know who Malick was when he auditioned and was asked to go to Malick's house to meet him.

"To be truthful, when I went in and met with him, I kind of told him, this is who I was and what was important to me. We really didn't talk about the movie much. Maybe that had something to do with it.

"School and many things in my life have been difficult for me. I've had to work a lot harder than most people. I always figured college was for smart guys, so I came to Hollywood," he said with a grin.

"One thing was never a problem, and maybe it's a gift, is character and integrity," said Caviezel, who is deeply religious. "There are things that I believe in so strongly that I basically have said I'm willing to give up what I'm doing in order to have my family live a great life. I don't need to change. I need to be like myself; this is who I am. From the get-go, that was either going to push (Malick) away or draw us together."

Apparently, it drew them together. Malick changed his mind about the role he originally wanted Caviezel to play and cast him as the moral Witt, who avoids killing, even when it might save his own life.

Caviezel also lucked out in the editing process. Originally, Witt was just one of several important characters. Many other major and minor roles were cut completely from the film.

"I think we shot a record 1 1/2 million feet of film," Caviezel said. "That's basically 50 movies. Coming out of (shooting) that, it was like, well, what kind of film are we going to have here?"

Some filmgoers will be asking that question as they leave the theater. Few will doubt The Thin Red Line is achingly beautiful and frighteningly intense. But it is also a film that demands complete attention.

"If someone is very linear, Saving Private Ryan will work brilliantly for them," Caviezel said. "The Thin Red Line could have been about invading Guadalcanal, going to capture Henderson (air) field, getting the Japanese off the island - making it as linear as possible.

"But it's not. It's about the condition of the human heart and spirit. It's about the thin red line between life and death, between heaven and hell, between sane and insane. It stays true to that line. It's not really tangible."

The Thin Red Line - Interview with Jim Caviezel

 

The Rough Cut Interview with Jim Caviezel

This interview originally appeared on Rough Cut on January 13, 1999. Interview by David Poland. Copyright of Rough Cut.

Caviezel describes his experiences with Malick and war
A Fine Line to Stardom

Jim Caviezel needed to "act" to get into acting. While a teenager, he tricked casting agents into thinking he was a recent Italian immigrant to get a small role in My Own Private Idaho. He was later accepted into the performing arts school, Juilliard, and soon afterward starred opposite Kevin Costner in Wyatt Earp. Caviezel talks about his experiences working alongside big-name stars such as Sean Penn and Nick Nolte and reclusive director Terrence Malick. He also notes his reaction to Saving Private Ryan and explains his alternate choice in profession, should he quit acting.

Let's start with the great mystery of The Thin Red Line. What's Terrence Malick really like?

He is an extremely kind, kind man. You would see an extra walk along and he would treat the extras as well as he would treat me or Sean Penn or Nick Nolte or anybody. As far as a director is concerned, he's like a farmer. He likes to make sure the soil is tilled right and we're, like, his crop. He really takes care of his crop. He works real hard. He works from, like, 4:30 in the morning till 12 at night, and it's never done. And he's always calling you up and saying that, "Well, let's work on your accent a little bit more." He's got this way about him that's wonderful. He's a great listener; [he] doesn't forget a name. You could be some complex five-syllable name and he'd remember [it]. He's extraordinary that way. As far as a director and his techniques, no two days were the same. One day you could come out there and it'd be real intimate and another day he's giving you line readings. I enjoyed not knowing what he was going to do. One day he'd say, "Jim, we don't have a scene yet put down today, I don't have anything written, but maybe I know something needs to be done there between you and Sean (Penn), and so we're gonna try our best to figure it out." So, we'd sit down and thoroughly think through a scene that's not even there yet. It could be real controlled chaos, some days. He likes to keep the actors around him, like we're paints. Some of the guys would complain. Maybe we're up a hill and have to hike and it'd be like 40 minutes away from where our trailers were, so he needed us right there. But it was really hard because of the heat -- you know, 100 degrees every day, humidity was real hard -- and he'd keep you by him like you were a paint and that's how he did it. And then, when he was done, he'd just kind of painted this piece of art, this film.

You're kind of new to this business. What's going through your mind when you find out you're going to be in a Terrence Malick film, with all of these famous actors, playing one of the leading roles?

It's an incredible [feeling]... it's a miracle. I definitely won a lottery, at least for now. No words could describe what a great experience.... Terry Malick had the courage to give me this role. He didn't have to. There were plenty of guys who were much better-suited, [who] had way more credentials than I did. I hadn't proven to him that I could do this role, only the two auditions I'd done on video. But he put his reputation on the line for me and there are no words to describe what a wonderful experience it was, working with him.

Did he explain to you why you were chosen?

No. He wouldn't do that. Maybe it's a sense of we're a lot alike. Every character in the film, as you get to know them -- each guy in the film, the essence of who they are -- is a lot like their character. Now, I'm not saying that I'm as good as my character, because I'm not. But I do believe in a better day. I try to be the best man I can for the day. I love my country. I am a humanitarian, so maybe it was those things that we were similar on (sic). And Sean Penn, maybe, you know, he's so much like [his character] Welsh. He can be such a viper, but in the next sense he could be picking you up and carrying you over his shoulder. I don't know if it made the [movie], but him running out there and picking that guy up is very much like him. And you love him. And there are times when you want to hit him, but there are other times you want to just kiss and hug him. You'd do anything for him.

Did you ever think that you wouldn't get here? Did you ever think of just giving up acting?

I didn't want to quit acting, but I felt like it was impossible. I realized that I knew I wasn't going to change who I was as a person. I had a strong sense of who I was, always have, and I was much happier in staying the way I am, in the way God intended me to be, instead of changing to fit my generation or the area, Hollywood, that we're always in. I needed to stay as close to home as I could, because what was important was being happy. What was important was when I found my wife. I married a woman who is much better than me, I'm very fortunate to be with her and I know I'll be happy with her the rest of my life. People have asked me, "There's a lot of temptations down here," but I said, "Use the best [temptation], go ahead and challenge me, go seek me out." I don't ever want you to print anything that says... I don't want it ever to come out that I've cheated on her. I don't want to ever do that. It's not something that I can afford to do. I would never go back to my wedding day and say that we had a great time. We were so in love, but I'm so much more in love with her now than I've ever been. And that is real happiness. I want to be closer to her as I get older. I've had too many good examples in both directions. People who say, "Well, there's probably something out there that I'm missing, so I need to try some [of them]." You know, I'm just telling you what I've found that I know I can be happy.

What would you have done if you quit acting?

Well, I'd probably have gone into [the] chiropractic [field], like my dad. And I'd probably have done theater on the side, you know? But yeah, I've really got into my kids, like he did. He invested a heck of a lot of time, and my mom, especially, who was always there for us and we're very tight today because of it. We're a real strong unit. My father had open-heart surgery about five months ago and I was devastated. We didn't know if he was going to make it. He's not a man so much to tell you, I mean, I've never seen him cry. But I said, "I'm scared," and I could tell he was, 'cause his hand was shaking and he said, "Well, if I go, it's because God wanted me to, because I don't want to. I want to see The Thin Red Line, I want to see your film."

If this movie makes you a big star, how hard is it going to be to maintain this attitude you have?

Well, it's like I said, there are some things in your life that you can't do. If people ask me, I don't plan on going to strip clubs, I don't want to be tempted, so I won't go there. I don't want to be [tempted]. If I'm around a woman who I know I would want to be with, physically, if that was an attractedness, I would just make sure I'm in the public, so I wouldn't do something (sic). I'd try to put myself in a situation where it's not going to happen. Do I have feelings of physicalness around other females? Well, sure, I mean, I'm as human as anybody, but the big thing is I'm not going to act on it. And I try to [think], if it gets in my mind, it's like, "Hey, stop."

Have you seen Saving Private Ryan?

Yes. I did. I've seen it three times. It's a masterpiece. Someone asked me earlier, "Do you not want that film to do as well?" and I said, "Absolutely not." The big thing is that I'd like for my generation and the generations to come, to see how bad war can be. To see the 50 million people die, [more than] 54, 56 million people died in WWII. To see what these veterans went through... let us not do it again. After going to Guadalcanal and then coming to watch Pvt. Ryan, I wept. But first, I was numb. I walked out of there, and maybe 14 hours later, I just broke down. I saw the veterans there, when they came to Guadalcanal. A couple of them came up and were saying, "Hello," and one of them turned around and I could hear him crying. And he goes, "I apologize," and I go, "No. You don't apologize." And he goes, "No. You don't understand. You are us. You look like us. This area... we were here."

Can you tell us about your experience with the WWII veterans?

I spent time with the veterans, right before the filming, in Kentucky, where I did a lot of my research. And spent time with the boys there, who told me what it was like before growing up, they say, you know, "I walked a couple of miles to school everyday [and] walked back." Some guys walked five miles. They carried guns, nobody messed around with anybody. They'd hunt a lot, and [have] chicken farms. There was always plenty to eat, but they were always poor. How intimate do you want me to get?

Were the veterans watching on the set?

No. They didn't. Those guys were just telling me the experience in Guadalcanal and in the Philippines and some of them told me about Germany and D-Day. But the actual veterans, there are all these guys going uphill to [make] pilgrimages to Guadalcanal. A lot of them have to get through what happened. It was so devastating. Many of them were coming and seeing where their comrades had dropped and died.

And they were welcome?

Oh, yeah. Terry would welcome them anytime they came out there. Terry would even say, "Well, do you see anything here that you would change?" That's where Malick is smart, he knows where he can use experience, and these veterans were that.

Did anyone in your family fight in WWII?

Two of my uncles were in Vietnam, my great-uncle was in WWI, I had cousins in WWII, but as far as my mom's brothers, they missed that part. They were too old. Even more devastating was the Battle of the Sun. We weren't involved with that, with the machine gun, they'd never dealt with machine guns. They'd get up and run out of trenches and you'd lose a couple hundred thousand [soldiers] in a matter of a week.

Can you tell us what the title, The Thin Red Line means?

That line of being sane and insane, that fine line. And the thin red line that you go through. I wanted to tell you about that, some guys get Superman Syndrome. That's how they deal with it. Some guys go insane, they do go insane. They go into a mental ward. They can't handle it anymore. Some guys could never take somebody's life. Nobody wants to, it's just kill or be killed. But it would be the fine line of sane and insane.

The Thin Red Line - Interview with Jim Caviezel

 

The Seattle Times Interview with Jim Caviezel

This interview originally appeared in The Seattle Times on January 8, 1999. Interview by Luaine Lee of Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. Copyright of The Seattle Times.

Caviezel followed a dream

In spite of the high-profile cameos of George Clooney, John Cusack and John Travolta in "The Thin Red Line," the real star of the film is somebody most people have never heard of.

Jim Caviezel, who plays the Kentucky idealist who weaves a stream-of-consciousness narration throughout the bloody battle on Guadalcanal, earned the role mostly because of who he is. Not from Kentucky (but from a small town in Washington, Mount Vernon), Caviezel is a slow-talking, earnest guy who mostly dreamed of basketball when he was a kid. Along the way somebody noticed he was a deft mimic and encouraged him to try acting.

From a family of five kids (all of whom play basketball), Caviezel, 30, came to Los Angeles with the idea of studying acting.

"I was accepted at Juilliard and they gave me sort of a scholarship. Then they REALLY gave me a scholarship when I said, `Look I can't afford your school unless you give me more money.' And they did. Right after that, maybe a month, I got `Wyatt Earp.' I wanted to do both."

But he couldn't do both. So Juilliard lost out. Caviezel doesn't regret the loss. He says earning a role in "Wyatt Earp" built his confidence and encouraged him to keep trying. But there were many times when he considered giving up the dream. "I'm married and want to have kids," he says, in his slow drawl.

Caviezel has been married to Kerri, a high-school English literature teacher, for 2 1/2 years. He auditioned several times for Terrence Malick, the director of "The Thin Red Line."

"He was a real great guy, a sweet man and we went on to have several lunches and dinners and phone calls," recalls Caviezel, who refuses to change his name to something more euphonic.

"He called me at home up in Washington state. We never talked about the film, really. He asked me about baling hay growing up. Did I know the difference between a round bale and a square bale and what is the difference between alfalfa and regular grass weight. So we built up the trust."

Already there is a flurry of talk about Caviezel. But is he ready for the blast furnace of fame?

Caviezel says he learned a hard lesson about ego when he was still in junior high.

"I was a pretty good ball player. As the stakes got higher there were bigger kids than me, and I came in with a bit of an attitude, a bit cocky. And I got thumped. It hurt but I said to myself, `I'm never going to do that again. I'm never going to be like that again.' I was blessed to learn that early in life," he nods.

"Perspective is important. There are people out there doing far better things than I'm doing and that was the hardest thing about getting into acting because it's like: This is a lifestyle? This kind of life? Whatever I do I've got to treat others as I'd want to be treated.

"I know if you keep connected to who you are inside, happiness is what you're pursuing. You're never going to find it cheating on your wife or in the money. . .

"My dad had a heart attack and open-heart surgery this last year. I'm so close to him, and that sums it up right there. When I got off `The Thin Red Line' and we started shooting `Ride With the Devil,' I couldn't think about any film. I could only think about him. He's OK. He made it through and our family's a lot closer because of it. He said to me, `If I go, it's not because I want to. I want to see your movie and your children.' "

The Thin Red Line - Interview with Jim Caviezel

 

The New York Daily News Interview with Jim Caviezel

This interview originally appeared in the New York Daily News on December 29, 1998. Interview by Ron Givens. Copyright of The New York Daily News.

'Thin Red Line's' Unknown Soldier: A fresh face gets big break in all-star cast of WWII film

Funny things can happen to a movie in the editing room. Take "The Thin Red Line," for example. The WWII movie, which opened last week, had been widely anticipated because its legendarily reclusive director, Terrence Malick, was making his first movie in 25 years. Also because its all-star cast which includes Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Woody Harrelson, John Travolta and George Clooney, was supposed to surround an up-and-comer named Adrien Brody.

Well, "The Thin Red Line" showcases an almost totally unknown actor all right. Only his name is Jim Caviezel.

His character, Witt, is the spiritual heart of this very intense depiction of the Battle of Guadalcanal.

"It's really been tremendous being a part of this," says the 30-year-old Caviezel, who has only had small roles in movies like "Wyatt Earp" and "Diggstown." "It's like winning the lottery."

The victory was all the sweeter because Caviezel landed the part after nearly seven years of frustration.

"I was almost out the door," says the soft-spoken actor, who was on the verge of moving with his schoolteacher wife back to his native Washington State and studying chiropractic medicine.

The straw that nearly broke this Caviezel's back was a movie called "The Hi-Lo Country," which comes into theaters tomorrow. Caviezel was up for the part won by Billy Crudup and Sean Penn was under consideration for the role that went to Woody Harrelson.

"I had been close before," says Caviezel, "but I thought maybe I had a shot with this. One day I came home and there was a letter on the door from ['Hi-Lo' director] Stephen Frears. It took the wind out of me."

Getting the part of Witt in "Red Line" did not come easily. Caviezel met with Malick several times over the course of the three months it took to land the assignment. They had lunch. There were long talks on the phone. Caviezel took a pass on three separate TV pilots. (They didn't go anywhere anyway.)

Finally, the actor got a call from the director, which he re-creates using what he calls Malick's "Texas-meets-Kermit the Frog" voice.

"Jim, hello, how's everything?"

"Good."

"Well, I was wondering, uh, if you would, uh . . . "

"Yes, Terry."

"If you would like to . . . is Kerry [Caviezel's wife] there? . . . "

"No, she's not here."

"I was wondering if you would like to play Witt."

Once Caviezel went off to Australia for the making of the movie, he had to cope with working in the midst of A-list stars. What got Caviezel through was sheer talent and a rugged work ethic.

"I was a basketball player and that was all I did," says Caviezel. "My goal was to play in the NBA. As I look back, I realize I wasn't good enough to play at the highest level, but I felt that I got everything out of my physical ability."

In "The Thin Red Line," Caviezel creates tremendous impact by not doing much. With bodies being cut down all around him, his character remains remarkably still.

"Jim reflects a kind of innocence and purity that made him very attractive for this role," says George Stevens Jr., executive producer for the movie.

Stevens is very careful when describing the way that the Brody character became almost nonexistent in the movie.

"Jim's character was always intended to be one of the two or three most important parts," he says. "So it's less a matter of Witt becoming more important than there not being room for the development of other characters."

Almost like the understudy who must replace the star on opening night, Caviezel already has seen the benefits of his good fortune. There is a big part in the next Ang Lee movie, "Ride With the Devil," and three more roles are under negotiation. But, the actor emphasizes at the end of the interview, "Don't worry about me getting a big head."

The aw-shucks attitude is not an act. Like the character he plays in "The Thin Red Line," Caviezel doesn't seem to have an insincere bone in his body.

"Everything from this point on," he says, "is just cake."

The Thin Red Line Interview - Adrien Brody

 

The Independent Interview with Adrien Brody

This interview originally appeared in The Independent on April 21, 2001. Interview by James Mottram. Copyright of The Independent.

COMING SOON: THE PRIME OF MR ADRIEN BRODY;
AFTER HIS ROUGH EXPERIENCE ON 'THE THIN RED LINE', THE YOUNG ACTOR HAS BEEN BIDING HIS TIME

Adrien Brody doesn't really look like a movie star. He's tall and awkward-looking, gangly even, with a wedge of black hair, that seems shocked to attention. But his appearance belies the fact that, at just 27, the Manhattan-born Brody is one of the most mature actors of his generation.

Notching up an already impressive list of directors worked with - including Barry Levinson, Terrence Malick, Spike Lee and Steven Soderbergh - his performances are astute, meticulous and spirited. Brody has had his disappointments - he was touted incorrectly, much to his disappointment, as the hot newcomer to emerge from Malick's The Thin Red Line in 1998 - but he still remains willing to take risks with his roles. Take his latest picture, Ken Loach's Bread and Roses: it. features Brody as an LA union organiser fighting in the recent Justice for Janitors campaign. Offering a typically committed performance, Brody says he was attracted initially by the lack of safety net. "I took the job because it was so different: no script, no make-up, no trailer. It was a bit of an adventure, and I didn't know what I would be required to do," he says. "I didn't dislike it, but I didn't prefer it, because I'm an actor and ... I like to guide my performance; I don't like it to just happen, and then me to go home at night and go 'Shit, I wish I'd done that!'" Brody, as he often does, took to the shoot a wealth of research and preparation. He had Spanish lessons, and went undercover in a union to learn the techniques of an organiser, even participating in a picket outside a hotel. "It was good to get a taste of a whole new side of LA, and spend some time downtown. I even considered moving there. It's cheap! In New York, the neighbourhoods aren't so removed. Poor people, wealthy people, every kind of race and cultural background, it's all intermingled. If you have to live in LA, you want to be by the beach - and you have to be wealthy to do that." Brody, who adds that LA's exploited service-industry employees "live in the shadows of the town", claims most Angelinos - himself included - felt inconvenienced by the Justice for Janitors campaign.

"It was an inconvenience to me ... I was pissed off. I had a major audition for (Elizabeth director) Shekhar Kapur, which was very difficult for me to get. Most casting directors say I'm too urban, too ethnic, and this was to play a very English soldier. It was an incredible role. I studied very hard for it. Didn't get it. These janitors were outside making a racket, picketing Paramount. It sounded like a game show was going on." Brody is now "bi-coastal", with homes in both LA and his native New York. It was his mother who sent him to a Saturday class at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts which led to his first off-Broadway acting gig; his father, a teacher, went so far as to take a sabbatical to live in LA while Brody played Mary Tyler Moore's stepson in a CBS series shot there.

After he won his supporting role in Soderbergh's King of the Hill in 1993, Brody's career accelerated, though much of his work went un-noticed. It wasn't until Terrence Malick chose him to star in his lyrical World War Two epic, The Thin Red Line, that Hollywood found Brody.

"The pressure on that film was that I had to carry the movie with a cast of stars that I truly admired," he recalls. "Nick Nolte and Sean Penn in particular. You hear horror stories about Sean Penn, that he can be a real bastard if he doesn't admire your work." Having endured boot-camp and a protracted six-month shoot in the Australian outback, wearing "a filthy costume which they wouldn't wash," Brody returned to the US to discover his role as Corporal Fife had been drastically trimmed. Understandably, he remains bitter.

"I was so focused and professional, I gave everything to it, and then to not receive everything ... in terms of witnessing my own work. It was extremely unpleasant because I'd already begun the press for a film that I wasn't really in. Terry obviously changed the entire concept of the film. I had never experienced anything like that." Brody had initially been touted as the lead, based on the size of the role in the James Jones source novel - he learnt a valuable, if painful, Hollywood lesson. "You know the expression 'Don't believe the hype'? Well, you shouldn't." Since that time, Brody has chosen projects - Spike Lee's Summer of Sam aside - that will not resubmit him to media scrutiny. Barry Levinson's Liberty Heights, in which Brody played a Fifties Jewish Baltimore boy, came and went, while crime thriller Oxygen was restricted to US TV.

But, just maybe, Brody is ready for a second assault on the big-time. With four films on the way, he will next be seen as a war photographer in Harrison's Flowers, with Andie MacDowell - a chance, as he puts it, to "reclaim what I lost" on The Thin Red Line. His performance as a painfully shy ventriloquist in Dummy follows, and then a period swashbuckler with Hilary Swank and Christopher Walken. The latter meant learning to fence and ride. "I get to be a French 17th-century scoundrel," he grins.

Currently shooting in Germany, Brody also has the lead in Roman Polanski's The Pianist, a Warsaw ghetto-set story as personal to Polanski as Liberty Heights was to Levinson. A diverse slate by anyone's standards - I wonder whether he sees these as provocative choices. "Yes I do, actually," he says. "It's good to be able to be playful, a bit of a smart ass - it's fun. It would be terribly boring to be earnest."