MM: Well Reservoir Dogs, I think, kind of brought him back. Did you meet him on Reservoir Dogs? Was that the first time you met him?
TR: Yeah. Well actually I’d met him once in a bar uptown a bit.
MM: You guys had such a good relationship on screen. It seemed to really click.
TR: Yeah, it was like a father-son thing.
MM: It’s pretty common knowledge that Harvey will sometimes lower his fee for a director just starting out.
TR: Oh yeah, we do, yeah.
MM: Is that something you have to fight your agent about?
TR: No, I don’t have to fight my agent about it. They tell you this one’s a low budget, so you work out a back-end deal, and of course you never really get any money from back-end deals—
MM: Really? Even Reservoir Dogs?
TR: We got a bit from that but by the time they’d done their magical accountancy, you’re screwed. Pulp Fiction paid. We all got the same: scale plus 10 at the beginning. Then there were three levels of back-end for the actors, and we got paid.
MM: How about with James Gray [on Little Odessa]?
TR: That was all back-end. We didn’t see a penny over here. In Europe it went through the roof. People loved it. Paris went crazy about it. The president invited him over and all this kind of stuff. It was very cool. And he loves French movies so he felt really honored.
With Helen Mirren (L) and Michael Gambon (C) as the perverse thug-husband and assorted motley crew in Peter Greenaway’s cult classic, The Cook, The Theif, His Wife and Her Lover (1990).
MM: In any case, you’re finally being paid what you’re worth. Let’s say it didn’t break for you at the point it did. For a lot of people it never does. Would you just slog through it forever on a passionate love for acting?
TR: You just do. That’s what I did. I got to the point where I couldn’t make next month’s rent in L.A., with films that had been out and stuff. People wanted me in their movies and I was still turning them down. And, you know, after you can’t make the rent you just have to keep going.
MM: So you would be 45, waiting tables, doing regional theater that nobody wants to see, because you want to act.
TR: You either want to act or you want to become rich, you know—
MM: That’s great, that kind of passion. It’s probably what attracts you to independent film.
TR: There’s that, but it’s really the kind of films that they were making here that I was seeing back in the ’70s.
MM: How do you exorcise your demons? Do you find acting therapeutic?
TR: Yeah, it’s therapeutic, absolutely. That’s why a director also has to be a psychiatrist, and if you’re no good at that, don’t do it.
MM: Are you surprised at the level of success that you’ve achieved—
TR: Yes.
MM: —or did you always know?
TR: No, I never considered it. You get a lot of failure and I never worried about it. I just plowed on. And then when you do get some kind of recognition it’s extraordinary and it’s surprising but it’s great. And it helps me work, it means I can work.
MM: Does it give you more confidence?
TR: It doesn’t really change your confidence. There are always times when you think, oh shit, I can’t do this, before you get into something. And that kind of insecurity is probably a good thing. But I try not to worry about it. In a world that’s not really considered art anymore, that’s considered more of an industry, there’s always somebody else coming up, so you shouldn’t worry about it. Just get going and try to stay active.
MM: How much did that instruction by Chris Menges help you?
TR: He always just said [the lens] was like a black eye in a room — you can ignore it or use it, depending on the message you want to get across. If you really want to hit home, it’s your way of traveling into the minds of the audience. Sometimes you want to keep them in back of you somehow and not give them what they really want so they have to work, and sometimes you can turn around and hit them. It’s like using it as your spyhole. It’s always in your peripheral vision. You should always know where it is and what it does in terms of lens sizes and what it’s going to do. Then, once you know what it’s going to do, you forget about it.
MM: You’re aware of that, what size lens they’re using?
TR: Yeah. A lot of actors don’t care. I like to know, but that’s because I’m interested in that stuff anyway. I always thought that if I wasn’t an actor I would be an operator.
MM: Yeah, we just had Janusz Kaminski and Russ Carpenter up to Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. for workshops, doing some camera and lighting stuff. It was great seeing how they work. And they seem so happy. It’s like, hey man, I’m fine with this for the next 40 years.
TR: It’s interesting work. Actors should know technical stuff. Editing rooms are fascinating places.
MM: We were talking earlier about the arc of your success and your career. Do you think you’re doing your best work now? Are these the good old days?
TR: You do good and bad, you know? An arc, I always think, means there’s going to be some down time, so I’m always just trying to find things that still excite me and that are a serious challenge. That’s why with Four Rooms, it’s a slapstick comedy, pretty much. I’d never done that and wanted to try it. It’s hit and miss, really. With Rob Roy I wanted to try that kind of broad brushstroke performance and see if I could pull it off.
MM: When you said inside that you wanted to do a romantic role, we thought you were just being facetious at first.
TR: A thing that I did in England was a film called Captives, which Miramax has, and it was a romantic story, although it’s set in prison. It’s about a woman who works in the prison and has a relationship with an inmate, which is illegal to do. So it’s a kind of dodgy premise, but it’s a romance, and I was interested to do it. They don’t come to me often because physically I don’t look the part, especially in America. There’s a certain way that men are supposed to look. They all go to the gym and all that…so it just doesn’t happen.
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