(upbeat music)
- Adam, "Marriage Story's" semi-autobiographical.
Were you playing your director?
- I may have, like all of these things,
Noah's wrote a script, he did that hat trick
that people, I think try to do,
of writing something that's incredibly
specific but reaches a broader audience.
I mean, like anything, like "Meyerowitz",
you know "The Squid and the Whale,"
"While We're Young,"
they're all in a sense auto-biographical, then.
But he wrote something that,
I think we all projected our history onto.
- What was the toughest moment for you in that film
or was there one that you really struggled with?
- Usually there's like one scene in a movie
or maybe two that you're dreading.
With this one, every scene felt like,
it's all too early in the schedule,
it's too early for Halloween,
(laughing)
It's too early for--
(laughing)
And I'm like okay well,
then we can maybe put it to next week
but then next week's was worse, so.
And again that's, I think,
a testament to good writing.
Every scene felt the stakes were incredibly high.
They all felt urgent.
They all felt necessary.
There wasn't a part that you could take out
where the movie would survive without it
so I think that was our first sign of oh this felt
like it always should be this urgent, hopefully.
If it was badly written, there's only one way to do it.
If it's well written,
the language is so rich that every time you say it,
it opens up an idea for something else
and because Noah has structured,
and Adam knows this from working with Noah in "Meyerowitz,"
because it's the script is the script
it feels very much like theater, I guess,
where you're talking about
where the boundaries are very clear.
The text is the text and I find that incredibly freeing
because your intention could be anything.
And if you're with another actor, as Scarlett,
in that instance, the set is,
Noah is giving you another piece of information
that maybe you hadn't thought of before.
Where the line or you got in a fight
with your wife before the scene starts, or maybe nothing,
maybe you're having a good moment before the scene starts.
It just opens up your imagination
of a different way of reading it.
He's taken, basically a four month run of play
and condensed it to two days.
So I think that's easier.
If its just, have an emotion, I don't think I can do that.
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- Adam, you were in the military.
- Right away.
(laughing)
- Acting in trauma and dying are common.
Do they seem trivial in comparison?
- Well, I mean when the stakes you're pretending are life
and death and the other they kind of are
but the way the process in which you work
on them is the exact same.
It's a group of people trying to accomplish a mission
that's bigger than any one person and you have a role
and you have to know your role within a gun team,
and you're only as good as the people
that are there with you.
There's someone leading it
and when they know what they're doing,
what you're doing feels active and relevant and exciting,
and when they don't it feels like
a waste of resources and dangerous,
and you're just so aware that you're one part
of a bigger picture.
- How did you switch from being a Marine to being an actor?
- I was interested in it before being in the military,
then when you get in the military you get out,
you kind of have all this false confidence
that civilian problems will be small in comparison,
which is an illusion.
But then I was lucky enough to get into an acting school
and learned about acting and plays and a process.
Then I was lucky enough to work.
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- Are you self critical?
- Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't think that you ever get over,
'cause in a way you kind of know what your potential
is more than anybody else in a sense.
I have a lot of regret.
Often when you leave a set,
you can't help but think about it,
obviously it's filmed so film is forever,
so you never get a chance to go back and do it again.
I feel like that's the thing about acting
is that regardless of how often you do it
or long you do it you never figure it out.
- Do you prefer theater because of that?
- I've learned from theater and that,
always at the end of a four month run of a play,
your, always the last performance,
it's always the best one,
and you're like okay now I have a better sense
of what I wanna do and go back
so I know that there's no right answer.
There's no right way to play a scene.
That's my part of it, I like the making of it
and it's someone else's responsibility
to make the choice of what is the best version of it.
You would just have to feel comfortable with failing.
You either get easier on yourself, I think about,
like okay then I'll just let it go,
or you don't but I don't think you'll ever figure
that out that's why I think people keep doing it.
I think.
But I don't know.
Being more economical,
I think I wish I could be,
in things that I think I need I don't.
Whether it be acting or life.
- Economical artistically, financially, emotionally?
- Well we can say artistically, I guess.
If you think that you need to,
certain things that have to be in place
for you to do your job,
and actually none of that's true.
We were using the example earlier of porthole.
Having it worked up in your mind and then realizing
getting there you have no control over any of it.
Or doing homework and research
and losing weight and putting a bunch of weight
and then feeling comfortable to let it all go
'cause none of that is helpful
because your scene partner is drunk.
(laughing)
That's not something that's happened to me,
just pulling something out of
(mumbles)
But being more economical with,
you know okay all that time,
I have to either get better about that I wasted it
or I shouldn't just waste that time
and I should prioritize in a different way
so I think that's kind of the same thing.
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