The Most Intense Actor In Hollywood

Watching James Remar on set is akin to viewing a wild cat stalk his prey.  Directors beware.  Remar will challenge your handling of a scene, from talking too much to the performers to not being clear enough.  Rumors of his difficulty ostensibly let to his termination as Hicks in James Cameron’s Aliens.  And you definitely don’t want Remar smiling at you.  That dictates a serious actor unhappy about a challenging question being posed a certain way as to set him off balance.  But all of these affects are in pursuit of excellence in front of the camera.  And Remar has certainly delivered time and again, from his splashy performance in Walter Hill’s films The Warriors and 48 HRS. where he played menacing characters on the prowl, much like his persona on his sets, to his commanding roles in The Cotton Club and Drugstore Cowboy.  But make no mistake: Remar is a friendly affable interview subject who is as happy to talk about his native Red Sox from his Boston hometown and his many experiences of the last 30 years as he is defensive about his craft.  Perhaps it is his uncanny knack for being on his guard that has led to some of the more memorable performances as a heavy over the last three decades.  Regardless, Remar is one to be taken seriously and he knows it as evidenced by this exclusive interview conducted between setups on one of his recent television projects.

SCOTT:      What was your first five years as an actor like leading up to “The Warriors”?  What kind of things did you do?

J.R.:            It was less than five years.  I went to the Neighborhood Playhouse and studied with Sandy Meisner, ‘75, ‘76.  And then I starved and drove a truck and worked in restaurants and got a couple of little Off-Off-Broadway gigs, and finally managed to get a job in the bus and truck company of the Equity show, “Grease”.

SCOTT:      Playing which role?

J.R.:            Kenicki.

SCOTT:      So you sang and danced.  Were you any good?

J.R.:            Yeah.  Well, I was.  I think they hired me for my energy and attitude more than for my singing and dancing, though.

SCOTT:      Then Walter Hill–how did he cast you in “Warriors”?

J.R.:            By audition.  I had done one feature film prior to that called “On the Yard” with Ray Silver directing.  It was a pretty much massive audition.  Every young man in New York went to the audition for “Warriors”.  And I auditioned for Walter and managed to win the part.

SCOTT:      There were a lot of good young actors in that cast: Dorsey Wright, Michael Beck, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, David Patrick Kelley, Tom Waites.  That was a pretty rich cast.

J.R.:            Yeah.  All wonderful talents.

SCOTT:      Was there a sense that you guys were an emerging group of young New York actors in this picture?

J.R.:            You know, at that age, I never thought in those terms.  We all had that energy.  That that’s what we wanted.  We didn’t think in those terms–that we were an emerging group of young actors.  We were just thrilled to be working on a feature film.  You know, and getting to do our thing.

SCOTT:      Was it a tough movie to shoot?

J.R.:            Yeah.  Incredible.  It became a lifestyle.  It was 20 weeks of nights, New York City.  And that affected me for years.

SCOTT:      Albert Ganz from “48 HRS.” was one of the most memorable villains ever–I’m talking cinema history here–on the screen.  You were unforgettable as that character.  The question is: what went into making him so memorable?  “Cause in a weird sort of way, he’s just another bad guy, but you brought a certain energy and menace to him that was outstanding.

J.R.:            Well, thank you, first of all.  And at that particular time, I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with the character.  Most actors get the job on Tuesday and they’re working on Wednesday.  Here was a chance that I had to really get into the mind of this particular guy.  And there was some writing going around at that particular time–one book was called “In the Belly of the Beast” by Jack Henry Abbott, and another was “Executioner’s Song”, Norman Mailer, story of Gary Gilmore.  And I delved into these very, very deeply and got as much information as I could about the state-raised convict.  So without it ever having been said in the film, people knew I was a state-raised convict, somebody who had basically spent his life in the care of the system.  And I made a conscious effort to fuse these two guys, to fuse Jack Henry Abbott and Gary Gilmore, and ended up with a completely different new breed.  So it really was for me, that background research.  The simple thing is to understand that my image for this guy was a panther who’d been tormented by his zookeepers.  And he got out of his cage.  And there’s no way he’s going back in it.  And every opportunity he had to punish his tormentors was one he took.

SCOTT:      It seemed to me to be a performance in which Walter Hill had ultimate confidence.

J.R.:           Walter’s always demonstrated ultimate confidence in me.  That’s one of the beauties that he possesses as a director, is that he doesn’t try to layer stuff on you that isn’t there.  He really lets you do your thing.  And that confidence has a way of snowballing.  So your confidence and belief in the character just continues to develop.

SCOTT:      How long of a shoot was “48 Hours”?  It seems like it must have been a long shoot, ’cause you were in so many places.

J.R.:            I think it was a summer.  14 weeks, something like that.  3, 4 weeks in San Francisco and then about 9 or 10 down in LA.

SCOTT:      There’s a great moment in “48 Hours”, too.  I don’t know if anyone’s ever asked you about it.  But you’re in the hotel, and there’s a cartoon….

J.R.:            Oh, yeah.  “Space Kid”.

SCOTT:      And he shoots his gun at all this stuff and then he shoots the policeman.  Your character’s got this great reaction to it.  Where you’re just–you’re just like sucking it all in, and you’re just about to have a huge shoot-out with police and so forth.  What was the idea behind including that scene?

J.R.:            Well, the idea behind that is that the cartoon wasn’t even playing when I was watching the TV.  What I was doing is I was just watching a blank television set.  And I was just letting my mind wander.

SCOTT:      So it didn’t even matter what was on?

J.R.:           No.  It was a nice astute choice on their part.  But I was just letting my mind wander.  Blanking out.  Blankin’ out like I was watchin’ the tube in the joint.

SCOTT:     I don’t know that much about you as a person, but I’m sort of willing to believe that you’re not as bad a guy as Ganz.

J.R.:          We wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation if I was.

SCOTT:     You’d snap my neck.  So, is it hard to divest yourself of Ganz when “Action” hasn’t been called?

J.R.:           No.  The more mature and the older I get as an actor, the easier it becomes.  There was a thing, I think, as a young actor, like staying in character all the time.  And it’s just not truthful.  It’s too energy depleting.  But playing a character in extreme, like that character, is always gonna leave me a little raw.  It gets a little easier as I get older, but as I say, a character in extreme is harder to divest from than a character–not divest, but just–stop doing–than say, a character that is not in such an acute state.

SCOTT:     How young were you when you played Ganz?

J.R.:           28.

SCOTT:     In “Cotton Club,” the most memorable line in that whole movie is when you look at Richard Gere, and you just have this look of disgust on your face and you go, “The mob boss.”  And you kind of  laugh at him.  That was a great moment..

J.R.:          Yeah, it was….

SCOTT:    Totally different kind of guy from Ganz.  Totally different.

J.R.:         Well, I wouldn’t say totally different.

SCOTT:    Well, you’re a classy old-time gangster.  You’re not a menace to society.

J.R.:          Not a menace to society?  Dutch Schultz?  Dutch Schultz was a real enemy of the state.  I mean, this guy fucked people up.

SCOTT:    True. Ganz had a little more dirt under his fingernails.

J.R.:          No, that’s not true at all.

SCOTT:     No?

J.R.:          Not at all.  Dutch Schultz was a street fighter.  He did it all.  The guy was smart, and he loved money.  You know?  Albert Ganz wasn’t really interested in that stuff.  Albert Ganz was more of a meteor that burns in the night sky.  Enters–zoom–brilliant flare and it’s gone.  He was a guy that burned himself out immediately, whereas Dutch Schultz had a greater constancy to him–a little more gravity  He had a vested interest in living in the world.  You know?  He liked money.  He liked the good life.  Albert Ganz didn’t give a shit.  And he was just takin’ that one last run.

SCOTT:     How is the James Remar who works with Walter Hill different from the James Remar who works with Francis Coppola or Robert Zemeckis?  What do you have to do differently when you meet these different kinds of guys?

J.R.:      Very little.

SCOTT:      You’re doing the same kinds of stuff?

J.R.:      The craft remains the same.  To live truthfully under imaginary circumstances.  To get as truthful as I can with art.  Whatever intercourse or exchanges take place in order to make it more imaginative and interesting is gonna vary from guy to guy.  But those are all truthful directors, and they’re interested in portraying the truth.  And by virtue of that, we’re all in pretty good shape.  They want to be truthful.  They want to keep it real.  And I support them.

SCOTT:      What are you looking for in a director?  What do you want from a director?

J.R.:      Simplicity.  Somebody who listens and is intuitive, who understands the actor’s craft, and can keep it real simple and help me do things in a doing way.  I’m not interested in intellectualizing.

SCOTT:      Any particular reason?

J.R.:      Intellectualizing is the antithesis of acting.  The root word of act–acting–to act is to do.  It is activate, actual.  It is to do.  And somebody that can instruct me and direct me in a doing and active way is the most valuable kind of director I can be involved with.  Then someone that can take it further and liken that doing to a personal experience of the character or of my own, that’s embroidery and it makes it all the more beautiful.  But most people don’t understand that acting is doing.  There’s the popular line that acting is reacting: that’s just nonsense.  It’s action.  Action.  Doing.  Activity.

SCOTT:      Internally, though, you’re thinking about stuff.  You seem to care.  You seem to be very passionate about acting.

J.R.:      Of course.  I’ve devoted my entire adult life to it.

SCOTT:      So you are, maybe not intellectualizing, but you’re thinking very carefully about everything you’re doing?

J.R.:      I review it to make sure that it doesn’t feel untruthful.  Intellectualizing about things is different than examining something and doing it and bringing it to life.  It seems to me that if you can say something in a succinct fashion, if you can say it pretty simply and quickly, you can get a lot of content in that.  The more somebody starts to talk about something, the more in your head, intellectual, it becomes.  And that way, it isn’t something that I can do.  It’s something to think about.

SCOTT:      Yeah.  That makes sense.  Of all the stuff you’ve done in your career, what do you think you’re most proud of?  Or is it more the body of work you look at?

J.R.:      You know, I’m very happy to have survived all these years and made a living as an actor.  I’m proud of relationships.

SCOTT:      You’ve been working since you were—what–mid-twenties?

J.R.:      Early twenties.  I’m proud of the relationships that have developed over the years, where someone comes to me 20 years later and remembers working with me as being a worthwhile experience.  There was a period of my career where I was not a very happy guy or a good guy to be around.  But I was always a pretty competent actor.  And that’s been consistent.  Someone’s  come up to me and said, “You know, you were a jerk, but you’re a good actor.”  And now they come up to me and say, “Hey, you’re not a jerk anymore, but you’re still a good actor.”  That’s very gratifying.

SCOTT:      What period of time was this?  That you were having a hard time?

J.R.:      Eh.  Mid-eighties.

SCOTT:     After “48 Hours”?  You know what?  I saw you in a movie called “Quiet Cool” around then.  That wasn’t a good experience?

J.R.:           Sure.  No, it was.  I never said that the motion pictures themselves weren’t good experiences.  I was not personally a very happy guy.

SCOTT:     What’s your high point in that period after “48 Hours” and say, after “Cotton Club”?  The favorite of your experiences after that in the eighties?

J.R.:           You keep asking me to make something number one.  That’s not the way it is.

SCOTT:      I don’t mean to do that.

J.R.:           Well, it isn’t–you know, the overall experience, the longevity of it is cool.  “Drugstore Cowboy” was a very special point.

SCOTT:      You were excellent as the cop.

J.R.:           Thank you.  That was special point in my life.  You know, it was at the close of the Eighties, and I really got to play a character who was, literally, quite the opposite of most of the characters that people view me as.  That was an important moment.  That came at a perfect time.

SCOTT:      Your relationship with Matt Dillon was also really interesting.

J.R.:            Yeah.  We had a relationship.  You know, it was a small town and, in those days, the cops knew every junkie there was.  There wasn’t a lot of them running around.  Only like three or four heroin dealers, and 30 or 40 junkies, and they all knew each other.  They were all chasing each other all the time.

SCOTT:      You created a character from the period, too.

J.R.:            Yeah, that was a lot of fun.  I gave him a real nice back story and just brought that to my work.

SCOTT:      Excellent.  Thank you.

And with that, James Remar went back to his set to do what he does best – act.