Have movies been a good healing touch to people in the bleeding economic conditions?
Well, more than ever movies reveal themselves as healing, as helpful, as encouraging, as escapist, anything that makes someone get through their day in these times. It’s the best form of entertainment and it’s still arguably the most inexpensive form of entertainment. I always say to myself that if I can make a movie that makes a kid smile or gives them some hope or gives them something to get excited about then I’m applying myself in the best way that I can. I don’t think that just goes for kids. I think that it goes for adults as well and for families. So there is a need to go to the movies and just shut your mind off from the problems that are happening in our daily lives, the stresses between countries, the economy and global warming—all of those things that are on our minds.
How much research did you do for your upcoming film? This is the second futuristic movie that you’ve done. Is this your preferred genre now?
I grew up with a professor so that was all the research that I really needed. I just used my own recall of what that experience was like. At the risk at impinging on your own personal opinions, your own relationship to the movie I would just offer that I’m not a chaos theorist.
Does the relationship you share with your son help you to better enact a father-son relationship in a film?
Well, I dedicate the movie to my first son, because that’s what the relationship was really. It was me and him. I just have memories and this script came to me at the right time. I had the life experiences and the emotional resources to play John Koestler. I had been looking for a way to express those feelings for a long time and having been a single father, a single father out in California I know that there is a gender bias depending on which lawyer or which psychologist or family therapist that you talk to.”
Can a man do a great job in raising kids like a woman?
Just because you’re a man doesn’t mean that you can’t raise your kid. I think that families should stay together, but if you are a single father don’t give up no matter what they say. So I wanted to have a chance to express that, to show that archetype in a movie, that you can have a devoted, positive relationship between that family, a father and a son as well.
What about science fiction appeals to you?
Well, good science fiction is intelligent. It asks big questions that are on people’s minds. It’s not impossible. It has some sort of root in the abstract. So automatically you’re getting closer to potentially divine sources of interest because it is abstract. It’s one of the only ways that a film actor can express himself in the abstract and have audiences still go along for the ride.
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