Sarah Michelle Gellar

Southland Tales: Star Sarah Michelle Gellar By: Mr Disgusting

[all quotes are Sarah except where indicated SM, Sean McCitrick]

FDM: Are you in costume?

SMG: No, I’m in sweatpants. I’m in I just ate the steak that was outside and the mashed potatoes and the pudding. I can’t put on the costume yet. I have to deflate first.

FDM: Tell us about your character, Krista Now?

SMG: Krista Now - - Kapowsky? Is that what I am now? Krista Kapowsky. I am a porn star with a heart of gold. I’m also a porn star with an entrepreneurial spirit. I have my own clothing lines, my own album dropping, my own warming gel. What would you call it? My own lubricant line. Energy drink, I also represent Golden Palace Casino. I’m the spokesperson of Golden Palace. What else do I do? I’m sure I have a perfume. I figure I’ve gotta have a perfume. Everyone’s got a perfume.

SM: You’re cutting an album.

SMG: Dropping an album. I learned that’s what the cool people say. You say you’re dropping an album.

FDM: Do we see any of your commercials within the film?

SMG: Do we see any of my commercials? You see my music video. Oh, my reality show. We forgot the reality show. I also have my own reality show and I guess that kind of goes with it. If you say I’m a pornstar, clearly I have my own reality show. You see my reality show, you see my music video, some ads for my products, you hear the song, we hear- - some of my DVD covers of my earlier films, my ouvre. I will not say the title in mixed company.

FDM: And in a church?

SMG: Oh my God, could you imagine if I just said that too. I didn’t even think about where we were. How awful would that be? That would have been awful. But no worse than anything else we’ve ever done on this film set. I’ll refrain.

FDM: And your character’s role in the film?

SMG: I am the girlfriend of Boxer Santoros who is Dwayne, The Rock.

FDM: Post or pre-amnesia?

SMG: Oh my God, you definitely have been on this film- - you have to understand that if you’re on this film long enough, you actually confuse yourself. There were two characters getting shot the other day and we got into a 25 minute discussion, no joke. We couldn’t remember who shot whom? But also the names keep changing because of clearances, so on top of the fact that we couldn’t quite organize which character was shot, which character- - we couldn’t even remember their names. I am the post-amnesia girlfriend, as opposed to his wife.

FDM: Are there multiple versions of you?

SMG: Do you guys ever pose questions like this by the way? Well, there are in the Cybil sense of the term but not in the actual sense of the term. I am just one. I just spread myself very thin.

FDM: Do you understand what this movie is about?

SMG: Okay, it’s really funny, I said this the other day, maybe it’s because I’ve been involved for so long and I’ve been through a lot of the drafts, or maybe it’s because my character probably has the simplest arc of any of the characters - I am a girl that wants to be famous in our disposable society which I think is very easy to understand in this country and I love the boy. So it’s actually for me, my story is probably the easiest arc because everything I do is either for my career or for the person that I love. So I have the easy one. So yes I understand my role.

FDM: What will LA be like in three years?

SMG: The first question is will it still be here. Did you see the news today in Malibu? The surf is so high today because I guess there’s a storm in Tahiti. It’s coming up and breaking all the glass in all the houses in Malibu. You see all the deck chairs washed out to sea.

FDM: Are you doing The Grudge 2?

SMG: Good question. I don’t think they’re anywhere near. I still can’t figure out if I’m alive or dead. I’m still working that one out. Basically I only like to choose films that I don’t understand. As long as they’re greater than my mental capacity, I figure I gotta be doing something artful, right? Isn’t that what makes something art when you don’t understand it?

FDM: Do people make the noise at you?

SMG: Maybe I don’t get out much, but not recently.

FDM: Have they changed the title of your Revolver?

SMG: I think it had to do with the Guy Ritchie film but the Guy Ritchie film isn’t distributed here yet, so I don’t know who actually has the rights to the title. You’re so asking the wrong person.

FDM: Is it supernatural?

SMG: Yeah, really it’s a thriller. I think in our times, in our tendency to try to categorize things and whatever’s popular at the moment. If romantic comedies come back really big next week, it’ll be a romantic thriller. It’ll be a romantic comedy thriller. And then it’ll be slapstick next week. It’ll be a slapstick thriller. It’ll be a Keystone Cops thriller.

FDM: How did you become involved in this film?

SMG: Well, I actually became involved for a different character originally. I was supposed to play- - we’re allowed to say that, right? I was originally playing Amy Poehler’s character and Amy Poehler was playing my character. Just Richard called one day and said, ‘I want to pitch this movie to you’ and I said, ‘Great, I’m going to Japan tomorrow and I’ll be back in two months and that’d be great.’ He said, ‘No, tomorrow.’ And I was like, ‘I’m going to the airport’ he’s like, ‘I’ll meet you there.’ And I’m like, you’re kidding, right? I didn’t even know him. I was like, ‘You’re kidding, right?’ He’s like, ‘No, no, no.’ And I said, ‘Well, could you just send me the script?’ He said, ‘No, no, I have to explain it to you, it’s visual, I have to show it to you.’ And I was like, ‘Who is this crazy person?’ So I went and had lunch with him that fateful day I went and had lunch with him before I went to the airport and he pitched this spectacular idea. My favorite part of this whole story is we must have met for about three hours. And he brought video footage to show me these visuals and colors and sketches and all this and my character, she wants to be this actress but she’s struggling because she’s working at CPK but she knows she has a greater gift and her dad is supporting her, she’s cutting an album. Just and her dad is this ice cream- - just this whole thing. So I get on the airplane to read it, my character died in the first 30 pages in that draft. And I was like, ‘I spent three hours and I die in the first 30 pages?’ It just showed how spectacularly enriched Richard’s ideas were because everything was so fully developed to him. I signed on instantly before I even read it actually, after meeting with him because he’s so impressive when you speak with him and his ideas and he wants so badly to do something that’s different. Not as an actor but as someone that goes to the movies, you’re so desperate for anything that’s inventive, that’s different, that isn’t conventional, where someone’s not afraid to try something. And then through that course my role got bigger and as he started to change ideas, he had this idea that the Krista character would be in love with Boxer and through different things we just realized that Amy and I would probably be better off swapping.

FDM: Did taking the bigger role help the film get made with your name above the title?

SM: That was it. As simple as that.

SMG: And I thought I was on my laurels.

SM: Essentially, yes.

FDM: Was the original idea like Janet Leigh in Psycho?

SMG: I think it literally just the characters changed so much. Although she did die in the first 30 pages in that draft, I got a draft six weeks later where she was alive through the whole thing.

SM: It’s evolved so much from the original draft to what we’re shooting. It’s evolved so much that the characters have changed so much. Five or six new characters- -

SMG: I would say more than five or six characters are new.

SM: I can’t distinguish between what Richard’s saying and what’s on the page so much.

FDM: What are you able to do in this that you haven’t before?

SMG: I don’t know where to begin with that. I wouldn’t know how to touch that question. I don’t think no matter how many films you’ve done, television series, whatever. Nothing prepares you for Richard Kelly. I can tell you that right now. You can get a phone call in the middle of the night- - this weekend, he calls me over the weekend, he’s like, ‘Okay, I think in this scene that Krista should have a complete emotional breakdown. We need to write- - We ,as if I’m going to write this- - I think we need to write this whole thing when she sees this- -‘ it goes on and on with me on the weekend. I’m like okay, sure, whatever you write, I’ll do it. I come in on Wednesday, he cuts the scene. The scene was totally dropped. So in that sense, it’s just nothing like you’ve ever experienced.

FDM: Do you wish more filmmakers would be like that?

SMG: I wish, and I wish so much for the film industry right now. I wish so much for originality and I wish so much and I think that we’re caught in this difficult cycle right now because our studios are corporations now. I keep talking about the old 1940s, where one guy with a cigar and a scotch made decisions for a studio and now because there are all these computer corporations basically, technology companies and there’s so much else that goes into a decision that it’s very difficult to get films that are different that are off the beaten path made. It’s much easier to get something unoriginal made than to get something original. I’m just very happy to be here and be able to- - you hope it works but you know on whatever level, even if you don’t understand it, you know it works.

FDM: Richard said they ran the numbers.

SMG: Unfortunately, that’s what gets a movie made these days. Regardless of who’s the best for the job, regardless of what the best story is. You read great scripts constantly that don’t get made for whatever reason it is and it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating to see- -

SM: It comes down to an Excel spreadsheet.

SMG: In foreign countries no less. Not even in our own country. When you think about the fact that foreign countries are dictating what movies get made in our country. That’s really sad.

FDM: What were the elements that got the film locked down?

SM: Sarah Michelle Gellar, The Rock, Seann William Scott and Richard Kelly.

FDM: Where is the funding coming from?

SM: How long do you have? It’s five different sources of equity.

SMG: A man in Vegas.

FDM: Any distributors talking?

SM: Yeah, several domestic. I mean, Universal Pictures is releasing most of foreign. And Wild Bunch has a few territories like France. North America is completely open and we’re holding it to sell.