Caffeinated Clint
The star of the hit series “Big Love”
Bill Paxton has packed a lot into his showbiz career. He’s directed a couple of movies (the well-received “Frailty” and “The Greatest Game Ever Played”), he was the lead singer for a new-wave country & western outfit called Martini Ranch back in the ’80s…he even worked as a set decorator and production designer when he was first starting out in the industry.
But Paxton’s best known as an actor, and quite an eye-catching one at that. During the 1980s he come to prominence with larger-than-life turns in films like “Aliens”, John Hughes’s “Weird Science” and the cult-classic horror movie “Near Dark”, where his hillbilly vampire got to deliver the terrific pre-bite line “I hate it when they ain’t been shaved!” (It’s not for nothing he was once billed as ‘Wild’ Bill Paxton.)
More recently, though, Paxton has made his way into leading-man territory, portraying noble, upstanding sorts in films like “Twister” and “Apollo 13”. Still, with over 50 movies to his credit, he’s never really played a family man. The new SBS series “Big Love” has given him that chance, but with something of a twist.
Paxton’s character Bill Henrickson is a family man…and then some. A true believer in the Mormon faith, Bill practices polygamy. What’s more, his three wives – Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn from “Basic Instinct”), Nicki (“Boys Don’t Cry”’s Chloe Sevigny) and Margene (“Walk the Line”’s Ginnifer Goodwin) – and their children all live in adjoining suburban houses.
It’s an unconventional arrangement (and a secretive one, given that polygamy remains illegal in the US), but Bill, his wives and their kids are committed to making it work. But all the love and faith in the world can’t ease the tensions, jealousies and conflicts that occasionally rear their heads in traditional relationships.
Triple that and it’s clear that Big Love has plenty of scope for compelling, confrontational drama. And that’s before you take Bill’s tense dealings with fundamentalist sect leader Roman (Harry Dean Stanton) or troubled relationship with his parents (Bruce Dern and Grace Zabriskie) into account.
How’d you become involved in “Big Love”, Bill?
It’s so funny. You hear about these great jobs you get when you weren’t even looking for them – this thing kinda fell in my lap like a birds’ nest on the ground. We just finished shooting the second season over here, and it’s now starting to be syndicated around the world. I got offered this while I was getting ready to shoot my first major studio film for Disney, The Greatest Game Ever Played, and I didn’t think I’d have the time but it was only a three-week commitment to shoot a pilot. I’m so glad I was able to do that because even when I first signed aboard I thought it had great potential. I felt like we had a great season. I think you’ll enjoy all the episodes. I’m noticing in my travels around America that people are excited by the show and really entertained by it.
It reminded me of other HBO shows like “The Sopranos” and “Six Feet Under” in that it uses this situation that may be foreign to a lot of people but the stories that emerge are really quite familiar.
They’re these unorthodox familial dramas about people whose lives you wouldn’t normally follow. The one strain through all of them is that there’s a comic element to all of those shows, although the last Sopranos episodes are getting pretty dark. Not a lot of laughs there. Are you guys getting that? We’ve got the finale coming up a couple of weeks. It’s time to pay the fiddler. But they’re all great shows, and I’m a fidelity nut – I want images, as a filmmaker and in terms of the films I’m in as an actor, to be strong, striking and produced well. And I always thought that was the case with HBO’s stuff. Put two hours of an HBO show together and it’ll look better than most movies you see. I couldn’t believe the actors who were signing on, either; that was a big part of me getting excited about the whole thing. We got ‘em coming out of the woodwork. Ellen Burstyn and Bonnie Bedelia are joining the show this year. And I thought the part of Bill was great. To play a patriarchal role in something that has the potential to become a saga like The Sopranos is kind of a cool thing, especially for me at this time. I’ve played a lot of different parts in movies but I’ve never had the chance to explore a character over an extended period. And a character this rich and with this many possibilities.
Having three wives played by Jeanne, Chloe and Ginnifer was probably a drawcard as well.
Well, having three wives wasn’t bad for my virility factor. Let me rephrase that – having three sirens to chase around is pretty great. I’ve never gotten to mix it up with the ladies as much as some of my contemporary acting friends. I always wanted to. I always kind of thought I could do some romantic stuff and in this it’s like I won a triple bet. I have three love stories and they are all love stories. Each one of them is kind of sweet.
Do each of Bill’s wives represent something different for him? A different need or different aspect of his personality?
Oh, yeah. They sure do. They sure do. When you’re doing the show, you’re thinking about it subjectively but I can now look it objectively. I don’t try to over-analyse it – there’s a natural chemistry you have with different people in a scene. The three gals – Jeanne, Chloe and Ginnifer, who are all so terrific – bring their own individuality to it, which I play off. So there’s that element, which is just a given in terms of the actors. But I think Bill sees Barb as his true love, his first great love, and he’ll always be loyal to her. He was the polygamist who dreamt of monogamy so he ended up a very happy monogamous relationship. But things changed in his life, and in a weird kind of way fate or destiny pointed him back to the roots of his own culture. He ended up going into what’s called a plural marriage or celestial marriage. Chloe kind of represents his childhood. She can relate to him on levels that Barb can’t. She grew up on the compound; Bill lived there until he was 14, and a lot of your life is decided between the time you’re born and the time you turn 14. So there’s kind of a country-girl thing that appeals to his country roots. And then Ginnifer – oh my God, she’s this fresh-faced little thing. She makes him feel like he’s in high school again, and who doesn’t want to feel like that? So there’s some honey – and those bees are sweet – but you soon realise they’re the queen bees and Bill’s the worker bee. What you’re trying to do to get a taste involves robbing Peter to pay Paul, to say nothing of the emotional and physical stamina that’s required.
Did you do any research into Mormon belief systems or the polygamist way of life?
Oh, yeah. But we’re trying to distance this thing from the whole Mormon thing. The show is not trying to wave a red flag in anybody’s face. But obviously these characters are people who came from traditional Mormon beliefs. The Mormon religion is all over the world and there are lots of parts of the religion that I’ve learnt about and that I admire greatly. It’s been fun to get into a culture that is the only American religion in a way – its roots here go back to the early part of the 19th century. So I read stuff and watch documentaries and it’s great, because that’s when you find these little nuggets of detail. Any ideas we find we bring to the writers and the creators of the show.
Because I was wondering if you approached your role from a Mormon point of view, so to speak, or if you were simply multiplying by three the stresses faced by the average person.
I think the latter is true. That’s what’s clever about the show – it really is a way of viewing contemporary mores through this weird lens of polygamy. That’s the hot button. When I first got the call from my agent that the script was coming, just hearing the word polygamy made me think of some rural situation with people living in trailers. You know, your sister’s your mother. Some kind of weird Deliverance-style hell in the southwestern United States. I don’t know why, it just conjured up those kinds of images. And I think women – who have really responded to the show, even more than men have in some ways – initially want to take a giant step backwards when they first hear about it. But the thing has appeal, I think, because we all have a desire for an extended family in a way. In this country we’re all spread out. There was a time because of geographical boundaries or lack of technology or because there wasn’t much travel, people had huge families and the mortality rate was high. There was something to be said for these old bloodlines that went back for centuries. All that stuff is changing now, all that stuff is ending. It may even be a subconscious fantasy that we have a huge family supporting us or hailing our victories when the chips are down. There’s a weird retro thing about the show because there’s a strange innocence to these people. But then you’ve got other things like the corruption and the dark side of life in the compound, with Harry Dean Stanton – he’s the best, isn’t he?
He’s got this quiet menace as Roman that’s really unnerving.
I adore him, and we’ve become very close. I hang out with him more than any other cast member. The gals all have their own lives but Harry and I get together.
What was the key characteristic of Bill’s that you wanted to convey? What was important for you to communicate to the audience about this guy?
I think there’s a very positive aspect to this character. He’s taking on all of the trials and tribulations of his own life, and a lot of them are of his own making, as it is with most of us, but these are his beliefs. He taking them on with his game face on. There’s a nobility about the guy. Let’s face it, as actors we get to play the noble sides of people, as well as the despicable sides – we get to play all the sides we’re all capable of. It’s nice to be playing a character who’s trying to fight the good fight in a way. Trying to be a good husband to his wives, a good father to his children, do right by his business and his partners.
I read an interview with your “Greatest Game” star Shia LaBeouf where he talked about the way you encouraged him to project a more manly, mature image on-screen. Did anyone do that for you during your career? Because there was this transition from the very stylised supporting roles you were playing in “Aliens” and “Near Dark” to your more subdued work in movies like “Apollo 13” and “A Simple Plan”.
I think the transition I made was on One False Move. That was directed by an actor, Carl Franklin, and I remember doing a scene where he gave me something that was probably bigger than anything else in terms of being a film actor or just being an actor, for that matter. I was doing a scene and he said ‘You’re working too hard, you’re trying to show me too much – the camera’s not interested in what you’re doing, it’s interested in who you are’. He said I was interesting enough. ‘I am?’ You have to have a craft as an actor, you have to understand the basics of how it works and figuring out a character and trying to build a subtext. You mostly want to see an actor thinking their way through a part. Emotions come out of actions and thoughts. It’s pretty simple stuff, really. But the thing about accepting that you’re interesting enough, you can then just start to be in the front of the camera. Harry Dean’s big on this. He said to me ’You’ve just got to let it happen, you can’t get in the way of it’. Sometimes when you’re working a part too hard, trying to show a certain thing, there are times when you have to let that go and trust that it’s going to be there. It’s a paradoxical business in a way. Sometimes you have to go for the gag. What was great about Shia was that he was very malleable. He had this rough-around-the-edge street-kid quality but he had such a great face – you could project any emotion on that face. So I showed him a way to stand and deliver, which is what Carl Franklin gave me when we did One False Move. It made a huge difference. That’s when actors really become who they are. Too many actors play the role rather than let the role play through them. I’m no expert on the craft of acting but I know from my experiences what works for me and what doesn’t. It’s a great craft because you’ll always be trying to do better. And every job gives you a chance to do it better.
What are your future plans in terms of directing? Will you ever direct a “Big Love” episode?
Not so much the show – I’d pretty much have to clone myself because I’m literally working every day and they’re preparing the next episode with a new director and a new director of photography while we’re shooting. I really want to stick with feature directing, so I’m trying to put a movie together with a great crime writer called George Pelecanos. He’s fuckin’ great. The book is Shoedog – he’s adapted it and we’re in the process of setting that up right now. It’s a Don Siegel-esque urban western without all the souped-up hijinks. That’s a little sophomoric to me, a little juvenile. I want to go back to that hard-boiled ’70s style with terse dialogue – it’s men taking down a liquor store, dealing with the consequences, all that kind of stuff. I want to do every genre. And my dream project is to make a movie about the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. That’s a five-year project, and I’m in the early stages of getting that together.
You’re an ambitious guy, Bill.
Well, you’ve gotta stay hungry. They’re not beating my door down, so I’ve got to keep myself going. And for the first time in my life, I think I’ve got kind of a steady gig on this show. So instead of trying to fit into someone’s else script during my hiatus and driving myself nuts, I’ve got enough to live on so why not pursue projects that I feel passionate about? To tell you the truth, on Frailty and Greatest Game I’ve been able to work in kind of an idealistic way as a director. I’ve certainly faced the political and financial issues that productions have to face but I’ve not had to make a living as a director so I’ve been able to keep it pretty vocational. On both projects I could bring real passion to them because I wanted to do them. It’s a rare thing.
I’ve gotta say, all these different movies came up when I told some people I was going to talk to you. A friend of mine was jealous I was interviewing Chet from “Weird Science”.
I think you guys in Australia dig some of my more comical incarnations. To tell you the truth, I wish I could do more comedies. I loved playing Chet in Weird Science, I loved playing Simon the used-car salesman trying to bang Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies, I loved doing Club Dread with the Broken Lizard guys.
One film of yours I really dig is Walter Hill’s “Trespass”.
That movie plays all the time, so it has an audience. That was actually written by Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale – they wrote before they had their big success with Back to the Future. And Walter has always been really tight with those guys. It’s actually a reworking of Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and I got to play the Tim Holt character while William Sadler got to play the Bogart character. I guess Art Evans was the Walter Huston character. That one just keeps on movin’. Walter would have us do these shots where your head would be right up against the other actor’s – William Sadler’s, in this case. He wanted to do these close-ups because he’d been inspired by some of Akira Kurosawa’s camerawork. It feels completely unnatural when you’re doing it but when you see the image on-screen it is incredibly dynamic. So sometimes as an actor you have to trust the director. He might ask you to do something that seems unorthodox or inorganic but it’s amazing when you see the power of it.
Thanks for your time, Bill, and congratulations on “Big Love.”
What’s cool for you guys in Australia is that you might double-down – you’ll probably get 24 episodes. Be careful, it might start a revolution down there.
Big Love premieres 8.30pm Sunday June 3 on SBS.
– GUY DAVIS
