Alicia Malone
She may play tough, hard women on the screen (see ‘’Fast and Furious’’, TVs ‘’Lost’’, ‘’Machete’’) but Alicia Malone discovers ‘’Battle : Los Angeles’’ star Michelle Rodriguez is anything but; in fact, she’s a total sweetheart.
Are you interested by all that stuff? The UFOs and everything?
I love it. I mean that whole world… I wish that they would come, maybe people would be nicer to each other if they have something else to attack.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Yup.
We would just like make it a one race situation.
Everyone together.
Yeah. [laughter]
Which was kind of what it was like in this film, would you say?
Yeah, no. Yeah. [laughter] It was. Part of it. You know what, it wasn’t much of a love fest, but close enough for sure.
So at what point did you come on board? You were saying this morning that the character was kind of added on later on?
Yeah. She was pretty much introduced last minute. She came on board pretty much a month before shooting.
Wow!
So we had a lot of research to handle, actually during production and pre-production of the film. We had about a month before actually shooting, but we were training that whole time and doing rehearsals. And through that whole process, there was a lot of research involved and lots of trips to the air force base.
Yeah.
Just to try to make sense of it all you know? What do these aliens want? And out of what they want, how do we not detect them with all the technology that we have globally for that? Satellites and atmospheric interference detectors and sensors all over the world. And you have global networking now where you are up against together with the NSA over here and they have global security systems in place, you would need to really destroy all of that stuff before being able to penetrate our atmosphere. So yeah, all of this stuff was stuff that we were just constantly like talking about, and I love Jonathan for that because he’s so adamant about attacking those geeky questions, because he knows that he’s going to get railed…
Yeah. [laughter]
…By the geeks if he fucked it up, you know.
So it was quite collaborative then…
Yeah, very much so.
You got a say?
Very much so.
Because your character comes in part way through the disaster and you don’t get much of a sense of her back stories.
Yeah.
So did you create all that for yourself?
Yeah, we pretty much bagged it… Yeah. We got together and just assess what her role skid is. He wanted something a little bit less tough and more awkward and geeky and subtle as opposed to the kick-ass and take-names thing that I am so [laughter] adamant about most of the time. But yeah, it was good. It was good. We collaborated well.
You tried to add a few shades of that awkwardness and not fitting in with the rest of the platoon and…
Yeah. It helps to soften her up and make her more human.
Yeah.
Because God knows, man, I could pretty gnarly when I’m angry.
[chuckle] I can imagine that, you being gnarly. [laughter] So do you think in Hollywood, there’s the girly type roles and then there’s the tough type roles, tough girl roles, are they both as one-dimensional as each other, usually?
Yeah. Yeah, man. You know what, they need to merge. They need to marry each other.
Yeah.
And create dimension. Because that’s where we are. I really was excited when Inception came out. You know why, because for me, it was a symbol of multi-dimensional thinking. It was like this layered aspect of psychology for me. And that being manifested in a film was just gnarly. And the fact that million Americans went out, 60 million, on opening weekend and watched that proved to all those retards at the studios that they are idiots, not America.
Yeah.
You know what I mean? Like there are people who can appreciate intellectual content and they’re not dumb. Not everybody is dumb, you know what I mean? Don’t sit here making stuff for laymen all the time.
Yeah. It’s good to have a film… I love those films that you can actually think about.
Yeah.
That get you thinking.
It’s awesome!
And you talk about it after with your friends.
It is, it’s great.
More of an experience.
And there are many ways to look at one thing and I think that’s awesome. But the reason why I mentioned it is because I feel like that needs to happen with that alchemical balance between femininity and masculinity, within characters that are being written, because it is multi-dimensional. And you marry your husband because you are on a quest to balance out your masculinity as a woman and he marries you because he is on the same quest. He doesn’t even know it. And that’s what life is all about and you need to explore that more. And I feel like it really isn’t being touched on that much in films and I find that really, really sad because that’s what films are. They are an expression of reality and I think, exaggerated but, yeah.
Yeah, exactly. And so, for men as well as women, you think that it’s there very much…
Yeah, for sure.
Dimension.
That’s it. Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, they embody that. When I look at him and I don’t see a man, just a man, I see a man and a woman. And I look at her and I see both too. And I think that’s awesome, that they embody that. Who the hell is writing about that?
And you mentioned too, writing a script at the moment?
Yeah.
And that’s what you’ve always wanted to do?
Yeah, it is. I’m not attacking that massive subject. This is more like sex, drugs and rock and roll.
I expect it to be all about that, Michelle.
No, this is more fun.
Yeah. Who’s your inspiration when it comes to screenwriting?
Wow. Let’s see. That’s a good one. Wow.
Would it be a Quentin Tarantino like you have Pulp Fiction…
God, he’s an amazing writer. Jeez.
Robert Rodriguez?
Geez. I really loved the Thelma and Louise script. I thought that was awesome. I love the Point Break script I thought that was sick. Cabaret; my heart goes out to that. I mean it’s like the way that you captured… But then Liza Minelli brings it to life and does some whole other thing to it. Good Will Hunting.
Yeah?
Come on. What I mean? What a good script. Like, if you want to talk about screenwriting, that was awesome. I mean…
And that was their first film.
Magical, magical, magical. Yeah, that was good. Yeah, I’m inspired by a lot… There’s amazing writers out there that are doing amazing things. Most of my stuff that I really, really love is old, though. Yeah, I find.
Yeah. Do you think the classics maybe seem to have more of an emphasis on story and characters, do you think more than today’s special effects and the same old romantic comedy and…
I think that people can become very overwhelmed with everything we got. I think we’re in a really, as society in a whole from a macrocosmic perspective, we’re in a really strange place because we’re at a peak right now, a saturation of information and technology and it’s like these kids that are 10 years old right now are going to be the deciding factors on how to consolidate and make it useful. And we’re right now in limbo. We’re saturated with all this stuff and don’t know what to do with it. And it’s really up to the next generation to take all of it and mix it up and learn what the best format for applying it is. So I feel like right now we’re just playing with how to adapt. And everyone is so overwhelmed with all the possibilities that a lot of crap comes out. You know what I mean? But then you have a genius like Jim come along and do an Avatar or with Inception, you have to…
And changed the game.
That changed the game and bring the balance between a human story and a really great technology.
And how about Jonathan? He seems that…
He’s so great.
A lot of fun, and he seems to add the…
He’s brilliant with Clash of the Titans.
I know. I can’t wait to see what he does with that because I loved about this film was that it added more of a realistic nature to it, more gritty.
Oh my god, Sam Worthington is gonna love him. I know he’s gonna love him because he’s on our plane, you know what I mean? Like he’s young, he’s slick. He knows what’s corny. He knows what’s cheesy. He doesn’t want to be that. You know what I mean? He’s aware of his surroundings. He’s empathetic. Some directors are just narrow-minded and strict. They have their own idea of what it is and like balls. They’re moving forward with their vision and there’s no… You know what I mean? But that’s not Johnny Boy. He’s great. He’s amazing. It’s really important to have that kind of word to move organically and have this kind of empathetic sense of your surroundings. Like you need to know what people’s opinions are about things, not necessarily to please everyone but to at least be aware of what’s working and what’s not. You know what I mean?
And the physical surroundings in this film as well. Did that help with you on real set and…
Oh, yeah. He was adamant about that, too.
Explosions.
He’s like, “No, I don’t want any green screen. Like we need a green screens background. We need to hook it up, like we need to be in that world. I want to walk to set and I want to feel like the world is coming to an end.” And, boy, did he get what he asked for.
Yeah. Aaron said it was the toughest film he’s ever worked on.
I’m sure it was. I didn’t meet Aaron until we were done, by the way, because he was in character the whole time.
Oh really? And that’s not the way you work?
No, not at all. You say “Cut.” I’m like laughing and goofing off, making like armpit noises.
[laughter] Thank you so much. Nice to meet you.
Thank you…
