When speaking about both quality and longevity in an acting career, nobody is more prevalent than
Stephen Lang. A stage actor in his early years, Lang came from strong theatrical training and as a result has had one of the most interesting, long and diverse careers ever. Known for playing the consummate tough guy (see “Avatar” folks!) as well as more weasel-like figures (his Freddy Lounds in “Manhunter” is the epitome of paparazzi sleaze!), Lang’s career has deservedly stretched for decades and shows no signs of stopping. His latest flick entitled
“Gridlocked” (out on DVD/Blu-ray and Digital HD June 14 from Magnolia Home Entertainment) sees Lang playing a vicious villain with military training named Korver who gives Dominic Purcell’s hard-nosed cop a run for his money. We were utterly humbled by the chance to talk to Lang – one of our acting heroes – all about his new film, but the magic did not stop there. What follows is a massive and comprehensive career interview that runs the gamut of Lang’s colorful and amazing career. From “Band of the Hand” to “Babe Ruth,” from Michael Mann to Sidney Lumet (plus we get into “Band of Robbers” and “Don’t Breathe” that both feature standout Lang performances this year too!) we grilled the gracious Lang for three-quarters of an hour (sorry Stephen!) to get the skinny on anything and everything Lang related. (Plus as a bonus scoop hounds get the skinny on Lang possibly playing Cable in “Deadpool 2” and info on the “Avatar” sequels – you’re welcome!) In what is safe to say our all-time favorite interview ever we are so proud and excited to share with you, our colossal chat with one of the legends in acting and a man who has created cool characters we just adore, here’s the great….
STEPHEN LANG
Having played so many villains over the years what is the secret to portraying a memorable one and how does Korver in “Gridlocked” fit into that mold?
Stephen Lang: I don’t know that there’s any one secret to it. You just have to first of all jettison the idea that you’re the villain and pursue your own agenda with your own sense of purpose and righteous integrity – whatever the hell it is. It’s hard to play bad. You have to approach them as if they are as human as you and I. I mean it’s kind of a bullshit answer (laughs) because when I read a script I can tell as well as anybody else who the good guy and the bad guy is, you know? But most bad guys don’t conceive of themselves as bad guys I think.
You have some serious fight time with Dominic Purcell in the film – how much of that is you and how do you maintain your shape as you get older?
SL: Well, that’s an undying question my boy (laughs) because you just do it. It’s a physical role and an awful lot of what I get called upon to do is physical stuff. I mean fighting with Dom was great. He’s a terrific pro and he’s not out to prove anything – we’re just trying to get the job done correctly. So knowing that what you’re going to do is going to be physically demanding in any case you just go at it as safely and energetically as you possibly can. It’s like dancing – it’s a successful fight if it looks absolutely devastating. As the years go on I just keep changing my workout regiment according to what’s needed and what I’m doing, but also according to what feels right for myself. So back in the day, there was a tremendous amount of weight and strength training, now I do an awful lot of flexibility training as well – so basically a lot of yoga.
I love the angle of the film that’s a throwback to one of your previous films “The Hard Way” with an actor getting caught up in the mix of real life action – what is it about smarmy actors in peril that we love to watch?
SL: When I read the movie I was a bit like, ‘Yo, Allan (Ungar, Director), this feels like…’ and he said, “Yeah, I know. It’s a take on that!’ And I think that throughout the film there are a number of tips of the hat to various action films. He’s a really smart director and made a really good film. I think the intention here was to take something that really does, just by its very nature kind of a B-movie, almost epitomize the genre. I don’t know what it is about actors, but we do love the concept that actors will relish the idea of really getting into these situations. Every actor wants to be a cop, every actor wants to do adventurous or dangerous stuff and this guy is totally unequipped for it. (Laughs) And Dominic is a very good antagonist to Cody just because he is so no-nonsense to me – you look at him and he looks like a pillar.
Past work – I adore and grew up with the film “Band of the Hand” and especially dug your character of Joe Tegra who was fascinating and layered. How much of the mindset of that character did you bring to it vs. what was on the page?
SL: Wow – that’s a long time ago. I was actually filming something else for Michael Mann simultaneously at the same time. There was some depth to that character as I recall. I worked closely with Paul Michael Glaser who was the director on that and Michael Mann certainly had a lot of input into the character. We just wanted to make a guy who was solid and righteous and was dealing with his own pain in a real positive way and who felt the responsibility to make these kids learn what it means to take responsibility for their own lives. To teach them to survive and to take the native skills they had and turn them towards a public and private good. As far as I can recall – remember that movie is thirty years ago now. But he was a good character. It always amazes me that there’s a certain segment of people that come up to me and talk about “Band of the Hand” and I have a feeling that it’s one of those movies that hit them at just a particular time in their youth.
Definitely – for me yes!
SL: We all have movies like that. It just kind of spoke to them – the alienation of these kids, the adventure of the whole thing and becoming part of a unit, part of a team was appealing to young people of a certain age. I had movies like that when I was a kid.
The scene where Tom Noonan towers over you with words and physical prowess in “Manhunter” is harrowing to watch – what was it like to shoot?
SL: It was pretty harrowing to shoot, to be honest. I was taped to the chair all night and so there was no getting out of it. So I was just there and I remember that Noonan was so marvelous in that part, but Tom was deeply, deeply immersed in that role for the entirety of the shoot. I mean it’s not like on Friday night Tom and I would go out and have dinner together or something like that. (Laughs) As it happens Noonan’s a great guy, a flat out cool guy, but not on that shoot. He was deeply into the Tooth Fairy role and so it was not a particularly pleasant scene to be doing just because of the physical nature of the thing. I was scared out of my mind – that’s what I was paid to be – and on a Michael Mann picture the atmosphere can really begin to reflect very much what’s going on in the script. It was a tense night.
“Last Exit To Brooklyn” is a deeply moving and at the same time deeply disturbing flick to watch – what were your thoughts on the finished film?
SL: I loved the work I put in on that movie and I loved the effort that we all made on that film. It’s been so many years since I’ve looked at it because it is, as you say, a very disturbing picture. I remember when I was sent that movie on page forty-six – don’t ask me why I know it was exactly that page – I went, ‘Oh man’ and I threw it across the room. And it was only two days later when they were calling and saying, ‘Will you do this movie?’ that I retrieved it out of the corner and sat down and continued reading it and I realized that I was frightened of the film. I was just flat out scared of this character. I wasn’t at all convinced that I wanted to make that particular journey into that kind of darkness and insecurity. And what I realized was being scared of something is a really, really good reason to do it and it’s one of those truisms I was fortunate to learn. He was a dark character, but I thought that within Harry Black there was a real light that needed to be uncovered. And through his relationship, it exposes this other romantic side to him. But I really loved doing that film. I loved the Brooklyn waterfront and all the trucks and the blue collar grime – I just loved it. Uli Edel was a hell of a director and I had an opportunity to work with or be in the same film with some really marvelous actors as well. But reading that script I just remember now thinking you know when you’re in a garden and you pick up a big stone and there’s an ant colony under it and there’s thousands of these ants scurrying about and doing their business? That’s what
Last Exit was to me – pick up this rock and see all these creatures going about busy nasty lives.
The famed baddie in “The Hard Way” could have been just another throwaway villain, but you made so many interesting choices – from the speech to the look. Can you talk about where the Party Crasher character came from and what went into his various memorable character traits?
SL: I remember the role was kind of underwritten – the best thing about him was the name. So it looked to me to me like an open floor plan. What do you want to do to make this guy memorable? And it’s a peculiar film in that it’s a comedy. That’s essentially what it is – it’s a buddy film. So you’ve got this killer on the loose and we wanted to give, and this came out of discussions with Director John Badham, a certain, for lack of a better word, goofiness to him. It’s not a situation where you’re going to consider what this guy’s motivations are – it’s not about the darkness of this killer. This is just about a guy who functions in this way in order to taunt the cops. Why he does it is not the concern of this movie at all. And so the choices we made had to do with that. I remember the blonde platinum hair was really chosen to make you immediately be able to pick him out of a crowd. And I remember thinking this guy has to wear Chuck Taylors – we want this guy to bounce along and it was very consistent with what John had been thinking of. So we were improvising it, doing a lot of talking, looking at clothes and I thought I just wanted this guy to be able to move easily. I don’t remember whatever cadence in the speech where it came from, but it just sort of emerged.
You worked with comedic greats Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor on “Another You” – what were they like as a duo?
SL: I loved both of those guys. Richard was a comedy genius of his time and the same could be said of Gene – wonderful guys. But it was a troubled picture in a way for a number of reasons. Number one Richard, of course, was sick and he had not gotten into an advanced stage of MS, but was very close. And so he didn’t move well at all, but okay, whatever, that’s the circumstance you work under. But also that movie originally was directed by Peter Bogdanovich, which was one of the selling points for me being a fan – I love Peter. And Peter was released after we’d shot about six weeks and in fact everything you see in the film was reshot in California and that shoot went on for a long, long time. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, so all I can really talk to was that if one gets a chance to work with the likes of Pryor, Wilder and Bogdanovich, one does it. And I formed a wonderful friendship with both Gene and Richard during that time. As far as the greatness of the film, I’m not sure it’s on anybody’s list of top twenty comedies. (Laughs)
You got to play the legendary Babe Ruth in the film of the same name – did you do a lot of research and what did it take to get into that iconic character?
SL: I worked harder on that film than almost any film I’ve ever done. I loved that film and the Ruth family loved that film also. It was difficult to do a film about Babe Ruth. His life was kind of episodic, which is to say it’s made up of these great moments where he hits sixty home runs or he does a call to home run and then interlace that with a life. But we had great producers, writer and director on that show and I just worked my tail off on that thing. Turning around to become a left-handed hitter, putting on a lot of weight and we shot the film in twenty-four working days – it was a tough long shot. The only thing I can ever control on a movie is what I put into my performance. I can’t control the schedule, I can’t control the budget, but I can control the effort that I put into something. And when you play a role like the Babe you feel this acute responsibility to get it right. I liked Babe Ruth before that and then I ended up falling completely in love with him – I always remember having the sense that Babe was on my shoulder for that film to help me out.
You worked with the late great director Sidney Lumet on “Guilty As Sin” – as someone who came from theater what was it like to work with such an actor’s director?
SL: Lumet was a great director obviously, although “Guilty as Sin” was not one of his great pictures. He was a very precise, very meticulous director and everything was worked out. I remember on that particular show before we ever got near sets we worked in a rehearsal room where everything was taped out – almost as if one were doing and blocking a play. And when you got on the set things went in a logical and orderly fashion. I also remember Sidney would look at a set and say, ‘Okay, it is now 8:30. I’m going to begin shooting this scene at 9:30, okay. And that’s the way it’s gonna be.’ That meant get the scene lit, get it right because you’re walking away at 9:30 and we’re gonna shoot it. Sidney had been doing it so long and what he did worked. I mean you look at the number of splendid films that he made, obviously the guy knew what he was doing. I loved working with him – he had tremendous wit. You could really talk shorthand with him and he always struck me as the smartest guy in the room.
Having worked with Director George P. Cosmatos on both “Tombstone” and “Shadow Conspiracy” can you talk a bit about the elusive director – what was he like and what was his process on set?
SL: Well, George kind of came in and saved the day on “Tombstone” because the original director was the writer Kevin Jarre – rest his soul. And Kevin wrote a fantastic script, but he really didn’t know how to direct a film and that became apparent after a couple of weeks. Hollywood Pictures, which was Disney, they were going to pull the plug on that movie because it wasn’t going well and as you recall there was another Wyatt Earp project going on at the same time with Kevin Costner. Costner was about as hot as you could be, so we were definitely the underdog picture when it was being made. But Kurt Russell flew back to Hollywood and convinced these guys to not shut us down and that we could make a really great movie if we brought in a shooter. So they brought in George and George knows how to swing a lens real good. When it came to the visuals, George was as good as anybody. Remember, he was working with no prep time and while George I believe loved and appreciated westerns, but he wasn’t a student of western culture. But he was fortunate; he had Val and Sam and Kurt and myself and Paxton. He had a lot of actors who knew what they were doing and so in a way it was a little bit ‘stand back and you let us do what we’re doing and you capture it.’ There’s a lot of truth in that, but it’s also slightly unfair because George does bring a very strong point of view to everything. And it’s become a beloved film for a lot of people. The only thing I would say is I know what’s on the screen and I also know what we shot and the film that’s been made is an excellent film, but I think there was a classic buried in there as well. The script was so remarkable and I think in the end it became a little bit of a popcorn picture. I’m not dissing the movie, I think it’s a really cool movie, but I think that the script I originally read was basically The Godfather 1880 in the southwest. But I liked George very much. He was, if it can be said there is such a thing, a typical Hollywood director. George had very rough edges, he didn’t communicate in the best way sometimes, but once you got to know him like I did you had tremendous affection for him. I was completely pleased to do another picture with him after that and I would have done more pictures but he died untimely. But he was a good guy at heart and he was a good director. I’ll tell you another guy who had a lot of affection for George Cosmatos was Jim Cameron. Because George was good to Jim and I can’t remember what it was, but he gave him a break on something in his career and Jim always liked George. That was a nice point of mutual admiration and friendship for Jim and I when we first started working. We felt like we were both part of the George Cosmatos fan club – which didn’t have that many members.
When you were making “Avatar” with Jim did you have any idea that it would become so huge?
SL: We knew that what we were doing was different and potentially very exciting and was completely worthwhile being part of. What you didn’t know – was anybody going to like it? I don’t think anybody could project that. Ten-foot tall blue creatures could have been rejected by everybody. So even if one had projected a degree of success for the film, I don’t think anyone could have projected the absolute global phenomenon that it became. Because to me it became more than a movie, it became this cultural international phenomenon – I don’t think people even dared to dream in that direction.
You only have a few scenes, but your recent turn as Injun Joe in “Band of Robbers” this year almost steals an already amazing movie – can you talk about the inspiration behind creating that character?
SL: I wanted to create something that was visually arresting knowing that you don’t have a lot of screen time to make an impression. My feeling about villains, as a rule, is that you want them to have an impact in an efficient time effective way, which is to say you don’t want too much of them. A lot of times a villain is like a very strong spice with strong flavor – you don’t want to overuse it. And Joe is in and out of the movie, but he’s not there a lot so I wanted do something that was visually impactful and that was extremely threatening. And that comes out of my relationship reading Tom Sawyer when I was a boy – the thought of being chased in a cave by Injun Joe was absolutely alarming to me back then. So he really does, just in my own personal history, stand out as a literary villain. He’s not a man of a lot of words – he’s just this taciturn threatening guy. And when I sat down in front of the make-up mirror and we put on a half a wig and facial scars and history on the guy, I just took a kleenex out of the box that was on the table, dunked it in water and shoved it up my nose. It changed my face completely and more importantly it changed my voice. And so that sort of dark, breathy quality that he has was a direct result of shoving kleenex up my nose – and it worked really well.
Fede Alvarez’s “Don’t Breathe” has you playing a tough guy, but this time one with the obvious ailment of being blind – how did that inform the character in terms of his skill set?
SL: That script really knocked me out when I read it. I thought it was extremely challenging, really well told and a very gnarly story. So you go about your business learning how to be blind, which is the standard way of looking at tapes of blind people and reading about it, but it’s a leap of faith. I had this phrase in my mind – in the land of darkness the blind man is king. And for these housebreakers to have the audacity to come into my kingdom that way it fills him with this incredible righteous rage and he’s got a skill set this guy. He was warrior and he was a soldier and within his own environment he’s set that environment up so he can exist there in a pretty capable way. And they make a terrible mistake by coming in there. But when I read it I thought it was different and Fede Alvarez is the real deal. He’s made a movie that in my view having seen it actually transcends the genre – it’s a hell of a movie.
I know you’ve been rallying to play Cable in “Deadpool 2,” which I think is a fantastic idea. So what makes Stephen Lang the only man for that job?
SL: (Laughs) I can’t answer that because that all kind of came from the internet. There were things that have gone on for years about it like Lang should do Cable and we’d been seeing this for years. And then after “Deadpool” came out it started happening again and so I did one tweet. I said, ‘Yeah, yeah I think I should play Cable.’ And that is the extent of my ‘campaigning’ for the role. Now whenever they do fan art with me and Cable I’ll retweet it because, why not? Look, I think the odds are long me ever getting the role partly because they probably will want somebody younger, even though I know Cable is an older guy. But also I’m committed to doing four Avatar’s – (laughs) it’s conceivable that there could be a scheduling problem and it is the same studio Fox. Now having said that it did strike me as kind of a win-win situation. If they’re crazy enough to let me play Cable they’ll be very pleased that they did because I’ll do a great job with the role. And if don’t and choose someone else then I can be magnanimous in defeat, wish that actor luck and console myself doing four sequels to Avatar. (Laughs) That’s an exclusive – that’s my battle plan. I just don’t see a downside to it. It’s what I seem to have evolved into, being the old tough guy. Okay, great – I’m quite happy with that at this stage in my career…
But in the midst of that you’re still creating great original characters like Injun Joe…
SL: And I’ll keep doing it for the next twenty-five years. But I’m also aware there are an awful lot of really good actors out there, so many colleagues I’ve had over the years that are just tremendous, so it keeps you up to the mark. I don’t feel like I have any alternative other than to just continue to work at the craft of acting and make myself better and try to be surprising. If I do do a villain, say an Injun Joe, to try to bring something completely new to that because I don’t want to repeat myself.
We’ve been anticipating the new “Avatar” sequels for a while – any forward movement and what can fans expect?
SL: You all have some idea of who Jim Cameron is and what makes him tick and I do believe it’s fair to say Jim is not out to repeat himself. In the new scripts a saga unfolds of really epic proportions in terms of the world that’s created, in terms of the creatures that inhabit this world and the landscapes that are being created. Because remember when you saw Pandora in “Avatar” you saw one part of Pandora – you saw the bioluminescent part of Pandora. But there are a lot of facets to this planet and a lot more species then we’ve seen. So that’s one thing I would say, but within this huge canvas that Jim has created is a very emotional, personal and intimate story of survival, of sacrifice and redemption. It’s really an immense story – it takes my breath away. We’ve been in pre-production on this for a long time, but pre-production on a film like “Avatar” is almost to say it’s in production because so much of what’s being created is being created via technology that when we get to the actual shooting of it – which we will relatively soon – that’s gonna be exciting too I think. I can’t tell you what to expect other then it’s gonna blow your socks off.
