Q&A: 'Boarding Gate' star Michael Madsen
But this role really does shatter the mold of you as the bad ass guy, as the heavy that people have gotten to know in Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill?
Well, that is also why I wanted to do it. Not only was I flattered by being asked to do something by Olivier Assayas, I was confused. Why did you think of me, man? Of all of the people you could get? Wow.
Did he have an explanation for that?
No, he never did. He never explained it to me. [Laughs.] He never did. But whatever it was, I had reached a point I am really weary of playing these tough guys and shooting and killing people.
Well, you did Free Willy. Was that something you did for your kids mainly?
Well, nobody remembers me from that. I am the Reservoir Dogs. I am the Kill Bill. And I am the this and that. In reality, I have been married to the same woman for over 10 years, and I have six children. I am a lot more Glen [Greenwood from Free Willy] than I am Mr. Blonde [from Reservoir Dogs]. Or maybe I am somewhere in the middle. I don't know. Humphrey Bogart, I think, made something like 40 pictures for Warner Brothers, always being the fucking hoodlum and shooting from the hip. Because only Bogie shot like that. [He fires an imaginary pistol from his hip.] He played all these guys until Johnny Huston had the realization that he use Bogie for the Maltese Falcon and everything changed for Bogie. He became a leading man. And his whole career changed.
But you have said that you feel like you are a leading man trapped...
...in a bad guy's body. I have said that before. But the thing is that it was kind of the same for Bob Mitchum. But then again look at Ryan's Daughter and Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison. I mean look at the re-make of Cape Fear. You've got Robert De Niro and Nick Nolte and they were shit! Look at Mitchum and Gregory Peck. It was all underplayed, very subtle. And it is a better film.
Michael Madsen
Photos by Matt Carr
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Maybe it just takes a certain point in your career and a certain age that you reach before these things naturally progress for you.
I am hoping for that. I think that sooner or later, if you don't try to take destiny into your own hands, you are just going to continue to be pegged and used and manipulated as a gun for hire. "Well, let's get Madsen, yeah! There's a crazy guy in this movie. Let's get Madsen. He'll be great!" Meanwhile, I would rather ride off into the sunset with the girl. I would like to leave the building unscathed. I would rather save all the people in the town and then leave. Why is Shane the greatest film that Alan Ladd ever made? It is because George Stevens realized that Alan Ladd was gonna be believable in a heroic role. He didn't have to be a killer. And if he is gonna be a killer, if he is gonna kill for the right reasons, that it would be looked upon in a completely different way. Because there is a really fine line between good and evil. Most of the best leading men were good at being leading men because they knew the other side. I mean look at Gregory Peck in Duel in the Sun, one of the only times he played a nasty guy. Look how fucking incredible he was in that movie. He was such a bastard, rotten to the core but he was charming when he was right. Wow! He could have been one of the greatest film villains in history. But then when you look at To Kill a Mockingbird, he will go down in history as one of the greatest leading men.
So what do you think it will take though for directors to take you on in a different capacity?
The only way that is that is ever going to happen is if the pictures that I have that are playing over here [are seen by] the right people. I did a fight picture — I played a prize fighter — called Strength and Honour that has been playing over here, which is a 180 000 degrees different from anything I have ever done before. I did a cop thing called Vice, where I played a policeman who is very fucked up and has to do a lot of violent things, but at the end of the movie there is a lot of redemption. And I have got Boarding Gate, so I just have to hope that if anyone went to see these three pictures, perhaps someone will finger me.
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