Q&A: Boarding Gate star Michael Madsen

Putting aside guns and violence, the actor once known as Mr. Blonde dons another suit and talks poetics.

by Karl Rozemeyer

Michael Madsen Photos by Matt Carr

It is difficult to imagine Michael Madsen in a suit. Let alone in a corporate office. But as Miles, an international business financier, in Olivier Assayas' thriller Boarding Gate with Asia Argento, he shows he is capable of playing more than just a trigger–happy killer. On a hot afternoon in Cannes, Michael Madsen takes a break from posing for photographers to discuss why he would rather ride off into the sunset with the girl, what is wrong with America's celebrity-driven culture, and why he is passionate about poetry and photography.

How did you become involved in Boarding Gate with Assayas?
It actually took quite a while for that thing to happen. When they first asked me about it, I was a little surprised because the character wasn't the usual kind of character that people usually call me to play. And so, I was very, very flattered and very interested in somebody like Olivier Assayas. I mean, my God, you know, he has a lot respect. He is a great filmmaker. I love shooting pictures out of America and so to be able to go to Paris to shoot a movie is like a fucking dream. And then Asia... (He smiles rakishishly.)

It was a good pairing then, I take it?
Yeah, it was. It certainly was. I can tell you a number of stories but I will say that when you have to work in a movie with a woman, and you have to do certain things with a woman that require cooperation, it can be a bit complicated if the woman is a bitch, or if she is a cunt, or if she is a self-centered ego-maniac, which many of these starlets of our generation are. So, I was a little concerned. Having never met her, I didn't know what I was getting into. I liked her films, but then when she walked on the set she had a can of beer in her hand with a napkin wrapped around it and a straw, and the second that I saw her and I saw what was in her hand, I knew that we were gonna get along just fine.

She's a spitfire...
Oh, God. I love her. I think we had a good — whatever works on film — chemistry. I sure would like to do something else with her. I really do. I think that somebody needs to write a script or somebody needs to find something for her and I to do. Something else. Now that we know each other, if we did something else again, knowing what we learned from each other doing Boarding Gate, then we could probably do something fantastic.

Could that onus then fall on you? You're a writer too. Have you considered writing a screenplay for you both?
The stuff I have is Americana: American cops and robbers and killers and that kind of thing. It would have to be something that would cross the line between an American and a European storyline. I am counting on someone to come up with something for us.

How much of yourself did you bring to your character, Miles Rennberg?
I was completely confused with that character. I really didn't know what the fuck to do. I mean, the guy is on the internet and he is stockbroker and he's a businessman and he has an office with a staff. He wears nice shirts, suits. He drives a nice car. I could not relate to it at all. I did not k now what the fuck it was. But I think that maybe it is good that I didn't because I put myself in the circumstance of that guy, Miles. And I didn't understand Miles, but I did understand Miles' dilemma. So I just played the dilemma. Does that make sense?

So you played him without necessarily having to inhabit his entire being?
You know if you make a movie, and you put a guy in a suit and you sit him behind a desk, well by God, there he is: He's a businessman. Then it's done for you. It is created around you. It is not some intellectual journey. Acting for me is not some fucking mystery. It is what it is. I don't have any training. I don't have any talent. I am not Lawrence Olivier. I never will be. I am not interested in Shakespeare. But, believe me, I tried to read some of that shit and it is kind of confusing. Very prophetic and profound, but, okay...