Q & A: Patrick Fugit of Wristcutters: A Love Story
In Goran Dukic's offbeat film Wristcutters: A Love Story, Patrick Fugit plays Zia, a young man who has killed himself and crossed over into an afterlife just for suicides. Even the music on the jukebox is by rock stars who have self-destructed. It's in this unlikely world that Zia finds love. Fugit, who once played Cameron Crowe as a young rock critic, discusses starring in Wristcutters alongside music icon Tom Waits, and his experiences at Sundance '06.
By Tom Roston and Jessica Letkemann
PREMIERE: What drew you to this film?
PATRICK FUGIT: There's a couple of things I really liked about it. One was that it takes place in a suicide afterlife. All of the characters kind of take it in stride. It focuses on that but it doesn't obsess about it. It's just where they are during the movie. And also the fact it's just kind of an unusual way to tell a love story. [I also liked] the fact that I would have to play the character and get the emotions across without smiling.
Was not smiling the biggest challenge?
I wouldn't say it was too big a challenge. It was a really good exercise to find that in yourself. I realized how much I'd used smiling in acting as like a crutch, because a smile can get across so much. You realize that you smile even when you're angry or nervous. So to do without that was really cool.
During the actual production, was it a struggle? Was it a hard shoot? Did you say it was seven weeks?
It was seven. It is long. We had a lot to shoot and it was a lot of locations. There were days when we had to go out and we had a skeleton crew and myself and Shea [Whigham] and Shannyn [Sossamon], we’d go out on the weekends and shoot all day Saturday and Sunday. That happened probably five out of the seven weeks. It was pressed for time for sure, and hot, really hot.
Where did you shoot?
Lancaster [CA]. Palmdale [CA]. And I'm from here [in Utah]. It's crazy hot here down in southern Utah, so I was used to it, but it was tough.
Did you and Tom Waits get a chance to play music together? Was there time for that?
Not really. I've been playing guitar for like six years and last year I got into flamenco guitar and so I got kind of obsessed with that. John Hawkes plays music. He's got a really great band, King Straggler. It's this country, folk, old-timey combination. He and I played a couple of times. Tom was just mostly there to work. It's funny because he and John would find weird percussion instruments walking around camp and you'd see [Tom's character] Kneller and [John's character] Yan sitting there banging on tin cans and chairs and hitting rocks against other.
What was your experience at Sundance this year? Is it your first?
No, I've been up here a couple of times. It's getting crazier and crazier. If my friends have a film up here, if I hear about a film, or if I have a film, it's really fun for me to come up here. But if I don't, it's hard to come up here because it's so crazy. It's like two very different festivals are going on at the same time. People are here to see films, and people are here to get free s**t. But I am wearing my free jeans right now.
With everyone I'm talking to, it's like that. It's like 'I'm doing an independent film, I don't really get much pay for this. So give it to me and I'm probably going to regift it anyway, give it to all my buddies.'
Yeah, my agent loves taking me around getting the free stuff. But it's like I never use any of it. He gave me all this speaker equiptement for an iPod and I don't have an iPod.
You, of all people, don't have an iPod?
No, dude. I carry the CDs everywhere I go. Five pounds of CDs.
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