OUT OF THE FURNACE Press Day With Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson, Zoë Saldana, Casey Affleck And Scott Cooper

From Scott Cooper, the critically-acclaimed writer and director of Crazy Heart, comes OUT OF THE FURNACE, a gripping and gritty drama about family, fate, circumstance, and justice that hits theaters today. Recently, Director Scott Cooper and stars Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Woody Harrelson and Zoë Saldana sat down with press in a small press conference to talk about the film. Check it out below.

Russell Baze (Christian Bale) has a rough life: he works a dead-end blue collar job at the local steel mill by day, and cares for his terminally ill father by night.  When Russell’s brother Rodney (Casey Affleck) returns home from serving time in Iraq, he gets lured into one of the most ruthless crime rings in the Northeast and mysteriously disappears. The police fail to crack the case, so – with nothing left to lose – Russell takes matters into his own hands, putting his life on the line to seek justice for his brother.  The impressive cast of Christian Bale and Casey Affleck are rounded out by Woody Harrelson, Forest Whitaker, Zoë Saldana, Sam Shepard and Willem Dafoe.

How did the Pennsylvania steel country mountain setting inform the story and characters/performances?

COOPER: I grew up in a small town in Virginia along the same Appalachian mountain range. As the grandson of a coal miner, I have grown up with these people and have spent a lot of time in small town America. While I was touring with my first film, Crazy Heart, I had been reading a great deal about Braddock, Pennsylvania – Brad-DOCK, as they actually say in Braddock – and what the town had undergone over the past 5-7 years dealing with economic turmoil and the loss of the steel industry really touched me. It was important to me to really shine a light not only on small town America like that, but also what we as Americans have undergone the past five turbulent years. That blue collar milieu was something that I really understood and resonated with me and I thought was underrepresented in American cinema. It was very prevalent in the 1970s films that have very much influenced this movie and Crazy Heart, and I wanted to see that represented on screen again because I knew these people very well and I knew their morays and their values and hope to think that I knew about their world view. It was important to weave all those themes into a narrative in a very personal way.

BALE: It obviously helped so much being on location. If you understand what I mean, the different between performing for the rectangle of the camera versus a world being created and the world finds things within that. You know what I mean? There’s a huge difference in that because what it takes away is performance. You don’t feel like you’re performing; you’re just doing it and you’re existing.

AFFLECK: I think they summed it up pretty well. Especially a place like where we were, which has a real story just in the way it looks – to see a place that was once one thing and is now something else. It has a lot of atmosphere. If there’s a lighting set-up that takes 20 minutes, you can go into another room and you’re not just staring at the back of a bunch of plywood; you’re actually in another room in your own house where you’re supposed to be. It helps to ground you.

HARRELSON: I think I’d like to say ditto.

SALDANA: You walk in with this fear of wanting to see something that you can imagine being so heavy. And what you learn from it and take from it is a strength that you’re able to absorb from these people. It’s very easy to leave when things go wrong, but to stick around and to basically give life to a town because of everything it gave you – generation after generation after generation – to me is what defines a true American. [It] is sticking together when it gets really rough, and here is a town that has been hit very, very hard. I’ve been to places around the world that leave you with a big knot in your stomach and you feel like an elephant has sat on your chest, and Braddock was definitely one of those cities. Once you sit down with the people, you wish you had an ounce of the strength they possess every single day by sticking around. I really was very moved by that.

Woody – intense but cool and calm. Rare and scary combination. Did it come natural to you or a technique you’ve developed?

HARRELSON: Well, I think it’s important when you’re acting to be as relaxed as possible, even if you’re doing something intense. So you’re basically in a state of dynamic relaxation. I think these other actors might agree with me.
I didn’t feel there was anything natural about playing Harlan DeGroat. [To Scott] What was it you told me…

COOPER: The very last shot of the film was the very first scene that we shot at the drive-in. When we wrapped, Woody walked over to me and hugged me and he said, ‘I have never wanted to shed a character so badly in my life.’

HARRELSON: Yeah.

COOPER: And truly, for me, I wanted Woody’s character to represent the very worst of American and Christian’s character to represent the very best of America, that kind of dichotomy, and I hope we succeeded. But I just want to really quickly say, as someone who’s had a very unremarkable career as an actor, you quickly realize, if you feel like you have a little bit of talent as an actor, that once you see these four actors and you see the work and you see the other side of the lens, that you quickly realize there’s a difference between being very modestly talented and gifted as they are. It’s a real treat to direct these actors, I have to say.

BALE: But that being said, you need the right environment, and Scott creates that environment.

To Zoe – character torn between two men. How did wrap your head around in loving both and how she dealt with it?

SALDANA: Torn…I think Lena has been torn by her life. She’s probably had a rough life. I needed to build that for her and understand that, and through endless conversations with Scott, we came to the conclusion that she hadn’t had it easy. I needed to know why she just couldn’t stick by the person that she truly, truly loves and she went with somebody that worked in law, that symbolically is going to keep her safe. And it has to do with her inability to cope with danger and pain. I think being torn between two men that have been really good to her is small potatoes in comparison to the torture that she has to live with herself knowing that she just has to make decisions that are going to protect her physically.

With regard to Christian’s character, he’s seen in church in a few scenes. Any particular backstory to his seeking faith and religion to get him through?

COOPER: This is a man who, as I was writing this character, I always thought of as a very good man who is beset on all sides by a relentless fate. It was based on someone in my life who has suffered a great deal of tragedy and pain and loss and who is one of the most positive people I know and is someone who has given me a great source of inspiration. That particular man’s faith has carried him through – whether he’s asking for absolution or redemption or whatever it is he’s asking for in those very quiet and personal moments – and in these small communities throughout America and I’m certain around the world, people all pray to different Gods and they all look for different things when they go to houses of worship and spirituality. It was important for me to have Russell Baze ask for that type of spirituality and faith, as he’s certain he’s doing things that are very morally questionable and things that have happened in his life that, through twists of fate and circumstance, have put him in the position he’s in.

Elaborate on what it’s like to actual be able to tell this story with such a talented group of actors?

COOPER: Well, directors go their whole careers without being able to tell personal stories and to work with a cast as talented as they are. And I don’t even consider it work; I honestly and sincerely consider it a privilege to see the type of work and the preparation and the care that these actors put into helping me realize my vision. There was no ego on the set. They were always questioning. They were taking a script that was decently written and elevating it in every way and making me a better filmmaker and making me really understand more about who I am as a person. And after the modest success of my first film, I found it very daunting to have to live with those kinds of burden of expectations. For someone who grew up with very little money and who had very little money after Crazy Heart, you can get tempted to make movies for the wrong reasons. When you have two little girls who want you to make that movie – or need you to make that movie – and you just can’t, you have to be true to yourself and to your artistic world view. I chose to tell a personal story. When you tell a movie like this that’s emotionally charged as this is, it’s a risk, certainly. I could have taken a much less risky path after the success of my first film, but as one of my great cinematic heroes, Francis Coppola, would say, ‘If you aren’t taking the highest, greatest risk, then why are you a filmmaker?’

Casey, playing a returning Vet…very real. Any special preparation?

AFFLECK: Not anything special. But I did some preparation that starts with reading the script over and over and trying to absorb it, and then talking to Scott a lot about where he’s coming from because it’s not really a part of the movie – it doesn’t delve into [his history] too much, which is good. Then watching some documentaries, things like that, then talking to some veterans and just trying to piece together what – as much as you can – an experience like that might be like for somebody. These guys now in these wars have done more tours than the average soldier in other wars just because it’s not a volunteer army and they’re careerists, so they spend a lot of time over there with a constant level of anxiety. Understanding what those symptoms are when they come back with some post-traumatic stress disorder and the depression, the frustration, the alienation, and feeling like people don’t want to hear what their experiences were and how lonely that can feel, then you have to just forget about that stuff and just be in the living room – there you are talking about cleaning the bed pan or something – and you just hope that all that stuff imbues whatever moment you’re in and not try to bring it to every little scene because you don’t carry around your history in that way; it’s just background noise, and you hope whatever research you’ve done bubbles up to the surface at the right time when you’re playing a scene that’s an argument about a beer and then suddenly you’re sharing some experience that you weren’t even planning on sharing. You just hope that you’ve done the work so in the right moment it clicks and makes sense.

Casey and Christian – great scenes together. Know each other before this? Do anything to develop brotherly dynamic?

BALE: Not really. It just happened. Even though Scott and I had been saying, ‘We want Casey for the role,’ and there were a lot of conversations about that, Scott and I were eventually saying, ‘We’re not doing it without Casey.’ And then I didn’t actually meet Casey until we were doing a camera test in Pittsburgh a couple days before we started. All of the prison stuff was done in two days…

COOPER: The very first two days.

BALE: The very first two days of filming we did all of that prison sequence stuff, so we just got thrown in the deep end, which was nice. That was it. It just happened. Casey’s a fucking great actor and he was wonderful to work off of.

AFFLECK: We spent weeks and weeks together. (laughs)

BALE: I forgot all of it! I was just blasted off my head! Sorry, mate, I just forgot.

AFFLECK: It was like what he said. It’s awkward to say it because he’s sitting right there, but I think he just makes everyone better around him and is an anchor of reality. If someone’s in a scene with you and they’re listening to what you say and they’re looking at you in that way, then you’re having a real conversation and the whole thing feels a little bit more real in some way. I would have to attribute whatever apparent chemistry there is or relationship there is to that. And those first couple days in the prison, those were hard for me – it’s always hard to get right into something and I’m usually terrible the first week – so on the very first day or two we’re doing those scenes and Christian was very patient. I did and said some things that just immediately made me trust him, and it just went smoothly from there.

COOPER: What you see between these two actors isn’t something you can learn in the Lee Strasberg Institute or with Stella Adler. That is these two actors doing a great deal of investigative text work before – they won’t say that – but they’re also as talented as two actors of my generation, simply put. That’s not the type of thing that you as a director can really manufacture, that really are two actors at the very height of their skill level, quite frankly.

The physicality of the role – very realistic and scary. An added level of trust that Woody can be as scary as he wants to be and Casey isn’t worried he’ll eat your face?

HARRELSON: I was worried about him eating my face. (laughs) We were just talking about that before because I was saying working with Casey is like working with a wild animal; you really don’t know if he’s going to bite you or want to be petted. [It was a] really great experience; Christian is one of the greatest actors who ever lived. There’s a level of confidence in the actor you’re working with that really helps a lot. It makes all the difference.

Christian – what was it like to shoot Woody?

BALE: Well, I respect Woody greatly – he’s desperately wrong with what he said, with the utmost respect. The things that happened on the film were just very organic. That whole piece, I viewed it as hunting a deer. It was like that. He wanted to inflict the most amount of pain he could upon this person before finishing him. He wanted to see him struggle. We know he’s good with a rifle. And then it’s almost like a mercy kill in some ways by the end. But really satisfying. (laughs)

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OUT OF THE FURNACE opens in theatres nationwide on December 6