JOHN CARTER directed by Andrew Stanton, written by Stanton, Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon based on the novel A Princess Of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, with Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Ciarán Hinds, Mark Strong and Willem Dafoe. A Walt Disney Pictures release. 132 minutes. Opens Friday (March 9). For venues and times, see Movies.
Taylor Kitsch knows everybody’s talking about John Carter’s uncertain box-office prospects. He doesn’t care.
“They’re just trying to fabricate something that’s not fuckin’ there, you know?” says the BC-born actor who broke out as noble failure Tim Riggins on the Friday Night Lights TV series and now finds himself starring in two massive studio event pictures, John Carter and Battleship (coming in May).
“It’s disheartening. You just wanna be like, ‘Go open yourself to it and you’ll be more than happy with the film.’ But I think people just wanna disillusion themselves with fuckin’ negativity and shit. And it sucks, to be honest with you, dude.”
John Carter has its problems, but it’s not all that hard to enjoy. It’s harder to sell, which is the problem those industry-watchers have fixed upon.
“I think it’s easy and lazy to be negative,” Kitsch says. “It takes a lot more work to actually fucking get in there and figure out what the movie’s about. And that’s a disappointing thing, that part of it.”
As Kitsch tells it, the budget was the furthest thing from anyone’s mind while they were making the movie.
“Story first,” he says with the same conviction he brings to his characters. “You know, the more you give me to dive into, the more fulfilling it’s gonna be. And then when you sit down with [Andrew] Stanton and work off Willem Dafoe, you’re gonna get something pretty great.”
Even if Dafoe is… well, I’ll let Kitsch explain the work involved in turning the actor into a 7-foot, six-limbed Martian chieftain.
“Willem Dafoe was on stilts in grey pyjamas and a head-cam,” he says. “I mean, every time Tars Tarkas is onscreen, that’s Willem in the middle of the Utah desert on a dry lake bed on stilts.”
There’s a great deal of digital enhancement at work in John Carter, and it was ultimately Kitsch’s job to sell us on the reality of the spectacle.
“If I don’t believe it, certainly you won’t either,” he says. “It’s just that much more energy and work you’ve gotta make sure you’re in the moment.”
Kitsch says director Stanton, who made the Pixar classics Finding Nemo and WALL*E, surprised and challenged him from their very first meeting.
“He didn’t talk once about a budget, about who’s doing the effects – anything,” he says. “It was like, ‘I’m looking to play, and to cast a great young actor to come in here and breathe life into my childhood dream.’ As an actor, when you hear that, that’s just music, you know? Because god knows how many meetings you fuckin’ take where it’s just, ‘Then we’re gonna make this explode, and this one’s gonna look so sweet, and you’re just gonna be there.'”
Battleship is an equally massive effects actioner that reunites Kitsch with director Peter Berg, who cast him in the Friday Night Lights pilot.
“It’s a huge film,” Kitsch says, laughing. “There’s just – it’s insane. [And] to reconnect with him five, six years later was a great time.”
He’s also top-lining Oliver Stone’s Savages, which opens July 6. “I can’t wait to see it,” he says. “I’m better now for the jobs I’ve done, you know? Probably the most exciting thing this year [for me] is my growth as an actor as these different characters – I mean, they couldn’t be more different, you know? From Chon in Savages to John Carter – literally, they’re unrecognizable [from each other].”
Interview Clips
Taylor Kitsch on the challenge of acting in a digital world:
Kitsch on Oliver Stone’s Savages:
normw@nowtoronto.com
