(This interview was originally published in the November 9, 2009 issue of Broadside, though most of it had to be cut due to space constraints. This is the unedited interview.)Based on the short story by Richard Matheson, The Box is a new psychological thriller directed by Richard Kelly and starring James Marsden and Cameron Diaz that depicts a financially unstable 1970’s couple who one day receive a mysterious box with a button inside. They are told that if they push the button, they will receive one million dollars, but someone, somewhere in the world will die. Broadside recently had the chance to sit down with Diaz, Marsden and Kelly to talk about their experiences on making the film.
Have any of you read the short story or seen the Twilight Zone episode this movie is based on?
James: Embarrassingly, I never read the short story, not out of laziness, but because we just wanted to focus on our version of what we were doing. I did see the Twilight Zone episode which—Richard where are we with that whole mentioning the Twilight Zone episode?
Richard: I’m under the impression that I’m not allowed to mention those words legally. [Laughs] But the short story was something I read when I was young and it had a huge impression on me, obviously, and I optioned it from Richard Matheson and I spent many years trying to figure out how to expand it into a feature film and you know, here we are. It was a long journey to get here, but the concept of the story was something I felt left a strong footprint in my mind, so to speak.
Cameron: My answer’s the same as Jimmy’s. I didn’t read the short story because it was something that I wanted to sort of have, you know, to focus on our script, the sort of concept that Richard—or how Richard expanded on that concept.
How do you keep such a positive presence in the media and paparazzi with your social and personal life?
Cameron: You know, life is what you make of it and if you’re angry or upset about things that you can’t control, then you pretty much spend your life being angry and upset about things you can’t control, so I found that it’s just easier to enjoy life and embrace and be appreciative of the things that I do have in my life that I can control and also appreciate the things that I can’t control and make those things not so terrible in my life and just decide to be happy and bring on good positive things in my life. That’s worked for me so far. I have a pretty good life. I think it’s what you make of it and it’s how you absorb it and what you do with it. It’s a little thing that you learn as you get older. You’ll figure it out as you go.
Do you have any advice for somebody who wants to be an actor on how to make it and keep your integrity?
James: I would just say you just have to go for it. You have to be honest with yourself and you know, it takes a lot of courage, it takes a lot of confidence and I would say just doing it in any form, an acting class or community theater or whatever you’re available to do, the more you do it the more you want to do it and the better you get. It’s a tough business to get into, but if your heart’s there and you believe in yourself—I know that sounds really corny, but it is true—you can just stay with it and be persistent and patient and don’t lose your confidence.
Cameron: Can I add something to that?
James: Yes please, add something more.
Cameron: I think it’s also the—don’t let other people’s success be what you set as your own success. Make your own success like what [James] was saying, doing community theater or doing whatever—that could be success for you if you want that. If your goal is to just do those things, then you’re successful. Define your own success. Don’t try to make other people’s success your standard.
What was your initial reaction when you first read the script?
Cameron: I was a huge fan of Richard from Donnie Darko and Southland Tales and I just really wanted to work with him, so when I read the script, I felt that it was very authentic to the stories that he tells. There is sort of this existential quandary and I just knew that Richard would tell the story as uniquely as he does and I wanted to be a part of that.
How much of your own personality would you say you put into the characters? How much of you goes into who you’re playing?
Cameron: All I have is me. [Laughs] James would agree that you really have to use—you try to understand what other people are going through even if you haven’t gone through it yourself. You just try to get to the feeling of what you think it would feel like to be in that position, but you never really know. As much as you want to feel that you’re being somebody else, you’re only working from your own toolbox and experience, so I would like to think that there’s nothing of me in there, but really I can only contribute with what I have.
James: For me, you wouldn’t be responding to the material and to the story and to the character if there wasn’t a part of you in that, so there’s always going to be a piece of you that is going to be inherent to your performance, or my performance anyway.
How is this 1970’s set film relevant to our society today?
Richard: Well I think that this film kind of puts in the crosshairs the idea of the nuclear family. In our film, it’s a married couple under the age of 40 with a single child and they have a lifestyle that they really can’t afford and they’re sort of living on credit and they have a mortgage that’s beyond their means and they’re driving a car—Arthur is driving a car—and it’s a little bit too expensive. They have a son in private school with tuition that’s a little too much for them to handle. I think looking at our economic crisis right now, the film I hope resonates with the audience of today despite the fact that it’s set in 1976 because these are things that we can identify with and we can see and realize that we all are trying to live a better life and achieve a better life, but it’s ultimately about the things that we strive to possess in this lifestyle that we want to achieve. Hopefully, that’s something that resonates with modern audiences.
How do you select music for your films? Because music played a really big role in Donnie Darko and Southland Tales. I was wondering how you selected what role music plays in this one.
Richard: Well it comes from an emotional place. It’s a big kind of emotional strings and brass and percussion in the spirit of kind of Bernard Herrmann. The pop music in The Box is much more source music in the sense that there’s kind of a wedding/rehearsal dinner sequence towards the middle of the film. We were very specific about trying to pick songs that were kind of southern in quality because the movie takes place in Virginia and it has a southern rock believability, but also they were very iconic bands so we were very lucky enough to get The Grateful Dead and Scott Walker and The Marshall Tucker Band and all these bands that flow together. The biggest pop music in the moment is a Derek and the Dominos song called “Bell Bottom Blues” that I actually heard on the radio while driving to set and I remember I called Cameron up and I said, “Download this song from iTunes. Download “Bell Bottom Blues” and memorize the lyrics because we’re going to have you listening to it on the dance floor and it’s going to be this big romantic moment between you and James and we’re going to try to get the song.” It’s kind of an act of faith, when you just feel in your gut that this song is the right one. We ended up getting it, of course, luckily.
The story was written in the 1970’s, but it sounds so much like today. I was wondering why you set it in ‘76 instead of the present.
Richard: Well, I guess speaking from my point of view, it became a huge decision for me or a necessary decision to set it in the 70’s because the concept of someone you don’t know, which is inherent to the premise, doesn’t really exist anymore with modern social networking sites and Google satellite maps and all the surveillance technology we have today. I realized that if I set it in present day I was going to have to write that scene where [Cameron] sits down and Google’s the name Arlington Steward, you know, she’s just sitting in front of her laptop for half of the movie. It just didn’t feel as resonant. Obviously, the themes are resonant with present day, but the execution of the story only held onto its plausibility by maintaining the 1970’s era in which it was written. At the end of the day, it’s kind of an old fashioned concept and there’s something a bit more frightening about—people felt more vulnerable, I think, in the 70’s because we didn’t have all these technologies that allowed us to spy on each other.
This movie poses a big moral question about our human nature. In your opinions, do you think that the majority of people would push this button given the opportunity?
James: Probably.
Cameron: In today’s society, I think we’re already proving that we’re pushing the button more than ever by, you know, taking out credit cards and mortgages and dumping stuff into the ocean, doing all these things that we think we aren’t going to have to take responsibility for, but ultimately it does have an effect and we do have to suffer the consequences of that, like our economy, and we are doing so right now based on all the buttons that were pushed over the last few years. So I think it’s very relevant. I think it’s obvious that people do put forth the idea of having monetary wealth over any other wealth, especially in our culture and society.
What would you say was one of the funniest things that happened on set?
James: I remember lying in bed, having a heart to heart scene with Cameron, and then getting up and vomiting in the bathroom and then washing my mouth out with soap and then coming back and asking if it was ok if we finished the scene. Cameron, being really gracious and sweet, said it was totally fine. It’s kind of funny now more than it was then and they were able to fix my green face in post [production].
Cameron: We laughed a lot, but if there was anything in particular that we laughed about, it would probably be the day that we got to have water dumped on us, hundreds of gallons of water, maybe thousands of gallons, that was a day we were, as you would say, tickled because it was so much fun.
Richard: I remember when we did that, we did two takes when we dunked hundreds of gallons, probably 400, maybe it was a thousand gallons, I don’t remember the amount, but there was so much water that it literally knocked Cameron off the bed. Obviously, Cameron is an amazing athlete so this was not a problem with her.
Cameron: My hair was standing straight up, remember?
Richard: [Laughs] That’s right. She jumped up and her hair was sticking up in the most crazy direction.
Cameron: It looked like I was an alien.
Richard: Yeah, but we did a second take and your hair looked perfect so it all worked out.
Cameron: You know what’s really funny is that we’re laughing about it now still. [Laughs]
James: I remember in the first take, Richard pulled that practical joke and you dumped 10,000 gallons of cat urine on us. Remember that? That was the most fun. [Laughs]
Richard: I know, I know. [Laughs]
James: You got us.
Cameron: [Laughs]
The story in the movie is obviously a little bit more complex than the original short story. How did you go about elaborating the original premise and what kind of inspiration did you have?
Richard: Well, the short story was almost like a great set-up for act one of a movie and there was one line of the short story that just sent my mind racing and it was when they asked who Mr. Steward worked for and he said, “I can assure you that the organization is large and international in scope,” and that to me was just so fascinating because it had all these questions. I wanted to know, who did Mr. Steward work for? Why did they build the button unit? What are their intentions? Why are they kind of approaching these married couples? What’s the point of it all? What’s the agenda at work? And I thought those were such amazing questions and to be able to kind of explore all those answers in act two and act three and make it a story of redemption was really exciting so we really spent a lot of time to get it right and figure out what act two and act three were going to be.
With The Box and Rod Lurie’s upcoming Straw Dogs, [James], you’ve undertaken more intense roles and characters who grew up in violent areas. Did you find these roles to be more challenging than your previous work?
James: I find all were challenging, but yes, these were more challenging in that they are characters that are more different than myself on a normal day to day basis. The Straw Dogs role is what’s really intense and borderlining on a sociopath actually, so I don’t really see myself as that kind of guy. The further it is from you, the more difficult it is to get there, but it was great to creatively go there because that’s what we get to do as actors and I will say that after The Box and after Straw Dogs, I’m going to be looking for something light and fluffy. [Laughs] Something fun where I can change it all up.
Have any of you read the short story or seen the Twilight Zone episode this movie is based on?
James: Embarrassingly, I never read the short story, not out of laziness, but because we just wanted to focus on our version of what we were doing. I did see the Twilight Zone episode which—Richard where are we with that whole mentioning the Twilight Zone episode?
Richard: I’m under the impression that I’m not allowed to mention those words legally. [Laughs] But the short story was something I read when I was young and it had a huge impression on me, obviously, and I optioned it from Richard Matheson and I spent many years trying to figure out how to expand it into a feature film and you know, here we are. It was a long journey to get here, but the concept of the story was something I felt left a strong footprint in my mind, so to speak.
Cameron: My answer’s the same as Jimmy’s. I didn’t read the short story because it was something that I wanted to sort of have, you know, to focus on our script, the sort of concept that Richard—or how Richard expanded on that concept.
How do you keep such a positive presence in the media and paparazzi with your social and personal life?
Cameron: You know, life is what you make of it and if you’re angry or upset about things that you can’t control, then you pretty much spend your life being angry and upset about things you can’t control, so I found that it’s just easier to enjoy life and embrace and be appreciative of the things that I do have in my life that I can control and also appreciate the things that I can’t control and make those things not so terrible in my life and just decide to be happy and bring on good positive things in my life. That’s worked for me so far. I have a pretty good life. I think it’s what you make of it and it’s how you absorb it and what you do with it. It’s a little thing that you learn as you get older. You’ll figure it out as you go.
Do you have any advice for somebody who wants to be an actor on how to make it and keep your integrity?
James: I would just say you just have to go for it. You have to be honest with yourself and you know, it takes a lot of courage, it takes a lot of confidence and I would say just doing it in any form, an acting class or community theater or whatever you’re available to do, the more you do it the more you want to do it and the better you get. It’s a tough business to get into, but if your heart’s there and you believe in yourself—I know that sounds really corny, but it is true—you can just stay with it and be persistent and patient and don’t lose your confidence.
Cameron: Can I add something to that?
James: Yes please, add something more.
Cameron: I think it’s also the—don’t let other people’s success be what you set as your own success. Make your own success like what [James] was saying, doing community theater or doing whatever—that could be success for you if you want that. If your goal is to just do those things, then you’re successful. Define your own success. Don’t try to make other people’s success your standard.
What was your initial reaction when you first read the script?
Cameron: I was a huge fan of Richard from Donnie Darko and Southland Tales and I just really wanted to work with him, so when I read the script, I felt that it was very authentic to the stories that he tells. There is sort of this existential quandary and I just knew that Richard would tell the story as uniquely as he does and I wanted to be a part of that.
How much of your own personality would you say you put into the characters? How much of you goes into who you’re playing?
Cameron: All I have is me. [Laughs] James would agree that you really have to use—you try to understand what other people are going through even if you haven’t gone through it yourself. You just try to get to the feeling of what you think it would feel like to be in that position, but you never really know. As much as you want to feel that you’re being somebody else, you’re only working from your own toolbox and experience, so I would like to think that there’s nothing of me in there, but really I can only contribute with what I have.
James: For me, you wouldn’t be responding to the material and to the story and to the character if there wasn’t a part of you in that, so there’s always going to be a piece of you that is going to be inherent to your performance, or my performance anyway.
How is this 1970’s set film relevant to our society today?
Richard: Well I think that this film kind of puts in the crosshairs the idea of the nuclear family. In our film, it’s a married couple under the age of 40 with a single child and they have a lifestyle that they really can’t afford and they’re sort of living on credit and they have a mortgage that’s beyond their means and they’re driving a car—Arthur is driving a car—and it’s a little bit too expensive. They have a son in private school with tuition that’s a little too much for them to handle. I think looking at our economic crisis right now, the film I hope resonates with the audience of today despite the fact that it’s set in 1976 because these are things that we can identify with and we can see and realize that we all are trying to live a better life and achieve a better life, but it’s ultimately about the things that we strive to possess in this lifestyle that we want to achieve. Hopefully, that’s something that resonates with modern audiences.
How do you select music for your films? Because music played a really big role in Donnie Darko and Southland Tales. I was wondering how you selected what role music plays in this one.
Richard: Well it comes from an emotional place. It’s a big kind of emotional strings and brass and percussion in the spirit of kind of Bernard Herrmann. The pop music in The Box is much more source music in the sense that there’s kind of a wedding/rehearsal dinner sequence towards the middle of the film. We were very specific about trying to pick songs that were kind of southern in quality because the movie takes place in Virginia and it has a southern rock believability, but also they were very iconic bands so we were very lucky enough to get The Grateful Dead and Scott Walker and The Marshall Tucker Band and all these bands that flow together. The biggest pop music in the moment is a Derek and the Dominos song called “Bell Bottom Blues” that I actually heard on the radio while driving to set and I remember I called Cameron up and I said, “Download this song from iTunes. Download “Bell Bottom Blues” and memorize the lyrics because we’re going to have you listening to it on the dance floor and it’s going to be this big romantic moment between you and James and we’re going to try to get the song.” It’s kind of an act of faith, when you just feel in your gut that this song is the right one. We ended up getting it, of course, luckily.
The story was written in the 1970’s, but it sounds so much like today. I was wondering why you set it in ‘76 instead of the present.
Richard: Well, I guess speaking from my point of view, it became a huge decision for me or a necessary decision to set it in the 70’s because the concept of someone you don’t know, which is inherent to the premise, doesn’t really exist anymore with modern social networking sites and Google satellite maps and all the surveillance technology we have today. I realized that if I set it in present day I was going to have to write that scene where [Cameron] sits down and Google’s the name Arlington Steward, you know, she’s just sitting in front of her laptop for half of the movie. It just didn’t feel as resonant. Obviously, the themes are resonant with present day, but the execution of the story only held onto its plausibility by maintaining the 1970’s era in which it was written. At the end of the day, it’s kind of an old fashioned concept and there’s something a bit more frightening about—people felt more vulnerable, I think, in the 70’s because we didn’t have all these technologies that allowed us to spy on each other.
This movie poses a big moral question about our human nature. In your opinions, do you think that the majority of people would push this button given the opportunity?
James: Probably.
Cameron: In today’s society, I think we’re already proving that we’re pushing the button more than ever by, you know, taking out credit cards and mortgages and dumping stuff into the ocean, doing all these things that we think we aren’t going to have to take responsibility for, but ultimately it does have an effect and we do have to suffer the consequences of that, like our economy, and we are doing so right now based on all the buttons that were pushed over the last few years. So I think it’s very relevant. I think it’s obvious that people do put forth the idea of having monetary wealth over any other wealth, especially in our culture and society.
What would you say was one of the funniest things that happened on set?
James: I remember lying in bed, having a heart to heart scene with Cameron, and then getting up and vomiting in the bathroom and then washing my mouth out with soap and then coming back and asking if it was ok if we finished the scene. Cameron, being really gracious and sweet, said it was totally fine. It’s kind of funny now more than it was then and they were able to fix my green face in post [production].
Cameron: We laughed a lot, but if there was anything in particular that we laughed about, it would probably be the day that we got to have water dumped on us, hundreds of gallons of water, maybe thousands of gallons, that was a day we were, as you would say, tickled because it was so much fun.
Richard: I remember when we did that, we did two takes when we dunked hundreds of gallons, probably 400, maybe it was a thousand gallons, I don’t remember the amount, but there was so much water that it literally knocked Cameron off the bed. Obviously, Cameron is an amazing athlete so this was not a problem with her.
Cameron: My hair was standing straight up, remember?
Richard: [Laughs] That’s right. She jumped up and her hair was sticking up in the most crazy direction.
Cameron: It looked like I was an alien.
Richard: Yeah, but we did a second take and your hair looked perfect so it all worked out.
Cameron: You know what’s really funny is that we’re laughing about it now still. [Laughs]
James: I remember in the first take, Richard pulled that practical joke and you dumped 10,000 gallons of cat urine on us. Remember that? That was the most fun. [Laughs]
Richard: I know, I know. [Laughs]
James: You got us.
Cameron: [Laughs]
The story in the movie is obviously a little bit more complex than the original short story. How did you go about elaborating the original premise and what kind of inspiration did you have?
Richard: Well, the short story was almost like a great set-up for act one of a movie and there was one line of the short story that just sent my mind racing and it was when they asked who Mr. Steward worked for and he said, “I can assure you that the organization is large and international in scope,” and that to me was just so fascinating because it had all these questions. I wanted to know, who did Mr. Steward work for? Why did they build the button unit? What are their intentions? Why are they kind of approaching these married couples? What’s the point of it all? What’s the agenda at work? And I thought those were such amazing questions and to be able to kind of explore all those answers in act two and act three and make it a story of redemption was really exciting so we really spent a lot of time to get it right and figure out what act two and act three were going to be.
With The Box and Rod Lurie’s upcoming Straw Dogs, [James], you’ve undertaken more intense roles and characters who grew up in violent areas. Did you find these roles to be more challenging than your previous work?
James: I find all were challenging, but yes, these were more challenging in that they are characters that are more different than myself on a normal day to day basis. The Straw Dogs role is what’s really intense and borderlining on a sociopath actually, so I don’t really see myself as that kind of guy. The further it is from you, the more difficult it is to get there, but it was great to creatively go there because that’s what we get to do as actors and I will say that after The Box and after Straw Dogs, I’m going to be looking for something light and fluffy. [Laughs] Something fun where I can change it all up.
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