FILM

John C. Reilly is one of Hollywood's best-kept secrets. Or, at least, he used to be. Tending to thrive in atmospheric ensemble pieces like Ulu Grosbard's Georgia and Lasse Hallstrom's What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, the actor's star has risen considerably by way of his self-effacing and understated performances in director Paul Thomas Anderson's first two features, Hard Eight and Boogie Nights. His acceptance into Hollywood pictures is a recent development, having begun with last year's baseball romance For Love of the Game continuing with Wolfgang Peterson's upcoming tragedy at sea, The Perfect Storm, also starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg. In Magnolia, Reilly's third collaboration with Anderson, his Officer Jim Kurring is the film's moral center and allows the actor to deliver the most honest and deeply felt performance of his film career.

THC: As a character, you tend to give yourself over to your roles. Is it frustrating, as a character actor, that people try to pin you down to the types of roles you play?

JR: Yeah... People tend to say "nave" or "tough guy with a heart of gold."

THC: How do you see them?

JR: I see them as something different from what I've already done. They always tend to have a good core to them, but I think that most people have a good core to them, so it's not that surprising to me.... My favorite characters are all connected in that they all totally believe in the dream of their lives. And I think that makes for.... really genuine people. It makes for very funny people because sometimes they're not even aware how ridiculous they're being in pursuit of that dream.

THC: The character you play in Magnolia is based on one that you improvised in doing a Cops-parody with Paul Thomas Anderson. But I imagine that it was much more of a caricature at the time.

JR: It was basically, Paul and I, before he got the money to do Boogie Nights, and after Hard Eight had been absconded by the first studio that produced it, we were just kind of going crazy. My way of dealing with it was just growing a mustache for no reason, and Paul's way of dealing with it was, "Come on over here and we're going to shoot something on video," and all of a sudden we're doing a Cops parody, and yeah, the only point in doing it was to make each other laugh and just entertain each other, so it was a little bit more over the top, but, that said, a lot of the dialogue from those improvisations ended up in the movie. And I think Paul deepened the role in other ways, but a lot of the kind of haplessness of the character that I created in those improvisations did end up in the movie.

THC: Was it hard to get inside a guy like Jim Kurring once you'd already parodied him? Was it hard to take him seriously?

JR: Well, when I improvise, it's not like I'm making fun of the person. In some ways I felt like I totally already knew the character, but in other ways, Paul had synthesized that character into the script and added a lot more weight to him, and a whole romantic angle, and so I had to flesh it out at the same time. And then, also, I spent a lot of time with policemen... After we did those improvisations and I started to prepare for the movie I went out policemen in North Hollywood and drove around with them, and just...the crushing humanity of it all... It's a lot more serious than I even imagined.

THC: Jim is one of the more conventionally motivated characters in the film because he's so firmly grounded in laws and structure and rationality. But this film is really about the unavoidable subversion of all of those things. How does that constrast reflect on Paul's vision of the film, do you think?

JR: Well, he's a pretty subversive character. I think you can tell in his movies ... It's sort of like... the truth about the human condition or the truth about emotions and what people are really feeling has become subversive because most of what we're presented in popular culture is total bullshit. It's some kind of commercially facile version of the way things are instead of the complicated truth of human existence.

THC: Most of the characters in Magnolia only interact with one or two others. That's unusual with such a sprawling cast. How does it change the group dynamic that was so obviously at play in Boogie Nights?

JR: Yeah, it's odd... This was a very challenging movie for all of us to make after the kind of picnic we had on Boogie Nights. But at the same time, we all know each other really well, so it wasn't like there's some stranger doing some scene that I don't even know what it's about.... So we still felt connected to each other even though we're all filming the movie in this kind of episodic fashion. I think that Paul did that on purpose, that it's an ensemble movie but the ensemble doesn't really interact. I think the point he might have been trying to make with that is that in life it's that way. All of us are operating on all these kind of independent little spheres, but really we're all connected.

THC: This is your third collaboration with Paul, and because of your friendship and mutual respect, he's able to write characters for you, and other members of the cast, not just with you in mind, but knowing that you are going to play the part.

JR: Yeah, sometimes he writes screen directions, like in Magnolia, like, "we see Officer Jim Kurring. He looks a lot like John C. Reilly with a mustache."

THC: Do you think it's ever a risk, because Paul does know you so well, that the characters he writes for you are too specific to you, that they're not enough of a stretch of your abilities?

JR: It's always challenging. It's just such a rare opportunity to do anything that's truthful. Most of the time, you're just trying to when you do these larger Hollywood movies that are very genre- specific, they try to just get you to do it by numbers and cry on cue, and, you know what I mean? With Paul, it's like, even if the thing is so close to home, it never bothers me, because it's that much more truthful and it's that much more original, you know? It's always stranger than fiction.

THC: I know you've done a lot of stage work. Is it closer to stage work working with Paul then, because it is tapping more into a personal experience?

JR: Yeah.... I hadn't ever thought of it that way, but a lot of the great strength I think he has is as an audience. You know, people think of directors as, "Now go there! Go there! Now do this! Now, turn those lights up!" Paul can do all of that, but I think his real, like, secret weapon with actors is, he really listens. He's sitting there...staring intently at what you're doing and watching every single subtle little change that you make from take to take, and gets in there and talks with you about it, you know-doesn't talk too much--gives you a lot of freedom, and a lot of leeway to interpret how you're going to get what he's asked you to get. But yeah, it is like theater that way. You know...a lot of times in movies... they'll break scenes up. "Oh, we're just going to do a pick-up from this line," "we're just going to pop in for this." And it's all really choppy and fragmented and it just kind of feels like you're just hashing together this blueprint instead of a live performance. Paul loves to let things play out in a single, massive take.

THC: You also have the unique distinction of having been in two movies made notorious for showing a penis: Boogie Nights and For Love of the Game.

JR: Oh God.

THC: Kevin Costner made a big fuss about how taking that shot out of the film was a desecration of the artistic vision of the film.

JR: I don't know what his problem was. I was kind of pissed off at him because I felt like he sandbagged the movie right before it came out, had this huge tussle with the studio about this ridiculous scene that... It's just stupid, you know? I mean, he should have just trusted Sam Raimi to make a good movie, and he tried to subvert Sam's power in the movie and I was just kind of let down by it. I thought he was more of a team player than that, frankly, to use a sports analogy.

THC: Costner tends to wrest control over films away from his directors. How legitimate is the concept of artistic vision in filmmaking today?

JR: When movies are good, they have a vision. When movies are bad, usually they're directed by committee or by producers or by stars that are trying to exert vanity requirements over the project. And film is not a democracy. Film is a monarchy, and the director is king, and that's--in my opinion--that's the way it works. You can't have the prop guy going, "Well, I think you should...".

THC: One thing that writers tend to comment on is your very "regular guy" looks. Does it strike you as odd that people are so fixated on your appearance?

JR: My wife is insulted by it. "You're beautiful! Why do they say that?" In the press, if people need a hook they need a hook, and I could try to sway them away from that and then I'd spend 15 minutes trying to describe how good-looking I am, and that's not exactly my bag.