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Compiled by: Jack Foley
Q. Can you tell us about your obsession with Howard Hughes?
A: Continuing on with what Marty mentioned, my perception
of Howard Hughes is very similar. I’m not of that generation,
but I knew of this ‘Wolf Man’ like figure who was
locked away in a hotel room in Las Vegas, who wouldn’t communicate
with anyone except by telephone. Almost this monstrous image that
I had of the man.
And I really didn’t know the genesis of how he became that.
More so than trying to portray an American hero or an icon, it
was like a Greek tragedy. He was a man obsessed with everything,
truly everything that he put his mind to. He was relentless and
would not stop until he had reached his own ideals of perfection.
That went with creating a bra for Jane Russell, or building the
Spruce Goose, or sleeping with as many women as he possibly could,
or breaking speed records. That element of a character obsessed,
and then have that character be confined to his own private, mental
hell by microscopic germs just made for one of these characters
that I or any writer could have possibly made up.
So in that great search as an actor to find those types of characters
I stumbled upon this book. And I guess you could use the word
obsessed, I became obsessed about wanting to play him. And going
along with what Marty mentioned earlier, the fact that it did
focus on his earlier years, that it dealt with a man dealing with
the onset of his own madness rather than the aftermath, what happens
to him afterwards, you have this great see-saw act where he’s
succeeding in all these different departments and really fulfilling
the dreams he had when he was a young man.
It’s like a test case for what happens when you give a
man everything in the world and he fulfils all his dreams while
simultaneously becoming more and more mad by his own mental illness.
So yes, I suppose you could say I was obsessive about playing
him.
Q. How did you go about researching the real Howard?
A: We were playing characters here, we weren’t
doing a Felliniesque surreal, dream like version of Howard Hughes’
life. At some point we said we wanted to be as authentic as possible,
but at the same time create our own characters out of the actual
events. We read as many books as we could – I read as many
as I could – and I got to meet with the real Jane Russell,
and talk with her about Howard.
I spent a lot of time with Terry Moore his ex-wife who gave me
a lot of insight into the man. People who actually worked with
him, I met a doctor who knew about his condition. But the main
thing that really helped me in capturing his character was the
documentary footage of the Senate hearings. There is other footage
of the man, but he’s such a private man that whenever there
is a clip of him he’s always talking very specifically about
the props of an engine plane or the landing gear. He goes on and
on for hours about the specifics of the plane and how it works.
He was literally like a robot, very technical. The Senate hearing
stuff was the only example I got to see of the raw state of the
man. A man confronted, a man pushed up against a wall and attacking.
In a lot of ways he was a hero to a lot of people because of those
Senate hearings.
He was an individual, a billionaire – America’s first,
a powerful man – but an individual taking on a corporate
monopoly and the Senate. He succeeded, and there was a huge grass
roots effort for a while to make him President.
Martin Scorsese: There were a couple of things
Leo picked up from the footage, like the touching of his pants
leg. Every picture we saw he’d do it, so we started layering
that in. And one other interesting thing, naturally the newsreels
that he had at the end of an aeroplane flight, the plane would
land and the press would be there.
There were big cameras and everything, so it was kind of rehearsed
as he got out of the plane. We had the out-takes from one of these,
he got out of the plane and all the guys applauded and he said
‘none of that now, none of that’ and then he said
‘okay let’s do it again’. We use that at the
end with the Hercules. He kind of got embarrassed but he liked
it. We literally pulled bits and pieces throughout.
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Leonardo DiCaprio: I
don’t know if you remember this other one, the cameraman
was obviously filming him without his knowledge, but Howard was
making Hell’s Angels and there he was in between takes meticulously
replacing a scarf, moving it in increments inch by inch. For no
apparent reason.
It’s interesting to see his meticulous attention to detail,
which is very different from when Marty pays attention to detail.
If you look at The Outlaw it’s a pretty horrendous movie
but they literally did hundreds of takes, for him to get to the
level of his own – and I don’t think it even had to
do with performance – but it was probably the way somebody
said a line that didn’t sound right. Or the angle on somebody’s
face or the way a piece of wardrobe looked. He spent millions
of dollars on that movie as well. It’s interesting to watch
a man with OCD and have him make a film. That was quite apparent
on Hell’s Angels, having him shoot that movie for four years
and re-shoot it for sound and spend more money that had ever been
spent on a feature film in history.
Q. Did you ever view the story of how fame affected Hughes
as a cautionary tale for yourself?
A: I don't have obsessive compulsive disorder, number
one. I'm not a germophobe. But I do get asked that question and
I have a hard time drawing parallels because I wouldn't have my
plate that full in life. You're really focussed on so many different
things, that work themselves into a frenzy. I'm trying to focus
on being an actor, to do the best possible job I can at it.
Q. Can it be difficult being you?
A. I'm very lucky, I'm a very lucky person and I'm very
appreciative certainly to be able to be in the position that I'm
in as an actor. It's the only thing that I've known I really wanted
to do professionally so I'm very appreciative of it.
Q. Leonardo, do you have a love or fear of flying?
A: I don’t feel the urge to fly myself, not at
all. I got to simulate what it was like to fly though, and I asked
if I could go up and fly in some of these planes but the insurance
company quite understandably said absolutely not, they wouldn’t
allow me to fly for the first time in antique war planes a couple
of weeks before shooting. So I understood.
We worked very closely with a professional pilot, and that’s
the great thing about being able to do a movie, you learn about
the subject matter and you simulate what it’s like and you
get into the history of it all. Certainly for Howard Hughes’
character, to be able to be way up in the sky like that, cocooned
from the world and in control of his own vehicle, in his own germ-free
zone in the heavens, was his favourite place to be. And he ultimately
passed away on a plane which I suppose is appropriate.
Q. Do you see Hughes as a sympathetic figure or a troubled
genius?
A: I think both. For me, ultimately, it wasn’t
about us saying we wanted to portray a great American hero, why
don’t you know about this man’s life, and historically
what he did. He needs to be recognised. For us it was a combination
of those things, it was ‘here is a fascinating character
to put up on screen, a multi-dimensional character who was all
those things'.
And through the research that I did the most interesting thing
that I found was that he was all those things. No one was able
to define him, he was all those things. A crackpot of different
elements that made him who he was. Even the people who were most
intimate to him, people that knew him on intimate levels, weren’t
able to define the man.
I think that it’s a direct result of being orphaned at a
very young age and having all the resources in the world to do
whatever the hell he wanted. He also had these conditions. He
was a very private man, and I don’t just mean that in the
media sense, I mean in all the relationships he had. I certainly
had sympathy for the mental state that he was in, and I also have
an admiration for what he accomplished. But more than that, his
brashness, his inability to fall short of his criteria of what
he wanted to accomplish with everything he put his mind to.
Q. Did you identify with Cate Blanchett's speech about
fame?
A: There are pros and cons to everything. More than fame,
to be able to do what I do and what I love on this level is much
more of a pro than being recognised.
There are certain invasions of privacy and all that, but I hate
sitting around complaining about it, I just don't like to hear
it come out of my mouth. I'm a very fortunate person being able
to do what I do.
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