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DUSTIN HOFFMAN (King):
“My part had been written for a 300 pound guy. So when they asked me to do it, we had to find another way to be intimidating. Jamie Foley said, ‘I want this character to be threatening, fun and to give a sense of tension.’ So we started to construct a character to find a psychological way, and I said, ‘Let’s keep the sexual ambiguity (that was in the original script) and build from that.”
EDWARD BURNS (Jake Vig ):
“I vote The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy as two of my top five films of all time, films I saw at film school that made me want to make movies. So I’m going into the first rehearsal like a hardcore fan of Dustin Hoffman. To rehearse with him, and get to improvise and adlib with Dustin, help him create another memorable character, was pretty awesome and an amazing experience. And for me it’s by far the work I’m most proud of, and the best work I think I’ve ever done as an actor, and I love those (confrontation) scenes in the movie.”
RACHEL WEISZ (Lily ):
“It was important for me to believe that this girl did what she did, and lived as a criminal and worked the streets alone. It was really important to me that she was tough. I thought if she were vulnerable, she wouldn’t last a minute. I wanted to toughen her up.”
JAMES FOLEY:
“Good actors can express multiple things on multiple levels, simultaneously. They can be saying one thing, and feeling and thinking something else. And the satisfaction of this movie is that that happens a lot. You don’t quite know what’s going on. But then at the end the questions are answered.”
DUSTIN HOFFMAN:
“I don’t think my name today has that much to do with funding a movie. The money people go to a computer and get the last few pictures, what they grossed, and that’s how they determine someone’s box office value, not by their career. There are a handful of actors who probably could fund a phone book, like Julia Roberts or Tom Cruise. They call them stars that open, meaning that kids come in the first weekend - that seems to be the game today.”
RACHEL WEISZ:
“In terms of the style of the piece, it was written in this very noir style. It’s heightened; it’s not really naturalistic. I watched Bogart/Bacall movies to get the style. If you watch Bacall, she’s like a guy. She’s the most beautiful, sexy guy you’ve ever seen, but she doesn’t lose her femininity.”
EDWARD BURNS on the movie being compared to The Sting:
“The Sting was made in 1972, it’s a period film, it’s totally and stylistically different. It’s still a great film, but has aged some and is more quaint now. But that being said, for anyone to compare this to The Sting in any way is not a bad thing.”
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THE CONCEPT:
