| IAIN SOFTLEY on Will Smith having been initially chosen to play
Prot:
"I was told when I read the
first script that it was his role. I thought the Will Smith of Six Degrees
of Separation would have been great, and I think the reason he didn't jump
at the role in the same way that Kevin did is that it's a role he could have
done, but it's a role that Kevin was born to
do."
Back to top
KEVIN SPACEY:
"The way that I read scripts
is I don't want to know the role, I just read the story. (Knowing the
character) taints your ability to judge it as a story. When I finished reading
K-PAX I picked up the phone and called my manager, and said, 'This is
such a beautiful story and the role of Prot is so great.' And she said, 'That's
not the part they want you to play.' They wanted me to look at the
psychiatrist. I thought the psychiatrist was a good part, but it wasn't the
part I liked. For whatever reason, that incarnation of the film didn't get
made. Three and a half years went by and they came back and offered me Prot -
and we went out and got Jeff, who's a much better psychiatrist than I would
have been."
Back to
top • Spacey on working with Bridges
 JEFF BRIDGES on the research he did,
meeting psychiatrists:
"I was very impressed
with all the different methods there are to approaching patients. I saw many
ways to conduct therapy. It freed me up, not thinking that I had to do
something rigid."
Back to top
SOFTLEY:
"We got a lot of help
from psychiatrists and psychiatric hospitals, because they thought it was a
rare film script that was accurate in its depiction of mental health. The
actors were very pleased, for more than one reason, when they realized that
there was going to be a psychiatrist on the set!"
Back to
top
SPACEY:
"I've always liked Jeff's
work. I always thought he did interesting, subversive films that were just
extraordinary, and he's done it without a lot of fanfare. We established,
almost immediately, that there was no territory that we couldn't go into with
each other. There was no ego."
Back to
top
SOFTLEY on how
important using light was in shooting the film:
"Light is a theme in
the movie. Prot's eyes respond to light in a different way. Your view of
reality is determined by what you see, so the way the light looks becomes a
metaphor for seeing the world in a different way."
Back to top
SPACEY on the reversal
of having Jeff Bridges as an alien in Starman:
"I basically kidded him a lot
by saying, 'Now you've got the Karen Allen part!' He would say, 'Yeah, God damn
it, I do!'"
Back to
top
JEFF BRIDGES: (he laughs)
"Kevin would call,
'Oh, Karen!' But it was great to be the other character. You're representing
the audience's point-of-view and one of the aspects of this movie that I like
is that it's a bit like a puzzle. It's the kind of movie I would love to see,
as well as be involved in. It doesn't follow where you think it's going to go.
It takes you in different, surprising ways."
Back to top
|
