MW

seen my face on film! And my teeth started
chattering, and I didn't stop chattering till the
movie was over. The excitement! And my
heart was pounding! There was this incredible
excitement about it, it's going to open soon,
what's going to happen to me. I remember that
feeling. I'm nervous. You're always nervous.
But it's the excitement when you're working.
BRODY: Finding a moment.
HOFFMAN: "I know ! You know how this
scene should play? I know what you should
do!"
BOXOFFICE: Isn't it exciting to you to
anticipate seeing those moments working?
HOFFMAN: You know what's exciting?
Is after it's over. If it's successful. Then you
can sneak in two days later in the back of the
house, and you know that thing's going to
get a laugh, and you wait till it hits.
BRODY: I think there's too much dread
probably [prior to a movie's opening].
HOFFMAN: The dread gets in the way. A
lot of D.E.—Dread Excitement. [Affects
streetwise hip voice:] Gotta lot of 'D goin'.
BOXOPnCE: What sort of research did
you do for your character in "Sphere"?
HOFFMAN: That's not.. .you're not.. .you
see, that's a bad word. You're not researching.
You're painting. You're sketching. Actors
have that commonality. We love to pick up
every httle thing you do. We don't know why,
but we just can sit there and just pick up every
litde thing you do all day long, [laughs]
A wonderful tool for being an actor today
[that wasn't available] when I was his age
[indicating Brody] is that you have tapes now.
You can do research and it's so much quicker.
1 got tapes on crisis, that was the first tape I was
interested in. Because this character, before he
[is summoned to investigate the submerged
spacecraft], he's a crisis—I forget what they're
called now, but when there's a crisis, diey send
a psychologist there to deal with the trauma of
the survivors. So I did some reading, 1 got
"Arthur Miller once said,
They forget what it's
called. It's called a play.
If
it's a play, why are we
making something so
serious about it?'"
literature on that, and 1 got some great energies
fi-om people who had that job. Then your
imagination kicks in, because then you say,
"Ooh, that's interesting. So that's what he does
well. And if he does that well, he probably likes
it." And there's a comfort to that, I've always
thought. It's
like being in the ER unit of a
hospital. You're in a crisis, and you're not in
trouble. If you deal with stuff like that, where
people die, there's kind of an unconscious
feeling that "as long as 1 help people, then it
won't happen to me." So I made that decision
for the character And then I thought maybe
when he himself was in the position that the
other people were in, how was he then?
BOXOraCE: Being so analytical yourself,
it's interesting...
HOFFMAN: Idon'tthinkl'mthat analytical.
BOXOFnCE: Not analytical in a dry
sense. You have a very colorful, enthusiastic,
insightful way of perceiving things.
HOFFMAN: I'm very analytical in a very
wet way.
BOXOFFICE: What does that mean?
HOFFMAN: 1 just like the sound of it. You
said not in a dry way.
BOXOFHCE: Oh! [laughs]
HOFFMAN: I like that. I'm very...
BRODY: Moist.
HOFFMAN: Moist! I like that word a lot.
I'm very analytically moist. Moisdy analytical.
[Laughs heartily]. Moistly, I'm mostly
moistly analytical! Miles Davis said a great
line. He said "Don't play what's there, play
what's not there." And you know, in life, some
of us are interested in what's not there, or what's
not on the surface. What's most interesting to
us is what isn't said, what's disguised. [Trying
to figure that out,] I've never been bored. I've
been depressed, but I've never been bored.HH
"Sphere. " Starring Dustin Hoffinan, Sharon
Stone and SamuelL Jacksoit Directed by Barry
Levinson. Written by Stephen Hauser and Paul
Attanasio. Produced by Barry Levinson, Michael
Crichton and Andrew Wald. A Warner
release. Sci-fi/thriller. Opens Feb. 13.
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The Audience Is Listening
at Act III Tigard Theatre, Portland, Oregon
Response No. 9