Boxoffice-Febuary.1998

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talked about how cruel critics can be
sometimes. He said, "They forget
what it'scalled. It's called aplay. If it's
a play, why are we making something
so serious about it?" We get on stage
and we play. It shouldn't be work, it
should be play. Not just is it going to
be a hit, career, this, that. So when you
work with a director, I can say, "Yeah,
I like to play with Barry."
BOXOFTICE: Describe what
your character is about in
"Sphere."
HOFFMAN: There are
three
roles, myself and Samuel Jackson and
Sharon Stone. And Liev Schreiber's
in it,
and Peter Coyote. And we shot
it up north. I got my scuba license.
BOXOFnCE: Was the scuba certification
for "Sphere"?
HOFFMAN: Yes, they wouldn't
insure you otherwise.
BOXOFFICE: What sort of activities
were you doing underwater?
HOFFMAN: Going down, 20, 30
feet, for the underwater shooting
when we're entering this capsule.. .but
I don't like to say. 1 don't understand this age
we live in now. I know that when that movie
opened, 'Twister," the morning it opened,
there was the director on one of those shows
saying "Now this is real, but that cai' that's
going up isn't...," and I thought, "My god! The
magician's giving away his tricks!"
BRODY: I used to be a magician.
HOFFMAN: Ah! So was Woody Allen!
BRODY: He was, really?
HOFFMAN: Yes !
All right, where are we?
Come on, we have to do this now. [to Brody]:
You're tangenting all over the place!
BOXOFFICE: [to Brody]: It's aU you!
BRODY: Yeah, it is all me.
BOXOFTICE: So I guess you don't want
to tell me about any of the s{>ecial effects
used to create the creatures in "Sphere."
HOFFMAN: I don't even know, because I
know they're doing it now. They're CGIing it.
But I don't know how they're doing it.
BOXOFTICE: The book had some intriguing
descriptions ofsome unique sea creatures
that were mutations created by the
mind.
HOFFMAN: Nice idea, isn't it? What
you manifest becomes real. That's what psychosis
is. I think that's what interested Barry.
That the monsters and fear are the things that
we create.
BOXOFTICE: You were saying that you
basically were interested in this material
because Barry Levinson was involved.
HOFFMAN: That was the first thought for
me to do it. Then I read the book, and I had
never read a Michael Crichton book. And I was
surprised that it had an interesting spine. And
I guess I believe in what it's postulating.
Human beings have something no other—as
far as we know, we don't know about dolphins—we
have something no other organism
SCUBA DUPER: Hoffman and co-star Stiaron Stone plumb the depttis in "Sptiere.
has: the ability to imagine. That's where everything
starts from. And what we've done with
that gift is imagine things that hurt us.
[The book also brings to mind the fact that]
our country has spent more money, trillions, in
terms of outer space, and what it costs to make
a toilet in a spacecraft, we have spent less than
what it costs to make a toilet on undersea
exploration, which is the majority of our
planet. We don't know dick about what goes
"What it
costs to make
a toilet in a spacecraft,
we have spent less than
[that] on undersea
exploration, which is
the majority of our
planet."
on down there. We're not investigating it. So
that's kind of fascinating. We haven't explored.
This is our planet! We're out there, and
we don't seem to be interested [in our own
planet].
BOXOFTICE: The cast of "Sphere" is
interestingly eclectic:
you, Sharon Stone,
Samuel L. Jackson, Queen Latifah...Can
you describe that whole dynamic?
HOFFMAN: It's just like any other movie.
We're actors and we come to woik and we
work. It was a wonderful acting experience. A
terrible experience for other reasons. I had
hayfever, and you don't want to go to Napa
Valley in the springtime. I didn't know it was
the hayfever hell capital of the world. I had to
have steroids fmaDy.
BOXOFTICE: I hope you didn't have
hayfever when you had to do the scuba part
HOFFMAN: Well, it was a concern. Anyway,
everybody got the flu because we were
working in water. It was a sick film—I hope
that doesn't get distorted. Everybody was sick,
[laughs] The acting was the best thing because
it was acting. It wasn't Uke doing an action
film. It was drama sex underwater We're actors,
all in a room. It was almost like doing a play.
BOXOFTICE: Have you seen any footage?
HOFFMAN: No. I looped it, and you see
a Uttle, but no.
BOXOFTICE: Do you have any impressions
about the film?
HOFFMAN: I've never been able to tell [if
a movie will be successful or not]. We had a
producer [who had seen footage from "Rain
Man" during production] who said it was a
disaster. We were so depressed, we didn't want
to finish the movie. "It was terrible and we
made a big mistake; Cruise's character is too
unsympathetic." So you never really know.
"Midnight Cowboy," I was sitting in a screening,
rows of people walked out. In blocks! Jon
VoighL Bob Balaban has oral sex with him in
the bathroom—whoosh!
BOXOFFICE: Do you feel any excitement
about being in a big sci-fi epic Crichton
movie?
HOFFMAN: I don't have any excitement
I've never had any excitement about that part
of it. The only memory I have is "The Graduate."
My first wife and I [went to the screening],
and I'd never seen it, and I sat in the
dark, and my teeth were chattering. Once it
started, my face, I remember, a close-up of
me was the first shot of the film. I'd never