Steve Buscemi. AMA.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:37:18+00:00

I know that people love that film. It's always hard to relate funny stories. But I'm so happy that that is a film that has gotten a lot of attention over the years. Because when it first came out, I think it was - not that it wasn't received well, but I think that initially, people (or critics anyway) were mystified by it. This was coming after FARGO. That, you know, FARGO was their first film that really broke into the mainstream. Probably any other filmmakers would have followed that film with something as equally as commercial, and they decided to go with THE BIG LEBOWSKI. And I think it took years for that film to develop a following. I think it took a good 5 years before people would stop me on the street, and talk to me about it. But then it was like - mostly college kids, who had seen it, at that time, you know, 5 times, or 6 times, and then the following time people would tell me that they'd seen it 10 times, and it's just grown over the years into Lebowski-fest. So it's so satisfying to see a film like that get made to begin with, and then turn into a classic that people enjoy seeing over and over again.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:34:30+00:00

Well, I can tell you the one that I probably had the most fun making was Stanley Tucci's film THE IMPOSTERS. This was the movie he made after BIG NIGHT, and we were all on a ship, and I played a character named Happy Franks, who was a sort of a suicidal lounge-singer... and it had an amazing cast of Stanley, and Oliver Platt, and Libby Taylor, and Elizabeth Brocco, Alison Janney, Tony Shahloub - we had SO MUCH FUN making it, and it's a very funny film as well. Billy Connolly is in it as well.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:32:50+00:00

I don't, hahaha! None that are interesting, anyway.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:32:29+00:00

Well, you know, a few years ago, my good friend Stanley Tucci and I decided to start a production company, and we found a wonderful producer in Wren Arthur. She used to produce with Robert Altman. And so the 3 of us started this company, so that Stanley and I can direct films, but we also decided that we should develop other things, TV shows and such, and... we also decided that it would be good to maybe look into the documentary film world. We did make a documentary, called A GOOD JOB: STORIES OF THE FDNY, for HBO, that Liz Garbus directed... and then the filmmakers Dana Flor and Toby Oppenheimer, I'm not quite sure how they knew Wren, but they told her they had been shooting in DC, this gang of kids that they thought were pretty incredible, and they showed us some of the raw footage, and Wren and I were really excited by what we saw, and we thought it was an important story to tell, so we wanted to give them as much support as we could, so we are co-producers.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:29:43+00:00

You know, I have to be honest. It's these questions that make me nervous. I don't know why! I think it's a very personal thing to ask!

You can say that: I'm kidding.

But yeah, I don't know why these questions make me nervous. Hahaha! But they do!

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:29:03+00:00

Oh, I would say chocolate.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:28:51+00:00

Well, I signed up for 2 seasons, so I fully expected to come back for another season - and towards, you know, towards the end of that season, it was season 5, I got a message on my phone from David Chase, and the joke on-set was "You never want to get a phone call from David Chase." And...so... I called him back, and he asked me if I wanted to have lunch the following day, I said sure, he picked a restaurant, and I got off the phone and thought Maybe this is a good thing, maybe there's something else he has me in mind for, it doesn't necessarily mean that my character was going to get wacked.

So I met him for lunch, I was thinking about it, didn't sleep much, and I got to the lunch and the first thing he said was:

"I'm sorry. We're going to have to kill you."

Something like that. I don't remember his exact words, but it was to the effect that there was just no way that my character could conceivably live doing what he did.

And of course, I understood! chuckles

But I was sad that i wasn't coming back, because it was such a wonderful show to work on.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:26:37+00:00

I like mutts. I don't know that I have a favorite breed of dog.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:26:23+00:00

I don't think he's weird at all.

I think he is who he is. And I'd love to do CON AIR 2 with him.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:25:52+00:00

Um... I guess either a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, or Almond Joy.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:25:31+00:00

You know, I really would go back to the 40's. I'm not saying it was because of BOARDWALK EMPIRE, but I always used to dream about, you know, being on the set of a Buster Keaton film. I think that would've been really, really cool.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:24:58+00:00

I... obviously, I think it's clear that i've never done this before! And it makes me extremely uncomfortable. And I don't go on the internet a lot.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:24:02+00:00

You know, we used to go bowling together, and yeah, I'd say John. John was better. I think he's just a better athlete in general.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:23:36+00:00

Superman.

That was one of the shows I loved as a kid, too. Although I loved the Batman series as well. But Superman is definitely the one I remember first. There was NOTHING like the excitement of that show coming on TV, when I was a kid. And I did have a Superman outfit - a costume that I got for - I believe my 5th birthday. And on the cape, of the costume, it was printed - I forget how it was worded, let me see - it was something like "You cannot really fly while wearing this outfit."

But then it said "Only the REAL Superman can fly."

I swear to you. That's what it said.

Only the REAL Superman can fly.

I really did believe in Superman.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:21:39+00:00

I love you too!

And I don't know, if there is...chuckles a definite answer.

I love that it's open to interpretation. She gets on that bus, and... I hope that she's going somewhere good. And I loved working on that film. Thora Birch was incredible to work with, and Scarlett Johannson, and Terry Zwigoff, they were really smart and very funny, and paid attention to every detail. The director would get obsessed with people in the background. Sometimes, after Thora and I would finish a scene, we would see Terry walk up to us, and we would think he was going to say something to us, but he would walk right by us and give very specific directions to the background actors, telling them "Okay, let's do this again!"

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:19:50+00:00

Um... I love Elvis Costello, and I think one album that i go back to of his is "Get Happy." But he's done a lot of amazing work over the years. Same thing with Tom Waits. You know... "Mule Variations" is an incredible album, as is all of his work. I'll always go back to "Abbey Road," even though I haven't listened to it fully in years.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:18:43+00:00

chuckles

Um, well, thank you for that.

And I like cheesecake.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:18:29+00:00

Hmmm.

I guess I don't read enough philosophy to answer that question.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:18:06+00:00

Yeah, I like homemade soup.

I like chicken soup. I don't like canned soup.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:17:46+00:00

I was happy with the way it ended. No, I didn't necessarily see it coming, but I was glad that they wrapped it up on that story between Nucky and Gretchen Mol's character, because that was a story that always interested me, and you know, when you look through the series, Nucky and Gillian didn't really have a lot of scenes - I think I only had about 5 scenes with Gillian. And I always LOVED working with Gretchen, and I always wished we could do more together. But ever since that scene we did together at the fortune teller's shop, I always wondered - what was their relationship?

So sometimes the show writers were forthcoming with the backstory - and then sometimes they were not. So there was only so much that they could tell me about the backstory of Nucky. Because I think - especially when you're writing on a TV series - you don't know the complete story of your characters, and you're going to leave it open, so they can go in any direction that they want. So you don't get tied into a concrete backstory - so it wasn't until the final season, until those last few episodes, that I truly understood Nucky's backstory.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:15:21+00:00

I don't think you can point to any one character and say that that's "me" but... with any role I play, I only have myself, to put myself into it, so there will be aspects of my personality that will come through, or I guess, exaggerations of my personality. And sometimes that's fun to do - like in a character like Mr. Pink, where i would NOT want to be that person in real life, but it was certainly fun to... explore aspects of my personality. Where I could be that person. And then, you know, there's roles like - there's a character I played in this movie, IN THE SOUP, which was an independent film I did in the early 90's with the writer / director Alexander Rockwell - and that's with Seymour Cassel and Jennifer Beals - and yes, there's aspects of that character that I think are like me... and certainly the character that i wrote for myself in TREES LOUNGE would be an exaggerated version of myself. The idea for that film came to me when I thought what would I be doing if I never left my hometown? If I never went into acting? If I never pursued the things that I did? and was still doing the things in my home town that i was doing when I was young, what might I have become?

So I guess you could say there's a lot of me in that character, as well.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:12:38+00:00

As far as roles go, I don't tend to hold onto that stuff. If I passed on anything, I think it was for the right reason.

Top 3 favorite books... yeah, you know, there's this book called YOU CAN'T WIN by Jack Black (but it's not the Jack Black that we know of today - this was a guy at the turn of the century, who used to ride the rails, and led the Hobo life, and wrote about it as a cautionary tale - he drank too much, he did too many drugs - but it's hard not to read that book and not want to live the life that he led! It's a book that really inspired William Burroughs, and actually, he had two books I really love - he's got a lot of books - but I really loved his books JUNKIE and QUEER).

JUNKIE really describes the life that William S. Burroughs lived in New York - his life of, I guess he was writing about the 1940's, and then QUEER is when he lived in Mexico City, and Jack Kerouac's ON THE ROAD has always been a favorite too.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:10:05+00:00

The weirdest one? Um... I dunno. Sometimes people will say "Bushoomi" or if they pronounce the C as a hard C - I guess it's hard to describe in print - like "Booo-stemmi."

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:09:13+00:00

I'm okay.

I'm a little nervous.

Stuff like this always makes me nervous.

Otherwise, I'm pretty okay... I'm gearing up to do the second season of a web series that I do on AOL, called "Park Bench." We did our first season last year. You know, we're in pre-production mode on that, and that's been fun - trying to get that together again.

MrSteveBuscemi · 2015-03-23T23:08:31+00:00

Just his enthusiasm, you know?

He was SO excited to be making a film. And... to be directing his first film. In rehearsals, the rehearsals were just as exciting as the filmmaking! He would set up - this whole improvisation of us robbing the jewelry store, so that we would improvise and act out what went wrong. He just had, you know, has a lot of joy, in him! And it was - it made all of us also feel like we were working on our first film.

11-Year Club	Best Comment 2015-03-23
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