John Cusack Channels Edgar Allen Poe
John Cusack started his career starring in hit 80’s teen films that we all knew and loved like “Better Off Dead”, “One Crazy Summer” and “Say Anything”. As his career continued he progressed into more serious film roles like “Grosse Point Blank”, “The Thin Red Line” and so many others earning him a reputation for strong performances. He recently stopped by the SiriusXM studios to talk with Ron Bennington about his upcoming film, “The Raven”, which opens this Friday April 27. Excerpts of the interview appear below.
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[box] Check out our “Lock Yourself In with John Cusack Weekend” for our recommendations for the five essential Cusack films.[/box]
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Ron Bennington: “The Raven” comes out in theaters everywhere, Friday April 27th. The story of, well it’s a fictional story you’ve done of Edgar Allan Poe.
John Cusack: Yeah.
Ron Bennington: But when I was watching the film and thinking about Poe, which quite honestly, I probably haven’t since high school. But probably everything that we think about American writers starts with that. And not so much even his writing, but just his attitude and the way that he lived his life.
John Cusack: Yeah. He was like one of the first lunatic writers. First famous guy, first guy who was famous for being a writer, trying to make a living only being a writer. And he was also that first guy who was sort of at war with the world.
Ron Bennington: Right, right. So it reminded me as you’re watching this you think, well yeah Hemingway kind of lived his life the same way. And Mailer and Hunter Thompson, doesn’t matter who you’re talking about.
John Cusack: Absolutely. Yeah. Burroughs.
Ron Bennington: They all have these, they had to be bigger than the writing somehow to be famous. And then they also needed to have public fights with other writers.
John Cusack: The genius writers behaving badly and being peevish and almost being a fodder for the critics and for intellectual criticism that was actually underhanded and backhanded and there was personal vendettas and feuds between intellectuals. You saw it somewhat like with Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley in politics. And you used to see it in literature war where they would sort of fight that out.
Ron Bennington: And it’s almost like the Hip Hop kids picked it up because it would help both products.
John Cusack: Absolutely.
Ron Bennington: It would make you think, wow if Mailer hates Vidal then I’ve got to find out why. And it would get you following this story.
John Cusack: And Poe said, they said to Poe “You have many enemies”. And he says “You say I have many enemies, would you please give me their names?” He was like, he would never back up from it.
Ron Bennington: Well because you’re so good at it, it’s almost like yes, of course I want to be in a battle. It’s almost like if you’re a good wrestler, you’re dying to be in a great wrestling match.
John Cusack: Yeah, but he also, I think he legitimately wanted the spotlight on himself so he said Wordsworth and Longfellow and all these other poets of the day, I mean he didn’t just say they were bad, he said they were like fish wrap.
Ron Bennington: Right. Right.
John Cusack: He said they were garbage. There was no value. (laughs)
Ron Bennington: None whatsoever.
John Cusack: So he was very kind of, he was a real wild character for sure. And obviously sad and damaged and soulful and kind of fantastic too. But there’s also a courage in the honesty of their self-expression to talk about even their own demons or their own vanities. They’re just like out there as pioneers and explorers and let them attack.
Ron Bennington: Well I wonder too like do you need to get that far for your art? Like you think about Richard Pryor who’s practically killing himself for his stand up at his peak. And I kind of look back and see Poe was doing the same exact thing. Let me try to feel every fucking thing I can possibly feel so I can explain it to the audience.
John Cusack: Yeah or like maybe Lenny Bruce or Kurt Cobain. You know they’re something of the outcast, the loner and I think artists always feel like they’re a little bit off like orphans. Either by design or literally. He was like the perpetual orphan of the world. Like he was alone, abandoned, friendless, penniless, wandering graveyards by himself. And I think he cultivated that too. And it takes kind of a ferocious mind I think. First of all, he’s a junkie, right. So he’s an alcoholic for sure, born alcoholic, not wired right, too fucking high strung, too tight, but he also was like, it’s a certain kind of mind and Hunter Thompson had that mind and Burroughs had that mind where most people have a nightmare, they want to wake up from it, but there’s a few people who have a nightmare, they’ll go like “Oh I want to go deeper in”. And there’s not that many people like that. I mean the nightmare to be wished for, earnestly wished for. Talking about the attraction of the abyss, the romance with the abyss. And if you see all these writers, these modern writers or modern artists, it pretty much all stems from Poe.
Ron Bennington: And then when you see a Hunter Thompson, you want to protect him when you’re a fan. I remember feeling this way when I was a kid, like please don’t let this, I don’t want the writing to end. But at the same time that’s the thing that made him Hunter Thompson.
John Cusack: That edge. And I think Poe was straddling this world and the other world. He was straddling. He was always looking for that twilight between waking and dreaming and life and death and sanity and insanity and whatever that luminous, whatever that awe was, that religious feeling he felt when beauty and death were around. He wanted to surf that thing and he was going to take it all the way. There’s something we love about that too because maybe we don’t have the guts to go that deep.
Ron Bennington: Right. And it is the mystery. It is the mystery. And it stays there.
John Cusack: And he’s also like a, he’s working out his demons too. He did die, every woman that he loves died coughing up blood in his arms. So he was haunted by that. Any Poe stories, the dead never stay dead. So he had the courage to take all this stuff. He was, look I don’t know if we’d like him if we saw him here.
Ron Bennington: Sure. Right.
John Cusack: I don’t know if we’d really like the guy, but you’d probably respect him, but he did have the courage to take all that pain and turn it into something creative and try to process it in some way creatively. He was pretty courageous that way.
Ron Bennington: Well you guys have done this as a detective story. And this, I wasn’t even aware of, this is the beginning of detective stories, was Poe. Nobody was doing this before.
John Cusack: Nobody did like the forensics of reenacting a crime scene. No.
Ron Bennington: Which is stunning.
John Cusack: And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle based Sherlock Holmes on Inspector Dupin, I think that’s how you pronounce it, a French inspector that was the basis for Sherlock Holmes.
Ron Bennington: So up to that point, and I think what’s kind of cool about this, is that you do it as a detective, not an action film, but it’s really old school detective work. And like you said this is what everything’s based on today.
John Cusack: When it was conceived, sort of like Poe if Poe became a subject for a copycat serial killer. So the police then have to partner up, like a very straight laced police captain and Poe have to partner up and try to figure out the mind of Poe. Then you have Poe deconstructing Poe. And also getting caught in his own madness which is one of his themes which is like is he going insane, the dream within a dream kind of Meta-Poe thing, right? So it seems like it would be like a Poe genre. One of his genre things. So that’s a good way to kind of get into his stories.
Ron Bennington: And when you are listening to when you are doing his lines and you’re like “Yeah, that shit is a lot better than I ever gave it credit for”.
John Cusack: Yeah, it is. It really is.
Ron Bennington: It’s really weird that when some of that stuff gets forced on us when we’re kids, it almost makes us take a step back.
John Cusack: Yeah. It was part of the curriculum. I think it becomes two-dimensional after awhile. It’s like, okay he’s the scary sad Halloween guy and he’s got the little moustache. And it becomes like a postage stamp. But if you read it again, there’s a reason he was famous. It was great weird twisted fucked up stuff.
Ron Bennington: And then the other thing too, New York Magazine just did like the biggest scandals of New York history and Poe was in there because of the extramarital affairs that caught on and that was a gigantic thing for gossip magazines at the time.
John Cusack: Although a lot of that might have been untrue because I don’t think, I think he was a one woman man. I just think he needed the company of women. He needed to be validated. He was always looking for patrons too. So I think he probably romanced a lot of women with letters to try to get their favor, but I don’t have a sense that he was a real playboy. I think he was too kind of, too in his head, too ethereal.
Ron Bennington: And at the same time, I do think…
John Cusack: But he was also, there was him and Griswold together. They were all assassinating each other’s characters all the time. So they were all like scurrilous rumors.
Ron Bennington: But I think every artist has to also think that they’re attractive to women no matter what they look like or what they do, there’s a constant seduction that takes place.
John Cusack: Yeah. And I think also he was, given his batter with women, he was constantly looking for the eternal feminine. I think that’s sort of like where like his religious feeling was. I think he was just like looking for a mother. He didn’t believe, well he said he didn’t believe in God because he said “My whole being revolts to the idea there’s a being in the universe superior to me”.
Ron Bennington: Right.
John Cusack: He would say that, but not like on the radio. (laughs) Like put it in print when it was really hard to print books which is a different thing. It wasn’t a flippant comment, right? But I think he put his, that feeling, that need for that religious sort of feeling into this kind of, the life after death and like beauty. He was a poet and so he said there’s nothing that can be more dramatic than a dying woman, a beautiful dying woman.
Ron Bennington: Wow.
John Cusack: That’s the height of absolute drama. And that’s what he sort of wrote about. But I think he needed women, he needed to feel it, I mean he was always searching for that feminine.
Ron Bennington: And he was doing that as well, right?
John Cusack: That’s how he was making his living. He was one of the first guys to really try to make a living only as a writer. Not coming from money or having other sources. He was just trying to make a living. I’m a professional writer. And no one had really done that in the states.
Ron Bennington: John Cusack. Thank you so much for coming in. The movie is called “The Raven” where you’re playing Edgar Allan Poe as a detective. Thanks so much for stopping by man.
John Cusack: Thanks for having me man.
Ron Bennington: And I hope to see you next time through.
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