Stephen Dorff On Shooting “Brake” in Eleven Days

Stephen Dorff  starting his acting career with small television roles, but quickly graduated to landing great parts in great films like SFW, Blade, Somewhere, Cecil B. Demented, and Somewhere.  Last week  he stopped by the SiriusXM studios to talk about his latest role in the independent film Brake.  Excerpts from the interview appear below.

Ron Bennington: You actually pulled off something I’ve never seen before, and that’s an action film that takes place in the trunk of a car.

Stephen Dorf: Thank you man, I hope that’s good.

Ron Bennington: When you saw the script come out did you think, “can I keep this thing going?”

Stephen Dorf: Yeah well, when I read the script I thought, there’s something original to this. I like the idea of this torture movie about this guy who, they’ll just do anything to break him. They’re screwing with his health, his mental…they know what he’s allergic to.  I saw this as a torture movie but I thought okay, if I can pull this off, this could be really exciting as a performance, as hopefully a movie, manipulate the audience a little bit as the story is unfolding.  I had seen it kind of done a few times in other films but I never thought it was really effected in the right way. So on this one, we went in, and in eleven days we made this movie.   I looked on it as kind of an experiment, and in the end it came out pretty cool, so IFC bought it and it’s coming out.

Ron Bennington: You do a couple of things to keep this from just being a torture movie. It’s not just about claustrophobia. It really is more of a psychological film. Does the lead character even know what’s happening to him? Has he ever known? At what point does he even know what reality is? And I think that’s why the movie works so much.

Stephen Dorf: Yeah. I’m glad that you thought that. I think going in, I thought…how can you make a movie in eleven days?  But this one I thought, I’ll just approach it like a play. I’ll get in this box, I’ll have them lock me in there, I’ll feel my own claustrophobia as I’m playing this guy, kind of learn from the script as it goes. Because you’re right, it is a psychological game, what they’re doing to him and it becomes his own willpower of  can this guy maintain even with guns to his families’ heads, and all the stuff that they’re saying. I though they did a nice job of not repeating shots. The editing and the camera work was all really well done.

Ron Bennington: Well there’s enough stuff that’s done through light and visual and sound that takes you out of that “it’s just a box.” And the box of course is his whole life. But the other thing that got to me about the character, is,  he keeps to a certain oath, but then you find out that the rest of his life he hasn’t lived the same kind of way.

Stephen Dorf: The gambling….

Ron Bennington: …the gambling and with his family and all, so you’re like, what makes a guy just make this one choice to stick to this, but nothing else.

Stephen Dorf: It’s pretty intense. I worked with the secret service and they let me come down in Los Angeles. And one of our tech consultants was an ex-secret service agent and I said to them, well, everybody’s human, so people have flaws. There are guys who could be in the secret service that on the weekend might have a gambling problem with football and they might need help. So I could get away with the fact that okay this guy has flaws, this guy has some problems in his relationship. We kind of open the film where there has been some distance between him and his girl– he hasn’t seen her in a couple of months. So ultimately I asked the secret service, “if they had a gun to your families head, and all they wanted was this information that you had, what is that code that makes you not do it.” And I said–  cause we’re going to lose some of the girls in the audience at that point; they’ll be like “well hell, fuck you man.”  And there’s something about the secret service oath, I forget the exact oath, but it’s a lot more serious than FBI, CIA. There’s another level with these guys. Cause the union is so small– there’s not that many guys. The FBI has 50-100,000 agents. With the secret service, the whole thing is under 2500 so it’s much more of a club.

Ron Bennington: And the idea is to take a bullet. No one else sees themself as a shield.

Stephen Dorf: Yeah. You ain’t gonna give that information. He said, “Stephen if my family was at gunpoint I’d have to let my family go.” That’s what they sign up for. So I was kind of amazed by that, but I thought alright, well that’s the movie, that’s what I’ve got to go with. I’ve got to go with that code.

Ron Bennington: Is that one of the cool things, when you’re an actor? The research stuff?

Stephen Dorf: I think so. For me, when I look back on movies, the cool thing is they last forever. The good news is, if it’s a good film, it’s there forever. But if it’s a bad film, it’s also bad forever.

Ron Bennington:  Are there times where you’re clicking through and you see a movie of yours and you’re like oh no I’ve got to get out of here.

Stephen Dorf: A couple of times…yeah.

Ron Bennington: Can you go back and watch something that you’re really proud of? Like if Backbeat shows up?

Stephen Dorf: Yeah, I love that movie. I’ve been happy–  because Somewhere has been on HBO like every night– when it’s something you’re really proud of.   There’s a couple that you have to close your eyes and go, oh I was in that movie? Fear Dot Com? But we all have a couple of those. But to go back to your question, when I met Scott Strauss, who I played in World Trade Center, the real ESU worker… I just meet these heroic people who are like the real deal. All I do is try to bring them to life on the screen. Scott Strauss is still a friend of mine. Hey Scottie, if you’re listening! But I love meeting the real guys– even in a film like Brake which was a smaller and more intimate film for me– more of an experiment — I really became friends with a lot of these guys.

Ron Bennington: And you guys did this totally as an independent film, right?

Stephen Dorf: Oh yeah, we did this in a warehouse. It felt like we weren’t making a movie, it was so small. I was about to start this world tour with Sophia Copolla on Somewhere, we were going to Japan and other places. And I was like, alright I’ve got ten days, let’s do this thing. I like this character. So physically I went through a beating but I thought, that’s the kind of movie this is. Let’s just run this guy ragged, let’s throw him into the walls, let’s break his nose. Let’s just drive this audience nuts with claustrophobia until it ends and then hit them with a twist at the end, and then the movie’s over. So before they even get a chance to think about it, it’s over. And I thought, okay if we can make that work, that’s worth the eleven days to me. So we shot in a warehouse, we had two cars cut in half, so guys could be moving it in the front. The trunk was open in the crown vic and basically this glass box was created with steel and girders and very almost Saw or these horror movies. It wasn’t beautifully made because these guys wouldn’t have made it that way either. They literally just made a torture box and that’s what we spent eleven day in, until I got out and did that sequence outside.

Ron Bennington: How weird to come right after Somewhere. Where it’s the exact opposite type of film. It’s a film where it’s so internal that we’re watching you watch tv, or smoke cigarettes, checking out your kid. It’s really a 180 to go from one film to the other.

Stephen Dorf: This year’s been kinda weird because the movie I did right after Somewhere was Immortals. That was this big five month movie which ultimately did really well and I had a good time with Mickey Rourke and some of those guys. But this one was somewhere in the middle because it’s kind of a genre movie, almost like an early Die Hard feeling.

Ron Bennington: I think that when you get bigger sets and more money then you don’t make the psychological choices. If you’re thinking, hey we’ll blow them away in a helicopter that blows up…

Stephen Dorf: Yea you get a lot more choices then.

Ron Bennington: …and the choices take away that early thing that we loved about film which was just tension. And Die Hard, to me, that’s the action movie that you could watch regardless of whether it had the explosions.

Stephen Dorf: And the idea of being trapped in this building and going from floor to floor but not knowing who is around the corner, but trying to get to your wife. The set up was intoxicating and that’s what I think you were getting at. And so this one had that same thing. If you’re too expansive and there’s so many different avenues out, it kind of loses the hype and then they need to fill it with explosions and gunfire and bigger blood. But if you strip it all down– one guy, trapped, behavior, how does he survive? Let’s run him ragged, let’s run him to the bone.

Ron Bennington: It almost forces the creativity, and not only that, it forces the creativity of the audience which gets forgotten sometimes. Like if you watch The Conversation, you’ve got to pay attention to every moment. But if you’re watching Transformers, you can be tweeting.

Stephen Dorf: Yea, its more like video game stuff where with certain films, you can’t miss a beat.

Ron Bennington: What’s next for you?

Stephen Dorf: I got some cool…I’ve been doing a lot of movies. This one is smaller release but hopefully will kill it on demand. I’ve got this great drama called The Motel Life that I’m really excited about that will come out in the fall, with Emile Hirsch and Dakota Fanning. It’s a beautiful kind of story about brothers based on a novel. Probably one of the best scripts I’ve read, definitely since Somewhere, It was a movie I’m really proud of.  We’re waiting to find out, we might go to Cannes with that. And then I got this cool movie called Boot Tracks, which I think the title is changing. It’s a movie I did with Michelle Monahan and Willem Dafoe. It’s a movie by a guy named David Jacobson who directed Dahmer and Down in the Valley. That’s more of a Badlands, like a southern, almost like a David Lynch movie. I haven’t seen it yet but I have high hopes for that one too.

Ron Bennington: I think wherever Willem Dafoe is, feels like a David Lynch movie.

Stephen Dorf: He’s just got that great face. There’s certain actors that have an energy…

Ron Bennington: …they bring that intensity no matter what happens. Does that bring your game up?

Stephen Dorf: My younger years, when I would choose– not necessarily the most commercial films but— by doing a movie like Blood and Wine with Nicholson and Bob Rafelson, and then going and working with Keitel and meeting De Niro. I think I learned what I do from those guys and I think my game completely gets better if I’m sharing the stage with somebody… When I did my scenes with Willem in this film, they were incredible. The guy is just a stud. It’s like, you’re working with guys like that– they don’t have to do much and they resonate so much power– it’s almost a control thing. So I always try to continue to learn, whether it’s directors or actors.

Ron Bennington: You brought up an interesting point. A lot of those guys will do less, but it seems more the older they get. If you look at Jack, early on, he would be chewing up scenery but he can do that now, without moving. There becomes a richness I guess.

Stephen Dorf: If you can get an opportunity, it’s almost just as important– more than the role you’re playing– of who you’re working with. I almost would take a smaller role sometimes, if I could get a chance to work with somebody I want to work with. I just did a film called The Iceman based on the Iceman killings.

Ron Bennington: I had the writer in here, after he had done the books, it’s scary as shit.

Stephen Dorf: Michael Shannon plays Richard and I play Joey his brother. And it was one scene in the movie, and I was kind of like, “well why am I going to do one scene” at first. Then I read it and I thought, wow this is the best scene in the movie, and it’s between me and Michael. I actually never came into a movie and did just one scene, but I went in there and it felt like we went 12 rounds of boxing. And after, me and Michael are eating a steak at a restaurant, our hands are all swollen, and I was like look at us, we’re a bunch of actors but we look like we went 12 rounds. That’s fun to me. And if it hadn’t have been Michael, it might not have been as special, but there’s a connection there because he’s an actor I can juice with. It’s like a tango. When you’re dancing, if you’re partners not good, you’re going to be screwed.

Ron Bennington: Well congratulations with this and I love the fact of doing this On Demand. You can sit down and order it no matter where you live.

Stephen Dorf: I like that and I think this is the perfect movie for that. Because it’s so intimate.

Ron Bennington: Check that out at IFC films. Steven Dorff is always making interesting choices and I’m so glad you stopped by.

Stephen Dorf: Thank you buddy, I look forward to coming back.

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