Edward Norton’s latest film Stone opens nationwide today. The film was one of the featured Gala screenings at Fantastic Fest last month and you can check out our review of the film right here. We got a chance to sit down with Norton and some other film journalists for a round-table discussion of the film during that time.
In the movie, Edward Norton plays Stone, a man serving a prison term for arson. He is going through a series of interviews with a parole officer (Robert De Niro) who is responsible for determining whether or not Stone should be eligible for parole. Milla Jovovich and Frances Conroy co-star.
Round table: I feel that if a different actor had played the character [of Stone] with the cornrows, and the profane language, that it might have come across as a stunt. Could you articulate how you bring a character to life without falling into any traps like that?
Edward Norton: (laughing) I don’t think I can. John Curran and I were on the fence about many aspects of the character, but then I met a couple of guys in this prison north of Detroit. I was really having a hard time figuring out what I felt the specifics of Stone should be.
I got John’s themes and his sense of these characters crossing each other on their path, in a way, but I didn’t know what we were channeling it through in terms of the character.
Less than a week before we started, I happened to meet a guy I was hypnotized by and I had John come over and meet him. Then we walked out and John was like,”If you can get anything like that, that would be amazing.” I ended up miming a couple of people in particular, but that look and voice were one guy in particular.
The character, the thing about him, is that superficially he doesn’t look or seem like he would be a strong candidate for a spiritual transformation. But the thing I think anchored it for me is that the things he is saying are really at odds with that sort of presentation that you sort of could laugh at or dismiss.
Mainly because his anxiety is so real, and I think the way you can take something so audacious and ground it is if you are not being condescending to the character. His anxiety and desperation are very real, and his conviction that he deserves to be listened to and he deserves to be reconsidered is real. You’re going to have to look at him from different angles and he is going to be hard to reduce.
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