INT: Gerard Butler

It
takes a heck of an actor to go from musical theater dork to badass
action star like Gerard Butler does this week with 300.
Prior to starring in the highly-anticipated Spartan epic, the
Scottish actor sang his ass off in the film adaptation of THE
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. How many other so-called “geniuses”
of the acting profession could pull that off? DiCaprio? No way.
Deniro? Please. Sir Anthony Hopkins? Don’t make me laugh. No, only

Butler

(and possibly Hugh Jackman) can do something like that.

Butler

stopped by the
Beverly Hills Hilton recently to talk about his experience making
300. Check it out.

Gerard
Butler

Approaching
a character like this, how do you strike a balance between history
and myth?

I
think that it’s really trying to strike a balance between many
things without getting too caught up in the different technical
elements, because I’ve never come across a character quite as
powerful and intense and charismatic as this guy — and as badass. I
mean, he’s a fucker…and yet, you know that you have to rise to
that element that it goes past even epic and becomes comic book. But
at the same time, to only do that and never give him a heart and
soul, then the whole thing means nothing.

It
involves choosing your moments. I really focused a lot on becoming
as big and as strong and as confident in those things as I could
possibly be — and even doing a lot of working out just before the
takes and constantly doing that. Every time I trained, it made me
feel more like a Spartan, more like a king, more like I was
impressing my men and more like they would be willing to follow me.
And also that fire is burning inside you and then you can completely
go the opposite way and play it as a guy.

I
literally walked around

Montreal

with my shoulders back, my chest up. It was that feeling, just that
feeling of real inner confidence and yet then you can have fun with
the other things because it was actually difficult to suck all that
in and let out…he has a lot of things going on. There’s an
arrogance there; there’s a confidence; there’s a humor;
there’s a dryness; there’s a compassion and there’s a certain
amount of humanity. And then the guy is a nut job. He’s crazy.
There’s a fearlessness that borders on insane. To try and get all
those in with a man who really doesn’t talk that much was a
challenge — and then to do it all in front of green screen. So
there’s a way of doing it and a way of talking about it, and as
you can see I’m really not good at talking about it. I just do it.

So
are those really your abs that we see in the film?

Yeah.
I tried to borrow someone else’s but they wouldn’t give me them.
I mean, that was seven months of training. There was always a part
of me going, “Okay, am I going to stop doing this?” But I was
really kind of happy and surprised that I kept it up. I kind of
became a bit addicted to it or perhaps addicted to the advantages
that it was giving me because after a certain point, I never once
felt silly or strange standing in my cape.

That
started to become, a couple days after putting it on, one of my
biggest allies, wearing that costume and feeling so strong, excited
that your body was also an intimidating factor and inspiring factor
for your army, as they all were. You’re surrounded by probably a
few tons of muscle and when you pool that together and pull all that
spirit together and have nothing but focus and belief and pure
intention. The power of that…you become 1000 times stronger, that
it actually makes sense that you could hold off an invading army
that don’t have that belief — that are in disarray — that you
could hold them off quite easily.

Is
it more difficult to create a character behind a mask like in
Phantom of the Opera?

I’ve
had to play characters where there’s a difficulty of expression.
Maybe that’s…that’s what I like to do though. I started acting
kind of out of nowhere, started in theater. Actually my biggest
thing when I started acting was people were always saying, “Great,
but bring it down. Bring it down.” And the more I brought it down,
the more I started to trust what I could genuinely feel inside and
what I could say with the less that I did, the more that I could
say.

Then
suddenly roles like the Phantom became a kind of beautiful thing to
do, to try to say so many things while 1) singing, and 2) wearing a
mask, means that you have very little control. It’s really in the
eyes and it’s the same in Leonidas, in some ways, because he
can’t be expressive in a modern way…to me, if there was one
moment in this film, if you were to see him suddenly be weak or
modern, then the audience would lose faith in that. So no matter
what else you were trying to express, it always kind of had to come
from a foundation of absolute power and strength and solidity and
gravitas.

When
did you realize this movie would be incredible?

When
I saw it. No, I almost want to say that I had a kind of psychic
feeling about it. Before I even knew what it was about, when Greg
Silverman at Warner Brothers said, “Have you heard about this
movie 300?” I don’t know what it is, but just the title 300 was so
simple and strong, it’s like a strong guy with a shaved head. This
is it. Here I am. I’m not hiding behind everything. That was the
one advantage of the Phantom by the way. You can also hide behind
that mask. But I kind of knew that there was just something really
cool about this.

Then
of course they explained the story and I was like, “Wow.” As you
know, it’s my kind of story but also it felt like a story with a
twist, the way our heroes perform, their morality, their methods,
between each other and against the enemy. Then I took a look at the
graphic novel and saw the three minute piece that they did and I
thought, “Oh my God, this is insane. If this could be even one
tenth of what I saw in that piece, in that test, with the story that
already exists here, then we are onto something really cool.” They
had a hard time green lighting it and sometimes that’s a good
thing because you know that it means what you’re not making is
something mainstream.

You’re
making a vision and that vision often really has to be impressed
upon people and people have to be turned in and clicked into what
that vision is. Which was another great thing about the film is I
feel like Warner Brothers just kind of said, “All right, listen.
Zach, you obviously get this. There’s a lot of stuff we don’t
really get what you’re trying to do but we trust that we have
something here, so just go off and do it.” In that respect, it
often felt like an independent film. We were just doing our own
thing. Zach and I, I was amazed at some of the changes, big changes
that we came up with just through a conversation on set. We’re
about to go and it’s like, “Well, why don’t we cut all that?
Or why don’t I just not say that? David narrates that, it’s
probably going to be more powerful.” That just went to the studio
and that’s what happened.

Do
you have any expectations about how big a star this will make you?

If
you really think about it, that’s an unfair question. You put
somebody in kind of an embarrassing situation when you say that
because what are you going to say to that? I don’t know. I want to
be part of a successful film. I want that to help me have a wider
choice of roles. There, you get your clichéd answer.

Sorry.

No,
it’s okay. But think about it: If I was to ask a similar question
to you and your career, it’s kind of embarrassing.

How
much training did you have to go through?

I
trained for about seven months, pretty solidly. I was doing six
hours a day. I took the film trainer but I also kept my own trainer.
It was kind of a political decision. They didn’t really want me
having my own trainer, but I knew I had to increase bulk as well —
for me — just for me. So I did that and I also trained with the
stunt guys two hours a day, here in the valley, 120 degrees outside.
It was so hot. And then I did the same in Montreal. So I took my own
trainer outside the film and this crazy Venezuelan bodybuilder
called Franco Licastro had views on everything. But it was great. He
just became my little buddy and he was so passionate about my
training. I also trained with my stunt…I trained with everybody I
could and I kept it up and I pumped in between all the shots as well
just to really feel that intensity. So I did a lot.

How
much of the action was you and how much was your stunt double?

All
me. Never, he didn’t film any of that.

In
one sequence, you take out like 20 guys in one shot.

One
shot, yeah. But you know what? We took a whole day filming that.
Maybe there’s a break halfway through it but we would do it the
whole way through. Literally, that is me. In fact, that’s why my
stunt guy said because they did The Matrix and Bourne Identity and I
really clung onto this fact because they said nobody in any of those
films had to do a piece this long — uncut — with
this many moves. So that took a lot of training and I almost
didn’t do it.

At
the last second, Zack took half a day just to set up this special
rig and he said, “I think we’re going to have your stunt guy do
it.” And I died because I knew I was ready. He hadn’t seen me do
it but then he said, “Well, go ahead, just rehearse it a little
bit.” And then I ended up doing it and it was such a blast. Then
there was a problem with the rig. It came out of focus. There was
some problem with the mirror. It was a new rig that had never been
used before, three cameras, so we ended up having to shoot the whole
fucking thing again and that was depressing, but it actually came
out even better.

How
carefully was it choreographed?

Very
carefully. I must have done that about 500 times training. And yet,
still mistakes would happen every time and, to be honest, that’s
actually what makes it what it is. At a point, you go, “Well, you
know what? If this was to look so smooth and perfect, it kind of
takes away something from it.” The first day I did it, there was
something amazing about that. It was full of mistakes but it was so
raw and hyped and the mistakes actually made it look even better.
Things that went wrong, you’d go, “Oh, how cool does that look
that I hit him in the balls instead of the stomach?” Honestly,
sometimes, I hate to say it, but when you pick up an injury,
that’s the stuff that looks really good.

And
it’s all a long stretch of blue screen?

Yeah,
the whole studio was wrapped in blue screen so in actual fact, the
blue screen doesn’t become that much of an issue. It’s not like
you’re constantly waiting for stuff to be moved and lasers to be
pointed. You’re just filming on blue screen so you just film away
like you would.

Did
you experience any costume difficulties?

A
lot of chafing in the groin area. The weird thing is, the cape, I
don’t want to sound like a pussy because I trained really hard,
but the cape, everything. It’s like if you were to, say, hold up
that tape recorder, that’s fine. But if you’re to say hold that
up for 16 hours, it gets pretty hard. And the cape is actually very
heavy. When you first put it on, you don’t think about it but you
naturally have to tense your shoulders to wear it. By the end of the
day, you’d be just trying to lift it up just to get some relief
for your neck.

I
had knots in my neck for months, down my left side because this is
where the heavy part was. And doing the fight sequences, the cape
would twirl and you’ve got 50 guys running towards you, and you go
to stab them and sword literally is like this [stuck]. And you know
that its 45 minutes to set up a shot again if that doesn’t happen.
And yet, there’s a guy coming at you with a spear that if you
don’t do that and he fucks up, then you have a spear in your
belly. A lot of the times, the sword would stick on the cape because
this cape will just fly all over the place so you’re trying to
literally be like, “Okay, spear, spear, spear, duck.” We fought
twice the speed in this film. Normally, in a film you would do your
bang, defense, bang, defense. This was bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
bang, bang. One, two, three different guys. It was kind of crazy.

What
are you working on now?

This.
Actually, nothing at the moment. There’s a few things we’re
talking about but I haven’t… there’s nothing I know I’m
doing for definite.

Is
P.S. I Love you finished?

Finished.
Done. I’m really excited about it. I think it’s going to be
lovely.

Questions?
Comments? Manifestos? Send them to me at [email protected].