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12.15.02

The Two Towers brings most of the Fellowship to the land of Rohan, home of the Horse Lords, ruled by King Theoden. But Theoden has been corrupted by the words of his evil advisor Grima Wormtongue, who works for Saruman.

Bernard Hill, who you probably know as the Captain from Titanic, delivers an astounding performance. In real life he was much more earthy and far less regal. Brad Dourif, who plays Wormtongue, does manage to have much of the same intensity that he is known for, even when seated at a roundtable.

Q: The close knit quality of the cast is, by now, legendary. As new comers did you find it hard fitting in? Was there some initiation process?

Hill: Have you ever gone to private school? They put your head down the toilet. They did with me. Nah, blended in immediately. There was no sense that we were in any way late or newcomers. We just happened to arrive at a different time than other people. People arrived after us and had the same experience.

Q: Is that Peter Jackson's doing, or a function of the people on set?

Hill: It all filters down, on every film set I've ever been on, that the tone and the general feel, the standard that is being set, trickles down from the top. It's a classic trickle down theory. Good or bad, everything comes down from the director.

Q: Why does Wormtongue do what he does? Is he corrupted by Saruman the way Theoden is, or is he his own brand of evil?

Hill: Smart cookie this one is.

Dourif: I would imagine that Saruman would be very very difficult to resist if he knew how to get to you. And Wormtongue walks around with a real corruptible something about him. He was probably someone who - or I made him out to be someone who - was picked on when he was young. Smart, able to figure out what people were going to do before they did it, thus avoiding trouble. It became for him a real skill that he could then bring to Theoden, because that's what a king needs to know, what people are apt to do, and to give really good advice about politics, which is a battle of egos. He was brilliant at that. He's a part of his [Theoden's] family, but he's not. He can never belong. He can never have what he really needs. Saruman picks up on it and corrupts him.

Q: What is his interest in Eowyn? Is it purely sexual? Is he trying to touch good or is he trying to corrupt good?

Dourif: You know, need is something that doesn't really have those kinds of definite boundries, does it? Where does lust end and love begin and when people lust what do they really want? It's like searching for gold; you're not really after a fucking rock, you know what I mean? You're after what a rock represents to you, and it's different for every single person. Generally we all become very surprised by something, we find out things about ourselves we don't know. So what does he want? He wants Eowyn.

Q: Can both of you talk about the treat of working on a film with the scale and subject matter where this kind of conversation can take place?

Hill: It's a little bizarre sometimes. We talk about Saruman, conquering evil, motivation, King Lear and all that kind of stuff. Then you realize that these are very vague, primitive and to some extent inadequate metaphors for what the film is trying to say. You indulge yourself in the process by which those messages and the motivations that make the film. You use these kinds of images and metaphors so that you might express yourself. What basically the films are about is how evil permeates, destroys, corrupts every aspect, every single fiber in the fabric of society. And how it always has been and always will be. It's more relevant now because when we made this it was before the horrendous events of September the 11th. When film one came out all that stuff happened. It achieved a greater relevance than I think anybody could have anticipated. Only greater. It didn't actually make the comparison, it just achieved it in a much higher fashion. It was always going to be about confronting your fears of evil. I know this was one of Brad's theories as well - we're learning so much from each other as we go through these interviews! You can confront your own fear of evil, like you confront your fear of cockroaches or spiders.

Q: You could take that a step farther and use the fear to say, "Let's go to war."

Hill: Well, we are at war. The way we are at war now is probably a way we have never been at war before. The thing we're fighting, what the war is about, is not about Iraq and oil fields, it's about the constant presence of evil in our society, which will never go. You can't have good without having evil. But the story that this comes out of, which we're making a feeble attempt to put on screen, is one person's attempt at coalescing lots of different fables that are about the same thing as they were being formed and elaborated and being put down in previous societies. These are Scandinavian legends and myths, these are Celtic legends and myths that Shakespeare drew upon, which is why we get the comparison. It's kind of superficial in a way because what we are dealing with is the stuff that is inside every one of us. There is evil inside all of us. There is good inside every single one of us. We are responsible for the evil that goes on around us.

Q: But that's why it isn't really a feeble attempt.

Hill: In terms of showing what evil can do of course it's feeble. It doesn't match the evil of the atrocities that we see every day. The fact that there are kids dying every single second because somebody can't be bothered to put their money in an envelope and send it off to help. Because governments can't change the way that they view the poor and deprived in their own country. I'm not talking about the obviously deprived areas of the world, I'm talking about societies like the USA and the UK. There are people dying of poverty in both those countries.

Q: This is an extraordinary attempt to deal and grapple with big issues-

Hill: I agree, which is why it's weird to talk about it in those terms. Because it's kind of a trivial attempt to explain something that in actual fact doesn't need any explanation whatsoever.

Dourif: On the other hand, why have a story about good and evil and have it be primal and close to myth? Because when we tell the stories we go through the experience of confrontation with it. It somehow has a value, it makes it clear - for instance, playing Wormtongue, it makes it clear how tragic it is when people give in to fear. Instead of confronting something I am afraid I just give in to it, I'm pathetic. For example, I'm a character actor. I'm never safe. I don't know where my next job is going to come from, I don't know where my next money is going to come from. I could walk around the house feeling terrified about, "I'll never work again," and I've done that. Or I could have a little faith that in time all of this is going to come around and I just do what I need to do and go about my business with a little bit of faith and some courage. And then teach that to the children that live with me. Those are the choices we all have.

Part of this movie is about environment. We're sitting here knowing, feeling, that we're not confronting what we need to confront about what's happening to the planet. I know that Long Island now has green grass all year. That's Global Warming. That's very real, and it's scary and we're not doing something about it. This is something that we, there's a subliminal need to need experience this story because we feel so helpless. And we're not! The truth is we're not! We're not helpless. We can do something about it if we want to. I have faith that eventually we will.

Q: Was all of this at the forefront while making the movies, or was it something you discovered later? Was Peter Jackson reinforcing to the cast that you were making a bigger statement?

Dourif: Always you're making a bigger statement. If you're doing something as an actor, it's got to have a real human meaning to it. It needs to be universal. It needs to be something an audience will get as well. So anytime you begin the first process of confronting your character - and we all had discussions with Fran and Phillipa - in the beginning, that's the place that we really laid down what moved us and what made us human.

Hill: Yeah, we did the same thing. I think the tale needs to be told. I think we need to deal with metaphor because I think that sometimes that is the only way we can get to areas where otherwise we couldn't get to. People need the placebo, they need the sugar pill, they need to be told this is happening because this is happening, and you make them laugh. And while they're laughing you pop the pill in their mouth.

Q: From an acting point of view you have one of the most difficult scenes in the movie, when we see the curse lifted and Theoden get younger.

Hill: I had the help of some great digital technology. I have never seen morphing done so well before.

Q: You did do a great job of acting it though. At the time I couldn't tell what was special effects and what was you.

Hill: Isn't that great? If you walk out going, "What a great morphing process-" Remember that film The Passenger? With Jack Nicholson? Every kept saying, "What a fantastic camera shot at the end!" That's bullshit. You know what I mean? You shouldn't have been aware of it. It was too elaborate. There's a danger if you go too far.

Q: What did they ask of you for that moment?

Hill: Several things. We did multiple times. I can't remember if I did it with make up on or without make up on, or the intermediate stage, or when we went somewhere else for the digital imaging. I got totally lost because they gave me a screen to kind of match my face and I couldn't see the screen because of the lights. And they wanted me to do it backwards! They said, "It's easier if you go from young to old." Oh, come on. How can I do that? It took a long time. Which makes the creation of Gollum awe-inspiring. Every day you would go on set and Peter would have one monitor there which was just Andy Serkis and his guys.

Q: Bernard, were you as surprised as I was that so much of your stuff made the final cut? You're more or less the third lead in this and you have these great dramatic moments - de-aging, moments of doubt in Helm's Deep - that if this had been your usual Hollywood movie, would have been the first scenes cut.

Hill: Believe me I have to thank Peter Jackson for all of that. I have to thank his faith in what we did and his faith in keeping this away from being a completely and totally overwhelming action pic. To keep the characterization, to keep the human element in the story, to keep the prime element. That's what's going to make people come in more than the first one, because it's the world of Men that comes into it. With that you can deal with issues that are not just pure fantasy, they are metaphorical, allegorical. You can get characters like Wormtongue that you can appreciate. And the development of Theoden is essential, because it tells you something about human endeavor, that you can actually beat this evil - again I'm getting very whimsical, very Tolkien kind of stuff - you can actually create a world around an idea and make that world acceptable and people will take that idea because of the world you created.

I did a movie a couple of years ago with Peter Greenaway called Drowning By Numbers, and everywhere throughout the film there was a number, from one to one hundred. I said to him after, "Why?" and he said, "Editorial, so the editor can't take anything out." I think every film should be like that.

I said to Peter the other day, "Thanks." He said, "I can't tell you how difficult it was, I can't tell you how hard we had to fight for that stuff." So we're dealing with evil in many forms!

By Devin Faraci at Chud.com