PETER SARSGAARD ON 'MEMORY'
INTERVIEW BY MERVE ARKUNLAR
First of all congratulations for the Best Actor award at Venice Film Festival, once again for Memory. How was being part of this movie?
I mean the experience of making it was something that I’ve been wanting for a long time. It’s almost, I knew exactly what I wanted. I’ve known what kind of an actor I wanted to be for a long time but didn’t have the place that I could do it exactly. Because, well, first of all Michel [Franco] gives you so much power as an actor by the way that he films, just having the one camera. So we control everything, we control the time. He can’t make the scenes shorter or longer. You are just responsible for so much of it. And what he wanted was a deep, deep sense of the truth. And I remember when I first started acting, when I was in college, I actually went to a teacher, Anna Pileggi?, and I said “I feel like I can never get to the truth”. Because intrinsically, it’s not true. Like [laughs] it’s not true that I’m in these circumstances, it’s not true that I’m this person. And I actually almost thought that I was supposed to be psychotic or something and go into an altered state. What I learned over the course of time doing it, that I was able to do in this film, it’s like available to you right now. Like you don’t have to slip into a dream. We’re standing in it, we’re both standing in it right now. This could be a scene from the movie. I got a deeper sense over time as an actor as to what the actual thing I was after was. The actual truth, which is not being psychotic, not even walking around doing your accent on set or having the relationship with the actress be a romantic one, because this is a romantic one in the movie. And all that other stuff that people do, it’s a deeper, different sense of the truth that’s in me. And when this came along, it was kind of, after all these years, piecing things together. And I thought, this is exactly the canvas on which I can do what I am talking about.
Yeah, also I have watched a couple of interviews that you gave recently. And in one of them you say that “To me, acting should feel really easy when you are doing.”. And how was the experience of portraying the character Saul for you?
[Laughs] I mean it’s funny to win an award for something that felt like, you know, pouring a glass of water. But I do think that it should feel that way. Sometimes I’ll watch an actor in a performance. Because I think a lot of the performances that we normally love are where an actor did a lot; they gained weight, they did an accent, they wore a nose, then we give them the prize. And you’ll think, Wow, that looks really hard. I can’t imagine how they did that, they don’t seem like themselves, I don’t see the actor in there. And I respect that on some level but I also deeply respect this whole other generation of actors I’ve seen come along, that go into themselves, they offer up themselves. Even if they are playing Hitler or Mother Theresa. It is, still, intrinsically themselves.
Yeah. And also I think Jessica Chastain was a wonderful partner in crime. How was your set life?
We didn’t really have one. I mean I hung out on set. I think because I was playing a very lonely person who wanted to be around people. Like I said, it’s not like I’m being Saul in his circumstances but if you live in the circumstances of the character for a while, you start to feel the circumstances. And so she was playing somebody who was shut off from the world. So, you know, Jessica would come into work and we would say hello in a nice way. Not break our stride though. She would go up into her room and I’d get ready as fast as I could, which took two seconds. I didn't even comb my hair for the movie. So I would walk downstairs in my clothes and I would stand outside and I would just chat with the crew, hang out and wait for her to come down. She and I really only communicated on set when we were doing the scenes, and we rarely talked about scenes. Only if they weren’t working. Most of the time we would just be “Okay, great. Let’s do it”. She would do her thing, I would do my thing. We’d figure out where to put the camera and then we would do it a few times and then we would go onto the next scene. That’s what I mean about easy.
Yeah.
Just, doing it. So you see the relationship develop on screen. It doesn’t have all of the stuff that we are used to from other romantic movies from Hollywood, I think, where so much of the relationship between the actors has been constructed off-screen. And they bring it on, and you think “Wow, these two people really love each other, these two people are probably having sex with each other”. You see us get to know each other, the awkward thing, I mean the way that I have to reach out, I felt like I was Pepé Le Pew, I don’t know if you know Pepé Le Pew.
I know.
Just this skunk, that’s after this cat and will not stop. She was like inside of a safe and I was trying to crack it, the whole time. You have to be quiet. And sometimes you hit it, and then you know, but like, it was very active.
Yeah. So I wonder which line or dialogue or scene maybe, had the most impact on you when you first read the script? Do you recall?
Well, I didn’t like the scene on the log and I almost stopped reading the script when I read that scene. Not that it’s poorly written, but because I thought “Oh, this is what this movie is about”. So I really remember reading that line. I’ll tell you a line that we added that to me became an important line, but maybe just for me. The lines that are said at the last scene were, I’m not going to say improvised because we came up with them right then, but then said them [laughs] you know like, I sat down and said “Okay”, I went in and did it. But also there is a moment where I say “Can I write down what you’re telling me?”. She’s telling me about her trauma. So that I remember it later. And I had really wanted her to say no, and she said yes. I had wanted her to say no so that she would be telling me “I just told you my trauma and I’m gonna let it go because you’re not gonna remember it tomorrow. Right? And that will be great.” But she says yes. Then I was thinking about it and I thought, but I don’t remember to look at my book, and if I had looked at my book ten minutes ago, and had a conversation with her, I’m not treating her like somebody who has been traumatised. And I think that’s an interesting idea in the world, you know, to acknowledge someone’s trauma but then not constantly treat them like a victim for the rest of their lives. To give them a chance to change. And I think because I’m somebody who lived in so many different places growing up, one of the benefits of that is being able to redefine yourself in each place. Because you are who you are, based off of what you feel and all that. But also because of what everyone is reflecting back at you all the time. So if everyone’s like, he’s not that smart, his dad beats him up. You know, he’s a good soccer player, well he broke his leg a couple years ago so he’s not really a soccer player anymore. You know, like, but you're still the soccer player. You know, the way we define people, it's constricting. And so that set me off on a lot of ideas. When I thought about that line.
You have played a man dealing with dementia, and I wonder how was your experience of ageing and getting older and what do you love most about yourself right now and why?
You know, just recently in the last like four months, I've gotten into very good physical shape. But when I was doing this movie, I had a really bad back injury and it's in several roles that I played during that period, including this TV show that I have coming up with my brother-in-law. And I had to use it. It's, you know like Saul walks the way he walks in that movie because one of my legs wouldn't go as far forward as the other one. And I guess my experience of growing older now is like, yeah, I run into these challenges physically. You run into challenges mentally. You run into challenges in terms of like you get to be an age where everyone starts dying. But if you kind of weather through it and learn from it there, I don't know, maybe I'm feeling really optimistic because I now can put on my own pants. And I could do much more. I feel unbelievably good. It took a lot of work to fix.
Actually, I have this back injury with me and I'm going to a chiropractor. And I'm almost 40. I can feel you.
Yeah, you have to make your body strong. So much of what we do in this world is staring at a little screen while seated in an unusual position. We're all getting fucked up. If you just look at people, everyone's starting to be shaped like a C. Yeah, and so it's an epidemic. The last big epidemic of trouble came when we stopped being hunter-gatherers and started farming because farming is backbreaking labour. And they actually say if you look at the fossil record during that time, back problems everywhere. So this is the second wave. Beware, a cell phone.
Yeah. So what does memory mean to you? Do you think that time and memory work linearly or cyclically?
I mean, the only moment that I feel personally responsible for is this one. You know, every other moment in my life. And for me, my kids actually always comment that I say, the other day, I never say yesterday or two days ago or last week. It's either past or future for me and events in the past for me, the way that I remember them doesn't have anything to do with how far back in the past they are. You know, I actually said this in an interview recently. I was remembering a relative of mine after seeing me do Hedda Gobler. I played Ejlert Løvborg, in college. She'd never seen me act before. No one had ever seen me act before. I started doing it in college and we're sitting in a car. She was in the front seat on the passenger side and I was in the back and she turned back and said, Peter, you're not an actor. An actor looks like Mel Gibson. Look at yourself in the mirror. And sometimes it's something someone said, sometimes it’s something you said that you wish you hadn't said. But these things, I can think of something that I wish I hadn't said to somebody that happened last fall. Just a very short sentence. Not a horrible thing, but my mind goes over and over it. So I think memory keeps like a greatest hits and the rest of it becomes a kind of dissolute thing that you try to pull something from. But it's difficult.
So one last question then. I know you are a music person. Actually, both you and Maggie, you have this amazing music room in your house as well with many instruments. Yeah, here's the guitar. And as far as I know, Maggie plays the theremin and you have a piano and so forth, right? Yep. So when I think about the inclusion of A Whiter Shade of Pale in this movie, I believe that this must have affected you. So what would be an unforgettable song for you and Maggie?
Well, Maggie and I actually realised pretty late in our relationship that we listened to the same music. Like, some of it's common, right? Like, we were both really into Sinéad O'Connor when she came out, like Lion and the Cobra. For me, when that album came out, I felt psychically bonded to that woman, I wanted to hang out with her. And so we both know all the words to all of her songs, and we'd sing them back and forth to each other.
My kids know all those words, but then there are more unusual ones like there's this woman named Michelle Shocked. She was pretty radical and she's still around, but she doesn't make albums that much anymore. It's hard to get her albums. Short, Sharp, Shocked was the name of her album, and she was a radical and she would get arrested and she believed in a borderless world and she really put herself on the line and had gotten into a lot of trouble.
And I think, you know, I don't know the end of the story. I only know the beginning of the story. So then Maggie and I met and we realized we could sing every single one of the songs off that album, you know, not just like the hit, I think it was Anchored down in Anchorage, Anchorage, Alaska, but we know every song. So that's a whole album for you.
Take care of your back. Squats, lots of squats.
MEMORY NOW SHOWING ON MUBI, click for more information.
With special thanks to MUBI and Peter Sarsgaard.
PETER SARSGAARD ON 'MEMORY'
INTERVIEW BY MERVE ARKUNLAR
First of all congratulations for the Best Actor award at Venice Film Festival, once again for Memory. How was being part of this movie?
I mean the experience of making it was something that I’ve been wanting for a long time. It’s almost, I knew exactly what I wanted. I’ve known what kind of an actor I wanted to be for a long time but didn’t have the place that I could do it exactly. Because, well, first of all Michel [Franco] gives you so much power as an actor by the way that he films, just having the one camera. So we control everything, we control the time. He can’t make the scenes shorter or longer. You are just responsible for so much of it. And what he wanted was a deep, deep sense of the truth. And I remember when I first started acting, when I was in college, I actually went to a teacher, Anna Pileggi?, and I said “I feel like I can never get to the truth”. Because intrinsically, it’s not true. Like [laughs] it’s not true that I’m in these circumstances, it’s not true that I’m this person. And I actually almost thought that I was supposed to be psychotic or something and go into an altered state. What I learned over the course of time doing it, that I was able to do in this film, it’s like available to you right now. Like you don’t have to slip into a dream. We’re standing in it, we’re both standing in it right now. This could be a scene from the movie. I got a deeper sense over time as an actor as to what the actual thing I was after was. The actual truth, which is not being psychotic, not even walking around doing your accent on set or having the relationship with the actress be a romantic one, because this is a romantic one in the movie. And all that other stuff that people do, it’s a deeper, different sense of the truth that’s in me. And when this came along, it was kind of, after all these years, piecing things together. And I thought, this is exactly the canvas on which I can do what I am talking about.
Yeah, also I have watched a couple of interviews that you gave recently. And in one of them you say that “To me, acting should feel really easy when you are doing.”. And how was the experience of portraying the character Saul for you?
[Laughs] I mean it’s funny to win an award for something that felt like, you know, pouring a glass of water. But I do think that it should feel that way. Sometimes I’ll watch an actor in a performance. Because I think a lot of the performances that we normally love are where an actor did a lot; they gained weight, they did an accent, they wore a nose, then we give them the prize. And you’ll think, Wow, that looks really hard. I can’t imagine how they did that, they don’t seem like themselves, I don’t see the actor in there. And I respect that on some level but I also deeply respect this whole other generation of actors I’ve seen come along, that go into themselves, they offer up themselves. Even if they are playing Hitler or Mother Theresa. It is, still, intrinsically themselves.
Yeah. And also I think Jessica Chastain was a wonderful partner in crime. How was your set life?
We didn’t really have one. I mean I hung out on set. I think because I was playing a very lonely person who wanted to be around people. Like I said, it’s not like I’m being Saul in his circumstances but if you live in the circumstances of the character for a while, you start to feel the circumstances. And so she was playing somebody who was shut off from the world. So, you know, Jessica would come into work and we would say hello in a nice way. Not break our stride though. She would go up into her room and I’d get ready as fast as I could, which took two seconds. I didn't even comb my hair for the movie. So I would walk downstairs in my clothes and I would stand outside and I would just chat with the crew, hang out and wait for her to come down. She and I really only communicated on set when we were doing the scenes, and we rarely talked about scenes. Only if they weren’t working. Most of the time we would just be “Okay, great. Let’s do it”. She would do her thing, I would do my thing. We’d figure out where to put the camera and then we would do it a few times and then we would go onto the next scene. That’s what I mean about easy.
Yeah.
Just, doing it. So you see the relationship develop on screen. It doesn’t have all of the stuff that we are used to from other romantic movies from Hollywood, I think, where so much of the relationship between the actors has been constructed off-screen. And they bring it on, and you think “Wow, these two people really love each other, these two people are probably having sex with each other”. You see us get to know each other, the awkward thing, I mean the way that I have to reach out, I felt like I was Pepé Le Pew, I don’t know if you know Pepé Le Pew.
I know.
Just this skunk, that’s after this cat and will not stop. She was like inside of a safe and I was trying to crack it, the whole time. You have to be quiet. And sometimes you hit it, and then you know, but like, it was very active.
Yeah. So I wonder which line or dialogue or scene maybe, had the most impact on you when you first read the script? Do you recall?
Well, I didn’t like the scene on the log and I almost stopped reading the script when I read that scene. Not that it’s poorly written, but because I thought “Oh, this is what this movie is about”. So I really remember reading that line. I’ll tell you a line that we added that to me became an important line, but maybe just for me. The lines that are said at the last scene were, I’m not going to say improvised because we came up with them right then, but then said them [laughs] you know like, I sat down and said “Okay”, I went in and did it. But also there is a moment where I say “Can I write down what you’re telling me?”. She’s telling me about her trauma. So that I remember it later. And I had really wanted her to say no, and she said yes. I had wanted her to say no so that she would be telling me “I just told you my trauma and I’m gonna let it go because you’re not gonna remember it tomorrow. Right? And that will be great.” But she says yes. Then I was thinking about it and I thought, but I don’t remember to look at my book, and if I had looked at my book ten minutes ago, and had a conversation with her, I’m not treating her like somebody who has been traumatised. And I think that’s an interesting idea in the world, you know, to acknowledge someone’s trauma but then not constantly treat them like a victim for the rest of their lives. To give them a chance to change. And I think because I’m somebody who lived in so many different places growing up, one of the benefits of that is being able to redefine yourself in each place. Because you are who you are, based off of what you feel and all that. But also because of what everyone is reflecting back at you all the time. So if everyone’s like, he’s not that smart, his dad beats him up. You know, he’s a good soccer player, well he broke his leg a couple years ago so he’s not really a soccer player anymore. You know, like, but you're still the soccer player. You know, the way we define people, it's constricting. And so that set me off on a lot of ideas. When I thought about that line.
You have played a man dealing with dementia, and I wonder how was your experience of ageing and getting older and what do you love most about yourself right now and why?
You know, just recently in the last like four months, I've gotten into very good physical shape. But when I was doing this movie, I had a really bad back injury and it's in several roles that I played during that period, including this TV show that I have coming up with my brother-in-law. And I had to use it. It's, you know like Saul walks the way he walks in that movie because one of my legs wouldn't go as far forward as the other one. And I guess my experience of growing older now is like, yeah, I run into these challenges physically. You run into challenges mentally. You run into challenges in terms of like you get to be an age where everyone starts dying. But if you kind of weather through it and learn from it there, I don't know, maybe I'm feeling really optimistic because I now can put on my own pants. And I could do much more. I feel unbelievably good. It took a lot of work to fix.
Actually, I have this back injury with me and I'm going to a chiropractor. And I'm almost 40. I can feel you.
Yeah, you have to make your body strong. So much of what we do in this world is staring at a little screen while seated in an unusual position. We're all getting fucked up. If you just look at people, everyone's starting to be shaped like a C. Yeah, and so it's an epidemic. The last big epidemic of trouble came when we stopped being hunter-gatherers and started farming because farming is backbreaking labour. And they actually say if you look at the fossil record during that time, back problems everywhere. So this is the second wave. Beware, a cell phone.
Yeah. So what does memory mean to you? Do you think that time and memory work linearly or cyclically?
I mean, the only moment that I feel personally responsible for is this one. You know, every other moment in my life. And for me, my kids actually always comment that I say, the other day, I never say yesterday or two days ago or last week. It's either past or future for me and events in the past for me, the way that I remember them doesn't have anything to do with how far back in the past they are. You know, I actually said this in an interview recently. I was remembering a relative of mine after seeing me do Hedda Gobler. I played Ejlert Løvborg, in college. She'd never seen me act before. No one had ever seen me act before. I started doing it in college and we're sitting in a car. She was in the front seat on the passenger side and I was in the back and she turned back and said, Peter, you're not an actor. An actor looks like Mel Gibson. Look at yourself in the mirror. And sometimes it's something someone said, sometimes it’s something you said that you wish you hadn't said. But these things, I can think of something that I wish I hadn't said to somebody that happened last fall. Just a very short sentence. Not a horrible thing, but my mind goes over and over it. So I think memory keeps like a greatest hits and the rest of it becomes a kind of dissolute thing that you try to pull something from. But it's difficult.
So one last question then. I know you are a music person. Actually, both you and Maggie, you have this amazing music room in your house as well with many instruments. Yeah, here's the guitar. And as far as I know, Maggie plays the theremin and you have a piano and so forth, right? Yep. So when I think about the inclusion of A Whiter Shade of Pale in this movie, I believe that this must have affected you. So what would be an unforgettable song for you and Maggie?
Well, Maggie and I actually realised pretty late in our relationship that we listened to the same music. Like, some of it's common, right? Like, we were both really into Sinéad O'Connor when she came out, like Lion and the Cobra. For me, when that album came out, I felt psychically bonded to that woman, I wanted to hang out with her. And so we both know all the words to all of her songs, and we'd sing them back and forth to each other.
My kids know all those words, but then there are more unusual ones like there's this woman named Michelle Shocked. She was pretty radical and she's still around, but she doesn't make albums that much anymore. It's hard to get her albums. Short, Sharp, Shocked was the name of her album, and she was a radical and she would get arrested and she believed in a borderless world and she really put herself on the line and had gotten into a lot of trouble.
And I think, you know, I don't know the end of the story. I only know the beginning of the story. So then Maggie and I met and we realized we could sing every single one of the songs off that album, you know, not just like the hit, I think it was Anchored down in Anchorage, Anchorage, Alaska, but we know every song. So that's a whole album for you.
Take care of your back. Squats, lots of squats.
MEMORY NOW SHOWING ON MUBI, click for more information.
With special thanks to MUBI and Peter Sarsgaard.
PETER SARSGAARD ON 'MEMORY'
INTERVIEW BY MERVE ARKUNLAR
First of all congratulations for the Best Actor award at Venice Film Festival, once again for Memory. How was being part of this movie?
I mean the experience of making it was something that I’ve been wanting for a long time. It’s almost, I knew exactly what I wanted. I’ve known what kind of an actor I wanted to be for a long time but didn’t have the place that I could do it exactly. Because, well, first of all Michel [Franco] gives you so much power as an actor by the way that he films, just having the one camera. So we control everything, we control the time. He can’t make the scenes shorter or longer. You are just responsible for so much of it. And what he wanted was a deep, deep sense of the truth. And I remember when I first started acting, when I was in college, I actually went to a teacher, Anna Pileggi?, and I said “I feel like I can never get to the truth”. Because intrinsically, it’s not true. Like [laughs] it’s not true that I’m in these circumstances, it’s not true that I’m this person. And I actually almost thought that I was supposed to be psychotic or something and go into an altered state. What I learned over the course of time doing it, that I was able to do in this film, it’s like available to you right now. Like you don’t have to slip into a dream. We’re standing in it, we’re both standing in it right now. This could be a scene from the movie. I got a deeper sense over time as an actor as to what the actual thing I was after was. The actual truth, which is not being psychotic, not even walking around doing your accent on set or having the relationship with the actress be a romantic one, because this is a romantic one in the movie. And all that other stuff that people do, it’s a deeper, different sense of the truth that’s in me. And when this came along, it was kind of, after all these years, piecing things together. And I thought, this is exactly the canvas on which I can do what I am talking about.
Yeah, also I have watched a couple of interviews that you gave recently. And in one of them you say that “To me, acting should feel really easy when you are doing.”. And how was the experience of portraying the character Saul for you?
[Laughs] I mean it’s funny to win an award for something that felt like, you know, pouring a glass of water. But I do think that it should feel that way. Sometimes I’ll watch an actor in a performance. Because I think a lot of the performances that we normally love are where an actor did a lot; they gained weight, they did an accent, they wore a nose, then we give them the prize. And you’ll think, Wow, that looks really hard. I can’t imagine how they did that, they don’t seem like themselves, I don’t see the actor in there. And I respect that on some level but I also deeply respect this whole other generation of actors I’ve seen come along, that go into themselves, they offer up themselves. Even if they are playing Hitler or Mother Theresa. It is, still, intrinsically themselves.
Yeah. And also I think Jessica Chastain was a wonderful partner in crime. How was your set life?
We didn’t really have one. I mean I hung out on set. I think because I was playing a very lonely person who wanted to be around people. Like I said, it’s not like I’m being Saul in his circumstances but if you live in the circumstances of the character for a while, you start to feel the circumstances. And so she was playing somebody who was shut off from the world. So, you know, Jessica would come into work and we would say hello in a nice way. Not break our stride though. She would go up into her room and I’d get ready as fast as I could, which took two seconds. I didn't even comb my hair for the movie. So I would walk downstairs in my clothes and I would stand outside and I would just chat with the crew, hang out and wait for her to come down. She and I really only communicated on set when we were doing the scenes, and we rarely talked about scenes. Only if they weren’t working. Most of the time we would just be “Okay, great. Let’s do it”. She would do her thing, I would do my thing. We’d figure out where to put the camera and then we would do it a few times and then we would go onto the next scene. That’s what I mean about easy.
Yeah.
Just, doing it. So you see the relationship develop on screen. It doesn’t have all of the stuff that we are used to from other romantic movies from Hollywood, I think, where so much of the relationship between the actors has been constructed off-screen. And they bring it on, and you think “Wow, these two people really love each other, these two people are probably having sex with each other”. You see us get to know each other, the awkward thing, I mean the way that I have to reach out, I felt like I was Pepé Le Pew, I don’t know if you know Pepé Le Pew.
I know.
Just this skunk, that’s after this cat and will not stop. She was like inside of a safe and I was trying to crack it, the whole time. You have to be quiet. And sometimes you hit it, and then you know, but like, it was very active.
Yeah. So I wonder which line or dialogue or scene maybe, had the most impact on you when you first read the script? Do you recall?
Well, I didn’t like the scene on the log and I almost stopped reading the script when I read that scene. Not that it’s poorly written, but because I thought “Oh, this is what this movie is about”. So I really remember reading that line. I’ll tell you a line that we added that to me became an important line, but maybe just for me. The lines that are said at the last scene were, I’m not going to say improvised because we came up with them right then, but then said them [laughs] you know like, I sat down and said “Okay”, I went in and did it. But also there is a moment where I say “Can I write down what you’re telling me?”. She’s telling me about her trauma. So that I remember it later. And I had really wanted her to say no, and she said yes. I had wanted her to say no so that she would be telling me “I just told you my trauma and I’m gonna let it go because you’re not gonna remember it tomorrow. Right? And that will be great.” But she says yes. Then I was thinking about it and I thought, but I don’t remember to look at my book, and if I had looked at my book ten minutes ago, and had a conversation with her, I’m not treating her like somebody who has been traumatised. And I think that’s an interesting idea in the world, you know, to acknowledge someone’s trauma but then not constantly treat them like a victim for the rest of their lives. To give them a chance to change. And I think because I’m somebody who lived in so many different places growing up, one of the benefits of that is being able to redefine yourself in each place. Because you are who you are, based off of what you feel and all that. But also because of what everyone is reflecting back at you all the time. So if everyone’s like, he’s not that smart, his dad beats him up. You know, he’s a good soccer player, well he broke his leg a couple years ago so he’s not really a soccer player anymore. You know, like, but you're still the soccer player. You know, the way we define people, it's constricting. And so that set me off on a lot of ideas. When I thought about that line.
You have played a man dealing with dementia, and I wonder how was your experience of ageing and getting older and what do you love most about yourself right now and why?
You know, just recently in the last like four months, I've gotten into very good physical shape. But when I was doing this movie, I had a really bad back injury and it's in several roles that I played during that period, including this TV show that I have coming up with my brother-in-law. And I had to use it. It's, you know like Saul walks the way he walks in that movie because one of my legs wouldn't go as far forward as the other one. And I guess my experience of growing older now is like, yeah, I run into these challenges physically. You run into challenges mentally. You run into challenges in terms of like you get to be an age where everyone starts dying. But if you kind of weather through it and learn from it there, I don't know, maybe I'm feeling really optimistic because I now can put on my own pants. And I could do much more. I feel unbelievably good. It took a lot of work to fix.
Actually, I have this back injury with me and I'm going to a chiropractor. And I'm almost 40. I can feel you.
Yeah, you have to make your body strong. So much of what we do in this world is staring at a little screen while seated in an unusual position. We're all getting fucked up. If you just look at people, everyone's starting to be shaped like a C. Yeah, and so it's an epidemic. The last big epidemic of trouble came when we stopped being hunter-gatherers and started farming because farming is backbreaking labour. And they actually say if you look at the fossil record during that time, back problems everywhere. So this is the second wave. Beware, a cell phone.
Yeah. So what does memory mean to you? Do you think that time and memory work linearly or cyclically?
I mean, the only moment that I feel personally responsible for is this one. You know, every other moment in my life. And for me, my kids actually always comment that I say, the other day, I never say yesterday or two days ago or last week. It's either past or future for me and events in the past for me, the way that I remember them doesn't have anything to do with how far back in the past they are. You know, I actually said this in an interview recently. I was remembering a relative of mine after seeing me do Hedda Gobler. I played Ejlert Løvborg, in college. She'd never seen me act before. No one had ever seen me act before. I started doing it in college and we're sitting in a car. She was in the front seat on the passenger side and I was in the back and she turned back and said, Peter, you're not an actor. An actor looks like Mel Gibson. Look at yourself in the mirror. And sometimes it's something someone said, sometimes it’s something you said that you wish you hadn't said. But these things, I can think of something that I wish I hadn't said to somebody that happened last fall. Just a very short sentence. Not a horrible thing, but my mind goes over and over it. So I think memory keeps like a greatest hits and the rest of it becomes a kind of dissolute thing that you try to pull something from. But it's difficult.
So one last question then. I know you are a music person. Actually, both you and Maggie, you have this amazing music room in your house as well with many instruments. Yeah, here's the guitar. And as far as I know, Maggie plays the theremin and you have a piano and so forth, right? Yep. So when I think about the inclusion of A Whiter Shade of Pale in this movie, I believe that this must have affected you. So what would be an unforgettable song for you and Maggie?
Well, Maggie and I actually realised pretty late in our relationship that we listened to the same music. Like, some of it's common, right? Like, we were both really into Sinéad O'Connor when she came out, like Lion and the Cobra. For me, when that album came out, I felt psychically bonded to that woman, I wanted to hang out with her. And so we both know all the words to all of her songs, and we'd sing them back and forth to each other.
My kids know all those words, but then there are more unusual ones like there's this woman named Michelle Shocked. She was pretty radical and she's still around, but she doesn't make albums that much anymore. It's hard to get her albums. Short, Sharp, Shocked was the name of her album, and she was a radical and she would get arrested and she believed in a borderless world and she really put herself on the line and had gotten into a lot of trouble.
And I think, you know, I don't know the end of the story. I only know the beginning of the story. So then Maggie and I met and we realized we could sing every single one of the songs off that album, you know, not just like the hit, I think it was Anchored down in Anchorage, Anchorage, Alaska, but we know every song. So that's a whole album for you.
Take care of your back. Squats, lots of squats.
MEMORY NOW SHOWING ON MUBI, click for more information.
With special thanks to MUBI and Peter Sarsgaard.
CURA
18
OUT NOW
is a large format international biannual magazine from Istanbul. Focusing on arts, culture and society, each issue tackles various universal subjects within a distinct theme.
Address
Karaköy Tarihi Un Değirmeni Binası, Kemankeş Mahallesi, Ali Paşa Değirmen Sokak 16, 34425, Karaköy Istanbul, Turkey
+90 212 232 4288
contact@212magazine.com
CURA
18
OUT NOW
is a large format international biannual magazine from Istanbul. Focusing on arts, culture and society, each issue tackles various universal subjects within a distinct theme.
Address
Karaköy Tarihi Un Değirmeni Binası, Kemankeş Mahallesi, Ali Paşa Değirmen Sokak 16, 34425, Karaköy Istanbul, Turkey
+90 212 232 4288
contact@212magazine.com
CURA
18
OUT NOW
is a large format international biannual magazine from Istanbul. Focusing on arts, culture and society, each issue tackles various universal subjects within a distinct theme.
Address
Karaköy Tarihi Un Değirmeni Binası, Kemankeş Mahallesi, Ali Paşa Değirmen Sokak 16, 34425, Karaköy Istanbul, Turkey
+90 212 232 4288
contact@212magazine.com