E-mail a friendJohn Cusack
airdate December 3, 2007
John Cusack is known for wise career choices. Part of a family of thespians, he made his feature film debut at age 17 and has since starred in a wide range of thrillers, comedies and dramas. His film credits include Being John Malkovich, Runaway Jury and Grace is Gone. He's also dedicated to the theater and founded The New Criminals, a Chicago-based theatre group that promotes political and avant-garde stage work. Cusack occasionally blogs on his opposition to the Iraq war at The Huffington Post.
John Cusack
Tavis: John Cusack is a talented actor, screenwriter, and producer whose many notable films include "The Grifters," "High Fidelity," and "Being John Malkovich," just to name a few. His two new projects include "The Martian Child," which is currently in theaters as we speak, and opening this weekend in New York and L.A. is "Grace is Gone." The film debuted earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. Here now, a scene from "Grace is Gone."
[Clip]
Tavis: John, nice to have you here.
John Cusack: Nice to see you, man.
Tavis: Good to see you. I saw this, I liked it, and I liked it primarily because it tells the story, and I'll let you explain it, but it tells the story that could be told and has been told a number of different times, but not from this perspective. Not from the perspective of a father with daughters. Having said that, I'll let you explain what the story line is.
Cusack: Well, it's the story about a military family, and the character Stanley is a real believer in the mission and he's a deep believer in the cause over there, and he's having a hard time because he's raising a family on his own. And his wife is stationed in Iraq, and so he's parsing what the children can see on TV because he doesn't want them to get too worried.
He's not sleeping at night and doing all the things that are happening to thousands of families on both sides of the conflict. And so it's a very human portrait of that. And then at some point, he gets the knock on the door that what now, 3,000 American soldiers have gotten - where the military says, “We regret to inform you your son, daughter, husband, wife has lost their life in the line of duty.”
So from that moment on, his whole world and universe changes with a knock on the door, and so what we tried to do is dramatize those first three days of grief, and this character, Stanley, is - the film operates in a pretty interesting gray zone between sort of a right and wrong and heroic and cowardly, because (audio drop out) can come over and before he can deal with it.
He can't process it, he's (audio drop out) road trip, and in a way he's trying to give them three, four more days of innocence before reality comes crashing down. And in another way, he's just trying to deny and put off what has to happen, which is he has to experience that grief and the family has to heal, and they have to deal with the reality of what's happened. So it's an interesting piece.
Tavis: It is interesting. How did that happen for you? How'd the script come together, how did you get turned on to a project telling it from this end?
Cusack: Well, this was the screenwriter, James Strouse, had approached my company, and I had been looking for a story, a human drama to tell about the Iraq conflict, and it stemmed from a place of outrage for me when the Bush administration had banned the photos of the dead coming home.
Tavis: At Dover Air Force Base?
Cusack: Right. And I thought, well, that's one of the most cowardly political acts I'd seen in my lifetime in some way, so I thought well, we've got to just tell the story of one of those coffins coming home, right? It seemed very clear that that would be a really smart thing to do. And at that very same time, Jim Strouse, the writer, had approached my company and had written this with me in mind and had approached my company with it. So it was kind of the universe sort of met you halfway, I think.
Tavis: When you say that that decision - I think I know what you mean, but I want to give you a chance to fill it in a little bit more, to unpack it a little more - when you say that the Bush administration not allowing those bodies to be seen returning to Dover Air Force Base was a cowardly decision, what do you mean by that?
Cusack: Political act, yeah. Well, I just think that if this war is going to be fought and if it's as important as he says it is, then I think the least we can do is stop our days and pay honor to the people who are making the ultimate sacrifice for this. They were trying to say, “Well, we'll tell you when we can grieve, and we'll get our photo ops when we go to the bases and we visit the families, and we're going to control this, too, along with everything else.” And I thought, “My god, if this is really happening, we should all know about this every day. We should stop our days.” Right?
Tavis: Your fan base knows that you are born and raised in Chicago, you love Chicago, it's your hometown, you still live there, you're a huge Cubs fan - we know how much John Cusack loves Chicago. Two questions in that regard, though. In Chicago, how did you end up taking the acting route, and how did you end up being so concerned about issues, so politically and socially minded?
Cusack: I think that's just - probably one, I couldn't hit a curve ball. (Laughter) So there's nothing you can do about that. And you fall into what you're best at, probably, and then I just was very lucky to have parents who exposed you to the arts and they just said sort of follow your bliss, and so whatever we were interested in, they sort of supported. So it was just dumb luck, really, to be born to parents who were capable of caring for their kids that way, I guess.
Tavis: But there had to be a moment though when you latched on to the fact that you could act. How did you discover that this was your gift, put another way?
Cusack: I don't know, I think I got hungry for it when I was in junior high school, and they used to have these revival cinemas, where they'd show all the great movies from the '40s and '50s and '60s and the '70s, and during the summer they would have, like, a week of Kubrick's films, or a week of Renoir's films - anything you wanted - or Kurasawa.
And I would go there and I think I sort of fell in love with the movies back then. And at one point, I remembered seeing "Apocalypse Now" on a school night and not sleeping till about 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. So I sort of fell in love with that.
Tavis: I mentioned how much you love Chicago. There are certain cities that - at least for me, there are certain cities I think of, and in terms of personalities, you attached certain personalities with certain cities. It's just a love affair that these personalities had with their city. You were one of the persons - and there are many - but you were one of the persons who love Chicago. We see you at the games, we know you, this is your hometown. What is it about Chicago that after all these years you still love so much?
Cusack: There's so much about it. I think probably the culture, and it's far away from the movie business but it's still a big, international city. The sports, music, food, and also the Midwestern, I think, attitude is pretty straight up. I don't know, there's something about it. At some point as you get older, maybe you start to appreciate where you came from a little bit more, you gravitate back towards it. What's your hometown?
Tavis: Indiana. I grew up in Indiana, so I know that - when you were saying the Midwestern thing, I was nodding my head like, yes.
Cusack: Yeah, you go back to it and you feel yourself pulled back to it somehow, to your roots.
Tavis: I grew up in Indiana, and when I was in college one of my -
Cusack: Go to Indiana University?
Tavis: I went to IU, sure did. IU in Bloomington. One of my proudest memories while I was at Indiana University, while I was a student, three of us would go up to Chicago on the weekends to try to help Harold Washington win that mayor's race. And he was a guy -
Cusack: Yeah, he had one of my favorite political lines ever. At one point, I think - who was the alderman who was always trying to roll him?
Tavis: Fast Eddie Vrdolyak.
Cusack: Fast Eddie.
Tavis: Fast Eddie.
Cusack: So at one time, he stood up at a press conference and he said, "I will not lay supine to the juggernaut." (Laughter) And I thought, man, give that guy four more terms.
Tavis: Well, I took great pride in going up there and fortunately, he won.
Cusack: Yeah, Harold Washington was great.
Tavis: He was a great guy, man. And then there was a guy - I ended up meeting this guy at one point. As a student, I never actually met Harold Washington, even after he was mayor, but I met a guy who was in charge of his security detail, and his last name happened to be Smiley. So I thought that was kind of cool. It was a funny story, but anyway, you and I met for the first time a little while ago on the set of "The Tonight Show."
Cusack: On the "Jay Leno Show."
Tavis: You were on Jay's show, you were the lead guest and I came behind you, had a good time that night. And we got a chance to talk afterwards backstage, and first thing you do is start giving me books that you think I ought to check out.
Cusack: Did I really?
Tavis: You did. No, I liked that. I liked that.
Cusack: All right.
Tavis: It said to me this guy -
Cusack: It sounds kind of presumptuous.
Tavis: No, no, you were - (laughter) not at all, you're a smart -
Cusack: You're a pretty smart guy, I don't know. (Unintelligible) reading list, I should be getting yours.
Tavis: No, I take from that - no, not at all. I take from that that you're a smart guy, that you are an avid reader, and that there are things that you wanted to see if I had (unintelligible) -
Cusack: Well, I want you to have my friend Naomi Klein on your show.
Tavis: And we may very well do that.
Cusack: I think you should.
Tavis: Tell me, since you - I raise this primarily because two things. One, I want to know about your love of reading, and two, why it is that you recommended that text to me.
Cusack: Well, I knew that you were going to be hosting a presidential debate and so I was hoping maybe you could take some of the information in there and present it to the Republican candidates, see what they had to say. And you seemed to be a very serious person, so. And you've got a nice forum, and you don't seem to be lacking in courage to say, perhaps, politically controversial things, or to challenge conventional norms, so.
Tavis: Your being a part of - quick exit question here - your being a part of this business helps you do that in some way?
Cusack: Well, it gives you access to meet a lot of terrific people and you certainly have to - when you're filming these shows, you do 15, 16-hour days, but then sometimes you get some time off, so I think yeah, it's been a great sort of passport to the world, being in the film business.
Tavis: Well, "Grace is Gone" is a powerful story. The new film starring John Cusack, long way from those brat pack days. This guy, one of the fine actors of our generation and of our time. Again, "Grace is Gone," the new film. Go check it out; I think you'll like it. Good to see you, John.
Cusack: My pleasure.
Tavis: Thanks for coming on, man.
Cusack: All right.
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