|
 You many know him as the hunky Lone Starr from Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs. Or maybe from such classic romantic comedies as Sleepless in Seattle and While You Were Sleeping. Blockbuster fans can probably recall his moving presidential speech from Independence Day—no matter how ridiculous the scenario happened to be. But how about Bill Pullman as Sam Hallaway, the creepy, enigmatic FBI agent in the dark, violent and perverse film Surveillance?
“I don’t know if I could do 40 days of those three days [of shooting the scene] because it was disturbing to a lot of people on the set. They’d come to like Pullman!” the actor stated, referring to his last scene in the film.
The Jennifer Lynch psychological thriller also stars Julia Ormond as his partner, professionally and personally. The two actors are as you’ve never seen them before, portraying characters who are deeply disturbed and psychotic, while remaining eerily cool and calm throughout most of the film.
When asked what attracted him to such a distinct, risky role, Pullman stated, “I really have known Jen for a long time and always wanted to work with her.”
Director Lynch claimed, “When my father [David Lynch] was doing Lost Highway, I said he should look at Bill Pullman, and they hit it off like Mike and Ike.” She continued to say, with a slight apprehension, “I actually wrote this for Bill, and he turned me down flat at the beginning.”
After Lynch lost another actor during preproduction, she reverted back to her first instinct and contacted Pullman one last time.
“She’s [Lynch] managed to tell everyone I turned her down, which makes me sound like I’m awfully smug about myself,” Pullman recalled. “[But] when I [first] read the script, I didn’t hear her voice in that draft.”
Soon after, Lynch rewrote the script to what she claimed was more “true to herself.” After gaining a firmer understanding of Pullman and coming to realize how exactly she wanted to do Surveillance, Lynch approached Pullman a bit more strategically.
“Bill’s no fool, and he knows what he wants to do, and what he doesn’t want to do,” Lynch stated. “He’s not going to take risks, unless he feels safe taking them. It wasn’t good enough for him yet.”
Luckily for Lynch, the script finally was.
“When I read it a year later, and I heard her own whacked humor and her own word choices--her everything--then I talked to her and told her this is the only thing I want to do,” Pullman said. “I don’t want to do anything else!”
Soon thereafter, Ormond contacted Lynch directly and wanted in simply by saying, “I can’t afford not to do this movie.”
 Ormond distinctly remembers when she first met Pullman and laughs when recalling their initial introduction. “I thought, ‘God! He so reminds me of someone, and I can’t put my finger on who it is.’ Then I suddenly realized that it’s Bill Pullman!”
Although the two actors worked well on-screen, they both took separate approaches to identifying with their characters.
“Julia did go study with the FBI and worked with victims of violence,” said Pullman. “But I don’t think [our characters] had a lot of information, just a lot of attitude. I spent time with certain literature about psychopaths.”
Through his research, Pullman acquired a great deal of insight into the minds of psychopaths. While Ormond utilized a more hands-on approach, Pullman worked alone, primarily because he saw his character from another angle. He read The Mask of Sanity by Hervey Cleckley, which he believes is the first complete treatises about such psychological disorders.
Pullman’s alternative form of research can perhaps be reflective of Pullman as a person. As a former theater professor at Montana State University, he is no stranger to referencing books, which is maybe why he opted for more of a self-disciplinary learning style. According to Pullman, it paid off pretty well.
“At the end of a take, she [Lynch] would go, ‘Nasty, Pullman! Come on, let’s go again! What else you got?!’”
It’s possible Pullman doesn’t even know how intense he can be. Although he comes off as an easy-going, approachable and loose-talking guy, he actually intimidated his costar, Ryan Simpkins.
 Simpkins plays 8-year-old Stephanie in the film, and is the sole representation of any pure good or innocence in the film. Her purity and Hallaway’s adulteration contrast very heavily, both in a moral sense and through their limited interaction on-screen.
“Julia could talk to me and be really nice, but Bill and me couldn’t,” said Simpkins. “In the movie we were enemies, so he couldn’t talk to me as much as Julia did.”
As time went on, and the cast became closer and closer within the small confines of the desolate Canadian providence of Ragina (which Pullman refers to as “rhymes with fun”), Pullman and Simpkins put their characters’ relationship aside and soon became father-daughter type buddies.
“Later on we became friends,” Simpkins stated. “At one point [in the film] I whisper to him, ‘I know who you are,’ but then sometimes I’d say, ‘Your shoe’s untied’ or ‘Your fly’s open!’”
The shooting location was so completely isolated, the cast became very tight over the months, and particularly for Pullman, very enchanted with the area. On one of his few days off, he drove for miles in one of the two directions and nearly purchased an old stone mansion he encountered along the way.
“I fell in love with the area,” said Pullman. “I wanted to buy it, then people were like, ‘What are you doing?’”
Although he brushed the occurrence off with a humorous aside, the attraction alone says a lot about Pullman as a person. He’s not into the Hollywood grandeur and blinding lights. With his children currently in college, he worries what they will be doing post-graduation, and completely mocks the stereotype of celebrities’ “entitled” offspring: “Give me more poison! I want to anesthetize myself from the pain of life, and this incredible Land Rover, Gucci-label life we live! Please! Rescue me!”
Pullman understands the pressures that may come with having famous parents, but considers it just one other reason to admire Lynch, the daughter of a famous director herself.
“But Jen looked at the monster and lived,” he said.
Pullman undeniably possesses a true and genuine passion for the art of acting. He is not determined to be the biggest movie star in the world, but is committed to giving worthy projects what he refers to as “the light of day.” For the progression of good cinema, Pullman is a firm believer of independent films such as Surveillance.
“You do them because you’re looking to cut away from commercial movies,” he stated. “Commercial movies have to end with flags flown again, but I think it’s smart economics, really, to be true to yourself in an indie movie, because there’s no audience more likely to blow the whistle on you.”
 Currently Pullman has returned back to his early acting life: the theater. Although he appreciates both mediums, he feels a different kind of connection with stage acting primarily because it’s where he started. When asked which one he finds to be more challenging, he responded, “In theater you are making the cuts and edits every night, and it’s hard and humiliating and underappreciated. Why do I do it?!”
Pullman can currently be seen alongside Julia Stiles in the play Oleanna at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. As far as film is concerned, Pullman has contributed to many different works in the past few years, but is unclear on the progression of his movies. Peacock with Ellen Page, Susan Sarandon, Cillian Murphy and Josh Lucas is, what he believes, the next to be released.
“But it’s hard to know what happens to them,” he shrugged.
Hopefully, we’ll know soon enough.
Surveillance is now playing at the Nuart Theatre in West Los Angeles and is available on VOD, Amazon and Xbox Live Marketplace.
For more information, visit the film's official Web site.
|