Talk
John Cusack Never Understood His Cusackness
“Perhaps in a way, I had my own brand. I would have denied it, because that would be pretty unartistic.”
John Cusack Never Understood His Cusackness
For certain moviegoers — and I’m one of them — the quick-witted, alternately idealistic and morally deluded characters that John Cusack played in films like “Say Anything . . . ,” “Grosse Pointe Blank” and “High Fidelity” were charismatic guides to the pitfalls and promises of youth and young adulthood. To others, Cusack was more straightforwardly a movie star, as he shared top billing in 1990s and 2000s box-office hits like “Con Air,” “America’s Sweethearts” and “Serendipity,” to name a few. And when the studios didn’t quite know what to do with a no-longer-boyish Cusack — he’s now 54 years old — the actor found success with character work in smaller films like “The Paperboy” and “Love & Mercy.” But that last one was six years ago, and since then he has kind of fallen into a cultural limbo of “Where’s he been?” Gen X nostalgia. (At least for those of us not plugged into progressive-politics Twitter, where he’s very active.) But a pivotal role in Amazon Studios’ upcoming, eagerly anticipated sci-fi thriller series “Utopia” should change that. “It’s always a dance, and you always feel like you didn’t do it well enough,” Cusack said about his career’s twists and turns. “But I tried to do my best.”
Let me ask you a human-experience question: You’re an actor — and you’ve probably gotten more attention over the last few years for tweeting about politics than for acting. Is that worrying? You wouldn’t want to be the left-wing version of a James Woods, a great actor whose talent has maybe been obscured by his aggressively tweeting about right-wing politics all the time. You know, I was born into a family where Dan Berrigan gave the baptisms and eulogies. I believe that there comes a time when silence is acquiescent to what’s happening. If your government is abducting children and driving around with unmarked cars sweeping up protesters, I don’t know if you should be worried about your career.
But is it a concern that you can say useful things and then risk your credibility when you mistakenly retweet anti-Semitic imagery or get people calling you a 5G conspiracy theorist? Yeah, I thought they were saying something else with that image. That was a dumb error on my part. But I have 35 years of being on the side of social justice, so I’m not worried about that. Then with 5G, you’re crossing into a different thing. I never equated 5G with the coronavirus. I said it’s not proven technology, and unproven technologies aren’t always tested before they take off. That was a hit I took, because I’ve been critical of the Trump administration, critical about big tech. Sometimes you’re going to get stoned for telling the truth. If you really tell the truth, they’ll put you in jail. Then if you really tell the truth after that, they’ll kill you. I can take small hits for telling the truth. But I don’t think anybody thinks I’m some partisan left-wing goon.
Practically speaking, what has it meant for someone with your political beliefs to have navigated a Hollywood career? It’s clear from looking at your films like “War, Inc.” or “Max” or “Grosse Pointe Blank” that there was a progressive sensibility running through your work. But then there’s also “Con Air” and some of your more recent video-on-demand action movies, which seem at odds with what I’m interpreting as your moral sensibility. You try to do — it’s a cliché — one for them, one for you. Then it becomes four for them, one for you. Then it becomes all for them, none for you. But Joe Roth was a great benefactor to me. He was a guy who ran the studios and was a connection to older Hollywood. I got to make “Grosse Pointe Blank” and “High Fidelity” on a handshake deal with him. He asked me to do “Con Air.” In order to get movies funded, you had to make people money, and then you could leverage that into doing a movie like “Max.” But you can subvert commercial movies in interesting ways. In “Con Air,” I put in the Dostoyevsky quote, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by observing its prisoners.” That wasn’t in the script. Or I thought, All right, I’m going to wear inappropriate footgear. I’ll be the first post-Charlton Heston non-biblical action star to wear sandals. I would do ridiculous things.
So it’s fair to say that your personal politics and show business made for an uneasy mix? It’s complicated. The artists, they’re never the tough part. The tough part is navigating the idea of making everything into a commodity. You get tired of the business. It’s also a strange thing, because what are the struggles of navigating Hollywood, really? It seems petty to complain. Even just talking about myself seems slightly obscene given the political climate. But it can be a tough business. I remember I was working with a filmmaker. It was his first time, and I knew that we had to survive the editing process and the selling of the film. That’s where 60, 70 percent of movies get destroyed. The movie got sold, and then whoever bought it decided that they or their executives were going to cut it. This poor director is saying, “What am I doing?” I said: “Your version is 2:05 long, and they obviously want a 95-minute version. So you have to cut something as close as you can to their time. Then you’re going to have to beg, demand or pay for audience testing. Then you test our shortest version versus their version, and ours will do better because they don’t know what they’re doing.” I’d been through that process so many times. You work with people and they go fresh-eyed into it, but they don’t know what happens to these films.
Could you say which film that was? The executives would probably not like to hear about it. I could if you want. Do you want to get me in trouble with some executives?
Yes. [Laughs] I can tell you another one. I did a film with somebody who had worked with the Weinstein Company. Stephen King had this book “Cell” that we were doing the movie of, and this guy kept giving insane notes, and it seemed to me that he hadn’t read the book. I said: “You win. You’re so corrupt that you’re beyond my capacity to imagine. You’re saying, ‘Why are you putting these things in the movie?’ They’re in the book! It’s a Stephen King novel! He’s a good writer!” There’s no defense against that. Those things happen a lot. The other one was “The Frozen Ground.” To its very talented writer and director I had to say, “You have to test your version.” There’s always those compromises.
Does the way you seem to have pulled back a little from acting have anything to do with a waning interest in making films you don’t really believe in and a waxing interest in politics? No. A few years ago I got a call to be in a David Cronenberg film.
“Maps to the Stars.” But even that was six years ago. Well, it was beautifully written by Bruce Wagner. Acidic, chilling. So of course you’re going to go do that one. And I got to play Brian Wilson. Terrific film in every respect. Or in what it was trying to do anyway. If those were available lately, I would have done them. But if you don’t get those offers or if you can’t get your own projects funded, then you’re doing less. Unless you have some great character or classic text, then it’s hard not to think: What is the use? How many times can you put this mask on?
You used to write political op-eds for Huffington Post. Have you ever thought about going back to that? I also used to do editorial stuff for them.
Really? In addition to writing? Yeah, I’ve always been interested in that. As an example, say, the Bush administration’s torture stuff was in the news after he left office. The Obama administration operatives would go on the Sunday shows and say, “We need to move on from torture.” That just happened to be said by 14 people across multiple platforms? I know how politics and talking points work. So I said, “Let’s put up something saying, ‘Watch Sunday shows whitewash torture’ and show all these people saying, ‘We need to move on.’” I used to do a lot of that. That was fun, because that was a way to be of service without anybody knowing.
I read the book you did with Arundhati Roy, “Things That Can and Cannot Be Said.” In it she has a line about N.G.O.s and needing to be aware of whether you’re walking the dog or the dog is walking you. Then you replied that you’ve been the dog and you’ve been walked. What did you mean? That book was written as a radical primer, a political primer, for people who don’t want to get lost in that academic language, that political language that separates ideas from truth. The context of the quote in the book was about a person’s relationship to power and to people in power. I wanted people to be able to think about politics and understand they are quite capable of understanding the world. You can see that with the Black Lives Matter protests, the big corporations are throwing funding into those things. It’s not that we have to have a dogmatic approach, but we have to be aware of how these real impulses get assimilated by the same structure.
Does that apply to your experience in the movie business? Hollywood has changed a lot. When I was first coming up, it was connected to ’60s, ’70s filmmaking. The film companies weren’t part of megacorporations where the film division was nothing compared with their vast holdings. There were people who ran studios. You can deal with one personality, but dealing with this veil of 25 junior vice presidents? Maybe the directors and artists gave the game away when they started triangulating with the money people and pushing out independent producers. What happens is they know the bigger their budget is, the more the studio has to make it a fait accompli that the film makes money. Then that starts a process of watering down impulses and shooting forever and collecting coverage for producers. I remember one movie where it had too much money. They were just shooting too much. There was a scene where a train pulls into a station and people come on the platform and they go, “Anywhere good to eat around here?” “Yeah, you can try this diner. The lemon pudding’s terrific.” Shot it once, and the director decided he didn’t like it. Shot it again, another day, and he decided he didn’t like it. Then he built a fake train station, and you’re thinking: What the [expletive] are we doing? This is madness. It happened even when the directors had the control; the studios would give them too much money.
Given what you said about corporatization, is it weird to be doing a big Amazon show? No. There’s no way to be holier-than-thou about it. You can’t not exist in capitalism. I’ve avoided things that I’ve thought were foul myths or narratives or exploitative as much as I could. The Amazon show was a nice experience. It was fun because I’ve never done anything kind of sci-fi and over six hours.
While we’re talking about TV, did you follow any of the reception to the “High Fidelity” reboot from this year? No, I didn’t. I’ve worked with Lisa Bonet and her ex-husband. I wish the best for their daughter. But I wasn’t following.
Did you watch it? No.
Nevertheless, I have a question. In some of the writing people did about the show, when they compared it with your movie, it was clear that your character, Rob, was now understood as way less sympathetic than when the film came out 20 years ago — even as an example of toxic masculinity. What does that say about both the character and how the culture has changed? That’s an interesting one. You can make any argument you want about the character, but was that character true? Is that how people are? I’m glad that people have changed their view of Rob. I mean, he was an [expletive]. We all are. If somebody was writing that Rob was a passive-aggressive womanizer, I’d be like, “All right, somebody got it.” I wanted to reveal the flaws of the character.
The thing you’ve always been great at is making appealing characters out of guys who were emotional messes. Is there an actorly trick to that? People’s self-perception and what they do are usually divergent. So if I’m doing “Grosse Pointe Blank” — Martin Blank is a psychopath. That was me trying to figure out, What does it mean to be a success in America? It’s psychotic: the mercenary mindset. The killer instinct. Does Bill Barr think that he’s a good guy? Probably does. That’s interesting! I try to explore it all. And also, as an actor, you become empathetic with “there but for the grace of God go I.” Like, a killer’s a bad thing, right? But we could all be that person. You want to understand how you could be what you’re seeing in the world.
There was a Los Angeles Times article in which John Mahoney was interviewed for the 25th anniversary of “Say Anything . . . ,” and he said that film was where you found your “Cusackness.” What do you think he meant? I don’t know. Probably that was the first movie I did where I got to create a lot more than was in the text. When I got offered “Say Anything,” I didn’t really want to do it. I felt that Lloyd didn’t have enough of a worldview. So I put a lot of my own sensibility into it. Maybe that’s what John meant.
There was this specific blend of sincerity and skepticism to your work in “Say Anything . . .” and some of your other roles that allowed them — and you — to become almost cultural touchstones. I know this is probably embarrassing to talk about, but how close was the connection between what people saw in your characters and how you saw yourself? I’m trying to think about how I would even approach that question. I wanted to make the characters as human as possible. I thought, you know, In Hollywood, if you tell lies about love and violence, you can make a fortune. All you’ve got to do is lie about both. Or lie about yourself.
That didn’t answer the question at all. [Expletive]!
What I’m asking is whether you understood your persona. It’s hard to understand. That persona thing might be about me just getting a job in a romantic comedy and trying to put something original in there. Perhaps in a way, I had my own brand. I don’t like to think that, but maybe I did. I would have denied it, because that would be pretty unartistic.
I think there was a moment when you arguably had a clear commercial brand, and it was connected to romantic comedies. In 2000 and 2001, you did three in a row: “High Fidelity,” “America’s Sweethearts” and “Serendipity.” They were all hits, and then you did only one more rom-com after that. Why did you reject a genre that you were good at and that audiences liked? What was the other one?
“Must Love Dogs.” Oh, right. That’s not really my genre or the kind of thing that I like. “America’s Sweethearts” was Joe Roth directing. He asked me to do it. “Must Love Dogs” was the best thing I could get at the time. It wasn’t something that I would be looking to do. When somebody is trying to force you to do something that is easily understood, you’re always trying to get to something that’s more dangerous emotionally.
Is that true even with a movie like “America’s Sweethearts,” where the whole purpose of a Julia Roberts-John Cusack romantic comedy was to deliver a very particular emotional experience? No. You’re not going to turn “America’s Sweethearts” into “On the Waterfront.” But there’s always room for creativity, even if a movie is just a piece of comic entertainment. On “America’s Sweethearts,” Joe cast Alan Arkin, and he came up with all this stuff that wasn’t in the script. He came in and on days like that it was really fun. Especially if it’s a genre piece, you try to make them the best versions of that. I don’t know what people thought they wanted me to do. I never could understand that. They want you to be a straight leading man, but your instinct is to do weirder stuff. Even with “Say Anything . . . ,” when I met Jim Brooks, he said about Lloyd: “Look, buddy, I don’t think this is a guy that has an agenda. I don’t think this is a kid who needs a beer to have fun. I don’t think this is a kid —” And I said: “Jim, let me stop you right here. I want you to know I don’t understand anything that you’re saying. And when I say ‘anything,’ I mean absolutely nothing you’re saying makes sense to me. Lloyd totally has an agenda. He totally thinks about the world. He’s this Army-brat kid listening to the Clash. Let’s cut the [expletive].” We laughed about it later, because as soon as he saw what I was up to, he respected it.
I know your instinct is to be humble about it, but can you tell me if you’ve ever had periods where you wanted fame or would be upset if you didn’t have it or wanted more of it? Yeah, as a kid. But it was wrapped up in feeling like, I want to be part of a great piece of art. It wouldn’t be fame as a goal. You also don’t know what you’re getting in for. As a kid, you don’t know, OK, you’ll have weird stalkers. You don’t know what that means. But I was trying to measure up to something. I’ve done some — I think — good films. But if you make a bigger film, whether it’s good or not, they get a Howitzer, and they want to blow it down your throat and say, “This is the greatest thing you’ve ever seen!” And all of the sudden, the selling of it warps the movie. So you also make these weirder, smaller things, and they’re there waiting to be found. That makes more sense to me.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.
Opening illustration: Source photograph by Ralf Hirschberger/Picture Alliance, via Getty Images