Joining the cast as the prime suspect of "Déjà Vu" is Jim Caviezel, who previously made a rich impression on moviegoers in a very different role – offering a remarkable portrait of Jesus Christ in his final days in Mel Gibson’s "The Passion of The Christ." In "Déjà Vu" he plays a darker, disturbed character, but Caviezel simply couldn’t resist the screenplay’s rare mix of unpredictable thrills with compelling questions about the nature of reality.
"The story is definitely complex, but nobody can do complex better than Jerry Bruckheimer and Tony Scott and make it the most extraordinary movie-going experience in the process," says Caviezel. "I love that it’s a thriller that tackles both the seen and the unseen."
Caviezel was especially excited to have a chance to work with such Hollywood powerhouses as Jerry Bruckheimer and Tony Scott. "I can remember seeing ‘Top Gun’ in my junior year of high school and because of that film applying to the United States Naval Academy three times. It was my favorite film ever and suddenly I thought my destiny was to fly jets," he recalls. "Having this chance to work with them on this film was such a pleasure – Jerry and Tony are truly good people."
Movies Online recently sat down with Jim Caviezel at the Los Angeles Press Day for "Déjà Vu," directed by Tony Scott and starring Denzel Washington, Paula Patton, Val Kilmer, and Adam Goldberg. Caviezel is a sensational actor and we really appreciated his time. Here’s what he had to tell us about his latest movie:
Jim Caveizel: Did you all get the time change this morning?
Q: Yeah. Did you?
Jim Caveizel: Oh boy, no, I wasted my hour this morning. I got up real early. My son was with me this morning. I’ve been filming up in Halifax. It’s a new movie with the Weinstein’s called The Outlander and it’s going to be great! But my son came in this morning, and we have this little thing where my wife’s on one side of him, and I’m on the other, and he’s in the middle.
He’s adopted from China and so he loves it when his parents are real close to him so we make a ‘sandwich.’ And then I say, ‘What do you want on it?’ And he says, ‘Mustard.’ And I say, ‘Do you want a lot or a little?’ ‘A little.’ So I give him a little tickle here, and he just goes crazy. So he gets to decide how much he wants. And when he says, ‘A lot,’ I go after him and he just goes berserk. He’s in for a punishment.
Q: How old is he?
JC: He’s six.
Q: Six?
JC: Yeah.
Q: How do you feel as a parent? How is parenthood treating you?
JC: It’s an emotion I’ve never experienced, it really is. We’ve been very, very fortunate – he’s just a light. You learn a lot, you learn to listen, and it really kicks your butt, I’ll tell you. The joys far outweigh anything else. It makes you a better human. I wouldn’t want to be 25 again.
Q: Your last three movies have obviously been completely different. Why did you choose to take this supporting role after two starring roles?
JC: Really it comes down to the material and I originally saw this when it came across my desk and I thought this was a wonderful script and I wanted to play Denzel’s role but I didn’t know he was the one playing it. Then I knew after I met with Tony (Scott), when I walked into the room, he originally had me planned for someone else, and he said, ‘What do you think of Carroll Oerstadt?’ I said, ‘That’s the only role that I’d be interested in playing.’ And I knew it would be a challenge because -- I don’t know how to explain this to you -- but Denzel being the great character leading man actor, one of the rare greats ever in the business – he’s like a Cabernet, you better have something strong to offset that or it’ll get washed away.
And so I kept feeling that it had to have that ‘pull’ to where it snaps, and that scene, that interrogation scene, is where I kept coming back to and where this was. And then from that point, then a Hurricane (Katrina) hit, and we’re not filming Déjà Vu, and we’re not in New Orleans.
Then I went in five days after the storm hit, and what I saw just blew me away. And when we came back, this devastation and desolation was still as bad. We were in the 9th Ward and they were pulling bodies out of attics, and just the shock and awe of what…I can’t even…when I think about it, it’s life changing. But I felt that New Orleans itself needed to be a character in the movie, and I just fed off that anger and then he (Denzel) represented the government, and I just used that.
Q: So did you want to embrace his feelings, or was he too much of an extremist?
JC: I used it, though I wanted to make a difference between saying that ‘he was that’ versus ‘he used that.’ He wasn’t even from there and he used it. He’s a cockroach. I think at the end of the day what was great was Denzel was, ‘Look man, there is a big difference.’ I saw In The Line of Fire and what I liked about that was in every film of that magnitude, something that’s really good is the guy tries to identify, he tries to pick away; Denzel starts the interrogation, and I turn it [around] on him.
I say, ‘We’re a lot alike, you and I.’ ‘No, no, no. There’s a difference between pushing a woman in the way of an oncoming bus and pushing another woman out of the way of an oncoming bus. It’s not just pushing women around here. You’re clearly a different beast than I am.’ And then it came to the ultimate, which is, ‘Fine, but if you don’t get out of my way – hehe, it’s nothing personal pal, I’m going to have to take you out.
This is my destiny.’ And that’s when… and then Tony showed me all the differences between the serial killers versus the bombers and there’s kind of a ‘my destiny, my thing.’ It’s still narcissistic, and don’t get me wrong, they both have a different side of it, but they’re different. And I think this was originally written more on the sexual side of the serial killer versus being more on the bomber side, yeah.
Q: Oerstadt is talking about divine intervention at one point. I wasn’t quite sure if he was being religious at that point? What do you think of the divine intervention aspect?
JC: No, I think it had to do more with the déjà vu thing. I think it had to do with this guy has a sixth sense. If he were a police officer, he’d have been a great one, but he used that [sense] – great cops have that sense, they can look in a room and size it down and that’s who Denzel’s character is based off of, that kind of guy who can walk into an area and he can sense and he sees what’s out of the norm. This guy had that too, and they were using a technology on him, and it was backfiring because he sensed it.
I’m glad you picked up on that. That’s what he’s referring to – ‘There’s something in the wind, there’s something, I smell it,’ and ‘I’m being watched,’ and it backfired on them. It’s a technology that in some ways, 15, 20 years ago, if someone would have told me about the internet, I would have said, ‘I don’t know anything. There’s no way." And now Tony was talking about science fiction, ‘No, Jim, this is not science fiction, this is science fact.’ They handed me a plethora of magazines, and I went through them, and said, ‘This is unbelievable where they’re about ready to go.’ So he wanted us to believe in that four-day window.
Q: Do you believe in destiny?
JC: Do I believe in destiny? I don’t know, I guess that it’s more about the daily choice that you make – you make good choices, and bad choices, and hopefully the good choices win out.
Q: Did you like playing the bad guy?
JC: It gives you – this is what it feels like: he has to be right 100% of the time, I only have to be right once. And that’s kind of an interesting thing when you think about what these guys go through that are federal agents or police officers finding the bad guys. Bad guys don’t have laws, and they make them up, and they change daily.
Q: Have you been back to Switzerland since the last time?
JC: No, I have to go there. I haven’t been back there yet. When I go back there, I’ll go to Graben.
Q: And you’ll bring your family and your child?
JC: Yes, absolutely.
Q: Thank you.
JC: Thank you very much.
"Déjà Vu" opens in theaters on November 22nd. Be sure to also read our inteviews with Denzel Washington, and Paula Patton. Everyone has experienced the unsettling mystery of déjà vu – that flash of memory when you meet someone new you feel you’ve known all your life or recognize a place even though you’ve never been there before. But what if the feelings were actually warnings sent from the past or clues to the future?
In the captivating new action-thriller from producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Tony Scott, written by Terry Rossio & Bill Marsilii, it is déjà vu that unexpectedly guides ATF agent Doug Carlin (DENZEL WASHINGTON) through an investigation into a shattering crime. Called in to recover evidence after a bomb sets off a cataclysmic explosion on a New Orleans Ferry, Carlin is about to discover that what most people believe is only in their heads is actually something far more powerful – and will lead him on a mind-bending race to save hundreds of innocent people.
