Michael Stuhlbarg Interview, A Serious Man

Imaginatively exploring questions of faith, familial responsibility, delinquent behavior, dental phenomena, academia, mortality, and Judaism - and intersections thereof - A Serious Man is the new film from Academy Award-winning writer/directors Joel and Ethan Coen. MoviesOnline sat down this weekend with the film’s star, Tony Award nominee Michael Stuhlbarg, to talk about his experience making the film and working with the Coen brothers.

A Serious Man is the story of an ordinary man’s search for clarity in a universe where Jefferson Airplane is on the radio and F-Troop is on TV. It is 1967, and Larry Gopnik (Stuhlbarg), a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith (Sari Lennick) that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous acquaintances, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), who seems to her a more substantial person than the feckless Larry. Larry’s unemployable brother Arthur (Richard Kind) is sleeping on the couch, his son Danny (Aaron Wolff) is a discipline problem and a shirker at Hebrew school, and his daughter Sarah (Jessica McManus) is filching money from his wallet in order to save up for a nose job. Struggling for equilibrium, Larry seeks advice from three different rabbis about how to cope with his afflictions and become a righteous person – a mensch – a serious man.

In 2005, Michael Stuhlbarg was a Tony Award nominee and a Drama Desk Award winner for his performance in Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman, staged by John Crowley. He has also been honored with the New Dramatists Charles Bowden Actor Award and the Elliot Norton Boston Theatre Award, the latter for his performance in Long Day's Journey into Night. The actor's other Broadway credits include the National Actors Theatre productions of Saint Joan, Three Men on a Horse, Timon of Athens, and The Government Inspector; Ronald Harwood's Taking Sides, staged by David Jones; Sam Mendes' revival of Cabaret; and Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love, staged by Jack O'Brien.

His films include Ridley Scott's Body of Lies, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio; Boaz Yakin's A Price Above Rubies; Antonio Campos' Afterschool, which was showcased at the 2008 New York and Cannes International Film Festivals and will be released in the fall of 2009; Sophie Barthes' Cold Souls, with Paul Giamatti and David Strathairn; and Martin Scorsese's short homage to Alfred Hitchcock, The Key to Reserva. He recently re-teamed with Mr. Scorsese, costarring in the latter's just-wrapped cable pilot Boardwalk Empire. He has also made guest appearances on such television series as Damages and, most recently and memorably, Ugly Betty.

Mr. Stuhlbarg received his BFA from The Juilliard School. He also studied at UCLA; at the Vilnius Conservatory in Lithuania's Chekhov Studies unit; at the British-American Drama Academy at Baliol and Keble Colleges in Oxford; and, on a full scholarship, with Marcel Marceau.

Michael Stuhlbarg is a terrific actor and we really appreciated his time. Here’s what he had to tell us about “A Serious Man”:

Q: Michael, how did you get your first leading role in a film with the Coen brothers? Is this just good karma or did you do a mitzvah that got you this?

MS: I hope so. Goodness gracious. I guess it’s sort of a series of events of the stars aligning up in some ways. If you go back to the very beginning of this, I worked at a little Off-Broadway theater company called The 52nd Street Project which is a theater for kids who are from age 8 to 17 and they write plays and get professional actors and directors to come in and act them out and direct them. A lot of people in the entertainment community love the gig and have a great time doing it and I met Francis McDormand there. Francis is married to Joel. We became friendly and that was about it. I’ve worked with them off and on for the last ten years. Then, by chance, I get cast in a play with Francis, a workshop of a new play at Lincoln Center, so we got to be friendly there and then she invited Joel to come see me in a play at the Atlantic Theater Company, David Mamet’s adaptation of Harley Granville-Barker’s play, The Voysey Inheritance. And then, I think they had seen me in The Pillowman on Broadway as well and I got to know them a little bit socially.

I always hoped I’d get a chance to work with them and then I got a call out of the blue to say “Come in and audition for the part of the husband in the Yiddish parable at the beginning of the movie. I had to learn that whole scene in Yiddish and so I went to a tutor and l learned the whole scene in Yiddish. I came back and did it for them and they laughed a lot and that made me really happy. And then, they said they weren’t sure at that point if they wanted an actor who could learn it or somebody who could speak it fluently and they ended up going with folks who could speak it fluently, rightfully so. And then, four or five months passed by and they said they wanted me to come in and read for the part of Larry and for Uncle Arthur and I did. I learned three scenes of each and I did all those scenes and they laughed a lot and I was very happy again. And then, I kept asking periodically if I was still in the running and I kept hearing back, “Yeah, you are.” And then eventually I heard, “You’re going to get one of these parts. They aren’t sure which one you’re going to get.” So, I started working on both of them. And then, about six weeks before they started shooting, I got a call from Joel saying “We’ll put you out of your misery. You’re playing Larry.” And that’s how it happened.

Q: Deep down inside, did you have a preference for Larry over Uncle Arthur?

MS: I really didn’t. I would’ve been glad to have done either one. It just so happened that they felt I was more right for Larry and they had found Richard Kind for Arthur and they felt like our balance together was a really good balance so that’s how that worked out.

Q: Can you talk about what it was about the character that resonated with you?

MS: Well, I guess in some ways he resonates kind of I imagine with everybody in the sense of him going along in his life thinking that his life is one thing and then he gets some curve balls thrown at him and he has to make the best of them and sort of go along and do the best he can. I guess we can all sort of empathize with that when that happens to us in our lives. I knew nothing about physics, for instance, and I found a physics professor to help me learn about that, to explain Schrodinger’s paradox – Schrodinger’s Cat and the uncertainty principle. I don’t know. I guess I asked Joel and Ethan a lot of questions and found my way into him and tried to put myself into whatever situations that Larry found himself in and tried to react and respond as truthfully as possible.

Q: What are Joel and Ethan like on set?

MS: They are very hands off and very respectful of everybody – from the person who moves a cord from here to here to, you know, everyone is just a part of the team. As far as the actors are concerned, they are very discerning in terms of trying to find the right actor for a role. But, once they do that, they really love to get questions from the actors so I’d ask them a ton of questions and then they just let me do my thing. They said if they had another option or another idea about a possibility, they’d say, “Oh, that was great. Now here’s another idea. It could be this way, too. Let’s try this.” So, I’d do that. It was all very collaborative and easy.

Q: You’re so acclaimed in your theater work. After The Pillowman and your Tony nomination, all of a sudden TV and film opened up for you as opposed to more theater roles coming along. Do you have any kind of hypothesis as to why that occurred?

MS: I guess it just became one of those circumstances where people in another medium of film and television heard about the play, came to see the play and were kind of provocative and were interested. So, some doors opened for me in terms of that and then I started getting some opportunities that I had never had before and I took advantage of those. And, in terms of the plays that came around, I became a little more discerning I think in terms of the kind of work that I wanted to do. Theater is, you know, deep in my blood and I’ve done it for a very long time and I take it very seriously. When I devote myself to it, I try to do it one hundred percent. I’m getting older (laughs) and the amount of energy that I have to expel I am trying to use a little bit more judiciously and I’m choosing my projects, I guess, more judiciously because now more doors have been opened to me. That’s how it’s gone that way.

Q: How would you say your work and grounding in theater informs your work in film?

MS: Well, I find that my work in both mediums is pretty much the same. It’s my job to bring a character to life. How that character is received is a little different. You know, the person in the back of the second balcony needs to be able to receive what I’m doing in a Broadway house, whereas if I’m making a film or a television show, the audience is somewhat smaller and I have to do much less. But, they really feed off each other in a beautiful way. I know that my film and television work tend to make my theater work more simple. And, my theater work tends to ground me in a way that informs my film and television work. So, I think I want to continue to do all of it.

Q: It’s well known that at one time in your life you wanted to be an artist or a cartoonist and, with every character that you portray on stage, you always draw a sketch of yourself in character. Did you do that as Larry Gopnik?

MS: I did. I did indeed. It’s a great place for me to start in terms of getting at and putting ideas on paper and dreaming, that whole wonderful period of time when someone says, “You got the part” and you haven’t started shooting yet or you haven’t started rehearsing it for a play or whatever. It’s kind of a dream time when you can do it. It can be anything you want it to be. And then, over the course of asking questions, it becomes more and more defined. I find that to be true with my sketching as well. He could look like this, he could look like that. He could wear a sweater, he could have glasses. His hair could be this way or it could be that way. It’s sort of fun for me to just put it down and then show it to the designers and see if they respond to it or not. Sometimes they do and sometimes they could care less (laughs) because they have strong ideas, too.

Q: With the character of Larry, did anything that you put down in your sketches make its way into the look of Larry?

MS: His palette was somewhat simple, but yeah, I think we all had similar ideas about what he might be like. How far those ideas would be dependent upon the collaboration of the artists involved -- Mary Zophres, who was our Costume Designer; Frida AradOttir, our Hair Designer and head of the whole hair company who was fantastic; and Jean Black, who was head of make-up – as well as myself and with Joel and Ethan. All of us collaborated together. I drew little curls on top of Larry’s head and we sort of determined which way they’d go and what it might look like. I thought Larry might have no glasses and I thought Arthur would have glasses and, as it ended up, it was the opposite. So, you never know.

Q: This film is like the wine that Sy Ableman brings you and says it has to breathe before you can really take it all in. What did you take from this film? Is it that life is difficult and you have to get through it and just when it gets bad, it can get worse? Or, is it that life is hard and you have to live it the best that you can?

MS: The quote at the very beginning of the movie, I think, has a lot of resonance, both for me and for the little Yiddish parable in the beginning as well as the rest of the film:  Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you. I mean, it’s a Talmudic scholar, Rashi, whose quote it is and I think it’s a good place to start in terms of understanding what the film is exploring and also a way to live one’s life in many ways.

Q: As you were reading the script, you must have had ideas about where the film was going. What was your experience when you read it for the first time?

MS: You know, I just enjoyed it for its individual nuances. I didn’t look for a meaning behind it. I didn’t look for a message. I just found it to be so funny. I just kept laughing and that’s a huge kind of Geiger counter for me in terms of how I respond to stuff. If it makes me laugh, you got me. It’s like that’s where I live. A sense of humor saves me from everything. (Laughs)

Q: But your character barely laughed throughout the entire movie.

MS: Well, on screen, yeah. (Laughs) But I laughed a lot off screen.

Q: I have to ask, did you get to climb up on the roof yourself?

MS: I sure did.

Q: And how much fun was that?

MS: It was fantastic!

Q: How high did the insurance premiums go to have you do that?

MS: Oh my goodness, that’s nothing compared to what other people have to do. I would’ve done so much. I was actually in the car when it was hit. That was more scary than being on the roof. I was sort of stuntman for a day which was kind of fun.

Q: Did you get a pay bump?

MS: I hope so.

Q: You should have.

MS: (Laugh) I should have.

Q: Did you have any training for that before they threw you in the car?

MS: No, they said “Just get in the car. We’re going to do something but you’ll be fine. Keep your seatbelt on though.”

Q: This movie is set in 1967. What was your experience of going into that time period midway between Madmen and Taking Woodstock?

MS: Well, Mary Zophres, the Costume Designer, had created for everybody these amazing clothing boards covered with pictures from the period in Minneapolis exclusive to the communities in which we were working. So, when we showed up on the first day to meet her, all our work was done for us. She’s brilliant at what she does and the stuff she found was so easy. When we put it on, it just made us feel like we were there. We didn’t have to do anything really. The constraint of the pants and the glasses, you know… We had books to look at. We talked a little bit about the social [aspects] and what was going on at that time. It’s mentioned briefly in Mrs. Samsky’s The New Freedoms that she brings up. It’s a fascinating time to find yourself in terms of dreaming on or thinking about what our country was like at that time – the conformity or perhaps the beginning of the lack of conformity and how a work-a-day professor’s life can sort of veer off and change in some ways and what that means within the context of the political situation within that time in the history of our country. It kind of mirrors it. His journey kind of mirrors it a little bit. It’s sort of like a left turn, so to speak, and a new adventure.

Q: How beneficial was it to you in character as Larry and to the film as a whole that you were actually filming in a local synagogue, in the Hebrew schools, and then having a Cantor and the actual Torah there during the Bar Mitzvah scene?

MS: Well, it certainly makes our job easier. You know, we don’t have to do anything in terms of thinking about I have to pretend I’m in a synagogue or anything. A really funny thing happened, too. When we were rehearsing the Bar Mitzvah scene and as Danny comes down from the pulpit after his Bar Mitzvah and he’s got his Kiddush cup in his hand and the whole congregation breaks in with Adon Olam, that hymn we’re all singing. Everybody knew it. They were actually members of the congregation. It was like all of a sudden they said, “So you guys all sing Adon Olam. Do you know it?” And the whole congregation jumped in and it was like you’re back in synagogue. It was crazy. It was like I just had flashbacks of my Bar Mitzvah and things like that.

Q: Did anybody drop the Torah at any time?

MS: (Laughs) Oh, no!

Q: That’s my favorite line in the whole movie: “That’s heavy!”

MS: (Laughs) Me too.

Q: There are not a lot of movies about the realm of Judaism. I loved how this film went from being in the Shtetl to being in the Synagogue and what it means to be a Jew in America, especially in the 1960s.

MS: Yeah. And also, it’s not a Hasidic story, you know, it’s not The Chosen or A Price Above Rubies or one of those other unique films. It walks that line of secular Judaism.

Q: Did you have any concern while you were making this film that you might be propagating some negative stereotypes?

MS: I don’t know. I take the point of view that they’re presenting these individuals who aren’t helping Larry very much, if we talk about the Rabbis, for instance. And, there are truths within archetypes, you know. That’s why they’re archetypes. But, I think they’re more human than that and also, they’re infused with a sense of mischief and a sense of love. It’s also Joel and Ethan who are creating them and they had a particular experience growing up in their community and I think that will reflect what is seen on the screen. So, I think there are truths and there are also fictions within them.

“A Serious Man” opens in theaters on October 2nd.