Interview: Dustin Hoffman & Gene Hackman
The veteran actors discuss living together in their early days of acting, working
together on Runaway Jury, gun control, and more.
by Steven Horn
     
October 16, 2003 - Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman. Take each on his own
merits and you've got enough acting experience to fill volumes. Put them together
in the same room, like Fox did for their upcoming Runaway Jury release and you've
got pure electricity. In a hotel dining room packed with journalists at New Orleans,
Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Hackman traded banter like a couple of seasoned pros. That
the two are longtime friends is evident in this transcript of their meeting.

Runaway Jury is a historic film in the sense that it is the first time the two master
thespians have ever acted together. Their meeting in the men's room of a courthouse
in the film is reminiscent of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino trading licks in Michael
Mann's Heat. (Check out our clip from the scene and an exclusive behind-the-scenes
look at its filming.) While the film itself may not stand the test of time, this meeting of
the two actors at the top of their game will be recognized as one of the greats.

Decades ago, Hackman and Hoffman were young actors living in New York City, trying
to make it in the theater world, when Hoffman moved in with Hackman briefly. "I slept
on his floor because he had this small bedroom ... he had this little teeny bit larger room
where there was the stove with a board over it where you would use to dry dishes. Next
to the stove was a tub which was also the sink and it had a board over it. So, I would have
to take a bath while they were making breakfast, and there was also a toilet next to the
bath, and all he's thinking about is that when I had to have my morning bathroom, I didn't
care whether they were making eggs or not. He's held that against me for forty years,"
Hoffman says.

Did the two have any sense back then that they would be such massively successful
and accomplished actors? "I would've been happy with an off, off Broadway job and that's
what happened," Hackman says. "We both started in something like that."

Hoffman continues, "Hackman lent me to Bob Duvall because it was the only way he
could get me out of his apartment. It's true. I was supposed to stay there for two days
and I was there for about three weeks. Bob was working all night at the post office,
Gene was working for the Greenwich Village Moving Company, I didn't have a job yet,
and the three of us went out together for years. Each one had a different acting gig.
This was coming off of the day with Tab Hunter and Rock Hudson and Troy Donahue
and good looking guys and Bonanza." "We were character types," he adds with a
augh: "meaning we're ugly."

"Speak for yourself," Hackman says.

"Well, I was more ugly. It's true. If God had come down and said, 'The three of you
sign a contract now, you will never get very far, but you'll work. I'll give you a part in
an off, off Broadway show for the rest of your life,' we would've signed in a New York
minute. I still don't understand it [the success]," Hoffman explains.

Asked what changed in the tide to allow them to be stars, Hoffman laughs and replies,
"A decline in the culture." Hackman says, "Everyone has a chance if you're lucky
enough to find the property and we all three individually were very fortunate."


 - © Monarchy Enterprises S.a.r.l. and Regency Entertainment

Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman in Runaway Jury"By the way," Hoffman adds, "just
a piece of trivia: the first time that we would have worked together would've been The
Graduate. Gene was cast as Mr. Robinson and we were in the third week of rehearsal,
we rehearsed for three weeks and it was at Paramount. Gene and I are in the Paramount
bathroom, and I think, in my memory, about six urinals separate us and he looks over at
me as he's taking a leak, saying, 'I'm going to get fired,' and I said, 'What are you talking
about?' He said, 'I'm getting fired today, I can feel it,' and he did, and that opened his
career up because Warren Beatty said, 'He's not doing it?' And he put him in Bonnie
and Clyde.

Why did Gene get fired from the film that made Hoffman a household name? "He's not
a good actor!" Hoffman laughs. "We've known each other for years."

Says Hackman, "I got fired, I think, because I just didn't fulfill the director's and the writer's
idea of what the part should've been. In rehearsals, I do a lot of searching around, I try not
to perform and I really feel confident in what I'm doing. I mean, you can go first day and
perform and probably won't go further than that. But the way that we were all trained in the
Fifties and Sixties, you needed to keep searching and so, I was doing that, and they
decided that I was just taking too much time."

Hoffman says that when they lived in New York, "Gene moved furniture, and that was his
back-up. I kept saying, because he made good money relatively speaking, more than a
waiter would make, but the company that he worked for seemed to only move furniture for
the lower side tenements with no elevator. Gene would strap a refrigerator, I saw this, on
his back and he'd move up and down six flights. There was a very funny day that I said,
'Gene, you've got to let me go down there, I'm strong, I could do that s**t,' and he says,
'Alright.' He gets me on one day and he says, 'There,' and he gives me a box of books
and I took it upstairs, six flights, and I said, 'I'll see you later.'"

Hoffman explains how the two came together for Runaway Jury. "You know what happened
on this movie, he was cast before I was because they're trying to get a movie together. Then,
I get cast, and maybe I was one of the last principals to get cast. The director [Gary Fleder]
discovers that we knew each other years and years and years ago and hadn't worked together,
and goes back to the writer and says, 'We don't have a scene for them together,' and he goes,
'Okay, we're going to write a scene,' and the director said, 'Take your time,' and decided to
shoot the scene, the bathroom scene the last day of the shoot. Gene finished his work weeks
before and I finished my work weeks before and now, we have to sit everyday, waiting as the
clock ticks. It's always nice to have a film over with and we show up to do the scene the day
before here in New Orleans. We admit to each other that we hadn't slept the night before,
how f***ing nervous we were and it's like eight pages. We had to shoot eight pages, and we
weren't going to get through it, and so, we did the first take and we were terrible, both of us,
and we yet we embraced each other because we got through it. It was intimidating."

Why the trouble? "Well, first of all, it's hard to shoot a movie and break for a long time and then
come back and do, in a sense, one of the biggest scenes that each character had. I thought
about it and I think that in a funny way, Gene and I became very good friends very early and I
think that we have certain things in common. One of them is, part of you feels like you're never
going to work again. We've both always felt that way. It's a freak accident that we became stars.
It's a freak accident that we've been able to have a career and there is a part of us that always
feels like we're a fraud. That's enough to make you nervous."

Seasoned pros like Hackman and Hoffman get nervous? Hackman says, "I still [do]. When
I'm getting ready to do a scene, I have a kind of opening night jitters or whatever, but I like
that. That's part of the reason that I'm still in the business. There's something at stake, you're
not just showing up, you're not a day player, you're not just trying to make a living. The thrill
of that is that there's nothing like it, absolutely nothing like it."

Hackman's next asked what it was like working with John Cusack. Hoffman tells Hackman
"Make that answer quick so you can get back to [talking about] working with me." As Hackman
begins answering the question, saying, "John's an interesting actor–" Hoffman interjects with a
laugh: "Next question!" Hackman tells Hoffman, "He may be in the back," and continues his
answer. "John is an interesting actor and quite a good one, and I think that the movie really
relies a great deal on his performance. He's really talented."

What preparation can you do for characters like these? Hoffman replies, "Let me answer the
first part of this. When Gene and I spoke about being in this movie and we were here in New
Orleans, the first thing I said was, 'So, do you have any thoughts about your character?' and
he asked if I had thoughts about my character. The first thing that he said was ... 'I want to
make him human,' and that's why he's such a good actor. That's the first thing he said. I
just wanted to say that."

Hackman adds, "I think that pretty much says it all, in a way. I always try to find in these bad
guys something that's human that makes them even more diabolical. If you see someone
that's all bad, you kind of just put them in the monster category, but if you see someone who
is really bad, but is also a father and a grandfather and all of that, that's even worse, I think."

Hackman and Hoffman in Runaway JuryIn the film, Hoffman plays an honest lawyer. "Well, I
mean, it's a lawyer who gets a hit," he explains. "I felt the same thing that Gene did. I didn't
think of him as honest or dishonest. I thought of him as naive because something tells me he's
playing like the guy who doesn't believe that technology has even happened and all you need
is your own sense. I have a friend who's been a lawyer for thirty-five years. I was once arguing
with him about capital punishment and I said there are innocent people there and DNA is
proving it, and he said, 'No, no, no,' and he pissed me off so much, after about a half-hour, I
said to him, 'How can you feel this way?' and he just smiled, and said, 'Do you want me to
take the other side?' That's all they are. They're hired and they do it."

Runaway Jury deals with a manufacturer's potential responsibility for death caused by the use
of their product: guns. How does Hackman come down on the gun control issue? "Yeah, I'm for
that. There should be some control of how people acquire guns and that kind of thing. There are
just too many guns out there."

Hoffman chimes in: "I could talk for an hour on this because that was my character. I called up
the Brady Center for Control Against Gun Violence and the guy who ran it then was Dennis
Hannigan. I talked to him for hours, and I think that the director liked him and flew him out. We
learned about it and after I spent time with this ex-Congressman, Barnes, and my head is filled
with statistics and it's so interesting because more than eighty percent of Americans feel that
they're for more gun control. It doesn't happen because the NRA, the National Rifle Association,
is the most powerful lobby that exists. I mean, we're not talking about the right to bear arms,
the second amendment. It was initially conceived, as I understand it, because we needed a
militia and now, we have the National Guard. So, you can shoot down a plane, you can buy that.
They took it in '86 for Congress to pass legislation to no longer allow bullets that were especially
made only to pierce bulletproof vests and to kill cops. In '94, and you know, we have states rights.
You have a slaughter at a school with kids, and that state suddenly passes some legislation and
you have one in Stockton and that passes one, but with the Clinton administration, that was the
first time that there was some gun control passed. The NRA is so powerful that they told their
constituents, 'Okay, go ahead, but only give it ten years,' and that ten years is up next September.
In other words, Saturday Night Specials, assault type rifles, a five-day check, like Gene said, to
make sure that they don't have criminal background, that's up and already, the NRA is trying to
epeal that. Thirty people die, no, eighty people die every day in the United States from violence
with guns. Ten of them are kids. Thirty thousand, every year. These are statistics that I took
from the Brady Center. More people died last weekend from gun violence than in the entire
Iraq war. There are certain aspects in our society that remain hidden and we just say, 'What
can we do? There's nothing we can do about them.'"

What can a film do for an issue? Hoffman responds, "Well, it's like cigarettes. The Insider was
a good movie against cigarettes, and little by little, it's about increments. I mean ... no one is
saying that you shouldn't have a gun, but it's about money. I don't know what effect it's going
to have, but I don't think that it's going to hurt it."

Hackman and Hoffman have noticed a change in the way the "younger generation" approaches
acting. Hoffman says, "We came from the theater. I don't know if that exists now. When Gene
said off, off Broadway, we basically fought and wanted to be stage actors. We weren't trying
to get work in Hollywood. We were in New York and I think that maybe a big difference is that
they're film actors."

And Hollywood? How has it changed? Hoffman replies, "Well, in the business, I suppose that
demographics for a big, home run type of film is probably leading towards more of a younger
audience then when we started. Maybe even more technically oriented films with special FX
and so forth."

Does Hoffman miss working in film during the olden days? "Yeah, like Gene said, I mean,
we were not told that it was the Golden Age. We didn't know that it was then when we
started making movies in the Sixties and Seventies. I can't blame the studios, the average
budget is fifty million, then you have to market it and distribute it and it's eighty, ninety, a
hundred million and like Gene said, they have to fit it to those kids the first weekend. So,
it's home runs to use a baseball metaphor and in our day, you wanted to make a good
movie, get your money back and make a few dollars; a single, a double, a triple. That
doesn't exist today. That's why you have the independent film that you do. We miss them
a lot. I mean, he does the Royal Tenenbaums and he does it for free because he wants
to play the part."

Hackman in Runaway JuryHackman adds, "There is enormous pressure when you're doing
a film, a big budget film, and it keeps filtering down. Everyone feels it, the crew feels it, the
cast feels it and when you feel it as an actor, it affects your performance.

"And we hear a language that we never heard before," says Hoffman. "I mean, everyday,
you'd hear, 'Well maybe we should shoot that.' 'Well, we don't need it.' 'Yeah, but it'd be
good for the trailer.' I mean, they have to open the movie. It's a product and I'm not knocking
the studios. When it's that expensive, it's a product."
 
And audiences? How have they changed? "Well, the studios weren't too happy ... this last
summer. I think that every big budget movie, suddenly, every audience member turned ...
on those blockbusters or prequels or sequels. A couple of years ago the small budget movies
were getting the nominations and everything. I think that the audiences still want them. There's
an audience and then, there's the kids."

Hackman explains, "I think that the problem is, when you talk about the audience, is there
even an audience to see Dustin and myself in Inherit the Wind. It'd be great fun for us to do,
but it would have to probably have to be done with a very reasonable budget. He continues,
"A lot of actors older actors in Hollywood I think are resentful and by older, I mean, guys
who are like in their eighties because they missed the big bucks. The big bucks didn't
start until when?"

Hoffman replies, "Well, the studio system seven-year contract that started ending and that
took a few years. I think that it was Jaws, it started to open in two thousand theaters and
carpet bomb the nation."

Hackman shared his views on the lasting appeal of acting. "It's still kind of a narcotic. You
show up on a set and there are eighty people there waiting for you to do something fun and
as I've said before, the pressure of that is fun for me. I don't know, do you like that?"

Hoffman responds, "Yeah, we were out of the Kerouac generation and Ginsberg and the
beat generation. We were going to spend a lifetime being anti-establishment. That was the
pretense, On the Road, that's the generation that we'd come from. I've always said, as I'm
sure that Gene has, 'If you become an actor to make it, you're crazy.' Ten percent work when
we started and it's still true now. Ninety percent of the Screen Actor's Guild makes what,
seven, eight thousand dollars a year, and yet, there is a whole difference between actors that
just go into film; they want to be stars and all of that. I mean, we f***ing love it."

Has success changed Hackman? "I don't think that it's changed me as an actor. It's changed
me maybe as a person. There are a variety of different things that money brings or whatever,
but hopefully it hasn't changed me as an actor."

And younger actors? Do they ask their more seasoned peers like Hoffman and Hackman
for advice? "No actor has ever asked me for advice," Hackman replies with a laugh.

Hoffman shares, "When we started out, yes, we wanted to do good work, and we used to
have arguments and we were passionate, Duvall and Gene and myself, because each of us
had a different acting teacher who taught us a different technique or approach. We'd argue
whose was the best and we argued about who did better work and there was passion about
that. I have found that, I don't know, but they might come up to you and say, 'How can I
make it?' and we never talked in those terms – 'How do we make it?'"

Hackman agrees. "Yeah, a lot of young actors will come up to you and say, 'How do I get
started?' and I always tell them the same thing. I say, 'Go to New York, find a good acting
teacher.' 'Yeah, but I really want to go to California and do commercials,' and I'm like, 'Do
that then!'" he add with a laugh.

How have Hackman and Hoffman managed to stay in the business so long? Hoffman sums
it up succinctly: "It is amazing how we've retained our youth physically and it's mostly
testosterone, I would say."
 



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