In the second and final part of our conversation with Dark Knight actor Andy Luther, we dive deeper into the hostage scene between himself and Heath Ledger, how his thoughts on the film has changed the past 10 years and what he's up to today.
The Dark Knight was directed by Christopher Nolan and first saw light in July of 2008. To this day, the film has earned more than $1 billion and is ranked No. 4 in IMDb's list of greatest films in history.
Zach Catanzareti: Where were you two during that scene? It looked like a meat factory room?
Andy Luther: It was shot in Chicago at the old post office station. I believe it's being turned into condos now. It's an old, historical building. A lot of scenes were shot in that, I believe the bank scenes were shot in that building. The meat locker scene, it was basically on the second or third floor in a room they basically turned into a meat locker.
Was it just you two in the room? He turns around and starts talking to the camera. Did everyone else leave and let you guys work it out?
It was all essential people in the room. The director was in there, I don’t even know if the assistant director was in there, but sound people. Everybody essential. That’s what’s happened after we did our first run-through -- I think some people cleared out because they thought, 'OK, this is going to be an interesting scene.' So, they wanted it quiet. I don’t know if Heath was like, 'Hey, you can see the crew when I flip the camera back.'
But those are things we worked out in the first take. By the second or third, everyone was on point. After they told me not to worry about camera angles or this stuff, I was like, 'Fine, I’ll let them do their jobs and I'll do mine.' That's what I’ve learned about being a professional, you have to know your role, stay in your lane and let everybody do their job. That’s how something great happens.
What kind of camera was used? I guess a small, homemade amateur camera?
Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the documentary on Heath Ledger where it shows him going around with a video camera all the time. It was very much that. He definitely knew his way around a video camera, shooting stuff, playing with me while he was filming. It was really quite fun. It was like a psychotic person grabbed a video camera and was like, 'I’m going to have as much fun with this tied-up person as I possibly can.'
His most captivating line was when he yelled "LOOK AT ME." I was looking at YouTube comments earlier and everyone was like, 'THAT’S what got me. Of the entire scene, it was when he yelled 'LOOK AT ME.'" When it came to you and that line, you looked terrified. You did it perfectly. I guess that was almost real, right?
Yeah. In the script, it was bolded, the 'look at me' when he yells that. Like I said, we had gone through it a couple times, but the first couple times he would [say quietly] 'look at me, look at me.' I just didn’t look at him. It says [in the script] that it's big so I’m going to wait until he does something to make me do something.
Man, he made me wet myself [laughs]. When he was like 'LOOK AT ME,' I was like, 'Woah!' That’s what I’m saying that if you focus on your attention, things happened. To me, it felt spontaneous.
He really led that scene. It was fun to work with him. It unfortunate what happen to him but he was a great person and very generous and gracious in that whole scene. In the trailer, the whole experience I had with him, even afterward, he walked down with you the entire way.
It was pretty humbling. Its great to be at this level because everyone is doing what they love and they’re so nice. I’ve also been told that is a rare experience on a set, even a typical Chris Nolan set.
Everyone knew it was a great script, a great movie. It's a superhero movie but I like to think it was one of the best ones.
I bet your family and friends have watched that scene. Have they given you any feedback on what they thought about that scene? I bet they’ve never seen you in a scene quite like that.
It was a big deal for a long time, people still talk about it. I’m on a construction crew now, I run a crew and every once in a while, people will find out about it and I get random people coming up behind me going, 'Oh my God! That was you!'
To me, it's always surprising because I thought it was such a small scene. It's nice to know, at some point in my career, I impacted people or made some kind of dent. For you to say it was a turning point in the film is how I felt about it, but to hear people say it, it's like, 'Oh OK, maybe that was a pretty cool thing.'
Aaron Eckhart once told Larry King -- he was in a scene with Heath in the hospital -- and how Heath would kind of walk around his bed and make weird noises and do weird things with his face and hands. Was he in character a lot around you?
Only when filming. I remember -- this is kind of a faded memory now. But when we started our scene, they were like 'Action!' And all I hear is this, 'WAAAAAAAAA WAHHH WAHHH WAHHHHHH"
"And then, next thing you know, here comes the Joker."
But before that, it was Heath Ledger talking to you in Joker makeup, you know?
As far as him staying in character the entire time, that may have developed along the movie, I can’t speak to that. But for me, he seemed to be able to go back and forth quite simply. When an actor's performance develops, the more they get into it. That stuff may have happened.
During the scene, I’m sure if you were able to watch all the outtakes, you would see him pulling those antics and things like that.
But yeah, he did kind of like a weird spiral-dance thing and next thing I knew, he was coming across the room to put a camera in my face. It reminded me to when I was younger and I used to take big risks. This set, I was just sitting in a chair with my arms tied behind my back, so there’s not a lot of movement. But how cool it would be to be at that level and be able to make those kinds of choices and have that confidence.
I feel it would be tough to do that when you’re working with someone like him. You said you’re watching him going 'Wow.' All we do is watch, but you were there in person. What was it like working with someone who was so committed?
As an actor in the moment, you try not to get lost in that kind of stuff. You analyze it retrospectively. In the moment, you don’t. What it does to you as an actor in the moment, it helps you raise your game. If this guy is going to take this seriously, I’m going to take seriously. it becomes a tennis ball and the end is great work.
After we did our eight to 11 takes, there was a gasp that went out of the room because everybody was confident they had it. But Heath wanted to keep doing it again and again and again. Chris Nolan was like, 'Yeah, we got what we wanted, you guys can play around with whatever you want and if something comes out of it, we'll keep it. Right now, we're confident, you can stop whenever you want.'
As far as watching Heath -- once you’re in the cast, you’re invited back, you can get on set and watch people work. I did that one time, it was the night they were flipping the truck over and I caught the end of him doing his machine gun scene, the truck flips over and the Batman is coming at him.
I was like, 'Wow, this character has really evolved in a terrifying way.' The way he was committed to it, you could tell his confidence had gotten stronger as well.
To be in those shoes after Jack Nicholson. Everybody was comparing him to Jack Nicholson before he even got a chance to show them his work. To see him rise above that and focus on his Joker was enlightening to me as an actor. You’ve got to do your thing.
Was that the only scene you saw before the final product?
Yeah, I didn’t see the final product. They had a screening for the crew in Chicago and I went and saw that. I didn’t even watch my performance the first time until it came out on DVD and I could watch it by myself. I didn’t know I was one of those actors, but there were some things I thought in retrospect, 'Oh, it would’ve been cool if I did this or that.' The end of the day, I accepted it was a decent performance people responded to.
There was one shot when he set the camera down on my legs, I was doing the screaming and things like that and that was the only direction Nolan gave me, he said, 'If you’re conscience of him setting the camera down by your feet, it would be great to see while you’re screaming to see your legs do something.' I sat there like a rock, I didn’t even think about that.
That was a lesson to me on set. You have to act with your whole body. The more you get captivated in that make-believe world, the better off you’ll be as an actor.
Since then, unfortunately, we lost Heath the January before Dark Knight came out. How did you find out about his death?
People texted me because I wasn’t a big Facebook person at the time, social media person. They texted me saying, 'Hey, did you hear about Heath?' I found out pretty quick, but I found out when everyone else did, I didn’t have any inside-scoop or anything.
I was very saddened by it because he had become a hero to me. The way he treated me, how gracious he was, just what a nice human being he was. He really had this aura that made you think everything was going to be OK and everything you did was great.
Damn, it's too bad that his life ended so short because I feel he had so much more to give. Instead of the Joker being one of the biggest things he did, it could’ve sunk back and been one of the smaller things because I really think he was on a trajectory to do pretty amazing things.
When did you first meet him?
I met him in the makeup trailer, I want to say June 14. I was in a buzz that day because I had my costumes fitted previously and they were like, 'You know, you’re going to be with Heath. He's in the trailer right now.' And I said, 'That’s OK, I’m not here to get autographs, I’m just here to do my job.'
I just sat there, got my makeup on. It took a while because they experimented with a few different things. They had to take down the makeup in how beat-up I was. Heath was talking about his garage band, skateboarding, things like that.
He had his own makeup artist and at one point he got up, walked over and said, 'Oh mate, they’re really doing a number on you.'
And I go, 'Yeah, I think you’re doing this to me!'
And he goes, 'Oh, that’s great mate, you want to go have a smoke?'
I said no and the makeup guy kind of hit me on the shoulder [kind of saying] if an actor like that invites you out, you should go out. After we got our make-up on, we had a little session before we went out.
It was business. After he had his make-up on, you could tell the mode was starting to swing to focusing on the scene. There was so much stuff happening in the background and they really minimized that room for us. It was a special moment for me. I look back and I know it was cool that I got to experience that even at the 1/10th of what I could’ve if I pursued acting. I’m glad I had that experience.
Did you have any experiences with Christian Bale, Christopher Nolan as well?
Yeah, Chris Nolan, too. His attitude and Heath's were one of glee, you could tell they were enjoying doing the film. Cillian Murphy is someone I got to spend a lot of time with, I thought I spent the most time with him on a set.
I loved watching his work now because I actually got to spend an entire day with that guy on a set. He would tell me, they’d give you director chairs to sit in and I told him that I was too small on the totem pole and he goes, 'Hey mate, that's your chair over there. You should probably sit in it. And it's OK to ask for things, if you want water, let they get water because they want to do something.'
We were both smokers at the time and we would have a couple smokes. He'd ask me, 'So, what is your experience like with this?' And he told me about his family, he had a boy at the time. It was just interesting.
And Christian Bale, to him, I have to say I was starstruck at the time. He is an incredible actor and someone I really looked up because of his style and how he gets into things. It was intimidating working with him, but he was very professional. I didn’t have the personal interaction with him, he had a lot of places to be.
I got to work with him in that scene, we did that take four or five times. [I say] 'What the difference between you and me?' [And he says] 'I’m not wearing hockey pads.' Those things where you can barely hear each other because you’re so far apart.
All around, it was a great experience. It's taken years to process all the little nuances that went on. It was a great opportunity for me and an experience I'll never forget.
That was my final question about how you’ve processed this. Its been 10 years and how your thoughts of your experience have changed over the years. Does it seem like a second life to you?
First of all, it doesn’t seem like 10, 11 years. He shot it in 2007, so it's been 11 years. Its such a popular movie and the funny thing is we're still getting residual checks for it. I’ve been told for years that those are going to run out and they keep coming.
Having that big of a thing happen in your career so early, right out of college, it put things in perspective for me. I got to see the hills I had to climb at the age I was. 'What can I actually get out of this?' I have always compared my other experiences to that one, but the ones I had after that, I brought more confidence to the set, more confidence in me and my choices.
It's something I look back on fondly. I’ve stepped away from it, I’m a character actor. I know I’m a utilitarian actor and I feel I could step right back into it if I want on my terms. I don’t have any spouses or children so my debt is all on me. It got to the point where I knew I had another career that I knew could take off.
Is that one of the reasons you chose to step away, to do something new?
I had a multi-million-dollar opportunity come my way and it required all my attention. Now, I have the responsibility of 30 + workers, I run an installation group and it s requires more of my time. It's a way to get some security.
It does tie back to the whole Dark Knight experience because when I got out of grad school, I had that feeling of security. I didn’t have any debt, I was able to focus 100 percent on my acting. The result was the scene people say turned the mood, so to speak. It turned the mood of the whole picture. I felt like a trained actor coming out.
I have an opportunity again to do that with my business. Everything I’ve learned through acting, I take with me every day, even if it's just recognizing when someone is upset, it affects your life.
I guess you’re a big movie watcher now and some sports as well?
Yeah, I’m a big Cleveland Browns fans, Cleveland Indians fan. All my sports teams are Cleveland, you can share in my misery there. Film is something to this day, it relaxes me. Post-retirement, one of the things on my bucket list is to take improv training in Chicago, audition and try to go through those two-year programs. Improv is something I’ve always wanted to do, I was told that was a skill I already had.
That is something I will go back to someday and maybe I’ll do improv comedy for a nursing home or something when I’m older [laughs].
(Below is some of Andy's work in 2013 and '14)
No comments:
Post a Comment