Vince Vaughn: People Online Daily

People Online Daily

Interviews by Laura Smith Kay

CLAY PIGEONS

Vince Vaughn, Joaquin Phoenix and Janeane Garofalo talk about their new black comedy

"Using daylight is sort of like slipping a sedative into the movie," says director David Dobkin. "It relaxes everyone, so you're not expecting certaing things [like Vince Vaughn, left, and Joquin Phoenix, right, finding a corpse] to happen."

The black comedy Clay Pigeons wants to shoot holes in your timeworn movie assumptions. The hero, played with intense befuddlement by Joaquin Phoenix, is likable enough but not the swiftest tumbleweed on the prairie. The usually wise-cracking Janeane Garofalo gives a straight portrayal as a no-nonsense FBI agent (except when she puffs on some confiscated weed). Perhaps the only traditional element is the Stetson-hatted lady killer, played by Vince Vaughn.

Unpredicatablity is just what director David Dobkin was after. "I wanted everyone to be different than what they appear to be -- the FBI agent who smokes pot, the small town sheriff who seems slow but is the one who figures [the murders] out in the end," Dobkin says. Indeed, the first-time director works hard at tweaking movie tropes (at least pre-Scorsese ones) -- undercutting dazzling sunshine with murders, murders with seemingly wholesome country-and-western and Pat Boone tunes -- making the film a tough sell to distributors.

"It's not really a thriller, it's not really a murder mystery, it's not classic noir and it's not really a comedy, though it is humorous," says Dobkin. So what is Clay Pigeons, then? Suffice it to say that in a tiny, panoramic town in Montana, dead bodies keep appearing to the well-intentioned Clay (Phoenix). Not long after, a smooth-talking neo-cowboy (Vaughn) aggressively befriends him, not long after that the Feds (led by Garofalo) aggressively investigate him. And that's just the beginning ...

Q&A with Janeane Garofalo

Janeane Garofalo's brand of savvy, acerbic humor, honed by countless hours of stand-up and banter with pals like Ben Stiller, has saved more than a few otherwise dopey films (remember The Truth About Cats and Dogs?). But in Clay Pigeons the rebellious, outspoken comic expands on a new type of role -- a straight-up dramatic one. Following her turn as a law enforcer in last year's Cop Land, Garofalo plays the ultimate authority figure in Pigeons: a no-nonsense FBI agent.

The pint-sized actor is happy to be stretching her image beyond the prickly, Gen-X mislabel so often attributed her since Reality Bites, but that doesn't stop her from cutting up. She can lay claim to the film's funniest scene (involving pizza, a vibrating bed and a joint) and easily quips on the fly about everything from Ally McBeal to nudity in films. The 34-year-old onetime bike messenger, sporting her trademark dyed black hair, cords and platform shoes, recently spoke with Laura Smith Kay of PEOPLE Online.

PEOPLE Online: You've said it was important to have a strong woman in Clay Pigeons, a story where women are mostly murder victims. Did that work out as you'd like it to?

JG: Oh, I don't know if it worked out, but I just had to be in the movie. I wanted to work with Vince and Joaquin and David because I liked them. And I thought [the FBI agent] has to be a girl, and it has to be me. It just makes me angry that these girls are getting killed -- nobody seems really upset.

PEOPLE Online: [Director] David Dobkin has been raving about your performance in this movie. Do you agree that you've hit new highs as an actor?

JG: [Laughs] I thought I was horrible, but I have to say that. Could you imagine if I said, 'I thought I was really good. I really liked my work in this.' I actually don't like my acting as a rule. I shouldn't say I'm bad; [my colleagues] will be mad at me. I was excellent in this movie. It's the best of all the FBI agents I've played. [Laughs]

PEOPLE Online: This character, unlike many of your roles, wasn't comic. Do you want to do more like it?

JG: Oh yeah, yeah. And I've done some that haven't been released yet: The Midas Man and The Bumblebee Flies Anyway, which are dramas, and I'm shooting Abbie Hoffman. But I tend to gravitate toward comedies, I just find them more enjoyable, and I'm not interested in movies that get into it with nudity and violence, and that tends to be dramatic.

PEOPLE Online: Do people advise you to do more big budget movies?

JG: Oh yeah, anybody's agent would love it if they did more. The next movie I'm doing, Mystery Man, is a studio film. But I don't get a lot of offers in that milieu, and a lot of studio scripts are just not interesting.

PEOPLE Online: Do you ever think of solving that problem by writing your own script?

JG: I'm not interested in writing a script and making a film, and I've come to the conclusion that I wish more people felt that way. I get all these scripts, and I'll give them a good college try but godd--- it! [worked up] Why do you think this story needs to be told? All these students with these aspirations who are just as hacky as [producer Jerry] Bruckheimer, they just happen to be in school. They put every waking moment, their blood, sweat and tears, to get the most mediocre vision realized. It just drives me nuts. There's nothing worse than a dreamer or a true believer that writes a script, except for a dreamer that's had their heart broken. Those scripts are the worst.

Sometimes you'll see a movie that blows your mind, that also makes you not want to make a movie because it's too good....I'm not even going to throw my hat in the ring.

PEOPLE Online: How did you like filming in Utah?

JG: I loved it, that's where I got my dog. It was beautiful. I enjoy location living, though. I enjoy living in a hotel with the whole cast and crew, like a dorm.

PEOPLE Online: You once said there's nothing worse than being directed. Do you still think so?

JG: Being directed is just irritating to me because of my personality. Obviously it has to be done, I realize that. But this is the worst: The director will come over with the script and this perplexed look, like 'How do we make this better?' What they're trying to communicate is 'No, whatever you're doing no,' but they don't even know what to say. That drives me up the wall, because I feel fine. I did it that way for a reason. Essentially what is being said is, 'I don't like what you just did.' And because I get embarrassed very easily, I just get embarrassed. And then my performance is inhibited.

PEOPLE Online: It must be hard to ignore your instincts.

JG: Oh yeah, yeah. But I've been wrong so many times; I watch a performance [thinking], 'I shouldn't have done that. He was right and I fought him on that.'

PEOPLE Online: Are you as self-conscious acting as you once were?

JG: I'm not uncomfortable in front of the camera....I don't feel as embarrassed about certain things, like kissing, where I used to be like 'Oh my God, I don't believe I have to make out with him.' But I did talk the director of Abbie Hoffman out of sex scenes. I can't make that leap of nudity, because I'm still me. I still have to go to Starbucks in the morning, and my dad's still going to go to the movie. I'm not that kind of actor yet where I can go, 'That's not me.' That's still my ass. I can't live a life among people and be nude on the big screen. David Duchovny was right when he said, "The only time an actor really needs to be nude is if the movie's called Before There Were Clothes." You don't have to do it, and if you meet nice directors, enlightened directors, they'll concur.

PEOPLE Online: What do you think about people dubbing Ally McBeal a feminist show?

JG: I don't like Ally McBeal. Not the person, I like Calista Flockhart fine. I just don't buy that empowered women nonsense. It doesn't make me feel better to see an anorexic in a short skirt. It's obviously written by a man -- the baby fever, or when she wishes her breasts were bigger? Is she supposed to be speaking to me? It's a smarter than average show for sure. But I don't believe it is a feminist show.

PEOPLE Online: You're so busy, working on back-to-back movies -- is that intentional?

JG: I try to keep busy because eventually, people lose interest. Luckily right now, I can keep working, so I want to keep doing it until I can't, because then I'm going to be bummed out.

Q & A with...Joaquin Phoenix

Joaquin Phoenix is is no stranger to playing the small-town dupe -- the role that changed his identity from simply being the brother of the late River Phoenix to being an actor in his own right was in To Die For. In that, Nicole Kidman convinced Phoenix's unworldly teen to off her husband. In Clay Pigeons Phoenix isn't lacking a moral compass, though, just the smarts to keep away the appearance of trouble.

No one seems to question Phoenix's savvy in his career, though. Like his three sisters and River, Phoenix has acted since childhood. After living in South America and Florida with his missionary parents, he appeared in TV series and movies of the week from the age of 8. But instead of going the child-star wash-up route, Phoenix put himself on Hollywood's map. Besides 1995's To Die For, he did Return to Paradise and Inventing the Abbotts. He also boosted his personal life with the latter; Phoenix and costar Liv Tyler met on the set and have been a high-profile couple ever since. Though the 23-year-old actor often looks scrappy on the big screen, his off-beat sense of humor and rough-hewn good looks landed him in a Prada campaign not so long ago. Phoenix recently spoke with Laura Smith Kay of PEOPLE Online.

PEOPLE Online: Much has been made of the fact that you and Vince Vaughn did Clay Pigeons and Return to Paradise back to back and that you became friends. How did that happen?

JP: It was coincidental. I know that Vince likes to think that he got us together again [in Return to Paradise], that he said, "Joaquin -- he's a talent, you want him in this movie." But the director didn't even know that we had finished shooting Clay Pigeons....So it was organic, which was really nice.

PEOPLE Online: You recently finished shooting 8MM, a Joel Schumacher movie. What's the difference between making a big movie like that and something small like Clay Pigeons?

JP: The amount of time -- we shot Clay Pigeons in six weeks with six-day weeks, so it was really brutal. It was a much longer shoot for 8MM. Here's the thing: In 8MMyou get the trailer, it's grand. In Clay Pigeons, they say, "If you don't mind, share with Vince, because your trailer's been repossessed." Literally.

PEOPLE Online: What's 8MM about?

JP: Nic Cage is a private detective hired when someone finds a snuff film in her husband's safe; she wants to know if it's real and if so who's the girl and who are the men who killed her. So he comes to Los Angles, where I work in a sex shop, and I become his guide to all these underground places. My character is really sad -- a character in a tragic situation is sad, but one who doesn't know it is worse. We get in way over our heads. I think it's great that he's paying me money, and I'm happy for that and to be out of the sex shop; I really think I'm a big man. But I'm ridiculous -- I have vinyl pants and pierced eyebrows and blue hair. He's such a sad little punk, he wants to be a rocker, to be Jim Morrison but he's got zero talent, he's never going to make it, so he has to laugh about it, to make jokes. He thinks that they're like a great team -- Starsky and Hutch or Jon and Poncherello.

PEOPLE Online: Is it hard to shake really intense roles, like your prisoner in Return to Paradise?

JP: Yeah, it certainly was. The first two weeks were a real state of confusion, and you're just trying to get through it because time will take care of it. But luckily I went into 8MM soon afterward, which was great, to roll that into another character.

PEOPLE Online: Is it difficult, after an intense shoot, to part ways with your costars?

JP: It's strange. On [the upcoming drama] The Yards, we all -- particularly Charlize [Theron] and me -- had really powerful scenes with each other, where you just know somebody's soul, completely exposed. And suddenly, everyone's packing up, "Yeah, we'll see each other," but it's never going to be the same. I don't know how much you know them and how much you know their characters. It's tough sometimes. I stay in touch. I talk to every director I've worked with, and a lot of the actors also.

PEOPLE Online: You've done your share of dark movies -- any interest in doing a big broad comedy?

JP: Absolutely. But the thing is, when are we going to find a Dr. Strangelove again? That's what I love, it really explores the characters. Some of the broader comedies are just kind of dumb. There's nothing wrong with laughing, but I'm really picky about dialogue.

PEOPLE Online: What excites you about being an actor?

JP: [Stage whisper] Everything. It's really hard to explain. When you work with people you admire -- really fantastic directors and writers and actors, it's just such a wonderful feeling wrapping for the day and walking out and talking and saying, 'Wow we're really bringing this thing to life,' and just being collaborative and creative and working hard. It's really a glorious feeling. I'm absolutely addicted.

PEOPLE Online: How do you develop a character?

JP: It depends on the character, but usually when I pick up a script the lines start coming out. I start talking a certain way, I start testing things, and then I start seeing them. The minute I read To Die For, I knew that I wanted the character to have that Billy Ray Cyrus sort of hair. So I had them put in some extensions and pierce the ear. I thought this was a really ridiculous hair style, and I still do. But it's funny, in Canada, I'm walking to the set laughing about it, and I look up and like 60 percent of the crew has this haircut -- the hockey cut.

PEOPLE Online: Given your busy shooting schedule, is it hard to keep in touch with your far-flung family and actress girlfriend [Liv Tyler]?

JP: It's not hard. [wryly] We have little gadgets that we can leave things on and say things. I'm always in touch. My younger sister was living with me when I was making The Yards. I'm going to get back soon and see my other sister. I'm seeing my girlfriend a lot now, she got done with work in London a couple of months ago so she's around, which is nice. So you always manage, and you just spend a lot of money on phone calls.

PEOPLE Online: You've managed to keep out of the tabloids -- is that due to a conscious effort?

JP: No, I think I'm just not that famous -- no one cares. You certainly can put yourself out there in certain places, certain functions where you're asking for it. People are not really interested in me, which is grand. I don't know what it is, but we love that. [claps]

Q & A with...Vince Vaughn

Vince Vaughn may share the same thumbnail description as, say, fellow budding star Matt Damon: He's Steven Spielberg-endorsed, Gus Van Sant-approved, a rising talent with pin-up looks and an actress girlfriend (Chasing Amy's Joey Lauren Adams). But that's pretty much where Vaughn's relationship to today's crop of floppy-haired idols ends. As he displayed in his breakthrough role as the retro Lothario in Swingers, Vaughn's appeal is his old-fashioned star quality -- he's solid (6'5" to be exact), intense, funny, suave, dark and seems to have completely missed the New Age psycho-babble movement. Vaughn's bootstrap mentality got him through almost a decade of guesting on bad TV shows before he made his own luck. Vaughn and his friend, actor/writer Jon Favreau, collaborated on Swingers, scraping together $250,000 to shoot and release the film in 1996. The surprise hit not only buoyed burgeoning cocktail chic, it also brought Vaughn to Spielberg's attention, landing him a role in The Lost World.

Vaughn parlayed that into back-to-back roles this year -- in the just-released Clay Pigeons and last month's Return to Paradise. In December the 28-year-old actor will be seen in one of the most talked-about roles of the year: as Norman Bates in Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho. Not bad for a kid from Illinois who thought he'd really made it when he landed a Chevrolet commercial in Chicago in 1989. The actor recently chatted with Laura Smith Kay of PEOPLE Online.

PEOPLE Online: Is Lester the bridge between your more stable characters and Norman Bates?

VV: I think Lester is a psychobilly Frankenstein because he's sort of taken things that he saw as masculine or heroic and ended up with this weird kind of combination of it all...western heroes, the cowboy imagery. I don't think he is a cowboy at all, but he's created this for himself -- a reality he needed to be.

PEOPLE Online: You've appeared in a wide range of movies -- from indies to The Lost World. How do you choose roles?

VV: By the material I like, and if I like what the director wants to do with it, and the people that I'd work with. I think I'm blessed in a way coming from Illinois and not growing up in Hollywood with the burden-of-the-actor [attitude], because I just do work that I like. Hell, I'd go see Star Wars or E.T., and then Tender Mercies or Cuckoo's Nest. I never felt like, "Oh I could never like that." So to go work with Steven Spielberg in a cowboys and Indians kind of way, except with dinosaurs and scientists, was fun, was exciting and so wonderful.

PEOPLE Online: So many of your characters are funny and charming, but also have a dark side, like Trent in Swingers.

VV: Trent is sort of a loser and unsuccessful in a traditional sense as an actor, so he's created this image of himself -- he always wears great clothes, he's great at video games, he's frustrated with his work so he has to impress you to feel powerful. And when he gets into the club he feels like he's out of Goodfellas, he's The Man. I've always thought of him as unevolved like a child, not malicious -- when that's stripped away at the end, he has a hard time looking Mike in the eye.

PEOPLE Online: So he's both cool and a loser.

VV: I think that's the beauty of everything. Elvis Presley I think is the coolest, but also I think that Elvis was very innocent and childlike, very much "Thank you." There's a sensitive warmth to him and almost a goofiness. Something that's really sick and sad and painful can be really funny too. So I think Trent is unevolved and sort of pathetic in those ways, but I think he is also kind of charming in a way, because he has layered these protective things on himself in a way that has style, versus just belligerence.

PEOPLE Online: How did you feel about Swingers becoming such a big deal?

VV: I was surprised by the whole thing, because me and [Jon Favreau] Favz sat in this room going, "That's funny. That's cool." And no one would make the movie. They'd read it and say, "Who's going to understand these expressions, 'You're so money'? There's no female in the group discussing her point of view." We're not excluding, we're just saying, let this be the truth for what it is. "There's no plot. Can't they get involved with a mobster?"

The story is that he's got to get over himself and the girlfriend and allow himself to be loved again so he can love again. And that's pretty universal. But make it as specific as possible to this underground scene. So to go from that to seeing expressions used by corporations selling stuff... It doesn't make me angry, it doesn't make me proud, it's just absurd.

PEOPLE Online: You're known as an improvisational actor. Did you improvise in Clay Pigeons?

VV: I did improvise some lines, but I also improvised stuff emotionally, meaning that I don't go into a scene saying, "I'm going to hit this moment no matter what you do." I don't know what the hell's going to happen. You let yourself go.

Like Norman Bates: "My mom is great, and she's upstairs, and I'd really just like to keep this polite, but don't ask about my mom too much, and my clothes aren't right." It's more fun, and I think it's more interesting to watch. Not, "OK now he's doing his mean thing, and now he's going to be funny."

PEOPLE Online: Have directors always been OK with that?

VV: Yeah, I don't think I'm destructive in the way I work. I do work within the structure of the thing and gear it toward the vision of the director.

PEOPLE Online: Do you want to get involved in other aspects of filmmaking?

VV: I wish I was more so, that's why I'm doing this Hassidic Western [Marshall Revelations] with Favz. In every movie I've done, my sensibilities on what should be given are different than what it's finally been. Not that I don't enjoy the stuff. But Swingers was a collaboration. I was allowed in the editing room. So we'll both be there saying, "Oh don't put the camera there, that's bulls---." "Oh, now you have a moment when you really learn and think." [laughs] There's respect, but no formality.

PEOPLE Online: You've worked with the same people on different projects -- Joaquin Phoenix on Clay Pigeons and Return to Paradise, Anne Heche on Return to Paradise and Psycho. How did that happen?

VV: It's a happy coincidence. I like both their work. It's funny, because it feels like community theater a little bit. It's like, "Who are we this time?"

PEOPLE Online: Were you nervous about taking on a classic like Psycho?

VV: Yeah. In music it's done all the time. Hank Williams sang "I Saw the Light." I enjoy Elvis's version of "I Saw the Light." Sinatra sang Elvis. A lot of bands go back and play songs... I think Gus [Van Sant] is going back to what inspired him, to pay tribute.

PEOPLE Online: Who is Norman Bates to you? VV: The suburban guy at the barbecue: "Everything's great. This house is a great house, and everyone's happy here. Are you happy? I want you to be happy. I want to convey that I'm a nice guy and you're great," because underneath it all there's' so much f------ bad.

PEOPLE Online: You have a great comic sense -- would you do a big comedy?

VV: I like comedy that comes from reality. I'm not big on banana peel slips, just my taste. I don't find it funny. But when there's a truth to it, a pain to it, it's situational, character-driven, I think it's funny as s---.

PEOPLE Online: You used to act out westerns as a kid, right?

VV: My dad loved westerns. So I'd come in the room and say, "Get up you lowdown Yankee liar." That kind of thing. And he'd laugh.

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