TONIGHT
E-mail a friendJohn Turturro
airdate December 19, 2007
Actor John Turturro has been described as the go-to guy for volatile, complex characters. After receiving his MFA from the Yale School of Drama, the NY native first gained notice on the stage. He made his film debut in Raging Bull and became a favorite of filmmakers Spike Lee and the Coen brothers. His TV credits include ESPN's The Bronx is Burning and an Emmy-winning guest turn on Monk. Turturro has expanded his range to include writing and directing, with three features, including Romance & Cigarettes.
John Turturro
Tavis: I am pleased to welcome John Turturro to this program. The talented actor has starred in so many notable films including, of course, "Do the Right Thing," "Jungle Fever," "Barton Fink," and most recently the acclaimed miniseries "The Bronx is Burning." He's behind the camera for his latest film, which is called "Romance & Cigarettes." The film is already playing in New York and opens this weekend in Los Angeles. Here now a scene from "Romance & Cigarettes."
[Clip]
Tavis: First of all, an honor to meet you.
John Turturro: Oh, wow -
Tavis: I so enjoy your work.
Turturro: Thank you, I try.
Tavis: You do more than try; you do a great job. So you describe this film as a working class opera, which I find funny. I'll let you explain that in a second. But how many friends do you have? This cast is unbelievable.
Turturro: Well, not all of them were my friends. Some people I had met for the first time. I know, like, Aida Turturro and Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon, but a lot of people, actors are always looking to do different things, and obviously I can get the script into their hands. And when they read it, everyone said, “Wow, this is really interesting.”
So we did a reading of it and the Coen brothers were involved as executive producers; they helped me edit the film and helped me get the money and made a few casting suggestions. And they really liked the script and they said, “We're going to try to help you get the money for it.” And once people read it, they realized that it was - it's a love story.
It's kind of a love triangle, it's about a man who's married having this - who's basically a good man but he's having this torrid affair with this younger woman. And what I wanted to do is explore how people, regular people, use popular music to help them get through the day, to escape, to fantasize, to remember, to express how they feel when language feels - when language fails.
And I think that the potency of popular music, a three-minute song, has always been used that way. And a lot of us - I didn't grow up with an iPod, I grew up with 45s - I would put my 45 on in my bedroom or in my basement, and you could fantasize and you could be Fred Astaire or Willie Mays or whoever else you wanted to be.
And it's a very, very powerful thing. Music is emotional transportation, and you grow up - not with a lot of money. I grew up, like, near an airport and I never really ever went anywhere. We never went on a plane. We would go and watch the planes take off and land.
Tavis: And land, (unintelligible) you didn't go anywhere, though.
Turturro: We never went anywhere. And a lot of people didn't, because it was more expensive. But music was a way to fly and go to different places, and so I wanted to use that within this actually very - even though the movie's heightened and everything - as a way that people express themselves, and every day. SO they sing along like in the shower or on the radio.
Tavis: Your answer notwithstanding, I still stand by my point: it's an amazing cast. (Laughter)
Turturro: Well, it's a great - listen -
Tavis: James Gandolfini, Kate Winslet. You got everybody in this thing.
Turturro: Yeah, Christopher Walken, Buscemi, Mandy Moore, Mary Louise Parker.
Tavis: You were talking about music a moment ago and I like that description, which I have not heard before: music is emotional transportation. Do I have to give you attribution for that when I start using it?
Turturro: I think so; I'm copyrighted on that. (Laughter)
Tavis: I'll take that.
Turturro: All right.
Tavis: Music is emotional transportation.
Turturro: It is.
Tavis: Copyright belongs to John Turturro.
Turturro: That's right.
Tavis: That said, this soundtrack is pretty amazing.
Turturro: Right. Well, I wanted music that was stuck in the back of people's mind. I didn't want to have the most modern songs, because you associate certain songs with certain things that happened in your life. I also tried to pick songs that would help propel the plot, but I also chose people who have a kind of visceral quality, whether it's James Brown, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Jones, Janis Joplin.
Etta James actually was a big influence on the whole film, even though I didn't use any of her songs. I listened to her CDs every single day and I would read sort of a Charles Bukowski poem, and I would say, what would happen if Charles Bukowski, like, collaborated with Etta James or with Bruce Springsteen or James Brown? (Laughter)
I actually sent the script to Bruce Springsteen and he read it, because I said, “Well, maybe you want to be in it.” And he said, "No, man, I'm not a good actor, man." But he was nice enough to give me his song "Redheaded Woman" for a very modest price.
Tavis: Right. That was nice of the Boss.
Turturro: Yeah. And I also got to talk to James Brown a little bit. He was just worried about who was going to - because originally, James Gandolfini sings along to "It's a Man's World," and then we made it into a montage. And he was very concerned about who was going to sing -
Tavis: His song.
Turturro: - the song. And he kept saying, "Who's gonna sing it?" You know what I mean? (Laughter) "Who's gonna sing it?" I couldn't really - and I was a little nervous talking to him. I was, like, "What did you say, Mr. Brown?" And he said, "Who's gonna sing it?" I said, "Well, a guy -" and I got nervous, I said, "The guy on 'The Sopranos.' the big guy."
And he said, "Oh, he's bad," and he hung up on me. And I was, like - I had no idea. Like, well -
Tavis: Is that bad good or bad bad?
Turturro: I said, “Well, I know I was in there,” and then he said, “Yeah, James said you could have the song for whatever.” But he wanted to make sure if someone was going to sing along with it, who was the guy, had the right gravitas.
Tavis: Well, that's what an icon does. You've got to protect your stuff, man.
Turturro: That's right.
Tavis: You've got to protect your stuff. This is not the first film you've directed, but so many of us and most of your fans, I suspect, still know you primarily as an actor. How did the directing thing become of interest to you?
Turturro: Well, I wrote a movie years ago called "Mack." It was about my dad, it was about the world of builders. And we did it as a play and when the directors who I wanted to do it, whether it was Scorsese or Spike or the Coen brothers, they were all doing their own material. And they said, “Maybe you should think about doing it.”
And so I wound up doing a short. It was a story I wanted to tell, it was a world I grew up around. It's a world that has a variety of different kinds of people in it, and it's a very interesting place and very dangerous, and people have to struggle to build something. To build a bridge is a monumental undertaking. So from that experience, I don't know, it was just very interesting.
You get to learn a lot about yourself and who you are, and actually you're faced with the horror of what you think is interesting. You're like, oh my god, that's the way I really think? So I got a bunch of offers to direct after that and I really didn't want to. I've only wanted to do something that I felt very strongly about. And I did another movie, "Illuminata," and this is my third film.
But I'd like to do it a little more, I would. I like working with people and when you work with people like this, I didn't miss acting at all, so it was fine.
Tavis: You mentioned Spike earlier and it's impossible to have a conversation with you and his name not come up.
Turturro: Without Spike? Yeah.
Tavis: That collaboration over the years has been good for him and good for you, and good for us as viewers. Tell me about that relationship with Spike over the years.
Turturro: Well, I remember when he sent me "Do the Right Thing." He had seen me in a film called "Five Corners" that John Patrick Shanley wrote, and I think I threw my mother out the window or something. It was a great part, it was a great part. And when I read it, I realized - I said I grew up in a neighborhood which was basically - I grew up almost the exact - we're almost the exact same age. We're a month apart. He grew up in a neighborhood that was mostly Italians; I grew up in a neighborhood that was mostly Black.
So we had a lot of things in common and when he wanted me to do the movie, he offered me the role. And I said, “Well, I don't want the other brother, the first one.” I said, “I'd rather play the bad guy, the racist guy, because I think that's what the movie's about.” And we became very good friends on the movie because we just started talking about things and sharing a lot of growing up.
And he saw that I was not afraid to do what he wanted me to do and even go further than that, and then I wound up doing other movies with him, and "Jungle Fever" I did a lot of writing with him on it. I worked on it right from the beginning, before he had a script. He interviewed me about the whole theme and about my experience as a young man.
And I was like, I said, "I'm telling you all this stuff, Spike, but I don't want this to get out in the newspapers, now." (Laughter) But I really feel like he's someone I could have grown up with next door, because we - and you know, I really feel he - I also became a big - when he was always talking in the newspapers and all kinds of stuff was going on, I became kind of a spokesperson for him for a long time. Eventually I had to tell him, I said, "You better stop talking, man, because I can't keep - "
Tavis: I'm tired of explaining what you meant.
Turturro: Because - and when you look at it now, he really did kind of crash open a lot of doors. Because in this business, if a film makes money, people will say, “Hey, there's a market there.” And he said, "There is a market for my kind of stories." And he's just a good friend of mine and I really like him as a person. And I know him a long time now.
Tavis: Did you have any idea - and I've interviewed Spike any number of times over the years, but did you as an actor, particularly given the role you play -
Turturro: In "Do the Right Thing?"
Tavis: Yeah, "Do the Right Thing." Our first time meeting. (Laughter) Did you have any idea that that movie was going to push the envelope in the way that it did and become the kind of classic, from the acting to the soundtrack, that it has become?
Turturro: Well, we felt when we rehearsed the movie that we were, like, doing something that was real. It was weird, rehearsing that movie. It wasn't like rehearsing a regular movie, we were saying this is really - if you grew up a certain way or grew up - everyone knew. In the room, we would have all these discussions, and you could feel it. It was palpable.
And everyone got along very, very well on the movie. There were a couple tensions, not between me. But I knew it because there was a girl - there were a lot of people who never worked on movies before that Spike had gotten on to be with craft service, to deliver food, and whatever. And there was a girl, Black girl, she would go to the dailies at night.
He let everybody watch the footage, which was, like, even better than the movie. But you watch a scene and someone's saying something, and you watch it four or five times, you start to think well, maybe that person is that. And I could tell she completely - she would not talk to me, she would not give me water, she wouldn't do anything.
And she was so, like, taken. And I told Spike, I said, "(Unintelligible), she, like, hates me.” I said, “You got to tell her, like, that I'm an actor." He would laugh. He would think it was the funniest thing. And she told me to my face, she said, "I can't talk to you. I hate you. I hate you." And I thought, well -
Tavis: I'm doing my job.
Turturro: I said, “Well, you know what? I'm just going to have to accept that and do my job.” But I could feel it from her reaction how - the beginnings of that. And I kind of knew it when I read the script a little bit. I remember where I was and he used to make it - this place called Studio Duplicating. They had these leather - they were bound with these leather - it was a black cover.
And I loved the title. But you did feel something on the set. It was really -
Tavis: Beyond the craft - I'm out of time here - beyond the craft services lady, did people, Black people, more broadly after that movie came out, maltreat you?
Turturro: No. I have to say - I told Spike - it was a big joke between us - I said, “You've got to put me on the cover of ‘Ebony' with your arm around me, man.” I said, "Because I'm worried." And I have to say, I have only gotten - even when the movie came out, only gotten really very appreciative rapport, response. People were unbelievably warm, like, "Yeah, you told it like it was, like it is."
And no, people were very, very nice to me. I was, like, wow, thank God. People don't - so no, it was the exact opposite of what I thought could be - the people would associate.
Tavis: Well, I don't know about the cover of "Ebony," whether that will happen or not.
Turturro: (Laughter) But wait a second - I've got an award from "Ebony." There you go.
Tavis: That's all that matters, then. What I do know, he's a great actor, he's done some stuff that is now classic, and who knows what they'll be saying years from now about "Romance & Cigarettes," now playing in New York, opening this weekend in Los Angeles. John, nice to have you on the program.
Turturro: Thank you so much.
Back to December 19, 2007