E-mail a friendBrendan Fraser
airdate January 16, 2008
Brendan Fraser has been a presence in a wide variety of films, including The Quiet American and the Oscar-winning Crash. He's also made guest appearances on TV in such shows as Scrubs and The Simpsons. In '06, he was the first American-born actor to be inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. Fraser is also an accomplished amateur photographer, fluent in French and serves on the Board of FilmAid International. He stars in The Air I Breathe and, later this year, continues in The Mummy film series with Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.
Brendan Fraser
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Brendan Fraser to this program. The talented actor has starred in a number of notable films, including of course "Gods and Monsters," "The Quiet American", "Crash," and of course something called "The Mummy." (Laughs) His latest project is called "The Air I Breathe" and also stars Kevin Bacon and Forest Whitaker. The film opens around the country on February 8th. Here now, a scene from "The Air I Breathe."
[Clip]
Tavis: Brendan, an honor to meet you.
Brendan Fraser: Pleasure's mine.
Tavis: Glad to have you here. I should have taken money around here, but we had, like, a bet going here on the set about the pronunciation of your last name.
Fraser: What's it up to now? (Laughter) Because I want to get in on it.
Tavis: So have you had this problem your whole life, Frasure versus Fraser?
Fraser: I've heard it frequently, so I just say, "Fraser like razor."
Tavis: I like that. I told y'all. I told you. Fraser like razor.
Fraser: Buck Rogers had a Taser.
Tavis: Oh, I got it,
Fraser: Fraser - (unintelligible).
Tavis: I got it. Taser, razor, Fraser.
Fraser: The nerd crowd will know all (unintelligible).
Tavis: No, that's cool. But it works. It's funny because as much as you have done, as long as you've been around, you would think that that is a score that would have been settled a long time ago.
Fraser: I let it roll off my back at this point, just as long as they call me Brendan.
Tavis: Yeah. (Laughter) Well Brendan, we're glad to have you here, Brendan. Tell me about "The Air I Breathe."
Fraser: It's an interesting film that's been written and directed by an emerging talent. His name's Jieho Lee, he's a Korean-American who has borrowed from Asian philosophy, a principle that the cornerstones of humanity can be distilled into four notions: happiness, sorrow, love and pleasure. And he's created a rather nefarious world where characters who are known only to the audience in title cards with those names, as they never refer to each other by any other name, are pit together.
They almost make these morally ambiguous choices towards finding a journey of redemption. And they're anything but their namesake as the audience knows them. For instance, Forest plays - who you just saw in that clip - a character called Happiness, and he's unfortunately one of the saddest men you'll ever meet.
Tavis: Anything but happy, yeah.
Fraser: The character I play is called Pleasure. He's someone who absolutely has had none whatsoever in his life. The character I play also has a rather unusual intuition. He's no oracle but he has these premonitions of sorts where he's never wrong. He gets a vision of something that's going to occur briefly in the future, and in the scene you just saw he's putting money down across a banker's table and Forest's character is trying to encourage him to invest a little bit more because he could do a lot better.
But being that the character Pleasure has chosen a rather dark path in his life, he's decided to keep the amount small so as not to attract any attention. Because he's never wrong, he's always going to gain, and Forest's character certainly wants to get ahead in life. And when you see the film, you'll realize that all of these stories - it's a quartet, really, almost like a chamber piece - they're all interwoven with one another in a way that satisfies much in the same way that I'd like to think that the film "Crash" did.
It had a sense of continuity and all the stories were interrelated, whether the people knew of each other or not. There was a unifying theme all the way through.
Tavis: A blockbuster like "Mummy" on the one hand, a choice like "The Air I Breathe" on the other hand. At this point in your career, what draws you to a project like this? "The Mummy" I get, but what draws you to a project like "The Air I Breathe?"
Fraser: I've been really lucky all the way through, and I do believe I've had very good fortune. And I'll also say that I worked very hard and that is to maintain a sense of disciplining myself to look for work that keeps me interested, that lets an audience find the film rather than the film going to its audience. And in the case of a film like "The Air I Breathe," a select group of people are going to come and find it and of course word of mouth will get out it's interesting.
Not only because it's a thinking man's call it action movie, if you will, but it's for an audience that will leave - as a moviegoer, like myself, I like to feel a bit enlightened. And then on the other hand, if you make a picture like one of the films from "The Mummy" franchise, that's wildly entertaining. And let's face it, I love to go to the films because I want to be taken somewhere else and I want to have that thrilling sort of blockbuster, roller coaster ride experience.
Tavis: You may have just answered this question -
Fraser: A balance them both.
Tavis: You may have just answered this question, but let me just have you unpack it a little about more, because I hear the distinction you're making. What is, though, the difference between a movie that finds its audience and an audience finding a movie? What's the primary difference for you?
Fraser: I think it just really depends on the material, and that's what I look for. In the case of "The Air I Breathe," this is something that I'd never been asked to do before. The character is someone who's stoic, to say the least - really rather unhappy and saddened to the point that he can't really even articulate in words any longer. There is very little dialogue that I had to play, and so I was directed to keep what I'm told is my youthful grin off of my face (laughter).
Tavis: In the filming of it.
Fraser: Aw, shucks. Because that would belie the character. Gosh, I just flattered myself there, didn't I?
Tavis: Oh, it was smooth how you did it, though. Before I even saw the thing, when I first read about it and started to get a sense of what the movie was about, speaking of being enlightened, I wondered whether or not when I saw it what I was going to get was a lesson about how confused we are about these virtues. In other words, we think something is pleasure and it's really not, to your point. In the movie you're called Pleasure but you ain't had much of it. Forest Whitaker, Happiness, not much of it. Am I thinking too deeply about this?
Fraser: No, you're not. You're absolutely right on the money it. Sorrow is played by Sarah Michelle Gellar. She's a pop star who should be on the top of the world. Her career is on the ascendant until it hits a brick wall when she runs into some trouble with some bad management, the sycophantism that surrounds instant celebrity, and she finds a kindred spirit in the character whom I play and theirs is a dangerous love that they have.
Tavis: I like that phrase, a dangerous love.
Fraser: It is, it is.
Tavis: A dangerous love.
Fraser: Because Andy Garcia -
Tavis: Isn't that the best kind of love?
Fraser: Well, yeah. (Laughter)
Tavis: Maybe I'm showing too much of my business right now, but yeah.
Fraser: No comment. (Laughter)
Tavis: Nothing like dangerous love.
Fraser: No comment.
Tavis: No comment from Brendan. All right. (Laughter)
Fraser: We'll talk after the show. (Laughter)
Tavis: All right, let me switch gears right quick so we both dig ourselves out of this hole right fast. What can you tell me about "Mummy?" It's this summer, right?
Fraser: This summer, yeah. It's going to -
Tavis: I predict a blockbuster, whatever it is, but go ahead.
Fraser: Well, the eyes of the world are going to be on China. We shot in the studios in Shanghai, in locations outside of Beijing that I will mispronounce. Given that the Olympics are opening in 8/8/08 and this film is about a week before. It's been seven years since the last one and I think that's a good thing because we're able to take advantage of the generation that's come of age in some way and reconceive the way that the film was seen before as being themed strictly in Egypt.
And let's not forget that many societies in archaeologically rich cultures all mummified their deceased. And so we are able to take advantage of that, mix in some movie magic, and also reanimate the terra cotta warriors as the mummy, who's played by Jet Li, as his heavies.
Tavis: Is that too long a gap, seven years?
Fraser: I'm not sure. In the law of sevens, I think that's probably pretty lucky.
Tavis: I hear you. I opened myself up for that one, didn't I? Walked right into that one, didn't I? Here's another dumb question, then.
Fraser: There are no dumb questions.
Tavis: No, this is a dumb question, as was the last one. I get paid for this, can you believe that? I sit here and talk to stars and ask dumb questions.
Fraser: Don't tell anyone.
Tavis: No, I shouldn't tell anybody I get paid for this. The China connection - was that designed that way, to come out this year, or was that already planned before?
Fraser: I think that made studio bosses jump up and down in their chairs with glee, but I think it's new territory and it removed the theme of the world that the film was shot and to give it a new vitality for sure.
Tavis: Got a minute to go here. The most important thing we have not discussed is I am told that you also are from Indiana.
Fraser: I was born there. I lived there long enough to probably maybe just start thinking less about bottles. I was an infant. Our family traveled a great deal.
Tavis: Okay. I'm from Indiana, and so if you've just gone through Indiana and you're a star, we claim you.
Fraser: I'm there. No, I was there.
Tavis: So just anybody that kind of drove through, I claim you.
Fraser: I drove through there. There was an outdoor basketball tournament and it was so windy that they would shoot and the ball would go up (unintelligible). (Laughter) That's all we do in Indiana, is grow corn and play basketball.
Fraser: Other than that, they stand on the sidelines and shoot that way and hope it went into the basket.
Tavis: Well, wherever he calls home we are delighted to have him here at our home tonight on this program. The movie, "The Air I Breathe," and then of course this summer "The Mummy" is back. Brendan, nice to see you.
Fraser: Pleasure's mine.
Tavis: Fraser like razor. (Laughter)
Back to January 16, 2008