Adam Kempenaar from Filmspotting sent us excerpts from a roundtable discussion with John Cusack at the Chicago International Film Festival. Cusack discusses Grace is Gone, a new movie where he plays a widower taking his daughters on a road trip after learning his wife was killed in Iraq. If it sounds like this role is off-type for him, it is. Especially when you consider that the 80’s most swooned over slacker’s main draw was to “get into the head of a real believer, someone who has put a lot of his energy and time and faith into needing to believe that the country has a righteous purpose…”

Thanks to Adam Kempenaar for the coverage. His highlights with John Cusack follow after the jump.

On why he wanted to star in and produce “Grace is Gone”:

Cusack: “It’s a very pure story about grief and loss; just a very human story, and I thought it transcended the partisan bickering between left and right. It didn’t fall into it; it sort of pierced through it. Part of being compassionate is understanding other people’s points of view, so I said, ‘let me get into the head of a real believer, someone who has put a lot of his energy and time and faith into needing to believe that the country has a righteous purpose,’ which I think soliders have a right to believe. They have a right to believe they’re not being lied to and they have a right to
believe that what they’re doing is not based on lies. And so I thought it was a very pure piece. And I just really wanted to do it.

On developing chemistry with Shelan O’Keefe and Gracie Bednarczyk, who play his daughters:

Cusack: We didn’t have to do much. A lot of that has to do with the mystery of casting. It can be, and it’s almost like, what makes you have chemistry with someone? A connection with someone romantically? With adults there can be people who look great together, but there’s just not that special something there, and I think people who are playing brothers or father and daughters… there just has to be a little bit of a chemistry or spark where you feel like you already know them somehow, and so that’s what you sort of look for in casting.

But beyond that, we took some field trips and hung out, and then we were lucky enough to have Joyce Piven [from the Piven Theatre Workshop] work with them a little bit, who is a great family friend and a great artist and teacher — one of the greats here in Chicago. So, that gave us a familiar feeling as well.

Filmspotting: I love the scenes between you and Alessandro Nivola, who plays your brother in the film. You get both sides of the Iraq argument, but it never feels heavy-handed. How did you find the right tone for those scenes?

Cusack: Well, the script was pretty great. And this writer, the director Jim Strouse, made the script really tight and we worked on it a little bit. It was really all on the page, so it just mirrored a lot of the arguments that were going on in the country. Actually, strangely, when we started making it, I think the war still had about a 60% or 70% approval, so Stanley wasn’t quite as isolated as he would be now. But I just thought it rang true, and he’s a great actor, so we get along. Great actors like Alessandro, or Shelan, or Gracie, they make you look better.

Filmspotting: The moment the two of you have up in your old bedroom where you hug. I think that’s my favorite scene in the film.

Cusack: Oh, yeah.

Filmspotting: There’s a sudden burst of emotion… you guys have your differences, obviously, but also have tremendous affection for each other. Was that pretty much on the page? How did you approach that scene?

Cusack: I think that came out of it. We tried to create an atmosphere where you transcend what’s on the page — not transcend it, but you realize there’s not a right or wrong thing to do. Art is the opposite of a war. War you want to have everything planned before you go in and know exactly how you’re going to get out. In art you want to have every intention and have no idea how you’re going to get out. Once you get in, you want to get into the emotions and then you want to film yourself trying to survive, figuring out what to do in all those unscripted, unmapped moments. That’s what you are trying to catch and film. I don’t know if any of that makes any sense, but…

On wearing the producer’s hat in addition to acting:

Cusack: Just from doing it so much, I have a general sense that we can do this much and it’ll be about that much money because I’ve been looking at call sheets and scripts. But it’s very vague, intuitive. I’m not really a numbers person, but I do know how to create the environment and how much time you would need to do certain things and whether it’s realistic or not just from making so many movies, so…

On working with writer/director James Strouse:

Cusack: It’s more collaborative because Jim had written it and he was directing, but it was his first time and we were producing, so it was a real collaborative effort. I just wanted to make sure he was surrounded and we were surrounded by the best kind of technicians we could and we have great crews here in Chicago. But then your key people, you need a DP who is going to challenge you and you need production designers and you need people who know what they’re doing.

On his character’s decision to keep his wife’s death in Iraq from his daughters:

Cusack: I think what was beautiful about this script, and what I responded to, was that this was a guy trying to stiff-arm a nervous breakdown, so all he’s trying to do is create space for himself because he can’t process what’s happening. He has poured so much belief into the righteousness of what he’s doing and needing to believe that this is the right thing to do that’s he been willing to sacrifice everything. So when reality and that belief are put into an atom-smasher and that door opens, he’s just trying to literally buy another thirty… he’s just going minute to minute.

So there’s no sort of political correctness, and this is not a movie, or this isn’t a cinema, where this is representative of family values or how people should be. This is just about people in grief and people in grief who are shocked, they don’t have an equilibrium. They don’t behave in normal ways. They’re, by definition, in a state of disorientation. So that’s what I liked about it.

He takes the wheel and drives into a field and it’s free and he’s unburdened in some way and part of it’s scary; it’s like he’s having a bit of a nervous breakdown. So it’s in that paradox, in that place between liberation and nervous breakdown, that’s where the thing lives. So I thought that’s great because normally he’d be driving and he’d say put your seatbelt on, but now he’s saying eat anything you want. He’s just trying to preserve a little innocence for his kids.

On playing a true ‘character’ role:

Cusack: I did a movie “Max,” and that’s a very character role. And “Being John Malkovich” is a very character-y role. I don’t get an opportunity to do as much in the big studio movies. But, yes, I loved doing it. It’s really nice to do something that sheds all your vanity and all that stuff. It’s fun.

Filmspotting: Can you talk about how you came up with Stanley’s physicality?

Cusack: Talking about acting is a strange thing, not like talking about if you threw a pass or made a run. It goes inside out, where you try to get into the headspace of how the person is feeling and then the physicality comes out of that. I guess [Stanley's distinctive walk] is that the character is shut in on himself, tightly wound and taut, so sometimes you get very tense or something’s going on, your body, your shoulder blade, your scapula, starts to come up a little bit. It’s usually because you try to protect your heart; you’re trying to protect yourself. So I think Stanley’s really wound up tight.

On playing another ‘loner’ character:

Cusack: A lot of things that are dramatic have to do with people doing battle with themselves, you know? … I really responded to the character and I have so much enormous empathy and sympathy and feeling for people who are going through what the soldiers and their families are going through. It boggles the imagination and it becomes so abstract, the war.

You think about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s who have died and all the soldiers who have come back wounded and maimed. You read the paper and four more soldiers last week died and mercenaries have killed 27 people in Baghdad, mercenaries who are getting money from our tax dollars that should be going to protect the troops, and I’m depressed about the Cubs game. There’s a disconnect there.

My point in all seriousness is that it’s such an abstraction, and this government has asked us to sacrifice nothing for this. The troops are sacrificing everything. It just seems like an obscenity. I thought that if we could tell the story of one soldier who didn’t come home and the impact on the family and do it with as much humility and respect as we can, maybe that’ll start the debate about the cost of this thing.

On whether he met with any actual survivors or families of soldiers?

Cusack: Yes, I spoke with a gentleman who had gone through what Stanley had gone through. He had three daughters and he got the knock. He was very helpful. I didn’t know how much to ask or how to pry. I didn’t want to pry, but people want their stories to be told. People want this thing to be real. I think that’s part of this healing process. Hopefully, the movie can be a part of that in some small way.

On whether he created a backstory for his character:

Cusack: Yes, we did. Jim and I talked about it. Then we talked about it with Shelan and Gracie and decided that he was a person that the only real soft spot he ever allowed himself was through his wife; the only person he ever let that guard down for, so the fact that that would be taken away would be as painful as possible.

In casting Shelan and Gracie, we read other young actresses and they were terrific, but they would complain or do a scene and they’d be upset. But Shelan and Gracie looked at you and they judged you. They didn’t want to but they just judged you because they’re at that age and their bullshit detector is really high and the world hasn’t beaten them down and they’re a pure soul. Those were the faces you look into and say I can’t lie to that face, but yet the story was that he had to. If you can look Shelan O’Keefe in the eye and lie to her, you’re a stronger man than I am.

Filmspotting: You said that this is the most intimate film that you’ve done… just three characters really, very stripped down. Is that process better or more rewarding than the bigger Hollywood projects, or just different?

Cusack: It’s different but also more rewarding from an acting standpoint and from what you’re trying to create because all you really want to do is focus on characters and a “hello” everyday sort of thing, and the bigger budget things are much more about high concepts and more like theme park rides. So it’s just different; both can be fun.

On Oscar buzz surrounding his performance:

Cusack: Usually I disdain awards in general. But if they’re going to give one to me, then I’ll buy into the system totally. I think I have utter contempt for the political hypocrisy of the awards and how they’re given out, but if the system works for you… I think it’ll be an act of benevolence, like the Nobel Prize. If it works for me, the system is good. If it doesn’t, the system is corrupt. That’s the way I look at it. [Laughs]

Filmspotting: Tying in with the Chicago Film Festival this week, we’re doing our top 5 movies set in Chicago. What do you think of as the great Chicago movies?

Cusack: “The Blues Brothers,” probably. I’d like to think “High Fidelity” would make somebody’s top 5. That would be pretty good. What else has been shot here? “The Fugitive”? That’s good.

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Grace is Gone

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