There’s always been a current of crazy running beneath the surface in Bill Pullman.
He could have made a movie career just playing the upright guy, as he did in “Sleepless in Seattle,” “The Accidental Tourist” and, most famously, “Independence Day,” where he was the speechifying president who saved the planet. But for every decent boyfriend and heroic chief executive there is the nuanced nut job, the conflicted film producer, the sad schizophrenic and the sleazy fixer. (See “Mr. Wrong,” “The End of Violence,” “Igby Goes Down” and “You Kill Me”).
Next up: a grim FBI officer with a secret in “Surveillance,” a violent crime thriller from writer-director Jennifer Lynch, scheduled to open in Denver July 17. It also stars Julia Ormond. The role takes Pullman, 55, about as far out there as a leading man might go.
Q: “Surveillance” is one of your most intense roles. Have you become more interested in playing characters that are at the uncomfortable margins of humanity?A: Yeah, there’s always a challenge inherent in them, some person who’s most likely to be rejected by people. It’s a challenge to chart something that actually has some basis in humanity where you say, ‘that can’t be rejected.’ … So many characters are just kind of bad characters and I just don’t see a possibility of how to do that.
Q: What does it feel like to disappear into such a role? Kind of good?
A: Yeah (laughs). Most of it (“Surveillance”) is spent in a kind of place of watching the world and interacting as a kind of a partner to Julia’s character, who clearly has a professional mission that we’re there to do, but you can feel that there’s something pulsing underneath it … and for me it was great to have that.
Q: I’m thinking more of the movie’s end.
A. That was a whole three days (of filming), going to a place where it all comes to flower … a lot of (the final scenes) happened in a room, and we’d come out of the room and the crew would be lined in the hallway … kind of all averting their eyes.
Q: Tell me about “Your Name Here.”A: It’s the last days of William J. Frick who, you know, who really in a sense is (laughing) so amazingly similar to Philip K. Dick. …
It’s like a fantasia of the last day of someone like Philip K. Dick … an incredible down-the-rabbit- hole experience of a writer haunted, chased by his own imagination.
Q: I like these movies of yours that go off the rails a little bit.
A: (Laughs). They’re my favorite, too. Did you ever see “Brain Dead?”
Q: That falls into that category. “Zero Effect” did, too, and “Mr. Wrong.”
A: (Laughs). Oh, I’m so glad to hear you say that. That’s a movie that I’ve always loved a lot. … To me it felt very funny.
