Interview: Matt Dillon

Charles Bukowski once wrote a story titled “My Beerdrunk Soul is Sadder than all the Dead Christmas Trees in the World,” so it is somewhat appropriate that Factotum, director Bent Hamer’s adaptation of Bukowski’s 1975 novel of the same name, is arriving on DVD just after Christmas. Matt Dillon (Drugstore Cowboy, Crash, You, Me and Dupree) takes the lead role of Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s literary alter-ego, who works a series of dead end jobs to keep himself alive and drunk while he concentrates on writing – a pursuit Chinaski approaches with passion, discipline, and brilliant insight to the world around him.

Not included on the DVD’s extra features is the following interview with Matt Dillon, which I participated in earlier this year in New York City, prior to the theatrical release of Factotum.

Question: How did you change yourself physically to play the character?

Matt Dillon: Well, you know outside the… I grew the beard obviously, the hair was done a certain way, and I shaved my hairline back a little bit… just a little bit. And I let myself go, I put on some weight, you know I didn’t come up with, ‘Oh I’m gonna put on thirty-five pounds for this part!’ or you always hear about actors, ‘Oh he put on forty pounds for this role!’ I don’t know how much weight I put on, I put on a little weight, but more of it for me was in the behavior… in the physicality of the behavior, in the way he moved…. That was the feeling I had from Chinaski, he was a guy who was physically defeated. You know what I mean? The way he carried himself physically, was that, the material world had sort of defeated him, he had surrendered to that. But he was very bright, and very sharp, and was very strong mentally. But there was this other side to him, and kind of the way he carried himself. And that really comes right from Bukowski, I mean that’s how what I’d seen Bukowski, that’s what I got from him. And kind of like this defeated effortlessness. And there was something that I heard, I didn’t see it, but it was written on his tombstone, engraved in his tombstone… were the words ‘Don’t Try.’ And that really helped me. That really helped me with the character, because he doesn’t try to like, live up to something his father wants him to be, he doesn’t try to fight for his job, he doesn’t try to [laughs] stop drinking, he doesn’t try…. The only thing he tries to do is to get published as a writer. And that finally happens at the end. But he’s not even aware of it, he’s not even there to partake in it. But that was really helpful to me with the character. And the other thing that helped me with the physical thing with the character was…

[Matt gets up at this point to ask two people talking loudly in the hallway just outside the room to please be more quiet]

MD: Sorry, I find that very distracting. [sitting back down] I was just saying about, there was something I spoke to Linda Bukowski, his wife… one of the things she said he, Bukowski, felt misunderstood and that really bothered him, was that he was often depicted as dirty, as kind of a slob, like physically… unwashed… and that really bothered him. And she said he was very neat, and he was very in a certain way, disciplined as a writer. He was very disciplined in that way. So there was a sense of order with him. And I also knew that, what she told me, clothing wasn’t important to him. But at the same time it was very important for him to be like… to keep himself together in that way. And that really helped me, because I think as an actor the first impulse you might have is if you are going to play a skid-row bum… at times he’s homeless in the film… is that you would rub your face in the grim, you get down in the gutter and become… that’s the natural inclination, that’s what you typically see, and that’s the instinct and actor… that’s the first one they have. But here really he’s the antithesis of that, he isn’t all those things. But he still manages to keep himself, he still manages to get up and comb his hair, get dressed… and mostly that helped me with the way he carried himself.

Q: How did you sell yourself to Bent, because he said you were almost too handsome for the role?

MD: Well, too handsome… [laughs] I’m sorry.

Q: So how did you convince…

MD: I didn’t have to convince Bent at that point, maybe that was something between him and Jim Stark. I don’t remember it that way. I think at the time we met he wanted me to do the picture, but maybe he struggled with that before he got to that point. For me, I felt pretty much the way Bent felt… not that I was too handsome… but that I wasn’t really physically right for the part. So when they approached me about it, I was like, ‘Are you sure you got the right guy?’ I was ready kind of, in the beginning, to walk away… I said I don’t know, I don’t think this is the right thing for me. But once I got, once I made it clear that… once it was made clear that I wasn’t expected to become Charles Bukowski, I felt much more comfortable. You know, he had this alter ego, he was Henry Chinaski. For whatever reason he created this alter ego. So I said, okay, that’s a rationalization, that works for me, that gave me a sense of relief. As long as I don’t have to do any personification of Bukowski I’m okay. So then I could go on preparing to play Chinaski. So then Bent and I were walking in Central Park talking, there was something we talked about, I didn’t have the answer, he didn’t have the answer, so let’s call Linda, and we call Linda Bukowski, his wife, and you know… started to talk about the alter ego, and she’s like, ‘Oh that’s very autobiographical! You have to know it’s very…’ and I’m like ‘Oh great…. So now all the roads lead back to Bukowski.’ So inevitably, even through I said I didn’t want to set out to do any kind of impersonation, which I don’t think it is at all, because I really felt like I worked from the inside out…. Still, but it all goes back to Bukowski… so I studied him, and any footage on him… but that was a tricky balance again, because a lot of the stuff he did… I felt like there was a… a lot of the poetry readings and you know… this is no crack on Bukowski, but he didn’t like doing these readings, and there was kind of an affectation he had in his delivery, which I think there’s a little bit of that in this, it’s more with the poetry, it’s more with the poetry stuff… but that was the type of thing, ‘Yeah I want to capture that,’ because he has that sing-song quality, his voice is very different from Chinaski for the most part, he’s got that high, almost feminine, sing-song thing. Which is strange, because when you read him, he sounds like, Warren Oates or something… Lee Marvin, you know… he doesn’t sound like the real Bukowski. So there is that sort of idealized version of Bukowski in Chinaski too. Anyway, that was sort of the… I hope that answered your question, I don’t remember what the question was.

Q: You’re so good at these scoundrel-type roles. What draws you to these kind of womanizing parts and the dark side…

MD: Well, whatever it was that drew me to it was probably what drew me to read Bukowski when I was in my early twenties in the first place. I like that kind of stuff. I’m… I think what I really like most about Bukowski is his honesty. He’s really truthful. He just lays it out there and he sees things nobody else sees. But for me what I think I liked about it was he’s this… I think it’s just the ups and downs of his life are really… I like that sort of thing, I like that kind of character. I like conflicted… drama is conflict and if you don’t have that in a character, it’s not really a worthwhile role to play. For me, I like a challenging role, and often those characters are… you know, I don’t know if I see Bukowski as so dark. I think his view of the world is a funny view, like he looks at the world and sees the middle of things. He’s able to laugh at himself and the world around him, and I think that’s what I loved about him. I often wish I could see the world like that a little bit—to be able to laugh in the worst of situations… I’ll never forget when I was reading Ham on Rye when he’s laying in bed when he had that horrible acne when he was a kid, and he overhears the doctor saying, ‘Jesus this is the worst case of acne I’ve ever seen in the history of Los Angeles!’ [laughing] Something like that and he blurts it out loud, and he’s just like, ‘Does this asshole realize I can hear every word he’s saying?’ But I always liked the way he speaks… he speaks plainly. But I do think it is connected with maybe a certain through line in my career, which is like the first movie I did, Over the Edge, and Drugstore Cowboy, maybe the film I directed, this one, a few other ones. And then there’s this other comedy thing, and they’re sort of mainstream kind of things that I do too, so… I don’t know.

Q: What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?

MD: Well, you’re asking a guy who started acting at age 14, so I didn’t have too many jobs before then. I mean I did work a job while I was acting, early on because I didn’t have any bread, and it was like unloading trucks at a nursery, you know, a plant nursery, plants… And it sucked. The woman was horrible, she always managed to cut down your salary… it was really horrible. I had to work my balls off at that job. I didn’t stick around to long, needless to say, thankfully. But I never really had any of the stuff he went through.

Q: How did you convince her to hire you? What did you have to say to get the job?

MD: I didn’t have to say anything because I didn’t want the frickin’ job [laughs]. I got hoodwinked into doing it…. I was gonna say I think the curse of being an actor is not the horrible jobs you have to do, it’s like when is the next job gonna come…. Well, it is a little bit, at a certain level you’re going, ‘Jesus man, if I don’t get a good script soon I’m going to have to do this slasher movie.’ [laughs] You know what I mean? There is a little bit of that.

Q: Looking back on your career, what’s your take on it?

MD: You know I really don’t try to figure it out too much, you know? I just keep moving ahead. The only thing I’d say about it is that I started very young, so to me I look at it and go ‘Oh wow, I was pretty green then.’ And I look back at a thing or two and think ‘I would have done that differently.’ But that’s the old hindsight 20/20 thing… I don’t really know, I don’t really dwell on it too much, I just move ahead and learn from the mistakes and move ahead. I don’t really think too much, I don’t hang onto the past that much.

Q: Are you going to be directing again soon?

MD: Eventually I’d like to be. I don’t have anything that’s in preproduction now or anything like that. I really think I should direct again, not that I should but that I know it will make me feel… I had a really great experience doing it.

Q: Last question. A lot of people don’t forgive Chinaski for the scene where he hits Lili. What’s your take on it?

MD: Well, at one point they talked about her slapping me, but no, that’s not Hank… [laughs] That ain’t Hank! But I think that’s part of the flawed nature of who the guy is, and I kind of… the dichotomy… on one hand he’s this poetic guy who wants to be a writer, and on the other hand he’s this flawed alcoholic drunk and they had this totally dysfunctional relationship… she provokes him, right? In that other fight? They have this thing, and it’s a little bit like… she’s tough, she’ll go right up against him too. It’s sort of like one of those crazy relationships… I don’t know. It’s inexcusable that he does it, but hey, it’s life, and it’s the life of these people, you know? And he forgives her for giving him crabs… [laughs]

Factotum gets released on DVD today.