Filmmaker Q&A: Jeff Goldblum talks to Clara Bingham at Tribeca

By M&C News May 8, 2006, 13:31 GMT

Jeff Goldblum,at Tribeca Film Festival, Wednesday 26 April 2006. EPA/JASON SZENES

Jeff Goldblum, the man who forgot his mantra in ‘Annie Hall’, ‘The Fly’, the swaggering scientist in ‘Jurassic Park’, is now fully unleashed in his new film, ‘Pittsburgh’ (which screened at the Tribeca Film Festival), simply because he plays himself.

In the movie, which he conceived six years ago, Goldblum and his fiancée Catherine Wreford return to his hometown (yes, Pittsburgh) to star in a regional theater production of ‘The Music Man’. From his New York perch at the Mercer Hotel, we talked about his entertaining, original film, which he describes as "fictionality"-part fiction, part reality.
 
Q: Is it possible to label ‘Pittsburgh’? Is it a comedy, a documentary, a narrative feature? It seems to be in a class all its own. What movies does this film remind you of?

A: Parts of it remind me of ‘Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm’, or the Beatles’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. I'm not comparing it to that masterpiece, but in ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, they used real fans and documentary-style footage techniques that allowed for spontaneity and a naturalistic, unexpected rendering of a narrative movie.

‘Pittsburgh’ is as enjoyable as a fictional movie, but it incorporates real life.

Q: I noticed that there is no writer's credit. Was ‘Pittsburgh’ scripted?

A: It is not scripted. It is designed. We had a treatment and a design of a story line, and we improvised and encountered it. We said, here's the story, and then we lived in it. The writing was really in the editing, which took a year-and-a-half to finish.
 
Q: There are clearly several layers of art imitating life in ‘Pittsburgh’. Can you reveal some of them? For example, I have to know, was Catherine Wreford really your fiancée?

A: Yes, she was my fiancée, at the time. (We broke up seven months ago.) There is a parallel universe going on in the movie. You are led to wonder, has Jeff Goldblum lost his mind? Is this relationship he's having (with a young actress in her 20’s) imprudent or half-cocked?

Is he returning to ‘Pittsburgh’, which he avoided his whole life, the hometown hero?

And then there are parallels with ‘The Music Man’. There's the story line of my manager, who thinks performing in ‘The Music Man’ is a terrible career choice for me, and meanwhile, Harold Hill (Goldblum’s conman character in the musical) is an ego-driven salesman who is transformed by this authentic town and falls for the hometown girl.
 
Q: How much can you tell us about what's real and what's fiction?

A: Well, how much should I reveal? It's fun for viewers not to know, to keep them guessing. I don't want to ruin the movie for them by telling everything.

For example, in a magic act, you don't want to know that the tiger isn't hiding behind the door.
 
Q: OK, you don't have to tell all, but, at least, can you tell me if Ileana Douglas and Moby really did have a romance?

A: No, they didn't have a romance. But we did go to his apartment in SoHo and hang out with him.

And the Mermaid Parade was real. We enacted the break-up scene within the parade. If you were to cast that parade with extras and find costumes for them, not only would it be expensive, but it wouldn't be as good—as authentic—as that scene turned out to be.

We were able to intermingle improvisational acting with real events. We were able to show people candidly living their lives, and we were able to make the movie, by the way, on a $300,000 budget.

Q: There is a scene, near the end of the movie, where you are having an existential moment of stage fright and anxiety.

It's opening night, and you're in your dressing room looking at the mirror, holding your head in your hands and saying, "Please help me." Was it harder to act in a musical on stage than in a film?

A: As an actor, I like to be very prepared, and ‘The Music Man’ was very challenging for me. We only had two weeks of rehearsal, and I did get better each day. But that scene was more about the pressure that is on Jeff in terms of my creative life, my career, my relationship with my family, and even Ed Begley's legal problems with the product that he tries to sell with my help.
 
Q: Would you say that you were "acting" in that scene?

A: I knew that the camera was there, and I was presenting one version of myself.

I wanted to be pretend-able, theatrical—it's a performance.

Watch for the opening of 'Pittsburgh' in a theater near you.

(C) 2006 Tribeca Film Festival