Bodies Bodies Bodies Star Lee Pace On Making The Smartest Choice In The Movie [Interview]
Lee Pace makes the best decision in "Bodies Bodies Bodies." If you've seen the film, you already know that says a lot. Pace plays Greg, a guy who simply wants to party with the friends of the younger woman (played by Rachel Sennott) he's seeing. But when their hurricane party starts to take a turn for the worse, he's wise enough to leave the party early and catch some shut-eye.
That's about as much as we can say about Pace's role in the film without spoiling some of the fun the actor has in the film. During a very brief interview, the actor summed up "Bodies Bodies Bodies" best as "a movie about inner demons." With just enough booze and drugs, insecurities and secrets come roaring out to wreak havoc in Halina Reijn's horror-comedy. Recently, Pace told us about his interpretation of the film and one of the smartest choices a character makes in the movie.
(Side note: If you ever bump into Lee Pace and happen to be a fan of his 2006 movie "The Fall," consider telling him so.)
'There's no Freddy Krueger'
You and Halina both have a lot of theater experience. She told me it was crucial experience for "Bodies Bodies Bodies." What about for yourself?
From our very first conversation, and she's an actress as well, we were instantly speaking the same language. I've done a lot of theater. She's done a lot of theater. So I found we were just talking about this movie, talking about the character that I was going to play, talking about the dynamics across the board, using the same terms and really on the same page. I think it was because of our theater backgrounds, because as you know, there's no Freddy Krueger, there's no big evil force, ghosts or anything like that, that's causing the mayhem. It's just these characters, and the chaos that is evident in their dynamics and in their own kind of inner demons as they kind of clash up against each other in this night that just escalates and becomes more and more violent and unhinged.
So it's all about those dynamics, and Halina, she knew her subject in this film scene to scene, character to character, in such a detailed way that between takes, I watched her go around and give everyone extraordinarily specific notes so that when we did the take again, all of those character dynamics were heightened. All of the characters were even more individuated and specific and the triggers it caused all around were extra-heightened because of it. I give so much of the success of this film to Halina, because she had that touch with directing all of these actors.
I feel like a lot of times when you watch a movie like this that has a cast of actors who are roughly the same age, me excluded, everyone kind of becomes the same in a way. They take on a very similar way of speaking. There's a kind of commonality between all the characters. It's not like that with this. I watched the movie again last night, and I was just so impressed with how specific each of the characters were, and in not a stereotypical way. Their anxieties were specific, their triggers were specific. The way they handled the trauma was specific.
'He knows the moment to walk away'
What were some of the notes Halina gave you about Greg? He's an outsider himself and clearly recognizes something is wrong at times, but he also doesn't speak up.
I think 90% of the time, Greg is just game. He's happy to meet these people. He's not like them. He doesn't understand their codes and customs. He's not speaking their language all the way, but he's embracing the opportunity to meet them where they are and just have good time with them, to be one of them for the weekend. And then there are things that start to happen when people start getting f***ed up that kind of rub him the wrong way, where he feels like, "That's not cool. I don't know if I like that. Should I say something?" I think he ultimately feels like, "It's just not my place to. And the move for me to make is to go to bed. I'm not going to fight this kid. Why? What's the point? He's not my responsibility. It's not my business. He's not my business." I very much appreciated that. Yeah, me and Halina talked about that and I think that's Greg's maturity, in a way, is him just knowing what's his business and what's not his business. It's not his business to school David on how to treat people. It's just not. I think that there is a kind of maturity in that.
He knows the moment to walk away.
He knows the moment to walk away, and he knows that he's not going to, in that moment, when this immature man is f***ed up on drugs, obviously in a lot of pain and doesn't know who he is, it's not going to be received well if he were to say, "Hey, that's not cool." That's just going to ... this group of people doesn't know how to de-escalate. That's the whole point of the movie, is that they don't de-escalate. They don't know how to take a nap and get control of themselves.
"Bodies Bodies Bodies" is now playing in theaters.