I know, I'm sorry, that's two Entertainment Weekly covers in a row, but how was I supposed to avoid mentioning this? Where's the YouTube mash-up? I'd make it myself, but I don't really want to. I never thought of Anton Chigurh or Daniel Plainview as "Bad Boys," but...
From "Three Kinds of Violence: Zodiac, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood" (January 25, 2008):
Like the chess-playing avatar of Death in Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal," to whom he has been compared, Chigurh exhibits the occasional glimmers of personality -- pride, arrogance, annoyance, determination -- as do Zodiac and Plainview, but he never succumbs to the latter's fits of dudgeon. He kills not from anger, or even for money, but because it is his nature. Plainview is a petty bully, his unmanageable fury a sign of weakness that Chigurh would consider frivolous and self-indulgent. (That said, let no one suggest a "Chigurh vs. Plainview" sequel, please.)The "Alien" and "Predator" franchises are owned by Fox. Both "NCFOM" and "TWBB" are Miramax/Paramount Vantage releases (and they were both shot in Marfa, TX!). Will Javier Bardem's and Daniel Day-Lewis's people return the studio execs' phone calls?
The EW story says: "The face-off will never happen, of course. Nor will any sequels, no matter how popular Anderson's and the Coens' movies become. There will be no 'Chigurh Rising.' No 'There Will Be Blood II: Oil Be Back!'"
Ken Tucker's article sometimes takes a jokey approach to the films ("Brrrr, it's even creepier when he puts it that way, isn't it?"), but also sincerely tries to explain the origins of the uncomfortable laughter they have provoked. And they do provoke uncomfortable laughter -- from people who are on their wavelength -- and smug laughter from those who misread them:
Both of these intense movies inspire a different kind of laughter among many viewers: a mingling of surprise, shock, disbelief (if you don't buy into the films) and/or elation (if you do). Ditto their makers. Ethan Coen meant it as a compliment when he told us he finds Blood ''really funny.''... I even heard chortles of surprised pleasure during No Country's trailer, when a car explodes on a street as Bardem's Chigurh walks serenely into a drugstore, oblivious to the effect his mischief has elicited, hell-bent on his mission while all those around him yelp and scamper.I have to interject here: Chigurh is not "oblivious" in this scene (and he has never had a moment of serenity in his life). He's obviously aware of the havoc he's just unleashed. He's caused it to distract everyone else, so he can focus on getting what he needs from the back of the store. Yes, he never blinks. But he's neither "serene" nor "oblivious."
The laughter provoked by "There Will Be Blood" comes in sharper barks; it's more pop-culturally complex. For all the rave reviews the movie has attracted, there's been some skepticism, especially about the movie's final moments... [Spoilers removed.]Again, I think this represents a slight misreading of what's going on. Anderson describes "TWBB" as a "horror film" ("a story that was only going to be a downward spiral," drilling down to a single point), and horror films almost always elicit laughs and screams to vent the tension that builds up. The muddy confrontation between Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) and Plainview earlier in the film is, I think, its most brutal and horrific moment. (Although, on second thought, the sight of HW on the train as it pulls out of the station may be more wrenching.) The baptism scene and the milkshake scene are designed to play as comedy, though sometimes I wonder if we're laughing at the out-of-whack character or the over-the-top actor. They're not straight comedy, but the tension they generate is meant to make you laugh and cringe at the same time -- in the first case at Plainview's response to his humiliation; in the second to the way Plainview turns the earlier scene around on Eli), then you're missing the movie.... [W]e, as viewers, are challenged either to stay the course on Mr. Anderson's wild ride or to hop off, shaking our heads in hooting disbelief. One way to defuse the discomfort Anderson and Day-Lewis clearly intended here is to snicker at it — to mock it in a hip/ironic way that the movie itself, to its great credit, assiduously avoids.
As Sheriff Ed Tom Bell says: "That's all right, I laugh myself sometimes. There ain't a whole lot else you can do."
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P.S. A great quote from the EW interview with Bardem:
"Maybe the character's mother didn't feed him when he was 5 years old, or something like that.... I started to do that [imagining a "backstory" for Chigurh], but then I realized... in this case, it would be much more helpful if I didn't know where he was coming from. The challenge was to embrace a symbolic idea and give it human behavior. It wasn't about how his mother didn't feed him."
Comment Spoiler Warning
I agree with your initial assessment of the two but then I think, "Plainview's nuts and often times crazy wins in a battle of wills." So I'm thinking Plainview says something like, "I want you to say you're a false assassin and the suitcase full of money is a superstition." And then as Chiguhr is looking at him bemused and starts to reach for his quarter Plainview smashes the bowling pin down on his head.
After all, Chiguhr just keeps getting injured worse and worse (handcuff cuts, open wound, bone sticking out) and doesn't have resolution whereas Plainview clearly knows how to be "finished" with someone.
Oops. Noticed the editor's label atop my comment. Sorry for all the spoilers. You mean there are still people who haven't seen these two movies?
"I'm your brother from another mother" would get laughs in any century.
THERE WILL BE BLOOD SPOILER WARNING: (See? Did it all on my own.)
The first thing I thought when "There Will Be Blood" ended and the title card came on screen was that the whole damn thing was a big (deliberate) joke.... and I kind of mean that in a good way. It was sort of like, "Hey, there was blood, wasn't there? Eh? Eh? Gotta give us that, right? You can't be mad!"
It was this epic, incessant build up to at least what I thought was going to be an equally epic finale, and then it eventually devolves into this small moment of, by that point, almost meaningless madness. But hey, there totally was blood. And there just wasn't a whole lot else I could do but laugh.
I agree with Kris on the simple notion that There Will Be Blood is structured as a joke, though I think I took it to be more than just a confirmation of the title. For me, the film exists from a non-human perspective--it's camera movement and angles never feel quite natural to our instincts--and it holds the slightest bit of misanthropy (a healthy thing, I think) in its observation of our ridiculous behavior. Though I don't think the film is meant to be read as political, Plainview vs. Sunday holds some very obvious parallels to the archetypal conflict between faith and power (each privy to their own corruptions). And really, what else but laughter is there to do at such senselessness? (it seems common that we make sense of the senseless through humor).
That being said, I think the film is more so a character study of Plainview in general, about his self-immolation in the name of the superficial and financial. The scenes of Plainview reaching out (against his stronger, economic instincts) - to a baby in the desert, to his "son", to his thought-to-be-brother, to his (assumedly) deceased mother (after reading his "brother's" diary) - root the film in an unspoken sense of tragedy even when it goes bonkers (for the record, I believe Plainview's baptism confirmation to be as hilarious as Spinal Tap's "this one goes to eleven). We know nothing of Plainview and, well, he too may be a lost bastard from a basket.
Back to where I started: yes, I think the film is structured as a joke, but given the crazy, exclamation point style of its ending, it seems to bear more in common with an anecdote than the traditional set-up and punchline. This may be the most nervous dark comedy of the new millennium, so many of its scenes as frightening as they are tickling, there being many times I was chuckling more out of fear than amusement. By the time the end credits come, the contrast provided by Johannes Brahms's third movement is like a devastating blow (I'm reminded of the similar rug-pulling used in Brazil), the final and decisive sentence in a play-by-play debate. In its own bitter way, the joke is on us.
So, if you couldn't tell, I love the film. In a way, I spent the first four viewings "finding" it, soaking it in and making sense of it, finding the many grooves and paths it led down. I enjoyed it incredibly and thought it a near-masterpiece in all of those experiences, but during number five something clicked, and it became this whole new beast. I think it might be the most Kubrickian work never done by Stanley himself.
THERE WILL BE BLOOD SPOILERS BELOW...
My big problem with the TWBB ending scene is that I don't think it's all intentionally played for laughs.
I believe the reversal is, where Plainview turns the baptism thing around on Eli by making him say that he's a false prophet and God is a superstition. That's meant to be funny.
However, I don't think Day-Lewis' mugging (not just the now infamous milkshake line, but also "DRAINED!!!" and "I AM THE THIRD REVELATION!!!)is meant to be funny. I think that's funny in the same way Faye Dunaway screaming "NO WIRE HANGERS EVER!!!" in Mommie Dearest is funny. It's just shameless overacting of the kind that would even make Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman cringe.
When I saw "There Will Be Blood" I was the only one laughing in the theater. But that didn't stop me from continuing to laugh. I think some of the film plays as comedy, but mostly I think that the laughs come from something inside of us that doesn't know how to process what's happening onscreen.
Jim, I agree that the film is a horror film, and it elicits some of the same reactions as a horror film (laughing at inappropriate time in order to ease our tension about what is taking place, or bound to take place), but also I think that this is something that is very distinctly, Paul Thomas Anderson. This is something I have noticed with his films when I experienced "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" for the first time, again, I seemed to be the only one laughing in the theater.
I think a lot of this has to do with the absurdity of Anderson's films. He is a gambler of a director who is not afraid of the unconventional. It is this unconventional filmmaking that causes me to laugh out loud during his films, because he usually has these absurdities swirling around his characters, whose problems always exist in the very real (the reconciliation with a dying parent or marginalized, outsider type characters like in “Punch-Drunk Love”) and are weighed down by heavy thematic elements that remind me of Anderson's biggest influence, Robert Altman.
Whether it be the slap-happy baptism scene in "TWBB" or frogs falling from the sky, Anderson is not afraid to go for real emotion amidst absurdity. Which is kind of like real life.
Whether it's Scotty from "Boogie Nights" or Frank T.J. Mackey from "Magnolia", Anderson has a gift for giving us sad, pathetic characters that are also hilarious, even though sadness surrounds them.
I love the idea of "TWBB" as a horror film and a comedy catching on with other people, because it evoked those kinds of emotions you get from those films, and made me think about all of the funny moments in Anderson's films.
Even though he makes heavy, operatic, and over-the-top films, much of these serious themes are surrounded by absurd moments that remind the viewer (like the Ed Tom Bell line you quoted above Jim): "That's all right, I laugh myself sometimes. There ain't a whole lot else you can do."
I am glad people are starting to see Anderson's film in a somewhat comedic light. I have always thought of "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" as tragic comedies.
It's a lot of things: drama, character study, period piece, horror, dark comedy, and in many ways like a silent film at that. As for the "intentionality" of the humor, I think the best way I could describe it would be intentionally unintentional - it's "funny" (in a nervous, not-smug-at-all sort of way), but only until it becomes scary, which is to say far more of the latter. And as far as the ending goes, I think the fever-pitch execution is commendable, and I can't think of it as overacting at all given how perfectly I think everything fits together. By that point in time, Plainview is just a monster in his cave, and Sunday was foolish to tread there in the first place.
TWBB is a lot like "Fargo" for me in that I felt uncomfortable laughing (although it happened sporadically on first viewings of both) because of the audience I saw it with. At a second viewing of each, I knew where the movies were headed and had a clearer sense of intention. It freed me up to laugh loud and hard, despite the silence of a clearly befuddled crowd. Both films elicited howls of laughter the second time, and "Fargo" is one of my favorite films of all-time. I believe TWBB is on its way up that list for me.
The entire movie was Plainview's destruction as seen through his eyes so the only way for the film to work was it to slowly get more and more exaggerated.
I did an undergraduate project at a state run hospital for what was then (and still may be) called the "criminally insane." What I saw Plainview in that last scenes I saw in some of men and women at that hospital. Daniel Day Lewis did not give the literal truth in that performance. There wasn't a literal truth in the entire film. He and PTA gave us a poetic one. Nobody at the hospital ranted like that out loud (although I'm sure some in other wings did), but in their minds I could see the thought process Plainview had at the end of the film. Namely, emotional moments stuck on a loop (Plainview's repeating of "I am the third revelation"), the glory and need to relate their triumphs and superiority ("I drink your milkshake"), and their need for the destruction of those they deemed their enemy. Lewis outwardly showed us the internal destruction of the man.
Disclaimer: I wasn't a doctor, I was a mass communication student. My job was to help communicate the basic rules of the facility to the more normal inmates.
I need to watch Fargo again in light of all this, having had a very bad experience with it the last time (my second viewing, but the first was when I was 10 so I don't really remember). In short, I hated it, finding it to be an incredible technical exercise made rotten by completely mean-spirited character condescension. The humor felt like outright mockery more than anything, and it was an utterly embittering hour-thirty-eight. Those moments of humor in There Will Be Blood felt implicitly self-critical (ditto No Country), whereas here the Coens seemed to be distancing themselves in that kind-of-smug way Juno flirts with (though I found it to be a line uncrossed, and I did like that film, overrated as it has become). Only, like, twenty times more. Exponentially. Yo yo yiggady yo.
That being said, I'm hoping I like it more a second/third time. If nothing else, I can be less mad at Roger for naming Breaking the Waves - my favorite film of the decade - #2 behind Fargo in his list for best of that year.
Don't you think it's funny that Day Lewis agreed to be on the cover, was photographed, and then declined to be interviewed for the article? I've been monitoring his behavior lately and he is quite strange, at least to someone viewing him as an outsider. He had an emotional outburst on Oprah about Heath Ledger's death even though he didn't know him, and then dedicated his award to Heath while detailing at length in his acceptance speech particualr films and scenes he loved of his. This is obviously meant from the heart, but still seems kind of absurd and out of place at the same time. I love his performances, but he just strikes me as a very odd, complex man.
Don't you think it's funny that Day Lewis agreed to be on the cover, was photographed, and then declined to be interviewed for the article? I've been monitoring his behavior lately and he is quite strange, at least to someone viewing him as an outsider. He had an emotional outburst on Oprah about Heath Ledger's death even though he didn't know him, and then dedicated his award to Heath while detailing at length in his acceptance speech particualr films and scenes he loved of his. This is obviously meant from the heart, but still seems kind of absurd and out of place at the same time. I love his performances, but he just strikes me as a very odd, complex man.
I don't get how anyone could think the end of There Will Be Blood ISN'T played for laughs.
From the way Plainview says the milkshake line and "Did you think your song and dance and your superstition would save you Eli?" as he does a funny little dance with his hand waving back and forth over his head. And the way Eli Sunday is shrieking and screaming and ineffectually dodging the thrown bowling balls. See the way he ducks down on one side of the bowling lane and pops up on the other side when he's dodging the thrown bowling pins? That's a classic cartoon joke! Sunday could've been a gopher and Plainview could've been wielding an over-sized mallet. That's what makes the final act so shocking. The entire scene is played for laughs right up until Plainview decides to swing that bowling pin in a way that would cause real damage.
Considering how every single other PTA film mixes comedy with drama and violence (the drug deal scene in Boogie Nights, for instance, is as hilarious as it is suspenseful), I somehow doubt PTA was all of a sudden going straight in the over-the-top climax of TWBB.
Peter: I have a visceral response to Day-Lewis, over which I have no control. And that is, when I see the look on his face -- which, to me, always seems smug and superior -- I want to smash his face in. Metaphorically speaking. I've never felt the urge more strongly than when looking at the inside photos for this EW shoot. I will be debating DDL's work with another critic in an upcoming MSN Movies article.
i don't think DDL is smug at all. from articles i've read interviewing him and about him, he seems like a really lovely, down to earth human being. i don't know how he could drive anybody to want to smash his face in....
JE: He's probably a prince among men offscreen. My innate response isn't even rational. There's just something about his facial expressions that I find instinctively repulsive. It's almost the same attitude I detect in Paris Hilton's look -- just a little smarter. I know very little about Day-Lewis except for his work and publicity; I'm just admitting this is a gut reaction I've always had. Sometimes you just take a liking to people (and actors) when you first see them; sometimes you feel the opposite. Me, if I see DDL's name on a movie (or Tom Cruise's, for that matter), I don't want to see it. Unless, for example, it's directed by Paul Thomas Anderson or Martin Scorsese...
"And that is, when I see the look on his face -- which, to me, always seems smug and superior -- I want to smash his face in."
Jim,
Even though I love Daniel Day Lewis, I love your frankness in this comment even more. You even admit "My innate response isn't even rational." I know certain idiosyncracies, prejudices, esoteric personal experiences of yours have something to do with this. For example, I know a guy who had the exact same reaction to Leonardo DiCaprio back when he was first getting big. He just HATED his guts. I think it would be too easy to say it was jealousy or envy or whatever. The thing that surprised me was that my friend even found him insufferable in "The Aviator," a performance I thought showed a vulnerable, weirdo, interesting angle on DiCaprio. Remember the scene where Hughes attends that nerve-wracking dinner at the Hepburns? After being quite inhibited, Cate Blanchett presses him to share with the family about his latest project. Reluctantly, he starts to explain about the wings of a plane or something, and Blanchett's ex-husband interjects rather rudely, and Hughes snaps, "Excuse me. I was speaking!" When the movie got out, my friend said he thought DiCaprio was a "little jerk" for openly confronting the guy about interrupting him, saying something along the lines of "Who does he think he is?" He thought *DiCaprio* was rude, where I thought he was totally justified in his rebuke. I couldn't understand it.
I don't know if there are some people whose faces we just don't like, period, and feel a personal resentment or animosity towards which clouds our judgment, preventing us from seeing them objectively or not, but I find this all very fascinating as the people we detest reveal just as much about us as the people we admire.
I know that feeling (disliking someone inexplicably) and I try to overcome it. Jim mentioned Tom Cruise, and I must admit Cruise for me is the equivalent of nails on a blackboard (although oddly the blackboard thing doesn't bother me). I just can't stand him, and I mean I CAN'T STAND HIM!
But I think a lot of what also comes into play is the confusion we have as to why others don't feel the same way. When someone whose opinion I trust tells me they think Tom Cruise is a fine actor, etc and they like him I am immediately baffled. I understand he is capable of giving a good performance so I'm not saying I think he's bad it's just that all of his performances make me cringe to some degree or another. He feels creepy to me.
The one performance of his where I don't feel this way is Magnolia and I believe that is because Cruise is playing a role strikingly close to who he is as a person (all just my opinion of course). So the creepiness worked for me there.
I feel this way about movies as well (I'm sure we all do) where there are certain films that trusted voices like (for instance there have been a few with Jim on this very site) that I detest. I think, "How can he think that's good? Is he feeling okay? Maybe I should send him a 'get well' card?" Is there a movie fan alive that doesn't have at least a few of these actors and movies that send shivers down their spine?
Oh, and just an aside, I don't feel that way about DDL but looking at the EW Cover I have to say, "Yeah, he does look a little smug there."
I am mostly in agreement with Jim regarding Day-Lewis' performance in TWBB, and I also find him ridiculous as Bill the Butcher (aren't they really the same performance?) But to defend the man for a moment, I thought he was fantastic in "Age of Innocence," a role in which he proved he could play the exact opposite end of the spectrum. It's a very modulated, tamped-down performance, perfectly evocative of the repressed rage and sexuality of the era (and the book.)
I hope Day-Lewis doesn't get pigeonholed for being a "big" actor because he's capable of much more interesting work.
Christopher: I find things to admire (if not exactly feel) in Day-Lewis's work. And it's not so much the "big" that bugs me as the smugness and self-possession. I have to confess I don't remember him in "Age of Innocence." The last time I recall not thinking about the actor but actually seeing the character was long ago in "My Left Foot." But I haven't seen that movie since it came out, Day-Lewis wasn't as famous/familiar then, and he wore a beard! I did recently re-watch "Last of the Mohicans" and "Gangs of New York." In the former I couldn't stifle laughter upon first seeing him, because I immediately thought of Tom Cruise's run-run-run in "The Firm": All grim determination and nothing else. Then Hawkeye starts delivering sarcastic quips and practically winking to the camera, like Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger in some late-80s/early-90s action picture.
Even though it's his "biggest" performance (though not quite as premeditated as Plainview) I actually found him more impressie as Bill the Butcher -- mainly because I amazed at how he recovered from what may be the worst introduction of a character in the history of motion pictures. The moment you see his feet in the snow, they're so mannered even his boots are overacting. Then he stands there with his leather cap, his fists clenched, and bellowing exactly like a Monty Python hankie-head Gumby character: "My brain hurts!" There's nowhere to go from there, but any recovery from the stench of such a hilariously disastrous entrance is remarkable. (BTW, watching "Gangs" this time -- first time I'd ever made it all the way through -- I found a lot to admire, but found myself feeling so bad that Scorsese didn't capture the footage he needed. He and Thelma Schoonmacher try their best, but the battle sequences especially just don't cut together. How could they have built this huge set and then not choreographed or shot the fights they needed? Did Harvey Weistein deprive him of necessary shooting days on all the fight scenes, or did Scorsese just not realize he didn't have the material he needed until he was in the editing room?)
-- I want to smash his face in.
It's funny since that kind echoes the sentiments of Punch-Drunk Love, only in a much angrier tone. I can see how you're picking up on smugness, but I'm more picking up on strangeness. Did you see the Oprah interview or the acceptance speech? He seems genuinely moved and shaken by Heath's death, not smug or calculating at all. And the inside photos of EW just looked really awkward to me, like the photographer didn't know how to talk to Day Lewis, and so they wound up with a bunch of weird pictures. His back so straight and eyes closed? He seems way too out of place to ever come across as smug to me. You can feel his agent telling him he has to do the cover in those pictures.
JE: I was also making a "TWBB" joke/reference. There's a lotta slapping and beating in that movie! I didn't see DDL's "Oprah" interview, just his SAG speech, which I thought was sincere.
Christopher, you're the Divine-apologist, right? Maybe if Divine had played Daniel Plainview, it wouldn't have seemed so over-the-top? I dunno.
Jim, can't you give Daniel Day-Lewis the benefit of the doubt?
You were one of the writers of "It's Pat!" and I gave you the benefit of the doubt.
JE: Gee, thanks, Harry! I, for one, would love to see Divine mud-wrestle with Paul Dano. But, also, I see Critical Analysis of the Written Kind as a useful way of exploring doubt, beneficial or otherwise. I'm not out to slag DDL just because he's nominated for some award. I'm interested in drilling down into why some people passionately adore DDL's work while others (like me) find some of it so hollow and unconvincing. I'll link to the in-depth point-counterpoint argument I had with an eloquent film critic who completely and utterly disagrees with me, as soon as it's published on MSN Movies.
It's strange, but I can see exactly what you mean about Day-Lewis but I tend to like him anyway. What you see as smug usually strikes me more as discomfort. He looks the way I feel when some photographer tells me to smile and I say I am smiling. We expect actors to be "natural" on screen, of course, and usually if they're not it doesn't work, but I think Day-Lewis's roles often seem made for this quality. I agree that Plainview reminded me immediately of Bill the Butcher but that was my least favorite role of his because it seemed all wrong for the qualities I mentioned, while There Will Be Blood's operatic tone and Plainview's bigger than life misanthropy were tailor made for him.
I once had to deal with a guy at work who really gave me the heebie-jeebies even though he was always as nice as could be. After months of wondering what the deal was I realized he looked a lot like a bully I knew in about third grade. Did you once get beaten up in a laundrette or something?
TWBB and Gangs of New York are both very overblown films (not necessarily a bad thing), though in far different ways to me. One's a nerve-racking and almost Shakespearian theatrical period piece turned character study horror film/dark comedy (milkshake), the other like an epic D.W. Griffith silent film that just happened to be made by Martin Scorsese in 2002 (sounds like an idea for the next Directorama). Such as it is, I think Lewis is perfectly suited to both films, and absolutely critical to their structure, tone, and unwavering success. Also such as it is, I think both films are masterpieces (for the record, I'm a Scorsese fan but not a sheep pack traveler; The Departed is okay at best and I don't think Raging Bull is all that). I don't think Lewis simply becomes and emotes his chosen characters; he seems to exist within the films more entirely than most performers I'm familiar with. I suspect that whatever reason I could possible articulate to "explain" this is currently beyond the scope of my vocabulary (I really should be in bed), but I do suspect that it is just as much DDL's doing as those of the director at hand; he seems like someone so selective, that his only parts are those that the filmmakers knew to be perfect for him in the first place, the kind of performance that an entire film can be shaped around by. Maybe this structural guidance makes him seem somewhat "off" depending on your approach or angle; watching his performance with conscious scrutiny, I saw method at work, but I don't think it's one of physical methodology only.
Everything I said about his TWBB and GoNY performances, ditto Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans (also, a masterpiece, and no, I really don't use that label a lot, although if - for example - believing their to be four out of the some 160 new releases I saw in 2007 is a lot, please let me know). DDL expresses his emotions as if he were rationing food, meticulous and selective, and Christ the emotions just rumble down inside of him. He's the "hero" in all of these pictures, their thematic and narrative beating heart. This is striking me as more praise than criticism (when you're blown away by something so repeatedly, it gets hard to pick it apart; dammit, critics can be fans, too!), but damn, I'm unabashedly straight, but in Last of the Mohicans he right up makes my heart swoon (for the record, Clive Owen is also hot, regardless of your gender or orientation).
I absolutely respect and support his decision not to talk about his acting methods, as these are usually hollow, superficial points that people fall over themselves talking about more so than the thesping itself. "Like, oh my God, Robert DeNiro/Christian Bale lost/gained X pounds for [insert movie name here]!" McDonalds customers and marathon runners gain and lose weight all the time, but that doesn't make 'em the next in line for a Hollywood star.