Film Actor Willem Dafoe Learns from the Stage

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: MAY 07, 1997
Time: 12:00
Tran: 050701np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Willem Dafoe
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:06

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Willem Dafoe is a movie star who is also a long-time presence in experimental theater. This summer, he'll star in "Speed 2" as a madman bent on destroying a luxury cruise liner.

In contrast to that high-tech action film, he's now performing in a small theater on Times Square in Eugene O'Neill's "The Hairy Ape." It's a production of the acclaimed experimental theater company The Wooster Group, which he's been a member of since 1977.

Dafoe's other film work includes playing villains in "Streets of Fire" and "To Live and Die in LA;" playing the nearly-Christ-like Sergeant Elias (ph) in "Platoon" and playing Jesus himself in "The Last Temptation of Christ." Dafoe starred opposite Madonna in "Body of Evidence" and played Caravaggio (ph) in "The English Patient."

I talked to Willem Dafoe first about O'Neill's The Hairy Ape, in which he plays Yank, a stoker working in the boiler room of a trans-Atlantic liner. He wants revenge after one of the passengers, the daughter of a steel magnate, calls him a filthy beast.

The play's really written in -- like urban ethnic dialect.

WILLEM DAFOE, ACTOR: Right.

GROSS: For example, some of your opening lines read: "choke off dat noise. Where'd'yuh -- that's D-'-Y-U-H -- d'yuh get dat beer stuff."

DAFOE: Right.

GROSS: Beer Hell! Beer is for "goils" -- G-O-I-L-S. Me is for somep'n -- S-O-M-E-P'N -- wid a kick to it.

How -- how literally did you take the way O'Neill wrote the dialect?

DAFOE: I clung to it. It was the way. It was the, you know, really more than anything else, initially and even now as I perform it, what I cling to is the language and the rhythm of the -- the music of the language.

This is a -- this is a dialect that's almost invented it's so cartoony.

GROSS: Yeah. Right. It's like generic urban ethnic.

DAFOE: Yeah, it's -- it's you know, some weird kind of Brooklynese, sort of. But after working with the text for a long time, and we perform at a very fast clip, he really has built in some beautiful rhythms and some beautiful repetitions.

And it's been a real lesson for me as an actor, because it's one of those cases where you realize language, besides the literal, you know, the being conscious of the words, so much of what we express in language is tone and vibration and all these kind of things that aren't normally measured and that we don't normally speak to.

And that, in this production particularly, with the thick accent and performed at a very fast clip, is something that I think we're able to -- I, anyway, am interested in, as a performer. I feel like I sing this play rather than speak it.

GROSS: I did a really miserable reading of those first lines. Can you bring that to life for us?

DAFOE: Oh, sure, just a little bit: "Choke off dat noise. Where'd juh get dat beer stuff? Beer, hell, beer's for goils and dutchmen, me is for sompin' for somepin' wid a kick to it. Git me a drink, one of youse guys.

GROSS: Right.

DAFOE: Something like that.

GROSS: I did it better, I think, but...

LAUGHTER

GROSS: So, yeah, I mean, your talking about, it's like, singing the play. You even have a hand-held microphone in it, as if you were a singer.

DAFOE: Right. You know, a lot of our work we deal with amplified sound, not -- just so we can mix it, because the sound mix is quite complex. And it just made me more, you know, then I'm not bound to different positions on the stage, but occasionally there are also mikes around the stage that I go to, that are quite present -- they aren't hidden. They're part of the architecture of the set.

GROSS: Willem Dafoe is my guest, and he's now starring in a Wooster Group production of Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape.

You grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin where I imagine there wasn't a lot of experimental theater.

DAFOE: No.

GROSS: How did you discover experimental theater?

DAFOE: Well, I think -- I went to school for a little while in Milwaukee, very, very briefly, and there was a small company there called "Theater X." And I worked with them for a while, and I also remember there was a very good small press bookstore in the lobby of that theater.

And I started to read various journals that, at the time, seemed to me very esoteric and intellectually challenging, let's say. And there would be things about the performance group and Richard Foreman's (ph) work and Josiah Gratovsky (ph) and Robert Wilson. And I got very turned on by reading about these productions -- about this theory.

And when -- then I worked with this company for a while -- worked in Europe for a little while -- and then went to New York totally intending to become a commercial theater actor because I found the life of working in the small collective was very frustrating.

And I was ambitious, too. I'm basically a puritan from the Midwest. I had to go out there if I wanted to be an actor, an actor was about being very public with what you did.

And when I got here, I just found myself drawn to a certain kind of work, and specifically the work of Elizabeth LeCompte. So I really just kind of knocked on their door. This is the, you know, short form, but knocked on their door and made myself available and insinuated myself into the company -- made it so they couldn't work without me.

GROSS: Well, I should mention that you and Elizabeth LeCompte have been partners on and off the stage for many years.

DAFOE: Right.

GROSS: And have a son together.

DAFOE: Right.

GROSS: So what do you think it was that spoke to you about experimental theater? Was it something intellectual? Was it something -- something else?

DAFOE: I think -- well, I'll go back to what my first impression was when I saw the Wooster Group work. I think, I looked at these people and I thought: these people are doing this amazing thing publicly. They're finding -- they're telling these stories that allow them to have, you know, personal revelations -- some sort of self-realization in public.

And they're -- it looks like they're interested in doing things that will change their way of thinking -- will liberate them, really, and take the audience with them in that change of mind, in that ability to look in different ways. That was one aspect.

The other aspect is just the sheer pleasure, the beauty, of the pieces. They brought me back to when I was a kid, when I loved animation -- cartoons, really, so much, because they were fluid and things transformed and they weren't trapped in a normal way of thinking.

So I guess, basically, I looked at these people. They were very romantic figures. I thought: boy, they're turning their life into art and it's extraordinarily beautiful.

GROSS: So, did you feel like you actually got that sense of personal liberation that you thought you were witnessing other people having when they performed?

DAFOE: I don't know. I mean, it's a -- it's a process, and as you say, personal liberation, I mean, I get a little shy. I can't believe I quite said that on the air. It's a private thought. It's a private aspiration.

But yes, I think I get a great pleasure out of performing in -- and at its best, what it does for me is, you know, it's all about trying to find, in a simple way, trying to find truthful behavior and ways of re-looking at things.

And I think that's good training for living, even. I mean, frequently, people ask you what the difference is between film and theater, and I used to -- because there are many differences and it's quite complicated -- I used to just kind of throw up my hands and say: well, it's all the same. It's all pretending. I mean, some of the external things are very different, but at the heart, it's all pretending.

But I've come to think that in theater, one huge difference is I'm -- I love ritual very much, and I like the idea of basically getting a score and having to reinvent it. It's, you know, it's like, it's -- in our life, there's a lot of repetition: getting up, going to bed, eating -- all kinds of things. And how we live our life is, you know, is the quality of how present-minded we are and how aware we are and how we can invest these things that are so familiar to us.

Where in film, you know, you're working on a scene for a day, and then you either make it or you don't. And it kind of goes away. You aren't returning to the same turf over and over again. So in a funny way -- I'm really answering the question that you didn't even ask -- but it's always on my mind: I find myself always going back to the theater.

GROSS: Well, you know, it's interesting in talking about the theater, you've used words like "personal liberation," "truth," "art," "ritual." These aren't the words on everybody's lips when they decide to make Speed 2, which is the film that you're starring in this summer. What's it like for you to be in, you know, in an action -- in an action -- a big summer action film?

DAFOE: You know, I haven't done it so much. I've been in big movies, but not Big Summer Action Movie -- not those three things. It's -- I don't know -- the doing it was fun. Why I did it was a combination of things, some real pragmatic ones. I knew I wanted to do a big movie. I'd made some small movies, and I felt like it was time to do a big movie.

And also I hadn't played a stone cold, let's call him "villain," in a long-time -- not since many years ago, at least to my mind. And I was eager to do that.

And also it's just a case of you like to exercise different muscles. I mean, clearly Speed 2 has different intents and desires than The English Patient does, for example. But I'm, you know, actually I'm quite happy that I can go between those two things to some degree.

GROSS: So you're the heavy in Speed 2, yes?

DAFOE: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

GROSS: So what's the most out of character thing you had to do for this role?

DAFOE: Out of character thing? Hm. I'm usually attracted to projects where I don't know what my function is or I don't know what the character is at all, and that's the beauty of it, in the process of making the movie, is finding that.

In the case of Speed 2, when I got there, I knew what had to be done, and I think I did it to a fare-thee-well. So, that's not my way, but I felt very comfortable with that because the truth is, sometimes when you work on a movie, as I said, the process of doing it is sometimes finding out what it is. But in the case of Speed 2, the mystery, the curiosity, is you know what you have to do. It's about how you're gonna do it.

And it's like fighting a war, because it's this huge movie with all this complicated technology and really complicated logistics. A lot of it is shot on the water. But then you add this guy that's worth mentioning, in terms of Speed 2, is Yan Debant (ph), who is really a very strong director and he's very willful and he knows exactly what he wants.

So there was a certain kind of pleasure of giving him exactly what he wanted.

GROSS: Willem Dafoe is my guest, and he's now starring in New York in a Wooster Group production of Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape, and you can see him soon in the summer movie Speed 2, where he plays the villain.

Let's take a short break, and then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH AIR.

BREAK

GROSS: Back with actor Willem Dafoe. You know, how you were saying in the O'Neill play, The Hairy Ape, you did the lines as if they were music. I think that is often a really good thing to do when you play the villain, you know, to -- to just get, like, the charisma and the musicality of the character and the lines. Did you do that in your Speed 2 role?

DAFOE: Not so much, because I find that the -- this is not a typical villain in the respect that he doesn't have a lot of, you know, mano-mano face-offs, because so much of what he does is mediated through technology.

So, his personal obsessions and his agendas are worked out in a very private way, which is kind of interesting. So, the text was not what I went towards particularly, because it's -- although there's some wit in it and there's some irony -- it's not where the character lived, let's say.

GROSS: And the character lived where?

DAFOE: Oh, in the close-up.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: Well, speaking of close-ups...

DAFOE: In the close-up and in the action.

GROSS: You've said about your face, speaking of the close-up, that you think it's a face of another era, not a modern face.

DAFOE: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: What do you mean by that?

DAFOE: Oh, I just look at myself and -- I don't know, it's not so much about me looking at myself. I probably can't look at myself anymore, I mean, I don't know what I think. But I -- it's just how people place and identify my face.

And, really, my manner. I mean, I -- it's very good, as an actor, in a fun way, because people can't place you. But I find them often mis-identifying where I come from and who I think I am.

GROSS: I think part of the mis-identifying comes from your name -- Willem -- W-I-L-L-E-M...

DAFOE: That doesn't help, does it?

GROSS: Right. Which is not your birth name, actually, yeah -- but people, I think -- I always assumed you were of Dutch ancestry and...

DAFOE: Right. Right. We don't even know that. I mean, Willem is a nickname that I picked up and if I had to do it all over again, believe me, I would have been "Bill" or something like that. It would have made things a lot simpler.

GROSS: You know, it's funny -- going from experimental theater to movies. In your early movies, you played the heavy in "The Loveless." You were the leader of a motorcycle gang in "Streets of Fire." You were the heavy who, you know, abducts the heroine. Oh, in "Wild at Heart," you were a very obnoxious character -- miserable teeth.

What do you think it was that film makers saw in you that kept casting you as the heavy? Oh, "To Live and Die in LA," you were the heavy. What was it that you think that film directors saw in you that was different than what your colleagues in theater had seen in you?

DAFOE: Hm. I can only guess. Hm. You know, I think it has something to do with physiogamy and it also has to do with what you project.

And in the beginning of your career, of my career, I think if you aren't conventionally handsome and you've got a different manner and you cultivate a certain kind of toughness, which I think I did for, you know, probably personal reasons -- a Midwestern guy, you know, coming to New York, dropping three economic classes, and, you know, getting some attitude. All that comes together and makes this persona, I think.

And in the beginning of working in movies, I think, as surely as survival, just kind of intuitively, you start to create a persona. And I probably don't feel about -- the same about that now, creating a persona, but I think that's what I was projecting. I think those directors found me and I found them. I mean, I went towards that.

And then it got to the point, I think, where I had an interest in trying to change that because once people started to respond to a certain kind of aspect of, you know, a certain character, I found the things that I was getting -- receiving as far as offers were not always complex characters. They were functions of the script and they would just plug you in as a product.

So then, I think I fought to try to mix it up by doing different kinds of projects and different kind of characters. You know, I think people will always respond to me in villain roles. I don't know, someone else has to say why.

GROSS: Mm-hmm. So do you think that you cultivated this toughness when you got to New York because you had been so middle American, middle class before?

DAFOE: I think so. I think so. I think so. And it's just natural. As I said, it's a big -- it's a big -- you grow up middle class and then you really do fall, like, three economic classes and you're dealing with people.

You're living in bad neighborhoods. You're dealing with, you know, a much more marginal society among your colleagues, and you're living with people that you didn't usually mix it up with.

So, I think you become a little radicalized politically and you start to educate yourself in a different way. You start to identify, you know, you aspire to be an artist. You start to identify with a certain kind of outsider position in the world. And that's -- that all feeds it.

GROSS: So, what did you do to cultivate the toughness that you felt you needed?

DAFOE: Oh, you know. I don't know -- it's, you know, you look for trouble, that's all. Because somewhere you think that's where the truth is, because you think in, you know, bourgeois comfortable life -- that's desensitizing. And you're young and you want to get out there and mix it up.

GROSS: Willem Dafoe is currently in New York starring in a Wooster Group production of Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape. He'll be back with us in the second half of our show.

Here's music from one of his early films, To Live and Die in LA. I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

SOUND OF MUSIC FROM FILM "TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA"

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Back with more of our interview with Willem Dafoe, about his dual career in movies and experimental theater. In New York, he's now starring in a Wooster Group production of Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape, and this summer he'll play the heavy in the action film Speed 2.

You know, we were talking about moving back and forth between the world of movies and the world of experimental theater, and often playing the heavy in the movies, which is what you'll be doing this summer in Speed 2.

Are there kind of showy moves that are really -- that really come across well in action films that you have to be careful to avoid when it comes to serious theater?

DAFOE: Hm. Showy moves.

GROSS: In part, because it's a transition from stage -- from screen to stage, but also...

DAFOE: Right.

GROSS: ... I don't know, there's a certain kind of large, charismatic gesture that really works in action films. Action films are kind of about that.

DAFOE: Right.

GROSS: And I'm not sure if that's what you want when you're in a small theater.

DAFOE: You know, one thing that you always -- one interesting thing that I keep on coming up against in my head, and I think this relates to what you're saying, so let me speak to it just a little bit, and I'll try to work it out on the air on your time.

LAUGHTER

But is -- for example in Speed 2, you basically know what you have to do and you do have a large gesture and the -- there isn't a lot of -- you try to build in complexity, in that you hope there is some ambiguity, but basically it's a very long, very large gesture.

And in the selling of the movie, when you're doing your publicity in a movie that's aimed for a big audience, it's -- you're like creating something that's basically recognizable.

And a lot of acting in Hollywood is geared towards that. You're encouraged to make a persona, to make something that people know what it is, and then you have these characters acting these things out in these stories. That's what all movie stars have in common, I'd say, pretty much. They make themselves into a product.

So you're dealing with that on the one hand, and then on the other hand, you're an actor, and part of being an actor is to be totally mutable, to be totally invisible, to totally melt into the story. And that's -- that's always an interesting struggle.

And when you go back to the theater, you're always reminded of that, I'd say, because never, at least not in my theater, which is basically an ensemble theater, I mean, it is an ensemble theater. It's an artistic collective, and I'm not -- it's not like a showcase for me. I'm one of many people in this group -- group of theater artists.

You're reminded that your job is to serve "the Thing." And so often in movies, certain parts of Hollywood encourage you to be the thing and the movie serves you. And I think I struggle with that, because basically, at heart, I hope I have the power and the attractiveness of -- that, let's say a movie star has, but at the same time, you know, my conceit is I want to be an actor, because I want to do all kinds of things, and I want to, you know, be able to clean the slate, you know...

GROSS: Yeah.

DAFOE: ... kind of the beginner's mind thing. Each time...

GROSS: Right.

DAFOE: ... in each outing.

GROSS: I like these points that you're making.

DAFOE: Well, to reinvent, to reinvent -- because that's what I feel comfortable with. That's what I feel close to in my life, you know, the impermanence, the transformation, the always things changing -- that's when I feel alive.

But when I have an obligation to make something and stick to it and guard that and protect that, then it's really oppressive and I find it -- that's where you start to creak creatively.

GROSS: You must have odd, ego transitions you have to make.

DAFOE: Oh.

GROSS: Because, you know, in the movie...

DAFOE: It's true.

GROSS: ... world, people have such big egos who are movie stars, and, I don't know, I think a lot of movie stars are really used to being pampered and taken care of in every way, and then when you're working on a small, experimental collective like the Wooster Group, it's about collaboration. And although I'm sure there is a lot of ego there, it's of a different -- of a different sort?

DAFOE: Yeah, it -- that's a very good question, and probably a very personal question. But you know, that -- the whole idea -- basically, I believe that -- it's very complicated -- because I believe your best performing comes when you're serving something outside of yourself.

And your best performing comes when you don't have an agenda, that something actually works through you. I find that most satisfying, and those are the performances I'm attracted to.

I'm not -- as an audience member, I'm not attracted to needy performers. Some people like that very much. That's their -- that's the whole social contract, sometimes, with the arts. But me, I'm not so interested in that.

But at the same time, you now, as I've expressed already, part of this whole game of making things has a lot to do with finding out about yourself, and being, you know -- having it, having these journeys be public journeys to find out who you are.

So it's very schizophrenic, because somewhere I believe you should cultivate an egolessness in performing, but on the other hand, performing is all about dealing with the self.

And maybe I'm tangled up in semantics there, but this is -- this is a dynamic that I'm dealing with all the time. I mean, I can play with it as opposites and all that, but I'm still not clear about the other end of the spectrum yet.

GROSS: Yeah, but then there's also just the pure egocentrism of show business, you know, of the Hollywood world where...

DAFOE: Yeah, but that's the -- see, that's one of the things that I love. There's a part of me that is absolute show trash. That, you know...

LAUGHTER

... want to -- no, wants to get up there and sing a song...

GROSS: Me, me, me.

DAFOE: You know, take off my clothes and you know, show off and have people think I'm wonderful. And then there's another part of me that wants -- wants me to quietly work stuff out, you know, using these stories, using these characters as a mask and have me be a agent and have it not be about me and have people quietly watch this thing happen, and we hope, for all of us, that something interesting happens.

So I mean, I can live with that, but, you know, sometimes when I express some very lofty aspiration, then I have to laugh and I feel like an impostor, a liar, because I know the other end.

GROSS: Right.

DAFOE: And they operate at the same time all the time.

GROSS: My guest is Willem Dafoe. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

Back with actor Willem Dafoe. Now, you were Christ in The Last Temptation of Christ -- the Martin Scorcese-Paul Schraeder (ph) film. Did Scorcese just think of you for Christ? Or did you audition for him?

DAFOE: You know, he had a long, long audition process. He tested lots and lots and lots and lots of people. Everybody imaginable. That's my understanding.

But I was very lucky, because I wasn't involved in that process, and one day he gave me a call and I came in. I read the script. I mean, he gave me a script. I read it. I came back the next day, and I said: I'd love to do this. And he said OK.

He basically told me what he wanted to do, what his perspective on it was. You know, that basically he wanted to address the mortal side of Christ, you know, to balance the divine side.

GROSS: I don't know if you came from a religious background, but I know Catholicism was really important in Scorcese's early life, and he's still very involved in thinking about the meaning of religious iconography and the church and so on. And Paul Schraeder was from a very strict religious background.

Did you all sit and talk a lot about -- about Christianity during the making of the film?

DAFOE: No. No. Marty didn't even ask me what my background was. There were no questions.

GROSS: But I will ask you.

LAUGHTER

DAFOE: No, I mean, it's interesting because part of the process of working on that -- you know, I look back on it, and I can't, I can't believe that I wasn't more nervous about doing that movie than I was. Not because of the movie, but because of the role.

GROSS: Right.

DAFOE: But I wasn't, because Marty knew exactly what he wanted to do, and I knew that I had to approach it from a place where I had to cleanse myself of any expectation, which was, you know, I -- which worked very well for the film, because the point is Jesus, in the film, starts out as a regular Joe, sort of, that gets visited upon. And then it's the process of struggling with this responsibility that he has.

So, the starting place for me on that film was definitely a place of trying to not know -- not know anything. And that was the trick. It was a very Zen approach to Jesus, I guess.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: Did you come from a religious background?

DAFOE: I don't know. I mean, I want to say culturally, yes, but formally, no. I mean, basically, my parents were puritan -- puritanical, God-fearing people, but I didn't have any real education.

I went to a church that was, you know, basically as I recall, you know, when I was growing up, a lot of the sermons were about civil rights and Vietnam. So, it was more about social issues and kind of preached a -- you know -- a loose interpretation of the bible. And, for lack of a better -- well, I guess, humanism.

But I didn't get the religion religion. I didn't get the juicy iconography. You know, always interested in painting and art, of course, I got that some, when I started getting older, but I've been playing catch up with education for a long time. Now, I'm terrifically interested in religion, and actually, working on Last Temptation was probably -- had a lot to do with that.

GROSS: In what sense? In the sense of thinking of yourself as Christ, and therefore thinking through the whole story?

DAFOE: Oh, I just think -- you know, I don't know. That afforded me -- you know, it was an introduction to certain teachings of Jesus, and I thought when you really sit in them and you really think about them and meditate on them, they're very powerful.

And I think that that was the beginning of me being interested in different religious traditions and, you know, ancient philosophies and things like that.

GROSS: When you took the role of Caravaggio in The English Patient, did you have any idea that the film would be as successful as it was?

DAFOE: No. No. I mean, well, yes and no. I mean, I assume if I'm going to -- if I like a film well enough, and I think it's a wonderful proposition, I assume we're going to make a great movie and people are going to be able to find it, and it'll be a big success.

But it had -- it didn't have those kinds of beginnings. I mean, production was called off -- canceled, really -- right before I was ready to leave for Italy. And it was a struggle, but I knew it was -- I knew that it had a certain kind of pedigree to it.

Let's put it that way, and it was just a question of whether it would be a movie that the critics would get behind, and then they would create enough of an interest that people would go to it and then it would stick, and then word of mouth would be good.

Because basically, you had a, you know, a movie from a celebrated literary source, but you didn't have any big names in it. And yeah, it was one of those things that people have to find it, because the sure bets in movies are only when, you know, you have a built-in audience and people can immediately identify what it is, and it's what they want.

GROSS: Had you read the book before making the movie?

DAFOE: I had, but not in association with the movie. I had read Michael Ondaatje before. In fact, I've read all the other books before I read English Patient, and then only after the movie did I come to his poetry.

So, I was aware of it, and when I heard they were making a movie of it, I thought: great, good luck. But I also thought there's no role for me, so I didn't particularly watch it.

GROSS: You just assumed there'd be no role for you?

DAFOE: Yeah. Yeah, because I -- you know, I'm stupid. Like a lot of actors, you know, you mis-identify things. And Caravaggio -- I was kind of literal about his ethnic background. He's a Canadian, but he's of Italian descent. So like an idiot, you know, I started picturing this guy with, you know, jet black hair and darker skin than me and a different look, you know, like a Sicilian guy.

But also, to be fair to myself, actually, in the novel, he's a much older man and certain adjustments were made, kind of in reaction to the casting, I think, to make him younger.

GROSS: You grew up in a large family, two brothers, five sisters -- both of your parents were in the medical profession. Your father was a surgeon, I believe, your mother a nurse.

DAFOE: Mm-hmm. Right.

GROSS: You're raising a son who's, I guess, already a teenager and...

DAFOE: Right.

GROSS: ... you've raised him in a very unconventional environment, living in a loft in SoHo. You know, his extended family is, I'm sure, a lot of artists and actors and so on. I wonder what it's been like to come from a fairly conventional middle class background, then watch your son grow up in a very unconventional way.

DAFOE: I think it's great. I envy him. I mean, I -- my family was wonderful when I was growing up, and I don't want to malign my home town. But it was basically a very, you know, homogeneous environment and people basically thought alike and dressed alike and, you know, there wasn't a lot of range of experience.

So, when I found myself going out into the world, I had lots of catching up to do. And you know, overcoming a certain ignorance just by virtue of the fact that I hadn't experienced a lot of things. So, here I've got my son who takes certain things for granted -- things that were hard-fought battles for me to come to grips with or understand are totally natural to him.

He's very accepting of many different kinds of points of view, different lifestyles. You know, New York City, quite simply, is still a really incredible place where we mix it up for better and for worse.

You know, economically, color-wise, religion-wise, sexual persuasion-wise -- and I think that's very healthy, because it gives you, you know, I'm preaching here, but it gives you -- it breeds tolerance and compassion.

GROSS: In reading a bunch of articles about you to prepare for our interview, I came across a few, well, kind of beefcake kind of photos.

DAFOE: Oh.

GROSS: I mean not heavy beefcake, but...

DAFOE: Right.

GROSS: ... you know, as a movie star with his shirt unbuttoned and his manly chest revealed.

DAFOE: Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes.

GROSS: And I'm wondering what it's like for you to do photo shoots like that -- if you both enjoy it and see the absurdity of it, you know, again, having a foot in both worlds -- in the major motion picture world and the experimental theater world.

DAFOE: I do. I do, actually. I'm -- I've always kind of liked having my picture taken and I don't know why. I'm not that narcissistic. I guess, I like that -- I must like that attention. I don't know. I don't know what it is.

GROSS: You like the beefcake thing where, OK...

DAFOE: Not the beefcake thing...

GROSS: ... undo your shirt.

DAFOE: You know, sometimes I'm in the mood for it, and sometimes I'm not.

GROSS: Right.

DAFOE: I mean, you know, there's a -- I -- this is kind of a funny story, I think. Annie Liebowitz shot me several years ago and it was a period where, you know, when people were shooting me, they were always asking me to put on a leather jacket and hang a cigarette out of my mouth.

And here she was, and I was excited to shoot with her, and she wanted me to put on a leather jacket and take off my shirt and that sort of thing. And I thought: oh man, this is a drag. Just because it -- that image, that place for pretending wasn't living for me any more.

You know, I felt cornered. So I said: No, no, no, no, no. And I resisted her and I resisted, and we shot lots of other stuff. And then at the end, she was so nice, I said ah, what the hell, and I said: OK, let's do a couple.

So, I took off my shirt, put on this leather jacket. And she shot about three shots. And one of them went on to be a picture that is, like a postcard and is in a book and I see it a lot, and it's a very beautiful picture. So, who knows.

GROSS: Right. Right. Right. Well, we're out of time. I wish we had more time to talk, but unfortunately we don't. I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

DAFOE: Sure. Sure. My pleasure.

GROSS: Willem Dafoe is now starring off-Broadway in the Wooster Group production of Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape. This summer, you can see him play the villain in the action film Speed 2.

Coming a new CD by jazz singer Abbey Lincoln. This is FRESH AIR.

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: Willem Dafoe
High: Actor Willem Dafoe. He's a star in films, and says he is attracted to roles that are morally ambiguous. His villainous turns include: "To Live in Die in L.A.," "Platoon," "Wild at Heart," and "The English Patient." When he's not starring in films he's performing on stage with productions by the Wooster Group, an ensemble that presents experimental theater in New York. The group's director is Elizabeth LeCompte, Dafoe's longtime companion, and mother of their 14-year-old son. He is currently starring in the group's off-Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's "The Hairy Ape." This summer Dafoe stars in the film sequel, "Speed 2."
Spec: Movie Industry; Media; Theater; People Willem Dafoe; Religion

Please note, this is not the final feed of record

Copy: Content and programming copyright (c) 1997 National Public Radio, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. under license from National Public Radio, Inc. Formatting copyright (c) 1997 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information please contact NPR's Business Affairs at (202) 414-2954
End-Story: Willem Dafoe
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: MAY 07, 1997
Time: 12:00
Tran: 050702NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Who Used to Dance
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:54

TERRY GROSS, HOST: Jazz musicians, as a rule, do not retire. One reason for that is most never make enough money to save up for a few well-deserved decades of leisure. Some musicians tend to show their age more than others. Trumpet players and singers in particular tend to sound a little less steady as time advances.

Singer Abbey Lincoln was 65 when she recorded her new album. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead has this review.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, ABBEY LINCOLN'S NEW ALBUM)

ABBEY LINCOLN, SINGER, SINGING:
Did you go all the way just following the stream?
Did you run to capture something from a dream?
I'm coming for to get you, never mind the tears
'Cause you've always been my darlin' through the years.

KEVIN WHITEHEAD, FRESH AIR COMMENTATOR: That's real Abbey Lincoln. Any fan would recognize her, both from the rich timbre of her voice and from certain eccentricities of phrasing and intonation.

If anything, those idiosyncrasies have gotten more noticeable as she's gotten older. Some of the albums Lincoln has made during her 1990s comeback have been over-produced, as if the fancy arrangements were designed to hide her quirks. But her new album called "Who Used To Dance" puts her voice squarely out front.

The basic band is her working trio, spiked with various guests like Savion Glover (ph), who tap dances on the title track. Other dancers, like Fred Astaire and Baby Lawrence have put on their taps for recording sessions with uneven results.

This is not the best example on record, but it was still worth a tri.

MUSIC RISES

SOUND OF TAP DANCING

LINCOLN SINGING: Who used to dance
And now who grinds
A way of life, a road that winds
Who used to dance

WHITEHEAD: That's Mark Carey (ph) on piano. As on other Abbey Lincoln records, she's occasionally joined by guest saxophonists. Oliver Lake (ph), Frank Morgan (ph), and Steve Coleman (ph) are among them here.

When you consider that Morgan is, like Lincoln, a survivor of the jazz business and that Coleman apprenticed in Lincoln's band in the 1980s, the album begins to take on a subtle autobiographical aspect.

On this CD, Lincoln sings a Bob Dylan song that was a rock hit in the '60s. That choice was surely influenced by Cassandra Wilson's (ph) success covering '60s rock tunes like "Last Train to Clarksville."

But singing Dylan makes particular sense for Lincoln, since she also writes harmonically simple songs of social observation and comment. She believes music can help change the way we see and deal with the world.

That said, this is unpolitical Dylan.

LINCOLN SINGING: Though I know that evening (Unintelligible)
Returned in to sand
Banners from my hand
Left me finally here to stand, but still not sleepin'

My weariness amazes me
I'm stranded on my feet
And I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreamin'

Hey Mr. Tambourine
Play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come following you.

WHITEHEAD: Sometimes, listening to Abbey Lincoln, one gets the impression she lands on a note or a beat she did not anticipate. But she learned long ago how to recover herself with grace. That's a positive side of accumulated experience.

If the records she's made in her '60s also reflect the aging process in less positive ways, that's OK too. Lincoln's music has always reflected her personal experience.

Flawed as they are, her recent CDs don't play like the depressing last recordings of Billie Holiday. Those were the sound of a life falling apart.

When the mature Abbey Lincoln sings, you hear an artist making intelligent choices arrived at through trial and error. That's a good example for all of us, which is another way of saying that music really can influence the way we deal with the world.

GROSS: Kevin Whitehead is currently in Amsterdam, where he's working on a book. He reviewed "Who Used To Dance" by singer Abbey Lincoln.

Dateline: Kevin Whitehead; Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest:
High: Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews Abbey Lincoln's new release "Who Used to Dance?"
Spec: Music Industry; Jazz; People; Abbey Lincoln

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright (c) 1997 National Public Radio, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. under license from National Public Radio, Inc. Formatting copyright (c) 1997 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information please contact NPR's Business Affairs at (202) 414-2954
End-Story: Who Used to Dance
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.