The idea for The Station Agent has been floating amongst writer/director Tom McCarthy's inner circle for more than three years. Getting the film together was a difficult task. A character-driven film, it takes place in a small town in New Jersey named Newfoundland. It's about outsiders and loneliness &#Array; not the ingredients most Hollywood producers look for in a project.
In the midst of attempting to get funding for the shoot, Tom McCarthy had been working on scenes for the film with Bobby Cannavale and Peter Dinklage. Often working simply with a video camera, many of these scenes would remain virtually unchanged when finally shot for the feature. McCarthy came up with the basic idea first, then tailor-wrote parts for friends Cannavale, Dinklage and Patricia Clarkson.
At a Miramax press day last Thursday at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles, IGN spoke with co-stars Peter Dinklage and Bobby Cannavale about their work on The Station Agent. It's hard not to feel a little bit sympathetic, as, for some reason, Miramax has combined the interviews for Station Agent with Kill Bill. Obviously, the large majority of the press is here solely for Kill Bill, which is a shame.
Bobby Cannavale laughs coming into the room. Some members of the press look a little disappointed by his presence. He immediately takes notice of this. "Working with Quentin was great," He jokes. "Uma Thurman's hot. And that's it."
This gets some good laughs from the room and, more importantly, breaks the ice so we can start talking about The Station Agent. "Yeah, the part was written for me by Tom McCarthy. For almost ten years we were really good friends and, when he started writing it, he called me and asked me little things like, you know, 'Give me the name of a Cuban dish. Tell me about the culture.' But I would say, one sort of thing we had in common is I'm very talky and inquisitive and sort of relentless that way. For me, the work part of it was trying to identify with this guy's loneliness. I was really impressed with how, sort of on the surface, he didn't seem like a lonely person at all. That's what I loved about it. You had Fin (Dinklage) and Olivia (Clarkson) who were two people who were actively trying to be lonely and this guy who was lonely and not trying to be. And so that, for me, was the kind of hard part. We'd be shooting and Tom would say 'Just remember. Don't force any of this stuff. Just really, genuinely ask these questions like a kid would want to know the answer to all these questions. Don't stop, don't stop.' There would be a fine line between making this guy grating and annoying."
Originally, the part of Fin was not written specifically for Peter Dinklage. "He set out to tell a story about a guy who was a train enthusiast who had chosen to isolate himself from the world," Cannavale says. "And then he decided to write it for Peter and that's when he started actually putting pen to paper and writing the parts."
Finding roles where his dwarfism is not the focus can often be difficult for Dinklage. Still, he has never let size stand in the way of playing really interesting parts.
Watching him play the train enthusiast Fin, it's easy to forget his size. "I'm not a spokesperson or an activist for people my size. I'm not going to get on my soapbox about that stuff (comical movies starring dwarfs such as the Austin Powers films) because people can do what they want to do. Sure, it might perpetuate a stereotype, but I'm not going to be a hypocrite. I had a grand time at those movies. I was laughing my butt off at those movies so I'm not going to cast my judgment upon it. For me personally, that's something that I try and stay away from."
Station Agent is the kind of role any actor would dream of, regardless of their physical attributes. "Often roles written for someone my size are a little flat," Dinklage says. "They're either fools, sight gags or they're sort of Lord of the Rings, filled with wisdom. They're not sexual, they're not romantic, they're not flawed. And I love this about this character that Tom wrote... He has this stuff going on. He has romance. He's got romantic feelings. He's got anger and he's got flaws."
Acting is a passion that has always been in Dinklage's blood. "As a kid you just do it because it's fun. Make believe. Put on puppet shows in my basement with my brother. Do Pinocchio in the fourth grade. You love the attention, I suppose. You love to have fun. I come from a very supportive group of family [and] friends. My mom's a music teacher. My brother's a violinist. There's a piano in the house. My grandmother was in silent movies, although we can't find any of them. They've all been lost. It's so sad. ...I just was encouraged always and I was fortunate enough to have great teachers along the line there..."
Putting this film together and sticking to his guns about casting made this film an even more difficult endeavor for McCarthy. Dinklage talks about the struggle: "We were trying to find funding and we were shot down a couple of times. But we really all were very determined that we weren't going to make it if one of us wasn't a part of it. We would change things, minor things, the day while we were shooting it. ...We knew these characters so well, by the time we shot it, he trusted us."
Much of the film, such as the train-watching scene where Joe (Cannavale) first goes train watching with Fin was shot on the fly. Cannavale talks about this shooting process: "That scene. All the scenes in the movie except for the train chasing, we stole those shots. We'd have a kid, a PA (Production Assistant) a couple of miles down the track with a whistle and, when we heard that whistle, we knew the train was coming so we would just throw cameras together, put on different wardrobe and just sit there. With that one, we didn't know what the train was going to look like, and it was only those two cars.... Tom was just like, 'Stand there and react to what comes. I don't know what's coming, but whatever comes, just react.'" In the film, when the train comes, Joe jumps up and down and screams like an excited little boy. It's a great scene. "Wouldn't you react that way? I was waiting like two hours for this train to come and then it was bulls**t. It was nothing."
"It was a great combination because it took us three years to make this movie," says Cannavale. In those three years, we never put it down. We'd get together all the time. Tom and I lived right across the park from each other. I live on West 82nd. He lives on East 82nd. So we'd get together all the time, the middle of the park, you know, for three years. He had a video camera, a little video camera. Dink (Dinklage's nickname to his close friends) and I would shoot... I don't know if Tom realizes it or not, but that basically replicated those scenes that we'd shot two years earlier on a stoop with video with the same exact shot. It was always present, so when we finally got there, it was incredible. I've worked with some directors, doing these small parts, that were just out of their minds, you know. And just like screaming at everybody with the pressure. And that never happened on this film. It was amazing, because we shot it in twenty days. He never freaked out. It was all friends."
The buzz on Station Agent has been excellent for many months now. It was one of the darlings of the Sundance Film Festival, taking home the Audience Award in the drama category. Now comes the uphill battle of selling it to the general public. Can a good movie become a hit without the big budget ingredients of star power, multi-million dollar effects and sex?
Without the usual hip selling points of mainstream cinema, The Station Agent still faces an uphill battle when it is released outside of art house-friendly circles. Cannavale is very proud of the film and eager to do his part to promote it. "We got a great reception at Sundance but, you know, until we went to these other cities and saw it with just, sort of, regular folks, we didn't know. Everyone really seems to like it. I'm taking my son to the premiere. He's eight. I think he'll like it too. We went to Spain and there was 1800 people in the audience. None of them spoke English and they reacted the same way they did at Sundance. They got everything. I really think it can appeal to everyone. People come up to me and say, 'You know, I didn't know where this movie was going and then slowly I started to identify with these characters.' "And I think that's actually what Tom was going for. Everyone can identify with being lonely in their life at some time."
The Station Agent opens this Friday, October 3rd.