Celebrity Interviews

Zimbio Interview: Edward Norton Talks About 'Stone'

(Getty Images)

In Stone, which opens to wide release this weekend, Edward Norton plays a convicted arsonist trying to convince a parole officer, played by Robert De Niro, that he's worthy of being released back into the world. Norton claims to have experienced a spiritual awakening while inside prison, and it's left to De Niro and the audience to determine its authenticity.

We sat down with Norton in San Francisco to talk about the movie, his time with Detroit-area inmates, and how this film fits into his filmography.

Zimbio: You have a reputation for being selective with scripts. What attracted you to Stone?

Edward Norton: I made this film The Painted Veil with [Stone director] John Curran. I had such a great experience with him. There are two ways I rate the director: what's it like to work with them on the day, in the process, and how do they do with the film in the end? On both counts, I really loved John. I really was happy with the outcome of the film. I thought he did a beautiful job.

We were enthused about the idea of finding something, and this came from John. He read it as a play, and saw it developed into a script and he was really tracking it. It had his hooks in him and he wanted to do it.

I didn't totally understand it at first. It was considerably different in script form than the film we made. It was eluding me, but John -- over the course of about a year -- I began to really get a sense of what John was aiming at. This is going to sound weird, but to me John wanted to make a film about certain things, and he saw the script as a springboard for him to get into things he wanted to get into. Eventually I began to understand what those were, and then I kind of got on board.

Zimbio: You mention the script was considerably different than the end product. I saw the film last Friday and there's some stuff that I wasn't expecting. I didn't get that there was going to be this whole spirituality aspect to it. How heavy was that in the original script?

Edward: That was definitely there. To [screenwriter] Angus MacLachlan's credit there was always a quality in the script that was unexpected, where what feels like is going to be just a manipulation reveals itself to be possibly an inversion between these characters. Where the character that you assume is the manipulator indeed starts to possibly be having an authentic transformative experience. And I really liked that.

Zimbio: You have this history with Primal Fear, Fight Club, Incredible Hulk, of doing characters with a duality. What attracts you to these characters that have this split to them?

Edward: Primal Fear was -- it wasn't a time in my life where I was choosing my roles. It was just an opportunity that came and obviously it was a lot of fun. Because in some ways it was about acting. It was a character who's faking.

So I can't really line that up as something that I chose thematically. People have asked me that question and people have observed a sort of thread of duality, but I don't relate to that so much as I do to the idea of characters that are complex or who have a journey. I don't relate in an intense way to Fight Club just because it's a theme about a person whose personality is fracturing anymore than I do American History X or The Painted Veil, which are just complex studies of characters who journey a long way from where they were in the beginning to where they are in the end.

I would say Stone is in that category of films where it's an exploration of a person going through an intense change of their life. Something happens to them that really alters them.

Zimbio: You've been around prisons with some of your roles. American History X, did you research that in prison?

Edward: No, not really.

Zimbio: For this one you did, though.

Edward: This one I did. I've only really been in prisons for a film -- I mean on Primal Fear maybe we ducked into one, but it wasn't anybody's idea of a prison film. It's really a court room drama. This was the most substantive time I've ever spent in a prison. And this was the only time I've ever really -- in like a deep sense -- interviewed and interacted with inmates, and really heard about their experiences and kind of mined specific people's experiences.

Edward says of his cornrows, "It's a stupid kind of prejudice, but... you make certain types of assumptions about someone when they sit down looking like that." (From Overture Films)
Zimbio: And where did you get the idea for the cornrows? The movie opens on the cornrows. It's the first shot of you.

Edward: Everybody up in there -- black, latin, white -- there were so many guys who had it. This character is supposed to be from southwest Detroit. We met guys in the prisons -- there were white guys who were in Crips gangs. Cornrows are very common, to be honest. It's as common as tattoos.

John said, "Look, all I really care about from this guy is that I want him to be from Detroit. I want it to feel authentic to that. And I want to feel when I first meet him, both in how he looks and what he says, that this guy is not a very likely candidate for release or for spiritual transformation -- so that he can emerge.'

I think it has that effect. In a weird way, if you think about it, it's a stupid kind of prejudice, but it does have that effect. You make certain types of assumptions about someone when they sit down looking like that.

Zimbio: I had cornrows in college once.

Edward: Oh yeah?

Zimbio: They did not look as good as yours.

Edward: They look worse when they come out.

Zimbio: The Hulk kind of fell apart. There were a lot of fans that were sort of disappointed about it. Are you interested in doing anymore comic book films in the future?

Edward: I'm not uninterested in it.

Zimbio: Depends on the scripts?

Edward: Yeah. To me, I'm not interested in comic books just for their own sake, but it's kind of like what's the opportunity of a specific one? It's fun. It's fun. There are great worlds and if someone can do it smart...

I think [Dark Knight director] Chris Nolan's really set a new baseline bar for how to address these things and I'm not sure almost anyone else is really living up to that right now. But I think it could be great. It could be great fun. I had fun doing it. I don't get into things like that with an expectation that -- I don't relate to the franchise of it -- I kind of look at them as a one-off opportunity and I had a great time and it was great fun.

Edward Norton Pictures