Meet Bill Pullman

"So now you want to do all those goofy romantic comedies, huh?"

"Actually, no, I feel like there was something so Cinderella-ish about being with Sandy that to do another one would seem like shtick. So I'm doing things that are totally different."

"Another thing we thought..."

"I can hardly wait to hear this."

"No, this you might like. We watched Sommersby, and we decided that the reason they gave you the limp and made you wear shirts and pants that were two inches too short..."

"I looked like Ichabod Crane, for chrissakes."

"I know. And we decided that if they left you alone, let you act with all your assets, so to speak, you would have blown Richard Gere off the screen."

Pullman leans over and kisses my forehead, but won't say a word on the subject.

"Did you see Liebestraum?" he asks.

"I know this is one of your favorite performances, because your publicist reminded me to watch it. I can watch anything, but i gotta tell you. Bill. I couldn't get through the first hour..."

That's too bad, because I really think it's great. Mike Figgis directed it--he also did Internal Affairs and Leaving Las Vegas."

"He did the score for Leaving Las Vegas, too, and took a separate credit for it. I thought that was the height of self-importance, for the director to give himself a pat on the back like that."

"Well, for me, Liebestraum was a great experience, a great time, and I have such fond memories about it... "

"I feel the same way about sleep-away camp."

Pullman slaps my hand. "It was wild working with Figgis, because he's very much in possession of himself. Some would say a narcissist, but I think there's a power in that. I have to admit that I was just dazzled by his absorption with his own instincts and his own ability to pursue things..."

"Because you're not like that?"

"Well, I think of myself as an actor, and I can get absorbed in myself and I can get overbearing and everything like that, but it's not in that totally toxic way, where if anybody says anything that disparages your work, it just rolls off your back because you're thinking, 'How dare they...?'"

"I'll tell ya, Internal Affairs has some of the sickest things in it. When Richard Gere comes into the elevator and butts heads with Andy Garcia while he's holding Andy Garcia's wife's underpants in his hands..."

We both get hysterical. "I know," says Pullman. "There's a scene in Liebestraum that's quintessential Figgis. Kevin Anderson has come into town, and I know he's attracted to my wife and she's attracted to him. I'm telling him about my relationship to my wife, and I say, 'Yeah, we've had some tough times. She found a pair of black lace panties in the back of my pickup truck and then she shaved her head.' Those are the kind of things that happen in a Figgis movie! In that same scene, Kevin Anderson and I are drinking, and I put my arm around him, and I go, 'I'm gonna give you the keys to this building.' And I sort of put his head in a headlock, and I say, 'You can come and go as you want, but just don't come in my wife.'"

Pullman and I both turn red. "I think I'm speechless," I say.

"Not likely," Pullman retorts.

"How come we never read about you in the tabloids? Don't you know in order to be really successful in Hollywood you have to know how to make an asshole of yourself in public?"

Pullman smacks his head. "Now you tell me! No, I live a fairly normal life, and I guess it's not that interesting to the tabloids. I'll tell you. I read things about myself, and usually I can lake it. But one time, somebody printed this story, and they wrote about my wife and kids, and they printed my kids' names in the piece. My kids deserve their own privacy. But the other part of it was that the way they said it, that I was a married guy with kids, it just felt like I was boring, that I was like white bread. That was the lone of the whole piece, to show how flat a personality I had."

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