The Messenger's Ben Foster: 'I Love and Hate What I Do'
So many of them are so young.
Oh, they're kids. They enlist for so many different reasons, and I suppose I didn't think about it, you know? I just didn't understand. The awareness that we need to take much better care of the soldiers, and this silly thing we tell ourselves about how long the war is going to last...in my opinion, it's going to be one of the great failures of our country if we don't step up and take better care of our returning soldiers. We could win the war and lose, because they're coming back and they're gonna need a lot of love.
Obviously, you really immerse yourself in a character, and yet many of the tattoos in the movie are your own. I'm curious: Do you rationalize those through your character, and try to see him getting those same tattoos through his point-of-view? How does that work?
If they suit the physicality of the character, whatever works. I don't operate with a single thought. If they suit the picture, some will stay in, some will disappear, and new ones will appear. It's sort of what feels right. [Laughs] Yeah.
I always wonder about actors who get tattoos, since you're asked to play so many different roles. Is it about putting something permanent on yourself in a profession where you're so often inhabiting someone else temporarily?
It's hard to say, growing up in a tattoo culture. When I see somebody who doesn't have ink, I'm always excited for them. At the same time, I don't regret this body mapping. We build our own narratives, and it's a permanent expression of where we've been and where we're going. They're little talismans of our experiences. In terms of what works for a role, that's something you figure out role to role. They can go away just like that.
So this film that sent you to the hospital is Simon West's The Mechanic, right? Tell me about that.
It's a remake of this assassin picture from the 70s: this assassin has to kill his boss, a father figure, and there's guilt and remorse. He sort of adopts his mentor's son, who doesn't know his father has been murdered, and he trains him in the art of the hit.
What I like about you, Ben, is that your work in big studio movies like 3:10 to Yuma is just as interesting as your work in indies. You don't just coast through it.
Well, thanks. You've got to love the character. I've never approached something as strictly a paycheck, nor am I pretentious enough to believe that you can only explore the deepest corners of your soul and survive. I'm a movie fan, and I like going to the pictures. [Pause] I love and hate what I do.
You would say that on your way home from the hospital.
[Laughs] Yeah, well. It's all in fun.
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I served as a female U.S. Marine, and happen to also be Orthodox Jewish. I found it sadly hilarious that poor Ben is "conflicted" by his idealistic notions of service members coupled with his contempt for the politics circumventing today's American military. He says we need to care better for our soldiers, that they're just kids, yada yada. Oh, Ben, thanks for the support, brother, but you're too Hollywood. Here's his irony: the very politics that reduces military care is designed by the administrations and representatives he and his co-stars vote for. If he's going to sum up the military, I'm going to sum up Hollywood actors.
We do join for a variety of reasons, but unless we join the Air Force where bootcamp is 6 weeks long and military traditions don't hold (it's the branch you join when you want to focus on personal growth instead of combat skill and team development, so an A.F. Colonel I moved in recently told me), we join for reasons you can only mimic from a script. We join for college money, which you'll never have a struggle with. We join for the excellent free medical and dental and vision coverage for ourselves and our dependents, another thing you'll never have to worry about. We join because we were accepted to Loyolla Marymount University or UCLA (we are not stupid, despite what most liberals and hippies think) and can't afford to attend even after we receive Stafford Loans. We join to escape gang territory in which we live, like Pacoima and the Bryant Street gangs off Parthenia or to escape MS13 indoctrination as my Salvadoreno husband had. We join for religious inspiration, sorority, fraternity, for the excellent state-of-the-art training in foreign language, intelligence, physics, and certain technical schools. We join for direction, belonging, and sometimes just a graciousness for country once we see the countries we've emigrated from have either no freedoms or very vague protections, again something Ben and his cronies will never experience first-hand.
By the way, Ben, you have no conscience. How dare you take roles in movies that don't support families of the victims these movies advertise? Nick Markowitz was my friend, and you didn't receive that call that summer that Nick was dead, you didn't lose that classmate. The revenue from that movie didn't benefit Nick, but was another fleeting thriller which Jesse James Hollywood can now add to his resume: "I inspired a major movie and it made me look like a hard-*ss!" You and your friends act like you're so enlightened, but in reality, if you could be paid enough to play the rest of the common people, you would. We're just muses who add figures to your pay-cheques and character traits to your repertoire.
I liked it on Freeks & Geeks when Ben Foster as Eli delivered his weekly catchphrase: "I do anything to get away from annoying Vania, maybe even join Military. That why I join Marines."
Seriously, it's a puff interview with Ben Foster. Save your anger for a Shia Labeouf face-to-face.
Wow, bitter much? I agree with R Hoods. Lighten up. This was a nice interview with a thoughtful actor who had nothing but respectful things to say about the military and its personnel. Vania's anti-liberal rant has no place here. I tip my hat to our troops (and as the child of a veteran I do have an appreciation for them, thank you very much). Haven't seen The Messenger yet but it sounds like a good one and I'll definitely check it out.
B.E.P. are the very best! I adore them so much. Let's party with their songs! Boom boom pow!