Last week, Bartha spoke to Movieline about the perils of indie filmmaking, Eisenberg's habit of self-deprecating, and the job he'd take on the next Hangover if director Todd Phillips asked him.
You seemed to be having a lot of fun in this film. Is it more satisfying for you to play the bad boy?
Oh yeah, it is. It's a lot of fun and a lot of hard work, but it's always good to branch off and do different things. That was the challenge of the role: I think he's incredibly insecure, and the confidence is put on. That's one of the character traits that start to unravel over the course of the script; it's his arc, this loss of power and social standing within the drug running family he's created. After Jesse's character steps up and I've gotten sick from doing too much of my product, you can see his insecurities that Jesse's going to take his place.
When you say it was a lot of hard work, are you talking about the performance, or the fact that this was such a low-budget indie?
It was a little bit of both. This was a passion project for everyone involved, and we shot in 18 days in the winter of New York on a very small budget. You've got a limited amount of time and you've got to stay focused, but the elements, at times, are a bit unbearable. We just had to stay that course, because Jesse and I had been working on developing it for years with the producer and director.
So what happened during that development? How did the project change?
The impetus for this project started with one of the producers who saw a clip of the true story about these kids dealing Ecstasy. This was years ago, and then Jesse and myself got a script that was more focused on the drug-dealing and thriller elements, and we knew that with the amount of money we were gonna raise and the amount of time we'd have to shoot it, that would be pretty impossible. Over a couple years, we really kind of developed it into a character-driven piece that we wanted to make in the vein of a 1970s character drama like Mean Streets or Midnight Cowboy, albeit not as wonderful as those movies. Once we had an idea of what we were going for, we were able to spend a long time researching, because we'd spent so much time raising money. We really researched the Hasidic community and planned out every beat we were going to go through.
Jesse actually recommended you for this role, right?
Yeah, I've known him for years, and we've been very close friends. We sat next to each other on a plane many years ago, and we both lived near each other in New York, and just like any friendship, it developed over the years. I think we both have a mutual admiration for each other's work.
Whenever we talk to Jesse, he always says he's not that confident he's doing a good job, that he's certain he'll be fired and replaced. Do you see that from him on set?
Once he gets on set, he's very confident, he knows what he's doing. He's just a rare, wonderful actor. We all have our insecurities, and being an actor is self-deprecating to begin with. We could probably talk for hours about actors' insecurities -- every single actor I've ever met has them, whether they talk to you about them or not.
What is it like to shoot something so small and fast as Holy Rollers, where you get so few takes, as opposed to doing theater like Lend Me a Tenor, where you can constantly work on and revise your performance?
It's quite a bit different. The great thing about theater is that once you're done with rehearsal and you go up, the performance is yours. That curtain goes up, and you can kind of do whatever you want for two and a half hours, whereas on film, you're always subject to an editor and whatever someone else's vision is. Obviously on the play, we had the vision of Stanley Tucci, but it's live and unedited and there's a very thrilling aspect to it.
Did it take you a while to get over the fact that no matter what performance you give on a film, it's so subjective to the filmmaker's vision?
[Laughs] I mean, I still struggle with that. A lot of actors struggle with that, I think. It's something that you just have to expect, or you'll drive yourself crazy. From the get-go of my career, when I first started to realize that that's how it works, it could be kind of maddening. You're not only subject to an editor, you're sometimes subject to a studio and whatever agenda there is there. You can be subject to so many different things, not just the editing process and whatever takes the director uses. The only recourse that an actor has is to try to choose really good roles with really interesting people, especially directors and other actors. That's kind of the only way I can choose my material, so I don't have to drive myself crazy.
It's a really great movie, and Bart is such an immensely talented director, it's crazy. Unfortunately, when our economy kind of went into the shi**er, it took with it some parts of this business, too. Mark Gill, who produced the movie, is starting his own distribution mini-studio, so they're trying to get that together. This would be the first film he's releasing, so it's a huge undertaking. Right now, it's been a product of that difficulty.
Do you take that into account when you select projects, especially small ones without assured distribution?
Yeah. It comes back to what I said before: if you do interesting stuff with directors or actors, that's really all you can look for. Otherwise, you never know what's going to happen, unless it's a big studio. Even with that, though, I've been a part of big studio movies where they end in limbo and disaster.
I'm hearing that the Hangover sequel is going to give you a bigger piece of the action this time.
No one has read the script except for the director, Todd, so we shall see. I can't really reveal too much about it, but I'll be there and I'm very excited to get the guys back together.
You can't just email Todd and be like, "Hey man, can I have a peek at the script?"
To be completely honest, it's one of those projects where I would literally come on for a day and do craft services if they would have me. It's such a great project to be a part of, so I don't care if my part is ten times bigger or ten times smaller. Just being around those brilliant people is enough for me.
[Lead Photo Credit: Jim Spellman/WireImage]