From 1981 to 1987 Mickey
Rourke was the silver screen’s favorite
disillusioned, defiant bad ass. After turning in
legendary performances as Robert “Boogie” Sheftell
in Barry Levinson’s Diner and Motorcycle Boy in
Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumble Fish, it seemed like
Rourke was destined for James Dean status. Women
wanted to fuck him and men wanted to fuck like him
after watching him in Adrian Lynes’ elegantly
crafted straight-to-theater-sadistic, soft core-porn
flick, 9 ½ Weeks with Kim Basinger.
1987 was
memorable year for Rourke fans as they marveled at
his stamina when he gave them a one-two punch with
his role in Angel Heart and the alcoholic poet Henry
Chinaski in the Charles Bukowski - written Barfly.
If you’re a Mickey Rourke fan, what followed for the
next nine years was the Great Depression. We
waited-and we cringed - at shit pieces like Harley
Davidson and the Marlboro Man with Don Johnson ;
Double Team with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dennis
Rodman; and the straight- to -video Con Air rip off,
Point Blank. Things got weird as he stepped back in
the boxing (quite successfully, actually), reliving
his glory days with a string of seven knock-outs.
Things got even weirder as rumors flew rampant over
Rourke’s compulsive behavior. It was said he chopped
off his own finger and that he compulsively stalked
his now ex-wife Carre Otis. In 1997, he landed a
supporting role as Bruiser Stone in Coppola’s
adaptation of John Grisham’s The Rainmaker. It was
not enough to redeem him from the Great Depression,
but it sparked something - a second wind. Rourke has
since turned in his manic behavior for a string of
exceptional performances: the creepy bookie in
Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo ‘66; alongside Stallone in
Get Carter, and currently as a transvestite inmate
in Steve Buscemi’s Animal Factory. Rourke maybe find
redemption through upcoming roles in Sean Penn’s The
Pledge and Vincent Gallo’s Piece of Ronnie. More
importantly, it seems that Rourke has finally come
to terms with his demons. He called me recently,
willing to speak openly about his life and future.
How
did you prepare for your role as a cross-dressing
inmate in The Animal Factory?
Well, I was
pretty lucky because when I was 18 I worked at a
transvestite club in Miami Beach. It was security
and it was kind of lively, you know. I remember one
night I met a great- looking redhead, and I was
halfway out the door with her when the doorman, who
I’d known since I was seven years old, said “hey,
come here! I’m gonna tell your mama.” I said “hey
come on.” he insisted “hey, hey, that’s not what you
think it is.” I said “I don’t care.” I chickened out
in the end, though. Then when I came out to LA., I
couldn’t get a job as a waiter or anything else, so
I ended up going to this place on Hollywood
Boulevard- a transvestite night club called
Danielle’s - and I ended up working security. I was
24 or 25 and that was pretty lively as well.
You
didn’t really need to prepare for this role then?
Well, no. I asked him what the role was about,
thinking it was going to be one of the convicts. He
said I would play a transvestite, and I said “what?”
He laughed and I really thought he was kidding me.
I’m thinking, “I’m pretty far from a transvestite. “
He caught me by surprise; the air went out of me. I
got the script sent to me and I looked at it. I
thought for me to go to work on a movie without a
big budget, the director has to be someone I respect
and who’s credible. I like Willem [Defoe], I like
Eddie Bunker, and I like Danny Trejo...so you know.
There was a reading; I went and it was fun. About
two weeks before I was suppose to leave, I started
getting into it really heavy. I started thinking
that I’m going to work from the outside in. I was
thinking, “How am I going to dress this guy?” I went
to Santa Monica Boulevard, and I went into all of
the leather shops, you know. It was nice because it
was prison so I was confined to a certain outfit. In
prison you could wear jeans, right? I went out and I
got these Levis that got elasticity in them; I sent
them to Henry Duarte’s on Sunset, and had Henry cut
them so they were like hip hug-huggers. I lift
weights, so I’m really good at dieting. I lost about
22 pounds, and I got way under my normal weight. I
got the hip huggers, and then I went down to
Hollywood Boulevard, You know those fluffy shoes
with spikes that have the fur ball in the front?
Yeah.
I had a
shoemaker on Hollywood Boulevard chop off the heel,
so they looked like slippers, you know. I had a pair
of those that were powder blue. Then I went to the
Pleasure Chest {the sex shop of all sex shops in
LA], and got some really metallic green and red
g-strings. I had those come up a little bit above
the jeans. I picked out three bras-a green one, a
red one and a plaid colored one. I think we settled
for the red. They were real satin-real pretty. Then
I remembered the character is in jail, so I liked
the fact that I was limited because the queens can
only have a certain things, you know what I mean.
So, what I did was I got a cowboy shirt that was
really tight fitting, and I cut the sleeves off and
tied it up above the waist. Then I was having fun: I
was on a roll. I went to Mark Mahoney’s tattoo
parlor and the piercer there had those big-gauge
earrings to pierce me with. Man, that hurt! The
think what hurt the most was the belly ring.
This
role is depicting a sad and horrible situation, but
there’s a sense of comic relief to Jan, the actress
character.
I didn’t
look at this as comedy, you see. When you spend as
many years in jail as these characters did, you
become institutionalized. What you do is your try to
make the best and the most out of the world you live
in. All you have day-to-day is what’s in your head.
I had her improvise this whole thing about wanting
to go to Paris and become a butterfly.
Basically you become kind of delusional.
Yeah. I
remember I was doing some research on a script I was
working on, and I went to death row in Angola and
talked to the wardens and the inmates. Almost
everybody on death row really thinks they’re getting
out. I asked Warden Kane, “why do these guys all
think they’re getting out” He said, “if they didn’t,
they’d go mad.” I had fun with the role. Steve had a
nice feel on the set: he was real professional. The
only mistake I made was that I went to Beverly
Hills. They did my eyebrows they did my make-up and
lipstick and everything. Then, I flew like that with
the jeans and the cowboy shirt on the plane. I’ll
never do that again. When I showed up on the set and
said hello to Steve, he didn’t even recognize me.
What
are your thoughts on the American way of capital
punishment?
I’m working
on a script right now about a woman who gets the
death penalty called Killer Moon.
Are
you writing it as Mickey Rourke, or are you using
your alias?
I always
write under Eddie Cook. What I’ve found-I’ve read
books and done research for two or three years on
this particular subject matter-is that about 85-90%
of the wardens in this country are against capital
punishment. Look: it’s the poor, the uneducated and
the abused that commit crimes in their teens and
early 20's. For their crimes, they are kept in cells
that are nine by eleven feet for anywhere from nine
to sixteen years. Then, they are executed. Most of
the executions that are done with the electric
chairs have been messed up; people fried to death,
burned or caught fire. Now they have the lethal
injection and everyone thinks that humane, but it’s
actually the worst torture in the world. All the
inmates already know this. The first injection’s the
sedative, right? The second injection is the
beginning of the end: it closes down the lungs. The
third and final injection-you don’t see somebody
with their eyeballs rolling, jerking up and down,
because every organ in the body shuts off. They’re
smothering to death with their eyes open. You see
someone lying there calmly on the table, but you
damn well know the person’s suffocating to death.
Everybody on death row is hip to this. This month in
Texas they executed between four and six people,
and this prick Bush is running for President.
Fifty to sixty years from now, they’re going to look
back at this country and view capital punishment as
barbaric. They know nothing about it, and they sign
off on these things. Many of the people who go on
death row are poor and being represented by
inexperienced trial lawyers.
It’s
been like for a while now.
Yeah, but
hey keep it quiet. Aside from a few countries in the
Middle East, nobody else does capital punishment.
Have
you ever been institutionalized?
No, I
haven’t, but I have brothers who have been
institutionalized for long periods of time.
How
have stabilized your personal life since those
tumultuous days, and how do you intend to keep
yourself focused on your second wind?
Yeah, well
you know, sometimes a person has got to fall to the
bottom before they can come back up. Let me put it
to you this way: Before there was religion, there
was philosophy. If you make the same mistakes the
second half of your life that you made in the first
half, then what the hell were you born for? I was a
professional fighter, and when I left the fighting I
knew I would miss something, So, I meet a Korean man
and I do martial arts with him.I use that to
stabilize my day. I do a lot of the slow breathing
and relaxation techniques. At his point in my life I
do that instead of getting my head banged in.
Tell
me about you part in the upcoming Sean Penn film,
The Pledge.
That was a
great experience. It was only a four or five minute
scene with (Jack) Nicholson-but I worked on it for
three months.
Wow,
why is that?
Well, I knew
Sean wanted me to do it because he knew I could
deliver, and my other goal was to showJack
something he’d never seen before.
Which
is?
Well, you
know, whatever. I felt like I accomplished my
mission, which made me happy. You never know-when
you see someone in a scene for four minutes-you
don’t know they’ve been working on that scene for
three months.
Can
you talk about your character in The Pledge?
Well, the
movie is about Jack’s character; a policeman who is
tracking down a serial killer who kills children.
So, at different points in the story, you see these
different people who lost children over a period of
years. I’m a guy that was probably normal at one
time-prior to my child disappearing on her way to
school three years earlier. So, I’m in a nursing
home working as a burned-out janitor, just looking
out the window. Jack come in and asks me questions
about my little girl, and it segues into the story.
The great thing about it was working with Sean and
Nicholson. Even though we shot for only a day, it
was one of my most pleasurable experiences in the
film.
Tell
me about Get Carter.
Well, I got
that role thanks to Sylvester [Stallone] because the
Powers That Be were very nervous about me. For many
reasons, I gave everyone 14 years to feel that way.
Sly saw me at a restaurant one night, and I didn’t
have the entourage from hell with me. I was alone
for the first time in 14 years, and almost a human
being. Sly and I talked, and three days later I got
a call from his producer, who offered really low
money and I turned it down. Then, Sly called me a
couple days later and said, “they’re throwing all
kinds of guys at me for this part and I’m picking my
teeth with all of them. I want you to do it.”
I said, “well Sly I appreciate what you did.” Then
he said, “is the guy offering you a disrespectful
amount of money?” and I said, “yeah.” Then he said,
“would you do it for such and such?” and I said, “I
would do it in a fucking heart beat.” He said, “I'll
call you back in five minutes.” So he calls me back
three minutes later and says, “we’re in.” He’s a guy
who’s really experienced in making movies and he’s a
perfectionist. Whatever anybody has to say about
him, like him or not, the guy’s got old-school
values-he’s a gentleman. There was a scene in the
film where we’re having a confrontation. I’m sitting
there and nobody sprayed me down, in the middle of
the scene he goes, ”Hold it, hold it, hold it,”
picks up a water bottle and sprays me down. I
thought, “Fuck, no actor has ever done that for me
before” People can bring someone to another level
and he brought me to another level. Stephen Kay, the
director, is the bomb. I’d make three pictures in a
row with him if I could.
It
seems that your friends like Stallone, Coppola and
Penn have been really supportive in your resurfacing
into mainstream films. What sort of traits have you
worked on the have re-instilled their faith in you?
One day you
find yourself alone in life-in a hole so dark and
evil only you can dig yourself out. You got to work,
and you got to work real hard to get out because
years goby and there’s no daylight. You keep
praying to God, “Let me have some daylight, and I’ll
do the rest.” It didn’t happen overnight. It took
years. Nobody would ever knowexcept The Man
Upstairs.
Is it
true that you worked on The Thin Red Line
with Terrence Malick?
Yes I did.
It probably got cut because, um you’ll have to talk
to Terrence Malick. Let me put it to you this way: I
think if Terry had his way, I would have made it
into the movie...
How
was it like to work with Terrence Malick?
Fucking
incredible! It’s like a professional boxer who
hadn’t stepped in the ring for 16 years and comes
back and does it and doesn’t miss a beat. I’m sure
if he had his pick, that wouldn’t be the film he
would have come back and made. I think Terry Malick
has got some great films in him.
Can
you clarify the incident that erupted between
yourself, your Chihuahua Bojack, and the producers
Luck of the Draw?
This
director wanted me in his movie. I knew the producer
was this really-out-of-control woman. So, I said to
the guy I’ll be in your movie, but I’m really scared
of her because her rep is worse than mine. He shook
my hand and everything, then promised me she
wouldn’t be around. She didn’t want me, but the
director did. I was going to do a scene with Eric
Roberts and Dennis Hopper and I was going to get
killed. Dennis, Ice T and Eric have this whole
dialogue, and I’m standing there literally for three
minutes before I say anything, and I say one word
when I go in. So, I gave myself an activity, and my
activity was my dog because I knew the character was
going to go in and get killed. I didn’t want to go
in as a victim, so I ad-libbed “Just love him a
little.” I asked the director and he agreed it. We
rehearsed it four or five times, and then there was
a little pow-wow for about five minutes, and he
comes over and says “You can’t use the dog.” I said
“We just rehearsed it. Do you have a better
activity?” and he looked over at her. I said, “You
told me...You fucking lied to me that she wouldn’t
be around. Francis Coppola, Adrien Lyne, Alan
Parker, Terrence Malick would never have a producer
sitting in a fucking seat across the room, and tell
the director to tell the actor what fucking activity
to work on!” So this scared-ass director with no
balls-and I told him he’ll never have any-says, “No
Mickey you got to......” I said, “I’m sorry.” Then
Dennis Hopper’s assistant come over and says,
“Somebody’s driving over to replace you.” Of course
they put this shit in the paper, right? But the bond
company sided with me, paid me off and took the
fucking movie away from her. I think once you have
your head on straight, everything happens in life
the way it’s supposed to. Even if it hurts that day,
it’ll work out in the big picture.
One
last rumor to rest: I heard a rumor that you and one
of your fingers axed. Is that true?
No comment.
No
comment. Gotcha.
You meant
that I supposedly cut it off myself?
No,
I’m saying that you might have cut it off by
accident.
I’ve done
very little in my life by accident.
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