Interviewing actor Bill Pullman

Originally published in the Livingston County News (5/7/08)

Last week, actor Bill Pullman (Spaceballs, Independence Day) was in Rochester promoting his new film, Phoebe in Wonderland, at the Rochester High Falls International Film Festival. Born and raised in Hornell, NY, Pullman spoke with the Livingston County News about growing up in western New York as well as his long, decorated career in the film industry. In its seventh year, the High Falls Film Festival ran April 30 to May 5 and featured over 120 features.

LCN: What was it like growing up in Hornell, and how did that influence your decision to become an actor?
Bill Pullman: You know, there’s nothing like coming home to throw you into a lot of memories that you haven’t had for a long time. Just driving up here, I was thinking of things I haven’t thought about in a while, and one is that I have a lot of memories in Rochester. My mother’s family is Dutch, and they came and lived in Rochester, and they had a theater for a long time in the teens and 20s and maybe even into the 30s in Rochester, so I wonder if I kind of got something there that I hadn’t thought about until driving up here. But I grew up in Hornell, which was a struggling town at the time, and they always had a strong civic pride, you know, to try to turn things around, and I think they have now. So I enjoyed it, and I always appreciated a lot of the people around there, but at a certain point I was going on my barn fetish and I ran into a theater guy who put me in a play, and the barns were soon put aside (editor’s note: before acting, Pullman considered building and was interested in restoring old barns).

LCN: Philip Seymour Hoffman is from right over in Fairport. Did you know him or any other local actors when you lived in western New York?
BP: Well no, you know, Phil is younger than I am but definitely a great asset to the whole thing, and I’m glad to see that he’s such a big part of the festival at some point – I see his picture on the Internet. But Robert Forster I did talk to quite a bit about western New York State at different times and different parties. I haven’t seen him for a couple years though, but it’s always good to touch base with that element.

LCN: Is there any specific actor or director you worked with over your career that you think maybe had a pivotal influence on you or changed your perspective about film?
BP: Well, David Lynch, probably – and I’m not the only one. The exciting thing about him is that he somehow has maintained the same instinct that he had when he was in film school – the joy of being able to take the simplest ingredients and make something happen with it. And so people who work with him tend to come away excited to work that way.

LCN: What was it like to work with Mel Brooks?
BP: Mel Brooks was, you know, that was an amazing thing to do [Spaceballs] as my second movie, and it was a time when the industry was changing. That was an MGM film, and it was the last film to be shot on the lot when MGM owned it, and it got sold eventually to Sony. So that was a kind of movie-making that was very epic, and the makeup guy showed up with a blazer and tie and it was still that tradition, and there in the middle of it was wacky Mel.

LCN: Do you have any advice for young, aspiring actors and anyone getting into film?
BP: You know, I never really remembered any advice that was given to me, so I think they all will have to get some kind of deep appreciation for the craft and fall in love with a couple of people who’ve done it before them and understand why there’s a standard of excellence that is exciting to imagine trying to measure up to.

LCN: You’ve done a wide array of genres over your career, but you’ve repeatedly come back to fantasy and science-fiction projects – not just Spaceballs but Independence Day and Serpent and the Rainbow among others. Is there something that draws you to science-fiction?
BP: I think in these times, science-fiction is what the westerns were 40 years ago. It’s like a dominant genre for us, and I think some of it is because it’s a very imaginative world. One of the movies that I have coming out this year is Your Name Here, and it’s about Philip K. Dick. Philip K. Dick is now probably one of the most influential people because his stories are being made into movies. This started with Blade Runner and then Minority Report, Total Recall and A Scanner Darkly, and so I think those are interesting science-fiction stories because they involve a lot of psychology about what it is to be human as opposed to being a robot. So there’s a certain vein of science-fiction that I am particularly interested in.

LCN: Did you do any school plays in Hornell?
BP: Yes I did. The big one was Don’t Drink the Water, which Woody Allen wrote, which probably everybody did in high school at some time or another.

LCN: You have six siblings. Did any of them get into acting?
BP: I have never seen any of my siblings under the spotlight…I’m dying to [laughs]. A lot of my family is in medicine, and my father went to University of Rochester Medical School. My mother was a nurse that trained here, and they met at Strong Memorial Hospital; my brother John is a doctor that went to University of Rochester Med School. They’re all care-givers and doing very important work, so I’m just joking about wanting to see them act [laughs]. They better stay doing what they’re doing.

LCN: You attended school for a time at Oneonta. What did you study?
BP: Theater. Yea, I started out at Delhi, which was a two-year vocational school for building construction, and then I met this very charismatic guy who directed the plays. He went to Oneonta, he said ‘you’re gonna do what I did; you go there to Oneonta, you get a degree and then you’ll teach at a college like this one. It’s a good life, Pullman, you better do it.’

LCN: Is there a performance you did in your career that you’re most proud of?
BP: It’s funny. To tell you the truth, I really see film as a chance to exercise myself, and I don’t see it as primarily the kind of control that you need to have to make your life work – most important things in film – but I find that in the theater. And I have to say that some of my most important work, I think, has actually been in the theater. For me, my deepest, deepest satisfaction comes from doing The Goat on Broadway, from doing a premiere of a new play by someone who is one of the great American playwrights of the century. But at the same time, to work with David Lynch is an amazing honor, and to have the chance to do some movies that I think are good stories like Zero Effect or some small movies, it’s a good privilege to do those as well.