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The Perfect Host

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : Warwick Wilson is the consummate host. He carefully prepares for a dinner party, the table impeccably set and the duck perfectly timed for 8:30 p.m. John Taylor is a career criminal. He's just robbed a bank and needs to get off the streets. He finds himself on Warwick's doorstep posing as a friend of a friend, new to Los Angeles, who's been mugged and lost his luggage.

Opened July 1, 2011

Runtime:1 hr. 33 min.

 

Interview with director Nick Tomnay and Actor David Hyde Pierce

 

(Q) : The production notes said the original incarnation of this was called "The Host." Can you talk about, since you had David in mind for "The Perfect Host" what were some of the changes you felt were necessary that David brought to the character that were different from the original incarnation?
 
(Nick Tomnay): I think I changed some of the wording around from Australian English versus American English. But really, honestly, I didn't change anything. I just wrote it as I thought it should be and then when we were doing it and when we were rehearsing it David would come to me and say "This doesn't make sense to me," and I'd say "Well what would you say?"

And he'd say "I'd say it like this," so I said "Alright, well then say it like that." When I made the short people had said to me in Australia "This film doesn't really feel like an Australian movie. It just feels like a tale that could be told anywhere," and I agreed with that. So when I expanded it into a feature film I wasn't thinking specifically about America or Australia, I was just thinking about telling the tale.
 
(Q) : David, why did you take the chance on working with Nick?
 
(David Hyde Pierce): I had been drinking. No, I read the script and I really liked it. Obviously, the character's an incredible thing for any actor to get to play. But also it's a really smart, funny, interesting, twisted, twisty script, so I loved that to begin with. I saw the short, so I got a glimpse of Nick's style as a filmmaker, which is really clear and strong and also funny and not heavy handed. That's something that's important to me; if there's humor in a script, that you're allowed to laugh.

He did all those things and then the last part of it was actually meeting Nick. We had a couple of meetings at Isabella's and it was not just the process of talking through how we would do it and how to play the character, but it was also just getting to know him and being very comfortable with wanting to work with him just on friends level of yeah, I want to spend time with this person, I think this would be worth a short.
 
(Q) : What about your walk? I love the distinctive walk that your character has. Is it something you brought or is it something that was put into the script?
 
(Nick Tomnay): You did that. In rehearsal you said "Hey, I've been working on this. What do you think?"
 
(David Hyde Pierce): I didn't ever say those words. No, I had been drinking. No. The walk came honestly from early discussions not about that movement per say, but the character sort of has very different aspects to himself at the beginning and the end of the movie as he's different sorts of people, and I wanted to be able to physicalize that in a way that was noticeable but not so extreme that it wasn't believable.

And so one of the ways to do that was to kind of goose the way he moves in the beginning of the movie into one direction, which was more of a sort of fluid kind of snaky oddness, so that later on in the movie when his physicality's a little bit more stolid and lumpy it would help underscore the difference in him.
 
(Nick Tomnay) : And actually the last shot of the film you have both walks, which is great. I think that's something that I realize it needed it. I think at the time when we were shooting it was so kinetic and energetic. In the last shot of the movie David starts off one way and ends up another, which is almost like the whole movie in one shot.
 
(Q) : Do you do a lot of party?
 
(David Hyde Pierce) : No one ever comes back. (LOL)
 
(Q) : Do you cook?
 
(David Hyde Pierce) : No, I'm a terrible cook. My partner's a great cook, but I'm lousy.
 
(Q) : But you're big on entertaining, I bet.
 
(David Hyde Pierce) : No, we have friends over occasionally. No you would think yeah, no; I'm a terrible disappointment that way.
 
(Q) :There are dancing sequence, musical sequence and some drama. Talk about the balancing act for that.
 
(Nick Tomnay): The film has a lot of dark humor in it, and I think for the dark humor to work there has to be a real dramatic tension in the film so the humor because a release and a relief. And I thought that that also would be an entertaining motion. The dancing sequence actually occurred to be early on when I was writing it. I thought what an unusual decision for this man to make.

When he has John in the situation he could sever his arm but he's not going to do that, he's going to do something else. And once I thought that was what he would do then that really told me a lot about the character and a lot about the time. From that moment that was an anchor for thinking about the drama and the dark comedy. I think the film is equally weighted as a dark comedy and a psychological thriller.
 
(Q) : Did you discuss between yourselves any backstory? Because I know some actors really like to ask the writer what motivates the character. Did you discuss that at all?
 
(David Hyde Pierce) : No. But there's a good reason, because I'm someone who would do a lot of research and stuff like that. It is all on the page in this script, both because it's so well written but also because the character is so complex that you don't need to look elsewhere to find new levels, they're all there and you're busy enough playing all that stuff.

For me the work was more about just reading and rereading and rereading the script to kind of understand moment to moment motivation, what he's doing at any given point. But there's more than enough on the page to play.
 
(Q) : When you were preparing for it did you research multiple personality disorder?
 
(David Hyde Pierce) : No I didn't. I feel like the world of this movie is very specific unto itself. It's not "Awakenings" or something. That's kind of what I mean when I say it was all there on the page. I think I've done a little bit of work on hallucinations and delusion and stuff like that, so I understood how they worked and what they felt like in schizophrenia. But that was very, very peripheral. All I tried to do was bring to life what he had given me.
 
(Q) : So then when you're approaching a character that's literally playing several different characters within one how do you as an actor tap into the really dark side of yourself that is drawn to these horrific murders as opposed to tapping into the part of yourself that is an authority figure? How do you broaden all those different aspects of yourself?
 
(David Hyde Pierce) : I think that most of us are all of those people. Most of us aren't crazy psychotics, but most of us are a whole bunch of different people, and I think when you are in a position of authority that doesn't remove that from you. We find that out all the time. You read the paper any day and you find out that yet another person in a position of authority has revealed themselves to be odd in some particular and sometimes criminal way.

So I think being an actor in general is just acknowledging that, that we are constantly playing different roles, that we constantly have all these different parts of ourselves and instead of pretending that you're one thing as an actor you get to admit that you've got all this stuff going on.
 
(Q) : This is for both. If you could host a dinner party with anyone in the world who would it be? And then who would be the last person on Earth you'd ever host?
 
(Nick Tomnay): I probably wouldn't want someone like the Incredible Hulk turning up. I don't know who I'd like to be there though.
 
(David Hyde Pierce) : I hate questions like this. Like you'd say ooh, I want to have Beethoven over for dinner, but then the whole night would be "What?"
 
(Q) : From a character perspective how did you initially see Warwick? He's so loveable. It's like he's a little batshit, but so what?
 
(David Hyde Pierce) : I'm really glad you said that because there's a trap when you're playing crazy or whatever characters that you try to solve the character and make them what they're not, make them more sympathetic than they are, and I certainly didn’t want to do that. But I think what you're maybe identifying with is that between us we found the reasons, even if they're not stated, why he does the things he does.

And you get the sense that there is a need he has that may be expressed differently than we all would express it, but it's not that different from the needs that we all have to have friends, to have someone to spend time with, to have a life that's just not sitting alone in your house with your things. That kind of stuff. The same thing with the character on "Frasier" or any of those extreme characters. Sometimes the extremity allows you as an actor to let people see more of themselves because it's not so a part of your normal life that you take it for granted. It's a weird situation and so you're kind of let it to the humanness of it.
 
(Q) : I thought it was really interesting casting to have Helen Reddy. I know she's not one of the main characters but can you talk about working with her and casting her?
 
(Nick Tomnay) : She's represented by my manager and she hasn't been in a movie in a while. She read the script and really liked it and thought it was great and wanted to do it, and the producer, manager, Stacey said "What about Helen?" and I thought that was great. I was really pleased that she wanted to do it. She understood the role and she was really professional and terrific.

(David Hyde Pierce) : She's lovely, she's a sweetheart. If you know her from her days when she was actively performing she was kind of a sex pot. Not she's like an Earth mother; she is so nurturing and warm. She wasn't on the set that long but she made us feel so at home, and she was the person coming into the working set. I just saw her again at the Tony Awards; she's really a sweetheart and a person full of great love. So that was a nice thing to have around, and also she's really funny playing that part and it was cool of her to do because it's not a big part, it was just sort of a cameo.

(Q) : Can you both talk about the shoot? It was 18 days?
 
(Nick Tomnay): 17.
 
(Q) : How was it working on such a short schedule? David, how was it for you? Because I know you do a lot of stage and you worked on "Frasier" which was a set schedule for a long time. Was that a challenge for you?
 
(Nick Tomnay) : I wish we had more time. I felt the pressure of the clock constantly on my shoulder. And the trick of it for me was not to let the audience feel that, that was what I was trying. I was consciously trying not to give the audience the feeling, particularly at the beginning of the movie where the two characters are feeling each other out and just getting a sense of them. I wanted a certain amount of silence, dead air here and there, and a sense of what it's really like when someone you meet turns up and it's kind of an uncomfortable conversation.

So I didn't run around going "Quick, quick, quick!" and things like that. It was challenging. I had planned out this film fairly extensively in terms of how to shoot it, so when we'd gone off to film it, particularly in the house, it was a matter of just getting in there and doing it. There wasn't a lot of time to experiment and try things out; I had a pretty clear idea of how I wanted to photograph it. We had had a four day rehearsal period where we had basically explored every bad idea we could think of until we got rid of them all.

And we figured out a lot of the blocking in terms of its emotional reality, and so when we got to the set we were fairly prepared and comfortable with each other, especially Clayne, David, and I. And so what that meant was from my point of view, even though I had prepared fairly extensively I was able to throw out a lot of what I planned being in the moment of what was happening as opposed to what I thought would be happening. And I think that was a big lesson for me on this movie was that I thought that what worked quite well was if you prepared well that gives you the luxury to be spontaneous, and I learned that on this film.
 
(David Hyde Pierce): I had been warned by an actor friend who had done independent film and said "The thing you have to do is you have to learn the script ahead of time, because unlike a regular, big budget feature where everything takes forever and you can look at your scene that you're going to shoot the next day, you're going to shoot five scenes in a day. And if you haven't got it all in your head you'll never catch up."

So fortunately I had that knowledge. And then this rehearsal period that Nick referred to was vital for all those reasons about shaping the trajectory of the story, the emotional trajectory of the character, but most importantly of us all learning that we could totally trust each other, me Nick and Clayne. There were no arguments there was no "Wait, you want me to do what?" We knew that we were all really good at what we did and understood the story in the same way.
 
(Nick Tomnay) : And there were some exciting things because we left out when we were rehearsing intentionally I didn't want to rehearse certain scenes, I wanted to leave. Like the moment where Clayne kind of begs Warwick, David, and some of the more risqué stuff that David does I didn't really want to do. And what happened was because when we were rehearsing we got to that point, stop, skip over it, go to the next point, when we came to shoot those moments there was this electricity because we hadn't touched them yet. So there was something about those moments and I think when I look at the movie now I notice that spark.
 
(Q) : What's next for both of you?
 
(David Hyde Pierce) : I'm about to direct for the first time. I'm directing a new musical, which we'll do in the fall, and then after that I'm acting in a play at the end of the year.
 
(Q) : What's the name of the musical?
 
(David Hyde Pierce) : The musical is called "It Should Have Been You," and it's comedy. And I have been talking to all the directors I know, including this one to get advice. And actually what you just said about directing, which is you prepare and prepare and prepare so you can throw it all out, that is the thing I've heard most from directors in all different walks of life, film, television, everything, musicals, straight plays, that that's what you do. Because you can't go in unprepared and you may be right, what you prepared may be exactly what you're going to do.
 
(Q) : And who wrote the book for that?
 
(David Hyde Pierce) : Brian Hargrove wrote the book and lyrics, and Barbara Anselmi wrote the music.
 
(Q) : And the play you're doing is?
 
(David Hyde Pierce) : It's called "Close Up Space," which is an editing term. It's a new play I'm doing at the Manhattan Theatre Club.

(Nick Tomnay) : I'm writing a thriller.
 
(Q) : Another psychological thriller?
 
(Nick Tomnay) : It's more of a visceral action thriller, actually. It's a fish out of water story set in Sydney, Australia.

 

End.