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He yanks at his hairline, stretching his mug into an unnatural mask of wrinkles and teeth.
DOnofrio is absolutely repulsive in every sense.
Who came up with his walk and that voice?
And, most important, do they believe in aliens, as our friends at theTimesdo?
The actor and director graciously agreed to speak, so here is an abridged oral history of sugar water.
It was all based on her really likingThe Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.But thats not what the producers wanted.
I told him Id feel you out about it.
And I said, Im not gonna talk to him about acting at all.
I read the script, and I didnt know what on earth to think of the part of Edgar.
The script has nothing to do with my performance.
I found that super-intriguing.
The original scripts had more to do with bugs and pheromones and bugs smelling fear, stuff like that.
It was too hard to execute, and it was anti-action.
I believe in short movies and not a lot of visual effects.
I wanted everything to be as real as it could be.
We eventually came to an agreement.
I loved the story because the basic concept is we dont have a clue.
And thats the way I feel about everything.
Hed look at Vincent and say, you’re gonna wanna weigh more.
Come back in a week.
Finally, Vincent said, Okay, now can I ask you some character questions?
And Kubrick said, Thats your job, not mine.
DOnofrio:The casting process was interesting.
We never talked about the movie or anything.
I went to work and tried to figure out how to do the character.
Hes a bug inside a human body, but hes way more intelligent than a human.
It was all about frustration and a need for sugar.
I told him, Always be frustrated.
Hes frustrated in the body, dealing with idiot humans.
He said, Will you be able to run like that?
We went to the set and did a take, and he cleared the set after that.
He said, So this is what youre gonna do?
And I was like, Yeah!
Thats what I got.
I trusted Barry, and he trusted me.
But it was Vincent creating that character, in terms of his mannerisms.
And then you had Rick Baker creating the fantastic prosthetics for him.
Thats how Vincent came up with that great stiff walk.
I wanted it much subtler than that.
By the end of theMen in Blackshoot, I realized Vincent was playing John Huston, specifically fromChinatown.
When hes talking to David Cross in the morgue and he says, I left something here.
you could hear him doing Huston.
DOnofrio:I was combining two voices: George C. Scotts and John Hustons.
[Imitates Huston]: Pond scum!
Im sure youve seenDr.
It got more and more pronounced and scratchy as he got older.
He had this cadence he spoke with, which was kind of staccato.
Hed put very weird pauses in and then fly out with a bit of dialogue.
I was also really interested in Hustons pronunciation of things.
It was pedestrian in an elegant way.
He sounds out every letter.
Early on, I was looking at bug documentaries and it was such a fucking boring task.
I hated it so much.
Instead, I started to work backward, thinking about the end of the movie.
So I had my legs locked off, which was my own concoction.
The first week or so of shooting, that was under my costume.
I never want to see the acting.
When actors talk fast, it doesnt give them time to act, which is a good thing.
Siobhan has this very monotone voice, and all Vincent is saying is, Give me sugar in water.
When the alien voice responds to him, Im pretty sure thats Vincents voice.
The joy of watching Vincent is how dry he is.
I didnt want a big performance.
I didnt want a horror-movie performance.
He was so funny because he wasnt trying to be.
DOnofrio:I think Barry was pretty nervous!
I absolutely adore Barry.
Every time we see each other, we give each other a big hug.
But I knew everybody was very nervous about what I was doing with Edgar.
They had all this money behind this movie, and I could have fucked it up.
But I didnt want to.
He wanted it to be flatter so it didnt distract from the story, which was smart.
But once we knew the performance was working, by the end we had so much fun with it.
By the time we shot the sugar-water scene, Barry was very comfortable with my character.
By the end, one of his teeth is barely dangling in his mouth.
Rick did three or four different iterations, depending on where in the movie we were.
Vincent totally embraced all the prosthetics and was a joy to work with.
Really easy and funny.
DOnofrio:I was so into what Rick was doing.
Hes such an artist.
His original designs are very close to what we ended up doing for Edgar.
Theyd put prosthetics on top of that.
I was like, Oh, thats cool!
Glad I could help!
Wed just listen to music, and Id let Rick paint [my face].
We got into a groove together; wed just create.
It was uncomfortable, of course, but it was great to see it all come together.
What about the insane hair and overalls?DOnofrio:There were many different versions of my hair.
From then on, its partially my hair, partially wigs attached to things.
The costume was great I saw it and was like, Perfect!
Looks like somebody who lives in upstate New York.
Theres a few versions of that costume, and theyre all owned by different people.
I think Peter Jackson has one.
Who came up with the way Edgars wife says Eggar?Sonnenfeld:Siobhan did.
That was all her.
I love that she calls him Eggar, not Ed-gar.
She did that in her audition, and we were on the floor laughing.
She brought her baby with her, too.
She was just fantastic.
The reason being theres no fucking sugar in the lemonade because Eggar drank all the sugar.
Its subtle but hilarious.
That was Wills idea.
In a wide shot, you see him drink the entire glass full of sugar water.
Theres no cutaway; hes not faking it.
He was a real trooper.
DOnofrio:Barry thought that was amazing.
I think I impressed him somehow.
In Barrys mind, thats very impressive.
The last time I saw Barry, he brought this up.
I also think he just appreciates people who dont complain.
How did you feel after drinking all that sugar water?DOnofrio:Like I had to pee.
We found a place that looked like an upstate New York farm, a crappy farm with one cow.
We dug that big hole.
Rick had made an entire Vincent DOnofrio skin: his face, his body, his clothing.
So we had someone in the hole throw that skin up onto the lip.
We had to make it clear that it was Vincents face but it no longer had any bone structure.
You dont want to cut away.
Cutting is the enemy of comedy.
You want people to think its all happening in one shot; then you believe it.
Thats why I didnt cut to an insert of sugar being poured into the glass, either.
But I was inspired by the script.
Reading it, you knew it wasnt just a space movie.
It wasntSpaceballs,its not blood and guts it was something completely different.
And that gave me the inspiration to make this dark, crazy thing that people had never seen before.
But you attempt to execute it in a unique way.
I know this is actor-speak, but its the only way I talk I cant help it!
Sonnenfeld:The concept of an action-adventure comedy is an oxymoron.
And it doesnt make sense.
If the action is too scary or too gross or graphic, it kills the comedy.
Its a very hard line.
I remember seeing Will Smith inHancock.
I loved the first two-thirds of it.
I was so jealous I didnt get to direct it.
It was funny, charming.
Then in the third act, the tone changes, and it becomes a darker thriller.
I think the audience wants one tone.
But inside of those three hours, theres an extraordinarily funny 90-minute comedy.
If Id gotten a chance to recut Michael Bays movie, it would have been a hilarious movie.
Tommy and Will have such good chemistry.
We finally got it upside down; were ready to shoot.
We hear Will say, Oh, Jesus!
Im so sorry, Tommy.
Guys, get us out of here!
And Will was like, No its not!
Hed farted so bad in this enclosed space.
Tommy is a manly man.
If you talk to him about intellectual things, he says, Im just a rancher.
So he played it cool.
But man, as soon as we opened it up, Tommy was outta there.
But they loved each other.
I kept explaining to him that you need a straight man, and both are equally funny.
But once he saw the movie, he was so pleased by how funny he was.
But usually they dont ask me anything.
They just go on about the movie.
Sonnenfeld:Why did it take so long to do a second one and a third one?
I dont know the answer.
But I dont think anyone saw this movie coming.
It was so under the radar.
We werent supposed to be the big summer movie.
Unlike modern visual effects and superhero movies, its a very small movie.
It really is a buddy movie.
Even the spaceship crashing at the end, thats all done with miniatures, not CGI.
I think so many modern movies are like watching a video game.
We also always observed depth of field.
Lenses dont do that.
Audience brains know when its real and when its fake.
Our movie is a lot of smoke and mirrors and very little action.
Its really about Will and Tommy.
I wasnt brought on, except for the first one, early enough to be involved in the development.
I think the second one couldve been better if I had been.
Walter [F. Parkes] and Laurie [MacDonald] and I just didnt get along.
I like them very much as people, and if wed never worked together I think wed be friends.
But we all have strong egos.
But I wish them the best of luck.
Vincent, I love your Twitter.
I like the version of honesty in it.
I use it to express myself.
I love to write stream of consciousness, and its really good for that.
You know who the aliens are.
Ill say to my wife, Whats that about?
I live in a rural part of Telluride, Colorado, surrounded by 67 acres.
It makes no sense for me to live there, considering how afraid I am.
But that dog, hell stop and stare, and Ill go, Oh, great.
When my wife goes out of town and Im alone with that dog?
If anything happens, the building creaks, the wind picks up why did the wind pick up?!
DOnofrio:No, I dont believe in aliens.
And I hope to someday.
That would be awesome.
Right now, I dont.
I have to say, that news footage from those pilots is really fucking interesting.
I think the whole thing is freaky.
But its just the nowadays version of what has happened in the past.
I dont know enough about what theyre showing us or how often things get picked up like that.
All I know is that when you see it, it looks impossible.
And yet you know its real.
I really want to believe in aliens.
Sonnenfeld:Heres what scares the crap out of me.
And theyre just easing us into it.
Why else would they do it this way?
Its like the booster shot before the big shot.
Theyre just getting us ready.
I think itll be really bad.
