PLUME: Is there anything that’s ever out of bounds during the filming of Guest’s films?
BALABAN: No, because it all emanates from the head, and Christopher is a supremely kind, generous, sort of magical person, and he only puts people around him who – see, you have to trust a lot of these things. There is just a great feeling of everybody rooting for everybody else, which you don’t always get when you’re acting in movies or anywhere else. I mean, you mentioned it before – we are all out for ourselves, in a way. We all have egos, and we all are trying to occupy our place in the movie, but in these Christopher Guest experiences, you’re just aware that everybody wants you to do well, and you want everybody to thrive, and you listen to people, and you give them their space, and you’re just so thrilled when anything really happens, because this is why we all are attracted to this field, basically, because most of us – in fact, all of us – spend our lives doing something, waiting for magic to take hold. Waiting for a spark to happen. We all sort of know we can control it, to some extent, but it sort of has to happen, and we try to create conditions under which this sort of wonderful thing where life starts occurring would happen. And it’s more likely to happen on a set with a Christopher Guest group than it is in many other places that I’ve been. So you’re very, very happy to be there, and you really just are in support of everybody and the whole thing, all the time. It does stem from Christopher.
PLUME: So it’s sort of like a human pyramid…
BALABAN: Oh gosh, no. I mean, there’s no question that Christopher controls absolutely everything, but he does it just by his presence, and by the fact that he cast you, and by the fact that he knew to put you in this situation. He also knows to just sit back and just watch you, and let you unspool yourself. And then later on in the cutting room, he will make it into exactly what he wants to make it into – or maybe on the set, he might suggest, “Go here,” maybe, “don’t go there so much,” but he really doesn’t say very much. You kind of just are in his mindset, just by the fact that he’s around you.
PLUME: Would you say that it’s more fulfilling as an actor, being involved in a project like that?
BALABAN: Oh, it’s the most fun thing I’ve ever done, in a professional situation. Absolutely. I mean, just being near Catherine O’Hara doesn’t happen too much, it’s just a thrilling place to be, anywhere where she is working, and the fact that you’re doing this thing together, and then it stops, and you can just – Catherine is not artificially full of praise. Just if something strikes her, she just is tickled by you or it, and it’s just exciting. The fact that you could make her laugh, or that you could engage her for two seconds, is very wonderful. I feel that way about everybody in those movies. I think they and Christopher bring out the best in people, both creatively and also people-wise.
PLUME: When you’re talking about people escalating creativity, who are the best people to play off of? What type is the best to play off of in that situation?
BALABAN: In an acting thing, or just improvisationally? It’s probably the same, by the way. I think it’s people who are – I know it’s a little cliché – not afraid to take chances. Not afraid to engage. Definitely not trying to control things with themselves or with other people, but allowing a situation to happen, and then just being there, sitting around and seeing what happens. It’s very wonderful when that happens. I directed a play that is Off-Broadway now, called The Exonerated, that I’m also a producer of. It’s basically ten people on stools, talking about their experiences on death row. They’re innocent and they were exonerated, and it’s all in their own words. We and the authors went around and simply interviewed these people, tape recorded it, wrote it down word for word, edited it, and then we all got re-organized and we went back and got court documents – depositions and letters and stuff. So there really isn’t a word in there that wasn’t true, and there’s a great power in that. It’s also presented very, very simply. It’s beautiful – there’s great lighting and sound and everything, but essentially ten people are sitting on stools, simply talking. Last night, and often in our play – it doesn’t always happen, it’s always interesting and the audience seems to love it – but every once in a while, an amazing thing starts to happen. Where, because of something that’s happening with one of the actors, the actor sitting next to that actor starts getting infected by it, and then, on the most wonderful nights, all ten actors sitting on stage start partaking in this amazing sort of energy that channels through them. It’s not an energy that you would call energetic, it’s kind of this force that happens. The audience starts getting taken in by it, and suddenly you feel you’re like – if church were to be a religious experience, which it isn’t often, I don’t think, this would be like being in church. It’s electric. It goes through the audience. It filters back and forth, and it bounces around. It creates this amazing wired – it’s like you can see this wire being pulled taught. Everybody is straining… the hackles on the back of your neck are standing up, not just for a moment, but for minutes on end, while Aidan Quinn does his amazingly – you can’t even see what he’s doing, it’s just suddenly there’s a person on stage, and there’s an idea in your head, and the feeling is throwing around. Then Amanda Plummer picks up the ball and starts carrying it, and suddenly people who’ve been in the play now for three months – because we only changed three of the actors periodically, the other seven of them stay – each one of them started getting inspired by the other one. By the end of it, it was kind of like a very, very quiet ball of fire. It’s very beautiful when that happens. It can’t happen all the time, and you can’t expect it to happen, and you can’t plan for it to happen – you just have to leave the door open for it to happen. I know it sounds stupid, but it’s true.
PLUME: Is it disappointing when it doesn’t happen?
BALABAN: No. When it doesn’t happen, it’s about technique. That’s why they have acting class. Acting class can’t teach you to be magical, it simply can teach you the things to do, and then sit around and wait for these great moments to happen. I mean, we are always amazed to hear… for instance, Amanda Plummer was discussing the fact when her father, Christopher Plummer, did Hamlet many years ago – and it was generally regarded as one of the finest Hamlets and people just raved and raved – and he would come home every night, just terribly upset by the fact that he felt he hadn’t done a perfect or a transcended Hamlet. There’s the famous story of – forgive me, it’s so famous, I can’t remember if it’s Lawrence Olivier or John Gielgud weeping at the end of a performance. Somebody went backstage and said, “Well, you were just a genius tonight. Why are you upset?” And he said, “Because I don’t know why it was different tonight than it is usually, and I’m tragically upset that I won’t know how to do this again.” Now, to the rest of the world, all of his performances were on that level. But he was just talking about that extra thing that happens that you can’t control, and you’re just waiting for that – it’s probably like the perfect high, or the perfect wave, or whatever.
PLUME: So it’s that intangible force of nature?
BALABAN: Yeah, it’s that thing that happens when you’re doing something well, and all of a sudden it just gets to a different plane. It makes you start to believe in a lot of things, and it’s fairly paranormal, you could say.
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