PLUME: As an actor, how long did it take you, personally, to one, identify it, and two, identify it in the eyes of whoever you were acting opposite of?
BALABAN: Oh, I think you sort of know right away that it can happen sometimes, and you sort of then go around with this taste in your mouth. If you get more experienced and you train more, and you work with good people, it can happen more frequently. I mean, seriously, I don’t mean to talk about “it” too much, because it, like shit, just happens. It’s nothing you can kind of plan on. I look at myself as somebody who had some innate abilities and mostly a lot of interest. I was just captivated by the world of make believe, I suppose. I just sort of have stayed at it – I don’t feel that I was particularly good at it. I tried hard, I was always ambitious, I tried very hard to get work. I was frequently more focused on getting work than I was on doing work, which is probably not an unusual problem, but for me, something I’ve become more aware of and tried to cope with as I got older. I think I’m getting a little better, now that I’ve been around longer, but when I look at other people, it seems so easy. When I look at myself, it’s like, “If everybody were going through what I’m going through, I can’t imagine that anybody would be in show business.” And yet, when you talk to wonderful people, and people that I certainly think aren’t going through the kind of struggle that I’m going through – they all seem to be going through some version of their own struggle. I think they’re just perfect, so I guess we’re all trapped inside of our own heads. We mostly can’t get outside of ourselves, thank God, or we’d be insane, I suppose.
PLUME: How do you quantify the struggle? When you say “the struggle”, what is your internal struggle? What are you reacting against?
BALABAN: My own demons. Trying to find the material. “What is it? What does it want to be?” And frequently, frankly, we’re all stuck doing material where there’s nothing to find, and you have to create it yourself. And that’s trying to find the balance. Where’s the material? How can I fulfill it? If there isn’t material, how can I know what to do? God give me – it’s the old AA prayer, isn’t it? The strength to know … I don’t know it by heart, because I don’t go to AA meetings, actually, although I’ve been to a few.
PLUME: Is it knowing your limitations?
BALABAN: Knowing what you can change, what you shouldn’t change, and knowing the difference. That’s not the words, but it’s the idea. I’d say that’s what I’m always looking for. I think that’s what we’re all looking for. And ones demons. Tension is a demon to me, it’s always trying to find and get yourself to the place where you can be relaxed. I think it’s true, by the way, for everything. I used to think it was just acting, but I think now that I’m directing more and even producing, I absolutely think you use all of your faculties as best you can, and then you lay back and just try to be aware that there’s something greater than you at work. Trying to see what it is, and hook onto it if you can find it. I think it’s true of painters, and certainly ice skaters, lawyers – I think it’s true of everybody.
PLUME: I think what is such an amazing thing in talking about that vulnerability factor, how candid you were in your book about the process and your own trepidation going into the process, and your trepidation during the process about various factors and even interpersonal relationships – such as worrying if Truffaut no longer likes you…
BALABAN: Wouldn’t you be worried?
PLUME: I would be terrified. Of course, I’d probably still be still locked in my dressing room, but you soldiered on. I thought that illumination factor was a fascinating part of the book.
BALABAN: Well, I mean, it is the only thing one has to offer anybody else is that thing that you don’t think anybody wants to know about, that you’re sort of embarrassed about, and at some point you go, “No, that’s actually helpful to show that to other people.” Because that’s the thing that you never know. We always assume that everybody else is having an easier time of it than we are, and I think people actually want to hear that, and also it’s very relieving to talk about it. It’s like being in group therapy, which I loved being in, when I was in it.
PLUME: Do you think it’s almost improvisational?
BALABAN: Well, it better be, or else you’ve written a story and you’re coming in and telling it, which is the opposite of what you’re aiming at doing. Yes, it is.
PLUME: When you’re talking about that sort of vulnerability and that sort of insight – when the very hoary concept of actors lying on their resume, or exaggerating on their resume, is illuminated through your worry of having to use your very rusty French skills for Close Encounters …
BALABAN: Right.
PLUME: How much of that do you think is linked in to the actor’s profession and the artifice of it?
BALABAN: I think there is some feeling as an actor that if you can believe it, you can make it be – which is why it’s so exciting. I think there sometimes is sort of a thin line between truth and believing that it would be true. Although with French, you either can speak French or you can’t. Unfortunately, no amount of believing that you’re actually French will cause you to be able to speak French. It can cause you to have a good accent, and I do think actors sometimes do have very good accents. But I do think there is an element of lying as an actor – it’s healthy lying, I guess. It’s playacting, and it’s certainly one of the most fun parts about it all. You can play a part – and I certainly had opportunities to do that – of somebody that everybody’s afraid of, that’s a towering inferno. I used to get cast, and I periodically do, playing these schmuck asshole people who are just out to destroy everybody and frequently are successful at destroying people. That’s fun to take that power, which I don’t exercise or access too easily in my regular life – although I’m finding ways to do that more frequently and enjoying it. Not for uses of evil, I will say, but just for my own fun in trying to get my projects moved forward. I’m a producer now, and I’m having a very, very good time. I’ll have a better time when I have three more movies I’ve directed and produced, which hopefully will start to happen this spring. But I’m just having more fun now, being able to get to that part of myself that I could only get to when I was in Absence of Malice. And I don’t mean that I want to hurt other people, but I do mean that I want to be more effective in promoting what I want to promote.
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