| Spader
Gets to Shed Image The
doublecrossing protege of publishing god Will Randall (Nicholson),
Stewart mounts a Machiavellian campaign for his mentor's job, and
wife, "I've been a louse before," the actor concedes, "but he's taken to an extreme." It is a departure of sorts for Spader, 34, who has provided the proper note of postmodern mental anguish to such films as "sex, lies and videotape," "True Colors," "Storyville" and the recent "Dream Lover." As Stewart, he's cultured and erudite, qualities not foreign to Spader's filmography. But his personal beast lies just below the surface. "I
like the role," Spader said over breakfast in the toney Sony
Club in Manhattan. "It's in such contrast with Jack's character,
who's struggling "Stewart, on the other hand, is longing for the day he can dispense with grace and charm and just get on with devouring." Considering their public personas, one might say Spader and Nicholson have switched roles. Thirty-odd floors above Madison Avenue, there's a great view of Central Park - where an increasingly hirsute Will Randall does some horrible things to some miserable people - and of a city "Wolf" portrays as full of bloodthirsty publishers, editors, authors and agents spilling literary blood with patrician abandon. "Oh,
the whole world is full of animals," Spader said. "But
it's funny in the publishing world, and I think that's the intention.
The reason why - Hollywood perhaps? OK, no leading the witness. Spader actually has split his time between studio features and independent film during his decade or so on the scene, with uncommon results. Although he contributed a memorable smarminess to such big-budget features as "Pretty in Pink," "Wall Street," "Baby Boom" and "Less Than Zero," it was the independent "sex, lies and videotape" that made Spader's name. More recently, he did "Storyville" and Philip Haas' "The Music of Chance," in which he and Mandy Patinkin sort of switched roles, too. "I'm doing that now," Spader said with mock seriousness. "Doing `Wolf,' of course, was certainly not taking a chance: the opportunity to work with the people I was working with, who will do nothing but make it more exciting and easier to do my work, in a wonderful story, playing a delicious character - that's not taking a chance. "But I don't know what is taking a chance, because I don't have any sense of career choices. I don't know what the hell's good for a career. I don't have a clue. I don't know what dictates success in a film, or failure in terms of people going to see it. And I don't know how any of that translates into one's own facility for reaping the roles one wants to reap. I don't know how all that works. Every project I ever do is always picked quite specifically to that time in my life and that project." And
for specific reasons, he said, such as playing a particular kind
of character, or paying his bills. Whatever the reason, or result,
it can be "I don't know if that's me or the film," he countered. "I think in a weird way, if you do your job correctly and the film works around you, and the film envelops that character you play in the right way, then it has the appearance that you're just the right actor to play that role. And very often you aren't. "I can tell you of a remarkable amount of roles I've played in my life where I really wasn't the best choice. Which ones? I don't know. Well, one film, `True Colors,' was a tremendous struggle for me. I really wasn't the right guy for that. I always laugh when people say to me, `Well you seemed very appropriate for sort of a well-heeled, well-educated sort . . .' because my education has just been abysmal. I never even graduated from high school. I didn't go to college. Even when I was in school, I was a horrible student." Given that he grew up on the grounds of a New England prep school and that his parents were educators, Spader's scholarly image carries a certain irony. "I always feel that I'm getting away with murder," he said. He also gets away with comparing acting to manual labor and then saying what a great time he had making "Wolf." But considering the film's over-the-top tone and the fact that Spader got to do a role so ribald, you believe he actually did have fun. "That's what it was for me," he said. "As I said to Mike Nichols, it seems that I work and I work and I work and strive at my acting just so it can be like it was when I was in the backyard playing pirates. "And that's what it was like on this film, and that is the best thing I can say about a working experience. If I can make it my hobby again as opposed to my job, that's the best." Hollywood's
favorite yuppie, James Spader, is Stewart Swinton, scum de la scum
of the New York book world in the recently released "Wolf." |
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