The Island Of Fairuza

Jonathan Craven steps out with Fairuza Balk, the Neon's Jungle's latest deepwater girl.

COFFEE KILLS
Fairuza Balk: "I've had so much coffee. I've had like eight, nine cups of coffee...." Fairuza Balk's vibrating, perched Indian style atop an exhausted cauch opposite me, an exhausted slouch. Our interview unfolds on a slab of wooden deck overlooking trees, a hill, and a distant slanted radio tower. She hands me a coffee. Her eyes. Mary. What Attilla rode horses for;what Jesus taught; what Kodak moments wish they were; why Keith likes heroin; what directors cast her for...why I just mostly listen.
credits: Valmont; Gas Food and Lodging; Imaginary Crimes; Things to Do in Denver When Your Movie Title is Too Long; The Craft; and the upcoming, Island of Dr. Moreau, which we discuss. I light up American, she fires a Canadian. We talk through a veil of smoke.

DR. MOREAU WAITS FOR BRANDO
Jonathan Craven: The Island of Dr. Moreau...
Fairuza Balk:Yeah.
JC: Brando?
FB: Yeah.
JC: So?
(Fairuza seems a little disappointed. I sense reluctance on her part to do anything vaguely tabloid. She pulls on a heater. I wait. She exhales.)
FB: Well, we (she and Brando) only had a couple of things together and he's a very private man. Always surrounded by people. He's funny, he pulls pranks and stuff like a little kid. But...I mean, I don't want this to sound stupid, but...I don't come from the same generation who worshipped him like a God, I mean, I think he's brilliant...but I don't get star struck. So it was weird because it was like God was literally on the set.
JC: I'm sure.
(I'm agreeing with her, but I know full well I would slaughter a goat for Brando.)
FB: There was this one day...he was sitting there and doing his lines and kind of muttering, waiting for the crew to finish setting up. Everybody else thought he was rehearsing, so no one was allowed to talk. Two hours go by. I'm outside smoking, going, "I don't think he's rehearsing. Go in there and tell him they're ready and just see!" Right? So one of his assistants tells him that the crew's ready and he's like, "Good. I've been waiting , let's do it!" Everybody was just...gob stopped.

GOB STOPPED?
JC: Gob stopped?
FB: Well, no one would dare go and talk to the man. He's just a man. Ya know? I've just been thinking about this a lot because of the release of The Craft [perturbed] The success of it blew me away. All of a sudden everybody's staring...and I'm thinking: Do I have food on my face? I mean do I look weird?
(Fairuza has blue hair and a nose ring:normal fare by today's standard. I haven't seen The Craft. Didn't even really know it was big at the box office. I stare anyways.)

LOW PROFILE NO MORE
JC: You've had the relatively low key career...'till now.
FB: Yeah, well, I never did the big commercial stuff. I rented this place in Hollywood and moved in and it was all cool and excellent and then The Craft was released and there were people knocking on my door and windows. Like, autograph people! People with scripts, crazy Christian people calling me a witch...
JC: Cool.
FB: I was just...bombarded. I went to the building's manager...and he was really sympathetic and he was like, "Well, we can get you a bodyguard." And I'm like: "What's a bodyguard going to do?" You know? "Make me coffee?"
(I first saw Fairuza in Valmont the other Dangerous Liaisons. the kid's got talent, I mean, it's not just the eye thing. She played innocence. Gets deflowered by this guy in tights who's seen more action than Wilt Chamberlain. She kinda stole the show.)

THE LIVE IN BODYGUARD
JC: The manager of the building was gonna get you a bodyguard?
FB: What would the guy do, sit around and listen to music with me?
JC: I wonder if my landlord would do that for me.
FB: I just never grew up in L.A. and I think if you haven't grown up here, or lived here for a long time, being surrounded by the industry...you know, everybody's always looking at everyone and it's all about "that." And if your not used to it, it's really intimidating.
JC: L.A. has a preditorial social thing.

THINGS TO DO IN LONDON...
FB: I like going out to clubs and stuff, but I'm not into schmoozing cause I'm just really...I'm just really bad at it. I can't work a room. You know, I just end of sitting in a corner and drinking wine and being really quiet. I think L.A.'s just the wrong place for me to live.
JC: You're from Vancouver.
FB: Yeah, well...I lived in Vancouver until I was eight, and then, uh, moved to London, started working, and stayed there working in London and Paris until I was thirteen or fourteen. I went back to Canada and kind of lived there on and off. But I love London. In a lot o ways, because I spent those like really crucial growing up years working and living there..it kinda feels more like home than North America does, ya know?
(Fairuza is kinda holding out on me. It's never said, but there's a man. He's around, he met me at the door. I think it's a thing. English accent. I think it may figure into the whole London situation. Of course I'm talking out of school here. I may know more. I'm pretty sure I do. But I'll leave it there.)

AMERICA'S IMPERFECT
JC: You off to do another movie soon?
FB: Fairly soon. In June I'm starting a movie called The Maker with Matthew Modine. Directed by the guy who did River's Edge.
JC: Tim hunter?
FB: Yeah. I've just got a little part which is perfect for right now. Just go in there and do it for a while. It's a lot easier than going in for the whole shoot, that's for sure. After that, I'm going to do a movie called American Perfect with Amanda Plummer.
JC: She's amazing.
FB: I'm like dying to work with her. It's a beautiful script. I mean just brilliantly written. Hopefully, it's going to be something I can just sink my teeth into, have fun with. I just want to do something like, really simple and challenging and fun..with people who really wan to be there , you know?

INDIE FILMS RULE
JC: You must get offered a lot of "indie" films.
FB: Well...I mean yeah. There's a lot of them going.I mean it's great because there's a lot more of a market for them now and that's excellent. The thing with independents that's so great, is that there's more of a feeling of camaraderie, and it's a tight group of people who really want to be there. Otherwise they wouldn't be dealing with no craft service [food] and horrible weather conditions for no money. You do it because you love it. After The Craft and Dr.Moreau I'm just burned out on big movies. It took a year and a half of work, constant, and it was just, yeahhggff!!
(The ashtray fills up as we chain smoke in harmony. I feel bad I didn't see the movie she talks so much about. I'm not big on researching Bikini pieces. There's guilt. I light another cigarette.)

FAIRUZA'S BITCH WITCH
JC: So, what attracted you to The Craft?
FB: Well...I'm trying to remember...The Craft was, I mean, I had the fun role. I got to be the bad guy. I've played loonies before, but no one that's been able to blow people up and send them flying through walls, you know. I just thought it would be good for laughs You know, just to be a lunatic
JC: Was it?
FB: Yeah, yeah. there were a lot of cool bits. But, I mean, working with special effects isn't what you'd think it is, it's hard.
JC: It's slow.
FB: Yeah, it's slow, methodical. They do what they call plate shots with those super speed cameras and you have to do everything perfectly to the millimeter. Perfectly timed and perfectly done. It takes forever...and, for my character it takes a lot of energy to work yourself up into such a state that you could literally kill people. I just had to think about the most disturbing shit I could, until my brain was ready to crack into a million pieces.
JC: And for the special effects shots, you had to get into that state and kinda stay there?
FB: Well, yeah depending on what the shot was, what the scene was. I mean that was my character. She was, she got to progress. I mean, digress I should say. Or regress...I don't know.
JC: I think...progress.
(I mean, insanity seems like a progressive thing. For me.)

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR IS A F***ING BORE
FB: [laughs] Yeah, progressive insanity. Not the girl next door, that's for sure. But more fun. It's more fun to be the bad guy and go nuts than to be pretty and perfect you know? [laughs, sarcastic] Like I could do that anyway. I'm not built that way. That would probably the hardest thing for me to do actually. To play the apple pie, you know...[sugary voice] "Hi." That to me is the most psychotic.
JC: Agreed.
FB: Ya ever notice that it's the perfect people who commit suicide, the people who go home and shoot their kids?
JC: Yeah, their missing all the fun.
FB: Betty Cracker types.
JC: It's always those perfect suburban homes where the really weird shit happens.

BOOK OF DEATH
FB: II got' this great book for my birthday, The Homicide Detective's Scrapbook. It's so gross, at the same time it's awesome. They show a lot of...just families. Like, the man comes home and he shoots the kids and his wife then he shoots himself.
(She runs to get the book...I think about the fact that I'm sort of stuck out here on the porch.
I wonder what would happen if I asked if I could stay here from a few days, vomit, make a rude comment. I hate that I'm being so well behaved. I'm charmed. Fairuza returns, book in hand.)
FB: It proves that there were no good old days.
(We look at the book)
JC: Death scenes. A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook. Let's have a look-see!
(We look at a picture of a beheaded body. The renegade head sitting upright in the sand on a beach.)
FB: That's the body...that's the head.
JC: Oh man, good form, nice finish.
FB: It's like this head sitting in the middle of nowhere...it looks like he's been buried up to his neck in sand.
JC: So innocent, like a fraternity prank.
FB: Pretty messy stuff.
(A picture of a blown-to-bits body.)
JC: Oh yeah! Look, there's a dynamite death!
(We laugh squeamishly, like school kids looking at Playboy.)
FB: The book you love to hate.
(New page, Fairuza points.)
FB: That's a hermaphrodite.
JC: Yeah, but he/she's not dead.
FB: Not dead yet, at the time. It's an old picture.
JC: Wild book.

MID LIFE CRISIS AT SIXTEEN?
FB: Yeah. It was a birthday present. It was my birthday yesterday.
JC: Happy birthday. How old are you?
FB: Twenty-two.
JC: Twenty-two...?! You're coming up in the world.
FB: Yeah, I guess.
JC: You started working young. I mean when you did Valmont, what were you , fourteen...sixteen?
FB: Thirteen. So...

FAIRUZA'S CRAZY REPUTATION
JC: You were saying before that people think you're crazy.
FB That's just what I've heard, you know. Not many people have said that to my face. "We think you're crazy." [pause] Well, a couple have...actually quite a few. [laughs] Just kidding. I don't know...this other journalist was that a lot of people think I'm really nuts.
JC: What have you done in your life to make people think you're nuts? [she ponders this] What have you done Fairuza? [she shakes her head] What have you done to these people?!
FB: [coy] Not too much....[witch laugh] Yeah, I think the rumors about me being crazy are like...it's more fun to say shitty stuff than it is to say nice things. Everybody likes to hear shitty things more. Like when you're little and people say"Nya nya nya nya nya...you have funny hair and you have funny clothes!" It's like, what can you do?
JC: Los Angeles is the biggest high school in the world.
FB: Exactly, perfect.
JC: We're all in the cafeteria staring at each other... it's f***ing treacherous.
FB: Exactly. But all you can do is try and be professional, keep working and let it go...just prove them wrong.

VAL KILL MORE
FB: But it's weird, because, like right now I've read two things where there seems to be this massive kill campaign against Val Kilmer. And he was in Dr.Moreau and it just pisses me off because it's just not true. I mean, I worked with the man...and he's just not, he's not an asshole. He's been given this awful rap for nothing. He never did the things they said he did. I was there. I would know, you know?
JC: The media's all about what's going on in so and so's life. It must get hairy for you public types sometimes.

ROYAL FAMILY
FB: Like what they do in Britain to the royal family, it's like mass hysteria, they like blow people
out of proportion to the point where they've got them on these god pedestals...they're not allowed to be human or throw up if they have the flu, or have a bad hair day, and they're definitely not allowed to do anything "BAD."
JC: Yep.
(Yep. I've been reduced to "yep" man. All I can do is aggress. Where was I? I think I was thinking about innocence, and that girl I screwed over ten years ago...and what a bad person I am.)

AND THEN IT HAPPENED
FB: I think, a lot of times, they interview you just to get something bad, you know. Even if you don't say it, they'll rewrite it. Make it sound like you said it. You just have to be honest and hope for the best really, it's crazy, lunacy, that's lunacy.
(And then it happens, like a bad dream...Fairuza stands. I'm in the middle of saying "yep" when she pulls out an automatic pistol, smiles maniacally, levels the weapon at my head...
JC: Hey...wait...it's not me...I'm not one of them!
FB: I've been wanting to do this for a long time...journalist scum. I want to kill all you media bastards. Strangle you! Kill you stinking f***ers! KILL your f***ing children...your mothers...KIIIIILLL! GIVE ME DRUGS! SODOMY! RACISM!!! THE DEVIL...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA...
BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM!!!

L.A. IS A NICE PLACE TO VISIT...
(Actually, we're just sitting on the couch. The rush hour traffic roars up the canyon below and Fairuza forgets about the irresponsibility of the press. Hollywood, witches, the Royal family. A sigh.)
FB: The sun is going to go down soon. I sit out here in the morning and have my coffee. It's pretty. There's a view and stuff.
JC: If you sit on the couch you can't see the traffic.
FB: Yeah, you have to look over the balcony for that.But it's perfect in the morning because it's just got that light...a smoke and a coffee. It's cool, you know...I do try and live in L.A., and you know, I probably could if I wanted to. But I'd just rather live somewhere else, that isn't here.
(A cat saunters along the rail of the deck. He stops for a moment. He stares at us, really at Fairuza. She doesn't notice him. He appears to stare right into her eyes, mesmerized, as if the kitty acid just hit. She blinks. The cat shudders, falls off the balcony. I hear him hit the hillside below with a dull thud.)

MORE TO LIFE
FB: I haven't worked since January, on purpose. I just have to paint, just do nothing but read and write and have time for myself. 'Cause that's one thing you lose without even knowing it. It's like, you get so bus...ya know? You're just [hand gestures] always, always, always! You start to disintegrate inside...it's kind of like a disease. If ya want to work you have to keep working, you know, and you get to the point where there's nothing left in your life
JC: Gotta find the balance.
FB: Totally, it's so, so true.
(A Barbara Walters moment)
JC: What sort of stuff do you paint?
(there's this sense about Fairuza. This sense of a boundary. Something you're not supposed to cross. A taboo. Something you'd have to be a bastard freak to cross. I sense it and can't violate it. I want to but I can't. I want to push a little but I just smoke, "yep" and nod. She sighs.)
FB: Well, I've only been painting for a few years...kind of surreal, pretty weird to most people. Hard to define. It's not any one genre or anything. I just paint. I learned how to paint through comic books.

BLOOD COMICS
JC: Which comic books?
FB: All kinds.
JC: Favorites?
FB: My favorite comic book ever...was, uh, these comic books these comics that were only put out for about two, maybe three years called The Blood Comics. They were about these weird kind of vampire creatures. The artwork was incredible, very surreal. A lot of it done in oil...painted then photographed, just wild. And I also love the Sandman comics, those are cool because the stories are good. And Love and Rockets and...God, I mean I could go on and on, I used to have a big comic collection and my place got broken into. They stole all my comics and my collection of punk records...

RAPING WOMEN AND CHILDREN
FB: Having done those two big commercial movies, I saw the industry in a really different light.
JC: The ugly side?
FB: Exactly and it kind of threw me. It was like, "God, am I doing this for the right reasons?" you know? I always had turned down the big stuff [hand gestures] always, always, always...and things I was against like stupid- violent- blowing- up- cars- and- raping- women- and- kids. It was like, blecch! There's enough people out there in the world that worship that stuff. So I leave it to them.
JC: The studios spend so much money that they make stupid- violent- blowing- up- cars- and-raping- women- and- kids movies to even the financial odds.
FB: I know, once you get past a certain mark, money wise, you gradually lose degrees of your control over the art in the movie, over the choices you can make. How do you spend sixty million dollars? I can't even conceive of that much money.
(Working for Bikini, I have a hard time conceiving of five hundred dollars.)

FIVE MILLION DOLLARS
FB: And the salaries. What do you do with five million dollars? I mean I'm not saying I wouldn't like to have it. But I mean, imagine making that three times a year yearly! What do you do?
(Suggestions: Imelda Marcos bought shoes, Michael Jackson got a new face, MC Hammer...who the f*** knows?)
FB: I wan to make something good that I believe in that's fun that's gonna move people and do something to people, and people can go there for two hours and do something, get away from their lives. That's why I go see movies. So I can just forget, get away. It's like going on a ride. That's what's so cool about it. It's like moving art, at times, if you're lucky.
(Fairuza takes a deep breath. The sun's just disappeared over the radio tower. The cat's on the railing with paper and a pen, waiting for a break in the action. I've got something else I've gotta run across town for. Fairuza sees me check my watch.)
FB: I'm babbling. I've had too much coffee.
JC: No you're not.
FB: You're like..."SHUUT UUUP!"
(I say goodbye, get up to go. I stop, look at the cat. I push the tabby right off the rail again. THUD. Fairuza needs her time, cat. Scram.)