Pitted Against The Lizard
Beatty talks Bulworth, Baptists, boo and the bullshit of the bottom-line
Weekly: In the movie, every group you spoke in front of - the black congregation, the gathering of Hollywood Jews - you chastised, you offended. Yet, when you were to speak before a white, Presbyterian church, the character flees before saying anything at all to them. Why is that? Is it because, if you had to pick one group to direct the whole film toward, they would be it?
Beatty: That would be the group. That's the group I come from. Their [visible] amount of repression and inhibition, the level of Puritanism, the thickness of their vanilla armor is very funny to me. The faces of the people in that church - and they're wonderful people - those faces make me laugh. Talk about stereotypes. These are stereotypical vanilla, soulless people - the Massachusetts Bay Colony all in one gathering. That's what Bulworth was running away from.
Weekly: Bulworth works on many levels - including the notion of the identity glitch - and the casting of Halle Berry adds another layer. Berry - who is biracial - is perceived, unfairly I think, by a lot of black folks as a black-white girl, and a lot of her recent acting choices seem geared toward challenging that perception. With all those factors in mind, using her to play a girl from the hood takes on a special resonance. Were you aware of that extra weight when you cast her?
Beatty: Definitely. But you look at Halle Berry and you see the future of America. There is no choice. That's where it's gonna go. Halle Berry is a fact of life. There was never a moment's doubt in my mind once I met her. I'd thought of other people, people who could have brought a lot of interesting qualities, but Halle is not going to be denied. She's a person who's getting her perspective on this mantle that's been thrust upon her, and I think she's gonna handle it very well. But she is the future of America. She's the essence of it.
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