Close Encounters of the Celebrity Kind...
A Character Called Rusty
Expanded Edition of the 5-2-07 WCT Interview
by Richard Knight, Jr.
Rusty Schwimmer during a break in filming the intense indie drama The Hawk Is Dying, in character for the film as Precious and at
Sundance in 2006 with her co-star in the film Paul Giamatti
Outside “The Business” Rusty Schwimmer might not have a lot of name recognition but “inside” it’s a different story.  There’s a
reason why Robert Duvall has asked her to work with him on several projects; why Steven Spielberg wanted her specifically for a part
in
Amistad, why David Kelley has found ways to utilize her expertise at portraying eccentric characters in many of his popular
television series.  Schwimmer enjoys the respect of her colleagues for the vast variety of small but key roles she’s essayed since
arriving in Hollywood in the late 80s.  Her name may not be as familiar to you as it is to others in her industry but her face and voice
are unforgettable.  

There she is in the opening scene of
Twister, rushing to get into that storm cellar, or anxiously trying to get John Cusack alone so
she can confide her fears in
Runaway Jury.  She gave Charlize Theron plenty of sass in North Country; got out of the way of Eleanor
Bron’s evil Miss Minchon in a rare comic turn in
The Little Princess.  She was there in a pink sweater to say goodbye to the shy
fisherman she’d just met in the local bar the night before in
The Perfect Storm and strip searched Virginia Madsen (her real life best
friend) as a surly cop in
Candyman.  She’s even had the distinction of being part of the body count for the hockey mask wearing
Jason Voorhees in one of the countless
Friday the 13th sequels

That’s just a fraction of the feature films.  Her television work has run the gamut as well, from “Six Feet Under” to “Boston Legal.”  
Schwimmer originally hails from Winnetka, Illinois (where she traces her friendship with Madsen).  The daughter of a professional
washboard player, her reputation as a multi-layered character actress scratches the surface of her talent.  The comedic side of
Schwimmer has not yet truly been tapped by Hollywood (in either film or television) and she is one of the funniest and most honest
women you're likely to meet.  All that – plus an earthy sexiness and a singing voice (she’s a blues belter) just this side of Etta
James.

Who wouldn’t fall hard for a person with such vitality and genuine charisma and such an old soul to boot?  I date my head over heels
crush on Schwimmer to the mid-80s when our paths first crossed in the Chicago nightclub scene before she headed out to the West
Coast.  Now she is costarring with Paul Giamatti in the offbeat indie,
The Hawk Is Dying (it plays its Chicago premiere beginning this
Friday at the Gene Siskel Center).  In the film Schwimmer plays a distracted, anxious southern belle, Precious, brother of Giamatti
and mother of an autistic son (Michael Pitt).  During a recent trip back home she and I talked about the film among other things –
including an upcoming appearance on “Desperate Houses.”


WINDY CITY TIMES (WCT):  
The Hawk Is Dying is a very unusual piece.  It’s very non-linear – a real test for an absent-minded
audience.  I loved that the normal assumptions you make about characters in a movie didn’t really apply.

RS:  Yes, right.  Some people have pointed that out.  I think it’s because we’ve been spoon fed as an audience – I’m saying this in
a very general way – to figure out exactly where we are, who we are, what the relationships are within the first five minutes of the
movie.  I believe in movies that are really, really great you don’t have that spoon fed to you.  I think that’s hats off to Julian
Goldberger the filmmaker because he doesn’t want to do that.  He feels the audience is much more intelligent than the lowest
common denominator and that the lowest common denominator is not as low as most people think.

WCT:  It was refreshing to realize that the relationships were not always exactly what I’d assumed they were.  The film went off in
really interesting directions.

RS:  Did you think that I was his wife?

WCT:  No, it was clear to me that you were playing his sister but I can see how people would think that.  It’s not really stated until
much, much later in the film.

RS:  Right.

WCT:  He was alternately protective of her and resentful at the same time.

RS:  Yes.  I think he was really trying to manipulate the hell out of me in that scene where he wants Michelle Williams’ character to
come over.  But because of the brother/sister relationship you’ve got to be careful how you manipulate because you’ve grown up
aware of those things.

WCT:  So was George’s goal to get Michelle Williams and Michael Pitt (who plays Schwimmer’s son and George’s nephew) together?

RS:  I could be wrong but this is how I took it: I think that he felt that if he could get Betty (Michelle Williams) to be with Fred
(Michael Pitt) Betty would be more amorous with him.  I think he was just trying to get into her pants the whole time because he’s a
human being; he’s a man (laughs).  Men like to do that – they think of sex a lot.

WCT:  They do – we do – but now I’m really intrigued.  I assumed that George was already having sex with Betty and paying for it.

RS:  Wow!

WCT:  Yes – and every once in awhile they didn’t have sex and the two would just talk about his hawk obsession which she just put
up with.  I assumed that he was a long time client.

RS:  I love the fact that you thought she was a prostitute.

WCT:  She wasn’t?

RS:  No, no she wasn’t.  She’s a psychology student at the university and George has been talking about Fred all this time and she
wants to meet him because this is maybe something she can use in her thesis.

WCT:  Oh my God, I so did not get that (laughs).

RS:  Well that’s kind of cool, though and that’s what’s so great about these kinds of movies.  You can make it anything you want it
to be.  If you think that, you think that.  Unfortunately, I think I just spoiled that (laughs).

WCT:  Not at all.  That’s another wonderful thing about being a gay person that goes to the movies a lot.  I’m used to changing the
story in my head anyway.  That happens naturally for me.  If I don’t like what I see or understand it, I fill in my own blanks.

RS:  That’s why I think this movie is fantastic.  If you have an imagination you can wild with this.

WCT:  Yes and there’s a lot of open ended stuff to go wild with.  How did this originally come to you, Rusty?  Did you know this
director-writer?

RS:  I didn’t know him or anything about him.  He had worked with John Hawkes who played Bugsy in
The Perfect Storm and a
combination of John and Nick Offerman – my friend who used to be with the Defiant Theatre in Chicago – both said, “The character
of Precious needs to be Rusty.”  So Julian saw me at the very beginning of casting and then I didn’t hear anything and I thought I
did well and then maybe six months later I got a call asking if I’d be willing to play Precious.  Julian later told me that they kept
seeing a lot of people; a lot of name actors and he said he woke up at 2 in the morning one morning and said, “Oh my God, that
woman!” and started rifling through his tapes to find mine and said, “That’s her – what was wrong with me?  This is her.”  That
cracked me up when he told me that story.  I didn’t know that until long after we filmed.

WCT:  That’s a great compliment to you.

RS:  Yes, that was really nice to hear.

WCT:  Okay, so six months later you got the part and this was filmed in Gainesville, Florida correct?

RS:  Yes – right after the 2004 election.  Here comes Hollywood into this red state.  I believe that really helped my mind set.

WCT:  Can you talk about working with Paul Giamatti?

RS:  I was in a happy bubble to be working with such incredible people that really love what they do.  I loved that Paul Giamatti is so
open.  We immediately had this connection.  The first night I was on location in Florida he took me to this restaurant called Mom’s –
a great soul food place – and they all loved him because they’d seen
Big Momma’s House so many times.

WCT:  Right!  I’d forgotten he’d done that.

RS:  Yes, exactly.  So, from the get go we were like brother and sister and we could say anything in front of each other and that
meant that working with each other was great.  One of us would have an insane idea and the other person would giggle and then
we'd try it and see if it worked or not.  There was a lot of improvisation at times.  Julian would let us go sometimes.  This would be in-
between lines in the script.  We’d just go and go and then say to Julian, “Okay, it’s your job to figure it out in the editing.”  

WCT:  Is it true that with material this emotionally difficult that those are the movie sets where the atmosphere is light and you have
a great time?

RS (laughs):  Yes – actually that’s true, at least for me.  One of the hardest, most serious sets I was on was a comedy that I did –
EdTV – it was just a very serious set.  The Perfect Storm was a hilarious set, North Country was hilarious and this, the most hilarious of
all.  I think that unless you’re a method actor – which Paul and I certainly are not and we’ll drop character in a second (laughs) – you
need a rest from the intensity.  And in that scene that I won’t give away that’s so intense – in-between takes we were yukking it up,
laughing so hard because it was too horrible to deal with.

WCT:  Wow.  I keep saying “wow” today which is so lazy.  But maybe that’s because this is such a hard movie to talk about because
it’s so different.

RS:  Well, it is.  It is so different, it’s so non-linear and most people may not enjoy it and that’s okay because not all movies are for
everyone.  I personally didn’t enjoy
Titanic.

WCT:  You commie bitch!

(we both laugh)

RS:  That is I hasten to add my take on it.  I love
The Hawk Is Dying personally for obvious reasons but also because it made me
think about different things.  It made me think about different things that are going on with our society.  I think it was a beautiful
mirror of what’s happening in our society.  I think it’s unfortunate that Sundance kind of missed the boat on it because this movie is
strangely enough, very American.  It’s just not filmed in an American way.  But we’re talking about people that are very American and
I think a lot of people just couldn’t see it.  That’s why it did well at Cannes and I guess the Brazilian film festival went crazy over it
and it actually won the audience award.

WCT:  That’s trippy.

RS:  It is trippy because you think, “How could that win an audience award?”  But that’s because their thinking may be a little non-
linear when it comes to filmmaking and Americans are used to a formula.

WCT:  Yes, everything spelled out.

RS:  Right.  And this was not a formula.  It was filmed in 16mm for God’s sake.

WCT:  How long was the shoot?  Pretty quick?

RS:  Yes – 23, 24 days.  We had to shoot quick but I think if we’d had to shoot anymore it would have hurt us because it was so
compact that it was almost like a tornado went through, you know?  This was the first movie that I came away with – and I’ve done a
lot of intense movies – this was the first one where I couldn’t shake it and I think that if I was in that mode for any longer, I really
wouldn’t have been able to shake it and I had to do another movie right after that.

WCT:  Now let’s talk about the hawk – which is attached to Giamatti’s arm for practically the entire second half of the movie.  How
long did he train with that bird?

RS:  Not long, not long at all.  He’s just…

WCT:  A fearless guy?

RS:  He and I discussed stuff like that.  I don’t know if it’s that he’s necessarily fearless.  I think that he just likes to walk through
his fear and see if he comes out of it.  I don’t think there are a lot of people that are fearless.  I think Michael Pitt who played my
son is fearless.  He’s either got a missing fear gene in him or he’s got an extra gene that makes him fearless.  I’m not sure which
but he’s incredibly fearless.  There are very few actors that are.  Believe it or not – Keanu Reeves is another one.  Fearless.

WCT:  Huh?  Keanu Reeves?

RS:  Yes.  Oh come on, how many actors are like, “Oh sure, I’ll do
Much Ado About Nothing even though I don’t know what I’m doing.”  
Check him out, man.  He’s fearless – he’ll try anything.

WCT:  Okay, okay.  Can we talk about a few things away from the film?

RS:  My eyebrows for example?

WCT:  Absolutely.  Because your eyebrows have really been the reason why you have a career to begin with, right?

RS (laughing hard):  Oh yes…

WCT:  Did you know that when Lana Turner’s condo caught fire she said, “I’m not leaving without my eyebrows.  I will burn to death
before I go out without my eyebrows.”

RS:  Oh my God!  Good for her.  Precious would have been that way, too.

WCT:  So, let’s talk about some of your TV appearances because you’re on every hit show on TV it seems – “Heroes,” “Six Feet
Under,” “Boston Legal” and you have a “Desperate Housewives” episode coming up, right?

RS:  I do.  I play a forest ranger (laughs).  Now, who would meet up with a forest ranger I wonder?

WCT:  Hmmm.  Our People love that show and one of the reasons for that, of course, is that it was created by a gay man, Marc
Cherry.  Did you meet him?

RS:  Yes briefly and what I really enjoyed about Mr. Cherry to be perfectly honest was that he said, “Thank you so much for coming
and playing with us.”  He said “playing” not “working” and I thought that was very telling about what kind of human being he is.  I
liked him a lot.  He was very, very sweet.

WCT:  Okay my gay friendly friend who has worked for everyone in the business in both movies and TV – do you think we’re ever
going to see a leading man, mega movie star come out in our life time?

RS (crestfallen):  Oh honey, it’s not going to happen unless they’re a character actor.  They just say to the actor two words: “Rupert
Everett.”

WCT:  And those two words work because Everett’s career was wrecked by his coming out?

RS:  Well they say no one wants to take him seriously as a heterosexual guy which really sucks because it really shouldn’t matter.  
As far as I’m concerned, when someone asks me if I’m gay I’ll say, “It’s none of your business.”  They don’t have to know if I’m gay
or not because it doesn’t matter.  My personal life is different.  If you say you have a boyfriend lined up for me then I’ll tell you if
I'm gay or not (laughs).  But when it comes to my profession it doesn’t matter.  It should not matter.  Actors play all sorts of parts.  
I can’t tell you how many lesbians I’ve played.  Is that fair to the lesbian community that lesbian actors can’t play straight roles?  It’s
not fair and doesn’t make any sense.  But at the same time a lot of people will look at Rupert Everett and not want to make waves.  

WCT:  Is it just a generational thing do you think?

RS:  Yes but until those old white guys leave Hollywood and Washington it’s not going to happen.  It might be another generation
and if it is that’s brilliant because then it’s only one more generation instead of two or three.  But I don’t think it’s going to happen
in the next ten years.  Character actors sure but not leading men.  Not yet.

WCT:  Well, it’s an interesting time and I thank you for your opinions on that subject.  Aren’t you also working on a variety show?

RS:  Yes, I think the days of fun, sweet humor are coming back.  The days of Carol Burnett and Bob Newhart and all those cool
people are going to return.  I think mean comedy is about to leave and when that leaves I get to play and bring out all my
characters.

WCT:  Can’t wait, can’t wait.

RS:  My characters are ready to go!