"A Serious Man," the new film from the Coen Brothers, tells the story of a college professor at a Minnesota University who experiences a stroke of bad luck that amplifies to near-Biblical proportions. Michael Stuhlbarg, the film's lead actor, sat down with The Daily to discuss his first big Hollywood role, where he finds inspiration and what it is like to work with the Coens.
Question: Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to the project, when you got the script?
Michael Stuhlbarg: Well, I got a call from my agent that Joel and Ethan wanted to see me for the part of Velvel, the husband in the Yiddish parable at the beginning of the movie. It was entirely in Yiddish, so I found a Yiddish tutor and learned the whole scene in Yiddish and brought it back to Joel and Ethan. They laughed a lot and that made me very happy.
At that point, they weren't sure if they wanted an actor who could learn phonetically or someone who could actually speak Yiddish, so as it ended up they went with some folks who could speak it fluently.
Then the project sort of went away, and then maybe five or six months later I got a call to come in to audition and learned three scenes for each of those characters, and did them for Joel and Ethan, and they laughed a lot again and that made me happy again.
So I checked in periodically over the course of time asking if I was still in the running and they said, "Yeah you're still in the running." Eventually I got the call saying, "You're going to get one of these parts; we just don't know which one yet." So I just started working on both of them. Then about six or seven weeks before the shooting was to start I got a call from Joel saying, "We'll put you out of your misery; you're playing Larry," and that's sort of how it happened for me.
Q: Were you hoping for one [role] or the other?
MS: I would have been glad to do anything in this movie, you know? They're both great parts and it just happened that this was the one that I ended up getting.
Q: So what was it like working with the Coens versus other projects you've been on? I know people call them the "two-headed director." Any interesting stories from that?
MS: Yeah, I mean, once they cast their actors they're very hands-off and respectful in terms of allowing us to do what we need to do in order to bring the character to life. I asked a bunch of questions initially, and they answered them all. Those questions that they didn't have answers for, they just said, "Do whatever you want." They don't do a lot of takes, which makes their job easier in the editing room because they edit their own movies. They were really fun to be with, great sense of humor, wicked smart, and I hope I get a chance to do it again.
Q: How was preparing for this role different than preparing for a role in the theater?
MS: Well the work is pretty much the same in terms of my job: asking the same kinds of questions and familiarizing myself as much as possible with the arc of what the character goes through. Because when we shoot it it's out of sequence ... I have to know when I show up on a particular day what it is that I've gone through, so I can make it come to life as much as possible.
Q: You had mentioned that you had written three pages of notes on the script originally. Can you talk about what you were unclear about and what intrigued you?
MS: Well, there are so many questions in terms of the interaction between characters, what the back-story is, how well do I know people? What's a gett? How do you pronounce Mentaculus? Also, strange "isms." It's my job to know all when I show up and not to ask them when I get there. I don't want to be thinking so much in my conscious mind when I get on the set. I want to have asked those questions and made as strong decisions as I can beforehand, so that I can just live it when I get there.
Q: I was wondering if you have a favorite Coen Brothers movie, and if so, is there a certain character you wish you could have played?
MS: I love all their movies and I don't think any part would be better served if I had been cast in it, no way. But it's been really fun to get to [work] with them. Before we started, I got a chance to look at a number of their movies that I had seen before, just to see them again with a fresh mind and from a different place in my life. That was thoroughly exciting because they all hold up so remarkably well. All the performances are fantastic, and I had forgotten so many of the nuances of these pieces. I had my memory refreshed and pleasantly so.
Q: Did you feel any kind of pressure working on a Coen Brothers movie after they were coming off of two of their biggest hits ["No Country for Old Men" (2007) and "Burn After Reading" (2008)]? Did it seem like they were trying to do a smaller movie now with mostly unknown and character actors?
MS: I didn't think of it as a smaller movie, but in terms of its budget and unknown actors, absolutely. I tried not to let it get to me, just show up and make sure I wasn't the one who was slowing down production. I've been in enough films and on enough sets in television to know that you just show up and do your work and there's time to think about all that afterwards. I just showed up and did my work, and I think it served me well.
Q: This is one of your first big film roles. What's in the works? What's next?
MS: Next is an HBO series called "Boardwalk Empire" which is executive produced and the pilot was directed by Martin Scorsese. It's co-produced by Mark Wahlberg, Stephen Levinson and Timothy Van Patten. It's written by Terence Winter, who wrote for "The Sopranos." It's based on the book "Boardwalk Empire" by Nelson Johnson which is about the birth and high times of Atlantic City. We pick up the action on the eve of Prohibition in 1920. I'm playing Arnold Rothstein, who is allegedly responsible for fixing the 1919 World Series. We jump into shooting the second episode at the end of this month, so that's what I'm up to.
