It’s hard to remember there was actually a time when Greg
Kinnear was a television host (that would be Talk Soup, on E!) and viewed somewhat dubiously as an actor. Those
times are bygone, as Kinnear — fresh from a summer of good notices for Little Miss Sunshine, the little indie
that could — re-teams with filmmaker Richard Linklater in Fast Food Nation, in which he plays a marketing executive for a
national eatery chain who trips to Colorado
to investigate claims of tainted beef. Redacted portions of a recent Los
Angeles roundtable chat in advance of the film’s bow
this week, November 17, are included below:

Question: Did you stop eating meat upon booking the film, or
do you still indulge?

Greg Kinnear: “I actually have not been reborn since reading
Eric’s startling book. I still eat red meat. Sorry, is that okay? You can’t
keep me away from a burger. I guess I’m guilty. Is this the 60 Minutes portion of the interview? I
guess you got me. I’ve never been a big fast food consumer, but I eat red meat.
Eric Schlosser, who spent three years writing this book, still does as well. I
don’t think the book or the movie is necessarily an indictment of red meat or
beef in general. The average burger at a fast food place could be made up of
hundreds and sometimes thousands of different cattle. And the concept of how
those cattle are fed and where that meat source comes from and the conditions
at the packing plant and who works there and all of that stuff is more what the
book and the movie are about. It just asks people to think a little bit. It’s
like a sociology study in this book. I was amazed by it. And I think at the end
of the day when he and Rick sent me the script I was kind of nervous about a
big, preachy book [telling] people how to feel or behave. But I felt they did a
really nice job in just taking real characters and telling a narrative story that
I was really intrigued by. Usually you’re asked to play a good guy or a bad
guy, you’re rarely asked to play a guy who is both, and I was kind of intrigued
by that.”

Question: Do you like finding humor in situations like this?

GK: “I guess it read a little funny to me with Don’s plight.
He definitely is a little naïve and definitely goes through a source of discovery
in this little journey.”

Question: How do you feel about your character, Don, choosing not to act?

GK: “I liked it. At first I read it and I had a problem with
it, but that really is the way it is. Of course I want him and I think an
audience that watches the movie wants him to stand up and say, ‘I’m mad as hell
and I’m not going to take it anymore,’ and he never does. And you think,
where’s the Norma Rae moment? But
that’s kind of only in the movies. And this is in some ways a more truthful
assessment of that kind of person than you could ever ask to find. I thought it
was pretty brave of Rick to throw him in to lead the charge rather than just
have him disappear. And I think it makes a pretty powerful proclamation about
that kind of guy because there are a lot of people out there who might have
some moral questions or ambiguity about what it is they do or who they serve or
what kind of industry they are in. And at the end of the day they have a
family, they have a wife and kids, they have obligations and obviously that’s
what people serve. And that’s one of the things about the book. It says, ‘Are
the individuals answering to the corporation or is the corporation answering to
the individuals?’ And that line is less clear than ever.

Question: What was most shocking for you?

GK: “I think the fact that there are chemists involved in food. You never like
those two to intersect if you can avoid it. Let’s keep the chemists over here
and the food over there, that’s my feeling, but what do I know? But that is a
big aspect of fast food — their ability to artificially taint the colors and
smells to stimulate appetite. Another thing I was amazed by, and [another] aspect of
playing this guy that I really loved is he is a marketing guy, he comes from CNN
and hasn’t really gotten his feet wet in this fast food thing yet. But if you
read the book there is a fascinating assessment of all of the grown-up men and
women with PhDs who sit around at tables like this, and figure out how to
market to children as young as 2 or 3 years old — to stimulate images on a TV
screen to make those kids think positively about their products. My daughter is
3 and I think about it all the time. There is just something very creepy about
that. But I guess it’s a reality. It’s 2006, so I need to get on with it.”

Question: Have you ever been on a kill floor?

GK: “I wanted to go to a kill floor. Catalina (Sandino
Moreno) went and Richard went obviously, and some of the crew. They were pretty
particular about who they let in. I got there the day after they had shot on
the kill floor. It was kind of a dark day on the set when I showed up, but (producer)
Jeremy (Thomas) was trying to get me access in there and we just weren’t able
to do it. So no, I never went into the kill floor. I went to the packing plant
obviously, which, as represented in the movie and in the book, is a very clean
operation. The place where they actually do the packing and the freezing and
stuff is pretty remarkable, it’s very technical and it moves very quickly and
efficiently. But there are some things you can’t change, and the ugliness of
that kill floor and what goes on there is just one of the things that it’s
unavoidable to not be shocked about.”

Question: Does it feel like you’re more in the spotlight
now?

GK: “No, look, at lot of these are small movies. Little Miss Sunshine was a small movie
that kind of found an audience and really took off, but I didn’t know that was
going to happen. I was busy last year, definitely. It’s just funny sometimes.
In a fairly consolidated wedge of time I just had a bunch of things released, but
I don’t have any control over it. It’s just the way it is.”

Question: What was the last job you had that you didn’t want
to do or weren’t proud of?

GK: “There’s a big difference between not wanting to do [something]
and not being proud of it. I was cleaning up a huge baby poop this morning that
I didn’t want to do, but I’m proud that
I did it. In terms of flat-out not proud about something, I don’t know. I’m
sure there are lots of embarrassing movies I’ve done. I’ll e-mail them to you!”

Question: How was it working with Linklater, what’s his on-set
demeanor and direction like?

GK: “He just has a very easy spirit and disposition about
him. I really like his casts. He had a great group of people in this movie that
I kind of work with. He’s very easygoing, and he tries to let his movies breath
a little bit. He doesn’t come in and say everything has to be this way. He really works with actors
and gives them room and space and lets you feel like you could own some of it.
That’s not always the case.”