If cigarettes didn’t already exist, they’d have been invented for Michael Madsen. The raspy-voiced actor — known to a generation as the razor-wielding, feet-shuffling, psychotic Mr. Blonde — has over the course of his career, and its almost 150 movies, cultivated a screen persona that frequently makes use of his quiet gravitas, low growl, thousand-yard stare and penchant for flipping pinched cigarette butts out of frame. Madsen’s most recent film is the chopper opera Hell Ride, a dusty, very stylized motorcycle gangland drama, produced by Quentin Tarantino, in which he plays a gun-toting good guy known as The Gent. In advance of its release, Madsen graciously took the time to chat about the movie, his career as a whole, and his history with fisticuffs, among other topics. The conversation is excerpted below:
Brent Simon: So Larry Bishop says that the role of The Gent was written for you, or with you in mind.
Michael Madsen: Larry asked me to be in it, and the first time
he gave me the screenplay it wasn’t really a script, it was like a
dictionary. It was way too thick for me to read it, so I pretended that
I read it, and told him I loved it; I knew it was a motorcycle movie,
that’s all I really needed to know. And I also knew that we were a
long, long way from being able to make it, and that I had plenty of
time to read it. So I waited until I got a condensed version of it,
then I asked him if I could wear a tuxedo, because the character was
named the Gent and I thought that it would be interesting to put my own
little spin on it. I kind of figured that he would say no, but when he
said that I could I knew that we were on the same page with each other,
and I knew then that the movie was going to be really cool. But it took
almost two years to get done — it wasn’t like suddenly Quentin came
along and we made Hellride. It doesn’t really work that like. It takes a lot longer to get these things done.
BS: Was it a matter of scraping up financing money?
MM: I wouldn’t say scraping — I’d say that they were very, very careful about getting the money together, because it’s been a long time since anyone’s made a motorcycle picture and I think they were a little scared of it. Both Larry being more or less a first-time director, and the screenplay — I’m not so sure that they really understood what it was about, and I think that it was a long time before he was able to convince anyone that he did know what it was about. But Quentin hung in there. You know, Quentin was originally going to be in the movie, he was going to play Comanche. And when he bowed out the whole thing went up in smoke for a while. But it came back together.
BS: You said the script was dictionary-thick — was it language about the style and look of movie, which is very distinctive?
MM: I think that some people are scared to death of that because they’re not sure whether or not the filmmaker can pull it together, and you have to have so many people lined up that know what he’s trying to do, and make sure that everyone — even on down to the bike builders — knows exactly what the intentions are. It’s hard to get a group of people together like that. And it was a very time-consuming thing, but thank God it came together.
BS: Your bar brawl scene with Eric Balfour was pretty intense —
MM: Yeah, considering the fact that we didn’t have any break-away furniture, and we didn’t find that out until the day we were actually going to do the fight, and by that time we didn’t have much of a choice except to just break the real shit. So we just had to trust each other and realize that we didn’t want to hurt each other — that it was only a movie.
BS: It gives me the impression that you might have had some personal experience with bar fights. Is that true?
MM: Well, I’d hate to admit it, and I don’t need to incriminate myself, but (pointing) I have a dent in my forehead right here from being knocked unconscious by the butt end of a pool cue riding my Triumph into a saloon in Arizona.
BS: Was this days of misspent youth, or was this after you’d become an actor?
MM: Misspent youth that actually later came to help me understand some of the things I was being asked to do.
BS: Have you ever been involved in any location bar brawls, a la the recent scrum in Louisiana involving Jeffrey Wright and Josh Brolin?
MM: Yeah, I had a thing that went down with some guys in a hotel lounge in Baltimore, and they sued me for a $1.5 million but they lost the case. A couple guys started some shit with me and my assistant. And they came after me with a baseball bat, but we outfoxed them in a chase through the hotel, and they were done in. They made a big deal out of it and tried to get a bunch of money from me, but in the end their lawyer was a buffoon who ruined the whole case, and that was the end of that.
BS: Good Lord. Are most location experiences much more pleasant than that, or is there always some sort of wild and woolly war story?
MM: I mean, there’s always some things that go on, and they’re not necessarily good or bad. Making movies is a really bizarre experience, and it’s really hard — you never know what really is going to happen. I suppose that’s part of the attraction of doing it.
BS: Hell Ride is all about these guys who live for one another, but also love their motorcycles. You’re a big car and bike guy in real life, too, right?
MM: Well, when you grow up with nothing and then suddenly you have a little bit of money, the first thing you have a tendency to do is start buying all the shit that you never had as a kid. And then once you get all that stuff you realize that you don’t really have anything but a bunch of dead batteries and flat tires, and no place to keep them. And then you realize that you probably should have spent your money on the stock exchange, or maybe you should have invested in a restaurant, or maybe you should have spent your money in a wiser way. But it’s too late, and then you have to sell all your cars and motorcycles to pay the IRS, and everything else that may be held against you. And then reality kicks in.
BS: So when did the acting bug bite?
MM: At the moment of birth, when I had to pretend like I was happy to be here. (laughs) Well, look, I can honestly say that when I was babysitting for my mom’s sister’s kids and I was about… I think I was 14 or 15. There was a movie on TV called Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, with Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr, and Mitchum was playing a Marine trapped on an island with a nun. And his performance was so compelling to me, I remember sitting there going, ‘Wow.’ I couldn’t believe how somebody that looked like that and had that personality could do that in front of a motion picture camera and maintain humility. I just found it to be fascinating. I think that’s the first time it ever crossed my mind, and it wasn’t until years and years and years later that I actually had the opportunity and wherewithal to try it.
BS: You have a hell of a lot of movies to your credit — are you a workaholic?
MM: I’ve been off for the entire month of July. I have five sons and I stay home with them and take everybody to school and play Mr. Fix-It at the house. My kids ride motorcycles, and I spend time with my family and do the dad thing, and I’m very happy and blessed to be able to do that. But at the end of the day I’m not really happy unless I’m working, and also if I don’t work then I’m not going to be able to keep my family in the lifestyle that they presently enjoy. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Are we all supposed to move to a trailer park while I wait to get that one great role? I mean, that’s never gonna happen. I wanna stay busy and keep working and keep everyone in clover. I like to have everybody happy, and have what I never had, and that makes me happy, to know that they’re happy. That’s what drives me to go on. I work a lot because I have to pay the mortgage, not because I’m trying to be a big shot, or I’m secretly stuffing bundles of cash in a mattress. My money is spent before I make it. I’m trying to maintain the lifestyle that I already have, and it’s tough.
BS: Wrapping up, you’ve written a book of short stories and poems, Burning in Paradise — is that something that you do with consistency, or is it a different creative outlet that you dabble in and come to as need be, as a sort of pressure release valve?
MM: Oh, it’s definitely a creative outlet, and it’s something that’s given me a great deal of solace. Making movies is a very lonesome profession sometimes, so I took up writing, an
d writing about things that I saw around me. And I never intended it to be in a book, but it ended up being so. It’s not for everybody and some of it I wish I hadn’t written, some of it’s a little too personal. But then again, you can’t unring the bell, and it is what it is. I’m happy that some people like it, and some people don’t. I wrote down a lot of stuff that was true, I wrote a lot about growing up, and I haven’t written anything in quite some time. I have a writer’s block, I suppose. But I would call it social observance, not poetry. But I would hope to keep doing it, and I will. The greatest gift to me is that my son is reading Burroughs and Kerouac and Ginsberg, and reading about the Hell’s Angels. It’s wonderful, to me, that my son is studying and learning more about the people that I grew up reading, and knows more about it than I do, for God’s sake! All that literature is very important, and it’s really insightful stuff.
Hell Ride opens in limited release on August 8, and hits DVD in October. For Madsen’s take on Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards, meanwhile, click here.