COFFEE KILLS
Fairuza Balk: "I've had so much coffee, I've had like eight,
nine cups of coffee...."
Fairuza Balk's vibrating, perched Indian styte atop an
exhausted couch opposite me, an exhausted slouch. Our
interview unfolds on a slab of wooden deck overlooking
trees, a hill, and a distant slanted radio tower. She hands
me a coffee. Her eyes. Mary. What Attilla rode horses
for; what JESUS taught; what Kodak moments wish they
were; why Keith likes heroin; what directors cast her for
... why I just mostly listen.
Credits: Valmont; Gas Food ind Lodging; Imaginary
Crimes; Things to Do In Denver When Your Movie Title
is Too Long: The Craft; and the upcoming, Island of Dr.
Moreau, which we discuss. I light up American, she fires a
Canadian. We talk through a veil of smoke.
DR. MOREAU WAITS FOR BRANDO
Jonathan Craven: The Island of Dr. Moreau...
Fairuza Balk: Yeah.
JC: Brando?
FB: Yeah.
JC: So?
(Fairuza seems a little disappointed. I sense reluctance on her part to
do anything vaguely tabloid.
She pulls on a heater. I wait. She exhales.)
FB: Well, we (she and Brando) only had a couple of things together and
he's a very private man.
Always surrounded by people. He's funny, he pulls pranks and stuff like
a little kid. But ... I mean, I
don't want this to sound stupid, but ... I don't come from the same
generation of people who
worshiped him like a God, I mean, I think he's brilliant ... but I don't
get star struck. So it was weird
because it was literally like God was on the set.
JC: I'm sure. (I'm agreeing with her, but I know full well I would
slaughter a goat for Brando.)
FB: There was this one day .. he was sitting there and doing his lines
and kind of muttering, waiting
for the crew to finish setting up. Everybody else thought he was
rehearsing, so no one was allowed
to talk. Two hours go by. I'm outside smoking, going, "I don't think
he's rehearsing. Go in there and
tell him they're ready and just see!" Right? So one of his assistants
tells him that the crew's ready and
he's like, "Good. I've been waiting, let's do it!" Everybody was just
... gob stopped.
GOB STOPPED?
JC: Gob stopped?
FB: Well no one would dare to go and talk to the man. He's just a man.
Ya know? I've just been
thinking about this a lot because of the release of The Craft
[perturbed] The success of it blew me
away. All of the sudden everybody's staring ... and I'm thinking: Do I
have food on my face? I
mean, do I look weird? (Fairuza has blue hair and a nose ring: normal
fare by today's standard. I
haven't seen The Craft. Didn't even really know it was big at the box
office. (I stare anyways).
LOW PROFILE NO MORE
JC: You've had the relatively low key career..'til now.
FB: Yeah, well, I never did the big commercial stuff. I rented this
place in Hollywood and I moved
in and it was all cool and excellent and then The Craft was released and
there were people knocking
on my door and people at my windows. Like, autograph people! People will
scripts, crazy Christian
people calling me a witch....
JC: Cool.
FB: I was just ... bombarded. I went to the building's manager ... and
was really sympathetic and he
was like, "Well, we can get you a bodyguard." And I'm like: "What's a
bodyguard gonna do?" You
know? "Make me coffee?"
(I first saw Fairuza in Valmont, the other Dangerous Liaisons. The kid's
got talent, I mean, it's not
just the eye thing. She played innocence. Gets deflowered by this guy in
tights who saw more action
than Wilt Chamberlain. She kinda stole the show.)
LIVE IN BODYGUARD
JC: The manager of the building was gonna get you a bodyguard?
FB: What would the guy do, sit around and listen to music with me?
JC: I wonder if my landlord would do that for me
FB: I just never grew up in L.A. and I think if you haven't grown up
here, or lived here for a long
time, being surrounded by the industry... you know, everybody's always
looking at everyone and it's
all about "that." And if you're not used to it, it's really
intimidating.
JC: L.A. has a predatorial social thing.
THINGS TO DO IN LONDON...
FB: I like going out to clubs and stuff, but I'm not into schmoozing
cause I'm just really ... I'm just
really bad at it. I can't work a room. You know, I just end up sitting
in the corner and drinking wine
and I think L.A.'s just the wrong place for me to live.
JC: You're from Vancouver.
FB: Yeah, well...I lived in Vancouver until I was eight, and then, uh,
moved to London, started
working, and I stayed there working in London and Paris until I was
thirteen or fourteen I went
back to Canada and lived there kind of on and off. But I love London. In
a lot of ways, because I
spent like those really crucial growing up years working and living
there... it kinda feels more like
home than north america does, ya know?
(Fairuza is kinda holding out on me. It's never said but there's a man.
He's around, he met me at the
door. I think it's a thing. English accent. I think it may figure into
the whole London situation. Of
course I'm talking out of school here. I may know more, I'm pretty sure
I do. But I'll leave it there.)
AMERICA'S IMPERFECT
JC: You off to do another movie soon?
FB: Fairly soon. In June I'm starting a movie called The Maker with
Matthew Modine. Directed the
guy that did the River's Edge.
JC: Tim Hunter?
FB: Yeah. I've just got a little part which is perfect right now. Just
go in there and do it for awhile.
It's a lot easier than going in for the whole shoot, that's for sure.
After that, I'm going to do a movie
called American Perfect with Amanda Plummer.
JC: She's Amazing.
FB: I'm like dying to work with her. It's a beautiful script, I mean
just brilliantly written. Hopefully,
it's going to be something I can just sink my teeth into, have fun with.
I just want to do something
like, really simple and challenging and fun...with people who really
want to be there, you know?
INDIE FILMS RULE
JC: You must get offered a lot of "indie" films.
FB: Well, I mean ... yeah. There's a lot of them going. I mean it's
great because there's a lot more of
a market for them now and that's excellent. The thing with independents
that's so great, is that
there's more a feeling of camaraderie, and it's a tight group of people
who really want to be there.
Otherwise they wouldn't be dealing with no craft service [food] and
horrible weather under difficult
conditions for no money. You do it because you love it. After The Craft
and Dr. Moreau I'm just
burned out on big movies. It took a year and a half of work, constant,
and it was just, yeahhgggff!!
FAIRUZA'S BITCH WITCH
JC: So, what attracted to you to doing The Craft?
FB: Well... I'm trying to remember... The Craft was, I mean, I had the
fun role. I got to be the bad
guy. I've played loonies before, but no one that's been able to blow
people up and send them flying
through walls, you know. I just thought it would be good for laughs. You
know, just to be a lunatic.
JC: Was it?
FB: Yeah, yeah. There was a lot of cool bits. But, I mean, working with
special effects isn't what
you think it is, it's hard.
JC: It's slow.
FB: Yeah, it's slow, methodical. They do what they call plate shots with
those super speed cameras
and you have to do everything perfectly to the millimeter. Perfectly
timed and perfectly done. It
takes forever..and, for my character, it takes a lot of energy to work
yourself up into such a state
that you could literally kill people. I just had to think about the most
disturbing shit I could, until my
brain was ready to crack into a million pieces.
JC: And for the special effects shots, you had to get into that state
and kinda stay there?
FB: Well yeah, depending on what the shot was, what the scene was. I
mean it was my character.
She was, she got to progress. I mean, digress I should say. Or
regress... l don't know.
JC: I think ... progress. (I mean, insanity seems like a progressive
thing. For me.)
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR IS A FUCKING BORE
FB: [laughs] Yeah, progressive insanity. Not the girl next door, that's
for sure. But more fun. It's
more fun to be the bad guy and go nuts than to be the one who's pretty
and perfect you know?
[laughs, sarcastic] Like I could do that anyway. I'm not built that way.
That would probably be the
hardest thing for me to do actually. To play the apple pie, you know...
[sugary voice] " Hi." That to
me is the most psychotic.
JC: Agreed.
FB: Ya ever notice that it's the perfect people who commit suicide, the
people who go home and
shoot their kids?
JC: Yeah, they're missing all the fun.
FB: Betty Crocker types.
JC: It's always those perfect suburban homes where the really weird shit
happens.
BOOK OF DEATH
FB: I got this great book for my birthday, The Homicide Detective's
Scrapbook. It's so gross, at the
same time it's awesome, They show a lot of... just families. Like, the
man comes home and he
shoots the kids and his wife and then he shoots himself.
(She runs to get the book... I think about the fact that I'm sort of
stuck out here on the porch. I
wonder what would happen if I asked if I could stay for a few days,
vomit, make a rude comment. I
hate that I'm being so well behaved. I'm charmed. Fairuza returns, book
in hand.)
FB: lt proves that there were no good old days.
(We look at the book)
JC: Death Scenes. A Homicide Detective's
Scrapbook. Let's have a look-see!
(We look at picture of a beheaded body. The
renegade head sitting upright in the sand on a beach.)
FB: That's the body ... that's the head.
JC: Oh man, good form, nice finish.
FB: It's like this head sitting in the middle of nowhere...
it looks like he's been buried up his neck in sand.
JC: So innocent, like a fraternity prank.
FB: Pretty messy stuff. (A picture of a blown-to-bits
body.)
JC: Oh yeah, Look, there's a dynamite death!
(We laugh squeamishly, like school kids looking at
Playboy.)
FB: The book you love to hate.
(New page, Fairuza points.)
That's a hermaphrodite.
JC: Yeah, but he/she's not dead.
FB: Not dead yet, at the time. It's an old picture.
JC: Wild book.
MID LIFE CRISIS AT SIXTEEN?
FB: Yeah. It was a birthday present. It was my birthday yesterday.
JC: Happy birthday. How old are you?
FB: Twenty-two.
JC: Twenty-two ... ?! You're coming up in the world.
FB: Yeah, I guess.
JC: You started working young. I mean when you did Valmont, what were
you, fourteen ... sixteen?
FB: Thirteen. So....
FAIRUZA'S CRAZY REPUTATION
JC: You were saying before that people think you're crazy.
FB: That's just what I've heard, you know. Not many people have said
that to my face, "We think
you're crazy. " [pause] Well, a couple have ... actually quite a few.
[laughs] Just kidding. I don't
know... this other journalist was saying that a lot of people think I'm
really nuts.
JC: What have you done your life to make people think you're nuts? [she
ponders this] What have
you done Fairuza? [she shakes her head] What have you done to these
people!?
FB: [coy] Not too much... [witch laugh] Yeah, I think the rumors about
my being crazy are like ...
it's more fun to say shitty stuff than it is to say nice things.
Everybody likes to hear shitty things more.
Like when you're little and people say "Nya nya nya nya nya ... you have
funny hair and you have
funny clothes!" It's like, what can you do?
JC: Los Angeles is the biggest high school in the world.
FB: Exactly, perfect.
JC: We're all in the cafeteria staring at each other ... it's fucking
treacherous.
FB: Exactly. But all you can do is try to be professional, keep working
and let it go ... just prove
them wrong.
VAL KILL MORE
FB: But it's weird, because, like right now I've read two things where
there seems to be this massive
kill campaign against Val Kilmer. And he was in Dr. Moreau and it just
pisses me off because it's
just so not true. I mean, I worked with the man ... and he's just not,
he's not an asshole. He's been
given this awful rap for nothing. He never did the things they said he
did. I was there. I would know,
you know?
JC: The media's all about what's going on in so and so's life. It must
get hairy for you public types
sometimes.
ROYAL FAMILY
FB: Like what they do in Britain to the royal family, it's like mass
hysteria, they like blow people out
of proportion to the point where they've got them on these god pedestals
... they're not allowed to
be human or throw up if they have the flu, or have a bad hair day, and
they're definitely not allowed
to do anything " BAD. "
JC: Yep.
(Yep. I've been reduced to "yep " man. All I can do is agree. Where was
think I was thinking about
innocence, and that girl I screwed over ten years ago ... and what a bad
person I am.)
AND THEN IT HAPPENED....
FB: I think, a lot of times, they interview you just to get something
bad, you know. Even if
you don't say it, they'll rewrite it. Make it sound like you said it.
You just have to be
honest and hope for the best really, it's crazy, lunacy, that's lunacy.
(And then it happens, like a bad dream.... Fairuza stands. I'm in the
middle of saying "yep"
when she pulls out an automatic pistol, smiles maniacally, levels the
weapon at my head ..
JC: Hey... wait ... it's not me...I'm not one of them!
FB: I've been wanting to do this for a long time ... journalist scum. I
want to kill all you
media bastards. Strangle you! Kill you stinking fuckers! KILL your
fucking children ...
your mothers ... KililiLLL! GIVE ME DRUGS! SODOMY! RACISM!!! THE DEVIL
...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA... BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM!!!
L.A. IS A NICE PLACE TO VISIT..
(Actually, we're just sitting on the couch. The rush hour traffic roars
up the canyon below and
Fairuza forgets about the irresponsibility of the press, Hollywood,
witches, the Royal family. A sigh.)
FB: The sun is going to go down soon. I sit out herein the morning and
have my coffee. It's pretty,
there's a view and stuff.
JC: If you sit on the couch you can't see the traffic.
FB: Yeah, you have to look over the balcony for that. But it's perfect
in the morning because it's just
got that light ... a smoke and a coffee. It's cool, you know ... I do
try to live in L.A., and you know,
I probably could if I really wanted to. But I'd rather just live
somewhere else, that isn't here.
(A cat saunters along the rail of the deck. He stops for a moment. He
stares at us, really at Fairuza.
She doesn't notice him. He appears to stare right into her eyes,
mesmerized, as if the kitty acid just
hit. She blinks, The cat shudders, falls off the balcony. I hear him hit
the hillside below with a dull
thud.)
MORE TO LIFE
FB: I haven't worked since January, on purpose. I just have to paint,
just do nothing but read and
write and have time for myself. 'Cause that's one thing that you lose
without even knowing it. It's
like, you get so busy ... ya know? You're just [hand gestures] always,
always, always! You start to
disintegrate inside ... it's kind of like a disease. If ya want to work
you have to keep working, you
know, and you get to the point where there's nothing left in your life.
JC: Gotta find the balance.
FB: Totally, it's so, so true.
(A Barbara Walters moment)
JC: What sort of stuff do you paint?
(There's this sense about Fairuza. This sense of a boundary. Something
you're not supposed to
cross. A taboo. Something you'd have to be a bastard freak to cross. I
sense it and can't violate it. I
want to but I can't. I want to push a little but I just smoke, "yep "
and nod. She sighs.)
FB: Well I've only been painting for a few years ... kind of surreal,
pretty weird to most people.
Hard to define. It's not any one genre or anything. I just paint. I
learned how to draw through comic
books.
BLOOD COMICS
JC: Which comic books?
FB: All kinds.
JC: Favorites?
FB: My favorite comic book ever..was, uh, these comics that were only
put out for two, maybe
three years called The Blood Comics. They were about these weird kind of
vampire creatures. The
artwork was incredible, very surreal. A lot of it done in oil ...
painted and then photographed, just
wild. And I also love the Sandman comics, those are cool because the
stories are good. And Love
and Rockets and ... God, I mean I could go on and on, I used to have a
big comic collection and
my place got broken into. They stole all my comics and my collection of
punk records....
RAPING WOMEN AND KIDS
FB: Having done those two big commercial movies, I saw the industry in a
really different light.
JC: The ugly side?
FB: Exactly and it kind of threw me. It was kind of like, "God, am I
doing this for the right reasons?"
you know? I always had turned down the big stuff [hand gestures] always,
always, always ... and
things I was against like
stupid-violent-blowing-up-cars-and-raping-women-and-kids. It was like,
blecch! There's enough people out there in the world that worship that
stuff. So I leave it to them.
JC: The studios spend so much money that they make
stupid-violent-blowing-up-cars-and-raping-women-and-kids movies to even
the financial odds.
FB: I know, once you get past a certain mark, money wise, you gradually
lose degrees of control
over the art in the movie, over the choices you can make. How do you
spend sixty million dollars? I
can't even conceive of that much money.
(Working for BIKINI, I have a hard time conceiving of five hundred
dollars.)
FIVE MILLION DOLLARS
FB: And the salaries. What do you do with five million dollars? I mean
I'm not saying I wouldn't like
to have it. But I mean, imagine making that three times a year yearly!
What do you do?
(Suggestions: Imelda Marcos bought shoes, Michael Jackson got a new
face, MC Hammer.. who
the fuck knows?)
FB: I want to make something good that I believe in that's fun that's
gonna move people and do
something to people, and people can go there for two hours and do
something, get away from their
lives. That's why I go to see movies. So I can judt forget, get away.
It's like going on a ride. That's
what's so cool about it. It's like moving art, at times, if you're
lucky.
(Fairuza takes a deep breath. The sun's just disappeared over the radio
tower. The cat's back on
the railing with paper and a pen, waiting for a break in the action.
I've got something else I've got to
run across town for. Falruza sees me check my watch.)
FB: I'm babbling. I've had way too much coffee.
JC: No you're not.
FB: You're like..." SHUUT UUUP!
(I say goodbye, get up to go. I stop, look at the cat. I push the tabby
off the rail again. THUD.
Fairuza needs her time, cat. Scram.)

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