{"id":16033,"date":"2011-11-22T13:07:24","date_gmt":"2011-11-22T20:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=16033"},"modified":"2011-11-24T02:30:18","modified_gmt":"2011-11-24T09:30:18","slug":"an-interview-with-danny-huston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=16033","title":{"rendered":"An Interview with “Playoff” Star Danny Huston"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Danny Huston in Tel Aviv\/Photo: Rafi Delouya, courtesy of PR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI like characters that are losers. I don\u2019t like classic heroic characters. I like villains they\u2019re more meaty, you can play with them. I like to try to understand what makes a villain tic, the mechanics inside them,\u201d said Danny Huston, star of Eran Riklis\u2019 film Playoff, inspired by the life of Israeli sports hero Ralph Klein. Israel Prize recipient Klein coached Maccabi Tel Aviv for many years, including their historic win against CSKA Moscow, followed by winning Israel\u2019s first European title.<\/p>\n

Huston arrived in Tel Aviv for the film\u2019s Israeli premiere, and graciously met with Midnight East and other journalists for an interview. When he first read Playoff, Huston said he was immediately drawn to the complexity of the character, \u201cbut I did not at the time understand how important Ralph Klein was to Israeli culture and Maccabi Tel Aviv, I didn\u2019t understand that at all, and I think that maybe Eran was interested in having me play this role because I was ignorant.\u201d Huston plays the role of Max Stoller, a fictional character modeled after Ralph Klein. The film is inspired by a puzzling chapter in Klein\u2019s life \u2013 after his huge success with Maccabi Tel Aviv, Klein, a German born Holocaust survivor, accepted an invitation to coach the German national team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe closer we got to making the film,\u201d recalled Huston, \u201cI understood what the implications were and slowly I felt a great surge of responsibility. I didn\u2019t want to let anybody down, not Ralph\u2019s family and certainly not the Israeli audience. I still feel certain amount of pressure because of it, but then I realized that we were making a film about Ralph Klein but in situations that were invented\u2026. Max Stoller\u2019s exterior world was used as a device to represent what was going on with Ralph.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Danny Huston as Max Stoller in Playoff<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Reflecting on the choice made by his character in the film, Huston said, \u201cIf any one of us can conquer our inner demons it\u2019s an important thing to do. It\u2019s kind of like Pandora\u2019s box. Do you want to open that box or not? Do you want to let out too many demons? It\u2019s a choice that we have, maybe there isn\u2019t a right or a wrong, but in dramatic terms you want to open that box, otherwise you don\u2019t have much of a story to tell\u2026how courageous it was of Ralph to coach a German team and to break those kind of barriers. It\u2019s strange, sports are such a nationalistic thing, it\u2019s so much about teams and yet it can bring people together. Film does that; I love it when music does that. When you see two musicians and they don\u2019t speak each other\u2019s language and they don\u2019t have any clue about each other and they\u2019re playing music. They have that feeling and you can see it\u00a0 – I envy that, I envy that so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Playoff<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Comparisons between the actual details of Klein\u2019s life and the fictional character created in the film are inevitable, but this is familiar terrain for Huston who is the son of Hollywood legend John Huston. \u201cI\u2019ve had that experience with my father,\u201d said Huston, \u201cI\u2019ve read many biographies of my father. None of them had anything to do with my father, the person I knew.\u00a0 When I saw White Hunter Black Heart (1990) where Clint Eastwood played my father – that wasn\u2019t my father, that thin voice\u2026it had nothing to do with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Peter Viertel wrote the book, White Hunter Black Heart, everybody who worked with my father was up in arms, they were shocked: how dare they say that he was an irresponsible filmmaker, that he was more interested in hunting than in making films. It was a lie, but my father secretly liked it. The reason I think is because it lived up to his mythology. Hopefully what we\u2019re doing here is fulfilling the mythology of who Ralph Klein was and therefore continuing his spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Huston\u2019s own sports background, he said, \u201cSports? What do I like to do for sports? Well, I gave up smoking\u2026\u201d In researching his role Huston observed different coaches at work, looking at their stance and position on the court. Yet his research focused as much on the Holocaust and the role of memory as on sports. In particular, Huston read letters written by children to understand \u201cthe way that they perceived what was happening. It\u2019s very much something I carried with me at the time, simple things the children would recognize, the taste of a cake, blaming certain actions that they did that led to something that they feel guilty about\u2026we all know survivors, the guilt that comes with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Danny Huston as Max Stoller in Playoff<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The focus on his character\u2019s internal struggles and painful childhood memories took it\u2019s toll on the actor. \u201cDealing with a character\u2019s who was suffering so much I think it took more out of me than I realized\u2026Now that I look back on it, the whole thing was a very depressing experience and when I look at the film I can see it – I\u2019m not really myself, I\u2019m not really like that,\u201d said Huston, who did concede, \u201cThere were funny things too. I remember I was in a restaurant and I saw gazpacho on the menu and I was working on my dialect. The very happy rotund blonde blue eyed waitress came to my table and said: What would you like? And I said, \u201cI\u2019ll have one Gestapo.\u201d She looked at me in horror.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he was portraying a fictional character rather than the real Ralph Klein, Huston says that director Eran Riklis \u201cwas very protective. He would try for me not to see too much [documentary footage of Ralph Klein], which made me all the more curious. By the time we got to making the film I\u2019d probably seen just about everything that I could.\u201d Huston and Riklis had an instant rapport, Huston said, \u201cOn our very first meeting we kind of understood each other. We have the same taste in films, it was a connection. Later when we were working we didn\u2019t need to talk things through. There was a silent understanding.\u00a0 It\u2019s wonderful when that happens. I just really admire him as a filmmaker and a human being.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Danny Huston as Max Stoller in Playoff<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Huston has worked with many different directors over the course of his career, such as Martin Scorcese, Mike Figgis and Fernando Meirelles, Huston said, \u201cThe one thread, even though they\u2019re completely different, the one thing that I recognize is that they\u2019re all thieves. They all steal. There\u2019s a moment where they\u2019re robbing your soul. There\u2019s something they\u2019re looking for – when they\u2019ve got it they move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Huston began his work in films as a director, and would like to direct again someday, he is glad to avoid the \u201canguish, compromises, all that heartache\u201d that a director endures in the process of working on a film. As an actor, Huston said, \u201cI can come in and actually do the work and be creative rather than dealing with politics. I saw my father suffer through the politics, but he was very good he was a real beautiful poker player. I remember when he used to deliver a cut, he\u2019d be like, Gentlemen, he\u2019d do a strange bow: this is my cut. Then he\u2019d be gone to Mexico or some other country\u2026He was cunning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember a story about when he was in Moulin Rouge. At that time Technicolor was really important, they\u2019d put a stamp on the movie: Technicolor. And he was taking a lot of color out of the image with Ozzie Morris the camera guy and Technicolor were concerned. So they came to Paris where he was shooting and all the Technicolor approval guys, the brass, came to look at the footage. They spent a couple of hours looking at the footage and the lights went on and my father turns to Ozzie the camera man and says: \u2018Ozzie are you happy with the way it\u2019s looking?\u2019 And Ozzie Morris said \u2018Yes, Mr. Huston, I\u2019m very happy with the way its looking.\u2019 And my father turns to the Technicolor guys and says: \u2018Gentlemen, fuck you.\u2019 And that was the end of that. But you had to be John Huston to pull it off.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next for Danny Huston? \u201cI\u2019m doing a film about a meeting Elvis had with Nixon. I\u2019ll be playing Nixon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Playoff will be released in Israeli theatres beginning November 24, 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI like characters that are losers. I don\u2019t like classic heroic characters. I like villains they\u2019re more meaty, you can play with them. I like to try to understand what makes a villain tic, the mechanics inside them,\u201d said Danny Huston, star of Eran Riklis\u2019 film Playoff, inspired by the life of Israeli sports hero […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}