I recently got a chance to speak with a personal hero of mine, Jeff Bridges, about a little movie he stars in called The Amateurs. We only had ten minutes, so we couldn't get in to world peace or who he's voting for, but you will find his thoughts on movie trailers and a music suggestion or two.

Laremy: How long ago did you film The Amateurs?

Jeff Bridges: Gosh, it was 2005.

What happened to delay the project so long?

Bridges: Man, you know it’s not that unusual, unfortunately, for films to take all these twists and turns. And this was certainly the case with The Amateurs. I don’t know all the ins and outs from my side of things but I’m so pleased that it’s making its way to the screen because I think it’s going to bring some chortles… and some smiles.

When I watched I felt like it was a really sentimental movie about porn. How would you describe it?

Bridges: It’s like if Frank Capra made a porn movie. That’s how I sum it up.

There’s a line in the film that says “Friends shouldn’t let friends think.” Care to expound on that?

Bridges: (laughs) Well, that’s said by one of my buddies in the film. My character is going through a serious depression and it’s said because he knows I’m just sitting there thinking about how terrible I am. Thinking can be a source of great pain, right? (laughs)

You’re often better off not thinking.

Bridges: That’s right!

The language in this film is pretty impressive, the cadence and pacing. Was a lot of this improv or was it locked in the script?

Bridges: It was all pretty much locked. Mike Traeger, the writer and director, wrote a very unusual script with so many rich characters. One of my concerns when we first started was that it was going to be hard to follow so many characters. Each character had big speeches, long speeches, and I thought that would be tough to edit. But in fact it worked out beautifully. In life you tend to talk in monologues to each other. So it has a realism to it as well.

This reminded me of a Kinky Boots or a Full Monty sort of film. Did you get any of that when you watched it?

Bridges: Yeah, it could fall into that slot if you had to categorize it.

What sort of movies do you enjoy watching?

Bridges: I enjoy movies that are surprising, that you don’t know quite where they are gonna go. One of the tough things about (The Amateurs), a sort of necessary evil, is where you try to get the people to see the movie. But I always try to see as little as possible about the movie. One of my favorite things about the movies is when the filmmakers are ahead of you. They surprise you. Those are the kind of movies I enjoy promoting and watching.

It seems like marketing this would be a nightmare.

Bridges: Or any movie. I always bitch about trailers. The whole truncation of the movie. But it’s very challenging, how to sell it. How do you make it intriguing without giving too much away so the audience can enjoy it?

I’ve always felt like the best trailer would be a dark stage, the director walks out and says, “Hey, I made this movie about this. Go see it.”

Bridges: Right… or they could use the trailer time and let the director make the trailer. Use that trailer as part of the storytelling experience. He could maybe use some footage that’s not in the movie to set the audience up. So much of the movie going experience depends on what you bring to the movie when you sit down to watch it. What you’ve heard, whether it’s been too hyped up. There’s nothing worse than seeing a movie everyone’s raving about, then you see it and you’re expecting so much.

I’ve spoken to plenty of directors who flat-out don’t like the trailers to their movie which is quite a disconnect.

Bridges: Oh yeah, well they usually don’t have anything to do with it. It doesn’t make any sense. I remember Alien, that weird egg hatching, Close Encounters had a mysterious one too. You want to intrigue.

And some have the ending right in there.

Bridges: Terrible!

Last question, what kind of music are you listening to these days?

Bridges: I’m friends with a guy named John Goodwin, not Goodman like the guy in Lebowski, he’s got an album called “Up to Here” that’s pretty cool. There’s also a wonderful album by John Hammond called “Wicked Grin” – it’s all Tom Waits tunes. Do yourself a favor and get that one.

And with that the PR folk cut me off and my time with Jeff was over. He's a good guy, and I hope one day we can sit down and have a civilized conversation that's not on a clock. For my part I quite liked the movie and would have given it a B. It's whimsical and cute, though oddly enough it's about the making of an amateur porn movie. Our own Cole Haddon hated it, but as the Dude himself once opined, "Well, that's just like your opinion, man." The Amateurs opens a little wider this weekend; give it a shot.

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