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| Glenn Howerton as Jim Balsillie in Blackberry |
One of the independent hits of the year, sadly overlooked by the major awards so far but doing well in smaller ones, BlackBerry turns the story behind the development of the iconic phone into a gripping drama with comedy and thriller elements. Having previously discussed it with director Matt Johnson and (briefly) with Michael Ironside, whose contribution is fairly brief but makes quite an impact, I was pleased to get the opportunity to chat to star Glenn Howerton. His supporting turn as Jim Balsillie has received well deserved praise, and at the press conference he revealed that he got so fully into character that when he relaxed at the end of the shoot his co-stars were surprised to discover that he was actually friendly.
“The way this movie premiered in March and people are still talking about it, it's incredible,” he says. “I'm pretty thunderstruck by the response in general. It's not that I didn't think we made a good movie, I knew we did. It's just sometimes you can make a good movie and it can get lost in the shuffle. There's so many things out there these days, so many options, so many platforms that people get lost. So when something really stands out like this, it's an anomaly. I feel extraordinarily fortunate, and then the excitement about my performance, it's a little bit surreal, but I'm very grateful for it.”
Not only did he not expect the film to be such a success, but he was surprised that the phone was.
“I think that initially the BlackBerry, I think everybody thought, well, the iPhone is completely impractical. It's so impractical. But there was no denying that it was a sexier device. It was cooler. In almost every respect, other than maybe typing on the keyboard, the iPhone was just superior. The fact that you could toggle between different applications, the fact that they opened the App Store up to third party developers, it was undeniably a superior device. And I think BlackBerry overestimated the importance of the physical keyboard.”
Getting into character was fairly straightforward, he says, not simply because Jim is a real person, but because the film was so well mapped out.
“I think the actor's number one job is to help tell the story. And so I always go back to the script, especially if I know it's a good script. And I know that the people who wrote it did their research and that there was a lot of thought put into it. And having had multiple conversations with Matt [Johnson] and Matt [Miller] about the script, they had very specific answers for all of my questions.
“Everything that I brought up, even a specific line or a word used or a piece of stage direction, they had a very specific answer for why that piece of information was in the script. So I knew I was in good hands. I knew that the script was very well thought out, very well researched. And then, of course, I did my own research, but that was really more supplemental. I took most of my cues from the tone and the vibe of the script and really spent most of my time in preparation, just reading the script over and over again and talking to whoever I could get to talk to me about it, getting my friends to read the script so I could talk to them about it. That's what helped me kind of process the world, the tone, and then slowly building a performance off of that.”
One of the biggest parts of the process was the physical act of shaving his head.
“It made a much more profound difference in how I carried myself and how I felt than I had anticipated. I knew that it was going to affect the performance shape in my head. I knew it would affect how I felt. I underestimated the degree to which it would affect how I felt. It's almost like I want to take more credit for the performance than just shaving my head, but it really does change you. It's like putting on a mask. Even a non-actor, anyone who's dressed up for Halloween, just remember how that feels when you throw on that Halloween costume. If you can just kind of picture what that does to you.
“I don't know if most people are aware of what it does, but it really does free you from yourself in a way that's extremely helpful. You're already one step removed from the character, because you're a different person with different impulses, different upbringings, different desires and all that. Doing something physical like that and then even just the wardrobe, he dresses so differently from how I dress. The jewelry, the Harvard ring, all that stuff became a bit of a ritual for me in the mornings, to step into the character.”
Having done all that work, he says, he found himself wondering how people would react to it, especially when he got to see the completed film. I tell him that Matt Johnson told me that he thinks Jim is actually a hero.
“Well, look, I think it's difficult for anyone to view their work objectively,” he says. “Anyone who's ever had that experience of hearing their voice for the first time on a voicemail or in a recording and had that thought of like, ‘Wait, is that what I sound like?’ Think about that amplified times ten so that you're hearing your voice, you're seeing your face on a giant screen, and it's in front of a bunch of other people that are seeing it with you. So I think that I was struggling with having spent so much time in an editing room, editing myself and sort of objectifying myself. I thought I was past the point where I would not be able to see my performance objectively. I thought I could do that, but apparently not, when I watched the movie for the first time.
“I loved the movie, but I thought ‘Oh my God, people are going to really dislike this character. He's just so brash and so, I don't know, there was a lack of warmth to the character. I wasn't able to see the ways in which people would actually be able to get behind this character because they understood why he was doing what he was doing. It wasn't as if I watched my performance and thought, ‘Oh, that's not what I was trying to do.’ I was like, ‘No, that is what I was trying to do, I just hate it.’ But I think after a while, after seeing the film a few times, I've been able to kind of relax into it and start to enjoy my own performance in it a little bit more.”
Blackberry will screen at Palm Springs.
