Ben Foster: Shooting “The Messenger”

The "Messenger" star soldiers on and talks up his new military drama, the horniness of war, and cooking.

“The Hurt Locker” had a lot of attention, but it’s also an action movie. When people are looking for escapism, how do you convince them to see an Iraq War-themed drama?

It’s a tricky subject. Most of those war pictures that come out have had a tricky time at the box office. On a personal side, I know it has everything to do with Oren Moverman and Alessandro Camon’s script. It was the only script that dealt with the war that didn’t feel like it was pushing some sort of political agenda. It’s showing results and human beings trying to connect.

You can take the military out of this movie, and that was what was so exciting to play with. It’s the universal experience of losing a loved one, and we all have this. It is the most natural thing we experience other than breathing. We’re going to lose people, and we will be lost at some point. We don’t want to talk about it, we don’t want to look at it in our culture, and we all have to get back to life somehow.

We’re not claiming we have answers, other than: Connect. Allow friendship to occur. Pursue love. Listen to each other. Be with each other and support. These basic, simple human experiences are the things that get us through the darkest days, and in the end, we can get back and celebrate a very precious and brief time that we do have. The movie is a hopeful one that reminds us that we can go on, and we can still laugh. That’s such a beautiful question to ask with such brave artists.

Oren Moverman spent a few years as an Israeli paratrooper in the ’80s. Besides the script he co-wrote, did you ever get a sense of his military experience helping him as a filmmaker?

In so far as an emotional landscape — he didn’t want to say he was in war, he was in an occupation. He’s a really humble guy, but he understands the mindset of a warrior. It’s pretty basic. You’re horny all the time, you’re worrying about who’s fucking your girlfriend, you want to shoot something, you’re bored, you’re terrified.

Getting back to life with people who don’t share the same experiential vocabulary can be very isolating. They’re still people, they just don’t have that… “What did you do today?” That can be lonely. His own personal experiences were subtly interwoven into the script. It was so beautiful.

I came down to New York eight weeks early to just be with him. I met him and was like, “Okay, this is someone I want to ask questions with.” We shared documentaries, books, talked to soldiers, talked about family. It was like a tuning process, so on the set, it becomes very gentle and allows for intuition to take over, rather than over-intellectualizing the scene. Nothing was rehearsed. We didn’t meet the people we were notifying. It demanded that we do our prep so we can be available to each other while the camera’s rolling.

This is a quieter role than usual for you since, in recent years, you’ve played quite a few angry and unbalanced characters. Do you feel that’s what you’re most known for?

Everybody likes to file. We like shiny things that are ordered. When I did “Six Feet Under,” all I got were scripts about bisexual artists. With “Alpha Dog” or “3:10 to Yuma,” it’s only the bad guy, an unhinged fella. But there’s no real strategy to it, and of course someone’s going to want to pigeonhole you. I like to ask [myself if] it’s worth four months out of a life to explore this very seriously. But I mean, people are gonna do what they’re gonna do.

I read that your parents are restaurateurs. Do you cook?

Not well. When I do cook, I love to cook, but I’m on the road most of the time. Suitcase living. So, not as much as I like to.

So you don’t have any go-to dishes?

Meat and potatoes, man. Quite literally. Or, spaghetti and meatballs. I like some blood in my food.

“The Messenger” opens in New York and Washington D.C. on November 13th before expanding into limited release on November 20th.

Pages: 1 2