Bill Pullman

Bill Pullman is the Everyman of American movies, equally believable as the President of the United States Independence Day, a charming romantic hero While You Were Sleeping or a David Lynch-style murder suspect Lost Highway. In all, he's done more than 50 films, but there's a deeper side to Pullman's talent that's been unleashed onstage in the enigmatic works of Edward Albee. Presented with a script about an architect whose happy marriage is destroyed when he falls in love with a goat, Pullman didn't blink—and his performance in the 2002 Broadway premiere of The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? was central to the play's success. Though Pullman's work was inexplicably overlooked at Tony time, Albee realized that he'd found a simpatico leading man and made a personal call to enlist Pullman for Second Stage's current production of Peter and Jerry. In this combination of Albee's now-classic first play, The Zoo Story, and a new one-act called Homelife, Pullman plays Peter, a mild-mannered textbook publisher whose Sunday afternoon reading is interrupted by a provocative conversation with his wife, Ann Johanna Day, followed by an even more provocative encounter with Jerry Dallas Roberts, a young stranger in Central Park. Peter is the most difficult of the three parts, combining intense listening and sexually charged dialogue that could seem laughable in the wrong way in less-assured hands. But Pullman and his co-stars make Peter and Jerry a theatrical event, and an excellent pre-80th birthday present for Albee. The down-to-earth star, married for 20 years to dancer Tamara Hurwitz and a doting father of three teens, chatted about his lifelong love of theater with Broadway.com.

I understand that Edward Albee himself asked you to do Peter and Jerry.
Yes, he called in March. I was in Montana, where I own a ranch with my brother, and he sent the play to me. There I was in a rural place reading this urban story that goes to a really raw, wild place itself.

Did you know The Zoo Story well?
I had worked on it as a teacher but I had never done it, and I didn't really remember it that well. Most people, if they know it, will say, "That's the play where one guy is crazy and the other guy is smoking a pipe." Now that we're doing it, it's very interesting to hear people talk about their experiences with the play. Last week, Rob Reiner came and was telling me about a production in which he played Peter and Richard Dreyfuss played Jerry. Everybody's got their own Zoo Story story.

What makes Homelife a good companion piece? Tell me your view of this couple, Peter and Ann.
You get a sense of a guy who has found the perfect mate in Ann, and she's the same, I think. It's a very honest relationship. Both are prodding the other to stay awake in the relationship. I don't know if this is everybody's impression, but my feeling is that I'm the one who is a little bit shut off; she's always prodding me about whether my job is exciting. At the same time, I sense that there are things she's thinking about that she is afraid of, and I'm the one who pushes her. It's oddly important that they challenge each other.

How did you feel about the dialogue in Homelife? You have to speak graphically about a private part of your anatomy, as well as about a life-altering sexual encounter.
Well, there are always those things in Edward's plays, where people say awful things or things that cause shame in different ways. The Goat was certainly that way on many different levels. So maybe I've kind of come to know that as the territory—the element of exposure that's required with Edward's plays. And as much as it might seem mannered, I don't see it that way at all. I think of it as an exercise in exposure, of rawness, of not covering over things. I've seen productions of his plays that I haven't liked because they haven't had that element. What he's really looking for is to expose people, not crush them with banter.

Peter spends most of The Zoo Story listening to Jerry. Would you have been interested in doing this production if Homelife hadn't been part of it?
I don't know. I think what he goes through in Homelife is very interesting. There's the reassurance by the end of it that [Peter and Ann] are going to stay together, but the play raises a question in Peter's mind about who he is as a man. He has decided to put a glass ceiling on his emotional life, his sexual life, so when he goes to the park, he's more available for distraction. When Jerry comes up, there's all kinds of reasons not to talk to him, but at a certain point Peter feels relief at not having to think about all these things. Then it turns out that this guy who seems the best candidate for distraction ends up being the one who takes Peter right back to his core.

Okay, how intimidating is Edward Albee?
[Laughs.] Well, he's very direct, and there's a certainty about him. I guess that rattles people. But he's also loyal and generous, and he's a very compassionate guy. It's a good package.

You did a lot of theater in the '80s, but The Goat represented a return to the stage after establishing yourself in the movies.
Yes, and I'm so happy I did it. The Goat meant so much to me. I'd never done a Broadway play. I saw my first Broadway play when I was in college, Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst in A Moon for the Misbegotten, and it just knocked me against the back wall. I thought, "Wow, this is a memory I'll have forever." It's such a distinctive way that plays impact your memory and your thoughts and your life; being in the audience heightens the experience.

What were your thoughts when you first read The Goat?
I don't always understand the mysteries of plays I'm working on, and that's part of why I like them—that they embrace the paradoxes of the way the world is. I just loved the fact that he wrote this play! I knew I could work on it forever and still be mining it. That's the dream of an actor—to work on something you feel supported by, something that lets you keep uncovering layers.

You're now being praised as a great interpreter of Albee. Did you feel a special connection with his writing from the beginning?
It's funny—a friend of mine called after the [Peter and Jerry] reviews, and said, "Pullman, who would have thought that you'd be so connected to Albee? I would have thought it would be Sam Shepard or somebody like that." When I read Edward's plays, I'm always amazed at how connected I feel to certain rhythms. There are progressions of how two people are with each other that stay with me for a long time. I think of that scene in The Goat with the son, in the third act after the wife has left and they're alone in the house. By the time I was a month into the run, something started to happen to me. It wasn't there at opening, but the process of doing it and having an audience there really challenged me. For 50 percent of the people, anything [my character] Martin said was just terrible and shameful and awful. But somehow, through the process you go through with these plays, you have to expose more and more of yourself just to survive. You can't protect yourself in any way, and once you realize that, a really strong power comes from it.

You seem to have a good rapport with [Peter and Jerry co-stars] Johanna Day and Dallas Roberts.
They're both great. And the more we do it, the more I enjoy their company and their approach to the work. This [play] is a tricky one. We had to work really hard, and we're not always sure how we're going to do it. Once during rehearsal, Edward and I got together for some function, and he said, "How's it going this week?" I said, "Oh I think we're figuring some things out." And he said, "What's there to figure out? It's all there!" [Laughs.]

You're a playwright now too. [Pullman's Expedition 6 was produced in September at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco.] How has that changed your view of the theater?
I don't really think of myself as a playwright, because I fashioned that script more to direct something. People have told me I should get over that [laughs]. When we're talking about Edward Albee and then we switch to me, I feel like I have to keep my head down. But it was an incredibly great experience.

The play is about astronauts, right?
It's the true story of this mission in space that happened at about the same time as the Iraq war. It's a docudrama that I put together from a lot of different texts, including the words of the astronauts. It has a big scope, and I've been really pleased at how people responded to the minimalist style we used to create space, which is a haunting place to visualize. We did it very starkly, with actors on trapezes. It was more like an odyssey play in the way you followed the journey of two astronauts and a cosmonaut from their launch before the invasion of Iraq and the change in their perspective when they came down after the invasion.

Do you think it will be done in New York?
I'm hoping to, but pieces [like Expedition 6] that are performance-oriented scare people because of the cost of bringing the actors in. You can't just go to a different city and cast it; I've been training these actors for a couple of years. But we have a date to do it next year in L.A., and we're trying to do some festivals.

You didn't get your break as an actor until you were 30. How did you expect your career to unfold?
I didn't really think I was going to be an actor for a long time—or only an actor. When I was first starting college I thought I was going to go into building construction. I had a wacky series of things that I thought I was going to be doing, including urban planning. Now two of my kids are in college and I see them doing the same thing. You're at point A, and you can't imagine how you're going to get to Z. When you do get there, you can look back and see the connections, A to B to C, but you can't project it at the beginning. I actually trained as a theater director.

Who knew you were once chair of the theater department at Montana State University?
Yeah! I thought, "This is a great life." All of the things I thought about doing would have been good. I really believe that. I thought I would build a regional theater at Montana State and develop new plays about the West with a company of actors. What's wrong with that? But I also had this kind of lurking thing about acting and finally I said, "Okay, I've got to do this." And I went to New York and started focusing on it.

Did your success in film dictate the decision to settle down with your family in Los Angeles?
Yeah. I actually went out there to do a play, and then the movies started jumping pretty fast, and it was important to be there because you build a lot of [professional] relationships and connections with people. But now that the kids are older, we're able to shift back this way more. Plus my wife is a dancer with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange out of Washington DC, and she has things going on in New York. Liz Lerman got one of those genius grants for her work in making dance with communities around issues. They do lots of different kinds of projects about science, about people with handicaps, about things like prayer. There are some spoken pieces too. It's perfect for my wife at this stage of her career.

Do you mind being recognized for the lighter material on your resume, like Spaceballs?
[Laughs.] The honorable Mel Brooks is back in New York now, too! No, my career has always been eclectic, for better or for worse. I love farce, all that wacky stuff. I feel like I've been lucky to do different things, although sometimes it's like I'm a moving target.

What are you recognized for most?
Oh there are different pockets of people. I never know. It's a great privilege to have people stay after the show and say, "I saw The Goat," like they're part of some confederacy. I love that they respect my work onstage. Then you have people who say, "I really liked your work in Igby Goes Down." And of course there are people who say, "You were the President in Independence Day." The larger movies definitely have a base of people who are familiar with them because they get played all the time.

Will any of your children become actors?
I don't think so. They're all involved with the arts; music is strong for them. You never know, but I'm hoping they don't [laughs].

Well, it's great to have you back on stage in New York.
Oh my gosh, I feel like I've come full circle. I'm walking down streets that I walked down [20 years ago] when all I could count on having for the day was a piece of pizza and a doughnut. I don't know how I would do that again. What is it that sustains you when you have nobody believing in you except yourself? You know, I never had a five-year plan for my career. I just wanted to do it. And the fact that I'm still doing theater… I know a lot of actors who did theater and then went to film and never wanted to do theater again.

Because it's hard work!
Yes, it is [laughs]. Sometimes Dallas and I come staggering off the stage at the end of this play and say, "Whoa, we've got another show in a couple of hours." But there's also something about it that's incredibly enlivening. Once the rhythm of the play is in you and you've begun this journey, it changes your body. It feeds you in a way that you can't explain to people. I remember now the reasons I got involved in the theater in the first place.

See Bill Pullman in Edward Albee's Peter and Jerry at Second Stage.