Anyway, to help promote the movie I recently participated in a roundtable interview with Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of my favorite actors working today. And while I thought he was brilliant in “The Savages,” I just saw his next movie “Charlie Wilson’s War” and he was amazing in that as well. Actors of his caliber don’t come around too often and I’ll admit it was very cool to be able to ask him some questions.

During our interview he spoke about making this film and everything else he has coming up. If you’re a fan of his, you’ll definitely like the interview. As always, you can either read the transcript below or listen to the MP3 of the interview by clicking here.

Finally, before getting to the interview, here’s the synopsis for the movie and here’s a link to some movie clips in case you missed them:

“The Savages” is an irreverent look at family, love and mortality as seen through the lens of one of modern life’s most bewildering and challenging experiences: when adult siblings find themselves plucked from their everyday, self-centered lives to care for an estranged elderly parent.

The last thing the two Savage siblings ever wanted to do was look back at their difficult family history.  Having wriggled their way out from beneath their father’s domineering thumb, they are now firmly cocooned in their own complicated lives.  Wendy (Laura Linney) is a struggling East Village playwright, AKA a temp who spends her days applying for grants, stealing office supplies and dating her very married neighbor.  Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a neurotic college professor writing books on obscure subjects in Buffalo.  Then comes the call that informs them that the father they have long feared and avoided, Lenny Savage (Philip Bosco), is slowly being consumed by dementia and they are the only ones that can help.

Now, as they put their already arrested lives on hold, Wendy and Jon are forced to live together under one roof for the first time since childhood, rediscovering the eccentricities that drove each other crazy.  Faced with complete upheaval and battling over how to handle their father’s final days, they are confronted with what adulthood, family and, most surprisingly, each other are really about.

Question: This seems like this could be a good year for you.

Philip Seymour Hoffman: I hope it’ll be good. The films, I hope they’re good and they get received well. Yeah.

Q: Your performance in this as well as “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” has been praised universally by critics. Can you talk about your performance in this and what led you to this part?

Philip Seymour Hoffman: Oh, I just read the script. The script had been given to me a few years ago and then it kind of went away, made it with another company, came back, Laura was with it by that point. I just loved the script. I was always attracted to it. I always wanted to do it. So I was glad it came back around.

Q: Did you find that you and Laura had compatible acting styles?

Philip Seymour Hoffman: Yeah, I think we had a very similar work ethic. We just got along real well and worked well together.

Q: How does the family and the aging parent theme resound with you? Have you had a personal experience similar to this film?

Philip Seymour Hoffman: I was born from the earth so I don’t know. [Laughs] I’m sorry. I’m really tired, but I was just thinking people have been asking me that question all day and it’s like yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? I have a family. We all have families. It’s impossible to go into a film like this and not think of your family. But it’s not my story. It’s not my life.

Q: Have you ever had any personal experiences in terms of having aging parents?

Philip: I’ve never dealt with that. Both my parents are still alive so I haven’t had to deal with that. But I am of course dealing with aging parents and they’re dealing with aging children and we’re all aging and isn’t that beautiful?

Q: What did you think of the comic undertone in this? It’s a serious subject matter and yet there are some moments of levity. Was that something you liked about the script?

Philip: Yeah. When I read it I didn’t necessarily think oh, it’s got humor in it, that’s a good thing. I didn’t like think that, you know. I thought god, I really like this movie. I love the unique way she’s telling a story that I think we’ve kind of seen before but in a very unique way, in a very honest way. And when you’re doing something like that, what you usually get is humor. Things are pretty funny. Life’s pretty funny when you’re objectively on the outside looking at it. Like if someone was up there looking down on us right now they’d probably have laughed a few times already at our behavior, but inside it we don’t normally know that so often. This film had that opportunity I think.

Q: Do you think you’d be more the hard reality type of person or the hopeful optimist like Laura’s character?

Philip: I think a little bit of both. A little bit of both.

Q: In crafting the scenes, what was the most challenging one that you did where maybe you had brought something to the role and the director wanted you to shift your performance in a different way. Was there anything like that?

Philip: I’m sure that happened. I’m sure it did. We shot like a year and a half ago so I’m trying to call up… Can any of you guys remember what you were doing a year and a half ago? [Laughter] Yeah, I’m sure that always happens. You do something and there’s a slight change. Not a major change, nothing major, nothing like I want to wear a cowboy hat or something.

Q: How was it working with Tamara Jenkins as a director?

Philip: She was very, very passionate and she had been working on this for a long time. She was connected to it in a very deep way and so I knew that I was with somebody who was going to do everything that they could to make sure that it was the best film they could make. That’s what it was like working with her. I had a confidence in her ultimately.

Q: Some actors prefer a long rehearsal process and some want to just shoot it. How are you as an actor?

Philip: It depends on the director you’re working with, the material, how rehearsals are run. Sometimes your rehearsals aren’t as fruitful and sometimes they are depending on how they’re run. So it all depends.

Q: Is there one message you would like people to get out of it? After seeing it, did you see anything differently?

Philip: I don’t have a specific thing I want anyone to get out of anything I do. I think hopefully that the film is done well. There’s a lot of things that you could respond to that could push your buttons and being people, we usually all of us have different things that will affect us more than others. This film has a lot of different things that could affect you. Some are going to be affected by putting the father in the home, some are going to be affected by the estrangement, and some are going to be affected by the ultimate knowledge that he was somebody who probably abused the son, and some will be affected by the sibling rivalry that comes up. There’s a lot of things that I think are going to… there are many multi-faceted things and I just hope they key into something.

Q: Did you relate to the way your character decided to send his girlfriend back to Poland? That seemed an extreme thing for him to do.

Philip: Well it’s also an extreme thing for him to marry her. That just proves my point, meaning that’s the thing that you responded to. But there are other people that would go ‘Well of course he would do that.’ He’s got to marry her in order for her to stay in the country. It’s a very extreme action to take. That’s what’s great about the part is that everything he says and does actually has a lot of logic to it and a lot of practicality to it. I didn’t disagree with him. But what makes him so interesting is that it’s obviously based on the fact that affection is not something…..affection overwhelms him. And she obviously loves him very much and that really, really overwhelms him and makes him very upset. He doesn’t know what that means. Because anybody, and I think that’s the father, because the first 13, 14 years of his life the person who was supposed to do that to him didn’t so…and that’s really a richness of the screenplay that he really without anyone saying anything literally to you about what happened here, it’s pretty clear by the end why and how he became the man he is and how she became the woman she is.

Q: Is that why he cries when she makes him eggs?

Philip: Yeah, because it’s a very loving gesture I think.

Q: That was a great scene.

Philip: Yeah, it’s a nice piece of work, of storytelling.

Q: When you’re reading a script, how quickly do you know ‘I have to play this part’? Are you just a few pages in sometimes or do you have to finish it off and then ..?

Philip: Not a few pages in. Because the scripts that you read, in the first 10 pages you go, ‘Wow that’s really good’ and then by page 50 you’re like ‘Whooaaa. Wait. Nope.’ That happens. So it’s good to read the whole thing. That’s a plus. That’s a good thing to do. And then even then you might know you want to play it but the older you get, there’s a lot of things that go into the decisions you make.

Q: Have you ever said yes to a project without having read the script just because of the director?

Philip: Yeah. A couple times. Like with Paul (Newman?) I probably did that.

Q: Does that usually work out?

Philip: Yeah, it works out. Yeah. I’m telling you about times when I did that obviously because it didn’t matter if it did or didn’t. I did it because I obviously think the person is extraordinarily talented and I’m also friends with them or something. But if I don’t know, even if the person is really talented but I don’t know them at all, I would never do that. It’s the idea of knowing somebody mixed with their talent. When you’re really close with somebody and they’re talented and they say, “Would you do this film with me?,” you go “Yeah. Why would I not do that with you? Of course I would.” But that’s the only time I would ever do that.

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