<< Prev | Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3

: Where do you have your awards at?  Where do you keep them?

Pucci:  (laughs) I don’t even have the Sundance award, I don’t know where it is.  It’s probably somewhere in the mail.  I had to bring the Berlin one home, and it’s a silver bear, so it was hard to get through customs.  It’s sitting next to my Lord Of The Rings action figures right now. (laughs)

: Do you find living in New Jersey to be a hindrance to your career?

Pucci:  Hindrance?  No!  God no.  I have New York right next to me.  I was just in a car yesterday, talking to this guy, he was like, “Dude, there’s some awesome actors from New Jersey” and he was telling me all of them and I was like, “Holy shit!”  There really are, there’s a bunch of them.  Like Bruce Willis and all these huge people you never realized were from New Jersey.

: So you are saying that you are staying put?  You’re not itching to go to L.A.?

Pucci:  Oh no!  I’m not an L.A. person.  I’m really not. I dunno, I mean I’m not gonna put down L.A., I’m just saying that L.A. is not New York.  Everybody knows it there and everybody knows it here.  It’s just that somebody prefers one to the other and I’m a New York person because I like people  to tell me when I’m an asshole and in Los Angeles they don’t.  There’re just kinda like, “Oh yeah.  Hey, how are you doing?”  (laughs) Everything’s good… everything’s always sunny.  (laughs)

: Yeah, it has a little bit of that glazed, Stepford Wives thing going.

Pucci:  Yeah, they’re a little bit fake… without them knowing, most of the time.  I don’t think it’s completely, you know… they don’t try to do that, but it happens.  I don’t know why.  It doesn’t happen in New York as much.  It happens, but not to the same extent. 

: You make a good point.  New York keeps you real, keeps you grounded.  L.A. just lets you… lose it.

Pucci:  Yeah.  You know, I was always taught that, too.  My Dad always said stuff like that, you know what I mean?  He’d tell me a story about somebody, like, going to Los Angeles and becoming a douchebag.  But I just learned it first-hand when I went there, because… not that I didn’t like it, but I just saw it.  I completely realized that was absolutely true, and that this ‘land’ that you go to, when you go across the country, is a fantasy world.  It’s ‘dreams city,’ where everything in your mind can come true… if you pay a price. (laughs)  It seems really nice when you are there, but when you come home you realize you were in that dream world and you’re like, “Holy shit, I’m glad I woke up.”  So I can’t really stay there for too long.

: Are you a big film fan?

Pucci:  I have so many DVDs it’s ridiculous.  It’s only happened in the last two years.  I hadn’t seen a quarter of them before that.  But now, I’m just trying to kinda put a history together and know a little bit about other people and what other people have done.  And mostly because I like to write, and I didn’t want to write something that was already written just because I was ignorant and hadn’t seen that movie before.  So I just wanted to see as much as I possibly could, and maybe that’s the wrong idea… I’m not sure.  I just like to watch movies now, it kinda became a habit I guess.  I just got way into that.  It started out that I just wanted my favorite movies, but now I just get movies that I see where I’m like, “Oh, Christopher Walken was in something with Jack Nicholson…what!?!”  So I have to see it.  (laughs)

: What would you say is your favorite movie right now?

Pucci:  Oooo… OK.  See, I don’t know… I really don’t know.  Let’s see, I love 12 Monkeys.  I love The Big Lebowski; it’s one of my favorites.  Um, Donnie Darko.  Edward Scissorhands.  And, The Never Ending Story (laughs).   Those are some pretty good ones, I would say.  There’s a bunch more, man there’s just so much more.  It’s a tasty list. 

: Who is your favorite actor?

Pucci:  Uh… I don’t have one.  The favorite I like to watch is usually Christopher Walken.  I’d say that he is probably the most fun to watch.  So, I (laugh) I like Christopher Walken.  I gotta say that Steve Buscemi is also another one on the big, huge list of ‘Holy Crap, I have to work with him!’ 

: So, what do you have in the works?

Pucci:  It’s just a lot of scripts right now; I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna go for.  We’ll see what happens.  There’s a whole bunch of different things, so many different ones.    Some good scripts, a whole shitload of bad ones.  Not that they’re awful, just not right, not complete for some reason.  A lot of times it actually just seems like somebody stopped in the middle and just wrote “The End” from other movies that they’ve seen.

: I know that a lot of times, a script will go through so many rewrites that it could end up being completely different.  That must be scary for you to fall in love with a story that could drastically change after you sign on to do it.

Pucci:  Yeah, yeah… I could agree.  It’s something that’s true, it could happen and it’s very scary.  But, so far, I’ve been pretty lucky.  Thumbsucker is exactly the movie that I watched in my brain.   So is The Chumscrubber.  Actually, there is so much more there that I hadn’t even thought about.  I love The Chumscrubber.  A lot of people didn’t like it and that’s why I like it even more. (laughs)  Yeah, I thought it was awesome.  I didn’t see half the things that were written in that script, it was amazing.

: Was it interesting to see what the other actors brought to their parts?

Pucci:  Yeah, yeah, it was great.  There’s so many different actors in that one and they were awesome. It was such an ensemble cast and everyone had their own particular… way.  It was very strange. 

: Just looking down that cast list, there are a lot of different acting styles there.

Pucci:  Yeah, I know.  Ralph Fiennes put together with me, Carrie Anne Moss, Bill Fichtner.  So many others.

: Ever consider taking the lead in a television series?

Pucci:  Will I say ‘no?’  No.  (laughs)  I wouldn’t say no, but I wouldn’t jump at that.  I don’t like TV.  I don’t watch it myself, so I could do without it.  I went to this seminar, this Robert McKee Seminar, and he said everything is going to TV, film is nothing anymore, and it’s true.  It’s actually getting there, where TV is just taking over because they’re having good shows, really good shows like The Sopranos and all this crap, you know what I mean?

: Well, as they say, “It’s not TV, it’s HBO.”

Pucci:  Yeah, I agree.  It’s like a mixture between them, but they found the right mixture and right now it’s working really well.  And all the shows are slightly getting that way… not all the shows, but a lot of them.  I feel like it’s kinda getting to be the new, better medium, or something.  A lot of great writers are on TV right now, amazing writers, you don’t know how they put all that shit together… but they did.  So, I don’t know.  Right now, if somebody offered me the lead on a TV series, I’d say, “Absolutely not.  No way.”  It doesn’t matter who I'd be playing.  It wouldn’t happen.  I just couldn’t do it.  I wouldn’t want to.  I like film right now.  I like the whole idea of it and the whole process of it… a couple of months and then you see what happens.  Not “I work on this all the time, not knowing where my character is going to go next.”  And being on TV… I’m not a fan.  But I’m sure it’ll happen, I’m just not waiting for it.

: Do you find dealing with the whole machine getting easier as you go or is it always different?

Pucci:  Every single time it’s different.  It’s just a weird machine.  Every single time, it’s completely different.  I can’t even explain it.  I could go into details about each movie, about why it was different, but they’re just completely different.  Either the tone on the set or just how it makes the tone of the movie, or what you felt the movie was going to be and then what it becomes, or whatever.  It’s just completely different.  Every single time.  And sometimes the director could pull one over on you, you know what I mean?  He’ll be manipulating you a little bit the whole time and you’ll realize how he did it when you watch the movie and you’ll go, “Ohhhh… that’s… that’s awesome.” (laughs)  He said something I didn’t, and you made me do it without even knowing. 

: It won’t take long for you to get wise to those tricks.

Pucci:  Yeah.  Well, hopefully not.  I like it. (laughs)  If it was OK without me knowing, then why should I know?  But I don’t know.  I’m always learning a little bit more… and yet, getting no farther. (laughs)

: Do you like it on location?

Pucci:  Yeah.  Yeah, absolutely.  It’s like going to college.  It really is.  It’s like going, having fun for awhile in college.  You know, learning a whole bunch of crap in a little bit of time.  Meeting a whole bunch of people who are all learning from you and you are learning from them.  That’s exactly how I would describe going to college, you know?  A place where everyone is kinda challenging you in different ways and you’re getting all these strange-ass experiences at the same time.

: To go with your college analogy, any on-set romances or hook-ups that you want to talk about?

Pucci:  Nah.  Not really.  No.  Uh, Kelly Garner is hot! (laughs)  Dude, she’s awesome.  Um, no, it was cool working with her and I had a little crush on her during the thing just because the character really did, and I think I just got into it.  It was awesome.  It was just fun.  No real set romances, though. 

: In Personal Velocity, did Keira, Parker and Fairuza all get together and make you a man, like the scene in Almost Famous?

Pucci:  (laughs)  That would’ve been awesome!  I’m gonna make that story up.  I’m gonna tell everybody that.

: You can dish that out during your next press junket.  Do you like doing press?

Pucci:  All the press stuff is just slightly monotonous.  You’re not exactly learning much from it.  It feels like life is usually about learning things, and when you’re just talking all the time, it’s hard to listen.  (laughs)  So, when you are doing something like this, you might learn about yourself by something you just say, but it’s seldom like that.  I like listening.  I’m more of the quiet person who is going to randomly listen to a stupid conversation and learn something from it.

: So is it odd for you to now have to ramble on and on about yourself?

Pucci:  No, it’s like just going on in my brain. (laughs)  I act like it’s me asking myself the same questions.  Sitting there, dazed and confused.

: Now that you are entering the world of fame, would you be flattered or horrified to be the subject of your own E! True Hollywood Story?

Pucci:  Awww, that would be awesome!  C’mon, just for what they say.  (Adopts announcer’s voice) “Lou learned to make himself dinner at age 14.”  (laughs)  That’d be awesome.  C’mon, that’s fun.

:  You’ve got the website; do you have an organized fan club?

Pucci:  I hope not.  I doubt it, highly.  But if it is, it’s going to be some 13 year-old girl going, “Ooooo!”  Yeah, my Dad runs that website.

:  Are you getting any fan mail?

LTP:  Yeah, I’ve been getting that for awhile.  From Personal Velocity, from Sound Of Music.  I think I’ve been getting that for awhile, but it has been a lot more now.  I try to answer as much as I can, but I’m so horrible at e-mails, I’m the worst because I hate typing.  I’m just not good at online, I don’t know why.  It’s like so, completely impersonal.  I don’t like the telephone.  When you’re talking to a friend, at least, because you know them and only have to imagine how they’re looking right now, you can’t be as sarcastic as you wanna be and it’s a different way of living when you’re talking on the phone to someone so you just have to learn a whole new conversing method to do it.  And, I don’t want to learn the method for e-mail; I just don’t want to learn it. Like, “smiley face, wink, wink,” I don’t care.  (laughs) 

:  Lou, I really appreciate your taking the time to talk to us. 

Pucci:  That’s cool man, thanks. 

<< Prev | Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3