NEIL GRABOWSKY FOR MONTCLAIR FILM
Stephen Colbert interviews Paul Giamatti at NJPAC in Newark, July 26.
It was billed as “A Conversation with Stephen Colbert & Paul Giamatti.”
But it could just as rightly, and perhaps more delightfully, have been advertised as “Stephen and Paul’s Book Club.”
Admitted, for this — the 10th in Montclair Film’s long-running series of live chat-show fundraisers — the setting and format were the same as always. The two celebrities met on the stage of NJPAC’s Prudential Hall, where they took their places in matching comfy chairs. A table behind them held a guest-specific collection of tchotchkes, such as a bust of John Adams, a nod to Giamatti’s award-winning turn on the HBO series.
NEIL GRABOWSKY FOR MONTCLAIR FILM
Paul Giamatti at NJPAC.
But while one of the gewgaws, a carving of a fish, was meant to reference Giamatti’s odiferous character in “The Holdovers,” it might just as well have been a shout-out to “Moby Dick” and Melville.
Before he found acting, Giamatti was an English major at Yale, spending his undergraduate years focused on the 19th-century author. And it soon became clear that his love of literature was still with him.
“You’ve never read ‘The Day of the Locust’?” he asked Colbert in surprise at one point. “Nathanael West? You’ve got to read this guy, except you won’t like him. It’s incredibly dark.”
Despite the evening’s unexpected literary bent, it was still in step with the festival’s previous sit-downs. There was plenty of easy chatter, lubricated by Colbert’s proud mixology skills. (This night’s cocktail, requested by Giamatti, was the elaborate Vieux Carré, made with rye, cognac, sweet vermouth, Bénédictine and two kinds of bitters.) There was the usual bit of frank show business talk, too.
“Is there a movie of yours you wish fewer people had seen?” Colbert asked, putting a new spin on an old question.
“Yeah, I was in a Spider-Man movie,” Giamatti said glumly. “I’ll leave it at that.” (It was “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” for those looking for Giamatti films to avoid. For those looking for lesser-known ones to discover, the actor recommends the knights-in-armor “Ironclad” and the Jersey-set sports story “Win Win.”)
NEIL GRABOWSKY FOR MONTCLAIR FILM
Stephen Colbert at NJPAC.
Unlike other Colbert events, the evening mostly steered clear of politics (even with a taped welcome from Sen. Cory Booker). It avoided personal details, too.
New Haven native Giamatti did volunteer “I have a lot of Jersey roots,” including a mother born in Plainfield, summers spent in Manasquan, and an aunt and uncle who live, maybe, in Madison (“I should really know,” he added, embarrassed). Still, other topics were left untouched.
Yes, Giamatti spoke about his decision to leave the academic world of his parents — his mother was a prep-school English teacher and his father, A. Bartlett Giamatti, was once president of Yale — to, as Colbert put it, “join the circus” and become an actor.
“I think part of it was, it wasn’t respectable,” Giamatti said of the profession’s appeal. “It was a little bit of breaking the mold.”
But when, during the audience Q&A session later, a fan asked what it had been like in 1989 when Giamatti’s father, then the baseball commissioner, presided over Pete Rose’s lifetime ban, you could see him withdraw a bit, saying it wasn’t something he often talked about. “I don’t think it was a happy thing for him to do,” was all he said.
Giamatti was clearly happier whenever Colbert took charge and allowed him to guiltlessly geek out a bit, talking about some of his still-fervent fanboy passions — horror movies, sci-fi novels and speculative esoterica, like astrological charts, UFOs and cryptozoology (which is not a new kind of Bitcoin, but the study of rumored creatures like Bigfoot).
NEIL GRABOWSKY FOR MONTCLAIR FILM
Stephen Colbert and Paul Giamatti clink glasses at NJPAC.
It probably helped that Colbert shares a lot of Giamatti’s more esoteric enthusiasms. At one point, the two men even delved into “What Jungian archetype would you be?” (They each settled on The Fool.)
But still, differences emerged.
Asked to pick a favorite character they’d like to play, Giamatti went with the obsessed Captain Ahab (there’s that Melville dissertation again). Colbert — a quietly observant Catholic — chose Richard Rich in “A Man for All Seasons,” not because he’s a saint, like the play’s hero Thomas More, but because he most definitely is not.
Notwithstanding that eagerness to acknowledge his own failings, Colbert emerged as definitely a sunnier type. The fantasy novels that mean the most to him? The works of Tolkien, with their epic stories of our constant struggle to make the hard choices to perfect ourselves and our world.
Giamatti’s go-to fiction? The dystopian novels of Philip K. Dick.
“Very personal and meaningful to me,” he said, of the sci-fi master whose novels have inspired everything from “Blade Runner” to “The Man in the High Castle.” “Everything about the world feels like Philip K. Dick now.” (Both Giamatti and Colbert, however, agreed on their love for the fantasy work of Roger Zelazny, particularly his novel “Lord of Light.”)
NEIL GRABOWSKY FOR MONTCLAIR FILM
Paul Giamatti and Stephen Colbert at NJPAC.
Giamatti also talked enthusiastically about his life-long love of horror films, from seeing “Carnival of Souls” on TV’s “Chiller Theatre” at age 4 (thanks, negligent babysitter!) to his recent discovery of the ultra-gruesome “Barbarian.” (So to fans who doubted the story about Giamatti appearing in the upcoming TV version of the gorefest movie “Hostel” … get ready.)
But what unites both men, clearly, is their love of the written word. Giamatti’s favorite thing about going on location, he said, is finding new, secondhand bookstores to explore; his favorite thing about being on the set is all the time he gets to sit in his trailer and read.
Once, he confessed, he went to the Sundance Film Festival and forgot to pack clothes. He did, however, remember to bring a suitcase full of books to read.
“I have a problem,” Giamatti said of his bibliophilia, which has led to books being crammed into every cranny of his Brooklyn home. “It’s getting to Collyer Brothers level. It’s a compulsion.”
A compulsion, thankfully, his busy career allows him to indulge. Although, like every actor, Giamatti always worries about getting the next part, he has projects lined up through next year, including TV’s “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” and the movie “Downton Abbey 3.”
Still, he’s aware that the entertainment landscape is changing. Live theater, he says, will probably always have a place. But what will AI mean to filmmaking? How will streaming continue to change things? Will we all end up sitting at home alone, watching stories on our phones?
“The possibility of losing movie theaters is the biggest (potential change) to me,” Giamatti said sadly. “And that’s lamentable.”
“Montclair Film,” Colbert immediately declared, “will not let that happen.”
And, not for the first time that night, the room erupted in applause.
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