You can check out the interview in full over at RedEyeChicago.com
What’s the best way to tell someone that you are their previously unknown sibling?
Alex Kurtzman: I think you have to be direct about it. I think you just have to say it. “I’m your brother or I’m your sister” is pretty much the best.
Chris Pine: There’s no way to really soften that—[laughs]—fastball, is there?
AK: Or you just don’t tell them at all and you get involved in a relationship with them without telling them the truth.
CP: “You know, dad used to say.”
AK: “Whose dad? Oh …”The movie revolves around a big secret. What’s the biggest secret that ever blew your mind, in real life or a movie twist?
CP: That Santa Claus was not real. And that they dubbed—
AK: Glenn Close …
CP: Glenn Close in [“Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes”] …
AK: [Laughs.] [Being the voice for] Andie MacDowell. Biggest cinematic mind-blower was the end of “Seven” for me, I would say.
CP: [Screeches like Brad Pitt’s character.]
AK: “What’s in the box?!”Chris, in interviews you seem very down to earth about fame, but you’ve played several characters that have an energy that borders on arrogance. Why do you think you’ve been drawn to these roles?
CP: I guess it is odd because I would hope that people in my life, if they were to describe me, that the first word that would pop into their head would not be “arrogant” and “brash.” I also think a lot of the characters that I’ve played—not that I’ve played so many and I can talk about my “oeuvre” or something—in the films that I’ve made my characters, while they tend to be brash, and maybe borderline arrogant, there’s also a sense of humor to ’em.
And what I love and appreciate is sharp wit … what hopefully will resonate with people is I think we all in the world put off what we want to be seen like. This is who I am, and this is who you are and I’m going to present myself and my mom taught me to stand up straight and shake hands firmly and look someone in the eye because that’s what you do.
We learn all these tools of sociability and for Sam in this film, the first major crack in that armor is when he finds out that the money that he earns is not going to be his. And the second humongous crack is that his father dies, and once that crack happens, all that self-learning about how to shield yourself and protect yourself—and Sam uses wit and charm and words, being highly articulate and funny and charming—all that gets thrown out the window, and he can’t hide behind that stuff anymore. If you parallel that first scene with [Sam’s boss, played by Jon Favreau] to that last scene on the doorstep with [Frankie, played by Banks], those are two completely different human beings.
That guy at the beginning as we first met him, we would never imagine him being that vulnerable or true. The guy … meets Hannah’s [Sam’s girlfriend, played by Olivia Wilde] announcement that she finds out that his father died [with the response,] “What’s for dinner?” That man is incapable of talking about authentic, true, human, real, looking-someone-in-the-eye-and-connecting-with-them kinds of things.
