About.com:Interview with "300" Star Gerard

Hollywood Movies




Exclusive Interview with "300" Star Gerard Butler

From Rebecca Murray,

Your Guide to Hollywood Movies.

One on One with Gerard Butler at the 2006 San Diego Comic Con
The annual comic book lovers convention known as the San Diego Comic Con has grown from a tiny event attended by only a couple hundred of the biggest comic book fanatics into the place for Hollywood studios to showcase their upcoming films. Hundreds of thousands of comic book, toy, and movie fans show up once a year in Southern California for the largest convention of its kind in the United States, and the studios have learned that the positive word-of-mouth spread by attendees can really kick-start a film's marketing campaign.
Warner Bros Pictures chose the San Diego convention as the place to premiere the first clips from the action epic, "300," based on the Frank Miller graphic novel. Highly stylized and visually stunning, the preview clip showed Spartan warriors fighting off Persian soldiers who were attempting to enter Greece. Brutally violent and completely faithful to Miller's work, the "300" clip was so well received that the audience - and the film's stars Gerard Butler and David Wenham - asked for it to be shown one more time before the "300" panel participants (Butler, Wenham, Miller, and writer/director Zack Snyder) opened up the floor to answer questions from fans.

Immediately following the presentation I had the chance to snag an interview with Gerard Butler who stars as 'King Leonidas' in the film.

Gerard Butler’s Passionate Fans: Fans of Gerard Butler were definitely present for the “300” presentation and some even took to the mic to ask questions about his “300” costume. Butler appreciates their support and said, “They’re interested so that’s fantastic. And actually one of the things I love about the fans that I have is that they’re very intelligent. They actually often climb into the depth of the characters that I play, or try and find out about me as a human being, and I find that a lot of them give really great feedback.

The costumes here…as cool as they are, I guess they’re probably going to have more fun with this one (laughing) you know because they are quite an experience. I think in the end they really add to the value of the film, that whole feeling of being Spartan, which is kind of everything stripped away to nothing. You know, like just a bare cape and leather… I don’t remember the name… Leather codpiece. Can you believe that? I wore it for months and I can’t even remember what it’s called. And actually when I first started wearing it it felt very strange. I mean, you have to walk through these corridors and through the studio and all the chippies and the plasterers and the electricians, all the big French Canadian guys are like, ‘Who’s that guy walking past with nothing on expect leather sandals?’ But then in actual fact when you get used to it, and as I often find with my costumes, it so lends itself to the feeling and the character, you know? I trained really hard physically for this role so that I felt that I could deserve to wear that cape and that codpiece and stand strong and feel invincible."

Physically Preparing for the Role of King Leonidas: “I started training about four months before the film, maybe even longer than that. I started in LA and we had the trainer from the film Mark Twight, so I was training with him and he has a very particular style of training, but I also kept my own trainer so I was training with two guys every day - so that was about four hours of that. (Laughing) Yeah, I kind of overdid it. Then I also, on top of that, had to go into the valley in LA and do two hours of sword fighting and shield and spear work as well, because a lot of guys use swords but it’s actually learning to use a spear is a whole different thing. And starting to work on some of the maneuvers so I was doing that six hours a day, every day.

Then I started the dialect coaching and then went up to Canada and did the same thing. I got another trainer outside and kept training with Mark and trained on set while we were filming and pumping before shots. I really, really, really kind of devoted my life to the physicality because, to me, that’s what the Spartans were about. They were so devoted and dedicated to that kind of life, that kind of philosophy, that kind of culture – and that’s what I did."

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Digging Deep to Get Into Character: Does Gerard Butler go that deep with every character he plays? “I don’t know how deep I go compared to other people,” said Butler. “I know I go pretty deep and I try to have as much of it come from within, from as deep as I can get or from as deep as I can understand the things that I don’t have – if you know what I mean.

Often when I’m doing it it’s like a feeling when I play these kinds of characters of values that kind of belong to another time but I feel like I can climb into. I try to go as deep as possible without almost, in a way, making it too complicated. You can go too deep and people are going, ‘Okay, well I have no idea what’s going on right now.’ So I think it’s kind of balancing all those things together – the physicality and the mindset and the beliefs and the philosophies

And the motivation of just where you’re going and why you’re doing what you’re doing. This is a king who’s taking 300 of his men marching to their deaths and what does that mean to him."
The Appeal of the “300” Story: More than the visual style of the graphic novel and subsequently the film, it was the actual story told in “300” which grabbed Butler’s attention. “That’s what’s wonderful about this. Visually it looks so incredible. It’s stunning and yet at the same time the story itself is such an incredible story. And so, to me, it always felt we were onto a winner. I saw kind of a preview that they shot before filming started and so the second Zack showed me that I was [overwhelmed]. And I had read the script which was just such an incredible script. The story itself was powerful and the script was so interestingly and evocatively written and I just knew I had to be involved in this. I think it works from every angle. And also the deeper messages that it gives to the audiences as well in the end. I think it’s quite an inspiring, courageous, insane and violent, brutal, artistic film."

Bringing the Story to the Screen: “It’s a phenomenal story. When you hear about it you think, ‘Did this actually really happen?’ It’s kind of so intense and so insane to think that so few stood against so many and what it represented. In fact what it represented in terms of…because they say I think it was like a hundred years later when democracy actually was formed in Greece. If this battle hadn’t happened and the rest of Greece had therefore stood against the Persians then the West may be a very different place. I think perhaps it’s relevant today for many other political reasons that I don’t want to dive into in case I’m blacklisted in Hollywood. I think it’s for a different reason… I think it’s for the opposite reason than perhaps the producers are saying but (laughing). A few stood against many – think about that one."

Why It Took So Long to Tell This Story: “I don’t know. Perhaps because…well there was one actually made, “300 Spartans.” It was made back in the ‘60s; a kind of epic style of film that I watched and didn’t think was very good. I’m surprised myself because it is such an incredible story. At the time that our project was coming along apparently there was another one with the same story which never came to fruition – because ours was better and ours came first.”

Researching the Source Material: How much did he draw from Frank Miller’s graphic novel and did he look through it throughout filming? “Absolutely – I looked at it all the time. Sometimes to try and remind myself of the physicality of this guy, you know? As much as I could push it towards the physicality that you saw in the graphic novel, just the way he stood, the way he posed, physically how imposing he was. I looked at that a lot. And also when you read it, I think the graphic novel is incredible for really creating, one, that kind of society and how brutal it was.

And also the King that he was – very powerful, very thoughtful and perhaps in our film far more human than he is even in the graphic novel but also very humorous and very dry. There’s a lot of that in the novel. I just think it’s so evocative and explains so much, even just looking at the drawings in the book. You just get a feel. It kind of gives you a feel and a mood. When you keep reminding yourself it made it easier to kind of go in and let that [happen]. You trust that some of that, just by reading it, looking at it, it settles in."

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