Street chatted with the stars Cameron Diaz and James Marsden and director Richard Kelly about existentialism, picking out a soundtrack and college memories. The Box is out now.
Street: What was your initial reaction when you first read the script? Cameron Diaz: Well, I was a huge fan of Richard’s from “Donny Darko” and “Southland Tales” and I just really wanted to work with him. So when I read the script, I was – I felt that it was one of you know very authentic to the stories that he tells. There was a lot of — you know sort of this existential quandary and I just knew that Richard would tell the story uniquely as he does and I wanted just to be a part of that.
Street: How much of your own personality would you say that you put into this character? Like how much of you goes into who you’re playing? Cameron Diaz: Well, all I have is me. You know and I think and James would agree that you really have to use – you try to understand what other people are going through even if you haven’t gone through it yourself, you just try to get to feeling what you think it would feel like to be in that position. But you never really know. So as much as you want to feel that you’re being somebody else, there’s always – you’re only working from your own you know toolbox and experience. So I would like to think that it’s nothing of me in there, but really I can only contribute with what I have.
Street: How is this 1970s set film relevant to our society today? Richard Kelly: Well, I think it’s a film kind of puts in the crosshairs the idea of the nuclear family. In our film, it’s you know a married couple, under the age of 40 with a single child and they have a lifestyle that they really can’t afford and they’re sort of living on credit and they have a mortgage that’s beyond their means and they’re you know driving a car – or Arthur is driving a car that’s a little bit too expensive and they have a son in private school with a tuition that’s a little too much for them to handle. And so, I think you know looking at our economic crisis right now, the film I hope feels like it resonates with the audience of today despite the fact that it’s set in 1976 because these are – you know these are things that we can identify with and that we can see and realize that we all are trying to live a better life and to achieve a better life, but it’s ultimately you know – a lot of times it’s all about the things that we strive to possess and this lifestyle that we want to achieve. So hopefully that’s something that resonates with modern audiences.
Street: How do you select music for your films? Because you know obviously music played a really big role in “Donny Darko” and “Southland Tales” and I was wondering how you selected that and what role music plays in this one. Richard Kelly: Well, it’s obviously it comes from like an emotional place and in “The Box” you know we obviously have the score that you know was done by Winn Butler and Owen Pallet that it’s a big kind of emotional strings and brass and percussion and the spirit of kind of Bernard Herman. And the pop music in “The Box” is much more source music in a sense that there was kind of a wedding rehearsal dinner sequence towards the middle of the film that we were very specific about trying to pick songs that were kind of southern in quality because the movie takes place in Virginia and it have like a southern rock believability. But also were like the very iconic bands, so we were very lucky enough to get you know The Grateful Dead and Wilson Picket and Scott Walker and The Marshall Tucker Band and all of these kind of bands that flow together. And the biggest music – pop music moment I think in the film is a Derrick and Dominoes song called, “Bell Bottom Blues”, that I actually heard on the radio while driving to set and I remember I called Cameron up and I said, “Download this song you know from iTunes. You know download “Bell Bottom Blues” and memorize the lyrics because we’re going – I’m going to have you kind of listening to it on the dance floor and it’s goignto be this big romantic moment between you and James and it’s – we’re going to try and get the song.” So it’s kind of like an act of faith you know when you just feel in your gut that this song is the right one. And we ended up getting it, of course, luckily.
Street: Since your character pushed the button, what was in your mind, what was she thinking at that point? Cameron Diaz: Well, I think that she was hoping that she was goign to get $1 million without somebody dying. She didn’t want to have to suffer the consequences of it, but I think that also she and Arthur had gone back and forth so much on you know Arthur, she trusts him. He’s her husband. He’s a scientist. He’s proven there’s nothing in the box, there’s no transmitter. Nobody knows you know if we push the button or not. It’s just a box. It’s just a button. And I think that she even though deep down she knew because she saw Arlington and saw what happened – what his face was like and she knew that there had to be – and she saw the $1 million. I think she believed it, but somewhere in her heart she wanted to believe her husband, and she wanted to believe that there wasn’t going to be consequence, and she wanted to believe that she could push a button and everything could change in her life for the better and not for the worse. You know and I think that that’s just in keeping with what we all hope when we know that there is something that we really, really desire, but the consequences of acquiring it might just be too much for us to want to actually to have to take on. And you know some people you know are able to let it go and move on and find their happiness or find something else that fulfills them and some people go ahead and push the button.
Street: The story in the movie is obviously a little bit more complex than the original short story. So I’m just wondering, how did you go about elaborating on the original premise and what kind of inspiration you had? Richard Kelly: Well, the short story was almost like a great set-up for act one of a movie. And there was one line in the short story that just, you know, sent my — my mind racing, and it was when they asked who Mr. Steward worked for, and he said, “I can assure you that the organization is large and international in scope.” And that, to me, was just so fascinating, because I had all these questions. I wanted to know, who does Mr. Steward work for? Why did they build the button unit? What are their intentions? Why are they kind of approaching these married couples? You know, what’s the what’s the point of it all? What’s the agenda at work? And I thought that was just such — those were such amazing questions and I — and to be able to kind of explore all those answers in act two and act three and make — and make it a story of redemption was really exciting. And so we were able to really spend a lot of time to just get it right and figure out what act two and act three were — were going to be.
Street: Is there a specific time during your college here at Oklahoma State that you remember that’s just kind of been a little bit of a life-changing experience? James Marsden: I remember being initiated into the fraternity. There’s a lot of college that I don’t really remember — and don’t choose to. [...] It was a great time to sort of, you know, be away from home and party and have a great time and not learn a damn thing, because I was doing too much of that. So, yes, I have fond memories of it.
