Hi, friends, What´s up? Here´s an interview I´ve found today. Is
from March 2005, by Eve Ensler, The autor of The Vagina Monologes
and a good Harvey´s friend.That´s the reason because Harvey talk
much more about his personal life in this Interview. I´ve download
the entire article in our Files folder and in this post too.

HARVEY KEITEL: garrulous, gruff … and cuddly? The consummate tough
guy looks inward
Interview, March, 2005 by Eve Ensler


Whenever Harvey Keitel appears onscreen, growling at his adversaries
with his trademark inflection, you can be certain that their luck is
about to run out. But that tough-guy persona is ripe for comedic
manipulation, which is just what happens to it in Keitel's new
movie, Be Cool. A follow-up to Get Shorty (1995), the film co-stars
Uma Thurman, Vince Vaughn, and John Travolta, who reprises his role
as gangster-turned-movie mogul Chili Palmer. This time he's muscling
his way into the music business, and Keitel plays Nick Car, the
ruthless talent manager standing in his way. Keitel recently sat
down with his close friend, playwright and women's advocate Eve
Ensler, to discuss his most recent project and how his infamous
macho schtick may just be, well, acting.

EVE ENSLER: So here I am with Harvey Keitel, one of my favorite
people. Harvey, why don't you start by telling me what you're most
excited about in your life?

HARVEY KEITEL: Well, that's a question that if I really answered
would take me a couple of weeks. Of course, I'm terribly excited
about my new son and about the revelations I'm having and the
understandings I'm gaining.

EE: Anything specific you're thinking of?

HK: They have to do with childhood wounds and understanding where
they come from, like the difficulty I've had with speaking.

EE: Give a specific example of a wound you're talking about.
HK: Well, I will not let anyone tell my son not to cry. I don't want
anything to interfere with his expressing what he's feeling. As a
kid I was told to shush, and as a result it's taken me a lifetime to
be able to speak.

EE: What impact did not having space for that in your childhood have
on you?

HK: I had to hide it--you hammer it down until you can't think
anymore, you can't speak anymore, and your inner world is in
retreat. You can't function, and you stutter, which I did as a boy.
You will stutter not only vocally, but inwardly. You will hesitate,
you will fumble, you will futz, and you will deny the truth because
the truth is too difficult to handle. It's hard to select which
situations to run away from once you become a runner, so you hide
from everything.

EE: What's it like to play tough guys--guys who are playing through
their hiddenness?

HK: You can only play through your hiddenness to the degree that you
can live it. So to play a tough guy is to get in touch with what a
tough guy or a tough woman within one's self is.

EE: So, if you had a vision of your son, what would he be like as a
young man?

HK: He will know that he can feel whatever he is feeling, and it
will be the right thing. And then he will learn to make choices.

EE: This must be a really healing experience for you, having a son.

HK: It's great. My wife keeps saying, "That's you as a little boy in
your mother's arms."

EE: Talk about this new movie of yours, Be Cool. Why were you drawn
to it?

HK: Hey, to be cool, baby! [laughs]

EE: Was there something in the script that you were particularly
drawn to?

HK: My character was written as a very funny, active guy. He was
coming from everywhere-doing this, doing that, just to make a buck.
He was very superficial. I wanted to play that, to dance that. And
that was quite simply a good reason for me to take the part; it
presented a way to begin coming out of my shell. It was a good
character to latch onto because it helped me to be at play with
myself.

EE: Some people I was with recently were talking about sexy movies,
and The Piano [1993] came up as most women's all-time favorite sexy
movie, with you being the epitome of the sexy man. Why do you think
that was such a sexy movie?

HK: It begins with the film's author and director, Jane Campion. The
woman is a goddess. The environment she creates in and out of her
films is one you want to be in. It's just lovely. And then Holly
Hunter--she's another extraordinary lady. I mean, the talent that
woman has! She's just a volcano. I used to take her and Jodie Foster
as role models for my daughter, Stella.

EE: Do you watch that movie once in a while?

HK: I'll tell you, I watched it once.

EE: How'd you feel about your performance?

HK: [laughs] I loved the movie, which is why I never saw it again.
It was just too perfect for me. Every wish I had to be in a great
film and in an important story was fulfilled in The Piano.

EE: How many times has that happened in your career?

HK: I've been very lucky, to be perfectly honest. I've been in a
number of incredible films.

EE: Where did you grow up?

HK: In Brooklyn.

EE: Was it a difficult childhood?

HK: Yeah, very. We were very poor. We lived in a two-flight walk-up
above a Chinese laundry, which later became a grocery store. We
shared a bathroom and a kitchen with two elderly women on our floor.
A number of times it was difficult for my parents to pay the rent,
so I knew what it was like to be broke and the effect that poverty
can have on a family.

EE: Did you dream of acting?

HK: I always fantasized that I'd make a lot of money and take care
of my mother.

EE: And were you able to do that?

HK: A little bit. She died too soon.

EE: What made you want to act?

HK: Well, who hasn't played dress-up as a child? I don't know why it
carries on in some people and not in others. After I came out of the
Marines I was searching for what to do with my life. I became a
court stenographer, which I wasn't very fulfilled by, and I was
selling shoes part-time. Once this young girl suggested that I come
down and try acting. But I didn't, of course, because I was too shy.
And then a fellow employee said to me, "You want to go see about
acting lessons?" and I said okay. I'll never forget walking up the
stairs of that building; it was on 5th Avenue, between 22nd and
23rd, and the staircase was tilted. I remember saying, "We've got to
get out of here. This building is going to fall down." It was the
Anthony Mannino Studio--he was a fairly well-known acting teacher in
those days--but the building was really like a slum. My friend ended
up leaving, and I stayed. But I went about it very slowly; I was
scared to admit to my friends in Brooklyn that I was taking acting
classes.

EE: I imagine admitting that would be hard.

HK: Yeah, and I didn't know if I could do it or not. I went up and
studied a few times a week, and then about four years later, I began
to get further into it and wanted to take lessons more often. One
summer I went away to summer stock, and I committed myself to acting
then.

EE: And at that point you knew?

HK: Well, I was going to try my best. It was dreadful, though.
Forget working--you couldn't even get an agent to help you get work.
But I just loved the people I met. They were so wonderful,
courageous, fun, and persevering, and they were smarter than hell.
They helped me break out of my macho stance.

EE: Was that hard?

HK: Very. I'll tell you how that happened. I used to take acting
classes with this great teacher named Frank Corsaro, and afterwards
we'd all go out for drinks. Now, the Vietnam War was just beginning
at that time, and the entire group was against it except me, the
former marine. I used to say all those things that an ignorant,
closed-minded guy would say, like "Just send the Marines in, and
they'll straighten this out." And they'd scream at me, "Harvey, what
is wrong with you?" And I'd say, "What's the matter with you? You
want the world to become Communist?" not even knowing what a
Communist was [Ensler laughs]. Then one day, one of them handed me
The Arrogance of Power by J. William Fulbright. After that I became
a demonstrator against the war.

EE: What's so amazing about you is not only your seeking spirit but
your willingness to be transformed by the world. Where do you think
that comes from?

HK: I don't know--it's the luck of the dice, I guess.

EE: One thing people don't know about you is how extraordinarily
supportive you are of young artists, particularly young filmmakers,
and how many you've actually been behind at the beginning of their
careers--people like Quentin Tarantino, Jane Campion, Tony Bui,
Martin Scorsese. What do you attribute your ability to sniff out
that kind of talent to?

HK: I don't know why or how, but I do recognize that I have it. I
get a little glimmer of something in someone, and the glimmer I get
is rawness. I like what's raw. I like to walk down alleys. In the
Marine Corps I enjoyed being out in the wilderness, not knowing
what's coming before you.

EE: So it's about being drawn to what's fresh and raw?

HK: Yes, things that have some truth to them.

EE: So, what's it been like for you to live in and out of Hollywood,
which is seemingly a world with a lot of lies?
HK: Hollywood is comprised of many worlds, and the Hollywood
commercial world is one of them; and in that world people tend to
flock together, though with perhaps less of an eye towards
contributing something to humankind than some of the others. Not
many people are willing to give up their Mercedes.

EE: What would it take for people to want the inner life more than
the outer life?

HK: Courage to strike out for something meaningful. But the only way
you can really do that is to risk poverty, to risk not being popular.

EE: So what's something that you think people don't know about you?
I for one know that you're a vagina-friendly man and were wildly
supportive of The Vagina Monologues.

HK: Well, your play opened me up in ways that cataclysmic events
tend to open someone up to truths previously unforeseen. To me,
there is no difference between your Vagina Monologues and my dick;
it's all about how we perceive ourselves. And that's what you did
with The Vagina Monologues--you opened us up to another perception.
I can't think of anything else. Do you know something about me that
I don't?

EE: I think people have the idea that you are a real tough guy, but
I know you to be a very tender person. That was shocking to me when
I first met you. Another thing I know about you is that when you
find a book you like, you send it to every person you know.

HK: That's how we met. When I saw The Vagina Monologues I tried to
get my hands on as many copies of the book as I could.

EE: [laughs] I know! So what books are you obsessed with now?

HK: The Speech of the Grail by Linda Sussman and Trickster Makes
This World: Mischief, Myth and Art by Lewis Hyde.

EE: What's your vision for the next stage of your life?

HK: I'd like to take stories in the realm of mythology, the Bible,
and anthropology and find a form for them in the cinema and the
theater. For me, they denote a deeper truth about things. I'm sick
of the politicians, and I don't just mean the American ones. I'm
sick of this other nonsense--these people who, in the name of
religion, teach their children to hate other children because of
their religious beliefs. Neither the Western God nor Allah is
telling them to kill the children of other people in the name of God.

EE: I think this is great. Is there anything else you want to say?

HK: Yeah. Can we erase this whole thing and do a different interview?

EE: Nope.

Eve Ensler recently performed her new play, The Good Body (Villard
Books), on Broadway. Her most recent work, Vagina Warriors, is just
out from Bulfinch.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group