I interviewed actor Chris Cooper a few months ago for the film Married Life (released on DVD this week). The interview is now up on GreenCine.

Chris Cooper made his film debut in John Sayles’s Matewan. In the 20 years since, his career has been defined by a remarkable wealth and variety of interesting characters and intense performances in films as diverse as Lone Star, American Beauty, Seabiscuit and Capote. He won an Oscar for Adaptation and his unsettling incarnation of CIA traitor Robert Hanssen in Breach was mesmerizing. He takes another rare leading role in Ira Sach’s Married Life, an unusual genre mix that combines period style and a story of adultery and one man’s plot to murder his wife with a comedy of manners approach and a serious conversation about love and desire and marriage and relationships. I had the opportunity to talk to Mr. Cooper about Married Life, married life, and a career playing such a diverse and memorable set of characters.

Harry Allan, the character you play in Married Life, decides to kill his wife because it would be – in his mind, anyway – kinder to her than a divorce.

Yeah, he’s a little narcissistic there, a little full of himself. So in love with his wife it would be better not to confront her with a divorce so, yeah, he decides to put her away gently.

And yet he’s a sympathetic character in a lot of ways. How do you play a character like that who, in real life, would likely be institutionalized for thinking that way?

You don’t work for the evil side of this man. I’d say, for the most part, he is a gentle man and always has been except for his needs in this relationship, which he’s not getting. He’s looking for that romance and affection and his wife just has a different point of view. Add to that, probably to his fault as well, the marriage seems to be falling flat so, like a whole lot of men, he seeks it elsewhere. But he’s certainly made a terrible choice. Instead of doing the honest thing and confronting her with a divorce, he chooses something else.

Patricia Clarkson’s character has a defining line: “Love is sex. The rest is affection and companionship.” Harry is more of a romantic; in his own words, he aspires to be truly happy in love. That’s two opposites in the conversation of love and marriage. Where do you personally fall in the conversation?

I think you really have to work at it. I think, unfortunately, that a lot of men think once they’re married and comfortable, they don’t have to put much effort into their relationships. My wife [Marianne Leone] is a very strong woman, very independent, and she really keeps me on my toes. I’ve come to realize that and it’s gotten to the point where she doesn’t need to keep me on my toes. I realize I have a part to play in the relationship, too. I need to show interest in what she does and inquire about what she does. I think it’s a huge give and take and I think it’s a struggle. Not a struggle, but it takes work to keep that relationship interesting and not let it fall apart and not let it fall flat.

Read the complete interview here. My review of Married Life is on my blog here. I also interview director Ira Sachs here.

I interviewed Ira Sachs, director and co-writer of Married Life, for the Seattle P-I in the “A Moment With” format. I only had the opportunity to use highlights from the 20-minute phone interview in that piece, so here is the complete interview.

What was it about the book, “Five Roundabouts to Heaven,” that made you say: “This is my next project.”?

I’ve always been interested in psychological stories and character-driven stories. Right before I started working on this, I’d seen a lot of Joan Crawford movies and Bette Davis movies and Barbara Stanwyck movies and Fred MacMurray movies, a kind of old-fashioned storytelling that was usually over-the-top and larger-than-life in terms of the plot, but something about them really resonated for me personally. So I decided that’s what I wanted to do, I wanted to make one of those kinds of films without being a retro film. I just liked the way those stories were told. I spent a summer reading old pulp mysteries. People often say that you can make a movie out of a pulp fiction better than a movie out of a classic and I think there is some reason for that because there’s something more you can play with. And what I liked about this book particularly was that in the course of the story, when you learn more about each of the characters, you realize that, at its heart, it’s a really humanist story about relationships. Even though it’s a genre film, it’s also a humanist film. What I thought was quite true about the emotional stakes of these people within their marriages, even again if it’s over the top in its structure, it resonated for me personally within my own relationships.

I’d like to talk about that balance. In between the beats of the genre elements is an ongoing conversation about love and desire and marriage and relationships and what makes people happy in relationships.

That was certainly my intention and I think that what we tried to do, once we had a really good story, then the texture within that. Partially, I was lucky with my cast, a cast that gave a nuanced, emotional, really rich version of these lives that adds a better dimension. And I think in a way that’s the tension in the film, because it is a genre film on some level and yet it’s told in a naturalistic fashion.

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“This is my friend Harry Allen. He’s married. He likes his wife. It can happen.”

Harry (Chris Cooper) appears to be the very model of success in 1949 America: a corporate office, a long, healthy marriage to a practical (and well preserved) woman (Patricia Clarkson), a nice home, and a gorgeous mistress (Rachel McAdams as a platinum blond).

But Harry wants to be “truly happy,” he explains to his best friend Richard (Pierce Brosnan, our sardonic narrator). In the course of pursuing his happiness, it becomes clear to him that he must murder his wife. Not for money or spite, mind you. Harry loves Pat too much to put her through the pain of a divorce. How thoughtful.

The plot of Married Life, based on the British fifties-era pulp thriller “Five Roundabouts to Heaven” and set in 1949 Seattle (though the city is never actually identified, to the best of my recall), sounds like a seedy Hollywood B&W crime melodrama of cheating husbands and seductive sirens and the comforts of suburban life corrupted by lust and greed. Director Ira Sachs, who shoots the film in cool sepia tones that evoke the period and suggest lives lived in restraint and self-suppression, as if bold colors would shock them out of their comfort zone, plays it as a gentle comedy of manners. Or perhaps comedy is a misleading label. Call it an irony.

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I talked to director Ira Sachs Married Life, his third and most recent feature film, for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The piece is now live online. Here are few clips:

On adapting a pulp novel:

People often say that you can make a movie out of a pulp fiction better than a movie out of a classic and I think there is some reason for that because there’s something more you can play with. I think in a way that’s the tension in the film, because it is a genre film on some level and yet it’s told in a naturalistic fashion.

On setting the tone:

The credits sequence is a playful animated sequence. I wanted to signal to the audience very early on that what takes place following might be very serious to the characters, but that the audience didn’t need to take it too seriously.

On creating the period:

We wanted to use the ’40s as if they were today because we wanted the characters to seem as familiar as possible within their dilemmas. There’s that old Faulkner line, “The past isn’t past, it isn’t even over yet.” I think that that’s true. I connected to these characters as if they were myself, my parents, my grandparents. They’re people I know.

Read the complete feature here.

My review of the film will run in the Friday edition of the Seattle P-I. I’ll feature it in my blog when it goes online Thursday night.

I’ll be publishing my complete interview with Ira Sachs later this weekend.

Chris Cooper, Oscar winner for Adaptation and star of the new film Married Life, is the most recent interview subject in my MSN interview feature.

Here are a few choice clips:

MSN Movies: What’s in your DVD player?

Chris Cooper: Being a member of the Academy, they’ve sent me everything to look at so I’ve just seen scores of films. I think the very last one we saw was “Margot at the Wedding,” with Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Matter of fact, I gave one of my votes for supporting actress to Jennifer Jason Leigh. I thought she was really good.

Did you become a member of the Academy when you won your Oscar for “Adaptation.”?

I don’t think so. I think somebody submits your name. I was a bit surprised when I became a member because I don’t know how it came about.

Being a professional actor, is it easy to step back when you watch a movie and simply watch it as a movie?

Yeah, it is now. It is now. It wasn’t so enjoyable, say, 10 years ago. I was looking at every angle and the lighting and trying to dissect the acting. I was very aware of it and I got a little irritated with myself. But I’d say in the last 10 years or so, I’ve been able to separate myself and I really do enjoy it again.

Read the complete feature here.