A James Ellroy’s World Exclusive
Race Owen stars as Martin Plunkett in Mitch Brian’s short film, “Stay Clean.” The 11-minute, black-and-white film is touring various independent film festivals. It is based largely on a single chapter of a James Ellroy novel (Ellroy himself makes a cameo appearance in the film).
Owen was born in the Midwest, a couple of hours’ drive from Kansas City, where “Stay Clean” was filmed, and where both director Mitch Brian and author James Ellroy currently live. Owen’s interest in acting began in 1993. “The standard course of going from high school right to college was not an inviting one,” he said. “I just didn’t want to follow the person in front of me. I started down a course of working in Kansas City as a fashion model. I did that for a year, and the modeling agency offered an acting workshop with a coach from Los Angeles. At the time, I wanted to be musical performer, and I had always grown up a bit shy and unsure of the spotlight. I thought the acting would give me an opportunity to explore that and break out of it. I fell in love with it.”
Race Owen’s recent roles have included a part on TV’s “Dawson’s Creek” (“I played a bad kid, David Fachelli”) and in Oscar-winning director Ang Lee’s Civil War-era film “Ride With the Devil.” Mr. Owen is also a screenwriter and continues to write music. He now makes his home in Los Angeles. You can visit his Web Site HERE.
ELLROY’S WORLD: How did you hook up with director Mitch Brian for “Stay Clean”?
OWEN: Both Mitch and James live in Kansas City. I’m an actor and I did most of my work in Kansas City. My hometown is actually about two hours from Kansas City. Mitch was looking to have a little different perspective on his writing so he enrolled in an acting workshop that I also was enrolled in and that’s how we met. At the same time, he was offering a screenwriting workshop that I intended to take, so I was a student of his first before we ever actually worked together.
ELLROY’S WORLD: “Stay Clean” is a short film drawn from approximately one chapter of a much larger book: Did you read the entire novel to prepare for the role of Martin Plunkett, axe-murderer?
OWEN: I read about three-quarters of the novel. I read all the way up until the scene happened (in the movie) and then just a bit past that. When the scene we filmed happened, that is his first kill. I was mostly interested in what happened up to that point. I wasn’t sure that the information that came after that was actually going to be beneficial. I didn’t really move too much farther in the book past that.
ELLROY’S WORLD: And now that you have put the thing on film — you haven’t gone back and finished it?
OWEN: I haven’t finished it all the way. I’m still pretty much at that spot. I’ve picked up a couple of extra chapters, but that was it.
ELLROY’S WORLD: In terms of some of the things that happened prior to the scene that was filmed: was there anything you picked up to use during the interrogation scene?
OWEN: Yeah, actually. There is a very clipped language when the character Plunkett is talking in the book about “brushed-steel.” He refers to his “brushed-steel” axe in the film. That was something that was very apparent was a detail that was close to his heart, let’s say. Mostly, I picked up some mannerisms that you see in the film.
ELLROY’S WORLD: For all intents and purposes, the film is essentially a two-man show. Did you get a lot of rehearsal time with the other primary actor?
OWEN: When we went into pre-production, we knew we didn’t have this particular location but for approximately three days. It was a rental property that was sitting vacant. Kindly, one of the members of the Independent Film Coalition (IFC) in Kansas City offered to let us use it for a location. But he was going to be renting it the following week after we shot the film. So, yes, we did a lot of rehearsal in the space before we got to the shooting date. Walter (Coppage), myself and Mitch ran through a lot of rehearsal time, just so that we were all on the same page...we didn’t have to figure anything out the day of shooting. It made things a lot easier and made things move a lot faster and a lot smoother.
ELLROY’S WORLD: Apart from your role, and Walter Coppage’s, the only other substantial speaking part in the film — and it’s certainly a brief one — is James Ellroy’s, who is not an actor. Did he solicit any acting advice from you? Did you feel compelled to offer any?
OWEN: No. (Chuckling.) An interesting side note, though. If you ever meet James, or stand in the same physical presence as James, you realize he has this aura about him. He’s the big dog on set. The big man in town. He has broad shoulders, and he’s what, about 6’3”? He’s a big guy. And he’s got the reputation of being James Ellroy, famous writer. He came on set the second day of shooting. The first day, everyone was saying, “Well, this is going to be cool, because tomorrow James Ellroy is going to be on set. This is going to be cool.” A lot of people just wanted to be on set the second day just for that particular reason. Everything was built up to that fact. Now, as an actor, my personal thing is that I don’t like to jump in and out of character. I like to stay there and work and then let down at the end of the day. So, when we were setting up a couple of shots my reaction was to stay in character....There are a couple of shots where we (Race and Ellroy) are working in close proximity. Now, in one incarnation, I used to work as a stand-in. I gained a little technique that was just for fun, for myself, and that was not to break a gaze with the other person I was working with. What ended up happening, was I saw this big, famous writer start to turn away occasionally and move his eyeballs and fidget a little bit. I thought that was rather strange. Didn't think anything more of it. But then, later, it came back to me through a crew member that, he felt I was a little Psycho. I believe he thinks I might be unstable.
ELLROY'S WORLD: High, praise, from your character's creator....
OWEN: Later I asked (Ellroy) to sign my copy of his book and I didn't realize the way he felt about me. He wrote in there: "Race, you ARE Martin Plunkett." It became this joke, "Dude, you scared the Demon Dog with his own creation!" So it was a huge compliment. The short answer to your original question is that, no, Ellroy didn’t solicit any acting advice. I don’t know if either he wanted to, or he felt if he needed too...His presence is effective.
ELLROY’S WORLD: Were you familiar with Ellroy and his works prior to being cast?
OWEN: Honestly, I was not that familiar. I knew somewhat of “L.A. Confidential,” but to be honest, when Mitch said, “This is a piece by James Ellroy,” I said, “Oh, that’s cool, that’s neat.” But it didn’t strike a chord because I just wasn’t that familiar with him. I have become an Ellroy fan, but I wasn’t at the time.
ELLROY’S WORLD: You’re in every scene: the entire shoot encompassed three days?
OWEN: We did a lot of post-production work. We had a total of five cans of film, and the lab ate a can-and-a-half. What ended up happening is the machine ended up stretching the film, so every time it went through the machine, it pulled it slightly longer. That created a wobbling effect. It ended up being a technical issue as far as editing was concerned. The day of shooting, we also had a problem with the camera. We were shooting black and white; the emulsion was slightly different than on color film, and it was making a tracking sound. That killed our audio. We went through a couple of cameras trying to figure that out. The long and short of it is that we had a lot of technical problems we had to overcome. We did a lot of post-production work and some voice-over, but, eventually, we came across the ability to scrub the audio software and edit around the stuff that was damaged. Mitch ended up being very lucky in that fact. All of the post-production we did — I don’t want to say it was all for nought — but it was not actually used, except for one little piece of the voice-over.
ELLROY’S WORLD: So nothing was filmed that was truly lost? You got what you set out to put on film?
OWEN: Absolutely.
ELLROY’S WORLD: Apart from your recent appearance in “Dawson’s Creek,” you also recently worked with Ang Lee in “Ride With the Devil” prior to his latest Oscar-winning opus (“Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon”)....
OWEN: That was a really interesting initiation into big time film-making. My role on set was as a stand-in for Skeet Ulrich. He was in the first film, “Scream,” as the bad kid. He was also in “As Good As It Gets.” It always sounds bad, but he was a male prostitute who beat up Greg Kinnear.
ELLROY’S WORLD: Something many have perhaps wanted to do....
OWEN: Well, he technically didn’t beat up Greg Kinnear, but he was the subject of the artist in the film. But, the two of us are extremely close in our physical appearance and I was Skeet’s stand-in in the Ang Lee film. My job was to set-up the shots while Skeet was off-set, or in wardrobe or working on other things. So, I was next to the camera for two-and-a-half-months watching Ang direct. Watching everything happen. It was a very interesting insight into where the creative mind goes. Ang had a very gentle way about him. Unfortunately, “Ride With The Devil” was not much of a success at the box-office, but, he followed up with an Oscar in his next film, so it’s pretty cool.
ELLROY’S WORLD: Planning anything further with Mitch Brian?
OWEN: Mitch and I have actually grown to be fast-friends. It’s a nice relationship. We don’t get to see each other very often because of course he is in the Midwest and I am in California, but, he’s a pretty successful writer out here, so when he comes out we get together and chat. He's planning to shoot a Civil War short and asked if I'd be willing to fly out to appear in it.
ELLROY’S WORLD: How did you find Mitch Brian as a director?
OWEN: I saw he really enjoyed working as a director. I found him to be very curious in how a shot might play in one direction or another. It wasn’t as if we were changing a lot, but he was very open in a collaborative sense. Everyone deferred to him as the director, but he was very open. He knew the material and the core of the material a lot better than anybody else because of his personal relationship with Ellroy.
ELLROY’S WORLD: The film runs 11-minutes, so there isn’t a lot of room, but did you improvise anything that is in there?
OWEN: See, that’s the interesting thing about the film: You’re trying to pack the first half of an entire book into that space, so you just have to allude to this or that. There just wasn’t that room for improvisation. It was a challenge to consolidate and concentrate it. I read the script before I actually read the book, and, as I was reading the book, it was interesting because you would be in chapter one of the book, and there would be a snippet of the script, verbatim, in chapter one and then in chapter three, and then moving forward. To me, it was more interesting reading the script first and then going back and reading the book because I was constantly picking up where he (Mitch) had grabbed elements from the book for the script.
ELLROY’S WORLD: Any other special preparation you undertake in order to portray an axe-wielding serial killer?
OWEN: Oh man. I don’t think so. All of us have a darker side. I don’t want to say that you foster that, but you can open your eyes to it and see that the human condition can go in that direction. You just don’t really have to push because of the way it is written.
ELLROY’S WORLD: It (the double-murder) is an impulsive act as written — not something that was really premeditated.
OWEN: As it is written in the script, it is more of an impulsive act than it is in the book.
ELLROY’S WORLD: Yes, in the book, he is building toward it, consciously or unconsciously, but it still comes off as a fairly spontaneous act.
OWEN: Right. In the book he tends to fantasize a bit more and dwell on the fact that something is exciting him.
ELLROY’S WORLD: Any further thoughts regarding “Stay Clean”?
OWEN: It’s an interesting thing that has happened with the film that you alluded to in your review, on your Web Site: The film probably will not be seen by a large audience. But, Ellroy fans, excuse the pun, tend to be rabid about the Devil Dog. Anytime anything is produced, they want to see it and be a part of it. An interesting phenomenon has happened — a kind of underground movement of people really wanting to see this film.
— ©2001, Craig M. McDonald
