|
Peter Macdissi on Towelhead
By Fred Topel | Image property of Warner Independent
Towelhead is full of characters with questionable values, whom audiences may never forgive for their actions. Rifat is not much of a father, blaming his daughter for the abuse she suffers and ignoring her needs, let alone physically assaulting her. Actor Peter Macdissi felt the dirty looks as he did press for the film.
Peter MacDissi a Towelhead
"I just feel like everybody's scared," said Macdissi. "Nobody's looking at me. I was like, 'What's going on? Is that the character or something?' I'm such a nice guy it's ridiculous. Really, did you? That's a good thing, right? Ultimately that's a good reaction."
The amazing thing about Rifat is he has no awareness of himself. "None. The guy is very un-self-ware. I mean, unbelievable, and narcissistic. He's so self involved, he can't see anything but himself and his future and his life. He can't see her. She's trouble. She's just trouble in his life. She's a hindrance. He's going through midlife crisis. Thena's his new thing. It's hard. What he's going through is hard. Of course, see, I have to sympathize with my character. I can't judge him like that, oh, he's bad. That's horrible."
 Towelhead
Of course, liking one's character is an age-old actor's philosophy. It's not quite such a simple cliché for Macdissi. "You have to be your character. You have to become your character. It's not just loving. You have to become him. You can't act him. You have to be that guy. I didn't look at him in terms of liking or not liking. I just looked at him as a human being who comes from a specific place who's experienced specific things who has his own traumas and fears and ambitions and unachieved dreams. You have to work with that and then the story tells the rest."
Macdissi did research that probably no viewer w ill recognize, but was necessary for his preparation. "You have to do all these things. He lives in Texas, I had to go to Texas. He works at NASA so I had to explore what that meant, how much money he makes, what kind of sports. All that boring stuff that nobody cares about but for an actor, I had to do all that work for him to be as believable as possible. Then the relationship with his daughter. The first time she arrives at the airport, I was looking and I think the camera caught that, 'Oh my God, she's grown a lot since last year when she came.' There's the thing, I look at her breast, that it's grown. What does that do to a father? All these things are very, very important. It's not just like oh, he's so bad or he hits her. That's just the surface. It was really a great journey."
Towelhead is out in theaters.
For the trailer, poster, review and more movie info, go to the Towelhead Movie Page.
Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of Warner Independent
Contact
© 2004 Minds Eye One, All Rights Reserved
The Can Magazine™ is a trademark of Minds Eye One
All movie titles, movie icons, movie stills/clips/trailers/other media... are registered trademarks and/or copyrights of stated holders
CanMag.Com banners contain movie/gaming icons that were created by individual holders
|
|
|
Add to Heffee!
