MICHAEL STUHLBARG The Eyes and Angst of A Serious Man

It’s not often you go to a press event and find the publicist practicing her Hebrew alphabet, and overhear a conversation about the length of the fast on Yom Kip­pur. The writers and photographers have gathered to cover Michael Stuhlbarg, star of the new Coen Brothers film, A Serious Man, a darkly droll exploration of the Ameri­can-Jewish psyche. Offering a glimpse into the mindset of Hebrews of Eastern-Euro­pean descent through the eyes and angst of Stuhlbarg’s Larry Gopnik, the movie’s dia­logue is seasoned with words like mensch, macher, shul, and Hashem. Those who were primally tickled to see John Goodman’s furi­ous “Shomer Shabbos!” outburst in The Big Lebowski, will now recognize that scene as a prelude to this quieter, question-steeped fable about a formerly content family man utterly bewildered by the crumbling of every­thing he’s held to be true.

A Serious Man begins with an early 1900s, Coen-penned folktale performed entirely in Yiddish. The period vignette poses the ques­tion of whether or not an old family friend — played by the perennial, sharp-tongued Jew­ish elder, Fyvush Finkel — is a dybbuk, a person possessed by a spirit of the dead. This is the first of many, many unanswered questions posed by the film, the second of which is the relationship this little yarn has to the narrative that follows. Set in 1967, the film proper sees Stuhlbarg’s hapless physics professor offered a bribe by a student, asked for a divorce by his wife (newcomer Sari Lennick), informed of letters sent to the school board accusing him of “moral turpi­tude,” and being ousted from his marital bed by a sanctimonious family friend (a gloriously haughty Fred Melamed). And all of this just before his pot-smoking son’s bar mitzvah.

As things degenerate, Larry struggles to acclimate to sharing a motel room with his unemployed brother, Arthur — played by Richard Kind with pitch-perfect whine — who spends his time perfecting the “Mentaculus,” his notebook of mathematical, physical, and mystical equations he believes is a future-predicting probability map of the universe. Oy. Never in doubt that God is pulling the strings as his problems mount to the point of absurdity, Larry is beset with a heart-wrench­ing need to understand why all of this is hap­pening to him. The three rabbis he approaches offer only further questions, the most fascinating of which is what that “goy's teeth” story could possibly be about.

Stuhlbarg’s portrayal of Larry’s quiet and complete disorientation exposes the root of Ethan and Joel Coen’s penchant for cine­matic nihilism, and their perceived lack of cause and effect in the human experience. The Jewish way is to foster questions about the nature of the world, which invite respons­es that do less to answer than to inspire dis­cussion and debate. And, sadly, this philoso­phy offers no solace to Larry as he descends his Job-like downward spiral. Exuding a soft-spoken kindness, the Tony Award-nominated and Drama Desk Award-winning stage actor sat with us to discuss his history and his first major film role as the lead in the latest addi­tion to the Coen Brothers canon. [Please don’t tell our mothers we did the interview on Shabbos.]

Venice: Tell us a little about your history. Where are you from?

Michael Stuhlbarg: Long Beach, Califor­nia.

Were there Jewish elements to your upbringing?

Sure, Reform Judaism. I went to a Reform synagogue, and spent a lot of time as a kid at Jewish camps and the JCC. I was bar mitzvahed, I went to confirmation class, the whole nine yards.

I understand you studied in Lithuania. How did you decide to go there?

It wasn’t so much a decision; it was an exchange program with the Juilliard School and the Vilnius Conservatory. They brought their students to Juilliard to study American theater — like Tennessee Williams, musical theater, and stuff like that — and we went to Vilnius to study Chekhov for five weeks. It was remarkable.

What did you work on over there?

It was mostly scene work. We would choose a couple different scenes from Chekhov's plays. Their acting teacher had a translator, and we did scenes for her, and she would tear us apart! [laughs] And we learned that you could do anything you want with Chekhov.

You must have seen some amazing things in Lithuania.

It was an interesting time. It was 1990, and they had just declared independence in May, and this was November. So there was still a Russian presence on the streets. It was dead of winter, so there was snow every day. It was a little harrowing in some ways, but they couldn’t have been kinder to us, absolutely. They invited us into their homes and invited us into their lives.

You also studied with Marcel Marceau?

Yes. He came to UCLA. I was there for two years, and he had been offering, up to that point, one full-year scholarship for one stu­dent to go to France and study at the World Center for Mime there. I entered the contest because I would love to spend time in France, and learn about the movement and mime. He couldn’t make up his mind between four of us, so he invited all four of us to come to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for the summer, and we studied with his students and with him, and I learned that summer that I could never be a mime; it wasn’t for me. But I appreciated the discipline with which the people worked, and how devout the stu­dents were to him and the work. And he couldn’t have been kinder to us. He was a great guy. Really inspiring.

And he spoke.

He spoke a lot, actually!

You played Richard II and Hamlet. What kind of preparation goes into playing a role as iconic as the Dane?

It’s something that I had been wanting to do since 10th grade English class when I saw it for the first time on BBC videotape. So there was a lot of baggage that came along with it, because I had seen a few other actors do it on stage and several movies, and I had my own ideas about what I wanted to do. I was so grateful for the opportunity to get a chance to explore it a little bit — and to actually do it with the New York Shakespeare Festival was tremendous. To do it outside was fun, and it was more than I’d ever expected it to be. You know, it’s an over­whelming amount of information to factor in, and you need to pace yourself in terms of what is asked of you over the course of the night, but it’s a great challenge. I’m glad I had a chance to do it.

After all the theater that you’ve done, and continue to do, how did you decide to put more energy into screen work?

It just kind of happened. I did this play in 2005, “The Pillowman,” and I think a lot of people from the entertainment community — film and television — came to see it, and I think became familiar with what I could do. I was very different than I am now. At the time I was 50 pounds heavier, I had an interesting haircut, and I think for a lot of people that piqued some interest in what I could do. I got some doors to open for me that hadn’t ever been opened before, and I just sort of kept going.

How did you have this change of life, and lose all the weight?

Well, I had put on about 20 pounds for the play I had done right before that, a piece called “Belle Epoch,” that was up at Lincoln Center, about the life of Toulouse-Lautrec. I was playing this heavy-set cafe owner, and I thought, “Why not put on a lit­tle extra weight.” I grew eight months’ worth of beard. I had a waxed handlebar moustache and this massive, hairy face, and that’s how I looked when I went out to audition for “Pillowman.” After I got the part, I said, “Do you want me to lose all the weight? I’ll do whatever you want.” They said, “No, the fact that you’re a little bit on the heavy side is great. In fact, keep eat­ing.” And we came up with the idea that he did a lot of comfort eating. He had been tortured as a child, and had a lot of imagi­nation as well as issues. So I ended up putting on another 30 pounds, and it was a trip. Unrecognizable, and I learned a lot.

And it feels good to be back to nor­mal?

It does. Much more healthy.

Tell us about the audition process for A Serious Man. How did the part come to you?

I originally was asked to come in for the part of Velvel, the husband in the Yiddish parable at the beginning of the movie. So I had to learn that whole scene in Yiddish. I went to a Yiddish tutor and he helped me with it, and it went very well, and they laughed a lot. They weren’t sure at that time whether they wanted to go with an actor who could speak it phonetically, or find somebody who could speak it fluently, and they went with actors from the Yiddish theater eventually, who were fantastic. They’re great in the movie. So, many months went by, like three, four, or five months, and then I got a call out of the blue saying, “They want you to come back in for the part of Larry and the part of Uncle Arthur.” I said, “Great, all right!” I hadn’t read the script at that point, so I didn’t know it was the same movie, really. I learned three scenes for each of the char­acters, and did them, and they responded very well, and laughed a lot, which made me really happy. Then I would check in periodically to see if I was still being con­sidered and they said I was. And then they said that eventually I was going to get one of these parts; I didn’t know which one. So I start preparing for both of them, and then maybe six weeks before we started shoot­ing, Joel called me and said, “We’ll put you out of your misery, you’re playing Larry.”

What was it like knowing that your first major film role was going to be a Coen Brothers movie?

At that point when he told me, I was just glad to have one thing to focus on, because I was working really hard on both of them. I was extremely grateful, and I did-n’t want to be the one to slow down pro­duction and mess everything up.

The film illustrates some important aspects of Judaism, like the concept of inquiry without any solid answers. And having questions responded to in para­bles and stories that may or may not answer the question of, “Why?”

Or not even, “Why?” It’s just that you don’t question it. At least if you’re talking about following tradition. Larry is in a very unquestioning place at the beginning of the movie, and then as the movie progresses, that’s sort of the state he finds himself in, it’s his constant questioning.

Did you guys have any philosophical discussions about the story?

We pretty much left the themes to what­ever Joel and Ethan put down on the page. It was my job, really, just to show up and take responsibility for each scene, and let them piece it together how they would. I didn’t ask why Larry was going through what he was going through; I just tried to go through what he was going through.

And to take on the surprise and mis­ery of his story?

Absolutely. Surprise is a big factor in it. In anything that I do, I think the more I can surprise myself, the more everyone else will be surprised. So I didn’t ask a lot of questions. I just asked for specifics about what I was responsible for.

As you went through the experience of making the film, did you learn things about Judaism that you hadn’t known about?

I had never heard of a “gett” before, so this was the first time that came about. “Olam Ha’Bah,” “the world to come,” was something that I had heard very little about, as well. I had done a couple plays about dybbuks, and I also had some familiarity with Kabbalah, having done a play about that.

What play was that?

Tony Kushner’s adaptation of “A Dyb­buk.” In one production of the play, I played a messenger angel who comes down and watches the events of the story, and in the other production, I played the young scholar who dies and his spirit goes into the body of his beloved.

What do you feel is the connection between the film’s prologue and the main story?

I don’t know; it’s a good question. The thing that I stumbled upon is that quote at the very beginning of the movie by Rashi: “Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.” That kind of has a resonance for both stories, but as to how they’re attached, it’s sort of left to debate. Some people have mentioned things like maybe they’re ancestors of the folks in the latter half of the story. I don’t know.

The Coen Brothers have given you guys a fair amount of freedom in doing your work, from what I understand. This seems to be a departure from the former hands-on approach they took in their early films — at least from what I’ve read.

It’s a kind of letting go, actually. Once they find the actor that they want to play whatever role they’re trying to cast, they let them ask questions. I think they really respond when actors ask them questions about the stuff that they’ve written, because in some cases they hadn’t thought about things because they wrote it. They’ve thought about it from their per­spective thoroughly, but we have other ideas, and we bring our ideas to them, and we ask them questions. And they think, “Oh, I hadn’t thought of it that way, but yeah, that’s one way to think of it.”

What are some of the questions you asked them about Larry?

I remember asking about the relation­ship between Judith and Larry, and what their problems were that were not elabo­rated on. So we sort of created those ideas for ourselves. I also asked them about the Mentaculus. How is it pro­nounced? And about the physics of it.

What did they tell you about the Men­taculus?

The Mentaculus is actually taken from a friend of theirs who wrote this thing called the Mentaculus. It was the same thing— someone who was trying to create a proba­bility map of the universe, and probably went a little mad in the process. So they just stole from the truth that was their lives, and threw it in the movie.

Do you know who did the artwork for Uncle Arthur’s Mentaculus notebook?

Yeah, fantastic artists. Mike Sell and Eric Karpeles. They’re these wonderful artists. Mike specializes in a kind of photographic realism in his painting, and Eric does more sort of abstract art. They created it together. Really, really fun stuff, and they just went to town. [laughs]

It’s interesting that there is all this questioning of why things are happen­ing, without finding any answers, but here’s Uncle Arthur, who believes he is going to completely figure out why everything is happening — and he’s a mess. He’s going mad.

Maybe that’s where the quote comes in: “Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you,” as opposed to fighting against it or trying to understand it thor­oughly. There’s a kind of wisdom in accep­tance in some cases, and in other cases there is not.

Did scenes like the bar mitzvah in the synagogue bring back memories for you?

Sure, absolutely. All of the stuff we shot in the synagogue just felt so remarkably true. During the end of the bar mitzvah, when the whole congregation chimes in with that song, we didn't even have to rehearse. Everybody knew it, because they were all congregants. It was just like we were in tem­ple all of a sudden. It was amazing. We started laughing and applauding afterwards. It was like, “Wow, you throw a bunch of strangers together and everybody knows this song.” It was a look into the wandering nature of Jews, perhaps.

What are your thoughts about a film like this, that doesn't supply any answers?

I think it’s okay! I think it may start a dia­logue about the questions that are raised, and get people thinking. Nothing wrong with that!

Did this film have you looking deeper into your own Judaism?

I think every day there are moments when I confront my Judaism, frankly. Many times during the day; sometimes it crops up, sometimes it goes away. I was surrounded with it in the making of this movie. It comes and goes. ▼