Last month, Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn sat for an interview with The New York Times at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills to talk about their intertwined lives and work. Since they met while filming "State of Grace," a 1990 film about Irish-American gangsters, they have made four more movies together. He has directed her in "The Crossing Guard" and most recently in "The Pledge," which opens on Friday. It is the story of a retired detective, played by Jack Nicholson, who vows to solve the murder of a young girl. Married since 1996, the Penns   he is 40 and she is 34   live outside San Francisco with their daughter, Dylan, 9, and their son, Hopper, 7. Following are excerpts from their conversation with Margy Rochlin.

MARGY ROCHLIN How much time do you actually spend talking about a project you're going to do together?
SEAN PENN  We have a lot of conversations. She's also a particular critic. I'm not that analytic about stuff.
ROBIN WRIGHT PENN  We speak the same language. We cut to the chase.

MARGY ROCHLINAnd "The Pledge"? What kinds of conversations did you have about Robin's role   a roadhouse waitress with a young daughter and an abusive ex-husband?
ROBIN WRIGHT PENN We didn't have a lot of time. It was sort of five days before
SEAN PENN  [moans] Oh, no, don't
ROBIN Five days before, it was sort of, "Hey, you want to do this part?"
SEAN Don't exaggerate it.
ROBIN  "Hey, do you want to do this part?" And I'm like, "Oh, O.K. Let me get a nanny."
SEAN  It was two or three months before.
ROBIN  About a week. [laughs] So there wasn't really preparation time. There wasn't a lot of script talk. And there was no rehearsal, real rehearsal, on the movie.
SEAN  Not for you, there wasn't. That's true. But we did do some read-throughs with actors.

ROCHLIN  Why was that so? Sean, were you thinking of casting someone else for that role?
SEAN  I was
ROBIN  Everybody else. It was never going to be me.
SEAN  I was talking to a lot of people. Yeah. And there were people that I was very serious about, but I felt they would need more of me than I could give in these circumstances. And I was nervous about that for myself, for the movie and for them. So I just decided that I needed somebody that I knew could handle the emotional stuff and go head-to-head with Jack Nicholson. So she was the one. And I'm glad it happened because it worked out. Now, of course, typically I can't imagine it any other way. But it wasn't the way I was imagining it in the first place. And she was passive about the whole thing the whole time. Until one day, with no better option in the world, [laughs] I said, `Will you do this?' And she said, `O.K.'

ROCHLIN  Robin, what's it like working with a director who knows you as well as Sean does? Does it make you complacent because you know he won't let you look bad? Or is it freeing?
ROBIN  The latter. But in the same breath, literally, the same breath is fear. My thing with him is that I want to be perfect. I don't want to fail. And you always fail. Because I never nailed that character. Whatever that character was . . .
SEAN [both talking at the same time] She feels this way about her entire body of her work.
ROBIN  That's true, O.K., but it's tenfold because it's his piece. And you want it to be 150 percent. So it's both. It's feeling completely safe and being much more nervous because it's somebody you know and respect and want their respect.

ROCHLIN  Do you have conversations about this on the set?
SEAN She tells me how bad she is. And I tell her how good she is.
ROBIN  Well, he's also the one who says: "Go for it. Do something. Art. Whatever. And I'll cut it out if I don't like it. But just give everything."
SEAN  The other thing she's got going for her is, the editing room is upstairs from the kitchen.
ROBIN [bursts out laughing] He doesn't listen to me in the editing room, so it doesn't matter.

ROCHLIN "The Pledge" has an amazing cast   Helen Mirren, Jack Nicholson, Vanessa Redgrave, Benicio Del Toro, Patricia Clarkson and so on. How does it work, assembling a cast like that?
SEAN  I don't know. You'd have to ask them. It's Jack, it's me, it's the material. It certainly wasn't money. [laughs]

ROCHLIN  When you're working directing a movie with an all-star cast, does it make you want to get in front of the camera?
SEAN  [silence]
ROBIN [big laugh]

ROCHLIN  I guess that meansno.
ROBIN  [laughs] That's the last thing he wants to do. He's so much happier. He's a better person when he's directing. He becomes a queen when he's an actor. [laughs] Maybe because you're so used to getting things. And he's so unhappy when he's acting. So it's probably natural to take that position. When he's directing, it doesn't matter where he's staying or what meals he's eating. He's there for the love of what he's doing. He's happy at it. He's calm.

ROCHLIN  At its core, "The Pledge" has such a sense of tragedy and bleakness. Does that affect the mood of the set?
SEAN  It affects the mood of a set when you're shooting a scene of police standing around the body of a young girl. Everybody's a little   you know, it's on people's minds, and they start tailing off into their own experience or terrors about that sort of thing. But generally, as you go along in the movie, I don't think all
moments are overwhelmed by that.

ROCHLIN  Do you bring your work home?
SEAN  To a degree. Especially if some day you might be halfway into a scene between Robin and another actor   at the end of the day   knowing you're starting the next morning picking it up. If you're hot, you stay there, doing it. If you're not, you say: "Well, we're going into overtime. Let's do it tomorrow." If that's the case then it's, "What's wrong?"
ROBIN  What's wrong?
SEAN  Then we have those conversations: "Where should we start up tomorrow to make this thing click?"
ROBIN  Usually, the blanket statement if you do finish a scene is: [laughs] "We totally missed it. It's gone now. We don't have that second chance." Or, how great it was. The day. But you get home, by the time you make dinner for the kids, part of the crew comes over and watches dailies, then it's time for bed because you have to get up in the morning.
SEAN  We were out in the middle of nowhere, with no screening rooms. So we'd watch dailies at my place on video.

ROCHLIN  Where were you?
SEAN  Oh, we were 300, 400 miles outside of Vancouver, in different places. Moving all the time. We put 1,300 miles on the car in a week's time once. Just crazy moves all over the place.

ROCHLIN  How did you describe the more gruesome aspects of "The Pledge" to your two young children?
ROBIN  We told them what it was about. But they're not allowed to see those scenes.
SEAN  It's fragile ground.

ROCHLIN  What movies of yours have they seen?
ROBIN  Dylan just watched "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." But I fast-forwarded past all of the provocative parts.
SEAN  She's particularly upset by violence.
ROBIN  "Dead Man Walking" really messed with her.

ROCHLIN  You let your children see "Dead Man Walking"? Why?
SEAN We didn't let them see the rape and murder.
ROBIN  Or the end.
SEAN  We didn't let them see those things. But we let them see the drama between the two characters, between Susan Sarandon and I. And the pain and the discussions of what had happened. And they found it extremely depressing. Very sad.

ROCHLIN  I can imagine. Wasn't "Princess Bride" available?
ROBIN They loved that. And "Toys," they loved "Toys." They've seen "Gump." And what else? Something of yours. [pauses, thinks] "Racing With The Moon" they've seen.
SEAN  They're interested in kid movies. They're kids. [laughs]
ROBIN "Uncle Buck." They want to watch "Uncle Buck" over and over and over again.

ROCHLIN  Is there any movie of yours you don't want them to see?
SEAN Ever? No. Well, yeah. Anything that's a bad movie with bad acting. And I've been in a few.
ROBIN  [laughs] But they've watched bad acting in bad movies. A lot. "Uncle Buck"!
SEAN  That's the obscenity in American film. It's bad work. [laughs] I watched Sam Peckinpah growing up, and I didn't kill anybody. Clearly, it's bad acting that makes kids kill people. [laughs] But I won't name names.
ROBIN  No, you won't. [laughs] You've already done that.

ROCHLIN How did you find the source material for "The Pledge"?
SEAN  When I was making "The Crossing Guard." Normally, when I'm moved to write something, I'm writing my own experience, my own age, I guess. Jack Nicholson being older than I am, it was sort of a fluke that I'd written a character like his character in "The Crossing Guard." I didn't think I'd do it again. And I didn't want to force myself. But I did want to find a way to work with him again. He was forever reading detective novels on the set. So I
knew he liked that kind of thing, and I asked my partner, Michael Fitzgerald, if he could find that. So he had known this book ["The Pledge," by the Swiss playwright and novelist Friedrich Dürrenmatt], and I read it, and I thought, "Good." There were some things I thought I could really get into.

ROCHLIN  For example?
SEAN  The retirement crisis aspect of it was interesting.

ROCHLIN In both "The Crossing Guard" and "The Pledge" the protagonist wants to do good but is deeply misunderstood by the people around him.
SEAN  Yeah, "The Pledge" is a "no good deed will go unpunished" story. I liked that my own reaction to "The Pledge" is this: I still think about it. That's what I like about a movie like that. I'm not answering any of the questions in the movie. The movie is just there. And people decide for themselves. The people that like the movie tend to make that comment a lot. They go away thinking about it quite a bit. So, that's great.

ROCHLIN  You're still thinking about the movie?
SEAN  Yeah, and I don't want to know the answers to stuff. I can go to Westwood and see that movie anytime I want.

ROCHLIN  The movies that answer everything?
SEAN  Yeah. I don't know if you're aware of this, but in this town, all the answers are here.
ROBIN [laughs] Everyone has the answers.
SEAN  In fact, that building over there [points in the direction of the Creative Artists Agency, which is across the street] is full of brilliant answers. C.A.A. knows everything. All the studios, they know everything, too.

ROCHLIN  Let's talk about Robin's look in "The Pledge." Through much of the movie you're missing a tooth, your hair is dark and scraggly, you're almost unrecognizable.
ROBIN  The first thing was, Get rid of the blond hair. That was pretty much a given. And so I just put Clairol rinse on it. It was really ugly. Ash. And it worked, so we just kept that. And then he sent me to his dentist man. We got a tooth plate, and it was too much. I have such a little face. I looked like Sammy Davis Jr. So we just did one tooth. Then it was makeup.
SEAN  The makeup was the main thing. The blotchiness.
ROBIN  The scar.

ROCHLIN  How much do you talk about what project you're going to do next?
ROBIN  We talk a lot. But we really have to sit down and get a calendar out and say, "You're working these three months. O.K. I'll work for this three months." It's been back to back. Me work. He work. He work. Me work. We haven't had enough time for the four of us to go away. Except for a weekend or something like that. And I
really want to take a summer trip. Go to Europe for a month. Or go somewhere outside of America.

ROCHLIN  "The Pledge" has a very specific feeling and tone. And it's clearly made by the same director who made "The Crossing Guard." What films do you watch?
SEAN [laughs] What do we watch? "Uncle Buck." We get out to a movie once every two months. And we watch some on video.
ROBIN  You won't watch a lot of them. His tolerance is about five minutes.
SEAN  I used to watch movies a lot more. I've talked about this a lot in interviews. All of the movies of my time as an audience were movies in the 70's, made in America. That's what I watched.
ROBIN  The things we watch and cheer are, like, Gary Oldman's movie. We still talk about it. Tell everybody: "Nil by Mouth." "Breaking the Waves."
SEAN  Julian Schnabel just made this movie that I have a tiny piece in, "Before Night Falls." It's a great movie.
ROBIN "The Celebration." There are so few that sit with you.
SEAN I'll go see something and be surprised sometimes. Like, for a commercial American movie, I liked "The Thomas Crown Affair." I thought they did a really good job. I liked it better than the
original! The actors are really good in it. It's a well-done Hollywood movie. A good Hollywood movie is fun once in a while. The problem I have with Hollywood movies is that they're usually not done nearly as charmingly as that one. And the contrivances show all over the place. The way they slap you in the face and say: "You're stupid. We're not." So I usually get upset. We saw a movie, which will go unnamed but won some Academy Award recently. You know what I'm talking about . . .
ROBIN [claps her hands, throws back her head and laughs]
SEAN  I just wanted to shoot myself the minute the movie started. And everybody talks about this movie. And they suddenly get a Continental accent when they talk about it: [through clenched jaws] "Oh, goodness! She's just . . . !" And the people in it are talking about suicide sometimes and you're thinking: "Do it! Do it! There's
some gasoline! Pour it on yourself! Light it!" [laughs].

ROCHLIN  What happens when Sean is having a bad day, Robin? Even though he's the director, do you go up and talk to him?
SEAN  No, what happens is this: I say, "So, how do you feel it went today?" [mimes her rolling over in bed and turning her back to him] That's what I get. [laughs]
ROBIN  [in a little-girl voice] Because you make me tired. [laughs] Yeah, but he flips when people aren't doing their job.

ROCHLIN  Crew?
ROBIN  Crew. Production.
SEAN  Not actors. Actors do their jobs. Actors, by nature, do their jobs. The others don't, necessarily. Or they try to do yours.
ROBIN  It happens rarely. He's not a tyrant. He's not Klaus Kinski.
SEAN  She's asking about when I give you bad direction. Is that what you mean?

ROCHLIN  What I meant was this: On the set, does Robin feel comfortable juggling the role of wife and lead actress?
ROBIN  This was a really hard movie. In every way. Being up there.
SEAN  There was a lot of being out in the middle of nowhere.
ROBIN  It was hard with the kids in no man's land.
SEAN  I mean, Jack was staying in a roadside motor lodge with no cable. [laughs]
ROBIN  It was freezing cold, and it was April and you were in snow gear. Freezing. It was tedious. Just tedious work.

ROCHLIN  Did it make you rethink the idea of doing movies together? In other words, "Do we all have to be up here doing this?"
SEAN  No. It will be awhile before I do another weather-dependent picture. But I'd like to work with her any time.

ROCHLIN  Do you have another project planned for you two?
SEAN Yeah. I've got one I wrote. She won't likely be in it. She doesn't like it.
ROBIN  It will never get made.
SEAN [laughs]

ROCHLIN  Why won't it ever get made, Robin?
ROBIN  It's awful.
SEAN  [laughs]

ROCHLIN  Wait. You're saying it's a terribly written script?
ROBIN  Oh, it's self-indulgent. Queen. One of those queen scripts. [laughs]
SEAN  Anyway, that's probably the best thing I have. [laughs] I have a couple of other things, too. [laughs].

ROCHLIN  Do you feel the film industry is resistant to the idea of couples making movies together?
ROBIN  Hmmm. I don't feel that.
SEAN  Not if the couple is going to stick together for a while [laughs] and actually be doing work for the work's sake. We have the same taste in things, so it makes sense to do stuff together. In fact, working with her was the priority. Marrying her was the way to get to her without having to deal with an agent. [laughs]
ROBIN  As far as us, as a union, I don't feel other people   I have no sense of their judgment or anything else. Whereas, separate, individually, you feel judgment or competition. It's almost like there's a screen made of fiberglass between us and them. It's nice. Because Hollywood is a suction for your confidence
or your faith or your togetherness. Just walking on the street you can feel it.
SEAN  It's a vibe.
ROBIN  It's everywhere you go. I was walking on the street yesterday, and I passed three people in the course of an hour, talking about the industry. Just passing them and hearing "Robert Zemeckis" and "Cast Away."
SEAN  And schadenfreude is everywhere. It's like that great line that Michael Parks supposedly said to Martin Sheen on the Universal lot back in the late 60's. They were shooting "Then Came Bronson." He said, "If you took all the hate out of that building, it would crumble." And it is like that [pointing again to the C.A.A. building]. Meanwhile, some of our best friends live down here.
ROBIN  And are in the industry.
SEAN  And I'm from here. Born and raised. It's a particular industry filled with so much envy, jealousy. It's the heart of everything terrific and everything terrible. The culture is one now that puts very little value on quality. So all these people vying for a position in a totally quality uncontrolled industry. And now it's the less quality, the
better. So there's very little artistry, very little soul put into it.
ROBIN  Or meaning.
SEAN  Or honesty. Or care of any kind. It's all, "Beat these guys to that punch." It's all vying for position, more than it is creating anything. That's what becomes a vacuum.

ROCHLIN  Do people approach you as the Sean Penn they've read so much about?
SEAN  I was never whatever that was. I've always been the same. I haven't grown at all. I haven't changed at all.
ROBIN  Lie.
SEAN  That's the bottom line.
ROBIN  Lie.
SEAN  It's just that the journalists saying that stuff got tired of making stuff up. And I stayed out of jail.

ROCHLIN  Robin, what are you saying here?
ROBIN  It's a lie. It's a complete lie. And his therapist appointment? We're cutting it close right now. [laughs]
SEAN [laughs very hard] That's a good place to end.
 

The New York Times on the Web
http://www.nytimes.com

Copyright © 1998-2000All rights reserved