The Odd Couple Gets Even

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DANIEL DAY-LEWIS: When you're really inside of something, certain changes kind of demand themselves. Rebecca says she made substantial changes, and to her they probably seem to be, but I read the first draft nine years ago, and in essence I think it is exactly that same story.

RM: [Laughing] I think there were 33 drafts of the screenplay, and each time I changed something I would think it was a monumental change. [To Day-Lewis] I would show you, and you were trying to identify where it was and I would think it was earthshaking.

WHERE DID THE ENVIRONMENTAL AND THE PARENTAL ISSUES COME FROM?

RM: I grew up in the country. And maybe it was in the air at the time, but I was very concerned about the environment at a very early age.

DDL: It was in the air? [He starts laughing, which starts her laughing] She used to go around telling people to switch their engines off in parking lots.

RM: When we were all waiting for the bus in the freezing cold in Connecticut, I would go around and knock on people's windows and tell them to turn their engines off because they were polluting. I was like 7 or 9, and they were just hating me, I'm sure, going "Oh, no, here she comes." But I was really concerned. And I was also concerned about the land. So the seeds were sown in my childhood. With the parental issues [Pause] I guess I don't know. [Shrugs] That's a big question. [Silence]

TELL ME ABOUT PLAYING JACK.

DDL: Well, I recognized him in a certain way. Not because I would have rubbed shoulders with him 'cause I'd have been too small. It was a great time in the early '60s in England before everything kind of went crazy. It was an astonishing thing to see these exotic creatures flying around the place. Even though they seemed incredibly benevolent, there was a certain kind of danger as well, because they seemed to be taking something on, taking the whole society on. So I loved that about Jack. Even in his frailty, there was something I found compelling about him. Even though he has totally f______ up his greatest responsibility of his life, which is to raise his daughter. He tried to raise her in his own image and protect her from all these things that she ought to have been examining herself.

WHY DO YOU THINK YOU HAVE NOSTALGIA FOR THE '60S, BOTH OF YOU?

DDL: It's interesting, isn't it? And we're not alone. We should have a 1-800 number. [Laughing] It was a beautiful, hopeless cause, and the fact that it seemed ... I don't know.

RM: Innocent and free.

DDL: Emerging out of that grayness of the '50s, with unimaginable restrictions.

RM: For me, it was my older brother, him being in the commune scene, being friends with Ken Kesey, and there were these sweet girls who used to breast-feed their babies upstairs in my grandmother's room. And the guys with their fringe jackets. For me, the Garden of Eden is a story about nostalgia.

DDL: I think nostalgia is a primal emotion.

WHAT MADE YOU STAKE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF JACK ON YOUR HUBBY HERE?

[Both laughing] RM: Well, I always thought he'd be perfect for the part, even before I met him. I just had the sense he would make him both conflicted and dangerous and yet completely lovable. He becomes the person so completely that whatever is heroic or good

DDL: Stoppppp! [Groans]