The Film Forum

Back in 'Black': Q&A With Josh Hartnett

By Tom DiChiara

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While real life rarely ties up loose ends, that's one thing at which movies excel. The notorious and grisly 1947 murder of aspiring actress Elizabeth Short remains unsolved to this day, but Brian De Palma's 'The Black Dahlia,' based on James Ellroy's ('L.A. Confidential') 1987 novel, offers history buffs and conspiracy theorists one fictional -- and star-studded -- take on what might have happened.

Josh Hartnett stars as boxer-turned-cop Bucky Bleichert, a warrants officer forced by his gung-ho partner (Aaron Eckhart) to investigate the Elizabeth Short case. As Bucky gets sucked deeper and deeper into the investigation, he finds himself caught between the seemingly wholesome Kay (Scarlett Johansson) and the mysterious Dahlia-look-alike Madeleine (Hilary Swank), one of whom may hold the key to unearthing the truth.

In the interview that follows, we grill Hartnett on his reasons for doing the film, get him to cough up the goods on his taste in women (mysterious or wholesome?), make him name the first VHS tape he owned as a kid and convince him to turn state's evidence on the role he was supposed to play in 'Lost in Translation.'

Before becoming involved with the film, how much did you know about the real-life crime upon which the film and James Ellroy's novel are based?
I didn't know much about the real-life crime. I knew that this murder had occurred, but that's about it. I became involved a little over five years ago. A different director [David Fincher] was attached at the time. They gave me a script -- 210 pages I think it was. Really long script. And I read it, and just knew I had to do the movie. So then I read the book by James Ellroy -- loved it -- and was like, wow, they really can't cut anything out. And that was a problem: I think Fincher wanted to make it a really long film. So the movie didn't get made then. A bunch of time passed and then one of the producers came to me and said they had a new script and a new director, Brian De Palma. And this time, the script was much shorter and just as good. And that was that. I was onboard.

What did you do to prepare for the role and get into the mindset of a 1940s detective?
Well a big part of it was training for the boxing. There's not a whole lot of boxing in the film -- only a couple scenes where we actually box -- so it wasn't necessary for me to spend a ton of time in the gym. But Ellroy makes a direct correlation between the way that Bucky acts as a person and the mentality that he holds as a boxer and as a human. And once I got in the gym and started to feel what it was like to become a boxer, I started to feel like I got to know him a lot better. So I spent seven months training in preparation for this, five days a week, four hours a day. Yeah, they were training me like I was training for a real fight.

Have you kept that up at all?
Ha -- no. I'd love to get back in the gym again, but I've been busy on other projects. It's really something you have to stick with unfortunately.

Did your work on your previous flick, the noirish 'Lucky Number Slevin,' come in handy during this film?
No, unfortunately, the character Slevin [pictured to the left] didn't have anything to do with Bleichert. So I had to change the mindset a little bit.

How was the mood on set? Obviously, you were dealing with some pretty serious subject matter. How'd you keep things light?
Well, actually you know when you're working on very serious films the atmosphere maybe starts nervous, but there can be a certain giddiness that comes in. De Palma is a really funny guy -- dark, but also really funny. Scarlett is hilarious. And Hilary is actually a really funny woman, too. The set atmosphere was light enough. We all knew what we wanted to do. And Brian has a kind of dark comic element to all of his films. And he brought that sensibility to this film as well. There was a certain sense that we were doing something a little wry, that wasn't one hundred percent turgid.

There's a theme running through this flick that people can never really escape the things they've done in the past, whether or not they actually get caught. How does that mesh with the overall impression you want people to take away from the film?
The thing that impressed me the most about the film is that nobody is exactly clean, whether or not they get their comeuppance -- and they all kind of do, excluding Bucky. Bucky has done some things that are -- he's not the pillar of morality. He's a morally compromised character. What I appreciated about it is that it's not about black and white. All the characters exist in that grey zone. None of them are great characters, great people; none of them are horrible either.