Edward Norton

Off Camera with Sam Jones

offcamera

Arts, Education, Off Camera, Tv & Film

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2019

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For the past 25 years, Edward Norton has established himself as one of the greatest actors in his generation. His legacy includes roles in films like Primal Fear, American History X, Fight Club, and Birdman to name a few, and he’s the type of artist who constantly seeks to challenge himself. Take his new film Motherless Brooklyn, which he wrote, directed, and stars in. The noir-esque film is an incredible achievement for Edward, and it’s a direct product of all of his years of hard work and experience in the industry.For Edward, being an artist is more of a compulsion than a mere desire. As he says, “Most of us are one or two degrees away from obsession tipping over into a true condition and affliction. That’s how I feel about acting and writing.” Luckily, Edward has a creative place to put that obsession, and that creativity was inspired by the work of musicians like Bob Dylan and David Bowie when Edward was a teenager. The resounding message was: “The freaks are who you want to hang with.” So, Edward sought to find his own tribe of like-minded, creative people. It’s through that band of people that Edward got his first big role, and it also helped him fund and cast Motherless Brooklyn. As he says, “If I’ve got any collateral via what I’ve done, why wouldn’t I try to do something else? Why wouldn’t I try to swing for a story that I think I understand and say something?”Edward joins Off Camera to talk about identifying with his underdog character in Motherless Brooklyn, learning to put problems in perspective after his mother passed away, and why he has a hard time trusting anyone who actually enjoyed high school.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey folks Sam Jones here.
0:05.0	Welcome to another edition of off-camera, the show where I get to talk to iconic, creative, curious
0:11.5	artists, and find out how they got that way.
0:14.0	And in this episode I sit down with actor, director, and writer Edward Norton.
0:19.0	For the past 25 years, Edward Norton has established himself as one of the greatest actors of his generation.
0:25.8	His legacy includes roles in films like Primal Fear, American History X, Fight Club, and Birdman.
0:32.4	And he's the type of artist who constantly seeks challenge
0:35.2	Take for example his new film Motherless Brooklyn which he wrote directed and stars in
0:41.0	The political thriller meets Classic noir is an incredible achievement and one that took 20 years to bring to fruition.
0:48.0	For Edward being an artist is more compulsion than mere desire.
0:52.0	As he says, most of us are one or two degrees away from
0:54.9	obsession tipping over into a true condition and affliction. That's how I feel
0:59.5	about acting and writing. Well luckily Edward has a creative place to put that obsession and
1:04.4	he cites his artistic heroes like Bob Dylan and David Bowie for giving him a path
1:08.6	to follow when he was searching for self-identity as a teenager. The resounding message was,
1:14.0	The freaks are who you want to hang out with.
1:16.4	So Edwards sought to find his own tribe of like-minded creative people
1:19.9	after graduation, and he has felt like a part of an artistic community ever since.
1:24.0	That community nurtured him and helped him land his first big role in primal fear
1:28.0	and now that same community has helped him fund and cast Motherless Brooklyn.
1:32.0	As he says, if I've got any collateral has helped him fund and cast Motherless Brooklyn.
1:33.0	As he says, if I've got any collateral via what I've done,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from offcamera, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of offcamera and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.