IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.

Edward Norton takes on consumerism again

‘Down in the Valley,’ like ‘Fight Club’ rails against banality of modern life
/ Source: The Associated Press

In "Down in the Valley," Edward Norton plays a deluded 21st century cowboy whose contrived Old West masculinity and aw-shucks innocence attracts a restless teenage girl who's desperate for something more authentic than the asphalt highways of suburban Los Angeles.

Norton is again — as he did in "Fight Club" — exploring the strange avenues a person might take to eek out something natural in a consumerist, overdeveloped world.

"People who liked `Fight Club,' I think will like this film a lot because on a deep psych level, it's about the same things," says the 36-year-old, two-time Academy Award nominee. "It's about fantasy as a desperate attempt to get away from the numbing banality of what the modern world confronts you at times."

Norton's character — Harlan Fairfax Carruthers — appears to have wandered into California's San Fernando Valley straight out of an old John Ford Western. In one scene, he walks through bumper-to-bumper traffic imploring people to get out of their cars. He defends shouts of "You're crazy!" by drunkenly replying, "I'm the only sane man on this street!"

Harlan wins the heart of young Tobe (Evan Rachel Wood) and captivates her younger brother (Rory Culkin). But his identity isn't as genuine as it seems, and the romanticism eventually turns to tragedy.

In a disparate filmography that spans a decade, Norton has ranged from a neo-Nazi skinhead ("American History X") to a reflective drug dealer headed to the slammer ("25th Hour"). Since first impressing audiences as the duplicitous altar boy in 1996's "Primal Fear," Norton has been widely considered one of the finest actors around.

For several years, he's been largely absent from movie screens, but that's more a function of timing. "Down in the Valley," which opens in limited release Friday, was made two years ago, and Norton and director David Jacobson had to fight to secure a distributor.

ThinkFilm eventually picked it up, but Norton has recently been critical of the so-called "indie" divisions of major Hollywood studios (who passed on "Down in the Valley"), suggesting their taste isn't as artistically motivated as they claim.

During a recent interview in New York, where Norton has lived for years, his tone was a little more conciliatory.

"Just because you've made a couple movies, you've done some good movies, you've been nominated for some Academy Awards, whatever — nobody's entitled," Norton says, half to himself. "It's a business. If they don't see it, I can think they're wrong, but I'm not entitled to a $15 million budget to make a film."

Norton fought for the movie, screening it for critics, who in turn spread positive reviews. Recently, Rolling Stone's Peter Travers wrote: "It's typical of the cowardly indie scene that Norton, as star and producer, had to fight to keep this hypnotic and haunting film from going straight to video."

An intense and guarded person, Norton has in the past shown that he isn't reluctant to use his power to get what he wants — or, rather, what he feels is best for a film.

The final version of 1998's "American History X" was partly edited by Norton — not director Tony Kaye. Kaye sued the studio, New Line Cinema, and the Director's Guild for not letting him take his name off the picture.

Norton has frequently gone further than the typical actor-director collaboration, often honing scripts in preproduction. Jacobson's original screenplay for "Down in the Valley" was a darker "Badlands"-style murder spree. Norton helped bring out the contrast between Harlan's old-school (albeit deranged) grit, and the kids' shallow modern environment.

"David (Jacobson) and I have been talking about (`Down in the Valley') for three years together," Norton says. "We spent six months writing, two months prepping, we shot it, we edited it for a year together. It's been a very deep collaboration. I think it was worth it to both of us because we had a lot of feeling for it."

For his part, Jacobson, who previously directed the dark indie films "Dahmer" and "Criminal," welcomed Norton's involvement.

"I felt OK because Edward is really smart and we see things in a similar way," says Jacobson. "He didn't say `Let's turn this into my vision.' It was more like, `Let's find out ways to sharpen your vision.'"

Norton points out that he has often put total trust in a director, citing David Fincher ("Fight Club"), Spike Lee ("25th Hour"), Woody Allen ("Everyone Says I Love You") and Milos Forman ("The People vs. Larry Flint").

"Sometimes it's just really nice if it's a filmmaker that you've got a shorthand with them, or you know their work and you love it — it can be great," he says. "But I don't feel that that often."

Norton tried the director's chair himself in the 2000 comedy "Keeping the Faith." and plans to direct again.

He has a couple upcoming movies, playing a turn-of-the-century magician in "The Illusionist" (out in August) and starring alongside Naomi Watts in "The Painted Veil" (due in the fall). Right now, he's shooting "Pride and Glory," a story about a family of New York policemen.

Surprisingly, Norton doesn't envision himself acting steadily for decades to come.

"There's some work in front of me that I absolutely want to see through," he says. "But I don't want to get to be 80 and look back and go, `All I did was make movies.'"

Instead, he's interested in something "away from the arts entirely," but doesn't know what. He has, though, spent an increasing amount of time working on environmental causes and housing efforts for healthier communities.

It's a cause that runs in the family: his father, Edward Sr., has worked for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and his grandfather, James Rouse, was a famous developer. Rouse devised the 1967 planned community of Columbia, Md., where Norton was raised.

Norton says his interest is less due to his background than "a generational sense." Either way, it appears to inform his films — especially "Down in the Valley," where paradise has been paved over.

"Harlan is the one who's got a sense of that," he says. "He's got a sense of what's wrong, what's been lost."