We haven't seen Elizabeth Banks give a performance as she does in Paul Haggis' new thriller The Next Three Days. Being a wonderful comedic talent, she's appeared on the big screen in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Role Models, Zach and Miri Make a Porno and Wet Hot American Summer, and on the small screen in Scrubs and 30 Rock. Now, opposite Russell Crowe, she takes a dramatic turn and delivers one of this year's best supporting performances as Lara Brennan, a wife and mother accused of killing a co-worker. At a roundtable interview, Ms. Banks spoke with the OWF about her experience making The Next Three Days. She also discussed her upcoming directorial debut - a short film entitled "Middle School Date," which will be included in the Farrelly brothers project "Movie 43." OBSESSED WITH FILM: You shot The Next Three Days in an actual working prison. Did you get to meet and connect with any of the inmates?
ELIZABETH BANKS: I wouldn't say I bonded with any of the inmates, but I did speak with them. My character, she's incarcerated at the Allegheny County Jail, where we actually shot the movie. So of course it was really helpful in terms of getting into character. I got to sit with the inmates. I got to be locked in a cell, and I lasted about two minutes before I was like get me the he'll out of here. It's very... Well... They don't have bars in their doors. It's like heavy steel doors with a little window. You feel, also, not just incarcerated, but sort of institutionalized. You really feel like you're going to get a labotomy in five minutes. It was very easy to imagine the isolation of being there, and the depression. Just all of it. And being there with the inmates, I sat with probably forty or fifty women on this one cell block. Some were playing cards and they had a movie playing on a wall, but they don't turn of the lights off so you can't really make out the movie, and the sound is bad. It's really not a fun place to be. Most of the women I met with were either drug offenders, parole violators. None of them were super violent women on this particular cell block, but some women were going to be there for up to three years. Other prisons are actually better than the Alleghney County Jail because they have services and they have outdoor space. There is no outdoor space at the Alleghney County Jail. You never see the sun.
OWF: Did the inmates have any particular requests about the filmmaking process?
BANKS: They were like me. The were interested in authenticity. For example, I had this issue with my costume. We had all prison issued costumes. We went to the jail and we asked them for their old stuff. And we bought them new stuff. I'm pretty sure that's how we ended up doing it. So I wore all the clothes that they get. Everything. Socks, underwear. All prison-issue everything. It's itchy and scratchy. It's thin. It's gross. But the worst part is they had this elastic waistband that literally like cuts into you. And I'm tiny. You wouldn't thing this, but it cuts into you. I said, "How do you guys deal with this thing?" I asked for it to be a drawstring. I literally went right back to the costumer and said, "Can I have this as a drawstring?" She said, "If it's not a drawstring it's not authentic". So when I was sitting with the inmates, I asked them about it and they said, "We rip it apart and we take whatever we can and we make it a drawstring". And if they get caught they get what's called an Automatic Twenty-Four, which means they have to spend twenty-three out of twenty-four hours in their cell alone. But sometimes the guards are cool about it because they know it's really uncomfortable. It sort of depends. So, I went back to the costume designer and I said, "Actually authenticity says, yes, I can have a drawstring because I know Lara Brennen is smart enough to have figured out how to get rid of this horrible elastic waistband!" It was really interesting just to hear how they deal with all those little indignities every day. And how they really are fighting on a moment by moment basis for some sense of freedom. Another authentic thing was with my hair. I met several women whose dyed hair was growing out. So, you know, they had like black roots, and then blond. This made me realize that my character's hair would actually go back to brown.
OWF: Did you find that some of the inmates had the issue that they were innocent and not guilty? Did you get to speak with any prisoners that had that same issue?
BANKS: I didn't ask anyone about their innocence. I think that everyone that I spoke with amazingly seemed sort of resigned to what was going on. There was definitely some angry people. And almost all of them had kids. I asked, "How many of you have kids on the outside?" And nearly every hands went up. "How do you deal with that and communicate?" They have a phone bank on their cell block. They can buy cards so that they can talk. They can be on the phone for a while. As long as the guard approves it, they can be on the phone whenever they want. So in the middle of the night they can be on the phone. They have a lot of ways to visit with people. This one woman I saw was upstairs talking because her kid was in the hospital and her sister was there to give her the update. That struck me. Paul , in writing this movie and giving us a little boy.. for me that whole movie. It made the stakes of the movie so much higher. It's not just a love story, it's the story about a man who has a motherless child and needs to figure out how he's going to get his son's mother back. I walked a really fine line emotionally and psychologically while I was doing this. I felt one of the goals of my character was to get to the point where I could say to this man on one of his visits, "You need to find another mother for our son". And would I be able to actually give up that role and say that out loud? Knowing that it's the best thing for him and knowing that he's... We're not connected. I can't mother him from in here. Or do I need to fight to be mothering him so that when he's older he knows I've tried the whole time and he was the one who put up his walls, which he has the right to do? It's very, you know, emotionally tricky. And it was emotionally tricky for me figuring out how I would be able to say that. I really feel like she actually gets to the point where she can push them away. It's her coping mechanism. She's resigned herself to thinking, "This is my fate. I'm in here and you don't know what I'm dealing with. I'm going to move on because I have to and you should do the same". And it's sort of like the minute she's ready to say that, he's like, "I'm going to break you out".
OWF: It's tough on the kid because he is portrayed as just not responding to you at all.
BANKS: I think that's right on. It felt to me like, why would you make an emotional connection with someone you can't rely on?
OWF: The action scenes pretty intense. Can you give us an idea as to what filming those scenes was like?
BANKS: The scariest day for me was when we drove through a tunnel. Russell drove. We were in this SUV with the camera guy, sound guy and director with us. We're driving through this tunnel. It's two lanes. Walls on both sides. And it's not straight. It's a curving tunnel. They said, "Action!" And we start driving. Russell hits fifty miles per hour and suddenly he says, "Take the wheel!" And I'm like, "What?!" He said, "Take the wheel!" I'm like, "We're not really doing this. Were all going to die"! That was the scariest day for me, the Take the Wheel Day, because I really thought, 'I'm going to ram this car into a wall and kill all of us'. But it worked out. Russell had enough trust in me that it would work out, and it did. That day, for me, was very harrowing. All the driving stuff was.
OWF: What about scene in which you're hanging out the door?
BANKS: The Hanging Out the Door Day wasn't that scary, but it was physically not fun. But we actually shot the Hanging Out the Door sequence in three sections. We shot it on the side of the highway. We shot it in this other area off the highway. And then we shot the whole spin of the car and all that on a sound-stage with a huge green-screen. So, I got to hang outside the car when we were filming on the green-screen day, whipping around with fans and all. At one point I was hanging out the door and I was so far out of the car, was hanging onto my foot!
OWF: Knowing the script, didn't you expect to take the wheel?
BANKS: I sort of knew something was coming up, but what happened was we did this on the rehearsal when he said "Take the wheel!" But we were really driving. We had no stunt drivers in the car. It just became like, we've got to ratch this scene up, and he had to take his jacket off. It's like he needed to take his jacket off. We're in a hurry. "Take the wheel!" I think he let up on the gas a little but it was, you know.
OWF: I read something somewhere that they really don't want artists and actors and lawyers and people like that on juries because they can imagine what it's like to be incarcerated.
BANKS: I think that's probably right.
OWF: When you came out of this experience, what was your level of compassion for some of these prisoners? Did you feel we need to free some of these prionsers?
BANKS: Yeah, I'm a total softie on that stuff. But after seeing that, I absolutely believe that there are people who should be separated from society. I believe there are bad people. My experience in looking at humanity as an actress lead me to believe that we have a tendency to act violently. So, I think that there are bad people for sure. I also believe that there a lot of people who have drug and alcohol abuse issues, who have domestic abuse issues, and who we probably need to be serving with social services, and instead we throw them in jail because we have no other place for them. You know, there were clearly women who were uneducated. A lot of women I spoke to, clearly were not very well educated. And I think their ignorance of the system just generally sort of gets them in trouble. One of the things I also did was I watched prisoner intake, which is pre-booking; when they literally bring them in for the first time, after the police have picked them up from wherever they were. So I saw this guy who was in a bar fight, and he was just out of his mind. He had no shoes on. His face was blown up. And I saw this woman being admitted. And again, she was out of her mind. High as a kite on God knows what. A total mess. Resisting arrest. Throwing herself around this room. Just a total crazy case.
OWF: She was a danger to other people?
BANKS: I don't know if that woman is really a danger to other people, but she was definitely a danger to other people in that moment. She clearly needed to be helped and put away, but I donít know if throwing her in jail really helps her. I don't know if this is going to prevent her from being back there a week later.
OWF: Have you ever been in trouble?
BANKS: I've never been arrested, but I've texted in my car and I know it's bad
OWF: This isn't the first time you've filmed a movie in Pittsburg.
BANKS: Right, I filmed Zack and Mirk Make a Porno in Pittsburg, too. I really enjoy filming in Pittsburg. I generally like going on location with a crew. I'm shooting a movie in New York right now, and at the end of the day everybody goes home to their wives and their husbands and their babies, and it's very much like a job. We go to work and then we go home. But when you're filming on location with everyone, at the end of the day everyone's like, "So, letís hang out!" Because there's no one else to hang out with. Because our husbands and wives aren't with us. It's almost like going to camp when you make a movie. I'm a big believer in the value of location shoots because it brings everybody together and it's like we're all in this as a team and we're really focused on just making the movie.
OWF: You're staring to flex you're creative muscle now. You're also a director.
BANKS: Yes, I did just direct a little comedy short for the Farrelly Brothers. They're making this thing called Movie 43. It's sort of like a Kentucky Fried Movie, which is one of their favorite movies, as I'm sure would seem totally obvious for the Farrelly brothers to like that movie. Pete and Bobby called me and said, "Do you want to be in on this project? Will you act in one of these films?" They showed me all of the people involved in writing and directing these films, and there were no women on the list. I said, "I have an ambition to direct someday. I would absolutely be involved with this for you guys, but I want to direct one, too". I said, "Iíll bring you something. I'll pitch you some ideas. I know what you like and I'm sure we'll find something that you guys will be into". I brought in a female writer and we pitched them a bunch of ideas. We sort of whittled it down to three that they really liked. We wrote three scripts. They actually, I think, wanted to make a different one than the one we filmed. The script that we chose, the one that we filmed, I chose because Chole Grace Moretz plays the lead in it. And she wins, if you will. She comes out ahead of all the boys in the short. And I really wanted them to have one movie in this large set of shorts where the girl saves the day.
OWF: Whats it called?
BANKS: Its called Middle School Date.
OWF: And how was your experience directing? Did it match up to what you thought it would be like?
BANKS: It did, yeah. I loved the prep. I loved the actors surprising me. I loved shaping the performance. I loved the editing process; I'm like totally anal about editing. I loved shaping the music, and just everything. I had so much fun with it. And I just loved my actors. I had Chris Mintz Plasse and Jimmy Bennet and Patrick Warburton and Matt Walsh as well.
OWF: Maybe you'll be able to direct an episode of 30 Rock?
BANKS: Maybe, I don't know if I want to though. TV is a different experience because you're really serving the show runners. It's not really a directors medium. Not that I wouldn't love to direct some TV, especially some cable TV, which I think would be amazing. But, you know, ultimately 30 Rock has a style and it's established. The directors are great, but you're not putting your own personal stamp on that material.
OWF: Considering the things your character Lara does in the film, would you have done anything differently?
BANKS: Well, I probably wouldn't have lost control on my boss. I probably never would have done that. But we a made decision about this early on. We never really talked about "Did she or didn't she commit the murder?" We just decided that, if she really did kill this woman, she didn't do it out of malice. That, as I was saying, people have a tendencey towards violence. Chaos happens. Things get out of control and bad things happen to good people all the time. And that was the situation that she was in. She was a good person and a bad thing happened.
OWF: Your characters overall disposition about your husband trying to break you out of jail is quite negative, given the consequences of course. It's certainly not something she preferred.
BANKS: Well she didn't have a choice. This was going to happen. And I think it's very clear that I'm upset with him for trying to break me out. And that's the reason behind it. Also, I think in doing what he does, it's a difference between men and women. I think women go "Eh, there's all these consequences". We like to put some thought into our actions. You know, like, "We're going to leave our kid? Who's going to raise him?" All this stuff. Whereas hes like, "I'm going to break you out". He's so masculine about it. He's like, "I've got it all figured out and I've got a gun. Lets go! It's like I don't really have a choice in that moment".
OWF: After The Next Three Days, what's next for you?
BANKS: Well right now I'm making this movie called Man on a Ledge. I guess that's the next thing that's coming out for me? I don't know. I might have made another movie in between that one and this one.
The Next Three Days is in U.K. cinema's now. You can read our review of the film, HERE.