Space Case

By: Pamela Harland
Date: Wednesday, October 31, 2001

He is smooth. He is calm. He is debonair. Kevin Spacey embodies old Hollywood in his classic style. Always dressed up in a suit and tie when doing press for his films, Spacey takes his job seriously. That strict devotion is what garnered Spacey two Academy Awards thus far THE USUAL SUSPECTS ('95) and AMERICAN BEAUTY ('99). And that drive is what allows us to believe he truly is the embodiment of every character he portrays, including a misguided soul from another planet in his new film K-PAX.

Spacey plays Prot, a man found wandering in a New York train terminal and institutionalized for his odd behavior. Soon the doctors, among them psychiatrist Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges), take a keen interest in Prot, wondering whether or not he really is from the planet K-PAX.

But the 42-year-old Spacey, at first, wasn't set to be in the film. The script, based on the book by Gene Brewer, was floating around a few years back when Spacey got a hold of it. At the time the role being offered to him was Jeff Bridges' part of the psychiatrist, a character Spacey was not interested in doing - and the role of Prot was already cast.

"[The project] went away for

whatever reason and that incarnation of the film didn't get made," says Spacey. "Three and a half years went by and the producers came back and said, 'Well, would you be interested in playing Prot?' And so we went and got a better psychiatrist than I would have been in Jeff. So sometimes it's worth the wait."

Having played an extraterrestrial being in the John Carpenter film STARMAN 17 years ago, Bridges was content on being the psychiatrist for the film. But, says Spacey, the two did discuss Bridges' turn as an alien, sometimes in jest.

"I basically used to kid him a lot by saying, 'Now you have the Karen Allen part (Bridges co-star/girlfriend in STARMAN).' And he was like, 'Yeah, god***it, I do.' Yeah, we talked about that. There was a very specific alien form in the human body and what Jeff did so brilliantly in that movie was that he wasn't used to moving in that body so there was all that incredible, almost mechanical technique to his acting. What we wanted in this film was different. I thought that movie was very funny but for this film we felt very strongly that the humor couldn't be all those wacky people in the mental home and Prot couldn't be eccentric in a way that was very broad. We felt it had to be real in order for the film to earn that turnabout an hour and forty five minutes into the movie."

Finding his niche in playing Prot, Spacey went to several mental institutions in New York. Obviously his research was limited by the inability to talk with people from a different planet, although several people he came across in the facility may beg to differ.

"One of the questions that I asked the staff was, 'Is there anyone here who thinks that they're from outer space?' and they said, 'Oh yeah, there is like 11 people.' And that was true in almost every place that we went to. I met a number of them who were absolutely convinced that they were from another planet and they had foil on their buttons and tin foil on their ears because you get better reception apparently. So it is not uncommon in mental facilities for a large group of people to believe they are from a distant planet or galaxy."

In creating his own

distant galaxy, Spacey used a lot of what author Brewer wrote in his book along with some added background information Spacey continually went to mentally when he felt he needed any sort of justification for his character. Hair and costume also played a key role in how to make Prot act, move and speak. Adding those important aspects to the role was something he admits co-star Bridges helped him develop. At first Spacey was dressed more pristine and his hair was combed in an orderly fashion. Bridges thought that didn't really work for a man who should look like he was just beamed from thousands of light years away or even a troubled man who believes he is from another planet. Either way it just didn't seem to fit. One day in rehearsal he broached the question with Spacey.

"He said, 'Are you going to wear that hair piece that you tested?' and I said, 'Well, yeah, we were thinking of it, why?' He said, 'I don't know.' And so we talked about it and I talked about what I was trying to do and it made me start to think, 'Well am I wrong about how I'm making him look?' And then that led to 'How am I dressed?' And then literally within two days I completely changed the way I was dressed and how I was looking."

In the end Spacey says he felt he really did look more appropriate for the role, looking like he had arrived on a beam of light or that he had crawled out from under a train. In turn it worked better for him to blend in with the other mental patients at the hospital and not stand out like a well-kept actor.

Spacey also credits director Iain Softley for helping him keep a good balance of ambiguity for Prot.

"It's a question of putting yourself in the hands of a skilled director," explains Spacey. "He then takes that balance and he allows the evidence as the film goes on to sort of... almost present itself in the movie as a mystery where you keep thinking that, 'It's this,' and then, 'Well, no, wait. Maybe it's that.'"

Whether you believe that Prot

is an alien or a troubled man, says Spacey, depends on your sense of wonder and your sense of believability in something like this.

"Some people don't believe in E.T. the movie, others swear by it," says Spacey. "When you have an ambiguous kind of film that doesn't want to give the audience the answer, that wants to allow them at the end of the movie to go, 'Well, I think that it was this. No, no, don't you know, he was really embodying the body.' And all those arguments that go on, that's all valid."

Not willing to commit to either belief himself, at least not to the press, Spacey says he does believe in other beings in our world. And that it would be too ignorant for us to think there wasn't some other life form amongst us.

"I like to believe that there is intelligent life," says Spacey. "I don't know what form that it takes. I don't believe that it's little green men but I do think that we can't possibly be the only beings in the universe that can communicate and procreate."

As to whether or not they've actually landed on our plant and are among us, Spacey gives a more concrete answer.

"Oh believe me, I've often thought that I was working with them," laughs Spacey.