Exclusive: Demetri Martin takes on “Taking Woodstock”

Photo credit Bobby Bank/WireImage

Martin was especially worried about getting his one kiss with another man right and turned to some of the gay men on the film crew to make sure he was believably playing the part.

I have friends who have done a gay scene, but it’s always like kind of jokey; it would be like on Saturday Night Live, like a guy kissing a guy and everybody is like, ‘Oh my god, they’re not gay.’ But this is an entirely different task. This has to be like real. And there were some gay guys on the crew and there would be scenes I’d do and I’d kind of check with them, like, ‘Did I sell that right?’ Now of course I think in the end, heterosexual or gay love isn’t going to be very different, but still if you’re a heterosexual person and you’re trying to portray something accurately here, you have to do it correctly.

What did that particular scene involve?

There’s a scene where I kiss a guy – the only scene where I have a real kiss – and I’m on a dance floor and these girls pull me in to dance with them in my family’s bar in the motel, and they pull me onto the dance and a girl plants a kiss on me and then I push away from her. And then a guy grabs me and swings me around and kisses me, and at first I pull back, like who’s kissing me? And then I see him and I’m like, ‘Oh my god – it’s you!’And then I go back in for the kiss and it’s more passionate and it’s real and there’s a catharsis and everybody cheers.

The second kiss – once I pull away and I go back in – I remember asking one of the guys on the crew named David, ‘Did I sell that well enough? Like did that look like I was into him enough?’ Not that it takes a gay guy to know that. A girl probably could have told me as much, but, I don’t know, there seems to be a certain deference and creditability.

The moment was especially important to Martin’s character as it marked not only his coming out publicly, but coming out to his father as well. “It’s a real kind of moment, and my father in the movie is there, and right after I kiss him I realize, ‘Oh my God, my dad doesn’t know that I’m gay and I look, and he’s gone.’ Like, a moment before we saw him sitting there, this happened on the dance floor and I’m like elated, and then I catch myself and I look and say, uh-oh, what have I done?”

But looking back Martin believes the true acting challenge wasn’t the kiss; it was believably trying to go back in time and capture what Tiber felt and thought back then.

I think that’s where the acting test really came in. Not so much in showing affection for another person. It is how do you let your guard down in a time that we don’t know right now? I’m sure a lot of gay people do know that time right now. Maybe if you live in a certain town in the Midwest – I’m sure it’s very real still. But in 1969 in New York … cops just go into a bar and they can just do as they please or just rough people up as if they’d committed a crime or something. I think that’s where it got – that was a real period piece and it was a real task to communicate that and to convey that.

What in particular was Martin able to bring to the part?

I think what I could really bring to it was an awkwardness and a vulnerability. When you’re just not comfortable in your own skin. Nobody is born cool as a baby and just like has it, you know? Even like running in the movie. There were times I had to run and I tried to remove all layers of trying to look cool and tough and just be vulnerable. Not that that’s necessarily gay, that’s just - in order to become this guy who is gay I wanted to just be a vulnerable person.

Indeed, it was that vulnerability which Martin found both fascinating about the role and easiest to connect with.

I think that what’s more interesting is that if you’re trying to hide something, the more vulnerable the person is, I think that’s a greater struggle to hide something. [I think if you aren’t vulnerable or hiding something] that’s a less interesting struggle to me. Whatever the person’s sexuality or religion or whatever it is.

Appearing in virtually every scene of the movie left Martin feeling vulnerable; that in turn, convinced how important trust was in succeeding in the part.

On the movie set I learned that trust is maybe the most valuable thing because I need to trust the director. I need to trust the script. I need to trust the other people in the scene, and trust hair and makeup and all that stuff. I can’t control that. And that’s where I wanted feedback because you don’t want to do a caricature either.

Given Martin’s thoughtfulness and Ang Lee’s track record with Brokeback Mountain and The Wedding Banquet it’s easy to trust that neither Martin’s performance nor Lee’s direction will do anything other than hit all the right notes.