James Ransone is beaming as he walks into our interview at the Redbury Hotel. Probably best known for his character Ziggy Sobotka from Season 2 of The Wire, he exclaims that he is happy to be working again with director and friend, Sean Baker. Looking like a dead ringer for Christian Bale in The Machinist, Ransone takes a seat across from me at the round table. He opens up quickly, explaining how he first met Baker at an animal hospital, his struggle finding work post-Tangerine, and playing the role of another self-proclaimed “shitty asshole” character. We begin:
What were you drawn to in playing ‘Chester’?
I can’t help but try to play the funny in things, even if it might be wrong. I’m an idiot and will do the fall for the laugh, so I went for anything that I could find funny. Chester is based off of a couple of real people that I met through Sean (Baker, director) when he was doing research for the movie. I just take their mannerisms and amplify them and try to make them a little bit bigger.
Did you stick solely to the script?
No, the way Sean and Chris (Bergroch, writer) work is they make scriptments, about 30-45 pages. We’ll have the scene and go over it, and there will be certain lines that we all have to hit to make sure the plot propels itself forward, but then everything else can be an add-on. It’s actually a really fun process because it’s like writing jokes for standup comedy on the fly, but then you’re also trying to do it in the context of a very serious narrative. I only worked on set for 2 or 3 days, and it was so fun to have that freedom of like, “Maybe this joke works!”
When did you first meet Sean, and what keeps you answering his calls?
Haha, right now I can’t get a job to save my life! I’ve been auditioning for 8 months straight and no one’s hiring me for anything so, if anyone’s calling continuously I’ll work for them. Like, “Ok man, what are we doing next? I’ll fly myself there, it’s totally good.”
Laughter
Sean and I met in a really weird way. My dog got hit by a car and Sean’s dog was in the animal hospital at the same time. He told me he liked my work from The Wire, he was really sweet about it. Then we started seeing each other at Crunch [Gym] and he told me he was making Starlet. I understand the types of movies Sean is trying to make; the thread across all of them is that they’re labor movies, vocations. It’s all about the disassociation between people that might otherwise be marginalized because of their vocations and then humanizing them. Just because you have this job doesn’t mean that that defines your entire identity. I’m really interested in that personally, not just as an actor.
Your last role with Sean was the “shitty boyfriend”.
Yeah! Let’s be honest, with Sean I was like, “A shitty asshole again?” At least the reaction from Tangerine is like, “Chester’s really likeable.” Alright, but I’m still the same shit head I was in Sean’s last movie.
Nothing personal.
Sean didn’t want me to do the movie at first because it was too much like Starlet. I was working on a play in New York and he asked me for a friend of mine’s number to play Chester. My friend never called him back. Sean’s like, “Hey so he never called back. Do you mind just showing up…?” Dude!
Did you approach coming to set any differently, being that Tangerine was shot on an iPhone?
It didn’t really impact me. I don’t care if it’s a $30 million movie or a $200,000 movie, if I’m not running the dog– me being the dog– every day, I feel terrible. Sean told me he was going to use iPhones and I was like, “Cool, that’s fine.” The only thing that I thought about was all of the other luxuries that would be lacking from a closed off set. The Donut Time was technically still open. That’s the shit where, I don’t care about the phone, but I care about the fact that I’m gonna be saying some line and some meth head is gonna cruise in at 2:30 on a Wednesday demanding a bunch of donuts and ruin my best take.
Were a lot of takes ruined that way?
There were a couple, yeah.
Can you talk about working with Mya and Kiki?
It would be the same as if I worked with anybody else. You do anything long enough, you’ll eventually get good at it. They just hadn’t done that much before, and there’s enough raw stuff there that I didn’t think, “Oh great, first time actors.” Kiki was really f*cking funny. Really fast. One instance actually made it in the movie, where I was like, “Come on spit it out,” and she goes, “I swallowed,” and I go, “I set myself up for that one.” That was a genuine comeback.
Did you have any idea the reception at Sundance would be what it was?
No, I’m really happy that it’s the little engine that could. I’m a really harsh critic of my own work and I’m pretty objective about stuff. I was at Sean’s house and he was showing me early cuts of the film and I remember thinking to myself, “This is really good.” I usually don’t have that reaction. Most times it’s like, “F*ck, where’s the movie we shot? This is not it!” So, it’s not surprising because Sean is really talented. I’m happy that it’s doing well but I’m not surprised.
