Wow! It's a The Power Issue double-header!

Continuing our coverage of Hate Crime's release on DVD, we'd like to present an interview with a 25-year old actor named Brian J. Smith (pictured in a scene with Cindy Pickett). Currently finishing up his final year at New York's famed Julliard, Smith plays Trey: the victim of the movie's titular hate crime.

We hit it off so well that we started chatting before we could even turn on the tape-recorder! For a little context to the transcript below, we had just been chatting about Smith's role in a play about repressed Catholic boys putting on a production of Romeo and Juliet. Needless to say, the production's mired in both latent homosexuality and homophobia.

While writer/director Tommy Stovall chatted with us about the making of the movie, Smith discusses the power of acting, compares the puissance of film and stage and explains how acting gave him the strength to work through some pretty nasty family drama. Where the theater once worked to help Smith escape reality, it's now his tool for connection: a formidable weapon, indeed.

Queerty: Did you grow up with a religion?

Brian J. Smith: I grew up in Texas. I’m from the Dallas area. My parents are religious in the way that most Americans are religious. It’s not a church going, Bible thumping religion. It’s the Christian morality, but without the church: without the actual practicing of it. It’s all the guilt without the practice.

QT: So how was coming from Texas to New York? How was that transition for you?

BJS: It was frightening. It was a little easier for me because I was living in the dorms at school, so I didn’t have to deal with going out and getting an apartment... You have two years in the dorms where you kind of get to put your foot in and see if you like this and find parts of town that you really like.

QT: How did you get involved in Hate Crime?

BJS: I had just finished my first year at Julliard. I have an agent in Dallas and I would go back and audition for commercials and things like that. This film came along, which is kind of odd, because they don’t usually do films in Dallas… So, I went in and auditioned and met Tommy. I originally auditioned for Christopher Boyd. They were like, “Eh, come back and read this other part” and that was Trey and that’s how that happened.

QT: And it was a positive experience for you?

BJS: It was. I’d done commercials and things like that, but mostly it was just theater before that, so it was a very good experience. It was Tommy’s first film, too. So we had the same kind of nerves. [Also] there were so many people on the film who had been doing this for so long that they were very understanding about it and very helpful.

QT: So, which you do prefer: stage acting or film?

BJS: Stage… On stage, the actor is the editor and the director. After six weeks of rehearsal, the actor is the editor, the director, the cinematographer – all of these things in the moment. You’re bringing the audience’s attention to you based on what you do. The audience is only interested in you based in that moment. They have no frame other than what you’re doing.

QT: Did you always want to be an actor?

BJS: I don’t know if I knew I wanted to be an actor. When I was a kid, I was very dramatic and I was a very intense little kid. I would always force my friends to play weird, imaginative games with me – and I think all kids do, but I was a little more insistent with it. It just made sense by the time I was a junior in high school – it just made sense that this is what I would end up doing. There were some really crappy things going on in my life at that time, so acting gave me a way to handle all that and express it.

QT: Like what?

BJS: My parents were going through a really awful, terrible, disgusting divorce. I think one of the worst divorces I’ve ever heard of. It was really bad. So that allowed me each night to go on stage or rehearsal and either be something else or to be myself and give voice to things that I couldn’t do or express in life.

QT: Do you like disappearing into a role?

BJS: Oh yeah. That’s why film is harder, because you can’t disappear. Film is actually asking you to really be there as yourself. It doesn’t want a character. It doesn’t want something else. It wants you completely unadorned in that moment.

QT: There’s more essential humanity in film, whereas when you’re watching something on stage you’re there so you know it’s fantasy, a fabrication.

BJS: Someone was telling me you have three mediums: you have television, theater and film. Television is smaller than life, film is actually larger than life, but stage is the size of life. Even though people think that it’s larger… Film is very small, but it’s blown up, so the smallest things become huge in film. Stage is all about what I’m doing with my foot and my face and my hands. Film is about what’s happening when my left eye twitches, but it’s blown up.

QT: Do you still want to do more film?

BJS: Yeah, I’d love to. You have to as an actor – doing commercials and things like that, that’s how you make most of your income so you can do theater. But film – it’s this whole other thing. Some people fit really easily into film and some people have to learn their way into it. And I kind of have to learn my way into it.

QT: Hate Crime got a lot of really positive reviews. That must feel nice for your first film…

BJS: Yeah, it was really nice. I didn’t even know who would see it. I guess it’s kind of like that when you’re doing a film. You’re just involved with what’s happening on the set and the shoot each day, that you don’t even think of the larger picture and think, “Wow, people are going to be watching this”. [It] is kind of weird, because in theater, you’re always thinking about the audience and in film you’re thinking, “Alright, how can we make this work right now?”. You’re never thinking, “Oh, wow, people are going to enjoy this movie.” Once it’s all done and six months later, it’s so out of your life in a way, people start talking about it.

QT: With whom do you want to work? Who are some of your favorite actors?

BJS: Declan Donnellan. He runs this theater company called Cheek By Jowl. I just like the way he thinks about acting: [it’s] a lie. It’s really interesting to me. The way he talks about acting and actors is really moving to me. It’s like you’re acting all the time. We’re all playing a role. We all have a persona that we’ve become so good at, and that acting is taking on that other persona of perfecting someone else’s persona that they’ve spent a lifetime building up. But also getting underneath that and seeing how when you get in a crisis situation, that persona dissolves and the anesthetic dissolves and the real animal person comes out. That’s why Shakespeare’s so great. He’s all about that – what happens when someone is in this terrible tragedy… It’s like when you have a parent die or something awful happen in your life, who you are doesn’t make sense anymore. That’s fascinating to me. As far as screen goes: Meryl Streep. She’s an absolute goddess.

QT: Any men?

BJS: Ryan Gosling. Did you see Half Nelson?

QT: I saw The Notebook.

BJS: He’s amazing. I thought the movie was so fucking corny, but those two [Gosling and Rachel McAdams] had the most amazing chemistry! I thought he was incredible. If I could have anyone’s film career, that’s what I would like – he’s just so authentic and so charged and yet he can transform without you seeing the gears turning, without you seeing the acting.

QT: Do you ever want to write?

BJS: Yeah, I’d love to write, actually. I’ve never really done it, but I read so many plays and I think, “Oh, gosh, this isn’t helpful. It only there was this clue in there”. As an actor, I feel like I know what other actors need from a piece of writing.

QT: Do you relate to other actors?

BJS: I love actors!

QT: You’re a pretty weird crew, you know?

BJS: I totally understand what we go through and how hard is to have something to say and have something you want to express and to feel blocked or to feel – or have a rehearsal where it’s not working or it’s not coming out. It’s awful. But the moments when it does work and it’s flowing and you’re totally released: I relate to that. It’s a brave thing to do: to try and give people something with your body.