Steve Buscemi, ISSUE Project Room

What can we say about Brooklyn's own Steve Buscemi? It's impossible not to love this guy, and we'll see any movie his name is attached to, whether he's in front of the camera or behind it or just hanging out by the craft service. But besides his many acting and directing projects, Buscemi is also a big supporter of the ISSUE Project Room, the "center for experimental culture" that started out in the East Village, relocated to that really cool silo by the Gowanus, and is now headquartered at the equally cool Old American Can Factory. Before Buscemi became a prominent film actor, he was actively involved in the 1980s East Village experimental theater scene, so it's no surprise that he's still into the kind of avant-garde work presented at ISSUE Project Room.

On Sunday June 6th, Buscemi will be the focus of an "Actor as Auteur" brunch at Bussaco in Park Slope. Between bites of waffles, he'll be talking with journalist and Co-Host of "The Takeaway" John Hockenberry about how the distinctive characters he plays in movies impact each film's narrative. Presented in collaboration with SAGIndie, proceeds from the fundraiser brunch will go to support Issue Project Room as it gets ready to relocate once again to a new (permanent?) home in the 5,000 sq ft. landmark theater at 110 Livingston Street in Downtown Brooklyn.

So you're doing this conversation brunch thing for the ISSUE Project Room. Are you a big brunch guy? Am I a brunch guy?

There's a lot of controversy about brunch. Some people hate brunch. The waiting, the harried service... they prefer to cook at home. Well, I have to say I usually don't go out to brunch. I usually do eat at home. But I'm not against brunches per se.

Okay, now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about ISSUE Project Room. How far back do you go with this place? Well, Suzanne Fiol, who was the founder, is a friend of my wife, and our kids knew each other, so that's how we initially knew Suzanne. So when she started ISSUE Project Room, we went to the original space in the East Village. I think the first time I was there was when she had a whole afternoon of teenage bands in which her daughter played in a band, actually with my son, and then my son's own band played there. Then she had a benefit for ISSUE Project Room when she was moving to the new space in Brooklyn, and we just realized that we knew a lot of the same people that Suzanne knew from our East Village days, although we didn't know Suzanne back then. When we realized the kind of music that she was supporting, and it was some of the people that we had known, like Elliott Sharp and Butch Morris, then we were really interested in supporting her and that endeavor. So we've both been involved with ISSUE Project Room since the beginning.

It seems like a lot of the performing arts scene has shifted from the East Village to parts of Brooklyn. I think you've spent a lot of time in Brooklyn—is that gratifying to you to see that center of gravity shift a bit? It's great, because when we moved from the East Village in 1990 we sort of felt like we were leaving this world behind, so it's been really nice to see it has a lot of the performance scene. Certainly the music scene seems to has not entirely moved to Brooklyn, but I think there are more venues because there are more musicians and actors and writers and dancers living in Brooklyn, and I think because of that they have been seeking out the venues that are closer to home. So I think it's been a real plus for Brooklyn.

Japanese experimental guiarist, Yoshitke Expe, at ISSUE Project Room (Lori Baily)

And then there's the flip side of that—there are artists coming to certain less-gentrified neighborhoods, then other people move in—some would call them yuppies—and the original people who weren't artists are priced out. Do you think that there is too much gentrifying happening in parts of Brooklyn? Gentrification is something that happens and has been happening... the city is always changing neighborhoods, always changing, and it's something that happens and I try not to look at it as necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, but as something that just happens and there's good and bad that goes along with it.

Back to the ISSUE Project Room: you're very supportive of this organization. What is it about them that you feel resonates with you so much? Well, I think it just gives a voice to a lot of artists who wouldn't necessarily be heard because a lot of the music and performances are really outside the mainstream, so there aren't too many venues left that are brave enough to showcase this material. And that's what Suzanne was all about—giving voice and recognition and exposure to all different kinds of music and performance, and I think the further people were pushing the boundaries the more she liked it.

What's the most memorable or one of the most memorable things you've seen as part of ISSUE Project Room? Boy, that's hard to say... I do remember one of the most memorable evenings was seeing Elliott Sharp there because he's somebody that my wife and I know well in our East Village days, and to see his work continue and grow, and then to experience his show with our son. To see how it affected my son and his friends that were there was really satisfying, because it no longer became my wife and I saying, "You should see this person," it was something that he was discovering for himself. I think it really resonated with him and his friends.

I also vividly remember seeing Susie Ibarra, who is a percussionist and drummer. It's kind of hard to describe her work, as it often is. But that was the last time I saw Suzanne at Issue Project Room, before she went into the hospital, and I just sat with her in the back and it was just a really cool performance. I used to just love watching Suzanne watch the performances. I remember walking over to the Old American Can Factory and the sky that night... the sunlight was like nothing I'd ever seen in New York. The clouds were this amazing color and somebody told me it was because of volcanic ash from somewhere, but I don't know from where.

Matt Mottel, current artist-in-residence at ISSUE Project Room (Lori Baily)

I was at P.S. 122 one night and I remember seeing a documentary that either you or your son made about some of the East Village performance art world at that time... That was part of The Howl festival. So there were a few of us who were asked to make these short films specifically to be shown at the festival, and I made mine about primarily Tom Murrin, the Alien Comic, who was a good friend of ours. He's a godfather of our son, and so I just had the idea to have my son interview him for the film. So that's why you remember my son being connected with it. And it also turned into being not only about Tom, but also some of the performers that he performed with - his Full Moon Crew, Dance Noise, and my wife, Jo Andres.

There's a tendency for someone like me, who didn't grow up at that particular time and place in the East Village, to be nostalgic for a time and place I wasn't part of. As someone who was there, do you feel nostalgic about it? I don't know if I feel nostalgic about it, I just feel blessed that I was there at that time. Recently my wife and I attended a benefit for Movement Research, an organization that works primarily with dances and choreographers, and they were honoring the group, Dance Noise, and it was just really a wonderful night because I saw many of my friends and performers from that time, and many of them performed that evening. It absolutely brought back a lot of memories, mostly because people were just starting out. There was this really strong community of dancers, musicians, actors, writers, all going to see each other's work, and just supporting it. Now we're older and we are more spread out, but just seeing some of those performances that night made me feel that some of the work is still continuing and it's still vital.

Do you go to see much experimental theater? Any new companies that you like? To tell you the truth, I don't get out much anymore... so, when I do, I guess I tend to stay with the work of people that I know. I just recently saw the Wooster Group perform North Atlantic.

Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, since I knew you'd been in it. Yeah, I saw the original production in the early or mid-'80s and I performed in it myself in the late '90s or 2000, so it was really fun to see it again in a different space. This time it was at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, which is a bigger space, with an audience that had, for the most part, never seen it before. So it was great to see it with all the new members, seeing Frances McDormand in it and Maura Tierney and of course Kate Valk, who's been in it since the beginning. It just brings back a lot of memories for me, remembering Ron Vawter, who was in the original, and Spalding Gray, both of whom are no longer with us. But the material still seemed relevant and fresh and very funny and still really out there. So, it was really satisfying. Did you get a chance to see it?

I did, and it was really amazing. The set design, with the raked stage, was spectacular. You didn't have that element, did you? Absolutely. That stage has been with the group since I can remember.

Oh, wow! I thought it was a really new stage element. Oh, no! They've used that for North Atlantic and for The Road to Immortality. They just take it apart and store it and every now and then they break it out again.

Do you miss jumping in there and swimming around with them or doing experimental theater work like that? I miss doing theater in general, but now I can watch it and just appreciate it and remember that I was a part of it. These days, I just don't have the time, or I guess, the inclination, to jump back in there, but I still feel it's part of me, and that I could always return to it. But right now I'm just enjoying the chances that I get to either see it or support it.

Do you want to say anything about Queer? Queer is a film that I'm hoping to direct someday... it's based on a novel by William Burroughs and written by Oren Moverman, who directed The Messenger. I imagine you're asking me about it because you just read that I did a staged reading of it at the Sarasota Film Festival. It went really well, and it was the first time we'd ever read it out loud, and it was really satisfying to do it, especially at Sarasota. We had a lot of sympathetic audience members who were there because it was Burroughs, but there were a lot of people who didn't know anything about the book. It's pretty rough material sometimes, but it was great bringing a work like that to people, especially some of the audience who I know maybe came to see me or Ben Foster or Stanley Tucci or John Ventimiglia—we were reading it—but then came away knowing something about Burroughs too.

So you want to raise the funds to produce it? Well, yeah. This has been something I've been wanting to do for a few years now. We're always trying, we're always looking for money and going down different avenues to get the film made. But I think certain films just get made when the timing is right. I'm trying to get other films made too, so it's not the only film on my plate that I'm trying to get made. But I'm confident that one day, hopefully soon, it will get made.

So my last question is about what you're doing now, which is Boardwalk Empire, is that right? Yeah, that's what's been taking up most of my time. I'm doing this show, it'll be a series on HBO. It's all about Atlantic City starting in 1920, and I play this character named Nucky Thompson who's the county treasurer of Atlantic City, and he's a politician. But he's just in that whole world of when things were changing, when prohibition hit in 1920, and women got the vote. So the series deals with a lot of different things, and my character just basically runs Atlantic City. We have real-life characters, although my character is fictional, he's based on a real-life person named Nucky Johnson, but they've changed the name. But there are characters like Arnold Rothstein, Lucky Duciano and Al Capone and Myer Lansky. Some of them were very, very young in 1920, so you get to see their start as well.

And you're shooting this around Brooklyn? Because I see signs up sometimes. Yeah, we're shooting it at Steiner Studios, and then there's a boardwalk set in Greenpoint. It's funny, we've found that we've mostly been shooting in church buildings, using them as nightclubs and the like.