Bonus: Much More with Chaske Spencer & Tinsel Korey!

DECEMBER 8, 2011

It’s a plight of every journalist – not every word can wind up in the final cut. Thanks to Icon’s generous editor-in-chief and the limitless magic of the Internet, however, I’m able to bring you much more of my enlightening interviews with Chaske Spencer and Tinsel Korey (the “Twilight” saga’s Sam Uley and Emily Young, respectively)! The questions begin on page 66 of the new Winter, 2011 issue, though you won’t find these particular intriguing insights in those published pages. Read on below as the pair enter in to far greater detail on their activism with Native issues, the future of their careers and plenty else…

Chaske…

How can people get involved with Be the Shift?
It’s mainly a philosophy. You look at the way the systems are made today – it’s obvious right now with the protests in downtown New York City – and they’re not working for the people. They’re broken. I don’t know if they’re broken on purpose – if they’re made to prevent people from getting the benefits this country is made of. I think it’s beyond Republican or Democrat – let’s just throw those ideas out the window. It’s not about socialism or capitalism. Be the Shift is putting the power back with the people. We lost sight of it a long time ago. We’re so dumbed down by programs on TV and other distractions that we have forgotten what our power is as a people. We can shift things economically, environmentally, spiritually… we can do all these great things but it takes that one person to make those steps. For me, as an example, it’s the way Natives are portrayed in the mainstream media – that’s what I can shift. And it’s not going to be an overnight thing. I can inspire a kid out there to take that on and create an even bigger impact down the road. If people really want to shift the system, they need to start something in their communities and bring awareness to themselves and to others. You can take on anything. I see a lot in the media today, especially on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC… they give you sound bites. I don’t believe half the stuff I see on TV anymore. It creates chaos so we turn off the TV and don’t pay attention to what’s going on. We’ve become conditioned to accept the way things are. There are a lot of people out there losing jobs who can’t feed their families. I’m very lucky I have a job right now. I get why people are angry – it’s really frustrating. I understand, especially being a Native American – we get the short end of the stick all the time. People need to educate themselves and make their own decisions. Don’t worry what someone’s telling you on the TV to bring their own ratings up. Pick up a book, go online, find out your own information.

Do you [photography is] something that could resurface in your future, even going as far as directing films, perhaps?
I think most photographers would agree that once you get that eye, it’s hard to not constantly see the world through a camera. I’ll be walking down the street or just sitting here and see pictures. Looking at a pair of shoes or a jacket hanging on my door I see shots, so it’s really good to keep a camera around. I think eventually I’ll go behind the camera – it’s inevitable. It’s not a matter of if, it’s when.

I’m a big film buff, yet outside Will Sampson and Wes Studi I struggle to think of prolific actors of pure American Indian descent. Do you feel this aids your niche and helps pave your path in Hollywood a bit, or does it corner you in?
It’s a bit of both. What’s going on in my career right now… there have been offers of roles that are not Native. I’ll be doing those films, but the Native roles I have been taking on are not your stereotypical movies. I did a movie called “Winter in the Blood” based on a James Welch novel. It’s about this guy struggling with his identity being half-breed – half Native and half white. What I like about it is that when I read the script – and I’d read the books – the character could have been played by anybody. It didn’t have to be a Native man; it could have been anyone, and that attracted me to it. Other roles I get offered a lot are your stereotype Native roles and I’ve turned a lot of stuff down, but the ones coming through have been independent films, which I like. Independent films try to break through barriers and don’t think inside the box, and I tend to go that way because, y’know, there’s a lot of crap out there right now. I’m attracted to roles I haven’t done before and roles that help break down stereotypes. Those are few and far between but they’re out there. Some of the scripts I’ve gotten are really good, and they’ve made me think twice about the whole Hollywood stereotype of Native culture. It’s getting better. It actually is getting better.

Even in something like “Twilight”, that mold is being broken.
Here’s the thing – it just takes time. What “Twilight” did is it introduced a whole outlook on Native people to a generation of kids who really had no idea and are more open-minded than your Generation X-ers with all the information coming to them through the Internet. A lot of them, they don’t just see us as “Native actors”. We don’t have the long hair, we’re not speaking in an accent… I was talking to a buddy of mine, and I don’t want to put us on a pedestal but we’re kind of like rock stars. Of course we have no shirts, it’s very sexualized, but it’s introduced us in a whole different way as Native entertainers. You can do with that whatever you want to. You can either view it in a negative way or a positive way, and I want to use it in a positive way and look for more roles that challenge me as an actor, as a producer, as a director, and for causes as well. It all depends on what you do with it when it’s given to you.

You’re covering how the “Twilight” Natives set themselves apart, but I would like to ask if you feel there is an intentional connection between their heritage and their lycanthropy. It does strike me that perhaps there is that connection between werewolves and Northwesten lore. What is your insight on the matter?
I’ve heard about the legends, especially after I got the part… I read the books, of course, as research, and there is a correlation there but I didn’t really take it as that. What really blew me away about Stephanie Meyer’s work on the “Twilight” books, especially when it came to the Native issue… it was like an escapist adventure. When I got to the roles of the wolf pack, I thought it was really cool – there isn’t really anything political about it; it’s pure entertainment. It could have gone in depth about Natives and werewolves, but for me it could have been Irish werewolves, too. It was something I was really excited to be a part of after reading [“New Moon”] and the script and talking with director Chris Weitz. Meyer has done a really good job of creating these vehicles that have really helped out myself and the other Native actors. I really tip my hat to her and Weitz for allowing us to be a part of that. It’s what we do with it now – it’s up to us.

I find that the wolf pack had an even more impressive presence in “Eclipse” – do you feel [that film’s director, David Slade] carried that on from what Weitz established?
He did, yeah, he did. I like working with the different directors – Chris Weitz is a favorite of mine because he hired me for the job; he’s always had a special place in my heart – and when David came on he trusted what we did with the characters and allowed us to do our thing. Working with [director of “Breaking Dawn”] Bill Condon, he was the same way. We talked about character development and how we wanted to portray this but he had a lot of trust in us.

Do you feel you’ve formed a sort of surrogate family akin to that of the characters you play?
I would go to battle with any of those boys. Alex [Meraz], Bronson [Pelletier], Kiowa [Gordon], Tyson [Houseman], Boo Boo [Stewart] – they’re like family now. And Julia [Jones] and Tinsel, we’ve developed this bond – it’s very special and I’m very grateful for that. And plus, being Native and struggling with trying to get work in film, we’ve all been through the same ringer. It’s not easy for us, but it got our feet in the door – we know that, we appreciate it, so we can call each other and talk about business stuff and just hash out the whole fame thing. We’re just trying to figure it all out. It’s nice to check in with each other. Then [Tinsel and Julia] came aboard, welcomed with open arms, and they complete the circle. We need them because they’re the females and they keep us in line!

What can you tell me about working with Tinsel?
She’s very professional, comes in ready to go with her scene work done. What I like is when an actor comes in and knows what they want. She comes in so prepared that she can shift gears when the director has a note or wants to do it a certain way, and I like working with people who don’t just do the same thing over and over again – it keeps you on your toes. Plus she’s just a really nice girl, a very good person.

How much do you think in to Sam and Emily’s backstories, or scenes that might take place off-screen, to help round out the characters?
I have this whole backstory going with Sam and Emily, and also with Leah. I do that with all the characters I play – I go back and try to figure out how things took place, and that shows up on screen. In a film, we’re taking time to see these characters in a point in their lives. When you see “Dog Day Afternoon” with Al Pacino, that’s one day in that character’s life and yet there’s this whole backstory. It reveals itself throughout the film, but… I don’t know Al Pacino or anything, but I’m sure as an actor he went through a whole backstory with the director. Same with “Twilight” – you only get a certain period in Sam Uley’s life, and there’s this whole story about how he came to be a werewolf. A lot of the faithful readers know he was the first one in his tribe or clique that shifted, and there was no one to help him go through that – he thought there was something wrong with him. So that’s why he’s a mentor to the other guys – when they shift, he’s there to walk them through it so they’re not alone. That’s one thing I really like about Sam, he was alone in all this, so he carries some weight. Being an actor is like being a journalist. You do all the research but when the time comes, when they yell “action”, it’s like jumping off a waterfall. You don’t know how you’re gonna fall. I like that, I like that. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s always good to have in your back pocket.

Personally, “Eclipse” is my favorite of the series thus far because it has those subtleties you mention – it allows the story to be developed through the words that aren’t spoken.
And [“Breaking Dawn”] is Bill Condon, a really brilliant director. I like that Summit has hired these fantastic directors who have brought their respective A-games to the table. Bill’s a real nice man, he’s a good man, I feel comfortable working with him. You’ve seen Terence Malick movies, right? I think he’s a master… it’s funny, working on “Winter in the Blood” with Alex and Andrew Smith – we wrapped that a month ago – we stole something from Malick. There’s a scene in “The Thin Red Line” where John Travolta had all this dialogue, like a page and a half of dialogue before going in to battle. Finally Malick looked and went, “Just scrap it – do the scene but do the dialogue in your head and we’ll shoot it that way.” It turned out brilliantly, and as an audience member I knew exactly what [Travolta] was thinking – just the look in his eyes and the way the scene was shot. That’s why I like when directors don’t dumb things down for their audience. We’re smart people, let us make those decisions on our own. So in “Winter in the Blood” there’s this scene with all this dialogue and we just pulled a Terry Malick. We wiped all the dialogue out and it’s a beautiful scene, if it makes the cut when it comes out. That’s what I liked about working with Alex and Andrew. They’re huge Malick fans, and their previous film was “The Slaughter Rule” with Ryan Gosling and David Morse. If you haven’t seen that movie, that’s a beautiful movie.

Speaking of Malick, You recently did “Shouting Secrets” with Q’orianka Kilcher of that director’s “The New World” and the somewhat Malick-esque “Princess Ka’iulani”.
She’s an amazing actress, a great young woman. She would talk about working with Malick, and the thing is, that was her first movie and the bar was set so high for her working with a director like that. Not every movie do you have a Malick directing you. She was telling me stories about how he would shoot, how gentle he was and how on the whole film set everyone had to dress in period clothes because you didn’t know where he was going to shoot – he really shoots from the hip, and he’s good at capturing things with spontaneity. I found, also, at Sundance talking with David Morse who worked on Sean Penn movies “The Crossing Guard” and “The Indian Runner”, that Sean Penn does the same thing – he looks for that spontaneity, he looks for actors that go out on that limb. I don’t know who said this but I’m going to steal this quote: the greatest thing you can do in front of a camera is discover something. David Morse told me if you can let yourself go and discover something, it shows up on camera. Working with David on “Winter in the Blood” was like going to school. I don’t know how many movies he’s done – 50, 60, 70 – but I learned so much from him in the couple weeks he was there. It’s the way he conducts himself on set, off set – he’s a genuine master of his craft but also a good man, a good man, and something I’d like to be. Right now David Morse is the best actor I’ve worked with. I feel passionate about “Winter in the Blood” because I really worked hard on that movie and it was one of those passion projects we just fought tooth and nail to get done. I sacrificed a lot of time and threw myself out there, and was taken care of by the beautiful directors Alex and Andrew. It felt like we were doing a movie in the ‘70s, like a Terence Malick movie or like “Five Easy Pieces”. We had a joke – we’d talk about movies in the ‘70s, because back then Hollywood greenlit a lot of great, artistic movies and we’d go, “Yeah, man, Hollywood would never greenlight ‘Five Easy Pieces’ anymore, when is anyone gonna shoot another ‘Five Easy Pieces’?” And Alex and Andrew would go, “I think we are shooting one now! It’s independent, but we are!”

That’s probably the best endorsement I could imagine for “Winter in the Blood” or any film, for that matter. I’m tempted to half-jokingly ask if there’s a chicken sandwich scene.
I’m trying to think if we have a scene similar to that. All the scenes are great, but I’m not sure if we have an iconic scene like that. It depends on the audience – if they can relate to it. Which I think they will. What I like about “Winter in the Blood” is that anyone can relate to the character. He’s an outsider; he’s a guy who’s finding himself at a crossroads in his life. He can go one way and it’ll be horrendously bad, or he could go another way and he doesn’t know what’s going to happen. It’s a road less traveled, and he might live. I can’t wait to see it; it’s taken me a while to recover from it. I finished a month ago and I still haven’t really gotten all my marbles back in my head yet. I still feel emotionally scarred. I really worked my ass off and I don’t regret a single scene of it. It’s probably the best movie I’ve ever worked on.

Wow, if there’s one way to put a movie right on my radar, that’s it!
Check it out! We’re going to have a screening at Sundance.

Tinsel…

The werewolves you’re dealing with in “Twilight” aren’t able to turn non-wolves. Do you feel Emily wishes she could be turned, or do you yourself wish she could be so you could explore a more animalistic side to the character?
I don’t think Emily would want to turn in to a wolf. It’s very traditional and she respects the culture – it’s just the way it is, though that may be actor interpretation. And would I want to turn in to a wolf? I guess I’ve always kind of wondered, even though the boys obviously don’t actually turn – it’s all CGI – if it would hurt.

It’s kind of the painful sequence of “American Werewolf in London” versus “Twilight”, in which it’s more of a magical poof.
Yeah! Exactly. If it was more of a magical poof, if it was kind of like “Star Trek” where it was like “doo-doo-doo-doo-doo” and all that funky stuff comes down, then maybe it would be interesting to be an animal for a while, but if it was that typical werewolf thing where your body contorts, I think I’ll pass on that.

What can you tell me about the improv classes you’ve been taking?
It’s called UCB (“Uptight Citizens Brigade”), it’s actually sort of Amy Poehler’s brainchild. I always say taking an improv class or an acting class even if you’re not an actor is a great idea because it just gets you in touch with who you are and it’s a really freeing experience. Just do it for the sake of it – have fun! It’s a great way to let go, express yourself and own it. That’s really what acting is about.

Of course you have a music career as well – what direction are you taking that?
I’ve been performing music for quite a while now. I just released my first single this year (“Letter”, available on iTunes and at tinselkorey.com), and when I released it I didn’t know anything about marketing – I just knew the music part of it. Trying to get a music video and all that, I didn’t know where it was going, so I started doing acting again for a while and I finally met a music manager who I’m really excited to work with, and we’re now at the top of the list for a producer to produce a full-length album to take it to the next level. I’ve been playing the guitar and the piano and composing my own songs for a very long time, it’s just that my acting career has been at the forefront for the longest time so I haven’t been able to give my music my 100%.

Do you have a tentative timeframe for when you think the full album will be available?
I have over 20 songs ready to go, so it’s just a matter of finding a producer. The type of music I do is not electronic, so it’s a little bit harder, but if I find a producer we could easily get it out [by the end of the year] and that’s what we’re really rushing to do right now.

With a little bit of digging, I noticed you also harbor a fine arts hobby. Does this involve painting, photography… something completely different?
It’s more painting. For me, I’m an artist, I just need to create all the time. Painting is the one thing I don’t necessarily put out to the public for sale or anything like that, it’s super personal. I get to delve in to that different part of my brain and just explore and let it go where it goes, so it’s just something I do on my down time when it calls to me.

And you’re also involved with Be the Shift and other various charitable endeavors including helping Native children in the arts?
Quileute didn’t have a drama program when I visited. There are a lot of Native children who don’t have art programs established. I’ll just go in there and teach drama classes or spend time with the kids, because the arts are very, very important to me. It helps with the development of great young people for society. I’m actually doing something right now with the Make Art, Save Art program, which is basically about how art education is the first thing to go. The kid who wins this award will get a $1,000 college scholarship and a grant for their school’s art program. I went to a school in east L.A. to talk with the kids about art – they don’t even have textbooks. I asked the teacher what the art budget was and she said, “What art budget?” It’s something that’s definitely in need nowadays and the government just doesn’t see the importance of it. With Be the Shift, I love what [Chaske and his manager] are doing with this program that connects people to ways to get what they need across. For example, I was doing a coat drive for the Navajo Nation, I didn’t know where to go and I talked to [Chaske’s manager]. She contacted Marmot and they provided over 100 winter jackets for the elders and children. [Be the Shift] is about interconnecting people so they can find faster and easier ways to get things done.

Substance abuse, drought and other plights are taking place right here on our homeland, yet are neglected as though they’re half a globe away. Why do you feel America shoves Native issues under the rug?
I think the history books need to be updated. A lot of people don’t know what the Native issues actually are. As long as things like Columbus Day are around, people are not going to get the full understanding of what’s going on in Native America. A lot of people see the casinos going up and think the Natives are okay, but I’ve been to communities where they don’t have that and the kids are really hit hard and the abuse problems are going on. That’s not something that is necessarily appealing for Native people to report on, but it’s a big issue the government really needs to bring to light. That would go back to changing a lot of history that has been written, so I think it’s a bigger plight than some people want to take on. I try to speak about it, but at the same time a lot of people don’t want celebrities to speak about it. Like Green Day – they were very political for a long time, and people didn’t like that. As a celebrity, it’s what you say but it’s what you don’t say as well.

I did read a tweet of yours to the effect of, “It’s tough being both an activist and a celebrity – I find myself typing and deleting a lot!”
Yeah, just today I was typing and deleting. I’m sure you’ve seen the Native-inspired clothing lines all over the place, and as great as it is that people like Native-inspired things, I’d rather Native designers themselves be in the fashion stores. So I was like, do I tweet about it, do I not tweet about it? Is this going to this anger people? I don’t want to offend anybody. I don’t have ill intent, but when you put things in print it’s up for open interpretation.

Source: http://www.theiconmag.com/2011/12/08/bonus-much-more-with-chaske-sp...