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Mr. Hoffman's Wonder Emporium

Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman star in "Wonder Emporium."

For an actor who was such an integral part of the era when American movies “grew up” in the late 1960s, as the star of films like The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy, Dustin Hoffman has always had an essentially childlike nature. Even when he shows up 10 minutes late and a bit grumpy for a press conference, you look at him as a petulant kid who needs to be cheered up by asking him what’s in that bag he’s toting. (It’s a copy of the new translation of War and Peace.)

It’s a trait that first-time writer-director Zach Helm capitalized on by casting Hoffman as the star of Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. A self-characterized “toy impresario, wonder aficionado and avid shoe-wearer,” Magorium has spent the bulk of his 243 years running the titular toy store, blithely indifferent to considerations of economics or the market. When he decides it’s time to pass the store on to his assistant, a struggling young composer played by Natalie Portman, Magorium is advised to hire an accountant (Jason Bateman) to evaluate the place. (Unfamiliar with the term, he assumes it must be a combination of “counter” and “mutant.”)

Without slighting the performances of Portman or Bateman, or the whimsical work of Helm, who wrote Stranger Than Fiction (in which Hoffman had a featured role), Hoffman’s goofy performance is almost the whole show here, a combination of Willy Wonka and his Oscar-winning role in Rain Man.

In Manhattan, Hoffman apologizes for a nasty case of jetlag—he’s just flown in from London, where he’s shooting a film. “I’ve never left a movie that I was working on,” he explains, “but they hustled me into this.” Asked if he prefers to stay in character while filming, he laughs, “No, I just like to stay in town!”

I’ve been at press conferences with Hoffman before, and it’s almost a shame that he’s here alone at this one: Put him up with a few other people and he delights in disrupting the proceedings. By himself, he takes pains to answer all questions, even if, as he sometimes warns you, the answer isn’t very interesting. He interrupts his rambling response to the first question to remind himself that he’s got to give a succinct answer, only to pretty much ignore his own advice. But I’d much rather listen to Hoffman ramble than marvel at how someone else can turn every question into a chance to rattle off their standard talking points.

On playing a character who’s 243 years old: Zach and I agreed that what we didn’t want to do was to use prosthetics. I thought the only way to handle it was as a character whom you believed that he believed was that age. When you meet people and they say something, what’s important isn’t whether they’re lying but whether they believe it or not.

Mr. Magorium is an adult, but he’s not a grownup. Grownups pretend to be other people, and he’s what a kid is. A kid is there to believe. I think a kid looks at an adult for hope, and if you don’t give him hope in essence, then they feel hopeless around you, and that’s what the movie is about.

In my experience kids make decisions about people very quickly—are you safe, do they trust you. I’ve always been very close to kids, I yearn to find that more and more in my life. Up to the age of five kids have a purity because they’re really completely individualistic externally. We all are internally. Something happens early in school, or however the culture sets it up, to deprive you or censor your own individuality: If you don’t mix in you’re “odd.” So there’s a desire to retain that, to have your own voice. You have it, but society can kick the shit out of you. So when I say believe, or magic, magic is the miracle of your own individuality. I like that essence of [the movie].

I don’t think that actors do anything different than what all of us do. We all act and play and put on a face depending on what it’s for, what day it is or what mood we’re in or who we’re with. We’re not ourselves—our selves are very private beings that we usually reserve for a very few people. Everything else is playing at life. What differentiates actors is we observe the way different people act and we try to find a craft in which to recreate it. I really had fun making Meet the Fockers because I was able to cut loose and improvise. My kids saw that movie and said, “You finally played yourself.” That’s what I’m like at home—my kids tell people, “We have a great dad, but he’s crazy.”

On the film’s theme of the inevitability of death: I was talking to a friend this morning who runs a pre-school, she saw the film last night. She was struck that this film does not have violence. The first film I remember is Bambi, whose mother dies in flames. Pinocchio fell asleep and his legs were burned off—it’s extraordinary how violent children’s themes are. But why there is a sinister aspect to it, I don’t know. She liked very much that death was a part of this film, because death is a part of life. Her kids want the truth somehow, and she said that’s done simply in this film. Parents shouldn’t sugarcoat for children.

On his mentors and influences: I wanted to be a jazz pianist. And I wasn’t good enough. I got into City College because I didn’t have grades to get into university, and I took acting because I needed three credits not to flunk out and my friend told me to take acting because no one fails it, it’s like gym. And that’s literally how I got involved.

In those days the mentor, the hero was indisputedly Brando. There’s no actor that tilted the axis of that artform the way he did. A whole generation idolized him, there was something he did that we had never seen before. He hit a private spot that was almost unbearable to watch. And there was a femininity in his masculinity that I don’t think anyone had seen before.

Then I had a teacher named Barney Brown at the Pasadena Playhouse whom I studied with for two years. That was the days of the House Un-American Activities Committee and they thought he was a Communist because he brought in Stanislavsky and the Method. He advised me to go to New York: “You’re a very strange type and you’re gonna have trouble getting a lot of work. Nothing is going to happen for probably at least ten years. You’ll wait a lot of tables but you’ll learn a craft.” And he was absolutely correct.

Mike Nichols and John Schlesinger [who directed him in The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy] followed, and I was doubly spoiled because they brought theater rehearsal into the film. The studios don’t like rehearsal, because if the cinematographer is hired, the principal crew is hired, they want you shooting. But these directors somehow got three, four weeks of rehearsal. And we were able to build those movies like you build a play. It’s frustrating because sometimes you find a character you’re trying to do in the third or fourth week, but it’s too late because it’s not gonna match what you did the first three weeks.

Now I’m at the age where the mentor for me is the artist that survives. I just read Norman Mailer’s last interview. He said the wonderful thing about being older is that you realize that life is, you win some you lose some and you’re not expecting a reward for everything you do. When I hear about a director like Sidney Lumet at the age of 83 made a film that’s supposed to be remarkable [Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead], that’s all you ask for. [Portugeuse director] Manoel de Olivera came out with his new film, he’s 97 years old. So those guys are automatic mentors!

On the film he’s doing in London: Emma Thompson and I did a few scenes in Stranger Than Fiction, and one of them was cut in half because it took away from the focus of the film. But I had a chance to see the whole scene later and saw that Emma and I were cooking. We decided we wanted to work together, so she had someone over there write a script with us in mind called Last Chance Harvey. It’s a love story—need I say for the boomers? You never know if a film’s going to work or not, but you know if it’s working day to day and this is. It’s easily the most wonderful experience I’ve had working with anyone. There are wonderful actors I’ve worked with but there’s no one better than Emma. I’m not selling the movie, but she’s a very intelligent and intuitive woman and I’m lucky to work with her.

On his co-star Natalie Portman: I met her years ago, my wife and I saw her on Broadway in The Diary of Anne Frank. We went backstage to meet her, and there she was in her room with her mother, who was trying to decide if she should let us in because Natalie was doing her high school finals. So we met, and I did a very bad thing: I called up my son in Los Angeles, and said, “I got her! I got the one!” I put them on the phone together and they talked a little. And afterward he said, “Dad, don’t pimp for me anymore, please.”

I didn’t take the advice, it’s one of my flaws. Natalie’s a professional, she’s fun to work with, she’s lovely. Maybe she’ll marry my son—she can’t be my lover, she can be my daughter-in-law, that’s a healthy transference!