SXSW: Adrien Brody on Finding Home in Stone Barn Castle

Blending his personal life with his creative output, Adrien Brody brought to this year’s SXSW the documentary feature Stone Barn Castle, co-directed with Kevin Ford. Filmed over nearly a decade, the film follows the Academy Award-winning actor as he buys a dilapidated property in upstate New York with the goal of restoring it to its full glory and, ultimately, finding a place to call home. Check out Brody’s thoughts on the film, the painstaking restoration and on his plans for the future!

CS: Tell me about how this project began, both as a restoration and as a documentary.

Adrien Brody: It was a lifetime dream to get a country house and to try and make that home. In the years that finally led up to me acquiring the place, I had experienced a degree of increased awareness of myself and my work. That was a beautiful thing, but I had been working quite a bit so I felt the need to find something that was very honest and real and in touch with nature. I wanted to retreat a bit from Hollywood in a way. To do my work, but to have a place to come home to. I also loved the idea of renovating something that was old and in a state of disrepair. That also obviously made it more affordable. I found it when I was away doing a movie in Belgrade. I found the structure online and fell in love with it. I have many friends who live upstate and my parents used to have a place when I was younger. I went home, bought it and began to rennovate. I thought it would be interesting to chronicle that journey. I brought on a friend of mine who is a fellow filmmaker, Kevin Ford. He has a wonderful, creative eye and similar sensibilities. I think we gravitate towards the same aesthetic and appreciation of a style of storytelling that is both very natural and authentic, like the Maysles. My mother, Sylvia Plachy, was a photographer in New York. She really captures moments as they occur and find the magic. If you missed it, you missed it, you know? It can’t be created in a studio setting.

CS: Did you find that magic?

Brody: We got a lot of magic! It was almost a decade of my life. There were a lot of changes in my life. Somehow we managed to find the narrative structure where the Castle is the protagonist and I, perhaps, am the co-lead in the film. We told a story that I think is quite universal, this desire to find home.

CS: What was it about the property that immediately spoke to you?

Brody: It captured a lot the aesthetic qualities that I’ve always been attracted to. I love period, turn of the century architecture. It was a barn and, for a long time, I had considered rennovating a barn, because it’s this big, cavernous creative space. I can paint. I can restore an old car. I can do grand things within that. I also love open living, loft-like spaces. I had been searching barns and spent a lot of time in Europe filming castles. I think that gave me a taste of how beautiful they all are. Those ones are far too remote, though. There are decent deals, still, but you have to be in the most remote part of the world to imagine rennovating something like that. To be a foreigner, too, makes it feel less like home. So I had been looking in the States and then this thing popped up and it was just remarkable.

CS: Were you specifically targeting a property that would require some extra love?

Brody: I guess so, but I wasn’t looking for something on that level. I’m very much of a dreamer, I guess. Even when I bought the place, my first instinct was to not do a rennovation of the barn structure. There’s a log house on the property and I was going to rennovate that. I lived in that for awhile while I was rennovating the main house. I was fine with that. It was a beautiful little one-bedroom house with a stove. I would get up every morning and light the fire. It was wonderful. I thought perhaps I’d just do a superficial rennovation of the main structure to keep it structurally together. I thought it would be a folly. A work of art. I mean, it was built by an engineer who was ahead of his time. There are tunnel structures and lots of other elements that aren’t really elaborated on in the film but that fascinated me when I went to explore. There used to be a dairy barn, so he devised these underground flues that would extract the foul air from the cows and the manure. They’d bring it up through these 60 foot chimneys. This thing was fully functioning sending butter and cream to New York City. There was an ice house where they brought these big blocks of ice from the lake. The whole history of it all is just so fantastic. There’s something also about bringing something back to life that took so much love. The family that had lived there before me had spent 30 years trying to rehabilitate it. They built up some of the outer buildings, but they never got to the main place. They didn’t have the resources. It was an enormous task. I kind of took over where they left of.

CS: I imagine there’s some wildlife to be found throughout a task like that.

Brody: There’s a lot of game up there. There were a couple of snakes. There was a moment where I grabbed a snake off my porch. It got filmed, but it didn’t make it into the final cut. We had a lot of really interesting things that didn’t make it. I saw a porcupine. There were a lot of turkey and deer and a fox that lives there. Groundhogs. They live in certain structures. We also had chickens and horses and Guinea Hens. It was pretty full of life.

CS: Are you still using it as a farm in any capacity?

Brody: I’ve simplified a lot now. I’ve realized that, unfortunately, I’m a bit too young to retreat into the country life and maintain a career as an actor. I’ve just made it a bit simpler. Now that the overall rennovation is complete, I can focus on certain creative projects with the property. I’ve got aspirations to do more work as a filmmaker. In my capacity as a producer, I work a lot aboard. Your life goes through ebbs and flows. There was this intense period of focusing on that. I’m tenacious. I made it through that journey and now we’ve got this to memorialize that in a way. Now I can focus on other things.

CS: Do you feel very different coming out of the process?

Brody: Immensely. Most things change me. Most feel different from immersion in playing a character. If I gain insight, I’m very receptive to things in a very interesting way. I don’t really know how to describe it, but if something connects with me, it really resonates with me and I adopt that, whether it’s some joy or a sadness that I, unfortunately, have to become aware of through my work or in life. There are life lessons that are essential to our growth and especially in the path of being an actor are essential to becoming even better. You wind up with more to draw from and you have more sensitivity towards others. It’s more self-awareness. This journey was immensely challenging and I’m a changed man because of it! (laughs)

CS: Do you know what’s next for you as an actor?

Brody: Nothing that I can report just yet, but we’re talking about some interesting projects right now. I’ve kind of pulled back a bit on the acting side because I’ve worked a lot the past year or so. I’ve been focusing on a few things I’m producing. It’s an interesting time. There have been a lot of new opportunities. I did a wonderful film called “Septembers of Shiraz” with Salma Hayek about the lives that were lost and harmed in the changing regimes in Iran in the 1980s when the Shah was overthrown. A lot of people were abducted and their families were harmed by the revolutionary guard. I think the film eloquently brings that to life. It was a very challenging one. I’m also very happy with the success of “Dragon Blade” in China. I did it with Jackie Chan and it has become an immense success there. I got to live out my adolescent fantasties of being a martial arts actor and I got a pretty epic fight scene with Jackie Chan in the middle of the desert.

CS: It seems like you’ve had a pretty great balance as far as the tone of the films you do.

Brody: That’s the challenge! I have always strived for that. I’ve maybe been criticized for that at times because they may seem like odd choices, but they’re really not odd choices. The whole joy of being an actor is that you can experiment, take some risks and go explore something that is so different. There are so many different styles of filmmaking and you can learn from every process. There are directors that are so far from what you are like and what you know.

CS: Is there a dream role for you that you’ve always wanted to play?

Brody: That’s a really good question. There are several ideal scenarios that would like to still cultivate. Obviously, to help reinforce the ability of making flawed leading men roles resonate within the studio system. To have that epic journey supported with the whole marketing department and the infrastructure in place to resonate throughout the world, but to also have the protagonist be someone people can relate to. That’s what I yearn for. A contemporary leading man who is also a character. Who isn’t overtly heroic or overtly muscular or overtly good looking. Something that young and not so young men and women can align with and feel connected to that character’s journey. That’s something that I would really like to cultivate and support.

CS: You’ve also appeared in Wes Anderson’s last three films. Is that a partnership that’s going to continue?

Brody: That’s all been so great. I’m greatful for that. Wes is such a breath of fresh air. He’s so great to be around. To get to collaborate with someone as creative as that doesn’t feel like work. It’s like showing up with a friend of yours who has all these creative ideas and is so knowledgable about the filmmaking process. Anyone who has such a clear vision makes it such a pleasure to bring that vision to life.