Ben Foster, Chris Pine navigate 'Hell or High Water'

On the face of it, Chris Pine and Ben Foster seem to have taken different paths to stardom.

Pine has appeared in some big films, like the “Star Trek” reboots, “Into the Woods” and “The Finest Hours.” Foster has gotten good notices in smaller fare, like “The Messenger,” “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” and … “The Finest Hours.”

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OK, maybe not that different. Whatever the case, they’re together again in “Hell or High Water,” a terrific modern Western in which they play brothers who rob banks, for a specific amount and a specific reason. Jeff Bridges plays the almost-retired sheriff trying to stop them.

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Pine and Foster, both 35, recently talked about the film and working together again.

Question: This seemed like a fun movie to make – you get to be cowboys, more or less, sort of like playing when you’re a kid.

Pine: You’re not too far off in that presumption, or assumption. We didn’t have much time to get it all done. Me and Ben shot our half of the film in a month, shooting six-day weeks. We’d already done a film together so we were lucky in the sense that for all the time we lacked getting our (expletive) together and prepping, we already had a facility with one another, and that really helped out. We shot in Albuquerque and it was a small crew. We’d all hang out in the town and work and play. It was a good time.

Q: You’ve worked together before, yes, but played such different characters. Did it help?

Foster: It’s like having a great dancing partner, you know? You either know how to move or you don’t. You know how to anticipate somebody and be present with somebody when they’re taking a chance or a leap. Chris is one of the finest dancing partners I’ve ever had and I’m going to do it again. It’s a very natural brotherhood. And I say that with full knowledge of how much horse(expletive) comes out of Hollywood nonsense talk.

Q: Is there any different dynamic to playing brothers?

Pine: The one big resonant note for me in this film was brotherhood. I know there’s been some talk about guns and the 99 percent vs. the 1. I think there’s cases to be made for all those different interpretations of the film, but for me it was really about brothers and men communicating with men, and how often men seek intimacy yet fail to realize it, because they get in their way so much. I always saw these two guys as simultaneously loving and hating each other fiercely, kind of all at once (Foster laughs). At the beginning of the film you see a lot of space between them, and an inability to articulate how they feel, and it kind of culminates in this kind of beautiful masculine articulation of love in the end, when they’re both looking like they’re going to die. They kind of talk around it.

Q: You sold me on the brothers bit when you wrestled and fought.

Foster: That scene was on a day when we couldn’t shoot because there was lightning and thunderstorms at the house outside Albuquerque where we were shooting. They shut us down, the health-and-safety people. (Director) David (Mackenzie) and Giles (Nuttgens), the cinematographer, just wanted to shoot something, so we kind of went rogue and just started shooting wherever we could find. That scene with the two brothers kind of wrestling out front, as you say, is pretty indicative of men only knowing how to communicate via some sort of violence. It was found in that moment.

What’s wonderful about Mr. Mackenzie, our director, is that he creates an environment that allows people to be with each other. He’s game for discovery. He’s a pain in the ass. He won’t stop. When I feel like he has a scene, he just wants more. He’s kind of a glutton. He’ll just keep going and going and going, and he’s always right. For us, it was like, keep wrestling, keep fighting, keep going, don’t stop. That environment is so rare.

Q: Chris, you have an especially intense scene with Jeff Bridges. Can you tell it’s going well in the moment?

Pine: I think you learn pretty early on as an actor that there’s no correlation between feeling something and thinking that you’ve nailed it and its translation to how it comes across on-screen. It’s probably the best lesson, because as much as doing it is satisfying for the actor, it’s always more about the audience, and how it translates to the narrative of the piece, and there are a lot of other people involved. … All you can do as an actor is kind of invest in the moment and really hope there’s a correlation, and just enjoy the moment. It really starts with a great script, and this is one of the best scripts I’ve ever read. If you start with great words like (screenwriter) Taylor (Sheridan) gave us, you’re in pretty good shape.

Q: You’ve both seen the movie. Do you typically watch your own stuff?

Foster: I don’t like watching it. I don’t like going to see my movies. However, this is one that I’m going to see twice. I couldn’t speak higher of it.

Pine: It’s gotten easier for me to watch my films over the years, because you kind of reconcile yourself to the fact that you’ll hate certain aesthetic and creative choices. But this is just a film that I really like, and I think the telltale sign of whether or not I’m going to be able to sit through it is if you forget you’re watching yourself and get lost in the film. That’s only happened to me a couple times, and this is one of them. … David’s really crafted a good yarn, and you just kind of lose yourself in it.

Q: That’s rare, then? That’s surprising.

Pine: I think the only way you survive as an actor, it seems to me, is we have to start paying more attention to the journey of it and the moment of it and what you do on the day and little choices here and there. That’s what keeps you going, because you have no control over the final thing.

Q: There are real social messages in the film, but it kind of eases you into them.

Pine: Yeah. Just like any piece of art, I guess, it’s so subjective. You look at it as a viewer and you come away from it as a viewer thinking whatever resonates with you because of your own experience. So there’s plenty of stuff in here, like I said, about the 99 percent vs. the 1 percent. There’s plenty of guns in this picture that will resonate with people on one level. … I think it plays on multiple levels, and depending on who you are, where you’re coming from and what your experiences are, it’ll mean different things.

Q: You talked about the script. Is that how you guys choose your projects?

Foster: Gotta be on the page.

Pine: Gotta be on the page.

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Q: What do you need from a script?

Foster: It’s like this, man. Sometimes you’ve got to pay rent. And sometimes you have the opportunity to do something for the heart. This one’s a heart one.

Pine: I think, again, everything is so subjective, if you’re picking something because it moves you, it’s going to be different for every person. I just knew that in reading this, it was a very rare experience to turn the last page and put the script down and know that nothing really had to be done but making the film. Oftentimes you’ll read a script and be like, “Well, that scene I don’t think we really need, I’m sure we can cut that and rewrite that.” But this was just a beautiful piece of cowboy poetry. Taylor had a very specific voice, a unique voice, and that’s pretty rare.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: twitter.com/goodyk.