The turtlenecked Paul Giamatti

After I saw Balaban do that thing with the spur-winged goose I puked into my turtleneck. I was totally blown away. It reminded me of that Steve Coogan thing. That was on Sideways. One night Coogan dropped by with a jug of the moonshine and Alex Payne challenged Tom Church to a little drinking contest. Well, you can imagine—after round two Payne fell over onto his back like a dog, with all his limbs straight up in the air. Then Coogan stepped in and went ten rounds with Church. They got totally plastered and went over to Jim Taylor, who was playing poker with the grips, and they just beat the ever-loving daylights out of him. Jim was crying but he looked sort of happy too. I didn’t get it. I puked in my turleneck.

Bob Balaban’s smoldering intensity

I need to make any situation an extremely sexual one. That’s sort of what I’m known for. On the set of Lady in the Water I said, “Let’s make my role more sexual,” and it was so. There’s a scene, I think it ended up on the cutting room floor, where Henry, my character, does an extremely naughty thing with Jeffrey Wright and an ailing spur-winged goose. I won’t be so indiscreet as to go into details, but let’s just say M. Night Shyamalan wept for the best part of an hour. Whether they were tears of joy or of horror, that wasn’t quite clear. They might have been tears of discovery: I didn’t know that sort of thing was possible with a spur-winged goose either. With a Hartlaub’s duck, of course, or a ruddy shelduck, fine, but with a spur-winged…I just need to make any situation extremely sexual.