Sci-Fi/geek site io9 has a great interview with Angelina Jolie today – and they also spoke to Salt’s producer and director, but I don’t care so much about that part. For the full piece, with all three interviews, go here. Director Phillip Noyce talks more about how they were concerned that Angelina’s spy character would end up emasculating her husband (shock!). But Noyce does confirm something that I was wondering about – apparently, there’s an interesting sub-plot about Evelyn Salt and her agency mentor, played by Liev Schreiber: “Liev Schreiber plays her mentor and boss at the CIA — his bitter disappointment at her being potentially a Russian mole is tinged with a real affection for her that goes beyond the kind of male-to-male camaraderie that the two might have had. He has a crush on her, you feel between the line and the looks, and that wouldn’t of been possible, and arguably that relationship is the heart and soul of the movie. It’s the most emotional relationship in the movie. It wouldn’t have been possible if it was between two men.” Why couldn’t it have been between two men? Because (gasp) action films are never homoerotic? *clutches pearls* Anyway, here’s Angelina’s part (some minor SPOILERS ahead):

Can you talk a little bit about the research you did for this role and how you used it to inform your character?
Yes. We spent a lot of time with different people who’d worked in The Russia House and the CIA, and I think the biggest note I took from them was how isolated and lonely they felt not being able to talk about their life and their work with anybody in their family. And what a sacrifice that is, and how it’s only when they finally retire that they feel this relief of actually being able to sit around the dinner table and have real conversations, not have to hide anything and not have to lie about anything. What an unusual type of personality that must be. That informed [me] a lot.

How much of this film is based on reality? What is the limit as far as the action scenes?
A lot of it was our stunt coordinator, Simon Crane, he’s just a genius. And it was him really trying to figure out, okay, if she’s going to go up against a guy who’s a foot and a half taller than her and a 100 pounds heavier than her, how could she actually do it? She’s faster, she can get height, she can jump on things, or she’s quicker, or she’s more agile, or whatever it would be. Everything had to be somehow possible, even if it was stretched — even if the trucks on the freeway were wild. In a stretch, it’s still not impossible. Crazy, but not impossible. So we tried to always remember that. I think that was our bar – could it be done? It would have to be an extraordinary person, but could it be done? It’s actually the opposite of every action movie I’ve ever done, because there’s never really been a female action movie based in reality. They’re always fantasy. I’ve done most of ‘em.

You’ve played so many strong female action characters. And yet, for some reason that idea has never really taken off in Hollywood.
Well I think it’s down to [the] audience, and you know you want to give an audience something that they… you just wait for them to respond to one. So if you do it right, which we tried to do, then you’ve done it. And then hopefully, like most businesses, they think if it makes money, then somebody else will make money, and then they will make more movies with women in that role, I think, if this one works.

This character was originally written for a man, so what did you want to change, and what did change about this character?
Well, I’m not Edwin. [That name] didn’t suit me [laughs]. Didn’t have a wife. The big change… was, we said, “well we can’t start to turn this into a girl movie,” because that’s where, I think, people have failed in the past. When they write something on purpose for a woman, it’s always about being a woman — using your femininity, all these kind of female obvious things. So we said let’s just keep all the things about it that are tough, and it’s about being what she is, it’s about the journey. And if anything, we have to make it darker and we have to make it meaner than the boys.

Is that why they cut the son or daughter that was written into the original script?
I just didn’t feel that a woman would have a child in that position. And that if a woman had a child, I think it would be very hard for us not to imagine her kind of holding onto that child through the entire film. You know, because it would just become all about the child. Which is strange — but I think audiences would allow a man to have a child and the child [could] be with the wife back at home. But it would be very, very difficult to see a woman not be 100% focused on her child.

[SMALL Spoiler} You mentioned not being Edwin, but you are a man for a few minutes. [In the film Angelina makes a quickie disguise by changing her sex]
I am. I couldn’t help myself.

What was it like to cross-dress?
It was great. Oh, it was great. Well the funny thing is, you realize every lead in this movie has cross-dressed….So they were very supportive. They gave me tips. They just basically said, just go fully into it and enjoy it. That’s what they did. I loved it. We called him Johnny for some reason. It was really weird; I found… I think I was a bit suave. People had a very, very difficult time talking to me. Philip could hardly talk to me. Nobody could talk to me. It wasn’t as much what he looked like, it was when he spoke. Because when it was my voice coming out of him. And Brad [Pitt] came to visit me once, and I said, “You don’t want to come, I’m going to be the man.” And he said, “it won’t bother me, it’s you, whatever, it’s you.” And then he came, and I was changing, and so I was like half woman and half man. So creeped out by it.

It sounds like when you came on, you had some input in reinventing your character? What did you want to add in creating her as a character? And did you have an impact on her being pretty desexualized?
It was extremely important to me. I just felt that she was just better than that, that she didn’t have to do that. And not that it wouldn’t have been fun to do if it was appropriate in a scene, but it just felt like if we could find a way not to need that, let’s not. There was even talk for a long time about adding a scene in the end — because if you’ve seen it, I don’t end so pretty. And there was a discussion about, “Do you kind of catch up with her glamorous again?” Because this is what people would want, this is what audiences would want — and we made a definitive decision of “No, it’s very, very important that we don’t do that to her.” So we always angled it back into some kind of, trying to make it just harder and more raw. And I just liked her, I was more interested in a woman like Evelyn than what could have become of her. Which is always the scripts that get sent to me for action females. And I’ve never wanted to do that type of woman.

Your character builds bombs and rewires systems. Did you pick up any skills?
My MacGyver scene?… Apparently, we actually took one or two elements out of the bomb-building so it couldn’t be recreated, but yeah. Just so people know. But with a few extra elements, yeah that’s one. Yeah, I mean, you do; you learn the oddest things when you’re an actor. That you don’t even know what, and you come home and your kids say what did you do? And you’re like, “I built a bomb.” I don’t know. But I did, I laughed through that whole scene. I felt like making MacGyver music.

This film seems like it could really appeal to a female audience as well as a male one. What do you think about that?
I hope so. And I think we really tried to do something that we all just thought was a great film, and that I think should appeal to everybody. But I do think it’s interesting for women — even the women on set, it was interesting because it was this new thing, and again, it’s so odd that when we think that it hasn’t been done, but it hadn’t. It was all the girls that fought for the end to not become pretty. It was all the girls that said don’t do that, that’s something you’re kind of doing on purpose for a different audience. So we did, we tried to you know keep both the men and the women. We’re just very conscious of making it for everybody.

What do you think SALT says about women?
Well I’ve never underestimated women. So I’m not surprised to start seeing women do these things, I just think it was, and that’s why we didn’t actually approach it as, “Salt’s a woman.” We just approached it as, “Salt’s a badass and happens to be a woman,” and this should be no huge surprise for anybody.

[From io9]

Oh, Angelina gets the MacGyver reference! But for the life of me, I couldn’t recall the McGyver music. Now I just have the Mission: Impossible music in my head. UGH. Ayway, my favorite part is where Angelina is talking about how everyone treated her differently when she was dressed up as a dude. But it didn’t sound like Brad thought it was weird (strange?), but it bothered Angelina. I also like when she talks about her own feminism and her fears of it becoming a “girl movie”. Cough cough cough. What?

Here’s a clip from Salt that was released last week – more clips at Pajiba here.