June 6, 2008 | To promote Stuck, the bleakly funny black comedy in which he plays a downsized white-collar worker who has a close encounter with an oncoming car, Irish-born actor Stephen Rea returned to the scene of the crime. So to speak.
Rea appeared at the AFI Dallas International Film Festival for the Southwest premiere of the movie that director Stuart Gordon and co-writer John Strysik based loosely – very loosely – on a notorious real-life incident that occurred in nearby Fort Worth. In October 2001, a nurse’s aide named Chante Jawan Mallard struck a homeless man, Gregory Biggs, with her 1997 Chevy Cavalier, thereby lodging Biggs in her windshield. Mallard then proceeded to drive home, park her car in her garage, and have sex with her boyfriend – leaving her unattended victim to die of his injuries two hour later.
“I know they advertise a lot of movies as ‘Inspired by a real-life story,’” Strysik says. “But in our case, I think they should say, ‘Appalled by a real-life story.’ Or maybe, ‘Shocked by a real-life story.’”
Stuck re-imagines the stranger-than-fiction horror story as an ingeniously nasty morality play that incrementally worsens a very bad situation, then provides a potent payoff with the forced feeding of just desserts. Rea plays Tom Bardo, a sad-eyed schlump who’s in the wrong place at the right time when Brandi (Mena Suvari), a nursing home employee much too fond of clubbing and drugging, puts the pedal to the metal in her car. Tom winds up stuck in Brandi’s windshield, and left to die in her garage while his inadvertent assailant attends to, ahem, other matters. And that’s when he discovers that maybe, just maybe, the last best hope for a hard-luck loser is to be placed in a situation where there’s absolutely nothing left to lose.
Q: So tell me, Stephen – how does it feel to be back in the old neighborhood?
A: [Laughs] I guess if I’d come to Dallas before I shot the movie [in New Brunswick, Canada], it might have had more impact on me. But we’ve always been very careful to point out that the original incident was just a starting point. And that the characters in no way bear any relation to the real-life people. The attraction for Stuart and John, I think, was just the craziness of someone being stuck in a windshield, and then kept in a garage. After that, the movie departs completely from the real event.
Q: There’s a very interesting arc to the character you play here. Is that what attracted you to the project?
A: Yes. When the movie starts, Tom is a man whose spirit couldn’t be lower. He has no purchase on the ordinary commerce of life. He can’t get a job, he can’t hold onto his place in a flophouse. And then this thing happens to him. And gradually, he feels the spirit returning to him. The will to live returns to him, because he’s so close to death. He suddenly becomes inventive. At the beginning, he’s just flaccid, and passive. He can’t make anything work. But he almost becomes a kind of action hero. I mean, he has to come up with a plan – to live. I love it.
Q: It’s truly a horrifying situation. And yet – well, there’s no denying that parts of Stuck are hilarious. Shockingly hilarious, really.
A: Oh, yes. I mean, he’s lying there, caught in the windshield, and he starts beeping the horn. And then she comes into the garage – and you can’t help thinking: “Oh, no! On top of everything else, she’s not going to smack him in the kisser, is she?” And then she does – not only once, but twice. It’s appalling. But you can’t help but laugh.
Q: Has there ever been a time in your life when you’ve been as depressed as Tom is when we first see him?
A: Well, I remember once living in an apartment in London, which I shared with some people. And I must have been very depressed at the time, because I do remember thinking: “The next step? The gutter.” And then, after I left this place and went to live somewhere else, I went back to visit these people a year or so later. And I thought, “Hey, this is a very nice apartment. It was all just in my own head.” So it was easy to tap into that to play Tom. He doesn’t have a lot of positivity going on.
Q: Did you ever see the film with an audience before its AFI Dallas Festival premiere?
A: No. And I must say, it was great, because the audience was so into the movie. At one point, somebody yelled out: “Ram her!” They wanted me to ram her with the car. But what I think is the amazing achievement of the movie is, at first, you kind of identify with both people. Because you think, “Oh, God, what would I do I were driving the car?” But you also think, “Oh, God, what would I do if I were the one who got hit?”
Q: That’s true. Mena Suvari gives a fearless performance as Brandi. And up to a point, you actually do feel some sympathy for the character. But after that point is passed…
A: Yes, when she comes after him with the hammer – she does lose the audience at that point.
