Interview: Zack Ward – Penny Blood

You play the lead in Postal; tell us a bit about the story and your character.

My character is the Postal Dude; everyone’s like, “hey, what’s up Dude” so that’s my character’s name, although I don’t have any real name. I’m the guy whose life is like completely fucked over. He lives in a trailer, he got fired from his job, and his wife is cheating on him with EVERYBODY and she weighs like 480lb. Basically, the Postal Dude is at the end of his rope, trying to figure out what he’s going to do with his life. He ends up turning to his Uncle Dave for money, because Uncle Dave is wealthy and has his own cult.

But what my character doesn’t know is that the cult now owes the government back taxes for over a million dollars and so they’ve got to find a way to get some cash fast. Uncle Dave has this idea to steal the Krotchy dolls and sell them on the black market, because they’re like Tickle Me Elmo: they stopped producing them because there was some sort of child labour law embargo, so there’s only like ten thousand of them and there’re pre-orders for two million. So they’re selling for like $5,000 apiece. The problem is, the Taliban are after them too, because the Krotchy dolls are each filled with this avian bird flu that the Taliban want to use on America.

We’d heard it was pretty controversial, but we didn’t know quite to what extent…

Oh, man, we make fun of, like, Osama bin Laden, we make fun of him a lot, and George Bush, and also black people, and Jewish people, and Chinese people, and redheads, and German people, and trailer park trash, and we shoot a lot of kids. There’s nothing better than shooting a child. And then it ends with George Bush and bin Laden skipping through a field holding hands.

Uwe Boll’s a pretty controversial guy in his own right, too.

I think his latest three films, Dungeon Siege, Seed, and Postal, are going to be a whole new level for him. I think that the style that he’s developed as a director and the relationship he has with his crew is flawless. He’s getting to a point where he, and his actors, and his crew work pretty much empathically. And I found the process of working with Uwe one where I would get a lot of freedom. There’s no-one there holding your hand, and you need to bring what it is you do to the table. Which I think is a benefit, because with Postal, there’s no really big names. Dave Foley and Verne Troyer are the largest names, but there’s no superstar names and because of that there were no egos competing, and because of that everybody took a step up.

For me, it’s my first time I’ve ever starred in a $20 million movie. I’ve never starred in a movie this big and it’s an incredible amount of responsibility. It’s a real organic process with the other actors and I feel honoured to be working with these people. Even all the smaller supporting characters, like the guys who played Cooter and Mohammed, they’re really good actors who’re doing everything they can, I mean, it’s not like with the big actors who’re making so much money they like to pretend like they don’t care, and they hide behind false bravado because they know where their next money is coming from. I think with a movie like Postal, we’re kind of all the benchwarmers, the b-squad. I’m not Tom Cruise, I’m never going to be Tom Cruise, I’m a character actor. I’m quirky, I’m interesting, I’m kinda good-looking…

That’s very modest!

Well, I know what I’m like! I have to sell myself all the time. I do comedy well, I do violence well, but when it comes to a role like this, you have to be 100% committed to the process. I guide my career like, what’s that guy who did Inspector Clouseau? Peter Sellers. Yeah, his last film before he died was The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu. Before that, he did Being There, which was a genius film. And he also did Dr Strangelove, and The Pink Panther, and he did so many different parts, but the one he did right before he died was The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu. And it’s a crappy movie, not because of Peter Sellers, it’s just a crappy movie. But I grew up watching him and when he suddenly got snuffed out, I mean he just poof! Went. There was no expectation, nothing, and it made me realise that what you’re doing right now is the most important thing, because it’s how you’ll be remembered. I don’t go on set and complain about being up early, or being tired, that doesn’t bother me! The only thing that matters to me is what lands on that 35mm film, which then becomes a piece of art that can be watched forever. Like, I did A Christmas Story when I was 13 years old and that’s become an American classic. I didn’t know that! But it’s been a perfect example for me of how you can’t go half-assed on film. Because everybody sees it and everybody know you’re half-assed, and that’s all they see, you’re half-assed. I won’t do that, and I think Uwe is giving people an opportunity to get above their station. He gave me that.

This interview was originally conducted in 2006 for Penny Blood magazine.