The Safe House - Expositions

At this stage in the game, when you encounter Robin Williams, you expect to also meet any number of the many wild characters that clearly inhabit his high-octane, rapid-fire mind. But none of them are as realistically chilling as One Hour Photo's Sy the Photo Guy, a repressed, desperately lonely photo developer who becomes obsessed with his customers the Yorkins, a seemingly picture-perfect family with a dark secret that soon cause Sy to unravel.

Williams, who has received uniformly rave reviews for his dead-on performance in the psychological thriller, held court at the film's Beverly Hills premiere at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' posh theater just hours after the movie's two-screen New York opening day smashed a distributor box office record. Williams, wife Marsha, son Zak, writer-/director Mark Romanek and co-stars Michael Vartan, Connie Nielsen, Dylan Smith and Eriq La Salle were joined at the screening by a variety of Hollywood's elite, including Ben Stiller and wife Christine Taylor, Jason Schwartzman, Gina Gershon, rock legend David Crosby, R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Anthony Kiedis, NYPD Blue's Charlotte Ross and Access Hollywood's Nancy O'Dell. After the film, they noshed on gourmet edibles set out around a large ice sculpture shaped like a camera.

Hollywood.com caught up with Williams, ultra-mellow one moment and über-frenetic the next, and got a snapshot of the many things brewing in the Academy Award winner's famously percolating mind.

On his recent exploration of his darker side playing an angry TV clown in Death to Smoochy, a charming killer in Insomnia and now a disturbed photo clerk in One Hour Photo; making a high-profile return to stand-up on HBO; and whether he derives greater satisfaction playing comedy or drama:
It's a different satisfaction. This was satisfying in the details and all the work you do to make it, to work with somebody like Mark [Romanek] to create something so specific. Smoothy [mispronounces the film title and catches himself]--which is a film about a young man working in a vegetable stand--Smoochy [emphatically] is just so much fun because you can just blow out the doors with someone like Danny DeVito, who said, 'You can do anything, really push the envelope in terms of taste and drama.' And being on stage in HBO is the other thing, to just go nuts that way. Get that out of the equation and then you can do something like this, which is just so controlled. That's why I can do both.

On the allure of the disturbing, slowly unfolding story behind One Hour Photo:
It had so many different strange twists. Even the ending--people expect it to be so horrifying and it takes a twist even then.

On how he found the right kind of creepy vibe for his character, Seymour Parrish, aka Sy the Photo Guy:
I just remembered my childhood [laughs]. A lot of information in that statement! Second, the look alone really helped to get off. By blanding myself so much with the makeup. Somebody said they blanched me totally and it's true. [Makeup supervisor Cheri Minns] designed the hair to thin out--it's goin', but not that much! She just thinned the hell out of it. And then to give it the blonde and blanch the skin, and then the clothing--the clothes are so bland to blend into the store, literally, so he's like a creature in his own environment.

On how he felt going blonde for the role:
[Acting sultry and feminine] I felt good! That thinning blonde hair. Me being so furry anyway, any time you thin this out is always a good sign. And it's just good to change. For me it was the first time I could watch a movie in a long time where I could lose track that it was me.

On using his on-screen skills to develop photos in his real life:
I became Sy by first studying with a woman to learn how to use the AGVA machine--and I've forgotten everything. [Imitating reporter] 'Do you know how to develop photos now?' No.

On whether he sometimes took the role home with him after leaving the set:
No, I couldn't, I wouldn't want to scare my children. I played a movie years ago called Secret Agent where I played this professor who made bombs. And I was kind of into character one night and my wife said [calm but stern], 'Stop.'

On whether the film's chilling premise of image-stalkers in the darkroom will suddenly drive people away from the PhotoMat:
Did Psycho keep people from going to motels? No.

On what he learned about the power of the snapshot:
The weird thing about family photographs, how powerful they are. I looked at some of my old [family photos]. Our family wasn't a big picture-taking family, so in the photos I have you can remember a very specific moment in time, and it's really interesting. Having lost my mother in the last year and my father-in-law, all of a sudden you look back at the pictures and they have a different resonance.

On the tendency of personal photos to only reflect the happiest and warmest moments in people's lives:
Sy's seeing the In Style Greatest Hits, you know? The beautiful family, the beautiful child, everything in America that's kind of been sold to everybody. No one ever takes a picture of Uncle Pete going [makes a crazy face], 'You bastard!' And now with digital cameras, people delete them. But when people take [photos on film]--especially with one of those little $1 cameras--the moment you crack that camera, good luck! If you were drunk, going, [shouts something indecipherable in a drunken slur], that's in the mix."

On whether there's a photo of Robin Williams floating around out there that he hopes won't see the light of day anytime soon:
Yes, me in a thong. It's frightening. My carpet doesn't match the drapes.

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