OPHIRA EISENBERG, HOST:
Welcome back to ASK ME ANOTHER, NPR's hour of puzzles, word games and trivia. I'm your host, Ophira Eisenberg, please welcome our VIP, the star of the film "Experimenter," Peter Sarsgaard.
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: You know, you seem like such a smiley, like, nice guy and then I think of all the characters that I've enjoyed you - like, these roles you take on, they're dark - "Boys Don't Cry," where a lot of people first gave you a lot of note. They were like, that was a dark character.
PETER SARSGAARD: I got more female attention for that role than I've ever gotten for any other role. Isn't that bizarre?
EISENBERG: Really?
SARSGAARD: Yeah, it's absolutely 100 percent true. Yeah, I'm not getting any for "Experimenter."
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: Yet.
SARSGAARD: Yet, yet, yeah.
EISENBERG: So what is it about these dark characters that you are drawn to?
SARSGAARD: Well, I'm just not handsome enough to play the lead guy.
EISENBERG: Oh, please.
SARSGAARD: It's true. It's true. They're just more fun. I mean, everybody wants to be the guy in the black hat, you know? Look, in the '70s, you could be Elliott Gould and be a leading man, right, you know, and you could have flaws. You could lie to your wife as the character and still be a leading man. And these days, everybody's so cleaned up. Everybody's so polished that who wants to play the character anyway?
EISENBERG: Yeah, it's not of interest to you. You want the deeper character.
SARSGAARD: Yeah, it's not like I'm getting offered the other one, but, you know...
(LAUGHTER)
SARSGAARD: ...This is what I tell myself.
EISENBERG: So let's talk about the "Experimenter." You play Stanley Milgram, who conducted these psychological experiment in the '60s.
SARSGAARD: So the test subject, which is one person, answers an ad and they come into a lab room. It's a very spare room. It's got a very intimidating-looking machine on it with a bunch of knobs. And there's a doctor in the room and another person who they think is also someone who's answered an ad. Both the doctor and the other person are confederates with Stanley Milgram - they're actors. And the doctor hands - puts his hands out and he's got two pieces of paper and he says this is to determine who's going to be the teacher and who's going to be the learner. They both say teacher, so no matter which one the person chooses they're going to be the teacher. The learner goes into the other room and they both watch as the learner's hooked up to electrodes. The teacher gets to feel the shock, see that it's real, goes back in the other room, he says, you're going to ask these series of questions. When they get it wrong, give them this zap. It goes all the way from low voltage all the way up to XXX danger - very, very high-voltage - a number of stops along the way. The shocks are not real, but the person thinks they're real. And the person in the other room has a prerecorded tape of, like, please please stop, screaming and then in the end silence. And 65 percent of people went all the way to XXX danger...
(LAUGHTER)
SARSGAARD: Yeah.
EISENBERG: And obviously you can't participate in this experiment, but I'm sure on set you all talked about how you would fare if you were the person giving the electric shocks and what do you think?
SARSGAARD: I mean, I just have to think of the way that I deal with bad directors, you know?
(LAUGHTER)
SARSGAARD: I think I would say the machine doesn't seem like it's working, that I don't feel very good and stuff like that, you know?
EISENBERG: Right?
(LAUGHTER)
SARSGAARD: Yeah.
EISENBERG: I have the flu. I have to leave the experiment.
SARSGAARD: Yeah, pretend to pass out, that would be my way. There was this French show called "Le Jue de la Mort" - The Game of Death - and the crowd was in on it, but the person on stage that was doing the electrocuting did not know that they were - it was fake. And the crowd egged the person on. This was done, like, in the '90s, and it was a very popular TV show where we got to watch someone panic (laughter).
EISENBERG: Yeah.
SARSGAARD: And many of them went all the way. In that one I think it was actually even higher because they were being egged on by a live studio audience. I think it was like 80 percent went all the way. You know what? Human beings are part bonobo monkey...
EISENBERG: Yep.
SARSGAARD: ...Have sex for fun, matriarchal, live in trees, wonderful monkeys; part chimpanzee - torture other animals for fun. It's just who we are.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: And just, like, I think 1 percent cockroach. That's just me.
SARSGAARD: One percent cockroach, yeah (laughter).
EISENBERG: That's what I think. So as serious as the subject matter that you just explained of the movie "Experimenter," it is shot in a very surreal way. Your character, Stanley, talks to the camera. You break the fourth wall. There is an elephant following you around.
SARSGAARD: And of course when I read elephant in the script, I didn't know there'd be a real elephant. We had a fake room and a real elephant. I mean, my God.
(LAUGHTER)
SARSGAARD: So...
EISENBERG: It's an interesting budget choice, right?
SARSGAARD: Yeah. And actually, when I started singing at one point, some enchanted evening, I'd never looked back at the elephant. It was like a trust exercise. He's walking behind me and I'm walking - the trunk came around like this, like a microphone right in front of my mouth. Yeah, it was fun.
EISENBERG: Now, we've talked a lot about your acting career, but you also work five hours a month at a Brooklyn grocery co-op...
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: ...And you really enjoy it.
SARSGAARD: Yeah, you know why I have to work five hours a month?
EISENBERG: Why?
SARSGAARD: Since my wife won't do her shift.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: Good man, good man.
SARSGAARD: (Laughter) You know what I like? The best job there, for any of you working there, is to work in the dairy section behind that glass thing there. Yeah, you put the headphones in, you're spying on other people kind of through putting the milk cartons out. It's fantastic. You know, you're looking at me like I'm crazy.
EISENBERG: Oh, so you are on one side of the coolers.
SARSGAARD: It's like Stanley Milgram looking the - yeah, exactly. I get to watch human behavior.
EISENBERG: That's hilarious. All right, Peter, are you up for an ASK ME ANOTHER challenge?
SARSGAARD: I'm so terrified.
EISENBERG: No, you don't need to be terrified. Give Peter Sarsgaard a huge round of applause for being our VIP.
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: All right, let's bring back our special puzzle guru Cecil Baldwin.
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: So this game is called A Day In The Life Of Peter Sarsgaard.
SARSGAARD: Oh, should be easy enough.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: We were lucky to have you to play it, actually, 'cause we've been trying this with all kinds of other people - failed. So, Peter, our questions will tell the story of a slightly fictitious story of a day from your life, and from time to time I will turn to you to fill in a missing word or phrase. And in honor of your name with the rare double-A combination, all of the missing answers will have that double-A.
SARSGAARD: I don't think I can think of a single word that starts with double-A.
EISENBERG: Well, get ready.
SARSGAARD: All right.
EISENBERG: If you get enough right, Victoria Lugo (ph) of Le Palma, Calif., will receive a special ASK ME ANOTHER Rubik's cube, and if you get the questions wrong, we are going to shock you...
(SOUNDBITE OF WHISTLE, LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: ...With the buzzer. So the stakes are high. All right, the alarm clock buzzes and Peter jumps out of bed to grab his favorite breakfast from the freezer - an entire pint of vanilla Swiss almond ice cream made by this company with the fake Danish name.
(LAUGHTER)
SARSGAARD: Haagen-Dazs.
EISENBERG: Yeah.
(APPLAUSE)
CECIL BALDWIN, BYLINE: Peter heads to the park to relax under a tree and an apple hits his head and Peter thinks, great, it's another vampire hater who thinks I'm Alexander Skarsgard.
(LAUGHTER)
BALDWIN: But wait, it actually fell from this tree above. I've discovered gravity, Peter cries. I'm just as smart as that great mathematician and physicist, Sir...
SARSGAARD: Isaac Newton.
BALDWIN: Yeah.
SARSGAARD: OK.
(APPLAUSE)
SARSGAARD: This is a lot easier than I thought it would be.
EISENBERG: Yeah.
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: By the way, do people ever call you Alexander Skarsgard?
SARSGAARD: You know what? He and I had breakfast about 20 years ago, and we, at that time, thought we might pretend that we were related, but it didn't work out. You know, it's more believable that I'm John Malkovich's son I think.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: That's hilarious. Settling for a picnic, Peter notices his basket is swarming with ants. Perhaps I can help you, he hears and he turns to find an ant-eating, long-eared, long-tongued animal.
SARSGAARD: An aardvark.
EISENBERG: An aardvark is correct.
(APPLAUSE)
SARSGAARD: Really easy.
EISENBERG: Yeah, too easy.
SARSGAARD: Yeah, make it harder.
EISENBERG: Make it harder, all right.
(LAUGHTER)
BALDWIN: Well, the aardvark does his best, but, you know, the picnic is ruined. So Peter and the aardvark decide to grab a bite at an Indian restaurant and the aardvark orders saag paneer and...
SARSGAARD: Naan.
BALDWIN: ...Peter gets...
(LAUGHTER)
BALDWIN: ...Some naan.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: I like it when people walk in scared and then they find their confidence.
SARSGAARD: You know what? It's like the story of my life, you know?
(LAUGHTER)
SARSGAARD: Me, first day of movie set, I'm, like, quitting acting, you know? It's - I'm done. When I did Hamlet, I actually left the theater. They had to come and bring me back, but then two performances in, they can't get me off the stage.
EISENBERG: Really, do you have stage fright?
SARSGAARD: Oh, like, horrible.
EISENBERG: What? Yeah.
SARSGAARD: Horrible, horrible, horrible - you know, and the worst part is the first thing to go is my voice
EISENBERG: 'Cause that's what you need the most.
SARSGAARD: Yeah, so you have to breathe in order to speak and if you're not breathing you're not speaking, so, yeah. What I usually do is just walk out and take a second and look around and, you know, look at the way the building's made, look at the fact that I'm standing and that's a miracle because not very many animals stand like this.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: Just you and chimpanzees...
SARSGAARD: Yeah, just...
EISENBERG: ...Something to lean on.
SARSGAARD: (Laughter) Exactly.
EISENBERG: All right, well, let's see if you know this one.
SARSGAARD: OK.
EISENBERG: After dinner, Peter turns on the television to find one of his favorite movies, "The Godfather." Peter starts crying watching the scene where Michael Corleone's brother Sonny gets ambushed at a tollbooth, Sonny is of course played by the actor...
SARSGAARD: Oh...
EISENBERG: (Laughter) That's right.
SARSGAARD: It's been a long time. Stop it - Caan.
EISENBERG: Yes.
SARSGAARD: James Caan.
EISENBERG: James Caan, there you go.
SARSGAARD: Took me half a beat, give me a break, come on.
(LAUGHTER)
BALDWIN: Peter changes channels and the action film "White House Down" is on and Peter thinks, hey, who is that uncontrollably talented and unbelievably beautiful actress? Wait, that's my wife.
(LAUGHTER)
SARSGAARD: Maggie Gyllenhaal.
EISENBERG: Yeah.
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: All right, you did great. Congratulations, you and Victoria Lugo win an ASK ME ANOTHER Rubik's cube. Let's hear it for our VIP, Peter Sarsgaard.
(APPLAUSE)
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