Chris Evans In 'Puncture': From Super To Anti-Hero
There's just something about Chris Evans and needles.
Over the summer, a set of experimental injections turned the 30-year old actor into iconic comic book hero Captain America, ripped with muscle and fueled by the earnest virtue of his unblinking moralism. The film earned strong reviews and opened number one at the box office, catapulting his star to new heights. But for all the newfound success and accolades, it's a different needle that truly pierces Evans' heart.
Downshifting from 3D stadium seating to indie picture houses, Evans next stars as a frenetically brilliant, drug addicted lawyer in "Puncture." The film, the true story of a pair of small town Texas lawyers that take on an evil medical conglomerate, sees Evans play a functioning drug addict who lives life on the very edge. If Captain America action figures stretch stars and stripes over a super soldier body, a plastic model of attorney Mike Weiss would be its demented twin, instead covered in tattoos and scruffy beard wet with cocaine nose bleeds.
It was a part Evans was set on taking almost immediately after he began reading the script.
"Twenty pages in, it's one of those movies that I read that, if you really start liking something, I find that i just get on my feet and just start saying lines," Evans told The Huffington Post. "You almost start acting it, just feeling what it feels like with the words in your mouth. Halfway through, before I even knew where the movie was going, I was like, I wanna do this, I like this guy, I like this character."
Weiss and his partner, Paul Danzinger, are hired as the only firm willing to take on a lawsuit brought on by a nurse pricked by an HIV-positive patient's syringe. Now dying from the disease, she's suing to help make sure the ingenius accident-proof needles invented by her friend are used in hospitals to help others avoid her fate. Thanks to an array of secret kickbacks and bribes between hospitals and Group Purchasing Organizations, the inventor can't even get a meeting. The film sees Weiss cascade between philandering junkie to whip-smart crusader fighting passionately for the cause, even as the powers that be -- and his own, more cautious partner -- urge him to drop the case.
That juxtaposition, the often violent clash of his selfish and selfless ways, was part of the role's great appeal.
"It's a fun balance between -- he's such a vile guy. He has so many horrible qualities, but he still has to be likable," Evans explained. "So it's fun trying to toe the line between someone who you kind of want to strangle and someone you don't want to cut out of your life. He's still got this genius, he's still brilliant, he's still charismatic, he's still all these fantastic things, but kind of a dick. It's fun to try to find that balance.
Brought the story on a cold submission by Paul Danzinger himself, directors Adam and Mark Kassen warmed to it immediately. "Our assistant read it and said, You've really got to pay attention to this. It's raw but there's something here. And we really felt, wow, you know, if we can really take it and maybe give it some great structure, we can do some things," Mark explained. It helped that there was an emotional hook to it, too; their father owned a medical supply company and mother who worked as a nurse for over four decades.
Over the summer, a set of experimental injections turned the 30-year old actor into iconic comic book hero Captain America, ripped with muscle and fueled by the earnest virtue of his unblinking moralism. The film earned strong reviews and opened number one at the box office, catapulting his star to new heights. But for all the newfound success and accolades, it's a different needle that truly pierces Evans' heart.
Downshifting from 3D stadium seating to indie picture houses, Evans next stars as a frenetically brilliant, drug addicted lawyer in "Puncture." The film, the true story of a pair of small town Texas lawyers that take on an evil medical conglomerate, sees Evans play a functioning drug addict who lives life on the very edge. If Captain America action figures stretch stars and stripes over a super soldier body, a plastic model of attorney Mike Weiss would be its demented twin, instead covered in tattoos and scruffy beard wet with cocaine nose bleeds.
It was a part Evans was set on taking almost immediately after he began reading the script.
"Twenty pages in, it's one of those movies that I read that, if you really start liking something, I find that i just get on my feet and just start saying lines," Evans told The Huffington Post. "You almost start acting it, just feeling what it feels like with the words in your mouth. Halfway through, before I even knew where the movie was going, I was like, I wanna do this, I like this guy, I like this character."
Weiss and his partner, Paul Danzinger, are hired as the only firm willing to take on a lawsuit brought on by a nurse pricked by an HIV-positive patient's syringe. Now dying from the disease, she's suing to help make sure the ingenius accident-proof needles invented by her friend are used in hospitals to help others avoid her fate. Thanks to an array of secret kickbacks and bribes between hospitals and Group Purchasing Organizations, the inventor can't even get a meeting. The film sees Weiss cascade between philandering junkie to whip-smart crusader fighting passionately for the cause, even as the powers that be -- and his own, more cautious partner -- urge him to drop the case.
That juxtaposition, the often violent clash of his selfish and selfless ways, was part of the role's great appeal.
"It's a fun balance between -- he's such a vile guy. He has so many horrible qualities, but he still has to be likable," Evans explained. "So it's fun trying to toe the line between someone who you kind of want to strangle and someone you don't want to cut out of your life. He's still got this genius, he's still brilliant, he's still charismatic, he's still all these fantastic things, but kind of a dick. It's fun to try to find that balance.
Brought the story on a cold submission by Paul Danzinger himself, directors Adam and Mark Kassen warmed to it immediately. "Our assistant read it and said, You've really got to pay attention to this. It's raw but there's something here. And we really felt, wow, you know, if we can really take it and maybe give it some great structure, we can do some things," Mark explained. It helped that there was an emotional hook to it, too; their father owned a medical supply company and mother who worked as a nurse for over four decades.
