MARGY ROCHLIN How much time do you actually spend talking about a project you're going to do together?
SEAN PENN We have a lot of conversations. She's also a particular critic. I'm not that analytic about stuff.
ROBIN WRIGHT PENN We speak the same language. We cut to the chase.

MARGY ROCHLIN And "The Pledge"? What kinds of conversations did you have about Robin's role a roadhouse waitress with a young daughter and an abusive ex-husband?
ROBIN WRIGHT PENN We didn't have a lot of time. It was sort of five days before
SEAN PENN [moans] Oh, no, don't
ROBIN Five days before, it was sort of, "Hey, you want to do this part?"
SEAN Don't exaggerate it.
ROBIN "Hey, do you want to do this part?" And I'm like, "Oh, O.K. Let me get a nanny."
SEAN It was two or three months before.
ROBIN About a week. [laughs] So there wasn't really preparation time. There wasn't a lot of script talk. And there was no rehearsal, real rehearsal, on the movie.
SEAN Not for you, there wasn't. That's true. But we did do some read-throughs with actors.

ROCHLIN Why was that so? Sean, were you thinking of casting someone else for that role?
SEAN I was
ROBIN Everybody else. It was never going to be me.

SEAN I was talking to a lot of people. Yeah. And there were people that I was very serious about, but I felt they would need more of me than I could give in these circumstances. And I was nervous about that for myself, for the movie and for them. So I just decided that I needed somebody that I knew could handle the emotional stuff and go head-to-head with Jack Nicholson. So she was the one. And I'm glad it happened because it worked out. Now, of course, typically I can't imagine it any other way. But it wasn't the way I was imagining it in the first place. And she was passive about the whole thing the whole time. Until one day, with no better option in the world, [laughs] I said, `Will you do this?' And she said, `O.K.'

ROCHLIN Robin, what's it like working with a director who knows you as well as Sean does? Does it make you complacent because you know he won't let you look bad? Or is it freeing?
ROBIN The latter. But in the same breath, literally, the same breath is fear. My thing with him is that I want to be perfect. I don't want to fail. And you always fail. Because I never nailed that character. Whatever that character was . . .
SEAN [both talking at the same time] She feels this way about her entire body of her work.
ROBIN That's true, O.K., but it's tenfold because it's his piece. And you want it to be 150 percent. So it's both. It's feeling completely safe and being much more nervous because it's somebody you know and respect and want their respect.

ROCHLIN Do you have conversations about this on the set?
SEAN She tells me how bad she is. And I tell her how good she is.
ROBIN Well, he's also the one who says: "Go for it. Do something. Art. Whatever. And I'll cut it out if I don't like it. But just give everything."
SEAN The other thing she's got going for her is, the editing room is upstairs from the kitchen.
ROBIN [bursts out laughing] He doesn't listen to me in the editing room, so it doesn't matter.

ROCHLIN "The Pledge" has an amazing cast Helen Mirren, Jack Nicholson, Vanessa Redgrave, Benicio Del Toro, Patricia Clarkson and so on. How does it work, assembling a cast like that?
SEAN I don't know. You'd have to ask them. It's Jack, it's me, it's the material. It certainly wasn't money. [laughs]

ROCHLIN When you're working directing a movie with an all-star cast, does it make you want to get in front of the camera?
SEAN [silence]
ROBIN [big laugh]

ROCHLIN I guess that meansno.
ROBIN [laughs] That's the last thing he wants to do. He's so much happier. He's a better person when he's directing. He becomes a queen when he's an actor. [laughs] Maybe because you're so used to getting things. And he's so unhappy when he's acting. So it's probably natural to take that position. When he's directing, it doesn't matter where he's staying or what meals he's eating. He's there for the love of what he's doing. He's happy at it. He's calm.

ROCHLIN At its core, "The Pledge" has such a sense of tragedy and bleakness. Does that affect the mood of the set?
SEAN It affects the mood of a set when you're shooting a scene of police standing around the body of a young girl. Everybody's a little you know, it's on people's minds, and they start tailing off into their own experience or terrors about that sort of thing. But generally, as you go along in the movie, I don't think all moments are overwhelmed by that.

ROCHLIN Do you bring your work home?
SEAN To a degree. Especially if some day you might be halfway into a scene between Robin and another actor at the end of the day knowing you're starting the next morning picking it up. If you're hot, you stay there, doing it. If you're not, you say: "Well, we're going into overtime. Let's do it tomorrow." If that's the case then it's, "What's wrong?"
ROBIN What's wrong?
SEAN Then we have those conversations: "Where should we start up tomorrow to make this thing click?"
ROBIN Usually, the blanket statement if you do finish a scene is: [laughs] "We totally missed it. It's gone now. We don't have that second chance." Or, how great it was. The day. But you get home, by the time you make dinner for the kids, part of the crew comes over and watches dailies, then it's time for bed because you have to get up in the morning.
SEAN We were out in the middle of nowhere, with no screening rooms. So we'd watch dailies at my place on video.

ROCHLIN Where were you?
SEAN Oh, we were 300, 400 miles outside of Vancouver, in different places. Moving all the time. We put 1,300 miles on the car in a week's time once. Just crazy moves all over the place.

ROCHLIN How did you describe the more gruesome aspects of "The Pledge" to your two young children?
ROBIN We told them what it was about. But they're not allowed to see those scenes.
SEAN It's fragile ground.

ROCHLIN What movies of yours have they seen?
ROBIN Dylan just watched "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." But I fast-forwarded past all of the provocative parts.
SEAN She's particularly upset by violence.
ROBIN "Dead Man Walking" really messed with her.

ROCHLIN You let your children see "Dead Man Walking"? Why?
SEAN We didn't let them see the rape and murder.
ROBIN Or the end.
SEAN We didn't let them see those things. But we let them see the drama between the two characters, between Susan Sarandon and I. And the pain and the discussions of what had happened. And they found it extremely depressing. Very sad.

ROCHLIN I can imagine. Wasn't "Princess Bride" available?
ROBIN They loved that. And "Toys," they loved "Toys." They've seen "Gump."

ROCHLIN Is there any movie of yours you don't want them to see?
SEAN Ever? No. Well, yeah. Anything that's a bad movie with bad acting. And I've been in a few.
ROBIN [laughs] But they've watched bad acting in bad movies. A lot. "Uncle Buck"!
SEAN That's the obscenity in American film. It's bad work. [laughs] I watched Sam Peckinpah growing up, and I didn't kill anybody. Clearly, it's bad acting that makes kids kill people. [laughs] But I won't name names.
ROBIN No, you won't. [laughs] You've already done that.

ROCHLIN How did you find the source material for "The Pledge"?
SEAN When I was making "The Crossing Guard." Normally, when I'm moved to write something, I'm writing my own experience, my own age, I guess. Jack Nicholson being older than I am, it was sort of a fluke that I'd written a character like his character in "The Crossing Guard." I didn't think I'd do it again. And I didn't want to force myself. But I did want to find a way to work with him again. He was forever reading detective novels on the set. So I
knew he liked that kind of thing, and I asked my partner, Michael Fitzgerald, if he could find that. So he had known this book ["The Pledge," by the Swiss playwright and novelist Friedrich Dürrenmatt], and I read it, and I thought, "Good." There were some things I thought I could really get into.

ROCHLIN For example?
SEAN The retirement crisis aspect of it was interesting.

ROCHLIN In both "The Crossing Guard" and "The Pledge" the protagonist wants to do good but is deeply misunderstood by the people around him.
SEAN Yeah, "The Pledge" is a "no good deed will go unpunished" story. I liked that my own reaction to "The Pledge" is this: I still think about it. That's what I like about a movie like that. I'm not answering any of the questions in the movie. The movie is just there. And people decide for themselves. The people that like the movie tend to make that comment a lot. They go away thinking about it quite a bit. So, that's great.

ROCHLIN You're still thinking about the movie?
SEAN Yeah, and I don't want to know the answers to stuff. I can go to Westwood and see that movie anytime I want.

ROCHLIN The movies that answer everything?
SEAN Yeah. I don't know if you're aware of this, but in this town, all the answers are here.
ROBIN [laughs] Everyone has the answers.
SEAN In fact, that building over there [points in the direction of the Creative Artists Agency, which is across the street] is full of brilliant answers. C.A.A. knows everything. All the studios, they know everything, too.

ROCHLIN Let's talk about Robin's look in "The Pledge." Through much of the movie you're missing a tooth, your hair is dark and scraggly, you're almost unrecognizable.
ROBIN The first thing was, Get rid of the blond hair. That was pretty much a given. And so I just put Clairol rinse on it. It was really ugly. Ash. And it worked, so we just kept that. And then he sent me to his dentist man. We got a tooth plate, and it was too much. I have such a little face. I looked like Sammy Davis Jr. So we just did one tooth. Then it was makeup.
SEAN The makeup was the main thing. The blotchiness.
ROBIN The scar.

ROBIN [claps her hands, throws back her head and laughs]
SEAN I just wanted to shoot myself the minute the movie started. And everybody talks about this movie. And they suddenly get a Continental accent when they talk about it: [through clenched jaws] "Oh, goodness! She's just . . . !" And the people in it are talking about suicide sometimes and you're thinking: "Do it! Do it! There's some gasoline! Pour it on yourself! Light it!" [laughs].

ROCHLIN What happens when Sean is having a bad day, Robin? Even though he's the director, do you go up and talk to him?
SEAN No, what happens is this: I say, "So, how do you feel it went today?" [mimes her rolling over in bed and turning her back to him] That's what I get. [laughs]
ROBIN [in a little-girl voice] Because you make me tired. [laughs] Yeah, but he flips when people aren't doing their job.

ROCHLIN Crew?
ROBIN Crew. Production.
SEAN Not actors. Actors do their jobs. Actors, by nature, do their jobs. The others don't, necessarily. Or they try to do yours.
ROBIN It happens rarely. He's not a tyrant. He's not Klaus Kinski.
SEAN She's asking about when I give you bad direction. Is that what you mean?

ROCHLIN What I meant was this: On the set, does Robin feel comfortable juggling the role of wife and lead actress?
ROBIN This was a really hard movie. In every way. Being up there.
SEAN There was a lot of being out in the middle of nowhere.
ROBIN It was hard with the kids in no man's land.
SEAN I mean, Jack was staying in a roadside motor lodge with no cable. [laughs]
ROBIN It was freezing cold, and it was April and you were in snow gear. Freezing. It was tedious. Just tedious work.

ROCHLIN Did it make you rethink the idea of doing movies together? In other words, "Do we all have to be up here doing this?"
SEAN No. It will be awhile before I do another weather-dependent picture. But I'd like to work with her any time.

ROCHLIN Do you have another project planned for you two?
SEAN Yeah. I've got one I wrote. She won't likely be in it. She doesn't like it.
ROBIN It will never get made.
SEAN [laughs]

ROCHLIN Why won't it ever get made, Robin?
ROBIN It's awful.
SEAN [laughs]

ROCHLIN Wait. You're saying it's a terribly written script?
ROBIN Oh, it's self-indulgent. Queen. One of those queen scripts. [laughs]
SEAN Anyway, that's probably the best thing I have. [laughs] I have a couple of other things, too. [laughs].