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I like to try to find a way to subvert the genre in a subtle way. I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel. I believe in genre films, whether it’s a romantic comedy or a baseball movie (laughing), or an action movie, or a science fiction film. I believe in genres, you know? Then there’s ways of kind of turning the genre on its head a little bit or expanding that genre, or subverting the genre in some way.

That’s really what I’m interested in. If there’s a common theme through my films it’s that I try to find a way to do that.

“The Sweetest Thing” is a subversion of the romantic comedy. The girl plays basically the guy’s part, and the guy plays basically the girl’s part in that film. It didn’t work but… Not to say it didn’t work. It didn’t find an audience when it came out but now that it’s on DVD, constantly I get women who really enjoy that film. That’s fascinating to me. There’s two different movies, which is why the DVD culture is so interesting. There’s two different films. There’s the film that comes out in a public way that you see with the masses, that you go and publicly see and participate in a film, right? Then its reaction is a public reaction. Your opinion becomes part of that public reaction and is in some way, whether you like it or not, molded by that public reaction. That’s whether you like the movie or not. Then there’s the movie you watch in the privacy of your own home with your family or by yourself.

That’s another film. That’s a movie with a more personal reaction. So you find a movie that initially had a very negative public reaction having a very positive private reaction. That’s very fascinating. “The Sweetest Thing” was something that was not warmly received publicly, but privately it’s being very, very warmly received. This fascinates me to no end. But that’s not my job, it’s just interesting.

“Dreamcatcher” subverts the genre. It’s the thinking man’s science fiction movie. It’s an amalgamation of a couple of different things. “61” subverts the baseball movie. It becomes this movie about something else. “The Punisher” – the same thing. It subverts the genre. It does something unexpected with the genre that you’re expecting. That’s fascinating to me.

How do you subvert the genre with “The Punisher?” What exactly does it do that you don’t expect it to do?
Well, it’s a revenge movie, you know, that’s the genre. It’s a comic book revenge film. But hopefully what it does… See, I like to play characters who have two diametrically opposed forces operating within them. And the character of Frank Castle, for instance, is a guy who is dedicated to a certain ideal. He’s got an American standard of values. He’s a Special Forces operative who believes in right and wrong. He believes in upholding the law, and then he has all that stripped away from him and he becomes something less than human. So at its core, at some point you’re watching this movie and you come to realize that this is not a revenge film, this is a film about family. You have a guy who has had his entire family stripped away, the essence of what makes him human – I think what makes us human – is our interconnectedness among people. It’s our ability to form and maintain relationships. It’s the barometer by which we call ourselves human. And Frank has all that stripped away. So it asks the question, "Where does this impulse come from? Is it nurtured by our parents and by those human relationships? Are we taught how to love and how to care about people or is it something that is naturally born within us? Is it something that is God-given and something that we instinctually migrate toward and establish?" So having Frank’s entire family wiped out leaves him completely alone and damaged in his ability to make these human connections. And another family moves in in the form of Rebecca [Romijn-Stamos], Spacker Dave and Mr. Bumpo. In this tenement apartment, this misfit group of people form – all damaged goods in their own way – form this dysfunctional family in a way.

What it challenges is Frank’s ability or lack thereof to reconnect to society and to humanity and to a sense of right and wrong. Whether or not he’s successful or not, or how successful he is, that struggle is to me what subverts the genre because so many times you get a revenge film where the protagonist is already formed. He is what he is and he does what he does, and then he pays the price for that down the road, hopefully. Any good vigilante film there’s a price to be paid for going against the law and for taking the law into your own hands, and operating outside of society. That’s what it is in our movie.

PAGE 3:Thomas Jane on Preparing Himself to Play Someone Full of Rage

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