Saturday night's alright for biting with Bryan Cranston

Having played one of the most iconic TV characters of all time in Walter White – the high school science teacher turned meth dealer in Breaking Bad – Bryan Cranston’s latest role finds him appearing in possibly 2018’s finest film, Isle Of Dogs.

The new movie from US auteur Wes Anderson (director of cult classics like Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and The Grand Budapest Hotel) is set in a dystopian future Japan, where the corrupt mayor of fictional city Megasaki has ordered all dogs to be quarantined on an offshore island to stop the spread of canine diseases such as 'snout fever.'

A young boy, Atari, travels to the island to find his dog, Spots, and is helped in his quest by a group of dogs headed up by Cranston’s character, Chief. Told with Anderson’s trademark mix of quirky humour and quietly powerful emotional drama – and also incorporating influences from Akira Kurosawa and the Brothers Quay – Isle Of Dogs is a funny, touching, insightful and utterly wonderful movie.
But first things first: had Cranston been a fan of Anderson’s over the years?

“How can you not be?” responds the actor in his familiar baritone, down the line from London, where he’s currently appearing in the stage adaptation of classic ’70s movie Network at the National Theatre. “It was an easy decision for me to want to be a part of it. In fact, the first three words out of my agent’s mouth were all I needed to hear, and they were, ‘Wes Anderson wants…’. I was like, ‘Yep!’
“Because you know you’re going to be in good hands – he has a very unique vision to his storytelling. Isle Of Dogs is no different. Just because it’s animated doesn’t mean he spent any less time developing his characters and plotline.”

Cranston’s character, Chief, leads the pack of dogs on the island. A loner by nature, as well as being capable of great affection, he can also be very intimidating, and is frequently called on by the other dogs to lead the charge when there’s some fighting to be done.

Was Cranston channelling Walter White to any extent in his portrayal of Chief?

“I wasn’t thinking of Walter White,” replies Cranston. “This is a dog whose life was very challenging. So I was just thinking if a man was an orphan from an early age, and then kicked out onto the street at age 18, under-equipped to really handle himself, how would he behave? He’s always had to manage for himself, and probably get into a lot of fights, and generally scraped and scratched for everything that came his way.

“So, taking all that into account, this was my idea of how he would be. And in the dog world, might is right, and the alpha is usually the beast that is most aggressive.”

Had Cranston done much voice-acting before?

“Yes, all the way back to the Power Ranger TV series,” he nods. “We did a recent movie of that too, and I’ve also done stuff like Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda.”

What are the challenges of that type of performance?

“You have to focus in more,” explains Cranston. “But when you’re standing there reading it, you’re actually acting it out. It’s not just your voice; you’re using your inflection, your body and your gestures. Your facial features are fully active. Often – in fact almost all of the time – they will put cameras in front of the microphone to shoot the actor, so that they can be helped with the animation of the character.

“They’ll check back and see what the actor was doing with his eyebrow when he was saying a particular line, and that really helps the filmmakers.”

The Isle Of Dogs script was recorded in New York three years ago, and such is the painstaking level of detail in each scene, the film is only now ready for release. But it was most definitely worth the wait.

The cast is nothing of phenomenal: amongst the group of dogs headed up by Cranston, the other parts are played by Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum and Bob Balaban. Elsewhere in the galacticos-like assemblage of talent, there are also appearances by Harvey Keitel, F. Murray Abraham, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, Yoko Ono and Anjelica Huston.

For everyone involved, it must have been a remarkable experience.

“You know, it’s one of those things,” considers Cranston. “It’s the first Wes Anderson film I’ve done, and hopefully it won’t be the last. I had a great experience with him, and to work with his cast of regulars – Ed Norton, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray and the like – it was fun to do.”

While watching Isle Of Dogs, I was thoroughly entertained by Anderson’s characteristic filmmaking flair. However, it wasn’t until the final act that the penny really dropped with me as to what the director was trying to say: the persecution of the dogs and the general suspicion of outsiders in the movie resonates powerfully with the current political situation in the US.

“There are so many themes at play, that anyone around the world can apply to whatever’s happening in their own society,” says Cranston. “Certainly, there is so much craziness going on in my country right now; the xenophobia, fearmongering and greed. And then you have the immigration issue, segregation and the like. There are just a tremendous amount of issues in the movie that you can see are relevant to today’s life.”

What did Cranston make of the decision to set the action in Japan?

“What I love about it is that films and stories shouldn’t always be about what you’re already familiar with,” he says. “They should be able to introduce you to new cultures, languages, topographies and landscapes. So, I thought the infusion of Japanese culture into the film was very captivating, and really helped set the foundation of the story. I just thought it was really unique, and a beautiful homage to those famed Japanese filmmakers.”

A couple of standout scenes in Isle Of Dogs take place between Chief and his sultry love interest, Nutmeg, played by Scarlett Johansson. Written with Anderson’s characteristic charm, the sequences are a joy, and bring out another side to Chief.

“It was the only time that you would see Scarlett Johansson and Bryan Cranston legitimately romancing,” chuckles the actor. “She has a lovely quality to her. I have never met her – we did our recording separately. I would just picture her voice, and her loveliness and femininity, and it wasn’t hard to imagine being enthralled by a beautiful woman. That was the easy part. But there’s a definite mismatch – if you made that a live action story, it wouldn’t be as effective!”

Along with Paul Schrader’s dark drama First Reformed, Isle Of Dogs is the best movie I’ve seen this year. Interestingly, both touch on some similar themes, including environmentalism and political turmoil. But while Schrader’s effort trades in scorched earth nihilism, Isle Of Dogs has Anderson’s customary optimism, which is all the more powerful given the fraught nature of the times.

“It does have a positive outlook,” agrees Cranston. “The film challenges you because of its content, but it does embrace a compassionate side of humans, as we look towards the simplistic nature of dogs. The main four components of a dog are love, companionship, playfulness and loyalty.

“Those are qualities that any person would love to own. So it was easy to get that relationship and say, ‘Isn’t this something that we would all benefit from?’ It had a lot of layers of meaning, but I believe Wes was right that if you tried to make this live action, where there were refugees or something, I just don’t think it would be effective. But he knew how to do it.”

After a brief chat about his appearance on the incredible comeback series of Curb Your Enthusiasm (“crazy fun”), I ask Cranston about his work on the 2016 crime drama The Infiltrator, where his co-stars included one Tom Vaughan-Lawlor – best known to Irish audiences as Nidge from Love/Hate.

“First of all, he has a great American accent,” enthuses Cranston. “And he’s a good guy. We mostly shot The Infiltrator in London, but also in Tampa, Florida. Tom was with us in both places. In the film, he plays my friend and colleague, and there’s a scene where we’re both jogging, and talking about a case. I found out that Tom was a marathon runner, as was I at one point. So he and I enjoyed the day and said, ‘Boy this is great – we get to work and get our run in at the same time.’

“He’s a lovely guy and a really terrific actor, and I hope to get the chance to work with him again.”
Finally, I ask Cranston about his truly astonishing performance as Walter White in Breaking Bad. My own favourite episode is ‘Phoenix’, in which Walter ends the titular episode in a bar, ruminating about the titular space probe’s discovery of water on Mars – as well as expressing his frustration over his young partner Jesse’s heroin use.

Does Cranston have a favourite episode?

“Mine is not so objective,” he answers. “It’s subjective, because of what it meant to me. I think the most important one to me was the first one, because that started it all off and gave me a great story to tell for six years. And beyond that, it changed my life professionally, so I owe it and Vince Gilligan a lot.”