The Angry Zen of Matt Dillon

Tripe he won't eat. He sometimes uses phrases like "beats a sharp stick in the eye" and sometimes calls people Chief or Jack, and once said, "I've been doing this since I was a teenager, and the best advice I can give is 'Let the teeth do the work.' " He used to smoke, but no longer. His biggest vice these days is coffee, lots of coffee. He's a serious bowler. He is "pretty sure" that Quentin Tarantino wrote the Butch the boxer role in Pulp Fiction with him in mind. In his fridge he's got a lot of cod-liver oil, as well as a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

He's an avid reader. It turns out that in his early twenties, Dillon was a huge Charles Bukowski fan and read almost all of his novels and short stories, about lowlife drinking and lowlife women on skid row. It's funny, horrible stuff, and when it came time to playing Bukowski's alter ego Henry Chinaski, Dillon called the writer's wife to find out more. Among other things, she told him that Buk wasn't interested in clothing but that, contrary to popular perception, he wasn't a slob. In fact, he was neat and clean. "Knowing that really helped me," says Dillon. "It helped me tap into his dignity, in the fact that he had a certain sense of order and carried himself well. Anyway, in my twenties, what I loved was the hard living, the irreverence, the honesty, the laughing and seeing the world as a comedy. That's really great. That's what I liked more about Bukowski than anything."

Around the time of the Diaz breakup, Dillon decided that he needed to write and direct a movie of his own and embarked on the four-year journey that ended up being called City of Ghosts, a 2003 psychological thriller shot in the dust and confusion of Cambodia. "I was at a frustrated point in which my life was unacceptable," he says. "And when I was done with the movie, I was off the deep end. You know what I mean? Really off the deep end."

What happened was, he took a trip to Bali, found himself disgusted by "the world of wealthy bourgeois people" and decided that he wanted to be "back in the gutter, back in Phnom Penh, getting beat up by drunk men on the dirty sidewalk. That was my head." Where he ended up, though, was in Luang Prabang, in Laos, a beautiful jewel box of a town. To Dillon, however, it was boring as hell. So he started drinking, then ran into a friend and drank some more: "I wasn't used to being idle and just being alone with my thoughts or feelings. And then one night I got into an altercation with some asshole Australian backpacker. I figured it was a head butt. I didn't see it coming. I went down and was momentarily out. I hit the ground with two joints in my hand and threw them, saying to myself, 'Now I'm going to have to do something.' I got up. I don't talk about it much, because it's kind of embarrassing. I started pounding him. He was trying to get away from me. I was out of my mind."

And then, falteringly and with much exertion, Dillon says, "Look, I wasn't in a war and in a post-traumatic-stress situation. But making that movie was kind of a war. It didn't have the same stakes, obviously. But it felt like it." He sighs. "You learn tolerance and patience when you become famous or you get in a lot of trouble. I work on my self-destructive behaviors. I try to get past them. There've been times when I'm very prone toward anger. And if I look at my anger, there's usually fear behind it. Some sort of fear of something. I'd been drinking that night. I made some bad decisions. My judgment wasn't the best."

But that kind of introspection and honesty only lasts for a minute.

Was that the last time you were in a fight?

"I don't know," he says, looking away. "Maybe. I don't know. I don't keep track."

He's got a sweet little pad on the Upper West Side, not too far from the Museum of Natural History, that's got lots of art on the walls (Chris Burden, Weegee, John Waters), lots of record albums in a cabinet (mostly ethnic music and jazz of the Afro-Cuban variety). He points to the frame on one wall and says, "These are WANTED posters for kids that ran away from a reform school in California, 1899." He begins reading the description belonging to one Clell Dempsey: "Powerfully built boy, weight 150, large head, long face, median furrow of upper lip accentuated, has a mean sneering and a stubborn countenance."

He takes a seat on a couch. Yesterday, he wore black jeans and black lace-up shoes, which is pretty much what he's wearing today. He says, "Deep down I think I'm pretty easygoing, but life circumstances get to you. My mom used to say to me, 'What happened to you, Matt? You used to be such an easygoing kid.' Starting to act at a young age puts certain pressures on you. You sometimes feel you're in a battle when other kids are just being kids. You've got to sink or swim, Jack."

Then, a while later, looking back at his long career, he says, "I like playing unlikable characters. I'm surprised by how many actors are afraid of coming off like a bitch or not a good guy. But playing an unlikable character can be very interesting sometimes. We all have these character defects and flaws," he says. "We're all human."

>>This article appears in the September 7th, 2006 issue of "Rolling Stone" magazine.

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