Check out what he had to say after the jump.
Collider: How did you get involved with this film?
PAUL GIAMATTI: I actually am a producer on it.
I have a very small company.
Weve done a couple of things.
Were gonna do some TV stuff now.
And I actually knew this writer, Melissa Gibson, whos an Obie Award-winning playwright.
She writes very, very interesting, almost surreal, quirky plays.
She writes for the showThe Americansnow, too.
So, she had wanted to do a screenplay.
Shes Canadian and shes fascinated by these hard-luck guys shed seen selling trees on the street.
She said, one day, that she had two ideas.
And then, we got Phil Morrison interested as the director.
Did it stand out to you because it was such an unusual story?
It was more surreal and bizarre, and we made it a little bit more grounded.
Melissa wondered who those people selling Christmas trees are, and what their deal was.
Its a rough existence for some of them.
GIAMATTI: Well, I actually liked the fact that he doesnt actually talk a lot.
He actually doesnt say a lot, and I liked that idea.
There was a deadpan quality to the guy that I liked.
Youd think the other guy would be the selfless one.
The guy who comes off as the selfless one is less so.
So, the challenge was to actually make it believable that this guy could do that.
Hopefully, I succeeded.
Theres something about him that makes him not a bad guy.
GIAMATTI: I didnt really think about it that much.
Theres likeable, and then theres sympathetic, which seem like different things to me.
I like the guy.
I dont have a problem with him.
But, my definition of likeable may be different from other peoples.
Hes not traditional likeable.
But, I actually dont think about it that much.
Sympathy is a different thing.
To feel for or with somebody is different than liking them.
I dont think he does anything all that bad.
He punches the dude, but the dudes a jerk.
I actually went to jail for the guy, and he took my wife.
Just because hes charming and funny, everybody forgives him.
Why is he more likeable?
He shouldnt actually be.
What is your relationship with the holidays?
Can you understand why its such a hard time for so many people?
I have a whole different holiday situation now.
I have a son whos been raised Jewish because his mom is Jewish.
I have a whole different set of holidays to celebrate.
I suppose everybodys energy is up.
Everybody is thrown together with their family in such an intense way, opening all of that stuff again.
I guess that just doesnt work for a lot of people.
Youre cooped up with your family, and all of that history gets shoved in your face.
Especially in the city, Ive always like the whole atmosphere of the holidays.
Personally, Im much more of a Halloween fan.
GIAMATTI: I like Halloween, too.
Im not a big Christmas guy.
My kid is still into it, which is good.
Im dreading the day when hes no longer into it.
You do see us drunk at the end, and Im having a good time and joking around.
I dont think he was always this way.
He went to jail for four years, for another guy, and that cant have been easy.
And his wife is gone, and all this crappy stuff is happening to this guy.
The suggested is that he wasnt always quite like this.
And theres the opposites attract thing.
Theyre both good at something that they were really good at together.
The time you see them get along the best is when theyre stealing together, at the end.
They do a great job together because theyre good at it together.
They click together, and they do this well together.
Was it fun to have someone like Paul Rudd to play off of?
GIAMATTI: Oh, yeah!
Hes a lot more fun than I am.
Its totally great to be around a guy like that.
Hes light on his feet.
Im not like that.
Its really nice to be with a guy like that.
Hes really, really fun.
Hes genuinely, truly hilarious, so its just a pleasure to be around.
Im always vaguely in awe of guys like that, who are so effortlessly funny.
Youre an actor who works a lot.
What is it that gets you excited about a role versus what makes you turn down a role?
I like to work.
But, I get all kinds of interesting things that come to me.
Its not even necessarily the part, all the time.
Its the story that needs to be interesting to me.
I did this movie that comes out next spring, that I havent even seen yet, calledThe Congress.
Its the craziest thing Ive ever seen in my life.
Half the movie is a cartoon.
Its this crazy movie by this Israeli director (Ari Folman).
I just wanted to be in it.
I wanted to play the nice guy in it.
I didnt even care, in a way, what I did in it.
The movie was so interesting that I just wanted to be a part of it.
So, it just depends.
The part should definitely be interesting, but movies are about the movie.
A great performance in a great movie is great.
It all contributes to making it a great movie.
But, its the movie itself that needs to be good.
Everything around the actors needs to be good.
GIAMATTI: It was totally awesome!
Thats so crazy to me!
Its crazy to me that those are the big-budget movies now.
There was a time when those would have been the low-budget piece-of-crap movies.
But now, its amazing!
I totally wanted to play a villain in a comic book movie.
Ive been waiting my whole life to be a villain in a comic book movie.
Thats what I wanted to do.
I wanted to be those guys.
For Halloween, thats what I would do.
I wanted to be The Mummy.
So, its great.
I get to do that.
How hammy of a villain is Aleksei Sytsevich, aka The Rhino?
Did you get to go as big as you wanted to with it?
GIAMATTI: I went completely over-the-top with it.
I seemed to have carte blanche to just go and ham it.
I took it literally.
In some ways, hes literally a rhinoceros inside.
Hes just a big, dumb animal.
Thats what he is, so thats why I thought it would be fun.
Hes just a brute.
Id rather be the villain.
To me, theyre always more colorful and bizarre.
Im wearing a weird thing in it, too.
What was it like to do this most recent reimagining ofRomeo & Juliet?
GIAMATTI: The adapted language was interesting.
Im curious to see how it works.
But, it was just as tricky, in some weird way.
GIAMATTI: That was great!
That was one of the funnest things Ive done, in a long time.
I love period things, and it was an interesting character.
It was a different key in of character than I generally get to play.
The cast was great, and it was great to shoot in London.
I love working with British actors.
It was really fun.
And Shirley MacLaine was great.
It was me and her, and everybody else is British.
We had this great sense of being the Americans, in every possible way.
That was actually really interesting and fun.
All is Brightis now playing in theaters.
