Edward Norton takes on consumerism again

updated 2:30 p.m. ET May 8, 2006

NEW YORK - In "Down in the Valley," Edward Norton plays a deluded 21st century cowboy whose contrived Old West masculinity and aw-shucks innocence attracts a restless teenage girl who's desperate for something more authentic than the asphalt highways of suburban Los Angeles.

Norton is again — as he did in "Fight Club" — exploring the strange avenues a person might take to eek out something natural in a consumerist, overdeveloped world.

"People who liked `Fight Club,' I think will like this film a lot because on a deep psych level, it's about the same things," says the 36-year-old, two-time Academy Award nominee. "It's about fantasy as a desperate attempt to get away from the numbing banality of what the modern world confronts you at times."

Norton's character — Harlan Fairfax Carruthers — appears to have wandered into California's San Fernando Valley straight out of an old John Ford Western. In one scene, he walks through bumper-to-bumper traffic imploring people to get out of their cars. He defends shouts of "You're crazy!" by drunkenly replying, "I'm the only sane man on this street!"

Harlan wins the heart of young Tobe (Evan Rachel Wood) and captivates her younger brother (Rory Culkin). But his identity isn't as genuine as it seems, and the romanticism eventually turns to tragedy.

In a disparate filmography that spans a decade, Norton has ranged from a neo-Nazi skinhead ("American History X") to a reflective drug dealer headed to the slammer ("25th Hour"). Since first impressing audiences as the duplicitous altar boy in 1996's "Primal Fear," Norton has been widely considered one of the finest actors around.

For several years, he's been largely absent from movie screens, but that's more a function of timing. "Down in the Valley," which opens in limited release Friday, was made two years ago, and Norton and director David Jacobson had to fight to secure a distributor.

ThinkFilm eventually picked it up, but Norton has recently been critical of the so-called "indie" divisions of major Hollywood studios (who passed on "Down in the Valley"), suggesting their taste isn't as artistically motivated as they claim.

During a recent interview in New York, where Norton has lived for years, his tone was a little more conciliatory.

"Just because you've made a couple movies, you've done some good movies, you've been nominated for some Academy Awards, whatever — nobody's entitled," Norton says, half to himself. "It's a business. If they don't see it, I can think they're wrong, but I'm not entitled to a $15 million budget to make a film."

Norton fought for the movie, screening it for critics, who in turn spread positive reviews. Recently, Rolling Stone's Peter Travers wrote: "It's typical of the cowardly indie scene that Norton, as star and producer, had to fight to keep this hypnotic and haunting film from going straight to video."

An intense and guarded person, Norton has in the past shown that he isn't reluctant to use his power to get what he wants — or, rather, what he feels is best for a film.

The final version of 1998's "American History X" was partly edited by Norton — not director Tony Kaye. Kaye sued the studio, New Line Cinema, and the Director's Guild for not letting him take his name off the picture.

Norton has frequently gone further than the typical actor-director collaboration, often honing scripts in preproduction. Jacobson's original screenplay for "Down in the Valley" was a darker "Badlands"-style murder spree. Norton helped bring out the contrast between Harlan's old-school (albeit deranged) grit, and the kids' shallow modern environment.

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