marionbreen7: 'Hunger Games' Film Shows 'Flashier' Seneca Crane

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

'Hunger Games' Film Shows 'Flashier' Seneca Crane

'I used my understanding of show business and sort of magnified that to get a clear-cut vision of Seneca,' Wes Bentley tells MTV News.
By Kara Warner with reporting by Josh Horowitz

Wes Bentley as Seneca Crane in "The Hunger Games"
Photo: Lionsgate

On Thursday, we treated our fellow "Hunger Games" fans to a fun and candid discussion with star Wes Bentley about his character's curiously shaped beard and how its unique design and personality enhanced Bentley's performance in the film as game master Seneca Crane.

Now we have yet another snippet from that interview, in which we tackle some more serious issues, like what secretive scenes Bentley was most excited to film, as well as what kind of Seneca Crane we'll see on the big screen come opening day, March 23.

"It was all of it for me," Bentley told MTV News about what scenes he was most eager to film. "I was curious to get on set and see what was going on. It was secret for everybody, so to get on and see what the look was and how it was feeling, I was excited to be a part of it every day."

The "American Beauty" actor admitted that because author Suzanne Collins doesn't provide a meaty character arc for Crane, he wasn't exactly sure how they were going to interpret him for the film.

"For anyone who reads the books, he's not mentioned much in the books, mostly because it's told from Katniss' first-person perspective, so I had no idea what kind of angle we were going to take on it, and I really didn't have an idea until I got to set," Bentley said. "[Director] Gary [Ross] had such a clear idea of it that it made it easy to dig into."

Bentley was hesitant to describe his version of Crane in detail, but after a bit of prodding, he did reveal that he took a few cues from his experiences in Hollywood to flesh out Crane's persona a bit.

"The idea of him was a flashier idea than what you would think. He's more a flashy producer," Bentley said. "I'm still a tech-y kind of guy, still a producer at heart, so I used my understanding of show business and sort of magnified that to get a clear-cut vision of Seneca.

"He goes big. He's all about the show," he added about Crane's all-for-the-sake-of-the-Games showmanship. "I went as far as I could without [going over the top], but what he's about in his show is flashy, his look is very flashy, but he still tried to play it like he's a cool cat."

Check out everything we've got on "The Hunger Games."

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