From The Times
September 13, 2008
Francis Ford Coppola on Apocalypse Now - and then
If Apocalypse Now looked hellish on screen, that was nothing compared to making it. Francis Ford Coppola tells our correspondent about his jungle odyssey
Thirty years ago, the 39-year-old film-maker Francis Ford Coppola was finalising the edit of a film about the Vietnam war.
Three years earlier, on the back of two Godfather films and the taut thriller The Conversation, he had been the toast of Hollywood. Now, he was in danger of becoming a laughing stock. Tales from the Apocalypse Now set – of drug-taking, shootings and even body-snatching – were doing the rounds.
Still, Coppola persevered in the editing suite. Until in 1979, having spent $30 million on a film budgeted at $12m, he emerged with a masterpiece that went on to take the Palme d’Or at Cannes and earn three Oscar nominations. As a new DVD set of the film is released, the director returns to his Apocalypse for The Knowledge.
Looking back, does it feel like Apocalypse Now was made by another person?
Recently, while I was working with [editor] Walter Murch, he said: “We’ve been doing this for 40 years.” I said, “Really? it seems like four.”
The thing with cinema is that you always feel as if you’re just beginning to understand it, and that makes each day very fresh and exciting. When I was younger, I decided I would make each film as an experiment, trying to do something that was appropriate to its theme, so Apocalypse Now was quite different from The Godfather or The Conversation. So I made it in a style I felt appropriate to the war itself: high amperage, big production, almost out of control. It wasn’t comfortable but I think it was right. So yes, each film is made by a different person, but always the same six-year-old who looked at life with wonder and love.
Given the chance, what would you do differently?
What is, is. There’s no way to tamper with the past. Perhaps I would have made the French plantation sequence without as much worry about cost; or I would have made the film with less anxiety.
Why did you replace Harvey Keitel with Martin Sheen, and how hard was it?
The hardest thing in movie-making is to replace an actor. I’ve done it only once or twice. Harvey is a wonderful actor, totally different in approach and style to Martin. But given what I felt the character had to convey, I was convinced that he was wrong for what I wanted to do. There’d be many roles perhaps in which I would replace Martin with Harvey, as they are both wonderful actors and good people. It was a judgment call. It was difficult, but I do not think I was wrong. Something I am very grateful for is that this difficult moment did not cost me Harvey’s friendship – which shows what a fine and generous person he is, as well as a dedicated actor.
What led you to use Wagner’s The Flight of the Valkyries with the helicopter attack scene?
John Milius, who wrote the original screenplay, created that idea – as with so many creative aspects of the story and script. I only did some rewriting.
Was it a challenge handling Marlon Brando?
I spent several days with Marlon discussing the themes of the film and the specifics of the role of Kurtz (whom Brando had asked to rename Leighly). Marlon repeatedly resisted the idea that we could do the sequence in a manner following Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which I was proposing. He said adapting the novella wouldn’t work and came up with all sorts of thoughts, some relevant, some not, about which way we should go.
So I just sat patiently, worried though I was, listening and discussing many things with him, recording them and studying them later. Finally, after more than a week of this (I only had three weeks of his time), he showed up and I was shocked: he had shaved his head, like Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. I knew that meant he had come around to doing the role more like the novella, which he had always insisted wouldn’t work. I said: “But Marlon, you said it wouldn’t work to do it like Heart of Darkness – you said you had read it and thought it wouldn’t work.” And he said: “I lied.” He had only read it for the first time that night. From that moment, we went into high gear and did what we could.
How did you negotiate the problem of Brando’s size?
He admitted we had a problem in that this “Green Beret colonel” would not be as overweight as he was, which presented issues of what sort of costume should he wear, as there wouldn’t be uniforms in his size. He didn’t want to be depicted as a man who had let his appetites and passions go wild, which was the other solution. Marlon, like all fat people, was shy and embarrased by his weight, which of course I understood, having something of the same problem, as did Orson Welles. I decided to dress him in black and portray his fatness as great size, meaning that you usually see just his shoulders and arms. So his large scale could be interpreted as that of a giant man. I used a very tall, husky double for the scenes where you see all of him.
Why does his dialogue seem rambling, unrehearsed?
I took many discussions that I had recorded, and worked them up to a script. He recorded it and would listen through a small earphone to remember his lines. But they were all written. Plus, when he was rambling, that was usually in scenes where we weren’t intending to use the sound.
Legend has it that Dennis Hopper was high on drugs for much of the shoot...
God only knows what he was high on – but high or not, Dennis is one of the most knowledgeable, intelligent people I know.
The climactic animal sacrifice is similar to Eisenstein’s Strike. Were you aware of this?
No. My wife Eleanor had gone to shoot footage of the Ifagau people sacrificing a water buffalo. Our contract with them focused on the chickens they’d sacrifice daily, the pigs weekly, and, for the two big holidays, the two water buffalo. She came back with the heart that had been given by the chieftain to me, a token of honour. I was really desperately looking for a way to end the film, as the original script had an ending more appropriate for a war film in the style of A Bridge Too Far. So I decided, after much thought and conversation, to have Martin end by assassinating the great king (Kurtz), and utilise the fact that the Ifagao people were going to sacrifice their water buffalo on our last day of shooting. I refused to even consider killing anything ourselves for the purpose of making a film.
Why did the film become so all-consuming?
In those days we were ahead of the great electronic cinema revolution, and what you see was what you had to stage. It was a big movie with many difficult and dangerous big-scale sequences, not to mention the now-famous interruptions of typhoon, guerilla war and [Sheen’s] heart attack – all without the digital compositing. It took the time necessary to make it.
Which would you rather be remembered for: Apocalypse Now or The Godfather?
I’d actually like to be remembered for my present film Tetro, which is the most personal film I’ve made. It follows in the tradition I wanted to pursue, after The Rain People, The Conversation and The Godfather Part II. I don’t want to be remembered for a film, but for the fact that I loved so much and was enchanted by little children.
— The Apocalypse Now Steelbox Edition is out to buy on DVD
2008年9月18日星期四
2008年9月17日星期三
Daniel Day-Lewis
There Will Be Blood
Interviewed by Rob Carnevale
“ Close to the borderline of chaos is the most fertile area that you can work in. ”
Daniel Day-Lewis is often described as one of the most talented and influential actors of his generation. Since becoming noticed alongside Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins in The Bounty, he continued to enhance his reputation in films like My Beautiful Laundrette and The Unbearable Lightness of Being before stealing the Oscar from right under Tom Cruise's nose for his portrayal of Christy Brown in My Left Foot. Since then, he's never been far from awards shortlists or end of year best of lists with roles in The Last of The Mohicans, In The Name Of The Father, The Boxer and Gangs of New York. His latest finds him playing a ruthless American turn of the century oil prospector in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood. He discusses some of the challenges with BBC Movies...
What was your reaction as you flicked through the script and saw so many pages without dialogue during the opening of the film?
That was delightful actually. I have a paradoxical relationship with language anyhow, having come from a household where language was so important. I turned page after page and thought: "How long can he keep this going for?". There was something almost cheeky about it, but delightful and true, first and foremost it seemed true, that the life of this man in this situation could be revealed in such a way that you knew everything that you needed to know about him at that stage in his life without ever saying a word. I just thought there was something quite remarkable about that. In fact, it's actually a much longer sequence in the script and we shot a much longer sequence which then - when the film was put together - would have gone on for probably about 30 minutes had we not had to necessarily try and condense it. It was a whole overture.
Daniel Day-LewisI guess there's plenty of potential research material here for your role as Daniel Plainview. How far did you go into that?
Not very far, except I read the book [Oil! by Upton Sinclair]. The first 150 pages or so introduce you to the world of the oilfields at that time, and there's a lot of great detail about the world of the drillers and the prospectors. The second part of the book is almost like an examination of the conflict between labour and management, which is a different kind of thing altogether but nonetheless fascinating. Upton Sinclair was a very committed, lifelong socialist and it was kind of amazing he survived in America at that time. So yes I've read the book. But there were no clues there other than the introduction to the oilfields.
I studied the life of [turn of the century American oil tycoon] Edward Doheny only insofar as I learnt about the main events of his life. Los Angeles was actually founded on muck, it's an amazing thing, if you see the early photographs dating back to that period. It's actually a forest of oil derricks with tiny little houses sandwiched here and there in between them. If you happened to live in one of those little houses and stepped out of the front door, what you would be confronted by would be a quagmire of crude oil just running down the streets. Your kids would be playing in that stuff. That was the world, and Los Angeles grew out of that and was founded on that wealth. Doheny was one of the principal characters in the building of that city. Indeed, there's a Doheny Drive named after him and probably some other roads. We filmed the last couple of scenes of the movie in the Doheny Mansion which, in every respect, feels like a pyramid, a monument that a pharaoh built for his own quiet, self destruction. It's interesting.
Did you visit any oil rigs?
No. It was rumoured apparently that I'd built a derrick in a field behind my house in County Wicklow, and I must say when I read that I thought: "That's not a bad idea, I might try that!" But we were a bit short on help at the time. Considering the way that I work very often, I do feel I've been soundly misrepresented so many times that there's almost no point in even talking about it, but people tend to focus on the details of the preparation, the practical details in this clinic or that prison and so on and so forth. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. But for me as much as that work is a vital part of it and always fuel to one's fascination, one's curiosity, the principal work is always in the imagination. That's where it's going to happen if it's going to happen anywhere at all. The imagination in very close working partnership with the subconscious, I think, because when the work is happening the way it should be you can't be entirely in control of it. Paul [Thomas Anderson] is a mischief-maker; he's a great man for working close to the borderline of chaos and I think that's really the most fertile area that you can work in.
Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano
Did the father-son relationship in the film have any bearing on your own complex relationship with father, or your relationship with your son?
My relationship with my own father was much less complex than you might have been led to believe. He was just a man I never really got to know, so there's nothing really complex about that. In later years, reassessing what might have been a relationship with my father, that's where the complexity is, I suppose, because we all to some extent measure ourselves - if we're men - we measure ourselves against our fathers. I would hope that none of my experiences as a father would have fed the relationship Plainview has with HW [his son in the film]. I would hope. In fact, it probably worked against me a little bit, because I felt so protective of that wonderful young man, to the point where he'd almost be swatting me off like I was an irritating mosquito or something [smiles].
The film contains a number of amazing set pieces. Were some of them just one off chances, such as the burning of the oil rig? Or could you have more than just one take?
In that case no. In fact, I don't know how many times the burning of that bloody rig was put on the schedule. We all thought we should do something else first because there was only one derrick and that was the centrepiece of our world that [production designer] Jack Fisk had built for us. In a way, part of it was that we didn't want to lose it as well. We knew that we'd feel the absence of that beautiful thing when it was gone, but more than that it was a big risk. This was a big story to tell, the schedule was 60 days which is not nothing but it's not a long shoot either to tell that story. So, it was relentless and there was so much to do every day. And there was no going back if we'd got the burning of the derrick wrong - we'd have been absolutely shagged. But we had a good guy called Steve Cremin, who was strangely an ex-tennis pro, and he really just did everything right, thank God.
Your co-star Paul Dano was also in The Ballad of Jack and Rose, so was this a chance to pick up your relationship?
Yeah. I certainly knew enough about Paul and I hope he'd say the same, to know that he'd be somebody I'd know I wanted on my side in a scrap. I admired him so much in Rebecca [Miller]'s film. We never really spoke, and we never met socially during that time because the work led us in different directions. He understood implicitly, as I did, that it was important to keep that distance between us. But we got to know each other a little bit after that and I like him so much as a man - which always helps - but as an actor I think he's undoubtedly one of the most promising young actors working at the moment.
Are there any others you admire?
There's a few really good ones... Emile Hirsch and Ryan Gosling. I don't know if Ryan is a little bit older, but they're more or less part of the same generation, wonderful actors. But I was delighted at the thought of working with Paul again. Actually, when we cast the film originally we cast somebody else in the part of Eli and we shot for three or four weeks with a different actor. But it didn't work out for a number of reasons. It's the only occasion in my life that, during the course of a piece of work, we had to re-cast and re-shoot stuff which I wouldn't wish on anybody. Paul as already contracted to play the part of Paul, and we'd all considered him for Eli already, so it seemed like an obvious choice. He flew out to what he thought would be one of his scenes as Paul and we asked him what he thought about also playing Eli and he never went home again. He had two days to prepare for the part. He came out on a Friday evening and we were shooting scenes on Monday with him. And I swear to God on set that day he was a recognisable, fully formed character. I dare say he was slightly unsettled in himself, but you wouldn't have guessed it. He was just right there.
How aware of movies are you when you're not making them and how aware were you of someone like Paul Thomas Anderson? Are directors a lure to you or is it all about the script?
Initially it's all about the script. But in his case, I certainly knew his films and already admired him a great deal. And most particularly for his recent film Punch-Drunk Love. So even the very idea of working with him when the word came was something I was intrigued by. Nonetheless, had I read that script and not felt drawn into the world that he'd created, out of respect for him I'd have said: "Get somebody else, because I can't help you here." But I was very drawn to the idea of working with him.
There Will Be Blood opens in UK cinemas on Friday 8th February, 2008.
Interviewed by Rob Carnevale
“ Close to the borderline of chaos is the most fertile area that you can work in. ”
Daniel Day-Lewis is often described as one of the most talented and influential actors of his generation. Since becoming noticed alongside Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins in The Bounty, he continued to enhance his reputation in films like My Beautiful Laundrette and The Unbearable Lightness of Being before stealing the Oscar from right under Tom Cruise's nose for his portrayal of Christy Brown in My Left Foot. Since then, he's never been far from awards shortlists or end of year best of lists with roles in The Last of The Mohicans, In The Name Of The Father, The Boxer and Gangs of New York. His latest finds him playing a ruthless American turn of the century oil prospector in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood. He discusses some of the challenges with BBC Movies...
What was your reaction as you flicked through the script and saw so many pages without dialogue during the opening of the film?
That was delightful actually. I have a paradoxical relationship with language anyhow, having come from a household where language was so important. I turned page after page and thought: "How long can he keep this going for?". There was something almost cheeky about it, but delightful and true, first and foremost it seemed true, that the life of this man in this situation could be revealed in such a way that you knew everything that you needed to know about him at that stage in his life without ever saying a word. I just thought there was something quite remarkable about that. In fact, it's actually a much longer sequence in the script and we shot a much longer sequence which then - when the film was put together - would have gone on for probably about 30 minutes had we not had to necessarily try and condense it. It was a whole overture.
Daniel Day-LewisI guess there's plenty of potential research material here for your role as Daniel Plainview. How far did you go into that?
Not very far, except I read the book [Oil! by Upton Sinclair]. The first 150 pages or so introduce you to the world of the oilfields at that time, and there's a lot of great detail about the world of the drillers and the prospectors. The second part of the book is almost like an examination of the conflict between labour and management, which is a different kind of thing altogether but nonetheless fascinating. Upton Sinclair was a very committed, lifelong socialist and it was kind of amazing he survived in America at that time. So yes I've read the book. But there were no clues there other than the introduction to the oilfields.
I studied the life of [turn of the century American oil tycoon] Edward Doheny only insofar as I learnt about the main events of his life. Los Angeles was actually founded on muck, it's an amazing thing, if you see the early photographs dating back to that period. It's actually a forest of oil derricks with tiny little houses sandwiched here and there in between them. If you happened to live in one of those little houses and stepped out of the front door, what you would be confronted by would be a quagmire of crude oil just running down the streets. Your kids would be playing in that stuff. That was the world, and Los Angeles grew out of that and was founded on that wealth. Doheny was one of the principal characters in the building of that city. Indeed, there's a Doheny Drive named after him and probably some other roads. We filmed the last couple of scenes of the movie in the Doheny Mansion which, in every respect, feels like a pyramid, a monument that a pharaoh built for his own quiet, self destruction. It's interesting.
Did you visit any oil rigs?
No. It was rumoured apparently that I'd built a derrick in a field behind my house in County Wicklow, and I must say when I read that I thought: "That's not a bad idea, I might try that!" But we were a bit short on help at the time. Considering the way that I work very often, I do feel I've been soundly misrepresented so many times that there's almost no point in even talking about it, but people tend to focus on the details of the preparation, the practical details in this clinic or that prison and so on and so forth. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. But for me as much as that work is a vital part of it and always fuel to one's fascination, one's curiosity, the principal work is always in the imagination. That's where it's going to happen if it's going to happen anywhere at all. The imagination in very close working partnership with the subconscious, I think, because when the work is happening the way it should be you can't be entirely in control of it. Paul [Thomas Anderson] is a mischief-maker; he's a great man for working close to the borderline of chaos and I think that's really the most fertile area that you can work in.
Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano
Did the father-son relationship in the film have any bearing on your own complex relationship with father, or your relationship with your son?
My relationship with my own father was much less complex than you might have been led to believe. He was just a man I never really got to know, so there's nothing really complex about that. In later years, reassessing what might have been a relationship with my father, that's where the complexity is, I suppose, because we all to some extent measure ourselves - if we're men - we measure ourselves against our fathers. I would hope that none of my experiences as a father would have fed the relationship Plainview has with HW [his son in the film]. I would hope. In fact, it probably worked against me a little bit, because I felt so protective of that wonderful young man, to the point where he'd almost be swatting me off like I was an irritating mosquito or something [smiles].
The film contains a number of amazing set pieces. Were some of them just one off chances, such as the burning of the oil rig? Or could you have more than just one take?
In that case no. In fact, I don't know how many times the burning of that bloody rig was put on the schedule. We all thought we should do something else first because there was only one derrick and that was the centrepiece of our world that [production designer] Jack Fisk had built for us. In a way, part of it was that we didn't want to lose it as well. We knew that we'd feel the absence of that beautiful thing when it was gone, but more than that it was a big risk. This was a big story to tell, the schedule was 60 days which is not nothing but it's not a long shoot either to tell that story. So, it was relentless and there was so much to do every day. And there was no going back if we'd got the burning of the derrick wrong - we'd have been absolutely shagged. But we had a good guy called Steve Cremin, who was strangely an ex-tennis pro, and he really just did everything right, thank God.
Your co-star Paul Dano was also in The Ballad of Jack and Rose, so was this a chance to pick up your relationship?
Yeah. I certainly knew enough about Paul and I hope he'd say the same, to know that he'd be somebody I'd know I wanted on my side in a scrap. I admired him so much in Rebecca [Miller]'s film. We never really spoke, and we never met socially during that time because the work led us in different directions. He understood implicitly, as I did, that it was important to keep that distance between us. But we got to know each other a little bit after that and I like him so much as a man - which always helps - but as an actor I think he's undoubtedly one of the most promising young actors working at the moment.
Are there any others you admire?
There's a few really good ones... Emile Hirsch and Ryan Gosling. I don't know if Ryan is a little bit older, but they're more or less part of the same generation, wonderful actors. But I was delighted at the thought of working with Paul again. Actually, when we cast the film originally we cast somebody else in the part of Eli and we shot for three or four weeks with a different actor. But it didn't work out for a number of reasons. It's the only occasion in my life that, during the course of a piece of work, we had to re-cast and re-shoot stuff which I wouldn't wish on anybody. Paul as already contracted to play the part of Paul, and we'd all considered him for Eli already, so it seemed like an obvious choice. He flew out to what he thought would be one of his scenes as Paul and we asked him what he thought about also playing Eli and he never went home again. He had two days to prepare for the part. He came out on a Friday evening and we were shooting scenes on Monday with him. And I swear to God on set that day he was a recognisable, fully formed character. I dare say he was slightly unsettled in himself, but you wouldn't have guessed it. He was just right there.
How aware of movies are you when you're not making them and how aware were you of someone like Paul Thomas Anderson? Are directors a lure to you or is it all about the script?
Initially it's all about the script. But in his case, I certainly knew his films and already admired him a great deal. And most particularly for his recent film Punch-Drunk Love. So even the very idea of working with him when the word came was something I was intrigued by. Nonetheless, had I read that script and not felt drawn into the world that he'd created, out of respect for him I'd have said: "Get somebody else, because I can't help you here." But I was very drawn to the idea of working with him.
There Will Be Blood opens in UK cinemas on Friday 8th February, 2008.
Daniel Day-Lewis
Gangs of New York
Interviewed by Alec Cawthorne
Londoner Daniel Day-Lewis' film debut was "Sunday Bloody Sunday" back in 1971. He then turned his attentions to the stage for a decade before returning to the big screen with "Gandhi" in 1982. Since then he appeared in "My Left Foot", "The Last of the Mohicans", "The Age of Innocence", and "In the Name of the Father". His latest film "Gangs of New York" is his second for director Martin Scorsese.
Why did you take so much time off between films?
There came a time five years ago when I just felt I wanted to do other things. Periodically over the years I've always taken periods of time away from acting.
Did you need persuading to take this role?
Martin [Scorsese] doesn't have to convince me about anything. I can only say that I would wish for any one of my colleagues to have the experience of working with Marty once in their lifetime. If you get it twice, it's a privilege that you don't necessarily look for but you certainly don't try to avoid.
What is it about working with Scorsese?
As an actor, I think it is very hard to define why he works so well with actors. He has a very clear vision of what it is that he is trying to do. Nevertheless, he creates a great sense of freedom within the framework that he's laid down.
Is it true you stayed in character on set even when cameras weren't rolling?
I just found a way that suits me some years ago, as every actor does. It seems a little bizarre to some people.
And working with Leonardo DiCaprio - how was that?
I spent a little bit of time with Leo before shooting began. Leo and I didn't get to know each other very well during the film because I think we both understood that you need a certain distance to allow things to happen when the work is important.
One thing that's truly fascinating about your character is the hair.. it's terrible!
It was work to make it so gross! On the last day I said to Marty "Can I get a haircut?" You could fry an egg on that hair!
Interviewed by Alec Cawthorne
Londoner Daniel Day-Lewis' film debut was "Sunday Bloody Sunday" back in 1971. He then turned his attentions to the stage for a decade before returning to the big screen with "Gandhi" in 1982. Since then he appeared in "My Left Foot", "The Last of the Mohicans", "The Age of Innocence", and "In the Name of the Father". His latest film "Gangs of New York" is his second for director Martin Scorsese.
Why did you take so much time off between films?
There came a time five years ago when I just felt I wanted to do other things. Periodically over the years I've always taken periods of time away from acting.
Did you need persuading to take this role?
Martin [Scorsese] doesn't have to convince me about anything. I can only say that I would wish for any one of my colleagues to have the experience of working with Marty once in their lifetime. If you get it twice, it's a privilege that you don't necessarily look for but you certainly don't try to avoid.
What is it about working with Scorsese?
As an actor, I think it is very hard to define why he works so well with actors. He has a very clear vision of what it is that he is trying to do. Nevertheless, he creates a great sense of freedom within the framework that he's laid down.
Is it true you stayed in character on set even when cameras weren't rolling?
I just found a way that suits me some years ago, as every actor does. It seems a little bizarre to some people.
And working with Leonardo DiCaprio - how was that?
I spent a little bit of time with Leo before shooting began. Leo and I didn't get to know each other very well during the film because I think we both understood that you need a certain distance to allow things to happen when the work is important.
One thing that's truly fascinating about your character is the hair.. it's terrible!
It was work to make it so gross! On the last day I said to Marty "Can I get a haircut?" You could fry an egg on that hair!
2008年9月15日星期一
Pitt named 'most powerful actor'
Hollywood star Brad Pitt has been named the world's most powerful actor in the Guinness World Records 2009 book, which is released next week.
His partner Angelina Jolie has won the title of most powerful actress toppling Pitt's ex-wife Jennifer Aniston.
Samuel L Jackson has set a new world record for the highest grossing actor with earnings reaching nearly $4bn (£2.2 billion).
Last year's Transformers film is the most downloaded movie.
Blockbuster hits
According to the record book Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have become the most lucrative movie partnership ever formed.
The director and actor duo have made five blockbuster hits, including the 1990 movie Edward Scissorhands, netting $287m (£157m).
British actors Hugh Laurie and Christopher Lee have had their status as top Hollywood stars confirmed.
Samuel L Jackson
Samuel L Jackson has starred in Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown
Veteran actor Lee has been crowned the most connected living actor.
The 86-year-old, who has been made a CBE, was listed in the 2001 record book as the star with the most screen appearances to his name - after playing about 300 film and TV roles.
He is best-known for playing monstrous roles opposite Peter Cushing in the Hammer horror films.
Laurie has seen his American hospital drama series House shoot to the top of the ratings and take the crown of most popular TV show.
The 49-year-old star has recently signed a new four-year deal to play grumpy doctor Gregory House, which has made him one of the highest paid actors in America.
The latest list of record-breaking achievements goes on sale on 17 September.
His partner Angelina Jolie has won the title of most powerful actress toppling Pitt's ex-wife Jennifer Aniston.
Samuel L Jackson has set a new world record for the highest grossing actor with earnings reaching nearly $4bn (£2.2 billion).
Last year's Transformers film is the most downloaded movie.
Blockbuster hits
According to the record book Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have become the most lucrative movie partnership ever formed.
The director and actor duo have made five blockbuster hits, including the 1990 movie Edward Scissorhands, netting $287m (£157m).
British actors Hugh Laurie and Christopher Lee have had their status as top Hollywood stars confirmed.
Samuel L Jackson
Samuel L Jackson has starred in Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown
Veteran actor Lee has been crowned the most connected living actor.
The 86-year-old, who has been made a CBE, was listed in the 2001 record book as the star with the most screen appearances to his name - after playing about 300 film and TV roles.
He is best-known for playing monstrous roles opposite Peter Cushing in the Hammer horror films.
Laurie has seen his American hospital drama series House shoot to the top of the ratings and take the crown of most popular TV show.
The 49-year-old star has recently signed a new four-year deal to play grumpy doctor Gregory House, which has made him one of the highest paid actors in America.
The latest list of record-breaking achievements goes on sale on 17 September.
The Duchess, shot by Gyula Pados, HSC, recounts the trials and triumphs of England's Lady Goergina Spencer.
Mark Hope Jones
Unit photography by Peter Mountain, Nick Wall and Liam Daniel
Born in 1757, Lady Georgina Spencer (Keira Knightley) was the great-great-great-great aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, and every bit as controversial a figure. The day before her 17th birthday, she married William Cavendish, the fifth Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes), and as the Duchess of Devonshire, she evolved into one of the most extravagant, influential women of the 18th century. Like Diana, she was a beautiful but naive country girl who married into a high-profile family, only to find herself both venerated and vilified by the press and public. A creature of infectious passion, she inspired action and debate in spheres as diverse as fashion and politics. Gradually, however, her spirit began buckling under the weight of drug addiction, gambling debts and the emotionally draining ménage à trois that resulted from her loveless marriage. “It’s really a beautiful story about loss,” says director of photography Gyula Pados, HSC. “At its core is this woman who is isolated by society and becomes a very lonely person.”
Early in Pados’ career, before he earned credits that include the features Fateless (AC Jan. ’06) and Evening (AC July ’07), he worked on two films as a camera assistant to Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC. “He gave me my first light meter as a present, and he taught me a lot,” Pados recalls. “It was fantastic to watch how sensitive to the story Vilmos always is. He’s a great technician, of course, but what I really learned from him was how important it is to be close to the director, to watch his every move and get a sense of how he wants to tell the story.”
On The Duchess, Pados collaborated with British director Saul Dibb, whose background is in documentaries. Dibb wanted to tell the story in the most realistic way possible, an approach that appealed to the cinematographer. “One of my problems with period films is that the costumes and historical details can create a kind of distance between the audience and the film,” says Pados. “What’s really different in this script is that Georgina’s story is so personal and intimate. I had seen Saul’s first film, Bullet Boy [2004], which is a frighteningly realistic movie, and I thought it was fantastic. When I started talking to him about The Duchess, I realized what mattered to him most was the reality of the two main characters and their relationship.”
To lay the groundwork for his close collaboration with Dibb, Pados spent as much time as possible with the director during prep. “Being a cinematographer is a bit like being a chameleon,” he muses. “You always have to adapt to your environment and become like your director by getting in his head and feeling what he wants, which is why spending time with him is important.
“For The Duchess, I had about six weeks with Saul before filming began, but I would have liked even more time, especially because it was a big and complicated production,” Pados continues. “We storyboarded a lot of things; we knew we wouldn’t necessarily be pinned down by our drawings and that there would be a lot of improvisation, but that approach allowed us to discover the really important moments. Sometimes we would just figure out one key shot for a scene, a bit of movement that would capture exactly what Saul wanted to express.”
The film was shot almost entirely on location at a number of historic homes across England. This decision was made primarily for financial reasons, but it perfectly suited Dibb, who is accustomed to location filming and a great believer in its benefits. “I wanted to shoot on location, and there’s no way we could have afforded not to,” says the director. “We’re lucky in England because all of these extraordinary houses still exist; I believe shooting in these real locations helped everybody connect with that time and that world. I think it helped the actors to be able to walk into a real house and realize how fabulously wealthy and powerful these aristocrats were.”
Shooting at well over a dozen different period properties was not without its difficulties, however. Aside from the logistical complexities of traveling between locations on a tight schedule, many of the structures are maintained and protected by the National Trust, which imposes strict limitations on the activities of film crews in order to prevent any damage to the heritage sites. Pados jokes, “They have an interesting rule: you can’t touch anything!” More specifically, the Trust prohibits any equipment from coming into contact with interior walls or ceilings, which makes the rigging of lights a particular challenge. “We were also very careful with the lux levels,” notes gaffer John Colley. “They were often concerned with the levels of light hitting delicate artwork and tapestries, so we had to cover a number of them with 12-by-12 textiles on frames. In addition, we took simple precautions like putting tennis balls on all the C-stands to preserve floors and being diligent when carrying equipment in and out. This isn’t the only film that had ever, or will ever, shoot in these places, but we wanted to make it easy for ourselves and also for those who came after us.”
Filming took place over the course of an English winter, so daylight hours were extremely short; shooting hours were made shorter still by the lengthy delays involved in getting actors into the elaborate costumes and makeup of the era. “If we did more than one scene a day, we’d lose two hours in the morning and then another two in the afternoon to costume changes because Keira is in almost every scene,” explains Dibb. “That leaves you a tiny amount of time on camera, and yet I believe in actors having a degree of ownership of their parts, so there will be certain scenes that I don’t want to be pre-staged; I want to be able to see the actors in the situation and then find the scene. That [approach] makes it even more difficult, because you’ve got to rehearse and commit to the staging before you can shoot.”
With time so tight, Pados could take only as much time to adjust the lights between setups as it took to move the camera to each new position. For daytime interiors, the solution was to make use of the sizeable windows typical of the buildings in which they were shooting; lighting came in from outside, keeping the walls and ceilings free of fixtures and the floors free of clutter. Dibb wanted the lighting to feel natural and was accustomed to shooting with available light, but the rooms were often extremely large and lined with dark wood paneling, so exposure readings varied wildly inside. “You might have a reading of T11 by the window and T2 in the corner,” says Pados. “I had to get more light in there so Saul could have the freedom to say, ‘Okay, let’s shoot in this corner and then over there,’ in the same way he had on his previous projects.”
Daylight coming through the location windows was therefore augmented with diffused 12K Arrisun Pars and 18Ks, usually on 10'x10' scaffold towers. During the first few weeks of filming, these towers had to be erected and dismantled for different scenes at various locations with tremendous speed. “Vince Madden was the rigging gaffer, and he did a fantastic job,” says Colley. “His guys worked harder than I’ve seen anybody work before.”
At Holkham Hall in Norfolk, a total of 18 scaffold towers were erected at the same time to light a labyrinth of connecting rooms, allowing Dibb to move freely between them. “It was really important for Saul to have that freedom,” asserts Pados. “At Holkham Hall, he wanted to show how Keira’s character is really lost in this huge place by filming her walking through all these unbelievable rooms in a Steadicam shot that was almost 200 meters long.” Once the towers were up, they stayed up, so rooms and scenes could be revisited at a moment’s notice. “It was the only way to make the schedule work,” says Colley, “and the only way I could look the rigging crew in the eye!”
The English winter in-evitably made its presence felt with ever-shifting light and weather conditions. Naturally, exterior scenes were the worst affected, and Pados battled for consistent images from the beginning of the shoot. “We shot the very first scene over three different days,” he recalls. “The first day was sunny, the second was cloudy and on the third it was raining; we seemed to go though every season in that one scene!” Fluctuating levels of sunlight also had an impact on day interiors. “You might have lots of lights outside these huge windows, but you’re still using the existing daylight as well,” continues the cinematographer. “Sometimes there were days when it was so dark and cloudy that nothing came through, and it would often change in the middle of the day.”
To counteract unreliable daylight and add contrast to interior shots, Pados frequently reflected light off mirrors into backgrounds. “We would put 6K and 12K Pars in the rooms and bounce them off 3-by-3-foot and 4-by-4-foot mirrors,” he says. “The mirrors created hotspots, as though the sun was coming in though a high window; it worked really well.” Additionally, working from the floor, the mirrors and lights could be moved quickly without breaking any of the properties’ rigging rules.
Lady Georgina died shortly before the introduction of gas lighting in England, so candles had to motivate most of the lighting for evening and nighttime scenes. Pados worked closely with production designer Michael Carlin to make the best use of the limited number of single-wick (rather than double- or triple-wick) candles permitted by the National Trust. The cinematographer also performed an impromptu experiment at one of the locations to get an impression of the reality he sought to emulate. “We were doing a scene in a ballroom with 400 candles, and I was curious to see what the room would really have looked like,” says Pados. “So I asked the crew to light all the candles and turn the lights off, and I was really surprised — it was pitch black!”
Pados knew filming in such low light levels would create a dirty look that would work against Dibb’s desire for the film’s early scenes, which were designed to show the happiness of Georgina’s youth and the grandeur of her first few years with the duke. He did not, however, want to use lights with flicker effects to bolster the candlelight. “When you’ve got 400 candles in a room, they’re all flickering differently and the overall effect is that you don’t see any flicker,” he notes. “I only used flicker on the few occasions where we could use a fireplace as a light source, and I usually used a 2K Zip light or an OctoDome with a flicker box.”
In order to achieve a soft ambience, the only real options for sources that would be unobtrusive and quick to adjust without touching either walls or ceilings were helium balloons, spring balls (a.k.a. Chinese lanterns) and Lowel Rifa-lites. “For the most part, we used a couple of 8K tungsten sausages, dimmed down to about 30 or 40 percent to mimic candlelight with a color temperature of around 2200°K,” states Colley. “We tethered them from C-stands or other equipment and made adjustments to the light with the guide lines.”
Helium balloons proved invaluable for a great many interior scenes, especially when it came to wide and traveling shots that made it impossible to hide fixtures on the ground. The balloons’ only downside was that they did not lend much in the way of contrast or depth. As Pados explains, “We had a big ballroom dance scene and Saul wanted to use a Steadicam to follow Keira as she walks from one room into the ballroom and then starts dancing, with the camera turning through 360 degrees; I think it was a four-minute shot. In that situation, my only chance of lighting anything was with the helium balloons, but they looked a bit flat because everything was coming from above. I had to get more light in there, so I was running next to the Steadicam operator with a couple of 15-inch Kinos in a housing we made [modified to run off a 12-volt camera battery in a backpack] and trying to get a bit more contrast — a bit more light on the costumes and faces.”
The cameras employed on the shoot were Panaflex Millennium XLs supplied by Panavision U.K. Relatively lightweight, they suited the location filming and the need to move quickly between setups. “The way we covered scenes kind of progressed,” notes Dibb. “To start with, we were very much using one camera, but as time went on and I got to know the second camera unit’s way of working, the second camera came more into play and remained so throughout. They were very independent, which worked because most of my time was spent focusing on what I really needed from the first camera.
“We were shooting a nine-week schedule on a film that should probably have had 12 weeks, so there just wouldn’t have been any way to do it with only one camera,” the director continues. “It was one of those things that starts as a practical consideration and winds up as something that has great creative benefits as well.”
Though the director wanted to imbue The Duchess with the naturalism that defined his previous projects, this did not extend to using camerawork associated with a documentary style. Dibb explains, “Both cameras tended to be on dollies and quite carefully composed, but with the second camera you’d get a slightly abstract profile, or details of hands — things the main camera wasn’t looking for. Sometimes you’d get quite surprising framing because [the operators] were limited in where they could shoot from, but they’d come up with something that felt very fresh. It might only be used for one shot in the scene, but it’s a shot that gives you an extra angle you would never have had.”
Pados operated the A camera, taking care of the key shots that would carry each scene, but he makes it clear that he could not have managed without the B-camera team. “We had a fantastic second-camera operator, Gerry Vasbenter,” he says. “Gerry came up with some great ideas and really saved us at times. We were often so rushed that we weren’t even aware of what he was doing, but he got some great footage. It did mean a bit of a compromise because we didn’t always know what kind of light conditions he was shooting, which was one reason why I had to achieve a sort of general lighting that gave us both freedom. Nevertheless, he got some shots that were vital for the story. Of course, it’s ultimately more important to get the right material for a scene than to make the lighting perfect.”
The film was always destined for a digital intermediate (DI), so Super 35mm initially seemed like the obvious format. However, tests conducted during prep convinced the filmmakers otherwise. “We shot tests of Super 35 and anamorphic side by side, and there was a tangible difference between the two,” recalls Dibb. “We fell in love with anamorphic, and it suited the ambitions of the piece; we wanted to make it look big and cinematic, to lift everything up that extra level.”
When anamorphic won out, Pados and his crew began seeking the right lenses. “I opted for the C-Series,” he says. “I wanted to find softer lenses to give the whole movie a more realistic look, and my first assistant, Rawdon Hayne, helped me find these older, softer lenses when he was testing at Panavision. We found a particularly good close-up lens, a 100mm, that was really soft and worked perfectly for big close-ups.
“I tested soft contrast filters at the beginning, but each filter seemed to have a different effect with each lens, especially with the glow around candle flames,” continues Pados. “I couldn’t really control it, so I decided not to use them. In any case, the lenses were very soft, so I didn’t really need the filters. I was shooting almost everything wide open at around T2.8. That can drive the crew crazy, but I really like the look of that shallow depth of field.”
The cinematographer used three Kodak Vision2 stocks throughout the shoot: 50D 5201 for exteriors, 250D 5205 for day interiors and darker exteriors, and 500T 5218 for evening and night scenes. “We had hi-def dailies on DVD,” notes Pados. “HD dailies can be difficult to judge, and in my experience, they are often a bit brighter than I would like. Every day, I asked for a couple of shots to be printed, and I watched them projected with an Arri LocPro.”
The DI was carried out at Deluxe Digital in London, where Pados worked with colorist Adam Inglis. “There’s a curve to the lighting through this film — it changes as the story develops,” Pados explains. “We start with a sort of golden age, when Georgina is young and innocent and has dreams about her future. Slowly she starts to realize that the world is different than she dreamed, so the lighting and the tones transition from brightness and color to a faded and colder tone at the end.”
By focusing on this overall structure, Pados succeeded in visualizing Dibb’s understanding of Georgina’s emotional journey. “I think a lot of cinematographers naturally get obsessed with the aesthetics, but Gyula’s first question is always, ‘What’s the scene about?’” says Dibb. “His focus is on how the camera and lighting will help tell the story. It’s not so much about the how as the why.”
Unit photography by Peter Mountain, Nick Wall and Liam Daniel
Born in 1757, Lady Georgina Spencer (Keira Knightley) was the great-great-great-great aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, and every bit as controversial a figure. The day before her 17th birthday, she married William Cavendish, the fifth Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes), and as the Duchess of Devonshire, she evolved into one of the most extravagant, influential women of the 18th century. Like Diana, she was a beautiful but naive country girl who married into a high-profile family, only to find herself both venerated and vilified by the press and public. A creature of infectious passion, she inspired action and debate in spheres as diverse as fashion and politics. Gradually, however, her spirit began buckling under the weight of drug addiction, gambling debts and the emotionally draining ménage à trois that resulted from her loveless marriage. “It’s really a beautiful story about loss,” says director of photography Gyula Pados, HSC. “At its core is this woman who is isolated by society and becomes a very lonely person.”
Early in Pados’ career, before he earned credits that include the features Fateless (AC Jan. ’06) and Evening (AC July ’07), he worked on two films as a camera assistant to Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC. “He gave me my first light meter as a present, and he taught me a lot,” Pados recalls. “It was fantastic to watch how sensitive to the story Vilmos always is. He’s a great technician, of course, but what I really learned from him was how important it is to be close to the director, to watch his every move and get a sense of how he wants to tell the story.”
On The Duchess, Pados collaborated with British director Saul Dibb, whose background is in documentaries. Dibb wanted to tell the story in the most realistic way possible, an approach that appealed to the cinematographer. “One of my problems with period films is that the costumes and historical details can create a kind of distance between the audience and the film,” says Pados. “What’s really different in this script is that Georgina’s story is so personal and intimate. I had seen Saul’s first film, Bullet Boy [2004], which is a frighteningly realistic movie, and I thought it was fantastic. When I started talking to him about The Duchess, I realized what mattered to him most was the reality of the two main characters and their relationship.”
To lay the groundwork for his close collaboration with Dibb, Pados spent as much time as possible with the director during prep. “Being a cinematographer is a bit like being a chameleon,” he muses. “You always have to adapt to your environment and become like your director by getting in his head and feeling what he wants, which is why spending time with him is important.
“For The Duchess, I had about six weeks with Saul before filming began, but I would have liked even more time, especially because it was a big and complicated production,” Pados continues. “We storyboarded a lot of things; we knew we wouldn’t necessarily be pinned down by our drawings and that there would be a lot of improvisation, but that approach allowed us to discover the really important moments. Sometimes we would just figure out one key shot for a scene, a bit of movement that would capture exactly what Saul wanted to express.”
The film was shot almost entirely on location at a number of historic homes across England. This decision was made primarily for financial reasons, but it perfectly suited Dibb, who is accustomed to location filming and a great believer in its benefits. “I wanted to shoot on location, and there’s no way we could have afforded not to,” says the director. “We’re lucky in England because all of these extraordinary houses still exist; I believe shooting in these real locations helped everybody connect with that time and that world. I think it helped the actors to be able to walk into a real house and realize how fabulously wealthy and powerful these aristocrats were.”
Shooting at well over a dozen different period properties was not without its difficulties, however. Aside from the logistical complexities of traveling between locations on a tight schedule, many of the structures are maintained and protected by the National Trust, which imposes strict limitations on the activities of film crews in order to prevent any damage to the heritage sites. Pados jokes, “They have an interesting rule: you can’t touch anything!” More specifically, the Trust prohibits any equipment from coming into contact with interior walls or ceilings, which makes the rigging of lights a particular challenge. “We were also very careful with the lux levels,” notes gaffer John Colley. “They were often concerned with the levels of light hitting delicate artwork and tapestries, so we had to cover a number of them with 12-by-12 textiles on frames. In addition, we took simple precautions like putting tennis balls on all the C-stands to preserve floors and being diligent when carrying equipment in and out. This isn’t the only film that had ever, or will ever, shoot in these places, but we wanted to make it easy for ourselves and also for those who came after us.”
Filming took place over the course of an English winter, so daylight hours were extremely short; shooting hours were made shorter still by the lengthy delays involved in getting actors into the elaborate costumes and makeup of the era. “If we did more than one scene a day, we’d lose two hours in the morning and then another two in the afternoon to costume changes because Keira is in almost every scene,” explains Dibb. “That leaves you a tiny amount of time on camera, and yet I believe in actors having a degree of ownership of their parts, so there will be certain scenes that I don’t want to be pre-staged; I want to be able to see the actors in the situation and then find the scene. That [approach] makes it even more difficult, because you’ve got to rehearse and commit to the staging before you can shoot.”
With time so tight, Pados could take only as much time to adjust the lights between setups as it took to move the camera to each new position. For daytime interiors, the solution was to make use of the sizeable windows typical of the buildings in which they were shooting; lighting came in from outside, keeping the walls and ceilings free of fixtures and the floors free of clutter. Dibb wanted the lighting to feel natural and was accustomed to shooting with available light, but the rooms were often extremely large and lined with dark wood paneling, so exposure readings varied wildly inside. “You might have a reading of T11 by the window and T2 in the corner,” says Pados. “I had to get more light in there so Saul could have the freedom to say, ‘Okay, let’s shoot in this corner and then over there,’ in the same way he had on his previous projects.”
Daylight coming through the location windows was therefore augmented with diffused 12K Arrisun Pars and 18Ks, usually on 10'x10' scaffold towers. During the first few weeks of filming, these towers had to be erected and dismantled for different scenes at various locations with tremendous speed. “Vince Madden was the rigging gaffer, and he did a fantastic job,” says Colley. “His guys worked harder than I’ve seen anybody work before.”
At Holkham Hall in Norfolk, a total of 18 scaffold towers were erected at the same time to light a labyrinth of connecting rooms, allowing Dibb to move freely between them. “It was really important for Saul to have that freedom,” asserts Pados. “At Holkham Hall, he wanted to show how Keira’s character is really lost in this huge place by filming her walking through all these unbelievable rooms in a Steadicam shot that was almost 200 meters long.” Once the towers were up, they stayed up, so rooms and scenes could be revisited at a moment’s notice. “It was the only way to make the schedule work,” says Colley, “and the only way I could look the rigging crew in the eye!”
The English winter in-evitably made its presence felt with ever-shifting light and weather conditions. Naturally, exterior scenes were the worst affected, and Pados battled for consistent images from the beginning of the shoot. “We shot the very first scene over three different days,” he recalls. “The first day was sunny, the second was cloudy and on the third it was raining; we seemed to go though every season in that one scene!” Fluctuating levels of sunlight also had an impact on day interiors. “You might have lots of lights outside these huge windows, but you’re still using the existing daylight as well,” continues the cinematographer. “Sometimes there were days when it was so dark and cloudy that nothing came through, and it would often change in the middle of the day.”
To counteract unreliable daylight and add contrast to interior shots, Pados frequently reflected light off mirrors into backgrounds. “We would put 6K and 12K Pars in the rooms and bounce them off 3-by-3-foot and 4-by-4-foot mirrors,” he says. “The mirrors created hotspots, as though the sun was coming in though a high window; it worked really well.” Additionally, working from the floor, the mirrors and lights could be moved quickly without breaking any of the properties’ rigging rules.
Lady Georgina died shortly before the introduction of gas lighting in England, so candles had to motivate most of the lighting for evening and nighttime scenes. Pados worked closely with production designer Michael Carlin to make the best use of the limited number of single-wick (rather than double- or triple-wick) candles permitted by the National Trust. The cinematographer also performed an impromptu experiment at one of the locations to get an impression of the reality he sought to emulate. “We were doing a scene in a ballroom with 400 candles, and I was curious to see what the room would really have looked like,” says Pados. “So I asked the crew to light all the candles and turn the lights off, and I was really surprised — it was pitch black!”
Pados knew filming in such low light levels would create a dirty look that would work against Dibb’s desire for the film’s early scenes, which were designed to show the happiness of Georgina’s youth and the grandeur of her first few years with the duke. He did not, however, want to use lights with flicker effects to bolster the candlelight. “When you’ve got 400 candles in a room, they’re all flickering differently and the overall effect is that you don’t see any flicker,” he notes. “I only used flicker on the few occasions where we could use a fireplace as a light source, and I usually used a 2K Zip light or an OctoDome with a flicker box.”
In order to achieve a soft ambience, the only real options for sources that would be unobtrusive and quick to adjust without touching either walls or ceilings were helium balloons, spring balls (a.k.a. Chinese lanterns) and Lowel Rifa-lites. “For the most part, we used a couple of 8K tungsten sausages, dimmed down to about 30 or 40 percent to mimic candlelight with a color temperature of around 2200°K,” states Colley. “We tethered them from C-stands or other equipment and made adjustments to the light with the guide lines.”
Helium balloons proved invaluable for a great many interior scenes, especially when it came to wide and traveling shots that made it impossible to hide fixtures on the ground. The balloons’ only downside was that they did not lend much in the way of contrast or depth. As Pados explains, “We had a big ballroom dance scene and Saul wanted to use a Steadicam to follow Keira as she walks from one room into the ballroom and then starts dancing, with the camera turning through 360 degrees; I think it was a four-minute shot. In that situation, my only chance of lighting anything was with the helium balloons, but they looked a bit flat because everything was coming from above. I had to get more light in there, so I was running next to the Steadicam operator with a couple of 15-inch Kinos in a housing we made [modified to run off a 12-volt camera battery in a backpack] and trying to get a bit more contrast — a bit more light on the costumes and faces.”
The cameras employed on the shoot were Panaflex Millennium XLs supplied by Panavision U.K. Relatively lightweight, they suited the location filming and the need to move quickly between setups. “The way we covered scenes kind of progressed,” notes Dibb. “To start with, we were very much using one camera, but as time went on and I got to know the second camera unit’s way of working, the second camera came more into play and remained so throughout. They were very independent, which worked because most of my time was spent focusing on what I really needed from the first camera.
“We were shooting a nine-week schedule on a film that should probably have had 12 weeks, so there just wouldn’t have been any way to do it with only one camera,” the director continues. “It was one of those things that starts as a practical consideration and winds up as something that has great creative benefits as well.”
Though the director wanted to imbue The Duchess with the naturalism that defined his previous projects, this did not extend to using camerawork associated with a documentary style. Dibb explains, “Both cameras tended to be on dollies and quite carefully composed, but with the second camera you’d get a slightly abstract profile, or details of hands — things the main camera wasn’t looking for. Sometimes you’d get quite surprising framing because [the operators] were limited in where they could shoot from, but they’d come up with something that felt very fresh. It might only be used for one shot in the scene, but it’s a shot that gives you an extra angle you would never have had.”
Pados operated the A camera, taking care of the key shots that would carry each scene, but he makes it clear that he could not have managed without the B-camera team. “We had a fantastic second-camera operator, Gerry Vasbenter,” he says. “Gerry came up with some great ideas and really saved us at times. We were often so rushed that we weren’t even aware of what he was doing, but he got some great footage. It did mean a bit of a compromise because we didn’t always know what kind of light conditions he was shooting, which was one reason why I had to achieve a sort of general lighting that gave us both freedom. Nevertheless, he got some shots that were vital for the story. Of course, it’s ultimately more important to get the right material for a scene than to make the lighting perfect.”
The film was always destined for a digital intermediate (DI), so Super 35mm initially seemed like the obvious format. However, tests conducted during prep convinced the filmmakers otherwise. “We shot tests of Super 35 and anamorphic side by side, and there was a tangible difference between the two,” recalls Dibb. “We fell in love with anamorphic, and it suited the ambitions of the piece; we wanted to make it look big and cinematic, to lift everything up that extra level.”
When anamorphic won out, Pados and his crew began seeking the right lenses. “I opted for the C-Series,” he says. “I wanted to find softer lenses to give the whole movie a more realistic look, and my first assistant, Rawdon Hayne, helped me find these older, softer lenses when he was testing at Panavision. We found a particularly good close-up lens, a 100mm, that was really soft and worked perfectly for big close-ups.
“I tested soft contrast filters at the beginning, but each filter seemed to have a different effect with each lens, especially with the glow around candle flames,” continues Pados. “I couldn’t really control it, so I decided not to use them. In any case, the lenses were very soft, so I didn’t really need the filters. I was shooting almost everything wide open at around T2.8. That can drive the crew crazy, but I really like the look of that shallow depth of field.”
The cinematographer used three Kodak Vision2 stocks throughout the shoot: 50D 5201 for exteriors, 250D 5205 for day interiors and darker exteriors, and 500T 5218 for evening and night scenes. “We had hi-def dailies on DVD,” notes Pados. “HD dailies can be difficult to judge, and in my experience, they are often a bit brighter than I would like. Every day, I asked for a couple of shots to be printed, and I watched them projected with an Arri LocPro.”
The DI was carried out at Deluxe Digital in London, where Pados worked with colorist Adam Inglis. “There’s a curve to the lighting through this film — it changes as the story develops,” Pados explains. “We start with a sort of golden age, when Georgina is young and innocent and has dreams about her future. Slowly she starts to realize that the world is different than she dreamed, so the lighting and the tones transition from brightness and color to a faded and colder tone at the end.”
By focusing on this overall structure, Pados succeeded in visualizing Dibb’s understanding of Georgina’s emotional journey. “I think a lot of cinematographers naturally get obsessed with the aesthetics, but Gyula’s first question is always, ‘What’s the scene about?’” says Dibb. “His focus is on how the camera and lighting will help tell the story. It’s not so much about the how as the why.”
Kevin Costner defends his Hollywood legacy
From The Sunday Times
September 14, 2008
Kevin Costner defends his Hollywood legacy
Fame is not a cultural achievement. It’s just a sign of our times. If your movie doesn’t make an enormous amount of money, is it a failure? I have different criteria on what constitutes a success: a defiant Kevin Costner defends his Hollywood legacy
“Are you anxious to die?”
It’s a little after 3pm on a thick Tuesday afternoon in Los Angeles, and Kevin Costner and I have reached an odd moment in our interview. The sun beats against the window of a second-floor suite at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, but inside it’s freezing. Costner sits at the edge of a vast sofa wearing a black shirt, jeans, cowboy boots and a scowl that could stun a team of oxen.
“No,” I say, “I’m not anxious to die… You?”
In front of Costner is a glass of mineral water.
As he leans forward to take a sip, he reveals his highlighted, balding head and a parcel of flab around his midriff. At 53, with his goatee and deep tan, he looks like an ageing golf pro. It’s only when Costner cracks his wonky half-smile that he resembles a movie star, but, in the course of our time together, he has little cause to do so.
Outside, a gaggle of publicists are twittering away, comparing BlackBerrys. When the interview is over, they ask an obligatory question: “How did it go with Kevin?” I’m not sure what to say. Our conversation encompassed Costner’s views on death and failure. He became irritated. At one particularly frosty moment, he demanded: “What is with these questions?” He also called me “weird”. It was, I tell them, a mixed bag.
In Los Angeles, Costner is, like Bernard in Death of a Salesman, “liked, but not well liked”. He was, says the bellboy at my hotel, “famous, like, 20 years ago”, but that’s unfair. He was hot 20 years ago. Indeed, Costner’s gilded period between 1987 and 1992 – when The Untouchables, Dances with Wolves, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, JFK and The Bodyguard drew huge worldwide audiences – made him, briefly, untouchable. But nobody remembers the good times. When people mention Costner now, it’s the turkeys they talk about: Waterworld, The Postman, Wyatt Earp. They do so because it has become an accepted Hollywood narrative that Costner has fallen from grace. In this narrative, he gambled on the three-hour subtitled epic, Dances with Wolves, and, against the wisdom of the industry magi, it paid off, winning him two Oscars and bankable kudos. But, in the wake of his great moment, hubris marred all.
Professional failure accompanied personal strife. In 1994, his 16-year marriage to his college sweetheart, Cindy Silva, fell apart, amid allegations of extramarital affairs. Costner paid £40m in the divorce settlement. He then made Waterworld and The Postman, expensive, self-indulgent epics that were panned by the critics. Five years after The Bodyguard, Costner’s life had nose-dived. He became a cautionary tale.
Interviews with Costner in the post-glory years tend towards this theme. He is the embittered has-been, the dangerous single guy. In the aftermath of his divorce, he was reported to have dated a “string of famous beauties” – Naomi Campbell, Courteney Cox, Mira Sorvino – and we all know the barely concealed desperation this kind of behaviour implies (would that we were all so desperate). His three children became four when a fling with the socialite Bridget Rooney resulted in a son, Liam, and £7m in paternity payments. He also gambled and lost £20m when his environmental-technologies business failed.
What nobody seems to have noticed in this otherwise convincing Hollywood morality tale is that Costner has recently made some terrific movies. True, he can no longer open a film in the way that Jack Nicholson or Tom Cruise can, but so what. Thirteen Days, a drama about the Cuban missile crisis, was compelling. The western Open Range, which he starred in and directed, was a bleak and gripping story of friendship and corruption in the Old West. Costner was also superb as the murderous lead in Mr Brooks. And, while his personal life seems to be the litmus test of his professional and spiritual wellbeing, it should also be mentioned that he married the model Christine Baumgartner, four years ago. They had their first child, Cayden Wyatt Costner, last May.
Swing Vote, his latest movie, released in the UK later this month, is not, it should be said, his best work – a fact reflected in the film’s abysmal showing at the US box office. Its premise, for one thing, is feeble. Bud (Costner), is a hard-drinking, apathetic factory worker who becomes, through the meddling of his precocious 12-year-old daughter and the convoluted machinations of the screenwriters, the deciding vote in a tied general election. His home town of Texico, New Mexico, is then besieged by reporters as the two rival candidates vie for his approval.
High jinks ensue.
It’s silly stuff, executed passably, and Costner’s performance tells you one crystalline truth about him: he can’t do comedy. It’s like watching Frankie Howerd do Hamlet. However, as the movie progresses, and Bud is forced to confront his past and his failings – as we move towards its teary, Capra-esque denouement – Costner comes into his own. When he plays the American everyman, pulling at the heartstrings of his mawkish nation, there is nobody better, and he knows it.
Back in the second-floor suite of the Four Seasons, the temperature has just dropped a degree. I am comforted by the advice of Armyan Bernstein, Costner’s friend and a producer of three of his films. “Kevin’s not really an aggressive guy,” he says. “He can get a little ornery, but really he’s like a big dog. He’ll make a lot of noise, but he ain’t going to bite you.”
Right now, Costner is barking. “What is your article about?” he asks. “You are getting so weird. You don’t even want to talk about Swing Vote. All you want to talk about is all this… other stuff.” “That’s because I saw Swing Vote.”
So we talk about why Hollywood doesn’t love him any more. “I think there’s a whole world that wants to laugh at someone who’s been successful, and had perceived failure,” he says. “It’s only a perceived failure. It doesn’t mean it’s so, but that’s the perception.” Isn’t his big problem that not enough of the paying public wish to perceive some of his movies? “Well, sure, sometimes failure in a public way is wrapped up in the following terms – is it popular?” he replies. “If it’s not popular, then it’s a failure. But you can be popular now, in this world, for getting cum on your dress. Okay? You can be popular for all kinds of things.
“Fame is not a cultural achievement. It’s just a sign of our times. And if you’re not famous, are you a failure? If your movie doesn’t make an enormous amount of money, is it a failure? What if it makes 10% on its investment? I think a stockbroker would go crazy if he knew he could make 10% on his investment. I have different criteria on what constitutes a success.”
Costner sees himself as a crusader, a frontiersman. He would never, he says, do a sequel (although he has talked frequently enough about making The Bodyguard: 2). He’d never do something just for the cash. He’s happy to cause a stink (and often does) when he thinks a good film is being sold short by executives. He wants to test himself. This assessment seems fair, when you look at the majority of his recent work. But it doesn’t sit well alongside the fact that Costner signed up for 3,000 Miles to Graceland, an Elvis caper that ranks alongside Dude, Where’s My Car? as one of the worst comedies ever made.
His pioneer spirit also attracts conflict. On several film sets he has run up against directors, because of his refusal to cede control. In 1995, on the set of Waterworld, for instance, he and the director, Kevin Reynolds, had the mother of all arguments. They had been great friends. Reynolds directed Costner’s break-out film, Fandango, in 1985, and his biggest commercial hit, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, as well as assisting on Dances with Wolves. But, on Waterworld, he could not stand Costner’s meddling, and, as he walked off set, leaving his ex-friend to finish the picture, he made the following observation: “Now Kevin gets to work with his favourite actor and director.” The Kevins have since patched up their differences. “We’re older and wiser now,” explains Reynolds. “We’ve realised life is too short. But it was difficult, no doubt about it. We had some serious arguments. There was so much pressure on the film itself, because at the time it was the most expensive ever made. The press were after us from early on, willing us to fail.”
What happened between Reynolds and Costner? “He asserted himself,” says the director. “We had discussions, then arguments, and then a falling out. It’s not something I want to go into in detail. But it took years for us to get over it.
I think Kevin’s more comfortable in his skin now.” What was Costner like back then?
“I’d known him since I was at film school and he came to audition for a part in my student film,” says Reynolds. “I actually gave the part to someone else, but when I told him he hadn’t got it, he was incredibly gracious. Two years later he came to read for a part in Fandango, and just nailed it. We became friends then.
“It’s hard not to change when you become the biggest movie star in the world,” he continues. “You see someone’s confidence grow when they have hit after hit. They are surrounded by people who tell them what they want to hear. Kevin found himself in a rarefied atmosphere.” However, David Valdes, who also worked with Costner at the back-end of his A-list period as a producer on the 1993 Clint Eastwood movie, A Perfect World, did not notice an oversized ego. “There wasn’t much sign of a guy who was then demanding $20m a movie,” says Valdes. “Although he was much more than a hired gun. Normally actors turn up, do their thing, then you see them months later for publicity. Kevin gives you much more. He’s part of the movie from start to finish.”
Does that mean he muscled in on Eastwood’s patch? “No!” laughs Valdes. “But then you don’t when there’s an 800lb gorilla for a director. I’ve done 17 films with Clint, and no one gets in the editing suite with him except the editor, and sometimes, me. Kevin was very respectful.”
The second time Costner and Valdes worked together was 10 years later on Open Range, which Costner also directed. “It was an interesting time, because Kevin’s career had taken a bit of a dive. And everyone said the western was dead. Very few people apart from Kevin would have taken that shot. But he did. He dismissed the Hollywood logic, set a great example by working for union rates, and we made a great movie.”
The golf pro cracks a smile. His high dudgeon has subsided. I can see why many in Hollywood mention Gary Cooper in the same breath as Costner. Not only is the western home territory for both of them, but they have that implacable (some might say wooden) surface, which, just occasionally, breaks to show the tumult beneath. Right now, Costner is having a Cooper moment.
Another name is mentioned, too, when Costner is discussed – Will Rogers, the Oklahoma cowboy-impresario of the 1920s and ’30s, and, for a time, America’s everyman hero. This comparison is much more convincing, if only because of Costner’s deep wish to appear uncomplicated, a man of the heartland. Several times in the interview he asks me to repeat words, to rephrase, to “help him out”. His answers are polished enough, but Costner would rather appear to be a rough diamond.
Costner tells me about his upbringing. He was raised in California – first in the poor, inner-city area of Compton, and then in more rural spots around the state: Santa Paula, Ventura, Visalia. These were, he says, “the ideal places to grow up. I used to go up into the mountains and the hills. As soon as I got back from school I was playing – I was out with guns, and trapping animals, and skinning them. I was an outdoor kid. Wasn’t real academic”. He was also, he says, a late developer. At 16, he was 5ft 2in and weighed 93lb. Was he ever bullied? “Not really,” he says. “The first time I ever thought about it was when I got my driving licence, and right there on the card it has your weight and height as a description. Well, I was pretty proud of my licence, but when I used to show it to girls, they would giggle. After showing it about five times, I quit showing it.
“As a kid I was pretty athletic, but I was small and I wanted to be a basketball player. The coaches asked me if I wanted to be on the Varsity wrestling team [the school first team], but I said I wanted to be a Varsity basketball player. They said, ‘but you’ll be on the lowest team,’ and I said ‘not for ever’. Of course, one day, I was a Varsity basketball player. And, in a way, it’s marked me ever since. I didn’t do the easy thing, which was to be a wrestler. I did what I wanted to do.”
This story is important to Costner for one reason: it’s a movie script. This is his fable, establishing him as a gutsy outsider, a part he likes to play in his dealings with the mainstream film industry. It also cements his all-American credentials, the Will Rogers genes. What could be more apple pie than the little guy fighting for a place on the Varsity basketball team, against all the odds, and succeeding?
Costner’s sporting dreams were replaced by acting dreams as he progressed through college, gaining a degree in business. After graduating, he took a series of odd jobs – working on fishing boats, building sets – that would allow him time for auditions. He won a couple of small parts, including one role, in The Big Chill, that was completely cut from the final edit. This invisible role turned out to be his break. Costner had befriended the director Lawrence Kasdan, who offered him a part in a future movie. That movie was Silverado, a marquee role for Costner that came six months after his cult coming-of-age film, Fandango. The Untouchables and Field of Dreams came next. You know the rest.
I ask Costner to name the films he is most proud of. He lists almost all of them (The Postman, unsurprisingly, is omitted). It’s an indication that, where Costner is concerned, movies are not a peripheral activity. They are at the centre of his being. Several areas of the casino he built in South Dakota are, for instance, named after characters he played in Silverado. When he checks into hotels, he does so as characters from his most successful films. Frank Farmer, from The Bodyguard, is a favourite.
I am not the first one to notice how Costner’s life intersects with his movies. “Kevin is like the parts he plays in films,” says Bernstein. “Pick your favourite five Costner films and he’s that guy.” The man himself is candid about how he views the world through film. “You can learn a lot about the way you want to be by the movies you watch,” he says. “I’ve been able to look at movies and decide who I wish I was. I’m not as brave as some of the people I’ve played. I’m not as smart as some of the people I’ve played. But I wish I was.
“These things are highly personal, movies. That’s why they’re worth fighting for.” Why are they so personal? “I think all actors want to be immortalised on screen. You have your choice of movies. Your best chance to be remembered is to do great work. I could go out every day and work for money. But you want to be involved with things that are appreciated for a long time.”
Costner’s concern for a legacy is interesting. What’s he so afraid of: being dead or being missed when he’s dead? It’s a question worth asking, if only because last year, when Baumgartner gave birth to Cayden Wyatt (spot the film), the new father made a telling comment. “My fundamental fear,” he said, “is that I will die and someone else will have to raise my baby.” He was 52 then, hardly geriatric. It is, I suggest, an odd thing to worry about. “I don’t think so,” he says. “I think to myself, am I going to see him go to college? Am I going to see him graduate? You start doing the math. You begin to look at things that way. You know, I don’t worry about it every day, but I was asked the question, so I just articulated the answer the best way I could… Are you anxious to die?”
Kevin Costner is not anxious to die. He wants to live and live and live. He wants to play heroes, and be like the heroes he plays. He wants to be the figurehead for old-fashioned American values. It’s why he made Swing Vote – for that lump-in-the-throat moment at the end of the movie when Bud realises what a terrible American citizen he has become. What he seems unwilling to do is laugh at himself, or have others laugh at him. The reviews for Swing Vote must be killing him.
Still, the future is bright. Several industry players say Costner is Eastwood’s natural heir as the grand old man of the western. The man himself is confident. “The western is our Shakespeare,” says Costner. “I’m comfortable in the genre. I know where the drama is.”
“You know, there was a time, when John Wayne died, when I had a conversation with Clint Eastwood,” adds Valdes. “I asked him if he was going to step into the Duke’s boots. I think we could have the same conversation with Kevin now. I can’t see anyone else doing it.”
Reynolds thinks, westerns or not, his old sparring partner is one role away from enjoying a revival. “In Hollywood, you go through these peaks and troughs in your career,” he says. “But perception can change quickly. Look at Marlon Brando. He was out of favour for a long time and then he does The Godfather, and suddenly he’s back on track. It can happen for Kevin.”
One thing is for sure: Costner will never stop dreaming. He once invested and lost £20m in an environmental-technologies business that failed. He once married his college sweetheart and paid her £40m in a divorce settlement. He once made The Postman. But he never stops believing he is only one step away from greatness. In this regard, he is peculiarly American. And if he fails, ultimately, to return to the highest echelons of Hollywood, it will not be because he gave up. That would be a denial of the script.
“At the end of the day,” he says, with the flicker of a poignant smile on his lips, and those swimming-pool eyes widening a fraction, “I operate with hope.” Cue music and credits.
September 14, 2008
Kevin Costner defends his Hollywood legacy
Fame is not a cultural achievement. It’s just a sign of our times. If your movie doesn’t make an enormous amount of money, is it a failure? I have different criteria on what constitutes a success: a defiant Kevin Costner defends his Hollywood legacy
“Are you anxious to die?”
It’s a little after 3pm on a thick Tuesday afternoon in Los Angeles, and Kevin Costner and I have reached an odd moment in our interview. The sun beats against the window of a second-floor suite at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, but inside it’s freezing. Costner sits at the edge of a vast sofa wearing a black shirt, jeans, cowboy boots and a scowl that could stun a team of oxen.
“No,” I say, “I’m not anxious to die… You?”
In front of Costner is a glass of mineral water.
As he leans forward to take a sip, he reveals his highlighted, balding head and a parcel of flab around his midriff. At 53, with his goatee and deep tan, he looks like an ageing golf pro. It’s only when Costner cracks his wonky half-smile that he resembles a movie star, but, in the course of our time together, he has little cause to do so.
Outside, a gaggle of publicists are twittering away, comparing BlackBerrys. When the interview is over, they ask an obligatory question: “How did it go with Kevin?” I’m not sure what to say. Our conversation encompassed Costner’s views on death and failure. He became irritated. At one particularly frosty moment, he demanded: “What is with these questions?” He also called me “weird”. It was, I tell them, a mixed bag.
In Los Angeles, Costner is, like Bernard in Death of a Salesman, “liked, but not well liked”. He was, says the bellboy at my hotel, “famous, like, 20 years ago”, but that’s unfair. He was hot 20 years ago. Indeed, Costner’s gilded period between 1987 and 1992 – when The Untouchables, Dances with Wolves, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, JFK and The Bodyguard drew huge worldwide audiences – made him, briefly, untouchable. But nobody remembers the good times. When people mention Costner now, it’s the turkeys they talk about: Waterworld, The Postman, Wyatt Earp. They do so because it has become an accepted Hollywood narrative that Costner has fallen from grace. In this narrative, he gambled on the three-hour subtitled epic, Dances with Wolves, and, against the wisdom of the industry magi, it paid off, winning him two Oscars and bankable kudos. But, in the wake of his great moment, hubris marred all.
Professional failure accompanied personal strife. In 1994, his 16-year marriage to his college sweetheart, Cindy Silva, fell apart, amid allegations of extramarital affairs. Costner paid £40m in the divorce settlement. He then made Waterworld and The Postman, expensive, self-indulgent epics that were panned by the critics. Five years after The Bodyguard, Costner’s life had nose-dived. He became a cautionary tale.
Interviews with Costner in the post-glory years tend towards this theme. He is the embittered has-been, the dangerous single guy. In the aftermath of his divorce, he was reported to have dated a “string of famous beauties” – Naomi Campbell, Courteney Cox, Mira Sorvino – and we all know the barely concealed desperation this kind of behaviour implies (would that we were all so desperate). His three children became four when a fling with the socialite Bridget Rooney resulted in a son, Liam, and £7m in paternity payments. He also gambled and lost £20m when his environmental-technologies business failed.
What nobody seems to have noticed in this otherwise convincing Hollywood morality tale is that Costner has recently made some terrific movies. True, he can no longer open a film in the way that Jack Nicholson or Tom Cruise can, but so what. Thirteen Days, a drama about the Cuban missile crisis, was compelling. The western Open Range, which he starred in and directed, was a bleak and gripping story of friendship and corruption in the Old West. Costner was also superb as the murderous lead in Mr Brooks. And, while his personal life seems to be the litmus test of his professional and spiritual wellbeing, it should also be mentioned that he married the model Christine Baumgartner, four years ago. They had their first child, Cayden Wyatt Costner, last May.
Swing Vote, his latest movie, released in the UK later this month, is not, it should be said, his best work – a fact reflected in the film’s abysmal showing at the US box office. Its premise, for one thing, is feeble. Bud (Costner), is a hard-drinking, apathetic factory worker who becomes, through the meddling of his precocious 12-year-old daughter and the convoluted machinations of the screenwriters, the deciding vote in a tied general election. His home town of Texico, New Mexico, is then besieged by reporters as the two rival candidates vie for his approval.
High jinks ensue.
It’s silly stuff, executed passably, and Costner’s performance tells you one crystalline truth about him: he can’t do comedy. It’s like watching Frankie Howerd do Hamlet. However, as the movie progresses, and Bud is forced to confront his past and his failings – as we move towards its teary, Capra-esque denouement – Costner comes into his own. When he plays the American everyman, pulling at the heartstrings of his mawkish nation, there is nobody better, and he knows it.
Back in the second-floor suite of the Four Seasons, the temperature has just dropped a degree. I am comforted by the advice of Armyan Bernstein, Costner’s friend and a producer of three of his films. “Kevin’s not really an aggressive guy,” he says. “He can get a little ornery, but really he’s like a big dog. He’ll make a lot of noise, but he ain’t going to bite you.”
Right now, Costner is barking. “What is your article about?” he asks. “You are getting so weird. You don’t even want to talk about Swing Vote. All you want to talk about is all this… other stuff.” “That’s because I saw Swing Vote.”
So we talk about why Hollywood doesn’t love him any more. “I think there’s a whole world that wants to laugh at someone who’s been successful, and had perceived failure,” he says. “It’s only a perceived failure. It doesn’t mean it’s so, but that’s the perception.” Isn’t his big problem that not enough of the paying public wish to perceive some of his movies? “Well, sure, sometimes failure in a public way is wrapped up in the following terms – is it popular?” he replies. “If it’s not popular, then it’s a failure. But you can be popular now, in this world, for getting cum on your dress. Okay? You can be popular for all kinds of things.
“Fame is not a cultural achievement. It’s just a sign of our times. And if you’re not famous, are you a failure? If your movie doesn’t make an enormous amount of money, is it a failure? What if it makes 10% on its investment? I think a stockbroker would go crazy if he knew he could make 10% on his investment. I have different criteria on what constitutes a success.”
Costner sees himself as a crusader, a frontiersman. He would never, he says, do a sequel (although he has talked frequently enough about making The Bodyguard: 2). He’d never do something just for the cash. He’s happy to cause a stink (and often does) when he thinks a good film is being sold short by executives. He wants to test himself. This assessment seems fair, when you look at the majority of his recent work. But it doesn’t sit well alongside the fact that Costner signed up for 3,000 Miles to Graceland, an Elvis caper that ranks alongside Dude, Where’s My Car? as one of the worst comedies ever made.
His pioneer spirit also attracts conflict. On several film sets he has run up against directors, because of his refusal to cede control. In 1995, on the set of Waterworld, for instance, he and the director, Kevin Reynolds, had the mother of all arguments. They had been great friends. Reynolds directed Costner’s break-out film, Fandango, in 1985, and his biggest commercial hit, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, as well as assisting on Dances with Wolves. But, on Waterworld, he could not stand Costner’s meddling, and, as he walked off set, leaving his ex-friend to finish the picture, he made the following observation: “Now Kevin gets to work with his favourite actor and director.” The Kevins have since patched up their differences. “We’re older and wiser now,” explains Reynolds. “We’ve realised life is too short. But it was difficult, no doubt about it. We had some serious arguments. There was so much pressure on the film itself, because at the time it was the most expensive ever made. The press were after us from early on, willing us to fail.”
What happened between Reynolds and Costner? “He asserted himself,” says the director. “We had discussions, then arguments, and then a falling out. It’s not something I want to go into in detail. But it took years for us to get over it.
I think Kevin’s more comfortable in his skin now.” What was Costner like back then?
“I’d known him since I was at film school and he came to audition for a part in my student film,” says Reynolds. “I actually gave the part to someone else, but when I told him he hadn’t got it, he was incredibly gracious. Two years later he came to read for a part in Fandango, and just nailed it. We became friends then.
“It’s hard not to change when you become the biggest movie star in the world,” he continues. “You see someone’s confidence grow when they have hit after hit. They are surrounded by people who tell them what they want to hear. Kevin found himself in a rarefied atmosphere.” However, David Valdes, who also worked with Costner at the back-end of his A-list period as a producer on the 1993 Clint Eastwood movie, A Perfect World, did not notice an oversized ego. “There wasn’t much sign of a guy who was then demanding $20m a movie,” says Valdes. “Although he was much more than a hired gun. Normally actors turn up, do their thing, then you see them months later for publicity. Kevin gives you much more. He’s part of the movie from start to finish.”
Does that mean he muscled in on Eastwood’s patch? “No!” laughs Valdes. “But then you don’t when there’s an 800lb gorilla for a director. I’ve done 17 films with Clint, and no one gets in the editing suite with him except the editor, and sometimes, me. Kevin was very respectful.”
The second time Costner and Valdes worked together was 10 years later on Open Range, which Costner also directed. “It was an interesting time, because Kevin’s career had taken a bit of a dive. And everyone said the western was dead. Very few people apart from Kevin would have taken that shot. But he did. He dismissed the Hollywood logic, set a great example by working for union rates, and we made a great movie.”
The golf pro cracks a smile. His high dudgeon has subsided. I can see why many in Hollywood mention Gary Cooper in the same breath as Costner. Not only is the western home territory for both of them, but they have that implacable (some might say wooden) surface, which, just occasionally, breaks to show the tumult beneath. Right now, Costner is having a Cooper moment.
Another name is mentioned, too, when Costner is discussed – Will Rogers, the Oklahoma cowboy-impresario of the 1920s and ’30s, and, for a time, America’s everyman hero. This comparison is much more convincing, if only because of Costner’s deep wish to appear uncomplicated, a man of the heartland. Several times in the interview he asks me to repeat words, to rephrase, to “help him out”. His answers are polished enough, but Costner would rather appear to be a rough diamond.
Costner tells me about his upbringing. He was raised in California – first in the poor, inner-city area of Compton, and then in more rural spots around the state: Santa Paula, Ventura, Visalia. These were, he says, “the ideal places to grow up. I used to go up into the mountains and the hills. As soon as I got back from school I was playing – I was out with guns, and trapping animals, and skinning them. I was an outdoor kid. Wasn’t real academic”. He was also, he says, a late developer. At 16, he was 5ft 2in and weighed 93lb. Was he ever bullied? “Not really,” he says. “The first time I ever thought about it was when I got my driving licence, and right there on the card it has your weight and height as a description. Well, I was pretty proud of my licence, but when I used to show it to girls, they would giggle. After showing it about five times, I quit showing it.
“As a kid I was pretty athletic, but I was small and I wanted to be a basketball player. The coaches asked me if I wanted to be on the Varsity wrestling team [the school first team], but I said I wanted to be a Varsity basketball player. They said, ‘but you’ll be on the lowest team,’ and I said ‘not for ever’. Of course, one day, I was a Varsity basketball player. And, in a way, it’s marked me ever since. I didn’t do the easy thing, which was to be a wrestler. I did what I wanted to do.”
This story is important to Costner for one reason: it’s a movie script. This is his fable, establishing him as a gutsy outsider, a part he likes to play in his dealings with the mainstream film industry. It also cements his all-American credentials, the Will Rogers genes. What could be more apple pie than the little guy fighting for a place on the Varsity basketball team, against all the odds, and succeeding?
Costner’s sporting dreams were replaced by acting dreams as he progressed through college, gaining a degree in business. After graduating, he took a series of odd jobs – working on fishing boats, building sets – that would allow him time for auditions. He won a couple of small parts, including one role, in The Big Chill, that was completely cut from the final edit. This invisible role turned out to be his break. Costner had befriended the director Lawrence Kasdan, who offered him a part in a future movie. That movie was Silverado, a marquee role for Costner that came six months after his cult coming-of-age film, Fandango. The Untouchables and Field of Dreams came next. You know the rest.
I ask Costner to name the films he is most proud of. He lists almost all of them (The Postman, unsurprisingly, is omitted). It’s an indication that, where Costner is concerned, movies are not a peripheral activity. They are at the centre of his being. Several areas of the casino he built in South Dakota are, for instance, named after characters he played in Silverado. When he checks into hotels, he does so as characters from his most successful films. Frank Farmer, from The Bodyguard, is a favourite.
I am not the first one to notice how Costner’s life intersects with his movies. “Kevin is like the parts he plays in films,” says Bernstein. “Pick your favourite five Costner films and he’s that guy.” The man himself is candid about how he views the world through film. “You can learn a lot about the way you want to be by the movies you watch,” he says. “I’ve been able to look at movies and decide who I wish I was. I’m not as brave as some of the people I’ve played. I’m not as smart as some of the people I’ve played. But I wish I was.
“These things are highly personal, movies. That’s why they’re worth fighting for.” Why are they so personal? “I think all actors want to be immortalised on screen. You have your choice of movies. Your best chance to be remembered is to do great work. I could go out every day and work for money. But you want to be involved with things that are appreciated for a long time.”
Costner’s concern for a legacy is interesting. What’s he so afraid of: being dead or being missed when he’s dead? It’s a question worth asking, if only because last year, when Baumgartner gave birth to Cayden Wyatt (spot the film), the new father made a telling comment. “My fundamental fear,” he said, “is that I will die and someone else will have to raise my baby.” He was 52 then, hardly geriatric. It is, I suggest, an odd thing to worry about. “I don’t think so,” he says. “I think to myself, am I going to see him go to college? Am I going to see him graduate? You start doing the math. You begin to look at things that way. You know, I don’t worry about it every day, but I was asked the question, so I just articulated the answer the best way I could… Are you anxious to die?”
Kevin Costner is not anxious to die. He wants to live and live and live. He wants to play heroes, and be like the heroes he plays. He wants to be the figurehead for old-fashioned American values. It’s why he made Swing Vote – for that lump-in-the-throat moment at the end of the movie when Bud realises what a terrible American citizen he has become. What he seems unwilling to do is laugh at himself, or have others laugh at him. The reviews for Swing Vote must be killing him.
Still, the future is bright. Several industry players say Costner is Eastwood’s natural heir as the grand old man of the western. The man himself is confident. “The western is our Shakespeare,” says Costner. “I’m comfortable in the genre. I know where the drama is.”
“You know, there was a time, when John Wayne died, when I had a conversation with Clint Eastwood,” adds Valdes. “I asked him if he was going to step into the Duke’s boots. I think we could have the same conversation with Kevin now. I can’t see anyone else doing it.”
Reynolds thinks, westerns or not, his old sparring partner is one role away from enjoying a revival. “In Hollywood, you go through these peaks and troughs in your career,” he says. “But perception can change quickly. Look at Marlon Brando. He was out of favour for a long time and then he does The Godfather, and suddenly he’s back on track. It can happen for Kevin.”
One thing is for sure: Costner will never stop dreaming. He once invested and lost £20m in an environmental-technologies business that failed. He once married his college sweetheart and paid her £40m in a divorce settlement. He once made The Postman. But he never stops believing he is only one step away from greatness. In this regard, he is peculiarly American. And if he fails, ultimately, to return to the highest echelons of Hollywood, it will not be because he gave up. That would be a denial of the script.
“At the end of the day,” he says, with the flicker of a poignant smile on his lips, and those swimming-pool eyes widening a fraction, “I operate with hope.” Cue music and credits.
Nicole Kidman returns to Australia for Baz Luhrmann
From The Sunday Times
September 14, 2008
Nicole Kidman returns to Australia for Baz Luhrmann
In his enormous new movie Baz Luhrmann is not only bringing the actress back home, he’s redefining an entire country
Whichever way you cut it, the land down under is huge. The state of Western Australia alone — the left-hand third — unfolds nonchalantly at 11 times the size of the UK. The difference is, it’s home to a mere 2m people, dwelling largely in southern Perth. Up here, in tiny Kununurram, a thousand miles to the north (the “Top End”, as the locals call it), there’s plenty of legroom. Bar the odd Aboriginal settlement and remote dots like this one, God’s country remains decidedly empty.
Our minibus spews dust as we jolt along the desert trail, eyes peeled for suicidal ’roos, noting warnings about crocs in the river and the deadly snakes and “spideys” that lurk under the rocks. Before long, we are a speck in a land that time forgot — a blistering crucible of prehistoric rock, squat boab trees and a blinding azure sky. This isn’t the faux Mad Max outback, a morning’s drive from Sydney. This is the real McCoy, big and parched. Bloody beautiful. The idea of shooting a movie in such hostile terrain, one that would suck the last drop of gumption out of Ray Mears, is not to be entertained lightly. (Darwin, the nearest city, is 500 miles away.) Making a $130m picture out here ought never to have come within a whiff of a cigar.
“Forget ‘the country’,” says the film’s male lead, Hugh Jackman. “It’s like going to Mars.” An hour later, however, on an arid plain beneath a spectacular escarpment, you arrive upon it — the trailers, the lights, the generators.
The centrepiece, like something out of a John Ford western, is a sprawling, ramshackle homestead, surrounded by horse corrals and a creaking water tower, against which Jackman leans, grubbed-up and bearded in his Clint Eastwood duds. On the veranda stands Nicole Kidman, in an elegant green period dress, her pale skin the ward of an assistant with a brolly. It’s 100F in the shade, but there is no shade. Sweat drips like a tap with a worn washer. Arms flap reflexively in the great Aussie wave, beating off the incessant flies. “The film truly is about the landscape and how the outdoor experience can have an effect on your soul,” insists its director, Baz Luhrmann. Done up, quite impossibly, in an immaculate, pressed white outfit, complete with dandy stetson and neckerchief, he looks like Mr Benn after he’s just stepped out of the changing room.
When Luhrmann titled his movie, he was laying down a marker. “Why Australia? Well, first of all, to get people all uppity about it, so there’s a lot of comment,” he explains. “I think about films like Lawrence of Arabia, Out of Africa, Casablanca, Hawaii, by James A Michener : epics that use one word to describe a place. The film can’t be definitive about Australia, but ‘What does it mean?’ is not a bad place to start when you’re creating a story.” Sixty years ago, Casablanca meant “faraway, exotic”, he adds. “I think even now, to the rest of the world, ‘Australia’ just means big, somewhat mysterious, somewhat misunderstood. This is a land far, far away. It has a sense of fairy tale about it.”
Dubbed an antipodean Gone with the Wind, Luhrmann’s film tells the story of Lady Sarah Ashley (Kidman), a haughty British aristo who, on the eve of the second world war, inherits her own Tara — a Belgium-sized ranch named Faraway Downs. Arriving in the apparent back end of nowhere, “she’s forced, kicking and screaming, into having to engage, not only with the landscape, but with the people”, as Luhrmann puts it. “The act of doing that transforms her.” The land of Oz, though, is not all merry. Rival land barons are circling. In 1942, to save her home, Ashley is forced to drive 1,500 head of cattle along her own yellow brick road, accompanied by Jackman’s man-with-no-name “Drover” and an Aboriginal boy (Brandon Walters). Their quest concludes in Darwin in the aftermath of the port’s bombing by the Japanese.
Shades of Red River? With classic imagery aplenty, let’s just say that Luhrmann has always been a sucker for the iconic reference. “The Beatles didn’t just make that sound up. It was an English interpretation of American rock’n’roll,” he counters. “Shakespeare made popular cultural references all the time. Picasso is probably the best example of it. You draw from the vernacular that’s around you.” Devotees of the Aussie screen legend Chips Rafferty might also cite 1946’s The Overlanders, a film with a similar story line.
Maybe we should just remain in thrall to Australia’s old- school sensibility: those days before blue screen, when an exotic backdrop meant lugging your production, kitchen sink and all, into the heart of darkness, as Zulu or The African Queen did, but without the turbulence of Apocalypse Now. There was, says Luhrmann, no way to fudge it. “I love being in the northern Sahara, but you can walk along and a Bedouin will serve you a Coke from a hole in the ground. The cellphone reception is better than in Beverly Hills.” It was plenty of nothing he craved — “And the greatest abundance in the northwest of Australia is nothingness.”
Kidman slinks into the tight, tented gazebo where we are talking and perches elegantly while a lackey divines water. “This is the last of a dying breed, this kind of movie,” she echoes. “They don’t build stuff like this any more. To feel that air and see people ravaged by the elements, as hard as it is, it’s exquisite. I dreamt of making a film that had the passion and the weight of the films I grew up watching — Gone with the Wind, Doctor Zhivago. When Baz and I first started speaking about this, seven years ago, I said there needed to be a film about our land that speaks on a much broader scale.” I wonder whether Lady Ashley might be something of metaphor, too — the quasi-royal who comes down under, only to have the Aussie knocked (back) into her? She laughs: “I don’t know that it’s ever been knocked out of me.” For all her cool grace, a couple of dark patches have started to spread around even her sainted armpits.
Australia marks the third collaboration between Luhrmann and Kidman, after Moulin Rouge! (filmed in Sydney) and that weird Chanel No 5 ad. “I’ve been able to enter into the psyches and ideas of some of the greatest minds in the world and that, for me, is a big gift,” Kidman chirrups, not merely content with her Nintendo Brain Training. “When you enter into the vision that Lars von Trier or Baz Luhrmann has, or Sydney Pollack or Jane Campion or Kubrick . . . These are the philosophers of the world. They’re good professors.” She did her “thesis” on Virginia Woolf and Henry James, she says; she’s learnt to speak Russian; she can hammer out a passable Moonlight Sonata, not to mention parley an “array of accents”. Should her husband, Keith Urban, ever step out of line, he should note that, on Australia, she acquired the ability to crack a whip. “I’ve got a busted shoulder at the moment,” she says, giving it a rub. “You gotta have a few scars, right?”
In recent months, what with marriage, the baby and hitting 40, Kidman seems more in the public eye than ever, despite her secluded life in Tennessee, near the heart of Urban’s music business. (“He’s in my trailer,” she confides. “He’s forbidden from coming down, though. He’s actually very jet-lagged, so he’s up there asleep.”)
It is Catherine Martin, Luhrmann’s wife, who remains his most steadfast collaborator, going back to Strictly Ballroom in 1992 — a film, indirectly, that has reshaped Saturday-night telly. While her husband has done the front-of-house stuff, it’s Martin, the production/costume designer, who has been furtively bagging the baubles (two Oscars for Moulin Rouge! and a Tony for their Broadway La bohème). On Australia, wearing a producer’s hat has added to the responsibilities, an unenviable task given the logistical woes of building everything out here from scratch (transporting every last nail up from Sydney) and wrestling with meteorological vagaries. They hadn’t felt a drop of precipitation here in the dry season in 50 years. Recently, however, it chucked it down, turning the set into a quagmire and causing the whole shoot to be rescheduled.
For both Martin and Luhrmann, the film is a venture into the unknown, a departure from the “red curtain trilogy” (Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!), films that, like their exceedingly amiable author, are as camp as the village of tents within which 200 of his crew have been billeted. Australia would have been the second instalment in a trio of historical epics. Yet after two years of prepping a version of Alexander the Great, with Leonardo DiCaprio, it was shelved once Oliver Stone’s version began. “It was devastating,” Luhrmann admits, “but the only way we could have done it was to race to beat Oliver, and that seemed destructive, pointless.”
The pair may revisit it “when we’re both in wheelchairs”, jokes Martin. Indeed, Luhrmann’s film output can hardly be described as prolific, this being only his fourth in 16 years, which can be put down, he says, to his pursuit of other life interests and the fact that he and Catherine are “research junkies” whose meticulous groundwork takes for ever. “The list is very long where people have knocked on the door and said, ‘I’ll give you the income of a small country, would you do this?’ Sometimes I think, ‘That would be fantastic... James Bond, that could be fun.’ We’d be a whole lot wealthier, that’s for sure. But when we make something, I say, ‘What can we do that is truly reflective of an interest we have?’ ”
Here, it’s about Australian self-confidence, the right of a nation to pursue its own destiny “instead of being caught in a sort of cross- fire of other people’s stories”, as Luhrmann puts it. “I guess what I’ve received in bucketloads, no matter what the outcome, is a much more direct understanding of my country, particularly its relationship to England and the sense of the republic, as well as the whole indigenous question.”
At the very least, he can throw a spotlight on the bombing of Darwin, the “Australian Pearl Harbor”. The strategically important city suffered more than 60 raids during 1942-43, as the last line of defence against an intended full-scale Japanese land invasion. “Nobody knew about it,” he says. “Even Australians didn’t know about it.” Back then, it was an “end of the world” place, a cut-throat mishmash of Anglos, Greek pearl-divers, Chinese gold-panners and, of course, Aboriginals. Darwin’s centre now looks too modern to be a location; Bowen, on the Queensland coast, is its proxy.
With the likes of the veteran Australian actors Jack Thompson and Bryan Brown cropping up, and Stuart Beattie doing the screenplay, native sons are out in force. Luhrmann has emphasised the melting pot, with Aboriginal actors such as David Gulpilil and Crusoe Kurddal. The real winner would seem to be Walters, an 11-year-old mixed-race boy, plucked from obscurity, who had never been to a cinema, yet finds himself as third lead to two of the biggest stars in the world.
There is also the fact that those very stars have returned home. The Hollywood A list seems positively cluttered with their compatriots, who have enjoyed most of their successes abroad. “In acting, we’re over-represented,” Jackman says. “Of course there’s a desire to want to give back to or support the industry that gave you a start.”
Backwoods Australia is certainly staging an almighty homecoming for them. In Bowen, the whole town turned out as extras. With an eye to what The Lord of the Rings did for tourism in New Zealand, local governments had been outbidding rivals for the right to host the film. In a dream piece of synchronicity, Luhrmann has just been signed up by Tourism Australia to do a series of commercials promoting the country. Despite the wonderful independent films made in Australia over the years, and the huge Hollywood imports (such as Superman Returns) that have been made in Sydney’s impressive studios, this is the biggest film, by a considerable distance, to be made about the host nation, everyone points out. “It would be so fantastic,” Jackman says, “if we could all look back and this was the dawning of a new era.”
Back on set, the tropical sun descends quickly. Luhrmann has made heavy use of the “magic hour”, the twilight period beloved of cinematographers. “Every sunset there’ll be a majestic transformation and you forgive it all,” he sighs. “It’s like flicking a switch between brutal and beauty.”
“Have you seen the sunset? It’s of the gods, put it that way,” Kidman vouches. “People go to Africa, and they never come back. I think this country has a similar ambience. It casts a spell. For the first week I was here, I thought, ‘I’m not gonna survive’ — then I just felt it turn. I know it’s an extreme way to put it, but it’s a ferocious land.”
As the rocks are kissed to a peachy hue, Luhrmann shoots a campfire scene — Jackman and the Aboriginal stockmen (Aussie for cowboy) lounging around after a hard day’s cowpoking. Given both Luhrmann and Jackman’s musicals credentials, it wouldn’t seem amiss if the actors suddenly ripped off the buckskin and burst into a disco version of The Surrey with the Fringe on Top. Amusingly, for all the millions of boab trees in the area, the one Jackman lolls against is made of fibreglass, there not being a natural one in the right place. But do not underestimate the zeal of the thespian gone native. “I would encourage you to take your shoes off, even if just for a second,” he intones. “That doesn’t anger the spirits as much.”
Sydney, September 2008: a whole year later, and Luhrmann still hasn’t finished his movie, juggling the editing while the score is being recorded. He’s sailing mighty close to the wind, given the November opening date in Australia. In the end, they had to tweak a few scenes in the studio, “doing it Lean and Lucas”, he quips. When the actors came back in to “loop” some of their dialogue (“Baz has a penchant for talking over the top of it,” Jackman says), Kidman wasn’t the only one to have given birth in the interim: no fewer than 15 babies were born to cast and crew during the course of the film, underlining both what a protracted affair it has become and that being stuck in the middle of nowhere leads you to make your own entertainment. (Jackman has even shot another film, Wolverine.)
“There’s a crushing ambition behind the film,” Luhrmann says. “We don’t make things very often, and when we do, we try to make something that isn’t always out there, a meal that maybe isn’t being served every day. Some of my favourite films are sushi, rarefied treats, but this sort of event cinema is like a Sunday meal — it’s got a starter and a main course and a dessert. It’s high comedy, high tragedy, tears, laughter, costumes. Everything big. Big actors. Big landscape.” Jackman chuckles: “Mate, if I told you the film was coming out this time next year, Baz would still be working 24/7 on it. The print will be wet as he gives it over. But, fingers crossed, I think we have something special.”
Australia opens in the UK on Dec 26
September 14, 2008
Nicole Kidman returns to Australia for Baz Luhrmann
In his enormous new movie Baz Luhrmann is not only bringing the actress back home, he’s redefining an entire country
Whichever way you cut it, the land down under is huge. The state of Western Australia alone — the left-hand third — unfolds nonchalantly at 11 times the size of the UK. The difference is, it’s home to a mere 2m people, dwelling largely in southern Perth. Up here, in tiny Kununurram, a thousand miles to the north (the “Top End”, as the locals call it), there’s plenty of legroom. Bar the odd Aboriginal settlement and remote dots like this one, God’s country remains decidedly empty.
Our minibus spews dust as we jolt along the desert trail, eyes peeled for suicidal ’roos, noting warnings about crocs in the river and the deadly snakes and “spideys” that lurk under the rocks. Before long, we are a speck in a land that time forgot — a blistering crucible of prehistoric rock, squat boab trees and a blinding azure sky. This isn’t the faux Mad Max outback, a morning’s drive from Sydney. This is the real McCoy, big and parched. Bloody beautiful. The idea of shooting a movie in such hostile terrain, one that would suck the last drop of gumption out of Ray Mears, is not to be entertained lightly. (Darwin, the nearest city, is 500 miles away.) Making a $130m picture out here ought never to have come within a whiff of a cigar.
“Forget ‘the country’,” says the film’s male lead, Hugh Jackman. “It’s like going to Mars.” An hour later, however, on an arid plain beneath a spectacular escarpment, you arrive upon it — the trailers, the lights, the generators.
The centrepiece, like something out of a John Ford western, is a sprawling, ramshackle homestead, surrounded by horse corrals and a creaking water tower, against which Jackman leans, grubbed-up and bearded in his Clint Eastwood duds. On the veranda stands Nicole Kidman, in an elegant green period dress, her pale skin the ward of an assistant with a brolly. It’s 100F in the shade, but there is no shade. Sweat drips like a tap with a worn washer. Arms flap reflexively in the great Aussie wave, beating off the incessant flies. “The film truly is about the landscape and how the outdoor experience can have an effect on your soul,” insists its director, Baz Luhrmann. Done up, quite impossibly, in an immaculate, pressed white outfit, complete with dandy stetson and neckerchief, he looks like Mr Benn after he’s just stepped out of the changing room.
When Luhrmann titled his movie, he was laying down a marker. “Why Australia? Well, first of all, to get people all uppity about it, so there’s a lot of comment,” he explains. “I think about films like Lawrence of Arabia, Out of Africa, Casablanca, Hawaii, by James A Michener : epics that use one word to describe a place. The film can’t be definitive about Australia, but ‘What does it mean?’ is not a bad place to start when you’re creating a story.” Sixty years ago, Casablanca meant “faraway, exotic”, he adds. “I think even now, to the rest of the world, ‘Australia’ just means big, somewhat mysterious, somewhat misunderstood. This is a land far, far away. It has a sense of fairy tale about it.”
Dubbed an antipodean Gone with the Wind, Luhrmann’s film tells the story of Lady Sarah Ashley (Kidman), a haughty British aristo who, on the eve of the second world war, inherits her own Tara — a Belgium-sized ranch named Faraway Downs. Arriving in the apparent back end of nowhere, “she’s forced, kicking and screaming, into having to engage, not only with the landscape, but with the people”, as Luhrmann puts it. “The act of doing that transforms her.” The land of Oz, though, is not all merry. Rival land barons are circling. In 1942, to save her home, Ashley is forced to drive 1,500 head of cattle along her own yellow brick road, accompanied by Jackman’s man-with-no-name “Drover” and an Aboriginal boy (Brandon Walters). Their quest concludes in Darwin in the aftermath of the port’s bombing by the Japanese.
Shades of Red River? With classic imagery aplenty, let’s just say that Luhrmann has always been a sucker for the iconic reference. “The Beatles didn’t just make that sound up. It was an English interpretation of American rock’n’roll,” he counters. “Shakespeare made popular cultural references all the time. Picasso is probably the best example of it. You draw from the vernacular that’s around you.” Devotees of the Aussie screen legend Chips Rafferty might also cite 1946’s The Overlanders, a film with a similar story line.
Maybe we should just remain in thrall to Australia’s old- school sensibility: those days before blue screen, when an exotic backdrop meant lugging your production, kitchen sink and all, into the heart of darkness, as Zulu or The African Queen did, but without the turbulence of Apocalypse Now. There was, says Luhrmann, no way to fudge it. “I love being in the northern Sahara, but you can walk along and a Bedouin will serve you a Coke from a hole in the ground. The cellphone reception is better than in Beverly Hills.” It was plenty of nothing he craved — “And the greatest abundance in the northwest of Australia is nothingness.”
Kidman slinks into the tight, tented gazebo where we are talking and perches elegantly while a lackey divines water. “This is the last of a dying breed, this kind of movie,” she echoes. “They don’t build stuff like this any more. To feel that air and see people ravaged by the elements, as hard as it is, it’s exquisite. I dreamt of making a film that had the passion and the weight of the films I grew up watching — Gone with the Wind, Doctor Zhivago. When Baz and I first started speaking about this, seven years ago, I said there needed to be a film about our land that speaks on a much broader scale.” I wonder whether Lady Ashley might be something of metaphor, too — the quasi-royal who comes down under, only to have the Aussie knocked (back) into her? She laughs: “I don’t know that it’s ever been knocked out of me.” For all her cool grace, a couple of dark patches have started to spread around even her sainted armpits.
Australia marks the third collaboration between Luhrmann and Kidman, after Moulin Rouge! (filmed in Sydney) and that weird Chanel No 5 ad. “I’ve been able to enter into the psyches and ideas of some of the greatest minds in the world and that, for me, is a big gift,” Kidman chirrups, not merely content with her Nintendo Brain Training. “When you enter into the vision that Lars von Trier or Baz Luhrmann has, or Sydney Pollack or Jane Campion or Kubrick . . . These are the philosophers of the world. They’re good professors.” She did her “thesis” on Virginia Woolf and Henry James, she says; she’s learnt to speak Russian; she can hammer out a passable Moonlight Sonata, not to mention parley an “array of accents”. Should her husband, Keith Urban, ever step out of line, he should note that, on Australia, she acquired the ability to crack a whip. “I’ve got a busted shoulder at the moment,” she says, giving it a rub. “You gotta have a few scars, right?”
In recent months, what with marriage, the baby and hitting 40, Kidman seems more in the public eye than ever, despite her secluded life in Tennessee, near the heart of Urban’s music business. (“He’s in my trailer,” she confides. “He’s forbidden from coming down, though. He’s actually very jet-lagged, so he’s up there asleep.”)
It is Catherine Martin, Luhrmann’s wife, who remains his most steadfast collaborator, going back to Strictly Ballroom in 1992 — a film, indirectly, that has reshaped Saturday-night telly. While her husband has done the front-of-house stuff, it’s Martin, the production/costume designer, who has been furtively bagging the baubles (two Oscars for Moulin Rouge! and a Tony for their Broadway La bohème). On Australia, wearing a producer’s hat has added to the responsibilities, an unenviable task given the logistical woes of building everything out here from scratch (transporting every last nail up from Sydney) and wrestling with meteorological vagaries. They hadn’t felt a drop of precipitation here in the dry season in 50 years. Recently, however, it chucked it down, turning the set into a quagmire and causing the whole shoot to be rescheduled.
For both Martin and Luhrmann, the film is a venture into the unknown, a departure from the “red curtain trilogy” (Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!), films that, like their exceedingly amiable author, are as camp as the village of tents within which 200 of his crew have been billeted. Australia would have been the second instalment in a trio of historical epics. Yet after two years of prepping a version of Alexander the Great, with Leonardo DiCaprio, it was shelved once Oliver Stone’s version began. “It was devastating,” Luhrmann admits, “but the only way we could have done it was to race to beat Oliver, and that seemed destructive, pointless.”
The pair may revisit it “when we’re both in wheelchairs”, jokes Martin. Indeed, Luhrmann’s film output can hardly be described as prolific, this being only his fourth in 16 years, which can be put down, he says, to his pursuit of other life interests and the fact that he and Catherine are “research junkies” whose meticulous groundwork takes for ever. “The list is very long where people have knocked on the door and said, ‘I’ll give you the income of a small country, would you do this?’ Sometimes I think, ‘That would be fantastic... James Bond, that could be fun.’ We’d be a whole lot wealthier, that’s for sure. But when we make something, I say, ‘What can we do that is truly reflective of an interest we have?’ ”
Here, it’s about Australian self-confidence, the right of a nation to pursue its own destiny “instead of being caught in a sort of cross- fire of other people’s stories”, as Luhrmann puts it. “I guess what I’ve received in bucketloads, no matter what the outcome, is a much more direct understanding of my country, particularly its relationship to England and the sense of the republic, as well as the whole indigenous question.”
At the very least, he can throw a spotlight on the bombing of Darwin, the “Australian Pearl Harbor”. The strategically important city suffered more than 60 raids during 1942-43, as the last line of defence against an intended full-scale Japanese land invasion. “Nobody knew about it,” he says. “Even Australians didn’t know about it.” Back then, it was an “end of the world” place, a cut-throat mishmash of Anglos, Greek pearl-divers, Chinese gold-panners and, of course, Aboriginals. Darwin’s centre now looks too modern to be a location; Bowen, on the Queensland coast, is its proxy.
With the likes of the veteran Australian actors Jack Thompson and Bryan Brown cropping up, and Stuart Beattie doing the screenplay, native sons are out in force. Luhrmann has emphasised the melting pot, with Aboriginal actors such as David Gulpilil and Crusoe Kurddal. The real winner would seem to be Walters, an 11-year-old mixed-race boy, plucked from obscurity, who had never been to a cinema, yet finds himself as third lead to two of the biggest stars in the world.
There is also the fact that those very stars have returned home. The Hollywood A list seems positively cluttered with their compatriots, who have enjoyed most of their successes abroad. “In acting, we’re over-represented,” Jackman says. “Of course there’s a desire to want to give back to or support the industry that gave you a start.”
Backwoods Australia is certainly staging an almighty homecoming for them. In Bowen, the whole town turned out as extras. With an eye to what The Lord of the Rings did for tourism in New Zealand, local governments had been outbidding rivals for the right to host the film. In a dream piece of synchronicity, Luhrmann has just been signed up by Tourism Australia to do a series of commercials promoting the country. Despite the wonderful independent films made in Australia over the years, and the huge Hollywood imports (such as Superman Returns) that have been made in Sydney’s impressive studios, this is the biggest film, by a considerable distance, to be made about the host nation, everyone points out. “It would be so fantastic,” Jackman says, “if we could all look back and this was the dawning of a new era.”
Back on set, the tropical sun descends quickly. Luhrmann has made heavy use of the “magic hour”, the twilight period beloved of cinematographers. “Every sunset there’ll be a majestic transformation and you forgive it all,” he sighs. “It’s like flicking a switch between brutal and beauty.”
“Have you seen the sunset? It’s of the gods, put it that way,” Kidman vouches. “People go to Africa, and they never come back. I think this country has a similar ambience. It casts a spell. For the first week I was here, I thought, ‘I’m not gonna survive’ — then I just felt it turn. I know it’s an extreme way to put it, but it’s a ferocious land.”
As the rocks are kissed to a peachy hue, Luhrmann shoots a campfire scene — Jackman and the Aboriginal stockmen (Aussie for cowboy) lounging around after a hard day’s cowpoking. Given both Luhrmann and Jackman’s musicals credentials, it wouldn’t seem amiss if the actors suddenly ripped off the buckskin and burst into a disco version of The Surrey with the Fringe on Top. Amusingly, for all the millions of boab trees in the area, the one Jackman lolls against is made of fibreglass, there not being a natural one in the right place. But do not underestimate the zeal of the thespian gone native. “I would encourage you to take your shoes off, even if just for a second,” he intones. “That doesn’t anger the spirits as much.”
Sydney, September 2008: a whole year later, and Luhrmann still hasn’t finished his movie, juggling the editing while the score is being recorded. He’s sailing mighty close to the wind, given the November opening date in Australia. In the end, they had to tweak a few scenes in the studio, “doing it Lean and Lucas”, he quips. When the actors came back in to “loop” some of their dialogue (“Baz has a penchant for talking over the top of it,” Jackman says), Kidman wasn’t the only one to have given birth in the interim: no fewer than 15 babies were born to cast and crew during the course of the film, underlining both what a protracted affair it has become and that being stuck in the middle of nowhere leads you to make your own entertainment. (Jackman has even shot another film, Wolverine.)
“There’s a crushing ambition behind the film,” Luhrmann says. “We don’t make things very often, and when we do, we try to make something that isn’t always out there, a meal that maybe isn’t being served every day. Some of my favourite films are sushi, rarefied treats, but this sort of event cinema is like a Sunday meal — it’s got a starter and a main course and a dessert. It’s high comedy, high tragedy, tears, laughter, costumes. Everything big. Big actors. Big landscape.” Jackman chuckles: “Mate, if I told you the film was coming out this time next year, Baz would still be working 24/7 on it. The print will be wet as he gives it over. But, fingers crossed, I think we have something special.”
Australia opens in the UK on Dec 26
Don't cry Nicole: you may be overpaid, but all that's about to change
Forbes Magazine has done some research about how much money Hollywood actors are actually worth – not how much they are paid, but how much profit they generate, compared with how much they are paid. And this means that, by making a list, we can easily see which actors are the most "overpaid" – a list that lots of people will want to print, thus advertising Forbes. It's a really good piece of publicity for the magazine, because everybody likes to hear about vastly wealthy people failing, particularly during the credit crunch.
Forbes got their figures by looking at the last three films each actor had made, and found that Nicole Kidman, whose films have made a pound for every pound she was paid, is therefore the "most overpaid" actor in Hollywood – and therefore, I suppose, the world. A bit further down the list comes Tom Cruise, whose films make £4 for every pound he makes. His films, if you think about it, tend towards the blockbuster end of the spectrum, while she does a lot of more risky, arty stuff.
A bit further down the list is Jennifer Lopez, who makes £4.10 for every pound she pockets, and Jim Carrey, who makes £4.11 – not a bad return, I would think, when you compare these results with, say, city traders. After Carrey, moving upwards, as it were, through the bottom ten, we find Nicolas Cage, followed by Drew Barrymore, Will Ferrell, and Cate Blanchett, who makes almost a fiver for every pound she's paid.
I think it's pretty clear what's happening here. I once read that, if you play the stock market, you shouldn't listen to gossip that has entered the public domain, because once a stock is known to be a good bet, it has stopped being a good bet. Now, if you apply this to film stars, the same tendency will apply: once a star is known to be good box-office, he might look a little stale. Also, those who are known to have been big box-office winners in the recent past will command the biggest fees, and so their films will make less profit per dollar they earn than, say, their co-stars, or actors in successful films who are relatively unknown.
So hats off to Forbes – it certainly made me take notice. It hooks straight into the schadenfreude vibe we all feel about big-time actors, whose millions always make them seem overpaid. But they're paid that much because film-makers have made the decision to gamble on them. And sometimes – quite often, in fact – film-makers do not make good gamblers.
Forbes got their figures by looking at the last three films each actor had made, and found that Nicole Kidman, whose films have made a pound for every pound she was paid, is therefore the "most overpaid" actor in Hollywood – and therefore, I suppose, the world. A bit further down the list comes Tom Cruise, whose films make £4 for every pound he makes. His films, if you think about it, tend towards the blockbuster end of the spectrum, while she does a lot of more risky, arty stuff.
A bit further down the list is Jennifer Lopez, who makes £4.10 for every pound she pockets, and Jim Carrey, who makes £4.11 – not a bad return, I would think, when you compare these results with, say, city traders. After Carrey, moving upwards, as it were, through the bottom ten, we find Nicolas Cage, followed by Drew Barrymore, Will Ferrell, and Cate Blanchett, who makes almost a fiver for every pound she's paid.
I think it's pretty clear what's happening here. I once read that, if you play the stock market, you shouldn't listen to gossip that has entered the public domain, because once a stock is known to be a good bet, it has stopped being a good bet. Now, if you apply this to film stars, the same tendency will apply: once a star is known to be good box-office, he might look a little stale. Also, those who are known to have been big box-office winners in the recent past will command the biggest fees, and so their films will make less profit per dollar they earn than, say, their co-stars, or actors in successful films who are relatively unknown.
So hats off to Forbes – it certainly made me take notice. It hooks straight into the schadenfreude vibe we all feel about big-time actors, whose millions always make them seem overpaid. But they're paid that much because film-makers have made the decision to gamble on them. And sometimes – quite often, in fact – film-makers do not make good gamblers.
John Waters
John Waters, 62, grew up in Baltimore. He began making silent 8mm and 16mm films in the mid-60s, before making the notorious Pink Flamingos in 1972. He made many low-budget shockers until his commercial breakthrough with Hairspray in 1988; it was later adapted for the stage, and remade as a major Hollywood movie. He will perform his one-man show, This Filthy World, at Hammersmith Apollo, London, on Thursday.
When were you happiest?
Chasing after fire engines as a child with my dad and watching neighbours' houses burn to the ground.
What is your greatest fear?
Losing my mind and not knowing it.
What is your earliest memory?
The radio soap, The Romance Of Helen Trent, that my mom used to listen to.
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Johnny Mathis - he is so perfect.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Impatience.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Judgmental without investigation.
Aside from a property, what's the most expensive thing you've bought?
It's bad taste to brag about money.
What is your most treasured possession?
My health.
What would your super power be?
To be able to fly - anything to avoid Heathrow.
What makes you depressed?
People's bad luck.
What do you most dislike about your appearance?
I've had a bad hair life.
If you could bring something extinct back to life, what would you choose?
All my friends who died of Aids.
What is your most unappealing habit?
Chewing toothpicks.
What is your favourite smell?
Poppers.
What is your favourite word?
'Pernicious'.
What would be your fancy dress costume of choice?
I'd never go to a costume party - I have to dress as John Waters every day.
What is the worst thing anyone's said to you?
'Do you have a hobby?' It was a journalist. I went into a tirade: 'How dare you presume I'm a dabbler!'
What is your guiltiest pleasure?
I'm not guilty about any of my pleasures.
What do you owe your parents?
Gratitude for making me feel safe.
To whom would you most like to say sorry, and why?
To my teachers in high school - that I didn't punch them in the mouth for discouraging all my interests.
What or who is the greatest love of your life?
I think my friends' love is the best - it lasts the longest.
What does love feel like?
A wonderful, terribly exciting disease.
What was the best kiss of your life?
Well, he's now married to a girl, so I better hadn't kiss and tell.
Which living person do you most despise, and why?
Religious leaders who don't mind their own business.
What is the worst job you've done?
I worked in a unisex clothes store for three days. Girls would say, 'Do I look fat in this?' I'd say, 'Yes.' I was fired.
If you could go back in time, where would you go?
To Johnny Rae's first big concert.
How do you relax?
I read, I drink and I hang out in monster bars in Baltimore.
How often do you have sex?
Whenever I'm in Baltimore and can make someone laugh.
What is the closest you've come to death?
Just thinking about unsafe sex.
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
An unreadable wig.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
That I live a life with no contact with arseholes.
What keeps you awake at night?
Nothing, I can sleep everywhere but an aeroplane.
What song would you like played at your funeral?
Don't Play Me Cheap, sung by Tina Turner when she was still with Ike.
How would you like to be remembered?
As a funny guy who surprised you once in a while.
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
A 'no' is free.
Tell us a joke.
I hate jokes, I like wit.
Tell us a secret.
I've never seen Star Wars.
When were you happiest?
Chasing after fire engines as a child with my dad and watching neighbours' houses burn to the ground.
What is your greatest fear?
Losing my mind and not knowing it.
What is your earliest memory?
The radio soap, The Romance Of Helen Trent, that my mom used to listen to.
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Johnny Mathis - he is so perfect.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Impatience.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Judgmental without investigation.
Aside from a property, what's the most expensive thing you've bought?
It's bad taste to brag about money.
What is your most treasured possession?
My health.
What would your super power be?
To be able to fly - anything to avoid Heathrow.
What makes you depressed?
People's bad luck.
What do you most dislike about your appearance?
I've had a bad hair life.
If you could bring something extinct back to life, what would you choose?
All my friends who died of Aids.
What is your most unappealing habit?
Chewing toothpicks.
What is your favourite smell?
Poppers.
What is your favourite word?
'Pernicious'.
What would be your fancy dress costume of choice?
I'd never go to a costume party - I have to dress as John Waters every day.
What is the worst thing anyone's said to you?
'Do you have a hobby?' It was a journalist. I went into a tirade: 'How dare you presume I'm a dabbler!'
What is your guiltiest pleasure?
I'm not guilty about any of my pleasures.
What do you owe your parents?
Gratitude for making me feel safe.
To whom would you most like to say sorry, and why?
To my teachers in high school - that I didn't punch them in the mouth for discouraging all my interests.
What or who is the greatest love of your life?
I think my friends' love is the best - it lasts the longest.
What does love feel like?
A wonderful, terribly exciting disease.
What was the best kiss of your life?
Well, he's now married to a girl, so I better hadn't kiss and tell.
Which living person do you most despise, and why?
Religious leaders who don't mind their own business.
What is the worst job you've done?
I worked in a unisex clothes store for three days. Girls would say, 'Do I look fat in this?' I'd say, 'Yes.' I was fired.
If you could go back in time, where would you go?
To Johnny Rae's first big concert.
How do you relax?
I read, I drink and I hang out in monster bars in Baltimore.
How often do you have sex?
Whenever I'm in Baltimore and can make someone laugh.
What is the closest you've come to death?
Just thinking about unsafe sex.
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
An unreadable wig.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
That I live a life with no contact with arseholes.
What keeps you awake at night?
Nothing, I can sleep everywhere but an aeroplane.
What song would you like played at your funeral?
Don't Play Me Cheap, sung by Tina Turner when she was still with Ike.
How would you like to be remembered?
As a funny guy who surprised you once in a while.
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
A 'no' is free.
Tell us a joke.
I hate jokes, I like wit.
Tell us a secret.
I've never seen Star Wars.
Hi Ken, sorry I stole your movie
The Devils' - Oliver Reed, Ken Russell and Vanessa Redgrave on the set - 1971. Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Features
Director Bernard Rose has worshipped eccentric film-maker Ken Russell all his life. But the day the two finally met, there was something he had to get off his chest
* Bernard Rose
* The Guardian,
* Monday September 15 2008
Ken Russell is already there when I enter the restaurant. He's hard to miss, with his big features and shock of thick white hair. At first he seems wary; Russell is an easy target for critics because he wears his heart on his sleeve. He knows I'm a film-maker, but wants me to tell him what I've done. I mention Candyman, Ivans XTC. He smiles pleasantly, and asks me to carry on. I tell him I shot Immortal Beloved, a Beethoven biopic with Gary Oldman. Russell fixes me with his steely blue eyes. "I've hated you for years," he says. "I was going to make that movie. I had Anthony Hopkins: he even got into the costume. That was before the project fell apart."
François Truffaut once said that if you love a man's work, you love all of it. That's how I feel about Ken Russell. Of the British directors active in the 1960s and 1970s who inspired me, Nic Roeg and Jim Henson were mentors in a very direct way (I worked for them), while Stanley Kubrick and Lindsay Anderson were remote, mythical figures. But Russell was my hero, the heir to Michael Powell's peculiarly emotional Englishness and vivid visual rhapsodies. And, sadly, a controversial figure more loved abroad than here.
The first Ken Russell film I saw was his Mahler biopic. It begins with a long shot of a wooden hut built on the side of a lake; birds tweet, the sun shines, nothing happens - until, without reason or warning, the hut is consumed by a sudden explosion of fire in time to the chilling music of Mahler. I know of no other director who would conceive of beginning a picture like that, although Francis Ford Coppola later ripped it off, brilliantly, for the opening of Apocalypse Now. Mahler concerns itself with the normal stuff of biography: childhood, loves, religion, family tragedy, but is devoid of a conventional plot. What drives it is the music - bawdy, vulgar, violent, sweeping, cloying, stunning music set to pictures that switch from naturalistic drama to pastiche, fantasy and history.
Russell's main concern is the struggle of the artist to create, the courage it requires to devote one's life to art, and the tragedy that often results. He elevates the artist to heroic status, and denigrates traditional heroics as violence and oppression. The quintessential Russell sequence is in Savage Messiah: Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, the young sculptor, more drunken punk than working artist, lies to a Bond Street gallery owner at a dinner party about a brilliant neo-classical marble torso he has supposedly made. The gallery-owner agrees to come to Gaudier's studio to view the non-existent piece. Gaudier then rushes from the party, heads to a cemetery, steals a hunk of marble off a tombstone, lugs it home and spends all night chiselling. When morning comes and the gallery owner fails to show, Gaudier drags the statue down to the gallery in a barrow and hurls it through the window. As his friends bail him out of jail, he complains: "I don't want to get off - if I get off it means I didn't do anything!" To me, as a teenager who wanted desperately to make movies, this felt like a credo I could get behind. I adopted Russell as my hero.
I knew about Russell's aborted Beethoven movie. In his autobiography, A British Picture, a new edition of which is published this week, he describes a project called The Beethoven Secret, a film that would use the unknown recipient of a letter Beethoven wrote to his "immortal beloved" as a mechanism for telling his story. Russell also describes a colourful character called Denny, a man who built a shrine to Russell's movies in the backyard of his LA home. Denny is in fact Leonard Pollack, a costume designer I worked with on Candyman. There was a copy of H C Robbins Landon's biography of Beethoven in Pollack's shrine, the copy Russell had used to research his planned version. I...#65279; read it, and became hooked on the idea of making a film about Beethoven.
So, although I didn't have the courage to say so, I did steal Immortal Beloved from him. I even tried to hire Anthony Hopkins, and I did hire Peter Suschitzky (who shot Russell's Lisztomania) to be my director of photography. But when I was shopping the idea around with studio executives, I constantly had to promise the movie would be nothing like one of Russell's. Under the table my fingers were firmly crossed. The execs wanted the new Amadeus, little realising that that film owes something to Russell. A scene in his Song of Summer, where the blind and paralysed Delius dictates music to his young amanuensis, Eric Fenby, is exactly replicated in Amadeus, when Mozart, sick and dying, dictates his Requiem Mass to Salieri.
What I do say is: "Sorry if I pinched Immortal Beloved off you. Anyway, it got terrible reviews." This makes Russell smile, and quote Lisztomania: "'Time kills all critics' - which leads me on to Alexander Walker."
Walker, the London Evening Standard's film critic, hated Russell's films with a pathological fervour, a hatred that climaxed in a live TV showdown where Russell hit Walker over the head with a rolled-up Standard. Russell says: "I was foolish enough to write to the editor of the Standard and suggest that Walker was not reviewing my work fairly and could he have someone else review my films. The editor took offence, printed my letter, and announced that, even though Walker was on holiday, he was going to fly him back to review my latest film. He hated it, of course." I remind Russell of Ingmar Bergman's theory about critics: "One must remember that they have their public, too." He laughs; he likes that.
Russell remains prolific. By his own definition an "unbankable" director, he has returned to his roots. Working with new technology, including a home camcorder, he has in the past few years made The Fall of the Louse of Usher, A Kitten for Hitler and Boudica. He is planning Bravetart Versus the Loch Ness Monster. There's a bawdy 19th-century bohemian quality to these late works that is hard to resist, but of course none of them has received any conventional distribution. Russell and I both agree on this issue: it no longer matters. Ten minutes from now, everything will be on the internet.
He tells me about a planned biography of Russian composer Scriabin. "I want giant bells hanging from clouds. A couple making love on a giant bed. Of course, it's too expensive to do. I did it as a radio play with Oliver Reed. I'd love to make it as a film." I ask if he ever applied to the Film Council for a grant and Russell replies sadly: "I did, but they just treat me like some kind of joke." It's a shame they don't recognise Russell's importance. If the UK Film Council don't want to fund his work, they should at least put him forward for a knighthood. If they don't, I've a good mind to wheel a barrow of Ken Russell films to their offices and, like Gaudier, hurl the cans one by one through the plate glass windows. Cans that bear the names Women in Love, Elgar, Song of Summer, The Music Lovers, The Devils, Savage Messiah, Mahler, Lisztomania, Tommy, Altered States, Crimes of Passion, Salome's Last Dance - the work of one of the greatest British directors of all time.
· A British Picture is published on Friday
A Bronx Tale: Tony Curtis
Many a highbrow raised a brow high last year when the critic Clive James, in his book "Cultural Amnesia," included just three movie actors among his selections of the most significant cultural figures of the century. They were Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, and ... Tony Curtis.
Click Images for Slideshow
United Artists/Photofest
Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier star in Stanley Kramer's 1958 drama 'The Defiant Ones.'
That's right. Not Brando or Olivier or even John Wayne, but the Jewish kid from the Bronx, Bernie Schwartz — the guy who wore a dress in his most popular movie and whose most famous line in a film can't be recited without inciting snickers: "Yonder lies the castle of my fad-dah."
I always thought that this line was apocryphal, like Cary Grant saying, "Judy, Judy," or James Cagney snarling, "You dirty rat!" or Bette Davis waving her cigarette holder and exclaiming, "Peter, Peter!" — lines invented to conjure an actor's cadence and verbal trademark. In Mr. Curtis's case, though, the line would have been intended to be derisive, highlighting his working-class Bronx accent and, by extension, his limitations as an actor.
But it really is a line from a movie, "The Black Shield of Falworth" (1954), a kitschy swashbuckler that Mr. Curtis made with his wife at the time, Janet Leigh. Though it was, like most of Mr. Curtis's 1950s films, a box-office hit, it is scarcely remembered today. In fact, it is remembered only for Mr. Curtis's delivery of that line. And that's not even the Tony Curtis line that gets the most laughs; that would be from a prestigious film, Stanley Kubrick's "Spartacus," when he tells Kirk Douglas, "I love you, Spah-da-cus." Pauline Kael loved the way he pronounced "avidly" in "Sweet Smell of Success."
"The Black Shield of Falworth" is not one of the films that Turner Classic Movies has selected for its Tony Curtis day, which airs all day tomorrow. Not to worry. Mr. Curtis, one of the most energetic and entertaining actors in American film, has been fun to watch in just about everything he's done. And he's done plenty, from costume epics (1962's "Taras Bulba") to Westerns (1955's "The Rawhide Years") to socially significant drama (1958 "The Defiant Ones") to innocuous comedies — lots and lots of those, from his box-office heyday in the mid-1950s to this day.
TCM has done okay: Among others, the network has selected Mr. Curtis's two best films, Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot"(1959) and Alexander Mackendrick's "Sweet Smell of Success" (1957), which also feature his two best lead performances. And what an amazing contrast in those two performances: In the former, he is the drag-disguised jazz man fleeing the mob, a role that gave him a chance to indulge himself in a parody of his idol, Cary Grant; in the latter, he is the press agent Sidney Falco, who, as Mr. James phrased it, "raised sleaze o the status of poetry." Has any popular American film star played two roles so daringly and distinctly different? Watch the two movies again before answering.
TCM can be forgiven for slacking off on some of the other Curtis selections; so many of his more than 100 films are utter crap that it's nearly impossible to assemble a retrospective that does him justice.
The best of TCM's rest are "The Vikings" (1958), in which he kills Kirk Douglas (as opposed to "Spartacus," in which Mr. Douglas kills him); "Operation Petticoat" (1959), in which he gets to imitate Grant while a bemused Grant watches; "The Defiant Ones" (1958), in which he seems to be enjoying himself as a snarling, racist convict handcuffed to another convict played by Sidney Poitier, and "Trapeze" (1956), Carol Reed's silly but entertaining circus epic in which Mr. Curtis matches biceps with Burt Lancaster. All six films share one characteristic: In each, Mr. Curtis is matched alongside a powerhouse actor, and in each, he holds his own or comes out ahead.
Today, Mr. Curtis is largely regarded as the hugely popular pretty boy of perhaps 40 light comedies, most of them execrable. The other Tony Curtis, the one who has proved to be the survivor, is the ultimate co-star — the quirky, energetic character actor trapped in the body of a leading man. This is the Bernie Schwartz who channeled the horrors of his youth. His mother suffered from schizophrenia and, when Bernie was 8, placed him and his younger brother, Julius, in an orphanage. Four years later Julius was killed by a truck; Bernie was the only family member available to identify the body.
This is the Tony Curtis who was stunning in such underappreciated dramas as "The Great Impostor" and "The Outsider" (both from 1961), which featured performances of startling contrast. "The Great Impostor," directed by Robert Mulligan, about the chameleon con artist Ferdinand Demara, is a feast for Curtis aficionados. "The Outsider," directed by Delbert Mann, features Mr. Curtis in what would seem to be a hysterical bit of miscasting as the Indian Ira Hayes, one of the Marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima. Those who can suspend their disbelief of a Jewish kid from the Bronx playing an American Indian can appreciate an extraordinary portrait of a man more alienated from mainstream America than any character played by Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, or Robert De Niro.
Nevertheless, Mr. Curtis has never had a definitive DVD collection; most of his best performances are in other actors' collections. Take the time to seek out his role as Albert DeSalvo in "The Boston Strangler" (1968), in which he played a character so deranged that it chased the film out of the crime and drama section of the video store and into the horror ghetto. Or watch his gleefully demonic portrayal of Joseph McCarthy in Nicolas Roeg's "Insignificance" (1985), a performance even more illuminating than McCarthy as himself (in archival footage) in George Clooney's "Good Night and Good Luck." That's the real Tony Curtis, not the one remembered by your mudd-dah and fadd-dah.
Click Images for Slideshow
United Artists/Photofest
Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier star in Stanley Kramer's 1958 drama 'The Defiant Ones.'
That's right. Not Brando or Olivier or even John Wayne, but the Jewish kid from the Bronx, Bernie Schwartz — the guy who wore a dress in his most popular movie and whose most famous line in a film can't be recited without inciting snickers: "Yonder lies the castle of my fad-dah."
I always thought that this line was apocryphal, like Cary Grant saying, "Judy, Judy," or James Cagney snarling, "You dirty rat!" or Bette Davis waving her cigarette holder and exclaiming, "Peter, Peter!" — lines invented to conjure an actor's cadence and verbal trademark. In Mr. Curtis's case, though, the line would have been intended to be derisive, highlighting his working-class Bronx accent and, by extension, his limitations as an actor.
But it really is a line from a movie, "The Black Shield of Falworth" (1954), a kitschy swashbuckler that Mr. Curtis made with his wife at the time, Janet Leigh. Though it was, like most of Mr. Curtis's 1950s films, a box-office hit, it is scarcely remembered today. In fact, it is remembered only for Mr. Curtis's delivery of that line. And that's not even the Tony Curtis line that gets the most laughs; that would be from a prestigious film, Stanley Kubrick's "Spartacus," when he tells Kirk Douglas, "I love you, Spah-da-cus." Pauline Kael loved the way he pronounced "avidly" in "Sweet Smell of Success."
"The Black Shield of Falworth" is not one of the films that Turner Classic Movies has selected for its Tony Curtis day, which airs all day tomorrow. Not to worry. Mr. Curtis, one of the most energetic and entertaining actors in American film, has been fun to watch in just about everything he's done. And he's done plenty, from costume epics (1962's "Taras Bulba") to Westerns (1955's "The Rawhide Years") to socially significant drama (1958 "The Defiant Ones") to innocuous comedies — lots and lots of those, from his box-office heyday in the mid-1950s to this day.
TCM has done okay: Among others, the network has selected Mr. Curtis's two best films, Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot"(1959) and Alexander Mackendrick's "Sweet Smell of Success" (1957), which also feature his two best lead performances. And what an amazing contrast in those two performances: In the former, he is the drag-disguised jazz man fleeing the mob, a role that gave him a chance to indulge himself in a parody of his idol, Cary Grant; in the latter, he is the press agent Sidney Falco, who, as Mr. James phrased it, "raised sleaze o the status of poetry." Has any popular American film star played two roles so daringly and distinctly different? Watch the two movies again before answering.
TCM can be forgiven for slacking off on some of the other Curtis selections; so many of his more than 100 films are utter crap that it's nearly impossible to assemble a retrospective that does him justice.
The best of TCM's rest are "The Vikings" (1958), in which he kills Kirk Douglas (as opposed to "Spartacus," in which Mr. Douglas kills him); "Operation Petticoat" (1959), in which he gets to imitate Grant while a bemused Grant watches; "The Defiant Ones" (1958), in which he seems to be enjoying himself as a snarling, racist convict handcuffed to another convict played by Sidney Poitier, and "Trapeze" (1956), Carol Reed's silly but entertaining circus epic in which Mr. Curtis matches biceps with Burt Lancaster. All six films share one characteristic: In each, Mr. Curtis is matched alongside a powerhouse actor, and in each, he holds his own or comes out ahead.
Today, Mr. Curtis is largely regarded as the hugely popular pretty boy of perhaps 40 light comedies, most of them execrable. The other Tony Curtis, the one who has proved to be the survivor, is the ultimate co-star — the quirky, energetic character actor trapped in the body of a leading man. This is the Bernie Schwartz who channeled the horrors of his youth. His mother suffered from schizophrenia and, when Bernie was 8, placed him and his younger brother, Julius, in an orphanage. Four years later Julius was killed by a truck; Bernie was the only family member available to identify the body.
This is the Tony Curtis who was stunning in such underappreciated dramas as "The Great Impostor" and "The Outsider" (both from 1961), which featured performances of startling contrast. "The Great Impostor," directed by Robert Mulligan, about the chameleon con artist Ferdinand Demara, is a feast for Curtis aficionados. "The Outsider," directed by Delbert Mann, features Mr. Curtis in what would seem to be a hysterical bit of miscasting as the Indian Ira Hayes, one of the Marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima. Those who can suspend their disbelief of a Jewish kid from the Bronx playing an American Indian can appreciate an extraordinary portrait of a man more alienated from mainstream America than any character played by Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, or Robert De Niro.
Nevertheless, Mr. Curtis has never had a definitive DVD collection; most of his best performances are in other actors' collections. Take the time to seek out his role as Albert DeSalvo in "The Boston Strangler" (1968), in which he played a character so deranged that it chased the film out of the crime and drama section of the video store and into the horror ghetto. Or watch his gleefully demonic portrayal of Joseph McCarthy in Nicolas Roeg's "Insignificance" (1985), a performance even more illuminating than McCarthy as himself (in archival footage) in George Clooney's "Good Night and Good Luck." That's the real Tony Curtis, not the one remembered by your mudd-dah and fadd-dah.
Pacino & De Niro Circle Back To Each Other
By S. JAMES SNYDER | September 5, 2008
The scene lasts only five minutes and 23 seconds, and it couldn't be more understated: Two guys sit in a California diner and size each other up as they talk about their dreams and their jobs. In most other movies, it would be a throwaway sequence, but in 1995's "Heat," Michael Mann's epic tale of cops and robbers, it was a landmark: the first time Robert De Niro and Al Pacino shared a movie screen.
Click Images for Slideshow
Universal/Photofest / © Universal
PARENTAL ADVISORY Robert De Niro in Jay Roach's 2000 comedy 'Meet the Parents.'
Given their explosive personalities, this quick scene (they appeared briefly together at the end of the film as well, for a climactic shoot-out) was marked by its unmistakable lack of bravado — the iconic actors divulging more with their eyes and their expressions than with words or bullets. It is the most riveting and complicated moment in "Heat" and, arguably, the last great moment of cinema in which either actor has participated. Now, 13 years later, Messrs. Pacino and De Niro are set to co-star in the forthcoming drama "Righteous Kill," which Overture Films is marketing as a historic pairing of two cinema legends — offsetting the lack of drawing power each star has retained on his own.
What happened? In the years leading up to "Heat," Mr. Pacino had found abundant success in "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Scent of a Woman"; Mr. De Niro was coming off superior performances in "A Bronx Tale" and "Casino." But in the years to follow, their paths would again diverge, with both actors sinking into career doldrums. Mr. De Niro mixed strong performances in "Cop Land" and "Wag the Dog" with dismal turns in "The Fan" and "The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle," while Mr. Pacino, bolstered by such strong films as "Donnie Brasco," also descended into self-caricature in "The Devil's Advocate" and "Any Given Sunday." Both actors would go on to make bizarre decisions and stand at the center of some major financial flops. On the eve of "Righteous Kill," we take a look back at where the years have taken these two titans of cinema since "Heat."
'Casino' (1995)
When "Heat" arrived in theaters, it competed for attention against another film starring Mr. De Niro: Martin Scorsese's "Casino." In that film, Mr. De Niro delivered his last virtuoso performance as Ace, the subdued but dangerous casino manager led astray by his love for call girl Ginger (Sharon Stone). Ace is shrewd with his business, slick in the way he keeps his hands clean, and misguided in his belief that he can sustain a serious relationship. "Casino" didn't just tap Mr. De Niro's ability to intimidate, but his gift for masculine vulnerability.
'City Hall' (1996)
A year after "Heat," Mr. Pacino appeared with John Cusack in "City Hall," a political drama co-written by Paul Schrader that made only $7 million in its opening weekend. Playing a New York mayor trying to calm racial tensions after a police shooting, Mr. Pacino gave us a career politician doing his best to roll with the punches. His Mayor Pappas attempts to investigate the accidental death, reach out to the black community, confront his own bureaucracy, and keep the city from spiraling out of control. No less complicated a performance than Mr. De Niro's Ace, this is one of Mr. Pacino's most richly textured — and seldom seen — outings.
'The Fan' (1996)
It didn't take long after "Heat" to find both Messrs. De Niro and Pacino suffering from the tedium of typecasting. In 1996's "The Fan," Mr. De Niro was asked to do a second-rate impression of Travis Bickle — in other words, an impression of himself as Hollywood had come to see him. This time he fell way short of the mark. Mugging for the camera as Gil, a recently fired knife — yes, knife — salesman who becomes obsessed with a baseball star played by Wesley Snipes, Mr. De Niro flashed a lot of the menace, but none of the pathos.
'The Devil's Advocate' (1997)
'Any Given Sunday' (1999)
Like Mr. De Niro, Mr. Pacino soon found himself impersonating his own on-screen persona in "The Devil's Advocate" and "Any Given Sunday," with melodramatic monologues that seemed almost contractual. Given that he played Satan in "Advocate," it was easy to see why he might have been inclined to unleash the fire and brimstone. But fans were hoping for something a little more nuanced in "Any Given Sunday," Oliver Stone's hyper-edited football epic in which Mr. Pacino played an outmoded, grumpy coach who argues constantly with management, players, and the press — a one-note billowing train wreck.
'Meet the Parents' (2000)
Never has Mr. De Niro been move lovable yet appeared more lethargic. Capitalizing on his comedy success in "Analyze This," in which he fruitfully spun his penchant for gangsters into parodic comedy, Mr. De Niro signed on for "Meet the Parents" ($166 million at the box office) and "Meet the Fockers" ($279 million), playing the gruff straight man to Ben Stiller's idiot. Going for the easy laughs and the quick payday, "Parents" amounted to a 90-minute collage of Mr. De Niro selling out.
'The Merchant of Venice' (2004)
As "Meet the Fockers" arrived in theaters, Mr. Pacino encountered a sudden burst of ambition, tackling the dark soul of William Shakespeare's Shylock in Michael Radford's "The Merchant of Venice." As he bundled his characteristic rage and hostility to deliver a Shylock for the ages — spewing his vitriol for Antonio, and Antonio's world, straight at the audience — the film tanked at the box office and failed to garner Mr. Pacino his ninth Oscar nomination and first in 12 years.
In the end, 2004 marked an important year for both actors: Mr. De Niro went goofy and hit the blockbuster franchise jackpot, while Mr. Pacino went theatrical and substantive, and was ignored by almost everyone.
'The Score' (2001)
After the lightweight comedies and overblown thrillers ("15 Minutes"), audiences were thrilled to see Mr. De Niro return to the role of criminal-in-chief in "The Score." But the film's pedestrian formula, segueing from heist preparation to double cross to twist ending, offered a standard antihero with nothing on the line. Risking little, Mr. De Niro's veteran criminal is simply going through the motions.
'88 Minutes' (2008)
Speaking of going through the motions, Mr. Pacino found himself literally stumbling through this undercooked thriller (directed by Jon Avnet, who also helms "Righteous Kill"), a contender for the worst movie of 2008. Playing a forensic psychiatrist who becomes increasingly agitated by a mysterious caller who informs him he only has 88 minutes to live, Mr. Pacino's doctor is never told what to do or where to go to prevent his demise. The result is a film with no purpose or motivation, resting solely on the actor's ability to whip himself into the kind of frenzy that distracts audiences from a script's voluminous black holes. Mr. Pacino's fondness for overacting has helped buoy the occasional sinking production, but in "88 Minutes," he finally went down with the ship.
ssnyder@nysun.com
The scene lasts only five minutes and 23 seconds, and it couldn't be more understated: Two guys sit in a California diner and size each other up as they talk about their dreams and their jobs. In most other movies, it would be a throwaway sequence, but in 1995's "Heat," Michael Mann's epic tale of cops and robbers, it was a landmark: the first time Robert De Niro and Al Pacino shared a movie screen.
Click Images for Slideshow
Universal/Photofest / © Universal
PARENTAL ADVISORY Robert De Niro in Jay Roach's 2000 comedy 'Meet the Parents.'
Given their explosive personalities, this quick scene (they appeared briefly together at the end of the film as well, for a climactic shoot-out) was marked by its unmistakable lack of bravado — the iconic actors divulging more with their eyes and their expressions than with words or bullets. It is the most riveting and complicated moment in "Heat" and, arguably, the last great moment of cinema in which either actor has participated. Now, 13 years later, Messrs. Pacino and De Niro are set to co-star in the forthcoming drama "Righteous Kill," which Overture Films is marketing as a historic pairing of two cinema legends — offsetting the lack of drawing power each star has retained on his own.
What happened? In the years leading up to "Heat," Mr. Pacino had found abundant success in "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Scent of a Woman"; Mr. De Niro was coming off superior performances in "A Bronx Tale" and "Casino." But in the years to follow, their paths would again diverge, with both actors sinking into career doldrums. Mr. De Niro mixed strong performances in "Cop Land" and "Wag the Dog" with dismal turns in "The Fan" and "The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle," while Mr. Pacino, bolstered by such strong films as "Donnie Brasco," also descended into self-caricature in "The Devil's Advocate" and "Any Given Sunday." Both actors would go on to make bizarre decisions and stand at the center of some major financial flops. On the eve of "Righteous Kill," we take a look back at where the years have taken these two titans of cinema since "Heat."
'Casino' (1995)
When "Heat" arrived in theaters, it competed for attention against another film starring Mr. De Niro: Martin Scorsese's "Casino." In that film, Mr. De Niro delivered his last virtuoso performance as Ace, the subdued but dangerous casino manager led astray by his love for call girl Ginger (Sharon Stone). Ace is shrewd with his business, slick in the way he keeps his hands clean, and misguided in his belief that he can sustain a serious relationship. "Casino" didn't just tap Mr. De Niro's ability to intimidate, but his gift for masculine vulnerability.
'City Hall' (1996)
A year after "Heat," Mr. Pacino appeared with John Cusack in "City Hall," a political drama co-written by Paul Schrader that made only $7 million in its opening weekend. Playing a New York mayor trying to calm racial tensions after a police shooting, Mr. Pacino gave us a career politician doing his best to roll with the punches. His Mayor Pappas attempts to investigate the accidental death, reach out to the black community, confront his own bureaucracy, and keep the city from spiraling out of control. No less complicated a performance than Mr. De Niro's Ace, this is one of Mr. Pacino's most richly textured — and seldom seen — outings.
'The Fan' (1996)
It didn't take long after "Heat" to find both Messrs. De Niro and Pacino suffering from the tedium of typecasting. In 1996's "The Fan," Mr. De Niro was asked to do a second-rate impression of Travis Bickle — in other words, an impression of himself as Hollywood had come to see him. This time he fell way short of the mark. Mugging for the camera as Gil, a recently fired knife — yes, knife — salesman who becomes obsessed with a baseball star played by Wesley Snipes, Mr. De Niro flashed a lot of the menace, but none of the pathos.
'The Devil's Advocate' (1997)
'Any Given Sunday' (1999)
Like Mr. De Niro, Mr. Pacino soon found himself impersonating his own on-screen persona in "The Devil's Advocate" and "Any Given Sunday," with melodramatic monologues that seemed almost contractual. Given that he played Satan in "Advocate," it was easy to see why he might have been inclined to unleash the fire and brimstone. But fans were hoping for something a little more nuanced in "Any Given Sunday," Oliver Stone's hyper-edited football epic in which Mr. Pacino played an outmoded, grumpy coach who argues constantly with management, players, and the press — a one-note billowing train wreck.
'Meet the Parents' (2000)
Never has Mr. De Niro been move lovable yet appeared more lethargic. Capitalizing on his comedy success in "Analyze This," in which he fruitfully spun his penchant for gangsters into parodic comedy, Mr. De Niro signed on for "Meet the Parents" ($166 million at the box office) and "Meet the Fockers" ($279 million), playing the gruff straight man to Ben Stiller's idiot. Going for the easy laughs and the quick payday, "Parents" amounted to a 90-minute collage of Mr. De Niro selling out.
'The Merchant of Venice' (2004)
As "Meet the Fockers" arrived in theaters, Mr. Pacino encountered a sudden burst of ambition, tackling the dark soul of William Shakespeare's Shylock in Michael Radford's "The Merchant of Venice." As he bundled his characteristic rage and hostility to deliver a Shylock for the ages — spewing his vitriol for Antonio, and Antonio's world, straight at the audience — the film tanked at the box office and failed to garner Mr. Pacino his ninth Oscar nomination and first in 12 years.
In the end, 2004 marked an important year for both actors: Mr. De Niro went goofy and hit the blockbuster franchise jackpot, while Mr. Pacino went theatrical and substantive, and was ignored by almost everyone.
'The Score' (2001)
After the lightweight comedies and overblown thrillers ("15 Minutes"), audiences were thrilled to see Mr. De Niro return to the role of criminal-in-chief in "The Score." But the film's pedestrian formula, segueing from heist preparation to double cross to twist ending, offered a standard antihero with nothing on the line. Risking little, Mr. De Niro's veteran criminal is simply going through the motions.
'88 Minutes' (2008)
Speaking of going through the motions, Mr. Pacino found himself literally stumbling through this undercooked thriller (directed by Jon Avnet, who also helms "Righteous Kill"), a contender for the worst movie of 2008. Playing a forensic psychiatrist who becomes increasingly agitated by a mysterious caller who informs him he only has 88 minutes to live, Mr. Pacino's doctor is never told what to do or where to go to prevent his demise. The result is a film with no purpose or motivation, resting solely on the actor's ability to whip himself into the kind of frenzy that distracts audiences from a script's voluminous black holes. Mr. Pacino's fondness for overacting has helped buoy the occasional sinking production, but in "88 Minutes," he finally went down with the ship.
ssnyder@nysun.com
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