约翰·图特罗（卫报）

John Turturro
The actor and director tells Mark Kermode about the New York roots that have informed his acting performances for directors including Spike Lee and the Coen Brothers and inspired his own films

* guardian.co.uk,
* Thursday March 23 2006

Mark Kermode: Before we start, I just want to point out that John was just in the green room with Kate Winslet's parents, who have only just watched the film for the first time. John, I know you were very concerned about what they thought.

John Turturro: Well, I'm greatly relieved.

MK: Well, everyone's just seen the film, so tell us about its origins. The story is that you started writing it on the set of Barton Fink.

JT: That's a true story. I did a lot of research for Barton Fink, even went to secretarial school. I'd written a little before and liked it, so I decided that I'd work on one or a few things while on set because most of the writers I'd worked with always had a lot of things stuffed in their heads. So I thought that it might be interesting, when they were filming me typing, if I was actually working on something. I would then continue working on it in my dressing room. I wrote the title and the line: "Two things: a man should be able to be romantic and be able to smoke his brains out." That's something I'd overheard somewhere. I had some ideas for scenes - the first scene with the toe, into the first Engelbert Humperdinck song. At that time, I hadn't planned for people to burst into song yet, but I knew I wanted that song to come on there. Then for years I kept adding to the pile of notes in my shoebox. In my second film, I did a little musical fantasy scene and I thought it would be great to use that for this story so that it wouldn't be quite so dark. In the year 2000, I'd done about five movies and I decided to take time off and put all my notes together and attempt to do it.

MK: It's shot in an area fairly close to where you grew up, so there's a tendency to say it's autobiographical. How much is it so?

JT: It's not that autobiographical. I grew up in a neighbourhood close to Kennedy Airport. I was going to do a documentary about my mum and her friends who were all widows. They all had similar stories about their husbands. I had the money, but then it fell through. Anyway I think the most autobiographical element of this film is its irreverent spirit, which very much comes from my mother. She was a professional singer and our house was full of music. She would always, even in the darkest moment, try to find something funny. There was a scene in the script, which I never filmed, which was based on the fact that when my dad was in a bad mood, my mum would do this striptease. She would wear a leotard underneath and do a raunchy number for my father, and we three boys would dance with her. We didn't know what she was doing, we were so young. I actually have it on 8mm film, and my father would slowly break into a smile. So that's the kind of spirit that pervades the film.

MK: So your mother was a singer and a dancer?

JT: No, she was a singer and her two brothers were jazz musicians.

MK: One of the other ideas in this film, which you've spoken of before, is that of small houses filled with big characters, people who are almost too big for their surroundings.

JT: I have three photographs that inspired the film, and one of them was of my family, taken from a low angle. My father looks like this giant and my grandmother was in curlers and then there was my mother and me. We used to laugh about it because we really did look like we were too big for the house. But that's how a lot of people lived, crowded in these tiny houses. Everyone had their own music, and in those days there was no iPod, so everyone would have their own record player. So there'd be Frank Sinatra, classical music, James Brown and Jimi Hendrix - everyone just trying to find their space in it. Another thing I'm reminded of is that when I shot up really quickly - I'm 6 foot 1 - my father used to yell at me to sit down because I was too big. So there's no escape in these houses - there's one bathroom, so music and films are forms of transportation, ways to get out. When we moved close to the airport, and in those days it was still expensive to fly and planes were really loud and flew lower than they do now, we would go to the airport to watch people take off. We thought that was the coolest thing. We never went anywhere. I never flew until I was in my 20s, and now I fly all over the world. So the place you wanted to run away from, all of a sudden it looks like a William Eggleston photograph. That was an inspiration on this film. That scene with Kate in front of the mound - I found that mound by myself and it was where the garbagemen and snowploughs would be. She had this great coat on and she'd had this scene in the car, and I thought what a tragedy that people never see the coat, so I asked her to stand in front of the mound, put on the Humperdinck song and asked her to mirror my movements off camera. We'd bonded by this time so it was easy for her to agree. And it turned out to be the iconic image of the film. That was a happy accident.

MK: While we're on the subject of images, it's impossible not to notice, especially if you've come to the NFT on the tube, that the poster for Romance & Cigarettes has a huge block that says the image is banned. What is it about the image that people are not allowed to see on the tube?

JT: I really don't know. I know that Kate was breastfeeding at the time. I think it's a great poster and I was surprised that they were so nervous about it. But I hope that this will just give the film that little extra bit of attention. And that's not an enhanced poster - that's exactly how she looks in the film.

MK: Now, about the bawdiness of the film, which has attracted some press attention. You've been quoted as saying that there's an artistry to that kind of thing, it's Chaucerian, Rabelaisian even. What's your relationship with that kind of language?

JT: Well, my father had a really dirty mouth. I don't know if he did in bed, but he certainly did at work as a builder, so I've always had a kind of appreciation for that kind of language. After I'd directed my first film, I was offered the chance to direct a book by Charles Bukowski called Women. But I realised that it would have been triple-X, so I said I didn't know how to do it, it was too dirty, even though I loved the book. So when I was writing this story, I was thinking about how tenderness and obscenity lie side by side, as do spirituality and lust. I thought about Bruce Springsteen - he writes songs about the people you see in this movie, gives voice to them. I wondered what it would be like if Charles Bukowski wrote something in collaboration with Bruce Springsteen. That idea really turned me on, I thought it would be really entertaining and fun, and wouldn't be devoid of humanity. Actually, when I finished the script, I had no idea who I'd offer the role of Nick to, so I wrote a letter to Bruce Springsteen. I said, "If you ever want to explore acting, then maybe this could be the film for you. I would be willing to do a reading with you; I'm an actor, so I'd be able to help you." I really terrified the poor guy. But he said he was really flattered and that he liked the script and that he would let me use his song Red-Headed Woman in the film. So once he was on board, he really helped us. It took me about 18 months to clear the music rights for the film, because the music's foreground, it's part of the narrative.

MK: Was there ever a point where you seriously thought that he could star in it?

JT: Well, no. Then Joel and Ethan Coen suggested James Gandolfini. I thought he was too young, but they said he could play older. So I sent him the script, he read it and liked it, and he did a reading with us, with Mary-Louise Parker and Steve Buscemi and he was brilliant. James is like an anti-actor. He's like a wounded bear coming out of the forest. He's a wonderful actor and he plays off really well opposite all the women in the film.

MK: Here we'd like to show a little clip from your first film, Mac. You've spoken a bit about your father. So can you tell us a little bit about how the movie relates to your father?

JT: It was kind of inspired by my father. He was a builder and had his own business and I worked with him since I was a little boy. I always thought it was an interesting world but you never see anything about builders, even though there are all kinds of great stories about them. They build bridges and skyscrapers. I'd done it as a play and people seemed to really like it, so it encouraged me to try to tell it as a film. I couldn't really find a director I liked so, by a process of elimination, elected myself to try to direct. I did it as a short, then raised the money and did the film. I won a Camera d'Or for it at Cannes, and it's a film that people still discover. Sometimes when I watch it I put my head down because I can't believe how raw it is. But it's something I'm glad I did.

MK: So this is Mac. [clip runs]

MK: One of the themes of Mac is that craftsmanship is sort of bygone. There's a key speech that contrasts people who make things with their hands and people who just say things with their mouths. It's very elegiac about that, the passing of craftsmanship. But clearly, in the making of the film itself, there is craftsmanship. Do you see making a film, directing, as a little bit like building a house?

JT: I think it's closer to that than acting because you get to express yourself. This is how I look at the world. There's a part of you that wants to justify what you do, so you want to do something meaningful and at the same time entertaining, that's not just a celebration of yourself, but a celebration of the world around you. I look at the films of Mike Leigh, and I am encouraged by them. They're the kind of people I like being around. Not to say they don't have warts and all, but that interests me.

MK: This sense of family also seems very important to you - both your actual family and your family of film-makers. You seem to thrive in that kind of family environment.

JT: Well, when you do a film like Romance & Cigarettes, you have to create an environment where people are relaxed and not afraid to make a fool of themselves, like you're able to do in the confines of your own home. When you have that freedom, you can do great things. I was always encouraged and not second-guessed by my parents. When we moved to the neighbourhood where the film takes place, my mother encouraged me to enter a drawing contest. I used to draw gladiators and such, so my mother told me to try and enter this contest, which was to draw a picture of my mother. I drew this picture, it looked like the Bride of Frankenstein. I was crying, I was six years old at the time, and thought they'd hate it, but she said, "No, I think it's interesting." So we submitted it. And I guess the judges thought it was hilarious and awarded me the prize just before Mother's Day. And the prize was a huge box of candy. And my mother put the picture in the window. That indicates the level of support I had from her. One thing I have is that I have never been afraid to expose myself in a way, and I really think I got that from my mother. That's a great gift you can give to a child, that they have confidence in their abilities. I was looking for that quality in the people who worked on this film. Kate Winslet certainly has that quality, and James. They would always go, "Let's take this as far as we can."

MK: As far as your acting career's concerned, there are some people you've worked with again and again. We're going to show a clip next from Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. In fact, I've read somewhere that you are the actor who has worked the most times with Spike Lee. Is that correct?

JT: I am his Caucasian representative. I am actually black; Spike's never said that out loud, but I am. We're good friends and really bonded in a great way on Do the Right Thing. We're the same age, have a lot of the same interests. We disagree on a lot of things, too, vehemently. But yes, I have been in a lot of Spike Lee's films, and he's a dear friend of mine.

MK: So here's a clip from Do the Right Thing. [clip runs]

MK: Even after all this time, that scene still has an incendiary quality to it. You've said that you're good friends with Spike Lee and that you disagree as well. So describe your relationship with him: is it sparky?

JT: Well, when he asked me to do the movie, I read the script and liked it, even though I had some problems with the ending. I still do actually, but I've always been honest about it. When he asked me which role I preferred to play, I said I wanted to play the racist, because I thought it was the more interesting role. The neighbourhood I first grew up in, it was basically black. Then we moved to a neighbourhood that was mixed - various people from England, Scotland, Ireland, Italians and Jews, but I was bussed to a school which was almost 90% black. I played basketball and had a lot of black friends. So we just got along, and Spike knew that I was unafraid to look bad. But it was weird at first, doing the film, because there were a lot of black people on set, and it was kind of painful saying those things out loud. But once we got relaxed with each other, he could see that I wasn't afraid to do that, and admit to certain things. Then I started telling him things he didn't even know about; I'd say, "You should put this in because this is what people really say." And he'd do it. We really hit it off. When we did Jungle Fever, I was kind of one of the ghostwriters on that. He's a good friend of mine; I like Spike a lot. He's done things maybe not perfectly, but he's opened the doors for a lot of people. I think he's a good person and a very responsible person. We were born weeks apart, so we grew up with the same references. Actually, his best friend growing up was Italian, and my best friend was black. So it's weird, we have a strange relationship but it's one that we value. Because in a business like this, where every time you're working with new people and having to reinvent the wheel. So if you have even a modicum of continuity, you really appreciate it, especially as you get older.

MK: Spike Lee is such a signature director; I mean you know when you're watching a Spike Lee film. Clearly, you've learned something from all the directors you've worked with. Is there something you can point to as something you learned from watching Spike?

JT: I think people like Spike, Joel and Ethan, or Francesco Rosi or Redford or Peter Weir, they really prepare a lot and they know what they want, and they try to set a good, relaxed atmosphere. So I have an advantage because I've worked with all kinds of directors, but in the end you can only be yourself. You are who you are, for good or bad. I knew in Romance & Cigarettes that I wanted actors who could be funny and real, and weren't afraid to expose themselves. Sometimes actors come in with a lot of skills, but what they're doing is protecting themselves. So I realised we needed to do a lot of work before we started shooting. I would also allow myself to make a fool of myself before them, to show them the direction that I wanted them to go in. So I was very careful about how I cast the film - it wasn't about getting a bunch of names together. I wanted a certain kind of actor in the film.

MK: It would also seem to me that as an actor, having done a difficult role like you did in Do the Right Thing, you learned something about how to get your actors to trust you as a director, as I'm sure you did with Spike.

JT: That's right. Spike does a lot of rehearsal, a lot of improvisation. In our film, we didn't do a lot of that, but I made them do theatre games that made them feel like they were starting out all over again. Which is good, because sometimes you make a movie and you really feel like you're just going to the dentist. And you feel like you just get out of the cage, do it, then get back in the cage. I don't like that feeling.

MK: The other people that you obviously feel this kind of connection with are the people who executive-produced Romance & Cigarettes, the Coens. There's a quote, which may or may not be true, attributed to the Coens, saying after they read the script that it "seemed deranged enough" for them to produce.

JT: I was surprised that they wanted to do it. Once they came on board, they helped me get the money and they recommended James, and they really helped me in the editing stage, once I had my rough cut. They're very, very close friends of mine. They're incredibly grounded people.

MK: And they genuinely do that thing of completing each other's sentences, don't they?

JT: Yeah, well, there's two of them.

MK: Except that there's really one of them existing in two bodies.

JT: They laughed at things in the film that nobody else laughed at. When Ethan saw the wallpaper in the kitchen, with the pictures of Paris and the Eiffel Tower, he was just dying laughing; he thought it was so funny. And whenever people are in severe pain in the film, they think it's hilarious. When James goes, "You don't even like me" to his family, they just die. Actually, I think it's pretty funny, too. Only a guy could turn himself into the victim when he's the perpetrator of the crime.

MK: Because Romance & Cigarettes came out of the wellspring of Barton Fink, we're going to show a clip here from that film. Barton Fink has become one of the most quoted films of all time.

JT: I can't believe they didn't win any awards for the script because it was such a great one. We basically just laughed the entire time we were making that film because we just kept thinking, "How did you get the money to make this movie?" We had enough money to do it in 45 days and we never went into overtime. My wife had my first son in the middle of it, and it was just a wonderful experience. But the first time I saw it I was horrified. I wasn't used to seeing myself in a big role. Now I think it's a great film, but it's taken me like 10 years to say, "Yeah, I think it's okay."

MK: Well, if you can contain your horror, let's take a look at Barton Fink. [clip runs]

JT: He really should have listened to the story - it would have been a much shorter film.

MK: As you've said, it is an extraordinary piece of work and extraordinary that it got made. But one of the contradictory things about it is that he's supposed to be a playwright of the common man...

JT: Yeah, but he's an egghead. You should ask Joel and Ethan about that. Well, obviously it was inspired by some people, like Clifford Odets. They just really wanted to take it to an extreme.

MK: You've never fallen into the trap of wanting to make the characters you play likeable or loveable or heroic.

JT: Joel and Ethan used to accuse me of making Barton Fink more horribly human than they'd imagined. That's your job, to do it, not to ask if the audience is going to like this or not. I come from the theatre, I've done a lot of plays and excellent literature, and you know what that is. Some of the great characters of literature aren't likeable, but they're riveting and watchable. Your job is to keep people awake, and then after that you can say whatever you want. If you forget that, then you're in trouble.

MK: Well, in Barton Fink it's given a satirical treatment, but in the films that you've made, you've kind of focussed on the common man, the builders and blue-collar workers.

JT: I am Barton Fink. I just don't think there are many stories told that way. You can tell it with humour and invention, as long as you still try to involve the audience. In Barton Fink, maybe he started out that way but then he went off a little bit. I love the Italian neo-realist films, I like Mike Leigh. When you know there's a lot of unmined territory, you want to use that. I knew people from construction sites who had books in their backpocket, who read poetry and literature, and people are surprised by this. So I have an affection for that, and it interests me.

MK: One last clip I'd like to show here: Grace of My Heart, which was very little seen in cinemas but has grown in stature since. I love this film; it's about the Brill Building and I think it's relevant here because it's a musical, to some extent. The character that we're going to see you play, he looks uncannily like Phil Spector. Just set it up for us, who he is.

JT: He's the music manager of a singer-songwriter who's kind of based on Carole King, played by Illeana Douglas. Martin Scorsese produced it and helped edit it with Thelma Schoonmaker. We kind of based him on Phil Spector, definitely the look, but the character, I kind of used someone I'd met.

MK: And in getting his mannerisms right, you got this guy to read your lines into a tape recorder?

JT: This guy was an accountant for musicians but he's a really funny guy. That's what I do sometimes, I tape people and have them talk or read a few lines. There was just something about this accountant that I thought was just perfect for the character that Allison Anders wrote.

MK: So, Grace of My Heart. [clip runs]

JT: A funny thing was that I was going to use a Carole King song which was politically incorrect - I got the rights to it but then realised that I didn't need it. It was the song He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss). Carole and I had many conversations about it, and I ended up doing a benefit for a women's shelter. But I just loved the song. A lot of the music in that film is stuff that I grew up with.

MK: Absolutely, and you see that with Romance & Cigarettes as well. And that is a great song. Let's have some questions from the audience here.

Question 1: Were you tempted to act in this one yourself? And when you've previously directed yourself, how difficult was that?

JT: I was tempted to act, but I realised that I had a tough job with the musical element and all the actors I had to navigate. I did a bit of dancing in this - I'm the other umbrella dancer with Christopher Walken - and that was fine for me. But as for when I've acted myself, for example Mac I'd done as a play and had a lot of rehearsal, while on Illuminata I had a role and was in and out of the picture, and I was one of the writers, so it wasn't that hard. But directing's a different type of animal. When you're acting, you're like a horse, you want to run. But when you're directing, you have to keep everything within your eyesight and orchestrated - you're more like the conductor. So I was glad I didn't.

Question 2: Romance & Cigarettes seems to me to be a film that deals with the sacred and the profane. How do you think it will go down with audiences in America, given the current political climate?

JT: Well, it's coming out there in the summer. We've had a lot of screenings there and people seem to really enjoy it. I think it would be the perfect film to show at the White House these days, as long as we don't show it after 9pm. I'm looking forward to taking it to Washington. I think there's just so much dishonesty in the world that sometimes you can use a little honesty, especially where it's entertaining and evocative in some way. I'm really tired of seeing films where I get embarrassed and I'm not entertained, you know, where it's about sexuality and stuff. In this film, I tried to be as honest as I could be in an inventive way. I won't apologise for it, so I look forward to whatever occurs in those red states.

MK: Has the film been through the American ratings board yet?

JT: Yes, we got an R-rating, thank God.

MK: With no cuts?

JT: No cuts. I was really worried about some of the things that Kate's character says and thought that might get us an X-rating, but we're okay.

Question 3: You talked earlier about how your way of directing actors came from your experience of being an actor yourself. How did you develop your visual style?

JT: I've watched a lot of directors work. I like photography and painting. I collected a huge number of photographs and things, so we had a huge bible for this film, and I based a number of things on these photographs and paintings. I like composition - I didn't have so much time that I could do an extravagant number of shots, so they really had to be composed. And I really like that, because I think that composition is sometimes lost because of quick cutting nowadays. I've worked with great film-makers, so it's been like film school for me, and they've all influenced my approach to the film.

Question 4: The scene where they're chasing a cow down the road - is there a story behind that?

JT: That's a very controversial scene, by the way. I actually saw something like that on the news once, and thought it would be good in a movie. People have wanted to cut that scene over and over, and Ethan Coen has come to its defence. According to Ethan, in the days of the silent movies, whenever they came to a creative impasse on the set, they'd turn to the crazy person on the set. And the crazy person might say, "We should have an elephant jump on someone." And it would be used. So Ethan thought that this was our crazy-person idea. It's a non-sequitur, it happens many times in life. You're in the middle of a tender conversation and then something happens and you go, "What the hell was that?" So part of my idea for this film is that nothing has a consistent tone. In life, you're in this really beautiful state and then you fall down a sewer or something. So I just wanted to keep it popping and I just thought the cow would be interesting.

Question 5: Throughout this film, I couldn't stop thinking of Dennis Potter. Towards the end of the film, the Gandolfini character recites, "Will there be any stars, any stars in my crown?" Did you have Dennis Potter in mind?

JT: Definitely. Before I got the idea of how to use the music, I had never seen a Dennis Potter programme. My friend Matthew Sussman was a huge fan of his, though. I had read an interview with him, and in that he quoted that psalm, and I read it and thought it was beautiful. And then, when I thought I had an original idea, my friend said to look at The Singing Detective. I thought that was brilliant. Then I watched a little of Lipstick on Your Collar. I watched about two episodes of each because I didn't want to be too influenced by it because he's very strict. He uses music from one era and he uses pure lip-synching. But then I did read a book of interviews with him, and I was very inspired by what he said - his parents were really poor and I really thought he was on to something. So that was an appropriate thing for James to say, and it was my way of tipping my hat to him. Once again, it was something I had to fight to keep in, because some people thought it was too much, but I'm glad I used it. You know, everyone's influenced by someone, whether you read something about them or whatever. You can use that influence as an encouragement to find your own path, and I certainly took it that way.

Question 6: Did you ever think of getting the actors to sing?

JT: They do sing. One of the best songs in the film is Kate Winslet's version of the Little Water Song, but it didn't work in the film. So I had to decide to use Ute Lemper's version, which is a little more accomplished. But people do sing along with most of the songs. My idea was to use an everyday person's connection to popular music. You can watch a movie where an actor has trained for a year to sing, and they're okay, but they're never going to be as expressive as Dusty Springfield or Tom Jones. That was always my idea, that they would be the dominant voices. But James sings along, Kate sings along. That's what people do in real life, and that's what I thought would be appropriate for the film.

Question 7: One of my favourite films is Box of Moon Light, and I was just wondering if it was as enjoyable to make as it appears? And what are you planning to do next?

JT: I like that film very much, too. What next? Well, I've done a couple of films, I did a play and so now I'm kind of in-between things and taking some time off, reading and thinking. I think it's good to sometimes withdraw from the circus. I also did a film that Robert De Niro directed and that's coming out next year.

Question 7 add: But nothing with Tom DiCillo?

JT: Not at the moment, but I'd like to work with Tom again.

Question 8: Back on the subject of influences - what are your major literary influences? I ask because I thought I saw a little bit of Beckett in the film tonight.

JT: I'm a big Beckett fan. I've done a bunch of benefits doing his material, I did Waiting for Godot. Once again, if you're going to use an inspiration, then you might as well use the best. He never wrote a musical, so... There're a lot of writers I like. You try to incorporate that in the right way. Yeah, that's definitely in there.

MK: Ladies and gentlemen, I have a feeling we could go on and on, but we have to draw this to a close. So please join me in thanking John Turturro.