The Ashes of Time Redux interview

by David Ashley

[This article is written as if what took place was interesting.]

230pm: I arrive at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills and announce myself at the front desk. They’ve seen Wong wandering around, but curiously have no notations for any sort of press event. I’m nervous. The ever-ticking clock scuttles a few precious minutes and Helpful Woman tells me that Wong is in the restaurant talking with a few people, but that she doesn’t quite know in what capacity he is there. So I wander in that direction with wooden steps; a one-on-one I was not expecting, let alone am I prepared for. As I near the restaurant a fellow who looks vaguely familiar spots me and continues eyeing me strangely. Finally he inquires why I’m here, I tell him, and he wanders off to determine which interviews I’ll be taking part in. Aggrieved, I pace for a few moments outside the entrance to the dining area. As I wait, Wong exits the restaurant and passes me – quite taller than I expected, and donning the sunglasses that I’ve never seen him not wearing. Helpful Man then exits and informs me that I should be at the Regent Beverly Wilshire for the round-table interviews, despite my press email noting, that’s right, Four Seasons Hotel, 3pm. So I heave a sigh of relief and drive five minutes southwest to another pleasant, opulent hotel in Beverly Hills. There the press day cattle have assembled and sip their free drinks. I, fellow underdog, sit and confine myself to merely worrying about the questions I’ve prepared.

“They told me Wong probably won’t be here for another 45 minutes.”

This comment is not unexpected. I speak to an intelligent former Londoner named Tom who drops a few somewhat familiar names for me that I jot down in my ignorance: Derek Jarman and Jacques Rivette. I’ll check them out. Tom loves living in Los Angeles. Why does everybody here love Los Angeles?

A word on Wong: now 52 years old, Wong Kar Wai was raised in Hong Kong and has been steadily gaining much love from arthouse filmgoers since invigorating 90’s cinema with the now iconic Chungking Express. Incidentally, Chungking was filmed in three weeks during the breaks between the filming of Ashes of Time, and primarily because Wong simply needed “another script to fulfill his contract for a second feature” (thanks, IMDB). Due to the power and singularity of Ashes alongside Chugking, 1994 may be viewed as the best year of Wong’s career – that’s certainly what I posit. 2000 saw the heralded and formal In the Mood for Love and 2006 saw his equally acclaimed 2046 (Mood’s pseudo-sequel). What does Wong do that makes him stand out? I watched almost all of his films in the week preceding this interview, so I can now speak of it: he sensualizes the image and enlarges the minutiae of life. Every one of his films utilizes scenes with a lowered shutter speed to break up the narrative, and in Ashes of Time this is specifically relegated to action – instead of creating a contrived and overly-choreographed, now typical martial arts sequence, we are given a series of images that could’ve only been caught out of the corner of one’s eye, glimpsed in the adrenaline of battle; the ‘idea’ of violent action or, as Wong later describes, a rhythm or dance. Wong’s films are very moody, very emotional. And in his recent venture to American moodiness, My Blueberry Nights, he was perhaps too filled with ruminations and nostalgia.

Ashes of Time is completely unlike his other films, not the least important reason being that its landscape is an ancient desert as opposed to Wong’s usual modern city. It is a Jianghu film; other notable recent Jianghus include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero, so that’s the sort of film we’re talking about – ancient Chinese fantasy martial-arts. No American release was ever given to Ashes and any copy that wound up in local video stores in ruefully inadequate. Wong restored, reassembled, added new sparse new footage and re-arranged music and gave Ashes the glorious revival it deserves.

Back to reality. Tom has proffered me a rolled cigarette outside the Reg Bev Wil; I stared down the gauntlet of Rodeo Drive and Wong, making another cameo appearance, popped up near us and smoked his own cigarettes. 45 minutes from Free Drinks, I and the others are ushered to the round-table. Wong strolls in and says “OK who’s first?” The group, having waited for some time, is quite sedate and nobody chimes in. Wong arranges our recorders in front of him – very nice of him, though it might’ve been an act of impatience – and smiles while we prepare to speak. From my position I am able to see the eyes under his shades.

Tom chimes in. Wong: “So you’re the first one!” Wong describes that initially only a simple restoration had been intended for Ashes of Time based on the desire to give the film the wide theatrical release that had been intended (Wong is clearly quite a bit more popular now than in 1994), and to make use of the current international popularity of the Jinaghu genre and the stars involved – Tony Leung, for instance, of Infernal Affairs and many of Wong’s most popular films. This process proved difficult since numerous versions of film existed in poor DVD releases, so Wong and his cohorts went on a scavenger hunt across China to find original prints. Another interviewer poses a question and Wong smilingly jabs “You again?” Fella must’ve been in a previous interview.

213: “During the restoration process, was there any visual or audio material that you weren’t able to get ahold of?”

Wong: “Yeah, of course. When you compare [Redux] to the original version it’s ten minutes shorter. It’s not like Apocalypse Now, which is longer. There were a lot things we had to give up, but of course we had to replace it with other things. Also, we had to create some shots. The first shot of the film actually is created digitally. This is a shot which I always loved… now it seems rather easy, when you have all this technology.”

“So the things that were cut were not intentional, it was just a matter of not having access to the footage?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

I sate myself with this rather oblique answer. Wong is asked what is different about the Redux cut of Ashes. He sets a trend for misinterpreting questions and answers that ‘those who haven’t seen the original film don’t have to carry ‘this baggage’ into the new cut,’ meaning that the film will be fresh for unfamiliar audiences. Sigh.

We are surprised to hear that Christopher Doyle, Wong’s longtime cinematographer, was not involved with the restoration process, this being quite long and involved, and Doyle currently shooting a film with Neil Jordan in Ireland. Doyle was present when the film was screened at Cannes, and allegedly Doyle feels that Redux is the same film he had personally shot. Tony Leung (Blind Swordman) and Carina Lau (Peach Blossom) had joined Wong to promote the film in Cannes, though star Brigitte Lin (Yin/Yang), apparently now avoiding all pubic appearances, was able to view the film in an arranged private screening. She is very happy with it (and gives an enjoyable performance as Yin/Yang).

An interviewer inquires about the relevance of the Chinese Lunar Calendar that is oft referenced in the film, used for benchmarks and setting seasonal tones during the film’s four primary vignettes. Wong answers that ‘it is used to denote the passage of time and show how the characters change.’ Mmm.

Wong speaks of how the original Ashes of Time was the first film to come from his newly christened company, Jet Tone Productions, created so autonomy could be maintained. His previous film, Days of Being Wild, had not been well-received or financially successful in China, so Wong was faced with a decision: make commercially marketable films or break from the machine altogether. Once Ashes was complete Wong immediately knew that he had made the right decision. That’s what we want to hear!

Me again!

213: “Normally your films are very intimate, romantic, but Ashes of Time has a scope that is much greater than most of your other films. Do you have any desire to do another “epic” story?”

Wong: “There are definitely projects we’ve been developing that you can call epic, in a sense. I think what makes you feel special about Ashes of Time is that… most of my films are urban films, they happen in the city. Ashes of Time is a film that is shot entirely in the desert, the landscape is different. The space is much, much broader. So it’s different.”

I had really wanted a more provocative answer than that, but I keep my damn trap shut.

Wong and Doyle intended to have shot the action in the film considerably differently than had ever been done before. Wong distilled the scene of action to a ‘rhythm, a dance.’ Not about the stunts, merely an ‘expression.’ And, of course, emotion was a motivating force; fury, despair, and thoughtless adrenaline. “You can do more without seeing what is happening.” Wong was pleased to work with Sammo Hung (action choreographer and film director), who Wong notes is ‘the best action director ever in Hong Kong cinema.’ Hung had returned from Canada, where he was working on an American television series (I was not able to find this series on IMBD), to work on Wong’s Ashes. The collaboration was based on mutual respect, Hung a seasoned film director himself, and the partnership was very efficient and pleasurable.

Tom gets some good material when he inquires as to whether or not Wong had imagined any further stories dealing with the characters in the film. Wong references the author Louis Cha, who penned The Eagle Shooting Heroes from which Ashes had been based. The characters in this story were 70 year old men of fantastic infamy in China. Wong was faced with the unique and new prospect of creating his story backwards, detailing the young years of future legends. Cha, he notes, wanted to impart a sense of Shakespearean tragedy to his old characters. Wong was happy to have the opportunity to a true martial arts epic (despite his dodging my previous question to that effect!), though admits he wanted Ashes to resemble the Sergio Leone westerns. “It’s like Shakespeare versus Sergio Leone… in Chinese.”

213: “In the press notes you mention that during the original filming you were not able to achieve the technical standards that the film required. What did you mean by that?”

Wong: “When we had to do the new score… I think what [Frankie Chan] did in the original version is cool. It’s not that standard martial arts music, it’s more Tangerine Dream, and a bit like modern opera. The recording was quite bad at that point so that’s why we had to find Wu Tong, and some very talented Beijing musicians. They’re from a group called Figaro which was founded by Yo-Yo Ma (featured cello solos) and himself. I asked him to do the arrangement based on the original compositions. It’s different… the soundtrack now is much better quality and closer to the film.”

We are lastly imparted Wong’s memories of his times at Cannes, he having been there every year for the past four years, for one reason or another. Incidentally, Ashes had been filmed relatively close to Cannes, particularly close to the location of a recent earthquake. Wong thereby dedicated Redux’s screening to the victims of that earthquake and carried some memorable emotions with him from said trip. The meeting of he and Christopher Doyle, as well as the original cast and actors, he claimed, was like a high school reunion.

At this point the mediator steps in, “Sorry to break this up, but we actually have to do another interview.” Wong turns, “Really?” He chuckles, thanks us, and we unceremoniously disperse.

Death of a President interview

Gabriel Range, director

Gabriel Range, black button-down shirt, shaved head, apparently 35 years old.  A very personal, sensitive fella who easily strayed from the topic.  This is the man who made a film that he knew would be talked about.  Before the interview began, he asked the six interviewers present which publications we each represented.  Range is keeping his eye on the papers…

The 213: You’ve done before what you called a ‘retrospective documentary’ with The Day Britain Stood Still.  Why are you interested in that type of storytelling?

Gabriel Range: I think it’s a really unusual way of looking at the future.  Or, a way of using the future to look at the present.  It’s a bit of a complicated thing, because it’s told in the past tense, it describes an event set in the future, but it’s really about what’s happened in the past.  I hope it works.  I think that you engage with the material in a different way.  When you look at a film that’s told in the vocabulary of the documentary, you have certain preconceptions which make you absorb the material in a different way.  If it was told as straight narrative fiction, like an episode of 24, then you dismiss it, or just absorb it as fiction.  Although this clearly is fiction, it is absolutely about the world we live in now.  The intent is always for it to feel as realistic and authentic as possible.

213: Have you ever been personally involved in any activism?

GR: I was in London during the protests against the impending invasion of Iraq.  I’ve been in New York for some of the protests there.

213: Nothing serious?

GR: Well, I absolutely took place in the protests against the impending invasion of Iraq.  And I have witnessed a lot of protests here in the US, but from more of the journalistic standpoint.

213: Was it difficult to get funding for the movie?

GR: No.  I think it would’ve been impossible to have got funding in the US.  And so…there are plenty of American filmmakers that would’ve – if I had been American, it would’ve been much harder for me to get this film off the ground.  You only have to look at the response that the film was being made as a pretty strong indicator that no American studio or company could’ve – politically – made this film.

213: What feelings do you want the audience to leave with?

GR: The jury at Toronto said that they thought the film distorted reality to reveal a greater truth.  If that the audience feels when they leave the theater, then I’m thrilled.

213: What truth?

GR: Well, I think what the film does is offers a series of…I see the film as a reflection of…I mean, I hope the film poses some serious questions about the way the War on Terror has been handled, the way this War on Terror is presented to the media, and the continuingly corrosive effect of the war in Iraq.  I mean, I think those are all things that are really important to think about.  Specifically the way the administration sought to connect 9/11 to the invasion of Iraq is something that is…an extraordinary thing.

The Black Book Piece
By David Ashley

Carice van Houten and Sebastian Koch became a couple on the set of Black Book, and enter the interview holding hands, answering questions as a collective unit.  Tiny little corrections between the two.  They’re kind of cute together, but it seems strained.  They’re being patient with one another (by now, Koch’s The Lives of Others has won best foreign film.  Good for him).

Black Book concerns itself with the misadventures of Rachel Stein (Van Houten) as she infiltrates the ranks of an SS unit by shacking up with very head of the Gestapo (Koch), and the subsequent betrayals that are laid out between the all the players.  It’s a nice return to Dutch form for Verhoeven.

Koch plays Muntze, the head of the Gestapo in (Holland?), but he’s a swell guy despite it.  Thankfully, Black Book is able to portray Nazism as simply just another form of government, full of real people with real problems, as opposed to the vengeful Spielbergian dehumanization of the Nazis, which for taboo reasons remained uncriticized.

213:  What was most satisfying for each of you about playing the character you played?
After a brief “lost in translation” clarification of my question, answers came.
SK: I liked that he’s not the mean Nazi; he’s a double character.  When he’s in his uniform you don’t like him, in the beginning, because he is a Nazi.  Then you do like a double-take and you say, “There’s something behind you?”  This is sort of very fine to act.  You feel in the beginning that you have this distance, then you feel that you like him and you want to approach him – and it’s good that you approach him because you see he has a good heart.

213: Do you think he believes in the Nazi ideal?
SK: Not anymore, definitely.  He starts, like every German fellow, like a lot of people.  But he was very BLAH, he even said, “The war was lost.”  If you said the war was lost they could shoot you.  Yeah, so he was definitely not “in it” anymore.  And you can see that he handles all his orders in a very human manner, and tries to avoid bloodshed.  It’s based on a real character, like Munt.  He was really saving a lot of lives.

CvH: And he was a real stamp collector.

SK: [chuckle] Yes, he was a real stamp collector.

213: And what about you, Carice, with Rachel?
CvH: What I liked very much was the fact that she, in the end, is not the hero we see in the book that says, “I forgive you.  I let you live.”  She just says, “No.  I’m sorry.”  And it doesn’t mean that’s ‘the way,’ but it shows the reality that she’s a human being as well.  That’s what the film is about.  It will never stop if nobody will say “I forgive you.”  It’s almost a Christian cry for peace, that’s what I feel.

SK: The film shows that it’s not possible, that war will go on and on.  It’s actually a film that’s against war, and in the end she kills him.  And you’re with her, because she’s so right.  This is life, you know.  You want to have it good, but it’s very difficult to do it.

CvH: Like as well with the character of Hans…he’s the asshole, in the end, but he was forced with a gun against his head.  What are you gonna do?

We then cutely agreed that life is full of duality.  Another interviewer inquires about the stage work that both actors missed as a result of the film’s going over-schedule, and Carice civilly reminds Sebastian that she, in fact, missed two productions, which Sebastian does not remember when reminded.  Adorable.

Paul Verhoeven.  Perhaps it was the effect of caffeine or a similar agent, but Verhoeven is rather animated.  Very energetic, but I surmised also slightly, subtly nervous.  Loves talking about himself and his work.  Adjectives “maniac,” “womanizer” and “intellectual” were lovingly dropped by Carice during her interview.  Ask one question, he’ll pour his brain out on any subject that tangentially relates until his lungs are exhausted or he is interrupted by another question.  Basically, he proved himself to be exactly like what you’d expect.  He may be a maniacal, somewhat intellectual womanizer – but he’s also a man who loves telling stories and enjoying himself.  And his films positively reflect that, if you don’t have a stick up your ass or unshakably high artistic standards.

Due to a lamentable amateur snafu the priceless 30-minute interview turned out to not have been recorded, with the exceptions of the first and last 3-minute intervals.  Verhoeven did admit that Sharon Stone is a bitch for giving him heat about flashing her yahoo in Basic Instinct, when she most certainly knew what she was doing beforehand.

The Factory Girl interviews
by David Ashley

George Hickenlooper, who promised that this would be his last biopic (“You can’t please anybody”), directs the story of Edie Sedgwick (Sienna Miller), very pretty party girl who became famous for hanging around artists and inspired generations to do the same.  Sedgwick basically falls in love with Andy Warhol (Guy Pearce) and the two enter into a platonic romance of bright lights and cold shoulders.  When Sedgwick’s loyalty is tested by a Dylan look-alike (Hayden Christensen), Warhol distances himself from Sedgwick and her loneliness and insecurity become her painful undoing.

Sienna Miller and Guy Pearce conducted extensive research into their characters, fortuitously drawing upon the extraordinarily large collection of film and audio archives that exist regarding Sedgwick and Warhol, and even being granted exclusive access to previously unviewed materials in the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

213: Are you a fan of the art that Warhol was producing in The Factory?
SM: Yeah, certain parts of it.  Other parts…I think I like what it represents.  Having really thought about it, I think he’s an absolute genius.  He was so ahead of his time, all of them were.  I just think the way he made his movies – you know, put the microphone in, make it real, he just had real people having real conversations.  Flash forward to us now, in our culture, our generation is obsessed with reality TV.  But he was doing it in 1965.  The man was just so forward-thinking.  And the mockery of America, with the Campbell’s Soup cans, throwing it back in its face…I think it was really interesting stuff.  I mean, I prefer other artists, personally, but I really appreciate what he was doing.  I wouldn’t mind having a “Marilyn” in my house.

One of the most impressive resources available for Pearce came from Warhol’s friend Bridget, who tape-recorded virtually every conversation they had on the phone – and they had plenty;  particularly, the tape labeled  “I Tell Andy Edie Died.”

213: What was Andy’s reaction on the tape?
GP: He had a number of reactions.  Phone conversation goes on for five minutes and…he’s clearly shocked and stunned by what’s happened.  His very first reaction is to go, “Who?  What?  Wh- how??  Why?  Who?”  He does an incredible job of evading the actual information.  They end up talking about her husband, Michael Post, for a while, and then there’s this huge long pause…then Andy says, “Does he get all the money?”  And then they get back into it, and Bridget’s clearly not happy with that response.  There’s another big pause, they talk about some other stuff.  Then Andy says, and you can tell he’s about to cry, “I just thought she was gonna pull through and get well…”  So he’s – in typical Warhol fashion – I think he didn’t want to attach to the emotional response.

Miller’s role as Sedgwick involves bearing her soul, and more, and a great deal of sadness.

213: Was it painful for you to play Edie?
SM: I wouldn’t say it was painful…it was emotionally draining at times, certainly.  In the scene where I confront Warhol in the restaurant, that really emotional scene, was my second day of shooting – so that was, a little bit.  Sometimes stuff like that happens and you just have to make a decision – sink or swim – and just have to go for it.  So it was emotionally challenging, and also completely rewarding, from an acting point of view.  You feel a tremendous sense of achievement when you get to a base emotion.  But I really loved it, I’d be happy playing Edie for the rest of my life, it’s so interesting.

Hickenlooper comes off as deeply passionate about his project, and unfortunately a little defensive, as the film has been attacked every step of his way.  Lou Reed has denounced the script, and Bob Dylan has sought legal council for a “misrepresentation of his likeness,” or some such nonsense.  Have a sense of humor!  [Platitudes!] History can be rewritten, after all.  But then such are the foibles of those in the public eye – Sedgwick not excluded.

Hickenlooper explains the low budget the film was shot on and how close the cast & crew were during the production, bedding in the same airport hotel and spending every day as a cohesive unit – a wonderful film fairy-tale, rarely achieved.

Even Hickenlooper himself refers to the characters as “superficial and emotionally needy” and their exploits as “high school melodrama.”

213: Based on that, do you think this story is a tragdy?
GH: Yeah, of course.

213: Despite being “high school melodrama?”
GH: Yeah…she dies.  She has a drug overdose.  Tragedy that Andy ultimately lets her go, abandons her; she’s abandoned.  It’s a universal, terrible tragedy.

I’ll be the first to agree (with the high school melodrama comment), but upon meeting the Factory’s primaries, my opinion of the film only improved as I learned how deeply personal the work was for each member.

213: Is there an impression of Edie that you want the audience to leave with?
GH: I want the audience to just…love her, and feel loss.  Tonally, one of my favorite films of all-time is Midnight Cowboy, that film just resonates with me in a timeless way because it’s about loss and abandonment.

213: Why do you want to make a movie about loss?
GH: Because life is all about loss.  We all die, we all lose people, life is inherently a tragedy for all of us and we just make the best out of what we can, and try to be happy.  That’s what happiness is about, trying to compensate for the loss, and I think all great stories, from Shakespeare to Ancient Greeks are about loss.

The Hannibal Rising Piece
by David Ashley

Roughly eight of us sit at a roundtable in the Beverly Hills Four Seasons Hotel, waiting for members of Hannibal Rising to drop by for a little of the old back-and-forth.  Today we’d be meeting pretty-boy and burgeoning cannibal Gaspard Ulliel, his extraordinarily attractive Japanese aunt, Chinese actress Gong Li, “How did I ever luck into this?” director Peter Webber (Girl With a Pearl Earring), and raspy old romantic Dino De Laurentiis and his lovely wife, Martha.

The novel Hannibal Rising, more or less, was penned alongside the screenplay by Thomas Harris, Lecter’s creator.  While each other film involving Lecter (Manhunter/Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal) features Lecter as more of a cameo performance, Hannibal Rising grants his youthful splendor its sole attention in telling the story of his origin as a cannibalistic killer.  We follow him from childhood in Eastern Europe to Paris, where he becomes the youngest medical student in the country.  Using this new knowledge, and despite his step-Aunt’s numerous pleas to dissuade him, Lecter enters into an exacting campaign of revenge against the war criminals at-large who murdered his younger sister during WWII, and develops his taste in the process.

Gaspard first, looking youthful and fresh and speaking “broken but good” English, one of the many languages he speaks.  Gaspard is French, this is his first English speaking role, and most certainly his greatest challenge to date.

213: Do you think that the character of Lecter is justified in the killings he performs?
GU: Well, I didn’t ask myself this question because I don’t think we’re trying to justify anything.  For some people it might be justified because he experienced some heavy things during his childhood, and so he is just seeking revenge, but I don’t think it’s the right way to take your revenge.  When someone kills one of your parents, I don’t think you should kill him to take revenge.  You can see in the film that as the character is seeking revenge, he is destroying himself little by little, and at the end he is just a monster.  I think the message is not for violence, it’s against violence.  You can very easily jump on the wrong side, in the wrong way, and just kill yourself through those killings.

Stepping into the shoes of one of cinema’s most popular characters gave young Gaspard pause and some trepidation.  But after swallowing the lump in his throat he sneers something vicious, and slice slice slices away.  Ulliel was careful not to let his performance simply become a mimicry of Hopkins, but that didn’t stop him from borrowing a few of the old man’s ticks, which he described as “eye movement,” “blinking,” and “stillness.”  Hopkins provided a template for future neuroses.

213: Are there certain things about the character of Lecter that you just can’t understand?
GU: The only thing I have difficulty understanding, precisely, is how you can go and try to bite somebody and take human flesh.  How do you go and do this the first time?  Cause I can understand…you keeping doing this, and that you really like it, you like the taste, and it can be addictive, maybe…but the first time, I don’t understand how you can just try this.

In comes energetic Peter Webber, who was ready to be questioned after a thwarted attempt at purloining one of the many tape recorders in front of him (real stitch, that Webber).  Webber explains that after Girl With a Pearl Earring he was sent countless scripts about “dead painters,” or “young women falling in love with men they couldn’t have,” but has no desire to tell the same story over and over (ironically, and quite accidentally, both dynamics actually manifest in Hannibal Rising, Lecter being a gifted artist and participating in a taboo lovey-dynamic with his Aunt.  Ha!).

213: Do you think Lecter is more a product of his environment or more “inherently evil?”
PW: It’s the Nature/Nurture question.  I would say its 75% nurture, 25% nature.  I think he has something within him, a special difference, potentially evil, but it took that particular set of circumstances to bring it out.

Eager to hash Hannibal, he explains his excitement at tackling a film of this size (“There are tanks!”), and how this piece of “pure entertainment” allowed him an opportunity to vicariously express the violence he sees in the world, get it out of his system – which, for some irreverent reason, he said was a “visceral response to the situation in the Middle East.”

213: Do you like any cannibal movies?
PW: As a genre, I can’t say that I know that many…

213: It’s not the biggest genre…
PW: [chuckle] It’s not, no.  The most interesting thing that I found about cannibalism was… Cannibalism still happens, to some extent, in Paupa New Guinea.  When they serve it up there they don’t say they’re serving you humans, they say they’re serving you “Long Pig.”  Human beings taste, apparently, like a very very sweet pork, and they’re longer than a pig.  So if anybody ever offers you Long Pig…

213: They serve this?
PW: Served to people!  It’s not legal.  It goes on out in the jungles of Paupa New Guinea.

The table agreed that that was the most useful piece of information gleamed from the day.

Gong Li enters with her translator.  She briefly converses in Chinese to another interviewer, then the fairly awkward Q & A begins.  The translator phrases our questions and Li responds in Chinese, sometimes at length (impressively, the translator is able to keep many minutes of response all in mind), and we sit and watch her, though nothing is understood.  The translator then, sometimes at length, phrases her answers to the group while she watches us, probably slightly understanding – she does speak English in the film, after all.  Lots of courtesy and slightly formal idling in this interview…eyes wandering, half-smiles, etc.  Li is extremely cute.

213: What do you think attracted your character, Lady Murasaki, to Lecter?
GL: (translator) I think it’s a matter of fate towards the lives of these two characters.  They’re very similar.  Right when they meet they realize that they share something in common – that they suffered a lot in the war, specifically that their families have all died in the war.  They had to face a lot of dark experiences together, they have a lot of pain and suffering in their hearts.  I think that’s what attracts Murasaki to Hannibal.  She has a desire to help him and protect him, to get through this, and I think it’s quite similar to Hannibal as well.  What attracts him is this feeling of protecting and being protected.  It’s a kind of mutual dependency, as it were, to help them get through these difficult times.

Li is wearing a long blue-green skirt and a denim jacket with slightly puffy shoulder things that certain women’s garments have to look cute.  She smiles at me once or twice, but it’s only to be polite.  For a 42 year old, she looks wicked young, but that’s just an Asian thing, that’s how it is over there.  She talks about working on Miami Vice, and employing a Cuban accent, and how she doesn’t see much difference in playing a Japanese or a Chinese character since there are traits that are inherent to all women (oh come on).  Some interviewer asks, “Is it annoying that Hollywood seems to think that Chinese and Japanese are interchangeable, or are you just happy for the work?”  That made me chuckle, but what balls on that interviewer.  Still, Li grinned at that too.

Legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis enters with his wife Martha.  He captures our attention immediately, waltzing in knowing full well that we’re there to talk about him.  He wears a red suit-coat over a dark shit.  He is a short man with prickly white hair and a beard of the same.  His face is spackled with red dots and varying shades of maroon and brown, like aged leather.  His introduction is this: “So, I suppose you’ve all seen the movie?  And I suppose you liked it?”  I only now realize that Dino is 88 years old, and I’m completely blown away.  It may interest you to know that Dino has produced every Lecter film except Silence of the Lambs (perhaps that’s why his face is red.  Chuckle).  Dino expostulates as a man completely confident and quite aware of his position in the world of film, referencing, to our delight and his, the many filmmakers’ careers he’s contributed to: Bergman, Lynch, Antonioni, Fellini, De Sica, to name a meager few.

213: You originally passed on Silence of the Lambs, right?
DdL: Yes, I can tell you why.  I did Manhunter, 92%, fantastic review – I lost many many million dollars.  It was a big flop.  Then Silence of the Lambs comes up.  All my partners said, “We haven’t seen this book.  After the flop, it doesn’t make any sense to buy the rights” – and I even read the book.  And we passed.  But when we passed Orion bought the rights to the book.  Orion had no rights to use the Hannibal Lecter character.  So then they had to call me to get the authorization for Orion at once.  It was good for me because Silence of the Lambs became a success and I was able to make more.

Dino speaks for the film’s singularity amongst the other Lecter films through entertaining gesticulations.  Upon producing numerous Lecter films, he would continually be asked why Hannibal turned out the way he did.  Once the flints were sparked in Dino and Martha, Thomas Harris was approached with the idea and held at gunpoint until he agreed to pen the novel and screenplay.

213: Do you think certain people are inherently compelled to do evil?
MdL: [laugh] You mean directors, or real people?

213: Anybody, not people making movies.
DdL: [chuckle] Yeah…if I understand your question…Hannibal Lecter…If you remember, when he was a boy, to care about Mischa.  His action, for a young boy, for his younger sister…When he started to defend his sister they broke his arm!  He fell down in the snow…and said, “It’s hard to die at this moment.”  And at this moment, when young Hannibal fell down in the snow…he’s crying, with his arm broken…Something…changed…in the boy.  And the animal starts to come out.

Interviews conducted in round-table format (four total) by David Ashley

Interviews
1 – James Cromwell
2 – Helen Mirren
3 – Peter Morgan and Stephen Frears

The Queen follows the British Royal Family during the week after the death of Princess Diana in 1997.  In that week, The Royal Family’s lack of public response spurned indignation in the populace whom, with the assistance of the press, largely had sided with the deceased ‘People’s Princess.’  The Queen is an account of modern aristocracy, and prompts a delicate debate positing ‘tradition’ versus ‘change’ in the government, and ‘public’ versus ‘private’ in the individual.

Helen Mirren plays the recalcitrant dignitary, Queen Elizabeth II (fresh off of her Emmy-winning cotails for Elizabeth I).  James Cromwell gruffly supports as Prince Philip.  Peter Mogan penned the screenplay, and The Queen was directed by Stephen Frears.

James Cromwell

James Cromwell: …they were talking about casting, and the cinematographer said, “Gee, I oughta get James Cromwell to do it.”  Stephen, who I worked with, said, “Well, I never thought of that.”  Then, he thought, “Oh, it’s great!  We’ll have ‘an American.’  That way they can’t take us seriously.’  Cause I think they wanted him to be more…of the ‘goat’ …than I was willing.  Stephen, a lot of times, tried to push me toward excess…

The 213: …comic relief?

JC: Yeah, only with his temper being more out of control.  I didn’t see that, from having met [Prince Philip], I didn’t see it.  [Stephen] didn’t use any of it.  In fact, there were times when I was looping…cause they didn’t have a dialect coach.  Dialect was a bitch on the set.  My partner, who’s a wonderful actress, tells me that, ‘Without somebody there to tell you, you struggle.’  That dialect is unique, and if you make a mistake everybody immediately knows.  And I didn’t want that.  When I looped, [Stephen] would say, ‘So you liked that performance?’  I’d say, ‘Well I liked what I’ve done in the looping, but can I change the image?  The image is wrong to me.’  It’s wrong for him to behave like that, and I hadn’t behaved that way.  It was hard.  Brits especially, as I get older.  When I was younger I think I could’ve done it.  It’s very hard to find out why the dialect is placed where it is in the mouth.  The woman who did our dialects coaching, Penny Dyer, goes to dialects through psychology, so you learn why they make certain sounds.  It’s in the jaw, the placement of the tongue, how the body is held.  So it changes.

213: So they hired an American to play the part but they didn’t give you a dialect coach?

JC: I had her for two days.  She was doing the Tom Hanks thing…The Da Vinci Code, so she couldn’t do it.  They said, ‘It’s fine.  We’ll fix it in post.’  You feel like a bloody jerk.

Helen Mirren

The 213: It must’ve been convenient to have just done Elizabeth I.

Helen Mirren: In a way there was a certain advantage to that, in that I had to think.  A lot of the preparation in Elizabeth II was to do the thinking.  Just…thinking about ‘What that must mean,’ ‘where does that psychology come from?,’ ‘who is this person?’  And I had think, as Elizabeth II, about what it means to be the monarch, what it means to walk into that prison, where there is no choice.  You’re in a place beyond ego, beyond vanity, where there is no choice.  You’re not becoming the Queen because you think, ‘Oh, I could be Queen, I think I’d be rather good at that,’ or ‘Hm, I love the clothes.’  No choice.  And with both of those women, they weren’t supposed to be Queen.  They came to it in a weird, accidental route, and suddenly there they are at the gates of the prison.  And how do you walk into that prison?  Absolutely no choice.  At the age of 25.  I had to think a lot about what that means.

213: What were your personal feelings during [the week of Princess Diana’s death]?

HM: I was in America, so I was looking at it through this rather healthy lens of the American media.

213: Healthy lens of the American media…

HM: Yes, for once, the healthy lens.  There was an objectivity about it, a kind of ‘What the hell is going on over there?  Look at those Brits, my God.’  It took place in August, and there were a lot of tourists in London.  It slightly became a sort of tourist attraction, in a weird way.  I found the whole thing disturbing.  I was in NY at the time of 9/11, and suddenly there were thousands of people who wanted to go to Ground Zero, supposedly to honor, but really because it’s this kind of quiet gawk.

213: Like driving past a car crash.

HM: Exactly.  And that side of human nature has always kind of appalled me.  I find it very upsetting and difficult to deal with.

Peter Morgan and Stephen Frears

The 213: [to Morgan] You’ve done a lot of TV work.  Do you prefer that writing to film?

Peter Morgan: [That’s an interesting question.]  Hmm…look, if you work on a sliding scale of hysteria, the hysteria increases the greater the rewards and potential.  People behave the best during radio plays and they behave the worst making big feature films.  [To answer your question], in terms of the hysteria involved…most television people are so busy making television that they don’t have enough time to behave badly.  That’s sort of my experience.  They operate from a position of, ‘We’ve got to get this into the schedule by X.’  Whereas most film people are desperate to ‘make something,’ and end up usually not making anything at all, and behave so badly in the process.  I also have, on a number of occasions, read scripts that people have sent to me, and whenever I see a really good script I always think to myself, ‘This is a television writer.’  If the writing is good, it’s either invariably a theater or a television writer, not a film writer.

213: Along those lines, you wrote that The Last King of Scotland, and you’ve written a lot of other things that are based on historical events.  Is that by choice?

PM: Yeah.  Absolutely, no one’s forcing me to write them.  It really interests me.  Having said that, I’m quite keen to do some fiction now.  Yeah, I find it riveting.

213: [to Stephen] Did you find The Queen, or did The Queen find you?

Stephen Frears: Did The Queen find me?  No, what happened was, we made this other film about Tony Blair.

213: The Deal?

SF: Yes…which was very successful…and then the producer came to me and said, ‘Would you be interested in making another film about Blair, and the events of [the week of Princess Di’s death], and the Queen, played by Helen?’  I met with Helen and we both thought that was a very good idea, and then Peter went away and wrote the script.  [I don’t think that answers your question, but that’s what happened.]

213: Do you think you were very sympathetic to Tony Blair?

PM: Well, you couldn’t not be at that time.  If we were going to give Tony Blair a hard time, we’d have looked like idiots.  At that moment…he just won an enormous majority.  The whole country was so excited about him.

SF: Yes.  He was very, very popular.

213: I heard that Helen Mirren got a five minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival?

PM: Yeah, it went on forever.  The response has been startling.

SF: To expect a response like that would be ridiculous.  But I knew it was a good film.

[213: I went in knowing nothing about it and was surprised.  It was very good.]

SF: The truth is that in my country, the Royal Family is mocked 24 hours a day.  I think people expected a satire.  The remarkable thing about this film is that it takes them seriously.  This has never happened!  This is completely offbeat!  Not since Shakespeare have they been taken seriously.  At some moment, ‘deference’ disappeared from our country, to some extent, and people started making fun of the establishment.  And, I guess, the Royal Family is included in that.  And that’s just how they’re treated.  (beat) And they don’t help, they do lend themselves to being made fun of.

Daniel Craig
Interviewers (round-table, 6): INT
Daniel Craig: DC
David Ashley: ME

INT: Are you in the middle of shooting something – is that why you’re in LA?

DC: No, I’m in LA for this. But I’ve been shooting something, I’ve been in Texas.

INT: What are you shooting?

DC: I think it’s called “Every Word is True.” It’s about Truman Capote writing “In Cold Blood.”

INT: Oh, and who’s doing that?

DC: Perry Smith.

INT: Were you friends with Matthew or any of those guys?

DC: No, not at all. That crowd, that crew. Uh, no, Zach and I have the same agent in London, so they kind of put it together. So I got the script…read it…wanted to meet him. Did it that way, really.

INT: So was it a no-brainer when you read the script?

DC: It was kind of a no-brainer, it was so good, I just- and then there was that whole thing about “Matthew’s never directed before” and I just thought “well, I’ve gotta go see and see what we says about it.” In five or ten minutes we were talking about the same things, and were talking about the same ideas. So it was sort of, from then on in – I think I teased him a bit – and then he said yes.

INT: Did any of your ideas for the character get into the movie?

DC: (beat) I hope so! Most of them, hopefully. It was more to do with the fact that, I think I was sort of nervous about the fact that… I mean I think Lock, Stock and Snatch are great movies, but they’re not the kind of movies I want to do. And I think I was worried that it was just going to be another repetition of that. And as soon as I sat down with Matthew we started talking about the way the film should look, and the way the film should feel, and the fact that the violence in the movie is incredibly important, but its about how- what the reaction to that violence is, opposed to that sort of “bloodshed for bloodshed” thing.

Um…and, yeah I think so! It’s difficult to tell now, I’ll just claim them all. That’s because he will.

INT: How do you choose your roles? You have such a varied career, we can’t pin you down to any kind of genre. How do you pick?

DC: It has to be something that I think is gonna change me and that’s gonna make me…you know, the stuff that I can read and think looks difficult or looks interesting…it’s gotta challenge me. That’s the way I want to look at things. I mean it doesn’t matter if it’s a small, independent movie, or if it’s a big movie, it’s gotta challenge me in some way. Otherwise it sort of gets dull.

ME: Did you find this role challenging?

DC: Yeah, I kinda did. But in a good way. I found the idea of doing it – I’ve never done anything like it before – so it was all a bit of a new experience. I mean normally I’m not usually spending as much time in wardrobe as I did on this. You know, just because…people’d be making my suits for me and making shirts and doing shit like that, but I got used to it pretty quickly.

INT: Did you get to keep any of that?

DC: (joking) Actually I’m wearing a piece from it, it’s my wardrobe from now on in.

INT: You’ve worked on the Hollywood movies and the French movies…can you compare the differences that are evoked from being on a large-scale production?

DC: It’s not really an awful lot different, actually. I know that sounds kinda crazy, but…if you’re doing something like Tomb Raider it’s a different deal, it’s an effects-driven movie and it’s a lot of waiting around, it’s very dull. But if you’re on a sort of movie like this shoot – compare Road to Perdition with this – once you’re on set it’s the same deal. You’re trying to achieve the same thing. The food might be better. And there might be bigger and better sets, but that’s because it’s a money thing. But once that camera starts rolling it’s all about you and someone else, or you and three other people. You know, you just apply the same rules.

INT: Do you enjoy working with small, first-time directors as opposed to more experienced ones?

DC: I don’t have a preference. I’ve got a couple directors I work with, like Roger Michel I’ve worked with twice now, and John (Movie) I’ve worked with twice, and hopefully I’ll work with Matthew again. (beat) I don’t give it that much thought. It’s about the work.

INT: (indistinguishable) on the production said you had to tell him to cool down a bit when he started…

DC: (chuckle) I never told him that. What’s great about Matthew, is the he does – which is really difficult – is that he doesn’t let his ego in the way. He knew he was first-time, he knew that he was learning on his feet, but what he did was that he employed a lot of people around him who knew what they were doing and he would ask for their advice. I never really told him to cool down, I think the Production Notes kind of exaggerate slightly, make everybody interested. “Was it hell?” “Yes, it was awful!”

INT: You grew up in Liverpool, [so did you ever have a Liverpool-ian accent?]

DC: Eh, kind of, but not really. We moved around a lot, and I probably had one more than I have now, but I left there when I was 16. Then I went to London and hung out with actors. At that time all British actors spoke like this [accent], so it’s sort of difficult to pronounce things like that.

INT: Some actors tell us that they really connect with the character when they see it on the page, or there’s an epiphanol [ßnot a real word] moment in a particular scene where they said they’ve got it from there on out. Did that happen to you?

DC: There’s a lot of confusion. Kind of. There’s always a moment. The first week of shooting is always – the usual Hollywood tradition is that you shoot the first week and dump it and start again, because invariably the first week will just be everybody kind of just shitting themselves. From the cast, the crew, everybody will be too nervous, trying to produce something. By week two you start to understand it and you start trying to tell stories then. And once you start trying to tell stories that’s the moment where you think “Alright, now I’ve got it.” But there’s never sort of an “epiphany.”

INT: Did you have a favorite scene?

DC: I kinda liked being on top of that building. Cause I’m not great with heights, and I didn’t really have a choice about it. There were two stuntmen there. In fact, I tend to sneak out a bit further and further every time you see me. And I had wire tied to a post. I kind of got rid of my fear of heights, and it was such a beautiful day out there that day, good day of filming.

INT: You’re tipped to be the next James Bond.

DC: Tipped, yeah.

INT: How do you feel about that? Have they approached you?

DC: I feel fine about it, it’s a good place to be. There’s a lot of smoke and very little fire, at the moment. There’s nothing, really, to say. I’ve spoken to Barbara Broccoli, but I know Barbara Broccoli, so we know each other. Nothing’s been set in stone, and nothing’s been put on the table yet.

INT: Would you do it?

DC: I don’t know. I really don’t.

INT: Do you think [Layer Cake] is the film, though, that’s gotten you in those conversations?

DC: Maybe. Who knows? Maybe. This has helped, for sure.

INT: Are you reluctant to give that kind of a time commitment, or would you be concerned about moving out of that life?

DC: It’s a big leap. When in those situations I do that “Pro’s and con’s” list, and there’s an awful lot of Pro’s and an awful lot of Con’s, and I haven’t really done that yet and I haven’t really thought about it . It’s a big commitment to make to something that I haven’t really got a lot of ambition about doing, and that’s the truth of it. I never really wanted to do that. I mean, I want to make big movies, I want to make as much money as I possibly fucking can. (chuckle)

ME: There’s not a lot of emotional challenge in James Bond.

DC: Well, that would be an important to do, I’d want that to be the case. I’d want that to change, but I don’t know how ready they’d be to change. I don’t know how much of a fight that would be, to turn the whole thing on it’s head. I think they want to do that, but it’s a big machine and it makes a lot of money, so why would you change something that’s making a lot of money?

INT: [musing] Make James Bond metrosexual. [bit of an odd comment]

DC: Make him metrosexual? I think he already is! I think he’s kind of been there in a weird way.

INT: Doesn’t it bother you, though, that Pierce Brosnon brought a lot of emotions to the role, but that that was the problem with Timothy Dalton, that he didn’t…

DC: Well here’s the trouble with that, is how rough a rap that goes along with it. [uses his hands to represent scales, up and down] Someone said to me, you’ve got Sean Connery [up], George Lazenby [down], Roger Moore [up], Timothy Dalton [down], Pierce Brosnon [up]. Pierce Brosnon [up], Daniel Craig [down]? Umm… (chuckle). You know? But the thing is, I think Timothy Dalton was great in the part, but I think they tried to change it in the wrong direction and he got the rap for it. I think George Lazenby got the rap. I mean I think On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is one of the best movies, cause he loses his wife, and it’s sort of great – but he got the rap. It’s a dodgy place to be walking. I don’t really want to get the rap for destroying that franchise. (laughter) That’s not a good place to be!

INT: …the director and the way he directs you…

DC: Matthew’s produced two really successful movies, he knows a little bit. He’s got a lot of experience in this game. But he did what all good directors do; he was very keen to get actors, cause he’s never really employed actors before. Guy [Ritchie] usually works with people with faces, characters. People in Lock, Stock are scary, they were criminals. Matthew didn’t want to do that, he wanted to get actors, and I think he got a great cast together. He’ll say it to you, to make your job easier. He doesn’t want to teach actors to act, just like he doesn’t want to teach his DP how to photograph. He employs people who know what they’re doing, he sort of instilled confidence in people to do the best they could – which is at least 50% of being a good director. He had a clear vision of what he wanted to do, which thankfully I agreed with, and he got on with it. He’s very good, really good.

INT: Did he speak to you about doing any cameos in X-men 3?

DC: We talked a lot about it, but I’m busy, sadly.

INT: So it’s not going to happen?

DC: I don’t think so. I’m doing something else. I just wish him luck with that.

INT: Is there any way you can talk about the other thing you’re doing?

DC: Nope!

INT: To what extent did you prepare XXXX? [main character’s name] Did you work with Matthew with it together, or did you show up one day “as him?”

DC: I don’t really work that. We did two weeks of rehearsals, which is always useful. You get to meet the other actors and make some decisions and figure it out. I wanted [XXXX] to be as close to normal as possible, and not want him to be a gangster. I wanted to show someone that was totally in control, or so they thought, and that was the only aim I had, was to sort of show his character. And I think I understood the work, and the work was so was so well-written that it was all on the page.

INT: Did you make a “name” for [XXXX]?

DC: We did have a moment during filming where we started making up names just in case it became important, but it never became important. I mean, if you watch movies and it’s done with a big “fix,” where in the first couple scenes the main character’s name is just repeated over and over and over again, just so we go “Oh, we know who they are.” But once the first ten minutes of this movie are over I don’t think it matters. We know who he is, it’s everybody else who’s trying to remember.

INT: It’s kind of funny, cause you forget that you don’t know his name, but at the end that’s when you remember…

DC: Yeah.

ME: Yes, I didn’t realize it til the end.

DC: Well, that’s kind of the point.

INT: Do you get recognized?

DC: Do I get recognized? Sometimes.

INT: What for?

DC: I don’t know. You’ll have to ask them. “You were in that movie!” Some people were very specific, it just depends on where I am.

INT: Do you find it easier to be in the US than in London?

DC: Well I find it easier to be in London. [something about mass murderers] I mean London is a big city just like it is here. You don’t have to go very far to find somebody famous in this town…but in London, for the most part, people leave each other alone. It’s usually only events that get people over-excited about, and it starts to get silly. But I haven’t had any of that, so…

INT: Have you gotten any reaction, not necessarily from the criminal world, but from those who would be aware of the film’s authenticity?

DC: Well what is interesting is that J.J. Connolly – the film’s based on a novel he wrote, which is a really good read – and he did get some reaction from the criminal world, saying it was sort of “frighteningly accurate.” I don’t know how good that is, but they thought it was quite good.

INT: Did anybody approach you and say “Hey, my brother is-“

DC: (chuckling) No, not yet.

INT: Did you guys shoot any alternate endings?

DC: Yeah, we did, yeah.

INT: And, can you tell us about them?

DC: Oh, totally. I’m happy to. The script that Sony agreed to do was me “driving off with Fiona in the car,” you know, kissing and laughing and driving off. And we shot it, and we did it, and in the afternoon we went and shot the ending that’s in the movie. On the dailies report we put “Ending no good.” And that was Matthew. Balls of steel, really, balls of steel. And then when he edited the movie he edited it with this ending, the ending that’s in the movie, and showed it to them. There’s this thing when you show the movie to producers, when I’ve sat in on it, it’s terrifying. Five minutes before the end of the movie the Sony are going [thumbs up, smiles] – JESUS!! And they fucking saw the ending and they flipped, they fucking flipped, they went through the roof. And to their credit they tested it and it tested positively, and that’s the ending we got, which I’m really really pleased about. Cause it’s the only way to end the movie.

INT: Were there more scenes with Fiona?

DC: No, that’s it.

INT: Really?

DC: No, she’s not cut out at all. We were lucky to have her before she took off.

INT: How did you get into acting?

DC: I didn’t really have a good…I just wanted to do it. Getting up, dressing up, showing off sort of tendency. I love it, I believe in it, I think it’s a great art form, it’s a great way to earn money, it’s a great way to earn a living if you can do it. Eventually…I just can’t do anything else.

INT: Did you do a lot of TV as well?

DC: No, not really. I did one particular series. I did TV to earn rent once I got out of drama school, then you take any job you can. I did a television serial called Our Friends of the North in England.

ME: Wasn’t really your thing?

DC: No, it was totally my thing, and I still think it is, but I had an ambition to make movies. And I got off with lots and lots of television roles which would’ve paid a lot of money, but I was just like “…but I wanna make movies,” and the only way to do that was to be poor and stick with it. And that’s kind of lucky enough. John Mayer spotted me in Our Friends in the North and put me in Love is a Devil, which was a great movie for me to be in, and stuff like that happened. I took it, if I could do it. I think television is a fantastic medium, but…if you’re gonna do it, be 30-feet across. If you’re gonna make a fool of yourself, make a really big fool of yourself.

ME: I thought one of the most interest parts of Layer Cake was the whole sort of aspect of your character having a very difficult reaction to killing a person. Do you have anything to say about that?

DC: I knew that that was very important to the movie. I think that, for very selfish reasons, if you don’t see a film where in scene one four people die, and then four people die in the next scene, by the time you get to halfway through the movie, you don’t care, you don’t give a shit if people live or die or not. And I know it’s a sort of exaggeration, but I say at the beginning of the movie “I don’t like violence, I don’t like guns.” And we should know, as an audience, that “ha, ha ,ha!” we’re gonna see guns and violence. We’re giving that sort of thing away. It’s like I say at the beginning of the movie, “Just one more job and I’m out of here.” And again, if you go to enough movies, you should know that that’s not gonna happen. All those things are trying to get people emotionally involved with the character so that when violence happens to them or they commit some violence, you care, you’re emotionally engaged in them. And as far as I’m concerned, that makes for a much more entertaining movie. And if you then put it into this potent, or stylish, world that we’ve put the movie into, you can get people on every level.

ME: That’s one thing that made Layer Cake very good. The fact that it had a lot of crime, but when you get down to it, it’s really character-driven.

DC: Good. Great, good you noticed.

INT: What was the last DVD and what was the last CD you bought?

DC: Oh, Jesus Christ. What? I suppose the Jamie Foxx collection, stand-ups.

INT: Why?

DC: Cause it fucking makes me laugh my ass off!

INT: Were you aware of him before?

DC: As a comedian, yes. Not his movies. I know I’ve got a copy of Ray, but I’m going on…”Bought Ray as well…I love you Jamie!” (joking) CD? Jeff Buckley’s last one. It’s great, and I hadn’t heard it for some reason. I’ve got Grace and all those. It’s sort of weird with CDs now, cause of the iPod thing. I just load them onto my machine and press shuffle. Actually, the kind of music I’m listening to, sounds like I’m listening to something, I dunno, complex. I’ve got a Britney Spears track. You’ve gotta be careful!

INT: This film was so good, and you had a lot of fun filming it. Were there any sort of on-set shenanigans or pranks?

DC: There wasn’t time. The movie cost seven million dollars to make, we shot it in 67 weeks, we did six day weeks. I mean, you know, you get on with it. We laughed a lot because we had a great bunch of people, but there just wasn’t time. It would be lovely to be able to play tricks on people all day but you’ve gotta get on with it. (chuckle)

INT: Did you hang out with each other outside work?

DC: No. At the end of the day I just sort of want to go home. And narcissism (stops?) me from drinking while I work. Cause when you’re up at five in the morning with a hangover it’s not pretty. Believe me, it’s not pretty.

INT: Your character didn’t even really do stuff like that.

DC: Whether he does it or not, I don’t do it. If I have to look like I’ve been up all night, they can make me look like that. I don’t need to go out and do it.

INT: Ever thought about moving out to LA?

DC: I dunno. I hope it’s London. But I spend a lot of time here. As long as I’m still welcome, I’ve got friends here, and I spend time here. If I had enough movie I’d love to have a place here.

INT: Some [actors] go so extreme with the method, they’ll do all kinds of things. Martin Lawrence put himself into a coma trying to do something for a role.

DC: Yeah, that’s kind of over-the-top. I don’t knock anybody’s way of doing things, I really don’t. And I will do anything to make it work, it’s just that I don’t have any specific way of doing it. I tend to have a thing where I will do all my work before you start shooting. And if you get all that in, you can dump it or use it as you want to. If you get to rigid on a film set – film sets are fantastically magical places to be sometimes, where something magical might happen. And if you go “My character wouldn’t do that,” you’re kind of blocking off this whole sort of life that you can make. And you’re not changing plot, you’re just changing nuances and things. If I’m not ready on day one, I’m never gonna be ready. All that work’s done. Then there’s the question of inventing, or telling stories. It’s what you’re supposed to be there to do.

INT: Mike Nichols said that you have to do all your homework, do all your research, and then walk away from it for at least a couple of weeks.

DC: I wish I had that privilege to do that. The time privilege – but I don’t. But I agree, I totally agree. You should know. You should’ve done your homework. I think a lot of the “method-thing” that goes on is because people haven’t done their homework. “I’m not ready…” “Well fucking get ready!” You gotta go home and work. If I have to work at six o’clock in the morning, I leave home and I get home by eight o’clock in the morning, I’ve got two hours more work before I go to sleep because I have to prepare myself for the next day. Potentially, you get a lot of money. You should be earning money.

INT: We hear something like that and then you think “How much is actually going on during shooting?” If you’re already prepared and say “this is what I want to do,” how much direction do you need?

DC: You’re thinking. You’ve got to be constantly thinking. You can be shooting something and it might not be working. Storyboards will be coming until the cows come home, and this is how the shots are going to be…this way…this way…this way…You’ve got to be ready to change it. And that doesn’t mean you going to do something completely different. Then you’re fighting the cameras because something just looks wrong. It looks ugly or it looks like this. You’ve got be on the ball ready to make the move when you do something different. I sound like I don’t know what I’m doing, but I make most of it up on the day on the facts of what I need to do. You got to be able to make stuff up on the day. This is what I aim to do.

INT: And some people say that’s why they actually prefer theatre as opposed to the medium of film or even television because you get involved with that character shape the role you want and think about how to get it done.

DC: No, but I think it’s all relative. Because in theatre you can develop a character in a year, and with television you might have a series to do the whole thing, but in film what you’re doing is contracting it but it’s the same method . It’s just that you compress time and apply all the same rules. There’s no difference, there shouldn’t be anyway.

INT: How do you like watching yourself? Has it gotten easier.

DC: It kind of has. It has, yeah. It doesn’t completely freak me.

ME: In seeing the film again, what part of your performance where you most pleased with?

DC: Oh, I don’t know. I’m pleased that the whole thing gels together because I don’t need the screen. It’s kind of odds. I am watching shit wondering about the way I’m standing in that particular way. Because you can’t look at the bigger picture, but I’m watching know and thinking “but the bigger picture is working.” It gels; the ending sort of ties in.

ME: So now that it’s all together?

DC: I pleased with it. I’m kind of pretty pleased with it.

ME: So you have film where you won’t go and look fullback at the video?

DC: I would if it were a physical thing. If it’s a fight or something huge I’ll go back because if camera operators is trying to achieve something, you can go back and figure what he trying to achieve, and figure yourself into it. But if it’s just dialogue and emotional dialogue then no.

INT: Are there alternate endings or other things that were cut?

DC: Really very little. I mean, we got where we’re at and getting done to Matthew we shot the movie, and we shot the script. What you see is what we shot. Very little indeed. There are story orders that we moved around, but we screwed around with the plot a little bit more to kind of make the story a bit more interesting, but what we shot you saw.

INT: So would you go see this movie if you weren’t in it?

DC: I think I would, yeah. I wouldn’t go see this if I thought it was going to be another Lock, Stock or maybe Snatch, but because of what I think that we’ve created which is a bit more. I did like to think that it was Matthew… Cinematic down and dirty, but it may put it in big scope, but it looks beautiful and everybody says sometimes that they get taken, and that’s the thing that you were trying to go for. Not something that was quirky. London looks like it was in one square mile, but it makes London look huge like the huge city that it is. So in answer to the question: yes. I would go see the film.

INT: Thank you.

DC: Yes, alright. Thank you.