1. WHAT WAS THE STARTING POINT FOR YOU WITH THIS FILM?
About four years ago I wanted to do a piece that explored the idea of somebody changing their life completely by getting out of the acting business. I wanted to dramatize that moment of crisis when you stop in order to question what you are doing. It happens to all actors - it certainly happens to me - and it has always seemed to me a very funny thing to do because it’s so pointless and yet we all do it. Over the years the idea evolved into something less pretentious, a rather self-mocking look at the way actors behave in these circumstances. You could call it a comic look at existential despair.
2. YOU HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT IT FOR FOUR YEARS. WHY DID YOU FINALLY GET AROUND TO MAKING IT NOW?
I wanted to do something very small after "Frankenstein" which was very big and
it felt good to work on a completely different scale. Films can often benefit by being made that way. I feel strongly that it is important to keep practicing what you do, not just making a film every 2-3 years, and it’s important to try new things.
3. DID YOU ENJOY THE EXPERIENCE?
With this film it felt as if I was entering a new phase - a kind of hit-and-run film-making. I enjoyed the swiftness of the shoot, I enjoyed the challenge of having the finite amount of time within which to make it work and because of the lack of money, one’s ingenuity had to work in a particular way which I think keeps you fresh. I don’t say it’s the only way or the best way to work but it felt like the right thing for me at the time.
4. DID YOU ENJOY DIRECTING WITHOUT ALSO ACTING?
Yes, very much. I slept longer and found that I enjoyed the directing in a different way. I still find directing much more difficult than acting. Even on a small budget like this one, it’s a lot of money and I always want to finish on time and on budget because that seems to me fair and also because if you feel that if you at least achieve that, then you will be allowed to make another film. It is never easy for me to direct but I find that I am enjoying it more and more.
5. IS JOE HARPER BASED ON YOU?
I don’t think so but some of his romanticism, optimism, naivete, sentimentality and indeed sometimes stupidity, inevitably come from me. But I’ve never been in the situation he finds himself in and I didn’t feel that I was writing about myself. I’ve never been out of work for a year like Joe so that part is a fiction but it deals with ideas that interest me.
6. WAS IT IMPORTANT TO YOU TO WORK WITH ACTORS WHOM YOU ALREADY KNEW?
We were shooting so fast that I thought the film needed a kind of shorthand which would allow us to work well quickly. I wanted people who themselves understood about putting on a show in a short space of time and people who knew each other so that it would be easier to establish a sense of the rapport between members of the company. Like in "Peter's Friends," there is a sort of celebration of the fact that, in a tricky world, camaraderie or friendship is one of the few things that you can rely on that makes anything worthwhile.
7. DID YOU WRITE IT WITH THIS PARTICULAR CAST IN MIND?
About seven or eight of the characters were tailor made for the actors in question - particularly John Sessions and Richard Briers - and then all of the cast made large contributions and the more we did re-writes together, the more specifically it became tailored to the characters.
8. WHY DID YOU CHOOSE "HAMLET" AS THE PLAY WITHIN THE PLAY?
"Hamlet" is a complicated issue. At one end of the scale it represents for some people everything that is boring and silly about theatre and acting, with men in tights and frilly white shirts. And at the other end it can be one of the most moving and extraordinary experiences you can have in theatre. So in the film we look in a humorous way at both ends - the way that actors think of "Hamlet" as the absolute zenith of their art and the way it can also, when done badly, be highly comical.
9. WHY DID YOU MAKE IT IN BLACK AND WHITE?
I wanted to see what it was like to tell a story in black and white and the rather nostalgic view of the theatre that this piece offers just felt right in black and white, like an Ealing comedy. I also wanted to convey the feeling of what you might have encountered when you first saw a movie and that seemed to require to be made in black and white. When you first saw people like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland on the television in your front room, people who were 35 playing 16 - there was something about the b/w that legitimized it somehow, because it wasn’t quite real. And this film isn’t real either. People don’t really do plays in churches in this way or sleep in churches because you would never be allowed to but endeavors of a similar kind do take place in old black and white movies so it just felt right.
Last modified 02-Feburary-1996.
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