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| Interview: Riding The "Slipstream" With Anthony Hopkins |
by Peter Sobczynski
What better way to kick off Halloween weekend than with a long talk with the man who played one of the best-known and feared characters in screen history. Below, he discusses his latest work as an actor and director, the trippy meta-movie "Slipstream," as well as some of the highlights of his acclaimed career.
Already one of the most acclaimed screen actors working today, Anthony Hopkins returns to the director’s chair for the second time in his career (after the 1993 “Uncle Vanya” adaptation “August”) with “Slipstream,” a labor of love that he also wrote, produced and composed the score for in addition to his duties in front of and behind the camera. However, it is likely that whatever kind of film you might have expected from the 69-year-old actor, “Slipstream” will completely subvert those expectations. This is a hallucinatory romp in the style of David Lynch or Dennis Potter in which he plays the screenwriter of a weirdo mystery film who finds his real and fictional worlds colliding while he struggles to rewrite the script in the wake of the death of one of the lead actors. Of course, that is one way to look at it because this is one of those surreal exercises that will lend itself to any number of interpretations. Those in the mood for a straightforward narrative are advised to look elsewhere but those with a taste for the strange stuff may well find it a fascinating work to behold.
Recently, Hopkins came to Chicago to present his film, which is now opening in limited release this weekend, as part of the Chicago International Film Festival and on an grey and drizzly Sunday morning, he sat down with me to discuss “Slipstream” as well as other aspects of his long and varied career, including (inevitably) his most famous role, the misunderstood gourmet Hannibal Lecter.
Based on who you are and the films that you have done in the past, I suspect that a lot of the people who will be coming to see “Slipstream” will probably be expecting a certain kind of movie and certainly not the surreal free-for-all that you have actually made. When you have shown the film to people, either at regular screenings or at festivals, what has the reaction been from the audience?
Somebody said that we should take this to Sundance at the end of last year and so we submitted it to Jeff Gilmore even though I didn’t expect it to get in. The audience seemed to enjoy it. I’ve done a couple of other festivals–Seattle and Lorcano–but I didn’t hang around afterwards. I was supposed to do a Q&A with Richard Roeper today but, with all due respect to Roeper, whom I’ve never met, I pulled out of it. I’ve done some question-and-answer talks and it is very difficult to do Q&A’s talks to audiences because I can’t explain the film and it is pointless to try to wade through all of that. I have no defensiveness about it but when people ask, “What’s it all about?,” it sounds so trite but I don’t know. I’ve come up with some stock answer about how I know what it is about but it isn’t easy to explain. I just don’t think it is a good idea to do a Q&A. There is nothing to explain and I have nothing to defend or prove or win or lose.
I started writing it four years ago–in fact, I finished it here in Chicago–I just sat at a computer one day and wrote the opening scene that you see in the film. Then the next scene occurred and the next. I had no idea where I was going but after I got to about page 30, I looked at it and realized that it was certainly different. I didn’t know where it was going–I even chose the name “Bonhoffer” arbitrarily. I think I set out to write an experiment for myself, not even as an actor. I am not a screenplay writer or a novelist or a poet or any of those things. I can write a letter or a postcard. I’m not going to say anything profound–I’m not skilled or clever enough to write anything that profound. I just decided to write and see where it goes and that is where it went. I didn’t edit it. When I finished, I read through it and went “Oh yes, this is different.” I didn’t have any fear or anxiety about what other people might think about it and I had the freedom to write what I wanted without worrying about an audience I would have to please.
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Many of the advance pieces that I have read about the film have cited people like David Lynch, Dennis Potter and Charlie Kaufman as obvious influences. In a strange way, however, the person whose work I was reminded most of while watching the film was Bob Dylan. Like many of his songs, “Slipstream” is dense, there is no one correct way of interpreting it and it is jam-packed with allusions to history, literature and even your past career–there is a one-liner about the possibility of “Hannibal 4" and Felix’s memories included flashbacks to Hitler and Nixon, two historical figures that you have played in the past. All of these elements collide together and you have to sift through them
Well, to backtrack, it is really sort of a thumbnail sketch of my own inner life and my take on the world. When I was a kid, I came from Wales and when I went to school at an early age, I just didn’t get it–I didn’t understand what was going on and I was a bit of a slow kid. I couldn’t understand math but I was good at English and writing and drawing–I guess I had an artistic take even then. I could paint and draw as a little boy but I wasn’t really packed with skills for a future. Then I came into this acting business by default, really. I wanted to be a musician but I didn’t have that skill. There was a scholarship for an acting school in Wales–I auditioned and they gave me the scholarship. Three days before I went to the Cardiff College of Music and Drama, James Dean was killed and I remember that having an impact. I had seen Brando and I had been a film buff–the films that had an impact on me as a kid were “Sunset Boulevard” and “Out of the Past” with Robert Mitchum and all those dark film noirs. “Body and Soul” with John Garfield and “The Killers” with Burt Lancaster–those films had a big impact on me.
By 1957, I had read “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac and that seemed to sync into Bob Dylan in a way. I read Ginsberg when I was in the Army, “Howl,” and Thomas Wolfe. My reading was my own kind of special passion. Maybe twenty years ago, I read Kerouac again and I became a fan again and I became a Bob Dylan fan. It is funny how that connection is there–how it is there is something that I don’t know. Another one of my favorite books is “Bound For Glory” by Woody Guthrie and also Bob Dylan’s recent autobiography–these were things I read long before I sat down to write this film. At some level, probably unaware, I had already been prepping myself to write this movie.
However, the Hitler and Nixon things were not there because I had played them. In the film, when that girl is talking about all that New Age drivel about karma and having to pay debts, my take on that is “Yeah, tell that to the millions of Jews that this was their karma.” I put those little bits in as tributes to our own lives. I don’t think they are constantly and morbidly running through my mind but I do have fairly powerful memories of that period. I was born in 1937–I’ll be 70 this year–and I remember being in London after the war with the Americans there and the first revelations of what had gone on in the camps. I was young enough to remember hearing the voice of Hitler. I came to America in 1974, just after Nixon resigned over Watergate, and that was my take on America when I arrived. That scene in the car on the freeway with the shooter–we see Nixon and napalm and “Welcome to America.” It wasn’t even a comment on America–we live in a world that is haphazard and random and this has been going on for century after century after century.
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One of the themes in the movie involves the loss of control. In it, we see all these different and insular worlds in which control seems to be slipping away. For example, you would think that a screenwriter would have complete control over the world that he or she creates but as the film progresses, your character finds his screenplay slipping out of his hands both figuratively (when the characters begin showing up to ask why these things are happening to them) and literally (when Felix is ordered to do rewrites to cover up the death of the actor). Even the bits involving Hitler and Nixon fit into this–both were powerful men whose downfall was ushered in to a large extent by their overwhelming desire for power at any cost.
As it was being written and as we were in production up there, I naturally found myself adapting. Christian Slater, for example, took over that whole scene in the diner, which saved me a lot of time because he had such a talent for it. The scene up on the hill where the woman loses her pages of the continuity script–that is life. She’s lost all the pages and realizes that she has no control. That’s life. It is also kind of a tongue-in-cheek jab at the acting business, but not malicious. People get upset whether a movie is good or bad–get a life, it’s only a movie! It is that overseriousness–people shouting and screaming and treating others badly and all for a movie? To use an overused metaphor, the film is a metaphor for life.
This is the second film that you have directed–you did “August” back in 1993 as well. You always hear the cliche from actors about how all they want to do is direct–what were your specific reasons for wanting to get behind the camera and did you find it a different experience this second time around?
It was different because “August” was originally done by Granada Television. It was a Welsh translation of Chekov’s “Uncle Vanya” that I had done on stage. I didn’t trust the woman who was going to direct it and I told the producers that I wanted to make a film and that I would direct this as well. It was a bit of a rush job and adapting a play to film doesn’t often work. I know that there are actors who direct movies like George Clooney and Mel Gibson–Clint Eastwood is very skilled at it because he is very laid-back and just does it–but I had never had that sharp focus of ambition in my life. For me to direct was just something I decided to have a go at. My wife said to me, “Why don’t you write a script?”–this was four years ago–and I was in kind of a bemused state and wasn’t sure what to do. My mother had just died and I began to take a look at things in my life. I got a hold of one of those format programs for my computer and I started writing and that is how it evolved. There was no sharp focus about it–I’ve never been that sort of person. I have never been comfortable like that and when I have tried it, it just didn’t fit me. When I wrote it, I guess I wrote it for myself but I didn’t want to have a big part in it–I wanted to be more of an observer and this part of Bonhoffer was like a thumbnail sketch of my life and my bemused take on life.
The editing style of the film is very striking–it appears as though every possible editing trick and stylistic device in the cinematic language is deployed at one point or another. Was this all planned out in advance or did it develop once you went into the editing room after the completion of principal photography?
Part of the script had flashbacks but I wrote a whole series of notes after I finished it and had the idea of maybe directing it because it had been in my mind to do it like that. I sat down and read through the scenes and spliced things in here and there, so I had a fairly good blueprint of what I wanted. I went to the editing room with my editor and he showed me the assembly and he asked what I thought. I said that it was a good assembly but that it was a little slow. I told him that I wanted him to challenge me–I wanted to do something that was bizarre and outlandish and would really mess with editing and time. I wanted to put as much as I could in there to really mess with time and space and audience perceptions. I loved doing all those two-frame, three-frame cuts that were so subliminal that you couldn’t even see them. There was always a voice in my head saying “You can’t do that!” from my traditional background or even the traditions of Hollywood, but I would then say to myself “Why not–it’s my movie. They aren’t going to put me in jail for it.” We spent four months in the cutting room doing that.
In your long and distinguished career as an actor, there are certain films and performances that have been favorites with audiences–“Silence of the Lambs: and “Howard’s End” are probably the most obvious example while I would add such films as “Magic,” “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” “The Edge” and “Hannibal,” a film that in some ways, I oddly prefer to “Silence of the Lambs.” Of the films that you have done, what are your favorite performances–the ones where, regardless of how the movie as a whole turned out, you feel that you had a clear notion of what you wanted to do with the character and nailed it to the best of your abilities?
Oh, God. I suppose “Remains of the Day,” in a way. Lecter was the first role that I felt I nailed pretty quickly. “Nixon” was a tough one to do. I just don’t really think back on them at all–I never watch them if they come up on TV. I have the DVD’s of most of them but I never watch them. I liked “The Edge” and “The World’s Fastest Indian.” I don’t really know–I look back on them and all I think is that I have done quite a lot of work over the years.
Obviously, you are most recognized for playing Hannibal Lecter, a role that went beyond the ordinary bounds of screen acting to become a sort of worldwide cultural touchstone. For you, was there a single defining moment when you realized that it had become this strange sort of phenomenon?
It was when I was in the middle of filming my first day with Jonathan Demme. The very first time that you see him in the movie was my very first day of filming and I knew what to do. I think that Jodie had been filming for two weeks and then I came in to do my bit and I knew right then that I got it. It was one of those parts that could change things. The crew certainly responded to it and Jonathan Demme responded to it. On that first day, they said “You can let him out now” and one of the electricians came over–I said [in full Lecter voice] “What are you doing in my cell?” and he went “Oh, God!”
I knew then that I had hit something and I knew that it was going to be a big hit–I hadn’t seen any of the dailies but I just felt that it was going to be a big movie. I went back to England, where I was living at the time, and I got a phone call from Demme saying that the film was terrific and that I would be very pleased. I sensed that it would be a big hit and it was. I was reluctant to do another but my agent thought that I should do “Hannibal.” Then when “Red Dragon” came up, I did that and decided that I wasn’t going to do it anymore. I enjoyed working with Ridley Scott but that is all gone now. It did change things for me.
Finally, you are in two of the more eagerly anticipated genre films of recent memory–Robert Zemeckis’ motion-capture animation adaptation of “Beowulf” and a remake of “The Wolf Man” opposite Benicio Del Toro and from a script by Andrew Kevin Walker. Can you say anything about either of those two projects right now?
I haven’t started shooting “The Wolf Man” yet. I haven’t seen “Beowulf” yet but I hear that it looks good. It is an odd process–you have something like a wet suit on that is covered with little dots. It seems like it is a good film and it was good working with Zemeckis.
link directly to this feature at http://hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=2293
originally posted: 10/26/07 16:47:21
last updated: 10/26/07 22:38:35
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