Q. Why this movie, why Chicago, and why the Joffrey?
A. It was a project Neve Campbell started. She is a dancer and wanted to do a dance picture. And not the same old chorus-girl story -- the star gets drunk, and the chorus girl gets to go on, that sort of thing. All she wanted, she said, was an honest picture about the process of a dance company. We finished shooting this picture a year ago. Two years before that, Neve Campbell hired the writer Barbara Turner. For two years, they worked on this project with the Joffrey. She called me as a friend, wanted me to read her script. I thought, oh, God, I just can't. She persisted, and I read the script, called her and said, "Barbara, I read your script, and I don't get it. I don't understand. I don't know what it is. I'm just the wrong guy for this." Then, I thought: What am I doing this work for if I'm just going to do things I've done before? I was about to do a big picture about a bear. Paul Newman and Harvey Weinstein decided to take the film to Canada to save $2 million or so, and I said, "Fellas, goodbye." Barbara called again, and I told her I was going to do it. We came to Chicago, and it was like walking into the fog because I didn't know what we were going to find, and it grew like Topsy.
Q. Why didn't you want to go to Canada?
A. I think it's obscene to have a runaway production just because of some government who passes a law that gives you tax breaks. We've killed the business in Chicago, where the film [industry] started. I had a great crew. Everybody I used was from Chicago. There's no reason to let a political decision decide where a picture is shot. Why was "Chicago" made in Toronto? To save a couple of million dollars -- which, of course, doesn't go to the artists. On moral grounds, I won't do that.
Q. Did you and Malcolm McDowell spend time with Joffrey chief Gerald Arpino?
A. Oh, yes. Arpino couldn't have been better. To this day, I'm amazed at his trust and courage. He understood what we were doing. Malcolm [who plays Arpino in the film] said, "I'm not going to imitate you, but I am going to paraphrase you." Arpino wouldn't come around when we were shooting. I questioned whether he wanted to see this stuff, but he replied that he didn't want to bother us. I finally insisted he come over to the Auditorium Theatre, where we were shooting all the big dance numbers. He came and said he didn't want to interfere because it was my thing. A company cannot support itself from ticket sales or audiences. It has to be hustling money all the time. A guy like Arpino becomes a fund-raiser, who has to court rich people -- women who get their husbands to put money into it. He's out hustling half the time and still doing choreography. I sympathize because I have to raise money for films. Of course, the difference is that I can tell an investor he might make some money. I tell them that, but it's a lie. Sometimes, they make money.
Q. You just came off a big hit, "Gosford Park."
A. And I didn't make any money. Somebody did. That's all right. I've got to do it, and I wanted to do it.
Q. For this film, you really didn't work with a script so much as with a vision. You totally reinvent your approach between one movie and the next.
A. That's my job. It's what an artist does. You don't repeat the same thing. I'm not going to keep making the same thing. I didn't know what roads this film was going to take me down. What it did was introduce me to some artists, dancers who are so courageous. There's something very melancholy about this whole thing. These girls start when they're 7 or 6 years old, and, by the time they're 20, they walk like a duck, change the structure of their bodies, and some of them become anorexic because they have to keep down their weight. They're basically naked other than leotards. I think that's why a lot of these old rich guys agree to help support the ballet, when their wives request it, because every ballet is about the sex act. Talk about looking at these young people trying to remain in superb shape while destroying their bodies. I think they know they have a short professional life; they're finished at 35, no matter what. They've got to be bad in some way, so they smoke, eat junk food and do all those things you're not supposed to do.
Q. Of course, you're not exactly a role model for wholesome living.
A. Moi?!
Q. Did you ever lecture them about their habits?
A. Absolutely not! Did I ever lecture you about yours?
Q. No, you never did.
A. I don't do that. You wouldn't have listened, anyway. But it's very tough on them. That's another thing. Once they go up en pointe, they're in pain. I mean, 24 hours a day, they're in constant pain, but they do it, and they never make any money. But they don't do it for money.
Q. You've never made one shameful or compromised film. Along comes another director who makes a film every three years, and it's crap, and they knew it was going to be that when they signed on for it. You seem to have some kind of built-in barometer that won't let you do that stuff.
A. Well, it's because I do the things that occur to me, the things I feel I can do, and the things I want to do. I don't work with big movie stars. Big movie stars will sometimes come and work with me, but rarely. It's what the major studios want to dumb it down. They want to play to the lowest-common denominator -- 14-year-old boys. But I'm after 14-year-old girls for this film. I was thinking of Neve, who I've admired even in some frankly very commercial movies. My idea of Neve Campbell early on was another "Scream" queen who looks good in a low-cut neckline because there are a lot of actresses who play those roles. Then, I saw her in a movie with William Macy ["Panic," 2000], and realized these actors and actresses want to work in good films, but there's so little out there for them. They almost have to go out and make it happen, as she did.
Q. Campbell is amazing in this movie, and you look at what she's been in, and it's tragic what people have to do because of the 14-year-old movie audience. They want that Friday night gross, and the kids at the multiplex on Friday nights are boys.
A. I would like to put a ban on 14-year-old boys and not allow them to see any movies. If that happened for one year, the whole definition of what is a big movie and what is a little movie would flip-flop.
© 2003 CST
Archived 2003-08 by Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net