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Post by Yuliya on Jan 19, 2006 20:35:09 GMT -5
Just for the record, though - I was kidding. Don't go quoting me.
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Post by Ace on Jan 30, 2006 13:35:50 GMT -5
Great interview from The Sunday Times (UK) (in the Culture supplement magazine)
The Sunday Times January 29, 2006
The name’s not Bond...
For his role in The Matador, Pierce Brosnan has undergone a remarkable transformation, says Neil Norman
Caught in the grip of a biblical hangover and dressed only in a pair of black briefs and unzipped Cuban-heeled boots, Pierce Brosnan totters through a crowded hotel lobby clutching his first drink of the morning after the night before. Ignoring the open-mouthed stares of the other guests, he finally makes it to the swimming pool, kicks off his boots and jumps in. He comes up for air, shakes water from his eyes and takes a slug of his now somewhat diluted drink. Contrary to reports, this is not the way Brosnan responded to the news he had been ousted finally and irrevocably as James Bond by a younger, blonder model. Rather, it is a scene from his latest movie, The Matador, in which he plays a hit man on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Brosnan might be forgiven had he indeed got howling drunk after the news about Daniel Craig. The Irish actor had made little secret of his desire to play Bond one more time, having developed the role from his relatively Roger Mooreish debut in Goldeneye to the darker regions of his final outing in Die Another Day. It was reported he was “gutted” at being prevented from taking the character into fiftysomething maturity. It was he, after all, who restored the credibility of the character and the fortunes of Eon Productions, headed by Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, heirs to the Bond movies’ creative godfather, Cubby Broccoli.
* “It’s unfinished business,” said Brosnan before the announcement of his replacement. “I would be very happy to come back as Bond, and if such a scenario arose I would jump at it. A fifth, and no more. It takes a lot of stamina to go out for six months and save the world. But I think Barbara and Michael had a crisis of confidence. And there is strong competition — The Bourne Identity, for example. The trouble is, you have these great action sequences, and then you have to have this one-liner — and they’re not all that funny. And I wasn’t very good at doing them. My idea was to go right back to the foundation of the character and make it palpable, reveal the desires and wants of the man.
“Anyway, it’s all behind me now. It was painful for them and painful for us all. It was a business decision, and painful business decisions have to be made. It’s been a bit of an awkward time all round. I wish them well, and I wish the next man well.” Now the next man has been revealed, Brosnan bites the bullet with typical graciousness and generosity. “I wish Daniel the greatest happiness and success,” he says. “He’s a fantastic actor and he’s given superb performances. I think we’re all going to be really happily surprised.”
As if to redefine his status as “just another working actor” once more, Brosnan has undergone a remarkable transformation and is allowing himself to show his age with a kind of gleeful challenge. His figure remains enviably trim and elegant, but there is no attempt to conceal the silver in his facial hair, grown for his role in the civil-war western Seraphim Falls. Today he is dressed from head to toe in black; his deeply tanned features and neatly trimmed beard lend him the distinguished appearance of a 19th-century fencing master. In an odd reversal I have never been able to fathom, he is taller in the flesh than he appears on the screen.
Brosnan will still be picking up a gun for The Matador, albeit in a role far removed from the predictably structured antics of 007. He plays Julian Noble, a professional assassin or “facilitator of fatalities”, as he puts it. A black comedy that shares celluloid DNA with Prizzi’s Honor and Grosse Point Blank, The Matador is an odd-couple movie, charged with an unusual level of emotional depth. It’s set largely in Mexico City, where Noble has been sent to perform a “facilitation”, and explores the unlikely relationship between this crisis-ridden assassin and an innocent and desperate American businessman, Danny (Greg Kinnear), following their first disagreeable encounter in a hotel bar. Drunk and virtually incapable of normal human intercourse, Noble is by turns aggressive, pathetic, uncaring, pitiful and insulting; Danny is bewildered, intrigued and horrified at his would-be companion’s capriciousness. They part in acrimony but, like gum on a shoe, Noble just won’t go away. Soon, they become sort of friends. Then the problems start.
Brosnan is alarmingly good at portraying the lonely, pathetic guy who just happens to be a professional killer. Subsisting on a diet of alcohol and casual sex with the nearest available stranger, Noble is an unlovable creature, even when he starts to fall apart. Brosnan relished the script, sent to his film company, Irish DreamTime, by the writer/director Richard Shepard, though he did, he reveals, have second thoughts about playing Noble. “I thought it was wildly Pythonesque,” he says of the screenplay. “Like Hunter S Thompson meets Pinter. Richard was thrown by the comedic element we found in it. He thought he’d written something very dark. I saw the more surreal side. But when it was clear we were actually going to make the movie, I freaked out. I didn’t know if I could do it. There was a lot of sex, and it was a bit more violent, so I shied away. I went back to the text. The sexuality was relentless, and the bisexuality was a bit too much. I realised my image was on the line, so I changed things, tweaked it. Everyone was pissed off with me for a while.” Needless to say, Brosnan got his way and the script was toned down. In Shepherd’s original, Noble was even less sexually discriminating, bedding men as well as women. Brosnan insisted overt homosexual acts were excluded, though the implication remains, particularly in Noble’s first encounter with Danny. And now, though Noble is still a drunk, he doesn’t do drugs.
As it turned out, shooting in Mexico City provided enough excitement to satisfy even the most terminal thrill-seeker. Halfway through filming, the unit’s chief driver was kidnapped by an armed man and forced to surrender his ATM card. “Luckily,” Brosnan recalls, “he let him go.”
Brosnan might have been condemned to playing variants on Remington Steele had it not been for Bond, and he knows it. But he has been clever enough to further his own ends via his film company. The Matador is just one of several projects it is developing. There is a sequel to The Thomas Crown Affair (The Topkapi Affair) in the works, plus a kidnap thriller, Mexicali. Irish DreamTime has already produced the undervalued Evelyn and the underwhelming Laws of Attraction; and although he tends to star in all the productions, it is less a vanity project for Brosnan than a kind of insurance against future unemployment.
“I might have been waiting for the phone to ring,” he says. “I have the company in order to have the choices. It’s up to you to redefine your career. And it keeps you on your toes. I was taught and led to believe I could do transformation. I was trained as a character actor. But the leading-man thing came easily, and I went to America as a leading man. But I kept looking back over here with envy at other actors who were doing down-and-dirty stuff. And I still have to work out every day. You’ve got to stay in shape. It’s a pain in the arse. But what are you gonna do? Just fall off the twig?”
That Brosnan did not work for a year after the last Bond movie was as much his choice as anything else. The scripts that came through the door were largely variations on a dog-eared theme. He spent the time with his family, bought a place in Hawaii and travelled the world promoting the various charities with which he is connected — notably the Prince’s Trust, Unicef Ireland, the Irish Cancer Society, Down’s Syndrome Ireland, Make-A-Wish (for terminally ill children) and the animal charities IFAW and the Jane Goodall Institute. Then one morning he awoke with a “bellyful of fear”. “Well, not quite a bellyful of fear,” he corrects himself, “but a tickle of anxiety. I wondered if I’d ever act again. I wondered if I could still do it.”
I remind him of an observation he had made about his early childhood — the deprivations of which he claims have been exaggerated (“It wasn’t as bleak as it sounds”) — regarding his loneliness and sense of abandonment. “Maybe that’s where acting comes from,” he said. “From spending so much time alone and with your thoughts.” So how does a father of five (two from his wife, Keely Shaye Smith, one from his late wife, Cassandra Harris, and two adopted from her previous marriage), movie star, producer and benefactor find the time to be alone these days? “I’m not sure I want to be alone any more,” he says quietly. “When you are alone, you are so ...” he drifts off into a silence before hauling himself back. “I enjoy my own company. I like being alone as long as I know there is somebody close by.”
There is a darkness buried in Brosnan I have sensed more than once before, which the dazzling smile, the playfulness and self-effacement cannot quite conceal. Whether this is due to the incontrovertible trials of his childhood (an absentee father, a working mother who left him in the care of grandparents and aunts, the terrifying Christian Brothers school), the untimely death of his first wife from ovarian cancer, the near-death of his son Sean in a horrific car crash in 2000 and Sean’s subsequent illness two years later, or just plain old Irish melancholy is difficult to determine. But it’s there in some of his performances: his last 007, the deranged scientist in The Lawnmower Man, the glacial Russian KGB bomber in The Fourth Protocol, and now Noble.
Aware that aspects of his childhood and life have been slightly mythologised, he has become less permeable in conversation, although he will play the fool when required — mugging for Jonathan Ross on television, downing a pint of Guinness in one go at the GQ Man of the Year awards. But the suspicion is that he has become increasingly protective of himself and his family, and certainly more meditative. “The year off was about not rushing into another movie,” he says. “Not having to be in fighting mode. It was a time for reflection. To look back at what I’d achieved, and to ask questions about the future: how do you keep going and stay passionate about it? It was also turning 52. You look in the mirror and say, ‘Wow. How did I get here so fast?’”
The Matador opens on Feb 24
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Post by sparklingblue on Feb 18, 2006 8:48:35 GMT -5
IndependentPierce Brosnan: A new licence to thrillPierce Brosnan has reinvented himself in the story of a debauched hitman. He tells Elaine Lipworth what the future holds for the former 007 Published: 17 February 2006 "I am a sick, pathetic, immoral, alcoholic, sexually perverse, lost man, who is having a crisis of confidence in Mexico City," says Pierce Brosnan, a gleam in his eye. The actor is describing Julian Noble, the debauched hitman he portrays in his latest film, with great relish. The Matador, written and directed by Richard Shepard, is a black comedy that's refreshing because it is so far removed from 007. We see the actor looking hungover and unappealing, sporting a moustache and unflatteringly tight shirts, with a gold chain around his neck. In the most memorable scene, the former James Bond saunters through a hotel lobby, out to the swimming pool, wearing nothing but his skimpy underpants. Brosnan has managed to reinvent himself with one quirky film. "Yes, it's a good performance, relaxed, confident and sure-footed, possibly my best performance ever," says Brosnan. "I've been identified with James Bond or Thomas Crown for so long; suave, elegant, sophisticated men in suits. it's like you've been giving the same performance for 20 years. Then suddenly you're walking across the lobby in your knickers and people say 'how amusing'. The swimming-pool scene has certainly become the central image from this film," says the actor. "Brosnan in his Cuban-heel boots and skivvies, Heineken in one hand and a fag in the other hand. You are used to seeing Brosnan, trying to do his best Cary Grant acting, so to dismantle that was great." He talks about himself in the third person, in a strangely old-fashioned style, but does so with charming self-deprecation. He's easy on the ear, his soft, Irish voice undulating gently. He seems more or less unchanged by fame. When I first met him, in 1992, he was starring in a small film called The Lawnmower Man, shortly before his appearance in Mrs Doubtfire. He had recently lost his wife, the actress Cassandra Harris, to ovarian cancer. He was working, but the roles were pedestrian. A few years earlier, he had missed the opportunity of playing Bond because of contractual commitments to his television show Remington Steele. Yet he was enormously enthusiastic about his career and life in general. And during the Bond years he never seemed self-satisfied; on the contrary, one always felt that he couldn't quite believe his luck. "I left school at 15 feeling fairly useless and not really up to scratch in my education," says Brosnan. "And I still suffer sometimes from that lack of education. As an actor, I've got by, I've had employment, I've had the good fortune to be able to work and I just feel blessed. But I do feel I have some bit of talent to create a character or move people, or entertain an audience, and that is very gratifying." The Matador is particularly exciting to Brosnan because he's finally proved himself as a versatile actor. There have been solid performances before where he played against type, in films such as The Tailor of Panama in 2001, and the Irish drama Evelyn that he produced in 2002. But neither film took off at the box office. His performance in The Matador has had American critics in raptures. "As an actor I've had the time of my life. Jesus, I've been living the life of Riley, " he says. "But you sit back and think: 'Well, some day maybe I'll find a role, find a piece and just nail it.' Some people have careers that are brilliant, everything they touch turns to gold. I'm just a working actor, a journeyman. My God, I came over to America 23 years ago, on a wing and a prayer on Freddie Laker, sandwiches in the back of the plane, you know? I was hoping to work with Martin Scorsese and ended up with a TV job instead, doing Remington Steele. But beggars can't be choosers. Don't look a gift horse in he mouth. That's why The Matador is so good," he says. "I was aware that I was not getting the good acting roles because I was either too handsome, too pretty or whatever. I was being judged in ways that left me nowhere to go. You have to be patient." Brosnan's Julian Noble is appealing and scary at the same time. "He is a killer, but you just like the guy. I gave the script to a friend at LAPD [Los Angeles Police Department], who introduced me to a criminal psychologist and she gave me a breakdown of this kind of psychopath. Apparently they are the greatest actors, charming, wonderful, narcissistic, cruel and relentless. These men do exist in our society, they kill for money." Making the film was enjoyable, Brosnan says, despite some trepidation about filming in Mexico City. In fact, his fears were well founded: one of the crew was mugged. "My wife had some concerns," he says. "You hear about violence and kidnapping. We had bodyguards, that's for sure, and armoured vehicles, which was strange." Aside from concerns about the location, in hindsight Brosnan says that The Matador was a risky career move. Would audiences accept him as such a depraved character? "It goes against Bond, of course, and that's why I did it. Julian's the ultimate vulgarian, so to be able to go sexually and verbally and psychologically wherever you want to go was very liberating. But there was a risk factor, because you don't want to be an embarrassment." Brosnan says he decided to tone down the script and make his character less extreme. "At first he was bisexual, he shagged everything - man, woman, beast - but I thought: 'Less is more.' It's a razor's edge. The trick is to bring the audience in then push them away, but you don't want to leave them in the cold. So he is still wild. The curtain goes up, he gets out of bed and paints his toenails." Brosnan is willing to admit that closing the Bond chapter after a decade wasn't easy. There was the inevitable disappointment, (not to mention the financial loss) when the producers and franchise holders, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, decided to go for a younger 007, Daniel Craig. Brosnan's four Bond movies made billions. His last, Die Another Day (2002) with Halle Berry, set a franchise record, earning $425m worldwide. Aged 52, Brosnan had been keen to tackle the role one final time when he got the phone call that informed him that his services were no longer required. With The Matador doing so well, there doesn't appear to be any bitterness, but he is prepared to acknowledge that there were creative differences about interpreting the iconic character. "When you look at Fleming's work, the character has more depth, it's all there on the page: the sadness, the loneliness, the Martinis, the cigarettes, the casinos." He trails off with a sigh. "But they never went there with me. Hopefully there'll go there with Daniel. Some of those stupid one-liners never felt real to me," he says. "They always felt so phony. I'd look at myself in the suit and tie and think: 'What the heck am I doing here?'" He is generous, however, (or at least diplomatic) about his replacement. "I think it's great casting. But that chapter is over, closed, finished," he says with a flourish of the arms. "I am the happiest man, making films with my company Irish Dreamtime." Brosnan is currently producing Butterfly On A Wheel and a sequel to The Thomas Crown Affair. Physically you can tell that he has started a fresh chapter. He's still ridiculously handsome but doesn't look remotely like Bond; in fact, he doesn't bear much resemblance to Pierce Brosnan, wearing a grey beard he grew for his latest film, Seraphim Falls. "You want to know about my facial hair?" he smiles, stroking his chin. "I dyed it grey, of course," he says, grinning. "I have no problems with the beard. My wife, on other hand," he lapses into broad, cartoon Irish, "is not particularly partial to it at all." Brosnan's wife is Keely Shaye Smith, the mother of his two youngest sons, Dylan and Paris. He has an older son, Sean, and two adopted children, Christopher and Charlotte, from his marriage to Harris. Brosnan and his family live in Malibu and have a home in Hawaii. "I've been a married man most of my life; that's the way I like it. This is a very capricious business and the family, being a father, keeps you centred," he says. Fatherhood has been an integral part of life for Brosnan since he adopted Harris's children when he was just 23. Perhaps because his own father left when he was a child, the actor takes his familial responsibilities seriously. "When I go home from the studio or the set, work stays there and life is around the kitchen table and what's happening in our children's lives - soccer, homework, planning the next adventure in life. I get to go home to the most beautiful woman in the planet, lovely children, a good normal life and then I get to run off and play in the movies, in a fantasy world. "Where does the career go when I get older and things fade and fall apart? I don't know." He trained as an artist before acting. "I often think that when all this goes away, I'll be sitting out there in the sunshine in Hawaii, painting away." 'The Matador' is released on 3 March
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Post by Barbara on Feb 25, 2006 10:59:57 GMT -5
Back to the interview a few lines up. Pierce has been thinking about moving to NY?
DUDE! I'll help you pack!
Love...B
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Post by Ace on Feb 25, 2006 13:13:47 GMT -5
Moving to NY? I can't see that happenning, especially not for NYC where beach life can not be lead in December and Keely can't have several acres of gardens to tend year round. Maybe the phrase "some time" means just moving to NYC for a couple months of the year -- would seem more likley though with kids still a tad unpractical.
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Post by sparklingblue on Feb 25, 2006 16:39:31 GMT -5
I would love to see it happen for you ladies who live there, but, like Ace said, I don't think he'll leave the beach life behind.
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Post by Ace on Feb 28, 2006 12:20:00 GMT -5
THE BIRMINGHAM POST: Bond on the run
02/28/2006
When Daniel Craig was announced as the new James Bond, few could have breathed a louder sigh of relief than Pierce Brosnan.
No more questions about whether he would be returning to the role, no more probing to see if he knew who was taking his place, no more asking what he'd do to improve the franchise.
Finally, after seven years and four films, Bond was behind him. And, as if to firmly consign 007 to history, along comes The Matador with Brosnan playing Julian Noble, an amoral hitman enduring a nervous breakdown while on a mission in Mexico City.
Seedy, paunchy and very badly dressed, he's about as far from the debonair Bond as you can get.
"I never saw it as closing the door or anything like that," he laughs, "but I'd been very aware of painting myself into a corner and for some time I'd had the desire to break out of a mould which I'd seen closing in around me. In doing that scene where I walk across the lobby in my underwear it was like 'the train's left the station'."
Even so, he admits that the finished version of his character is considerably tamer than in the original script.
"It was a bit more flamboyant than you see now," he offers, flashing a knowing smile.
"I mean this man was shagging everything, men, women, animals, the whole thing, and I thought, hang on a second I might want to break out of the mould, but do I want to do it and alienate people in such a fashion?
"So when we knew we were actually going to do the movie we went back and addressed a few issues."
But even during his licensed to kill stint, the obscenely good-looking Brosnan was making efforts to keep from being typecast, making films like The Tailor Of Panama, Grey Owl and, through his Irish Dream Time production company, The Nephew and Evelyn, to show he could do more than suave superspy.
"I was aware going into Bond that if I got it right I was going to be labelled as Bond, so I had to look ahead and try and carve a niche for myself outside of that role," he candidly admits.
"The success of Bond has been bountiful to us as a company and to me as an actor. It gave me the prominence on a world stage and an education in producing movies, and relationships with distributors around the world.
"But there was very much an awareness that I was not getting the meaty acting roles. Because I was either too handsome, too pretty, too whatever. I was being judged in ways that left you nowhere to go.
"So The Matador was just the right time to say 'let's see what the actor is made of, let's see what talent you have to transform.'
"To be honest, you kind of find yourself painted into a corner by your own personality, the choice you've made in playing Bond and underpinning that with Thomas Crown.
"If someone else had been making the movie I don't think I would have been given the role. But if an actor isn't getting the work then it's up to them to create it for themselves."
Yet he confesses that the lifestyle of the leading man can be seductively counter productive to putting an effort into stretching those acting muscles.
"I was educated as an actor in London at the Drama Centre which was very heavily Method orientated and I did diverse roles and was taught to play character. But I went off to America and ended up playing myself for quite a while there in that kind of world persona acting.
"Deep down I always felt I was a character actor, but the money and the lifestyle's pretty good as a leading man so I thought I'd hang with that.
"But then I used to always look at the other guys out there doing this really kind of flashy, daring roles and I thought, 'when is it going to come my way?'
"I've always had the good fortune to work, not necessarily the greatest work at times, but it's all been to the advancement of my acting abilities. I feel like everything that I have done, good, bad or indifferent, has taken me further down the road to where I am right now with Julian Noble."
There are those, the film's director Richard Shepard included, who reckon it's the best and boldest performance Brosnan's ever given.
Modestly, he demurs.
"I'd say it is my most relaxed, most confident and sure footed performance. I don't want to say it's my best because then everything else that has gone before is like... you know... I thought Tailor Of Panama was great, that Evelyn and Thomas Crown were good. But I suppose I am so known as James Bond or Thomas Crown and so identifiable with suave sophisticated men in a suit, elegance that it's like you've given the same performance for 20 years.
"Then you grow a moustache and walk across the lobby in your knickers and people say 'Oh my God what an amazing performance.' But I've been an actor since I was 18 and I've done crazy stuff before."
He cracks a big grin.
"You should have seen me in Puckaree, an Irish rock musical at the Edinburgh Festival in my wonderful rubber phallus running around the stage. That was a good one."
At the end of the day, Brosnan is, by his own admission, a 'journeyman actor'. And, it seems, very happy to be so, apparently quite content to leave the flash to others and get on with doing the work.
"I'd like to find quieter roles, not so big leading man roles, more kind of simple characters," he confesses.
"Some people have careers that are just brilliant with everything they touch, but I look back and I have been blessed.
"I came to this country 23 years ago on a wing and a prayer' Freddie Laker, sandwiches at the back of the bus. I was looking to work with Martin Scorsese and I got a TV show, but beggars can't be choosers. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, whatever you want to say, it's work. Relish it, enjoy it, get on with it."
The Matador opens on Friday
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Post by Ace on Mar 8, 2006 2:16:12 GMT -5
IRISH INDEPENDENT: A secret mission to hire Pierce... in Hawaii 03/08/2006 One excellent thing about Pierce Brosnan deep-sixing 007, is that we (by we, I mean the more discerning members of Mna na hEireann) may get to see a good deal more of his personable self on this side of the Atlantic. In an interview this week, the Navan man suggested that he might join the long line of top-drawer thesps to appear onstage at the Gate Theatre. "Michael Colgan at the Gate is always offering me Pinter, Pinter, Pinter, which is something that I love watching but has always terrified me as an actor. Perhaps one day . . . we'll see," he said. And this may well happen. The Gate confirmed that Colgan had indeed made the offer to the actor on more than one occasion. Then, shortly after these offers, the theatre director's indomitable right-hand woman, Marie Rooney, was on holidayin a remote idyll on Hawaii. She turned a corner in the tiny town, and spotted Brosnan chilling in a cafe. She approached the actor and politely inquired, "why haven't you ever worked in the Gate?" Startled, the actor looked at her in astonishment. "Oh God - Michael's sent you halfway around the world to get me, hasn't he?" he gasped, shaken. But in the meantime, Brosnan hopes to shoot part of the sequel toThe Thomas Crown Affair - titledThe Topkapi Affair - in Ireland. He has also teamed up with a Dublin production company to doCaitlin, a movie on the relationship between Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and his wife Caitlin, starring Brosnan, Michael Sheen and Miranda Richardson. Bond or no Bond, it looks as if our handsome hero isn't going gently into any sort of quiet life yet. Copyright © 2006 Irish Independent. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire. ==================================== Startled, the actor looked at her in astonishment. "Oh God - Michael's sent you halfway around the world to get me, hasn't he?" he gasped, shaken. Ace
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Post by sparklingblue on Mar 8, 2006 6:37:41 GMT -5
I can just imagine his face as he says that. I swear, if he ever stars in a play in Dublin, I'll hop on a plane and fly over to see him, no matter what.
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Post by Lauryn on Mar 8, 2006 21:07:43 GMT -5
IRISH INDEPENDENT: A secret mission to hire Pierce... in Hawaii 03/08/2006 Michael Colgan at the Gate is always offering me Pinter, Pinter, Pinter, which is something that I love watching but has always terrified me as an actor. Perhaps one day . . . we'll see," he said. Judi Dench has done Pinter before. Perhaps the SMA can steal her away from Daniel Craig after her shooting stint is over. Then they can have a reunion. She'll put some starch in his spine about those stage ambitions, I'll bet. "What's this about you being terrified?" Really, It can't be that bad. One can always call a momentary forgetting of one's lines a Pinteresque pause. <wink>
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Post by Ace on Mar 8, 2006 21:22:58 GMT -5
Well doesn't Dame Judi always say she's terrified. I'm sure she could understand the terror of not being on the stage for about 25 years. She was on Goldeneye when her hands were shaking and PB had to calm her down and show her how to light a cigarette -- which they didn't use probably because her hand was still shaking (that and Michael Campbell is an anti-smoking loon and decided M swilling bourbon was more PG-13 kiddie friendly). I find it amusing that the writer checked with the Gate to see if Colgan has indeed offered -- did they think Mr. B was fibbing? =========================================== There's an interesting recent article on The Gate (and it's less flourishing by far more subsidized counterpart The Abbey) from the UK's Telegraph and note the mention of Pinter. A tale of two theatres (Filed: 27/02/2006) A dismal centenary and poor audiences have left the Abbey, Ireland's historic national theatre, with massive debts and a tarnished reputation. Down the road a rival theatre, the Gate, is attracting major stars and full houses on a fraction of the funding. Dominic Cavendish reports Anyone getting overly carried away with optimism at the launch of the National Theatre of Scotland this week would do well to glance across the Irish Sea and consider the state of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. For, with absolutely no fanfare at all, Ireland's own national - the oldest subsidised theatre in the English-speaking world - has embarked on the biggest shake-up in its history, after a calamitous couple of years. It takes a mere matter of minutes to stroll from the Abbey up O'Connell Street, the city's main thoroughfare, to its nearest rival, the Gate Theatre, but since the millennium a yawning chasm in terms of prestige has opened up between them. The Abbey's fortunes, sputtering for some time, went into a nose-dive during its centenary year in 2004. What should have been a triumphant celebration, marking the theatre's role in forging the Irish nation and shaping a world-class dramatic canon, proved a shambles fit to make its hallowed founders, WB Yeats and Lady Isabella Gregory, spin in their graves. Feeble attendances, coupled with a huge overspend, left the theatre saddled with a debt of €3.4 million. The debacle culminated in the departure of artistic director Ben Barnes, along with his management team, last summer and the fast-tracked installation of his successor, Fiach MacConghail. By shaming contrast, the Gate under Michael Colgan, 22 years at the helm, has gone from strength to strength, a cocksure David to the Abbey's reeling Goliath. In mounting major retrospective festivals devoted to Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter during the 1990s, it has become Ireland's most fêted theatrical ambassador. It was the Gate that persuaded some of the biggest names in British theatre (Michael Gambon, Kenneth Cranham, Penelope Wilton) to take part in a series of events celebrating Pinter's 75th birthday last year; it's the Gate that will be the toast of Broadway in April when its acclaimed revival of Brian Friel's Faith Healer, starring Ralph Fiennes and Ian McDiarmid, crosses the pond; and it's the Gate that, from March, will be pushing the boat out even further by marking the centenary of Beckett's birth with a double-helping of festivities, shuttling star-laden productions back and forth between Dublin and the Barbican in London. Colgan, 55, is too sage and savvy to gloat over his theatre's success and the Abbey's travails, pointing out that they've been characterised as sworn rivals ever since the English actor Hilton Edwards and London-born impresario Micheál Mac Liammóir dared to establish the Gate right under the Abbey's nose in 1928. "This rivalry has been going on for a long, long time," he says. "However, where I'm cross, and it's the only time I've spoken against the Abbey, is over the level of funding they have just received." Under a three-year deal for the Abbey, which has had its debts written off, MacConghail and his team have been given an annual Arts Council grant of €8.5 million - 10 times the amount of subsidy the Gate receives. "It's a strategy that rewards failure and punishes success," complains Colgan, who bitterly quipped to the press at the time of the announcement: "There's no rhyme or reason as to how the Arts Council make their decisions, but I think they must do it alphabetically - certainly 'A' does well!" For his part, MacConghail - a 41-year-old producer who ran the Project Arts Centre in Dublin for most of the '90s, specialising in new work - concedes that the Gate should have more money but counters that "we have to fight our own corners. One of the big debates that occurred during the Abbey's crisis was whether Ireland actually needs a national theatre. The Arts Council decided that it does, and they've invested in my vision, which is that it should be one of Ireland's most creative organisations." Quite open about the "outmoded work practices" and "Byzantine company structure" he inherited, and swiftly reformed, MacConghail acknowledges that it will take years to turn the Abbey into a powerhouse fit for the 21st century. A glance at the spring programme, however, suggests that a fundamental rethink has already taken place. A forthcoming Iraqified adaptation of Euripides, The Bacchae of Baghdad, will "feature a multi-racial cast - a first for the Abbey", according to MacConghail, and an international flavour is pronounced elsewhere, especially in promised productions of work by Joe Penhall and Sam Shepard. "The Abbey has to engage with the social and political change affecting Irish society," he explains, "and we should be quite happy to look to Britain and America to help us understand that change. In the past, the Abbey has been inward-looking. We need to ask tough questions about the repertoire. The Abbey can't depend as much on its past as it did." Through gritted teeth, concerned about the likelihood of knock-on wage inflation, Michael Colgan wishes him well: "A revitalised Abbey would be good news because at the end of the day, if people have a bad experience at the theatre, that rubs off on all of us. But it will take a long time - and if there are lots of terrible houses and bad reviews, my feeling is that this new man won't last six months." Gate TheatreEstablished Opened in 1928, by Hilton Edwards, an English actor, and his partner, the London-born actor Micheál Mac Liammóir. Highlight The 1991 Beckett Festival was the first time all 19 of Beckett’s plays had been produced at one go. A sell-out success, the festival was remounted in New York and London during the 1990s, re-establishing the Gate as a theatre of international importance. Building Housed within the Georgian Rotunda Buildings on Parnell Square, at the north end of O’Connell Street. Backstage conditions are so cramped that every set has to be cut into pieces, then reassembled on stage. Subsidy Current annual Arts Council funding is €850,000. Abbey TheatreEstablished The Abbey opened in 1904, the first theatre with a completely Irish repertoire. The principal co-founders were Lady Isabella Gregory, theatre manager and playwright, and the poet WB Yeats. Highlight The period between 1907 and 1926, book-ended by the riot-provoking premières of JM Synge's The Playboy of the Western World and Sean O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars, must be the most creatively fertile two decades a theatre has ever known, crowned by the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Yeats in 1923. Building The original burnt down in 1951 and was replaced by a modernist building with a fan-shaped stage and studio (The Peacock) in 1966. Subsidy Arts Council is providing €7.2 million for 2006, and €8.5 million for 2007. # The Beckett Centenary Festival runs from March 21. Barbican tickets: 0845 120 7550. Gate tickets: 00353 1 874 4045; 'The Bacchae of Baghdad' runs from March 4. Abbey tickets: 00353 1 878 7222
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Post by Lauryn on Mar 8, 2006 21:51:04 GMT -5
My take was more than slightly tongue-in-cheek. Actually, I think it would be nice for PB if he had a friendly and experienced hand to hold in such a fraught situation, which I'm sure Dame Judi would provide, paying him back in kind. They could go out for a bourbon afterwards to calm the nerves.
At the time of "Tailor of Panama" I thought that it would be to PB's advantage, should he wish to get his sea legs back on stage, to find a strong, sturdy vehicle for him and Geoffrey Rush. They had undeniable chemistry and got along quite famously. If anyone of his co-stars (other than Dench) could give a master class / refresher course in stagecraft, it would be GR.
Wasn't Colgan after PB to act in a Gate production around the time of TOP, or was that my wishful thinking?
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Post by Ace on Mar 8, 2006 22:48:55 GMT -5
My take was more than slightly tongue-in-cheek. Actually, I think it would be nice for PB if he had a friendly and experienced hand to hold in such a fraught situation, which I'm sure Dame Judi would provide, paying him back in kind. They could go out for a bourbon afterwards to calm the nerves. At the time of "Tailor of Panama" I thought that it would be to PB's advantage, should he wish to get his sea legs back on stage, to find a strong, sturdy vehicle for him and Geoffrey Rush. They had undeniable chemistry and got along quite famously. If anyone of his co-stars (other than Dench) could give a master class / refresher course in stagecraft, it would be GR. Wasn't Colgan after PB to act in a Gate production around the time of TOP, or was that my wishful thinking? Yes, it's been going on for years, and yes I do believe at the time of TOP he was after PB then as well. He's not the only one. Didn't Chrisptopher Fettes say it was horribly shocking that he hadn't been back on the stage while PB moaned that Fettes wanted him to actually work. *-) I do think co-starring with Dame Judi or Rush would be great for him, someone familiar who's also used to it.
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Post by Lauryn on Mar 9, 2006 0:13:02 GMT -5
And if the plot calls for a goat to be milked, PB can help them out, too!
Since trying on "The Matador" PB has been saying how the part took him back to his roots and he feels like an actor again. I guess we'll see how far that desire extends... I wonder what Fettes thinks of Pierce as Julian Noble and how his student's more free-form drama student days extend to that character. Rubber phalluses and fairs and all.<wink> In about every interview I've read with Fettes on Brosnan he singles out PB's range, sometimes stating that he's rarely been given a chance in his film roles to show what he can do. I'd probably quarrel with him on the degree that the latter has been true, still, I think he'd have to be pleased even though it's not stage work, LOL -- and recognize in "The Matador" a panoptic, fearless performance and one that could broaden the field for him.
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Post by Ace on Mar 9, 2006 2:00:03 GMT -5
And if the plot calls for a goat to be milked, PB can help them out, too! Since trying on "The Matador" PB has been saying how the part took him back to his roots and he feels like an actor again. I guess we'll see how far that desire extends... I wonder what Fettes thinks of Pierce as Julian Noble and how his student's more free-form drama student days extend to that character. Rubber phalluses and fairs and all.<wink> In about every interview I've read with Fettes on Brosnan he singles out PB's range, sometimes stating that he's rarely been given a chance in his film roles to show what he can do. I'd probably quarrel with him on the degree that the latter has been true, still, I think he'd have to be pleased even though it's not stage work, LOL -- and recognize in "The Matador" a panoptic, fearless performance and one that could broaden the field for him. Well Fettes said he was impressed by his range and work in TOP so I'd assume he's be even more impressed with his work in The Matador. He also said while he was great as Bond that Bond was somewhat beneath his talents. Along similar lines, there was an interview several months with Lizzie Spender, while promoting a book, (can't find it now) who was a classmate of PB's at The Drama Centre (and is also the wife of "Dame Edna" and daughter of a poet Sir Stephen Spender). Anyhow, she mentioned her years of on and off acting (while dropping many names, including friend of her father Peter O'Toole who encouraged her to act) and her time at the Drama Centre. She said PB was the best actor there with the greatest range, most of which he has not been using since he became famous but then that's what happenned when actors became famous. So the usual, praise tempered with criticism.
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Post by Lauryn on Mar 9, 2006 2:29:48 GMT -5
Yes, well isn't that always the way when it comes to these acting toffs, LOL! Alternatively, I was reading a recent interview with Anthony Hopkins where he whinges that the thought of going back to the National Theatre leaves him feeling absolutely dreary -- but he's been saying that for years now. Maybe, a decade on, after a string of triumphs at The Gate PB can plausibly opine that the theater is beneath him now, LOL! He and Tony can sit on a beach somewhere and tot up their bank balance. Ace has surely seen this before but here is a nice feature article in The Guardian on the evolution of The Drama Centre and its co-founder Yat Malmgren, who worked with PB (among with many other luminaries, of course). Written by Christopher Fettes, BTW. Apologies if it's been posted before. www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4432581,00.html
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Post by Lauryn on Mar 9, 2006 2:52:13 GMT -5
Well, that link's not working. Here's the article.
Yat Malmgren
The co-founder of a revolutionary theatre school, he brought a new awareness of movement to British theatre
Christopher Fettes Guardian
Thursday June 13, 2002
When, in the early autumn of 1963, a new theatre school, Drama Centre London, opened behind the decaying but still handsome facade of a Victorian Methodist church in Chalk Farm, north London, the occasion passed without notice. Yet it represented one of the few completely successful student-and-teacher revolutions of that decade, led by joint principals of unquestioned brilliance - John Blatchley (obituary, July 22 1994) and Yat Malmgren, who has died at the age of 86.
The students - who included Ian Hogg, David Leland, Oliver Cotton, Jack Shepherd and Celia Bannerman - were largely penniless, and the school would never have survived but for the immediate support of a council chaired by Lord Harewood, and including George Devine, Glen Byam Shaw, "Binkie" Beaumont, Peter Hall, Peter Brook and Kenneth Tynan.
These leading figures knew that the repertory of the recently opened National Theatre, stretching from Aeschylus to Brecht, made increased demands on training. They saw the approach of the new school, closely associated with developments in Russia, the United States, France and Germany, as offering a possible long-term solution.
Thus the school prospered. Courses were devised for directors, and for instructors from overseas. Lively associations were created with the state drama schools in Stockholm and, above all, in Gothenburg; and subsequently with the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco.
In most instances the initiative came from Malmgren, a former recital dancer, who had been greatly influenced by the work of the Hungarian Rudolf Laban. Laban's exploration of movement closely related to everyday experience (as opposed to conventional theatrical dance) characterised Drama Centre London's approach, and its eventual honours degree course. Formal recognition of Malmgren's work came through an honorary doctorate from the University of Gothenburg in 2000; he was still at the centre as associate director until last August.
Malmgren was born in Gavle, north of Stockholm. As a boy, he wanted to become a priest, to the dismay of his father, one of Sweden's finest shots: many of his later compositions had their origins in the Bible. A greater influence was the gallery of vivid characters contained in the popular novels of Selma Lagerlof, particularly Gosta Berling's Saga, the story of a young priest.
In 1935, Malmgren went to Stockholm to train as an actor under Julia Hakanson, creator of roles for August Strindberg, but it soon became obvious that Malmgren possessed an exceptional talent for movement and dance, and in 1938 he moved to the Berlin of the Third Reich to further his studies in this direction. Solo recitals of his own compositions in Paris, Stockholm, Berlin and Warsaw led to the award of the gold medal at the Concours International de la Danse in Brussels in 1939.
With war on the horizon, Malmgren was summoned to London by Kurt Jooss, whose company had been provided with a refuge at Dartington Hall, in Devon, where Malmgren first encountered Laban. A recital at the Old Vic Theatre brought an offer to join the company, and its tours of Britain, the US, Canada and South America.
But in 1940, Malmgren, who knew himself to be essentially a soloist, decided to leave the company and to chance his luck in Rio de Janeiro. Despite hardship bordering on starvation, he established a school and appeared as a solo artist. He created a tetralogy devoted to the war in Europe, an impressionist cycle based on the preludes of Debussy and Negro spirituals, and a series of studies from the lives of the young mulatto dancers of Rio's streets, which delighted and astounded the Brazilian press for their unexpected empathy.
Malmgren was appointed choreographer to the Casino Copacabana, which led to a series of recitals with two outstanding soloists from the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Tatiana Leskova and Nini Theilade. At last, acclaim led to genuine opportunity.
In 1947, Malmgren returned to Europe with Theilade to appear at the Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen, before embarking on a long tour of Sweden and Finland which reached a triumphant climax at the Concert House in Stockholm and included an appearance in his home town, from which his father pointedly absented himself.
In 1948, Malmgren was awarded a scholarship by Mona Inglesby, prima balle rina of the International Ballet, to study in London and Paris. Eventually he joined the company as Miss Inglesby's partner, distinguishing himself in particular as The Baron in Gaité Parisienne under the direction of Massine before, in 1954, sustaining the injury that ended his stage career.
A casual encounter on a bank holiday evening led to him being introduced to Harold Lang, a maverick advocate of the work of Stanislavski. Lang coerced almost everyone he knew into attending Malmgren's movement classes - students were to include Sean Connery, Diane Cilento, Natasha Parry, Patricia Neal, Gillian Lynne, Anthony Hopkins, Brain Bedford, Elizabeth Fielding and the directors Peter Brook, Tony Richardson, Bill Gaskill, Michael Blakemore, Seth Holt and Alexander Mackendrick.
Later in 1954, Malmgren was invited by Devine to work at the Royal Court and by Rudolf Laban to join the staff of the Art of Movement Studio in Addlestone, Surrey. The next year he assisted Brook and Gielgud on The Tempest.
In 1960, Lang's influence once again proved decisive. Invited to join the staff of the Central School of Speech and Drama by John Blatchley, Lang made his acceptance of the offer dependent on the appointment of Malmgren as director of movement. Here at last the doors to European theatre were thrown wide.
Fascinated by rumours reaching them from students on the acting course, other students expressed dissatisfaction at their own syllabuses. The management lost its head, and sacked Malmgren on the trumped-up charge of creating "neck tensions".
Within days seven other teachers, including Lang and Blatchley, had left, to be followed by three quarters of the students. A call to Olivier to save the day was firmly, if politely, rejected, and Drama Centre London was born. The following year, Olivier invited Malmgren to undertake movement training of all National Theatre actors.
Central to Malmgren's approach was the body of work entrusted to him by Laban - a precise, detailed analysis of the non-discursive symbolism of dance, expressing import without specific meaning, and of gesture and the role it plays in underlying the act of speech, which forms the basic abstraction of all drama. This was the source of Malmgren's apparently effortless spell.
He also exerted on the young a fascination as a genuinely cosmopolitan figure, an artist as much at home in Paris, Berlin, Rio or San Francisco as he was in London or Stockholm. Here was a man who had somehow made out in the jungle of the city, whose familiarity with the streets was hardly less than that of Jean Genet, but who was at ease in the Proustian world of the haute bourgeoisie. His loss has left his students of several generations shattered and incredulous.
· Yat Malmgren, dancer and drama teacher, born March 28 1916; died June 6 2002
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Post by Ace on Sept 8, 2006 0:33:47 GMT -5
I was just fixing up some old interviews on my site and found this bit by Malmgren and remembered this discussion and well voila: From Sunday Times Magazine: Moneypenny's New Man (11/95) They remember him at the Drama Centre as one of the hardest workers they ever enrolled, "He worked like a Trojan," says the distinguished Swedish teacher, Yat Malmgren. "He never missed a day." By another of the strange coincidences in Pierce Brosnan's life, Yat Malmgren was the teacher who had coached Sean Connery for the Bond auditions and told him how to get the part in 1961. "There is an enormous difference in psychological type between the two," Malmgren explains. "Sean Connery is intuitive and very Scottish. He will never come out as a lover in front of an audience. Pierce Brosnan’s feminine qualities are much more developed and he has great emotional depth. He is a romantic classical actor, wonderful on stage. He could have been a Laurence Olivier.” Malmgrem is well placed to warn Brosnan of the sacrifices an actor might have to make to play Bond.” “When I worked at the National Theater, Laurence Olivier and Maggie Smith discussed giving the lead male role in Strindberg’s Miss Julie to Sean Connery, but they decided they could not have 007 on the stage at the National Theater.” Malgrem told me something else I didn’t know. “The day it was announced Pierce had got Bond, he sent the Drama Centre an enormous cheque, a really enormous cheque.”
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Post by Lauryn on Oct 10, 2006 21:51:00 GMT -5
HAP ASKS THE STARS!
Hap Erstein
The Palm Beach Post
SECTION: ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
What movie do you wish you had starred in?
Our film critic Hap Erstein posed that question to some of film's top celebrities. The answers might surprise you!
PIERCE BROSNAN:
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
'I'd love to be Indiana Jones . . . but I wouldn't have been as good as Harrison Ford.
'Or Spencer Tracy in anything. He's one of my favorites and my grandfather's favorite. When you sit down and watch Spencer Tracy, you just have this relaxation of "I don't have to worry. I'm in good hands." '
JANE FONDA:
SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE
'Oh, from not so long ago. Something's Gotta Give with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton. I should have played that part. It would have been fun to do and I could have done it, yeah. Or Auntie Mame, that would have been fun.'
SHIRLEY MACLAINE:
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA?!
The title role? The Oscar winner laughs. 'That's good. No, I don't know, just being on the set. Don't you wish George Bush would look at that movie again?'
WILL FERRELL:
STAR WARS
'Probably from a little kid's perspective, I would have to choose the first Star Wars, because I remember being taken out of school for opening day, to wait in line for three hours to see this film that I never even imagined could be made. I was in that world instantly. I couldn't believe how consistently good the first three were. I saw myself as Luke Skywalker, definitely. Maybe even Han Solo. And I'd even take Chewbaccca. I'll get in the outfit.'
FELICITY HUFFMAN:
ROMEO AND JULIET
'OK, I never would have been able to do this, because I couldn't do it at that age, and I was about 170 pounds with a bad perm at that time, but Olivia Hussey in Romeo and Juliet. That I would have loved to have done. That's why I got into acting. I saw that when I was young and I went, "Oooh, I want to do that." '
***
Love Shirley Maclaine's choice for the White House screening room, LOL!
As for Indy and Spencer Tracy, if they ever make (as one long-suffering fan put it) INDIANA JONES (IV) AND THE ESCAPE FROM DEVELOPMENT HELL I would wish that Harrison Ford take a leaf from Tracy and learn to act his age less grudgingly on film, approach a last hurrah as Indy with an old pro's grace and a few poignant intimations, perhaps, of his own mortality. But we all may have our doubts on that score and as to whether the film will ever get made. Even at earlier stages in the development saga was anyone's heart really in it?
I'd rather Harrison Ford go indie instead of Indy and find some interesting character work. You're never sure if he lacks the nerve, or the ambition, or his ego just plain gets in the way.
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Post by Ace on Oct 10, 2006 22:24:05 GMT -5
With Harrison, it's probably a bit of all of the above plus money. I'm also not sure he really loves being an actor so much that he needs to be acting. I've certainly never heard him express passion on that score. He had that one short period in his career when he was trying riskier roles but when they didn't prove to be as financially popular he seems to have stopped bothering. He's had numerous opportunities to go "indie" and he's had the pick of the prime parts -- like Douglas's role in Traffic and turned them down supposedly because of salary. Supposedly the same reason he turned down the Clooney role in Syriana. But to be fair he's turned down a lot of roles as many actors have for a variety of reasons. Ford does his best at playing the everyman beaten down and surviving and keeping on going so he could probably continue that at an older age with larger dollops of mortality and doubt. He's not in the same stratosphere as Tracy as an actor but then he's in a hell of a lot better shape physically than Tracy was in his 60s so he can still rely to some extent on his physicality. He'd do well to also Connery who played his father in the third Indy at a younger age than Ford is now. It's interesting that PB remember's his grandfather's favorite actor. I wonder if they had a TV , took PB to see the films when he was little more than a toddler or just talked about him. They're both right about Tracy though -- a complete pro of an actor that made everything look so deft and natural. Ace
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