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Post by Ace on Feb 12, 2010 16:54:01 GMT -5
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Post by Ace on Feb 12, 2010 17:29:45 GMT -5
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Post by Ace on Feb 13, 2010 0:06:20 GMT -5
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Paola
Adventurer
Posts: 87
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Post by Paola on Feb 13, 2010 3:05:27 GMT -5
The press conference:
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Post by SecondWind on Feb 13, 2010 5:31:39 GMT -5
Wow! The pics are great ! ;D Thanks. The movie was awesome ! It had me on the edge of my seat for most of the time. Whatever you might think of Polanski, this is a definite must see ! Pierce brought his lovely mom to the premiere and they actually stayed in the cinema and watched the whole movie with us.
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Post by Ace on Feb 13, 2010 20:35:12 GMT -5
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Paola
Adventurer
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Post by Paola on Feb 14, 2010 3:38:35 GMT -5
Now there is available photo call and press conference too.
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Post by SecondWind on Feb 14, 2010 20:00:35 GMT -5
Promotional clip from BMW:
A question for the native speakers:
Do you really also say 'toi, toi, toi' or did Pierce pick that up in Germany?
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Post by Ace on Feb 15, 2010 6:17:27 GMT -5
I've never heard Toi, toi, toi as part of the American vernacular - or even British. So my guess is he picked that up in Germany. What does it mean? I'm currently uploading all the photos and the Press Conference and Photocall (thanks for the alert!) - divided in separate files. It should hopefully all be up on my site by tomorrow. (Grrrrr - I've uploaded the conference at least 4 times and it completes then I get an error message and it's not there. ) Reviews and articles are also up. Pierce Brosnan Files: The Ghost Writer pbfiles.t35.com/ghost/index.html
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Paola
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Posts: 87
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Post by Paola on Feb 15, 2010 9:10:33 GMT -5
I've read somewhere in internet:
"Toi, toi, toi" is an offering of good luck. It's often said along with the Greman equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon crossed fingers when hoping for a good outcome.
Is it correct German Fans?
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Post by Andrea on Feb 15, 2010 11:06:18 GMT -5
Yes, that's absolutely correct. Strangely to make this magic wish work you strictly must not say thank you or something like that to the one giving you his toi toi toi. I don't know if it's supposed to turn into a curse otherwise , but at least actors and singers do strongly believe in this little ritual .... and so you often stand there awkwardly because you don't know how to react properly to all these toi toi toi wishes.
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Post by Ace on Feb 15, 2010 15:28:07 GMT -5
Hmmm, I could see how that might be awkward. Thanks for the toi, toi, toi explanation.
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Post by SecondWind on Feb 15, 2010 17:33:26 GMT -5
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Post by Ace on Feb 15, 2010 18:38:52 GMT -5
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Post by steeleinc on Feb 15, 2010 23:22:33 GMT -5
Premiere: Photos #2 for The Ghost Writer (February 12, 2010)
The the links for the photos in the last row of Pierce and his mom aren't working.
Thanks for all your work in getting everything organized and posted.
Debra
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Post by Ace on Feb 16, 2010 11:30:43 GMT -5
Debra - fixed. Thanks for letting me know.
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Post by Ace on Feb 16, 2010 11:54:48 GMT -5
AV Club: Raddom Roles - Olivia Williams www.avclub.com/articles/olivia-williams,38187/ by Scott Tobias February 16, 2010 [EXCERPT] The actor: Olivia Williams, a British performer who broke onto the scene with a prominent role in Kevin Costner’s notorious flop The Postman, and subsequently won key supporting parts as the center of the love triangle in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore and as Bruce Willis’ wife in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense. Williams has enjoyed a career resurgence of late, appearing as a regular cast member on Joss Whedon’s science-fiction series Dollhouse and in a pivotal role as Carey Mulligan’s concerned teacher in An Education. In Roman Polanski’s new thriller The Ghost Writer, Williams stars as the Cherie Blair-like wife of a disgraced former British prime minister in exile. The A.V. Club: How did this movie come together?Olivia Williams: I heard about it a long time ago. They had the character I played in place, and I think I was proposed for the Kim Cattrall character at one stage. It was a rather long time. I think Tilda Swinton was attached to the role I played at one stage, so it all flopped around. And then I didn’t hear anything. I’d never met anyone, I never even got to read a script, I don’t think. And then I heard it was all cast up, and I completely gave up hope. Very suddenly, at the end of last year, it came back, with the character I played, Ruth. After all that time had passed, it was almost instantaneous. They wanted me to do it very suddenly, without a meeting. Usually the casting process is lengthy and humiliating, but in this instance, it was just too easy. I was sitting in a rental car on an L.A. street and my cell phone rang, and it was Roman Polanski on the line. I couldn’t really believe my luck. He said, “See you in Berlin.” I sat staring at a palm tree, thinking how surreal that was. AVC: Did he ask you to audition or just cast you, knowing who you were?OW: I don’t think he knew who I was before lots of people told him. [Laughs.] Thank God, on the basis of the things people said and what I sent, he was prepared to cast me. I did meet him before we started filming. I dashed to Paris to meet him in January, and we got along very well. There was some concern that I wasn’t the right age for the role. They wanted to make sure that I could fit in with the plot, in terms of being the right age, but once that had been got over, it was a very smooth transition to a job, which I said, is not something that happens very often. AVC: Polanski has a reputation as a very demanding director. What was your experience with him like?OW: It’s funny. It’s like anything in life—someone warns you that something’s going to be amazing or difficult or awful, and you say, “I can do that. I can cope with that.” And then when you’re in the middle of it, it may be joyful or tricky, but it’s never difficult in the way you think it’s going to be difficult. [Laughs.] And I thought “I’ve coped with some crazy situations, and I can do this.” But it is so different from the fashionable and accepted way of directing now. AVC: How so?OW: The phrase you usually hear after a cut is “That was great. Perhaps we could have another go. Maybe try it this way.” Even that much direction is prefaced with a lot of praise and encouragement. It’s quite like how you deal with toddlers: positive reinforcement, and then a little suggestion that you might want to try something different. Polanski will stop the take and shout, “No, no, no!” [Laughs.] Which is somewhat alarming the first time it happens. But I was lucky, because Ewan [McGregor] had already been shooting with [Polanski] for about a month before I got there. And he did a faultless impersonation of what it was going to be like. So when it happened, it was like, “Oh yeah. That’s what Ewan said was going to happen.” And so it was a little bit less debilitating than it might have been. AVC: Do you think that directing style could break down somebody weaker?OW: I enjoyed the experience and I liked working with him, once I realized that it’s not some master plot to break the actor down, in the tradition of crazy acting psychology, which I profoundly disapprove of. He actually said as much to me once. He had his head in his hands, and I said, “Roman, I’ve got to tell you, as an actor, seeing the director with his head in his hands… Look, I really want to do what you want me to do.” And he went away and he came back, having obviously thought about what I said. And he said, “When my head is in my hands, I’m closing my eyes and trying to remember what I saw in my head, before any of the stuff.” And he sort of waved his arms toward all the equipment and the set and everybody on it. “Before all this stuff came along. And I’m trying to recreate what I saw in my head.” So my analysis of the situation was that he wasn’t trying to break us down or get a performance out of us by destroying us. He was absolutely, very simply, trying to recreate this clear picture in his head. And the pictures he creates are absolutely perfect, and they are exactly what he saw in his head. Ewan and I said this to each other after we saw the film. Every time he did a “No, no, no!,” he was right. It was really as if a sculptor was asked to sculpt the embodiment of despair—that was the attitude he would strike. But as with every sort of inspiring teacher you ever had who was strict and scary, when you get it right, the sun comes out, and it’s worth it. AVC: So there were times when he was pleased?OW: Yeah. And when he did give you a “Great, great, great!” you were just like, “Thank you, Lord, for this magical moment.” [Laughs.] Once he explained the head-in-the-hands thing, in fact, it just made me want to create the image in his head more. AVC: The film has a very powerful sense of isolation and exile. Was that felt on the set as well?OW: Not really, no. Ewan, you know, is a very genial and entertaining man, and Pierce [Brosnan] is possibly the nicest man in the world. Actually, it was quite a genial set, but the weather and the colors and the actual surroundings were oppressive. But it was a created atmosphere. What was so striking is that Roman had his crew from The Pianist, and we were shooting in Berlin, so there were German and Polish and French people, and I was just sort of enjoying being in this mix of people, all kind of rubbing along together. That felt good. I felt for Ewan, though. There were vast tracts of time where it was him sitting in the car, with the camera on his hands, or with him looking out a window. That must have been isolating for him, but the scenes I was in were quite sociable and creative. I’m not much of a Method actress, so even though my character was quite dark and bad-tempered, I could only do that if I was seeming quite perky. AVC: There are some obvious parallels between your character and some real-life figures. You wouldn’t be inclined, say, to study the behavior of wives of duplicitous politicians?OW: There was very much a sense in my mind that Stephen Frears had covered that ground of impersonating real characters [in The Queen and The Deal]. We took the subject matter and created our own characters. I don’t tend to spend the whole day in the personality of the person I’m playing. But I was very particular about the type of woman Ruth is. She isn’t a British aristocrat, and that was something I discussed with Roman, because occasionally, he would direct me to speak to the servants or to other people as if I was someone who was used to that British way of assuming you’re in charge—a colonial way. But she’s not that. She’s bright, working-class, made via education and ambition. So she’s not at ease. She’s quite awkward and not particularly elegant, and that is what I wanted to achieve, not the assumption that someone like that would be something out of an Oscar Wilde play. She’s tougher and edgier. The point about her is that she’s not the charismatic one. Her husband is charismatic, and because she’s not, she didn’t choose to have the big, center-stage political career. It was my mission, in some ways, to make her abrasive and unattractive.
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Post by Ace on Feb 16, 2010 12:10:50 GMT -5
www.newstatesman.com/blogs/cultural-capital/2010/02/polanski-ending-ghost-filmNew Statesman - The greatest movie endings everPosted by Ryan Gilbey 16 February 2010 And how will Roman Polanski's The Ghost compare?
It's been a while since anyone discussed Roman Polanski as a filmmaker, but let me put aside for now such words as "extradition" and "house arrest" in order to proclaim the giddy brilliance of his new thriller, The Ghost, which premiered last week at the Berlin film festival. The picture is adapted from Robert Harris's scurrilous novel about a ghost-writer (played by Ewan McGregor) hired to pen the memoirs of a former British prime minister (Pierce Brosnan) who is accused of war crimes. Honestly, how do writers come up with such ludicrous and far-fetched stories? I'll be reviewing the film when it opens in the spring, but let me say in advance that the ending is an absolute humdinger. (No need to avert your eyes: when it comes to surrendering secrets, I'm like Jack Straw at the Chilcot Inquiry.) The final pages of the original novel were satisfying enough, but Polanski has conjured a closing image that stays true to Harris's prose while elevating it into the realms of cinematic poetry. The director, you will recall, has form in this area. His creepy 1976 horror-comedy The Tenant closed on a devastating final image -- the screaming mouth of a figure wrapped in bandages. And it was Polanski who famously jettisoned the upbeat conclusion of Chinatown favoured by the screenwriter, Robert Towne. The original script ended with Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) killing her revolting father, Noah Cross (John Huston), by whom she had borne a daughter. "You knew that Evelyn was going to have to stand trial and you knew that she wasn't going to be able to tell why she did it," Towne explained. "But it was bittersweet in the sense that one person, at least, wasn't tainted -- the child." Polanski was having none of it. In his autobiography, Roman by Polanski (later revealed, irony of ironies, to have been ghost-written), the director said: "I knew that if Chinatown was to be special, and not just another thriller where the good guys triumph in the final reel, Evelyn had to die. Its dramatic impact would be lost unless audiences left their seats with a sense of outrage at the injustice of it all . . . To this day Towne feels my ending is wrong; I am equally convinced that his more conventional ending would have seriously weakened the picture." Good call. No, great call. Towne observed correctly that Polanski's ending "was like the tunnel at the end of the light". It's a cert for one of the greatest movie endings of all time. But here is a handful of unsung sign-offs that deserve some love: Brighton Rock (1947)Admirers of the Boulting brothers' film of Graham Greene's novel, co-scripted by Greene himself (with Terrence Rattigan), tend to turn up their noses on the altered ending, in which Rose never discovers Pinkie's hatred of her -- the vinyl record on which he has recorded his malevolent message has a scratch in it, so she stays happy in her delusion as the needle gets stuck. Greene saw it as a compromise, but a clever one: "Anybody who wanted a happy ending would feel that they had had a happy ending," Greene said. "Anybody who had any sense would know that the next time Rose would probably push the needle over the scratch and get the full message." "But is the film version really softer than the original?" wondered the novelist Jake Arnott. "It has always struck me that it is much more cruel. Rose's horror is simply postponed." It'll be interesting to see how things are wrapped up in the forthcoming second adaptation, starring Sam Riley as Pinkie and Helen Mirren as Ida, which opens later this year. Before Sunset (2004)Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, the garrulous romantics of Before Sunrise, meet again, nine years later. He's married with kids now; she has a boyfriend. After 80 minutes of walking and talking around Paris, he ends up back at her apartment. "Baby, you're gonna miss that plane," she tells him. He agrees she's right. Cue fade out -- possibly the most tantalising fade-out, in fact, in all of cinema. Limbo (1999)The over-praised John Sayles wrote and directed this oddity, which starts as a tentative romance between two middle-aged loners and darkens to become a cruel thriller. I still can't make up my mind if I like the ending but the fact that it still bothers me 11 years after seeing it surely counts for something. It's not a widely-seen film, so I'll hold back on the spoilers, apart from saying that the picture ends with all the jarring suddenness of an emergency stop. My Own Private Idaho (1991)River Phoenix, as a narcoleptic hustler, has passed out in the middle of a country road. In extreme wide-shot his unconscious body is lifted into a car by a stranger. The car drives off. Cue "The Old Main Drag," The Pogues' finest hour. A perfect finish to an erratic movie. Ryan Gilbey blogs for Cultural Capital every Tuesday. He is also the New Statesman's film critic.
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Post by Ace on Feb 16, 2010 18:35:27 GMT -5
www.ugo.com/movies/pierce-brosnan-ghost-writer-interviewUGO: I'm Not Tony Blair, I Swear!Pierce Brosnan discusses what it is like to make a movie about a man at the center of a huge scandal with Roman Polanski.
Those of you not confined to your homes with ankle bracelets have a treat coming this weekend. Summit Entertainment is releasing The Ghost Writer, what may very well be the last film from the acclaimed and controversial director/scuzzbucket Roman Polanski. Whatever your thoughts are about this fascinating, troubled man, one thing is undeniable: he's made some incredible movies. And The Ghost Writer is one of them. It is a thriller in an old school, Hitchcockian fashion and deserves your attention. More so than most movies, you should try to see this with as little foreknowledge as possible. Just know that Pierce Brosnan, who is still in theaters as a wise Centaur in Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lighting Thief, plays a very Tony Blair-ish ex-Prime Minister underneath the scrutiny of a massive scandal. We had the good fortune to talk with Pierce. Here are some highlights. Jordan Hoffman: So you were in Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lighting Thief with Medusa and Hades, but if you want to talk about something scary, you want to talk about politicians.Pierce Brosnan: Precisely! Jordan Hoffman: On paper this is a Tony Blair type. And you can intellectualize that after the fact all you like. But while I was watching it, I wasn't thinking about Blair at all.Pierce Brosnan: Roman and I established right off the bat that this wasn't going to be Tony Blair. I read the book and I knew what was put down, but I wanted to make sure we didn't go down that road and we didn't discuss it ever again. It's a man who is an actor playing a Prime Minister, basically. There is a sense of irony in that it is me - you come with a certain baggage as an actor, of course, and in my case James Bond is always prevalent going into something like this, but you have to just go to the text. A man who knows his life is over as he knows it. A sham of a man holding on to a thread, and he has no qualms asking what to do in the company of lawyers or anyone. But he can still make speeches with an oratorical voice. Jordan Hoffman: Is Roman Polanski more dictatorial than other directors on set?
Pierce Brosnan: He knows what he wants. He's a Grand Master. His presence is very, very strong on the set. He's been a long time into the world of thrillers but he has never done a political thriller. He's certainly mischievous. My first day was supposed to be a very easy day and then at the very last minute he switched it and gave me a very lengthy, six page dialogue scene to do. The scene on the jet at the end. Jordan Hoffman: Wow - that's a heckuva scene to do first. Was that purely scheduling, or some sort of puppet master plan?Pierce Brosnan: Scheduling. But I did wonder, though. Jordan Hoffman: But someone like Polanski makes you wonder about every choice like that. Maybe he wanted something out of you on your very first day for that big, revelatory scene. Who knows?Pierce Brosnan: It's funny. We went and rehearsed and Roman says, "let's shoot," so we sat on the plane and Ewan McGregor sat opposite me and we knew our lines, it seemed like a simple set up, we rehearsed some more and then Roman looked at the guards and the laptop and all the other props and then it was one o'clock and it was lunch! And we hadn't shot a thing. And then he put his hands up camera style in front of my face and said, "after lunch we go close on Pierce with the 27 lens." And I thought, "Man, I was ready to go at 7 o'clock and I've been anxious the whole way and now it is time for lunch!" So I wondered if maybe he was playing with me, who knows? We'll never know. . . . Jordan Hoffman: The scene when all the characters are together and the lawyers are there and the helicopter appears and they are suddenly on CNN, and panic sets in. Do we go to London? Do we go to Washington? That was the first time I thought about Roman's legal situation and thought - ah, okay. This is why Roman is making this movie. How conscious are people on set of Roman's situation when you are making a scene like this?Pierce Brosnan: Well, yes, we are aware of Roman's history. I read the biographies - or as much as I could stomach before throwing them away. I wanted to experience Roman as a director, as a man, as a father, and his troubles are in the past, even though you knew he was a fugitive. But, yes, it permeates his world. Hopefully there will be closure soon. But you feel it. The movie's in the can and Roman's in the can, right? This is a man who spends his life with the Sword of Damocles at his throat. The movie is so claustrophobic and here's a man running from the furies of life. A man being hunted and hounded in a gray bunker in Martha's Vineyard enshrouded in winter. And here's a man in Gstaad with an ankle bracelet. So you can't help be shocked. Jordan Hoffman: This is all subtext - you never discuss it with him, right?Pierce Brosnan: No. No one discusses it. I never did, I don't think Ewan did. The book is a great page turner, you read the book, but then comes the cinematic vocabulary of Roman Polanski so it transforms and becomes palpable. Jordan Hoffman: Let's talk about the house! That staircase! Best movie staircase in since -- Pierce Brosnan: Fantastic staircase. Magnificent. Jordan Hoffman: Let's talk hypothetical about these new Bond movies. Let's say you were approached to enter this new world of 007 in some sort of elder statesmen role, would you be game?Pierce Brosnan: Why not? Anything is possible. I don't have any ego about that. I love what Daniel Craig is doing with it. If the script, timing and money was right, why not? I don't know anything of which you speak, by the way, but why not - it's all a game.
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Post by Ace on Feb 17, 2010 0:19:01 GMT -5
www.aintitcool.com/node/44015?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitterMr. Beaks And Pierce Brosnan Ponder The Paranoid Politics Of THE GHOST WRITER!Given that Adam Lang, the disgraced former British Prime Minister of Robert Harris's bestselling political thriller THE GHOST, bears a rather uncomplimentary resemblance to one Mr. Tony Blair, it's unlikely the real-life former British Prime Minister was at all interested in who might play the thinly-veiled him in Roman Polanski's big-screen adaptation, THE GHOST WRITER. However, when he found out his fictional counterpart would be played by ex-007 Pierce Brosnan, one can't help but wonder if Blair didn't at least let out a tiny squeal of delight. The film might take him for a cuckolded buffoon, but at least he'd be a suave cuckolded buffoon. While Lang's alleged misdeeds mirror those of Blair's, Brosnan thought it best the resemblance not extend to Lang's physical appearance: ergo, rather than don a comically large pair of prosthetic ears, he gives Lang the ol' movie star sheen. It's a wise decision; anything on the nose would've launched the film into spoof territory. It is, however, worth noting that when the crowds and the cameras aren't around, Lang throws tantrums that are downright Bush-like in their sense of entitlement. As Brosnan says in the below interview, Lang is a man who's used to being loved and getting his way; now that he's in exile, dodging charges that he illegally extradited British citizens to Guantanamo Bay, he's turned into a petulant child. So, for this American at least, it's enticing to view Polanski's film as something of a double indictment. Since THE GHOST WRITER is told exclusively from the perspective of the young writer (Ewan McGregor) hired to take down and shape the Prime Minister's memoirs, we're never allowed access to Lang's thoughts (or lack thereof). Is he a cipher or a brilliant statesman who got drunk on power during a time of war? Every time we think we know the answer, Polanski and Harris (who's nimbly adapted his own novel) throw us for a loop. But what really confounds us - and what helps make the film an enormous amount of fun - is that behind Brosnan's carefully constructed facade, there's the potential for both. This is my favorite Brosnan performance since his underrated turn in Richard Shepard's THE MATADOR, so I was delighted to sit down and chat with him a few weeks ago during an eerily quiet Los Angeles press day. With nearly everyone out of town for the Sundance Film Festival, the vibe was unusually relaxed at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons. Neither of us felt rushed, so, after a couple of minutes of small talk, we just casually worked our way into talking about the movie. All interviews should go this smoothly. Pierce Brosnan: Well, I'm proud of the movie. I've been a big fan of Mr. Roman Polanski's since ROSEMARY'S BABY. I've always held him in high esteem as a moviemaker. When I got the call, I was in London, and was asked if I'd like to meet with him. So I hopped on the train to Paris, had a bit of lunch with him, talked about the movie, and established that I wasn't doing an imitation of [Tony] Blair. I would just play it as if I was an actor playing the Prime Minister! That's what my job entailed. Within it is the tragedy of this man's lost life, mangled by and his own stupidity. He's caught in the crosshairs. Mr. Beaks: Because of his theater background, I imagine Adam Lang came into office envisioning himself as one of Shakespeare's kings. Brosnan: It's wildly Monty Python-ish if you take it those extremes. (Laughs) He got so carried away and enamored of his performance on stage, and applauded by his peers of the day, he thought he could be a politician - and did become one! He was very good with the written word and speeches, but his intellectual drive was somewhat lacking. Beaks: Do you think it's a lack of life experience or education that is his ultimate undoing? Brosnan: It's his ego that gets in the way. He's not paying attention. And before he knows it, . It's so shocking. As a grown man, he's so weak. And getting to play that is rather enjoyable and funny.
Beaks: Do you think he's aware of how weak he looks to everyone around him?
Brosnan: I think he does at this point in the story. He's cornered by his ego, his lack of awareness and his fallibility as a politician. I think he's very aware that life has slipped him by, and he doesn't know how to get out of it. He's caught in this vortex: he signed off on papers between the Americas that he shouldn't have signed off on; he's walked into issues that were way over his head. He's a tragic fellow, really.
Beaks: So he's hoping his memoirs will restore his good name and resuscitate his political career.
Brosnan: But that's even hollow for him as well because he has nothing to say. The book is a whole front. (Pauses and smiles.) I knew the story, and yet it held me to the end. I think the film jumps out the track really fast and furious, then slows and loses its way, and then kicks back at the end. There's always, because of the Polanski touch, that claustrophobic camera. And I think the ending is brilliant.
Beaks: The film is unmistakably Polanski, but he never made a paranoid political thriller during his '70s prime. So, in a way, it feels like his nod to the movies of Alan J. Pakula or Sydney Pollack.
Brosnan: Very much so. It's really a throwback to old-style filmmaking and storytelling. As you say, he never made a political thriller, so for him to go back to the thriller genre... you're aware, as an actor, that you're in the hands of one of the great conductors. When I was working with him, he just loved the camera so much. He was always beside the camera, never on the monitor; he was always right there looking at you. So you have this interconnect, this rapport with the fellow. His viewfinder was ever at the ready. (Laughs) I was sitting on the dolly one day watching him do a close-up with an actor, and I looked in his bag of tricks beside the camera and saw his viewfinder. It's old, worn, and burnished with time; all the numbers have been rubbed off, and there's all this gaffer's tape. You look through it, and it's like looking through some ancient dark glass. He's obviously had this for many years. It's always with him. And he's always at that camera trying to heighten the experience for the audience.
Beaks: It seems like every director needs to be on monitor nowadays. Have you ever worked with another director who wasn't?
Brosnan: No. Every director I've worked with is on monitor. Very rarely, they sit beside the camera to say "Action". But they're usually in the other room watching the monitor. I mean, there's no right or wrong way; at the end of the day, if the thing works, that's it. Roman just loves making films. I suppose if there's any lesson, it's just that of living a very long, very complicated, very tragic life - but still being very passionate about films. Physically, he was like a young boy at times, a child. He was just so eager to get the job done that he'd physically shake his hands and get so impatient. It could be off-putting to people, but I found him very challenging. You're on your mettle with him as an actor; you want to work hard for him. As long as you don't mind line readings...
Beaks: (Laughs) Really?
Brosnan: Yes. He's an actor, so he loves to give you line readings.
Beaks: Would you take his line readings?
Brosnan: At the beginning he gave me line readings. Then he left me alone. I mean, the first day's work was the scene on the Gulfstream. That's a six-and-a-half-page scene. It wasn't meant to be the first scene; the first week was supposed to be little bits and pieces. But I left L.A. on a Friday, got into Berlin, started work that Monday, and he asked if I was ready to do this scene. Luckily, I knew my lines, so I said, "Let's do it." We rehearsed at seven o'clock in the morning; Ewan knew his lines, I knew my lines, so we got on the Gulfstream. We were seated, and it looked like it was going to be on me first. I think, "Okay, the camera will probably be up there. We're going to do a master [shot] this way. Then we'll come down tighter and tighter." Well, Roman proceeded to talk about the luggage, and sort out the props - the laptops, the guys' guns and so on. The morning went on, we rehearsed all of that, and then at about five minutes until one, he came up to me and said, "Alright, Pierce. After lunch, 27 lens!" And I was like, "Fuck me, you've got to be kidding! I was ready to go at seven o'clock in the morning! Now I've got to wait through lunch?" So I went back to my trailer, worried some more, came out, and... I wasn't sure if he was messing with me. Everything was in order, really; he could've done [that shot] straight away. I think he just had his way of letting the morning go.
Beaks: Perhaps he wanted you back on your heels. At that point in the movie, your character is backed into a corner and then lashes out.
Brosnan: Yeah, he might've wanted that. I mean, I knew what he was doing. He was messing. But at that time, I just threw it away, and I had a good day. That was my first day: straight into the movie on a 27 lens. (Laughs)
Beaks: You mentioned that you didn't use Tony Blair as a reference for your character. That's apparent in the film. But it does seem like the character - particularly in how he's written and presented - is perhaps a Tony Blair/George W. Bush hybrid. You demeanor is very often petulant, and that's something we often saw out of Bush.
Brosnan: I didn't go towards George W. Bush. I just looked at Blair and Cameron, watched various films and interviews of them - never to replicate who they were or what they were, but just to see who they were in tone of voice and posture. And Lang is rather childlike. He's definitely petulant. He's used to getting his own way. And when he doesn't get his own way, he loses it.
Beaks: I'll use my last question to ask about the status of the THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR sequel. The first film has endured; it's really a terrific little movie. Is the sequel moving forward? Is it still called THE TOPKAPI AFFAIR?
Brosnan: It won't be called THE TOPKAPI AFFAIR. At the moment it's just THOMAS CROWN. Or THOMAS CROWN 2. TC2. That's what's on the scripts - and there have been a few. (Laughs) We'll do it. We must do it. It wasn't my idea to do it, but I'm going to do it. No names mentioned of who wanted us to do it, but studio heads have such bright ideas. Yes, the character has endured; it seems to have created its own life. So to see this man ten years down the line still doing what he does - living the life, doing a bit of thievery, and a love affair with some beautiful woman - why not? We're making our best effort to do it. It's not easy, but our best effort. Dear old MGM is... dear old MGM, you know? (Laughs) It's just trying to sort itself out again.
Roman Polanski's THE GHOST WRITER opens in limited release this Friday, February 19th, and I highly recommend checking it out (in fact, it would make a great "Living Legend" double feature with Martin Scorsese's SHUTTER ISLAND). I'll be back tomorrow with my full review of THE GHOST WRITER, and, next week, an interview with novelist Robert Harris.
Faithfully submitted,
Mr. Beaks
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