(They give the usual background, his past work,etc. A mention of Keanu Reeves gets giggles, Ken is introduced...much wild applause ensues)
Intro to Much Ado:
Ken: I want to know why Keanu Reeves' name always gets a reaction...only in America...I think he's great...I hope you think he's great in this role, actually.
(apologises for having to reschedule, etc.) Unfortunately I seem to have brought the weather (heavy rain) from England, now that you're going to watch *this* film, which is sort of...(They dim the lights)...Oh, they're starting already...[laughter]...(Lights back up)... A friend of mine described this as an advertisement for the Tuscan Tourist Board...We did have a fantastic time... Well, I'll give you a quick insight into what actors are like. I'll bet there are a few actors here tonight, [applause, etc.] you see, they're noisy that's how you always know. The actors in this film turned up on their first day, and...you may agree, it's an extraordinary place, it's fantastic, wonderful light, and extraordinary landscape, and great culture, and vista, and just a terrific place to be. So, they all arrive awestruck wandering around this amazing Villa that we shot in and we're all going around like this..."I've never, never worked in a location like this before...it's the most extraordinary thing...I'm so fond of it...to be part of this experience, Shakespeare and"... "Day 2- It's so f--king Hot!"..."Day 3- I hate pasta! Why don't they have anything else."...I don't think it was the Americans doing this, it was lots of Brits doing that. Anyway, I'll shut up now. This is Much Ado About Nothing, it's a play full of sunshine and heart, and silliness, you know, rather like the title, and some of the other titles of the other plays, As You Like It, Twelfth Night; or What You Will, it's something to take as indeed you like it. It's something we were very proud of doing, had a wonderful time, I think that feeling is in the movie, please enjoy the film....
Much Ado About Nothing screening...
Question & Answer
(I missed the question, something about film adaptations of Shakespeare) Well you have to make decisions about whether you are going to cut the plays, this one was significantly cut, as you probably have noticed. Um... and the Hamlet obviously is not cut, I suppose that was...ah...[laughter]...somebody once asked me what's Hamlet about, I said it's about 4 hours...[laughter]...Hamlet was an attempt to see whether there was now an audience out there who were prepared to take on a full unexpurgated text, even though many people still argue about what was a full text of Hamlet. But, in the case of this film, and with Henry V, there was a clear idea, what is the tolerance level for a big talking picture, I suppose, where, you know, there was lots of dialogue, and where you were trying to achieve what's always been a little controversial, in stuff that I've done, which is the amount of music in the film. I've been talking to people who are outraged by the amount of music, there's alot in this, there's alot of music in Hamlet, but, that's often been a tool to make this bridge between the stage and the screen, to try and take away some of the fear that people may have about not understanding. And music is a very good way of letting people know what the scene is about and perhaps we're right, in that, if they are nervous about laughing at 400 yr.old jokes, allowing them to pass and accept the scene and respond to it, and not feel as though the film is some kind of intelligence test. So, I suppose the 3 films that I directed have been sort of trying to stretch each time...what I think the audience might be prepared to consider, given that there is this magical thing, that I certainly can't put my finger on, but one of the reasons why I am attracted to this kind of work which is, that it is the work of a poet, whose music, if you like, is having an impact on us beyond our conscious understanding of what he's actually saying, that there's something in the structure of the lines, in the sounds of the words, in the way they are put together, that infects the soul, ...not to be too pretentious...in part pretentious [laughter]... But, it just, it has an impact beyond anything that I could as a director try to initiate. So Hamlet was an attempt to see what the whole *spell* of that great epic, sort of gothic castle of a play, as someone once described it, would have, so...[pause] I just get excited.
Question about how he adapted his acting method from the stage to the screen.
Ken: I've always been resistant to the kind of Shakespearean acting where people stand like *that* (old-time acting pose) wear kind of curtain material, and walk around (he begins to demonstrate bad acting & bellowing [laughter]) It's just so self-conscious, it's just as easy to do, I've been guilty of it and lots of people laugh, I'm aware, but, it's just that, been a thrill being an actor in it with an extrordinary playwright who always makes you look better than you are, brighter than you are and everything else and the fear is that you've got to live up to it and somehow you bring across a seriousness and pretentiousness to everything, your body, your voice. I want to try to find a way to cut away at that and have people speak, as they might speak in life and do this thing that acknowledges the fact that the language is, whatever, 400 yrs.old, and you ought to know what everything means, and when you have several guides on each film, there's a text expert there, Russell Jackson that's a Director of the Shakespeare Institute, in England, a fellow who works with me, who watches my performance called Hugh Cruttwell, who was the principal of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art when I was trained, who is a terrific drama coach in that his only interest is in what's truthful, so with a combination of those people, and actually the collection of casts of actors, who one feels are interested in, serving the play, rather than, what is very easy in Shakespeare, which I get a lot of completely superfluous credit for, which is, a sort of, grandizing thing, people think that I'm much more intelligent than I am, quite frankly, because I've been involved with these films. That's just a fact. You see, you have to somehow try and resist that and talk in all instances about what happens in the plays that makes some direct accessible connection to modern life for you, so in this it's reasonably simple, I think you know people, everybody in this room has fallen in love, I expect, everybody's done rediculous things in response to their reactions in love, and have reacted violently to what appeared to be, you know, great slights to the very trivial things, so, I rehearse alot, we rehearse and we talk about what we think the play is about, and just try to stop people talking in silly voices, and basically from scene to scene, line to line, moment to moment, there is, "do I believe you" and, then you do the stage making his language styles naturalistic, without killing poetry, and yes, they do have to hit the end consonants, you know it isn't caught to say Rosencrantz and Guildenstern rather than Rosencrantz 'n' Guildenstern. there's lots of kinds of sloppiness that can happen, I'm a little bit of a fascist about that. But I want that to happen without people realizing it.
Question: Could you please consider making a movie of Henry IV-pt.1?
Ken: It's very kind of you to say that, If I can quote another Elizabethan, "Times winged chariot is hurrying near" and I think he's hurried near, and he's hurried right past me. [laughter] So I think probably, the time has come and gone, I think, actually, when on film, and this isn't a cue for any kind of reaction, I think the time has come and gone when I can do that, also, there is this, I think magnificant film version of those Henry IV plays by Orson Welles, "Chimes at Midnight", which are a pretty remarkable piece, at that. In another life, it would be fantastic.
Question: Are there plays that you feel you don't want to touch, because there is a version already out there?
Ken: I used to think it would be nice to create this company, The Shakespeare Film Company, and do all the plays on film, but, I don't know if any of you saw on television, the BBC Shakespeare, the great, sort of cannonized version of all the plays, and it was more or less a disaster. Partly because, I hope none of the directors are here [laughs], it was partly because, I think the intention was to create this great sort of, cultural thing, so I think that when you get caught up in the idea of the plays almost like collecting parts, you know, if I do another three, I'll have a set.
The process of making a film, anyway, in my experiences is so intense, and often painful, and agonizing, and subject to all sorts of highs and lows, and takes a long time, that you wouldn't do it unless you are passionately committed to the story, and I certainly don't have 37 ideas of fantastic films of these plays, but, I know, I mean...spectacularly I've not been put off by previous film versions, first of all, we made Henry V, there are plays that are so adaptable, and so responsive to different times, or different imaginations coming into them, that any version is legitimate, if you feel you have a coherant, or just a passion and vision about it, so I'm not put off by any previous filmmakers, and there's maybe a couple of plays maybe down the line, I'd love to do,...that *do* have existing, excellent, versions, so I guess I'll be risking the Wrath of the Gods at some point.
Question about why he chose to have Hamlet and Ophelia have sexual relationship.
Ken: A question about why in Hamlet we chose to have Hamlet and Ophelia have a *sexual* relationship, [laughter] we can use that phrase here, Well, you know, when you do the play I think that at least the actor playing Hamlet, and playing Ophelia, usually have some sort of discussion about whether they *did* or *didn't*. There are you know, lines that suggest it, and there are lines that suggest they didn't, and the other thing you know, I suppose is, based on a very sort of open interpretation that you can make, but, we felt that they had, and I wanted to maybe that for some people in two obvious ways just remind people that the play is very much connected to very strong emotions...Hamlet...in a way, we're not trying to reduce it, I was trying to make it on some level as simple as possible. When we meet Hamlet, this great kind of cultural icon, you know, that people have maybe heard about...or they know there's a skull involved...or there's a guy with tights on, anyway...and there's a line in it, "To be or not to be"...When we meet him, he misses his Dad, you know, he's lost his Dad, not very hard to understand, if we haven't understood that we'd be forced to at some point, everybody in this room, nobody cannot at some point connect with that, and the same with, you know, this sort of intense, kind of forbidden love affair. Then there's a problem, when she's mad she talks about, "Thou hadst not come to my bed" during the mad songs and stuff, and we chose to take that literally, and we thought carefully about what happened, this kind of backstory, so Old Hamlet dies, and, within a month, his mother is married, so what does Hamlet do in that month, and where is Ophelia, what happens to Gertrude, well, Gertrude obviously gets to go to Claudius, so many people find it difficult to imagine, but, grief does very strange things to people, there's often that keenest reaction against the loss of life, which is our great...like we imagine Gertrude goes off with Claudius, you know, in some agonized intense way, transferring the sense of loss into a need to create and with someone very close to her, who uniquely understood, so somehow we rationalize that, and at the same time Hamlet is lost, his mom's not speaking to him, because otherwise you wouldn't be so suprised when a month later, she just married his uncle, so who is he speaking to? probably Ophelia. Ophelia, on her own, in a castle where her father is eventually going to prevent her from seeing him, where the royal opinion anyway, is very constrain. So we imagine them in some secret very intense trist during this month, and we felt it made sense, it put Ophelia on edge, it meant that her whole relationship with her father to whom she felt obedience and love,... if you believe was also charged with this tremendous alligence to Hamlet, and the unique charge, of probably the first, in the case of casting someone like Kate Winslet, who, you know, is very young, sort of adolescent, hormonally Whacko [laughter] a confused kind of sexuality, but it just, it kind of put a flame under it, that we were happy about. People's reactions to it, you know, obviously anything between Yeaaah [laughter] and appalled, anyway, there's some of the reasons behind it.
Question: When are you thinking about doing for your next Shakespeare?
Ken: OK...(lots of...well...um...ahh,etc)...I want to be very specific about these things, because you may assume that somehow I only have to pick up a phone now, and ring some Hollywood types, "I want to do this play", and it will all be lovely. Each time has been a nightmare, you know. Hamlet? Imagine that?..."it's 4 hours"..."There was one like 5 years ago with Mel Gibson, I don't know if you've heard of him?" ..."Now it's with Meeee?"..."It's longer but it's wider, because it's 70mm."...What are you bringing to your new Hamlet?..."It's *wider*, it's much WIDER" [much laughter and applause] 400yrs. all this is my great contibution, Hamlet is Wider!
The next one I quite fancy doing is Love's Labor's Lost. Which is not actually not terribly often done on the stage, and it's so, well I believe a young-ish play, the language is very often obscure, it makes alot of play of Elizabethan conceits, love of language, the way language disguises things, there are jokes so obscure, that quite frankly, you need to go to Yale to understand them. And so that would be a play that I would...anyway, I would make that as a musical, and...ah... [an audience member starts to laugh] Yes, you can laugh, [much laughter] the thing of it is...When I walk into the studios, it's exactly the same thing, "I want to do Love's Labor's Lost as a musical, everybody laughs. Love what? Love Labored who?...Start with the title, so I'm across the desk with like 4 executives, start with the title, what does the title mean, Love's Labor's Lost, so you walk into the local multiplex, you know, PEACEMAKER...love's labor's lost...so at least I don't talk about it much, because it would be like, as we would say in Ireland, rudely, shoving shit uphill with a stick, to try and get this thing going. But I would like to make it as a musical, and cut it, and it probably will be romantic, and all the rest, but things that I can really only say in the end, trust me, just trust me, and you know, I have an Idea, I have an idea about this, and then go through the whole thing..."we think Arnold would be great, he's looking to expand his range."...[lots of laughs] I don't know, I don't know, I'm open minded but ... so, I'll just have go again at the screenplay, and see if I can put somebody on.
Question: In your Shakeapeare films, you often work with the same people, like Richard Briers, Brian Blessed, and Emma Thompson, do you think that brings anything to the performances, that you all know each other so well, that you perform better?
Ken: Well I'm not working with Emma Thompson quite so much anymore [laughter]... That said...[roaring laughter]...She's lovely, we're just pals, and we'll work together again.
But, no that's a good question, for me it's important, because in many films it's such a wierd thing, you know, you often don't rehearse, and suddenly you come in, Day 1, and you might be in bed with somebody on Day 1, and you haven't met them, and yes, it's a marvelous thing about acting, [laughter] but I like a rehersal period, and when you have worked with people before, even if they're not the exclusive kind of group that you're working with, they have a relaxation, that means that, in this very difficult process, with this high work, trying to do many things, you want to make old language sound real, do you want to make it exciting, visual, and you know, da de da...and all this stuff, it's just good to be like further down the track, you know, and it certainly doesn't mean, I didn't mean you should get smug, because in fact when you work regularly with people, they're that much more able to challenge you, they feel more able to question things, and it makes it pretty vibrant, and I think it means that new people coming into that scenario, relax quicker, so that for me is very important, and I enjoy something, that I used to enjoy in the theatre, anyway, which is, you know, you go to see a play one night, people are playing one kind of part, you go the next night, they're playing something completely different, that's a bit of a thrill, and I enjoy it other people's film work, watching people play different roles, there's a certain kind of extra thrill that you have, so for me it's important and it certainly extends to the crew, I've worked with the same kinds of people in different departments, so you have to kind of change it round.
Question: Do you have projects planned that aren't Shakespeare? And if so, how do you feel that your reputation as basically the great Shakeapeare man of our day [laughs] is that something you feel trapped by, because the masses see you in a certain way.
Ken: I'm so trapped I can barely walk. No, I don't really have a sense of that, and in fact the last couple of years with other Shakespeare films, excellent ones, I thought Romeo and Juliet was a dazzling piece of filmmaking, and really got to the heart of the play in a very particular way, the same with the Richard III, I find something exciting for me releasing...banging up against these plays in all sorts of ways...so I feel totally released from the Idea of somehow carrying this alleged mantle, that doesn't bother me because I don't think about it. I'd like to write some more, I have some things, I'd like to do, I've been working solidly for the last year acting in other people's films, when I finished Hamlet, I just started acting in other people's films, and that's been great, and I've been working on this Woody Allen film at the moment, I finish that this week, and I have, as they say, nothing in view. So I'm very glad to be at a point where, it feels as though,...there's a book I want to write, there's a million things I fancy exploring, but nothing settled, I think that seems to be a good thing, that I'm waiting for the next thing to tell me what it is to do, so I'm pretty open at the moment.
Question: A lot of the roles that you play seem to have this great artistic integrity, have you ever just done something for shits and giggles?
Ken: [laughter] Shits and giggles, sure...actually, I've had quite alot of those shits and giggles on the things that I've done for the artistic integrity if I may say, because, if you can't have a giggle when it's so, it is such a sort of unnaturally intense world making a film, such money involved, and neatly scripted, and it also gets people tightly wound up, so if you aren't having a laugh, there's something wrong. I spoke to a couple of people tonight that have begun to understand that in the last year, I've done 3 or 4 movies all very sort of eccentric and wierd in their way, but I think quite interesting, certainly I was compelled to do them, I was interested to do them, I just was drawn to the scripts and the people involved, and I suppose having done Hamlet, you know what I'd love to do, is a movie for a pot of money, I'd like to, even if it takes 90 trillion squillion dollars, you know then I could persuade someone else to do like a 9hr. King Lear or something...[laughter] something to look forward to in your old age, isn't it, but, so far I've not just had the luxury. Thank Christ, I'm (knocks on wood) sort of just following my instinct, and that usually involved a few giggles along the way.
Question: You've worked on stage in the past, what do you miss if anything, and would you ever consider doing more stage work in the future?
Ken: I'm sure I will do more stage work in the future, the last thing I did was 4 yrs. ago, was in fact, Hamlet with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and that was the complete version on stage. The thing that irritates me about it was, I resent very much the influence and power of the critics in the theatre. You know, you make a film, spectacularly...Frankenstein I made which was universally panned critically, and did OK around the world at the box office, but at least, you know, it lives on video, people have different opinions about it. so you could say there's a lot of effort into the theatre. A small group of people can appear to dictate, often with a strange agenda, how it's remembered. And I resist that about the theatre, I get frustrated that people have to pay so much to go, and it's hard to get in, and last time there were just alot of people who couldn't get in, so that frustrates me, but I do think the live experience is unique and thrilling, so I couldn't imagine not doing it, but since I've not been doing it, which is partly a concerted attempt to practice more in cinema, you know, I felt that it was getting to be uncomfortable going from one to the other, I didn't think that I was doing either well enough, or in a concentrated enough fashion. The more I've been away from it, the more what I know from the theatre, I'm completely overwhelmed with admiration for those doing it, you know, the playwrights and the actors, when it works it's just sensational. But I'd be scared quite frankly, I'd be scared, and even though I've done trillions of plays, and remembered lots of words, as it were, I'd be very scared, I have to feel very, very comfortable about doing any of these kinds of parts. You know there are some parts I would really like to play, but I'd be pretty scared about doing it, live. So I have to work my way back to the point where I feel I can.
Question: I know Hamlet was a dream of yours for a long long time, now that it's done, and you can't go back to it, is there anything you would have done differently?
Ken: Well I think one thing actually, I was talking to someone about this the other day, In the "To be or not to be" soliloquy, which we did into the mirror, I knew there was something I'd been trying to get, something I couldn't remember at the time. I'm sure some of you, if not all of you have seen Citizen Kane, there's a shot in Citizen Kane where Orson Welles walks by a mirror, appears to walk by, and then a minute later, he does walk by in actual fact, but he obviously does something with a mirror here, and about an infinity number of Orson Welleses are walking across the mirror. And I think that's what I wanted with the "To be or not to be" soliloquy, and yet I think had I done it, it would have been so immensely distracting, in the middle of what is already a very complicated speech, that maybe the simplicity of a reflection was enough, but I've often, you know, pointlessly woken up and thought about that. But, I mean with most things, I mean you do them, and you leave them, I mean I haven't seen any of these since...I haven't seen this since '92, I haven't seen this film since the time when I said "Well, that's it, that's as much as I can do", when I've seen it dozens and dozens of times, and could no longer see it, so, you have to kind of, or at least my experience is just move on.
Question: In Henry V, you cast primarily British actors, and then your more recent films, you've used Americans, Keanu Reeves, Denzel Washington, was it...
Ken interrupts: See, Keanu Reeves got another snicker [laughter] just as you said that, in the middle of the room!
Question cont'd: How is it working with Americans verses British actors as a director, and another actor.
Ken: I think there are more similarities, than there are differences, is what I feel with actors. Sometimes Americans come to Shakespeare with a greater degree of reverence than is necessary, I think, and healthy for the practice of it. It's sort of very touching, and Brits do it as well, but it's not that I'm not reverent about it, it's just that when you do it, you have to have a practical relationship with it. No one is going to destroy copies of the plays, there are many people, even in our situation, when we rehearse who will point, but, "you can't possibly do that", but it has to be real, it has to be something that you can question, and sometimes people come in, and I'd say they probably, the Americans have more of this than the Brits, is that there's a kind of reverence, a kind of sense of entering some holy temple, you know that to say these words is, you know, to be a bit special, and indeed it is in many ways, but it just, you can't let that stop you acting like a human being, you know, go into Shakespeare voice. But, basically there's a pretty strong camaraderie. I think that American actors on the whole are freer, and this is a broad generalization, maybe the theatrical influence of the training of many British actors is that there's a dicipline, and there's an order, in a way, but I think Americans have that as well, but they have a kind of, once you get going, a kind of freedom about, just a sort of emotional radar, take for instance Denzel Washington, in this film, he had terrific natural radar about what was truthful and what wasn't, and he put his finger on bits, quite frankly in the writing, which you had to be honest about, sometimes you arrive at points in the play where you think Shakespeare was lazy here, this is psychologically inconsistant or this piece of plot is very loosely done, and you perhaps, sometimes have to take an attitude towards that. And I mean, actors do it, and quite frankly students, kids do it, I mean much younger kids can often spot moments where he has been lax as a playwright, because for whatever reason they have a natural and spontaneous reaction to the play, so I'd say it evens out. I enjoy the difference, a kind of cultural difference but in the end there are many more similarities, the problems they face are the same, and the courage required is the same.
A question about casting.
Ken: For me, and it's a subjective thing, there's no voice required for Shakespeare, it doesn't have to sound the way I sound, and in fact scholars, well some scholars would suggest that the Elizabethan tongue was very much like a modern Ulster sound, where I come from, or a modern American sound, they had hard "R's", there was a kind of roughness to it. It certainly wasn't a malifulous English thing, and for me, the sounds of different accents mean that there is a kind of color, and a variety, and a difference in tone, in the way it sounds that is very refreshing. It's just nobody knows how it was done. There are many arguements about it, but you know when people start telling me about what would have happened, in the end I say "Were you there", were you there in 1599, I don't think so. [laughter], but we can all tell, we can all have a view on "is it real", does it feel real, is it truthful, are you compelled. So I find it something that has a kind of cultural and sort of different looks and sounds, is it good. It's such a bloody cliche' but I think it's for everyone, so it kind of doesn't matter what you sound like, I mean everyone has to pay attention to what he said, but I don't think they have to have any particular schooling, or have particularly, at least in the way we've approached it, any specific cultural background because in a way, we created worlds in which I hope to suggest that all these different things can exist...In Hamlet, we have this 19th century court which is an impression of a 19th century court in which of course there are many, you know, black and asian faces, well not so many actually, I mean, you know, not that we've gone terribly far, but, anyway, we made the step towards it, so even there are some, which of course would probably not have been the case, although there are odd specific instances of people being involved in those courts, but I hope to create a world in which being concerned about that is not an issue. It's not a historical documentary. None of these films have been, you know, what's the period of that film, can anyone give me a year? Not really, it's sort of, kind of 1750-1850, within 100 years. Sorts of shapes that are borrowed from several periods, you know, in a landscape that is Italy, but it's not Sicily where it's set, so we take lots and lots of license, including, I think, helpfully that kind of thing, but it's not just trying, kind of, to write off things, it's just that I think it's helpful.
Question: Here in this country there is a growing audience for British films whether it's Trainspotting or The Full Monty, I'm wondering as a prominent British filmmaker, how you feel about the British film industry, what the future looks like.
Ken: It seems to be, and we've had many "false dawns" in the British film industry, but it seems to be a very creative and fertile moment in the British film industry, we've had some help in relation to, kind of, tax breaks, sort of financing of certain British films . Quite frankly, no one is more surprised than we are, at for instance the success of The Full Monty, because of the, which is a lovely film, I mean back there, we were amazed it was successful here, even though you can understand sort of, in a way kind of, connect universally, but because of the accents, so we're pretty surprised. Trainspotting, you know, the accents, you can cut with a knife, but, I think we're hopeful, and what we were delighted about is that there's an audience here, that people are prepared, because none of those films, currently, well maybe Mrs. Brown, because it kind of fits into that English period thing a bit more, but The Full Monty, and films like that, I think we're surprised that there is an audience, an opening here for films that don't conform to what I have come up against, a kind of Hollywood marketing machine would tell me the American audience wants. It's very encouraging and refreshing to feel that there's, a kind of original appetite amongst American moviegoing audiences, and not just the British films, but for films that are interesting or different, or whatever, so I'd say that their success is an amazing incentive to our industry, so I hope as long as you guys are all prepared to go and see them, that we will go on making them for many a long day. And on that note... (Thank You and Applause)