Director Mike Newell. MIKE NEWELL:
CINEMA OF THE COMMON MAN
By
Alex Simon
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the January 1998 issue of Venice Magazine.
Mike Newell was born in England in 1942. After graduating from Cambridge University with a degree in English, he began his career as a production assistant at Granada Television in 1963. There he went on to direct several television dramas such as "Them Down There," "Ready When You Are," "Mr. McGill," and "The Melancholy Hussar."
In 1977, Newell directed his first feature film, The Man in the Iron Mask starring Louis Jordan, Ralph Richardson and Richard Chamerberlin. He then went on to direct Charlton Heston and Susannah York in the horror film The Awakening in 1980. He followed this with Bad Blood in 1982 and Blood Feud the following year.
Newell next drew international attention and acclaim with Dance With a Stranger in 1985, the true story of Ruth Ellis, who in 1955 became the last woman ever executed in Britain. The film starred Miranda Richardson, Rupert Everett and Ian Holm and was a prize-winner at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival.
Over the next five years Newell had a diverse filmography that included The Good Father starring Anthony Hopkins, which won the Prix Italia in 1985; Amazing Grace and Chuck (1987) starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Gregory Peck; Soursweet (1988) and the TV miniseries Common Ground in 1990. In 1991, Newell directed Enchanted April, from the Elizabeth von Arnim novel starring Miranda Richardson and Joan Plowright. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards and was awarded three Golden Globes. Newell followed this with the contemporary fairy tale Into the West in 1993, starring Gabriel Byrne and Ellen Barkin.
In 1994 Newell introduced Hugh Grant to filmgoers in the witty British comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral. An instant hit world-wide, the film garnered two Academy Award nominations including one for Best Picture. The next year, Newell again teamed with Hugh Grant for An Awfully Big Adventure, based on the prize-winning Beryl Bainbridge novel.
Newell's most recent film is the acclaimed mob tale Donnie Brasco, which was released in February, 1997 by TriStar Pictures. The film centers on the relationship between an aging Mafioso played by Al Pacino and the undercover FBI agent (Johnny Depp) who becomes his closest friend. There is much-deserved Oscar heat surrounding this drama, which combines kitchen sink grittiness with a deeply personal story of friendship and betrayal.
Newell recently formed his own production company, Dogstar Films, with producer Alan Greenspan. The company signed a production deal with 20th Century Fox allowing Newell to develop, direct and produce a number of films. His first film under the new deal will be Pushing Tin, a comedy of a rivalry between two air traffic controllers, starring Billy Bob Thornton and John Cusack. The film will be shot on locations in New York and Toronto beginning in March, 1998.
Mike Newell sat down recently in his Westwood hotel suite to discuss his remarkable and versatile career.
In looking over your filmography, I'd have to say that, along with Sidney Lumet, it's the most varied one I've ever seen.
Mike Newell: It does confuse people. Everybody always says "What's the point? What's the focus of it all." The point for me is that I naturally gravitate towards character drama and I naturally gravitate towards characters who get into the sort of trouble that everyday people will find, because, I suppose, I'm a humanist. I think ordinary people deserve to have dramas of their own. They deserve to be examined as the heroes of stories. You don't necessarily have to have kings and queens and angels and devils at the center of everything. It's what makes Arthur Miller, Clifford Odets and Eugene O'Neil tick. It's the drama of real people...I usually disclaim all interest in this subject because I have a horror of sounding pompous or self-involved. I also think that if you start to think too much about yourself and start to become important to yourself, you just stop being sharp. You just lose your edge. It's the same with money and notability. As you get paid more and as your path gets easier, which it tends to do, as you get older and more experienced, the danger you stand is of becoming less acute, of not being hungry enough to look hard enough is really bad. It's a big, big danger.
How have you fought it?
Well, I always give the money back. Always.
Really?
Oh yes, yes, yes. Whenever they pay me, I always say, "No, this is too much," and I give it back. (beat) Uh no, not really. (laughs) I don't know, really. I listen to my wife, who is very, very strong on this subject and has a sort of finger-wagging hold on my conscience. And I live in England and that's better for you, in a way. You go back there and see people making absolutely wonderful stuff, in comparison to here, for absolutely no money. And you think to yourself "I have to remember this. This is where I came from." And that's what I'm going to do next (after Pushing Tin), is an English independent film, like Four Weddings. I mean, the total budget on Four Weddings was somewhat less than the catering budget on True Lies. (laughs) And that'll be the case with this next one. You work for no money. You work fast and you work very inventively because everything's reduced so much and you're at the point of desperation. It's good for you.
Let's rewind a bit and talk about your beginnings.
I was born and raised in a town about 20 miles north of London. It's a cathedral town, a market town, so that when I was a kid, it was absolutely the bedrock of an English, provincial city. A very Jane Austen-y kind of town.
Were you an artistic kid?
No. I was very keen on joining the Navy. I still am. (laughs) I thought I had this great Naval future ahead of me. But my parents were into amateur dramatics, which is a very strong thing in England. Every town of any size will have at least one company of amateurs that will put on six or seven plays a year, and very often have their own theaters. And they are simply potty about theater! It's all they think about.
I understand. My parents are into the same thing.
Then you understand how utterly obsessive they can be!
And most of them think that they're real actors!
Oh completely! The attitude is that you're an absolute fool to try and go out there and try to earn a living at it. Why don't you do what they do, which is work as a quantity surveyor or an insurance agent and then go on and be King Lear in your spare time! And their criticism of the professionals is savage! They know they're better than the professionals! I mean the number of times I went down to the theater where my parents performed...and you'll walk in on a Sunday, have a drink and they'll say "Well I saw that thing of yours. It was really rubbish, wasn't it? You needed the money, did you?" (laughs) They give you absolutely no quarter. So I was in that world from the time I was a small child. And because they were so passionate about it, it sort of rubbed off, I suppose. It's like having a father who's football crazy. So I'd help to build sets, painting. Whenever they'd need a kid, I'd go on as the kid. So I thought when I finished university, where I'd continued in amateur dramatics, that I'd have to give it up and start taking life seriously. Then I discovered that that wasn't necessary. One of my friends said to me "You're really miserable with the notion of getting a proper job." And I realized that I was. So then I was a hopeless failure at getting jobs in the theater. But it was also a time when television was just taking off in England and they were desperate for people to hire. They would sort of send posses out lurking in dark corners of these university towns, waiting to recruit you into their world. And that's what happened to me. I started in television and very arrogantly told them I was only going to stay six months, because I was going to go back to the theater! Then I became obsessively interested in the camera and loving the whole technical process. What fascinated me was that you could have pictures of all different sizes. You didn't just have to have (one size) like in the theater. And I stayed in TV for ten years. But back then TV in Britain was the sort of cultural center of the country. I mean you could tell what night of the week it was by seeing that the pubs were empty because people were all at home watching whatever big program was on. There really wasn't much of an English film industry at that point. And of course we were all influenced by social realism of people like Robert Rossen and Sidney Lumet, who said "It's not going to be Doris Day and Rock Hudson. We're going to present this the way life really is."
I think that whole period during the 60's was really one of cultural revolution.
And what was amazing was watching it hit Hollywood with Coppola and The Godfather. Because all through the 60's we were sitting watching American films in Europe thinking "These Americans are just never going to get it and Hollywood's going to die." Then Coppola came along and you realized that everything he learned came from the French New Wave and all those wonderful European films. At least that's what it looked like.
You think The Godfather was that film, or was it Bonnie and Clyde?
Well I was going to say that Arthur Penn was, for us, the precursor to all those films. All his films were, actually: The Miracle Worker, The Chase, Little Big Man. We saw them all.
Did you ever see his film Mickey One (1965)?
Yeah, sure. We saw Mickey One. It was a bit artistic for us. We liked it when it was realer. But in those movies, particularly Bonnie and Clyde, there was this great link between a subject that was really about something. I mean Bonnie and Clyde isn't just a stylish film about gangsters. It's about misery and depravation and what happens when people are poor but not prepared to lie down. The oppression of poverty. A big subject. A real subject. Yet it's done with this fantastic panache! We idolized Arthur Penn. He was and is a great man for my generation. It's criminal that each 18 months does not bring us a new Arthur Penn film. I think he's a great man, sort of the daddy of them all.
In many ways, he and John Cassavettes are the fathers of independent film in this country.
Yes, you're absolutely right. Those were the two big films, aside form foreign movies, that really influenced us. But I mean, if a film was in the Hungarian language, we'd just run to see it. Films like Closely Watched Trains, The Fireman's Ball, Shop on the High Street. All those films out of eastern Europe.
Ashes and Diamonds is another great one.
Oh God, yes! That's a different generation, though. That was post-war. But we loved (the film's director) Andrzej Wajda. He was another giant.
What was the actor's name in that film? The "Polish James Dean"?
Cybulski! Zbigniew Cybulski. He was incredible.
I'm still looking for a pair of sunglasses like the ones he wore in Ashes and Diamonds.
Oh, aren't we all! Aren't we fucking all! (laughs) And I always wondered if Warren Beatty hadn't had a very close look at Cybulski, because there's something very Warren Beatty-ish about Cybulski.
You'd actually have to say it was the other way around though, right?
(laughs) Of course, there you are. There is something Cybulski-ish about Warren Beatty. God, he was sexy! He was just terrific! Do you remember the scene in Ashes and Diamonds where Cybulski and the surviving partisans that he was with are in a bar, and they line up along the bar these shot glasses full of Polish vodka, and they light the glasses and the glasses sit on the bar burning. And the glasses each represent one of their comrades who was killed. And in the background, there are these Polish bergers, drunk and they start to dance with the whores in the back of the bar. God, what a great scene! It makes me shiver just to think of it.
Do you think that independent film in the 90's is capable of recapturing that same sort of energy?
Oh, of course it is. Look at Boogie Nights. Look at Flirting With Disaster. There's a whole stream of movies now that are made by their makers and financed somewhere else. Things here are very healthy from that point of view.
Tell us about Donnie Brasco.
After Four Weddings I had a crack at Hollywood. But because Four Weddings was a romantic comedy, I was getting a lot of romantic comedy scripts and most simply weren't very good. And I don't like doing the same trick twice because it bores me...So I really wanted to do something tough, about men. And I got the script by Paul Attanasio. And it had been on the shelf about six years, because it originally had been scheduled to get made at the same time GoodFellas was being done. And the producers thought, quite wisely, that that wouldn't work. So I got the script and thought the writing was just fabulous. There was a drama of real lives there. It was sort of like Willy Loman, where there's a guy who gets to the end of his time. He's never made anything of his life. He's stayed a low level functionary and at the end of it all they give him a gold watch and shove him off and he realizes his life has really all been about nothing. It's about the terror of what happens when you realize your life has turned out to be insignificant. It's a terror that faces all of us and I was very moved by it. I also thought the piece had such a wonderful language to it. The characters expressed themselves with such saltiness and wit.
Before I saw the film, I was curious how an English director would handle such a quintessentially American subject. One of the things that really made it work for me was that you brought to it a sort of kitchen sink realism that no other "mob" movie before has had. I saw a lot of The Lonliness of the Long Distance Runner and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in it.
When I went to research it, I couldn't take anything on trust because I knew if I did I was in for a potential hiding. Here I was, a foreigner, taking on this beloved traditional genre. And I didn't know if people were interested in that genre any longer. But Al (Pacino) gave a truly wonderful performance. And he gave it...Never once did I have to sit on him or did he go over the top. The thing that he can do, probably almost better than anyone else, is to truly sink into his character, to really become that person. And I certainly can't do that for him.
Do you think most good directors direct their actors as little as possible?
I hate telling an actor what to do. I don't know whether a good director does that, but it's certainly what I try to do.
Have you any advice for first-time filmmakers?
Get a good pair of shoes. Get a warm coat. And don't eat the catering at lunch time, because you'll go to sleep in the afternoon if you do. (laughs) Aside from that facetious advice, try and stay a human being. Don't be swayed by panic because it is very frightening. It's very frightening every time. I am now full of terror about the film I'm about to do. And to know that the thing that will protect you against anything is to have an idea. If you have an idea that you are convinced of, that really touches your heart, that has some foundation in humanity...that's the key. What's the idea? What's the human idea? What's it about? What larger significance does it have? Of course the greatest directors confuse style with content. But if you have to choose, choose content every time. And then you've got a weapon against all the terrors.
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