TEOTA Radio Promo Interview

Transcribed by Mary Ellen

I: How are you this morning?

RF: I'm alright. I'm not ready for very deep, philosophical questions.

[laughter, unintelligible replies--offer of coffee?]

RF: I just had some next door.

I: Actually, it is interesting in terms of this story and seeing it as a modern audience, because there are some philosophies and moralities, that I wondered how you put yourself in that frame of mind, or do you think it does speak to today's people of that age, or facing that kind of dilemma?

RF: Well, I think desire and resentment and the way that emotions take hold of people's hearts and minds and turn them inside-out or lead them away from one kind of life into another--I think that's perennial for human beings; that'll go on all the time. I suppose the one area of Graham Greene's work that isn't to everyone's taste is the Catholic element in it. I come from a Catholic background so it interests me a lot. And I think there are people out there who wrestle with--if it's not actually a question of Catholicism, certainly they ask themselves about God. Certainly in the States here you have a lot of channels, TV channels that deal with God and belief and morality. And certainly passion and love and sexual behavior is, I mean, I think that's all in here, in "The End of the Affair."

I: But I thought the civility of Bendrix and Henry being able to talk about it...

RF: ...Yeah...

I: ...rather than the image we have today of when the husband meets the lover, it has to be fire and "I'm going to knock your block off."

RF: Well, I think that's the cliche of how people deal with these situations. I think often people do confront each other and talk it through in a civilized way. Even if underneath they're torn apart. I know some people would say, "Oh, that's the English way of dealing with it," but I think that all over.... [humorously] The French, I imagine, would talk about it. I don't know, I just think that the cliche of someone's betrayed you and you want to go and biff them, or biff the other person...I mean, sure--that goes on, too--but underneath this civility there's a lot of aggression, and a lot of biffing is going on. Especially in that first scene when Bendrix is manipulating Henry. It's quite cruel.

I: Now, this is set, certainly, in another time. Do you still feel Graham Greene is still very relevant now, in this movie? I would think you do agree with that.

RF: Well, I'm a fan of Graham Greene--and I haven't read all his books--but, yeah, I mean, even reading something like "Brighton Rock," which deals with gangs in the seaside town of Brighton, but the violence and the corruption and the anger in it.... Graham Greene loved the underdog, and the world's full of underdogs still. And I think his writing has a real bite of reality to it, and all his novels really haven't dated at all.

I: So the underdog here is...?

RF: Well, they're all underdogs in a way, aren't they? There's no hero in "The End of the Affair." There's no pure.... Everyone's fallible, everyone is full of human weakness.... I think he has a lot of compassion for his characters, and you feel they're sort of raging against their own weaknesses and...and.... Yeah.

[Gives up on thought; interviewers chuckle.]

I: One thing I really liked about the film was the real romance of it. I totally got swept up in the love that they had for each other, and I don't see that very often in films, and I'm wondering--what part of bringing out that portion of the story was what you liked about it; the romance part of it?

RF: When you say romance, what do you mean?

I: Just the love that they shared and--you know--kind of like an "against all odds" feeling, even though they had other issues. Just that when they were together, you guys lit up the screen, to me. I really enjoyed watching that part, and so I'm just curious--as an actor, what part of bringing that to the screen did you enjoy most?

RF: I think, for a start, the dialogue--the scenes were so well written. They're a mixture of Greene's dialogue and Neil. They just play really well, simply from the writing point of view. And I think as actors you latch onto that; that's your springboard for whatever passes between you or across your face or whatever comes...the way you say the lines. It all has to be rooted in the way that they seem to make sense, as they have a real truth to them. And I think those scenes between Sarah and Bendrix--like, for instance, the scene where they have lunch, when she rings up. Not the meal they have when they've been to the movie, but the long lunch scene where she says, "Are you writing a book about revenge?" and he says, "It's too hard work for revenge." I think that dialogue seems so true, and awkward, and tentative, and right for that. And as actors you just instinctively feel that, and you have a very good bat and ball given to you already, in the dialogue. So if people watch it and they think that's romantic--in any of the scenes--I think that's because we've been fed words that make sense to act.

I: Do you think it was heightened as well--like, with the time and the war and the element of death in the air, and all that?

RF: Yeah, but that's sort of close to how it's...not unsimilar to how it's structured in the book. That the character of Bendrix is telling the story--takes the reader back and forth between the present moment of, you know, his suspicion that Sarah's got another lover and back to the time when he had met her and started his love affair with her. And I love that about Neil's script, that he deliberately suggests...he almost tries to confuse the audience. And I like that; I think that's really.... Because so many films bend over backwards to be oh, so clear to the audience. And I like the fact that he risks, you know, deliberately.... Like, in that same scene I'm talking about, she says, "I think you'd better go," and she puts out her hand and I don't shake it and she leaves, and he cuts to her going out and me running after her and saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm jealous of everything." Which is actually me exiting the restaurant from an earlier time. And then he plays her exiting the restaurant from that...Neil...so you know that it.... You know what I'm saying.

I: You don't know what's going to happen next...

RF: Basically he's throwing past and present together, and it all becomes clear. I like that about the script very much; it seemed to me very cinematic--that you were leading the audience by actually not telling them everything. And then repeating scenes as well.

I: Ralph, we talked to Julianne about the sex scenes in the movie--I don't think you’ve had any scenes quite that, uh, heavy, in your life...

RF: [laughing] Wonder why everyone wants to talk about the sex scenes?!

I: Well, hey, you know....

[Another interviewer: I think it's because everyone doesn't...you know, everyone pictures themselves up on the screen. Sorry.]

I: And we all know the old cliche, "No sex--we're British." Remember that?

RF: Right--No, we don't have sex in England.

I: Oh...OK.

RF: I had to have special coaching.

[laughter]

I: I do think that these were unique in presenting the passion--because so often I feel [when] watching sex scenes that I'm being made into a voyeur, and in this case I think it was the passion of the couple coming through that was very well projected. And I'm wondering if...because I realize that's partly the way the character was written, but how does that inform how the actor...when you realize that you are so literally exposed....

RF: You know, what springs to mind just listening to you is how you do rely so much on the camera--and how it's framed, and how it's lit, and how it's cut. Because any of those.... What we were doing in those love scenes could have been filmed differently, and could have had a completely different atmosphere. I mean, I've seen the film three times now, and I think...on the third time I think I'm the most objective, and I just thought the whole way--the camera, the lighting, the sound, where it's placed and phrased in the film, gives it, it's a quality that could be.... You could take that same footage--or you could shoot the scenes again, rather, and you could have a completely different atmosphere, which maybe [would] have the opposite effect of seeming [to] make you feel like a voyeur. And I think as actors, you know, you talk through it--like dance steps, really. And then when someone says "Action," you go.

I: Were they difficult for you at all?

RF: No, I didn't think...they weren't difficult in the sense that I was embarrassed or felt awkward. I mean, I tend to giggle a lot...I have to have humor as my outlet afterwards. It all seems so absurd when you're simulating sexual intercourse in a room full of men, with wires, and microphones, and they’re all being very, very serious and not looking at you at all, and, you know, they're all very concentrated on what they're doing. [chuckles]

I: So you're hearing someone saying, "Ralph, would you move your rear end this way, or that?"

RF: No, no, no. They're very...the atmosphere during lovemaking scenes on the set is that everyone bends over backwards to, sort of, pretend it's not happening. Even Neil is sort of tentative about what vocabulary he should use, to get us to do certain things. I think I tried to be, with Julianne, very, sort of, up front--say, "So what do we do--are we doing this, or this," or talk, "what's going to...does that look OK like that? Do you believe that?"

I: Although she said to us, she says you were a little surprised at how that one shot came out.

RF: Which shot's that?

I: The rear-end shot, the butt shot.

RF: I was a bit nervous, yeah. I hadn't done any working out. On my butt. So that was a question of good lighting.

[laughter]

I: It's all illusion, is that it?

RF: Computer-graphic imaging. It's not my butt at all.

[more laughter--"You had a stand-in butt?"..."A stunt butt?"..."It's digital?"]

RF: It's not mine, no. It's a stunt butt. [chuckles]

I: That was the line on "Notting Hill," wasn't it, or Mel Gibson? Yeah.... You said you saw the film three times. Is it easy for you to watch yourself onscreen?

RF: No, the first time it's very odd, because you only tend, I'm afraid, [to] look at yourself and you don't see the film, really. The second time is better, and I always think the third time that I can see the film more objectively.

I: What about your perfomance? Like, back when you started, when you were watching yourself, was it harder then [or] now--judging yourself or not judging yourself?

RF: Oh, yeah, you always judge yourself, and you always think, "Should that have been...?" I think all kinds of things race through your head, like, "Is that any good, does that work, does that make sense, is that truthful, God--is that what I look like?" But, actually, you can't do anything...it's up there now, and I rather like the fact that it's in someone else's hands.

I: Are you able to enjoy it?

RF: Um, I enjoy...like, the last time--I saw it last week, the completely finished cut, and I enjoyed seeing, because I wasn't really hung up on watching myself, I just enjoyed the way Neil had done it, and how it was put together. And I think, of course, Julianne and Stephen and Ian were all brilliant in it.

I: That scene where the blast hits the apartment is quite dramatic. I love the way you did that. Did you like the effects that were used?

RF: Yeah, it was very.... They had a few different cameras set around, and they had a stunt double who had to flip over the bannister, and it was a big deal setting up that explosion shot.

I: What are the challenges of doing a period film?

RF: Well, to be honest, it doesn't feel like a period film when you're doing it. People keep saying to me, "Oh, you do all these period films." And I can see they are period films, but actually in my head they're all about emotions and encounters that could be happening now. Maybe the language is different and the clothes are different, but what's going on in the hearts of people--that doesn't feel that it's of another age. People's thinking, feeling, responding beings are still the same, and that's still all happening.

I: If it didn't, it wouldn't work.

RF: Yeah...yeah. And sometimes, actually, the sort of framework of a period--if it's clothes, or music, or a certain style--actually, I think, can heighten emotions and sort of concentrate them. I think with this film I've done with my sister, "Onegin"--definitely it is a "costume drama," but I think that actually it has a way of sort of squeezing the emotions into more concentration. And what's going on between people becomes, in a way, more heightened.

I: A lot of shots in the rain.

RF: Yeah. We had a bit of weather like that here yesterday.

I: Didn't we? You probably had a little deja vu there, right?

RF: Yeah.

I: You mentioned "Onegin," and also there's "A Taste of...," uh,

RF: "...Sunshine," yeah.

I: "Sunshine," I guess, that's the title. And you have an award nomination on that, I believe--it's the European...

RF: Uh...yeah, yeah.

I: Now, these are films that have not been shown very much here yet...

RF: No.

I: ...so I'm not sure when we'll get to see them. Could you talk a bit about them--first off, working with your sister, and I know that that was quite a labor of love.

RF: Yeah, we worked on that over a few years. It was an idea I had to adapt this "Eugene Onegin" by Alexander Pushkin; I took [it] to my sister Martha--a long time ago now, and we sort of worked on it together, and eventually got financing for it. And we shot it in 1998, and now it is going to be...the hardest thing has been getting US distribution for it--to secure it--I mean, it's been very difficult. We've now got it; it's now going to, I think, open here at the very end of the year.

I: Who's going to be distributing it?

RF: It's a deal between Goldwyn and a small company called Stratosphere.

I: And why is that important? This is a story that I'm sure would find a welcome and a familiar audience in Europe and in many parts of the world. Why is it important to get US distribution?

RF: Well, it's a big territory, isn't it? I mean, I think that...uh.... It's a good question, I suppose.

I: It's like, "why not," right?

RF: We haven't got distribution in France. We've got distribution...we've opened in Russia. We're about to open in Italy next week. No, I...to be honest, I sort of felt if it's so...I mean, I'm delighted we have got distribution, but I have been feeling, well, if it's not going to work here, then it's maybe not meant to work, you know.

I: When you opened in Russia, what was the response there? Because this is taking the coals back to Newcastle, in a sense.

RF: Well, it was scary, and it was emotional, and some of them loved it; some of them completely resisted it because it was--they think you can't possibly film "Eugene Onegin." And it was interesting; it was a brilliant moment. It wasn't--I don't mean that it was an out-and-out success, but actually the Russians were very warm towards us even while at the same time some of them were critically quite severe--but by no means all of them. And it was just a wonderful sort of cultural interaction that takes [place]. And it was amazing to sit in the Petersburg premiere and feel them watching these characters which they've known inside-out--there's nothing really comparable, I don't think, in England or in the States, of an author that's so woven in to people's national consciousness. And they know these characters; they know Tatiana and Onegin, and to see them being interpreted on film.... And you could see them looking at scenes that they know, or scenes that we had created and invented, and you could see them sort of going in and you could feel the atmosphere in the audience as they sort of said, "[approvingly] Uh-huh, uh-huh.... [disapproving] Oh no, no, no--that's not right.... [approving again] Uh-huh, uh-huh--yes, OK." And you could feel it, like, they were trying to work out what they should make of it. It was very... [interviewer starts to speak] Sorry, go on.

I: There was a music piece in that film--I can't recall the name, but some of the Russian audiences were, like, they couldn't possibly.... Can you talk about that?

RF: Yeah, there were two music pieces in the film which Martha and I--I mean, we knew they were 20th century pieces of music, which we used because we very [much] liked the feeling of them. Actually, they're very generic pieces of music that probably are traditional in origin anyway. But for the Russians one of them had a particularly Soviet connotation. So that jarred with them. It was a folk song which had been used in Soviet times, in a Soviet propaganda film. So they found that rather...actually they found it funny.

I: Ralph, I just got back from London. Everyone there seems to be in a millennium fever. How about you?

RF: I'm afraid I haven't focused on the millennium at all. People keep asking me, "Where are you going; what are you going to do?" And I think I--probably perversely, sort of--am not interested in the millennium [chuckles].

I: Some people are worried that something will happen for the year 2000. What are your hopes for the next century? Do you think...where are we going to be, movie-wise? What are we going to be thinking about? Are we still going to do the same things, the same way?

RF: I think I'm a bit pessimistic, really. I think...I suppose the reason I'm sounding slightly, say, not interested, is that there's all this fuss, and everyone talking about.... I mean, it's just another day, isn't it, really? Yes, we're putting these markers up, to make us feel we have some kind of structure on time, and the universe, and our own fate, and we don't really. I just think the same...now, I'm sure there'll be great achievements in medicine, and in technology, and in the arts, and in writing, and there'll also be the same terrible messiness of cruelty and unhappiness and abuse of one person by another, one country to another, and I don't think the human race is going to suddenly find itself blessed on the first of January. I think they'll still have to wake up with the same problems and the same desires and the same aspirations.

I: People say we're doomed to repeat history.

RF: I think we probably are.

I: Are you doing your theater tour? I read somewhere that you're going to take off from film-making and spend a year doing local theater productions, or regional...

RF: No, I'm going to be doing, with the Almeida, which is the theater which I did "Hamlet" with--the Almeida is a theater; it's also a sort of company, a production company. So, anyway, the same company, the same director--Jonathan Kent--we're doing a double bill of "Richard II" and "Coriolanus," which we're opening in London in the spring and then we hope to tour it in the late summer.

I: What is the appeal of that, of going to places where they don't have this level of theatrical production on a regular basis?

RF: No, I don't think it's so much that--I think the two plays are about men in power who don't know how to use their power, or are flawed in such a way that their power becomes dangerous and they lose it. Actually, also, how their sense of themselves is totally woven into who they are as either a king or a soldier--general--Coriolanus. And I think, particularly in "Coriolanus," the most political of Shakespeare's plays, to take that to certain countries could be very interesting, to see what it throws up. Because "Coriolanus" is a play where the audience can see that both sides have a point. And "Coriolanus" has been used, has been taken up, by the left and by the extreme right as a propaganda play. That makes it very facinating, because you can decide that...you know, I think the Nazis played it and made Coriolanus their hero, and then I think the Marxists did it and he of course was their...the villian, and the plebians were the heros.

[Publicist: "Last question."]

I: And of course Richard is another character that has been used, as you say, in various...to present various...

RF: Well, Richard, again, is about the sort of pendulum of power politics, and that is maybe less--it's harder, maybe, because it's so much about about kingship, and being God's annointed representative, and that isn't so much now, I think--[humorously] even in England it's not really something we're hung up on now.

I: Well, we have George W. Bush.

RF: Is he God's annointed?

[laughter]

I: You mentioned "Taste of Sunshine," and we don't know when we're going to get to see that, but...

RF: That's coming out in April, I think.

I: Could you give us a capsule description?

RF: A capsule description of "Sunshine"! It's a story of three generations of a Hungarian Jewish family, starting at the turn of the last--I mean at the beginning of this century, the 19th, 20th centuries--and following, taking the journey of the family, through the end of the Hapsburg era and into the 20s and 30s when there was the rise of fascism in Hungary, and then to the communist period after the second World War. But it's really, I think, Istvan Szabo's...his...he said to me, "It's a film about the disease of needing to be accepted." And you watch three different men, all the same: father, son, grandson--which I play; I play the three of them--and they...you see them struggling with wanting to be accepted, and finally one of them being able to stand apart, and alone. The whole thing is woven into the sort of background of middle-European politics of this century. But it's not just a history lesson at all; it's really being true to one's self. And there's a female character that goes all the way through it, who is someone who is able to not be caught up in wanting to be accepted by different parties, different groups, different philosophies. And I think in a way she's really the heroine for Istvan.

[general thanks from interviewers]

I: By the way, have you seen "Copenhagen" yet, in London?

RF: No, I haven't seen it.

I: It's quite, quite something.

RF: Yeah, I hear it's excellent.

I: Yeah, it's still there...

RF: Is it coming here?

I: Yeah, there's talk of bringing it here, although some critics wondered if American audiences could handle it, because you've got to be a rocket scientist to really get into it.

RF: But isn't one of the things that's strong about it that he makes it very clear--the science, the scientific...

I: Oh, yeah... Michael Frayn, you know, to do something like this, is quite interesting. The guy who did "Noises Off"! Quite a change of pace.

RF: Yeah. OK.

I: Don't forget to ride the ferris wheel, the millennium ferris wheel.

RF: In London? The big one? If it's working.

I: It's up.

RF: I mean, is it working? They were having problems with it.

I: I know they were having problems with it, yeah...

[tape ends]

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