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Greetings from the Asylum
by Andy Jones
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| I haven't had any rest at all," says Bob Hoskins, as he greets a
roundtable of press assembled for his current film, TwentyFourSeven, an
unflinchingly gritty study -- in arty black-and-white, no less -- of working-class young
men outside London. He flew to the United States the weekend before, spent a day in
Boston, a day in Philadelphia , Chicago the next day, then back to New York and finally
made his way to this hotel room at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills. "And as soon as I
finish here," he continues, "my bag's packed and I'm flying out." He had
hoped to do this round of pressing the press with his 24-year-old director, Shane
Meadows, who conveniently made it to the Venice Film Festival then skipped the United
States press tour because of the flu. The entire P.R. push for the film now rests on
Hoskins' sturdy shoulders, just as the film does. In a role written for him, Hoskins plays
Alan Darcy, a middle-aged man who invests some of his life into the aimless youth in the
neighborhood by re-opening a boxing club in an effort to make a difference. He told rough
cut that his involvement in the film industry was an accident that changed his life
and freed him from work as a window cleaner, a member of the Norwegian Merchant Navy, a
porter at Covent Gardens, etc. "You name it, I've done it," he says. "If
you can think of a thing, I've probably been there." |
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With your experience, what challenges are there working
with a first-time director? |
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Well, I think I better explain [writer-director Shane
Meadows] because he's the center of this thing. His friends in the film are from the
same background. You know, they're not professional actors -- what you see on the screen
is who they are. And, this kid, he's just 24 now. He just took a camcorder on the streets
and made movies with his friends. He's made about 30 of these films. He left school when
he was 15 -- he has no education, no filmmaking training at all. Everything he's done he's
taught himself. His whole technique of making films is unique. |
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You've done some directing. Does that make a difference
on the set? |
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It's great. Because you've directed, the director can't
start pulling bull. So, s--t that's the big advantage. |
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Do you also have sympathy for them ? |
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Oh, yeah. You see a man trying to set something up, that
is technically difficult, and obviously you're gonna leap in and try to help. You
understand the process. What was extraordinary about Shane was that no one has ever told
him not to do anything. He doesn't know the rules at all. |
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Do you think that's a benefit for him? |
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Absolutely. Because he'd start setting something up, and
I'd think, "I don't know..." Oh, shut the f--- up. Don't say anything. Then you
see it work. ... I learned so much [by] watching him, I'll tell you. |
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On what level did you identify with your character in
the film? |
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Well, I can only say what really impressed me about the
part: It's the most brilliant study of loneliness. Here's this guy [Alan Darcy] who's got
all this spirit, drive, trust and street sense, but he's a social cripple. He would make a
really good husband and a wonderful father, but he hasn't got the ability to make himself
attractive to women. He can make himself attractive to me, as a man, and the terrible
longing of that is, I suppose, something we all identify with. Every man has that sort of
lack of confidence. |
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In the '80s, movies out of Britain were so much Merchant
Ivory. They were period pieces. Now, with your movie and Gary Oldman's Nil
By Mouth, The Full Monty and Brassed Off, it's been about the
working-class guy. Do you have any idea why these movies are becoming so popular? |
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Basically because I think Maggie Thatcher decided that
dramas and arts in England was left-wing and was going to go the same way as the miners.
And, if the women weren't wearing crinolines, the cameras weren't allowed to work. It was
that kind of thing for 20 years, a culture has been pushed away, been forgotten. Well, now
that's gone. Suddenly, the Labor Party is not particularly helping [show business], but
it's not trying to hamper it. I think you're going to get an awful lot more people
[documenting] what it's like to be unemployed and these forgotten people. |
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Now that the movie's over, do these young guys go back
to their hard-scrabble lives? |
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Yes. Sort of. [They joked], "When we doing a film,
Bob? When's the next movie? We're coming with you to Hollywood." |
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Every once in a while we hear talk about a Roger
Rabbit sequel. Would you do it? |
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Roger Rabbit was the first and the last of the
great cartoons. But it was all cartoons, and they would never go to the expense of that
now. They would do it on computer, you know? I don't know, maybe I'm too old now. When
you're playing with cartoons, you've got to bounce off the walls with the cartoons. |
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Your children [Rose, 14 and Jack, 13] were kids when you
did Roger Rabbit. What did they think when they finally saw it? |
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For Jack, he was 3 at the time, this was the first time
that I've made a movie that my kids could see. When he came out, he wouldn't talk to me.
He was really offended. I said, "What have I done? I've made a movie for my kids.
What is this?" It took me about two weeks to get it out of him. He reckoned that any
father that had friends like Yosemite Sam and Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny and didn't bring
them home to meet his son was an asshole. |
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It's hard to believe you got into acting by accident at
24. Why did you go to an audition in the first place? |
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I was drunk. A friend, he was interested in amateur
dramatics. We were going to go to a party, and he wanted to do this audition on the way --
at this theater -- and I waited for him at the bar. So, I'd been waiting for quite a while
in that bar, and they came out and said, "Right, you're next." And, I had been
in the bar long enough to have a go at anything. |
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Were you intimidated when you started repertory because
you had no experience? |
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No. I've always felt that anybody like me eventually
would be put away. Then, I got into [this] business, and I thought, "Yeah, this is
where they brought them." Because for the first time in my life, I felt totally at
home. And, I've been at home ever since. I just love the people in this business. They're
all completely mad and totally insane, which is wonderful. Hollywood is probably the
lunatic asylum of the world. Hollywood has got something absolutely wonderful. It's like
the fact that Titanic actually happened. Whether the film is a success or not, but
the fact that it happened is wonderful. Can you imagine if Leonardo da Vinci went
to the Pope, right? He was the man with the money, he went to the Pope and went,
"Right, Pope, I've got this sketch here, right? Now, what I want to do, I want to
build a statue to Hercules. Two hundred feet high, and it's going to be a mixture of
bronze and marble. And it's gonna cost you $200 million dollars." Can you imagine the
Pope? "What are you, nuts?" Get the f--- out of here. I mean, get out of here.
But, if Hollywood had been around at the time of Leonardo da Vinci, can you imagine
the splendors that we could be enjoying today? Anything can happen here. |
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