DE PALMA: "I APPRECIATE WHAT YOU DID - FOR ANOTHER TYPE OF MOVIE, IT WOULD BE GREAT"
The August 2022 issue of Total Film features an interview with Antonio Banderas, conducted by James Mottram:
You've always tried to work with American auteurs too, like Brian De Palma on Femme Fatale. Melanie Griffith had worked with him twice before. Is that what drew you to him?When Brian called me, Melanie was very pushy! She said: 'You should read his script!' I read it and I said to her, 'Melanie, there is no beef here.' These characters are very lean and I didn't know if I should do it. I talked to Brian and asked him if we could talk about it. He said, 'Of course, write whatever you want.' So I started composing the character... and put it together in a completely different way. We went for dinner in Paris, and I brought up my papers and read for an hour. At the end, he said "This is very good. You did a good job but it's not my movie! If you want to be in my movie, you have to do what's written. And I appreciate what you did - for another type of movie it would be great. But I have very specific ideas of what these characters will be. You decide.' I took a couple of days and said 'Yes'. For me, even if the character was not a main character, it was an opportunity to work with a person who I consider a master. He has a very strong personality on screen, and I just jumped into the part, I didn't regret it for one second.
What about your times with Steven Soderbergh? You worked twice with him on Haywire and The Laundromat...
Woah! That was a different world. Fast. Furious. No lights. I got to set on my first day in Barcelona [on Haywire], a conversation in a coffee shop at the start of the movie. And two cameras, digital. You go there, you sit, no practical indications, action! Boom boom boom boom boom. Two cameras. Action! Boom boom boom boom boom. Moving on. To the airport. No lighting. Nothing. Just the natural light. I remember shooting in Mexico, with Michael Douglas and with Ewan McGregor, and we did six sequences in one day. It's a totally different method, a totally different shoot.
You've twice directed features, Crazy In Alabama and Summer Rain. Having worked with so many great directors, how was it stepping into the chair?
To direct a movie is such a crazy thing. It's very complex. You have to become an answering machine and carry so many things at the same time. I thought at the beginning, when I directed Crazy In Alabama, that my strong point would be working with the actors. I loved doing that, and I did it on Summer Rain too- getting a bunch of kids together who had never been in front of a camera before. But I discovered in Crazy In Alabama, I had a tremendous [love of] framing and the meaning of that. I love that aspect of making movies, how you tell the story like that. Sometimes I have been working with directors just for that purpose.