Michael Radford

You can’t change the lines. I remember directing an American method actor who was supposed to speak a Pablo Neruda poem and he kept on improvising so I said, that isn’t appropriate. You can’t just improv your way through it because this is a story written by someone. For Merchant of Venice, it did help that we did a lot of rehearsal for this and the more time you give an actor the more you get into the role. These guys really needed that because Shakespeare helps you find out your technique.

No one comes in without ideas. But we discussed quite a lot and then we rehearsed for a month before we actually shot anything. We really had to hit the ground running because we had to shoot it in seven weeks so during that rehearsal period it’s my job to have an overall view of the thing. I can’t have one actor going one direction and the rest of the cast going in another. You make sure everyone is on the same wavelength. As far as working with movie stars like Jeremy Irons or Al Pacino, their reputations are at stake and they have to be able to trust you so you have to sort of earn their trust by showing them you know what you want. Once that happens you have a fantastic collaboration. Guys like Al and Jeremy are like violins, you play them and you get a really good tune.

I made it very clear that this play was set in the 16th century. The anti-Semitism in the play is not really relevant to today because it’s about things that don’t exist anymore. The lending of money with interest is not a problem anymore because everyone lends money with interest. I never really understood why the play is considered to be anti-Semitic because the speech “Hath not a Jew eyes”, is one of the great pleas for humanity. That’s not an anti-Semite writing. He’s placed us in a context where Christians and Jews were at each other’s throats, where two countries didn’t understand each other and where certain things happened that are dramatically striking. What I love about the play is that it’s about flawed humanity. Shylock has every right to do what he does, and to me that is rich in ambiguity and humanity. Antonio has this gay relationship with Bassanio that is quite obviously there if you read the text of this play. You hate Antonio for spitting at Shylock but you feel so sorry for him in his loneliness. All these things are very modern and they really have nothing to do with Anti-Semitism. The play is about cultures that don’t understand each other. We had a guy in London who stood up the other week and said I’m a Muslim and I totally identified with Shylock.

I personally feel the following. I think that Shakespeare is often treated as a dead text. Everyone is terrified of it. People in the 16th century did not speak in Iambic Pentameter either. There were a lot of people that couldn’t read and write so they used to go to the theater to have a good time. They were confronted by a lot of verse and that kept them going. Shakespeare was a businessman and he made a lot of money from people going to the theater. What kept them going was the story. People would get completely and totally hooked in what was going on in the story. I wanted people to understand the story and get involved with the characters. I wanted people to sit there and after five minutes, forget they’re at Shakespeare and are just at a movie.

She’s an interesting young lady. I love her to bits but she is one crazy girl.

She is that person that you see. She has more tattoos on her body than I have seen on anyone else. She is amazing, with a rough life and she’s run with all sorts of things in her life but she’s very bright. She wrote a book of poetry when she was eight that was published and in Italian culture she is far too intelligent to be that pretty. In Italy if you’re pretty, you’re done.

It’s not a desire to work in Italy. I never wanted to work there again actually, but it seems to keep happening

Italy and the Italian way of doing things. I know the language and I’ve lived there but their movie industry is like 40 years behind. It’s all heavily unionized and ridiculous. In Italy, if you start after five it’s double time. It just stops movies being made there because you don’t have that money anymore. But the most important thing is that Venice is the number one tourist attraction – so it’s full of Japanese. You have to clear them out of the way. The next thing is that it’s on water so everything takes four times as long. If you want to put up a light, you have to have a pontoon. You want to transport props, you need a barge. If you want to bring the artist in a limo, he has to have a water taxi. Everything is crazy. Shooting on the Rialto Bridge was the worst day of my life. We had three hours to shoot a scene. On one side we had the 16th century and on the other side we had the Venice Regatta with men in blue tights pulling boats at high speed. Then you have to have cops, it’s a nightmare.

I hate them. I’ll tell you why: Richard III is a Nazi, ok I get it. 30 seconds into I get it. Then what? I’m beaten over the head with it for 95 minutes. I don’t believe that allows you any subtext. It’s all about treating Shakespeare as dead – you got to jazz it up. I like West Side Story. They forget about the language, there’s great music and it’s Romeo and Juliet done as a great story. Fine! I like that. But with Baz Luhrmann’s film for instance, you can admire it for his revere of filmmaking but you could take Shakespeare out of that and it would be the same movie.

No! Do you update Chekhov? No you take it and you say this belongs in late 19th century Russia and that’s what it means. There’s a subtext there and the audience can say it’s still very modern. Humanity has not really changed in 400 years. Someone said to me, do this as a gangster movie set in Chicago. I said if I were doing a gangster movie set in Chicago in the 30’s, I wouldn’t use this plot because I’ve got to explain why girls dress up as boys. I don’t think that does anything. It’s about people that are afraid to confront what’s actually there. What’s there is a real story and it’s your job to get the audience into it. If you don’t believe you can do that then don’t do it.

It would be humanity has not changed for 400 years. We’re facing the same problems. So here’s a guy looking at them and saying this is what happens to cultures that are at each other’s throats.

They’re not the films you think they are. We tend to get grabbed by what’s fashionable. What’s new is obviously what’s exciting and sometimes what’s new is what’s great. There’s a Brazilian movie called City of God that I absolutely adore and it’s done in a very commercial way but it’s got a real soul to it. I think the movies that will last are the ones with soul. Not the ones that are clever because what’s clever now won’t be in five years time. Nothing dates faster than special effects. Have you seen Star Wars lately?

I don’t know if it’s a classic movie or not. I do know that people seem to still like it. Don’t buy the American DVD by the way; they’ve done it in full Technicolor. Buy the British one.

It’s odd because he’s not a film director that I particularly admire, but Franco Zefferelli’s version of The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet. It let me roar with laughter. It’s kind of a politically incorrect story but it was wonderful. There are many others I can admire. I can admire Orson Welles’ Othello because it’s so poetic but it’s more about Welles as a filmmaker them him as a storyteller and the same with Polanski’s Macbeth. It’s beautiful to look at but you don’t understand why Macbeth does anything. Shakespeare comes into his plays in the middle of the action and all the backstory is told during the play by various people. So you take the scene of Shylock and Antonio where he spits at him. Now that in Shakespeare’s play is exposition but you can’t do that in film you have to see him spit at Shylock.

Not at all. Jeremy, who was very proud about his heterosexuality, would admit that Antonio and Bassanio had actually done it. But we all agree that he was in love with Bassanio. It’s the same with the anti-Semitism. You can’t treat homosexuality in the 16th century the same way that you treat it now. One’s access to women in that time was very reduced. Women were treated as second class human beings and your deep friendships and your great loves were with other men. If you go to North Africa or Greece or Turkey you’ll find the relationships with men are very similar.

He’s a method actor and it’s not in my tradition to work in that way. It’s interesting to watch but the rehearsal process can be painful. I used to come home at night and think, my God are they going to do it that way? Then I’d say Al, can you speak a little faster? He’d say, I’m just working my way through. Every time I’d say something they’d say, we’re not going to do it like that. How are you going to do it? Can I get a glimpse?

Glimpses of it I saw in rehearsals here in New York but it was really just when we started shooting.

It was fabulous because these guys, there’s a reason why they’re great actors. They have an intensity which affects everyone around them.

Actually I will with Al if this one works. We’ve been talking about a number of them. He wants to do King Leer but I’m not convinced that is adaptable.

Merchant of Venice.

The first film I remember seeing was Shoot the Pianist [released in 1960]. I grew up in the Middle East and I never got to see movies. When I was at school I was allowed to go to the local art cinema and the first ones I saw were these European movies and I saw them long before I saw any Hollywood movies. I was just blown away. It made me fall in love with the cinema right then, and I could tell you the next 30 movies I saw in that order. Maybe not in their order but I can tell you what they were. Like La Dolce Vita and Rocco and his Brothers. I then discovered Hollywood and realized that even in that despised world that some great movies were made.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

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