Quartet
Quartet marks the directorial debut for actor Dustin Hoffman and brings together a great British cast. And while the movie doesn’t hit the big screen until next year the movie screened at the BFI London Film Festival.
Dusting Hoffman attended a junket for the movie along with Pauline Collins, Tom Courtenay, Maggie Smith, Sheridan Smith and Billy Connelly.
- Tom and Dustin I want to talk to you about the origins of the movie because we are not just talking about Ronnie Harwood’s play but also about a documentary that I was fascinated to hear was one of the inspirations.
Tom Courtenay: I have to keep reminding Dustin that this whole thing was my idea - it is not that he is resentful of me he is just forgetful.
Seven or eight years ago I asked Ronnie Harwood if he fancied the idea of making a screenplay of his play Quartet, I had seen it some years before I remembered how moving it was at the end.
He was very excited and BBC Film commissioned a screenplay and nothing happened until Dustin came along.
Dustin Hoffman: It is a wonderful documentary called Tosca’s Kiss and Mr Harwood told me about it when I asked him about the genesis of the play.
It was made in 1983 and Verdi was rich and successful towards the end of his life and he decided to build a mansion for himself in Milan where he lived.
He stipulated that when he died that opera singers and musicians, because he knew so many and some were poor, could live there.
It is called Tosca’s Kiss and it is about these retired opera singer’s and musicians that live at the Verdi house - which still exists in Milan.
- So you suggested that your cast should watch it before the film?
Dustin Hoffman: I told them all to see it and I think that they all ignored me.
Maggie Smith: I saw it and I thought it was wonderful because it gave you an inkling as to where we were heading and what we were going o do.
It is a very moving documentary and the moment I saw it I thought ‘this is terrific and if Dustin is on this wave length we should be safe’.
- Maggie have you ever been resentful of the fact that you have been asked to play aging women very early in your career?
Maggie Smith: I am just glad to get any role, the fact that they are all ninety is neither her nor there. It started with Hook when I was asked… Peggy Ashcroft was asked to do this part and she couldn’t do it and someone was asked how old I was and if I would be able to do the part and the person replied ’ninety two’. So I have been stuck ever since, but I am very grateful.
Dustin Hoffman: I would like to just throw in that it is not true and Maggie is very modest as she has been offered quite a few younger parts - last year she turned down a film called My Week With Marilyn.
- It is a really charming film but American and British cultures are different in many ways and this is a very British setting. So I wondered how the British actors found working with an American director and how Mr Hoffman found working with our grand British thespians?
Pauline Collins: First of all Dustin is a dynamo and a darling - both of those things help to create the atmosphere of this film. He is one of the most inspiring and kindest directors that I have ever worked for because he understand how actors work because he is one.
I found him really really easy to work with. But we have heard stories that he gives directors a hard time is this true sir?
Dustin Hoffman: Yes.
Pauline Collins: So maybe now he knows what it feels like. Occasionally I would say to Dustin ‘You don’t really understand what we are talking about’ and he would say ‘tell me, tell me what I am doing wrong’. So I loved the lack of hubris in the man.
There is one thing that he didn’t understand I said ‘mostly in my career, unlike Maggie, I am always downstairs.’ And he said ’after this film you won’t be’. He thought that I was below the title, which I have been many times, but I think we understand each other better now.
Billy Connolly: Nightmare. There were tantrums, long silences, inappropriate touching - you know the kind of thing.
He was excellent… I will tell you…
Dustin Hoffman: In terms of the touching?
Billy Connolly: He was an excellent toucher. I don’t crave praise as I have had enough prise in my life to get along with but sometimes it is kind of nice to be told that you are doing ok - he is very good at that.
Tom Courtenay: Can I do you an impersonation of when it was a good take? (In an accent) ‘Gorgeous, gorgeous f***ing take, that is in the movie’.
- Sheridan you represent the youthful part of the movie so how did you find working with someone like Dustin?
Sheridan Smith: Overwhelming. Just to be part of the film was an honour for me. Being on set everyday with these amazing people I just wanted to curtsey every morning. It was just an incredible experience and I tried to be like a sponge and take it all in.
- I just wondered if you were looking for an old age where you can say whatever you want?
Billy Connelly: I am already there
- And also if you had said anything where you thought that it was actually inappropriate?
Billy Connelly: I have been accused of being inappropriate since day one. I think that it is one of the joys of getting older as you can say exactly as you please. But I have pretty much have said exactly as I pleased all of my life and it hasn’t done me any harm at all.
There is a think that I really dislike when you say… if someone says ‘what do you think of so and so?’ And you say ‘I think he is an arsehole’ and they say ‘come one speak your mind’. As if speaking your mind was something weird - if more people spoke their mind we would be in much better shape.
- Sheridan you eluded to being thrown in at the deep end here so what did these illustrious teach you on the set? What did you go away with?
Sheridan Smith: So much. The film is so special and all of the cast were retired opera singers and retired musicians and between scenes they would be jamming.
It was just such a special film. And working along these guys was great and the stories that they would tell me. I had to pinch myself everyday; it has been an incredible experience.
- Dustin you one said that filmmaking was like some kind of magic so did you feel that way when you were directing?
Dustin Hoffman: This is the first time that I directed and I don’t know if I will feel this again because I think that we all felt it on this movie; crew and cast.
You never know when you are making a movie and no one was saying in the middle of Casablanca ’this is going to be a classic’ you are always in a tunnel where you can’t see the end.
But there was something that took place in the movie which I don’t think we expected and that was when we decided that the entire cast would be real retired opera singers and musicians and these people came with such verve every day.
That in itself made it an extraordinarily special occasion for all of us. It wasn’t a job for the crew after a few days it took on another tone.
- Tom having been with the project for so long and seeing it evolve did you see it evolve in the way that you expected when you wanted to play the role of Reggie?
Tom Courtenay: It moved on. Dustin asked Ronnie if he could make some changes - in the play Reggie was impotent and Dustin didn’t like that so he changed it; that was a big change for me.
It was fun and I don’t think I have ever had so much make up - Dustin was so particular and he was determined to make me as handsome as possible.
- Earlier this year a film about ageing won the Cannes Film Festival and then we have had The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel being successful and now this. So with an ageing popular is there a new genre of films about older people’s experiences? And should there be?
Maggie Smith: I think it is because a lot of grown ups would like to see films for grown ups and about grown ups - there is a change in what audiences want to see.
I hope that that is correct because there are an awful lot of people of may age around now - we outnumber the others.
I don’t think films about elderly people have been made very much and I think about Cocoon and Driving Miss Daisy and they always seem to be fairly successful so it is a bit baffling that everyone has to be treated like they are five years old.
- Was there much ad-libbing when working on the jokes in the movie?
Pauline Collins: There is lot of improv on the dialogue, which I absolutely love, and Dustin gave us free reign on that. I have learnt so much doing this - I came very late to film, it wasn’t until I was fifty, I have learnt so much from this man.
The main thing is what you start with, and not every screenwriter will want to hear this, but it is just a base and it is not the end. Sometimes things happen during the process that take you down a more exciting avenue and he always understood that.
Billy Connolly: It was openly encouraged and it was a very good idea. But they took one of my best ad-libs out I was just talking to the editor…
Dustin Hoffman: Let me set it up for you and then you can say it. Reggie is upset because while he is doing is rap thing he has found out that Jean is there and so he leaves. Wilf finds him in a place that they know of our in the wilderness.
Reggie is just standing there and in the script it said that he was looking a young deer - we tried to do it but we are a low budget movie and it didn’t look right so we scrubbed it. But when we had it and Billy comes to join Reggie and says…
Billy Connolly: Do you think it knows it is delicious?
- Dustin you had a Billy Wilder quote on the script that fired you up and inspired you every day?
When you are doing something you are trying to be your audience at the same time - in other words you place yourself in the audience - so somebody tells me that this about retired opera singer you may go ‘I think I will wait for it to come to DVD’.
I knew that we had an obligation and that was to keep an energy in it and keep the audience interested, in fact I asked some of the actors to take a look at His Girl Friday by Howard Hawkes because they talk over each other and there was this great energy. I said ‘we have to have energy here’ this is not a movie about smelling the urine that is another movie.
Volker Schlondorff got Billy Wilder to agree to these conversations because Voker spoke German at times and at one point he said to Billy Wilder ’what is in your mind?’
I am a fan of Mr Wilder and he said ’if you are going to try and tell the truth to the audience you had better be funny or they will kill you’ and I have never forgotten that.
- Despite the films that you have been in over the years this does feel incredibly British so how much was that intentional?
Dustin Hoffman: Well I had to because it was written as British. I finished a film called Last Chance Harvey a few years ago and I came friends with John de Borman and we would talk about shots during the making of the film and he would say ‘you should direct’ so I said ‘find me something to direct’.
I was about to get on a place the next day and he called me and he says ‘Finola Dwyer has sent me a script, they had a director but the director has dropped out’. So I read it and I jumped in. Sometimes it is just a coincidence that it turns out that way.
- Where was this film shot?
Dustin Hoffman: Buckinghamshire - and it took an hour to get there every day and an hour to get back. Maggie, because she is such a diva, made sure that she lived in a house no more than ten minutes away.
- Was there any rehearsal for this movie? Did you have a chance to bond before shooting?
Dustin Hoffman: I came in on this movie after another director. I came in on this movie when Tom Courtenay had had talk with Ron Harwood about making the movie.
Tom and Albert Finney had been friends since the beginning of their career and they became stars around the same time - so they had a forty odd year friendship. So when I came on it Albert, Tom and Maggie were in the cast and then Albert wasn’t up for it and had to withdraw.
In terms of the stars the only ones that I cast were Billy Connolly and Pauline Collins. I was in Los Angeles working and a lot of this took place on the telephone, I met Maggie once.
I had come back stage, which I usually loath to do because as an actor you just want to get home, after I saw Three Tall Women…
Maggie Smith: In which I was ninety three.
Dustin Hoffman: So we had introduced ourselves to each other over the phone. And I said to her do you have any ideas about… the first thing that you should do as a director, and director’s don’t do it, why don’t you ask good actors who they think is right for the part? Without missing a beat she said ‘Pauline Collins’.
I didn’t know Pauline and I hadn’t seen Shirley Valentine but I immediately saw it and I saw You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger and she was wonderful as a psychic.
And I said to her on the phone ’the dialogue seemed improvised’ and she said ’it was, I improvised every word of it’.
I lucked out as they say.
- How did you find the transition from actor to director? And in what ways did you draw from other directors that you have worked with before?
Dustin Hoffman: Forty five odd years of working in the business you pile up all the good things that you like about directors and things that we don’t like - sometimes they are very similar.
One thing you have to be aware if you are an actor is if you come on set and you see the director mouthing all the words to a scene - that is usually a very bad sign because it means that the director has already shot the film in his head and he knows exactly the rhythm and the nuances that he wants delivered in the line and you are not going to dissuade him.
Usually those people don’t even like actors and they can’t wait until they get in the cutting room. They kind of break down into categories; directors who like being surprised and some of them abhor being surprised - we learn that as actors very early on.
We all direct when we are acting in movies, every single one of us. We are like convicts in those old Hollywood movies where they talk on the sly and then go ‘quiet, here comes the screw’.
We are like that during takes as actors we say what do you think?’ ‘Well the director wanted me to do it really loud but I don’t feel that… sshhh here comes the screw’.
You have to protect yourself and everyone with half a brain who does movies year after years after year learns that they have to protect themselves because it is a bastard art form for us because we are not allowed in the cutting room - that is extraordinary.
So when a director is asking for certain nuances or colours and we feel that they are phoney, but we do it because the director asks for it, that is the one they pick in the cutting room.
I contend that when you see a movie with bad acting in it don’t blame the actor, blame those guys in the cutting room because they liked that take.
Quartet is released 4th January.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in Maggie Smith Dustin Hoffman BFI Tom Courtenay