THN has been lucky enough to be invited to the lush surroundings of the famous Savoy Hotel in London, which coincidentally also happens to be a major location in the upcoming comedy caper we’re here to find out about – GAMBIT, a remake of the classic 1966 Michael Caine/Shirley MacLaine film of the same name.
We’re a little out of our depth sitting here, surrounded by beautiful architecture and decadent furnishings that we wish we could afford on our insubstantial salaries. Still, we may be poor in terms of cash, but we’re rich with good company, as we sit down with Hollywood stars Colin Firth, Alan Rickman, Cameron Diaz, and Tom Courtenay, as well as the director of GAMBIT, Michael Hoffman, for a bit of a chat regarding topics such as Lions, Lassos, and performing in the buff!
Michael, this movie is very different to a lot of your previous movie-making endeavours, such as GAME 6 (2005) and THE LAST STATION (2009). Why the move from melancholy to pure comedy?
Michael Hoffman: I’d wanted to make another comedy. I made a comedy called SOAPDISH back in 1991, and I’ve always been interested in directing comedy in the theatre, and interested in the technical challenge of it. I think that’s what drew me to this film. And I also think that if there is a melancholy note to be struck in this picture, it’s in the character of Harry Deane and his struggle to maintain his dignity, so I like that about the story a lot. I think we all imagine ourselves to be the perfect criminal, and we found out going through life that we’re maybe no the perfect criminals. And so he finds out he’s not exactly who he wants to be, and through meeting PJ he starts to find more of who he wants to be. You always have to find some thread or some human connection, and that’s where I found it in this particular script.
Colin, we don’t often see you in this kind of comedic role, and in particular a physical one, as seen in the film. How did you take to that?
Colin Firth: I knew it was notoriously difficult and frightens some people off of doing it. Doing it on stage I think would be terrifying, but doing it on film also has it’s own difficulties, because a film is not spontaneous. You might have a run-through and get some chuckles at eight ‘o’ clock in the morning, but you don’t keep laughing at the same thing all day long, so by that point you don’t have laughs as a reference point anymore, so it becomes a bit of a science after that. You would love to depend on another sense of spontaneity, but then hours of waiting and hours of repetition are not contusive to hours of spontaneity. On the other hand though, it’s a lot of fun. By plunging into a bit of physical comedy and abandoning all dignity, no one can really hurt you much after that (laughs).
Were you self-conscious walking around the Savoy Hotel in no trousers?
CF: What? With members of the public wandering around?! Not at all! (Laughs) Yes, of course, it was appalling, and I felt that Cameron Diaz, being the kind and supportive colleague that she was, would assure me that my legs were fine specimens and that I had nothing to worry about. Instead she burst into a spontaneous belly laugh.
Cameron Diaz: I think I pointed at your knees as well whilst I was laughing.
CF: You see, I had to wait on standby to make an entrance in the lift. And the staff at the Savoy Hotel had quite understandably not taken it upon themselves to inform every one of their guests that there was a film shooting and a man without his trousers in the lobby. So guests would be on their way out for the evening, and would get into the lift, and they’d see a somewhat over-familiar English actor standing there with his trousers off. Was I self-conscious? Yes.
GAMBIT is all based around the idea of ‘the con’. Have any of you ever conned your way into a role by claiming to possess a skill you didn’t actually have?
Tom Courtenay: Acting! (Laughs)
Alan Rickman: I’m in a film where I claimed to be able to drive a car. And there is one take of this sports car, where the crew were on the other end of the road, because I had to make a hill start, which I have no idea how to do. And there was the owner of this car, who looked as if he was either going to kill me or himself, because this car was his prized possession. And so there’s this take of this car, screaming down the hill in first gear, with the windscreen wipers going, even though it wasn’t raining.
CD: Not really. I have no problem with saying I have no idea. Once I’ve been shown though, the world changes and I’m an instant expert.
MH: You were an expert with the lasso.
CF: Her lassoing skills became a bit of a problem on the set (laughs). Nobody snuck off the set without Cameron noticing. I once had the same problem as Alan did, with driving, but it wasn’t a hill start. I was just in a car. On flat ground. And I couldn’t make it go. I think we’ve all been busted on driving.
Compton Verney House in Warwickshire was a major location used in the film, Michael. Why that location, and did you have access to it’s artwork collection?
MH: We were allowed access to their artwork, but it wasn’t the artwork we needed for the film. But the house itself, we used, for a structural reason. What was going to work for the heist and the lion sequence. We were going to shoot at Syon House in West London originally, but once we met with the lion, we realised we were going to need a much bigger space to shoot it and Colin together, so that led us to Compton Verney, which is a fantastic place, with wonderful people to work with there.
How did you react to filming with the lion, Colin?
CF: I was beside myself with terror!
TC: There were two lions. And they didn’t tell him which one was the fierce one, and which was the tame one (laughs).
MH: I asked the lion-tamer if he was tame, and he replied, ‘He’s pretty tame for a lion!’ (Laughs)
CF: And that little qualification there becomes not very reassuring when the things standing just a few feet away from you. I mean, it was magnificent. The protective measures don’t include guns or anything of that sort. It’s just a little filament with wires a few feet above the ground, which is apparently enough to deter the lion. But it’s just between you and this enormous beast, which is a gorgeous thing to watch in motion, as long as it’s only interested in the bits of flesh that are being deposited around to guide it from A to B. And there was this one moment when it seemed to lose interest in all of those and took an interest in me. It was the eye contact moment when I nearly lost control of some essential muscles. It was pretty startling actually, for it to focus on me for that moment. But it was only for a nano second, and then it went back into its little house for about an hour.
MH: There was a strange moment that the Wrangler couldn’t quite understand. Colin’s there standing with this Roseau painting behind him, and this lion was suddenly fascinated by this painting. I mean seriously fascinated. And the wrangler, Steve, came over and said to us ‘I don’t think I have full control of this cat right now’.
CF: I wasn’t told that at the time (laughs).
CD: They told me that, and I promised not to say anything to you about it (laughs).
Alan, Colin keeps getting kudos for showing off his knees, but you go the full monty in GAMBIT. Were you nervous about that, and did you demand a closed set for that moment?
AR: I didn’t have any option, really, I mean, the script says he takes all his clothes off! I was frozen in fear that this was happening now at this stage in my life, and that people were going to see it. And on the day, I looked to my right, through the glass office doors, and there’s a room full of extras in the opposite room, watching!
TC: Did you ask them to take their clothes off?
AR: I should have done! I have no sympathy with his problem (points to Colin).
Did you base your role as Lord Lionel Shabandar upon anyone in particular?
AR: I think the words Boris Johnson slipped out of my mouth at one point. And Toad of Toad Hall (laughs). A mixture of the two. They are almost one and the same!
Cameron, did you feel like you were in the ‘Cohen Brothers’ Universe’? After all, they wrote the screenplay.
CD: Definitely. I mean, the ‘Cohen Universe’ is so prevalent. We stepped right into it. The story, the words, the rhythm, the broadness, the fuss, all of it was very much their signature. So it was a lot of fun, because you could take those characters and make them big, and the fact that for my character PJ being who she was, being American, being from Texas, she’s already a big personality, and then her being dropped into this world of different culture…I mean, she’s so open, and Harry Deane is so closed up and repressed, their about as opposite as you can get.
How do you all think this film compares to the original?
CF: I don’t think of it much as a remake. I don’t think they connect much. I think once your past that initial conceit, you know, there’s a heist in the first act, then you realise that’s not what happens, and then we see it again going wrong…we’ve used that, and we’ve used the name of about two of the characters, and one line of dialogue, which I stole from the film, but then gave to Cameron, because I thought it was a nice moment from the old film. But apart from that, it’s completely different, right down to the style and the genre.
A big thank you to Colin, Cameron, Michael, Alan, and Tom for their time. GAMBIT is released in UK Cinemas on the 21st November 2012 and in US Cinemas in 2013.
Read our review here
