Chapter 1: Clive Owen's Iconic Characters
0:00
- It's not a bad thing to be scared, it's not a bad thing to go in there thinking the chance of failure is pretty high, but just give it a go.
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9 seconds
When you're challenged like that as an actor, that's how you improve.
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13 seconds
[upbeat music]
Chapter 2: Children of Men
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17 seconds
"Children of Men."
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21 seconds
[bomb explodes]
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26 seconds
You know, sometimes you read a script and you say, oh, I know what to do here, or there's things I can do here. I didn't see it in that.
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32 seconds
I thought it was a really interesting, cool script, but I was like, where's the character? Where do you get to do things?
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39 seconds
I met Alfonso and he blew me away with his vision of the movie.
0:43
43 seconds
And then I realized actually, I'm the conduit to which he wants to discuss these things.
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48 seconds
Now by setting a film in the very near future, I think it gives you license to discuss head on, things that were already troubling and concerning people.
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58 seconds
You set it slightly in the future and it gives you a way of really getting into those subjects without it feeling heavy handed and, you know, in the moment.
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1 minute, 6 seconds
And I realized that my job was to not get in the way of it really, is to not act too much. I really saw that.
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1 minute, 13 seconds
I thought, I see, you need to see this world through this character.
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1 minute, 17 seconds
So it was really about, you know, signing on to Alfonso's vision for the movie.
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1 minute, 23 seconds
And it was one of those films that still, like people still talk about today.
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1 minute, 27 seconds
There was an article in the New York Times, I think like 10 years after it was made, saying, why is "Children of Men" still the most relevant film today?
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1 minute, 34 seconds
I mean, that's how much I think that Alfonso was on it really.
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1 minute, 40 seconds
[gun firing] [people screaming]
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1 minute, 49 seconds
My memories of those sequences is how close my relationship was with the operator, because we had to do a dance really in those scenes, especially that long sequence at the end of the movie.
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2 minutes, 1 second
And we spent a long time rehearsing and there were half day resets.
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2 minutes, 5 seconds
If we didn't get it right, it was a half day before we could go again to reset the whole thing.
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2 minutes, 11 seconds
So it felt like me and the operator were doing this dance, and I have to not make it obvious that, you know, I have to make it feel as natural as possible.
2:20
2 minutes, 20 seconds
And the beauty of those sequences, the intent of them is just to get you in to feeling what is going on, not to show you how great Alfonso is, and how great Chivo was.
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2 minutes, 30 seconds
It's the best way to plant you emotionally in what is going on.
2:34
2 minutes, 34 seconds
I really have fond memories of doing those because I kind of love that technical aspect and that kind of meeting with the operation, both trying to achieve something together like that.
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2 minutes, 44 seconds
- Even if they discovered the cure for infertility, it doesn't matter, too late. World went to shit.
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2 minutes, 52 seconds
You know what, it was too late before the infertility thing happened for fucks sake. - I'm still trying to tell a joke, man.
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3 minutes, 1 second
- Michael Kane's a legend, and when you work with him, you realize why, and you realize why, you know, his career has lasted as long as it has because he's like the ultimate pro and he is smart and economical and you know, it was a joy.
3:13
3 minutes, 13 seconds
And there was something quite special on that movie.
3:16
3 minutes, 16 seconds
I did a couple of films with Mike Hodges, who did the original "Get Carter" with Michael Kane, which was a big film in Michael Kane's early career.
3:25
3 minutes, 25 seconds
And they hadn't seen each other for like 10, 20 years.
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3 minutes, 30 seconds
And so I got Mike Hodges onto the set of "Children of Men" and just listened to them to sort of reminisce about the early days and the making of that movie,
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3 minutes, 39 seconds
which for me was just a treat, just to listen to those, you know, guys just going back and remembering the stuff that they'd done.
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3 minutes, 50 seconds
[upbeat music]
Chapter 3: The Knick
3:52
3 minutes, 52 seconds
"The Knick." He's based on a real guy.
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4 minutes, 1 second
He is based on a guy called William Holsted, who was a genius doctor at that time, but had this, you know, massive drug addiction
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4 minutes, 8 seconds
and was like a wild, wild, but still was at the forefront of medicine and like, hugely brilliant.
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4 minutes, 16 seconds
- We need to lengthen the incision and get the baby out now. Jules. - Yes, Mark.
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4 minutes, 23 seconds
Knife. Knife.
4:25
4 minutes, 25 seconds
- We had an amazing medical advisor on "The Knick" who has this townhouse in New York that has over a million medical photographs
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4 minutes, 32 seconds
and every single operation in the show was based on a real operation of that time. There was nothing that was like made up about it at all.
4:40
4 minutes, 40 seconds
And Soderbergh wanted us, you know, we did as much work as we could in the suturing and all of that, and he would use and wanted to use us as much as possible.
4:49
4 minutes, 49 seconds
And I'll never forget the first operation we did, which is the first operation in "The Knick." It was just a river of blood on the floor.
4:57
4 minutes, 57 seconds
The expert doctor was standing there and just going more blood, more blood, more blood.
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5 minutes, 2 seconds
And Soderbergh just kept shooting and shooting and we were doing it and we were losing this patient and everyone was just sort of soaked at the end of it.
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5 minutes, 10 seconds
It was like, wow. - Nothing.
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5 minutes, 21 seconds
- I'm hugely proud of that show. And I think Stephen Soderbergh did an unbelievable job. And the cast of that show is I rate so highly.
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5 minutes, 29 seconds
You know, I'm English and I've been brought up on period shows where everyone lives in a nice house and goes sauntering off for a little walk with an umbrella.
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5 minutes, 36 seconds
And here we are in "The Knick" 1900 where life feels visceral, dangerous,
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5 minutes, 43 seconds
and probably more like what it's like for most of us if we were living at that time, you know.
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5 minutes, 50 seconds
There was an urgency to life, life expectancy wasn't great.
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5 minutes, 54 seconds
You didn't want to end up in a hospital at the turn of the century.
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5 minutes, 57 seconds
And it was so refreshing to be in a show that sort of really, really told how it might have been for an awful lot of us.
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6 minutes, 7 seconds
- This is a technique I pioneered myself and one I know to be completely safe if done correctly.
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6 minutes, 17 seconds
- There are photographs that show doctors did that at that time.
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6 minutes, 21 seconds
They were cutting themselves open to teach people how to do certain operations and they were doing it on their own.
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6 minutes, 26 seconds
And when Steven Soderbergh came to me to pitch me the whole thing, he already knew that that's the way we were going out at the end of the second season.
6:36
6 minutes, 36 seconds
He's phenomenal.
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6 minutes, 37 seconds
I realized very quickly we start shooting and then I go, oh my God, he's editing it as he's looking at it.
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6 minutes, 44 seconds
And we shoot the edit. We don't shoot anything else.
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6 minutes, 47 seconds
We don't do loads of coverage of different people and then gives him lots to play with later.
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6 minutes, 52 seconds
He looks at a scene and he attacks it with an editor's brain and says, how would I put this together?
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6 minutes, 57 seconds
I go, bum bum bum bum bum and that's the way we shoot it. It's so focused. His set is like a hallowed environment.
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7 minutes, 5 seconds
There's no small talk, it's concentrated, which I adore.
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7 minutes, 8 seconds
I walk into that environment and I go, this is why we're all here.
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7 minutes, 13 seconds
There's no seats for anybody to sit down, there's no monitors for people to watch.
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7 minutes, 16 seconds
It's all like so focused and concentrated and I just had like the best time with him and rate him so, so highly.
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7 minutes, 27 seconds
[upbeat music]
Chapter 4: Sin City
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7 minutes, 29 seconds
"Sin City." - Hey baby, I don't hear you making those calls. Answer me.
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7 minutes, 39 seconds
Oh, I don't need to- - Hi, I'm Shelly's new boyfriend that I'm outta my mind.
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7 minutes, 47 seconds
- What I didn't realize when I signed on to do "Sin City," that it was gonna be so faithful to the source material, to the point where every scene started with an image from the graphic novel.
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7 minutes, 56 seconds
And it was an unusual shoot because we were kind of floating in thin air. It was all green screen.
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8 minutes, 2 seconds
We started off with car and things like, even that went, so in the end it was a seat and a steering wheel, like that's all we had.
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8 minutes, 10 seconds
So it's like floating, you know, you're like acting in a sort of weird floating state.
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8 minutes, 15 seconds
And then I couldn't believe what he did when I saw the movie. I honestly couldn't believe it. I sat there.
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8 minutes, 20 seconds
The world he created and how he made everything fused together was so impressive and it was so faithful to the graphic novel.
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8 minutes, 28 seconds
I watched it and went, this is the graphic novel just burst into life.
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8 minutes, 32 seconds
This is not like, you know, some cinematic takeover there of it. He has gone into that material and just sprang it into life.
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8 minutes, 41 seconds
I thought it was a really impressive movie.
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8 minutes, 43 seconds
The scene that I did with Benicio in the car, Quentin Tarantino came in and shot was literally two boxes and a wheel for the drive, you know, and that was it.
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8 minutes, 54 seconds
And the rest, all the car, everything else was created afterwards. - You ain't even going to make it to the pits.
9:02
9 minutes, 2 seconds
- You shut the hell up. I'll make it. - Not unless you keep your eyes on the road sugar pie. Watch it.
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9 minutes, 11 seconds
- It's unusual to begin with, but then you kind of suspend belief and it becomes a bit like theater or something.
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9 minutes, 16 seconds
You sort of know that that, but still, I didn't realize how well he was gonna achieve the world.
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9 minutes, 24 seconds
You know, how fleshed out that was gonna be and how well done he was gonna do that.
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9 minutes, 29 seconds
The energy and smart of Robert Rodriguez really, he was really like a brilliant to work with.
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9 minutes, 35 seconds
And I didn't quite know what it was because it was all green screen.
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9 minutes, 39 seconds
So I'm like, I dunno what the finished thing's gonna be like but I totally embraced the way he was working and the way we were shooting it.
Chapter 5: Inside Man
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9 minutes, 47 seconds
[upbeat music]
9:49
9 minutes, 49 seconds
"Inside Man." When Spike first gave me the script to "Inside Man," I went into the bank and I never took the mask off.
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9 minutes, 57 seconds
I put the mask on and I spent the rest of the film in the mask and I said, why would I do this? I said, do you want me to do a voiceover?
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10 minutes, 3 seconds
Like, you know, do I wanna stick around for months to do a film where you never see my face?
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10 minutes, 7 seconds
And we left it and then three months later I get a call going, "I got Denzel for the cut.
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10 minutes, 13 seconds
Does that change anything?" And I was like, "yeah, I think it does actually, yeah.
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10 minutes, 18 seconds
I think that definitely does." And we met up and he took me to a Knicks game, never really talked about the movie, didn't say a word, you know,
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10 minutes, 25 seconds
didn't realize that he was part of the game, he's remonstrating with the players and the rear play into the crowd. Still didn't talk about the movie.
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10 minutes, 33 seconds
At the end of it said to me, "you got a ride?" I said, "yeah, yeah." He said, "can you drop me off?" So we went back to his house, the car pulls up and he goes,
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10 minutes, 42 seconds
"so you doing it or what?" I was like, "of course I'm doing it.
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10 minutes, 47 seconds
Just sort the mask thing out." And he goes, "yeah, yeah, we'll find a way to get the mask off a few times." And I had a great time on it.
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10 minutes, 55 seconds
And he's become a great friend.
10:57
10 minutes, 57 seconds
A few months ago, I gave him a sort of BFI Fellowship award in London.
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11 minutes, 3 seconds
And like, you know, I've got nothing but you know, huge respect for Spike and I had a great time on that movie.
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11 minutes, 12 seconds
- I'm gonna walk out of that door when I'm good and ready. - Can I get you to do that today? I didn't think so.
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11 minutes, 21 seconds
- Any other proposals? - Oh, please do not say proposals. My girlfriend, she wants a proposal from me.
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11 minutes, 26 seconds
- It was just a very well written character and Spike was always, always talking about like, he needed someone who could go toe to toe with Denzel 'cause he is so strong.
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11 minutes, 36 seconds
And I just knew that that character had to feel like he had the upper hand throughout the movie and that was the way through it really.
Chapter 6: Closer
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11 minutes, 44 seconds
[upbeat music]
11:46
11 minutes, 46 seconds
"Closer." - I'm sorry you were- - Don't say it, don't you fucking say you are too good for me.
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11 minutes, 53 seconds
I am, but don't say it. You're making the mistake of your life.
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11 minutes, 59 seconds
You're leaving me because you believe that you don't deserve happiness, but you do Anna.
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12 minutes, 5 seconds
- Yeah, so "Closer" I remember where I was when I first read that play. They were work-shopping the play. They weren't even putting the play on.
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12 minutes, 13 seconds
And I was like, that's a fantastic piece of writing.
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12 minutes, 15 seconds
I wanted to play Larry and Patrick Marber said I was too young. It was seven years before the movie.
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12 minutes, 20 seconds
Then a year later, they do the play, they're gonna do it at the national theater.
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12 minutes, 24 seconds
And my agent comes to talk about something else and I say, "that play "Closer." What a piece of writing." And he says, "well, Ciarán Hinds is playing Larry,
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12 minutes, 32 seconds
how do you feel about the other part?" I go, "you know what, they're four great parts.
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12 minutes, 37 seconds
Like yeah, if they want me to play down, I'll play down." And I did, and I did the original production of the play.
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12 minutes, 42 seconds
So we launched that play and it was a big success and really kind of like a bolt of lightning, really. People were walking out during, I remember regularly.
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12 minutes, 51 seconds
It got towards the end of the first half of the play and people would walk out when it was getting so intense.
12:56
12 minutes, 56 seconds
Seven years later I get a call going, "Mike Nichols wants to meet you for lunch in New York." And I'd heard rumors he might be doing the film version of "Closer," but it wasn't clear.
13:08
13 minutes, 8 seconds
Well, I wasn't told exactly why, but that was in the air. And I went and had lunch and then he told me who he'd cast.
13:15
13 minutes, 15 seconds
He told me he got Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman.
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13 minutes, 18 seconds
And he offered me the part of Larry and I walked outta that lunch like on cloud because I knew that play really well and I knew it was a gift, a gift of a part in a brilliant piece of writing.
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13 minutes, 28 seconds
I remember walking out of that lunch just, yeah, so thrilled. - When?
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13 minutes, 37 seconds
When did you do it here? Answer the question.
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13 minutes, 41 seconds
- I mean, it's a really tough scene and I think because of, you know, the language that's used and where the scene goes, we approached it very sensitively
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13 minutes, 49 seconds
and it was feeling a little like too on the nose and a little too excruciating.
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13 minutes, 53 seconds
And then Mike came up, which he did throughout his career, and he did this with a lot of his films, is that he likes people to be busy and to move them around
14:02
14 minutes, 2 seconds
so that the scene is happening within the context of something else.
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14 minutes, 5 seconds
So it's not just two actors sitting there having like this super frank like, you know, detail, very personal conversation.
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14 minutes, 13 seconds
And so he started to move us around the apartment in the scene, me following Julia up and down.
14:20
14 minutes, 20 seconds
And suddenly the sink comes alive because we're buried in a movement and there's a sort of energy to it.
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14 minutes, 26 seconds
You know, as I was doing the play playing the other part, I knew the power of that scene and how sort of intense it was.
14:32
14 minutes, 32 seconds
I just embraced it and it's such a powerful, disturbing piece of writing that play. - Thank you. Thank you for your honesty.
14:39
14 minutes, 39 seconds
Now fuck off and die.
Chapter 7: Croupier
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14 minutes, 41 seconds
[upbeat music]
14:43
14 minutes, 43 seconds
- "Croupier." That film, possibly the most important in my career in terms of a gear shift.
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14 minutes, 50 seconds
It was a very small film, cost less than a million dollars, I think. Practically didn't get released at the beginning.
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14 minutes, 56 seconds
In fact, Mike Hodges who directed it, said that film wasn't released, it escaped.
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15 minutes, 1 second
But it had a really big impact on my career because it became the kind of cool indie film of that year in America and opened doors and suddenly my career shifted.
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15 minutes, 12 seconds
So it feels like, you know, an important film. And it was made by a great friend, Mike Hodges.
15:19
15 minutes, 19 seconds
[soft music]
15:19
15 minutes, 19 seconds
- 21. Blackjack. - I went to croupier school for two weeks straight all day, every day.
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15 minutes, 29 seconds
The one thing I remember about that training is they were obsessed by stealing. Like they drilled into everybody learning to be a croupier.
15:37
15 minutes, 37 seconds
Don't think you'd ever get away with it because unusually, I don't know if it's still the case, but unusually it was a rare thing where there's so much cash around.
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15 minutes, 47 seconds
People were giving cash, people spending cash.
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15 minutes, 49 seconds
There was this general paranoia that if you're coming to train as a croupier, don't think you'll get away with it if you feel like you've found a way to steal from us.
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16 minutes, 1 second
I just remember that being drilled into people.
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16 minutes, 4 seconds
[upbeat music]
Chapter 8: Chancer
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16 minutes, 6 seconds
"Chancer." Well that was the kind of the first really big project that I did.
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16 minutes, 12 seconds
I'd left drama school, I hadn't done much and then I landed this TV show.
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16 minutes, 16 seconds
I went away somewhere and I came back to London and there were massive posters everywhere and my face.
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16 minutes, 21 seconds
And I think they had a sort of phrase underneath saying, what's the matter? Don't you trust me?
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16 minutes, 26 seconds
'Cause he was a real chancer, he was this kind of guy that was like pulling scams every week against the big banks.
16:32
16 minutes, 32 seconds
It was the first time I really noticed the shift of being in the public eye.
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16 minutes, 36 seconds
I got in the tube and people were, this is like a day or two after it aired and people were looking and giggling.
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16 minutes, 43 seconds
And I went into a shop and it was the beginning of understanding what that kind of shift in profile entails really.
16:51
16 minutes, 51 seconds
That was a very strong memory of going, oh my gosh, it took time to adjust to that, you know, to be in a prime time TV show when you hadn't really done anything.
17:01
17 minutes, 1 second
It was a big shift.
17:02
17 minutes, 2 seconds
It takes time to adjust and process and find your way through that really.
17:07
17 minutes, 7 seconds
- You are a rude, arrogant self-opinionated, corrupt and dishonest young man. - I know. Cheers.
17:16
17 minutes, 16 seconds
- Unfortunately, you are just the kind of man a business seems to need these days. - It was great.
17:21
17 minutes, 21 seconds
And there was an actor in it called Peter Vaughan, who I really, really became very fond of.
17:25
17 minutes, 25 seconds
And I kind of learned a lot from him really about sort of discipline and approach and always being ready and focused.
17:32
17 minutes, 32 seconds
As a young actor I watched him closely and was really impressed with him, yeah.
17:36
17 minutes, 36 seconds
But that show was the sort of, you know, the beginning of everything in some ways.
17:41
17 minutes, 41 seconds
[upbeat music]
Chapter 9: King Arthur
17:43
17 minutes, 43 seconds
"King Arthur." I remember the big thing on that one was I'd had a couple of bad experiences on horses.
17:50
17 minutes, 50 seconds
I'd been thrown off on a TV thing.
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17 minutes, 53 seconds
I went to America to do a pilot and I had an awful experience where they put me on very lively horses that I wasn't really good enough and I developed a bit of a thing about it.
18:02
18 minutes, 2 seconds
And so we negotiated to do "King Arthur" and the day the deal was done, I made a call and said, I need to get on a horse tomorrow.
18:10
18 minutes, 10 seconds
And I had a long time before that shoot started, but I knew it was gonna be a journey because the whole movie was on a horse and I needed to get comfortable.
18:20
18 minutes, 20 seconds
- You should be on your knees.
18:23
18 minutes, 23 seconds
[horse neighs]
18:24
18 minutes, 24 seconds
- I came to see your face so that I alone may find you on the battlefield and it would be good for you to mark my face, Saxon, for the next time you see it, it will be the last thing you see on this earth.
18:39
18 minutes, 39 seconds
- I was very lucky, there was this brilliant horse stunt guy called Rob Inch who was kind of the best at any horse stunts.
18:46
18 minutes, 46 seconds
He'd done some really big stuff in movies on horses.
18:50
18 minutes, 50 seconds
And he walked me through it and he trained me on a horse and we got better and better and he got me into shape for it. It was wild, yeah.
18:57
18 minutes, 57 seconds
Then they built Adrian's wall and it was about a mile long. They were saying it probably cost more than the original. You know, like than the actual thing.
19:06
19 minutes, 6 seconds
It was huge. It was huge sets.
19:08
19 minutes, 8 seconds
I remember we did scenes where we sort of iced vast areas to do scenes in the snow and it was a big movie.
19:14
19 minutes, 14 seconds
- Knights, the gift of freedom that is yours by right.
19:19
19 minutes, 19 seconds
[knights shouting]
Chapter 10: Impeachment: American Crime Story
19:22
19 minutes, 22 seconds
[upbeat music]
19:23
19 minutes, 23 seconds
- "Impeachment: American Crime Story." - Didn't mean to catch you off guard.
19:29
19 minutes, 29 seconds
- Mr. President, sorry I was just- - You don't have to apologize for doing your job.
19:34
19 minutes, 34 seconds
- I was very surprised when they called me up and said, they want you to play Bill Clinton. I couldn't see it. I couldn't see it at all. I was like, why, why would someone come to me?
19:43
19 minutes, 43 seconds
You know, I'm English firstly, but also I just didn't see it.
19:48
19 minutes, 48 seconds
And then I started to think about it and then I started to look in like a lot of projects that I do, if something gets set a light in me suddenly I go,
19:55
19 minutes, 55 seconds
well there's something I think I can do in this and there's something I want to give a go. And I knew it was a challenge. I knew it was a big reach but I wanted to take it on.
20:05
20 minutes, 5 seconds
If you've been set alight and ignited and this, you feel that you could possibly do something. It's not a bad thing to be scared.
20:11
20 minutes, 11 seconds
It's not a bad thing to go in there thinking the chance of failure is pretty high, but just give it a go because you know,
20:20
20 minutes, 20 seconds
that's when you're challenged like that as an actor, that's how you improve.
20:25
20 minutes, 25 seconds
- Mr. President, even if you didn't have sexual relations by that definition, you still engaged in other sexual activities.
20:32
20 minutes, 32 seconds
So the statement, there is no sex of any kind in any manner is a lie, is it not?
20:42
20 minutes, 42 seconds
- Well, that depends upon what the meaning of the word is, is.
20:46
20 minutes, 46 seconds
- It's a difficult line, you know, to tread because you don't want to do just a bad impersonation.
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20 minutes, 51 seconds
You just don't want to, you know, you need to infuse it in with something.
20:55
20 minutes, 55 seconds
But you know, in some ways, for me, the most satisfying part of doing that was that there was all this footage. And we were recreating some of it.
21:03
21 minutes, 3 seconds
And it's there for you so there's something, you know, you know what you're trying to do.
21:07
21 minutes, 7 seconds
There's something very satisfying about having a really clear idea of what you're trying to achieve. And it's not open to a sort of actor's interpretation.
21:15
21 minutes, 15 seconds
The clarity of what you are trying to nail is very clear and I kind of like that.
Chapter 11: A Murder at the End of the World
21:23
21 minutes, 23 seconds
[upbeat music]
21:25
21 minutes, 25 seconds
"A murder at the End of the World." I did a lot of work with Brit and Zal on that show just before we even started shooting.
21:31
21 minutes, 31 seconds
Just, you know, when they first came to me and they put it to me.
21:34
21 minutes, 34 seconds
And as they wrote each script, we would jump on a Zoom and discuss it and talk about it. I didn't base that character on anyone in particular.
21:41
21 minutes, 41 seconds
But you know, the one thing that was becoming clear and they were kind of exploring and I imagine is the truth, is that when you're that successful
21:49
21 minutes, 49 seconds
or that powerful, that wealthy, it can be a lonely place and a little paranoid because you've got everybody around.
21:54
21 minutes, 54 seconds
You're never quite sure of people's intent around you because you're in a slightly different place to them all the time.
21:59
21 minutes, 59 seconds
The isolation and how, you know, it must be a strange place to be and it must be very, very hard to trust things and people around you.
22:09
22 minutes, 9 seconds
- You are holding us hostage.
22:11
22 minutes, 11 seconds
- Not one of you is going back to the surface of the earth until I know who has betrayed me.
22:18
22 minutes, 18 seconds
- That came from the work that that Brit and Zal did.
22:22
22 minutes, 22 seconds
But also that feeling of somebody who's very cool and very calm and very on the top, but when triggered of, you know, it was just a character thing
22:30
22 minutes, 30 seconds
that this guy's got a temper and you know, it's a way of expressing that underneath it all that he's not as cool and collected as he appears.
22:39
22 minutes, 39 seconds
[upbeat music]
Chapter 12: Monsieur Spade
22:41
22 minutes, 41 seconds
"Monsieur Spade"
22:45
22 minutes, 45 seconds
[speaking foreign language]
22:53
22 minutes, 53 seconds
- Quite the pepper gun you got there, madam.
22:58
22 minutes, 58 seconds
- I get a call from Scott Frank wanting to talk to me about a project, and him and Tom Fontana jump on the phone and they pitched me the idea of a spin on Sam Spade taking him 20 years ahead.
23:09
23 minutes, 9 seconds
The room I was sitting in when he called me, I've got an original Maltese Falcon poster on the wall.
23:15
23 minutes, 15 seconds
I take a shot, I send it to him and say, you've come to the right guy. Like, I'm a huge Bogart fan. I'm a huge Maltese Falcon fan.
23:23
23 minutes, 23 seconds
And it was like a gift.
23:25
23 minutes, 25 seconds
It was like a, you know, a genre that I love and something I was very excited about.
23:30
23 minutes, 30 seconds
[soft music]
23:34
23 minutes, 34 seconds
- These things will kill you. - These are the same ones Doctor smoke. I saw on TV.
23:42
23 minutes, 42 seconds
- It's difficult to try and reinvigorate noir in a way because we've kind of seen everything before.
23:47
23 minutes, 47 seconds
You know, when you set it up in a very classic way, people feel very quickly very familiar with it and I think it's hard to reimagine and reinvigorate it.
23:57
23 minutes, 57 seconds
And Scott did a very clever thing and he moved it 20 years ahead and put him as a complete fish outta water living in the south of France.
24:05
24 minutes, 5 seconds
And he did an awful lot of work on the, you know, Spades getting older Spade's, not the guy he was, he's trying to live a quieter life.
24:13
24 minutes, 13 seconds
But it also gave me the opportunity, which I welcomed, to go back and really flood myself with Bogart
24:21
24 minutes, 21 seconds
and those kind of characters from the forties because it's also important to know that's where the guy comes from.
24:26
24 minutes, 26 seconds
He might be getting older, but I needed to ground myself in the origins of the source material really,
24:33
24 minutes, 33 seconds
plus the fact that I was surrounded primarily by French actors.
24:38
24 minutes, 38 seconds
So I'm trying to do a kind of like period, kind of American Sam Spade thing, but kind of isolated
24:45
24 minutes, 45 seconds
because no one else is doing that around me because we're now in sort of early sixties France.
24:51
24 minutes, 51 seconds
So I used Bogart's voice a lot to ground myself and sort of get me.
24:55
24 minutes, 55 seconds
I lifted all of his dialogue from the Maltese Falcon in Casablanca, just his dialogue.
25:01
25 minutes, 1 second
And that was my kind of setting template every morning on the way into work. - Philippe could have taken the shelf.
25:07
25 minutes, 7 seconds
With Theresa in the car, hard to imagine even Philippe doing that.
25:11
25 minutes, 11 seconds
And he's wounded, which shouldn't make him too hard to find for a pair of top detectives like you
25:17
25 minutes, 17 seconds
[speaking foreign language]
25:20
25 minutes, 20 seconds
- We've already talked, Scott and I, about ideas and possibilities, some really cool, exciting ideas about where to take him and what to do with it.
25:27
25 minutes, 27 seconds
But it's just a case of, let's see how this goes and then we'll take it from there. - [Interviewer] Were you ever in talks to play James Bond?
25:35
25 minutes, 35 seconds
- No, and it's not a bad thing to be talked about.
25:38
25 minutes, 38 seconds
You know, it was like, [laughs] but no, it was all rumor.