FILM INTERVIEW: ANTONIO BANDERAS & LAURA LINNEY

Stars Of 'The Other Man' Talk Love, Communication & Corruption

By: Izumi Hasegawa

September 27, 2009

Izumi Hasegawa: Can each of you talk about what it was about your characters that resonated with you? What attracted you to the roles?

Laura Linney: I wasn’t really attracted to the role, to be honest. I was attracted to doing a movie, being able to work with Liam [Neeson] again, working with Richard Eyre again, getting to know Antonio and work with him, so I said yes almost before I’d even read the script. I didn’t even need to read the script. I just said yes, and then read the script and was like, “Oh, okay, this is my challenge.” Here’s my challenge now. So that was more why I did it.

Antonio Banderas: On my side, the same thing about the quality — all the people that I was going to work with, definitely. I feel a tremendous amount of admiration for Laura and Liam, and also for Richard Eyre, but I was more troubled by the character — not in terms of morality or anything like that, but in terms of knowing that I have to step in a territory that was an unknown zone for me — a type of nakedness, a separation with the characters that I have been doing during the last 15, 20 years. It related to me, when I read the script for the first time, to some of the characters in terms of risk that I had many years ago when I was working with [Pedro] Almodovar in Spain. And then, when I met Richard — he comes from that — he said, “Well yeah, I am calling you just because of that, because I know you are not afraid to actually decompose yourself in pieces and go for a character like that — that is, in a way, quite pathetic, if you will. He’s a man with a double life, which she has too, but in a way, she’s rewarded because she’s got a life. She’s a woman theoretically living in a happy environment, a happy family, or happy with what we were talking about before — probably too big of a word — but with joy. In my case, no. In my case, the only thing real that I have is her. If I don’t have her, I’m a nobody pretending the whole entire time to be somebody else. That’s quite uncomfortable when you attack a character like that. But I think that’s exactly what Richard Eyre was looking for. Even in the wardrobe, we were working together at the time they were working. He took me to places of basically exploration — unknown places. He said, “Here is a cliff and you have to jump, and you don’t know if, at the end of this jump, there are going to be rocks down there or you’re going to find water.” But that’s the whole entire feeling that I had when I was doing the movie.

IH: Laura, I didn’t understand why you did that to your husband, unless I missed something.  When you write the note, it’s your telling him you want to go to Lake Como, but I think you wanted him to find out about the other man. Am I right? And if it’s right, was that hard to justify?

LL: [Laughs] It’s complicated. I think there’s great value in looking at it from both perspectives, and that is that way throughout the entire film. You can take one viewpoint and one philosophy and watch the movie with that philosophy, and it will be a very different experience than watching it with a different philosophy. So it’s very complicated, and I’m finding I’m having a very hard time talking about it or being clear. I’m contradicting myself all over the place whenever I discuss this film. But you can decide that where she wanted to go was Lake Como, and she wanted to take her husband to Lake Como. Or you can say that she was leading him right to a further intimacy of herself, that she wanted him to know her completely.

IH: Is that how you played it?

LL: Um… [laughs] I wanted to play it so that both points of view were possible. I wanted to leave it a mystery. I have my own opinion about it, but I intentionally played it so that it would challenge an audience into trying to figure it out.

IH: I was actually hoping you guys could both speak to that, because The Other Man, in one way, sort of speaks to the duality in all personalities and the way you can fracture and become this other person.

LL: That’s right. And who is the other man? Which one is the other man?

IH: Exactly. As you were playing these parts, were there parts that you recognized with more of a certain thing? You were saying you played it as a mystery. Antonio, how did you…because there are these two halves, and there’s a public and private… Who was the one that was yours?

AB: I actually was joking with Liam all the time, saying, “You are the other man. The title is just making reference to you, my friend.” But it was not true. I think that’s one of the problems that the movie may or may not find with audiences, is just how the audience is going to position in front of the movie in terms of morality, especially because of the character. There are other issues in the movie also that go to that department of morality, because definitely, once the character of Liam Neeson is in pursuit of who is this man and finds out, there is a whole theme of revenge going on there — obsession but revenge — that can be also judged in terms of morality too. But I find this is something that has to do more with her character than with mine, but it struck me when I saw the movie — never when we were doing it, or even when I read the script for the first time, because I thought what Richard was looking for, when he hired me to do the movie, was just that the lover is justified, he isn’t even there. It’s that image everybody has seen in the movies. It’s like Dr. blah, blah, blah, but he was not looking for that. I realized that, but I didn’t know what was the intention until I saw the movie. The question for me, when I saw the movie, was there is a certain satisfaction in people taking somebody and making that somebody happy, fulfilling the dreams of that person. She sees this man suddenly, greets him in a certain way. That’s happening to me and to you from the point of view of a spectator, and provides him with a big chunk of reality, and that chunk of reality is herself. It’s almost like seeing a plant dying and putting some water on it and having the satisfaction of seeing that plant growing. She does it with this person for reasons that are very unexplainable. But we all have that duality. Some people may express that duality or leave that duality in their lives in terms of fantasy, and some people just go straight for that. There is a certain honesty, in a way, in the character that Laura portrays, because I think, at the end, clearly she wants her husband to find out. And there is a certain pardon at the end of the movie in which all the characters come to terms, including her, in which they all find a pardon for every sin that they have committed, and they recognize each other as human beings, which is a fantastic moment at that dinner party at the end of the movie in which everybody says, “You know, we don’t recognize ourselves as good, bad, with our miseries and our graynesses. We are human beings. This is what it is.” So the whole entire movie, I think, put a magnifying glass in that aspect of relationships which is probably normal. This is a movie that, in Hollywood, would have been literally impossible to make because it would have cut all the peaks and the lulls of the movie and made something very edible for audiences. The movie definitely had a big amount of reflection about it. It doesn’t give you straight answers, but the possibility of sitting down in front of a screen and reflecting about things that are very deep into the soul of human beings — that’s what I really got out of it at the end of this process. I have been extraordinary in this explanation. [Laughs]

IH: You guys were working with a director who has such an extensive theater background. How does that change your process? Was there a large amount of rehearsal before you guys started?

LL: We did have rehearsal, and Liam and I actually did a production of The Crucible with Richard Eyre, so it was old home week for us. It was fantastic. But yes, there is more… With directors who come from the theater — not all of them — but they tend to understand actors in a deeper way than some people who are just trained in film. Not that one is better than the other, but it’s just different. So there’s a much better ease of communication, and there’s just that deeper connection, at least I find, with directors who really have the same language. But yes, we did have a nice chunk of rehearsal, and that meant I got to spend some more time in London, which made me very happy. So it was nice, and there’s a real collaborative feel which is essential in the theater and, I feel, essential in films.

IH: How was it for you, Laura, coming off a seasoned director like Richard and having worked with [Clint] Eastwood, and you’ve got two films coming up with Mark Ruffalo directing and Leland Orser — both virgin directors. How do the experiences compare, and how do the boys hold up to the veterans?

LL: I’ve worked with a lot of first-time directors — a lot of them — and talent and experience are not the same thing. The combination of the two is really wonderful, and sometimes the first-time director is…they’re learning, and hopefully you’re there to help them learn. Leland and Mark were fantastic, both of them. They’re also both very good actors, so they have a lot of experience themselves. I haven’t seen the films, but on set, I loved it. I had a great time. They’re dear friends, and I wanted to help them any way I possibly could. I find the directors with the most experience — Clint, Richard, Barry Levinson — they roll with anything. Things that really rattle a first-time director, experienced directors don’t even blink an eye. It’s just that there’s an ease. They know the world’s not going to fall apart. They know it’s all going to be okay. There’s a sense of acceptance about the chaos, and then it makes things calmer.

IH: Do you guys have a special place that you really like that is memorable? Lake Como is so important for your characters in this film. Do you have a place like that in your real life?

LL: A special place. [Sings] A special place in my heart. Home.

AB: I was going to say that too.

LL: For those of us who travel, one of the great benefits and one of the joys of doing what we do is we travel to places that we never thought we’d ever get to go. So for me, home is the most magical and the richest.

IH: Are you talking about New York or your actual

apartment or house?

LL: Connecticut. My home in Connecticut.

AB: And Spain for me. In my case, even probably for more reasons, I’m living out of my natural environment. So when I go to Malaga, I feel myself — I can speak my own language. I can communicate with my friends and they are the same friends that I had when I was 14, 15 years old, so I feel tremendously comfortable, relaxed. I can be totally myself without having to pretend — not that I do too much, because just as you are discovering, at some point in your career, that the best thing you can do is just to be yourself, which is not an easy thing. But there’s a goal, actually.

IH: How much of what we see in the film is your own choices that you made as actors, and how much is the director?

LL: I don’t know where one ends and the other begins, and then there’s also the editor. It’s such a collaborative [process]. There are so many people, there are so many layers that are in it to a film performance.

AB: It’s difficult to know in movies.

LL: It is hard to know in film really. We bring what we bring to the table, and then Richard will guide one way or the other and make suggestions. Or he’ll have a better understanding of the overall and what’s important for him to tell the story that he wants to tell, and he’ll guide you to shift or change your behavior because of that. But it’s not so obvious in this one, for some reason, and sometimes you can say, “Oh no, that was my idea.” Here’s an example. The sequence with the photographs that come closer and closer of Antonio — that was all Antonio’s idea. So we all contributed. We all have moments where you contribute something.

IH: Whose idea was it for you to get to be half-naked for the guys, and we only get you (Antonio) in a towel?

LL: No justice!

AB: I don’t have a problem with it. I never had. They didn’t allow me to. I always wanted to. [Laughs] No, no, no. But this is something that happens very much in movies that doesn’t happen in theater. In theater, you are at the end of a process. And then it’s actually the audience who are going to motivate you and going to edit you, in a way, and yourself, but in movies, no. We forget, sometimes, about that. You give the best material you have, you think. I thought, for example, that the sequence with the chess was going in a totally different direction to what it came at the movie. I’m not saying it’s better or worse. It’s just choices of specific takes that you say, “Oh, I got it here. I nail it in this way.” And then you see that they used a totally different take. But at the same time, it’s not in my sight, judging in front of you right now. I might have my own opinion, but it’s not judging. Because when I was working with Richard, he was directing me much more than I thought he was doing at the time that we were there. There was a lot of subtlety — little things that were said that can take the whole entire cast in one direction that you don’t even expect. Do you remember the night of the rain? It seemed to pass like this [snaps fingers]. In the movie, we’re running together, we kiss against a wall in a church and I totally had another idea of how that thing was going. And suddenly he said, “No, no, no, no. You go and boom and bump her against the wall, and there is no laughter before. It’s very fast.” So I took that intention and I saw the cameras shooting that scene, and I saw one of the cameras going to my feet, and suddenly I did something that I thought was appropriate for the character. I got on my [tiptoes]. I got like this [demonstrates] because I thought that, in the mind of the character, this woman isn’t reachable in a certain way — unreachable in terms of “I want to marry you. I want you to forget your past life and come with me.” That is unreachable. So I felt that the cameras were going and, in fact, they picked that. I saw that in dailies, but then they didn’t use it. So you see the complication of those things. It’s very difficult for us to know exactly what is going to get to the end, but they are choices. They are decisions. And this is something — and especially in my case, because I directed two movies and I’m going to direct a third one now — I know how respectful you have to be with somebody’s idea. Acting and actors, we can be called, actually, interpreters, and it’s true. We interpret somebody’s ideas and you have to be very respectful of that, because this is a movie. What I cannot do is just fire the guy and go there and say, “No, no, no, no!” and get into a dynamic that is not creative — that is taking us to a place that nobody’s going to win. At a certain point, you have to say, “Okay, I got your point. I have another point. I got your point and I’m going to go for it because you are directing the movie, because it’s your idea, because you wrote this, because you got this, and I am working for you and I am trying to be a flexible actor, and there are a number of things. It doesn’t mean anything about this particular work. I’m talking in general, when you work in movies.

LL: We’re employees.

IH: What would you like people to take away from this film?

LL: I can’t presume what anybody is going to take away from this movie. That’s a question I can never answer for any film, but I do know it will provoke conversation, whether it pisses people off or they like it, or they’re intrigued or it makes them thoughtful or wistful or melancholy or sad — I don’t know, but I think it’s going to affect people in different ways. I think it’s a little provocative, for some people in a good way, and for some in an uncomfortable way.

AB: This year, I’ve been reading a lot of American literature, and I hate William Faulkner. I started reading William Faulkner and he pissed me off at the beginning, and I was fighting with the book The Bear, going up and down the book. At the end, you come to the conclusion that it is up to you. And what Laura said before I think is right. We were talking before about two couples going to the movies. Getting out of this movie, they go for dinner and they’re going to be talking about it, and they’re going to be taking a lot of positions in terms of morality. People are going to support her. People are going to support Liam. Even people are going to see me as a victim also of life itself and taking advantage of a situation there. So there are a lot of questions, but there are no answers, and we are too used to receiving answers. It creates a certain state of uncomfortableness when you have something that shakes you a little bit and think about where, actually, you are going to position yourself in front of this movie, if there is a place for you there. And what I said about William Faulkner was because of that, because it’s difficult. It’s a very active book that doesn’t allow you to read it in a passive way, and everything is cooked. So you go, “Oh, how beautiful. Oh, how conclusive,” with this and that. No, it’s not that.

IH: You just mentioned that you were going to be directing a film coming up…? Can you talk a little bit about what that project is?

AB: I will try to be fast. For 12 years, I’ve been thinking about that, although the last two years of my life, I’ve been dedicating a lot of time to writing and to put together this project. Spain was ruled by Arabs for almost eight centuries until 1492, the same year America was discovered. Alhambra and Granada, which was the last remnant of this empire in Spain, was very flourishing in the 11th century. It was coming down, and the Catholic king and queen took over. I’m going to tell the story of the last ten years of the last Moorish king because it allows me actually to reflect about what is going on right now in the world, and especially after the eight years of the Bush administration and the big polarization that the world is living with — Arabs and the rest. At the same time, I’m telling part of my own story. I belong there. I’m Andalusian, and the kingdom was called Al Andaluse. Through the life of this man who actually surrendered, Granada, at the end capitulated to the Catholic king and queen. I found the possibility of putting in that intimate, mystery character — everything that is good about the Arab culture — tolerance and dialogue and the best of the Koran side. It doesn’t mean that I’m doing a conflict in which the Christians are the bad ones and the Arabs are the good ones and the Jewish community is in the middle. No, every community has its greatnesses and miseries. We are going to tell the story in that way, and using a lot of popular legend too. But I think it allows me actually to reflect about those issues that are happening today with a certain objectivity that is given to me by the 500 years of history. You can look at those events now with a certain distance, so it’s going to be expensive and it’s an epic movie. It’s going to probably be financed by Arabs. I’ve been all around the world looking for financing, and I think we are now on the right path being in Qatar, in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, moving with a lot of people that are very interested. The movie may become a political event somehow, because it is a problem put on the United Nations by our President and Spain’s (Prime Minister) Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, called the Alliance of Civilizations. There are 57 countries attached to this problem. They have congresses every year — round tables, seminars, conferences, you name it — and the movie inserts very well into that. There is a big interest in the Spanish government, at the same time, for the making of this movie, and that is what I am working on right now. I had a script. I’m correcting it. Right now, I’m doing a third draft, actually, but I have a lot of hopes in this project.

IH: Does it have a title?

AB: Boabdil. That is the name of the Arab king.

IH: One of the things I loved about The Other Man is that it showed how technology has corrupted the way we communicate. How do you think technology has changed the way people woo and the way people have conversations?

LL: I think, at least what I’ve experienced, it just takes time. There’s no time to think. People are acting but they’re not necessarily thinking. There’s no thought. There’s such a hunger for instant, instant, now, now, now, now, now that even language is being truncated and people aren’t thinking sometimes before they act.

AB: I wanted to state here that I bought my first cellphone three days ago. When I went to the store, the guy was almost in tears. “Oh my God, I’m going to sell you your first cellphone. This is so emotional to me.” He was explaining it to me like it was a beautiful toy, which it is, so I cannot terminate it. I think that technology is making life faster but not necessarily better, and I totally agree with Laura.

LL: Thought shouldn’t be tedious. All of a sudden, it’s like people are impatient and their time is ticking away, so people get tedious, and me too. This is where the world is going. So we’ll see how it affects things, but there is something that unnerves me about where time is not appreciated that much.

AB: It’s affecting movies, actually. She said it slightly, but it’s true. Now you can tell a story… Video clips tell a story — a full, complex story in a minute and a half, two minutes. So are we eliminating the type of compromise, commitment that audiences had with movies that were longer? Could you imagine somebody here in Hollywood allowing a shot like in, for example, Lawrence of Arabia — Omar Sharif coming for two and a half minutes in the desert? No. The executives for the studio would be jumping on the table saying, “What are you doing?! People are going to go out of the theater.” That has a value when you see it still, right? That made me think about something else I said to Laura before, and she’s a theater woman. You’ve been a lot in theater, and your father was an excellent writer, and I’m probably going back to Broadway next year. Also, there are good effects of this technology thing. Suddenly there is something very valuable about what is ephemeral about things that only you can keep in your memory that are not recordable. The only thing you’re going to have is 2-1/2 hours for you — very personal, very intimate — and when you get out of the theater, that thing you saw right there, you cannot repeat anymore. You can probably buy a DVD in three years, but this is not the one that you saw. Except in nuances here and there, they are totally different. I love the possibility that theater and art of 3,000 years suddenly got the value because of this little thing — technologies that are going around. Suddenly it has a fantastic space again. One thing bad, one thing good.

IH: Laura, how long were you in make-up for that ghastly cancer, dying sequence?

LL: Not long.

IH: Because you’re stunning, and then to see you there was just…

LL: Oh, thank you.

IH: I was thinking, “My God!”

LL: A little green tint. It took a little bit of time, but it wasn’t prosthetic. It wasn’t anything like that.

IH: Antonio, what can you tell people about the Shrek 4 movie?

AB: It’s almost ready. Jeffrey [Katzenberg] called me yesterday, actually, and he said they were going to watch it this morning, and then the Puss in Boots story is there. They allowed me, finally, to read the script, and it’s fantastic. Salma Hayek is going to be attached to it.

IH: Do you know when you’re doing that one?

AB: I suppose we’re gonna record it probably February. The same thing that happened with my first Shrek may happen, that I am in the theater and I had to go to recording and do strange noises in the morning and singing in the afternoon, but it’s totally ready.

IH: How would you compare the fourth one to the first three?

AB: It’s totally different. I cannot reveal to you the whole of it. Something happened at the beginning of the story that changed the identity of all the characters, so it’s almost like a new movie. The characters are even different physically. You’ll see.