"The Singing Detective": Interview with director Keith Gordon
First posted March 18, 2003
This excerpted interview was conducted Sunday, Jan. 19, 2003, at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, by National Psoriasis Foundation directors Molly Marshall, Nicola Ries and Bill Taggart.
On the reaction to the film at the festival
Gordon: The reactions, I think, have been really wonderful. It's such an odd and eccentric film, you're always going to have a range of reactions. But what's been gratifying is that the positives have wildly outnumbered the negatives. And a certain number of negatives is inevitable and fine. This is not a movie you'd want everybody in the world to go, "OK, that's fine."
Asked about the mix of "moods" in the movie
Gordon: Potter's fascinated by that uncomfortable range, where the tragedy of life and the comedy of life are really close to each other. He had that in his own life, between the psoriasis and his cancer and his wife's death from cancer, he faced so much tragedy and yet he never lost his sense of humor but it definitely is a darkly tinged sense of humor.
Asked about the movie not being autobiographical of Dennis Potter
Gordon: I always took it as it's not autobiographical in the same way that "All That Jazz" wasn't autobiographical of Bob Fosse. Obviously, the career of the writer is different, and I guess Potter had a marriage that was very solid. But certainly the guy's dilemma and finding a way through all of it to be sort of reborn and have a spark stay alive amidst all the pain, that was Potter's struggle.
Comment: The diseases are definitely impactful. The psoriatic arthritis itself is so physically devastating.
Gordon: Especially the irony of being a writer and having your hands be immobile. It's one of those cosmic ironies, God saying "And now, how do you deal with that one."
Comment: How did you figure out how to portray psoriasis?
Gordon: It was a combination of things. First of all, I had people on the film helping us research textbook photographs so we could have the make-up people start working on stuff. One of the things that was so fascinating was the variety of ways in which the disease can manifest itself. So visually we found ourselves, in some sick way, saying "What would look best? What would be most interesting visually? What can we recreate successfully with make-up?" Because with different images we'd think, even though that's real, it looks phony in the picture. There were certain variants that look amazing but they look like something somebody designed. We went through all that to try to find something that the make-up people said, "Yes, we think we can do this well."
Robert started early on in rehearsal working with the physical immobility...not as specifically just to psoriasis, but looking at tapes of Potter and his hands, sort of imitating the postures that the arthritis called for and getting comfortable with that so he could stay really consistent. One of the things that is pretty amazing about the film is how consistent he is with his hands, where everything is. He works very hard at those things. He just knew it was going to be important to work on that.
My assistant was constantly on the phone [with the Psoriasis Foundation] asking, "How would this affect emotions? How would emotions affect this? How would it affect your sex life? How often would it come and go? When would it get better?" An endless stream of information that was incredibly valuable to funnel to Robert so he would understand what his life would have been like and what the ebbs and flows would have been like. And for me to understand in telling the story. That was incredibly helpful. It made it very easy to try to do it as accurately as possible. I mean, obviously ultimately we're telling a story, but we wanted to be as truthful as we could.
About the word psoriasis never being mentioned
Gordon: Well, the Japanese doctor says "psoriatic arthropathy," so that's as close [as it gets]. It's something I noticed that Potter didn't do, and I debated whether to try to stick in a line where somebody said "psoriasis," but I thought there was maybe a reason [Potter] didn't and maybe there's a reason to not get very literal about it. If you're interested, the conclusions are there, and certainly it talks about skin disease. But I have had people say, "Was he burned?" which I find very weird if you're following the story. I guess that may have been something we could have underlined more, but it's also in all of our press notes and the materials about the movie.
Reaction of people to severe psoriasis in the film
Gordon: People are very disturbed, which they should be. It's a very disturbing image if you're not used to it. As it is for the character to see himself. That's the whole struggle, and that's why we lit the hospital so bright and made it a place he could never escape and put that cruel mirror across from him. Here's this place that you can't get away.
But we figured by really doing that, by having the first time you see him be this huge close-up, that people would go through that initial shock and upset and revulsion and then hopefully start to get past that and start to wonder what's underneath that. Whereas if we'd kept it shadowy and hidden, it would take people longer—"what does he look like? what's the deal?" Of course, the whole point of anybody with a disease that is outwardly disfiguring is, ok, yes that looks different, now get to the person underneath. Now underneath that is a person with a heart and feelings and a mind and all the stuff that you've got, with a slightly different exterior. We just throw it right out there and make people deal with their feelings about it and then hopefully gradually move past it. And in a way, maybe the audience, as he's getting better, they're also getting better at accepting him, so in some way, if he'd stayed bad, you'd still have accepted him, but you can also just go with him in that transition.
We wanted to put it right there and make you really deal with it. If anybody storms out of the movie three minutes in they do, but anybody who gets past, then you start wondering about who this man is, not what his disease is.
Challenge of acting within the physical restrictions of psoriatic arthritis
Gordon: For Robert, who is so expressive, it was a really interesting challenge because he's so physical, so he really had to take that on as a challenge and he did. He was kind of excited by it as much as it drove him crazy, having to do that.
He was like a little kid, looking for some excuse to break out of it. And I'd say, No, you've got to be trapped, and the more trapped you are, the more everyone is going to understand why this is so hard. The more it looks like you can just move around, you're going to start undercutting it.
Comment: How did you get involved in the project?
Gordon: This was by far the most exhausting, because there was so much to do-the dance stuff and all that. And I started so much later. I came on only 12 weeks before shooting started. Normally on my projects I've been developing them for years, so by the time we get into anything like official pre-production, I've had months and months to research, to go to locations, to figure out how we're going to do things, to figure out what equipment we need. Often I'll be rehearsing with the actors way before we're ever supposed to be. None of that was available [with "The Singing Detective"], so here was the most complicated film I'd ever done with the least amount of preparation time and not a lot of money to throw at things either. Between that all, it was very challenging.
The history of the project
Gordon: I had loved the project for years but could never get close to it. It was going to be Barry Levinson and Jack Nicholson and $60 million [budget], so I could never get close to it, even though I loved the script. Then Mel, maybe a year and a half or two years ago, picked it up because he loved it. He was the one who thought this should be made as an independent movie. Nobody will ever make it as a huge movie. And as he said, if they did make it for that much money, they'd cut the guts out of it. Suddenly his disease wouldn't be so bad, and we really don't want the musical numbers. It would have become a medical drama about a guy in a hospital who had a little problem and then got better.
[Mel] understood the way to do this was independently, and then he brought Robert in which was a genius move on his part. Certainly Robert's struggles and his own life informed his performance, and also Mel and Robert are very good friends, and Mel wanted to give Robert a way to come back. And going with somebody so unique and so young and energetic avoided comparisons, I think, with Michael Gambon in the [original] series. Robert made it really American, really different, really a new character. I loved that idea when I heard it.
I think it was Robert was probably the one who suggested me. We'd acted together years ago in "Back to School," and we'd kept loosely in touch. I knew he liked my work. So he had me in and I did my hour and a half long spiel of how I'd make it look. They liked the ideas, but even then they took months before they ever made an official offer. They took their time, so I kind of assumed I wasn't getting the job. And then at the last possible second they said we'd like you come to do it, and I was like, OK, I wish I'd known earlier, but all right, I'll start now.
And Mel had already decided he wanted to play that part [of Dr. Gibbon], but again, I thought that was fun. I'd always been a fan and I also knew that would help the film's profile and help attract other actors, so I had no problems with the two main decisions that had already been made. Other than that, they basically said OK, it's yours, go off. Everything after that was on my shoulders.
Dennis Potter's children are listed as co-producers of the film
Gordon: They weren't really actively involved, but when Mel bought the film, I think he wanted their names on it as saying, this is something the family approves of. They wanted their names to be on it because they were excited about it. So that became part of the deal for buying the rights, that they'd have that credit. I would loved to have met them, but I've never had chance.
Good timing for movie, with Psoriasis Foundation's effort to increase awareness, emergence of new treatment options, etc.
Gordon: If it has any helpful affect, I'd be very happy. It's nice to think in the world that you can do a good deed at the same time you're making a movie. I'm certainly happy, in talking about it, to underline [the help the Psoriasis Foundation] can offer as much as I can. I'm certainly happy to make every effort to bring [the Psoriasis Foundation] in and make that point.
Specific scene comment: a nurse putting on white latex gloves before she applies moisturizer to the main character's psoriasis.
Gordon: It was obviously a real memory for him, where he described those gloves. There are places where he gives you a lot of room...but the gloves, he described it line by line, you hear the rubber being pulled tight, Dark's looking at it with apprehension as the white latex snaps tight. Clearly it was something that he remembered very personally. You could see where the things were that he really had gone through in a real big way.
Comment: Were you able to stay completely true to the screenplay, which was written in 1993?
Gordon: We changed a very, very few things. Where something struck as needing to be addressed, we would change it. And also Robert is a great improviser and where he'd come up with a great line that would fit in, I said fine. I didn't want to be didactic about it. But I basically felt like let's not change anything unless there's a really good reason. And Potter's agent's feeling was he would have been fine with everything that you guys did. She was very aware—she'd been with the script all along. She said there's nothing that you did that would have bothered him in the least. It's all within the spirit of what he was doing.
There were no material changes, there were no whole new scenes written. We did change the location—he'd written it for Chicago and we moved it to Los Angeles, but again, that was minimal in its impact, except it was moved to the desert, which I just really liked as an idea. That just seemed more visual to me than the suburbs outside of Chicago, which just seemed less interesting.
On watching the TV series beforehand
Gordon: I have to go back and watch the series again now that it's all over. I really avoided it because I knew how good it was. The problem is not so much not copying it as getting paranoid about copying it. I looked at everything else he did, but I didn't go back and look at ["The Singing Detective" TV series].
On the release schedule
Gordon: I already know one company was saying that they feel like both Robert and Mel could be Academy Award-type performances, where they might want to hold back and release it in the fall for that reason.
Comment: Do you know how Robert Downey doing this movie has personally impacted him?
Gordon: I hope for him, it's been kind of like for the character, I think it's been a step back toward sanity and being grounded. He was in such a bad place. For all I know, this was the first movie he ever did without drugs. For him to have that kind of very emotional experience he had working on it, I hope is a huge step forward.
Comment: A different role for him?
Gordon: I saw an interview he did for this, and he talked about that he's always been attracted to the hard stuff, that as an actor the easy stuff scares him. Give him something hard. If you think about, he's played a lot of pretty out there characters. Maybe not in this particular way, but he's not a guy who's traded on himself as a sexy leading man. He hasn't chased the Tom Cruise parts.
I know a lot of the projects you worked on the past, you have adapted books or other things that you liked. How was that different with this, where you were given something that was more complete?
Gordon: Well, because it was so great, it was fine. If I'd been given this and not been happy with it and then felt I couldn't change it, that would be bad. This is one of those rare cases...when you say "This is amazing. I just want to do this." Most scripts I get in the Hollywood system you go, "Oh my God, this is going to take a lot of work to make this good." So that's a lot less appealing to come in that late in the process. But, with a writer of this caliber, I'm like, yeah, let's go shoot.
Comment: Did you meet Dennis Potter?
Gordon: No, I wish I had. He stayed almost exclusively in England. As a kid, I started seeing some of his stuff and I thought it was amazing. Every time his stuff would air, I would watch it and I just thought he was a great writer. It's weird. It's like getting to work with one of my heroes. I wished he would have been around, although apparently he was very difficult and irascible. He was not always fun to work with.
On Potter's personality
Gordon: He loved to do what the character does in the movie, which is find what your weak spot was and see how you stood up to the needling. I'm kind of glad in a way he wasn't around, although I would have liked to have shown it to him. But to have him around day to day, it would have been hard.
And even Jon Amiel, who directed the original series, said it was not always easy. [Potter] was a genius, you had to really be ready for abuse and try to let it roll off of you. He said by the end of it they were great friends, but it really took getting used to, he's my great friend and he's going to call me names everyday. I'm just going to have to say OK, that's Dennis. I'm glad I didn't have that challenge.
It will be interesting to see what the reaction is from patients. We had to force ourselves to realize the movie is not about psoriasis.
Right, it's metaphorical as much as it is anything. It's not literal, but it's still ultimately very positive, it's still ultimately about overcoming and moving beyond.
The main character's wife calls it a "disgusting disease," and that's going to bother some people.
Gordon: That's just so much their relationship. They are two people that are always pushing each other's buttons. That's not meant to be the editorial voice of the film. It's a wife in a tense relationship with her husband. They were both spiky people but they really loved each other a great deal. They needed each other and it was just their weird way of communicating, which people have in their relationships.
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