R22.80 May 2012 Cannes Lions issue www.thecallsheet.co.za South African Party, Cannes Lions Friday 22 June, 10:30pm @ Plage royale, Cannes Contact Philippa Dresner for more information. philippa@bigbashtheory.com
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KEVIN SPACEY ON SPIRIT OF A DENTURE laboration i think.
GENERAL INDUSTRY
alan, what is the biggest thing you’re taking away from this experience? As: THere’s a lot of lessons i learnt on this. One of the first questions Kevin asked me was what was the tone of the script, and its one of those things i’d never considered. i had to wing it on the spot. subsequently, i’ve realised how important that is to know. On the projects i’m working on now that understanding is vital - if you’ve got that pegged everything falls into place a little bit. Ks: it’s true, because sometimes you can come into an experience and realise ‘Oh, that actor has a different view on what the tone of this is, and the director has a different view on it’. What you want, at least in most of the successful experiences i’ve had, is when everyone is together on what you’re trying to balance and on what the effect you have on the audience is. When everyone agrees on that, things fall into place.
Lance Gibbons interviewed Kevin Spacey, Trigger Street producer Dana Brunetti and Jameson First Shot winner alan Shelley ahead of the premiere of his short film Spirit of a Denture. What made alan’s script the South african winner? DB: Kevin’s idea is probably a little bit different from mine as a producer, mine was about the story initially and then what would be feasible for us to produce a good film based on the restrictions we had - like the amount of time, the locations and not being able to meet with Alan before the time and him not being able to select crew. Once we got the stories that we thought were the best stories and the best scripts, we started to look at them that way. “Okay, these we can produce and these we can get done.” They didn’t require more than we could provide in that time. Then those scripts were handed on to Kevin. Ks: sometimes you’ll read scripts and think ‘wow this is a really interesting idea, but it’s 15 locations, it’s set in 1940’. They’ve in a sense done a wonderful job, but they’ve given us a lot of problems and ultimately we can’t solve those problems from a production point of view. Particularly when you’re trying to shoot this kind of film in two days. What i was looking for on top of the production concerns was first of all who is the filmmaker I thought had a sensibility that i could immediately attune with. And what role
offered me something i could actually do where i would be putting myself in a position where this person could direct me and it wasn’t just a little cameo. so each of the three roles in the three films is very distinct and they’re all very different which i liked a lot. i just thought Alan’s script was hilarious, i thought it was a very clever idea and i thought it would be a lot of fun.
initially we didn’t know which role i would play, because Alan said i could play the pirate or the dentist. it was all of that and also because each person entering the contest had to submit a video presenting themselves and how they would shoot the movie and submit some of the things they had done. i also looked at some of the previous work he had done, his award-
winning PsA, and i just thought this was a good choice. alan, how was the experience of working with Kevin? As: YOu can freak out about it beforehand, but then i got to a point where i accepted that i was going to do this. Kevin made it very easy. He gave me a lot of suggestions and help and it was a great col-
KeVIn, what was it like being directed by fairly inexperienced directors? i have been directed by inexperienced directors before. i always try to put myself in a place where my job in a film is to serve the director. I don’t believe film is the actor’s medium, i believe it’s the director’s medium. so i’ve always tried, in my experiences working with directors, to put myself in the director’s hands and to trust them entirely and completely. continued on page 8