New Oldman

Interview, Feb, 1998 by David Furnish

DAVID FURNISH: Did you write and direct Nil by Mouth because you wanted to try your hand at filmmaking, or was it out of a need to tell this particular story?

GARY OLDMAN: I wanted to tell this specific story more than I wanted to throw a camera around. The film follows very much in the tradition of social realism, because I wanted to see a subject like this tackled with honesty. So often the style council gets hold of this kind of story. In my own journey [with alcoholism], having been an insider and having witnessed people destroy their lives, I, as Gary, find it very hard to laugh at that stuff. But it's not specifically a movie about that - it's about the people first.

DF: Was it a difficult film to get made?

GO: Because it's very colloquial and about a specific class and neighborhood in London, it was a hard sell. It would have been easier to get it green-lighted if I'd been in it myself, but there are no stars in it. So it was tough trying to find some idiot out there to write a check. We raised $1.9 million, but that would've meant only a twenty-day shoot and a scramble to get it done. I didn't want to work like that. I wanted to give the actors a rehearsal period and to work on the relationships between the characters, so I ended up putting a lot of my own money in to buy me the time to make the film how I envisioned it, without people in suits coming to the table saying, "It's a bit downbeat . . . it needs more jokes . . . the ending's ambiguous . . . can you make it more uplifting?" In fact this particular patient died several times on the operating table - you know, where checks hadn't come through and I couldn't pay the crew and I was putting up some art that I had for auction. We ran on sheer faith. But I feel I've battled bigger things, you know, than a film. I was certainly at my fighting weight going in.

DF: Did you write the screenplay with improvisation in mind?

GO: It was very structured. One of the two questions I like answering the most about the film is, "Did you have more than one camera?" And I say, "No, actually, we only had one." And then people ask, "Was it improvised?" And I say, "No, it wasn't." That's not necessarily a compliment to my writing, but to the performers. But the script wasn't written in tablets of stone. If something didn't feel right in an actor's mouth, I'd say, "Just say it how you want to say it. Say it how you feel it." I don't know how skilled I am as a director in terms of what I can say to actors, but I have a good bullshit detector. Sometimes I would say, "I can't breathe in this room. Can you?" And they'd go, "What's the matter?" And I'd say, "It's all this acting in here." Your own barometer is all you have to go by, and often what makes a good director is knowing when not to say something. On occasions you can find yourself on a film set where the person who is wearing the director's hat is only trying to justify his position.

What's fascinating is that when you write a script, it's almost a stream of consciousness. You have an idea that it means something, but you're not always sure what. Then when you get on the set, the actors teach you. I found they would constantly surprise me, and I'd go, "Hmm. That's interesting. It's not what I meant, but it might be fight anyway." Or it'd actually be better than what I intended, which was really exciting.

DF: Do you think your recovery from alcoholism contributed to the film?

GO: I think it played a big part in the whole process. What I learned through all that is the idea of progress not perfection. This whole journey . . . well, for one thing, without my recovery I'd be dead, so we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

DF: Was it cathartic making the film?

GO: A lot of people have asked me that, but it wasn't, really. It's ultimately a work of fiction drawn from my experiences and memories of growing up. Writing something and shooting it, you don't really have time to think about it. It wasn't until I got back to New York and I had the images coming back at me in the editing room that I started thinking, God, it's sad and dark. Do I really see the world like that?

DF: When you were growing up, did you witness or experience in your family the kind of physical violence that Ray [Ray Winstone] metes out to Val [his wife, played by Kathy Burke] in the film?

GO: That kind of violence was on the periphery of the family, because my sisters, who are a lot older than me, married boyfriends who - I wouldn't call them villains, I wouldn't call them gangsters, but they were . . .

DF: A little unsavory?

GO: That's the way I'd describe it. These were people who came from a real drinking culture, where your passport to manhood was that, at fourteen or fifteen, you go to the pub, drink beer, play darts, tell sexist, racist jokes. You've got to be homophobic - all that. You've got to be that guy at the bar. And I tried playing that character because there was peer group pressure and I wanted to fit in, but I was never comfortable. So my memories - the sensation - of that is still very much a part of me. It's shit we pack in a suitcase, isn't it? And we take it wherever we go.