New Oldman

Interview, Feb, 1998 by David Furnish

DF: What was your visual objective?

GO: The film is scruffily real. I wanted you to feel that you were sitting in the same room with these people and that you can't breathe, so I went for these very big close-ups, which, at first, Ron [Fortunato, the cinematographer] took some convincing about. When I said I wanted to shoot a lot of it on the zoom, the response was, "What, like Hawaii Five-O, like Columbo?" At times it was frustrating, but I guess what I was trying to get was a sense of claustrophobia and, at the same time, a sense of voyeurism, so that the audience would be like a fly on the wall.

DF: One of the most arresting parts of the film is the jump-cut sequence of Ray breaking down. What were you trying to achieve with that?

GO: He's having what you would call a real alcoholic bottom, and I wanted to capture that schizophrenic frenzy - where one minute you're in tears, and a split-second later you're feeling shame and remorse, and then you're laughing - by fracturing the scene. It's hard to explain to someone who's never experienced it. I know some people find it hard to feel anything for Ray, but I've been there so I have a kinder view of him in that particular scene. I had a screening in London and invited some people from a rehabilitation center I know, and the lobby was just full of all these people pacing up and down, smoking, through most of the film. And they went, "Oh, man, I can't take that, it's too . . . it's fucking with me head."

DF: Yes. It's a hard film to escape from because of the way you hold everybody so close with the camera.

GO: Well, it is a little unbearable at times, and so is life.