A Personal Approach

Two years ago, British director Mike Figgis hit the jackpot with his moody, downbeat love story “Leaving Las Vegas,” for which he garnered Oscar nominations for best direction and adapted screenplay. Nicolas Cage took home the Academy Award for best actor as a suicidal alcoholic and Elisabeth Shue received a best actress nomination as the prostitute who falls in love with him.

Figgis’ latest film is “One Night Stand,” which arrives Friday in theaters. Wesley Snipes stars as Max, a successful, married commercial director who has a passionate one-night affair with a beautiful married woman, Karen (Nastassja Kinski), while on a New York business trip.

Robert Downey Jr. plays Charlie, Max’s best friend, who is dying of AIDS. Ming-Na Wen plays Max’s wife, and Kyle MacLachlan plays Charlie’s conservative brother and Kinski’s spouse.

Besides directing and producing the drama, Figgis wrote the screenplay and composed the jazz-themed score. He also can be seen in a funny cameo as a hotel clerk.

Originally, Joe Eszterhas wrote the screenplay to “One Night Stand,” but Figgis was given the opportunity to rewrite the romance when he agreed to direct the film.

Figgis, 48, who has a background in experimental theater and music, has directed such eclectic, personal films as “Stormy Monday” and “Liebestraum,” as well as the more mainstream “Internal Affairs” and “The Browning Version.”

Currently, Figgis is directing the low-budget film “Death and the Loss of Innocence,” in England, Rome and Tunis.

Figgis recently chatted over the phone from Rome about the evolution of “One Night Stand,” his improvisational style of filmmaking and the aftermath of “Leaving Las Vegas.”

Question: You’re shooting “Death and the Loss of Innocence” outside the studio system. Do you prefer making movies independent of Hollywood?

Answer: It depends. I’m loving doing this one because it’s a quirky film, and you would never get a studio to finance something like that.

It’s half autobiographical and half sort of magic realism. It’s about the loss of innocence. The central story is Adam and Eve and the fall from grace and the expulsion from the Garden of Eden as sort of an allegorical ongoing tale. There are about 26 short stories that all kind of weave together, including the Adam and Eve stories, that are about growing up and losing innocence.

I wrote it 12 years ago, and I had been trying to raise the money for 12 years and, finally, I did it. The only way was to go back to sort of “Leaving Las Vegas” style--to shoot on 16-millimeter and have a very reduced crew and shoot very, very quickly with a very young, but very enthusiastic, crew. It’s been quite amazing, actually.

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Q: Joe Eszterhas originally wrote “One Night Stand.” How did you become attached to the project?

A: New Line had bought that script based on a relationship with Joe and [director] Adrian Lyne. Then Adrian Lyne did another film and Joe sort of hit rough water for a while with “Showgirls” and “Jade.”

This script he wrote was very, very sexually graphic. They offered it to me, and I turned it down. Then I went in for a general meeting with New Line, and they again offered it to me and I again turned it down.

They said, “What about if we asked you to rewrite it?” I said, “Let me think about it, but what I would want to do is radically rewrite.”

The idea of marriage and adultery--they are always fairly charged and interesting subjects. It was something that was on my mind at the time because I was thinking of doing a remake of a Truffaut film, “The Woman Next Door.” It’s one of my favorite films. [Adultery] in American films is not dealt with realistically very often. I saw [in “One Night Stand”] a possibility to do something quite personal.

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Q: Eszterhas doesn’t have any screen credit now.

A: To be fair to Joe, he read my script and said, “I think this is a good piece of work, but it’s not my work and therefore I should take my name off of it.”

[My version] is not about sex. There are sexual elements in it, as there would be in any marriage, but it’s not a sexually driven story. That’s the key difference. In Joe’s story, the sexual elements of adultery were the key issue which drove the main character.

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Q: Didn’t you also add the character of Charlie?

A: He is pretty accurately based on one of my greatest friends, who died of AIDS a couple of years ago. I felt when I rewrote it that it needed another character so it wasn’t just another story about a man torn between two women or whatever.

I remember when I proposed [Downey’s character], I think New Line was initially a little nervous about the AIDS issue. But to give them credit, they let me make the film the way I saw it.

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Q: You have a multiracial cast, but race doesn’t play an issue in this film at all.

A: It was an interesting process. Initially, I was looking for something for Nic Cage because I had a great experience with him. Then Nic didn’t want to do it for personal reasons, and I started looking for other actors.

Despite the success of “Leaving Las Vegas,’ the fact that my leading actor had won an Oscar, I did have difficulty finding someone who I felt was right and I could get a commitment from. I would say one of the most interesting things that happened in the pre-production was that I realized how limited one’s own perception of casting is racially.

One of the greatest experiences for me on “One Night Stand,” and thus far in my career, was the idea of casting who you think is good for the part based on their acting and based on their emotional ability and emotional range. When I cast Wesley, he and I had a very serious chat. I said, “This is not a black-white thing; it is just a story. I just want the best actor and I don’t want to rewrite it because you are in it. I would like to just ignore [race] and proceed with the story.” He was, I think, very enthusiastic about it.

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Q: While you were making this, Robert Downey Jr. was in trouble with the law over his drug problems. Were you reluctant to cast him?

A: Robert Downey is a brilliant actor. His problems are well documented and they are not a secret. When I cast him, he was very honest with me upfront, and a lot of people went out of their way to tell me the negatives [of casting him]. I guess on paper it represented a bit of a risk.

I, however, tremendously admire his work. I also felt he needs to be involved in something with depth and he needs to push himself as an actor. Part of his problems maybe come from the fact of his own frustrations, artistic or whatever. New Line backed me to give him a chance. He was going through hell at the time and despite that, his performance is phenomenal.

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Q: Can you talk about your use of improvisation on the set with actors? Do you forgo the script once you get to the set and let the actors take off with their characters?

A: I spend a lot of time talking to them, getting to know them and loosely discussing the story. But I don’t like to overdo it until we get on the set. Then once you start literally turning film through the camera, I feel that’s the time you can make magic. If I see an actor has the ability to go [off script], I’ll push them to go. If I see an actor more comfortable staying with the script, I’ll let the actor stay there.

I like people who want to improvise but also want to be directed. I am not interested in actors who don’t need me.

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Q: You’re one of the few filmmakers who also compose their own scores. Do you hear the score in your head while you’re making the movie?

A: Sometimes, like the bit where [Max and Karen] meet in the lobby. I thought that was old-fashioned. It has an old-fashioned kind of charm to it, and the score here should have that kind of Nelson Riddle charm.

Other times, the tone of the scene is something that subconsciously, musically is kind of ingrained in a way. You know the color, but you don’t specifically know the orchestrations or anything like that.

You have possibilities. Let’s say a scene has a certain kind of darkness; there is a kind of musical feeling to that. Sometimes, it’s kind of interesting to go against that three or four months later when you get to that point [in the composing], to go against what you thought you did [in a scene]. You might find you really surprise yourself.

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Q: Speaking of surprises, are you still amazed at the success of “Leaving Las Vegas”?

A: I’m more surprised now than I was then. At the time, you get caught up in the wave. It’s really good fun to be on that wave with the Oscars. It was a real buzz. In retrospect, when you start thinking about it, it’s absolutely amazing the film did that.

I can’t believe that so many people saw it and it got the reception that it did internationally. You realize you should never underestimate your public, never emotionally.