After ‘Monty,’ Something More Complex

When “The Full Monty” became a sleeper blockbuster almost two years ago, no one was more surprised than the man who wrote it. The story of dispirited Yorkshire steelworkers redeemed by forming an all-male stripper revue charmed audiences, and the $3.5-million film ended up making more than $200 million worldwide.

Word of its soaring success reached writer Simon Beaufoy while he was on location near the Yorkshire moors for the shooting of “Among Giants,” a script he had written before “The Full Monty” but one that trailed it into production.

“ ‘The Full Monty’ was never intended to be a commercial film. It kind of popped up in this alarmingly populist way,” Beaufoy, 32, says during a recent phone interview from his home in London. “It’s not really a film to me anymore. It’s kind of a phenomenon.”

“Among Giants” opens today, and moviegoers anticipating “The Full Monty, Part II” may be let down. Sure the new film offers some familiar features: male nudity and gritty depictions of working-class British life. But this is a serious work with a more muted tone--and one that doesn’t reach for a feel-good, full-frontal ending.

“It’s a shame ‘Among Giants’ comes with the expectations of another kind of uproarious comedy, when I think the characters in it are much more interesting and complex than ‘The Full Monty,’ ” Beaufoy says. “ ‘Among Giants’ is not a fairy tale. It’s what really happens to people, not what you’d like to happen. It’s much more the stuff of real people.”

There’s another twist as well in store for filmgoers: “Giants” casts veteran British character actor Pete Postlethwaite in an unusual role--the romantic lead. Postlethwaite, 52, an Oscar nominee for best supporting actor in 1991’s “In the

Name of the Father,” is a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company with a growing list of prime screen roles, including back-to-back assignments in Steven Spielberg’s “The Lost World” and “Amistad.”

But a lover? That’s something new. In fact, Postlethwaite says he was attracted to “Among Giants” because, as he puts it, “Well, hang on. The older guy gets the girl.”

With his boxer-like broad nose and craggy looks, Postlethwaite is known for harder-edged roles, such as the menacing lawyer in “The Usual Suspects,” the strident, passionate bandleader in “Brassed Off,” and the long-suffering dad of Daniel Day-Lewis in “In the Name of the Father.”

His role in “Giants” has prompted some friendly chiding from his friends. “You’ve heard of ‘Garbo speaks?’ ” he asks during an interview in Los Angeles. “Here the story is: ‘Postlethwaite loves!’ ”

The movie’s unconventional love story is set among workers with an unusual and dangerous profession: painting massive pylons supporting electrical power lines that dot the landscape along the moors.

Beaufoy, who grew up around this fading industrial region and knows its terrain and characters well, became intrigued by these rogue workers who roamed the countryside painting pylons by day and sitting around campfires and drinking at night. He wanted to do a documentary about them, but opted instead for a feature when the painters didn’t cooperate. “They were such an unruly bunch that no one would let me film them,” he says.

The film incorporates aspects of the western, a genre favored by Beaufoy, by framing its characters against the expansive landscape of lush hills and imposing pylon structures that soar more than 100 feet in the air. The main drama involves a love affair that blooms unexpectedly between Ray, the leader of the painting crew, and Gerry, a free-spirited Australian rock climber half Ray’s age and the only woman hired for the job. Rachel Griffiths, nominated for a supporting actress Academy Award for her role in “Hilary and Jackie,” plays Gerry.

Beaufoy highly approved of Postlethwaite being cast opposite Griffiths. “He’s got this face that’s full of wisdom and suffering, and a glint in his eye like he’d still be up for a love affair at 50,” says Beaufoy.

Postlethwaite liked the chance to follow up two big-budget mainstream American films with a small British one, even if it represents a career risk.

“I think there’s room for it all,” he says. “For my American colleagues, their careers are so chartered and examined all the time that they are terrified to make a wrong move. If you love the story and you love the script, it doesn’t matter if you’ve tuppence [two pennies] for the budget or 2 million. Do the tale.”

Going to Great Lengths--and Heights

Postlethwaite was so committed to doing this tale that he urged first-time director Sam Miller to re-shoot a key opening shot--at risk to his own safety. The scene has Ray and his young assistant, Steve, played by newcomer James Thornton, straddling the top of a pylon and discussing the job they are about to undertake painting miles of the structures for a power company. Miller originally shot the scene on a mock pylon, but Postlethwaite wasn’t happy with the result.

“I said, ‘I don’t believe it,’ ” Postlethwaite recalls. “This is the first shot you see, and if you don’t sell the fact that we’re up there, you don’t sell the rest of the film.” So Postlethwaite convinced Miller to hire a helicopter and shoot the scene from overhead as he and Thornton climbed to the top of the 100-foot tower and acted the scene from there.

The heavy draft from the chopper blades buffeted them about. “I was never so glad to be back on the ground,” Postlethwaite says.

That effort was typical of the entire shoot, Miller says. Cast and crew endured the same rigorous safety program used to train real pylon painters. Then they spent weeks shooting in the towers, with everyone adjusting to doing their jobs precariously perched on steel beams high off the ground.

“What drew me to the script was being able to tell such a bizarre love story in such an unusual place,” says Miller. “There was a trippy feel to that. It’s not an obvious love story. It’s a very grown-up love story. There’s a doomed quality to it that rang very true.”

Unusual Setting for a Love Story

In one of the most striking scenes, Postlethwaite and Griffiths joyfully stroll naked through an abandoned industrial cooling tower as water cascades around them. The blunt nudity in this scene is in sharp contrast to its more discreet treatment in “The Full Monty.” But in Postlethwaite’s view, the scene conveys a profound message.

“I love the idea that you don’t have to have a perfect body to do this,” he says. “I mean, I’m kind of a doughnut, but you know, ordinary people can get into those situations and it can be remarkable and beautiful and intimate.”

Postlethwaite grew up in a working-class neighborhood near Liverpool where he saw many of his friends stuck in grim circumstances--a fate he escaped because of his interest in the theater. He started out acting in the once-thriving circuit of British regional theaters during the 1960s and ‘70s. But government cutbacks forced some of these theaters out of business.

“Regional theaters used to be where people learned their craft, and where young writers and directors would try things out,” Postlethwaite says. ‘Now, all those young writers and directors have turned their attention to film.”

Postlethwaite did return to theater recently when he toured Britain and played the lead in “Macbeth.” He hopes to assemble a crew and direct a film version of the play sometime soon. Beaufoy, meanwhile, will drift even further from the lighthearted style of “The Full Monty” with his next release, “The Darkest Light.” He described his third feature script as a mystical tale involving two kids who decide they must save a friend’s life. After that, he promises to return to “Monty’s” broad comic style with “Never Better,” about the world of competitive hairdressing.

Beaufoy, though, passed on several lucrative offers because he firmly believes he must write what he knows, not what will sell. “I can’t go to America and write about subjects or people I don’t know,” he says. “The comedy has to come from real people.”

Review of ‘Among Giants’: Kevin Thomas finds the characters and the movie irresistible. F22