Gunning the Motor

London-based choreographer Matthew Bourne has always had an imaginary foot in America. A preadolescent autograph hunter, longtime devotee of the Hollywood musical and lifelong movie fan, Bourne and his company, Adventures in Motion Pictures, have recently found success--and a home away from home--in Los Angeles and New York. But his 1995 all-male “Swan Lake” was set against the psychological backdrop of British stiff-upper-lip royalty and 1997’s “Cinderella” took place in 1940s blitz-era London.

His next import to the U.S., “The Car Man,” is set in 1960 in the mythical Midwestern hamlet of Harmony, USA. It’s a loose take on Bizet’s opera “Carmen,” with a chopped-up score and a plot that borrows heavily from film noir. Often called a director more than a choreographer, Bourne said no to directing the 2000 movie “Billy Elliot,” but recently completed a film version of “The Car Man” that is set to air on the Trio network, available on some digital or satellite systems, 41/2 weeks into the L.A. run, which begins Sept. 12 at the Ahmanson Theatre.

At 40, having made a name for himself as one of the most popular dance-theater innovators in recent memory, Bourne is leaving the running of his trio of commercial works to his producing partner, and forming a new company on his own--just like the old days, when Bourne was a risk-taking solo act, not a corporation. On a recent Saturday morning, Bourne spoke by phone from his home in London, with a dog barking and a television faintly sounding in the background.

Question: You’ve been spending more and more time in America over the last few years. Did that have anything to do with why you set “Car Man” here?

Answer: I do tend to get influenced by places I spend time [in] or travel to. So it was a combination of having a holiday in Italy and spending a lot of time in the States that this sort of American thing came up.

Q: Movies have always been a major inspiration in your work process. Which films did you look at this time?

A: I was very influenced by “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” but I didn’t want it to look glossy and Hollywood. I wanted to bring a sort of earthy, European, dirtier feel to it. So I was looking at a lot of [Luchino] Visconti films, Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida and those sort of people. And I thought that’s what the women should be like, not like Lana Turner. So I put the two things together, to make it a community of Italian Americans. It has the best of both really, European ideas in an American setting, which seemed to suit the story. I was also influenced by “My Own Private Idaho” and I liked the small-town idea in the sense of a hothouse of relationships and emotions that you get in “The Last Picture Show.” I thought that would be good for a stage show, to try and make the ensemble a community rather than just an ensemble.

Q: You’ve spent a lot of time in the U.S. on the coasts, but you haven’t been to a Harmony, USA, have you?

A: I haven’t really been there. But you do get a feel.

Q: So you have that idea about America that people get from watching our movies: violence, sex, jail, bad food, alcoholism and general dysfunction?

A: I wasn’t really thinking of having some big comment about America. I was more interested in individual characters and their arc, their sort of journey throughout.

Q: But the fact that you set it in America does have an effect on the story, doesn’t it? I mean, how would it have been different if it was set in, say, Leeds?

A: You could set that story anywhere, I suppose, because it’s ultimately only about relationships after all. The desire to do the world that we did was conscious because it was so different from what we’d done before. The dancers were always being princes and princesses or ‘40s characters or people in periods they didn’t really understand; it took a long time to get them to act in a sort of courtly, royal way. To do something a little bit closer to them as people was a real motivation. The identification of dancers with the characters and the idea of it being sort of dirtier and not--sophisticated, I suppose.

Q: Were you worried as an outsider about creating a sort of caricature of small-town America?

A: The main reason for creating the piece was to create very strong roles that change and characters that change. The thing that’s not cliche about it is that it’s set up in a way that you sort of understand. There’s a point about 20 minutes in when you think, “I’ve seen this story before,” and then the strong guy who turns up at the beginning ends up being weak and guilt-ridden, and he’s a bit of a slob by the second half. The real weak-charactered guy turns out to be stronger in the end. I like playing with audience emotions. I’m quite interested in setting up a world that people know and then being subversive with it.

Q: You’ve used the music of two ballets as the starting point in “Swan Lake” and “Cinderella,” but this time you wrote the story first. Why?

A: Because it’s [based on] an opera; it didn’t have the same feel. It was more like scoring a film.

Q: How closely does it follow Bizet’s “Carmen”?

A: I tried to link it with the opera “Carmen” a little bit--big passion and murder and betrayal and guilt--so that people wouldn’t feel that it was totally unrelated. I liked the motivation of “Postman” in that these things don’t pay off and guilt is an awful thing to live with; it’s something that destroys you in the end. And also to say that people aren’t what they seem. We can set them up in a conventional way, but keep watching because it’s going to change.

Q: Why did you choose to set the piece in 1960?

A: There are a couple of films I really liked from that period. It doesn’t feel cliche ‘60s, it doesn’t feel cliche ‘50s, with a “Grease” kind of look. Lez [Brotherson, his set designer] likes to be a bit more specific than I do period-wise. He likes to get his pointy bras sorted out and things like that. It’s also the year I was born.

Q: The show premiered a year and a half ago, and has since had a West End run and a tour of England and elsewhere in Europe. Will you be making changes for the Los Angeles run?

A: We made some changes for the tour and will make more when we rehearse it in L.A., but nothing major that will affect the story. In the meantime, we’ve made [the] film of it. Some ideas [for changes] came from looking in-depth at how we filmed it. Some things in the film you can’t do onstage, some you can. But that influenced how we look at it quite a lot.

Q: The advertising cautions that there’s nudity in it--and it’s in the form of a male shower scene. Homoeroticism shows up in all your work, but the lead male character here, played by Alan Vincent, is bisexual. Or is he just the kind of guy who would have sex with whomever?

A: He’s the sort of person for whom anything goes. He likes a challenge. He arrives in town and very quickly picks the two people who are quite difficult to get: one is the inhibited, quite shy guy with the girlfriend, and the other one is a married woman. He thinks, ‘There are the two I’m going to get and then I’m going to move on.’ It gets too close for comfort, then the murder happens. He’s the type that would have left at that point. His downfall is that he gets involved too far, too deep. From that point on, he’s a bit of a wreck. Lana, played by Saranne Curtin, is the strongest character in many ways; it’s her quick thinking that makes things happen.

Q: Alan Vincent sort of looks like a young Russell Crowe.

A: He does! When he walks on, he doesn’t look like a dancer at all, and nobody thinks he’s going to be able to do anything. Then he starts dancing and he has a sort of natural elegance within that strong male body. It’s perfect for this part.

Q: Are there plans to take “Car Man” to Broadway?

A: There’s no plans to do it in New York. It could come about if someone came to us and said, “We want to present it.” It will be all the original [cast] for Los Angeles because everyone loves coming there and wants to fulfill the journey of the piece really. But by that time I think people will have done it.

Q: You’ve just choreographed “My Fair Lady” in London’s West End, directed by Trevor Nunn. You’ve always said you don’t feel comfortable choreographing other people’s work.

A: I promised Cameron [Mackintosh] I’d do it after I did “Oliver!,” probably about six years ago. Trevor Nunn is such an international star, I thought it would be good to work with him and it was a good collaboration. Also, it was financially much better than anything else I do.

A: What were the challenges?

Q: Dance “numbers” aren’t my forte. So I had to find my way of doing things, had to place the numbers in an atmosphere that I thought dance could actually come out of. I didn’t like people dancing on the street, so I placed “With a Little Bit of Luck” in a sort of pub. I had reasons for everything, which suits actors, of course.

Q: Would you ever do it again?

A: I’m doing “South Pacific” at [London’s] National Theatre with Trevor Nunn as sort of a follow-up to “My Fair Lady” in December.

Q: What else are you working on now?

A: I have been working on a scenario for a stage version of “Edward Scissorhands,” which I will do with the composer Danny Elfman, hopefully. I and some of the people I’d normally work with are being employed by Disney to develop a stage version of “The Little Mermaid.” I’m doing a documentary series for [Britain’s] Channel 4 about male dancing. It’s not a straightforward history. Since I’m known for good roles for men, it’s sort of my personal view, but it won’t be all about me. I’m doing the interviews, informal kinds of chats with people I like, people I’m interested in and people who have partly influenced me. “Billy Elliot” has created a lot of public interest, a lot of applications for dance school.

Q: You were sent the script for “Billy Elliot” and you have flirted with the idea of directing a film for a long time. Are you any closer to realizing that dream?

A: I’m still looking for the right thing. I’ve had offers and I know I could do it if I had the right idea, and it will come about at some point. I’m very proud of all these stage things and enjoying doing them.

Q: In the last year and a half, Adventures in Motion Pictures has had a permanent home at the Old Vic Theatre, which is pretty rare for a dance company. Is that relationship ongoing?

A: I’m forming a new company called New Adventures. Katharine Dore Management will continue to produce the commercial shows--”Car Man,” “Swan Lake” and “Cinderella.” I will continue to do new work and revive some of the older work, which is pre-”Swan Lake,” pre-commercial, including [my] “Nutcracker” and “Highland Fling,” through this new company.

Q: What made you decide to do that?

A: I suppose I find it difficult to have my life mapped out for me years ahead by somebody else. And also sort of feelings of getting to a certain age, 40, and kind of wanting to be a bit freer really and going back to the roots a little bit. And to not spend forever doing the same show. Which is what’s happening with “Car Man” a little bit. Forming a new company feels very liberating and feels very positive.

AMP is a company that has three shows, and they will continue to tour, because of demand and because they have investors to pay back. They’ll carry on doing that and I will fully cooperate artistically with those productions because they’re very important to me. But everything else will be done with the new company, which will be a bit more light on its feet. It won’t have heavy management costs, each show will be probably produced a bit differently, there won’t be a big office to run, which was what was happening with AMP a little bit. You know, the brand .

Q: You have a loyal corps of dancers. What does this mean for them?

A: The dancers just come with me wherever I go. That’s the way it’s always been, really. They’re employed per contract, and if it has AMP at the top of their contract or Katharine Dore Management or New Adventures, it doesn’t actually matter to them if artistically it’s what they want to do. I still have a strong relationship with the Old Vic. I’m on the board now and I have an office there and the new company is based there. So it’s really starting from scratch again, with an office with no money [laughs] and no one in it. Just me and some friends. *

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“The Car Man,” Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. Opens Sept. 12. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Also Sept. 16, 30, 7:30 p.m.; Oct. 4, 11, 18, 25, 2 p.m. Ends Oct. 28. $25-$70. (213) 628-2772.