Gladly Giving Up a Few Pounds

LONDON--That veteran pro- vocateur Robert Altman has been in fine form recently, sounding off on several of his favorite topics with a lack of tact bordering on the heroic. Promoting his Oscar-nominated film “Gosford Park,” which he shot in England, using a large cast of mostly British actors, he has extolled the virtues of this country and its dramatic talent.

“English actors are unquestionably the best,” he told a British journalist. To another, he proclaimed: “I love British actors. They’re trained so well, and they have the right attitude.” When I visited him on the “Gosford Park” set last summer, he told me it was the best experience of his directing career, which goes back more than 40 years. He has since repeated the claim.

One could dismiss all this as flattering courtesies for the benefit of the British media, but Altman is no flatterer, and he has also voiced more extreme opinions for the benefit of wider audiences. He has returned recently to one of his pet peeves: Hollywood. “They sell shoes, I make gloves. We’re not in the same business,” he said to one interviewer. To another, he remarked: “I couldn’t tell you the name, right now, of a person who runs a major Hollywood studio.” His comments come at an odd time, given that he presumably hopes academy members will award him a best director Oscar for “Gosford Park.”

As usual, Altman didn’t just leave it at that. On a panel at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, Altman remarked: “I’m proud to say [President] Bush has never seen any of my films.” In other interviews, he has called Bush “embarrassing,” adding: “I’d be happy to stay here in England. There’s nothing in America I’d miss at all.”

Well, Altman likes to ruffle feathers and nurse grudges. But he is also among a handful of distinctive, indisputably great film directors of the last half-century, and when he talks of the conditions in which he does his work, attention must be paid. In particular, his comments about the advantages of working in Britain merit scrutiny.

It should be remembered that “Gosford Park,” with its huge ensemble cast, could never have been made in Hollywood with leading American actors; its budget would have been prohibitive. But Altman was able to commandeer the cream of Britain’s acting profession--distinguished names like Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Alan Bates, Helen Mirren, Derek Jacobi and Eileen Atkins--and compensate them in a way that would gladden the heart of a Marxist economist.

Altman paid the 16 “lead” actors in his ensemble the same fee. He then paid all 24 “secondary” actors a lesser fee. (The film’s total budget was $13 million, so one sees how modest those fees were.) Each cast member was on call every day of shooting. Some stellar actors, known for technical acting brilliance effectively spent entire days as extras, appearing in the background of scenes but speaking no lines. They inhabited small, functional changing rooms at London’s Shepperton Studios and lined up with the crew at the lunch wagon. Luxurious it wasn’t.

But as actor Richard E. Grant explained, the knowledge that no one had a bigger salary or trailer than anyone else made for a hugely relaxed, enjoyable shoot: “It’s an easygoing, non-hierarchical attitude, and it’s irresistible.” Liberated from such concerns, the cast simply got on with doing the best work they could.

On British film sets, inflated egos simply become a source of rich humor. On the ill-fated film adaptation of “The Avengers,” producer Jerry Weintraub was occupying the biggest trailer I have ever seen in Britain; it seemed to be about the length of a city block. It was a standing joke among the British cast and crew, who referred to it in derisive, incredulous terms. And of course, it didn’t make “The Avengers” one bit better.

Some Are Willing

to Take the Pay Cut

It may seem odd to cite poverty as a unique selling point for working on films in Britain. Yet many American actors, accustomed to big salaries in Hollywood but curious enough to seek challenging, off-kilter work elsewhere, find that modest pay does not offset the pleasure of satisfying work. Brad Pitt and Heather Graham are just two who recently took a salary cut to work in Britain for directors they admire: Guy Ritchie and Chen Kaige, in “Snatch” and “Killing Me Softly,” respectively.

And a steady stream of actors flock to roles on the London stage--for even less money. The reason? The quality of the work involved. One could argue Nicole Kidman’s career went into overdrive after her triumph at London’s Donmar Warehouse in the controversial production of “The Blue Room,” David Hare’s adaptation of “La Ronde.” Kevin Spacey’s lucrative Hollywood outings in “K-Pax,” “The Shipping News” and “Pay It Forward” are overshadowed by his tour de force as Hickey in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh” at London’s historic Old Vic. Spacey enjoyed the experience so much he joined the theater’s board of directors.

Jessica Lange trod the London boards in O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” to critical acclaim; she noted at the time it was a far more complex, challenging role than anything offered by American films. Now Gwyneth Paltrow is set to appear at the Donmar this summer in the American play “Proof.”

It’s no accident so many American film actors gravitate to the London stage. The culture of British acting, even film acting, is more closely bound to stage traditions than in the U.S. British actors, even eminent ones, relish being part of a company; they are far more “non-hierarchical,” to quote Grant, than their U.S. counterparts. This collegiate British mentality, a backstage attitude that everyone in a company has a crucial role, means lead actors routinely adjourn to the pub with bit-part players after performances.

It is also common for British actors to move seamlessly among various media: films, TV, radio plays, commercials, voice-overs, audio books. They may do two or three such gigs in a day, applying the same professional standards to each. They do it not because they expect to make huge amounts of money but because they enjoy the work. The play’s the thing.

This relaxed, amiable, stage-trained attitude is evident on film sets in Britain, and many American actors seem to like it. The camaraderie and egalitarianism on British sets invigorates them; it helps some of them remember why they entered the profession in the first place.

In sharp contrast, stars often hole up in their trailers on Hollywood film sets, giving orders to phalanxes of assistants and taking constant calls from their agents. Each actor seems like a suspicious, isolated profit center. As a general rule, when films get made in Britain, actors read the script, agree to it and, during shooting, simply do their best to serve it. (This is also true, of course, of some American independent films.)

It almost never happens in Britain, as it does in Hollywood, that extra writers are drafted in to make a star’s character more appealing, thus potentially compromising the integrity and logic of a script. Such kid-gloves treatment might be initially flattering to star actors, but clearly being regarded as an actor first and a star second may bring even more profound, long-lasting rewards. Paradoxically, the latter course holds out the promise of more creative freedom.

I don’t mean to be dismissive of Hollywood; its industrial process of filmmaking has a precision and efficiency that can make an outsider’s jaw sag with awe. And the exasperating, perennially underfunded nature of the British industry leaves you not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

An example: Last May I went on location on the “Iris” set on a cold, blustery day. Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent were playing a scene inside an isolated seaside cottage; because it was a night scene, a huge expanse of black canvas was thrown over the cottage. The wind kept lifting it up, so everyone on set with no specific task (including actors and a producer) stood in line around the cottage, holding down the billowing canvas until the scene was done.

Viewed one way, of course, this was farcical. Yet there was also something rather noble about all those people putting their egos aside, humbly joining in a communal task to get a job done. I’d bet that Broadbent, a typically collegial English actor, would have joined in had he not been speaking lines; in contrast, one could not imagine the heavy hitters on a film such as “Pearl Harbor” volunteering for such demeaning labor. (The budget on “Iris,” by the way, was all of $5 million, the cost of the “Pearl Harbor” premiere.) Altman, I think, would have been tickled by the motley team of canvas holders on the “Iris” set; they exhibited the sort of spirit he seems to like in British filmmaking. And the Brits in turn like him; his sly, sardonic take on life and work and his willingness to speak his mind seems to chime with their own attitudes. Altman may be a cantankerous old cuss, but if he’s as good as his word, he’s welcome to work here anytime he wants.

David Gritten is a journalist based in London who writes about entertainment.