Sir Anthony Hopkins
Interview By: Michael Dance
michaelmdance@gmail.com
Most everyone knows Sir Anthony Hopkins the movie star, the Oscar-winning actor who embodied both Hannibal Lecter and Richard Nixon. Few people know him as a man who spends his spare time trying to figure out the universe. In a short half hour, he philosophized about everything from the nature of time to the pointlessness of acting.
Of course, much of this probably has to do with his mind-bending new film, Slipstream, a fractured, nonsensical tale that might be about an aging screenwriter losing his mind. Or it might be about a film shoot that's falling apart. Or it might be about two criminals and the staff of a diner in the desert trying to escape from Death. Or it might be about all of those things. Hopkins wrote, directed, and stars in the film.
"I didn't write it for any major purpose, to make a statement or even write a good script, because you know, I'm not a writer," he says. "It came at a time four years ago, my mother had just died, she was 89, she died when I was in California. It made me think about life a little...and my wife said, 'why don't you just write a screenplay'' And I wasn't in any mood to work much as an actor, but I've had a great life doing it, so I said, 'Why would I want to write a script'' And she said, 'Well go on, you can write one. Just for the fun of it.' So I did it. I wrote it as an experiment, and not having anything to win or lose - what, can they arrest me if I don't write a good script' - I started on Scene 1. And then Scene 2. And then Scene 3 and I though, well, interesting, where's this going'"
Turns out he didn't really even have to answer that. "There was no design to it. There was a little bit. I wanted to go off on tangents, I wanted to make it without construction, and I wanted to I had an itch to do something some years ago with ideas about films just to put odd little flash cuts in scenes with no explanation."
He curls his mouth with faint disgust at that last word. "Everybody wants an explanation for everything, you hear 'How did you arrive at that choice'' Especially with students. 'Can you explain that choice'' Why do you have to explain everything' So I thought, well I'll do things without explanation. Because it's all illogical."
The nonlinear, dream-like state the movie took began to mirror Hopkins's own take on life itself. "It suits my philosophy because I believe that life is an illusion anyway," he says matter-of-factly. "I've had that feeling for years and years and I can't explain why I'm here or any of us are here, and my life has unfolded in the oddest way, in the most illogical way, nothing linear about any of my life, from my childhood to sitting here with you. None of it makes any sense to me at all...So the character you see in this film is me. I don't know why I chose the name 'Bonhoeffer', all the names I chose just came off the top of my head. It must be the subconscious or something."
Still, Hopkins never thought he would actually make the film. "It was a fantasy that I'd make the film, but it was all very diffused, I never would even think about, and then one day as I was reading it I thought, I wonder if it's even possible to film this. And so I sent it to Emilio Estevez to see what he though. And he said to me, 'Yeah, it's going to cost a lot of money, all the special effects' and I said 'Well what special effects' All the jumping and cutting will be in the editing.'"
Actors love a director who understands them, so since Hopkins was one of them, he was able to assemble a great ensemble cast. "Some of the actors, like Michael Clarke Duncan, said, 'Well, I have no idea what this is about,' and I said, 'Well, don't worry about it.' Christian Slater got the hang of it very quickly. How on earth I got these great actors together I don't know, I sent them the script, they seemed to want to do it and have some fun with it. We were in the desert for three weeks, it was very hot. And so the first day when we were starting, I just said to the crew, 'Watch out for the rattlesnakes and the scorpions, don't rush anything, don't get careless, it's only a movie. That's how important it is.' Nobody was getting much money, so I said, 'Let's have a good time and enjoy it and have some fun with this thing.' And that's how we started."
"Let's just enjoy ourselves" seems to be a common mantra for Hopkins. Apparently, if you accept that life is an illusion, things don't seem quite as important anymore. "It's not really meant to be a joke against actors, but I do have a philosophy that I think we all as actors take ourselves a bit too seriously," he says. "There are some wonderful actors who take themselves seriously, but I'm tempted sometimes to say, C'mon. It's not that important. And I do say it to students in UCLA when I do an acting class there, I say, 'You know, it's really interesting, if you never acted again, the world would not stop. If I never acted again, the world would not stop. It will go on, inexorably on, for millions of years to come. That's how important acting is.' So my little joke is that Christian Slater's character dies from overacting."
It's refreshing, in the current climate of self-righteous politically-themed films, to hear an actor who understands the bigger picture: that acting usually isn't as influential as most of his peers seem to think. Of course, as Hopkins will turn 70 by the end of the year, he doesn't have a younger star's insecurities about whether or not fame will last. "I saw a film the other day, at a little theater up here near Lincoln Center," he says. "Great film. But I was sitting there in that depressing little movie theater, with the ice cream, and the popcorn, and the people coming in looking for seats, and there were about fifty people in there altogether, and I thought, so this is it. This is the great movie business. ...And life's the same way. Mel Blanc's epitaph was, 'That's all, folks.' I find it kind of comforting, that none of it is important. It seems important, but it's not."
