Kevin Spacey

Interview By: Jeff Wilser
JeffWilser@TheCinemaSource.com

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When Kevin Spacey was trying to get the rights for Beyond the Sea, the biopic for musician Bobby Darin, he had to first get the blessing from Bobby's manager, Steve Blauner. Spacey and Blauner met at a restaurant. The first thing out of Blauner's mouth: 'I'm just going to say it and get it out of the way: I don't think you should act it, I don't think you should sing it, and you're too old to play it.'

Spacey chuckles as he tells us the anecdote. 'I said, well, um, have a drink, Steve, and we'll talk about it.'

The film had been in 'pre-production hell' for ages'since the 1980's'before Spacey entered the picture and bought the rights. 'If you think about the history of this project,' Spacey says, 'Way before I got involved'it was gestating at Warner Brothers for almost fifteen years. That was a very difficult time. It was like dashed hopes every year: dashed hopes. I knew I was not only buying the film's rights; I was buying its reputation at that point, which was, 'It couldn't get made, they couldn't figure out how to tell it,' all the negatives. And I thought, I'm going to have to slog this uphill, change people's minds.'

And change their minds he did. He eventually won over the Darin family and Steve Blauner, eliciting their full support. 'In terms of the [music's] accuracy, I really have the Darin family to thank for that. And Steve Blauner. Because after their initial reluctance'and quite vividly being against my singing in this film'it was Steve Blauner who quoted in a newspaper article as saying, 'Over my dead body is anyone but Bobby Darin going to sing in this movie.''and I understood that. Their obvious concern is for Bobby's legacy. But they hadn't met me yet. And they hadn't met me because I made a conscious decision to not approach the family until I had the money.'

Spacey has been a fan of Darin since he was a little kid. 'My mother was in love with Bobby Darrin,' he says. 'I mean, totally. So I grew up in a house where Bobby was playing all the time'Sinatra, Duke Ellington. So I grew up in a house filled that kind of brass, that beat and that music. So by the time I was ten, I was that kid in the living room, singing into the hairbrush.'

Brenda Blethyn, his co-star, has said that Spacey's musical talent is the best-kept secret in Hollywood. The secret's out, and Spacey is ecstatic. 'Look. Right now I'm going through this experience where an album is coming out. And I'm going to a cd signing. And I'm talking on the radio about music, and I'm recording, and I'm hanging out with music executives. It's an entirely new world for me, and it's a world I love. I love music, and it's in my blood. Obviously I'm not over it yet, because I'm going out on tour.'

'I've just been in rehearsals for five days in Los Angeles,' Spacey tells us. 'The really fun part is that I get to do all kinds of music that I couldn't fit in the movie. We'll do the hits'the obvious ones'but I get to do all this stuff that I could never find a place to put in the film, like Carpenter, which is on the soundtrack, but I could never dramatically find a place for it in the movie. I'm just having a ball. It's a hell of a lot of work'it's one thing doing one song at a benefit, it's another to do eighteen numbers.'

'I've always loved musicals,' Spacey says. 'And as a kid, I did a lot of musicals. But I just never found the chance to do one professionally. And boy, it has been worth the wait.'