Homegrown screen legend Sir Michael Caine chats candidly with Blockbuster.co.uk's Marshall Julius about remaking Sleuth, shooting The Dark Knight and failing to retire.
Working class Cockney export Sir
Michael Caine, 74, has come out in support of Hollywood's striking writers, but admits his solidarity, though heartfelt, is more by accident than design. "It's come at a good time for me," says the actor of the pens-down protest, "because I just finished a movie and don't want to work for six months anyway. I decided to take a break before the strike began, and now it looks like I'm stopping in support of it, so all of the writers are going to love me!"
Thirty-five years after portraying the savvy young buck in Anthony Shaffer's grandly theatrical
Sleuth, a cat-and-mouse two-hander full of twists and double crosses, Caine has returned in a remake, of sorts, only this time as the scheming oldster originally essayed by Sir
Laurence Olivier. "Remaking
Get Carter,
The Italian Job and
Alfie, which were all very good to begin with, was a mistake," says Caine of the dangers of re-treading old and hallowed movie ground.
"You should only ever remake bad movies," he reasons. "We remade a terrible film that starred
David Niven and
Marlon Brando and we called it
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. The first one wasn't funny at all, but ours did rather well. If you remake a great movie you're on a hiding to nothing, but the new
Sleuth is something else. I would never have remade Tony Shaffer's script, but you see, there isn't a single line from the original screenplay in Harold Pinter's new one. So this second
Sleuth isn't a remake for me, it's something new entirely."
Key among the differences between the two Sleuths is that the original pairing saw Caine and Olivier divided by class, still an issue in Seventies Britain, while the new version focuses more closely on Caine and co-star
Jude Law's divergent ages, pitting youth against experience. It's a modern take for a different world, says Caine, who offers "a concrete example" of exactly how much times have changed since 1972.
"Larry Olivier was Lord Olivier," begins the actor. "We'd never met. We were going to do this very intimate movie together, and he wrote to me saying, 'It occurred to me that you may be wondering how to address me when we meet. Well, you must address me as Larry at all times.' Which was lovely, but the fact that he felt it was necessary to write that letter shows how much more formal some people were back then. If that happened today, I'm Sir
Michael Caine, but if I'd written to Jude saying, 'You may be wondering how to address me.' He'd probably have written back telling me to piss off!"
Although Caine still remembers how initially anxious he was about sharing the screen with the legendary Sir Larry, the veteran star says Law seemed perfectly at ease with the seemingly similar prospect of squaring off against Sir Michael. "He didn't seem nervous at all," observes Caine. "It was his idea in the first place. He was the producer. He got Harold to write the new script, and then he came to me with it. Any case I already knew Jude and we were friends. He's a wonderful actor, but he never gets good reviews because he's rich, he's famous and he gets all the girls. The bastard. That's why the critics screw him."
Caine says that when he was Law's age he'd have never considered producing. Hanging out in French discothèques with Peter O'Toole until 6am, yes, but dealing with the headache of running a production, no. "My thirties coincided with the Sixties," he explains, "and the only thing we thought about then was how late we could stay out without getting into trouble."
A supportive, nurturing grandfather figure described by
Sleuth director
Kenneth Branagh as an "utter gent, totally civilised and very kind," Caine has nothing but good things to say about Law and several other young stars of the day. "
Hugh Jackman is extraordinary," he declares. "He can do everything. He can sing and tap dance and do all those bloody things that I'd love to do, and he does them really well. He's annoying. Then there's Christian," says Caine of Bale. "He was brilliant in
The Machinist and
Rescue Dawn, which just came out this week, and he's the best actor ever to play
Batman. I hope I haven't upset anyone by saying that."
Speaking of his
Batman co-stars, Caine is quick to sing the praises of late Australian actor
Heath Ledger, raising hell as the Joker in director
Christopher Nolan's impending Batsequel
The Dark Knight. "The problem with playing The Joker," says Caine, "is how do you top
Jack Nicholson? But Heath was absolutely fantastic. I couldn't see how anyone could beat Jack, but Heath was at the very least his equal. It's extraordinary. Jack's Joker was a nasty old uncle, but Heath's Joker is a maniacal, murderous psychopath. And when you see the make up, he looks like he's mentally gone. He first puts it on in the movie to disguise himself for a raid, and then never washes it off. Gradually it comes to look like leprosy. It's quite weird."
It's fun to see Caine so excited about a new movie after so many years in the business. "I'm a great fan of
Christopher Nolan's," he enthuses. "I'm one of his biggest fans. I thought
Batman Begins was the best Batman I'd ever seen and I think this one will be better than that." That's great news for Batfans eagerly counting down the 244 days left until the film's release. There'll be no
Michael Caine action scene though. Let that dream die right now. "I'm just the butler," he says. "You have a fight. I'll bring you a cup of tea."
Bowled over by the enormity of
The Dark Knight's production, Caine insists he's equally happy making smaller, less elaborate features like the one he's shooting now. "I'm doing this little picture called Is There Anybody There? It's about a little boy. His parent's own an old folks' home and every time he makes a friend they die, so he goes looking for their ghosts. I turn up as an old magician who's gone to the home to die, and he helps the boy find his friends. It's a wonderful story with a brilliant new young Irish director called John Crowley."
This may come as something of a surprise, but apparently
Michael Caine retired several years ago. "Of course," he concedes, "I've made twelve pictures and won an Oscar since then. That's typical of me. I suppose what's changed since I at least mentally retired is that I'm in a situation now where I'll only do movies that I can't turn down.
Sleuth by Harold Pinter I couldn't turn down. Batman's butler I couldn't turn down. This movie I'm doing now, eventually you'll see why I couldn't turn it down. But right now, I don't have another movie to do because lately, I have been able to turn everything down. Besides, like I said, I want a holiday, and I'm not going to risk upsetting my wife or the Writer's Guild of America by doing anything for a while."