When Terence Stamp Died August 17, he left a legacy of incredible performances, ranging from his breakthrough role as a title character in “Billy Budd” and assignments for European Author who Pier on Paul Pierolini (“Theorem”) and Federico Fellini (“Toby Dammit”) to his comeback role as General Zod in the “Superman” films. Yet as good as all these movies and many of his others are, there is one Terence Stamp movie that gave him the part he was born to play: director Steven SoderbergS “Limey. “
Working with a razor script by his “Kafka” and “Haywire” partner Lem Dobbs, Soderbergh made “The Limey” a customized showcase for Stamp’s distinctive mix of kind humor, furious intensity and icy charisma. Stamp plays Wilson, a British ex-con who travels to Los Angeles to avenge the murder of his daughter, which he suspects was killed by aging music mogul Peter Fonda or someone in his orbit.
It is a character that rifles on both previous stamp performances (especially his work in Ken Loach’s “Poor Cow”, which is integrated into “The Limey” as Flashback pictures) and his personal biography as a 1960s icon, since Soderbergh and Dobbs use their revenge history as a vessel in which they can ever have every idea they can do with every idea they can do. Wilson is one of the richest characters in Stamp’s Oeuvre: regret and departure, funny and sad and deeply angry but still with flashes of tenderness.
The joy with which stamp attacks the role was clear from the first table read, according to his co -star Lesley Ann Warren. “I did a read with Terence and Steven SoderbergAnd I was completely terrified, “Warren told an audience at American Cinematheque.” He is very impressive in real life. He was a very formidable man. “
Cinematheque screened “The Limey” last week as part of its “Stader Terence Stamp“Series, which goes through September 25 and has a key stamp serves as” The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert “and William Wylers” The Collector. “Warren, who plays Elaine, a struggling actress who helps Wilson in her endeavor (she was his daughter’s actor), participated in a question and answer after screening to pay tribute to stamp and talk about her experience on the film.
“I had never met him, but I was such a fan of his from the time of” Billy Budd “,” Warren said, leaving that the fact that she was frightened by the actor who fed her performance. “I was nervous, but it actually helped the character because she is so insecure and suspicious and insecure.” One of the film’s many pleasures is actually the power of Warrens silent, discreet depiction of a lonely woman whose dreams have not worked – a far from Warren’s more energetic and comic performances in films such as “Clue” and “Victor/Victoria.”
It is a type that Warren acknowledged from his years in Hollywood. “I know some of these people and see what they are going through,” she said. “Men and women who just keep trying and trying, and they get a little, and it keeps them connected. They work many other jobs, and that’s all good, but there is a kind of chronic heart damage because you have never really achieved what you had come out here or dreamed of doing.”
By understanding the character implicitly dressed Warren, which she thought Elaine would dress for her first meeting with Soderbergh and tried to be as low -key as possible. When she got the part, Soderbergh not only had the costume designer model Elaine’s wardrobe on what Warren wore to her audition, but was surprised that Warren was completely unlike her melancholy character. “I laughed at something with the hairdresser one day, and Steven came and said,” You’re not really a depressed person, right? “I said,” No, I was just trying to be employed. “
According to Warren, Soderbergh almost never talked to her about her character or her performance – but that doesn’t mean he didn’t direct. On the day of his most emotional scene, Soderbergh Bug, Warren bowed continuously by telling her a long, bad joke just before she went on the camera. “When we were done, I said,“ Why did you do that? “He said,” Because I know you, and if you start crying, you won’t stop. “And I thought, it’s really true about me, how incredibly perceived. So he leads in this very oblique way, never talks about the scene or what should happen. He takes you there without even knowing what he is doing.”
Warren found Soderbergh’s oblique way to direct perfectly for an oblique script and a movie that became even more oblique in the editing, as Soderbergh revised the linear story to be in order and more atmospheric by previous memories than a current story was told with immediacy. “He changed the whole movie and made it a kind of dream memory film“Warren said, noting that it meant shooting the same dialogue scene in different places and then cutting them together, so that they would feel more like memories where you are not quite sure where some things were said or heard.
“I had never done it,” Warren said, noting that the different places helped get extra dimension to the stage every time she and stamp played it. “The environment both affected by us. We went and talked by the sea in a different way, versus when we were in the apartment. There was an intimacy in the apartment that was not out there. It was as if it was a whole new scene.”
Although Soderbergh’s drastic restructuring left some important scenes on the cutting room floor – including a love scene between Warren and Stamp, as she says was the first time she could finally relax a little – Warren was proud of the final result when she first watched the movie composed. “It was a completely different movie than I expected, but I really loved it.”
Warren put through the movie again on Cinematheque and said that even after seeing it several times she never gets tired of Stamp’s Performance – or by another actor who recently left us, Nicky cat. “I miss Nicky cat so much,” she said, leaving that all his comic dialogue as an inappropriate hitman was improvised. “He was so big and Steven loved him.”
When it comes to stamp, “He is so powerful and interesting and complex that I am as wizard as I was in the beginning. I never get tired of the show. And I’m just beaten by how the new movie still feels.”
“In the lead role Terence Stamp” goes through September 25 at American movie.
