Parkinson             (Saturday 6th of November 2004)

Michael: First a man who has been described as the finest actor of his generation, a double Oscar winner, his latest film, Beyond the Sea, is his own personal project, a portrayal of singer Bobby Darin's life, here making his television debut as a singer with his own version of Darin's Hello Young Lovers, welcome please, Kevin Spacey. (Applause)(Kevin performs Hello Young Lovers) (Applause)

Michael: A new career opens up to you you see, on that reception!

Kevin: Well it's nerve-racking. It's the first time I've done it on television like that with a big band.

Michael: I must say, you weren't miming, that's your voice.

Kevin: No I wasn't miming, this was live. So you get what you pay for folks! (Laughter)

Michael: I think it will surprise a lot of people, to see the movie and see the all singing all dancing Kevin Spacey.

Kevin: Well what people don't know is that when I started out in theatre as a drama student I did a lot of musicals, so by the time I was twenty-two I did West Side Story, Dam Yankees, and Gypsy, and Dames at Sea, you know I was doing a lot of that, and then professionally I've just never had an opportunity to sing and dance before, but Bobby Darin's story has always fascinated me, inspired me.

Michael: Why?

Kevin: Well part of it I think, starts with the music, that's just an example of the big band stuff that he did, but he had a very brief career and because he died at the age of thirty-seven, in some measure I think he's been the forgotten one of all those Ratpack from that era, the sort of swinging guys. And I think also because he kept changing the kind of music he did over a very brief fifteen year career. He started out in rock and roll with hits like Splish Splash and Dream Lover, and then moved in to pop, Mack the Knife, his most famous, Beyond the Sea, and then he went in to folk music and went in to country western music and did gospel songs.
 

Michael: Protest songs.

Kevin: And did protest songs against the Vietnam War. So I think that because of that when you walk in to a record store now, Bobby Darin's not in one section, he's in about twelve; I think that dissipates a person's legacy.

Michael: But that aspect of change in his life, do you find a similar empathy for that?

Kevin: I do, absolutely. I think that Bobby Darin shows to follow his own heart and you know after a number of years of being the Bobby Darin that everybody got to know and liked he completely changed his image, he took of his toupee, they used to wear toupees back then, some of them wear them now I suspect! (Laughter) And he took of his toupee, he took off his tux; he didn't want to be this shiny suit Bobby Darin any more, he wanted to be something else, he called himself Bob Darin for a while, and played songs they didn't want to hear. But then later in life just toward the end of his life he figured out that if he put back on the toupee, put back on the tux and sang the songs he wanted to sing, including some of the protest songs, that people would listen to him because he finally realised that people hear what they see.

Michael: That's a great line in the film.

Kevin: And that's a line in the film.

Michael: Hear what they see, that's very interesting that. What about, I mean quite obviously there's more to Bobby Darin than what we've just talked about because the life story itself, I mean the early years, are fascinating. He wasn't supposed to live was he, longer than fifteen years?

Kevin: Yeah, like a lot of kids in the United States in the thirties when he was born, prior to the introduction of penicillin, Bobby caught rheumatic fever and this was killing kids all over America until penicillin was introduced in forty-five. How he survived beyond twelve is something of a miracle, I think it was through sheer determination because I guess if you're twelve years old and you overhear the doctor telling you that you're not going to live to see the age of fifteen, first of all that's terrifying but second of all, I think in Bobby's case, it put a big chip on his shoulder, and he thought ok you're going to test me, I'll test you. And as a performer he was determined to make it bigger and better and faster than anybody ever had. He had a great relationship with his mother who was in Vaudeville, who taught him a great deal about what he did.

Michael: While he was sick at home?

Kevin: While he was sick at home, because he couldn't play baseball, go out and play like a regular kid. And modern medications kept him alive until he was thirty-seven but by that point the damage to his heart, well rheumatic fever for people who don't know it's like strep, which we can treat now but back then they couldn't, and it finally caught up with him and then he died after a heart operation.

Michael: So this is very much a labour of love from your point of view, you always wanted to make this movie, and now you're fulfilled it?

Kevin: Yeah, now I've made it and (a) I'm excited that it's finally going to get seen by an audience, it opens here at the end of November, and we did an album, which is the most remarkable thing! And I have to say the gentleman who leads the band that I'm with, John Wilson, and the orchestra, did I think an extraordinary job on the film and I'm very happy to be playing with them tonight, they're a great group.

Michael: It's a very good album and you're going to go on the road too, to do some concerts?

Kevin: I am going on the road. I'm going to sing for my supper! (Laughter)

Michael: I suspect that this is what you've wanted to do all your life, that you've really been a frustrated big band singer?

Kevin: Yes, I think you're right, I think you're right.

Michael: Because there can be very few thrills like sitting in the well of a big band like that and hearing that sound coming out?

Kevin: Well we did all the recordings for this film at Abbey Road studios, which as you know here in England is one of the most famous in the world. In the studio where the Beatles laid down one hundred and seventy-two tracks, so the room's got a really good feeling to it number one, (laughter) and I think other than strapping myself to the front of a locomotive (laughter) I would ever know what this experience would be like, to stand in front of a seventy-three piece orchestra, at times it was quite remarkable.

Michael: The other thing about Bobby Darin of course, he had a film career.

Kevin: Yes.

Michael: He was nominated for an Oscar at one point, and he married Sandra Dee, and he wasn't a man for a long and lasting courtship, he got directly to the point.

Kevin: He got directly to the point. He met Sandra on a location of a film that they were both doing in Italy and three months later they were engaged.

Michael: And this is how the wooing began, this is him making the film with Sandra Dee and telling her of his interest.(Excerpt from Beyond the Sea) (Applause)

Michael: You dedicated the film to your mother? What were the circumstances?

Kevin: Well since I last saw you my mother passed away, two and a half years ago, and my mother was the first person to introduce me to Bobby Darin. My parents had a pretty great record collection and Bobby was sprinkled in amongst you know Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, all the great big bands of that bygone era. And for some reason this movie was the one my mother wanted me to make more than any other film.

Michael: Did she see in it an echo of perhaps of her influence on you and Bobby Darin's mother on him?

Kevin: My mother did teach me a great deal, I was quite close to her, and I miss her enormously because she was a great sounding board in my life and so it just seemed natural to me, because the story is about mothers and sons, that I've dedicated it to mother, but in actuality that could be to anybody's mother.

Michael: It was your parents that introduced you to theatre, here in London?

Kevin: Yes, that's right.

Michael: Can you remember the first time you went to the theatre here?

Kevin: Well I saw a lot of theatre when we came here, but I remember one in particular when I saw an early preview of a production of Sherlock Holmes. I don't remember what theatre it was at but it was Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson and they had the set on a revolve, sort of like a Lazy Susan, so it kept moving around and there was a different set and one of the sets as it started to move, it was probably early hydraulic time in theatre, the back of the set began to 'move' (laughter) as there was an (laughter) actor playing Doctor Watson sitting at a desk. And it moved so much it fell over on the actor and encased him in a French window (laughter) on the desk! And he rang a bell and stage hands came on, they didn't say anything, and rebuilt the set, he kept looking at actors coming on to get props, stage managers, he just didn't want anyone to say anything. Finally, after they had rebuilt the set, which took about five minutes, he walked down centre stage, he took a cigarette out of his pocket, he lit it, and he looked out to the audience and said, "I knew I should never have moved to Kensington!" (Laughter) Now I told that story one night in a dressing room at the Almeda Theatre when I was doing Iceman Cometh, and Tim Piggot-Smith who was playing a major role in that production, looked up and said, "That was me!" (Laughter) And I had no idea that Tim and I were working together all those years ago!

Michael: You made your debut on the London stage, I mean you're now the artistic director of the Old Vic of course we'll talk about that in just a moment, but you've had a long association with the stage in London, you made your debut here I think, with Jack Lemmon?

Kevin: You know unfortunately for us Jack has left us but I think while he was here the sincerity with which he approached his life was a great lesson for me as a young actor, to work with him every single night. And he was great fun, he had some of the funniest stories you would ever hear, and I got to be his room-mate for a week while I was searching for an apartment here in London to live he said, (Jack Lemmon impression) "Look the wife isn't coming for a week, come stay at the Savoy! You can sleep on the floor!" (Laughter) And so I did.

Michael: Now what about the Old Vic, because I mean you've certainly took on a load there haven't you? Were you aware when you took on the artistic directorship for the company, of what you were letting yourself in for?

Kevin: Oh sure.

Michael: Did you, eyes wide open?

Kevin: Very wide open. It's a big responsibility; the theatre has had its ups and downs over the last thirty years. It really hasn't had a full-time artistic director since Olivier left with the National Theatre and went over to their building just down the block here. And I think that you can't turn around the fortunes of a theatre in one season or even in one production. We opened our first play Cloaca, which is a new play by a Dutch writer, a play we're quite proud of, but the critics didn't care for it.

Michael: That's putting it mildly.

Kevin: But fortunately for us the audiences have. Our mandate has been to try to get people back into that building and we chose plays that we thought would be popular with just regular people and that's proving to be true.

Michael: Why didn't you just take the easy option? You know, you're a film star, go and make films? Instead of getting involved with the politics of English theatre, that's a murky maze.

Kevin: Well I have to say, like Bobby Darin, I and a lot of artists will always be facing a dilemma of professional expectations over personal freedom. And I'm going to choose personal freedom over what people think I ought to do, or what might be the easy choice. I've never been interested in doing the thing that comes easy. I like a challenge when I get up in the morning.

Michael: I wonder too, given your interest in the world around you, and given your friendship with certain politicians, notably Mr Bill Clinton, or President Clinton I should say, whether or not politics appeal to you? Whether at some point in your career you might envisage standing for high political office?

Kevin: Only if I began to smoke crack regularly! (Laughter, applause) Why would you do that?

Michael: I knew half way through, that this was a daft question, I could tell by the way you were looking at me! (Laughter)

Kevin: Sorry, yes, I was starting to go cross-eyed wasn't I!

Michael: You were!

Kevin: Well I do think this; I have tremendous admiration for people who go into public service and I've had a long association with President Clinton, you know we went up to Blackpool and that made quite a lot of headlines, more that we went to McDonalds than that we were there for any serious reason! (Laughter) But the only reason that I had gone up there was that we had just taken a twelve day trip to Africa to raise money for President Clinton's AIDS foundation, and he said, (Clinton impersonation) "Well I'm going to Liverpool, do you want to come with me? I'm going to Blackpool... Come on!" (Laughter) "So we all went up there and had a good old time!" (Laughter)

Michael: Ok, well look, now you've got the job now of going out and promoting this movie, Beyond the Sea, and it's been very much a personal crusade for you, so we wish you well on that, and also too with the Old Vic, I think a lot of people admire what you're trying to do there and wish you well in the battle ahead.

Kevin: We're in for the long haul, so we're not going anywhere.

Michael: Well that's to our benefit. Kevin Spacey, thank you. (Applause)

Quelle: www.parkinson.tangozebra.com/