In the Life: Interview with Ian McKellen and Bill Condon

[Host] Ian, tell me what interested you about playing James Whale in the film? [Ian McKellen] I'd read the book "Father Frankenstein" by Christopher Bram. Really enjoyed it.. and uh... and someone said to me, which hadn't occurred to me when I read it, "Ah...there's a part for you there." "Oh... they meant the movie." And uh... about six months later Bill Condon, the director of the film, sent me the script and I was already...because I, I had done not my research but I, I was really into the man and of course I made certain connections with him. He's English as I am. He was an actor for most his life in London doing the same sort of plays that I am often in, new plays and classical plays. When he came to Hollywood, well, I know what it's like to be an Englishman in Hollywood but he was a gay Englishman and I know about that too. So... uh...I felt, well, here's a part that I won't have to disguise myself too much but I can feed on...on...on...on... aspects of my own life and apply them to it too, too well and uh... But that, it's not just the part you play, you know, it's the company you do it in and once I knew Lynn Redgrave was going to be in it and and talking to Bill Condon whose grasp of the material is so certain and assured and we laughed a lot together I thought probably gonna be okay and then when Brendan Fraser came on board well... who could resist the opportunity from seeing Brendan Fraser in close quarters? [Host] Uhm... were you surprised when you read the book that the creator of Frankenstein was a gay Englishman? Had you known his background before? [McKellen] I was an ignoramus. I mean I'd, I'd seen... Frankenstein movies on TV, you know, late at night and I knew the "Invisible Man" I... I had seen "Show Boat" and knew Paul Robeson singing "Ol' Man River" and so on but that was it. No...it, it came the wrong way around for me. I found out more about the man through the book and then went back to look at the movies. No, there is clearly a gay sensibility at work there- wonderful witty sense of humor for a start. [Host] How did you do the research for the role? I mean his, his...he lived in the '30s and was in Hollywood? [McKellen] Well, I lived in the '30s myself. Just, you know... and... uh... As I said, there were certain connections that I could feel with him personally but... the research, there's no point in me delving into the genuine biography of Whale and coming up with ideas that Christopher Bram didn't want to discuss you know. It's a Bram/Condon film and script and that long, long ago learned that when you're playing a real person you, you don't play the person, you play the script about the person. But research...I looked at photographs. There, there are no, no film of, of Whale and, and nor do we know what he sounded like these days but, but there, there are plenty of still photographs and you can tell from that how elegant he was and how upright and I managed to look a little, little bit like him in certain shots. Uhm... I talked to a few, a few of his friends who are still around but they have, they have varying views on, on what he was like and so that was just... I saw the house he lived in but Goldie Hawn has redecorated it so much you can't tell it was James Whale's any longer. So...no, basically just delved into the script and into the book- wonderful source material in the "Father of Frankenstein"- the novel. [Host] Now some of the friends that you talked to of his did they talk about his uhm... relationship with other men or the fact that he was gay? [McKellen] One of them, Curtis Harrington, was a young man in Paris at... uh... roughly at the time of the...of our film, late '50s, and, and Whale is a vacationing in, in Paris and so is Curtis and uhm... they became friends, I think, nothing more than that. Uh... and when Whale was leaving Paris and this peculiar [?] student was going to be left behind with no money to help him enjoy himself Whale gave him quite a few hundred dollars to make his life more comfortable there. So that's a true story. Uh... what else about his life? I don't know. You...I don't think that much is known and uhm... he was rather private person but quite at ease with being gay. David Lewis, his love of many years, a studio executive who produced Elizabeth Taylor's movies in the '50s. They lived quite openly in the Pacific Palisades and went to openings of movies together and no one turned a hair and nor did they. One shouldn't categorize him as a early gay activist. Such things didn't exist in the '30s and '40s, perhaps. But uh... he becomes symbolic and, and, and because...uhm... so few people in Hollywood through the years even now of his eminence find it comfortable to be honest about their sexuality. [Host] You mentioned something about you wouldn't necessarily call him the gay activist. But how, why would you say it's important for uh... say a gay generation that's growing up now, know about people like James Whale? [McKellen] Well, when I was growing up myself in the United Kingdom in the '40s and '50s uh... homosexuality was never mentioned at home, at school, at church... in the press unless, of course, it, it was some scandalous, dirty story and that was the image of what it meant to be gay that I grew up with. I had to discover on my own account from friends that the reality was quite different from that. And...uh...so, if I had had a few positive gay images in my life, had it been... had I understood Michelangelo was gay, had I understood that Benjamin Britten was gay, that John Gielgud was- people I admired for other reasons- and that they were getting on with their lives and it was no big deal, you know, they weren't monsters and they weren't gods. Then uh... I think my life would have been easier and certainly today, I think, it's... the fact that increasingly young people, some are able to come out to their parents in their teens and start their maturity as, as adults at ease with their sexuality. Part of the reason for that is that the subject is now more readily discussed in the open and the media and that certain people in public life are prepared to be honest and that, of course, has an impact on people who live in areas of the world or are of an age when it's difficult to be honest. [Host] Now, I understand that you screened uhm... the Frankenstein movies in preparation for doing the film. How would you say that the creature or this whole Frankenstein myth is kind of like a gay metaphor? [McKellen] Well, er... I think you have to come and see "Gods and Monsters." I mean it's, it's sort of discussed in that. It's, it's... or not discussed. It's uh... this film isn't didactic at all. It's a, it's a work of art. It's very imaginative and it sets the audience's mind racing in various directions. But... certainly, where it was sympathetic to the outsider. Now, he was an outsider himself in a number of ways. Yes, he was gay. He had escaped from his social past as a member of the working classes and turned himself into a middle class gentleman in London but he was an outsider when he arrived in Hollywood. He had seen the destruction in the first world war firsthand and never forgotten it but I don't know with what guilt he considered his own life and the fact that he, he'd escaped death himself. So... I think the monsters...to, to, to reduce the monster as a, as a metaphor for, for what it means to be gay, I think, would be to, to misunderstand the intention. It's, it's broader than that and perhaps a bit deeper. [Host] Now... you, you did mention a bit of a connection between, you know, you and Whale himself being an Englishman... going to Hollywood. Do you see any differences between that time when he was in Hollywood, was an outsider? Or do you still feel a you know, a bit of an outsider now? [McKellen] Well, uh... since AIDS has meant that the public has uh... had to consider that gay people have sex and even think of the ways in which they have sex. There is an openness now uh... in... for the public at large and that's the one good thing to have come out of AIDS, I think. That, that now gay people are understood to be firmly in society and so attitudes in Hollywood are beginning to reflect that and, and in the films being made- "Gods and Monsters" being one. "The Opposite of Sex" being another- a real grown-up movie where gay and straight characters exist side-by-side and I laughed at and are cried over in exactly the same way. Nothing remarkable about us. We're just uh... different but not threatening or whatever. Uhm... as for people living in Hollywood and the film, working in the film industry there is an increasing uh... sense that it's okay to be out. Studio bosses, agents, managers, directors, producers, writers, of course, happily out of the closet even joining together and, and, and meeting in societies to discuss it. But actors... very few stars. Only one, Anne Heche, and I, I think without burdening her too much we should all be watching her career with eager anticipation, I would say, certainty that the public doesn't give a damn that she's gay... uh... finds it interesting, perhaps, but isn't going to let them... let, let it affect the the enjoyment of her work when she plays a straight character which she very successfully does. I think the public is a great deal more sophisticated than those advisors of young actors, particularly their managers and PR people who may themselves be gay, who advise the young person, "No, no, no...if you want to have a career in Hollywood you must lie." Well, that's... unseemly and it's cruel and there's no career, frankly, worth having if it means you got to spend a whole of your life lying about yourself. Uh... but if you choose to have a career as, as an actor and you want to play romantic leads, follow Anne Heche's example and it's probably going to be okay..."get out." [Host] Uhm... what was it like working with Bill and Lynn Redgrave on this film? [McKellen] It was a very quick shoot, I think, it was only four weeks. We didn't have enough money for any more than that. Three million dollars isn't a lot to spend on a film that looks as good as this one does. Lynn, I've... known all my working life. We first acted together with Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic 30 years ago and I've seen her off and on and, and the fact that she can give a wonderfully rich, broad, comic performance... it didn't surprise me. I've seen her do similar things in the past. So it was lovely to see her again and we always laugh a lot together and that was a characteristic of my relationship with the director Bill Condon. We, we laugh together we have same sense of, sense of humor. He's uhm... he's from New York which I find easy to relate to being here quite a lot myself. Uh... He loves not only the film industry but loves theaters as well. And so... references to things in my own life and career he was able to relate to absolutely and as for him directing me as an actor I rapidly learned to totally trust him and if he was happy and, and said. "Cut, that's fine," I really believed him and that's a very good relationship to have with a director because it means however much you go off on your own as the cameras turning and perhaps trying something new, something you didn't expect to happen...does happen and you go with it... Bill would always let you know at the end whether what he'd seen was right for his movie or not. I totally underestimated how wonderful the film would be. I had no idea that it would look as beautiful as it does. That they, the stock of color film that they were using would be so specific that it would be so stylish or indeed as funny as it is and uh... so I'm in awe and uh... hope to work with Bill again another time. [Host] Now, you mentioned it's funny but there's also a lot of darkness in the film and the dark side. How is "Gods and Monsters" different from current Hollywood films that have come out the past few years like "In & Out" or even "The Object of My Affection"? [McKellen] I haven't seen either of those movies, sorry. I can't tell you. [Host] Uhm... [Host] I'd like to ask a little bit about uhm... the producer Clive Barker. Did you have any interaction with him? [McKellen] No, that was an initial uh... uhm... reassurance that the film is well-intentioned because Clive Barker is, until the ascendance of Bill Condon perhaps, you know the master of the the horror genre these days and uh but apart from meeting a couple of times his input, I think, was in getting the movie set up in overseeing the, the script initially and who knows in what ways supporting Bill but he was not often on the set and no... his job is very much behind the scenes as far as I was concerned. [Host] You mentioned that you and Bill share a love of theater. Are you still performing "A Knight Out" anywhere and how is that going? [McKellen] No. The last time I talked to your program was four years ago during the Gay Games when I had devised, for which I devised my time. Since then I, I, I've done it in a number of places most recently in, in Los Angeles raising money for local charities... gay charities and youth charities. Uh... I took it across South Africa at the time when they were trying to ensure, which they now have, that the equality clause in the constitution of the country should include... sexuality so it is not illegal on any grounds to discriminate against someone who's gay in South Africa and I did my show to raise funds for people who are trying to make that happen. No it's, it's put as I said back in the closet. It's put in the back of a drawer and and it'll come out when the time is appropriate but I'm still acting in the theater just done... ten weeks with the Nipson play in Los Angeles and now rehearsing for a Chekov play and a Noel Coward play and the Shakespeare play in the West Yorkshire Playhouse in the north of England where I'm going to stay for seven months with the company of ten actors. [Host] Well when you, you pull that play out again from your closet in the future, does it evolve? Does it change every time you perform it? [McKellen] Yes, it does. It's always "A Knight Out" in wherever I happen to be and uh the local concerns become my concerns as well and that and of course the part of the fun and point of doing a solo show and looking the audience directly in the eye is to communicate and, and to that extent it's a two-way process. Uh... also I don't think the shows yet right or reached a state that I would ever consider recording it for example in someways. So it's got more work to be done on it and I assume that will happen over the next time I do it and the time I do it after that and the time I do it after that wherever it happens to be. [Host] Well, I think that's all I have to ask. Was it okay if you do an "In The Life" identification for us? [McKellen] Sure. [Host] Just have to say, "I'm in Ian McKellen and you're watching "In The Life." [Camerman] Is he looking right to the camera at us? [Host] Yes, looking right into camera. [Cameraman] Hold on one second please and...anytime. [McKellen] I'm Ian McKellen and you're watching "In The Life" [Host] Okay. Thank you very, very much. [Cameraman] I want you rolling, what's the count? [Second Cameraman] Okay... [Cameraman] Twelve... [Cameraman] Thirteen... [Cameraman] Fourteen... [Second Cameraman] Right.. [Cameraman] Good? And...anytime. [Host] Bill, what got you interested in doing this film "Gods and Monsters?" [Bill Condon] I think it started with an interest in James Whale's movies. Uhm... first one I discovered was "Bride of Frankenstein." After that as I got older I saw as many as I could and I think was Clive Barker who said, "If there's any doubt about the existence of a gay sensibility, the "Bride of Frankenstein" proves that." Part of it is, you know, his movies aren't just full of kind of camp wit that is as fresh today as it was 60 years ago and also this amazing sort of identification with the outsider that runs throughout all of his movies. So that was the first thing and then, and then that drew me to Christopher Bram's novel "Father Frankenstein." Which I thought was absolutely wonderful but also that rare, serious book that wouldn't be diminished by being made into a film. I thought it was the possibility to do a movie about the end of James Whale's life and sort of do it in the style of Whale to a degree. [Host] So you kind of knew that Whale was gay even before you read the screenplay? [Condon] Oh sure, yeah. I have a friend Curtis Harrington who is a director who knew Whale in the last 10 years of his life and he always told me wonderful stories about him. Yeah, so I mean he is a bit of a gay hero, I think. Someone who was openly... homosexual... from the 1930s on. Never hid it. Never led a double life in any way and was wildly successful. [Cameraman] Do you need that again? [Host] Yeah, hold on a second. [Cameraman] We lost it at homosexual [Cameraman] Don't ask me why people are banging in the doorway... [Condon] Right, okay. [Cameraman] ... we can't stop them. [Host] Then you can repeat that? What... [Condon] Yeah... No, I knew about him from a friend of my Curtis Harrington a director who knew him in the last 10 years of his life. Heard, had heard great stories about him and of course he's a bit of a gay hero because he was someone who was openly gay in the 1930s all the way through the 1950s and thrived in spite of it. [Host] What do you think is going to happen to one of our most cherished American icons? You know this image of Frankenstein, you know, it's like Marilyn Monroe and James Dean... [Condon] That's right... [Host] How is that going to affect people's perceptions both straight people and gay people to know that... [Condon] I don't know. It's interesting because, you know, part of getting the rights to use it, it was difficult. I actually had a friend who works there and gave it to us kind of without them knowing, you know, because Frankenstein for Universal is a bit like Mickey Mouse for Disney, you know. So uhm... I don't know. I don't think that this will redefine everybody's image of Frankenstein but it is another little little variation on it. Definitely. [Host] Why did you want Ian in this role as James Whale? [Condon] Well, he just seemed the obvious choice. Especially, I mean, I'd seen him on stage in so many things and then seeing "Richard III" especially the way that he was so full of mischievous delight every time he invited you to watch the next horrible thing that he did, you know. I thought that, that would... it was important because Whale in the beginning, it's certainly not a PC character, you know, he does things that uhm... can put off certain...he's an older gay man who still has sexual urges, who sort of... any young guy within 500 feet he tries to get them to take their clothes off, certain predatory things like that. Which I think it's, it's being shown from the inside rather than the outside and I thought that was important to have someone like Ian who could, who could sort of take you along with the character. Also, I thought there was gonna be some fun to be had. Ian is so well-known as a political activist and is such a contemporary "out" gay figure. The play between that and someone like Whale who was "out" and, "out" doesn't even apply in the '50s, but who was openly, comfortably homosexual in the '50s but doesn't have any of that sort of extra political kind of... bite that someone, a contemporary figure has, so it's fun to watch, I think, someone like Ian play "in" in period. [Host] Yeah, that must have been interesting to direct him. I mean we're there times when you had to like tell him, you know, not so political? [Condon] No, no, not at all. No, No. That wasn't Ian. No. [Host] That's great. What was Clive Barker's involvement with this production? [Condon] Well first uhm... he... I think it's something he wants to do more of. He... was kind of our Coppola on this movie, you know. Just kind of there to help us get it going. To help us get it financed. Always stepping in at that those critical moments when it looked like it was gonna fall apart and then as a great sounding board because there's so many uhm... comparisons obviously, parallels between Clive's life and Whale's, you know...northern lads, expats living in Hollywood, making films, painters and also...gay. So he was always fun to talk to about it. [Host] What...you mentioned some of those connections. How are some things that are different and yet the same for gay directors like yourself or Barker now compared to Whale's time? [Condon] Well, that's a good question. Uhm... I guess it's less of an issue now. I think it's less of an issue now. Uhm... but again, what's interesting about Whale is that he made no effort to hide anything then. So...I think, it was a pretty sophisticated culture in the 1930s in Hollywood. I think... the war happened and suddenly all of America, everyone felt like they needed "real men" and so there was that followed by the Cold War made everything kind of clamp down but uhm... I don't know that it's that different from the 1930s, you know. I've never sensed any kind of real bias just in terms of being gay. You know, there's probably more of a bias for Clive, I mean, in terms of virtue the fact that we do horror movies, you know. That, that's much more of a stigma, I think. [Host] The characters that Lynn Redgrave and Brendan Fraser play are they based on any real-life counterparts? [Condon] Well, Lynn Redgrave's plays a Hungarian housekeeper, Hannah, and in real life Whale had two middle European... a housekeeper in a cook, Anna and Johanna, so she's bit of a combination. He used to, when people would come back for dinner a second time he'd, he'd line them up and ask people to identify which was which. I think that was one of his games. Clay?...No, Clay's an invention of Chris Bram's. Pure invention as is Hannah but Hannah is closer to somebody who lived, who existed in Whale's life. [Host] You mentioned that there are some aspects of James Whale's character in your film and in the story. They're a bit un-PC for these times... [Condon] Yeah. [Host] but I find that that refreshing, you know, compared to some of the films that have been coming out of Hollywood. Can you say a little bit more about that? [Condon] Yeah, you know I think, I almost feel like I loved, I mean...obviously we all grew up with all those hideous images of gay people in movies. Peter Russo wrote a book about them and in the last 10 years there's been, it seems to me, kind of two big movements- there's political queer film and then a more mainstream kind of... gay lifestyle movies. Sort of like... with mostly positive... you know... depictions. role models, you know and they've been great, a great corrective to everything that happened before but it does feel like maybe now we're moving into a time when we can sort of show a more complete picture again. You know, characters who do have dark sides. Characters who even behave in ways that might be considered... uhm... offensive to straight people but again showing it from the inside and not sort of as these alien others, you know, the way they were before. It reminds me something that happened in, in black movies, it seems to me, you know. With, you know, the great stride that was made by Sidney Poitier and it was wonderful but he was so heroic. I think it was Pollock Hill who said that he has to practically win a Nobel Prize before he's able to kiss the white girl, you know, and then there's another generation that comes along, Spike Lee and other people, saying "No, no this...there's like a more complicated picture," you know. [Host] It sounds like you've gotten some success audiences are ready for this kind of depiction... [Cameraman] Wait, wait... [Host] ...because of the title "Gods and Monsters" [Condon] Well, it's it's a quote from the "Bride of Frankenstein." Dr. Pretorius, the very fruity character played by Ernest Thesiger, lifts his glass and says, "To a new world of gods and monsters" but obviously it has a lot of meanings. I hate to be too literal about it but I do think that in, in the movie both Ian McKellen and Brendan Fraser, the characters they play, are at, at times either a "god" or a "monster," you know, and it really is the story of that sort of back and forth between those two characters. [Host] We were talking about how audiences seemed to be ready for this kind of film. [Condon] Yeah. [Host] Tell me some of the reaction to this one... [Condon] Well, it was interesting, it was interesting. For example, we showed the movie at Sundance We had a really good response there but when they show movies there they do one screening at Salt Lake City and we were a little nervous about that because there was like get there and there's like a significant Mormon... you know... uh...uh... part of the audience and that was the best screening we had, you know. So I found that... you know... there's been, there was certain resistance in the beginning from bigger independent distributors to, to uhm... release the movie and I wouldn't say it's because it was a gay movie....only but that was, that in addition to the fact that it's a kind of darker story and ends in, in...uh... uh...James Whale's suicide. I think probably all those things on top of it but gay, gay had a good deal to do with that and I've always found that I never want to walk away from the, the you know, saying it's not a gay film but it really isn't, you know. It, it...so... I would be interested...I'm hoping that... uhm... I don't know, obviously that it reaches as wide an audience as possible, [Host] Great. Thank you. [Condon] Good. Thank you very much.