What Makes Kenny Run?

Empire Magazine, December 1991
By Tom Hibbert

Kenneth Branagh is in reality entirely lacking - well, almost - in those flirty affectations or popular perception that have so damned him to date. This rather shocking realisation takes place in the offices of his Renaissance Theatre Company in the middle of Soho, bought by Branagh with the "handsome" advance money for Beginning. The unsuspecting visitor has first to climb ten flights of stairs - squalid, rickety, damp and ill-lit stairs - and there, sitting by a desk, is the owner, decked out in a sensible shirt, dishing out the mineral water, beaming, charming, defying anyone not to press the cliche button marked Youthful Good Looks.

"I'm suspicious of talking about the acting of life," wrote Branagh in the introduction to Beginning. "it seems that as soon as I think I know something and try to describe it, it's gone." And still he is suspicious: wary of the personal, averse to discussions of the meaning (or not) of "life". We talked, for the most part then, of terrible old films and it is refreshing indeed to find that Kenneth Branagh, who one may imagine to be far too snooty to encompass such decidedly lowbrow tastes, is in fact a great admirer of bad comedy and crap films about big tops with Ty Hardin in them. First though some opposite questions such as:

WHY, PRAY TELL, DID YOU CHOOSE A THRILLER SCRIPT LIKE DEAD AGAIN FOR YOUR FIRST FORAY INTO THE INFERNO OF HOLLYWOOD??

In America they didn't know quite how to take me, basically, because I'd done Henry V, this lovey lovey Shakespeare (HE PRONOUNCES 'SHAHK-SPEARE' FOR TERRIBLY ENGLISH EFFECT) and they thought I was eternally classical (PRONOUNCED 'CLAH-SSICAL FOR T.E.E.) So they kept sending me costume things with lots of battles in, lots of fighting pictures.

ROBIN-'NEATH-THE-GREENWOOD-TREE-BRING-ME-MY-STURDY-BOW-STOUT -FELLOWS-TYPE NONSENSE?

Oh yes, there was some of that. And I kept being sent lives of Shakespeare - with fighting in it. There are lots of lives of Shakespeare doing the rounds in America. And then I got sent Vietnam War stories, American Marine stories, naval things. They'd decided that lovey Kenneth Branagh could do two things: Shakespeare and battle stuff. But then I was sent Dead Again and I read the script and I simply couldn't put it down. Simple as that. It reminded me of the first sort of films that really made an impression on me.

ACCORDING TO YOUR AUTOBIOGRAPHY, THE FIRST FILMS THAT REALLY MADE AN IMPRESSION ON YOU WERE CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG AND ONE MILLION YEARS BC. DEAD AGAIN ISN'T MUCH LIKE THOSE AT ALL.

Er, no, ha ha. I saw those in the cinema when I was young but my real sense of being hooked into acting , into storytelling, into pictures, came from watching television - I didn't go to the theatre until I was 16. And I remember watching television on Saturday afternoons in Belfast. My Dad was away and my mother was working so I would sit in front of the telly watching film matinees - and films like Dial M For Murder, films like Rebecca, American B pictures that always seemed to have Dana Andrews in, or Victor Mature, they had an enormous effect on me. I just loved noir-ish things any things in the detective genre.

DEAD AGAIN SEEMS, AT TIMES, TO BE PAYING SOME KIND OF HOMAGE TO HITCHCOCK WITH TRACES OF NORTH BY NORTHWEST, ETC.

Well I always loved Hitchcock. I saw lots of Hitchcock as a boy: North by Northwest, Spellbound. Notorious I was very taken with because it is so weird. I re-viewed a lot of Hitchcock stuff in the early stages of preparing for Dead Again. I wanted to remind myself of just how far he went because with Dead Again you certainly needed alot of melodramatic Hitchcock approach to carry it off. You've got all the classic ingredients haven't you: the spooky house, the woman with amnesia, the detective who's got a slightly lost quality, the textures, old Los Angeles, a spooky old antique shop. It was just a love of old movies that enthused me. And then you've got re-incarnation and a plot that, if you sit and analyse it, is totally implausible. I hope I've managed to make people suspend their disbelief.

YOU DON'T ACTUALLY BELIEVE IN ANY OF THAT REINCARNATION HOCUS-POCUS, DO YOU?

It's interesting because almost everybody who worked on the picture had some belief in reincarnation - except for the author who thinks it's completely nonsensical. With me. I suppose the kind of ooo-eee-ooo-eee-ooo factor that we get when we encounter the old deja vu is there in me. And Dead Again certainly deals with reincarnation in an entertaining way. Making the film felt strangely like where I'd started off from because that kind of noirish, sort of creepy film was something I was steeped in much more, actually, than the classical theatre.

YOU MEAN YOU FEEL MORE AFFINITY WITH DOUBLE INDEMNITY OR RAY MILLAND IN THE MAN WITH X-RAY EYES, OR SOMETHING, THAN WITH SHAKESPEARE?

Ha ha ha, oh, not necessarily. I love classical theatre but my visual reference system all come from film. When I'm directing theatre, I always refer to films to try to convey to actors the shorthand of a scene. I'll say "Remember the piece in the Godfather when Brando did so-and-so," or, "There's that scene when Burt Lancaster said to so-and-so in Sweet Smell Of Success"... They don't know what I'm talking about half the time.

SO YOU PREFER A VISIT TO THE CINEMA TO "THEATRE GOING", DO YOU?

Oh yes, that is absolutely true. I like being able to talk while the film is on and I like being able to have something to eat. I like a bucket of popcorn and a drink. The cinema is a slightly more alive thing, strangely enough. I go to the theatre so I can see my mates in things but the whole physical process of going there, buying a ticket, buying a ridiculously priced drink or a ridiculously priced ice cream and the terrible, ridiculously priced programme - I just think, "Oh, fuck this, I could be going to the pictures and having a better time, getting up and going to the loo if I need to and not feel terrible about it, paying less than a quarter of this." And just think if you're on the other side of the camera, actually making the film. Christ, you get to be seen by so many more people - and that's exciting.

HOW DID YOU FIND WORKING IN HOLLYWOOD? "LIFE ENHANCING" OR JUST GHASTLY?

Neither really. I'm sure Hollywood is quite ghastly - there's only about 300 people who run the place, you know. I was surrounded by Hollywood horror stories of interference from studio people, but I had a very lucky experience. Paramount liked me because I didn't fuck up on practicalities: I was on schedule and I was cheap. They've just sent me the final budget figures and Dead Again cost under 15 million dollars. Fourteen million, nine hundred and fifty-seven thousand dollars! Fuck me that seems like a lot of money to me, but in their terms, it was probably the least expensive picture Paramount had made in the last year. I was Mr Reasonable, Mr Efficient, so they liked me.

SO NEXT TIME YOU GO TO HOLLYWOOD, YOU'LL BE ABLE TO GO COMPLETELY BONKERS?

Well, I like to think that maybe I'll be given a little bit of rope with which to hang myself next time.

DO YOU THINK THAT THE CHOICE OF EMMA THOMPSON AS YOUR, ER, LEADING LADY WAS A SOUND ONE?

Oh, yes, because I was convinced that the belief in the chemical combination of the man and woman must be right - so I was insistent that my wife should play the other part. I wanted a team around me that I knew so I was insistent that Derek Jacobi should be there too and that the nucleus of the creative team that had been on Henry V should be there. I had to make it under those terms otherwise I wouldn't do it. It was never going to be a hi-tech glossy thriller . . . Emma is a terrific actress you know; I know that casting her in Dead Again may be seen as a bit of a cop-out, but we had a good professional relationship which led to good acting before we fell in love. And, er, well...

WHAT IS ROBIN WILLIAMS DOING IN YOUR FILM? AND WHY IS HE A 'SECRET'?

Robin is brilliant - and he's a secret partly because he wanted it that way and partly because the reaction when he comes on and they are not expecting him is delicious. It stops setting up the wrong kind of expectations: it would be wrong if his big fans thought this was a Robin Williams movie. He was very interested in the part - the slightly sinister thing. He said when he saw it "Christ! I didn't realise I could be THAT seedy!"

HOW WAS HOLLYWOOD SOCIALLY? AWESOME PARTIES? MOUNDS OF COCAINE?

Do you know, Emma and I are the most fucking boring, boring fucking people in the world. In nine months we were there in Hollywood, we went to one do: an American Cinema tech tribute to Martin Scorsese who is a great hero of mine. They can be pretty ghastly those kinds of things. But it was OK because essentially in America nobody in America knows who the fuck I am so I could be quite anonymous ... There's a great piece in John Sessions' new show where Robert De Niro has a great fall out with Scorsese so De Niro goes to England and decides he's going to be a theatre actor and he learns panto and he's in panto with Sue pollard in Wimbledon. And then he goes back to America and he is so camp, with a kind of language taught to him by Billy Sparkle, the actor's friend. I felt a bit like that all the time in Hollywood. A bit kind of surreal I suppose. But most of the time I was just knackered. All I ever wanted to do in Hollywood was come home, glass of wine, bowl of something in front of the telly and blank off. I was a bit monkish in Hollywood ... I was also really fucking scared shitless, ha ha ha.

YOU WERE NOMINATED FOR OSCARS FOR HENRY V, BUT YOU'VE SUGGESTED THAT THE INDUSTRY JUST SAW IT AS SOME KIND OF FEISTY BATTLE SCENE OATER...

That's exactly how it was seen in that way by alot of potential employers. Oscar nominations help but they don't stop people from misunderstanding you. Fortunately, Henry V was incredibly enjoyed by the public there. They tell that over there it's the third highest grossing art film of all time, which doesn't mean much in terms of money - although we've done about 20 million dollars which for something that cost about eight million dollars is extraordinary. So it was very interesting that Henry V caught on so much in America. I got a lot of letters from people who were grateful that they had seen something like that and actually enjoyed it as opposed to just thinking it was good for them. It cut through the middle of the snobby thing and the intimidating thing: people would write to me as if they were drowning men who'd found some kind of raft to cling to in relation to this ogre of difficult english literature. All very rewarding.

HENRY V WAS RECEIVED RATHER DIFFERENTLY IN ENGLAND. CERTAIN CRITICS SEEMED A LITTLE PEEVISH...

Ha ha - that's a good way to describe it: "peevish". I mean, last year at the European Film Awards, Henry V got two things and the next week an English critic - who bemoans the state of the British film industry every other week - said, "Well, there is no accounting for taste." Which is just indicative of the negative corner people get into. I just feel that the influence of the cinema is such that it has an important part to play at a time like this, to entertain, to illuminate, to enlighten, to exhilarate, to ... I'm sorry, I seem to be wittering on a bit here....

HOW DO YOU REACT TO PERSONAL CRITICISM? DO YOU EVER THINK,"WHY DOES EVERYBODY HATE ME?"

I do, and I don't understand it, to be perfectly honest. It's just an arbitrary thing that this country is very capable of: a resentment that just occurs against someone who is relatively young and relatively successful. It is always upsetting when you read abusive stuff about yourself. You feel bruised, you know. Christ knows, you make a film and it takes 18 months so that it is a great personal investment and when people don't like it, you have a bit of a blub. But swiftly you recover because, essentially, it's meaningless. It's just a fucking film. It is completely and utterly unimportant, isn't it? My life, my personal happiness, does not hang upon what people think of Henry V or Dead Again. Ninety percent of the world don't know you've made the fucking thing anyway. But I just try to keep my head down. There's so many other fucking horrible things in the world that the fact that some people find you annoying is not the greatest revelation. So what the fuck? There's fucking nothing to complain about. You want to be in fucking Bangladesh! If some people don't like your films, what a tragedy, what a great personal tragedy! You won't get rid of me that easily. I'm MUCH too fucking thick-skinned for that.

WHAT SORT OF THING DO YOU FIND AMUSING??

There's something about those 70's sitcom shows where people are time locked: George and Mildred, Love Thy Neighbour, Rising Damp. I love all that. Emma and I watched Benny Hill in America and we were looking at each other absolutely amazed. He's in a fucking time capsule. It's 20 years on and he's still doing gags like he walks up to a door and it says "Push", and then he comes to a bell-pull and it has a sign saying "pull", and then a woman comes in with enormous breasts and she's wearing a name tag saying "Pat". You can't believe that this is still happening - and it's done with such commitment! I'm ashamed to say that Emma and I found it very, VERY funny.

HAVE YOU SEEN YOUR SPITTING IMAGE PUPPET? IT'S QUITE A JOLLY LITTLE FELLOW.

Is it? Ha ha ha. No I haven't seen it. Haven't avoided it either, it's just that...er, I don't read the papers, actually. I just get the news off the radio and assume the world will do whatever it wants regardless of whether the nation is pantingly waiting for Kenneth Branagh's movie. I don't think it is.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO SOME COMEDY YOURSELF IN THE FUTURE?

Yes, I would. I often feel that my natural predisposition is that way. The kind of people I would have liked to have met are people like Tony Hancock - a most fascinating, dark, infuriating creature; mad but a bit of a genius - Max Miller and Eric Morcambe. That's why I love working with Richard Briers. He's a genuinely funny man - much funnier as a person than he ever is acting. He's got a real spice in him, a real dark side to him, likes a drink. I'd love to do some comedy like Briers and co. I think that I've got to the stage now where everybody expects me to be a Serious Lovey, so I can afford to do something a bit farty. Who knows, I might even make a really good film one of these days......

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