Jeremiah Chechik: Secret Agent Man

Chechik's take on The Avengers sounds vastly different from those of moviemakers who considered the project earlier. According to London's Sunday Times, years ago, Mel Gibson nearly took a flier at playing John Steed in an action-comedy version, but opted instead to do the Lethal Weapon flicks. Before David Fincher made his name with Se7en, he did an Avengers script which he envisioned as "very cruel, very violent, with Charles Dance as Steed." Three years ago, director/writer Nicholas Meyer signed a deal to direct the movie based on a script by Don MacPherson, the writer of credit on Chechik's version.

"What I wanted to do was try and make a very smart action movie," Chechik says. "I think that once we moved into the '70s with disaster movies like The Towering Inferno, the visual kinetics began to overwhelm the characters and stories. Not that there haven't been wonderful, smart action movies since, but we seem to have drifted into a world where movie stars are people who run in front of fireballs. What I liked about The Avengers is that, at the heart of the movie, there's this wonderful playfulness, this wonderful Gable-Lombard banter between two fabulous characters."

The short supply of contemporary Gables and Lombards forced Chechik and producer Jerry Weintraub to come up with what they saw as contemporary analogs. "I saw Ralph Fiennes as Steed, pure and simple," Chechik observes. "It was never a question for me and there was no Plan B. He exemplified that classic sensibility--modern, yet traditional, kind of handsome. Cary Grant, Fred Astaire. I'd known him for several years and, while he was in Tunisia making The English Patient, I phoned him and said, 'I've got your next movie."'

To the observation that Fiennes, unlike Cary Grant or Fred Astaire, isn't renowned for his light touch, Chechik counters, "He has a light touch. He's fabulous at it. He's as light as a feather in this, and that's what people have never seen him do."

If Chechik was certain from the get-go about who his Mr. Steed was going to be, his perfect Emma Peel was more elusive. He dismisses as "not relevant" the circumstances as to why it wasn't Ralph and Nicole, or Ralph and Gwyneth, among other pairings. He also dismisses statements made in the press about Kidman by The Avengers TV series creator Brian Clemens, who observed that Kidman looked "too hard" and didn't have "the vulnerability that made the leather catsuits and high kicks that much more surprising and exciting."

"I don't remember [him] saying that," says Chechik, "but if [anyone] did, I'd say, 'Sure, if you're going to direct the movie, great, otherwise ...' The woman had to work well with Ralph and look good in the catsuit. She had to be able to do a good, strong, female personification and had to have energy equal to Ralph's and an intelligent sexuality. It's exciting when five people come in for the same part, and I often want to give them all the same part. The choice is often just a shading, a color interpretation, a quality of voice, a look in the eye. It's true that Nicole Kidman was one choice, Gwyneth, too. Uma got the part. She's extraordinarily hardworking, a very nose-to-the-grindstone person who's like, 'Let's just do it.' She worked very hard on her accent, the physical stuff. I don't know that any director can take responsibility for the sexual chemistry between two actors, other than putting them in the same room, but with Ralph and Uma, it was an 11 out of a possible 10."

What was it like watching Patrick Macnee, who lends his voice to an invisible character in the movie, watching Fiennes take over the role Macnee virtually defined, let alone watching Sean Connery watching Fiennes play a James Bond-like character? "Sometimes I did feel a little as if I were making a kind of Bond movie," Chechik recalls, "and working with Sean just reinforced it. With both Patrick and Sean, the mantle was definitely passed, both consciously and with great aplomb. We got on like a house on fire and it never let up. Sean got into the spirit of the movie before day one. We never thought, quite honestly, that we'd get him for the movie, but we didn't want to jinx it by even thinking of anyone else for the role. Like Ralph, there was no Plan B if Sean passed on it."

How does Chechik account for his ability to attract such interesting actors as Connery, not to mention Depp, Adjani and Fiennes to work with him? "Beats me," he grins. "I count actors among my very closest friends. I adore Johnny, for instance, who is one of the finest actors of his generation. I respect the actor's process. It's something I empathize with. I try to create an atmosphere that allows that process to flourish, where the actors can explore, feel safe. I respect that each actor has their own way of getting there and it's my job to make a challenging, fulfilling experience. On a smaller movie like Benny & Joon, you can devote yourself almost exclusively to the actors. Bigger movies like The Avengers require a certain amount of 'managing' as well as directing. However, when you're on the set of a big movie or small, within the scene, for me, it's all about the actors."

The importance of acting notwithstanding, the success of The Avengers will depend importantly on the evocation of a fantastic, stylized universe in which the cloak and dagger derring-do gets done. The movie boasts such A-list talents as award-winning production designer Stuart Craig and costume designer Anthony Powell (_101 Dalmatians, Hook_). "It's very surrealistic, a world completely unto itself," the director explains. "The posters for the movie say it well: 'Saving the world with style.' As in the show, there are almost no people on the streets, except maybe a woman pushing a pram, a bobby on a bicycle. It feels like an intimate movie on a grand scale. Stuart Craig created an absolutely magical, dream kind of London, both modern and Edwardian, we never question as we move our story through, never explain it, and never wink at the camera.

"I drew consciously from the world of fashion," Chechik continues, "on my background as a fashion photographer for Vogue in the late '70s. It all had to be of a piece, because the visual style is bold and unique, and the characters are totally unique, and even the action sequences are offbeat--interpretations of action sequences within the context of this wonderful, playful universe. It would be great if the movie paved the way toward a smarter kind of action movie."

Pave the way toward a smarter action picture? How about finding a way back to a smarter action picture, like North by Northwest, say, where Hitchcock shot big action set pieces in which characters spouted Ernest Lehman's witty, trenchant dialogue? "But you're talking about one of the greatest movies ever made," Chechik declares. "We can look at paintings and go, 'Tsk, would that they could all be Guernica.' I hope that, in our own way, we all aspire to the level of North by Northwest, but a lot of it is the age we live in. Why movies exist has changed. When that movie came out, television was not what it is today. Going to the movies now is a major investment in time and emotion. There's an audience that wants escapism pure and simple and doesn't want to be challenged. We look to shows like ER to get characterizations and relationships, and we look to movies for big, explosive entertainment.

"There's a certain cynicism now," Chechik continues. "The mass audience is uncomfortable with literary experiences on film. Maybe movies that are full of action but smart and personal, too, will come back in a new form. Sometimes movies with mass appeal can be brilliant and amazing like Titanic, or they can be mundane like movies I don't have to mention. All I hope is that audiences leave The Avengers--which is a nutty, light, weird, fun, offbeat movie--wearing huge grins on their faces, going, 'I've got to see that again.'"

Should mass audiences take to The Avengers, would Chechik direct another installment? "I don't know what I'm going to do next," he cautions, "because I don't know what I'm going to be, what person is going to emerge from this particular experience. I don't even think of my 'career' as a career. I'm here to direct movies, and I pour myself into directing them with as much passion as I have for life. All I think is, 'What a great gift it is to be alive in this world and to do the things I do every day with the kind of people I do them with.' I'm glad, honored, respectful, and fortunate."

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Stephen Rebello interviewed Christina Ricci for the April '98 issue of Movieline.

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