Anthony Minghella: Braving The Cold

Q: What was the most extreme incident that showed this dedication?

A: It happened when we were shooting in South Carolina, in this swamp. We hadn't been able to explore the floor of this swamp, and every time we put Jude in, he fell under this vile, foul, slimy water. They would have to fish him out, take his entire costume off, hose him down, go off and wash the costume and put it back on him. Three times, in the space of an hour, he went under this swamp. It was dangerous and extremely unpleasant. There wasn't one second that he didn't go straight back in again and carry on where he left off. And Nicole, at the end of the film when the temperatures had really plummeted, was having to dig out potatoes on the farm. We did a couple of takes, and I could see she was turning blue. She was so thin and it was just punishing, this piercing wind rattling around the location. She was shuddering, but never complaining.

Q: Jude was a revelation in Ripley as was Juliette Binoche in English Patient. Who'll have the same impact in Cold Mountain?

A: Brendan Gleeson I would hope will come to the forefront after this picture. I was so lucky with this cast in that wherever you turn, you had an actor like Charlie Hunnam, who had a few scenes playing this albino character. Almost no dialogue, but he was such a presence. Jack White from The White Stripes, he was such a revelation. He's a natural actor.

Q: When you spend four years putting together these intricately layered epics, you must do something interesting to unwind. What do you do for laughs?

A: I do play the piano and have found it a meditative escape when I'm writing and thinking. I listen to an enormous amount of music. My favorite is Bach.

Q: Why Bach over, let's say, Beethoven?

A: It's very hard to say, other than that to me, there's never been a greater artist or inspiration in history than Bach. Pablo Casals said Bach is like a volcano. On some level austere and formal, but there is this huge reservoir, a lava of emotions. In my own work, I always aspire to make something formal with a classic quality but with a huge amount of emotion. I once wrote a play entirely about Bach, and there are always moments of Bach in the work I do.

Q: You must have a guilty pleasure, too.

A: Not a morning of my life goes by, whether I'm shooting or not, that I do not log on to the Internet site of my soccer team to catch up on the daily minutiae of who has been traded and what the latest game results are. I'm very, very delighted by the game of soccer.

Q: Are you a Manchester United booster?

A: No, the team I have followed all my life is Portsmouth, a famously mediocre team that has broken my heart many times. Soccer is the root of a very important bond in my family. My brother and father go with me to the games, share the same passion. It is a real tradition, meeting at the games--this coming from a season ticket holder who hasn't sat in his seat for several seasons because it has just been too hard to get there from Romania or the cutting room or wherever my particular madness takes me. But you will see me work 18-hour days, then struggle to complete my Internet connection to the south coast of England from Transylvania, spending hours when I should be sleeping.

The other thing I relish is, I've become the head of the British Film Institute and have spent an enormous amount of time in the last 12 months giving my attention to that. I am very passionate about an organization which is such an advocate of films from other countries and from the past. If I could contribute to the cinema of Britain a fraction of what Martin Scorsese has given to American cinema, that would be a dream. It sounds like I'm asking people to eat spinach, but those movies can change lives. They changed mine.

Q: Who were your biggest influences?

A: A diversity of filmmakers has thrilled me. Italian cinema in general is what made me fall in love with the cinema and want to make films. I began as a playwright and always felt that my sensibility was detuned to most British writing and what was popular. I'd see plays from David Hare and Harold Pinter, writers I grew up loving, and they were tough and cold--I'd get tripped up by the frailties of people and their foibles. I have very little cynicism as a writer and filmmaker, because I'm a believer in tolerance and that there is a quality of spiritual dimension worth trying to identify and encapsulate. Then I watched Italian cinema, directors like Fellini, the Taviani brothers, and I said, "Now I get it."

As a teenager becoming a young adult, I saw De Sica's The Bicycle Thief, and that was enormously important to me. This was during a magnificent time with the emergence of Coppola, Scorsese, Italian filmmakers from other countries. I remember the excitement I felt when I sat through The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation, all of the early Scorsese films. They made me think it possible to make extraordinary films in English. As for other European cinema, Kieslowski is the filmmaker I would most like to have been. Like me, all of these men were raised as Catholics, and if you look at them and Fellini, you can tell the qualities that can only be called the blessing or curse of being Catholic. The cultural and spiritual imprimatur is certainly present in mind.

Q: Do you surround yourself with film types at home in London, or do you steer away from the biz talk in your spare time?

A: In the little time I have to myself, I am most interested in spending it with family and friends, not the movie community. I've been lucky to hold on to friends I had before I became a director. They are mostly all artists, musicians, choreographers, painters--people who work in other fields and in theater. I want to see them when I can. That is what I long for.

Q: What's your idea of a perfect day off?

A: Spending the day in bed. Though I've become accustomed to a degree of sleep deprivation and would probably feel guilty that I was not working, I would love it nonetheless. I also love poetry and have a lot of friends who are poets. One thing I've missed is going to poetry readings. I think if I could have a day that brought poetry, music and soccer, and didn't require me to get out of bed, that would be the perfect day.

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