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upert Everett is suddenly
on a roll. He voices the
foppish, hair-tossing
Prince Channing in Shrek
2, the biggest hit of the
year and the top-grossing
animated film of all time.
(It comes out on DVD on
November 5, joining the just-released
special edition of his breakthrough 1984
film, Another Country.) The out actor is
also on-screen in the key role of a cross
dressing King Charles II in the current o car hopeful Stage Beauty, with Billy
and Claire Danes.
Soon, Everett will join Emily Watson
Tom Wilkinson in Separate Lives,
dir ctorial debut of Oscar-winning
Pa?"k screenwriter Julian Fel-lowes, and will reunite with Another
Country's director on A Different Loyal
ty, with Sharon Stone. There's also that
MIA Russian epic he made with the leg
endary Sergei Bondarchuk (War and
Peace), and he voices the role of the Fox
in the anticipated blockbuster The
Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the
Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Is it any wonder Everett's exhausted
when he arrives spot on-time for a chat at a
restaurant in Manhattan's West Village,
where he currently lives? Everett, who's
greeted in Italian by the staff, who know
him on sight, is very polite and quite com
fortable and candid. Maybe it's that sec
ond declared bankruptcy. "It's tremen
dously releasing," he assures The Advocate.
"I can't advise it too strongly." ~
THE ADVOCATE 1471 NOVEMBER 9, 2004
Do you like politics?
Yes, very much.
I don't know how you feel about Tony Blair.
We wanted him to be our president at first.
Blair is a mystery. I think God plays a
role in this whole thing. I was talking to
my mum the other day, who is a
staunch Republican . We were having
one of those mother-son arguments
about politics that don't go anywhere. I
said, "What do you think George Bush
and God talked about that time when
George Bush asked about going into
Iraq? Mummy, do you really think God
said, 'Yes, you should go and lop off
some Iraqis?' " And my mum went,
"Well, you never know. He's a very
funny man, God." My father is slig1rtly to the right of Mussolini.
My mother is slightly to the right of
Imelda Marcos.
But not as many shoes?
No.
In Stage Beauty, you play your own son, which
is fun. [Everett plays Charles II, while in the
2003 British film To Kill a King he played
Charles I, that monarch's doomed father.]
That was really fun, playing the son of
a father in Stage Beauty. That was
what I liked most, because in the cate
gory of your own work, that's kind of a
fun thing to do. Also, to play scenes
where you're talking about your father
and you're imagining yourself-it's
great. For someone who is not a
Method actor, I thought it was about
as methodical as I could possibly get.
Now you have to play eromwe., who beheaded
Charles I. I know you went to Cathok school.
Did you practice, or are you practicing?
Am I a practicing Catholic? No, I'm a
practicing Buddhist.
THE ADVOCATE 148 I NOVEMBER 9, 2004 Not even for your mother at Christmas?
Yes, I do [go to church then], and I love
Christianity. But the Catholic Church
and Christianity in general I find unsatis
factory, because since the third century
they've been hijacked by neocons. If you
look at Christianity before the third cen
tury, you discover a very different thing.
You were on the cover of The Advocate in
January 1998, and you didn't seem interest
ed in carrying the gay banner and saying,
"I'm the out gay actor, and other people
should come out too." But is there any
disappointment that there haven't been
more people coming out?
Well, selfishly, less is more for me,
right? [Laughs]
You get to be the gay actor. "Get me
Rupert!"
I don't think it's something I'd advise.
Really?
Not in show business. Not in a trophy
business like Hollywood. I don't think
it's ideal. I think it's very lucky for ~
e 0 v e r s tor ,
me to have been English and to have
the opportunities to work in all the var
ious different places that I could so I
could keep going. French cinema, Ital
ian cinema, theater, English movies,
and getting a Hollywood one if I can. I
think if I had been an American .. .it's
definitely not a ... a ... friendly environ
ment, really. I don't want to particular
ly elaborate on that.
Do you wish you hadn't done it?
No. I have a very old-fashioned way of
thinking about the business and my
career. I thought when I started out
that your life was kind of it. All the ac
tors I saw and loved from the '50s and
the '60s were people who stretched
their lives out li ke a bodybuilder
stretches muscles out.
Richard Burton?
Oh, yeah. The hell-raisers; not my fa
vorite one. But Marlon Brando, Vivien
Leigh. You saw the madness of Vivien
Leigh in every frame of her films.
Montgomery Clift. Not wearing your
heart on your sleeve-it was all part of
one thing, your life and your work. It's
part of your expression. It's a different
business now. Now, the relationship
between actor and audience has
changed substantially . When you think
of On the Waterfront and
imagine working America
going to the cinema on the
weekend and seeing this god.
This god but almost, almost
like them and talking about
their problems. When he said,
"I coulda been a contender,"
you can imagine what the at
mosphere across the screen
and into the audience was. It
was a communion . You came
out of that theater and back to
whatever your life was. You
could get a lot of things out of it. You
could analyze your own life through a
great piece of writing. You could com
fort your own life. Montgomery Clift in
A Place in the Sun. The relationship
between spectator and star was much
more profound then.
Clift and Eizabeth Taylor were the two most
beautiful people in the wor1d at that moment
Yes. But now none of the characters
in mainstream cinema are realistic.
They're all about what we want peo-pIe to be or what a Republican pre
tending to be a Democrat in Holly
wood wants. Look at Tom Cruise in
Mission: Impossible. It's not a charac
ter. What the audience wants is a kind
of love-hate thing. They want the hair,
the teeth, the ass, the body, the
money, the girlfriend-they know
they can't have it but they look,
steamed-up against the window like
Dickensi an children, at what they
can't have. And it's a very, very scary
kind of fandom. I noticed it particular-
THE ADVOCATE 150 I NOVEMBER 9, 2004 ly when we were premiering Shrek 2
at Cannes. At Cannes, you drive in
cars very slowly through the crowds.
And it's really scary because the
crowd is ... there's love and hate in
there. Really, there's a very conflicted
emotional response. Sometimes it's,
"Who is it? Who is it?" Someone will
at Cannes get out a gun and shoot
someone because the relationship be
tween a spectator and what they're
watching has really changed. I think
it's because we're not putting out the
kind of work that's telling us
about ... we're not holding up a mirror
in show business to the real world.
The question was, Could you come out in
Hollywood and playa heterosexual hero?
And the answer was, Of course, as long as
he was animated.
Right.
If people came to you today and said they
wanted a Hollywood career-
I wouldn't come out then.
You wouldn't encourage them to come out?
No, definitely not. Have electroshock
treatment. [Laughs] You'd do much
better.
It always seems to us that the U.K. is so
much better for gays, and then some
artists say the U.S. is better-not for your
career, but for life.
I don't know. I was thinking about
this because I thought you might ask.
I don't know what it's like in the
workplace in general if you're gay. I
think maybe soon we'll get to a
point-maybe-where all the divi
sions between us that make us all
different types of human beings,
maybe we'll grow out of that. We're
so insecure as human beings, is how
it feels to me.
I'm too insecure to do drag. I wouldn't even
do it for Halloween. I want people to know I'm
gay, but I don't want them to think I'm gay.
It's all my faul~ I'm sure. You've done drag on
stage in The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Any
more [the Tennessee Williams play in which he
assayed a female role] , and of course you
have a very funny drag scene in Stage Beauty.
Well, I wouldn't dress up for Hal
loween. I wouldn't go to a club dressed
in drag. For work, yeah, I like the idea.
But having said that, from the age of 1
to 10 I was a seasoned cross-dresser. I
used to be taken out on these very
macho things like hunting, and I would
just be dreaming of being home and
trying on my mother's nightdress.
It makes it very hard to tell which British
men are gay. And of course it doesn't make
it any easier to tell when someone like
Robbie Williams is witty and clever and
records a love duet with you. He just
doesn't care what people might think.
He doesn't care. ~
1511 The Annual Fall Cocktail Event for
Stonewall Community Foundation
November 5, 2004 -New York City
DJ Girlina -Open Bar
212-367-1155 I www.StonewaIlFoundation.org
e 0 v e r s tor .,
Tbat had to be fun [recording the duet
"Tbey Can't Take That Away From Me" for
Williams's 2001 big band album Swing When
You're Winning] .
It was really fun and very memorable,
because I recorded that on September
12 here in New York.
Really?
When I think of September the 11th, I
was watching the television between
takes and singing this extraordinary
song. It was such a weird juxtaposition.
We did it for two days, and the second
day all those rains came. It was a very
extraordinary time. Funny enough, I
felt ... were you here?
Yes.
I thought afterwards, when you were in
the city, you knew if you asked anyone
for anything, they would help you.
They'd do it. You could feel the spirits of
the dead hovering around. It lasted until
the rain came. That rain came, and then
the whole thing of what they were doing
down there in the rain ... you could feel
that energy went down and it turned
into this panic and then victimization
and then anger. But for the first few
days I thought, My God, this could her
ald the biggest change in the world. If
everyone could see how all New York
ers-the most hardened bitches on the
planet-how they are now in the eye of
this disaster. And that changed.
You've reunited with Marek Kanievska, the
director of your breakthrough film, Another
CountJy. Another director you worked with who hasn't worked for many years, for 18 or 20
years, is Russian director Sergei Bondarchuk.
He's dead, so he's not going to work
again.
You did make ... And Quiet Flows the Don
with him, right? [It's based on the novel by
Nobel Prize-winning author Mikhail
Sholokhov.]
That was his last thing. I killed him.
I've killed quite a few. and the pixie queen was looking after
things and making dinner. I come in
the door with Sergei, and hanging from
the chandelier is a Barbie doll. And I go
into the bathroom, and sitting by the
toilet paper is another one. Then I go
into the sitting room, and lying on the
couch-everywhere-are Barbie dolls,
and they're positioned and combing
each other's hair. I'm picking them up
and hiding them behind things as
Sergei comes in, and I run into the
kitchen and say, "What the We haven't seen it yet.
The fIlm is lost. TIIEADVOCATE hell are you doing with
these Barbie dolls?" And he
says, "Oh, relax! Just tell
him they're mine." What happened?
It was financed by ... a
builder in Naples. They did
n't really care about it. The
print was locked in a safe
in Naples for a few years.
Now apparently it's got
back to Russia and [Bon
darchuk's] daughter-who
I saw when I was in
Moscow the other day-is
trying to get it together. POLL
SPUIIsum BV SUBARU -
Does Rupert
Everett's presence
in a film make you
more likely
to go see it?
Siun on io Tile AdvOCJtc's 1'/00 sile
belm II,vem,,, g 10 casl your \'01,
aM leave jOll' comme~ls. Rl'Sulls
,';11 appear in Ihe Dec.,m''') issue.
www.advocate.com How did he die? Heart attack?
Everyone died in our movie.
We had four deaths, four
weddings, and three babies.
The first person who died
was one of the Italian grips
who had a heart attack out-
side the hotel. The second
person who died was the
guy organizing the wind ma
chine, which was a pro
peller from an old Russian How did you kill him? The
stress of the whole thing?
The stress of the whole
thing. Also, he didn't realize I was gay
at first. And the character I play is one
of the most popular characters in Rus
sia. He realized I was gay when I
brought this tiny little pixie queen to
do my cooking, and this pixie collected
Barbie dolls. The first time I asked
Sergei Bondarchuk to dinner was
when I had just moved into a new flat, plane. He was decapitated
by it. His head flew over the entire set
and landed a little way from where we
were standing.
THE ADVOCATE 152 I NOVEMBER 9, 2004 [ Trying not to laugh and failing] Oh ...
And then the cherry picker-
Did you stop for the day?
[Pauses to think] No, we didn't.
You had to keep moving.
The guy driving the cherry picker ran
over a couple with their child and
killed them. I know it's funny, but life
is very cheap there.
Sergei's death obviously brings up The Next
Best Thing. There were stories in the lon
don tabloids saying Madonna caused direc
tor John Schlesinger's stroke, and one even
said she killed him. [It's all based on letters
Schlesinger donated to the British Film
Institute, some of which detailed his
complaints about the film and her behavior.]
[Shocked] No.
You didn't know this? They've pulled out
details from the upcoming biography by
William Mann [Edge of Midnight: The Life of
John Schlesinger] .
No! No, I think The Next Best Thing did
help to kill John Schlesinger. In that
sense, if anyone has the guilt, it's me.
Because, urn ... John really shouldn't
have been working. I wanted to make a
film that had the same kind of tonal
quality as Shampoo and was more a
slice of life and not about a miniseries,
which our fIlm ended up being. Its tone
was just too general, and he was too old
to understand about specific tone, I
think. But Madonna didn't kill him.
Some of your projects people always won
der about. The secret agent who is bisexual.
[A project called P.S.I Love You.] It
seemed like you'd be able to make it
happen. Was The Next Best Thingwhat you
rolled the dice on in Hollywood?
No, I think that was probably my fault
too. I don't think I've ever been well
organized enough. Hollywood re
sponds very well to things if you're
right in there and right on the case. I
can't blame .. .if I'd been on the case
better, if my writing partner had been
on the case better, we'd have got stuff
done. But we weren't. And then The
Next Best Thing happened.
Same thing with Martha and Arthul! [His
proposed pairing with Julia Roberts about a
famous Hollywood couple, one gay and one
straight, who are filming a costume epic about
Marie Antoinette as their public lives unravel.]
Martha and Arthur, Julia did not like
how the script came out. And she's
probably right. The first half of the
script was good, and the second half
didn't quite work. I'm sure you're always writing. Do you keep
a diary or journal?
Uh-huh.
That'll make a good book someday.
I want to write my biography, actually.
You didn't want to get too specific in an
interview, which I understand. But if you
wanted to do it right for a memoir, I
assume, you'd have to talk about who was
homophobic and who was supportive during
your experiences in Hollywood.
I think it's a bore when you're a very
lucky performer, in one sense, to com
plain too much about where in your
terms things have not measured up to
what you think you deserve. In one
sense, I feel very much like my career
has been totally fucking blessed. Be
cause I have fairly seamlessly-fairly
seamlessly, not altogether, not all the
time-kept going and lived and really
lived and been to all sorts of different
places. That is all good. That is really
the best thing. The rest is fine print.
One good thing about The Next Best Thing
was that your dog, who has since passed
away, had a starring role. I know you can't
replace him, but have you found someone
else, another dog?
No, I want a human being next.
Seems reasonable.
But I can't hold one down.
For long.
No, not that, but I would like to have a
human being.
So you're not in a relationship? That's
depressing. I don't mind if you don't have a
really big Hollywood career because you came
out. But you should at least have a boyfriend.
I never stay long enough in one place to
have one. It's very difficult to have a
boyfriend when you don't live anywhere.
Something happened. I stopped living
anywhere, and now I can't start living
somewhere. I don't know. Once it hap
pened and once you get into that rhythm
of moving all the time, then you're mov
ing all the time, and it's difficult to break
it. And I want to break it, because I'd
definitely like to be in a relationship .•
Giltz is a regular contributor to
several periodicals, including the
New York Post.
THE ADVOCATE I &3 I NOVEMBER 9, 2004
on a roll. He voices the
foppish, hair-tossing
Prince Channing in Shrek
2, the biggest hit of the
year and the top-grossing
animated film of all time.
(It comes out on DVD on
November 5, joining the just-released
special edition of his breakthrough 1984
film, Another Country.) The out actor is
also on-screen in the key role of a cross
dressing King Charles II in the current o car hopeful Stage Beauty, with Billy
and Claire Danes.
Soon, Everett will join Emily Watson
Tom Wilkinson in Separate Lives,
dir ctorial debut of Oscar-winning
Pa?"k screenwriter Julian Fel-lowes, and will reunite with Another
Country's director on A Different Loyal
ty, with Sharon Stone. There's also that
MIA Russian epic he made with the leg
endary Sergei Bondarchuk (War and
Peace), and he voices the role of the Fox
in the anticipated blockbuster The
Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the
Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Is it any wonder Everett's exhausted
when he arrives spot on-time for a chat at a
restaurant in Manhattan's West Village,
where he currently lives? Everett, who's
greeted in Italian by the staff, who know
him on sight, is very polite and quite com
fortable and candid. Maybe it's that sec
ond declared bankruptcy. "It's tremen
dously releasing," he assures The Advocate.
"I can't advise it too strongly." ~
THE ADVOCATE 1471 NOVEMBER 9, 2004
Do you like politics?
Yes, very much.
I don't know how you feel about Tony Blair.
We wanted him to be our president at first.
Blair is a mystery. I think God plays a
role in this whole thing. I was talking to
my mum the other day, who is a
staunch Republican . We were having
one of those mother-son arguments
about politics that don't go anywhere. I
said, "What do you think George Bush
and God talked about that time when
George Bush asked about going into
Iraq? Mummy, do you really think God
said, 'Yes, you should go and lop off
some Iraqis?' " And my mum went,
"Well, you never know. He's a very
funny man, God." My father is slig1rtly to the right of Mussolini.
My mother is slightly to the right of
Imelda Marcos.
But not as many shoes?
No.
In Stage Beauty, you play your own son, which
is fun. [Everett plays Charles II, while in the
2003 British film To Kill a King he played
Charles I, that monarch's doomed father.]
That was really fun, playing the son of
a father in Stage Beauty. That was
what I liked most, because in the cate
gory of your own work, that's kind of a
fun thing to do. Also, to play scenes
where you're talking about your father
and you're imagining yourself-it's
great. For someone who is not a
Method actor, I thought it was about
as methodical as I could possibly get.
Now you have to play eromwe., who beheaded
Charles I. I know you went to Cathok school.
Did you practice, or are you practicing?
Am I a practicing Catholic? No, I'm a
practicing Buddhist.
THE ADVOCATE 148 I NOVEMBER 9, 2004 Not even for your mother at Christmas?
Yes, I do [go to church then], and I love
Christianity. But the Catholic Church
and Christianity in general I find unsatis
factory, because since the third century
they've been hijacked by neocons. If you
look at Christianity before the third cen
tury, you discover a very different thing.
You were on the cover of The Advocate in
January 1998, and you didn't seem interest
ed in carrying the gay banner and saying,
"I'm the out gay actor, and other people
should come out too." But is there any
disappointment that there haven't been
more people coming out?
Well, selfishly, less is more for me,
right? [Laughs]
You get to be the gay actor. "Get me
Rupert!"
I don't think it's something I'd advise.
Really?
Not in show business. Not in a trophy
business like Hollywood. I don't think
it's ideal. I think it's very lucky for ~
e 0 v e r s tor ,
me to have been English and to have
the opportunities to work in all the var
ious different places that I could so I
could keep going. French cinema, Ital
ian cinema, theater, English movies,
and getting a Hollywood one if I can. I
think if I had been an American .. .it's
definitely not a ... a ... friendly environ
ment, really. I don't want to particular
ly elaborate on that.
Do you wish you hadn't done it?
No. I have a very old-fashioned way of
thinking about the business and my
career. I thought when I started out
that your life was kind of it. All the ac
tors I saw and loved from the '50s and
the '60s were people who stretched
their lives out li ke a bodybuilder
stretches muscles out.
Richard Burton?
Oh, yeah. The hell-raisers; not my fa
vorite one. But Marlon Brando, Vivien
Leigh. You saw the madness of Vivien
Leigh in every frame of her films.
Montgomery Clift. Not wearing your
heart on your sleeve-it was all part of
one thing, your life and your work. It's
part of your expression. It's a different
business now. Now, the relationship
between actor and audience has
changed substantially . When you think
of On the Waterfront and
imagine working America
going to the cinema on the
weekend and seeing this god.
This god but almost, almost
like them and talking about
their problems. When he said,
"I coulda been a contender,"
you can imagine what the at
mosphere across the screen
and into the audience was. It
was a communion . You came
out of that theater and back to
whatever your life was. You
could get a lot of things out of it. You
could analyze your own life through a
great piece of writing. You could com
fort your own life. Montgomery Clift in
A Place in the Sun. The relationship
between spectator and star was much
more profound then.
Clift and Eizabeth Taylor were the two most
beautiful people in the wor1d at that moment
Yes. But now none of the characters
in mainstream cinema are realistic.
They're all about what we want peo-pIe to be or what a Republican pre
tending to be a Democrat in Holly
wood wants. Look at Tom Cruise in
Mission: Impossible. It's not a charac
ter. What the audience wants is a kind
of love-hate thing. They want the hair,
the teeth, the ass, the body, the
money, the girlfriend-they know
they can't have it but they look,
steamed-up against the window like
Dickensi an children, at what they
can't have. And it's a very, very scary
kind of fandom. I noticed it particular-
THE ADVOCATE 150 I NOVEMBER 9, 2004 ly when we were premiering Shrek 2
at Cannes. At Cannes, you drive in
cars very slowly through the crowds.
And it's really scary because the
crowd is ... there's love and hate in
there. Really, there's a very conflicted
emotional response. Sometimes it's,
"Who is it? Who is it?" Someone will
at Cannes get out a gun and shoot
someone because the relationship be
tween a spectator and what they're
watching has really changed. I think
it's because we're not putting out the
kind of work that's telling us
about ... we're not holding up a mirror
in show business to the real world.
The question was, Could you come out in
Hollywood and playa heterosexual hero?
And the answer was, Of course, as long as
he was animated.
Right.
If people came to you today and said they
wanted a Hollywood career-
I wouldn't come out then.
You wouldn't encourage them to come out?
No, definitely not. Have electroshock
treatment. [Laughs] You'd do much
better.
It always seems to us that the U.K. is so
much better for gays, and then some
artists say the U.S. is better-not for your
career, but for life.
I don't know. I was thinking about
this because I thought you might ask.
I don't know what it's like in the
workplace in general if you're gay. I
think maybe soon we'll get to a
point-maybe-where all the divi
sions between us that make us all
different types of human beings,
maybe we'll grow out of that. We're
so insecure as human beings, is how
it feels to me.
I'm too insecure to do drag. I wouldn't even
do it for Halloween. I want people to know I'm
gay, but I don't want them to think I'm gay.
It's all my faul~ I'm sure. You've done drag on
stage in The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Any
more [the Tennessee Williams play in which he
assayed a female role] , and of course you
have a very funny drag scene in Stage Beauty.
Well, I wouldn't dress up for Hal
loween. I wouldn't go to a club dressed
in drag. For work, yeah, I like the idea.
But having said that, from the age of 1
to 10 I was a seasoned cross-dresser. I
used to be taken out on these very
macho things like hunting, and I would
just be dreaming of being home and
trying on my mother's nightdress.
It makes it very hard to tell which British
men are gay. And of course it doesn't make
it any easier to tell when someone like
Robbie Williams is witty and clever and
records a love duet with you. He just
doesn't care what people might think.
He doesn't care. ~
1511 The Annual Fall Cocktail Event for
Stonewall Community Foundation
November 5, 2004 -New York City
DJ Girlina -Open Bar
212-367-1155 I www.StonewaIlFoundation.org
e 0 v e r s tor .,
Tbat had to be fun [recording the duet
"Tbey Can't Take That Away From Me" for
Williams's 2001 big band album Swing When
You're Winning] .
It was really fun and very memorable,
because I recorded that on September
12 here in New York.
Really?
When I think of September the 11th, I
was watching the television between
takes and singing this extraordinary
song. It was such a weird juxtaposition.
We did it for two days, and the second
day all those rains came. It was a very
extraordinary time. Funny enough, I
felt ... were you here?
Yes.
I thought afterwards, when you were in
the city, you knew if you asked anyone
for anything, they would help you.
They'd do it. You could feel the spirits of
the dead hovering around. It lasted until
the rain came. That rain came, and then
the whole thing of what they were doing
down there in the rain ... you could feel
that energy went down and it turned
into this panic and then victimization
and then anger. But for the first few
days I thought, My God, this could her
ald the biggest change in the world. If
everyone could see how all New York
ers-the most hardened bitches on the
planet-how they are now in the eye of
this disaster. And that changed.
You've reunited with Marek Kanievska, the
director of your breakthrough film, Another
CountJy. Another director you worked with who hasn't worked for many years, for 18 or 20
years, is Russian director Sergei Bondarchuk.
He's dead, so he's not going to work
again.
You did make ... And Quiet Flows the Don
with him, right? [It's based on the novel by
Nobel Prize-winning author Mikhail
Sholokhov.]
That was his last thing. I killed him.
I've killed quite a few. and the pixie queen was looking after
things and making dinner. I come in
the door with Sergei, and hanging from
the chandelier is a Barbie doll. And I go
into the bathroom, and sitting by the
toilet paper is another one. Then I go
into the sitting room, and lying on the
couch-everywhere-are Barbie dolls,
and they're positioned and combing
each other's hair. I'm picking them up
and hiding them behind things as
Sergei comes in, and I run into the
kitchen and say, "What the We haven't seen it yet.
The fIlm is lost. TIIEADVOCATE hell are you doing with
these Barbie dolls?" And he
says, "Oh, relax! Just tell
him they're mine." What happened?
It was financed by ... a
builder in Naples. They did
n't really care about it. The
print was locked in a safe
in Naples for a few years.
Now apparently it's got
back to Russia and [Bon
darchuk's] daughter-who
I saw when I was in
Moscow the other day-is
trying to get it together. POLL
SPUIIsum BV SUBARU -
Does Rupert
Everett's presence
in a film make you
more likely
to go see it?
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www.advocate.com How did he die? Heart attack?
Everyone died in our movie.
We had four deaths, four
weddings, and three babies.
The first person who died
was one of the Italian grips
who had a heart attack out-
side the hotel. The second
person who died was the
guy organizing the wind ma
chine, which was a pro
peller from an old Russian How did you kill him? The
stress of the whole thing?
The stress of the whole
thing. Also, he didn't realize I was gay
at first. And the character I play is one
of the most popular characters in Rus
sia. He realized I was gay when I
brought this tiny little pixie queen to
do my cooking, and this pixie collected
Barbie dolls. The first time I asked
Sergei Bondarchuk to dinner was
when I had just moved into a new flat, plane. He was decapitated
by it. His head flew over the entire set
and landed a little way from where we
were standing.
THE ADVOCATE 152 I NOVEMBER 9, 2004 [ Trying not to laugh and failing] Oh ...
And then the cherry picker-
Did you stop for the day?
[Pauses to think] No, we didn't.
You had to keep moving.
The guy driving the cherry picker ran
over a couple with their child and
killed them. I know it's funny, but life
is very cheap there.
Sergei's death obviously brings up The Next
Best Thing. There were stories in the lon
don tabloids saying Madonna caused direc
tor John Schlesinger's stroke, and one even
said she killed him. [It's all based on letters
Schlesinger donated to the British Film
Institute, some of which detailed his
complaints about the film and her behavior.]
[Shocked] No.
You didn't know this? They've pulled out
details from the upcoming biography by
William Mann [Edge of Midnight: The Life of
John Schlesinger] .
No! No, I think The Next Best Thing did
help to kill John Schlesinger. In that
sense, if anyone has the guilt, it's me.
Because, urn ... John really shouldn't
have been working. I wanted to make a
film that had the same kind of tonal
quality as Shampoo and was more a
slice of life and not about a miniseries,
which our fIlm ended up being. Its tone
was just too general, and he was too old
to understand about specific tone, I
think. But Madonna didn't kill him.
Some of your projects people always won
der about. The secret agent who is bisexual.
[A project called P.S.I Love You.] It
seemed like you'd be able to make it
happen. Was The Next Best Thingwhat you
rolled the dice on in Hollywood?
No, I think that was probably my fault
too. I don't think I've ever been well
organized enough. Hollywood re
sponds very well to things if you're
right in there and right on the case. I
can't blame .. .if I'd been on the case
better, if my writing partner had been
on the case better, we'd have got stuff
done. But we weren't. And then The
Next Best Thing happened.
Same thing with Martha and Arthul! [His
proposed pairing with Julia Roberts about a
famous Hollywood couple, one gay and one
straight, who are filming a costume epic about
Marie Antoinette as their public lives unravel.]
Martha and Arthur, Julia did not like
how the script came out. And she's
probably right. The first half of the
script was good, and the second half
didn't quite work. I'm sure you're always writing. Do you keep
a diary or journal?
Uh-huh.
That'll make a good book someday.
I want to write my biography, actually.
You didn't want to get too specific in an
interview, which I understand. But if you
wanted to do it right for a memoir, I
assume, you'd have to talk about who was
homophobic and who was supportive during
your experiences in Hollywood.
I think it's a bore when you're a very
lucky performer, in one sense, to com
plain too much about where in your
terms things have not measured up to
what you think you deserve. In one
sense, I feel very much like my career
has been totally fucking blessed. Be
cause I have fairly seamlessly-fairly
seamlessly, not altogether, not all the
time-kept going and lived and really
lived and been to all sorts of different
places. That is all good. That is really
the best thing. The rest is fine print.
One good thing about The Next Best Thing
was that your dog, who has since passed
away, had a starring role. I know you can't
replace him, but have you found someone
else, another dog?
No, I want a human being next.
Seems reasonable.
But I can't hold one down.
For long.
No, not that, but I would like to have a
human being.
So you're not in a relationship? That's
depressing. I don't mind if you don't have a
really big Hollywood career because you came
out. But you should at least have a boyfriend.
I never stay long enough in one place to
have one. It's very difficult to have a
boyfriend when you don't live anywhere.
Something happened. I stopped living
anywhere, and now I can't start living
somewhere. I don't know. Once it hap
pened and once you get into that rhythm
of moving all the time, then you're mov
ing all the time, and it's difficult to break
it. And I want to break it, because I'd
definitely like to be in a relationship .•
Giltz is a regular contributor to
several periodicals, including the
New York Post.
THE ADVOCATE I &3 I NOVEMBER 9, 2004