any ideas to fi x it. It was kind of a quiet evening
[laughs]. Sarah Flack, the editor, and I were at
a loss. Then [composer] Cliff Martinez delivered
a piece of music, one of the recurrent themes in
the movie. It sounded to me like memory, a piece
of music that lent itself to abstraction. It turned
out to be a perfect launching point for Sarah and
I to rebuild the movie in a very diff erent way.
I started looking at the fi lm as a kind of cubist piece
of work in which you’re continually deconstructing
and fragmenting, yet coming up with patterns
of repetition and juxtaposition so the meaning
continued to evolve. I turned it into a memory fi lm.
Didn’t you go back and shoot some more
footage at this point? What did you shoot?
It consisted mostly of Terence staring off into
space [laughs]. And the plane material, which turns
out to be a critical part of the framing device.
Isn’t it arguable that nothing in the fi lm
actually happens? That Wilson [Stamp] is
playing out possible events in his mind
while he’s on the plane to LA...?
That is a defensible argument. But that’s not the
way I was thinking of it. In my mind the misdirect
was: you think all that plane footage is him on his
way there, and it’s actually him on his way home.
But the other thing we were hoping — at least Lem,
Terence and I — was that if the fi lm was successful
enough, we would do another fi lm. Which was
Terence going back to the UK and dealing with the
group of friends that betrayed him and put him
in prison. But not enough people went to see it.
Lem Dobbs doesn’t seem happy with how The
Limey turned out, if the audio commentary you
recorded with him is anything to go by. He laid
into you for the cuts you made to his script,
and called the fi lm “painful” to watch.
Ah, well, that commentary may have been worth
the entire project. Lem...has very strong
opinions and isn’t shy about expressing himself.
I don’t take it personally. When things aren’t the
way Lem wants them to be, he’s in pain [laughs].
He and I both felt that most commentaries were
really sleep-inducing in their lack of spark, and
the arguments we’d had were still very fresh, so
we just crashed right in, turned on the recorder
and started arguing right away. I remember looking
over and seeing the technicians in the booth
looking at each other, like, “Is this what we’re doing?
Should we stop?” I thought, “This is awesome!”
How quickly did you settle on ’60s icons
Terence Stamp and Peter Fonda for the lead
roles of Wilson and Terry Valentine?
Lem and I settled on Terence immediately. When
Lem informed me about [1967 Ken Loach fi lm]
Poor Cow — which I’d never seen — and the
possibility that we could use that footage to show
the young Wilson, there was no question in our
minds that Terence was the person to build the
movie around. Now, the list of American actors
with enough of that iconic weight and similar
baggage to Terence was pretty small, and Peter
was on it and we went to him fi rst. Luckily, he
was interested. But it seems so obvious in
retrospect that it should be the two of them.
They are the perfect foil for each other.What happened when they fi rst met on set?
I watched them meet again for the fi rst time since- We were breaking for lunch, it was the fi rst
time Peter had been on set, and he crossed over to
Terence. He stood up, they embraced and Terence
said, “Do you remember the last time we saw each
other?” Peter said, “Taormina” — the fi lm festival
in Taormina. Then Peter goes, “I wonder whatever
happened to her...” And they just sort of smiled.
Later, I got both of them to explain that comment.
They were like, “Oh, there was a woman at
the festival who both of us were fascinated by
that neither of us ended up connecting with.”
I thought it was kind of amazing that 30 years
on they’d retain that memory.
Did you discuss using that footage of
Terence in Poor Cow with Ken Loach?
The fi rst thing we had to do was track down who
owned the rights, then once we’d gotten the okayLeft, top to
bottom: Lesley Ann
Warren as Jenny’s
friend Elaine;
Valentine and new
girlfriend Adhara
(Amelia Heinle),
who’s roughly
Jenny’s age...;
Valentine at his
sumptuous
Hollywood
Hills home.Below: Peter Fonda
as record producer
Terry Valentine,
Jenny’s boyfriend
when she died;
Right: Wilson comes
to blows with
Valentine. Below, far
right: Soderbergh
and Stamp on set.REVIEW