I don't know. Was I emotional? I read in the newspaper, "Gary Oldman breaks down in tears at press conference." Was I near tears?
You definitely seemed teary.
Now there is a lot of distance there. [The movie is] on its own legs and it's out in the world. But I don't remember being that moved by that, and I was surprised to read that. But you're not alone thinking that.
What does the title Nil by Mouth mean?
It's a hospital term which means "intravenous only." A character in the film describes his father with the phrase. I use it literally and I use it ironically, because these characters have no communication skills. When they do communicate, it's often abusive and verbally very violent. They drink beer and they smoke and everything, so it's everything by the mouth and nothing by the mouth.
Did you consider acting in this film, as well as directing it?
I didn't want to be in the movie. I had a very specific idea of the way I wanted to shoot it and didn't want the hassle of being on both sides. Acting is hard enough, especially after seventeen takes.
Did you find directing difficult?
Anything you do, whether you dance, you act, you write music, anything you do is hard. But it was the hardest thing I ever had to do. It becomes like an animal, it starts to become its own thing and each day once you've finished you go to dailies. I wasn't sleeping at night, I was really going into a coma from tiredness. Then at 5:30 the alarm would ring and the light at the end of the tunnel was an oncoming train. The analogy one uses is almost like going into a war zone. Just as you've got one problem in control, you've got another one. It's . . . hard work. [Smiles.] But you're constantly engaged and stimulated, the creative process is constantly engaged the whole time. One of the things I did enjoy was that I could stay in my own clothes. I didn't have to get to the set at six in the morning and be made-up.
Is acting as creatively engaging for you as directing?
No. You get downtimes as an actor, and I'm tired of it. I've been doing it for twenty years. You can get bored; you can get tired. So I found [directing] a very rewarding experience—and you're boss. You get to be dictator.
Nil by Mouth's an intensely personal piece of writing. Do you have plans to write another script?
Yeah. I think there could well be a theme there, of the lonely and the disenfranchised. I'm not sure. I'm not going to adapt Jane Eyre, that's for sure. I've been so busy with the family and with Lost in Space and with the promotion of this film since I was at Cannes, that I've not had much time to write. I'm not good at doing fifty things at once. I have to clear the desk before I can sit down again and start cooking something else up.
This is a grim, harrowing movie made without compromise. It sounds and feels like these scenes are simply happening before the camera. I can't imagine it was easy to get people to say, "Oh yes! Here's some money—go make that movie."
The script was very specific in my head. I saw it and wrote it at the same time. It was a hard sell to the team that would handle sales: As soon as you say you want to shoot it 16 millimeter on the zoom, they go, "LikeHawaii Five-O?" You have a disadvantage [as a first-time director]; you can't say, "Oh, look at my other movie." You're talking always in the abstract.
You've made the term "personal cinema" quite literal.
There is a lot of me in there. I grew up in that neighborhood. All the locations are the actual locations I remember. My mother used to sing in that pub. The bar where you see the father sitting alone—that's where alcoholism puts you. Drinking whiskey chasers at 9:30 in the morning on your own in a pub. It's really attractive, you know? Great life. That pub is the pub my father used to go to, and where he destroyed his liver.
I watched it all going on. A lot of people I knew are still there. And now it's easier to me. When we first had screenings for this movie in Los Angeles, and I watched this huge chunk of my life, I was able to leave the cinema and walk out into the California sunshine. But there's a lot of people who are represented in the movie that don't have that privilege. I think there's a lot of me in all the characters. Some of that's my father. My brother-in-law's in it, my nephew. Some of those events I couldn't put in the movie— because it was so horrendous you'd come out and say, "I couldn't believe it."
Like what?
Where [Kathy Burke] gets beaten. That was taken from a specific incident [involving Oldman's mother]. That happened. He hit her with a steel-toe boot and then tried to drown her.
By Stephen Schaefer
(Copyright: Mr Showbiz site)