HERE’s YOUR CLASS

For a quarter of a century, I interviewed writers, directors, actors and comedians for newspaper and magazine articles. My first victim was the dramatist Christopher Hampton, my last the director Robert Altman. Among many others in between were Henry Fonda, Max Wall, Beryl Reid, Hal Prince, Trevor Griffiths, Paul Scofield, George Burns, Alan Simpson & Ray Galton, Edward Bond, Sue Pollard, Mervyn LeRoy, Stanley Baxter, Donald Sinden, Betty Marsden, Stephen Sondheim, Stephen Berkoff, Ursula Andress, Ken Dodd, Joel Grey and Patricia Routledge.

I learned one golden rule very quickly: that an interview is only as good as the interviewer, not the interviewee. Whether for print, screen or radio, a well-prepared, imaginative interviewer who listens can make the dullest subject – Cameron Diaz, say – come across as interesting. A cloth-eared, self-centred interviewer can disrupt the timing of even a Peter Ustinov.

The interview as a television form has been making something of a comeback, largely because it is one of the cheapest ways of filling a BBC hour or a commercial half-hour. Mark Lawson, who falls into the cloth-eared camp as far as I am concerned, gets regular hour-length slots to fill on BBC4 and, I guess, has a lot of say in whom he gets to interview even though, in recent times at least, his interviews have been apt to be slotted into themed runs: thus tonight his interview complements the opener of a short series on British sculpture. I might be more likely to watch if the programme were entitled Anthony Caro Talks to ... Mark Lawson but it follows the usual formula of Mark Lawson Talks to ... Anthony Caro and who the hell wants to watch that? But, having caught the end credits of a lot of his interviews while awaiting the start of something less irritating, I notice that he rarely enjoys the services of the same producer and/or director twice, so I cannot help wondering if this suggests that he is impossible to work with.

Mark Lawson Doesn't Listen to ...

Sky Arts have been bankrolling two interview series: In Confidence has Laurie Taylor quizzing a variety of accomplished individuals, mostly not from among the usual suspects; In Conversation has Derek Malcolm taking on a range of movie directors and actors. Taylor’s approach is the nearest in recent years to that of the granddaddy of serious cultural interview series, Hugh Burnett’s Face to Face, which was presented by John Freeman. Though it ran only from 1959 to 1962, that series still casts a long shadow, particularly among those who mourn the dumbing-down of television. The format was that the interview was broadcast live and hence uncut and the focus didn't leave the subject’s face (shown from two or three angles) – Freeman was never seen. The range of guests was huge, from Bertrand Russell to Danny Blanchflower, Hastings Banda to Cecil Beaton, Edith Sitwell to Nubar Gulbenkian, Carl Jung to Adam Faith. Of all the interviewees, only Bernardo Bertolucci and Albert Finney survive, but Freeman himself, splendidly, turns 96 this month.

The great John Freeman

The present granddaddy of interview series pretends to be a seminar. Inside the Actors Studio sits a professional before an audience (supposedly) of students of Pace University in New York (rather than the actual Actors Studio itself). The guest is interviewed according to a well-worked format by the dean of the Pace Actors School, James Lipton, and has been recorded for transmission since 1994 (a total of sixteen seasons). In Britain, the individual programmes are shown in any old order and have been shunted around the satellite, housed variously by the Biography Channel, Performance, Sky Arts and now Sky Atlantic (both the latter two channels screened the Hilary Swank edition last Sunday).

Episodes from the first three seasons, many of which did not get onto air at the time, can be considered as collectors’ items: Sondheim, Arthur Miller, Neil Simon, Shelley Winters, Dennis Hopper, Arthur Penn, Carol Burnett, Christopher Walken, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Reeve. Mike Nichols. How enticing to be able to see those – why has no broadcaster snapped up the rights?

Le vrai Lipton at work

Of course, the sessions are cut to ribbons for transmission. The ellipses are very apparent, none more so than in the interview with Peter Falk. Every continuity person in the movies will tell you that the biggest headache for editing is cigarettes. Falk chain-smoked through his interview – you still could on public platforms in New York City in 1999 – and the respective lengths of his cigarettes shot back and forth like Roadrunner.

This being an American show, much time that could be accorded to matters of substance is wasted on applause, in particular the applause that denotes recognition (a much feted movie, say, or the name of a great star dropped). Naturally, the audiences are generally enthusistic, though poor Ellen Barkin could barely half-fill the hall. Other precious minutes are taken up by establishing the guest’s credentials. In his introduction, James Lipton always gives a comprehensive run-down of the award nominations that the guest has received, however fatuous they might seem, and then, as each movie comes up for discussion, reiterates the nominations that the particular performance has garnered. “All right, already” you shout at the screen, “it’s still a pretty crappy movie”. What’s more, Lipton modulates his welcome according to the awards. He is “proud” to welcome a guest who has never won an Oscar, “very proud” to welcome an Oscar-winner and “very, very proud” when it’s a two-time Oscar-winner (like Swank). But people who hand out awards are not the sole judges of merit. The arbitrary and destructive nature of awards (and of honours) may perhaps furnish the subject for another posting as the prize-giving season gets into its stride.

The main problem with Inside the Actors Studio is that it is such a missed opportunity. Talking seriously about the craft of film-making is a perfectly useful exercise. Several years ago, before Lipton cornered the market, my old pal Beth Porter and I took a notion to The Guardian when it was in the process of investigating how it should join the on-line market. Our proposal was to build a bank of formatted interviews with actors, all answering an identical, comprehensive list of questions, upon which television programmes could draw for illustrative material. Our title was Lights, Camera, Acting! We thought we had hit on a winner. We got to pitch it to a guy who looked like a school-leaver and whose surname, rather worryingly, was Murdoch. We never heard back from him.

Lipton is a really terrible interviewer. His self-regard is such that he can never resist telling his guests how much he and they have in common, from which continuous reinforcement of public detail the regular viewer knows well that Lipton comes from the mid-west, that his parents divorced when he was a child, that he shares a birthday with Jeremy Irons (how utterly fascinating, Jim), that he is the proud holder of a pilot’s licence and a regular horse-rider, that he would have a tattoo if his wife would only allow it, that he was spoofed by Will Ferrall on Saturday Night Live and is determinedly genial about it, that he once arranged a gala in London at which the guest of honour was the Duke of Edinburgh, that he has acted in and written soap operas, acted on Broadway and in Hollywood, written book and lyrics for a musical and produced television specials including for Bob Hope. He is also a Francophile and a proud Chevalier. And of course he is a teacher of drama and, though there is comparatively little talk about technique, at least until the students get to ask questions, he is always keen to signal that he knows or knew every acting teacher to be mentioned. One of the most legendary of all American acting teachers, Nina Foch, is perhaps known to the widest public for her role as the “older woman” chasing Gene Kelly in An American in Paris. Lipton was married to her for a few years in the 1950s.

The programme logo

Lipton is also a sucker for a party turn, especially a (snatch of) song or dance and, that arsehole of show business, an impersonation. “Oh god” he is apt to laugh suddenly, the kind of laugh that sounds utterly phoney. This stuff is mere playing to the gallery, nothing whatever to do with the study of acting or movie-making, but of course the guests love to be called upon to show off. Only Barbra Streisand, who anyway resisted the show’s invitation for a long time, made it clear that she wasn’t doing any singing from cold. Quite right too.

Before throwing it to the floor, Lipton ends with a questionnaire. He used to characterise this document as being “invented by Marcel Proust”, perhaps misled by the magazine Vanity Fair, which has long run its own variation on the exercise, calling it ‘The Proust Questionnaire’. Someone has evidently set Lipton right. In reality, Proust was the most famous person to have submitted himself to a similar questionnaire – on two occasions, the first as an adolescent – and to have given the most precocious and high-falutin answers.

Lipton always attributes the questions he employs to Bernard Pivot, smug in the knowledge that his (Lipton’s) audience will never encounter this person, though we did get to see him when Lipton and the production team took a trip to Paris to record interviews with Jeanne Moreau and Juliet Binoche. The French broadcaster is clearly as dopey as Lipton. The questions are:

– What is your favourite word?
– What is your least favourite word?
– What turns you on?
– What turns you off?
– What sound or noise do you love?
– What sound or noise do you hate?
– What is your favourite curse word?
– What profession other than yours would you like to attempt?
– What profession would you not like to attempt?
– If heaven exists, what would you like to hear god say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

"The Great Bernard Pivot"

How can anyone have a favourite or a least favourite word? Virtually all Lipton’s victims cite an attractive or repellent concept – energy or truth or negativity and so on. Few offer a sequence of sounds they find especially euphonious or horrisonant – imbroglio, say, or montbretia or thew. My response to this question would be that I am a writer, all words are my friends, though those upon the spelling or exact nuance of which I forever trip are treacherous friends. Again, many things turn one on and off, many sounds likewise. Some guests are so keen to ingratiate that they give as a sound their children laughing or saying ‘Daddy’. Eeeuuuuwwww!

The curse is often bleeped for transmission, rather defeating the purpose. Anyone routinely deploying an expletive is anyway in danger of becoming a prize bore. As for professions, why would anyone working in a state of perpetual ego-massaging for millions of dollars on the world’s most envied racket think of another profession? Ah, but they want to be rock stars, write children’s books and give their names to wines and perfumes as well.

Finally, heaven doesn’t exist. Anyway (it’s hardly my place to correct the interpretation of other people’s superstitions, but) it isn’t god who greets you at the pearly gates: “And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven” Christ says to Peter [St Matthew’s Gospel 16:18-19]. I would want St Peter to say: “Don’t worry, there’s no questionnaire”. I never saw any form that made a fit with my circumstances or asked questions I cared to answer as framed; and questionnaires are the most perverse form of forms.

Over the years, it’s not to be wondered at that Lipton has become a parody of himself. Now (perhaps surprisingly) 84, he may be the only man on television whose hair and beard are dyed different colours. He clings to his prompt cards as to a life saver and rarely veers from his standard set of questions, beginning with: “Where were you born?” (hurrah if it was in the mid-west). These are the questions of an attorney, questions to which the questioner already knows the answers. (Were it me being asked who was my co-star in such-and-such a movie, I’d be sorely tempted to reply: “I don’t know, I haven’t seen it”). A proper interviewer, seeking new knowledge, asks questions to which he doesn’t know the answers.

Lipton and guest Liza Minnelli

Another infuriating tic is the question that begins “when [for instance] Robert De Niro and Marty Scorsese occupied that chair, they told us about the experience of making Goodfellas. What was your experience?” I would want to reply: “Well, funnily enough, when Larry King interviewed me, he asked about Goodfellas too”. I mean, what has it got to do with the present guest that his predecessors have talked about a movie that he was in?

After the dreaded questionnaire, Lipton blessedly departs the stage, handing the guest over to “your class” and the students pitch their own concerns, usually a lot more probing than Lipton’s and yielding more interesting responses but of course the television cut allows only a couple of these. After all, there are the credits to be got through. You can be sure that Lipton’s three end-credits (count ‘em) are perfectly legible, along with the one he had at the top of the show, but what Leona Helmsley famously called “the little people” whizz by in a blur. At least Lipton’s “tailored clothes” no longer get a credit that would have been the reward for dressing him at no cost (and you bet he got to take them clothes home).

How much longer will television draw from this well? Anthony Hopkins was the first Brit to guest on Actors Studio but not before the fourth season. John Hurt followed him the next year and then, as the list of willing Yanks was whittled down, more and more of them were invited, even some, like Vanessa Redgrave, who only really wanted to talk about the theatre. In recent years, Hopkins has been among those who have returned for a second session. Moreover, the net has been thrown wider and wider, now embracing stars of television comedy, rock musicians and even ensemble casts.
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Adam Godley as Elliott

On the subject of British actors in America, I was amazed to see Adam Godley turn up in the episode of Breaking Bad most recently broadcast in Britain on the FX channel. Godley is a surpassingly English actor – among his triumphs was his performance as Kenneth Williams in Terry Johnson’s comedy Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick at the National Theatre over a decade ago – yet here he was playing a wholly American character (the hero’s oldest friend) in an American teledrama. When you think of the numberless native actors in their mid-40s who could have played the role, it does seem extraordinary that a Brit should land it. But then all the comic superheroes currently being regurgitated for the movies are being played by Brits. I suppose the secret must be that they come cheaper than Americans.

Incidentally, I like Breaking Bad very much. It’s a noirish tale about a chemistry teacher going spectacularly off the rails after being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. The spiral he plunges into, through a mixture of circumstance and impulse, develops enticingly and with the right level of mordant humour. Bryan Cranston’s gritted-teeth portrayal of the anti-hero, never remotely tempted to try for the ingratiating, gets it pinpoint right. His reward has been an Emmy for “outstanding lead actor in a drama series” for each year that it has played. Vince Gilligan, who cut his teeth on The X Files, is the instigator and director.

Breaking Bad: the poster

But why has it taken three years to reach Britain? In the States, it will begin its fourth season in the summer and I cannot imagine how it will have sustained its premise through more than thirty episodes. How long must we wait to find out?