Interview: Mike Newell

Mike Newell is a director who's dabbled in many genres over the years. Although he's worked steadily in both television and film since the mid- sixties, Newell jumped over to the A list with the smash hit, Four Weddings and a Funeral, which introduced the world to Hugh Grant. Since then he's directed a string of mostly successful American films, including Donnie Brasco, Pushing Tin, and Mona Lisa Smile. In 2005, he directed his largest scale film to date, Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire– and now turns his attention to another book to film adaptation, Gabriel García Márquez's classic Love in the Time of Cholera.
 
The Nobel Prize-winning author had an estimated 50 film offers over the years for the film rights to the story that sees Florentino Ariza (Bardem)and Fermino Daza (Mezzogiorno) fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs–yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.

On a recent visit to Montreal, Newell was kind enough to sit down with me at the fashionable Hotel St. James restaurant located in Old Montreal.

Chris Bumbray: I Believe this is the first time a Gabriel García Márquez novel has been shot in English, correct?
Mike Newell: Yes, I think so…

CB: How did you go about adapting such a beloved novel?
MN: Frankly, I don't know. The book itself is kind of like James Joyce – the actual words chosen by Marquez were strange. My Spanish is non existent- but my Spanish speaking friends who read it tell me that it's written in a pastiche of 19th century Spanish, which changes as the eras go by. Adapting that to film is impossible- so what we tried to do was find out what was at the heart of the book, and figure out what we had to do to adapt the story. One important thing was getting the makeup right- both Javier (Bardem) and I were very frightened of the make-up. Each actor that hopped on board- their first question was always, who's doing the makeup? If you didn't make sense of this huge span of life- starting them around 25, you wouldn't get that the story starts when they have no fear at all. They have no idea they're ever going to die- everything is forever when you're young. At the end, when they're old- they know they are going to die. The woman, Fermina, is cowed by this- but Florentino is lunatically courageous. It doesn't matter to him. Whatever time you have left- live it until it hurts. And that's what I think the book says in the end. To solve this big practical problem that would make this idea wok- the biggest problem was how to do the make-up-, followed by where to shoot it. Was it going to be authentic or not?

CB: This brings me to my next question. This is the first studio film to shoot in Columbia since The Mission (1986) over twenty years ago. How did you manage to make it all work?
MN: There was a guy who had worked on The Mission that was tremendously helpful to us. He came on as our local liaison man. We couldn't’t have functioned without him. He was the only local guy who understood the business of making a movie. Everyone else thought it would be just showing up and wearing pretty frocks and then leaving. One night we were shooting midnight mass, and we were using this big Jesuit church. Because the Jesuits, not unreasonably, could not change the time of their mass we had to shoot through the night. Their last mass was at 8pm, the first at 6am. The extras couldn't’t believe that at three in the morning we were still shooting. All the extras looked like pre-slaughtered cattle, they were completely exhausted. Meanwhile I’m running down the central isle like a madman- screaming at them, GET UP!!! GET UP!!!

CB: One of the things that interested me was the casting- specifically that all the lead actors were Latin- except Fermina, who played by an Italian (Giovanna Mezzogiorno).
MN: Well, what happened was this. It’s not a terrifying large budget- between 45-50 million, and for a movie like this it’s very difficult to get your money back. Making a so-called “serious movie-

CB: Albeit an accessible one…
MN: Well lets hope- that’s what we tried for What Hollywood does is that they take out insurance with the actors. “We’ll get Billy Bob Thorton to play this, and Brad Pitt to play that-“ and we tried to do that, particularly with the woman, but they were all pregnant. They didn’t mind having their babies in Namibia, but not in Columbia. So, in the end, we just said “FUCK IT”- we’ll cast it the way it should be cast. As soon as we did that we were liberated, and could properly cast the roles. We cast people from all over the world- so long as they were Latin. Of course as soon as you did that, all of these wonderful actors were available. Javier was always on the list- one of the great actors of the world. And then we were able to cast this astonishingly beautiful Italian girl- who inhabited all the qualities of this character. She was fragile, skin like alabaster- beautiful enough to hook him.

CB: You believe that he would be obsessed with her for 50 years.
MN: Because she has these astounding green eyes- she looks different than the girls down there- that’s what we went for. We were also lucky to get Benjamin Bratt- who has this great physical presence and is a wonderful actor.

In part 2 of our interview with Newell, we'll get to the bottom of some unconventional casting decisions, and also find out how adapting Marquez compared to adapting Harry Potter..