It’s funny because in a way, I wanted to make it hard for him to act through it. I felt like that would feed him as an actor. Robert is not essentially an angry person. The one part of the character that I knew would be work for him was the anger. It’s not Robert; Robert’s very sweet. Whatever trouble he’s been through, it’s never been from lashing out at other human beings. I kind of thought that might be a useful thing for him. I said, “You love to use your body. You’re going to be lying in the bed unable to move, covered with this make-up that’s going to be very uncomfortable and awful. That’s where the anger can come from. If you get into that, and the fact that Potter lived with that every day, that will let you get to some of those angry places.” He got it immediately when I said that.
I didn’t want to make any huge effort to make it too comfy. Although the fact is, with that kind of make-up, you couldn’t make it comfy. It was just the nature of it. He had to sit in the chair and have it put on for hours. Then it doesn’t let your skin breath and it’s hot and it’s sticky and it’s itchy. I tried to get him to see that as a plus instead of negative and I think he did. He really got into that.
Having acted alongside Robert, did it change the dynamics between the two of you when it came to making “The Singing Detective?”
It makes a much nicer dynamic. I think part of why I got the job was that Robert had fond memories of working with me as an actor. Mel Gibson brought Robert in before I was ever brought in on the project. Basically it was that situation where the director was more hired by the actor than the other way around. I think that he remembered having fun with me as an actor. We talked over the years about trying to do more projects together, but it had never really come together. He obviously was intrigued enough that he came back again, and there I was sitting in a room with him talking, and this time the money was real and we could make the film. I think we went in with a nice dynamic because of that.
I love working with people I’ve worked with before. Otherwise, it’s like a blind date and it’s scary. You spend the first week just getting to know each other and [learning] how you talk to each other. “Oh, I pushed that person’s button and I didn’t mean to and I’ve made them feel defensive or scared.” You don’t know because you don’t have a way of communicating yet. Each person doesn’t know if the other person is crazy or difficult or angry. When you’ve worked with somebody and had a good time with them, you skip over a lot of that nonsense and go right to, “Oh hey, how are you doing? Now let’s get to work.” It’s much more comfortable and fun.
At the beginning of the film, Dan Dark is very angry and the audience doesn’t necessarily want to like him. How did you approach making him accessible so that we wouldn’t end up hating the main character right away?
Potter, by nature, loves to push the envelope with any of that, including characters that you have to really work to want to get close to. I think Robert has such an inherit empathy in him. That was one of the reasons that I think it was such a brilliant idea on Mel’s part to cast Robert. There is such vulnerability in him, even when he is angry or playing somebody who is trying to push people away. I look in Robert’s eyes and there’s a tremendous vulnerability there that I think allows people a certain measure of, “Yeah, he’s kind of a mean son of a bitch but there’s something else there.” There’s a human being in pain underneath. I think another actor might not have brought that as well. I think people react to him very much that way. It’s amazing when you watch people, even in life, around him. There’s something about him that I think people feel maternal towards or parental towards. There’s a lot of warmth that I think he brings out. That was part of what I felt made that casting such a good idea.
With Robert, even in that first scene with the doctors, as mean as he is there’s those moments where he lets his guard down. I think that makes you feel for him - at least I hope that makes people feel for him enough to stay with him. He’s angry and he’s difficult, but as long as I think you sense there’s something human underneath, people will go with that. People are okay with characters who are angry and difficult as long as there’s enough of a person underneath there they can also hold on to.
It’s a wonderful gift he has as an actor. If you think about how many characters Robert’s played that as different as they are, often they are very, very deeply flawed human beings. Yet there is something about him that, when you watch him, lets you forgive those flaws enough that you want those people to come out alright.
PAGE 3: Gordon on Subliminal Clues and Actors Who Don't Sing or Dance
