Can you talk about Leonardo DiCaprio playing Howard Hughes?
In terms of Leo, he came attached to the project. I felt that the main thing for me was that it's hard character to play, to say the least. But he had such a determination. I mean, more than half of it is wanting to do it, really wanting to do it. Then quite honestly, I thought particularly the young Howard, like when he's at
the Grauman's Chinese and he's in tails, he did seem to me [to look like Hughes]. When I looked at some of the earlier photographs of Howard Hughes, you've got to look at some real early stuff when he was still dressing before he gets the
clothes from Penny's or Sears and he's saying, 'Better make it Woolworth,'
or whatever he's saying on that paranoid phone call to Noah Dietrich. I
mean, before that he was in Seville Row clothes. He was really a dandy. When
he burns his clothes, that's a key moment. He changes everything. But I must
say, I saw a similarity.
I do feel if you ever find some really early photographs of him, because he always appeared, Howard Hughes, even in the photographs of him going out every night with these different starlets, he always sort of made a face. He didn't want to be photographed but he wanted to be, and he was always in an odd position. But the lankiness, the tallness, the frame itself, I felt that he did remind me of the young Howard Hughes, the real young Howard Hughes. And then later the older Howard Hughes, certainly. The one with the moustache after the plane crash. He just suddenly sort of became Howard Hughes at that point even with the application of seven and a half hours of makeup in that screening room scene where he’s naked. Seven and a half hours each day. He’d sort of walk in that room, look at all the tissue paper and the mess. There was two weeks of shooting that…
How did Kate Beckinsale, Cate Blanchett, and Gwen Stefani become involved in the movie?
Kate Beckinsale came in and was the first audition for Ava Gardner. I thought she was terrific. She was sultry and she’s a beautiful woman, a very good
actress. Excellent actress. I’ve always liked her. I’ve seen all her work, and I was glad that she agreed to audition. I mean, you’re auditioning for Ava Gardner, it’s not a totally fictional character. You can’t be Ava Gardner. You’re gonna be a sense of or a soupcon, a little touch of Ava Gardner. And she asked what she
should do before the audition, and I told her to just watch “Mogambo,” John Ford’s version of “Red Dust” with Clark Gable and Grace Kelly and Ava Gardner playing Honey Bear. I thought the attitude of Ava Gardner in that film was all she really had to know. There are only a few scenes with Ava in the film. So really all she had to know as that swagger, that wise guy attitude, like a guy in a way. And the beauty of Ava Gardner - Beckinsale, when you first see her on the screen, when he’s trying to figure out what name he should give his TWA
airlines, she’s absolutely gorgeous. The use of makeup, the technicolour field, we had that sense of Ava Gardner there.
The scene where she hits him with the ashtray is based on a fight between the two of them. She wouldn’t take anything from him. Nothing. In her autobiography she said, “Little did I realize we would be friends for 22 years.” They were like hanging out for 22 years.
Cate Blanchett on the other hand, I thought of Cate. We were starting to shoot our film sooner and she was on “The Missing” for Ron Howard. I saw her at the Golden Globes, she walked out on the stage, and my wife turned to me and said, “That’s her.” I said, “Yeah, that would be it.” But the availability was completely messed up and ultimately we were talking to a few other people. But ultimately things worked out beautifully because we had postponed our shoot about a month or two, she was then available, and she actually accepted to do it.
She came into LA while still shooting “The Missing.” We just had one meeting for like 3 hours talking about it. She had looked at some stills of Katharine Hepburn. Katharine Hepburn is a touchy area, you know? There are three levels there. The older people who really know Katharine Hepburn, who may have been alive in the 1930s and knew all about her career and everything else. There’s the mid-range, which is me. I’m 62 but I was 10 years old when I saw her movies. I didn’t know about her 1930s trouble as box-office poison. She always seemed to be a star to me. Even when I saw the films from the 1930s on television. I thought, “Everybody loved Katharine Hepburn. What’s the problem?” “Alice Adams” is a great picture and she’s fine in it. Okay, “Sylvia Scarlett” is a little bit of a strange film, but it’s quite unique what they were trying at the time. It’s an amazing movie and I love George Cukor, so what’s the problem? “A Bill of Divorcement” is good, the Cukor version.
PAGE 4: Martin Scorsese on Cate Blanchett Finding Katharine Hepburn and Gwen Stefani as Jean Harlow
