Harvey Keitel
Harvey Keitel does not suffer fools. Scowling and dishevelled, he sits there exuding the feeling of a man employing a well practised detachment to wrong-foot the media. Try, for example, researching his career in a quest for journo-friendly quotes, and you may as well be looking for Royal Mint safe combinations. The man is an Enigma. Seemingly uninterested in talk of the past, the interview starts badly (the question irrelevant, the answer, “No”). But wait….is that a smile ?
It is. Thank God. And it comes in response to a mention of his latest film, a brutal and glorious epic entitled Reservoir Dogs. “It is not the kind of film that brings people together”, says debutante director Quentin Tarantino, displaying an Olympian flare for understatement.
The story centres on a group of criminals and the aftermath of a botched diamond robbery. The men are known to each other only through colour-coded anonymous tags such as Mr Blonde, Mr Orange and Mr Blue. Uncompromising and occasionally very violent, the plot jumps between character and event like a crazed jack rabbit whilst the whole thing is tacked on a backdrop of seventies bubblegum tunes courtesy of K-Billy DJ, voiced by surrealist American comic Steven Wright. Mainstream it ain’t.
Keitel plays Mr White, a lawless thief with a strange sense of honour. I ask how he prepared for the role, “The technique for the actor remains the same no matter what part he is doing – be it cinema or the stage, and that is..” – here’s the rub – “Well, I fully recommend some books to you if you need classes.” Cheers.
His career to date has been a mixed bag. Delve once and you get the Faberge Eggs – Taxi Driver, Mean Streets and Reservoir Dogs; Look again and find the tin whistles – Sister Act, Wise Guys and Saturn 3. A contemporary of De Niro, Keitel is a graduate of the famed Actors Studio, breeding ground for many of cinemas greatest talents. And as with De Niro, he has attempted to do comedy and adventure movies (with similar results), remaining for many the Actors actor. Acclaim has come when playing the Wiseguy criminal of Mean Streets, sagacious cop in Thelma & Louise or brutal pimp in Taxi Driver. What is it that attracts him to these tougher roles ? “I think we have to have a drink one night, or maybe a couple of drinks on a couple of nights”, he says, making me grasp for fictitious future appointments, “Quentin saw me as Mr White and I took about two or three months to decide he was right.”
When asked about the attractions of this role in particular he is unequivocal, “It’s a brilliant piece of writing, and there are some things that interested me – universal themes regarding the quest for camaraderie, the quest to be a hero to someone, redemption… For me they were fascinating and unique.”
One of Keitel’s lesser publicised skills has been as talent scout for fledgling directors. He made The Duellists with an unknown Ridley Scott, and Mean Streets with Marty. It seems right, then, to ask the Kingmaker if Tarantino will be the latest champion, “You want me to say nice things about Quentin in front of him ?”, he jokes, “to me there is a common denominator between Quentin and Marty as well as between others like Tavernier and Nic Roeg. These group of people have a certain vulnerability and a certain insight…if they have anything in common it’s in that area.”
Tarantino has said he “wanted very much for it to be believable”, and the film has indeed been lauded for a strong sense of dramatic unity. The ensemble cast includes Englishman Tim Roth and American veteran Laurence Tierney, and a mix of improvisors and method styles. What could have been a complete balls-up instead translates into one of the strongest, almost poetic films to be seen in years. Keitel explains why, “You know, I had a rare experience like this when I made Last Temptation of Christ, with the actors that played the apostles. It was a very unique, unusual and spiritual moment. It was a group of actors coming together – the dynamic that occurred just was – I can’t explain it.
“In both instances, if someone fell down there was always someone to pick him up. Everybody was there for each other. Very spiritual, very powerful. We had to adjust to each other, for instance Tim Roth didn’t want to rehearse, but I got him to rehearse by doing a little improvisation and he took to that…in this particular instance all the different men were very supportive of one another. We coped with each others needs in the rehearsal process. I’m very proud to know these guys.”
His response reveals a lot about the supposedly impenetrable man. Tenaciously loyal, one gets the feeling he is wary – perhaps even shy – of praise. It is a journalists prerogative to applaud, yet Keitel covers his ears, “I didn’t do anything wonderful by doing his script. He did something wonderful by writing it. It’s perhaps fate that I came upon it – a woman friend of mine called to say she had a script I may be interested in – that’s the uniqueness of this event, not that an actor like may came down from a big budget movie to stoop to his level. Just the opposite is true.”
There is a tentative suggestion that Mr White could be seen as an older version of Charlie, the character he played in Mean Streets twenty years ago. He is dismissive, saying, “There is no relationship whatsoever, and I think you people make this analogy because of the talent that Quentin and Marty have in common. Charlie could never be Mr White – it’s a whole different person. The talent between Quentin and Marty should be discussed, with him or with Marty; character wise, it’s just a whole different ball game.”
And so it ends. Not wholly relaxed, but smiling and relatively candid, Keitel takes one final question. Inevitably, it inquires as to the general nature of the actors craft. Put simply, Harvey, What’s It All About? “Acting ?”, he reflects with a shrug, “It’s a lifetimes worth of experience. My lifetime.”
Peter Hill