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academy interview
play it again sam
Sam Mendes was weighed down with awards and acclaim after American Beauty. So what do you do for an encore? He talks to Quentin Falk about his new “arthouse movie with some film stars in it.”
For nearly half a year after win- ning the Best Director Oscar for American Beauty, Sam Mendes claimed he was “para- lysed with indecision. It was like, ‘My God, my first movie’s been a big success, what do I do now?’”
Then following that “very odd six months when I didn’t know what to do”, Road To Perdition conveniently plopped through the metaphorical letterbox. Mendes was swiftly hooked and with that, he insisted, the nerves simply evaporated.
“The moment I made the decision to do this one it some- how took away all those kind of nerves. There’s so much to do every day on a film that you become completely immersed in it all - which also, in a way, stops you thinking about the end result.
“It’s only when you’ve fini- shed it and are there standing at the premiere in New York. At that point I was much more frightened than when I was actually making the film. During production all you’re trying to do is making every day count, nail every scene and make sure you keep everyone afloat... including yourself.
“Then suddenly there it all is – the high poster, the big stars, your film – and it better be good!”
At the premiere of American Beauty a couple of years earlier, it was the guileless fervour of the debutant rather than the naked fear of a second-timer that char- acterised Mendes.
He remembered turning to the studio’s head of marketing and asking her: “Look, I know you love the film but tell me the truth: what’s it going to take at the US box office? She said $30m, which is what Fargo took. I thought, ‘Okay, that’s great,’ since I happen to think that Fargo is one of the mas- terpieces of the last 10 years. In fact, American Beauty ended up domestically at $140m and inter- nationally closer to $400m.”
Add reviews to die for and enough trophies to start a small museum – including Best Film at the Academy Awards both here and in the States – and it’s not real- ly surprising that a young first-time British director might just begin to start feeling a little pressure.
Not that Mendes, 37, hasn’t felt anything but the weight of great expectations ever since beginning a glittering career in
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Photo above: Tom Hanks in Road To Perdition; right: Sam Mendes