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the theatre soon after he came down from Cambridge at the back end of the eighties.
After triumphantly directing Judi Dench in The Cherry Orchard, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company eventual- ly moving on two years later to become, at 27, artistic director of the re-opened Donmar Warehouse. For the past 10 years the Donmar has defined Mendes’ creative output. Presiding over some 70 productions in all, it was his direction of The Blue Room and Cabaret, a pair of London- Broadway transfers in 1998, that especially earned Hollywood’s close attention.
“If someone had said, ‘your first film’s going to be a studio movie set in American suburbia’,
I would have said they were mad,” recalled Mendes, as he sat sipping a cup of tea in the Covent Garden offices of Donmar Films.
He’d taken time off (briefly) from directing a double bill of Uncle Vanya and Twelth Night – co-starring the same company comprising the likes of Emily Watson, Simon Russell Beale, Helen McCrory and Mark Strong – which marks his Donmar swan- song before he and executive producer Caro Newling leave to form their own new London- based production company.
Originally, there had been plans various to make his film debut here: “I got very close to doing a film of Little Voice, because I’d done the play, and I was also involved briefly with The Wings Of The Dove. But in a sense they embodied the two things I was trying to avoid: the costume drama based on a classic novel, and the adaptation of a play.”
When Alan Ball’s original script for American Beauty – which conveniently side-stepped both those strictures – was given to Mendes on the recommendation of Steven Spielberg, the West Coast die was effectively cast.
The fact that it was the “best” script he’d read wasn’t a bad reason either and there was, of course, an honourable tradition of outsiders regularly making
wonderfully insightful films about America. From Wilder and Lubitsch to, more recently, John Schlesinger, Milos Forman, Wim Wenders, Ang Lee and Peter Weir, the list Mendes has now so suc- cessfully joined is formidable.
After American Beauty, Mendes was quoted as saying that he’d probably do a bit of “a Terrence Malick” and steer away for a long while from filmmaking. He also told journalists: “I’ve got to be very careful what I do next and it may well be something small. I’ll do the reverse of what they expect... something that feels very personal.”
So what does he do? Six months on he commits – with once again Spielberg’s personal blessing – to a lavish, star-studded $90m gangster epic (American Beauty was a mere $15m) set in and around 30s Chicago.
“When I mentioned the Malick thing,” he smiled, “I think I was being a bit facetious. But
I have to say that after Road To Perdition, the thought of doing another one makes one feel physically sick. It’s two years of one’s life. I work much faster in the theatre than on film.
“Road To Perdition was every- thing that American Beauty was- n’t. It pushed me in another direction and I loved the scale and canvas of it. It also gave me the chance to work with some of the actors I’ve really admired for a lifetime.
“How developed was it when they first sent it to me? They told me that Tom Hanks had read it and liked it. I read it with him in mind, and have to say he never left my mind. I think I turned it into much more of a meditation as a film.
“In fact, for me, it still remains an arthouse movie with some film stars in it. It works on one level as a gripping narrative of revenge but on another level it’s a medita- tion on violence, fathers-and-sons and, of course, the period.”
What it isn’t, but what it could quite legitimately have been given the material’s source as a graphic novel, was a more con- ventional action movie. Mendes
explained: “I’d already read the script a couple of times before I saw the novel. That turned out to be a good thing. What I saw in my head was much more Hopperesque, composed, peaceful and hypnotic.
“The novel looks like an action movie and the best person to have made that would have been John Woo. He’d have made a wonderful movie of Road To Perdition with an almost identical script. It would be mag- nificent, balletic and much more violent – but it would have been a totally different film from mine.
“Actually, one of the things I’ve been delighted with most about both films I’ve made is that they’ve worked within the main- stream, and yet I don’t particular- ly consider them to be main- stream films as such,” Mendes added. To date, the bulging box office for Road To Perdition also massively belies any potential ‘arthouse’ tag.
If we are to believe him, Mendes will resist the inevitable Hollywood pressures and “absolutely, definitively” make his next film in the England.
“Look, I’m dying to do an English film. Frankly, I don’t want to go back to America and live there for six months because this is my home. You can only take so many upheavals. My experience of making films has always involved living in someone else’s house, out of a suitcase or in a hotel. That’s how I’ve lived for about three years.
But he was suitably cryptic when asked to reveal details of the mystery project: “I found a writer for it about nine months ago. All I will say is that it is a 20th century period piece written with two specific English actors in mind. I won’t mention them in case one turns it down and I have to offer it to someone else.”
With his track record so far in theatre and film, the prospect of any actor turning Sam Mendes down seems a laugh- ably unlikely prospect.
“One of the things I’ve been delighted with most about both films I’ve made is that they’ve worked within the mainstream – and yet I don’t particu- larly consider them to be mainstream films as such.”
Photo: Mena Suvari in American Beauty
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