AS LONG AS I'M SINGING...
Kevin spacey takes on his biggest challenge yet by co-writing, directing and starring in
Beyond The Sea, his vivid, colourful and unconventional biopic on sixties pop star and actor Bobby Darin. But if there's one thing Kevin Spacey likes, it's a challenge.By Philip Berk
There was a time when people were more interested in Kevin Spacey’s sexuality than in his Academy Award winning performances. But nowadays no one seems to care. Spacey, however, has a knack for keeping people on their toes, and while doing press for Beyond The Sea – his grand, splashy biopic on sixties pop star Bobby Darin, on which he served as co-writer, director and star – the assembled media were hooked on the circumstances surrounding his often controversial stewardship of the prestigious Old Vic Theatre in England. Has any other American ever been so honoured? "For me, this is a remarkable thing," Spacey says. "I feel that everything in my life has been leading up to this. This is what I was meant to do."
Thus far, however, his record has been spotty to say the least. Among his failures have been the obscure Dutch play Cloaca and Arthur Miller’s misbegotten Resurrection Blues, for which he hired Robert Altman to direct. His only success has been in casting Ian McKellen in the Christmas pantomime Aladdin. "We’ve had our growing pains," Spacey responds, "but I hope we’ll be given a chance to make mistakes and our worth will be judged over a reasonable period of time."
His other dream come true of course is Beyond The Sea, which ultimately became a gargantuan task for the actor. "It’s been the single hardest film to raise financing for," says Spacey, who made his directorial debut with 1996’s highly underrated Albino Alligator. "Thankfully, films driven by music are back in favour, although I don’t think they were ever out of favour with audiences. I just think people in this industry have short memories because they don’t remember films like All That Jazz and Fame."
Spacey also does all of his own singing in the film, delivering pitch perfect versions of Bobby Darin favourites like "Mack The Knife", "Dream Lover", "Simple Song of Freedom" and "Splish Splash". What convinced him he had the chops for that? "I sang an old Frank Sinatra once when I hosted Saturday Night Live," Spacey explains. "Clint Eastwood saw the show and called to say that I had a nice set of pipes. That’s how I came to do "That Old Black Magic" in his film Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil. But I’ve always had a definite musical sense, even when I read something. As a kid I was able to do impressions because I was able to hear how it sounded."
To get his voice right, Spacey worked for a long and intense period with respected jazz artist Roger Kellaway. "He was one of Bobby’s accompanists," Spacey explains. "We started working on the music in’98. We worked anywhere we could. I’d do a benefit performance just to find out if I could sing in front of an audience. Then we brought in Phil Ramone, and we went into a recording studio where we laid down about twenty tracks. So while I was acting in other movies, I was preparing and working with orchestrations without my vocals."
So it’s been almost a decade long journey? "Even longer," he replies. "The project was at Warner Bros. in development about 15 years ago. I kept my eye on it, and kept tracking it, there were a lot of rumours that other actors were cast, but for one reason or another it never happened. It just so happened that from 1996-1998 I did a series of films for Warner Bros. I began to have a relationship with executives who had the key to the golden box where the rights to Bobby Darin’s story were. It took about 5 and half years to convince Warner Bros. to hand over those rights. Generally they don’t like to do that even if they don’t end up making the film."
The problems, however, were just beginning, "Not only had I bought the rights, but I had acquired a property with a reputation that it couldn’t get made. In addition, the films that I did between 1999 and 2000 after American Beauty didn’t do well, and you know the way this town thinks: you’re only as good as your last film. So there I was trying to figure out how to tell the story and trying to raise the money to get it made. It’s no secret that I was turned down by darn near every studio in this town, the argument being, "Who ever heard of Bobby Darin?"
Ultimately, the ever daring Lions Gate ("They’ve been a terrific partner," Spacey says) stepped up to the plate, and the film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival two years ago. It was greeted by a rave review from respected American critic Todd McCarthy of Variety, and then scored Spacey a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor. Since then, however, the response has been tepid and the reviews downright hostile. A fair chunk of the criticism focused on Kevin’s age: Bobby Darin died at 37, and Spacey was in his mid-forties at the time of shooting. "That negative commentary hounded me for over two years before we started shooting; ultimately I told my producer, ‘You just have to recognize the elephant in the room and then move on.’ That’s why I ended up writing a scene in the movie where a reporter asks that question. (One of the film’s strange stylistic conceits has Darin involved in a film version of his own life as the movie begins.) That way people know that I know it too. I’m not so blind that I don’t get it. Maybe then people will relax and start enjoying the film. At the end of the day it was never a big issue because in the first scenes I wasn’t playing Bobby at seventeen. It’s the mature Bobby and the idea to me is, ‘Is it a memory, is it a dream, is it a movie, is it a movie within a movie, is it a nightmare?’ I don’t want the audience to ever know. I want the audience to decide for themselves what it is. So for me, the age issue is minimal. At the end of the day, we did the movie we wanted to, and we addressed that issue with some degree of humour. And for me, Bobby Darin is timeless.
© 2000 - 2006 Driving Mr. Spacey!
