Kevin Spacey feared typecasting

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Even with one Oscar behind him, Kevin Spacey felt backed in a corner where Hollywood would come looking only when it needed the sort of sinister, lunatic-fringe type the actor was known for.

Around the time he won the supporting-actor Oscar for 1995's The Usual Suspects, Spacey embarked on a methodical voyage to remake his career and the kinds of roles he could land.

He feared he'd become typecast as a dark knight of the soul by such roles as the diabolical serial killer in Seven or Verbal Kint, the gimpy, fast-talking hoodlum in Usual Suspects, who turns out to be the most menacing of puppetmasters.

Spacey gravitated to more nuanced roles, more fully human characters: a corrupt cop in L.A. Confidential, a charming socialite tried for murder in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, an expert hostage mediator in The Negotiator.

Capping Spacey's reinvention of himself was his second Oscar, the best-actor honor for his take on Lester Burnham, a bumbling family man elevated to a state of grace through the oddest of mid-life crises in American Beauty.

"I came out of 1995 with a real sense that a very deep and dark impression had been laid on me as an actor," Spacey, 40, said in an interview to promote his new film, The Big Kahuna.

"So I went on a little journey to play roles that were less black and white, more gray, more ambiguous, with a sort of moral shifting ground. I was trying to lead myself toward the kind of characters I've more often played in the theater, which are very close to Lester Burnham and very close to Larry," the cynical yet honorable salesman Spacey plays in the new movie.

Co-starring Danny DeVito and Peter Facinelli, Big Kahuna is a dialogue-driven character piece confined almost entirely to a hotel suite, where three hapless industrial-lubricant salesmen hope to land a critical but elusive customer.

The movie opened in New York City and Los Angeles last month and expands to more cities this weekend. It's based on the play Hospitality Suite by Roger Rueff, who also wrote the screenplay.

Spacey first read Hospitality Suite in 1991, and did a staged reading of it in New York that helped land an agent for Rueff, a chemical engineer.

The play had several stage productions, but Spacey and theater director John Swanbeck knew they wanted to collaborate themselves on the story. Spacey's busy schedule made a stage version unlikely, so they decided to make the project the debut of Spacey's movie company, Trigger St. Productions, with Swanbeck directing.

The shoot came together in a hurry. Spacey had just finished American Beauty and had a few days before beginning rehearsals for the New York run of The Iceman Cometh last year. Since he had done the play in London, Spacey figured he could duck out early on rehearsals and shoot the film at night.

Iceman director Howard Davies agreed to cut him loose early during the first couple weeks of rehearsal, and the $1.8 million Big Kahuna was shot in just 16 days.

It helped having a cloistered set - basically three guys in a room talking, with just a few street and corridor scenes and a few fantasy sequences requiring a roomful of extras.

Though Spacey, DeVito and Facinelli play a marketing team, the story puts them at sharp ideological odds. Spacey's Larry talks trash and is quick to criticize Phil (DeVito) for renting a "hospitality closet" with carrot sticks for hors d'oeuvres, and the youthful Bob (Facinelli) for his dogmatic religious zeal.

"You ought to apply for sainthood," Larry tells Bob. "The competition's not as stiff as it used to be."

Unlike salesmanship tales such as Glengarry Glen Ross and Death of a Salesmen, in which ruthlessness rules, Big Kahuna evolves into a bittersweet story of friendship. Phil, disheartened by divorce and disillusioned over missed opportunities, bares his soul and elicits surprising compassion from the abrasive Larry.

"I'm suddenly very conscious of the lateness of things," Larry says, as much to himself as to the others, after the facades of all three men have fallen away.

"I actually began to view the piece as one man at three different stages in his life," Spacey said. "You could absolutely understand that the very questions Bob thinks he's answered concretely are the very questions that Larry doesn't want to get close to and that Phil finally needs to get back to in his life. You could very easily see that they could walk in each other's shoes."

It's a smallish film, but Spacey's Oscar win might draw moviegoers.

"I hope the movie won't be impaired by the fact that people might want me to go away for awhile," he says, "and I promise I am going away for awhile."

Spacey's taking time off at least till fall after wrapping production on his next film, Pay It Forward. The drama casts him as a teacher severely burned as a child who makes an unusual connection with a student (Haley Joel Osment) and the boy's mother (Helen Hunt). The movie is due in theaters this fall.

Early next year, Spacey is scheduled to begin work on The Shipping News, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by E. Annie Proulx.

He said he wants to produce more movies, particularly independent features to showcase new talent, as Big Kahuna did for Facinelli, Swanbeck and Rueff.

"To me, the point of having a production company is to be able to give opportunities to those who haven't had them before, and step back and let them run with the ball," Spacey said. "If it were not for people who stepped forward and gave me opportunities at a time when I had not proved myself at all, believe me, I would not have a career."

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More questions than answers to Kevin Spacey
Is he playing too many roles that take the same attitude?

By Stephen Whitty
Newhouse News Service

NEW YORK, April 28 —  In his new movie "The Big Kahuna," Kevin Spacey plays another one of his trademarked antiheroes, a furiously sarcastic salesman with an answer for everything. Endlessly entertaining and vaguely dangerous, he's a fascinating character — fascinating precisely because he's ultimately unknowable. It is a part Spacey plays brilliantly off-screen, too.


When the "The Big Kahuna" team arrived in New York recently to push their small film, Spacey — the star and co-producer, and the logical centerpiece of any campaign — was missing.

Reticence isn't out of character for many actors, particularly the private, prickly Spacey. Although he'd been relatively accessible recently — and the increased visibility certainly helped him win that Best Actor Oscar for "American Beauty" — the 40-year-old performer usually avoids publicity.

Some of that reticence may be because he's been burned in the past, notably by a gossip-mongering Esquire article in 1997. Mostly, he says, it's because fame gets in the way of his craft. If audiences don't know who you are, goes his theory, they'll accept you in any role; the less celebrity you carry with you, the less baggage you bring to the set. "Nobody knows who I am yet," Spacey told People way back in 1991. "And I want to keep it that way."   

RAMPANT SPECULATION

It's a theory practiced by performers from Sean Penn to Holly Hunter, yet in Spacey's case the elusiveness has led to rampant speculation. At one time, it was said his last name was a misspelled tribute to Spencer Tracy. (It's not; it's his mother's.) At another, it was sworn that he was gay — a rumor the bachelor first refused to respond to, then categorically denied, without much effect either way.
("Spacey Admits He's Not Gay," ran one headline.)

Here, despite the wilder rumors, are some things we know about Kevin Spacey.

He was born Kevin Fowler in South Orange, N.J., on July 26, 1959; four years later, his parents, both white-collar professionals, moved the family to Southern California. Kevin, the youngest of three, grew into a chronic troublemaker; after an unfortunate stint in military school (he was expelled for throwing a tire at someone), a guidance counselor suggested he try acting, instead of acting out.  Kevin Spacey, left, with Peter Facinelli, in Spacey's latest movie, "The Big Kahuna"

Although Spacey got his first big break on Broadway, most Americans met him on TV's "Wiseguy," as the insidious Mel Profitt. He soon began to get movie parts as slippery dissemblers, and won his first Oscar for 1995's "The Usual Suspects," as the aptly named "Verbal" Kint. His roles since then in "L.A. Confidential," "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and "American Beauty" have made it clear a new American movie star has arrived.

The interesting question, though — the thing I would love to have asked him — is if becoming a movie star is making it harder for him to remain an actor.     

DRIVING PRESENCE 

Spacey's films seem built around scenes of him shredding some hapless underling with razor-sharp sarcasm.

Of course, it verges on apostasy to suggest Spacey is anything but one of the greatest American performers in films today. His amused presence drove the dark "American Beauty"; his skills have enlivened pictures as wide-ranging as the arty "Hurlyburly" and the rabble-rousing "A Time to Kill." He's deft and delicate and always real.

Yet the parts are far less diverse than the movies they appear in.

In "Swimming With Sharks," for example, Spacey's a sarcastic executive with a killer instinct; in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" he's a sardonic millionaire who may just be a killer. In "L.A. Confidential" he's a slick detective who's misplaced his moral compass; and in "Hurlyburly" he's a sleek Hollywood player who's deliberately thrown his away. In his last Broadway triumph he was the devastated salesman of "The Iceman Cometh"; in his most recent art- house effort, he's the desperate glad-hander of "The Big Kahuna."

To a dramatist, perhaps, all these roles are distinct and diverse. To an audience, undoubtedly, all of them are wonderfully entertaining (watching Spacey coolly, verbally eviscerate some minor character was one of the prime joys of '90s movie-going).

Yet to an actor of Spacey's talents they must be tediously alike. Far too often, Spacey's films seem built around scenes of him shredding some hapless underling with razor-sharp sarcasm; too many times they've turned into filmed talk radio, with the actor briefly descending from on high to smugly put everyone else securely back in their place.    

CLASSICALLY TRAINED

The typecasting is understandable; as one of Hollywood's rare, classically trained actors, Spacey handles complicated dialogue effortlessly. (And for an idea of how difficult it can be, imagine him switching roles with any equally talented, but more typically screen-oriented co-star, like Penn in "Hurlyburly," or Russell Crowe in "L.A. Confidential"). Yet, in some ways, the endless talk seems to have become too easy for him.

The sameness is beginning to show, too. When I first saw Spacey on-screen, those furious verbal attacks burned in my memory. Yet now, what I remember most from his films are the rare, silent moments — those brief, breathless pauses when he dares to be at a loss for words.

Like the way he excruciatingly unfolds himself at the end of "The Usual Suspects." The way he sits on the bleachers and hungrily stares at the cheerleader in "American Beauty." The way, at the moment of death in "L.A. Confidential," his eyes go utterly, impossibly black.

The way, when he's at his very best, he never needs to say a thing.

Words come easily to Spacey in real life. He can be a hugely amusing talk-show performer (his dead-on impressions of Christopher Walken and William Hurt are hysterical). He has a decent singing voice, and the dinner-jacket days of "L.A. Confidential" seem to have left him with lounge-star longings (often mentioned for various Rat Pack updates, he's said that HE wants to play Bobby Darin).
       
SOMETHING NEW 

I hope he puts aside the projects that always seem to come to him first, the ones with the pages of attitude and arch dialogue and flip, hip edginess.

But as a critic — as a fan — I hope he tries something else in the films to come. Something riskier. Something new.

I hope he puts aside the projects that always seem to come to him first, the ones with the pages of attitude and arch dialogue and flip, hip edginess. I hope that for once, instead, he goes after the sort of projects that don't have an obvious "Kevin Spacey part."

Scripts about decent, simple, inarticulate guys. Scripts about guys who aren't always the brightest bulb in the room, but still struggle, and manage to muddle through and maybe even occasionally come out on top.

It wouldn't be easy, of course. To begin with, he'd probably have to steal the scripts out of Tom Hanks' mailbox. And then, of course, he'd also have to resign himself to stepping back a bit, into letting someone else get all the withering comebacks and killer exits.

But it would be a challenge — and that's precisely what a performer of Spacey's caliber needs right now. Because before too long his popularity is going to do exactly what he used to fear his publicity would — and turn this elegant, elusive actor into just another star.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/399180.asp

© 2000 Newhouse News Service   

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