PREMIERE April 1990

Back in the USSR

Starring in ‘The Hunt for Red October’ and ‘The Russia House’ has made Sean Connery Hollywood’s leading Kremlinologist

By Robert Scheer

Q: I just finished reading The Russia House and The Hunt for Red October.  There’s an enormous difference between the two.  Red October is a cold-war story, but the cold war is over.  Do you think it is out-of-date?

A: No. When I first received the Red October script, the front page was missing from it, the preface, which was the introduction to the setting and the time of the piece--pre-Gorbachev. It's important that even though this is a fictitious figure-this captain of the submarine who's capable of making major decisions-that there are [real] people like him who, as Gorbachev hopefully retains power, will emerge who are very able.

            Because Red October is pre-Gorbachev, it presents the best kind of example of a truly offensive weapon, designed for attack, not defense [as the Soviets often claimed]: a submarine.

Q: Takes out 200 cities.

A: When you see the statistics of the submarines-these are six, seven stories high and 500 feet long, and they have twenty nuclear warheads on board-that's like an apartment building going underwater. And I think actually that's one of the problems in shooting these special effects underwater-to make you aware of the scale of these enormous projectiles.

Q: Is there a future for the spy movie in a new, more complex world where you don't have a simple enemy?

A: I think that Red October does fall into that category, because it's the human elements that make the story: the revelations of the different characters in similar circumstances-the American-run ship, the Russian-run ship, and the kinds of differences between them. In the end, it gets down to the kinds of decisions they make, and it touches on aspects of the American and the Russian mentality.

Q: Wasn't Tom Clancy, who wrote the book on which the movie is based, an advertising executive?

A: No, insurance. But he has a side of him that is able to deal with missile drills and strategies. He has the kind of brain that can juggle armaments, and because he's totally absorbed and fascinated by it, he remembers every detail, he can relate any- thing about any caliber of gun, what its characteristics are, range, trajectory-I mean, stuff that's mind-boggling to me because I'm not that interested in it. And now, if I'm not mistaken, I think he's involved at the Pentagon, advising the military. He obviously got a lot of stuff from the Pentagon-you can get information, if you need it, by just asking, even though it seems to be bordering on the secret. You certainly couldn't get it in Britain that way, or any other country, I should think. But somehow in America, you can.

Q: He undoubtedly loves it. The question I'm raising is whether Clancy's world is not an old world now.

A: A lot of Clancy's positions are black-and-white. I doubt if he's ever been in Russia. He's a certain type of American.

Q: He's a type of character that you've portrayed, favorably.

A: Who, me? Oh, in the James Bond pictures, you mean. Yeah, well, I don't think Bond is particularly American.

Q: You were in the Soviet Union for five weeks, I gather, filming The Russia House. What was it like?

A: We were in Moscow and Leningrad. But I'd been there before. I did the first picture the Russians opened for coproduction with the Italians. Funnily enough, it was a Paramount film, like Red October. It was called The Red Tent, and it used a Russian director. And 25 years later, a lot is exactly the same, and a lot has just changed so much you can't believe it.

Q: Tell me about the changes.

A: Well, when I was there before, I was very aware of the fear element. Every day, they changed my driver, so I would never know who my driver was. We'd drive to Mosfilm-it was bigger than all the American film studios put together-and they made you go through this ritual every day of checking who you were, like it was a Swiss bank or something. And the interpreters were all invariably KGB.

            You had no knowledge of how anything worked. There was no sense of time or program. No urgency about anything in filming the production. Took forever to light and shoot. They just had a whole different concept of time, in fact, and it was reflected in the movie, which ran four hours something in Russia and two hours in America when Paramount bought it. And everybody seemed to have something to say about how the film should be made, in the worst kind of way, and yet it got made, and it was a huge success because it was the first time Russia had made a picture with any other country. A big internal success. Never a success anywhere else.

Q: That was around '65, when Brezhnev was there?

A: Yep. And they had, in the center of the roads, a fast lane going one way and a fast lane going the other way that were yellow, and nobody used them unless they had a black car, because only the government had black cars. The top guys. And that was never questioned. You got the impression that everything was like some rather sinister, well-oiled machine.

            And the difference this time was, one knows something about what's behind it and how incompetent it is and how the whole infrastructure is really geared to the military and to state police rituals and bureaucracy-that artisans don't even know how to hang a door. There's no sense of apprenticeship. And they are totally indifferent to standards. Nobody knows, because nobody cares. You can see that it's rotten. The general level of health is pretty pathetic. Teeth bad. Skin not great. Soap rubbish. It's like wartime Britain. Long queues. And they are outspoken to an extreme in criticizing Gorbachev; they don't seem to be conscious of how big a leap they've taken compared to when I was there before.

Q: Did they know who you are?

A: Yes, quite a lot of people knew. When I went there before, nobody knew except people who were associated with the embassy-they had 16mm prints of the Bond films, whereas out on the streets, they wouldn't know you from a bag of beans. It was like getting into an elevator with three people, and nobody looks at anybody, and it's quite surly. Of course, it's based on fear.

Q: It's like New York.

A: I'm talking about a different kind of thing. I mean, for example, if you're coming along a corridor-this frequently happened-and you see somebody coming toward you, they don't think anything of not recognizing you at all. They don't make the overture.

Q: In the Bond movies you played the representative of the British Empire, what was left of it. And yet they're better off without their empire. That's what the Soviets are learning: get rid of all these places all over the world.

A: Well, that's what the guy who wrote that book about the empires- The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers-Paul Kennedy, said; he shows how you can't maintain them. It's like Hitler's idea of going into Russia. When you see Russia, you realize, how was he ever going to have Russia and have the rest of Europe? How can you run all that? The Romans, everybody, found the same problem, eh? But they keep repeating it.

Q: So James Bond was following a vision of power that has turned out to be incorrect in the world.

A: Well, I don't think that Bond was related to the empire-building. I think he was a bit too much of a hedonist for that.

Q: Nowadays, people expect actors to be just like their roles-these exalted beings. I think when the Beatles were recognized by the queen, something happened, we passed some threshold. There's a certain expectation. Was this a surprise for you? Did you get into this thinking this was just a way to make a living?

A: Oh, well, I didn't have a lot of alternatives. I had no qualifications. I started work when I was nine, and I left school at thirteen. I went into the navy when I was sixteen. That was in 1946, in Scotland. I came out when I was nineteen with ulcers. There was no one knocking down doors with offers; all the guys were coming back from the war, and we had rationing for the next ten years. The place was a joke. So my chances of anything were pretty remote.

Q: So how did you pick this career?

A: Well, through a series of different adventures, happenings, accidents....I went back to driving a horse and cart. Then, because I was a disabled ex-serviceman and was allowed a training program, I wanted to be a furniture polisher-tables and coffins and, you know.  Then I took up bodybuilding, weight lifting. At twenty, I became a professional soccer player. There was no money in that, so I got a job at the Edinburgh Evening News. And during this period, I was still working on the weights; bodybuilding.

Q: What did you do for the Evening News?

A: I worked in the machine room. I melted down lead every day and did the plates.

            Then I came to London for the Mr. Universe contest. I was representing Scotland in the tall-man's class. When I was there, I heard about these auditions for South Pacific. So I went over and auditioned. Did handsprings. I was accepted. Eventually, I gave up my job and went back to London, rehearsed, opened, and played for three months at Drury Lane, and then I toured for a year. I played in the chorus and understudied one of the leads.

            What changed everything was that we had nine weeks in Manchester, and the Manchester United Soccer team offered me professional terms. And it was good money for me, suddenly. One day, the American in the play, named Robert Henderson, said to me, "Is this what you really want to do? Don't you want to be an actor?" And I said, "Well, what do you mean? What would I do as an actor?" It didn't worry me being on the stage; I didn't have any problems, you know, doing all that I had to do, singing, dancing, and all that, but I said, "I'd rather play soccer." And he said, "Well, if you were to take on more understudy work and seriously consider broadening your horizons and, certainly, your intelligence, which could stand it, you could become an interesting actor." He was a director, too, and he had a drama school in London. So I thought about it. And he said, "If you're 22 now, and you go play soccer, it'll take you a year or two to get onto that team, and if you don't make it, that's it, it's all over, arid then what are you going to do? As an actor, you could go on forever."

            So I thought about that, and I decided I liked acting and liked his idea, and so I signed a contract to do another year on the tour of South Pacific. He said he would help me. He gave me a list of all these books I should read. I spent a year in every library in Britain and Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. I used to do a bit of soccer wherever we played, and then I spent my days at the library and the evenings at the theater.

            Henderson gave me the basic books-all of Shakespeare; An Actor Prepares, My Life in Art, by Stanislavsky. All of Thomas Wolfe's work- you know, The Web and the Rock; Look Homeward, Angel; You Can't Go Home Again. Jean-Christophe, by Romain Rolland, Proust-Remembrance of Things Past. All of Wilde and all of Shaw. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which I never read because when I branched off from his books, I picked up a book by someone called Aldington who proved that T. E. Lawrence couldn't possibly have done all the things he claimed to have done in Seven Pillars, so I never read it. Oh, and the other two I read were Finnegans Wake and Ulysses. And all of Ibsen's plays.

           When I toured, I'd go to see all the plays I could in the matinees while we weren't working, in towns like Birmingham, Manchester, and whatever. And I met the actors, you know? I was so impressed by them all. I thought they were all so intelligent, so smart. And they all seemed so knowledgeable. Doing all this reading and seeing all these plays, I had to have a dictionary, because all the words were new. But it made me aware of a whole different avenue of understanding and a whole different avenue of what words were about. I would find out what the play was, then I would read it, then go and see it. And I did that for the year.

            That's what opened me to a whole different look at things. It didn't give me any more intellectual qualifications, but it gave me a terrific sense of the importance of a lot of things I certainly would never have gotten in touch with. When I was young, I'd had an appetite for reading, which I lost, because once I started to go to work, I didn't seem to have any time to do anything like that. I mean, we lost schooling. The war started in '39. I was nine, and I started to work then. By 1940, nobody was going to school. Nobody was keeping a register, so there was no checking. We just dodged it.

Q: What happened after South Pacific?

A: I did plays. For five years, I was in the plays in Oxford and Cambridge and 'the Players Theatre in London. I did three plays for Robert Henderson out in Richmond. I'd bought a tape recorder-in those days, it was not something tiny, it was a box this big, a Grundig-to work with reading. Then I started doing experimental theater. Giraudoux, like that.

Q: You still support these kinds of groups now, don't you?

A: Yeah.

Q: They're in trouble because of Thatcher's cuts?

A: Yeah. The National Youth Theatre was going to close. It was quite extraordinary. I was in Rome doing The Name of the Rose, and I had this marvelous old-fashioned dressing room, which was Fellini's. One day, the bath overflowed when I was on the telephone, so I had to lift up the thing, and then under the linoleum there was a newspaper. Somebody must have put it there the week before, because somebody had obviously flooded it the week before. It didn't have one of these overflow things, so the water just came over the top. And there was an article in The Sunday Times talking about the National Youth Theatre. I had met the guy who runs it when I was first in London, and I always remembered him as kind of tubby, a little bit like Dylan Thomas, with the curly hair and round eyes. He was mad about the theater. He had started this National Youth Theatre, which had been going all these years. It was always failing, but he always got by, and then suddenly he realized he was going to go under. He needed 50 grand. Fifty thousand pounds.

            So I looked at the date on the paper, and already it was ten days, twelve days in the past. So I phoned him up, and I got the office, and we talked. I said, Christ, I hadn't seen him from that day to; this, and finally I said, "Is it true what I read in the paper?" And he said, "Yeah, but that was a couple of weeks ago." "Oh," I said, "then you've gone under." He said, "No, but the bailiffs are coming to take the thing on Wednesday." So I said, "I'll have to clear it, but I'll give you your 50,000." And he said, "Oh, Christ, that's terrific. We must make an announcement.’” I said, “I don’t want to make any announcements, but you've got it; I'll telex you with confirmation so that you can act on it."

            Then he called me right back, and he said, "You know, it's terrific, but you spoil it completely if you don't let me make an announcement, because I will not be able to embarrass anybody else into giving us more money, because that money will only just save this production we're supposed to do at-" I said okay. So he phoned up a critic from The Sunday Times.

            Brian Glanville came and did an interview eventually, when it was all resolved, but the irony was that the day after I gave him the money, he died, this guy. I had come back to go up to this club, invited by Joan Bakewell, who does an arts program, where the young actors were. They come from all over Britain; they are Asian, Hispanics, black, everything. It's quite interesting. And suddenly this little guy came up to me. It was him, the man I remembered from the National Youth Theatre. The next day, boff; he died.

            Bryan Forbes is on the committee for the theater. So is John Gielgud. I never go or anything, because I'm never there when they're doing all their meetings. But it's extraordinary that something like that doesn't get supported in Britain.

Q: You're critical of the Thatcher government for cutting back those funds?

A: I think she started really well. I think that she identified a lot of things that had to be done. She's got more chutzpah and balls than any man that preceded her. But I think that she's reached a crisis now. She's gone a little-not a little, but a long way-too far, too extreme, too removed from what is really happening there.

Q: To change gears and move from Britain to the United States, who has the power in Hollywood today?

A: Well, it's like everything else; it's evolutionary, although it's always been them and us, as it were. There was a time when you had points and profits, until along came cosmetic book-keeping, so that you can have a financially successful film and there are no profits. You should look at the case of Paramount and Art Buchwald. Because what it's going to reveal, really, is where the industry has taken itself. People like Eddie Murphy, who gets a very high salary [and gross points], can be in a film like Coming to America that can make $345 million or something, and there's no profit. Buchwald is going to have to find a battalion of auditors to be able to go back over that picture. So that, in essence, is what has happened.

            There have been changes before. For example, there were producers, and now there are director-producers, because they want the control. There are actors who want more money than a picture can carry. All it does is make the budgets bigger. I think that here one of the problems is also that the executives who are involved in the making of pictures are farther and farther removed from the reality of producing films. Therefore they have to rely on information that is gathered or presented to them, so that going in they know they have to have this amount above the line, this amount below the line, and now they say you cannot make a movie for less than $20 million. Well, there's something wrong.

            One of the big changes occurred when at one time-I think Reagan was in-there was something like 20 percent interest on the dollar. If there was $10 million or $15 million in a picture, they couldn't afford to delay it until they got it right or had the right climate for the release. The money was too expensive. So they would try to get it out as wide as possible--2,000 prints of one movie, which is quite astronomical. An enormous outlay, a blanket release. If the film is half successful, you get your money back immediately. But more important, if you get a clue you're not going to get your money back, you'll just close the books and go to the next thing.

Q: The big stars act as if they have less power than they used to have. Is that your feeling? Would you go to a studio and say, "I've seen this script, I like it, I think this guy would be a great director, give me $23 million"?

A: Well, with Paramount, I think if I found something I was really enthusiastic about and took it to Frank Mancuso and Sid Ganis-assumming, of course, that they would be convinced by my argument-it would go. But then, partly because of the relationship I have with them, they know that I'm not going to come in and bullshit them, which is what happens all the time in this town. People have found the Dead Sea Scrolls in a locker at UCLA.

            I have enough power in terms of casting approval and director approval. But I don't think it's something someone can brandish like a sword. I sense myself as much more a responsible filmmaker in terms of what's good for the overall picture, and for the actors as well, because I have had all this experience, and I've seen a lot of waste.

            Fewer and fewer people are emerging as "just" producers, in the sense that they have the strength to stand up to the top directors. But I think, in my book, it's almost impossible to be a director-producer. Half the guys I know in L.A. are going to shoot me down in flames, but I think with the best will in the world it is a conflict, and it puts such stress and pressure on somebody-like Hugh Hudson when he was doing Tarzan out in the Cameroons-to be involved with the production side as well as the directorial side; it's a monumental strain.

            I can honestly say I never had any real beefs. I've had a couple of producers who were absolute assholes. And had to deal with it, you know. But what I like is a good, harmonious, hardworking, professional crew. That's the best possible environment to work in and the most pleasurable. Also, it gives you the possibility of knowing if you're succeeding at what you're doing. I'm not talking about the success of the picture-that's something I always try to keep clear from the making of the picture. I think they're two separate issues that are always being confused-that is, what I see, read, and want to make, and then discover that the public doesn't want to see or doesn't like. I'm interested in A first and then hopefully will assist in succeeding with B. But at the end of the day, I know when I see the rushes if the picture has succeeded.

            For example, on the level of the script and what we had, Red October succeeded. The only point where I would have any reservations yet is stuff I haven't seen, which is these special effects they are making-very difficult and a real problem area in every movie, because no one seems to get it right, the way they want. The price is never the same, and the time is never the same.

            And by the same token, you see a film where you think, "It didn't come out like we wanted, no matter how hard we worked," which is unfortunate. I'll give you an example: Family Business, this film of mine that's just come out-I like the film. I think we succeeded in what we were trying to do, apart from the end. I have some differences with Sidney Lumet about how he resolved the end. But the film was a disaster. And it's very hard to know why, because, you know, I mean, it had a very good cast.

Q: A financial disaster.

A: At the moment, it's not successful here. Everybody says, "It was timing, it was Christmas," it was all the rest of it. Well, that's the beef factor. It's very difficult to explain, because the film is fantastically popular in France and in Spain. I'm just talking about in America. But it's an American setting and an American story. I've done five pictures with Sidney; he's the type of director I really like to work with because he's very fast, professional, no-nonsense, and we get on with it, and it's hard work, but rewarding. And needless to say, he gets depressed about that result. I like the script, I like the characters that are in it. I think they're marvelous actors, and I thought it all worked. The detail I'm talking about is nit-picking. But the picture hasn't had anything like even a curiosity success-you know, a measure of, "Well, let's go and see it because…"

Q: Is that devastating?

A: No, it's just what I was saying to Sidney: you would go around the bend trying to resurrect it and do more work on it. All you can do is reexamine if you have made…for example, I did a film, Outland, with Peter Hyams. It got a terrific response when we showed it to some kids in New York at one of these preview things. What we were not aware of until after the film came out was that the final act was equivalent to High Noon in space, really. The fight at the end took place in space, and therefore it was very slow, like underwater stuff, and the real villain of the piece, Peter Boyle, was resolved by one punch. And that was bad, because the film had a marvelous climax in the very middle of it that should have been topped at the end, or else not have been as climactic as it was, so that you would have had somewhere to go at the end. But we didn't see that. That was a lesson, and I wasn't even aware of it. I never saw it.