5753;:
days in January and I started Stakeout on February lst. NUTS features a character who is never meant to be sexy or attractive, never meant to be anything but tired and cynical and, in a sense, an idealist. Working with Barbra and Marty Ritt is a very specific kind of experience. Everyone on that film was very tough, very strong-minded, very wilful and it was a lot of fun but very confrontational. It was a character that I just had to play and Barbra always wanted me for the part. Even when she wanted Dustin Hoffman.
FEATURE LIST
she still wanted me. Stakeout was great because everybody jumped in
and made this movie together. The
Fish factory fight
script was about 60—70% there,
every actor was allowed to offer ideas or alternatives and a lot of it was exciting for me. I had a lot of fun doing all the things which might seem very little, tiny things like how do you run down a flight of stairs holding a gun in your hand and not look silly.‘
{(44/Kr/(41/"Z'4’III/I / fly/g/A /.
In the original Stakeout Dreyfuss was to have played the less demanding role of the younger sidekick now portrayed by Emilio Estevez. ‘I was going to be the younger cop and they were going to find someone like Gene Hackman to be the old cop but someone at Disney Studios got the idea that that had been seen a thousand times so we moved down a generation.’
The role calls upon Dreyfuss to participate in a number of action sequences, including a prolonged and unsavoury fight in a fish factory.
‘Everyone was so shocked that I would be willing to do it and I enjoyed shocking their sensibilities and also I have one advantage in that I have a very impaired sense of smell. So, I was not as uncomfortable as most of the people around me. I would love to do this kind of role again but I’m pretty sure that Harrison Ford's whip and hat are safe. Generally, you’ll never see attached to my name the phrase — he did his own stunts.’
Dreyfuss has enjoyed a fair share of good fortune throughout his twenty-year career but how to handle it has been a consistent problem. The Goodbye Girl came his way when Robert De Niro left the project and Jaws was a monster hit that no one could have predicted. The week the film opened in America he received 122 offers of employment. ‘AfterJaws I could piss in a pot and they’d pay me something,’ he complained at the time. ‘Life will never be simple again. It‘s all big deals and packaging. The venality rises in proportion to my fame and I suffer more and more complex lies.’
Ten years and one rehabilitation later, he is a changed man less career orientated and more willing to take life as it comes. last year he directed a television special on the American constitution, he will next be seen on
screen in the comedy Moon Over Parador and the future is brimming
with personal and professional
122 job offers plans. Second time around, life is very sweet indeed. ‘You know the film A Double Life? A Double Life is the story of an actor who when he’s in a comedy is just wonderful to live with and when he’s in Othello he goes into a jealous rage and kills someone. It‘s a classic actor’s syndrome and when I was a different Richard I used to tell everyone I had that syndrome because it was so dark and romantic. I always used to think that I was Oscar Wilde’s pal, drinking absinthe in some Victorian seaport bar, dying at the age of 26. Thank God that’s over. I used to be fascinated with every frame of my
Brimming Future
work but I’m not anymore. I’m not
so obsessed by it all, not so obsessed by the career. It’s fun and I enjoy it tremendously but I’ve slowed down and forced myself to keep my hands off my life. I’m in love with my family, I love my work and I get paid an enormous amount of money to do it.’
Stakeout opens at the Odeons in Edinburgh and Glasgow on 4 March. NUTS continues at the Cannons in Edinburgh and Glasgow. See Film Listings for Details.
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The List 4 — 17 March 1988 7