Pete Hamill - Piecework

Bisset laughs when asked about the macho atmosphere of the Volcano set (“It has its moments; it has its nonmoments, too”), but seems quite happy with the experience of making the film. “I quite like things to be run in a fairly businesslike fashion, because there’s a tendency on location for people to start thinking they’re on holiday.”

By the time the film finished shooting last November, it was under its $4 million budget, and five days under its eight-week shooting schedule. “What matters,” Fitzgerald says, “is that we’ve made a film of Under the Volcano, one that some people said could never be made.”

Certainly, a major share of the credit, if the film works, must go to Finney. On one of the last days of shooting, the actor talked about the process that goes into the making of such a performance. “In the beginning, I’m obsessed,” he said. “Getting up at three in the morning, lines buzzing in my head, I’d sit with the script, just think about it. Now, of course, I’m not so obsessed. No, I don’t make notes, don’t write anything down. I just try to remember, to understand what’s going through the character’s mind. Of course, sometimes those thoughts are not going through your mind while you shoot, but I believe that they’re there, that they’re part of the hoped-for density, or the life effect. I don’t make a claim that there is one; but if there is any, they’re there.”

Does he draw on the experiences of his own life to fill out a character like the Consul? “Well, yes. But I’ve never gone this far, as far as the Consul goes, and I don’t think I ever will. There are times in one’s life where one is scratched or kicked, or maybe there was a strange accident of responsibility, because you’re supposed to be good at something and, therefore, you have to deliver. And you want to say, ‘Ah, fuck it, I’ll decide whether I’ll deliver; that’s up to me, not to some sense of responsibility.’ As the Consul does. Therefore, we use those occasions when one’s felt that. But what one needs here is a much deeper, á much more painful extension of that. The Consul goes all the way. So far, I’ve not. I’m still walking about. I’ve not actually thrown the reins away.”

To illustrate what he meant, he talked about acting in Shoot the Moon. “If you are doing a part which is about the breakup of a marriage, about the pain of a relationship coming to an end, a good relationship, a love coming to an end, then constantly you are tinkering subconsciously with your own past. And the memory’s a remarkable thing. I mean you do actually, if you concentrate hard enough, you do remember, you do go back. You don’t only remember the locations, you don’t just remember the apartment you stormed out of with your few belongings. But a capsule opens, and I’m flooded with the emotions I felt at that time. The memory stores those emotions; not just pictures of ít; not just facts or figures; it actually does store the emotions. Therefore, doing a picture like Shoot the Moon is very depressing, because you’re constantly in that area that you can’t help but be.”

Finney said it isn’t simply a matter of using one’s life; certainly for younger actors, there isn’t enough life to draw on, not enough memories. “Imagination does come into play. And possibility. ‘If only I had. …’ ‘And what if. …?’ There’s more in the vault than one thinks, isn’t there? The big problem as you get older is to retain the lack of self-consciousness, to retain a kind of child in your work, to be open. One of the things I love about John is that it’s your own total responsibility. John just says, ‘Well, show me.’ John thinks if he’s cast it right, if the actor’s got some degree of talent, he doesn’t need to direct him. He doesn’t direct. He won’t direct. In other words, he doesn’t direct a lot — seemingly. If you say to John before a scene, ‘Would it be a good idea if…,’ he’ll say, ‘Show me.’ He doesn’t say, ‘That’s quite interesting, but, on the other hand…’ he says, ‘Show me.’ And then you show him, and he says, ‘Well, maybe.’ So John likes to see you offer something. And then he will cajole it, nudge it, bully it, or just say, ’A little less oil and vinegar — a little more lemon.’ Or he may say nothing. If you don’t know John, you may say, ‘Well, he isn’t giving me any direction.’ But when you get to know him a bit, you know that when he doesn’t say anything, he’s happy.”

Finney, of course, has had extensive theater experience and is clear about the differences between the two forms. “The most elusive thing about film acting is that when they say go, or when they say action, you’ve got to be in the state of mind to do it. You’ve been sitting around for two hours, while they are tinkering around with this, that, and the other thing, and then someone will say, ’OK, we’re ready; we don’t want to lose the light.’ And I think you must be ready. I suppose that’s theater training: when the curtain goes up at seven-thirty, it’s no good saying you’ll be ready at ten … I prefer that we do it on take one; we don’t have to keep flogging ourselves. But I also think the operator, the film puller, the sound man, the camera man should be ready, too. That doesn’t always happen.

“Therefore, in movies, an actor has to spend most of the day sort of being on simmer. Obviously, when it’s lunchtime, you get away from it; but sometimes I like to think about it, just brood over it, sit in a chair and look down into the barranca and fret. If I think it’s going to be useful …On some days it might be useful to just go and play catch ball with the boys. Sometimes you wake up in the morning, and you think you’ve got a feeling, a little feeling, you’re ready for the day’s work, and you want to nurse this feeling and use it. And then about twelve-thirty or something, you look for it, and say, ‘Where’s that feeling? Where did it go? It’s gone. Gone.’ That’s the intangible thing about film. You can stay so long on simmer that you evaporate.”

At the end of Under the Volcano, Finney utters the Consul’s dying words: “Christ, what a dingy way to die.” And yet the scene is not dingy; it is genuinely tragic. Through the power of Finney’s performance, we’ve seen the Consul revealed as a remarkable man, which transforms his stupid, dingy death into something of enormous artistic value. One reason is that Finney has infused the part with so many complicated feelings.

“I suppose what I might do better than anything else is somehow record feeling,” Finney said one Sunday afternoon. “If I was a painter, I’d record light and shade and color. But I record feeling, and so I think about feeling a lot. And then channel it into a role where I think it might be useful. That’s part of what acting’s all about, I think. One uses anything. And, yes, one is ruthless. Because there is no one way of going down the road, is there? There can’t be. There’re too many things, too much of a variety, too many possibilities for there to be one correct way. And if that’s how one does it, well, that’s what one does. I’ve not caused anyone’s death. I’ve not pressed any buttons or triggers in my life. Do you know what I mean? I might have been ruthless in my later use of emotions, and people’s pain. But no lives have been lost.”

Finney paused. Through the windows of his suite, we could see tennis players and old men cleaning lawns and a bus taking tourists on the mandatory ride to the pyramids or the volcanoes. “At its best, acting hopefully does help to ameliorate human behavior,” he said. “At its simplest, it’s often just maudlin. Some jobs you think — Well, it’s a bit like that. But at its best, when you get something that is really demanding and you have a go, it’s very honorable work. It’s also telling a story. But at its best, I think that somehow a recognition of ourselves might come about. In this film, we might know the Consul. We might know ourselves.” Finney smiled. “At least one likes to think so.”