Episode 621 - Ian McKellen
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what-the-fuckers?
Marc:What-the-fuck buddies?
Marc:What-the-fuckineers?
Marc:What-the-fucksters?
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's all of them.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:This is Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF, my podcast.
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Marc:on your computer taking a break from washing the thing how how are you doing there in your cubicle at work is this funny to you is this look around look around you're the only you know fuck those people look around yeah fuck all of them right right am i right
Marc:Yeah, that's right.
Marc:Are you smiling now?
Marc:Are you smiling?
Marc:Oh, be cool.
Marc:Be cool.
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Marc:I did a lot of work.
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Marc:So so maybe there's some there.
Marc:So.
Marc:Sir Ian McKellen is on, and I was excited and nervous about this.
Marc:Today, he's also on the Nerdist.
Marc:He's promoting Mr. Holmes, and sometimes we get our guests while they're running around doing the promotional thing.
Marc:I just got a text from Chris.
Marc:Where is it?
Marc:Hey, I just heard this is Chris Hardwick on my phone in a little talkie balloon.
Marc:I love the idea of cross promoting.
Marc:So I'm happy to tell tells folks.
Marc:It says tells in our intro to jump over to WTF for some sweet double Ian McKellen podcast action.
Marc:And I will tell you the same then.
Marc:Because this is the weird thing about podcasting is that I think we all have different styles.
Marc:Maybe you want to take this opportunity today to enjoy the different styles that Chris and I have and also to enjoy Sir Ian McKellen in two different formats.
Marc:Now I'm going to have to listen.
Marc:I'm going to have to listen to the Nerdist to see how it went over there.
Marc:I don't do that.
Marc:Got nothing against Chris.
Marc:I just don't have time.
Marc:I'm too busy listening to stacks and stacks of records.
Marc:That's my second job.
Marc:Oh, and I signed 1,000 books.
Marc:Not complaining, but it was a work day today.
Marc:A lot of manual labor with the Sharpies.
Marc:Hey, can I reach out to Sharpie and say, how about making a fucking pen that doesn't dry out if you've left the cover off for 12 seconds?
Marc:how about one of those do you have one of those i know you make a retractable sometimes that those are okay if you retract it and i know that's on me but let's talk about the cap thing seriously if i if i got a sharpie and i'm using it and a cap and a cap and i set it down for 15 seconds perhaps to get another thing that i'm about to write on it's it's it's fucked it's gone am i missing a trick what's happening
Marc:This is like an anti-ad for Sharpie.
Marc:So, yeah, I was excited and a bit nervous to talk to Sir Ian McKellen because, I mean, I've seen enough of his work to know who he is, but I also know he's a Shakespearean actor.
Marc:And as some of you know, my experience with Shakespeare has not been great.
Marc:OK, I don't I don't always understand Shakespeare.
Marc:I think that's that's the wrong way to put it.
Marc:I don't take the time to wrap my brain around the language in order to understand Shakespeare.
Marc:And I'm going to talk to Ian McKellen, Sir Ian McKellen, about Shakespeare.
Marc:I think that's reasonable and I hope you enjoy that.
Marc:I don't you know, I I'm starting to think that one of the reasons cats have a somewhat detached or or mysterious or even nasty disposition is do you ever really consider the amount of times you wake your cat up from a nap?
Marc:Could you imagine if someone did that to you?
Marc:Like as soon as you get like you're a half hour into a good nap and someone just comes over and starts rubbing your head.
Marc:Yeah, I think we underestimate the rage inside a cat just from that, just from the fact that we wake them up from naps almost constantly.
Marc:Let's talk now.
Marc:This is my conversation.
Marc:Um...
Marc:With Sir Ian McKellen.
Marc:His movie, Mr. Holmes, is out now.
Marc:And that is a Sherlock Holmes movie, although not the exact Sherlock Holmes you know.
Marc:And see how you enjoy my conversation with Sir Ian McKellen.
Marc:And feel free to compare it with Chris's.
Marc:Hardwick's, that is.
Marc:This is a big day.
Marc:This doesn't happen too often.
Marc:And it's never happened where we both have the same guests.
Marc:So I'm going to go and listen to his.
Marc:All right, here's me and Sir Ian McKellen.
Marc:The President of the United States was here three weeks ago.
Marc:That's his cup.
Marc:He left his cup.
Marc:He sat right where you're sitting.
Marc:Fantastic.
Marc:It was amazing.
Marc:He came to my house.
Guest:Was he excited that he knew I was coming?
Marc:Yeah, I told him.
Marc:That's the only reason that he decided to do the show.
Marc:He was on the fence initially.
Marc:So how do people refer to you?
Marc:Sir Ian?
Guest:No, Ian will do.
Marc:You want to wear headphones or no?
Marc:You want to just pull the mic closer to your face?
Marc:You know, like doing a voiceover.
Marc:Perfect.
Marc:Beautiful.
Marc:And what did you talk to him about?
Marc:I talked to him about, we ended up talking about race, about weapons, about his life as president, you know, how he handles it, his wife, his children a bit.
Guest:It was a tight hour.
Guest:Do you think you got something out of him that other people didn't?
Marc:Well, I got to have a one-on-one conversation with him in this intimate setting, which I think tonally sounded different than anything he had done previous.
Guest:And what was his motive, I suppose, for
Marc:I think it was to sort of reintroduce himself on some level to the American people.
Marc:I think here in this country, people become detached.
Marc:The president sort of fades into the background eventually.
Marc:And I think that he is seen as a lame duck at this point.
Marc:And I think he thought that by using this show, he could sort of connect to people that may have become a bit apolitical.
Marc:I see.
Marc:And show a different side of himself.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I think it worked.
Guest:Good.
Guest:And did you have a sense of who's...
Marc:downloading you listening sure they're presumably getting in contact with you uh well you know it's my audience tends to be uh sensitive slightly aggravated people you know usually intelligent uh of all ages i don't think i have a demographic i think it's more of a disposition that seems to uh to arc from 13 to 80.
Marc:uh but uh you know good people generally speaking yeah and i need to uh i i need to ask you about uh some things that you because you know i i'm not uh dumb but uh i have not uh i'm just one of these people i have this conversation before are we on now sure okay sure uh so i i that's what the other guy did we started talking i was saying a few things i said hang about
Guest:It's being recorded.
Guest:Oh, sure.
Marc:Well, yeah, that's right.
Marc:I wanted, for the record, you to know that Chris Hardwick, the other guy, stole that from me.
Marc:As long as I can touch the President's Cup.
Marc:I'll let you do that.
Marc:But I imagine you covered The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings fairly thoroughly.
Guest:Well, that's all rather old news.
Guest:However, I mean...
Guest:The fascinating thing is that although I haven't been to Middle Earth, as it were, for a long time now, those movies are still current because, of course, people watch movies at home all the time.
Marc:They will be forever current with a certain part of the population.
Guest:Yes, I know.
Guest:And it's a bewilderment to me.
Guest:Is it?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Oh, you know, you do a job and there we are.
Guest:You made a film.
Guest:But, oh, 15 years later, someone comes up to you.
Guest:I've just seen your movie.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And you're usually quite a young person.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, that's very gratifying.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We only act to get a reaction from an audience.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So when you get the reaction, it's so precious.
Marc:Yeah, even if it comes years later.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Well, there's no more late to the party.
Marc:The party's ongoing, and you can come in whenever you want as if it started.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:But my question is, knowing your history, is that...
Marc:I need somebody to make me want to understand Shakespeare, and I don't know if you can do that.
Guest:Well, that's what I've spent a lot of my life trying to do, because Shakespeare means a great deal to me and my colleagues, and we know that...
Guest:Your life's going to be enhanced by being familiar with those amazing stories and amazing language.
Guest:So I had a show called Acting Shakespeare, and I talked about Shakespeare, and the Shakespeare I was talking about was the acting Shakespeare, the...
Guest:Shakespeare, who often gives his characters at some moment of stress in their lives, they express that with a metaphor which is to do with acting.
Guest:All the world's a stage.
Guest:All the men and women merely players.
Guest:They have their exits and their entrances.
Guest:And I think one of Shakespeare's messages is, if you understand that about human beings, that we are all actors,
Guest:It'll illuminate your life.
Guest:And, well, what does that mean?
Guest:Well, when you get up in the morning, you decide what costume you're going to wear.
Guest:No, absolutely.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Now, you're quite relaxed here.
Marc:Yeah, as are you, I will add.
Guest:To reassure your listeners that you are fully clothed but relaxed.
Guest:You are a knight with a hoodie.
Guest:Correct, and a T-shirt.
Guest:But, of course, you dress here in this part of the world because of the weather.
Guest:But...
Guest:If you and I were going out this evening to some event, we would change our costume.
Guest:And clothes expresses a part of our nature.
Guest:Animals don't do that.
Guest:Animals always stay the same.
Guest:They don't need clothes.
Guest:They don't wear clothes.
Guest:They don't understand clothes.
Guest:They don't understand...
Guest:Presentation of themselves.
Guest:And what's more, we not only change our costumes, but we change our language, too.
Guest:I remember at school, I had a different accent at school.
Guest:It was a broader, northern Lancashire accent in the north of England.
Guest:But that was natural to you, though?
Guest:It was something like this.
Guest:It was quite broad.
Guest:When you were a kid.
Guest:Yeah, I can pick up the difference.
Guest:Yeah, sure, of course.
Guest:But at home, where my parents didn't speak with so strong an accent, I changed my voice.
Guest:And I'm capable of doing that because I'm a human being, because I'm an actor.
Guest:And you adapt.
Guest:We're all actors.
Guest:And we love pretense, and we love using our imagination, and we love just showing a different side of our personality in different situations.
Guest:A dog is always a dog.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And that's why dogs are so funny.
Marc:yeah because they get into situations where um it's not appropriate for dogs and and we laugh right and they change emotionally they can be needy or mean or i mean they're playing one part that's right that's the point there's a slight emotional range in the way they look and and probably they've only got one bark yeah but a couple different sounds but what when you were younger when you where'd you grow up exactly
Guest:In the north of England, in the industrial north, in a county called Lancashire.
Guest:It's where the Beatles came from, near Liverpool.
Guest:Did you see the Beatles?
Marc:I had that.
Guest:It's the greatest review I've ever had is when I was opening in a play in Nottingham, in the north of England, and the Beatles were playing at the local cinema.
Guest:So before they were big.
Guest:And the critic.
Guest:said, I was so taken with Ian McKellen's performance that it reconciled me to missing the Beatles.
Guest:Wasn't that nice?
Guest:I think that was before they came to America.
Marc:We should just go back to Shakespeare.
Marc:No, we are.
Guest:I just wanted to know how you came.
Guest:You're conducting this, not me.
Marc:No, no, but I mean, it's interesting to me that you grow up, and I know Shakespeare is sort of ingrained in British culture.
Guest:Well, it's possible, as I did, before I went to college at age 18, I suppose I'd seen...
Guest:Half of the 37 Shakespeare plays.
Marc:And what sparked that desire in you?
Marc:Because maybe as an American and as someone who's lazy, I can't get past the languages.
Marc:And I'm an English major.
Marc:And I somehow avoided Shakespeare because I can't follow the emotions.
Marc:I can't follow the story.
Marc:Well, that's a pity.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You perhaps didn't see very good actors doing Shakespeare.
Guest:It is difficult.
Guest:You'll have to learn how to do it.
Guest:It's as difficult in its own way as singing some Mozart.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And you're not going to get Mozart by looking at the score on the page, are you?
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And you're probably not going to get Shakespeare just by reading it for yourself.
Guest:You have to hear it out loud.
Guest:An audience, of course, audio, are listeners before their spectators.
Guest:And so if you get practiced performers of Shakespeare...
Guest:it's more likely that you will be able to understand it because they understand it.
Marc:I watched William Hurt, I think, Butcher, Richard II once.
Marc:All right.
Marc:It was a little difficult.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:If you want a good introduction to Shakespeare, it's not too late.
Guest:No, no, I know.
Guest:I'm looking forward to it.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You should get the DVD of Macbeth, one of Shakespeare's best and shortest and most popular plays.
Guest:With Olivier?
Yeah.
Guest:No, no, with Ian McKellen.
Guest:Hold on, let me write that down.
Guest:You won't be able to spell it.
Guest:And Judi Dench, a great British actress, was playing Lady Macbeth.
Guest:And it was directed by the man who at the time was running the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Guest:So this was a group of people who really cared about Shakespeare.
Guest:And we did it in a very, very small theater for 100 people.
Guest:And that adapted very easily to the television screen.
Guest:Well, we didn't have any scenery.
Guest:It was just the actors and their voices.
Guest:And my sister, who, when she was a teacher, used to play it for her little girls of 12, 13.
Guest:And she'd leave them in the room.
Guest:She'd pull the blinds down and she'd put it on the screen.
Guest:And she'd stand outside and wait for the first scream because it's a very terrifying play.
Guest:It's about magic and witches and danger and murder and blood.
Guest:And look at that because it's probably...
Guest:I'm not the only person to say this.
Guest:The most convincing screen version of Shakespeare that you can get.
Guest:There's no spectacle.
Guest:There's no scenery.
Guest:There's no weather.
Guest:It's just the voices, really.
Guest:But you can see the faces.
Guest:And I would be amazed if you had difficulty understanding it.
Guest:It's very, very simple.
Marc:I'm going to do that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm going to do it.
Marc:And it's going to start an entire new period of my life.
Marc:Well, I hope so, yes.
Marc:So, how old are you?
Marc:Do you talk about it?
Marc:How old do you?
Guest:76.
Guest:So you were born in England?
Guest:Just before the Second World War in 1939.
Marc:So it was a rough start.
Guest:Well, it's true.
Guest:The first three years of my life, I didn't sleep in a bed.
Guest:I slept on a mattress under a metal table.
Guest:In our downstairs room in case a bomb knocked the building over.
Guest:And blackout material so that the lights didn't attract any German bombers that were coming over.
Guest:Do you remember that?
Guest:Oh, clearly.
Guest:And not much to eat.
Guest:But quite healthy eating.
Guest:Rationing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But of course you don't when you're growing up know that that's not the norm.
Guest:And I was well looked after.
Guest:A lot of love in my house.
Marc:Yeah, it's interesting in retrospect to know that as an American person, we never had experienced that.
Marc:And really, England was trashed.
Marc:It was destroyed.
Marc:Parts of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Although we were living in a relatively safe part of the country, so safe that when families were evacuated,
Guest:forcibly by the government, they were told to leave their homes in dangerous places like London and Birmingham.
Guest:A family came to live with us, Mrs. Levick.
Guest:Mr. Levick was left behind, firefighting, and two kids came to live with us as well.
Guest:And I said in an interview like this, I think, on television in England quite recently,
Guest:I don't know what's happened to the Levicks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If you're watching, get in touch.
Guest:And they have done.
Guest:They did?
Guest:They have done.
Guest:The kid, the girl who's now my age, I suppose, she's living in Canada.
Guest:She's a grandmother.
Guest:Oh, that's beautiful.
Guest:Isn't that lovely?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So there were excitements in the war of a good sort.
Guest:For me, other people had their houses bombed and died, of course.
Guest:War is no fun.
Guest:It's horrible.
Guest:And how many siblings do you have?
Guest:My just one elder sister who's dead now.
Marc:Sorry.
Marc:That's all right.
Marc:And what kind of household was it?
Marc:What did your old man do?
Guest:What did your father do?
Guest:He was a civil engineer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a pacifist.
Guest:But he didn't have to register as unavailable for fighting because his job was thought to be too important because he was running the water and the energy supplies and the street lighting and the buildings in the town where we lived.
Guest:So...
Guest:He was able to serve.
Guest:Some people had to just stay at home and keep the place running.
Guest:So he got a reasonable salary, and I remember celebrating the day that he owned 1,000 pounds a year, which would be in those days probably $3,000.
Guest:But it's silly talking that way because the value of money has changed, of course.
Marc:Yeah, and that was a big day, though.
Guest:It was, yes.
Guest:I think we had tinned oranges that day.
Guest:Sounds good.
Guest:I'm not sure what it is.
Guest:Well, it's oranges in a tin.
Guest:Can of orange.
Guest:I can.
Guest:I can.
Guest:Sorry, I can.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I picked up this in your driveway.
Guest:Is that an orange?
Marc:It's a little fruit.
Marc:I think that came off a palm tree at some sort of unedible date, I believe.
Marc:Oh, there's a date in there.
Marc:Yeah, but I don't think you can eat them.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:I would have known because I like to eat, so I would have known.
Marc:I'm going to take it as a souvenir.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Did the president take a souvenir from him?
Marc:Just a happy memories, I suppose.
Marc:Very happy memories.
Marc:He calls me every day.
Marc:No, I have a beautiful hand-thrown mug I'm going to give you as well at the end if it goes well.
Marc:Good.
Marc:How are we doing so far?
Marc:Great.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:So, and your mother, did she work?
Guest:Well, no, she worked as running the house and two kids and these evacuees who were living with us, so she had to sort out... Was it a whole family?
Marc:Was it a mother and children?
Guest:And two kids, yes, but my mother cooked.
Guest:A full-time job, isn't it, running a house?
Guest:But it was in the days when, on the whole...
Guest:Women didn't work.
Guest:Our mothers didn't work.
Guest:They were doing that job.
Guest:But before that, she'd been a secretary.
Guest:And by the time, well, she died when I was 12.
Guest:So whether she would have taken up a job after that, I wonder.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you were young.
Marc:Oh, dreadful.
Marc:And your father's passed away too, huh?
Marc:Well, now he has.
Marc:Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Marc:And when did you begin to know that you wanted to act?
Marc:It's a very specific type of acting you did for a lot of years.
Guest:Well, I think my next job is going to be to try and write a memoir.
Guest:And that simple question is probably going to take up a couple of early chapters in the book.
Marc:Well, we've got about, you know, we've got maybe five, ten minutes to spare.
Guest:But simply, my sister and my parents enjoyed going to the theater, the live theater.
Guest:So you went as well as a kid.
Guest:So they took me along.
Guest:And I liked it too.
Guest:And I think I liked it more than they did.
Guest:Shakespeare?
Guest:Yeah, my sister took me to Macbeth, the play we were mentioning, when I was about eight or nine years old, an amateur production.
Guest:And another play, Twelfth Night.
Guest:Those are my first two Shakespeare.
Guest:Do you remember who was in it?
Guest:Oh, I do.
Guest:Keith Sykes.
Guest:These were amateur productions in the local community theater.
Guest:And I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to find out how it was done.
Guest:What's behind that curtain?
Guest:In those days, the curtain went up.
Guest:Look at that scenery.
Guest:But when they leave the stage, where do they go?
Guest:That's the question I wanted to answer.
Guest:And...
Guest:The way to answer it was to become an amateur actor myself, which I did at school and elsewhere.
Guest:And I got backstage, which was the real thrill to me.
Guest:Oh, that's how they do it.
Guest:When they pull that, that happens.
Marc:I see.
Marc:And then there is the tradition of Shakespeare Company is that everybody is really involved at all levels, right?
Marc:I mean, you're doing some stage work.
Marc:You're doing... Oh, I see.
Guest:Yes, yes, I suppose that's true.
Guest:And...
Guest:I mean, I'm glad I didn't become a stage manager, just dealing with the objects that are needed to help tell the story.
Guest:No, I found out that I had an aptitude for, I suppose you'd call it showing off.
Guest:I liked drawing attention to myself, but...
Guest:Not as me, but as the character I was playing is the interesting thing.
Guest:Because all the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players, I suppose.
Guest:I was just doing a fairly human activity of pretending.
Marc:But you didn't necessarily think you as a person were that compelling?
Guest:No, and I didn't think I was a very good actor either.
Guest:Although I did a lot of acting at school and then later at Cambridge University with...
Guest:like-minded scholars who intended eventually to become professionals.
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:I just enjoyed acting and didn't think I was good enough because I'd seen some very good actors on stage and I knew that I wasn't anywhere near that.
Marc:So...
Marc:Who are the guys that sort of blew you away at a young age that you would watch and be like, that is transcendent?
Marc:Like, who is the one that delivered the message of Shakespeare to you in terms of humanizing it and dramatizing it perfectly?
Guest:Peggy Ashcroft.
Guest:Now, Peggy Ashcroft was on a level with Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, Orson Welles, those sort of people who names people might still remember.
Guest:And she was the leading director.
Guest:I suppose, of her time.
Guest:And I saw her do a great deal and was riveted and overwhelmed.
Guest:Did you meet her?
Guest:I did meet her.
Guest:Oh, yes.
Guest:We became quite good friends because she was a very open, friendly person.
Guest:And I did work with her a little bit eventually.
Guest:I couldn't believe my luck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's amazing.
Guest:But not in a play ever.
Guest:On platform performances, readings and that sort of thing, yeah.
Guest:But there's a whole... It wasn't one act or it wasn't one production.
Guest:It was just the whole theater-going experience that I wanted to get by being on the stage rather than in the audience.
Guest:And how do you... You went to Cambridge...
Guest:Yeah, I read like you.
Guest:I majored in English but didn't do enough work.
Guest:I was in 21 undergraduate productions.
Guest:There wasn't a drama faculty there.
Guest:We just did this in our spare time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And when did you do formal training for acting?
Marc:I didn't.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I never have done, which is why I'm still learning.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think I judge each job still, but am I going to learn anything?
Guest:At the end of this, am I going to be better?
Guest:I mean, I hope to give the audience a good time, but I feel I'm a craftsman, you know?
Guest:I'm still trying to make that perfect table.
Guest:And there is no such thing.
Guest:So on we go.
Guest:So it's a constant...
Guest:My work is a constant interest to me because I know there's no end in sight.
Guest:I haven't found out yet how to do it.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:You really feel that.
Marc:I do.
Marc:But more than anyone, and I've never had a night in here.
Marc:Have you not?
Marc:No, the first one.
Marc:But, you know, you spent more time.
Marc:Have you spent a night in here?
Marc:No, never got that bad in the house.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Even with several troubled relationships and never got so bad.
Marc:Almost.
Marc:But you spent more time on stage than you have on television or in movies, really.
Guest:Well, I've made on average a film, either for TV or the cinema, one a year.
Guest:So that will add up to about 60 films.
Guest:You haven't seen or heard of any of them because they weren't worth it.
Guest:But every so often, luck strikes and you're in something that catches the public's imagination.
Guest:But...
Guest:I still, I suppose, if I want to define myself, think of myself as being a theatre actor.
Guest:That's where I'm most at home.
Guest:It's difficult to be at home in a studio.
Guest:There's so much going on.
Guest:There's so many people.
Guest:Although you've got a part to play, it is only a part.
Guest:And what really is happening is a bit bewildering.
Guest:But in the theatre...
Guest:When it comes to delivering the story to the audience who's there, and you go from the beginning through to the end, the director is nowhere to be seen.
Guest:The lighting guy is in a little box.
Guest:You can't see him.
Guest:The designer is on doing another production.
Guest:And it's just the actors and the audience.
Guest:And that's when I'm at my happiest, really.
Guest:It's so immediate.
Guest:You can feel the life of it.
Guest:It is happening now.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's that human level of direct communication, which is why at times I rail against the technology that mobile people communicate so readily these days.
Yeah.
Guest:But we need, I think, for our health's sake and to confirm our humanity, we need actually to look people in the eye.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:As well as hear each other.
Guest:I mean, here we are having a perfectly sociable conversation, but you're wearing earphones.
Guest:I mean, why?
Guest:Well, I've got an earphone on.
Guest:Why don't you just take them off and talk?
Guest:We can.
Guest:Do you want to?
Guest:No, but it's okay.
Guest:I've got used to the idea, but microphones in the theater are absolute death to what I consider life.
Guest:I will not use a microphone in the theater.
Marc:But you don't have problems with the hearing impaired having amplification, do you?
Marc:No, well, of course they must have that.
Guest:No, but I...
Guest:The point about audience, I go back to that audio, is that when your emotions start deep down under that big muscle that's called a diaphragm, it's below your lungs.
Guest:And as you feel things down there, it affects the way that you speak because it's pushing the air up in a particular way.
Guest:And this air comes up through the body and then at the throat and into the mouth through all those most intimate parts of your body, love-making places like tongues and cheeks and lips.
Guest:And through there it goes.
Guest:It can be measured as it travels across the air and it lands on your eardrum and your eardrum.
Guest:vibrates and your ear and my diaphragm are connected.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Put a microphone in the way.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Not the same.
Marc:Not a human exchange.
Marc:It isn't, no.
Marc:I think that's true.
Marc:And I think that, you know, when you talk about theater and when... Because I don't go to enough theater.
Marc:And I know that.
Marc:I've done plays and I enjoy seeing plays.
Marc:But, you know, over time, they're part of you, you know, if you're not a theater lover or a regular theater goer, you start to be like, well, is it a good play?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So how is that thing?
Marc:But every time I'm there, even if it's an experimental performance, it's undeniable the risk of human engagement, which I think might be why people don't go as often as they should because theater for generations has been thought of as sort of a community lifeblood of connection and creativity.
Guest:Well, in the most primitive of societies, there would be storytellers, and people would gather around to listen.
Guest:And, you know, before people could read or write, the great stories were passed down orderly.
Guest:Homer.
Guest:Homer, absolutely.
Guest:Homer wasn't a person, but what we know is that...
Guest:Whoever wrote them or first spoke them, they were repeated by people who had learned the words, not having read them, and passed them on.
Guest:And it was all on that very human level.
Marc:It's bizarre to me because I do stand-up.
Marc:Oh, do you?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And I recently did... No, you use a mic for that.
Marc:Right, but what I did recently, I was at the Opera House, the BAM in Brooklyn, and I was performing.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And I very consciously, you know, because I knew the venue could handle it, that it was designed properly.
Marc:So there were portions where I would step aside from the mic and get right up to the lip of the stage and engage like that.
Marc:Good for you.
Marc:But the difference is insane.
Marc:I mean, it's like the difference of how people listen.
Marc:They're not allowed the distance anymore.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:Absolutely right.
Guest:And Tony Bennett does that to great effect.
Guest:At the end of his set, he always puts the mic aside and sings.
Guest:And that's the magic moment.
Guest:It's beautiful.
Guest:That's what you remember.
Guest:That's what you really want all the time.
Guest:But it's difficult because, you know, that's a big theater you're talking about.
Guest:I've worked there myself.
Guest:But, yes, it's not that long ago that people didn't use microphones because they hadn't been invented.
Guest:At all.
Guest:And opera singers still don't use microphones.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's the thrill of opera.
Marc:Do you understand other languages?
Guest:No.
Guest:Oh, opera's tricky.
Guest:You kind of... Well, I go and see opera or hear opera sung in English.
Marc:Oh, because, like, I watched one and they literally have subtitles for it.
Marc:Oh, well, yes, you can do that, yes.
Marc:Yeah, but then that's distracting.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But what do you think, like, you know, as somebody who lives on the stage...
Marc:And when you do, like, let's say Shakespeare, and you're doing one of Shakespeare's plays that you've done many times, and maybe you're with a different cast than you've been previous, is it always a different experience emotionally?
Marc:Is there moments where something resonates differently every night?
Marc:Or is there a consistency to it?
Marc:Well, it's bound to be different, isn't it?
Guest:Because you're 24 hours older than you were when you last did it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But do you find new things?
Guest:In Shakespeare all the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, you'll never get to the end of Shakespeare.
Guest:Yeah, isn't that interesting?
Guest:No, you don't.
Guest:So, and is it different?
Guest:Yeah, of course it's different because the audience is different.
Guest:Is a lot of it the same?
Guest:Yes, of course it is because you... You've got to honor the script.
Guest:Yeah, and more than half of...
Guest:An actor, when he's acting, is awareness of what's going on and the technician in you.
Guest:But there has to be room for the unexpected, the surprise.
Guest:And you can only do that, of course, if you're working well with the other actors because you have to do it together.
Marc:Tell me about an amazing surprise, either for better or for worse, in the middle of a play.
Marc:Like, have there been times...
Marc:where something goes awry that you'll never forget?
Guest:Well, I worked once with a director called Mike Alfred, who was very influential on me, because he prepares and rehearses a play with his actors so that anything can happen during the performance, and that...
Guest:Anything.
Guest:Everything is genuinely improvised.
Guest:And so his rehearsal, his preparation, is all about discovering everything possible you know about the characters so that when you enter the stage, it doesn't matter where you stand on the stage, and you can walk and be wherever you want on the stage.
Guest:Nothing is set.
Guest:Nothing is fixed.
Guest:You're speaking the words.
Guest:You come onto the stage at the point at which the text says you should, and you leave it the same.
Guest:But in between times, the level of intensity of the emotions will depend on how things are going tonight.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And his instruction is you must reach a level of reality.
Guest:It doesn't matter how low and...
Guest:Insignificant, it seems to be, if it's real.
Guest:And work up from that.
Guest:Don't come on and do that wonderful thing you did last night, which everyone is thrilled about.
Guest:No, don't do that, because they will not be thrilled, because it won't be really genuinely in the moment.
Guest:So, you're asking me about...
Guest:Something exciting that happened.
Guest:It wasn't to me, except that I was in the audience when it happened.
Guest:He was doing a production by Anton Chekhov, the Russian play, who is my second favorite playwright.
Guest:Which play?
Guest:It's called The Seagull.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A classic.
Guest:And it's all about acting, actually.
Guest:It's all about theater, rather.
Guest:Anyway.
Guest:A boy entered, and he was reading a book.
Guest:Important.
Guest:He had to do that.
Guest:It's in the script.
Guest:But the actor dropped the book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he did what anyone would do.
Guest:He picked up the book, but somebody else got to the book first and picked it up for him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, of course, they got it in their hand, and they opened the book to see what he'd been reading.
Guest:And they reacted.
Guest:And the play was going on, but there was this book.
Guest:Suddenly an important character in the play.
Guest:And the book went down on the desk.
Guest:The boy didn't have the book anymore.
Guest:Somebody else wandered over and thought they'd have a look at the book.
Guest:And they did.
Guest:And afterwards, I said to the director, that's business with the book.
Guest:How long did that take to rehearse?
Guest:It's never happened before.
Guest:It's just impulsive.
Guest:So it's impossible in his productions to do anything wrong.
Guest:If something goes wrong, it's right.
Guest:See what I mean?
Guest:The spontaneity is the point.
Guest:But you can only do that if you know everything about the characters and have not limited your knowledge to...
Guest:just what you decide to present to the audience.
Guest:Everything is available for you.
Guest:So that's almost an ideal for me.
Guest:Difficult to accomplish, and everyone's got to be on the same side very much.
Marc:To live in that moment.
Guest:Oh, very difficult.
Marc:Who are your favorite Shakespearean characters to play?
Marc:Like, what do you like doing over and over again?
Guest:Oh, I see.
Guest:Well...
Guest:Macbeth's passed me by now, but I was in a wonderful production, and perhaps there's not much point in trying to do it again.
Guest:Anyway, I'm too old.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So a lot of parts have gone past me by.
Guest:You just end up with Lear at the end.
Guest:Is that how it works?
Guest:And I've done Lear, and I've also done Prospero in The Tempest.
Guest:But there are plenty of old men left, but they're not necessarily the leading parts, which I may be grateful to in my dotage.
Guest:I don't want the responsibility of carrying the play.
Guest:But Lear, was that exhausting and exciting?
Guest:I played that at BAM, where you were.
Guest:Yes, it's one of the most tiring jobs you could possibly get because for the first third of the play, he pretty well never stops talking and he's going through dreadful, dreadful physical and mental decline and he's behaving out of character and being absolutely horrible to his daughter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're at a constant level of high emotion, anger and regret and bewilderment and...
Guest:I suppose going mad in front of the audience's eyes.
Guest:And you do that for an hour, an hour and a half.
Guest:And when Shakespeare very kindly gives you a rest, and he does, most of the big characters have a good time offstage.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:We're in Brooklyn.
Guest:And I come to the pause for me in the play, which happens around an intermission.
Guest:So I had about nearly an hour off stage, although I was playing King Nick.
Guest:That's the way it goes.
Guest:And I did what I always did during the show.
Guest:I lay down on the sofa and tried to get some sleep.
Guest:knowing that my dresser would wake me up in time to get onto the stage.
Guest:However, we're in a strange theatre, a new dresser, a local person who didn't quite know the play, and when he realised it was time for me to get ready, he popped into the dressing room and couldn't see me because I was on a sofa, I was covered up with blankets and cushions against the sound in the theatre, and I was obviously sleeping quietly.
Guest:They couldn't find King Lear.
Guest:He was asleep.
Guest:Eventually, someone more familiar with my ways than this dresser shook me to life, and I ran onto the stage just to meet two very bewildered actors who'd been ad-libbing Shakespeare for the last three or four minutes.
Guest:Which is no easy task.
Guest:No, I did apologize to them an awful lot.
Guest:LAUGHTER
Marc:Now, when you do Lear at the age you're at, how does that affect you?
Marc:Because I imagine it seems to me that if the story about, in the one story that I know...
Marc:About the difference between a Shakespearean actor and, say, an actor of another sort, a method actor or somebody who comes from the inside first over the outside.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Does it become risky for you at your age to do something like that?
Marc:Does it inform – is it frightening?
Guest:It's frightening to the extent that these old boys –
Guest:are old, and you think of them as far distant from yourself.
Guest:And until in your early 70s, you play a man in his early 80s who is going mad.
Guest:Well, it's a bit close to Holmes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Same with Mr. Holmes.
Guest:The new movie, yeah.
Guest:The movie I'm doing at the moment, I'm playing him when he's 93 years old.
Marc:And the conceit of this movie is he's the real Holmes.
Marc:He's the real Holmes, yes.
Marc:And he's basically retired.
Guest:Correct.
Guest:Holmes is a real person, and his friend Dr. Watson wrote these fictional accounts of his life, and they weren't necessarily accurate, and he didn't wear a deer stalker, and he much preferred a cigar to a pipe.
Guest:But that only matters to Holmes in that, in his retirement, and he's not worked for 30 years, and Dr. Watson is married and long gone dead, I think, and
Guest:And he has a puzzle about the last case that he failed to solve, the case that sent him into retirement 30 years before.
Guest:And as he's declining physically and mentally, excuse me, we see him just coming back from a long journey to Japan just after the last war where he's been looking for some elixir of life.
Guest:To give him the energy, to bring back the memory so that he can solve this last puzzle because he knows it's important and he can't die until he's done it.
Marc:An unclosed case from 30 years ago.
Marc:Correct.
Guest:Which Dr. Watson had written down as solved with all his customary flair.
Guest:As a fiction.
Guest:As a fiction, but Holmes knew that the truth was other.
Guest:And what that other is, is what the film is trying to uncover.
Guest:And it turns out that he very nearly fell in love.
Guest:And if he had done, he would have been in different homes and it would have been a different life.
Guest:And in discovering this, he opens up his heart.
Guest:It's a wonderfully sentimental habit.
Guest:A happy ending.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:A happy ending.
Guest:Because the Holmes that you're left with at the end is a Holmes who's reconciled to himself, understands himself, and is nicer to everybody around him because of it.
Guest:I should have my father see this movie.
Guest:Yes, well, what's rather nice is that a lot of old people like it because it reflects interests that they have.
Guest:I mean, what do you do when your body's going and your mind too?
Guest:And you have unresolved shit.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:But it also appeals to younger people who perhaps think, hmm, perhaps I better attend to things now while they're happening rather than leaving it too late.
Marc:It's interesting how hard that can be.
Marc:Well, that's life, isn't it?
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:You know, you get old in your eyes.
Marc:I can't believe for so many years I was such an obstinate or stubborn.
Marc:What you used to be angry about, you can't even understand anymore.
Marc:Well, how could I have been angry about that for so long?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Life is very, very difficult, which is probably one of the reasons I'm an actor, because...
Guest:Acting is very, very easy in comparison with life.
Guest:And you can process big things.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And it's all written down for you.
Guest:And you know how it's going to end.
Guest:And you know what happens next.
Marc:Unless you're in one of your friend's plays, which could go either way.
Marc:Anything could happen.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:But I think that in terms of your life, that you relieved yourself of the burden of being closeted at a fairly young age, which I think was a profound decision, right?
Marc:Well, it didn't seem a young age to me.
Guest:I was 49.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:49.
Guest:All right.
Guest:There are gradations of coming out.
Guest:It's a journey that people go on.
Guest:But the people who were close to you knew, right?
Guest:They did.
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:People I worked with, people who employed me.
Guest:No, there are two areas of my life where I was closeted.
Guest:And crucially, with my close blood family, my stepmother and my sister and my aunts and so on.
Guest:And then a little bit of coming out journey, which most people don't have to worry about, which is talking about it publicly on occasions like this.
Guest:And I had never done that either.
Guest:So when the government was passing a particularly nasty anti-gay law, which I took... Personally?
Guest:Very personally.
Guest:I got angry and I kicked the door open and said on a BBC radio program that I was gay in debating this particular law.
Marc:What was it specifically?
Guest:Was it restricting the law?
Guest:Well, Google it.
Guest:Section 28 of the Local Government Act.
Guest:And it said that because gay people have only pretended family relationships.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Therefore, it would be illegal to talk positively about homosexuality in any school.
Guest:Oh, that's bizarre.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On the grounds that if you were to do that, you would be promoting homosexuality.
Guest:You would be encouraging kids to become gay.
Guest:Right.
Guest:As if such a thing were possible.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Any more than it's possible, in my view, to encourage gay kids to become straight.
Guest:So it was a horrible law.
Guest:But incidentally, it is the law which has just become the law of Russia.
Guest:Throughout Russia, you may not, on the grounds that you may not promote homosexuality, you can't talk positively about gay issues to anyone under the age of 18.
Guest:That's the law in Russia.
Marc:It's insane.
Guest:It is insane and cruel and unfair and ridiculous and antisocial in every possible way.
Guest:So, in debating that with someone who approved of this new law, it was only too easy for me to say, well, you stop talking about them, you're talking about me.
Guest:Shut him up.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And, of course, I haven't... That was a great moment.
Guest:It was.
Guest:I haven't shut up ever since.
Guest:And...
Guest:So it was hugely important to me because it was a great relief.
Guest:I didn't understand that I'd been censoring myself.
Guest:My life had been perfectly easy.
Guest:I'd been getting along all right.
Guest:What do you mean you didn't understand?
Marc:It was just the way it was?
Marc:I assumed that that's the way it was.
Marc:You behave a certain way.
Guest:You're gay.
Guest:You may not show your affections in public.
Guest:You may not hold hands with the person you're sleeping with.
Guest:You can't put your arms.
Guest:You can't kiss them.
Guest:You can't do any of the normal things like that.
Guest:You can't talk about it.
Guest:You're different.
Guest:And, of course, when I started out being sexually active, it was actually against the law to have sex.
Guest:I have friends who put...
Guest:But in prison.
Guest:Were they?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:They were discovered to have had sex.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:You can't believe it, can you?
Guest:For like a long time?
Guest:No, a few months.
Guest:Horrible.
Guest:But a scar that scars you for life.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Knowing that that's a possibility, then you restrict yourself and you see other people doing the same thing and you think, well, this is the way that life is.
Guest:And you buy into the lie that homosexuality is unnatural and...
Guest:So there's a natural shame to it.
Guest:Oh, absolute shame.
Guest:And that's no way to live.
Guest:No.
Guest:And it's living in a closet.
Guest:It's living in a place where it's dark and dusty, with old things that aren't used anymore.
Guest:And you don't like yourself, probably.
Guest:No, you certainly don't like yourself.
Guest:And nor do you much like society that makes you like that.
Guest:What do you stop all that?
Guest:The relief.
Guest:I can't imagine.
Guest:The joy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Proud to be gay.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Proud to say I'm gay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Glad to be gay.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Wonderful word, gay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Before that, it was queer, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Some clever activist said, it's not working this, calling ourselves queer.
Guest:Let's choose our own word.
Guest:Hmm.
Guest:What about blue now?
Guest:That's quite right.
Guest:Yellow with gold.
Guest:Hmm.
Guest:Gay.
Guest:Gay is a nice word.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, there we go.
Guest:So...
Guest:And then everything in your life becomes better.
Guest:I bet.
Guest:All your relationships are improved.
Guest:No, there was no backlash at all.
Guest:None at all.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A few death threats.
Guest:From freaks.
Guest:From people who, if they were intending to kill me, were...
Guest:Didn't have the... Yeah.
Guest:Thank God.
Guest:I was living in a country where guns were not available.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So... Better actor?
Guest:I would say a different actor.
Guest:How so?
Guest:Acting became no longer... And...
Guest:a release for emotions that I wasn't allowed to have elsewhere in my life.
Guest:Do you think that maybe some of your desire to act was around that shame?
Guest:I do.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I think that's true of a lot of actors are gay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they're hiding.
Guest:They're finding a sort of fulfillment.
Guest:They're indulging pretend emotions.
Guest:But all of the emotions.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:And to very big degrees.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:But when you're out...
Guest:You can have them in real life.
Guest:You can.
Guest:And on stage.
Guest:And I can now cry on stage.
Guest:I could never cry before.
Marc:Really?
Marc:How did you fake it?
Guest:You just pretended.
Marc:It was fake.
Marc:It was fake.
Guest:My acting was fake.
Guest:My acting was disguise.
Guest:Now, my acting is about revelation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Truth.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, everything's better.
Guest:So, I can't stop talking and telling people, come out.
Marc:Join the human race.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Literally.
Marc:Absolutely.
Guest:Like, open your heart.
Guest:Yes, of course.
Marc:Allow yourself to be seen.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:So, you weren't able to cry for real on stage until you were older than 49.
Marc:49 as well.
Marc:I think so.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was doing Uncle Varnia, another Chekhov play, and the...
Guest:the character reaches an emotional state and tears are appropriate and one day they just... It happens.
Guest:It just happens.
Guest:Was it a great day?
Guest:It must have been a great day.
Guest:Well, that's bewildering, but... I'm crying.
Guest:A great relief, yes.
Marc:And now, when were you... I don't do as much research as I should probably, but these different...
Marc:Things that you were given in England.
Marc:The commander of the order of the British Empire.
Marc:Oh, yes.
Marc:Being knighted.
Marc:Can you explain those a little?
Marc:Because we don't have those here.
Guest:You do.
Guest:Well, most countries have civil medals.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's what they are.
Guest:There are...
Guest:Quite a lot of medals are given out each year on the advice of the government, and the queen, as head of state, hands them out.
Guest:She doesn't draw up the list.
Guest:But she shows up for the knighting, I imagine.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And there are grades of medals.
Guest:Knighthood, surprisingly, is not at the top.
Guest:Really?
Guest:There are others beyond that.
Guest:What are those?
Guest:Are they secrets?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I've got one of them.
Guest:I'm a companion of honor.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:That's bigger than knighting.
Guest:Yeah, because there are only 68 of us.
Guest:You have to wait for someone to die before you might be given a companion of honor.
Guest:And beyond that, there's another one.
Guest:which is the order of merit, and there are only 25 of those.
Guest:These are extremely distinguished people.
Marc:So among the knights, it's like not a big deal anymore?
Marc:Like, yeah, I got knighted.
Guest:Well, a knighthood draws attention to itself because it comes with a title.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I find that a bit of a bind.
Guest:I mean, I don't want to be separated out from everybody else.
Guest:But if the nation says to you,
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Here's a medal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hang it on the Christmas tree, which is what I do.
Guest:Wear it on Sunday best occasions.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Why should you resist?
Guest:Of course.
Guest:But when it comes to the title, there's good reason to resist.
Guest:And people do resist it.
Guest:Sir.
Guest:Distinguished people have said, no, I don't want a knighthood.
Guest:David Hockney, my good friend the painter who lives close by here, he refused knighthood and others have done the same.
Guest:But when it came to the Companion of Honor, he didn't mind because it was just two initials at the end of his name, which he could use or not, and nobody really knew.
Marc:Right.
Marc:What, there's a pressure to having a sir?
Marc:Is it insulting somehow?
Marc:Why would you resist it?
Guest:Well, because... Well...
Guest:Some people think, and I'm one of them, that by accepting an honor in the Queen's name and implying an allegiance to...
Guest:a hereditary head of state, you're buying into that system of... Monarchy?
Guest:Of monarchy.
Guest:And on the whole, monarchy has its uses.
Guest:It doesn't... Does it get in the way?
Guest:But I think perhaps it does because it suggests that there's a hierarchy in society which is fixed at birth.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You know, it's not an elected monarch.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's what you have.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that's the statement that I think we ought to have, really.
Guest:And if you accept a knighthood, you're sort of saying, well, you bowed in front of the Queen, didn't you?
Guest:And she tapped you on the shoulder.
Guest:But how was that day?
Guest:You're asking me to reveal the best bits in my upcoming memoirs, but what's the day like?
Guest:Well, the day is very exciting.
Guest:You're going inside a building that you don't normally get inside and going into parts of it where the public doesn't go except on these occasions.
Yeah.
Guest:You stand in line and eventually your name is called out and you step forward and there is this familiar person who you know so well and yet you never met her.
Guest:It is extraordinary.
Guest:But I like it because at that moment when the hand is shaked, you're shaking hand with the nation.
Guest:That's her job.
Guest:She's representing all the people you know, all your neighbors, all the people you don't know.
Guest:For centuries.
Guest:Well, for centuries, and saying we belong, we're together, and this person...
Guest:is there and she's looking right into your eyes.
Guest:What she's like as a person, that's irrelevant.
Guest:Whether you would like her, who knows?
Guest:It doesn't matter.
Guest:It's not the point.
Guest:So it's a bit of high theatre going on.
Guest:And you are, at that moment, playing a principal part.
Guest:And you're playing opposite.
Guest:The Queen.
Guest:She doesn't have a name.
Guest:The Queen.
Marc:So it's quite alluring.
Marc:But as somebody that we talked about earlier, this human connection, this auditory, this visceral experience, did you feel it?
Guest:I mean, even with all the pomp and circumstance... Yes, but I would like it to be even more special than it was because, unfortunately...
Guest:Her conversation can't be particularly personal.
Guest:And the last time I went to get a medal from her, she said, you've been doing this for an awfully long time, haven't you?
Guest:I wonder if she knew what this was.
Guest:And I had the way to say, well, not as long as you have been doing it, Mum.
Guest:And the nation smiled and even had a little chuckle.
Guest:That's beautiful.
Guest:But then she shook my hand, which is the formality, and the handshake, I'm afraid, with the Queen is not a shake up and down, but a push away.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:You feel it.
Guest:Off you go.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, because she's got more people to do.
Guest:She's got to get through it.
Marc:But you've got to laugh.
Yeah.
Guest:I made the nation laugh, yes.
Marc:That's a beautiful thing.
Marc:It's a very exciting moment.
Marc:So, okay.
Marc:Now we have a few minutes left.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Because you have to get back to Hollywood.
Marc:These amazing turns of events in your career where you play these recurring powerful roles in these fantasy pictures.
Marc:Oh, yes.
Marc:As an actor, and I know we briefly talked about at the beginning in terms of it's just another job, but it's a good job, right?
Marc:I do.
Marc:Well, no.
Marc:When you're asked to play Gandalf or Magneto again, you're like, yeah, of course.
Guest:Well, I mean, have you been to New Zealand?
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, if you like living where you do, surrounded by sky and weather, go to New Zealand because they have more of it.
Guest:It's beautiful, right?
Guest:Overwhelmingly beautiful.
Guest:As you drive down some of those empty roads and surrounded by rapidly changing scenery, mountains and glaciers and volcanoes and
Guest:you hear yourself saying, I believe in God, because this couldn't just have happened.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yes, wonderful.
Guest:So, I've had three films worth of that, and then they say, come back and do three more, and apart from the lure of New Zealand, I couldn't have anybody else playing Gandalf.
Guest:No.
Guest:Anybody could play him.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's easy.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Put on the beard, put on the voice, there you are.
Guest:But...
Guest:I wasn't going to have Anthony Hopkins take over, you know.
Guest:Yeah, not the cannibal.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:But if we're coming to the end of... I'm going to give you a bit of Shakespeare.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I'm going to give you a little present.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:And... I just hope the publicist doesn't knock on the door in the middle of it, so let's do it.
Guest:Well, that would be improvisational, but perfectly right.
Okay.
Guest:But this is a speech from a play that isn't in the Shakespeare canon because he and others wrote it together.
Guest:It's apparently what they did in those days, rather like a group of people will write a TV series today.
Guest:And the leading character is called Thomas More.
Guest:And Thomas More is a lawyer.
Guest:And he's sent out by the authorities...
Guest:to put down a riot that's happening in the middle of London.
Guest:And the riot is all about the strangers and their midst, uh, immigrants.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:People with, eat food, smells different.
Guest:They look different, wear different clothes, different language.
Guest:And, uh, better send them back wherever they came from.
Guest:And, uh,
Guest:It's a special speech, not just for what it says, but because it's the only speech that exists in Shakespeare's handwriting.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And there it is in the British Museum.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so you think, oh, this must have meant a lot to Shakespeare.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And this is how it goes.
Guest:So someone in the crowd shouts that the strangers should be removed.
Guest:And Thomas More says, grant them removed.
Guest:And grant that this your noise hath chid down all the majesty of England.
Guest:Imagine that you see the wretched strangers, their babies at their backs, and at their poor luggage plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation, and that you sit as kings in your desires, authority quite silenced by your brawl, and you in rough of your opinions clothed.
Guest:What had you got?
Guest:I'll tell you, you had taught how insolence and strong hands should prevail, how order should be quelled.
Guest:And by this pattern, not one of you should live an aged man, for other ruffians, as their fancies wrought, with self-same hand, self-reasoned and self-right, would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes feed on one another.'
Guest:Oh, desperate as you are, wash your foul minds with tears, and those same hands that you, like rebels, lift against the peace, lift up for peace.
Guest:And your unreverent knees make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven.
Guest:You'll put down strangers, kill them, cut their throats, and lead the majesty of law in Lyon to slip him like a hound.
Guest:Say, now, the king, as he is clement, if the offender mourn, should so much come too short of your great trespass as but to banish you, whither would you go?
Guest:What country, by the nature of your error, should give you harbour?
Guest:Go you to France, or Flanders, to any German province, Spain, or Portugal, no, anywhere that not adheres to England?
Guest:Why, you must needs be strangers.
Guest:Would you be pleased to find a nation of such barbarous temper that breaking out in hideous violence would not afford you an abode on earth?
Guest:Whet their detested knives against your throat?
Guest:Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God owned not nor made not you, nor that the elements were not all appropriate to your comfort but chartered unto them?
Guest:What would you think to be thus used?
Guest:This is the stranger's case.
Guest:And this your mountainish inhumanity.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:Thanks for talking to me, sir.
Marc:Bye-bye.
Marc:Was that astounding to hear Shakespeare?
Marc:How amazing was that to be spoken to in a Shakespearean monologue?
Marc:He was looking right at me, and I was looking right at him as he spoke those words, and it was moving.
Marc:and I let myself open to feel it and it did do exactly what I needed to happen which was I understood every word of that and I felt it and I felt what he was saying he taught me a lesson in Shakespeare among other things I found that to be a wonderful conversation and I do not use that word often I use other words that are like it it's not that I don't feel that often but wonderful I find it to be an awkward word but I enjoy talking to him and now I need to get into Shakespeare big time
Marc:Full-on.
Marc:Full-on Shakespeare.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:There are no books left, but there's other things.
Marc:If you're looking for mugs, you can go to BrianRJones.com.
Marc:He might have a few, but he's a potter and he has a child.
Marc:There's only so much he can do.
Marc:He'll make another batch eventually, but you can check that out.
Marc:Did I say WTFPod.com?
Marc:Get on the mailing list.
Marc:Go to the merch pages.
Marc:A lot of new posters.
Marc:Cool shit.
Marc:All right, enough selling.
Marc:Enough selling.
Marc:I'm going to introduce you to the little monster now.
Marc:All right?
Marc:As I said, it's been a great day here.
Marc:All right?
Marc:It's been a great day, so we need to do some great day music.
Marc:And the little monster is a 1965 Fender Champ amp.
Marc:Okay, it's a little buzz.
Marc:It's a little buzz.
It's a little buzz.
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Boomer Lives!