MY BOOKS OF 2013

It’s not ‘Twelve from the Shelves’ this year as I didn’t read enough books I really loved this year to hit those heights. Or rather: I didn’t read enough that I reviewed. For example, if I’d reviewed them, I would have included:

Olivia Laing’s The Trip to Echo Spring, a gripping report on writers and alcohol (with special attention to Tennessee Williams and John Cheever);

Joe Moran’s Armchair Nation, which recounted the birth and growth of television in the UK with the same spark that he brought to our roads; or

Deborah Levy’s Things I Don’t Want to Know, a powerful essay which combines biography, politics and a response to George Orwell’s Why I Write.

Interesting – perhaps – that those are all non-fiction, where my reviewed choices below are all-but-one fiction. Do I find it easier to review novels? The books below were all read, or re-read, by me this year, and are listed alphabetically by author.

Martin Amis: Money

No surprise that I rate the book which gave me my online identity. This is the book which proved that Amis was not just a writer of short comic novels: he was also a writer of long comic novels. The voice he developed for John Self is a miracle of sustained attention to detail. Money is one of those books where it’s clear the author sweated over every single word. And it was worth it.

J.M. Coetzee: The Childhood of Jesus

I expected this book to be all over the prize shortlists and end-of-year roundups, but it seemed to slip quickly from view after publication early in the year. Perhaps it was the conscious elusiveness of the story, screaming allegory from every page but never quite being nailed down. That was one of the reasons I liked it so much.

Andrew Crumey: The Secret Knowledge

New work from Crumey is always a delight, though he makes us wait – 5 years since Sputnik Caledonia. Once again he has evaded expectations with a novel which is less immediately lighthearted than most of his previous books, but just as provocative, containing parallel worlds, ideas on art and mass culture, and guest appearances from Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno.

William Golding: Pincher Martin

This is a book with an unforgettable twist or two, one in the very last sentence, but which only gains in power when re-read. It is full of strange wonders, not least how so much is packed into so few pages, and how a book so ultimately unknowable can at the same time be as clear as the water its ‘hero’ lives in. If the only Golding you have read is Lord of the Flies, try this.

Stephen Grosz: The Examined Life

One of two debuts on my list, and the only non-fiction title. The conceit is simple: a psychoanalyst tells us the stories of some of his patients. The results are simple and – to me – enormously affecting accounts of what can go wrong, particularly between parents and children, and how it can be possible to begin to put it right.

Chloe Hooper: The Engagement

Another book that I expected to conquer all this year, and which seems to have sunk without trace. Hooper’s second novel is not just a page-turning psychological thriller – though it certainly is that – but also an inquiry into sexuality, male-female relations, and the power of stories. I read it twice and it stood up brilliantly.

J. Robert Lennon: Familiar

Lennon, like Hooper, has the gift of telling stories so seductively that it’s easy to overlook how much he makes you think at the same time. Here we get a story of a woman who finds herself living a new life, everything suddenly and unexplainably changed. Perhaps, as with The Examined Life, it was the acute understanding of parenthood that so floored me here.

Eimear McBride: A Girl is a Half-formed Thing

Much-vaunted by critics and at least one prize jury, McBride’s amazing debut is worthy of all the praise. It is the sort of story you simultaneously want to read and to look away from, and the brittle poetry of the language is a perfect vehicle for the familiarly dark events in this Irish family’s life.

Muriel Spark: The Driver’s Seat

A short Spark shock which, like Pincher Martin, loses none of its impact when you already know its unforgettable ending. A comedy, like much of Spark’s work, but undeniably grim and odd even by her odd standards.

ASYLUM

Andrew Wyeth / A Work to Admire



Andrew Wyeth
Trodden Weed, 1951
Tempera on Panel

Andrew Wyeth
Boots (Study for Trodden Weed), 1951

Christophe Thornock

ANDREW WYETH

A Work to Admire

I have a great affinity for the work of the late Andrew Wyeth. Finding his works when I was about 13 or so, really cemented a desire to look further into what it meant to be an artist. I had found books of reproductions at the local library and was so surprised by the power of the simplicity in the paintings. These works have always felt honest. This painting is one of my favorites. According to his autobiography, it is a self portrait. He is wearing a pair of French cavalier boots, once owned by Howard Pyle (the great American illustrator and teacher). After a surgery, Wyeth would wander the hills around Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, in order to regain his strength.

In Wyeth's own words, "As I walked, I had to watch my feet because I was so unsteady. And I suddenly got the idea that we all stupidly crush things underfoot and ruin them-without thinking. Like the weed here getting crushed. That black line is not merely a compositional device-it's the presence of death. Before my operation I had been looking at Albrecht Durer's works. During the operation they say my heart stopped once. At that moment I could see Durer standing there in black, and he started coming at me across the tile floor. When my heart started, he, Durer-death-receded. So this painting is highly emotional-dangerous and looming. I like it."

Christian Coigny / Femmes

Christian Coigny

FEMMES

Yurie Nagashima / Bodies

Yurie Nagashima, Kazoku, 1993

The Many Bodies of Yurie Nagashima

In a previous blog post, I wrote about the photographer Yurie Nagashima whose photographs of herself and her family in the nude instigated a dramatic shift in Japanese visual culture. After exhibiting her phenomenally successful Kazoku series in 1993, Nagashima continued to interrogate photographic subjects related to gender, sexuality, representation and the body.

 

Yure Nagashima, Onion Boob and Sarah Lucas, Self-portrait with Fried Eggs, 1996

In one photograph, she holds an onion in front of her left breast while holding her t-shirt up by her teeth. This form of visual allegory and humorous photographic intervention locates Nagashima alongside artists such as Sarah Lucas who, in one photograph, placed two fried eggs in situ of her breasts. In the case of Lucas, the reference to female fertility and reproductive organs signified by the eggs is clear. In Nagashima’s case however, the onion is more difficult to locate since it does not immediately signify either the male or the female body. Instead, the onion might refer to the trope of perfectibility: the emphasis on aesthetic perfection of fruit and vegetable that is common in Japanese department stores. The perfect watermelon, the perfect carrot, the perfect onion, is, above all, determined by its symmetrical and even visual appearance. Nagashima’s photograph appears to question, even ridicule, this paradigm closely associated with consumerism and the representation of gender. Here, I am referring to consumerism in an economic sense but also consuming food as metaphor for consuming the female body. The onion thus functions as a pun on consuming and being consumed: in contrast to the soothing milk of the mother’s breast, Nagashima purposefully chooses a vegetable known not only for it’s acidic taste, but also, for causing tears. The unpeeling of the onion, and the allegorical pain associated with it, becomes the complete antithesis to the warmth associated with the mother.

Another photograph in which she has painted her breasts in the shape of two cartoon characters suggests that Nagashima’s preferred subject is her own body. Here, the body is not a neutral canvas or a corporeal ground zero, rather, the body functions as a potentially humorous even uncontrollable form explored by the camera. The physical act of taking a self-portrait is more closely located within the realm of performance art as Nagashima interrogates a corporeal and spatial interior by turning the camera on herself. In other words, the intervention takes places in Nagashima’s personal sphere via her body, while the camera acts as documentary device. Similar to the onion photograph, the cartoon characters serve as a visual pun that also acts to defamiliarize body parts. The cartoon characters have the effect of setting the photograph off from the classical iconography of the Nude and enabling it instead to act as asignifier for specific bodily functions. The defamiliarization of body parts also acts to desexualize the body as a whole. This visual methodology is perhaps most apparent in This Time, where Nagashima makes another direct gender specific reference to a bodily function. In his concept of the ‘grotesque body’, the literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin argued that references to bodily excrement can act as a powerful device to invert a hegemonic social order. The allegorical blood on the floor situates the body outside of stereotypical representations of the body in mass media, consumer culture or pornography, placing it instead within a discourse of necessity and privacy.

Yurie Nagashima, This Time

It is ironic that as much Nagashima explores narratives of private life in her photographs, she was herself in the meantime turned into a celebrity figure in Japan. For a period of time in the mid-1990s, newspapers, magazines, TV chat shows, and the so-called ‘wide shows’, relentlessly pursued Nagashima in hopes of featuring the up-and-coming artist in their programming. With the emergence of a number of women photographers in a relatively short time period, from 1993 until about 1996, critics referred to Nagashima as a leader of a ‘girl photography boom’. Nagashima fiercely sought to distance herself from this label and, in the process, became critical of the media attention that her work has provoked.

Yurie Nagashima, Red Undwear

In as much Nagashima appears to engage in the pleasure of looking and being looked at in her photographic series Kazoku, in more recent photographs Nagashima’s gaze back to the spectator is noticeably absent. In one photograph, Nagashima’s back is literally turned towards the spectator. Viewed within the context of Nagashima’s resistance towards the increasing media attention, this gesture signifies her growing desire to be left unmediated. Even if this photograph relates to Nagashima turning away from the camera, from representation, from our gaze, she is still using her body to communicate this message. By performing to the camera, by deconstructing socially constructed gender identities, and by becoming object as much as subject of her photographs, the many bodies of Yurie Nagashima have reset the parameters of photographic discourse in her native Japan.

Please also read my post The Family Photos of Yurie Nagashima.

If you are interested in Japanese photography, please download my essay:
Marco Bohr (2011). ‘Are-Bure-Boke: Distortions in Late 1960s Japanese Cinema and Photography’. Dandelion Journal. Vol. 2, No. 2.

http://visualcultureblog.com/category/photography/page/10/

Alberto Sughi / In the Bedroom

Alberto Sughi
In the Bedroom
Nella camera, 1964

IN THE BEDROOM

by Alberto Sughi

Alberto Sughi had become one of the greatest Italian artists of his generation. A self-taught painter. He started painting in the early 1950s, choosing realism in the debate between abstract and figurative art in the immediate post-war period. Even from his early works, however, Sughi’s paintings have avoided any attempt at social moralising. They depict moments from daily life with no heroes, allowing Enrico Crispolti, in 1956, to define his work as "existential realism". His artistic expression proceeds, almost always, in thematic cycles, in the manner of film sequences. First of all, there were his so-called "green paintings", devoted to the relationship between man and nature (1971-1973), then the Supper cycle (1975-1976), after that the 20 paintings and fifteen studies of Imagination and Memory of the Family, dating from the early 1980s; the series Evening or reflection started from 1985. His most recent series of large canvases, exhibited in 2000, is entitled Nocturnal.

|        The theme of incommunicability dominates Alberto Sughi’s metropolitan scenes and half-empty rooms, populated by lovers. In the work  In the bedroom (Nella camera) two visionary human figures, a man and a woman, reduced to almost ectoplasmic forms, are ‘camping out’ in the dark and anonymous space of a hotel room, illuminated by the bright glare of electric light. Although we are given no clue as to whether they are occasional lovers or a well-established couple, we clearly feel the distance and incommunicability separating the two figures, each trapped in their own solitude. Sughi does not show the woman’s face, as she sits half-naked on the bed, stretching, with her hands pressing against her back. The man has his back to her and, as often happens in Sughi’s works in this period, he is staring ahead, looking at himself in a mirror to straighten his tie and hastily leave the room before his companion.

Etgar Keret / Two Stories



Two Stories By Etgar Keret BIOGRAPHY

CONJUNCTIONS:55, Fall 2010 September for Good —Translated from Hebrew by Sondra Silverston and Miriam Shlesinger When the crash came, NiceDay was the first to go. They’d always been a luxury brand, but after the Chicago riots even the wealthiest clients cut off their service. Some did it because of the unstable economic situation, but most of them just couldn’t face the neighbors. The shares lay on the world trading floors, bleeding point after point. And so NiceDay became a cautionary tale of the depression. The Wall Street Journal headline ran “September Gone Bad.” This, of course, was a play on their “September for Good” campaign, in which a swimwear-clad family stood around on a sunny fall day … decorating a Christmas tree! The ad had worked, big-time. One week postlaunch they were moving three thousand units per day. Affluent Americans bought. So did the less affluent, if they could fake it. NiceDay became a status symbol. The official stamp of a millionaire. What executive jets were to the nineties, and into 2000, NiceDay was to now. NiceDay: weather for the wealthy. Say you’re based in Greenland, say all the snow and gloom is driving you batshit, one swipe of your credit card and, with a satellite or two, they’d set you up with a perfect fall day in Cannes, delivered direct to your own balcony, every day of the year.        Yakov “Yaki” Brayk was one of NiceDay’s earliest adopters. He truly loved his money and had a hard time parting with it, but even more than he loved the millions he made selling weapons and drugs to Zimbabwe, he loathed those humid New York summers and that gross feeling you get when your sweaty undershirt sticks to your back. He bought a system, not just for himself, but for the whole block. Some people mistook this for generosity, but the truth is he did it just to keep the great weather with him all the way to the bodega on the corner. That bodega wasn’t just where he got the unfiltered Noblesses they imported from Israel especially for him. No, more than anything, it marked for Yaki the boundary of his personal space. And the minute Yaki signed the check, that block turned into a weather paradise. No more gray rain, no more dog days. Just September, twelve months a year. And not, God forbid, one of those off-and-on, partly-sunny, partly-cloudy New York Septembers, but the dependable kind, the kind he grew up with in Haifa. And then, out of the blue, came the Chicago riots and suddenly here were the neighbors telling him to cease and desist with the gorgeous fall post-haste. At first he didn’t give them the time of day, but then came those lawyers’ letters and someone left a slaughtered peacock on his windshield. That’s when his wife asked him to turn it off. It was January. Yaki turned off the fall and instantly the day turned short and sad. All because of one dead peacock and an anorexic wife with an anxiety disorder who, as always, was able to control him through her weakness.       The recession went from bad to worse. On Wall Street, NiceDay hit rock bottom. So did shares in Yaki’s company. Then after they hit rock bottom, they drilled a hole in the rock and went down a little farther. It’s funny, you’d think weapons and drugs would be strong during a worldwide recession, but that’s not how it worked out. People were too broke to buy medicine, and they very quickly rediscovered an old forgotten truth: that weapons with chips are a luxury, just like electric car windows, and that sometimes all you need is a stone you found in the yard if you want to smash in somebody’s skull. They very quickly learned to manage without Yaki’s rifles, much more quickly than Yaki could get used to the unseasonably cold and wet mid-March. And Yaki Brayk, or Lucky Brayk, as the tabloids liked to call him, lost his shirt.        He kept the apartment, the company accountant managed to retroactively put it in the anorexic wife’s name, but all the rest was gone. They even took the furniture. Four days later, a NiceDay technician came to disconnect the system. When Yaki opened the door, he was standing there drenched with rain. Yaki made a pot of coffee and they talked for a while. He told the technician how, not long after the riots, he’d turned the system off. The technician said a lot of customers had done the same. They talked about the riots, when a furious mob from the slums had stormed the Indian-summery homes of the city’s wealthier residents. “All that sun of theirs, it was driving us crazy,” one of the rioters said on a news commentary show a few days later. “Here you are freezing your ass off, just trying to make your next gas bill, while those bastards, those bastards …” At that point, he burst into tears. The camera blurred his face to hide his identity, so you couldn’t actually see the tears, but you could hear him wailing like an animal hit by a car. The technician, who was black, said he was born in that same neighborhood in Chicago, but today he was ashamed to admit it. “That money,” he said, “all that fucking money fucked up the whole fucking world.”        After they’d finished their coffee, when the technician was about to disconnect the system, Yaki asked if he could turn it on just one last time. The technician shrugged and Yaki took that as a yes. He pushed a couple of buttons on the remote and out came the sun from behind a cloud.       “That’s not real sun, you know,” the technician said proudly. “What they do is image it, with lasers.”        Yaki winked and said, “Don’t spoil it. For me, it’s the sun.”        The technician nodded. “A great sun. Too bad you can’t keep it out till I get back to the car. I’m sick of this rain.”       Yaki didn’t answer. He just closed his eyes and let the sun wash over his face.  My Brother’s Depressed —Translated from Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger It isn’t like just anyone walked up to you in the street and told you he’s depressed. It’s my brother, and he wants to kill himself. And of all the people in the world, he had to tell it to me. Because I’m the person he loves the most, and I love him too, I really do, but that’s a biggie. I mean like wow.        Me and my little brother are standing there together in the Shenkin Playground, and my dog, Hendrix, is tugging away at the leash, trying to bite this little kid in overalls in the face. And me, I’m fighting with Hendrix with one hand, and searching my pockets for a lighter with the other. “Don’t do it,” I tell my brother. The lighter isn’t there, in either pocket. “Why not?” my little brother asks. “My girlfriend’s left me for a fireman. I hate university. Here’s a light. And my parents are the most pitiful people in the world.” He throws me his Cricket. I catch it. Hendrix runs away. He pounces on the kid in the overalls, pushes him flat on the lawn, and his scary rottweiler jaw clamps down on the kid’s face. Me and my brother try to pry Hendrix off the kid, but he won’t budge. The overalls’ mother screams. The kid himself is suspiciously subdued. I kick Hendrix as hard as I can, but he couldn’t care less. My brother finds a metal bar on the lawn, and whams it down on the dog’s head. There’s a sickening sound of something cracking, and Hendrix collapses. The mother is screaming. Hendrix has bitten off her kid’s nose, but completely. And now Hendrix is dead. My brother killed him. And besides, he wants to kill himself too. Because to him having his girlfriend double-cross him with a fireman seems like the most humiliating thing in the world. I think a fireman is pretty impressive actually, rescuing people and all that. But as far as he’s concerned she could just as well fuck a garbage truck. Now the kid’s mother is attacking me. She’s trying to gouge out my eyes with her long fingernails, which are painted with repulsive white polish. My brother picks up the metal bar and bangs her one on the head too. He’s allowed to, he’s depressed.  http://www.conjunctions.com/preview.htm

Tim Roth / Interview / Steve Buscemi

Tim Roth. Photo by Dan Winters. Grooming by Patty Wheelock with Jillian Fink.

Tim Roth

by Steve Buscemi

BOMB 59/Spring 1997, FILM

When I was asked to interview my friend and fellow “dog” Tim Roth, I was glad to have the opportunity to catch up with him over a few beers. It’s something we used to do often when we worked together a few years ago, but living on opposite coasts we hardly ever get the chance. I was also excited to finally have access to his earliest films which were made on his home turf in England and are extremely difficult to obtain here. To truly appreciate the versatility of his enormous talents I strongly recommend seeking out, however hard it might be, Allen Clarke’sMade In Britain and Meantime by Mike Leigh. Throw in Stephen Frear’s The Hit, Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Robert Altman’s Vincent and Theoand you have an impressive array of strong performances in a number of eclectic films made before he bloodied a warehouse floor as Mr. Orange (in Reservoir Dogs) and proceeded to take the States by storm in a slew of risk-taking films. If there’s one actor I sometimes feel a tinge of jealousy over, it’s Tim. In my paranoid mind I envision the casting director saying, “Yeah Buscemi’s okay, but what about Roth?” I sometimes give him shit about all the Brit actors who have invaded our turf, but the truth is, I respect his talent and dedication to his craft. Since he’ll soon be making his home in New York, I guess I’ll have to accept that this town is big enough for both of us. And of course there’s no shortage of beer, even with us both at the bar.

---

Steve Buscemi You just got back from Sundance?

Tim Roth Yeah. I have a film called Gridlock’d that premiered there. It reminded me ofReservoir Dogs: first time director shitting himself but loving it all. We were standing in the lobby of the Egyptian Theater, smoking where we’re not supposed to be and acting terrified. It was a lovely experience, wonderful, actually.

SB I’m seeing ads for it, your picture on the side of a bus. How does that feel?

TR Well I saw the ads for Gridlock’d the first time the other day, driving down the street. It was very strange. Considering it’s a fairly low budget film. A lot of it has to do with the fact that Tupac’s record company got involved with the marketing. It’s a very odd, very funny film.

SB You’ve worked a lot, but in the past you were able to enjoy a certain amount of anonymity…

TR Yeah, that’s gone. It went a little bit with Reservoir Dogs, a little bit more with Pulp Fiction, but it really went with Rob Roy. Once you get nominated for an Oscar you’re fucked. It’s a lot harder. You walk into the same places you’ve been going to forever and it’s all changed.

SB I was sitting in a diner the other day with my son, just a little diner that he loves, and this guy came up and sat in our booth totally uninvited. He started talking to me, ignoring my son. It’s tough, because I didn’t want to be rude, but the guy wouldn’t leave. Finally I had to say, “I’m sorry, but can you go away?”

TR You don’t want to be rude, but they’re being really rude.

SB The last time we were here in this place was right before the Academy Awards with Quentin [Tarantino] and Alex [Rockwell]. You remember? Quentin was telling you if you lose you have to say “Oh, fuck” into the camera. (laughter) I’ve read that you thought your acting was pretty big and over the top during the Rob Roy shoot, but even that wasn’t enough for the director, Michael Caton-Jones.

TR I really thought I was going to get fired. I thought that they would get the dailies back in America—it was a proper studio film—they would say, “Get this fucking guy out of there!” But it was what Michael wanted. It was a real case of the director saying, “You’ve got to trust me on this one.” He was right and I was wrong.

SB Were you going to dailies then?

TR No.

SB You don’t like to go to dailies. But I remember you fought for my right to go on Reservoir Dogs.

TR Big argument, too. It’s an actor’s right to use them, I know some actors thrive on it.

SB I like to go because it’s fun, and I also find it really useful. Some directors are concerned that actors might change their performance, and they want to have the freedom to talk about the actors when they’re not there. But if an actor wants to alter his performance based on the dailies, he should discuss it with the director.

TR It scares me, because I start seeing things maybe I like or don’t like.

SB Did you go on the Robert Altman film, Vincent and Theo? I know he really likes the actors to.

TR No, I didn’t. I would sit and wait for everyone else to come out, and then say, “So, what was it like? Was it good? Was it good?” The only time I saw dailies was with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, because of the language. I wanted to make sure the timing was right on the comedy acts.

SB Did you choose to go as big as you did in Four Rooms because you had just done that inRob Roy

TR No. The choice to go big in Four Rooms came not during rehearsal or any preproduction process. The first time we shot, there was a moment where lone Skye appears in the distance and then, suddenly, appears right in front of me, and I chose to do a thing which I did when I was a lot younger and first saw Jaws. When a human head floats across the hole in the bottom of the boat, I literally, and I was sitting quite normally, leapt into a fetal position. It scared me that much, so I decided to use that. And, once I’d used that I had no where to go but…

SB That dictated you.

TR Yeah, it was really on the spur of the moment that that happened. It’s that comedy thing—you’ve done comedy—comedy performance is the most dangerous thing in the world. After the fact, you’re in the hands of the editor and the director, and their timing is very different from yours. As much as you may get your timing right or wrong, it’s really the editor and the director who pull the scenes together.

Tim Roth in Vondie Curtis Hall’s Gridlock’d. Photo by Nicola Goode. Courtesy of Gramercy Pictures.

SB Your character, Ted the bellboy, is in the whole film. How did that work in Four Rooms, having four different directors [Allison Anders, Robert Rodriguez, Alexandre Rockwell and Quentin Tarantino]? Did the four of them discuss that character with you, or did they leave it up to you?

TR No, they saw the dailies, and then took that character into their rooms. They did their own work to a certain extent. We didn’t know what was going to happen. Each section had it’s own tone, and I think what the financers really wanted was the one that worked best in the test screenings. They wanted them all to be the same. It was basically a little experimental film that should have remained as that, but they put the full weight of Disney behind it. I saw an uncut version of it which was a lot better than the final cut, but it just plain didn’t work. Interestingly enough I get so many people who come up to me and say, “Oh, I loved you inFour Rooms.” On the one hand, I think the experience of making it was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life, but my experience watching it is one of the most painful.

SB Well, I think the hype surrounding that film actually hurt it.

TR For me, it did one real service, apart from working with directors I really love, it gave me a kind of armor against the press. Ever since then, I don’t bother to look at bad reviews because who needs it? Even if the critics slaughter it, I know that there is still an audience for a film and that’s great ammunition to have as an actor. But it was a very weird experience—I would definitely want to work with the directors again. The time, the experience of making the film, that’s another part of what I’ve learned. If you really, really enjoy that…

SB It doesn’t matter how well the film does.

TR You really have to bear that in mind because you’re an actor after all, you’re not a movie star.

SB A question I get asked a lot is, when am I going to do a romantic lead?

TR I’ve done it once.

SB Really?

TR Actually, yeah. We don’t usually get offered them because of the way we look. I mean, we’re not Brad Pitt.

SB I was offered his part in Legends of the Fall, you know, but I turned it down.

TR I did one in England, where I played opposite Julia Ormond. It would have to be in England, they cast people like us over there.

SB I was going to bring that up: Angela Pope’s film Captives. You play a convict. You’re in prison, and she plays a dentist who falls for you. She’s on the rebound from her husband and you’re this mysterious guy. You two have a wild love scene. We should explain that your character is let out once a week to go to college. You meet her in a pub and both of you go into the bathroom. It’s a really hot scene.

TR Slightly disturbing. You know, it’s kind of horrible to watch yourself being in love with somebody. Definitely don’t go to those dailies—unless you’re one of those horrible people who look in the mirror while they’re fucking.

SB Is that bad? (laughter)

TR Well, in this case I was watching myself being in love and goo-goo over this woman, and I watched it and I was like, “Oh my God.” I’d never had to put that kind of experience on film. In a sense I would love to play those roles again because they’re a new type of exploration as an actor. But physically, the way I look, it doesn’t occur.

SB Well, my romantic lead was Living in Oblivion, because I got to kiss Catherine Keener. Even though it was a dream sequence, I still count it as a love scene.

TR I had a little bit of a sex scene in Little Odessa. But it was so weird that it can’t really be counted.

SB Now for Little Odessa, how much research did you do about the Russian mob in Brooklyn?

TR Absolutely nothing whatsoever.

SB So you got everything you needed from the script?

TR From the script and from James Gray. It was really a film about a family, a family where the devil has gotten into their house. I love that film, it’s one of the films I’m proudest of.

SB Very dark.

TR Very disturbing. Horrible, horrible, film. I like that.

Tim Roth and Drew Barrymore in Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You. Photo by Joan Clifford. Courtesy of Miramax Films.

SB Now, in the Bill Duke film Hoodlum you play Dutch Schultz. On the one hand you were playing a real character, and also there’s the knowledge that two other actors have played him. Had you seen Dustin Hoffman in Billy Bathgate, or James Remar in The Cotton Club? What does that do to your head?

TR I had seen Billy Bathgate a long time ago, when it first came out. But my main inspirations for the character were Bugs Bunny, Edward G. Robinson, Bogart and Cagney. You know, go for it, let it rip and be big about it. I didn’t want to do the whispering bad guy thing that everyone does nowadays, it’s boring.

SB Did you do any reading on that period? There’re some really good books.

TR The William Burroughs screenplay was the most interesting. I read that and Requiem of a Dutchman, and that was it really. I just read from the script. Historically, it’s pretty inaccurate, but it doesn’t really matter. We were making a film, and it was about an aspect of the mob scene back in the thirties that I didn’t know anything about. I had no idea about the black gangsters in Harlem at that time. It’s a historical character, but in the end it’s a Hollywood movie. And I just went full and big. That was my goal.

SB What are you working on now in South Carolina?

TR I’m going to do a film called Animals, which is by a first time director, Michael D. Giacomo. John Turturro’s in it, Martin Landau, Mickey Rooney. It’s got all of these weird characters, it’s gonna be good.

SB Let’s talk about your directing. Where’d the script come from?

TR It’s an English novel called The War Zone by Alexander Stewart. It’s about a fourteen-year-old boy whose life was destroyed by the discovery of incest within his family. It’s very graphic, but it’s quite beautiful. It broke my heart when I read it.

SB When I was directing, I was kicking myself in the ass for all the times I’ve been on film sets and not really paid attention to the technical side.

TR Well I always did, because I thought if I wasn’t an actor, I really wouldn’t want to be a director, I’d love to be a DP. In fact, I acted recently in a film called Liar. It was really low budget, but I met the DP Bill Butler who shot Deliverance, George, Cuckoo’s Nest, an incredible guy. And the stuff that he was pulling off for no money whatsoever was fantastic. So I sat with him and watched.

SB Have you been watching other films for ideas?

TR Films like My Life as a Dog, which is one of my favorite films, To Kill a Mockingbird. I’ve been doing my homework. I’ve got a ton of films that just deal with children—from Russia, China, Germany, all over the world. Just looking at how directors deal with children.

SB What directors have you been influenced by?

TR Truffaut, Bergman, Tarkovsky. You probably couldn’t do anything without that guy. Early Coppola, Kubrick. Jim Jarmusch I love. Wim Wenders. There’re plenty out there.

SB You also mentioned the Hollywood movies of the seventies…

TR They were probably some of the best films ever made. So, how’s your son? Does he still look like an angel?

SB No, he’s got straight hair now. He’s trying to grow it long so he can be a rock n’ roller. How old is your son, Jack?

TR Twelve. I’m getting to the stage with him where I’m not cool anymore: “You don’t really know what’s going on dad.” Especially in the music scene. For example, I didn’t know who Tupac Shakur was and he did. So basically I’m just not very cool.

SB It’s great when your kids can educate you. I saw Allen Clarke’s Made in Britain, where you play a sixteen-year-old skinhead. It’s an amazing film.

TR At the time I had absolutely no experience in film whatsoever, so he would rehearse scenes lock, stock, and barrel really thoroughly. There was absolutely no star system within the cast at all. Everybody was equally important, which was great. We had only three weeks to rehearse it in a little church hall in England, and then we shot it. Chris Menges shot most of it on steadycam.

SB So it was steadycam, because all those great shots with the camera starting on the third floor and then following you down from room to room.

TR Yeah, it was all steadycam, and so I thought all films were like that. After working with him and Mike Leigh, I couldn’t understand why they just didn’t get the steadycam out. I had no idea that there were different styles. That was the first time, that was losing my virginity. What was yours?

SB A film called The Way It Is with Eric Mitchell where there was no script, shot in black and white, and no sound. We dubbed the sound in later. So I thought, this is how they do it, it’s normal. The character that you played in Made in Britain — Trevor was so disturbing because he was so intelligent.

TR That was the intention. I went to school with guys like Trevor. I’ve always hated whenever skinheads or racists aren’t portrayed right. They have the National Front in England, which is a pretty nasty organization. I went to a couple of their meetings, and there were some very bright people there.

SB There just seemed to be no way to get through to Trevor, to change his way of thinking. As much as you can disagree with his politics and the way he sees the world, there was something you had to admire about his conviction.

TR He was determined. I think in the back of his mind he thought prison would be a good idea for him.

SB At the end, when he could have escaped, he goes to the social worker and tells him everything. And he never talked about his home life, but there’s the scene of you passing a model family in the store window, and the look your face told everything.

TR That is the difference in our styles. With European film it’s not as necessary to give the details, the background, as it is with Hollywood films. Adults can fill in the blanks.

SB Your character takes everything in, lets everybody have their say, and you think maybe they’re slowly getting to him, but then he says, “You guys are the assholes, because you buy the system. I don’t.”

TR Yeah, A-B-C-D. He absorbs information so he can spit it back at them. He’s a very intelligent guy.

SB Do you ever think about your characters, like Trevor? I mean, you did that film twelve years ago?

TR ‘83.

SB What would Trevor be doing now?

TR He’d probably be dead. The ones I went to school with are either dead or in prison. The one I loosely based the character on became a drug dealer. He was very violent. I think he’s probably in prison back at home. I mean, he did kill somebody.

Tim Roth and Tupac Shakur in Vondie Curtis Hall’s Gridlock’d. Photo by Nicola Goode. Courtesy of Gramercy Pictures.

SB So then after Made in Britain you did the Mike Leigh film Meantime. What’s interesting is that he cast you in a role that was 180 degrees opposite of what you played in Made in Britain.

TR When Mike hires you there is no character. The characters emerge from a series of discussions. It’s all improvised. In fact, there were a few circumstances that happened on set that changed the entire story. I think one of the guys came out and started having trouble on the set, another one had a nervous breakdown, so the story veered off into another direction.

SB What’s interesting about your character, Colin, in Meantime is that you can tell, like Trevor, that he has a lot of anger in him, but it is all turned inward. And so he’s just a basket case most of the time.

TR Tragic.

SB I didn’t know which character was sadder, Trevor or Colin.

TR Cohn was based on somebody I went to school with. He was very, very poor and his father died. He was living with his mother and they didn’t have any hot water, it was really awful. And he was bullied, mercilessly, beaten up everyday. By teachers and by kids, and he became the basis for that character.

SB And the actor who plays your brother?

TR Phil Daniels. He plays the lead in Quadrophenia. He’s one of my heroes. Phil also did an Allen Clark movie called Scum, which was about abuse in a juvenile prison. It was produced by the BBC, and then they banned it. Watching Scum and Taxi Driver is what made me want to be an actor.

SB And had you known Gary Oldman before that, who is also in the film? Or Alfred Molina?

TR No. I didn’t know any of them. I was so new.

SB When you were doing these films, were you also doing theater?

TR Yeah, I’d do plays above pubs.

SB Above pubs?

TR Yeah, pub theaters. There’s a whole tradition of it in England, where pubs will have a twenty seat theater upstairs, or in the back. Some of them are really well-respected. You’d do a play and earn a bit of money. Theater was what kept me going, it kept me acting.

SB The first thing I saw you in was Steve Frears’s The Hit. Another great role.

TR A brilliant role. At first Joe Strummer was going to play that part and he couldn’t do it, so I got it.

SB Were you feeling more confident as an actor by then? I mean, you seemed pretty confident.

TR I never had a problem with that. My problem was that I always felt that as soon as it was over, it was over forever. I still have a bit of that. If I’m not working, I go nuts. I never feel secure about it until the first day of filming and I can say, “Okay, it’s actually happening.”

SB Do you go through a little depression or withdrawal when you end a film? This happens to me. The film cast and crew become your family, and when that’s taken away…

TR I still do. And then after a while, you bump into somebody whom you’ve had this extraordinarily intense relationship with, and you have nothing in common. It’s very strange, especially if it’s been a great experience.

SB What were rehearsals like with Frears?

TR We didn’t do anything. We just showed up. My character was basically a football hooligan who got paid with a small amount of money and a gun which he didn’t know how to use. And he couldn’t drive particularly well. Frears let me go with it, let me run. He’s a funny guy. I like working with him.

SB So how did you raise the money to finance your film? Probably was the biggest acting job of your life.

TR God, I was good in that. I got yes’s from everybody.

SB Really?

TR Yeah, but it really is a performance. I get off a plane in England right, and I have a meeting with the head of drama at the BBC, Channel Four who did Trainspotting, and then two other companies. I have to sit and try and sell them on the idea of doing a film about incest. A very uncommercial film, it has no hip qualities about it whatsoever. A film I will not be in, but I want to have casting approval. When you’re an actor, you turn up, hit your marks and you go. But directing… I’m asking them to write a big, fat check. It probably counts as one of the strangest experiences of my life. When you become a director, you have to become a grown-up. I sit with my DP on the phone because I have to know what I want. I can describe shots to him that I need, and he will tell me what that will require, and I have to think about if it’s in the budget. I worked with Alexander Stewart on the screenplay, I structured it with him and let him run. An extraordinary feat. The lead character is a fourteen-year-old boy who discovers that there’s incest in his family between his father and his sister. The film is mostly about how your sanity is breached. It happened to him at probably his most vulnerable time as a young adult.

SB You talked about how his perception of reality keeps changing. Will you do anything with that in the way you shoot it?

TR Yeah. When something disastrous happens, even ordinary objects seem changed, those were always my nightmares. So I’m going to do a lot of that with the set designer, move already established objects around, and change the texture of surfaces, and the lighting. Start bringing the walls in, give them less space, play with things like Eli Kazan did in Streetcar Named Desire.

SB Well you’ll have a lot to be responsible for, and you’ll be working with a fourteen-year-old who may or may not have acting experience.

TR Yeah, and because it’s very graphic, and people don’t behave in the way that we expect them to behave, I have to find a young adult who understands this film’s around forever. I don’t want to become an abuser of the child who’s acting in the film. And his parents will have to be very aware of the story. It’s highly graphic, and it could fuck somebody up by just being in it.

SB Did you see Bastard Out of Carolina?

TR No, I read the book, but I haven’t seen the film.

SB It deals with child abuse that’s very graphic, and almost seems too much to put a young kid through that.

TR There are certain things you can do to protect the child.

SB I imagine Anjelica Huston did.

TR I know for a fact that she did, because I worked with a couple of people who were on that film. But you have to be careful as a filmmaker not to be an abuser. However, I have to be aware that probably three out of ten parents abuse their kids. So if I have an audience of one hundred people, thirty of those people are going to be abusers. I may aim my film at that audience. You see consequences, it’s not gratuitous. You see how this boy is destroyed by what he encounters. There’s no happy ending.

SB Do you ever write?

TR The only way I write is when I’m in cahoots with somebody, when I already have a book or a script, and then I can embellish. I used to write short stories when I was younger and I was always very embarrased about what I had written, so I would burn them immediately. But the actual writing was always an enjoyable experience. Do you write a lot?

SB No, I’m slow. It took me seven months to write Trees Lounge. I think actors can be good writers, but the hard part is to just sit down and do it. I’m always jealous of these guys who have four scripts sitting in their drawer.

TR I know what you mean, and they’re working on another one.

SB How do they do it?

TR I’m just glad they do it, because that’s how we work.

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