"No" was the initial answer
from Sir Michael Caine when "Sleuth" producer and co-star Jude Law
approached his fellow British countryman about making an updated version of the
1972 film adaptation that starred Caine and Sir Lawrence Olivier. That is,
until Law said the script was penned by Harold Pinter, who a half century ago
cast a young Caine in the first play he wrote.
The former schoolmate jumped at the opportunity to act in another Pinter
production.
"For 50 years (Pinter) wrote all this great stuff and I wasn't in any
of them," Caine said to a chorus of laughter from the Arclight Theater
audience at Thursday's Variety screening of "Sleuth." "I
thought, 'Listen, I made you. This is recompense.' "
Caine joined director Kenneth Branagh for a short but lively Q&A session
as an anxious publicist waited to shuttle the knighted Englishman to his next
destination.
Much of the conversation centered on Pinter's script. Caine explained that
the other reason he changed his mind about remaking Anthony Schafer's
Tony-award winning screenplay was that the movie isn't a remake at all.
"There's not a line in the Pinter script that's in the original one, so
for me it was not a remake. There's nothing there. What is there is the
plot."
"(Caine) has a kind of feel for Pinter's dialogue, this superficially
naturalistic dialogue which contains such menace and such humor," said
Branagh. "Pinter made a leaner, darker script than Schafer's brilliant
version and I felt when I read it that it was psychologically dirty and that it
needed great casting and that's what it got so for me it was a very exciting
'yes.' "
Read the full article at:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117973468.html