One of Roger Corman's star apprentices, Jonathan Demme was a critic and publicist before he got involved with the legendary producer's New World Pictures, where he wrote and produced such lowdown fare as 1971's Angels Hard as They Come and 1972's Black Mama, White Mama. Demme's quirky humanist touch was evident in his directorial debut, the 1974 women-in-prison classic Caged Heat, which brought humor, warmth, and a surprisingly progressive attitude to a sordid subgenre. But his critical and commercial breakthrough came in 1980, with the masterpiece Melvin And Howard, which turned the life of Howard Hughes beneficiary Melvin Dummar into a rich slice of Americana. Demme stumbled with the 1984 Hollywood comedy Swing Shift, which was notoriously mistreated and recut by Warner Bros., reportedly at the insistence of star Goldie Hawn. But he rebounded the same year with the groundbreaking Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense, the first of his superb performance documentaries, which also include 1987's Swimming To Cambodia (on Spalding Gray) and 1998's Storefront Hitchcock (on Robyn Hitchcock). Demme finished the '80s with two flavorful mid-budget comedies, 1986's Something Wild and 1988's Married To The Mob, but neither anticipated the scope and cultural impact of his work in the following decade. An unlikely choice to adapt Thomas Harris' grisly serial-killer thriller The Silence of the Lambs, Demme steered the 1991 project to enormous success, but his next major film, 1993's Philadelphia, invited controversy from all sides by being the first big studio movie to openly address the AIDS crisis. Demme returned to adaptation in 1998 with his faithful rendering of Toni Morrison's Beloved. His latest project, The Truth About Charlie, is a remake of Charade, a classically elegant 1963 thriller that paired Audrey Hepburn with Cary Grant. Thandie Newton stars as a young American in Paris who's beset by thieves and secret agents when her mysterious husband is killed, leaving a hidden fortune behind. The Onion A.V. Club recently spoke to Demme about the Corman years, the French New Wave, and making movies for mass consumption. 

THE ONION: How did you come to work for Roger Corman? How did you convince him to give you a chance to direct a film?
JONATHAN DEMME: I was a publicist back in those days for United Artists, and they needed a unit publicist for a picture that Roger was going to direct called Von Richthofen and Brown [later known as 1971's The Red Baron --ed.]. I got the job, and as fate wouldd have it, this was the exact moment in time when Roger was forming New World Pictures. This movie was being shot in Ireland, and he was desperately in need of scripts set in America. And there I was, this young American in Ireland. I remember him saying, "You write pretty good press material. Perhaps you could write a script for me." [Laughs.] So I teamed up with my friend Joe Viola, who was a commercial director, and we basically took Rashomon and rewrote it as a motorcycle movie. We showed it to Roger, who said to us, "Well, this is pretty good. Joe, you direct commercials. Jonathan, you're a bright young man. Why don't you guys come over and direct and produce it?" Three months later, I was in California, making my first movie [Angels Hard as They Come]. It was never something I aspired to do, but he offered me that opportunity. 

People always talk about the experience as attending the "Roger Corman School Of Filmmaking." What were the most important things you learned from him?
He gave you kind of a visual credo--the importance of imaginative editing and imaginative camerawork in order to keep the eye involved, because if you lose the viewer's eye, you're going to lose the viewer's interest. He also stressed the importance of having as many characters as possible that are in every way just as interesting as your main characters, even if they get less screen time. He had his tried-and-true formula for audience success, which was equal parts action, sex, and comedy, with a little bit of social commentary thrown in for good measure, preferably from the left side of the coin. 

How do you direct actors?
I choose actors who are guaranteed to take full responsibility for their characters. Then I act as their accomplice, or guide, through the shooting of the story. I'm not a puppetmaster. I'm a collaborator. I don't like to rehearse in advance. I like to rehearse for the first time on the set, with the cameras rolling, because I believe in the potential of first discovery being the most magical take of any particular moment. And I have a lot of fun working with actors. I love it. 

Does your philosophy about responsibility extend to other collaborators?
Oh, absolutely. I need to know that everyone I'm involved with on a project is smarter and more imaginative than me in their given area. 

Your films often have a lot of memorable faces on the fringes. Could you talk about the casting process, particularly how you cast the smaller roles?
When we cast The Truth About Charlie, for example, we hired a casting director in France. But instead of casting specific people for specific parts, I requested that for my first two weeks in France, I wanted the casting director to bring her favorite actors in. These actors had to be willing to come in for a general meeting, with no particular part in mind, just so I could see what a lot of people looked like and when they would be available. As I met people, I started making notes to have such-and-such an actor come back to read for such-and-such a part. In two instances, actors came in, and I liked them so much that I actually invented parts for them. The French commandant's mustachioed sidekick... There was no such character in the script. But I met Simon Abkarian, that actor, and I was so galvanized by his presence that I asked if he would participate in a fun experiment: If he could show up for every scene that the commandant was in, we would find a nice place for him in that scene. Over the course of the film, hopefully we could develop a very interesting character. The other made-up role was the Mysterious Woman In Black, the widow, which didn't exist in the script and which is an even more difficult character to explain. But I met Magali Noël, who is a woman of extraordinary radiance and presence, someone we recognize from many Fellini movies and from Rififi, and who's been a well-established stage and screen actor for about 60 years in France. So I met her and was completely enchanted by her, and felt that it would be wonderful to have a character in the story by which we could judge Thandie's progress to finding the truth about Charlie. 

Your work is so strongly associated with the American landscape that The Truth About Charlie seems like a bit of a curveball. How much did you know about Paris when you started shooting?
Probably 80 to 90 percent of my impressions of Paris entering the picture came from a lifetime of watching French movies. [Laughs.] In that regard, The Truth About Charlie is an opportunity for me to acknowledge the incredibly important part that French movies have played in my movie-going life. My parents, God bless 'em, took me to French movies when I was a little kid. Even at 7 or 8, they'd take me to movies like Mr. Hulot's Holiday. During my brief moment in college, I discovered New Wave films and devoured years and years of the stuff. There was a period of my life when I was obsessed with Brigitte Bardot. I had a relationship with her. I missed Brigitte Bardot between Brigitte Bardot movies the way one misses a live person that you've got a crush on. All of these transitions of my life were marked with attachments to different kinds of French movies. So once I got over there, I was confronted with the "real" Paris of today, which is tremendously stimulating - it's as visual a city as exists anywhere. But also, the picture became a receptacle for all this love I have for French cinema and French culture and French folkways as perceived through the movies. [Laughs.] 

The film has a complicated storyline, but the style seems very on-the-fly and New Wave-influenced, as you say. Was it difficult for you to find that balance?
The way we approached shooting the picture was very much off-the-cuff in a certain sense. However, aspects of the visual side of the film, especially as it pertains to the presentation of the past, were scrupulously designed up front in concert with the cameraman, the production designer, a terrific French storyboard artist, a costume designer... An enormous amount of work went into how we were going to present the past, and this fundamental choice of shooting all the past in digital, so we could make a textual distinction between people's memories of events as they might have happened and the so-called reality of the present. But we did shoot very off-the-cuff, because we wanted to have a freewheeling, New Wave style. I enjoy that as a consumer. I love that approach, and I think it's underexploited when it comes to more mainstream projects. In terms of the complicated story, one of the differences between The Truth About Charlie and Charade is that our film chooses to give more screen time to the past, and even [Newton's character's] dead husband Charlie, who in the original is only seen once as a body tumbling off the train at the very beginning. Not even at his open-casket funeral, which is one of the classic scenes... It was one of the scenes in the original film that was so great, we couldn't begin to know how to redo it. That's the interesting thing about remaking a great picture: You find yourself saying, "No, we can't do that. It was too perfect. We have to do something different here." [Laughs.] We took a different approach to the cadaver, and we took a different approach to the orange-passing scene, which turns into a tango in our movie. Instead of seeing Cary Grant take a shower in his suit, we get to see Thandie Newton take a shower with no suit. [Laughs.] 

Both the editing and the music cues are a lot more rapid-fire than your past work.
I was really inspired by three pictures: Run Lola Run, Doug Liman's Go, and a Chinese movie called Suzhou River. I wanted to emulate the energy of certain pictures that had turned me on in many regards. I had the desire to tell a complicated story at a fast pace, which can be really entertaining. Also, our first cut of the film was muuuch longer and contained a muuuch more complicated story, told at a more traditional pace. In the editing, [editor] Carol Littleton and I would look at the movie and keep saying, "That's good, but it just ain't fast enough." We were allowing people a little too much time to think about this stuff. Finally, we arrived at what seemed to be the most exciting tempo for the movie. I also wanted it to have the feeling of a rock concert. We had an enormous amount of music, a lot of it rhythm-driven, in the movie. In the cutting room, I started to think of the story like a concert, which builds in momentum, then finds a place for a slower number, and then builds up again in intensity. 

Since this is a major studio film, do you still have to go through the test-screening process?
I think it would be foolish not to. This is intended to be a mass-consumption movie. It's a corporate product that's been designed, ultimately, to cater to "the masses." So we extensively tested it with preview audiences, and learned a lot from that process. We did show a longer version in three situations, and it played okay, but it clearly had some areas that we liked more than the audience did. I have final cut, so in theory, I could put out any version I want. But I want a lot of people to see the movie, and one terrific way of finding out how much folks are going to like it is to show it to recruited audiences. So I embrace that part of the process very much. 

In your adaptations of books like Beloved or The Silence of the Lambs, how do you remain faithful to the material while still asserting your personality? Where do you get the impulse to bring these books to film?
I don't necessarily think it's the filmmaker's job to assert their personality. It's going to be reflected one way or another by how they choose to adapt it. I loved both of those books. I thought The Silence of the Lambs was an absolutely brilliant book. The easiest way for me to understand the huge success of the movie starts with what a great book Thomas Harris wrote to begin with. He created those characters for Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins and Ted Levine to bring to life. As a filmmaker, I had the delicious job of being the moviegoing audience's representative at the place where the film version was now going to happen. Of course, I had my own ideas about the strengths of the book and how best to visualize them for the screen. Same thing with Beloved. In Beloved, there was zero invention: We didn't have to fix anything in the book, no gaping holes, no problems that had to be solved. The film is very faithful to the book, because we were all so inspired by the book that we simply transferred that inspiration to the screen. The Silence of the Lambs was essentially the same situation, except for the ending. Thomas Harris ended the book in a very meditative, poetic sort of way. This being a movie, we needed something a little bit more galvanizing as a sign-off, so we came up with the phone call and a glimpse of Dr. Lecter following Dr. Chilton off into the Caribbean sunset. 

In the past, you've been heavily involved in Haiti, both in appreciating its cultural richness and in exposing its human-rights abuses. Are you still active there?
I just finished cutting a documentary I've been working on for years called The Agronomist. It's a portrait of a great Haitian radio journalist and human-rights activist named Jean Dominique, who was assassinated on the steps of his radio station on April 3, 2000. He's a guy I met when I was making another documentary back in the '80s, and we became very good friends. When he was in exile in New York, I used to do extended video sessions with him, in which he'd tell his life story and the story of Haiti. After he was assassinated, I went back down in May of 2000 and shot a lot of footage with his family and friends, and I had been working on shaping this portrait of him while making The Truth About Charlie. His murder hasn't been solved yet. Incidentally, the police commandant in the film is named Jean Dominique, and the lieutenant with the mustache I told you about earlier is named Lt. Dessalines in honor of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who was one of the great revolutionary heroes of Haiti. So my connection to Haiti remains very active. [Laughs.] 

Filmmaker Jonathan Demme — who was in Austin recently for the Austin Film Festival's premiere of his new The Truth About Charlie — is every bit as warm and welcoming in person as the actors he's worked with always say he is. In the middle of a long day of interviews, he paused to pour a glass of water, not for himself, but for the writer who had come to question him about his remake of a film, Charade, many regard as a classic. 

DeFore: You were very reverential toward Silence of the Lambs — consulting the author even about minor changes — but here you take lots of liberties with your source material. 

Demme: I don't think it ever occurred to me that there was any need for such a discipline in making this movie. I think I felt that the nature of film, being much more plastic than a book is, and what have you, I just felt — first of all, I thought it was imperative to not try to do a copycat version. That could have been an enormous failure, because you can't copycat Stanley Donen's elegance, you can't copycat the unique, enduring magic of Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. You can't do it. There was also a certain kind of storytelling innocence, combined with a delicious black humor, in the original, the tone of which I don't think one would want to try to duplicate. I felt that the point of remaking Charade was to have the opportunity to take a picture that dared to play so boldly with audience expectations and audience interaction, and to combine genres in such an audacious kind of way. And that it really invited departure more than demanded adherence. I was ruthlessly reverential to both Silence of the Lambs, the book, and Beloved the book; because my goal in both instances was to somehow capture the cinematic version of the incredible experience I had had when reading them. Here, it just seemed like a whole different ball of wax. 

DeFore: You're talking as if that feeling might have been specific to just this film, and I'm wondering if that's something that applies to film in general, that once it's been on screen — I'm not inviting you to criticize anyone here — you don't need to do a Psycho remake, where it's pretty much shot-for-shot. 

Demme: Yeah, but — Gus Van Zant's shot-by-shot recreation of Psycho, I guess is considered by most to have been more or less a bad idea or something. I get that impression. But I feel that it was an extraordinarily bold choice, to go for that, to dare to go for that. The trouble is, the casting was — in those instances, I feel gosh, Tony Perkins was just so Norman Bates, how could anybody else be Norman Bates. Janet Leigh is just so iconographically that young woman, and if you want to remake Psycho ... I think what Gus Van Zant did was extraordinary, but it had this Achilles' Heel of not having the original cast members in it. Gosh, Norman Bates is just as big an icon — not as fresh now, but in his time — as Dr. Lecter. But using Charade as a comparision: Cary Grant was an iconic actor, but his interpretation of Peter Joshua is not iconic. 

So even though for some (hopefully not for everybody) we're certainly haunted by the ghost of Cary Grant — even if you didn't see Charade, you know what he is, know his indelible charm — if you're looking for what Cary Grant had to offer, you're never going to find that from Mark Wahlberg. Mark's not selling that, and we weren't trying to bottle that. 

DeFore: Right; you made the only possible choice, which is never to indicate that he's a character with that kind of Cary Grant charm. There's never any attempt to sell him in that way. Whereas I think Thandie Newton does have a sort of Audrey Hepburn quality to her, though I'm not trying to say you're trying to make her fit that mold. 

Demme: She has shared major characteristics, although their interpretations of the part are very different. The parts are different as written, and additionally their interpretations are different, because there's only one Audrey Hepburn, where Thandie is a chameleon, a total immersion actress. But they're both, like, preposterously gorgeous, incredibly bright, decency oozes out of them, they have that British accent that you could listen to forever and ever. 

DeFore: You've said that Roger Corman taught you the benefit of well-motivated camera movement, and I wonder: In a scene like the one where Newton and Wahlberg are first flirting, and you've got the frame that's just sliding from side to side, is that a departure from that rule? 

Demme: Yes. That's one of many, many — it's consistent with a decision on the part of Tak Fujimoto and myself to not adhere to any of the rules that we've been slavishly adhering to together since 1974 when we made our first movie together. Nevertheless, there's an idea behind it: I wanted to try to capture that kind of fleeting quality that a first encounter can have, an almost dreamlike kind of quality. So we were trying to get that. One of the things that I love in the movie — in fact there are many times, now that you mention it, where I'm happy to say that the camera will be on one of the characters and it'll just suddenly leave the character and go somewhere else all by itself, for no apparent reason. And hopefully, deliver us to something that was worth travelling to. 

Now, as for all those little flashbacks and so on: You of course saw Run Lola Run — I was dazzled by these momentary impressions you got there about what was going on in characters' minds. So, I wanted to steal that, to pay homage and play with that. I really wanted the filmmaking itself to be an element of the audience's fun. I wanted to try a lot of stylistic departures from mainstream movies, to shoot it and use editing techniques in a way that is not often used in mainstream movies, on the premise that if these techniques are fun in the independent movies where we've seen them, they should be every bit as much fun in mainstream movies. So the two things that were borrowed /stolen/saluted from Run Lola Run were these subconscious glimpses, and also the fact of just people running. Run Lola Run showed how great it is to show human beings running just as fast as they can. I wound up stealing so much from that movie that I had to name one of the characters Lola , in case I ever meet [director] Tom Tykwer, so I can say "It was a salute to you" as opposed to "I know I stole from you." 

DeFore: Well, now, you'd already had David Byrne running in Stop Making Sense. 

Demme: That's true too! (Laughs) An early example of how fun running can be on screen. 

DeFore: The film's press materials call the film's stylistic tricks an homage to the French New Wave — how literally should we take that? 

Demme: Whatever an homage is, forget about that. The fact is, my parents started taking me to French movies when I was like seven years old — M. Hulot's Holiday — so I was introduced to the world of French cinema almost the same time I was introduced to American movies. I kind of grew up, therefore, bitten by the French movie bug. My first real intense sexual relationship in my life was with Brigitte Bardot. I went with Brigitte for two or three years, you know, saw every picture she did several times, and hungered for the next the way you hunger for your girlfriend when she goes away (the girlfriend I didn't have, except for Brigitte). And then, there was my discovery of the New Wave through Shoot the Piano Player, which opened up not just a new country, but a whole new way of thinking cinematically. So anyway, if this picture is populated by lots of references to French films, or filmmakers or actors, it's me being faced with the irresistible urge to honor all these things I love when I find myself one day in Paris France making a movie. 

DeFore: The Agnès Varda cameo is especially touching. It's such a beautiful moment, where you see the sign — 

Demme: You noticed the umbrellas?! You've got a good eye, man; that goes by very fast! 

DeFore: So you're not necessarily expecting your audience to catch all these cameos? 

Demme: No. They're for me, and, in this instance, for you. What's most important of all is that they're functioning successfully on a very immediate level that has nothing to do with my love letter to French cinema; that when Reggie is entering this kind of creepy environment, and she passes this mysterious woman with this very penetrating gaze, that's intended just to make the audience say "Are you sure you should be going back in there? This is giving me the creeps!" If Agnès Varda appears in a cameo, it's not so that I can salute Agnès Varda — it's so I get Agnès Varda's amazing face in my movie, and by the way, what a hip, "in" kind of thing. 

But no — say, with the appearance of Charles Aznavour, I really had to wrestle with this in my own mind, to say "This had better be fun if you don't know who Charles Aznavour is, and had better be fun if you've never heard of Shoot the Piano Player and don't know what they're talking about." 

DeFore: Speaking from the perspective of a moviegoer: If you were going to see The Truth About Charlie, would you want to see Charade again the week before going, or would you want to keep it a little hazy in your memory? 

Demme: Can I answer that as the filmmaker instead? Because I have very clear views about that. I hope that people don't refresh their memory, or meet Charade for the first time, before seeing The Truth About Charlie. Because I feel that inevitably, your energy will go to comparison — comparing story points, comparing characters and performances. What I would love, though, is if people went to see Charlie and emerged from that really extremely curious about Charade, and ideally, returning to The Truth About Charlie to complete the circle. 

Mark Wahlberg has revealed he was forced to lose over three stones for the remake of The Italian Job.

He says he struggled to shift the weight after piling on the pounds for a role in Pride And Glory, which was then cancelled.

The actor plays Charlie Croker in the remake, due for release next year.

Wahlberg told Radio 1: "Putting on the weight was fun for the first two weeks but then you have to wake up at two in the morning and eat two burgers and go back to bed.

"And at seven in the morning - eating a stack of pancakes. You still haven't even swallowed your last meal, and you're having to sit down for another one."

"So that wasn't fun, and then after finding out that it wasn't going to happen, it was a little upsetting."

Mark Wahlberg talks The Truth About Charlie by Steven Hanna 

Do you know what’s wrong with you, asks Audrey Hepburn sternly, her gaze fixed on a man who, astonishingly, has proved resistant to her considerable charms. But immediately she melts, flirtatiously, rapturously exhaling the answer to her own question: “Nothing.” 

This famous line from Stanley Donen’s 1963 classic Charade has been lifted verbatim for Jonathan Demme’s new remake, The Truth About Charlie. Except this time the subject of the female lead’s breathless praise is not the great Cary Grant, about whom the statement may well have been true, but Mark Wahlberg, erstwhile underwear model and onetime leader of the Funky Bunch. “It just tickled me to no end,” says Demme, “the idea of putting Mark in fedoras and berets, having him spout French, and running all over Paris, France, in pursuit of the most glamorous, dazzling, exciting young woman, arguably, on earth.” 

The outline of the original film’s plot has been preserved, with the admittedly quite glamorous, dazzling, and exciting Thandie Newton taking over Hepburn’s role as a guileless woman pursued by thugs through the streets of Paris and forced to reckon with an unusually extreme version of the deceptions that attend on every blossoming relationship. However, while Grant’s shadowy character’s fibs and lies as he fell in love were forgiven at every turn by both Hepburn and the audience — thanks in no small part to the goodwill engendered by countless earlier Grant roles — Wahlberg’s mendacity sometimes comes across as meaning something else. His portfolio of film roles is getting to be quite impressive — stellar turns in Boogie Nights and Three Kings, as well as a somewhat less stunning performance in Planet of the Apes, which in his defense might be one of the least stunning films of all time — but it goes without saying that he doesn’t win you over the instant he steps into the shot, the way Grant did. Maybe that’s for the best, though, in a might-be-a-good-guy, might-be-a-bad-guy role like the lead in Charade or Charlie. 

Today Wahlberg sits at a table in Beverly Hills, decked out in a dark gray suit, the knot in his lavender tie dimpled impeccably. In his hands is a paper restaurant napkin, which he ruthlessly folds and refolds as he answers, for probably the hundredth time this week, journalists’ queries about his stepping into Grant’s shoes. “This is, by no means, a Cary Grant biopic,” he insists. “It’s like the hip-hop version of Charade. And, uh, if people want to make the comparison, you know, that I’m doing the Cary Grant role, they can say whatever they want. I did the film ’cause Jonathan asked me to.” His hands are shaking just a little, despite the feigned indifference. Perhaps he’s a little daunted by the comparison after all. 

Or perhaps this is just today’s Mark Wahlberg. Newton, his co-star and Demme’s “most glamorous young woman on Earth” notes that “I never knew Mark. I don’t know who he is. I would say to him ‘Who are you going to be today?’ And I wasn’t talking about his character. He’s, um, all kinds of… Mark is a few people. It’s obviously,” she adds, aware that maybe she’s sounding critical, “very good for the film.” Hearing about these comments later, Wahlberg looks pained. “This is, like, out of left field for me. Thandie said I wasn’t very chatty? What? Chatty? You know what it is? I think we speak a different language. She doesn’t spend too much time, you know… It’s like, I’m just like… I thought we got along pretty well. There was a lot of, you know, if certain things weren’t OK, you say everything was cool, but…” He trails off. Pressed for details on what wasn’t OK, Wahlberg smiles self-deprecatingly. “My trailer wasn’t big enough,” he jokes, “or sparkling water instead of… You know, little shit. It’s all good. I’m very professional. I suck it up. But now people want to start talking about it, bring it into the streets…” He kiddingly mimes a rolling-up-the-sleeves gesture. 

“I wanted to cast very far away from Cary Grant,” says Demme, who obviously succeeded. “I didn’t want to try to do a copycat, to emulate that movie, and I didn’t want to get into some kind of chemistry contest with two of the most legendary icons in the history of cinema.” Chalk up points for avoiding the chemistry contest, offscreen at any rate. Newton goes on to say of Wahlberg that “I felt like we were sort of, like he was an older sibling, or a younger sibling, I don’t know which. It was very odd to be so distanced from each other but at the same time to be so closely thrown together, in the actual filmmaking itself.” Yet Demme insists that they’re fantastic together onscreen: “Seeing him with Thandie, I loved the way that couple looked together and the way they behaved together. I got very excited about Mark, and the pairing, and I thought he was really cute, incredibly sweet, in ways that I hadn’t seen anything like that in his movies.” 

Sweetness has been in short supply in Wahlberg’s personal history, as well, and this might be where some of the menace in his Truth About Charlie performance comes from. A rough childhood in the streets of Boston led to an assault conviction and a jail term early on, which he says was a turning point for him. “When I went to jail for a little while, I realized, you know, that I had kind of made it, ’cause this was what I had set out to accomplish. I wanted to be one of the guys, I wanted to be accepted, I wanted to be respected on the street. I wanted to have my stripes, to have my time under my belt, but when I got there, you know, I thought ‘This is the worst place in the world. This is not what I want.’ And, you know, from that day on, I had my work cut out for me.” Some help from his older brother Donnie, then of the New Kids on the Block, led to his music career under the moniker Marky Mark, and eventually to film roles. 

Newton says she was unfamiliar with her co-star’s musical work prior to meeting him on the set. “I’d heard of Marky Mark,” she concedes, “though I hadn’t heard his music. I still haven’t actually today. I do remember seeing, just before going to Paris, a book that a friend of mine had, kind of like a fan club book, of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch — is that what they were called? — and I was looking through this, and there’s Mark, and he’s so clearly a teenager; and there were all these girls everywhere, and I was just like, ‘Oh, my God. How can you develop a normal attitude to anything, when you’re going through this as a teenager?’ I was like ‘Oh, my God.’” 

Reflecting on all this, however, Wahlberg sounds remarkably well-adjusted. “It’s been a long road,” he says, nodding, “but looking back, it seems like nothing now, because I’ve accomplished so much, and I’ve changed, you know, truly changed, inside, in my heart. And, uh, that’s a big deal for me. I thank God everyday, for everything that’s happened. There’s a few nights, you know, when I was 16 or 17 when I would rather have stayed in the house, you know, because a lot of people got hurt. But everything happened for a reason, that was the path I was on.” And if there’s anything abnormal about his attitude toward his past, it’s that it’s an unusually healthy one: “For the most part, I usually feel uncomfortable talking about it, ’cause I, you know, it’s not an image that I’m trying to put out there. I’ve tried to talk about it because I thought, well, maybe it can do some good. Though, you know, you’re talking about it in the New York Times or talking about it in Vanity Fair, and the kids that I’m trying to reach don’t read those papers or these magazines. But they can identify with me, so if I’m there, I show them, that if I did it, then you can certainly do it. I know if I had somebody to look to, if I had an example, then I would have made a lot of different choices.” 

He notes that it’s not hard to make better decisions today. “I’m not in a situation now where I have a couple of drinks, and get into a fight, you know what I mean?” The napkin flexes between his fingers, folded upon itself countless times, but he doesn’t tear it, and it doesn’t break. “I just don’t think that way anymore. I don’t worry that if I go into a restaurant or a bar and I make eye contact with somebody, that they have a problem with me, and if I don’t get them, before they get me… It’s not like that anymore.” 

But the fact that it used to be like that explains why Wahlberg’s take on his Charlie part emphasizes the possibly sinister side of the character, the side that slid right off Grant’s smooth exterior. “I was always interested in pushing the darker side, in really trying to convince the audience that I was the bad guy,” he muses. “But, you know, you can only push that so far, ’cause if you continue to do that, even if you reveal at the end of the movie that I’m on, say, the right side of the law, still, you know, you’ve rubbed them in the way where you don’t necessarily want these two to be together.” 

The resulting balancing act, performed so deftly by Donen in ’63, fell upon Demme’s shoulders this time, and he concedes that his approach was a less feather-light one. “It’s the same thing as going with Mark Wahlberg instead of Cary Grant,” Demme enthuses, “and you go with something more earthbound, and hopefully it’s energized very much in its own way, kind of shoot-from-the-hip, and not elegant.” Wahlberg, for his part, shrugs that he just did his job, as Demme instructed, and that this willingness is what has led him to work with so many great directors, including Paul Thomas Anderson and David O. Russell. “I think it’s that I just let go, and do whatever they want me to,” he says, “and I don’t have any problems with it. Even if it means wearing a beret.” 

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Mark Wahlberg wants to set the record straight. He does not regard himself as the new Cary Grant, and he is not playing Grant in his new romantic thriller, The Truth About Charlie.

Furthermore, he says it was merely a misunderstanding that he seemed to suggest otherwise on the David Letterman Show earlier this year.

The problem is that the film, which opens Friday, is director Jonathan Demme's remake of Charade, a 1963 hit that starred Grant as a debonair mystery man who materializes out of nowhere to help damsel-in-distress Audrey Hepburn solve the murder of her equally mysterious husband.

Demme, of Silence Of The Lambs fame, had long wanted to make an updated version of the film that would again be set in Paris and again be heavy on old-fashioned romantic intrigue.

However, the director also concedes that the shadow of the earlier movie, and its two legendary stars, hangs heavy over the new project and its two current players, Wahlberg and Thandie Newton.

It is why Wahlberg has fielded questions recently about what it feels like to be the new Grant.

"It was never about that," he protests, good naturedly. "It was never a matter of Jonathan saying, 'You're the new Cary Grant.' He thought I was the right guy for the part, the guy to bring something different and interesting to the role, so I said sure. I wasn't a huge fan of the original ... I was a huge fan of Jonathan Demme, so I said: 'I'll work with this guy in whatever role. I'll play the guy on the bus who doesn't say anything.' "

But he's not playing the guy on the bus in The Truth About Charlie; he's starring in an eagerly awaited fall movie.

Yet, to Wahlberg, who will never forget the days when he was a convicted Boston street hood, it's a learning experience -- another mile on his acting "journey" and further proof he's become a mature adult.

It was never part of Demme's vision to have Wahlberg imitate Grant, and the actor says it's unfortunate if he gave that impression when chatting with Letterman. 

"Jonathan wasn't very happy about that," Wahlberg grins. "He wrote me this four-page letter ... and it's not flattering. It says: 'Had I wanted to do the Cary Grant thing, there are so many other actors I could have cast instead of you.' "

Still, Wahlberg manages to look as sleek and sophisticated as a modern Grant.

Unlike many young actors who seem to embrace scruffiness when meeting the press, Wahlberg is clad in a black Armani suit.

"They [Armani] are nice enough to give me free clothes," he smiles. "I even wear this to the gym, man."

Wahlberg says he loved filming The Truth About Charlie in Paris, and he was intrigued by Demme's decision to emulate the free-wheeling visual style of the French New Wave cinema of the 1950s and 1960s.

Wahlberg, who soaks up cinematic knowledge like a sponge in anticipation of one day producing and directing, also loved the way Demme embraced modern technology by using hand-held cameras whenever possible. He also laughs that Paris had a downside when it comes to film-making.

"The only thing that sucks about working in France is that you're required to drink a bottle of wine at lunch, and it's hard to keep up that sort of pace."

Wahlberg's also no stranger to remakes.

Last year's Planet Of The Apes was Tim Burton's eccentric reworking of an earlier classic, but nobody assumed Wahlberg would do a Charlton Heston number.

"Heston ran around in a loincloth for 90 per cent of the film which I did not want to do."

The forthcoming Italian Job is also a remake, but Wahlberg doubts anyone will assume he's imitating the original star Michael Caine. So, he's puzzled by what's happening with The Truth About Charlie, but also resigned to it.

"Jonathan obviously cast me in this movie to do the complete opposite of Cary Grant."

Wahlberg, 31, says that now, as in the original film his is a character who is constantly teasing and tantalizing the audience, leaving it in the dark as to whether he is a good guy or a bad guy.

"That was a lot of fun, but it was a fine line to walk because I always wanted to push the darker side."

Wahlberg will never forget his own darker side.

Even in the flush of stardom, he refuses to draw a curtain over the fact that 15 years ago, when he was 16, he was imprisoned for beating up a Vietnamese man while drunk and high on pot, simply because he wanted a case of beer in the victim's possession.

It's almost as though he sees it as an obligation to remember his origins, whether when talking to the media or visiting troubled youth in boys' clubs. Yet, he says that if he hadn't gone through those experiences, he wouldn't be the person he is today. 

"It was a tough road getting to where I am, but looking back now it seems nothing." 

Wahlberg believes that everything that happens in life happens for a reason, and as a Roman Catholic, he believes that people are put in this life for a purpose.

Ask him to name the things that excite him, he quickly lists off "my work, my spirituality, my maturing as an adult." 

But perhaps his spirituality is most important.

"Everything has happened because of my spirituality. It's not something I try to advertise. It's just something that means the world to me. I have a hard time talking about it because people always think this is just some sort of image I'm trying to present -- but it's just who I am." 

He talks of the "wonderful" people who stood by him during his worst times. "I didn't realize who they were. I was always trying to impress people that I thought were important -- the guys on the corner. Thank God for those people who never gave up on me. So, when I realized that I was basically being an idiot, I knew that what I needed to get back on the right track was to refocus my faith."

Jonathan Demme’s early films, among them Something Wild and Melvin and Howard, practically defined the ’80s. They captured the plastic, pre-fab, arms-length weirdness of a culture coming to terms with the excesses of capitalism as an end rather than a decadent means. His films have always been B-movies disguised by studio pedigrees, and he remains one of the few auteurs to successfully navigate his career through the rocky waters between the ’70s American artistic explosion and the ’80s acquiescence to today’s blockbuster mentality. So how is it that Demme’s cinematic voice can sound so muddled just barely a decade after his greatest triumph, The Silence of the Lambs, which synthesized the personality and idiosyncrasy of his vision with expert technical proficiency? The Truth About Charlie, his latest film, a remake of the 1963 Stanley Donen classic Charade, collapses together as a deafening cacophony of compelling ideas disrupted rather than invigorated by those underlying commercial leanings. 

The idea, outwardly, seems infallible: a bankable filmmaker personally writing and directing crafting a remake of an earlier, celebrated film (since Hollywood’s philosophy has always been “anything worth doing is worth doing over… and over… and over…”). The end result, however, is a scattershot assembly of interesting ideas shoehorned into an aging auteur’s dissipating milieu in search of a hit, either commercial or critical- undoubtedly by both the director himself and the studios. When Reggie (Thandie Newton) returns to Paris after a tropical vacation from her recent, whirlwind marriage to Charlie (Stephen Dillane), she discovers all of her belongings gone and her husband mysteriously murdered. Charmed by a stranger named Joshua (Mark Wahlberg) on the beach who has followed her back and is determined to help her, Reggie attempts to uncover the true identity of her husband: several parties are determined to recover the truth, including a police inspector (Christine Boisson) who considers her the number one murder suspect; a charming, bureaucratic embassy official (Tim Robbins) who urges her not to listen to or trust anyone; and a group of Charlie’s cohorts who look to recover a fortune he hid before he died. 

Thandie Newton (Mission: Impossible 2) nails the mannerisms of her onscreen predecessor Audrey Hepburn with unerring precision, and tries her damnedest to make us believe in Reggie’s naiveté. That she willfully believes each lie heaped upon the previous one—by people who have not proven their reliability—to cover up a disproved falsehood, speaks to the decade in which the character was originally created rather than some plausible contemporary suspension of disbelief, and one can only marvel at how many more lies Reggie will believe before the truth is finally revealed. Wahlberg, in reliable form, wisely avoids emulating Cary Grant and in instead opts for a more mysterious and potentially compelling leading man (at least by today’s standards). Joshua’s enigmatic presence unfortunately conjures more questions than it answers; Wahlberg doesn’t seem to know him better than we do and as a result credulity is stretched beyond its breaking point, as his lies accumulate and we are continuously expected to trust and sympathize with him. 

The double-crosses and battles of wits ultimately beg for some explanation that couldn’t possibly exist, and the “truth,” whatever is eventually envisioned (I’m still not quite certain) can’t satisfy the exasperated feeling that’s left after characters have come and gone and what’s true and false have become indistinguishable. Demme’s set pieces alternately confuse and exhilarate throughout the picture, revealing hints of impassioned creativity struggling to get out; he treats us to an exhilarating foot chase at one point that invigorates the film for a few minutes primarily because of its’ sloppiness- Joshua and his adversary push and shove like kindergarteners fighting for first-in-line at the cafeteria, and finds the fleeting, manic energy of a much more realistic “discovered” moment. Unfortunately, this is the only perceptible upswing in the entire film, and The Truth About Charlie reveals itself to be that a filmmaker has, like Reggie, lost his way, and is willing to believe most anything in search of something real- especially if that “reality” involves a hit movie. (Universal, PG-13) 

The Alpine skiing scenes are gone, and the missing money is no longer $250,000 but an inflated $6 million. Yet The Truth About Charlie's barebones plotting and character names instantly peg it as a remake of 1963's Charade, a smash at the time and still an audience favorite. It's a dicey idea even for its first-rate filmmaker. 

He is Jonathan Demme, who, before his films began leaning toward the self-important in the '90s (Philadelphia, Beloved), had a spectacular 14-year streak as a consummate entertainer, from Citizen's Band through The Silence of the Lambs. As far as it goes, he's a good fit for a movie built around a murdered husband, a threatened widow, Paris locales and baddies' pursuit of loot — even if he is missing the services of the original's Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. 

What he does have in Hepburn's role is Thandie Newton, an actress so vivacious — and especially here — that you'd think she'd have chemistry with anyone. But as the maybe good guy/maybe not who lends a hand, co-star Mark Wahlberg kills that theory. Charlie never licks its lack of romantic combustion, no matter how much Demme juices up the telling with a club scene that'll make you want to take tango lessons and his clever end-credits sequences. Tak Fujimoto's handheld camera establishes an intimacy with the actors that just isn't contagious, though Tim Robbins has some smooth moments as another mystery man. 

For a vehicle never intended — then or now — to be more than fluff, Charlie has a convoluted story that, at least, offers delightful scenery. Demme wisely doesn't try to challenge the original at its own game. Charade was prime old-style Hollywood, but Charlie is a conscious homage to French New Wave films of the same period. Wave icons Anna Karina and Charles Aznavour even show up in cute cameos — and at 78, Aznavour's singing voice still has a touch of the aphrodisiac. 

Slow at times but also smart and easy on the eye, the movie never really answers the key question: Why? One of the great Demme entertainments of the '80s was the dark Melanie Griffith farce Something Wild. This time, he has made something mild.