-A World Exclusive from The Gadflyista. Inspired by the success of The Iron Lady, actor-turned-director Nell Gibbon met us in London to talk to us about his latest project, The Vegetarian Chancellor.
I'm sitting in a cafe in Soho, waiting patiently for arrival of the man I'm due to interview. Actually that's a lie- I may as well admit it, since he's safely back in California by now. He's in fact been standing in clear view of my window-side seat for some minutes now, raging obscenities at the cab driver who brought him here. I wonder again whether to intervene, what with him no doubt being unused to the pricklier variety of London cabby, but think better of it. It would be presumptuous indeed to think that the all-action star of such movies as Deadly Killer Machine parts I, II, III and IV would have any need of my help should it come to a scrap.
Eventually he comes in, looking grizzled. Everyone turns around as he approaches my table, recognising immediately the good looks and the lustrous mane of big name Hollywood actor-turned-director, Nell Gibbon. Though looks aside, his opening mumblings of the words 'worse than', 'Yids' and 'New York' could have given the game away too. I choose to ignore these mumblings, and after introducing myself, quickly offer an opening sally on the movie billboard now passing by up on the bus outside. I note again how out-of-kilter the phrase 'The Iron Lady' looks with the pale but sensual, very-human face of actress Meryl Street looking down at us, so I ask Nell what he makes of it. His point is clear: 'she knows what she's doing, Meryl'. 'So do the studio'. 'Cut out the crap' about her being the 'Butcher-of-the-Belgrano', the 'smasher of communities', and focus on 'the good stuff'- on a 'chick' 'wading her way through shit, all guns blazing' so as to be 'the first chick to make it to the top. Now there's a story!'It seemed strange to me to hear him echo the sentiments of the liberal feminists discussing the film in this morning's papers- well, the stuff about 'chicks', 'shit' and 'guns' excepted- since Nell's notorious misogynistic remarks in the past seem about as likely to make him praise a feminist triumph, as the liberal feminist's 'leftist' remarks of the past seemed likely to see them praise a neo-liberal triumph. But perhaps Nell's own respect for the film has something to do with the fact that its success undoubtedly helped to make his latest project possible- a pet project that no studio would back as little ago as last year. But box office receipts don't lie. And such are the projected returns on The Iron Lady that rival studio, Revisomax, has commissioned Nell to make a similar resuscitation of a formerly loathed leader, again on the basis that they were the first leader of a group formerly excluded from holding power. Hence The Vegetarian Chancellor project was born, aimed to be be released next year so as to mark the 80-year anniversary of the coming to power of the first ever non-meat-eating leader of a Western nation.
So what's it about? Well Nell paints the following picture: of a sensitive young boy growing up in Imperial Austria, one of the world's most notorious fleisch-guzzling lands, only to find his conscience will no longer allow him to eat as his family eats. Nay!- what his whole culture eats. Dish after dish of schnitzel and sausage are set before him, but in spite of all the parental threats made, all the sibling mockery he has to endure, each time he refuses everything but sauerkraut. No innocent little animals would suffer on his account, no matter what the problems it caused him!
Stirring stuff indeed, and Nell promises his audience that there will be plenty more such inspirational scenes, featuring all the other Germanic stereotypes the studio's market research has shown that the movie-viewing public expect to see in a film set in Austria (or Greater Germany, as our young hero, Adolf himself would have called it). One scene that ticks all those boxes for Nell- indeed, he has tears in his eyes as he recounts it to me- is of our young, animal-loving young hero running across the Alpine foothills- in clear echo of Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music- carrying off a calf to its liberation, and of course, sporting the most tight-fitting lederhosen. A garb that will no doubt help the actor cast in the role, Tim Schmooze- another man much maligned for his beliefs- achieve a sufficiently high pitch to decry the brutal murder of poor little animals. And Nell goes on to explain, it is just these heroic but traumatic experiences that makes his young Adolf seek out consolation in art- a connection he makes in the movie that has been praised by a prominent Buddhist-vegan charity supporting his venture. It is at this moment that the interview is interrupted as Nell aggressively summons over a Barista. The twenty-something Latino guy looks terrified, since Nell looks exactly as he did in Deadly Killer Machine III, right before he forced the bad guy's screaming head into a smoothie-maker. 'Not skinny enough', he yells at the waiter, referring to his latte, so it seems. Needless to say that the waiter doesn't make a fuss. Nell turns back to me with an exasperated raise of his eyebrows. It therefore required some boldness on my part to move to ask whether he deals with the more, shall we say, controversial aspects of the character. "You mean the politics stuff? Right,' Nell replies, clearly unruffled, but betraying a slight annoyance that I'd veered from the vegetarian-struggle narrative. Though he's quickly back on it, describing his hero's descent through the dingy world of Austria's Bohemian underground, desperate to make it as a painter- to put his love of animals, his feelings of cultural alienation, onto canvas. And it is there that Nell depicts the young Adolf turning to more political aspirations. For, as he justifies it, one can only save so many poor animals as one man. But how many more could he save with a state apparatus, with a whole empire even, behind him?
I stop him at this pint, since it is at this stage of the film that concerns the rumours now circulating on the web. That he deliberately distorts a conversation of the young Adolf with a famous Jewish intellectual, who incidentally wears a prosthetic hooked nose it is said was made especially for the character. I ask him whether he's worried about these accusations? Especially following what one critic described as 'a whiff of anti-Semitism' from his last revisionist biopic, How the Murderous Jews Brutally Butchered Christ.
Nell though is bullish, insisting on his fidelity to the history, to his commitment to the integrity of the project as a whole. That he's not only sunk his own money into the project, but has even offered his acting talents to the studio for free; conditional, of course, upon his being cast in the role of the young SS-leader, Heinrich Himmler. He then tackles the charge head on. Sure, he says, in reality what the intellectual said to Adolf was that the Germans would never make a leader of someone who had such poisonous views on gypsies, Jews, communists, the mentally ill, homosexuals, and foreigners generally. But of course, Nell emphasises, one has to read between the lines with such people, as indeed Adolf did. That he knew the Jew to be really taunting him that the German people would never accept a vegetarian for their Chancellor. It was discrimination pure and simple.
'But Adolf showed 'em,' the beaming Nell now harrumphs, before going on to describe Adolf's heroic 'Mein Kampf' against such bigoted prejudices, on his giddy, inspiring rise on up to become the West's first vegetarian leader. And not only does he get to the top, Nell adds, but he goes one better than Thatcher when he gets there. Nell is of course recalling the familiar criticism that more cynical feminists direct at Thatcher: that it's all very well for her to be the first woman prime minister, but she actually did sod all for the women whilst in power. Adolf on the other hand, Nell points out, wasn't only the first vegetarian leader- as inspiring as that in itself is- but founded some of the largest non-meat-eating communities outside of Asia- in Dachau, in Auschwitz....
He's interrupted at this point by a cascade of coffee and foam splurting out of my mouth and nose. Nell though is unruffled, clearly used to such a primitive reaction to his artistic vision. He merely takes a sip of his fair-trade, organic skinny latte, before adding calmly:'I know what you're thinking. What about all those suffering millions? Well, there were vegetarians in the camps too you know- my researchers found that out. So just as the women in the broken communities of 1980s Britain could still be inspired by the fact that the leader who broke them was for the first time in history a woman, so could.....'
The Vegetarian Chancellor is due for release worldwide on the 30th January 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment