The Elephant to Hollywood

by Michael Caine

  Letting off our explosion in the square caused some considerable excitement. First of all we had a very special secret visitor on the set: a tiny Vietnamese man who turned out to be General Giap, the general in charge of North Vietnamese forces who had finally beaten the Americans. He just wanted to witness our recreation of the incident that had started the war . . . Then, as we worked setting up the scene, we noticed a man with a bicycle standing right next to one of the cameras and watching what was going on intently. When the explosion went off – and it was a very big one – he went nuts and started running round and screaming in Vietnamese. Our interpreters shouted translations at a surprised Philip Noyce, the director. ‘That was exactly it!’ the man was yelling, pointing to a spot about twenty yards from where the ‘bomb’ had gone off. ‘I was riding this bicycle right there – I could have been killed, but I was late for work!’ We obviously got something right . . .

  We finally left the hustle and bustle and the three million motor scooters behind and while the unit prepared to move location, we escaped to the paradise of the Furama Hotel and spa on China Beach, near Da Nang. It was the first free time I had had – I have never worked so hard before or since on a movie – and we were determined to make the most of it. It was also a chance to see the traditional Vietnam – and we weren’t disappointed. One night, after a night shoot, we were coming back to the hotel when we suddenly came across a massive vegetable market sprawled across the road for about a quarter of a mile. The car screeched to a halt and we slowly picked our way through the stalls as ladies moved their mats and baskets of fruit and vegetables out of the way. When we finally made it safely to the other side without killing any of the vendors or squashing so much as an onion, I asked our driver, who was a local man, what on earth they were doing holding a market in the middle of the road anyway. He shrugged. ‘They were there first,’ he said. ‘They have been there for a thousand years and weren’t going to move, so when they built the road right through the middle of the market they were prepared to change the time of the market to night time when there is less traffic, but they refused to budge.’ That’s what I call tradition!

  From there we moved on to the old Communist capital, Hanoi. We encountered the same motor scooters and the same noise – although there didn’t seem to be any Buddhists to help us cross the streets there. In fact the whole place and the people we met seemed to be much tougher and I could understand how these people had refused to be beaten by the Americans. Vietnam seemed to me to be almost three nations: the southerners were like the Italians with their great love of life; the ones in the middle were a bit like the Belgians: just anxious to get on with everything quietly and hoping their bigger neighbours would leave them alone; and the northerners were like the Germans – tough, efficient and always on time (Churchill was once asked if the Blitz on London had taught him anything and he said yes, it had – the Germans were punctual!).

  There were signs everywhere in Hanoi of the monotonous lives that the Vietnamese had to put up with under the Communist regime. We were driving back late one night through the city and as we passed house after tiny house, all with their doors and windows open and all with the television on, it dawned on me that they were all watching the same programme. No wonder – when I asked the driver how many stations they had, the answer was ‘One’. They were also subjected to a relentless diet of propaganda. In an overnight stay in a hotel outside Hanoi, I was woken up at dawn by loudspeakers all over the town blaring martial music at maximum volume before a man came on and began to exhort his comrades to get up and produce even more than they had the day before. It was too noisy to stay in bed, so I got up and went for a walk and by chance passed a small studio with its doors open. Curious, I peeped inside and there was the actual man making the broadcast, screaming his head off. I had nothing to lose (I’d already lost enough sleep!) and I stepped inside and shouted at him, ‘shut the fuck up!’. He just smiled and waved and carried on . . .

  Eventually it was time to move on from Vietnam and shoot the studio interior sequences, which we did in Sydney. I think it’s one of the most beautiful cities in the world and I love the place – if it were a couple of thousand miles closer, we’d all be living there . . . It was a relief to get there after Vietnam, and our Australian crew – who were great – were especially happy to be back on home ground.

  I turned up to make-up on the first day of shooting feeling very relaxed and happy with life. I sat down and as the make-up lady was getting to work she said to me very casually, ‘You do know you’ve got skin cancer, don’t you?’ I shot out of that chair at about a hundred miles an hour. ‘Skin cancer?’ I said. ‘Where?’ She pointed to a mark on my face that I had thought was just a razor rash. I didn’t know what to think, but I was encouraged by how unperturbed she seemed to be – I mean, I know Australians are laid back, but she was a genius. ‘No worries,’ she said. ‘It’s very common in Australia – and most of them aren’t serious.’ For obvious reasons I couldn’t have the operation while we were filming, so I made an appointment with Sydney’s top skin cancer specialist, who scheduled surgery for the very second we finished the shoot, and did my best to put it out of my mind and just get on with the job.

  We were operating a more relaxed filming schedule in Sydney, so there was a bit of time to see the sights. We had a fabulous apartment right on the harbour with spectacular views, although the most spectacular of all wasn’t there when we went to bed one evening, but in the morning when we woke up it had appeared during the night – there, outside our window, was the QE2. We were invited on board for a tour one afternoon and were shown around by the captain. It is a beautiful and remarkable ship (it was retired in 2008 and is now awaiting refurbishment as a floating hotel) although it has its stranger aspects. We were just going past what was obviously the most luxurious apartment on board when the captain put his finger to his lips. ‘Sssssh,’ he said. ‘Our most important guests are probably asleep.’ It turned out that this couple had actually lived on the ship for several years and travelled all round the world without ever leaving the ship . . .

  When we came back on deck I looked over at the famous Harbour Bridge and noticed that there was a group of tourists all tied together climbing over the top of it. ‘I’d love to do that,’ I said, ‘but it looks a bit scary.’ ‘Not at all!’ said the captain. ‘People do it all the time and it’s perfectly safe.’ Not many people can say they were talked into climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge by the captain of the QE2, so I accepted the challenge and the next day Shakira and I lined up with everyone else. We were given special harnesses to wear that were clipped into a wire that ran all the way up to the top. ‘That will stop us falling off,’ I said to the guide rather nervously. ‘It’s not there for that,’ he said, ‘it’s to stop you jumping off. People lose their nerve sometimes and seem to want to leap!’ Not me, I thought, not in a million years, but we took a deep breath and started the climb. It was fantastic – Shakira and I loved every moment and there’s a picture of the two of us on the very top, with the block of apartments we were staying in over one shoulder and the Sydney Opera House over the other to prove it.

  All these wonderful experiences were to a certain extent displacement activities. We were coming to the end of the filming and I knew I was then facing surgery for my skin cancer. I had already been reassured to some extent by my first visit to the surgeon. ‘If I were going to have skin cancer,’ he said, ‘then this is the one I would choose.’ I nearly kissed him. He did tell me the name of it, which I found unpronounceable, but being a keen gardener and cook there was one syllable I did recognise: ‘basil’ – pronounced in the American way (actually it turns out to have been a ‘basal cell carcinoma’). So if you are ever unlucky enough to get skin cancer and you hear the word ‘basil’, you are probably OK. In the end, the whole thing was remarkably painless. A lump of skin one inch wide and fourteen stitches long was cut from my neck and I got on the plane to England an hour later and flew all the way home
without any discomfort at all. The guy was a genius – there’s no sign of any scar at all and in the unlikely event of my ever wanting to have a facelift, I’ll be straight back on that plane!

  The Quiet American was first scheduled to be released in September 2001, but because of the tragic events of 9/11, it was postponed for over a year. When it was eventually released – and I had to beg Harvey Weinstein to release it in time to qualify for the Oscars – it got a great critical reception and I was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor. I knew in my heart of hearts that there was no way that a film which implied even the slightest criticism of American foreign policy was going to have a good chance, so I went back to England and got on with the important things in life: my family and my home. After all, there were roses to be pruned, potatoes to plant and rhubarb to be cut. I was reminded of something a Hollywood producer – and great friend – I had worked for once said when he had to break some bad news to me about an award. He gave me a hug and whispered, ‘It’s not your turn, Michael.’ I smiled and pretended not to mind too much and as he walked away, he gave me a very Hollywood line. ‘I am an honest man, Michael: I would only ever stab you in the chest.’ That’s show business.

  A lot of show business is about timing and in this instance the timing was against The Quiet American big time. The Americans invaded Iraq on 20 March 2003; the Academy Awards were just four days later on 24 March. The night before the ceremony I had dinner at Jack Nicholson’s with three of the other four nominees for Best Actor: Jack, for About Schmidt, Nicolas Cage for Adaptation, Adrian Brody for The Pianist (who was a worthy winner). Daniel Day-Lewis, who had been nominated for Gangs of New York, was still on a plane and couldn’t join us. We were basically deciding whether or not we should go ahead with the ceremony or abandon the whole thing. In the end, we decided to go with movie tradition and the show went on – although it was a very subdued ceremony indeed, only livened up by speeches protesting against the war.

  It’s always disappointing not to win, but in this case I really felt I had given my best. Philip Noyce, a great Australian director, guided the film brilliantly and Brendan Fraser, who plays the well-intentioned American, Alden Pyle, for whom my character’s mistress Phuong leaves me, gave a great performance. With them, a brilliant new actor I hadn’t come across before, Rade Šerbedžija, who played Inspector Vigot, and a script by Christopher Hampton – not to mention the quality of the original novel – I felt I had a chance of getting as close to my own standards of perfection as I possibly could; a chance to reach the limit of my own talent, a chance to improve my work. Great movie actors make themselves and the acting disappear and you only see the character. If you sit there and say – isn’t he a wonderful actor? – then he isn’t a wonderful actor at all. You shouldn’t see the actor in the movies; that’s for the theatre . . .

  When I was young, I read something somewhere that urged Olympic athletes to ‘go for the dream, not for the competition’ and this line has stayed with me all my professional life. In fact I have absolutely no sense of competition whatsoever. What other actors do or don’t do has never been of the slightest interest. It’s the same with critics. I am my own most severe critic and far harder on myself than any film critic could ever be. I do find the opinions of the better and more thoughtful critics interesting – and some of them are very helpful – but so many of them have been wrong so many times that I’ve found it’s best to ignore all of them, the good and the bad! I learnt two lessons about critics, one at the beginning of my theatre career and one at the beginning of my movie career. When I was in rep, I met the local newspaper critic and asked him what experience he had – and he admitted that he had none. The person who was the latest into the office during the course of the week, he explained, got assigned the theatre review as a punishment. Mind you, remembering some of the performances – including my own – in my first rep company in Horsham, I am inclined to think the punishment wasn’t severe enough . . . The first review I read for Alfie commented that, ‘a potentially good film is ruined by the terrible performance of Michael Caine as the central character.’ After that, I decided, I was on my own – and nothing I’ve experienced since has made me change my mind!

  21

  Batman Begins

  As I sit in my hotel room in Beverly Hills beginning this chapter, I am on standby, working on a film called Inception. I say working, but that’s not strictly true – at least not in the way I would normally think of it. I’ve got two days’ work here in Los Angeles, but with no dialogue, and I have already done one day’s shooting on this picture in London with the star of the film, Leonardo DiCaprio. It’s a tiny role, but I’m doing it as a sort of good luck gesture for Christopher Nolan, the director of Batman and I’m delighted to be doing it, because the Batman films have become for me some of the most important movies I have ever done.

  Every so often, something comes along and you just know that it’s going to be a turning point. Since Goldmember and The Quiet American I had done a couple of films, including The Statement, which reunited me with old friends like Frank Finlay, with whom I had toured back in 1959 in The Long and the Short and the Tall, and Alan Bates, in his last role before he died of pancreatic cancer in 2003. Second-Hand Lions, which followed, took us back to Austin, Texas, which was still working hard to keep it weird. Although they were fun to do, neither of these movies were huge box office hits and so I returned to Surrey and my garden, content to wait.

  In the end I didn’t have to wait that long. One sunny Sunday morning the phone rang and a voice on the other end introduced himself as Christopher Nolan. I had never met him, but I had seen two of his films, Memento and Insomnia, and had been very impressed. ‘I’m restarting the Batman series for Warner Brothers,’ he said. ‘The first movie is called Batman Begins and I wondered if you would like to play the butler, Alfred.’ This was something completely different for me – a regular character in a Hollywood blockbuster series – so I suggested he send over the script. ‘Tell you what,’ said Chris, ‘I’ll bring it round.’ It turned out he lived very close and an hour later he was on the doorstep, script in hand. I invited him in, expecting to give him a cup of tea and have a bit of a chat about the film, but he was adamant. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I want you to read the script now. I’ll wait.’

  I was a bit taken aback, but while Chris sat in the kitchen chatting to Shakira as she prepared Sunday lunch, I went to my office and sat down to read. The more I read, the more excited I got. ‘I love it!’ I said, as I came into the kitchen and it was handshakes all round. As he was leaving, Chris asked for the script back; this project was highly confidential and he was very protective of it – he even used the names of his three children as code for each of the films. I handed it over, waved him off and sat down to a delicious Sunday lunch feeling very pleased with myself. Batman had indeed Begun.

  A year later, it really did. We started shooting at Shepperton, the studios in which I had appeared in my first movie, A Hill in Korea, in 1956. It was extraordinary to walk in there and appear again on the sound stage where I spoke (or rather forgot) my very first lines in a movie. I took this as a very good omen and I was entirely right. The cast that Chris had assembled was brilliant: Christian Bale, the best Batman ever, in my view, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Tom Wilkinson and Cillian Murphy to name just a few. My first scene was with Morgan, Christian and Liam and was wrapped in only two takes. Chris said, ‘Cut, print,’ after the second one and the journey that is Batman was off the starting blocks.

  I decided that Alfred Pennyworth, my butler, was going to be the toughest butler you’ve ever seen – not the sort of suave English butler that someone like Sir John Gielgud played. I invented a whole back story for Alfred: he’d been an SAS sergeant, who had been wounded and because he didn’t want to leave the army, got put in charge of the sergeants’ mess, which is where Bruce Wayne’s father found him. So he knows how to serve drinks and all that sort of thing, but he’s also a trained killer. I
based his voice on the voice of my original sergeant when I joined the British army: it’s a very sharp, staccato, military delivery. It’s a great role, because I think I get to represent the audience’s point of view, to be a point of normality for them, if you like. So just when you’re thinking, What’s going on? There’s a man dressed in a batsuit? I come along and I ask, ‘What’s going on? You’re dressing in a batsuit?’ It was a very clever move by Chris to keep the audience on its toes but also in the loop.

  Chris is a very quiet director, but his sense of authority permeates the whole set. He always wears a coat with a big pocket in which he keeps a flask of coffee that he sips from all day as he watches rehearsals. It’s not just hindsight speaking when I say I knew it was going to be fantastic: it was clear from the beginning that we were on to something really special. Chris’s whole attitude and demeanour were a big part of it, but the sets, too, were quite spectacular, especially those built in Cardington Hangars, one of two enormous sheds built for the old airships near Bedford. To give you an idea of the scale, our enormous Chicago set fitted into one corner. The Bat Cave in particular was incredible. I remember looking up at the ceiling and saying to Chris, ‘Those bats in the ceiling, they look almost real – how did you make them?’ And he said, ‘Michael, they are real. They’re just asleep . . .’ ‘Well, whatever you do, don’t bloody wake them up!’ I said. A journalist later asked me if even at my stage in life I had learnt anything on this movie and I said, ‘Yeah – to stay away from the bats and keep my head down!’