Then there is improvisation. In Sandro’s new book he also includes a USB stick with short films that you made with him. Your first film together, Butterflies, has no dialogue. Just a premise.
That’s really all you need as an actor. Things come to you. You have memories of things you’ve seen, things you’ve experienced, things you’ve read, things you’ve heard, things you’ve experienced, and then they all just come out.
Do you ever feel afraid in such a situation? I don’t know if Martin Sheen was afraid when he shot the opening scene of Apocalypse now, but he definitely scared the director and crew.
No, I’m not afraid. I believe that people are capable of almost anything, including a lot of terrible, unfortunately terrible things. And I think I’ve always had to give myself permission to say, “Well, I think that’s the way it is. I don’t necessarily want to Be that, and I don’t necessarily think it’s my fault that I think that way. I have to have the freedom to use my experiences and powers of observation or inclinations or hunches to be able to say, “This person behaves such and such in this situation.” If it’s a play, you might just say this person behaves such and such in this situation tonight. Tomorrow night it may be different. The matinee may have been different earlier in the day. The last performance will certainly be different from the premiere because you’re constantly learning and revisiting and deleting and adding and taking away and refining and distilling and so on. You know we do that. I don’t consider myself a factor at all, except as something that the observations live in.
A channel to history. What would be examples of this?
For example, in the last six months I sang an opera duet with Cecilia Bartoli, and I made some disco songs with Nile Rodgers in a studio. The craziness of those two things, the absurdity, the impossibility. The absolute ridiculousness that I got a few songs one morning, listened to them once while taking an Uber to a recording studio in Boston, and then started recording music that was The dream and produced by Nile Rodgers is the madness beyond recording studios. “What should I do?” Okay, record. “I don’t know if I can sing all of this. I haven’t really had enough time for it. But let’s start recording.”
So fear doesn’t seem to get in the way of your life too often.
No, it doesn’t. At least not in this aspect of my life. Because what are you afraid of? Failure. But failure is my constant companion. Failure is my best friend.
What were you thinking as you prepared to recreate the classic Annie Leibovitz photograph of John Lennon and Yoko Ono? Several hours after this session, commissioned by Rolling Stone, John was shot in front of his apartment. I know that for Sandro it was one of the most emotional images of your collaboration because he knew what fate awaited John.
