Thursday, November 21, 1996
FILM:
Research eases transition from theater to complex film roleBy
Michael Horowitz
Daily Bruin Staff
In the film "Shine," veteran theater actor Geoffrey Rush plays
real-life Australian pianist David Helfgott, a child prodigy whose
pursuit of musical mastery drove him to madness.
The portrayal calls for bizarre nimble verbalisms, running
around naked a lot, matching the performance of a younger actor
playing David’s early years, and pulling off complicated hand
stunts on the piano. Challenging is an understatement. As Rush
says, "that describes King Lear as well, although King Lear didn’t
play the piano."
But Rush chose not to be overwhelmed. His passionate
performance, touted by some as the year’s best, is evidence that he
handled the myriad complexities with grace and panache. And his
portrayal of the adult David Helfgott is the crown jewel in the
emotional "Shine," fresh from standing ovations at film festivals
around the world and headed for Melnitz tonight.
Rush and director Scott Hicks are reaching the enjoyable
conclusion of a very long odyssey, one that kept getting longer as
the project took years to get off the ground. Rush was offered the
part back in 1992 and wanted immediately to be involved, but every
time filming was about to commence, he’d get another call pushing
the start date back.
He used the frustrating waiting period to thoroughly prepare for
the challenges of the part. And as he noticed the first time he
looked at the script, there were quite a few.
"I loved it, I thrived on it," he says, while on a quick
stopover in Los Angeles, "because there were such big dimensions,
and I said ‘yes’ very willingly originally and then headached for
weeks afterward thinking ‘Oh God, what have I done?’"
Rush, out of his element working in film, realized acting as
Helfgott could easily fall into conventional versions of mental
decline and madness. "I wanted to play this character very specific
and very detailed," he says, "and not fall into some vague
impersonation of the real person. I think it happens with most
roles for an actor; you just want to avoid the clichés."
In order to bring his theatrical acting skills to bear on the
project, he did significant research and preparation. Whereas some
film actors just learn one particular day’s lines a day or two
beforehand, Rush wanted to approximate theater conditions where he
had the complete performance pre-meditated.
"I gave myself good run-up time," he says, "I felt as if I was
shooting in the middle of the run. I felt prepared and able to
access the role quite readily."
Then he broke down the challenges one by one, determined to pull
off each difficult aspect of the role. The first were the piano
hand stunts, for which he enlisted a piano tutor as soon as he
could pry from director Hicks which selections he’d have to
perform. "David happens to play that big repertoire of frenetic,
virtuosic, 19th century show-off piano music that Rachmaninoff and
Chopin wrote," says Rush. "They wrote to be spectacular and that
didn’t make the task any easier."
While younger actor Noah Taylor, who portrays the younger David
Helfgott in "Shine," used a hand double to pull off his performance
pieces, Rush decided that it would work better dramatically for the
audience if he didn’t need one. Early on Rush announced to Hicks
that "it would really be fantastic it we could get some big chunks
of me at the piano with everything in the shot."
"That’s part of the drama of what’s going on," he reasoned.
"It’s got to be bold."
He tackled Helfgott’s strange speech next. Helfgott talks in
what Rush refers to as a "word salad," rhyming and repeating
phrases and words, playing with words in his head.
Armed with interview tapes and some video footage from
Australian "Current Affair"-type tabloid shows, Rush began piecing
together Helfgott’s speech patterns. He listened, tried them out
and typed them up to look at them as text. "It was a bit like
learning an accent," he says. Together with screenwriter Jan Sardi,
he worked on the exact phrases to be included in the film.
The nudity wasn’t really a problem, Rush says, but he had to
appreciate why Helfgott acted like he did about being nude in
general and about swimming in particular. One theory he and Hicks
were told is that the real David Helfgott has a shattered ego, and
only in the water can he truly define himself. No one knows much
about Helfgott for sure, only that he’s a little different to have
around.
"I remember when we went up to have a meal with Gillian
(Helfgott’s wife) and David," says Rush, who’s talked to Helfgott
and his wife extensively. "He’s there for half the meal and he’s
gone and he’s swimming, and he showers, and then you look out the
window and he’s naked 300 meters away, running around the perimeter
of the property. He loves that openness."
"Shine" also gave Rush another chance to work with up-and-coming
Australian film star Noah Taylor ("Flirting"). The two had played
brothers in a film they shot before "Shine," so they were already
very accustomed to each other and able to craft a coherent
performance.
"We’re very different people and we got on fantastically in this
film because we really have a respect for each other," says Rush.
"Noah’s done lots of film work, and hardly any theater work, and
for me it was the other way around."
"We have different thoughts and philosophies. He’s very cool and
very existential and very bohemian and very much his own man, and
I’m something else. He thinks I’m this gaudy, outrageous
thespian."
Instead of a mentor-student relationship, the two forged a
strange bond of mutual respect and irreverence. "When we were
filming this first film together, he said to me, and he was being
very genuine but you can never tell with Noah, he said ‘Geoff,
you’re like a God to me.’"
"He really meant it but it was just cheeky," says Rush, and the
confessions quickly became a running gag. "The next day he came up
to me and said ‘you know Geoff, you’re like a gopher to me.’"
Every word that started with a G became fodder for their daily
mock-praise, and although they got along very well, Rush held back
from discussing too much of the performance, except for matching
some of the language disintegration and traits like smoking.
"We didn’t overanalyze together, because Noah’s not someone who
likes to deconstruct something out of existence," says Rush. "He
works very much on instinct and intuition. He doesn’t feel a need
to articulate what he’s all about."
Rush, on the other hand, can articulate each element of the film
and his performance perfectly, and it takes away nothing from his
acting. "Shine" serves as his cinematic "Lear," and he plays the
piano.
Geoffrey Rush with Lynn Redgrave in "Shine," directed by Scott
Hicks.