Kevin Spacey
speaker
258 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2024
last heard Jun 2024
Kevin Spacey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
The truth is I didn't get the part. I had been in Los Angeles making a couple of films, Swimming with Sharks and Usual Suspects. And then I did a film called Outbreak that Morgan Freeman was in. And I went in to audition for David Fincher in probably late November of 94. and I auditioned for this part and didn't get it. And I went back to New York.
And I think they started shooting like December 12th, And I'm in New York, I'm back in my wonderful apartment on West 12th Street and my mom has come to visit for Christmas and it's December 23rd and it's like seven o'clock at night and my phone rings and it's Arnold Copelson who's the producer of Seven. And he's very jovial and he's very friendly and he says, how you doing? And I said, fine.
He said, listen, do you remember that film you came in for, Seven? I said, yeah, yeah, absolutely. He goes, well, turns out that we hired an actor and we started shooting. And then yesterday, David fired him. And David would like you to get on a plane on Sunday and come to Los Angeles and start shooting on Tuesday. And I was like, okay, fine. would it be imposing to say, can I read it again?
Because it's been a while now and I'd like to. So they sent a script over. I read the script that night. I thought about it. And I had this feeling, I can't even quite describe it, but I had this feeling that it would be really good if I didn't take billing in the film.
And the reason I felt that was because I knew that by the time this film would come out, it would be the last one of the three movies that I just shot, the fourth one. And if any of those films broke through or did well if it was going to be Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kevin Spacey. And you don't show up for the first 25, 30, 40 minutes.
People are going to figure out who you're playing.
That's one.
You're gone. You're not there. Not there. And so New Line Cinema told me to go fuck myself, that they absolutely could use my picture and my image. And this became a little bit of a, I'd say, 24-hour conversation And it was Fincher who said, I actually think this is a really cool idea. So the compromise was I'm the first credit at the end of the movie when the credits start.
So I got on a plane on that Sunday and I flew to Los Angeles and I went into where they were shooting and I went into the makeup room and David Fincher was there and we were talking about what should I do? How should I look? And I just had my hair short for Outbreak because I was playing a military character. And I just looked at the... and I said, do you have a razor?
And Fincher went, are you kidding?
He goes, if you shave your head, I'll shave mine. So we both shaved our heads. And then I started shooting the next day. So my long-winded answer to your question is that I didn't have that much time to think about how to build that character. What I think in the end Fincher was able to do so brilliantly with such terror was to set the audience up to meet this character.
Yeah. I can really only tell you that while we were shooting that scene in the car, while we were out in the desert in that place where all those electrical wires were, David just kept saying less, do less. And I just tried to, I mean, I remember he kept saying to me, remember, you're in control. Like, you're going to win. And knowing that should allow you to have tremendous confidence.
And I just followed that lead. And I, I just think it's the kind of film that so many of the elements that had been at work from the beginning of the movie in terms of its style, in terms of how he built this terror, in terms of how he built for the audience, a sense of this person being one of the scariest people they might ever encounter.
It really allowed me to be able to not have to do that much, just say the words and mean them. And I think it also is an example of what makes tragedy so difficult. I mean, you know, very often tragedy is people operating without enough information. They don't have all the facts. Romeo and Juliet, they don't have all the facts. They don't know what we know as an audience.
And so in the end, whether Brad Pitt's character ends up shooting John Doe or turning the gun on himself, which was a discussion. I mean, there were a number of alternative endings that were discussed. Nothing ends up being tied up in a nice little bow. It is complicated and shows how nobody wins in the end when you're not operating with all the information.
I've been very fortunate to be directed by Fincher a couple of times.
Shall we try it again? And you go, okay, yeah, we can try it again. And sometimes he'll do take, and then you'll look to see if he has any added genius to hand you. And he just goes, let's do it again. And then let's do it again. And sometimes, I say this in all humility, he's literally trying to beat the acting out of you.
And by continually saying, do it again, do it again, do it again, and not giving you any specifics, he is systematically shredding you of all pretense of all, you know, because look, Very often, you know, actors, we come in on the set and we've thought about the scene and we've worked out, you know, I've got this prop and I'm going to do this thing with a can.
You know, all these things, all the tea, I'm going to do a thing with that thing. And David is the kind of director where he just wants you to stop adding all that crap and just say the words and say them quickly and mean them. And it takes a while. to get to that place. I'll tell you a story. This is a story I just love because it's in exactly the same wheelhouse.
So Jack Lemmon's first movie was a film called It Should Happen to You, and it was directed by George Cukor. And Jack tells this story, and it was just an incredibly charming story to hear Jack tell. He said, so I'm doing this picture. And let me tell you, this is a terrific part for me. And I'm doing a scene. It's on my first day. It's my first day and it's a terrific scene.
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