by Pete Hamill
He enjoyed working with Gallo on the script, a process that took place almost entirely during six weeks last summer in Huston’s home in Puerto Vallarta. “In this picture particularly, I wanted it to be an immediate experience, rather than telling a narrative with a beginning, a middle, and an end, with frozen climaxes. I wanted something that was happening constantly, that gives you a feeling that you are present, as though it were an actual experience, rather than a remembered experience.” He pauses, watches a whore go by. “To me, one of the great things of American writing is when you feel you are directly witnessing something. One has that feeling in O’Neill, that you are directly witnessing a happening. And are you familiar with W. R. Burnett? This is one of the least appreciated American writers, and you get that thing of direct experience in reading Burnett.”
Huston watches Tommy Shaw whip the extras into their assigned roles and smiles. “That man is the true hero of this production,” he says of the white-haired Shaw. “I don’t know what I’d do without him.”
He turns and sees Albert Finney, dressed in the soiled white suit of the Consul, smoking a cigar in the corner, mumbling to himself, as if rehearsing one final time before the cameras turn. “This fellow Finney is giving one of the finest performances I’ve ever seen. I thought he would be good; but I never dreamed that he would be as good as he is. Or that anybody would be as good as he is.”
It was one of those pictures that, even though you have arrived in the middle, grip you with the instant conviction that it is the best film you have ever seen in your life; so extraordinarily complete in its realism that what the story is all about, who the protagonist may be, seems of small account beside the explosion of the particular moment, beside the immediate threat, the identification with the one hunted, the one haunted.
— Malcolm Lowry
Under the Volcano
It is impossible, on these days at the Farolito, to imagine anyone other than Albert Finney in the part of the Consul. When he is supposed to be drunk, he is drunk; not the comic drunk, not the grotesque, exaggerated drunk of so many bad performers. Finney as the Consul plays an intelligent man, a man of language and smothered passions, who has moved past the point where the world is clear, yet remains capable of sudden explosions of clarity. It’s in the way he stands, in the looseness of his features that suddenly snap into tension. It’s in his great angers, breaking out of the emotional ice jam that the Consul has made of his life. This performance displays one possible solution to the old problem of making a movie out of a literary masterpiece: Strip away the literary style, get down to the bones of the narrative, and then fill the bony structure with performance.-
“Where the book has helped me is to fill in the internal life, the subtext, the thoughts that go through my mind above and beyond what one says,” Finney says one afternoon in his room at the Racquet Club in Cuernavaca. “Because often in life, you don’t think of those things, or about what you say; you say what you say. A phrase may come out, a line may come out; but the general feeling behind it is often, in life, a sort of nonspecific area that you’re preoccupied with, from which lines come out. So I thought the novel was important to me to fill in that sort of interior thought pattern. One does this anyway as an actor; that’s one of the things that you’re supposed to do. I mean, that’s what one does: invest the undercurrent with all kinds of thoughts that may be applicable to the situation the character is in at any time. But it helped to have the novel.”
In Mexico, when not before the cameras, Finney is living to some extent the way Geoffrey Firmin might have lived in 1938. He drinks only tequila, usually taking a taste before shooting; he makes a ritual of eating breakfast each morning with a Mexican family living near the location that has begun to make special meals for the crew. Such activities are not simply a device to find the character of the Consul.
“It’s all to me part of the total experience, of trying to live the moment — the present tense of the matter — when you work,” Finney says. “The whole Mexican experience of doing this film is not repeatable in my lifetime. I’m not saying I won’t do another film in Mexico, but this subject, this experience, these circumstances at this time are not repeatable. One wants to relish all that, as well as the work. And, of course, it all feeds the work. So in this part, I find myself having a tequila; I had never really drunk tequila before. I’d been to Mexico before, but I never drink tequila in London or Spain. So suddenly I tried one or two kinds of tequila and mescal, just for the flavor. So that one is mildly — mildly — sort of savoring what the Consul seriously put himself through. It’s not that they, or it, help; but they might help. One of the jobs is that [as an actor] you’re going somewhere that’s unfamiliar to you. You’re trying to get yourself into unfamiliar territory in your imagination. So you help prepare the ground so you might get an idea you never had before. There’s no guarantee. It’s not to be relied upon. But it might help.”
Finney was first asked about playing the Consul in 1981, while he was portraying Daddy Warbucks in Annie, also directed by Huston. He was approached by a bearded, New York-based German intellectual named Wieland Schulz-Keil, who with his partner, Moritz Borman, was determined to bring Under the Volcano to the screen (at that point, they were almost finished with the enervating task of clearing the rights).
Huston loved the way Schulz-Keil looked, and drafted him for the part of a bomb-throwing anarchist in Annie. But Lowry’s novel was the German’s primary concern. He’d read it as a boy; now he wanted to see it on the screen. Huston was the ideal director, Finney the perfect Consul. Finney hadn’t read the book before Schulz-Keil’s first approach. “He told me they had an outline for this script, and could he send it to me,” Finney remembers. “I said, ‘Of course.’ “ A friend coincidentally gave him a copy of Under the Volcano; there had been some industry talk about the possibility of the movie being made, and she thought he should read the novel. At the same time, Schulz-Keil sent over his outline.
“It was the thickest document I’d ever seen,” Finney remembers, “so I thought, Well, I might as well read the novel. Like most people, I found the novel very difficult to get into. To plug into somebody else’s stream of consciousness is always hard. But then I thought what an interesting story it was, what an interesting situation it was. The pain of it, the anguish of it kind of struck me. Then periodically I would get new outlines, and then scripts.”
Meanwhile, thirty-two-year-old Michael Fitzgerald had been brought into the production end of the movie. Huston invited him to come to The American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award dinner honoring Huston last year in Los Angeles, where a deal was worked out with Schulz-Keil and Borman. The two Germans had exhausted their bankroll in the process of clearing the rights, and had been turned down by four studios. At the Huston dinner was Alberto Isaac, a director general of the Mexican Cinematographic Institute, who expressed interest in helping with the financing. Fitzgerald sent Tommy Shaw to Mexico to work with Isaac, and three weeks later Fitzgerald arrived to make a deal.
“For twenty years,” Fitzgerald says, “Mexicans have gotten screwed by virtually every outsider that has come in here. I wasn’t prepared to do that. In our picture, they are full participants, from every source of income, all over the world. They recoup in the same position, they have the same proportionate profit participation that everybody has. On top of that, they were given all profits in Mexico itself, as a gift from John.” Fitzgerald sold American rights to Universal Classics, while Twentieth Century-Fox took the rest of the world.
At the same time, casting was proceeding. Finney agreed to do the picture. Huston wanted Jacqueline Bisset for Yvonne; he’d directed her early in her career in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. Fitzgerald had been impressed by Anthony Andrews in Brideshead Revisited and showed his work to Huston, who approved him for the part of Hugh. And the work with Gallo continued at Puerto Vallarta.
“All of a sudden,” Fitzgerald says, “we were … I mean this all star
ted at the AFI dinner in March for Chrissakes, and by mid-June we were in feverish preproduction in Mexico.” He remembers Huston’s original interest. “He said, ‘Well, Volcano is there, and it will never get done otherwise; what about taking it over and doing it in the same vein that we did Wise Blood? Which was basically: small, tight, putting every fucking dime on the screen, rather than on bullshit. And that’s what we’ve done.”
Jacqueline Bisset was approached indirectly, through John Foreman, who was Huston’s friend and had produced The Man Who Would Be King. “He told me about the project and asked me would I read it,” Bisset says. “And I thought, Well, it’s an interesting idea, an interesting combination of people.” A first-draft screenplay was sent to her. “My part was not particularly fascinating, but I felt it had to go one way or another: more enigmatic, or much more ‘directioned.’ Both of which seemed fine, if they could move it in one direction or another. John, Wieland, and Guy were all down in Puerto Vallarta working together when I got the second script. So I went to Puerto Vallarta to see them. I read the book in between. In the book Yvonne is not that clear. She’s there very much, if you go through the book looking for her. But I needed to start from some concrete point. There are a lot of abstractions in the book, a lot of symbolism, and things difficult for me to understand: just in terms of story line, from A to B to C, to the end. In the second script, a lot of my queries were answered. I was very touched by the atmosphere of the piece; it haunted me completely; it’s still with me very much. I think it’ll stay with me.”
Bisset had some apprehensions about working again with Huston, and thus found the novel a comfort; it, too, answered some of her questions. “I didn’t imagine John Huston would be someone with whom I could be having a million detailed conversations. I felt one would go to him during the course of shooting for major decisions, rather than quibbling-quabbling. I heard he liked actors to prepare — I’d worked with him before, and didn’t have a particularly close contact with him. I was in that film [she played Paul Newman’s girlfriend in Judge Roy Bean], but didn’t have the benefit of scene preparation or anything like that; I did my bit and it was fine. I think it’s important to know the style of the director and what he expects. Some people like to change everything. And on Judge Roy Bean, they were rewriting the script before every scene, and actors were left with quite large speeches to learn, fifteen minutes before. And I thought, That’s something I would not like to be in [again], because I’m a slow study.”
Bisset laughs when asked about the macho atmosphere of the Volcano set (“It has its moments; it has its nonmoments, too”), but seems quite happy with the experience of making the film. “I quite like things to be run in a fairly businesslike fashion, because there’s a tendency on location for people to start thinking they’re on holiday.”
By the time the film finished shooting last November, it was under its $4 million budget, and five days under its eight-week shooting schedule. “What matters,” Fitzgerald says, “is that we’ve made a film of Under the Volcano, one that some people said could never be made.”
Certainly, a major share of the credit, if the film works, must go to Finney. On one of the last days of shooting, the actor talked about the process that goes into the making of such a performance. “In the beginning, I’m obsessed,” he said. “Getting up at three in the morning, lines buzzing in my head, I’d sit with the script, just think about it. Now, of course, I’m not so obsessed. No, I don’t make notes, don’t write anything down. I just try to remember, to understand what’s going through the character’s mind. Of course, sometimes those thoughts are not going through your mind while you shoot, but I believe that they’re there, that they’re part of the hoped-for density, or the life effect. I don’t make a claim that there is one; but if there is any, they’re there.”
Does he draw on the experiences of his own life to fill out a character like the Consul? “Well, yes. But I’ve never gone this far, as far as the Consul goes, and I don’t think I ever will. There are times in one’s life where one is scratched or kicked, or maybe there was a strange accident of responsibility, because you’re supposed to be good at something and, therefore, you have to deliver. And you want to say, ‘Ah, fuck it, I’ll decide whether I’ll deliver; that’s up to me, not to some sense of responsibility.’ As the Consul does. Therefore, we use those occasions when one’s felt that. But what one needs here is a much deeper, á much more painful extension of that. The Consul goes all the way. So far, I’ve not. I’m still walking about. I’ve not actually thrown the reins away.”
To illustrate what he meant, he talked about acting in Shoot the Moon. “If you are doing a part which is about the breakup of a marriage, about the pain of a relationship coming to an end, a good relationship, a love coming to an end, then constantly you are tinkering subconsciously with your own past. And the memory’s a remarkable thing. I mean you do actually, if you concentrate hard enough, you do remember, you do go back. You don’t only remember the locations, you don’t just remember the apartment you stormed out of with your few belongings. But a capsule opens, and I’m flooded with the emotions I felt at that time. The memory stores those emotions; not just pictures of ít; not just facts or figures; it actually does store the emotions. Therefore, doing a picture like Shoot the Moon is very depressing, because you’re constantly in that area that you can’t help but be.”
Finney said it isn’t simply a matter of using one’s life; certainly for younger actors, there isn’t enough life to draw on, not enough memories. “Imagination does come into play. And possibility. ‘If only I had.…’ ‘And what if.…?’ There’s more in the vault than one thinks, isn’t there? The big problem as you get older is to retain the lack of self-consciousness, to retain a kind of child in your work, to be open. One of the things I love about John is that it’s your own total responsibility. John just says, ‘Well, show me.’ John thinks if he’s cast it right, if the actor’s got some degree of talent, he doesn’t need to direct him. He doesn’t direct. He won’t direct. In other words, he doesn’t direct a lot — seemingly. If you say to John before a scene, ‘Would it be a good idea if…,’ he’ll say, ‘Show me.’ He doesn’t say, ‘That’s quite interesting, but, on the other hand…’ he says, ‘Show me.’ And then you show him, and he says, ‘Well, maybe.’ So John likes to see you offer something. And then he will cajole it, nudge it, bully it, or just say, ’A little less oil and vinegar — a little more lemon.’ Or he may say nothing. If you don’t know John, you may say, ‘Well, he isn’t giving me any direction.’ But when you get to know him a bit, you know that when he doesn’t say anything, he’s happy.”
Finney, of course, has had extensive theater experience and is clear about the differences between the two forms. “The most elusive thing about film acting is that when they say go, or when they say action, you’ve got to be in the state of mind to do it. You’ve been sitting around for two hours, while they are tinkering around with this, that, and the other thing, and then someone will say, ’OK, we’re ready; we don’t want to lose the light.’ And I think you must be ready. I suppose that’s theater training: when the curtain goes up at seven-thirty, it’s no good saying you’ll be ready at ten … I prefer that we do it on take one; we don’t have to keep flogging ourselves. But I also think the operator, the film puller, the sound man, the camera man should be ready, too. That doesn’t always happen.
“Therefore, in movies, an actor has to spend most of the day sort of being on simmer. Obviously, when it’s lunchtime, you get away from it; but sometimes I like to think about it, just brood over it, sit in a chair and look down into the barranca and fret. If I think it’s going to be useful …On some days it might be useful to just go and play catch ball with the boys. Sometimes you wake up in the morning, and you think you’ve got a feeling, a little feeling, you’re ready for the day’s work, and you want to nurse this feeling and use it. And then about twelve-thirty or something, you look for it, and say, ‘Where’s that feeling? Whe
re did it go? It’s gone. Gone.’ That’s the intangible thing about film. You can stay so long on simmer that you evaporate.”
At the end of Under the Volcano, Finney utters the Consul’s dying words: “Christ, what a dingy way to die.” And yet the scene is not dingy; it is genuinely tragic. Through the power of Finney’s performance, we’ve seen the Consul revealed as a remarkable man, which transforms his stupid, dingy death into something of enormous artistic value. One reason is that Finney has infused the part with so many complicated feelings.
“I suppose what I might do better than anything else is somehow record feeling,” Finney said one Sunday afternoon. “If I was a painter, I’d record light and shade and color. But I record feeling, and so I think about feeling a lot. And then channel it into a role where I think it might be useful. That’s part of what acting’s all about, I think. One uses anything. And, yes, one is ruthless. Because there is no one way of going down the road, is there? There can’t be. There’re too many things, too much of a variety, too many possibilities for there to be one correct way. And if that’s how one does it, well, that’s what one does. I’ve not caused anyone’s death. I’ve not pressed any buttons or triggers in my life. Do you know what I mean? I might have been ruthless in my later use of emotions, and people’s pain. But no lives have been lost.”
Finney paused. Through the windows of his suite, we could see tennis players and old men cleaning lawns and a bus taking tourists on the mandatory ride to the pyramids or the volcanoes. “At its best, acting hopefully does help to ameliorate human behavior,” he said. “At its simplest, it’s often just maudlin. Some jobs you think — Well, it’s a bit like that. But at its best, when you get something that is really demanding and you have a go, it’s very honorable work. It’s also telling a story. But at its best, I think that somehow a recognition of ourselves might come about. In this film, we might know the Consul. We might know ourselves.” Finney smiled. “At least one likes to think so.”