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| Rowan Atkinson interview for Canadian radio. |
Source: Bigstar.com
Author: Prairie Miller
Date: 1997
Already a huge hit in Europe and Canada, the British comedy Bean has made one hundred million dollars even before it washes up on American shores. The question for Bean himself, a.k.a. Rowan Atkinson, is if the quiet, mischief making character will translate well across the common English speaking cultural divide, using mostly body language.
Director Mel Smith anticipates the United States as "user friendly Bean territory," because that's exactly where the movie takes place. By way of proof, Smith confided that Burt Reynolds rang him up and told him he had to be in the movie without ever having read the script, simply because "the guy's a genius." I spoke with a surprisingly very well behaved Atkinson in the hope that he would shed some light on the mysteries of his very intriguing celluloid significant other.
PRAIRIE MILLER: Bean is a very funny movie. Do you think the American masses are ready for you?
ROWAN ATKINSON: We have an interest and enthusiasm in making it work here. But there isn't anything other than its setting in America that we've tried to alter or specifically orient towards American tastes. I mean, my personal faith in the character has always been very great. I believe in the character and his basic comedy, which is largely visual.
But I hope there is a true character basis to the comedy. And I don't think there is anything to the character which couldn't immediately be understood and enjoyed by the majority of Americans. It's a very accessible form of comedy...
But there are actually two different versions of the movie, based on test reactions here and in the U.K. One actually has a turkey on the head, which is what you get, and every other country in the world does not get the turkey on the head. We still have the turkey, it's just that it doesn't go on the head.
PM: Is the nine inch Bean on TV and the Bean on screen one and the same person?
RA: The TV show is more uncompromising. I think the character is much simpler and less complex on TV. He's more self-centered and self-concerned, more tunnel visioned than he is in the movie. With the movie, we wanted to broaden the character and make him more complex. We wanted him to have more light and shade, because he doesn't really have gray tones on TV. He's just kind of black and white.
Above all, it's in the character's attitude. For the first time he seems to look around and accept responsibility for his actions, which is something he had never done. But I think that if the character were as uncompromising as he is in the TV show, it wouldn't have made an interesting movie. I think it would have been a sort of ninety minute TV show, which is not what a movie should be.
But because of the nature of the TV show being almost a live action cartoon there is more opportunity for visual jokes per minute, I suppose, on TV. Whereas in the movie, where we wanted a proper sort of story, as soon as you do that you find surprisingly little room for jokes. The jokes are something you shoehorn in when you can. Most of the jokes were cut out because the audience didn't seem to want them. They wanted to get on with the story, and find out what happens next.
PM: I notice you have come in here as Rowan Atkinson and not Bean. You're giving very sober answers to these questions.
RA: Yesss.....I have all sorts of depths which have not been plumbed. Though I frequently do appear in character. I went to Planet Hollywood in character, because I felt safer doing so. I felt safer hiding behind someone else, rather than going to Planet Hollywood as myself. But I have appeared occasionally in Britain as Mr. Bean, and I frequently find it easier. You can be funnier, really, because I am not funny. I only act funny...It means that I find it easier to become somebody else.
PM: You're running around as these two very different people all the time. Do you ever feel schizophrenic?
RA: I don't know what it feels like to feel schizophrenic. But of course being schizophrenic means that you're not worried about it. He knows the answer...
I think it's possibly because of the length of time that I've done Bean, since 1979. I've been with him for a long time and I know him extremely well. I find him absolutely fascinating to be and become, and to watch. But at the same time I feel a tremendous distance. I mean, I find I can turn him on and off like a tap. There's absolutely no remnant at the end of the day, no remnant of Beanism which stays with me, and I don't have to build up to the point at which I turn him on. It's an extremely instant switching.
PM: Do people who know you well in your life think you're a little bit insane, or that you're one of the most well adjusted people that we could ever hope to meet?
RA: I haven't a clue as to the answer...As far as I'm aware, no. I think I lead a very straightforward and normal life. I'd be amazed and horrified indeed, if my friends thought otherwise.
PM: And exactly where were you and what were you doing when you first found out you were funny?
RA: [In seeming disbelief] When I found out I was funny? Hmmm...I can't remember, really. I remember vaguely at around the age of ten or eleven standing up in front of my classmates at school in the locker room and entertaining them in some way that thankfully I have forgotten. I can't imagine what I was doing...But anyway, whatever it was, I remember them laughing a great deal. But then within a year or two, adolescence set in and the appropriate self-consciousness was with me. And I never did it again actually, as far as I'm aware. So class clown I was not. But I remember when I was very young discovering something, but which I never did again, and which I still don't do, unless I have a formal format. You know, I have to have a stage and an audience, or a camera frame and a camera. I need the formality of a staging of some kind before I can be somebody else. I don't enjoy sort of spontaneous entertainment. Yes...
PM: Where does your comic self come from, and what drives you to be funny?
RA: Where does it come from...I don't know, really. I suppose it's something I found I could do, and it's always good to do something which you can do well. I suppose mainly what I'm seeking is a sort of satisfaction, that you can do a good job. And I'm probably a better comic actor than I am a carpenter, so that's why I do it.
Whether there's a neurosis or a paranoia or whatever, you know, long rooted which it addresses, I really don't know. I'm not aware of it. Certainly my background, my family and everything else, was very straightforward, normal, sort of conservative with a small 'c.' A quiet, middle, middle class upbringing. And as such, it perhaps provided maybe the sort of constrictions and traditions, and maybe an opportunity to break out. And the desire to express a bit of rebellion and anarchy in contrast to that world and that background. Maybe there was a bit of that. But I'm certainly not aware of anything in my personal or family life...But it just seemed like a funny thing to do.
PM: Why did you decide that it was time for Bean to come to America, and I'm talking about the character, not the movie?
RA: I have a feeling it was a desire to be newly inspired. We'd been doing the character on TV for quite a long time, and it had sort of run out of enthusiasm and steam. The idea for a movie was interesting, as long as it provided a new creative impetus. That's kind of what the American setting was all about, rather than existing in this rather gray London suburbia, which is how he had always been.
It was fun to imagine him getting out of a cabin and blinking in the California sunshine. It seemed to us to be an uplifting thought, purely for creative reasons. Though there are some very good jokes in the movie which are about the world's view of America. You know, the fact that he thinks that it's good to carry a gun in your inside pocket, and he gets into trouble for that.
But it's not really about a culture clash, I don't think. It's not a Crocodile Dundee. It's not about a fish out of water. I mean, the thing about Bean is that he's a fish out of water anywhere and everywhere. His own bathroom at home in London is as big a challenge as one in Buenos Aires. So almost anywhere is a cultural challenge.
PM: Did you feel as disoriented in Los Angeles as your character seems to be?
RA: I was surprised how relatively unalienated I felt by Los Angeles, because it is common parlance in England to badmouth Los Angeles as a shallow place. And New York! But the business of being there shooting a movie and staying in a normal house and leading a normal life, was completely unconnected with the traditional Hollywood world of deals. We weren't part of that, we were just part of living and parking, so that actually the people there seem to be remarkably normal. It was a surprisingly pleasant and normal experience.
PM: Do you feel there's a common bond between Bean and Charlie Chaplin?
RA: I think there are a lot of parallels to be drawn generally between virtually every successful visual comedy character. They seems to be loners. They seem to be largely asexual, childlike and naive, whether it's Mr. Bean, Benny Hill, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton or Stan Laurel.
But I think Chaplin was far more romantic. I think he had a softer heart. Bean is a rather harsher, more contemporary character. Bean can be as nasty as Chaplin was. The Tramp had a very vindictive side to him, and Bean is certainly potentially extremely vindictive. Sort of selfish and self-centered, looking out for number one.
As to whether it reflects the time, I don't know. I'm not up on social history enough to know to what degree the Tramp reflected his age, and the degree to which Bean reflects ours. But I've never regarded Bean as either a sexual or romantic figure. He has an extremely politically incorrect attitude toward women. If they can cook and iron well, then they're good women. But apart from that, they have very little use. Which I've always found secretly quite amusing.
PM: The Bean routines are very elaborate, unlike most comedy today which is short and quick.
RA: It really all hinges upon your faith and your interest in the character. That is why people are willing to spend the time just watching him. Because you're kind of with him. You're kind of curious to know what he's going to do next, and how he's going to do it. You have to be keen on Bean, because particularly on the TV show, there are quite a lot of jokes certainly stretched longer than they should ever have been.
Yet kids are willing to just sit and watch this guy do what he does, because you believe, I hope, in the character, and you know the way his mind works. When you get to know him, you know that it's just fascinating to watch his logic unwind. Because his mind always works in such a peculiar and fascinating way. And that is why I think we get away with it.
Bean isn't deliberately cruel. He's sort of cruel by accident. It's just his selfishness which is driving him to forget the rest of civilization, or the effect that his actions are having on them. He sort of means well...in a way.
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