Clive Owen breaks down his most iconic roles in film and television, including 'Children of Men,' 'The Knick,' 'Sin City,' 'Inside Man,' 'Closer,' 'Croupier,' 'Chancer,' 'King Arthur,' 'Impeachment: American Crime Story,' 'A Murder at the End of the World' and 'Monsieur Spade.'A Murder at the End of the World is now available to stream on FX on Hulu. New episodes of Monsieur Spade premiere Sundays at 9pm on AMC and stream on AMC+ and Acorn TV.Director: Robby MillerDirector of Photography: Charlie JordanEditor: Jason MaliziaTalent: Clive OwenProducer: Camille RamosLine Producer: Jen SantosProduction Manager: James PipitoneTalent Booker: Paige GarbariniCamera Operator: Christopher EustacheGaffer: Rebecca Van Der MeulenSound Mixer: Lily Van LeeuwenProduction Assistant: Caleb ClarkGroomer: Suzy Mazzarese; Brian AbbottPost Production Supervisor: Rachael KnightPost Production Coordinator: Ian BryantSupervising Editor: Rob LombardiAssistant Editor: Billy Ward
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 It's not a bad thing to be scared.
00:01 It's not a bad thing to go in there thinking,
00:04 "The chance of failure is pretty high,
00:07 but just give it a go."
00:09 When you're challenged like that as an actor,
00:11 that's how you improve.
00:12 (upbeat music)
00:15 Children of men.
00:18 (gunshot)
00:24 You know, sometimes you read a script and you say,
00:28 "Oh, I know what to do here,"
00:30 or "There's things I can do here."
00:31 I didn't see it in that.
00:32 I thought it was a really interesting, cool script,
00:35 but I was like, "Where's the character?
00:37 Where do you get to do things?"
00:39 I met Alfonso and he blew me away
00:41 with his vision of the movie.
00:43 And then I realized actually,
00:45 I'm the conduit to which he wants to discuss these things.
00:48 Now, by setting a film in the very near future,
00:50 I think it gives you license to discuss head on
00:54 things that were already troubling and concerning people.
00:58 You set it slightly in the future
00:59 and it gives you a way of really getting into those subjects
01:02 without it feeling heavy handed in the moment.
01:05 And I realized that my job was to not get in the way
01:09 of it really, is to not act too much.
01:12 I really saw that.
01:13 I thought, "I see, you need to see this world
01:15 through this character."
01:17 So it was really about signing on
01:21 to Alfonso's vision for the movie.
01:23 And it was one of those films that still,
01:26 people still talk about today.
01:27 There was an article in the New York Times,
01:29 I think like 10 years after it was made,
01:31 saying, "Why is 'Children of Men'
01:32 still the most relevant film of today?"
01:34 I mean, that's how much I think that Alfonso was on it.
01:38 Really.
01:39 My memories of those sequences is
01:51 how close my relationship was with the operator,
01:54 because we had to do a dance really in those scenes,
01:58 especially that long sequence at the end of the movie.
02:01 And we spent a long time rehearsing
02:04 and there were half day resets.
02:05 If we didn't get it right,
02:07 it was a half day before we could go again
02:10 to reset the whole thing.
02:11 So it felt like me and the operator were doing this dance
02:14 and I have to not make it obvious that,
02:17 I have to make it feel as natural as possible.
02:20 And the beauty of those sequences,
02:21 the intent of them is just to get you in
02:24 to feeling what is going on,
02:26 not to show you how great Alfonso is
02:29 and how great Chivo was.
02:30 It's the best way to plant you emotionally
02:33 in what is going on.
02:34 I really have fond memories of doing those
02:36 because I kind of love that technical aspect
02:39 and that kind of meeting with the operator
02:42 as both trying to achieve something together like that.
02:44 - Even if they discovered the cure for infertility,
02:47 it doesn't matter.
02:48 Too late.
02:49 World went to shit.
02:50 Know what?
02:53 It was too late before the infertility thing happened
02:55 for fuck's sake.
02:56 - I'm still trying to tell a joke, man.
03:00 - Michael Caine's a legend.
03:01 And when you work with him, you realize why.
03:03 And you realize why, you know,
03:04 his career has lasted as long as it has
03:08 because he's like the ultimate pro
03:10 and he's smart and economical.
03:11 And, you know, it was a joy.
03:13 And there was something quite special in that movie.
03:16 I did a couple of films with Mike Hodges
03:19 who did the original "Get Carter" with Michael Caine,
03:21 which was a big film in Michael Caine's early career.
03:25 And they hadn't seen each other for like 10, 20 years.
03:30 And so I got Mike Hodges onto the set of "Children of Men"
03:34 and just listened to them to sort of reminisce
03:36 about the early days and the making of that movie,
03:39 which for me was just a treat,
03:41 just to listen to those, you know, guys,
03:44 just going back and remembering the stuff that they'd done.
03:49 (upbeat music)
03:52 The Nick.
03:53 He's based on a real guy.
04:01 He's based on a guy called William Holstead,
04:03 who was a genius doctor at that time,
04:06 but had this, you know, massive drug addiction
04:09 and was like a wild, wild,
04:11 but still was at the forefront of medicine
04:13 and like hugely brilliant.
04:15 - You need to lengthen the incision
04:17 and get the baby out now.
04:18 (machine whirring)
04:20 Jewels.
04:21 - No smoke.
04:23 - Knife.
04:24 Knife.
04:25 - We had an amazing medical advisor on the Nick
04:28 who has this townhouse in New York
04:30 that has over a million medical photographs.
04:32 And every single operation in the show
04:35 was based on a real operation of that time.
04:37 There was nothing that was like made up about it at all.
04:40 And Soderbergh wanted us, you know,
04:43 we did as much work as we could in the suturing
04:45 and all of that,
04:46 but he would use and wanted to use us as much as possible.
04:49 And I'll never forget the first operation we did,
04:52 which is the first operation in the Nick.
04:54 It was just a river of blood on the floor.
04:57 The expert doctor was standing there
05:00 and just got more blood, more blood, more blood.
05:02 And Soderbergh just kept shooting and shooting
05:04 and we were doing it and we were losing this patient
05:07 and everyone was just sort of soaked at the end of it.
05:10 It was like, wow.
05:15 Nothing.
05:16 - I'm hugely proud of that show.
05:23 And I think Steven Soderbergh did an unbelievable job.
05:26 And the cast of that show is, I rate so highly, you know,
05:29 I'm English and I've been brought up on period shows
05:32 where everyone lives in a nice house
05:34 and goes sauntering off for a little walk with an umbrella.
05:37 And here we are in the Nick 1900,
05:40 where life feels visceral, dangerous,
05:43 and probably more like what it's like for most of us
05:48 if we were living at that time, you know,
05:50 there was an urgency to life.
05:52 Life expectancy wasn't great.
05:54 You didn't want to end up in a hospital
05:56 at the turn of the century.
05:57 And it was so refreshing to be in a show
06:01 that sort of really, really told
06:04 how it might've been for an awful lot of us.
06:07 - This is a technique I pioneered myself
06:11 and one I know to be completely safe if done correctly.
06:16 - There are photographs that show
06:18 doctors did that at that time.
06:20 They were cutting themselves open to teach people
06:23 how to do certain operations
06:25 and they were doing it on their own.
06:26 And when Steven Soderbergh came to me
06:29 to pitch me the whole thing,
06:31 he already knew that that's the way we were going out
06:34 at the end of the second season.
06:36 He's phenomenal.
06:37 I realized very quickly, we start shooting
06:39 and then I go, "Oh my God, he's editing it
06:43 as he's looking at it."
06:44 And we shoot the edit.
06:46 We don't shoot anything else.
06:47 We don't do loads of coverage of different people.
06:49 We don't, and then gives him lots to play with later.
06:52 He looks at a scene and he attacks it
06:54 with an editor's brain and says,
06:56 "How would I put this together?"
06:57 I go, "Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum."
06:59 And that's the way we shoot it.
07:01 It's so focused.
07:02 His set is like a hallowed environment.
07:05 There's no small talk.
07:06 There's no, it's concentrated, which I adore.
07:08 I walk into that environment and I go,
07:10 "This is why we're all here."
07:12 There's no seats for anybody to sit down.
07:14 There's no monitors for people to watch.
07:16 It's all so focused and concentrated.
07:21 And I just had the best time with him
07:24 and rate him so, so highly.
07:27 Sin City.
07:30 - Hey baby, I don't hear you making those calls.
07:35 Answer me.
07:39 Oh, I don't need to.
07:41 - Hi.
07:42 I'm Shelly's new boyfriend and I'm out of my mind.
07:45 What I didn't realize when I signed on to do Sin City,
07:49 that it was going to be so faithful to the source material,
07:52 to the point where every scene started
07:54 with an image from the graphic novel.
07:55 And it was an unusual shoot
07:58 because we were kind of floating in thin air.
08:00 It was all green screen.
08:02 We started off with car and things like, even that went.
08:06 So in the end, it was a seat
08:07 and a steering wheel, like that's all we had.
08:09 So it's like floating, you know,
08:11 you're like acting in a sort of weird floating state.
08:15 And then I couldn't believe what he did
08:16 when I saw the movie.
08:17 I honestly couldn't believe it.
08:19 I sat there.
08:20 The world he created
08:21 and how he made everything fuse together was so impressive.
08:25 And it was so faithful to the graphic novel.
08:28 I watched it and went,
08:29 this is the graphic novel just burst into life.
08:32 This is not like, you know,
08:33 some cinematic take over there a bit.
08:36 He has gone into that material
08:38 and just sprang it into life.
08:41 I thought it was a really impressive movie.
08:43 The scene that I did with Benicio in the car,
08:45 Quentin Tarantino came in and shot,
08:47 was literally two boxes and a wheel for the drive,
08:52 you know, and that was it.
08:53 And the rest, all the car,
08:55 everything else was created afterwards.
08:57 - You ain't even gonna make it to the pits.
09:01 - You shut the hell up, I'll make it.
09:04 - Not unless you keep your eyes on the road, sugar pie.
09:08 - What?
09:09 - It's unusual to begin with,
09:13 but then you kind of suspend belief
09:15 and it becomes a bit like theater or something.
09:16 You sort of know that that,
09:18 but still I didn't realize how well
09:22 he was gonna achieve the world.
09:24 You know, how that, how fleshed out that was gonna be
09:27 and how well done he was gonna do that.
09:29 The energy and smarts of Robert Rodriguez, really.
09:32 He was really like brilliant to work with
09:35 and I didn't quite know what it was
09:37 because it was all green screen.
09:39 So I'm like, I don't know what the finished thing
09:40 is gonna be like, but I totally embraced
09:43 the way he was working and the way we were shooting it.
09:46 Inside Man.
09:50 When Spike first gave me the script to Inside Man,
09:54 I went into the bank and I never took the mask off.
09:57 I put the mask on and I spent the rest of the film
09:59 in the mask and I said, "Why would I do this?"
10:02 I said, "Do you want me to do a voiceover?
10:03 "Like, you know, do I want to stick around for months
10:05 "to do a film where you never see my face?"
10:07 And we left it and then three months later,
10:10 I get a call going, "I got Denzel for the cut.
10:13 "Does that change anything?"
10:15 And I was like, "Yeah, I think it does actually, yeah.
10:17 "I think that definitely does."
10:19 And we met up and he took me to a Knicks game.
10:22 Never really talked about the movie.
10:24 Didn't say a word, you know.
10:26 Didn't realize that he was part of the game.
10:28 He's remonstrating with the players
10:29 and the rare play into the crowd.
10:31 Still didn't talk about the movie.
10:33 At the end of it, he said to me, "You got a ride?"
10:35 I said, "Yeah, yeah."
10:36 Like, he said, "Can you drop me off?"
10:38 So we went back to his house.
10:41 Car pulls up and he goes, "So you doing it or what?"
10:45 I was like, "Of course I'm doing it.
10:47 "Just sort the mask thing out."
10:50 And he goes, "Yeah, yeah, we'll find a way
10:51 "to get the mask off a few times."
10:53 And I had a great time on it.
10:55 And he's become a great friend.
10:58 Just a few months ago, I gave him a sort of
11:00 BFI Fellowship Award in London.
11:03 And like, you know, I've got nothing but,
11:06 you know, huge respect for Spike.
11:08 And I had a great time on that movie.
11:12 - I'm gonna walk out of that door when I'm good and ready.
11:15 - Can I get you to do that today?
11:17 - I didn't think so.
11:20 - Any other proposals?
11:21 - Oh, please do not say proposals.
11:24 My girlfriend, she wants a proposal from me.
11:26 It was just a very well-written character.
11:29 And Spike was always, always talking about like,
11:32 he needed someone who could go toe-to-toe with Denzel
11:35 'cause he's so strong.
11:36 And I just knew that that character had to feel like
11:40 he had the upper hand throughout the movie.
11:42 And that was the way through it, really.
11:43 [upbeat music]
11:46 Closer.
11:47 - I'm sorry, you were--
11:49 - Don't say it!
11:50 Don't you fucking say, "You're too good for me."
11:53 I am, but don't say it.
11:55 You're making a mistake of your life.
11:57 You're leaving me because you believe
12:01 that you don't deserve happiness, but you do, Anna.
12:04 - Yeah, so, Closer, I remember where I was
12:08 when I first read that play.
12:09 They were workshopping the play.
12:10 They weren't even putting the play on,
12:12 and I was like, "That's a fantastic piece of writing."
12:15 I wanted to play Larry,
12:16 and Patrick Marbis said I was too young.
12:19 It was seven years before in a movie.
12:20 Then a year later, they do the play.
12:23 They're gonna do it at the National Theater.
12:24 My agent comes to talk about something else,
12:26 and I say, "That play, Closer, what a piece of writing."
12:29 And he says, "Well, Kieran Hines is playing Larry.
12:32 "How do you feel about the other part?"
12:34 I go, "You know what?
12:35 "They're four great parts.
12:37 "Yeah, if they want me to play Dan, I'll play Dan."
12:40 And I did, and I did the original production of the play.
12:42 So we launched that play, and it was a big success,
12:45 and really kind of like a bolt of lightning, really.
12:48 People were walking out during, I remember regularly,
12:51 it got towards the end of the first half of the play,
12:53 and people would walk out when it was getting so intense.
12:56 Seven years later, I get a call going,
12:59 "Mike Nichols wants to meet you for lunch in New York."
13:02 And I'd heard rumors he might be doing
13:04 the film version of Closer, but it wasn't clear.
13:08 Well, I wasn't told exactly why, but that was in the air.
13:12 And I went, and I had lunch.
13:14 And then he told me who he'd cast.
13:15 He told me he'd got Judy Roberts, Judy Roberts,
13:17 Natalie Portman, and he offered me the part of Larry.
13:20 And I walked out of that lunch on cloud
13:22 because I knew that play really well,
13:24 and I knew it was a gift, a gift of a part
13:26 in a brilliant piece of writing.
13:28 I remember walking out of that lunch just, yeah, so thrilled.
13:33 - When?
13:34 When did you do it here?
13:38 - Answer the question!
13:41 I mean, it's a really tough scene,
13:43 and I think because of the language that's used
13:46 and where the scene goes, we approached it very sensitively,
13:49 and it was feeling a little like too on the nose
13:51 and a little too excruciating.
13:53 And then Mike came up, which he did throughout his career,
13:57 and he did this with a lot of his films,
13:59 is that he likes people to be busy and to move them around
14:02 so that the scene is happening
14:03 within the context of something else.
14:05 So it's not just two actors sitting there
14:07 having this super frank, like, you know,
14:11 detailed, very personal conversation.
14:13 And so he started to move us around the apartment
14:17 in the scene, me following Julia up and down,
14:20 and suddenly the scene comes alive
14:22 because we're buried in a movement
14:24 and there's a sort of energy to it.
14:26 You know, as I was doing the play, playing the other part,
14:28 I knew the power of that scene
14:29 and how sort of intense it was.
14:32 I just embraced it, and it's such a powerful,
14:35 disturbing piece of writing, that play.
14:37 Thank you.
14:38 Thank you for your honesty.
14:39 Now fuck off and die.
14:41 "Crupier."
14:44 That film, possibly the most important in my career
14:49 in terms of a gear shift, it was a very small film,
14:52 cost less than a million dollars, I think.
14:54 Practically didn't get released at the beginning.
14:56 In fact, Mike Hodges, who directed it,
14:58 said that film wasn't released, it escaped.
15:00 But it had a really big impact on my career
15:05 because it became the kind of cool indie film
15:07 of that year in America and opened doors
15:10 and suddenly my career shifted.
15:12 So it feels like, you know, an important film,
15:16 and it was made by a great friend, Mike Hodges.
15:19 21.
15:19 Blackjack.
15:22 I went to crupier school for two weeks straight,
15:28 all day, every day.
15:29 The one thing I remember about that training
15:31 is they were obsessed by stealing.
15:34 Like, they drilled into everybody learning to be a crupier,
15:37 don't think you'd ever get away with it.
15:40 Because unusually, I don't know if it's still the case,
15:43 but unusually it was a rare thing
15:45 where there's so much cash around.
15:47 People were giving cash, people were spending cash.
15:49 There was this general paranoia
15:52 that if you're coming to train as a crupier,
15:54 don't think you'd get away with it
15:56 if you feel like you've found a way to steal from us.
16:01 I just remember that being drilled into people.
16:03 Chancer.
16:07 Well, that was the kind of,
16:09 the first really big project that I did.
16:12 I'd left drama school, I hadn't done much,
16:14 and then I landed this TV show.
16:16 I went away somewhere and I came back to London
16:18 and there were massive posters everywhere of my face.
16:22 I think they had a sort of phrase underneath saying,
16:24 "What's the matter, don't you trust me?"
16:26 'Cause he was a real chancer.
16:27 He was this kind of guy that was like pulling scams
16:31 every week against the big banks.
16:32 It was the first time I really noticed the shift
16:35 of being in the public eye.
16:36 I got on the tube and people were,
16:38 this is like a day or two after it aired,
16:41 and people were looking and giggling,
16:43 and I went into a shop,
16:44 and it was the beginning of understanding
16:47 what that kind of shift in profile entails, really.
16:51 That was a very strong memory of going,
16:54 "Oh my gosh, it took time to adjust to that."
16:57 To be in a prime time TV show
16:59 when you hadn't really done anything.
17:01 It was a big shift.
17:02 It takes time to adjust and process
17:04 and find your way through that, really.
17:06 - You are a rude, arrogant, self-opinionated,
17:11 corrupt, and dishonest young man.
17:13 - I know.
17:14 Cheers.
17:15 - Unfortunately, you're just the kind of man
17:18 a business seems to need these days.
17:20 - It was great, and there was an actor in it
17:21 called Peter Vaughan, who I really, really
17:23 became very fond of, and I kind of learned a lot
17:26 from him, really, about discipline and approach
17:29 and always being ready and focused.
17:32 As a young actor, I watched him closely
17:34 and was really impressed with him, yeah.
17:37 But that show was the beginning of everything in some ways.
17:41 [upbeat music]
17:43 - "King Arthur."
17:44 [upbeat music]
17:45 I remember the big thing on that one
17:48 was I'd had a couple of bad experiences on horses.
17:51 I'd been thrown off on a TV thing.
17:53 I went to America to do a pilot,
17:55 and I had an awful experience where they put me
17:57 on very lively horses that I wasn't really good enough,
18:01 and I developed a bit of a thing about it.
18:02 And so we negotiated to do "King Arthur,"
18:05 and the day the deal was done, I made a call and said,
18:08 "I need to get on a horse tomorrow."
18:10 And I had a long time before that shoot started,
18:13 but I knew it was gonna be a journey
18:16 because the whole movie was on a horse,
18:17 and I needed to get comfortable.
18:20 - You should be on your knees.
18:22 - I came to see your face
18:25 so that I alone may find you on the battlefield,
18:27 and it would be good for you to mark my face, Saxon.
18:31 For the next time you see it,
18:32 it will be the last thing you see on this earth.
18:36 - I was very lucky there was this brilliant horse stunt guy
18:42 called Rob Inch, who was kind of the best at any horse stunt.
18:46 He'd done some really big stuff in movies on horses,
18:50 and he walked me through it, and he trained me on a horse,
18:53 and we got better and better,
18:54 and he got me into shape for it.
18:56 It was wild, yeah, and they built Hadrian's Wall,
18:59 and it was about a mile long.
19:00 They were saying it probably cost more
19:02 than the original, you know, like, than the actual thing.
19:06 It was huge, it was huge set.
19:08 So I remember we did scenes where we sort of iced
19:10 vast areas to do scenes in the snow,
19:13 and it was a big movie.
19:14 - Knights, the gift of freedom is yours by right.
19:18 (crowd chanting)
19:21 - Impeachment, American Crime Story.
19:25 - Didn't mean to catch you off guard.
19:30 - Mr. President, sorry, I was just--
19:32 - You don't have to apologize for doing your job.
19:34 - I was very surprised when they called me up
19:36 and said they want you to play Bill Clinton.
19:39 I couldn't see it, I couldn't see it at all.
19:41 I was like, why, why would someone come to me?
19:44 You know, I'm English, firstly,
19:45 but also I just didn't see it.
19:48 And then I started to think about it,
19:49 and then I started to look,
19:50 and like a lot of projects that I do,
19:52 if something gets set alight in me,
19:54 suddenly I go, well, there's something I think
19:56 I can do in this, and there's something I want to give a go.
19:59 And I knew it was a challenge, I knew it was a big reach,
20:02 and, but I wanted to take it on.
20:05 If you've been set alight and ignited,
20:07 and you feel that you could possibly do something,
20:10 it's not a bad thing to be scared.
20:11 It's not a bad thing to go in there thinking
20:14 the chance of failure is pretty high,
20:17 but just give it a go, because, you know, that's,
20:21 when you're challenged like that as an actor,
20:23 that's how you improve.
20:25 - Mr. President, even if you didn't have sexual relations
20:28 by that definition, you still engaged
20:30 in other sexual activities.
20:32 So the statement, there is no sex of any kind
20:35 in any manner is a lie.
20:37 Is it not?
20:39 Well, that depends upon what the meaning of the word is, is.
20:47 - It's a difficult line, you know, to tread,
20:49 because you don't want to do just a bad impersonation.
20:51 You just don't want to, you know,
20:53 you need to infuse it with something.
20:55 But, you know, in some ways, for me,
20:57 the most satisfying part of doing that was
21:00 that there was all this footage,
21:01 so, and we were recreating some of it,
21:04 and it's there for you, so there's something,
21:06 you know, you know what you're trying to do.
21:07 There's something very satisfying about having
21:09 a really clear idea of what you're trying to achieve,
21:12 and it's not open to a sort of actor's interpretation.
21:15 The clarity of what you're trying to nail is very clear,
21:20 and I kind of like that.
21:22 A murder at the end of the world.
21:27 I did a lot of work with Britain's Elle on that show,
21:29 just before we even started shooting,
21:31 just, you know, when they first came to me
21:33 and they put it to me, and they wrote each script,
21:35 we would jump on a Zoom and discuss it and talk about it.
21:38 I didn't base that character on anyone in particular,
21:41 but, you know, the one thing that was becoming clear,
21:44 and they were kind of exploring,
21:45 and I imagine is the truth,
21:47 is that when you're that successful,
21:49 that powerful, that wealthy,
21:50 it can be a lonely place and a little paranoid,
21:53 'cause you've got everybody around you,
21:54 and you're never quite sure of people's intent around you,
21:56 because you're in a slightly different place
21:58 to them all the time.
21:59 The isolation and how, you know,
22:02 it must be a strange place to be,
22:05 and it must be very, very hard to trust things
22:08 and people around you.
22:09 - You're holding us hostage?
22:11 - Not one of you is going back to the surface of the Earth
22:16 until I know who has betrayed me.
22:19 That came from the work that Britain's Elle did,
22:21 but also that feeling of somebody who's very cool
22:24 and very calm and very on the top,
22:26 but when triggered, you know,
22:28 it was just a character thing,
22:30 that this guy's got a temper,
22:31 and, you know, it's a way of expressing
22:34 that underneath it all,
22:35 that he's not as cool and collected as he appears.
22:39 (upbeat music)
22:42 Monsieur Spade.
22:43 - Priez-vous, s'il vous plaît, d'ira-follie.
22:54 - Quite the pepper gun you got there, madame.
22:56 - I get a call from Scott Frank
23:00 wanting to talk to me about a project,
23:01 and him and Tom Fontana jump on the phone,
23:04 and they pitch me the idea of a spin on Sam Spade,
23:08 taking him 20 years ahead.
23:09 The room I was sitting in when he called me,
23:11 I've got an original Maltese Falcon poster on the wall.
23:15 I take a shot, I send it to him and say,
23:17 "You've come to the right guy."
23:19 Like, I'm a huge Bogart fan,
23:21 I'm a huge Maltese Falcon fan,
23:23 and it was like a gift.
23:25 It was like a genre that I love,
23:27 and something I was very excited about.
23:30 - These things'll kill you.
23:36 - These are the same ones Dr. Smoke, I saw on TV.
23:42 - It's difficult to try and reinvigorate noir in a way,
23:44 because we've kind of seen everything before, you know?
23:47 When you set it up in a very classic way,
23:50 people feel very quickly, very familiar with it,
23:53 and I think it's hard to reimagine and reinvigorate it.
23:57 And Scott did a very clever thing,
23:59 and he moved it 20 years ahead,
24:01 and put him as a complete fish out of water,
24:03 living in the south of France.
24:05 And he did an awful lot of work on Spade's getting older,
24:09 Spade's not the guy he was.
24:11 He's trying to live a quieter life.
24:13 But it also gave me the opportunity,
24:15 which I welcomed to go back,
24:18 and really flood myself with Bogart
24:21 and those kind of characters from the '40s,
24:23 because it's also important to know
24:25 that's where the guy comes from.
24:26 He might be getting older,
24:27 but I needed to ground myself
24:30 in the origins of the source material, really,
24:33 plus the fact that I was surrounded primarily
24:37 by French actors.
24:38 So I'm trying to do a kind of period,
24:41 kind of American Sam Spade thing,
24:44 but kind of isolated,
24:45 because no one else is doing that around me,
24:48 because we're now in sort of early '60s France.
24:51 So I used Bogart's voice a lot to ground myself
24:54 and sort of get me.
24:55 I lifted all of his dialogue
24:58 from "The Maltese Falcon" and "Casablanca,"
25:00 just his dialogue.
25:01 And that was my kind of setting template every morning
25:04 on the way into work.
25:05 - Philippe could have taken the shot.
25:07 - With Teresa in the car,
25:09 hard to imagine even Philippe doing that.
25:12 And he's wounded,
25:13 which shouldn't make it too hard to find
25:15 for a pair of top detectives like you
25:17 and ton idiot de frere.
25:19 We've already talked, Scott and I,
25:21 about ideas and possibilities,
25:23 some really cool, exciting ideas
25:25 about where to take him and what to do with it.
25:27 But it's just a case of let's see how this goes,
25:30 and then we'll take it from there.
25:32 - Were you ever in talks to play James Bond?
25:35 - No, and it's not a bad thing to be talked about.
25:38 I don't know what it was like,
25:40 but no, it was all rumor.
25:43 [BLANK_AUDIO]