MoviesOnline sat down with Academy Award winners Dustin Hoffman (“Rain Man”) and Emma Thompson (“Sense and Sensibility”) to talk about their new film, “Last Chance Harvey,” a heartfelt romance that celebrates new beginnings at any age, written and directed by Joel Hopkins (“Jump Tomorrow”).
New Yorker Harvey Shine (Dustin Hoffman) is on the verge of losing his dead-end job as a jingle writer. Warned by his boss (Richard Schiff) that he has just one more chance to deliver, Harvey goes to London for a weekend to attend his daughter’s (Liane Balaban) wedding but promises to be back on Monday morning to make an important meeting or else.
Harvey arrives in London only to learn his daughter has chosen to have her stepfather (James Brolin) walk her down the aisle instead of him. Doing his best to hide his devastation, he leaves the wedding before the reception in hopes of getting to the airport on time, but misses his plane anyway. When he calls his boss to explain, he is fired on the spot.
Drowning his sorrows at the airport bar, Harvey strikes up a conversation with Kate (Emma Thompson), a slightly prickly, 40-something employee of the Office of National Statistics. Kate, whose life is limited to work, the occasional humiliating blind date and endless phone calls from her smothering mother (Eileen Atkins), is touched by Harvey, who finds himself energized by her intelligence and compassion. The growing connection between the pair inspires both as they unexpectedly transform one another’s lives.
Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson turn in wonderful performances in “Last Chance Harvey” and we really appreciated their time. Here’s what they had to tell us:
MoviesOnline: I wondered if you could just talk a bit about working together and what that experience was like?
EMMA THOMPSON: It's actually kind of got surreal now, because since we started doing this tour of duty I haven't actually seen Dustin, except to sit next to him and talk about what it’s like to work with him. (laughs) I haven't actually looked at him in the face and said “Hello darling, how are you?” But anyway, (laughs), we met on ‘Stranger than Fiction’ for the first time and made one of those rare discoveries that you make sometimes in our profession, you could just work with someone and there seems to be no obstacle, no solving, no edges to rub off, no nothing. It seems to happen with a very peculiar intimate ease. And it was frustrating to us, because we didn't get more to do, and we were kind of going mad with this feeling of oh, what a shame, couldn't we just carry on these characters and do a film about them? We've made jokes about it, we're like, you know, you always say oh wouldn't be nice and let's work together again, and it never, ever happens. And then when I got home, Joel's script was sitting on my desk. And I just went, “Oh my god! Send this quickly! Send this to Dustin quickly, quickly before he's forgotten that he said he wanted to work with me again.” ‘Cause you don't believe anything anyone says. (laughs) So it kind of came out of this profound...
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: You're still in character, that's what you say in the last scene! (laughs)
EMMA THOMPSON: ...yeah, exactly, yeah.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: You know, when you work with someone, in acting, it's an intimate experience, even though it's short term, and it's a marriage, and it's an ordered marriage, it's an arranged marriage, in other words, you don't get to pick your [partner], and so when you decide to go with someone in life or get married, whatever it is, then you know, you have things in common, hopefully. You laugh at the same stuff, you know, and it goes on and on, really, really, you like this, you know there are similarities and you have a similar feeling about life, and that doesn't happen often in film, even though it's an arranged marriage and it did this time. It's just one of those things -- with the help of a little sake of course to loosen things up.
MoviesOnline: What did you find most challenging about making this film? Was there was one scene that was more challenging than you thought it would be?
EMMA THOMPSON: Challenging, I think that the general challenge about this film is that it is not full of plot, subplot, super plot, action, heroes, villains, good, bad, simple things, it is about the movements of the human heart. It's what I call bread and butter acting, rather than the grand acting that we're sometimes required to do and we've both been required to do. It's inhabiting characters in a very subtle way, and making very ordinary moments interesting and engaging and full of meaning and profundity. That was the challenge for us and I don't know that whether we'd have been able to do that when we were young people. I think as a result of being older and having done this job for such a long time, between us, that we were able to do this movie. And I think it's deceptive actually, because (laughs) it doesn't sort of look like we're doing anything really, except being. But in fact, the work itself was quite exacting, because it's a very fine line you're walking along and it could easily be sentimental, it could be simplistic, it could be, I don't know, a bit cheesy. But somehow, I think we've gotten away with that. I don't think it is any of those things, I don't anyway, I mean, you may disagree, and that's fine. But I've never really done anything like that before. And so yes it was a sort of challenge from beginning to end really. And Dust(in) is unusually active. (laughs) From dawn until dusk, I have never known anyone who...
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: No, you said Anthony Hopkins, he had the same relationship.
EMMA THOMPSON: ...but Anthony doesn't work in the same way, he's a Brit, his insecurities and peculiarities work themselves out in an entirely different way.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Okay. (laughter)
EMMA THOMPSON: So, and (to Dustin) you, just, you will never let a moment go free, you know, we'll think oh well maybe we've gotten it, and you're like wait, wait, wait! There's something in there, there's something in there that we're missing, and I think that comes with practice as well. We would never have been able to do this movie when we were in our twenties. You know? (to Dustin) Don't you think?
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: I agree. I think we met creatively at the perfect time. I do, yeah.
MoviesOnline: This movie has universal themes concerning two lonely people who find each other in love, can you comment on that? Also Emma, I’d also like to hear about any bad dates you've ever been on in light of what your character experiences?
EMMA THOMPSON: Hmmmm...
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Bad dates? I'd like to hear that one.
EMMA THOMPSON: Yeah. Oooo, okay, you go ahead because I have to think...
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: You have to think up your bad dates?
EMMA THOMPSON: You carry on. Two lonely people, two lonely people meeting each other and falling in love later in life. You do that, and I'll think of a bad date. (laughter)
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: The short answer or the long answer? When we decided to do this, we decided to do it with certain rules because something happened to us in Chicago, you know, because the two scenes we did in that film ‘Stranger Than Fiction,’ it was very precise dialogue, it was stylized in fact. I mean we adhered to commas and periods and three dots, so it was not only word by word but it was almost a screenplay that was in a kind of modern verse. You know, not that the audience would suspect that, but that's the way we were asked to do it.
And so we had all this other time you know, hanging out together and talking, and getting to know each other, and you know, running the lines and stuff, but this life, it merged between us. And so when this one came along and Emma did call me and I read it, we just talked about how we would do it. And she said it's what she calls bread and butter and no plot. And we thought, can we evoke, or recreate, that life that happened, that went on with us, you know, when we were just sitting in the lobby of a hotel, sipping sake, talking about the people walking by and the memories. I mean, suddenly we became very autobiographical with each other. It was extraordinary. And then it hit me that Emma had done this scene in ‘Love Actually’ that just came to me, where she's told, or she finds out that her husband's been unfaithful, and I told her I'd never seen a scene quite like it. I've seen that moment, you know, you see that many times in films, but I've never seen it executed the way she executed it because it was beyond acting, it really was. She gave us an entrance to her soul, if you will, as corny as that sounds. And I said I think we should attempt to do this piece like that, because we spent a lifetime doing characters, quote unquote, and I don't know if we've ever done what came out of us in Chicago because we got to each other personally. And we were kind of evoking those scenes in life, like the ‘Love Actually’ scene she had. And we said we would do that and with the director’s agreement, ultimately, you know, some nights having more than one camera, we would play with a scene, so that neither of us knew where it was going. We knew what the scene was, but we would open it up at every single time, and every take. So we really didn't know what the other one was going to do. Not really improvisation, but an improvisatory atmosphere.
And I think what came out of it, now to get to the answer to your question, was that we, in Chicago, and talking about our lives, we hit on similarities that we had. And that was a certain kind of defense mechanisms that we both, you know, we all do that, you know. We have certain defense mechanisms that work for us, because we put them [up] to take care of us, you know, so we don't have the same pain in life happen again. It's the guard rails. And we felt that these two characters were there and they were both frozen in life. And they were meeting at a time when neither one of them had been living. She blames it on her mother, but as she says at the end of the film, it's her, you know, and I blame it on my daughter and my ex-wife and my job whatever, but it's me. And we in a sense are in it, catalysts for each other. But something happens between us where I think in the subtext of it, we felt that we deserved a life. The characters did. And somehow, what married it to us is that we felt like we deserved to do a film like this once. (laughs)
EMMA THOMPSON: I thought of my bad date. When I was a gal...
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: You still are, thank you very much...
EMMA THOMPSON: Thank you, you're so kind. The first job I did was a review show in Australia. We went and did revue, Hugh Laurie, me, Stephen Fry, a couple of other bauds, we went off to Australia, and toured this revue. And I was the only girl, and it was pretty difficult, ‘cause the guys were very guy-ee, they're very, very clever, and they used to practice their cricket in the dressing room, and I just kind of finally felt that I had to make a stand. So I started going out with a male model, who was really quite dim, as a sort of antidote really. Unfortunately, and greatly to my regret, he followed me back to England, which was a disaster. And I remember him coming to the Edinburgh Festival where we were performing, and standing in a pair of leather trousers and leggings, (laughter) with his legs akimbo, his hands on his hips, and announcing to one of the boys that he was in fact an international man. And I was so embarrassed that I actually went over and bit a sideboard, (laughter) in the assembly room bar, which bears my teeth marks to this day. So there you go. (laughter)
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: What question did she answer? (laughs)
EMMA THOMPSON: It was about a bad date.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Okay, oh got it. Oh it was about the bad date.
MoviesOnline: Your turn now.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Same guy. (laughter) Next. (laughs)
MoviesOnline: Emma, do you relate to your character on a personal level in terms of her relationship with her mother or her age?
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: I'll answer your question, the first thing that comes to my mind is I didn't get a lot of dates, I was, you know, not attractive at all through those formative years...
EMMA THOMPSON: Oh shut up!
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Well, the nose was even bigger and there were lots of pimples and the lack of stature was more evident, (laughs) but anyway, every once in awhile, there would be some girl that someone would fix me up with, you know, rarely to go out with and so that date was plural and that was, and if you've never experienced it, but I suspect many of us had. You think that person is going out with you because they want to, and the minute they get where we're going, they just want to walk in the door with you. And then they start looking around for the one they want. If you haven't had that happen, it's an extraordinary experience. Anyway, I'm sorry, go ahead.
EMMA THOMPSON: And that was the bad date wasn't it? That was the bad date.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: (laughs) What's this one?
EMMA THOMPSON: The similarities in character. Well, oddly, I don't think that we are like those people at all in life. We're not. You know, it is actually a dissembling as well as a truth, I mean those characters, I suppose I have a self deprecating quality, a little bit like Kate, but I...
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Well let me ask you, do you think, cause it's so personal your work in this, and I mean that, we have an ‘as if’ in acting school or a ‘what if.’ What if? So what if you hadn't become an actress, what if you hadn't become a writer?
EMMA THOMPSON: That's the best way round. If I hadn't become an actress, then it's very possible that there are aspects of that character that would have been mine and I think that as a young woman certainly, I always felt [like] something of an outsider. I wasn't able to join in very easily. Well, it's difficult. There were some groups that seemed to me to be far too glamorous and their reference base seemed to be so rich and more interesting than mine could ever be, and I felt locked out from that. So yes, I mean I can identify with that. Not now, obviously, and not for some time, because I found my way. But, I can imagine not finding your way, because acting is an incredible job for finding people with whom you have a great deal in common. I mean all actors are refugees anyway from some sort of emotional pain or other. So there's always something in common so that's how we heal ourselves. But if you don't find that and you're doing a job like she's doing, she's very stagnant somehow, and doesn't require anything that doesn't ask her any questions or push her in anyway, then you can imagine that you could freeze, as Dustin says.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: You get lost in the books you read.
EMMA THOMPSON: Yeah, exactly. And I did, that's exactly what I did, I escaped into books as a young woman. As a girl, you know, I read and read and read, and it was like, it was my life, reading.
MoviesOnline: Dustin, your character gives up his dream, and in your own life you had a similar experience with your career as a musician, can you talk about that?
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: I mean, if your first thirty years are really unsuccessful, you know, you have to doubt whether you've picked the right profession or not. So I've always felt that somehow Emma's and my friend, Mike Nichols, was doing some horrible joke on the world when he cast me in The Graduate, because it was such untype casting. It was. The part was written for a Robert Redford type, and had that not happened, I'm sure I would have just gone on doing what I was hoping success would be and that was just an occasional part Off-Broadway, you know, maybe eventually go to another town that has a theater company and spend my life doing that. Now if I couldn't have done that, I could have been in real trouble that's not far away from this guy, because the director and I decided on a jingle writer. It wasn't the original choice the director made for the guy's profession, because the director, Joel, knew that I played piano and that what I really wanted to be in life was a jazz pianist. And so acting was just a way to fail [with] a little more ease, you know, and not have my lack of talent show so much as it did in piano. And so I don't feel that far apart from the guy. You know, I just had this freak accident happen, called Mike Nichols. But I think what Emma's saying when she talks about herself, it's kind of true. When she talks about that, she's not that way now, because I think she would agree, this is the kind of talks we used to have. It stays with you. I think when Emma puts her face on the side of a window in the bus, a couple of times, she's not acting and she doesn't have to. I don't even think she has any conscious idea when she does that of what's coming across to us. She's not playing a moment so to speak. She's just, that's just a part of Emma. She carries her past with her right on her sleeve. (laughs)
MoviesOnline: One of the beautiful things about being successful in show business or entertainment or films is that you really get to be global citizens. You travel around the world and you have a unique perspective. So, can I ask you what your unique perspective is of the recent presidential election?
EMMA THOMPSON: Of course...
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Well I wanted Sarah Palin, so don't quote me. (laughter) That was my next co-star, I'm sorry! Go ahead, go ahead.
EMMA THOMPSON: (laughs) Well, you know, it was very interesting for us. We have an adopted son from Rwanda, and so we kind of went through this election with him, and it gave us a very different perspective upon it. And as we discussed as a family what was going to happen, our great fear was that behind closed doors and in the voting booths, the polls would be proven wrong by an intrinsic racism. And that did not occur. It was one of the great revelations, I suppose, of all our lives. I mean, my husband got up, we watched the election as it happened, half past three in the morning he woke me and said it's happening, and we watched Obama's speech, and I texted my son and said “Okay, that's ten years you've got to get into office. Okay?”
You know, it was the most extraordinary thing, and across Europe, all our friends, everyone was just in this state. You know, there is a big problem because the amount of projections that guy's going to have to deal with just doesn't even bear thinking about. It's miles worse than being a film star. You know, the hope and then the crashing down of hope if he doesn't happen to answer all those hopes, which he can't, he can't. So that means therefore that as global citizens, we really have to get behind him. We really have to do our part. It's not a question of like he says, “It's not me, you know. I can represent this. I can change the iconography, which is extremely important politically and socially, but I can't do this by myself.”
And therefore, it seemed to me to be a really huge call to democracy. Democracy is hard work. Democracy's not just about going out to vote. Democracy is actually looking at the world, seeing what's going on, getting involved, informing yourself and doing something about it. Not just reading the old newspaper and saying, “Oh, isn't it awful?”, and then going back to your life. So I hope that what it means is that it will involve us all, in the problems that we really are beset with at the moment, and I'm not just talking about financial crises, I'm talking about trafficking of human being, for instance, you know?
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: I don't know if you guys know the amount of work she does with the trafficking of women, but I think from getting to know her, she spends more time at that than she does in her art. If you know what Trafalgar Square was, is, at one point while we were shooting, she was also a part of this work that she does. And they allowed her to take Trafalgar Square and turn it into replications of the rooms that these women are brought into that are sometimes two blocks away from The Dorchester. And they are imprisoned there and they are...
EMMA THOMPSON: You have a big problem with it here. I'm sure you know about it. But I think that people are in denial about it. So yes, that's my response. We have to step up to the plate now. Dustin?
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: I told my kids, I've never seen or felt anything like it, and they probably won't ever see or feel the likes of it again. It's not just once in a century, it may be once in a few lifetimes, because it was symbolic on so many levels. It's like really good art, it's like God gave us a good piece of art (laughs) with this election because it hit certain levels. I mean, when Emma talks as an international person, who is more aware of places outside of America and the feeling that America had become, the perception was a bully, I mean in the strongest, ugliest sense of the word, and suddenly to have this Afro-American guy with a slingshot take down Goliath. I mean, no one in this country believed it was going to happen. No matter who you were voting for, you just didn't think it would be allowed, particularly because of the last two very questionable elections (laughs). I said to my wife the next morning, I didn't realize how ashamed I had felt for the last eight years just being in this country and having to apologize for it constantly.
EMMA THOMPSON: It's really true and in our newspapers, there was a wonderful description, it was one of the editorials in The Independent, and it just says America has given us a master class in democracy. And that made me very, very happy. It really did.
MoviesOnline: I noticed in the one sheet, that Dustin, you seem to be looking down on Emma's head. I thought that the difference in height was really charming and added a lot to these characters from different backgrounds coming together. Then they change it completely in the one sheet.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: I didn't notice that until you mentioned it.
EMMA THOMPSON: You know why, because when they took that picture, we were on the embankment, and on the embankment next to the wall is a big step, and that's where he's standing...
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: I'm on a step. (laughter)
EMMA THOMPSON: But I mean, not on purpose.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: You know, the director said that at the very beginning of the film, “Don't worry, you know, Emma's a few inches taller than you, but we’ll equal…” I said “Please don't.”
EMMA THOMPSON: I mean we really didn't aim for that at all. I think probably that photograph works because of the angle of the face and it might look a tiny bit too obviously comic, if he were looking up at me, but actually the photograph is bonafide. It's not been fiddled with.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: If I was that much shorter in the one-sheet, Last Chance Harvey he finally finds his mother (laughter).
MoviesOnline: Can each of you talk about your future projects? Emma, what about the prospect of getting the nose and warts back for Nanny McPhee, and Dustin, I read that you're looking at a film on silent film era publicist Maynard Nottage, a character who's lost in Hollywood history?
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: You got me. I never heard it before you said it. But go ahead with your Nanny McPhee.
EMMA THOMPSON: Maynard Nottage?
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Such a great name.
EMMA THOMPSON: It's a great name. We need to make that film. (laughs)
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: I swear, can I call my agent right now? (laughter) Okay. Maynard, no. But go ahead with Nanny McPhee, you are doing another one.
EMMA THOMPSON: Nanny, yeah, we shoot that next year. Very excited. Very excited. It's taken three years to do this script. The first film took nine years door to door because the script took seven years to develop. Just was really hard to work it out. But this one, because I learned so much on the last one, only took three, so we start that, we've got a green light in everything, so hopefully, it really will happen. Although who knows in this climate. There's a baby elephant in it which I'm particularly excited about.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: They're going to use a real baby elephant?
EMMA THOMPSON: They're going to use a real baby elephant, yeah.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Okay.
MoviesOnline: Will you direct it?
EMMA THOMPSON: No, Susanna White is directing it. First time I've worked with a woman director, which I'm really thrilled about. So the triumvirate at the top is all women, me and Lindsay Doran and Susanna. And that I think will make for a very comfortable shoot.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: The sex of the elephant?
EMMA THOMPSON: (laughs) Stop!
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Sorry.
MoviesOnline: I read that you're not going to be doing the next Harry Potter?
EMMA THOMPSON: No. No, I'm not in the next Harry Potter. The next Harry Potter's got an awful lot of story in it, you know, the last thing they can afford to do is bring in peripheral comedy characters like mine and that's fine.
MoviesOnline: So that's it for Harry Potter?
EMMA THOMPSON: Yeah, that's it. Cross it off your list of things that I do. I'd be so grateful. (laughs)
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: But don't cross off peripheral comedy characters, ‘cause she's always on the lookout for that. (laughs)
EMMA THOMPSON: Yes, yes, several of those coming up actually.
MoviesOnline: Can you strike up a conversation with a stranger in an airport and would you?
EMMA THOMPSON: Dustin can strike up a conversation with anyone anywhere. It's extraordinary. He can talk to anyone. I mean it is partly a result of fame, of course, because people know who he is. But, sorry to talk about you as if you're not in the room, but you know what I mean, you can talk to anyone.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Yeah, I like to do that.
EMMA THOMPSON: And you do that, a lot.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: But you do it too.
EMMA THOMPSON: I do. I do. Not quite not as much. I probably would do it more where I'm working in America. I probably don't recognize the types so well, so I would be interested in working out who everyone was.
MoviesOnline: Emma, working with Dustin twice now, has it inspired you in terms of story or characters to want to work together on something else again?
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Well, what's the age, at what point can we no longer do Taming Of The Shrew? (laughs) Could we get away with it? I mean, I kept thinking of that when we were working, but I guess no, well yeah, we could do an older version of it.
EMMA THOMPSON: Yeah, you never know.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Good morrow, Kate, for that's your name I hear. Or have you heard?
EMMA THOMPSON: Oh stop. Stop you! No, anyway, I don't know that play very well.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: It’s a good part for you.
EMMA THOMPSON: We will, I'm sure as I work along, be, I mean that's the good thing about being a writer, you do have to have a very good idea, so I mean I'd be thinking about that.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: I think we didn't really think about it that much because you never know with the movie. I mean what if this movie doesn't work, then maybe it's not a good idea to revisit ourselves as a duo again. (laughs) So maybe we're just waiting for the shoe to fall.
EMMA THOMPSON: (laughs) That's a good point, I hadn't thought of that. Yeah, what if it tanks and dies? Sayonara.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Good luck with your career. (laughs) And I with mine. (laughs) But yeah, maybe that's the reason.
EMMA THOMPSON: Yes, you don't want to jinx things by thinking then what should we do next?
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Think about the places that you never talk to people, you know, and it's interesting. Bathrooms for women, you know, but it's a whole different energy in a bathroom. I mean, you guys are all together in that. I mean, men, if one man is looking in the mirror, doing something, and another guy comes in, you know, and suddenly he goes like he's getting a pimple, you know, God forbid he'd been seen preening, you know. It's always to get something off, you know, you can't really do that in front of other men. But I love certain places that exist, where the chances of being together are astronomical, like an elevator. The chances of that combination of people being together, six and a half billion people on the earth, and suddenly there you are in that close proximity, never seen each other before, never see each other again, and what do we do? Put our heads down. (laughs) We don't even make eye contact. And I thought, why?
MoviesOnline: Was it fun for you shooting in the U.K., Dustin?
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: I love it there. But I love it there with Emma too. Because you know, those conversations during the montages of the film, she's really telling me stuff about that city. Every place we were she says, now this, (laughs) she knows her city. But it's wonderful there. I don't know if Joel's mentioned it, but you know, credit goes to Joel and the cinematographer, John de Borman, because at the beginning they said they wanted to make London look like Paris for this film.
EMMA THOMPSON: It's great they avoided things like Big Ben and the London eye, and I think because Joel's parents were architects, he has an eye for interesting bits of city. So I loved the urban scopes he chose.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: I think they're famous somewhat. Aren't they?
EMMA THOMPSON: Some of them are, yeah.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: But no, his parents.
EMMA THOMPSON: Oh yeah.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: They're famous architects.
MoviesOnline: Dustin, you are a great joker and known for playing tricks on people. So did you play any tricks on Emma?
EMMA THOMPSON: He wouldn't dare.
MoviesOnline: Nothing on this film?
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: I just knew early on I could make her laugh, and that gave me profound joy...
EMMA THOMPSON: (laughs)
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: ...and then I realized that she's, underneath her classy structure, she's a baud. She is musical, she's vaudeville in her bones. She really is. But I don't know if I, I don't do practical jokes. I know some actors do. I just like to make her laugh.
MoviesOnline: Dustin, you said that you would have loved to have been a professional musician and maybe have gotten some gigs on the side as an actor with someone, but you look at somebody like Clint Eastwood who has successfully taken what was his original first wish...
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: What was his first wish?
MoviesOnline: Well, it was music as well and he's composed his own scores for a lot of his movies. Is this the first movie we've ever seen you play in?
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: No, but that is a song I wrote, you know, and I played a teeny bit of it actually in Tootsie I think and I think that was the only one. But yes, you just depressed me by telling me what Eastwood does.
EMMA THOMPSON: (laughs) Yes, that's really lowering it actually.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: He's used his talents much more prodigiously than I have. But he can't tell a dirty joke like I can.
MoviesOnline: So if I went to a club on Sunset where maybe I would see Jeff Goldblum playing, I wouldn't ever see you sitting there?
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: No, because Jeff Goldblum is a really good jazz pianist.
EMMA THOMPSON: He's a genius…
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: ...and I'm not. And the guy that was brilliant, and I loved him with all my soul, was you know...
EMMA THOMPSON: Humphrey Littleton?
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: No, the little English actor who died with a clubfoot.
EMMA THOMPSON: Oh, Dudley Moore.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Dudley. Brilliant pianist. Brilliant. Now those are good piano players. I'm not kidding when I say I wasn't very good.
MoviesOnline: What about the opportunity to do the physical humor that you got to do in this? I thought it was a nice touch that made Harvey seem even less successful but it didn't fall into a clownishness and I thought that was an interesting line to navigate.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: We never thought of it. He may have thought of it in earlier incarnations of the script, to have the guy be kind of a, you know, this is the guy who always gets a Chaplineque thing where the car goes by, throws mud water on him or whatever, but that was a very early incarnation. But once we started shooting this, there was never the desire to milk a laugh and I mean, the whole idea with the thing on the arm really came out of his original writing. He wanted some physical obstacle to show when I go to the reception, so when I go to the hotel, the other guy comes up with coffee and he tripped and it got all over me. And I said to Joel, “But I wouldn't go to the reception [like that]. I'd go in shirt sleeves before I would do that.” So we had those kinds of [arguments]. It became an argument for awhile, and somehow that came out of it, so just that that would be something that we would have to deal with, rather than to try to milk it and see how long you could get it to work. And then Joel did things like the blinds or whatever, but the rocks in the restaurant, they were there. And we shot in a real restaurant, and I really tripped on it during rehearsal. And sometimes you do something like that and you say...
EMMA THOMPSON: Keep it.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Keep it. You know, but not to, I think it would have hurt the film, you know?
MoviesOnline: In the production notes, you mentioned that falling in love when you're older is really difficult...
EMMA THOMPSON: No, I don't think it's difficult, and I think it happens. I think it's rare, and I think the results of falling in love are difficult. I mean, falling in love per se is easy, you know.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: That's funny...
EMMA THOMPSON: (laughter)
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Falling in love, that's what Woody Allen said, “I'm not afraid of death, it's dying that I hate.” (laughs)
EMMA THOMPSON: Yes, exactly.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: So falling in love is easy.
MoviesOnline: The other side of that is that do you think that the older you get, the more you understand love?
EMMA THOMPSON: Yeah, I do actually, but that's only if you've put a good lot of graft into it. You can't just understand love ‘cause you're older. That's not a given. You can understand love if during the period that you've been getting older in, you actually work at it, work out what works, what doesn't work, what love is, which is a daily activity, not something that just, you know, carries on in the ether without you. You know, love is as mundane as washing up, you know. The plates aren't going to wash themselves and put them back and love is not going to survive...
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: That's good. She's a writer, that's good...
EMMA THOMPSON: ...unless you do the work. And the work is sometimes quite painful.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: So we translate that line as saying, you said love is as mundane as, well we say as doing the dishes...
EMMA THOMPSON: Yeah.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: That's good. I think.
EMMA THOMPSON: You know, so what I think that you do get to learn about that, if you do love and you do commit to loving someone over a long period of time. I mean, then there's other kinds of loving where you decide you don't want to stay with someone for a long period of time and you go from one relationship to another, stopping at the point at which there is an obstacle that you simply don't wish to climb over. That's another matter.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: What's the question again? Ask it again.
MoviesOnline: The fact that the older you get, the more you understand love.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: The older you get, the more you understand love. I think the older you get, the more you can understand life, you know, and it goes three ways. You understand more about life as you get older, you understand less, or you just stagnate, and you know, the question doesn't even hit you and you don't realize that you're in a stand still like these guys are when they meet. I think that what these guys are finding out, and it’s something, and we do try to bring ourselves into a piece like this. I mean, this is open for us, Emma and I, to use our feelings about life in this piece, because it isn't plot driven. And I think that as you get older, you begin to understand what intimacy is on a level that you didn't before and why it's so frightening to the most of us. Like when you marry or you wind up with someone, and that person doesn't [work out], well you picked that person for a reason that ultimately you have to face. You picked that non-intimacy, that person that you couldn't get that intimate with, for a reason. And intimacy is tough. I mean, we were talking about that last night. We were saying that these people allow themselves the chance to be happy for the first time in their life because they understand that disappointment, they understand rejection, they've been living in it, they've got the defenses built for it, so they can survive that. And these guys begin to understand that they can survive happiness. And that's a tough one for almost all of us.
EMMA THOMPSON: Truly.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: And to get to the point as you get older to realize that you can put down the obstacles that you've had up there.
MoviesOnline: You were joking about doing The Taming Of The Shrew, but seriously, are you actively looking for a third project to work on together?
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: No, we meant it. We want to see what this one does. We're scared to death to work together if this tanks.
EMMA THOMPSON: (laughs)
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: We have enough problems with our careers. (laughs)
EMMA THOMPSON: Yeah, exactly.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: (laughs) Why compound it by working together again when the public is saying, “We're not interested in you guys together? Leave it.” But you know, I'm sure we'll be calling each other if it works well and saying (laughs) “What about this idea?”
EMMA THOMPSON: Yeah.
MoviesOnline: Emma, you've done a couple of projects in a row set in the 1960s, particularly involving radio characters. Is Radio Caroline one of …
EMMA THOMPSON: Yeah, Richard Curtis’s new thing. Yeah, I did two little cameos last year for my friend Nick Hornby, who's a novelist, who's written his first screenplay. She's excellent, where I play a sadistic, anti-semitic head mistress. Heaven, I had such a laugh! And then I played a completely drunken, irresponsible ex sex symbol mother of a child with, you know, just absolutely no mothering instincts, whatsoever, for Richard, on a boat. It was great.
MoviesOnline: Writing a score, did you approach them, or did they approach you?
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: I didn't write the score. No, it’s just that song that I play. No, that score is quite beautiful and we were talking about it just before this started.
EMMA THOMPSON: It is a really nice score...
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: The score in this movie I really think helps the film.
MoviesOnline: Was it written specifically for the movie?
EMMA THOMPSON: The song when he pulls me back from the lift?
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: I wrote it when I was in my 20s when my first girlfriend left me for our acting teacher.
EMMA THOMPSON: Bitch!
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: It's called "Shoot The Breeze" and Bette Midler sang it once and Sting has sung it and Bette Midler actually wrote the lyrics. And if we had time, Emma and I would sing a duet for you.
MoviesOnline: Emma, what's the name of your organization?
EMMA THOMPSON: The Helen Bamber Foundation. I'm chair of. She's 82. She started her career as an activist when she walked into Bergen-Belson [concentration camp] at the age of nineteen with the Jewish relief unit. She's the most extraordinary woman in the world. She's been my mentor for a long, long time, and now I'm lucky enough to represent her organization.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: When she did the Trafalgar Square installation, and she took me to it, there's a woman who narrates it, and she introduced me to that woman and it's one of the most extraordinary experiences I've ever had in my life, because this woman had been...
EMMA THOMPSON: It was her story that the whole installation was based on.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: She'd been raped and abused and prostituted out for how many years, and looked at you and admitted it, and now she's getting a law degree or something?
EMMA THOMPSON: She works in a law firm, yeah.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: She's an extraordinary woman. Where's she from?
EMMA THOMPSON: She's from Moldova. A lot of Moldova’s, a lot of Eastern Europeans, you're trafficking persons come the other way, yeah exactly. I'm bringing it to New York anyway in April, so...
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Oh you are?
EMMA THOMPSON: Yep.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Where?
EMMA THOMPSON: Well, I'm hoping, I'm trying to get a meeting with the mayor, to see if we can get Duffy Park, because it just needs a really good venue that's got a real footfall. Or Times Square, I mean I think that would be good. It's seven shipping containers.
MoviesOnline: Emma, on Friday, Prince Charles turned sixty, and I wanted to know if you had ever met him, what your interaction was with him, and if you had any birthday wishes for him?
EMMA THOMPSON: Indeed I should have been at his sixtieth birthday, but I was here, and I nearly went back right before, but I was so tired. I'd be jet lagged and I'd be useless. I love him and he's a remarkable guy who just spends his entire time working. At the moment, he's really pushing hard on saving the rainforests. He's terrified about that, so that's what he's doing at the minute. You know, everything he said when he was a young man has all been coming to pass, and it’s the same things now, and he is a very depressed man. But he's much loved, by many.
“Last Chance Harvey” opens in theaters on December 25th.
http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_16114.html
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