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Kids, as a Deity, I’m not supposed to fear for my life. However, that security blanket was ripped from me after surviving a sit-down with Alan Rickman, who bestowed his best Severus Snape Side-Eye on Your Ever-Luvvin’ Elephant Head. Despite the joking, now I know what made Harry Potter such a nervous boy. Thank goodness his Bottle Shock co-star, Bill Pullman was around to catch us before we hit the floor.

Bottle Shock

Alan Rickman and Bill Pullman

Mighty Ganesha: So, tell us what brought you to this sweet little film?

Alan Rickman: Emm… sweet…lit-tle…film?

Bill Pullman: That doesn’t quite work, does it? Sweet huge film! Compromise.

AR: Well, I read it and kept turning the pages. That’s what it gets down to, I think, a lot of the time. Sometimes you have to take shovel to get the page open {Laughs} No it’s a great story. I had no clue about it actually happening, that was news to me, and those are rich characters that you can’t pin down and you have complex relationships and in a beautiful place!

BP: It’s simpler for me; I get to work with Alan!

Q: Are you guys adept at wine tasting? Can you tell a French chardonnay from a California merlot?

BP: Alan is. {To Alan} You already knew a lot, did you learn a lot more?

AR: I don’t know. I don’t know a lot more. I’m just like anybody else that goes to the wine store to get a bottle of wine for dinner. I don’t ever sit around comparing wines with no relationship to eating, or friends, or a function. And it’s taken a while, but if I know anything at all, I realise now I have got the guts to send a bottle of wine back, which, of course, in teenage years would never have happened. You drink this stuff and then carry on drinking it. But no, if it’s corked, I know what that smells and tastes like and I send it back. That’s about as far as I can go, to be honest.

MG: Were there free samples on the set?

AR: Grape. Juice.

MG: The one benefit to being on this film…

AR: {Laughs}

Q: Does playing a character that is referred to in the film as a “snob” affect your perception or performance of that role?

AR: I think the last thing you ever do is put labels on a character you’re playing. You don’t judge them yourself. It’s all information. But there is a moment in the movie when Bill calls me a snob and hopefully I sound surprised and say, “Am I?” It’s like he hadn’t thought of it before. But I think it’s also to do with language as an English person, to be called a snob is much, much worse than it perhaps is for an American to use that word.

Q: Due to class issues?

AR: Yeah, and so we had a lot of discussion about that line while we were making the movie cos I thought it was, just as a piece of writing, I wasn’t sure about it. But that’s to do with my reaction as an Englishman to that word, it’s very emotional. So that’s why, I suppose, my way round it was to play it like something that never occurred to me. But that’s a lot to do with being from the upper classes and you don’t get criticised.

BP: It was a hard choice cos it was something that we all were thinking about and I remember thinking that it was a really natural thing to say, “You’re kind of a snob” and that it would frame it in a way where I wasn’t totally throwing away his personality. I was just saying there’s an aspect of him and Randy said, “Nah, I don’t think it’s ‘kind of a snob’ I think it’s ‘a snob’.” And then I got back and think this is the time period where you didn’t have to put a little spin on things to try to slide it in a little better, y’know? That it actually is better and more true to the character to just kind of come in bluntly.

AR: Ultimately, it all underlined something that was helpful, or it was to me, that you are playing a product of a country with a class system, still. And you are walking into a country that doesn’t really have one and certainly not in the same way – maybe economic or if you went to Vassar or something but it’s not the same. This is something that in England we still have to deal with.

MG: Were you allowed a lot of leeway and room to improvise? You were just mentioning the difficulty you had with that line.

AR: Yeah, Randy’s in there with his sleeves rolled up. He reminded me a lot of Mike Newell, who won’t mind me saying that I… Does Basil Fawlty mean anything to you? I’ve actually seen Mike Newell raise his fist to the sun at a cloud and mean it and call it “You bastard!” And Randy, I think has a little bit of that, making the movie fills his whole body. It’s not an intellectual pursuit, but he’s very smart.

BP: {To Alan} I think it was curious, I kept observing what suggestion you had to him and he would take it and transform it and it would take a while and he would go way around the barn and then come back. And some very good things in the movie – not to give it away, but the guacamole and the Kentucky Fried Chicken I thought were a contribution Alan could make. No words, but incredibly succinct moments.

I think my favourite moment is when the guy brings {the guacamole}. That guy that brings the guacamole…

AR: That guy is fantastic. He was so wonderful.

BP: …he’s so astounding, and to see the two of you sitting in the same bubble of air.

AR: I was very worried about him because he looked so vulnerable and fragile. You talk about an alien, this guy was terribly sensitive and shy and he’d suddenly been thrust – the {crew} said {in tough Teamsters voice} “Hey, I need ya ta take this bowl of guacamole over here an’ put it down.” So, it’s all very joshing and jokey, but he looked so fragile and I’m just sitting there thinking he’s gonna just fall apart any minute. And in between takes, he would just stand there holding this bowl. He knew what he had to do and he did it.

BP: I mean, as much as Alan not playing a snob, this guy comes to him and Alan looks at him like an alien, not editorialising on him. That’s what I liked about it. I mean if there was one cynical little response that you would have had toward him it would have sunk the scene. He was so vulnerable.

AR: So touching. I hope he survived the experience.

{All laugh}

AR: There wasn’t a lot of aftercare.

MG: I loved your scenes with Dennis Farina and I wondered if there were more that we didn’t see?

AR: Nope, that was it.

MG: I wondered if there was a lot of improvisation between the two of you because your dialog flows so naturally back and forth.

AR: You know when you meet someone like Dennis, you just go with the flow, there’s no point in doing anything else and that’s the strength of that, I suppose, time marches on and you learn where to put your energies and that is just be with Dennis, cos there’s no point in trying to steer the ship in any direction. And that was a mirror of that relationship, anyway, that’s was what was good about it, y’know? He’s in there trying to drink my wine for no money.

MG: What’s coming up next for you guys?

BP: Well, I got bunch of movies that are coming out this fall. Phoebe in Wonderland with Elle Fanning and Felicity Huffman, and then Surveillance, which I did with Jennifer Lynch, David Lynch’s daughter, and Nobel Son, which we made together

MG: You star together in Nobel Son and it’s also directed by Randy. That was made previous to Bottle Shock, wasn’t it?

BP: Yeah, Yup.

AR: Yeah, but it’s a good way around. So Nobel Son in October and Harry Potter in November and I’m then gonna direct a play in London.

MG: Which play?

AR: It’s called Creditors, it’s by Strindberg. So, Bottle Shock has been no preparation! {Laughs}

MG: And I’m sorry Alan, but it is a sweet little film.

{All Laugh}

AR: No, it is, but it’s got heart.

~ Mighty Ganesha

August 4^th, 2008