One for you, one for me

This week, noted British thespian and professional impersonator Michael Sheen opens two new films in British cinemas: big-budget actioner ‘Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans’ serious chamber drama ‘Frost/Nixon’. But Sheen isn’t the first movie star to find his career balancing precariously between the divergent demands of posterity and pocket…

Bill Murray
One for you: ‘Ghostbusters’ (1984)
One for me: ‘The Razor's Edge’ (1984)
One of the best-documented cases of the art/moolah mambo is Murray’s agreement to play wiseacre parapsychologist Peter Venkman in ‘Ghostbusters’ on the proviso that Columbia Pictures would greenlight his pet project ‘The Razor’s Edge’. Loosely adapted from a novel by Somerset Maugham, the film sees Murray ditch his glib schtick and slip into the shell-shocked skin of a WWI ambulance driver searching for the meaning of life in the backstreets of Paris and the foothills of the Himalayas. Unfortunately, despite being a fine piece of work, the film failed to find an audience and its failure prompted Murray to take four years out of the business – quite possibly the amount of time it took him to count his ‘Ghostbusters’ money.

Tilda Swinton
One for you: ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ (2005), ‘Constantine’ (2005)
One for me: ‘Broken Flowers’(2005), ‘Absent Presence’ (2005)
The reigning queen of the art/cash scene is our very own Tilda, whose dedication to pushing the boundaries of the cinematic form is matched only by her compulsion to make a swift buck in Lalaland. 2005 was a banner year, with Swinton pulling off the rare ‘two for you, two for me’ manoeuvre with aplomb. On the one hand, it’s cartoon-baddy roles as the White Witch in ‘The Lion…’ and the transgender Angel Gabriel in ‘Constantine’. On the other, it’s a taciturn turn as one of Bill Murray’s exes in slacker midlife-crisis road movie ‘Broken Flowers’, and an appearance in fashion-art crossover installation, ‘Absent Presence’.

Al Pacino
One for you: ‘Dick Tracy’ (1990)
One for me: ‘The Local Stigmatic’ (1990)
After the four year sabbatical that followed the disaster of period clunker ‘Revolution’ (1985), Al eventually got back on the horse with first-rate romantic thriller ‘Sea of Love’ (1989). Those presuming normal service had resumed were left scratching their heads when, the following year, he starred in these two follies. The self-financed ‘Stigmatic’ features the little man as a cockney sociopath with an accent that could churn butter and is as low budget as a film can get, while his neo-Nixonian turn as Big Boy Caprice in Warren Beatty’s dizzyingly garish adaptation of ‘Dick Tracy’ kept the wolf from the door. The same year also brought ‘The Godfather: Part III’, which blurred the line between cash cow and critical acclaim beyond all recognition.

Stan Brakhage
One for you: ‘Alferd Packer: the Musical’ (1996)
One for me: Numerous shorts
Brakhage is one of the leading lights of the experimental cinema scene: in 1996 alone he completed no fewer than 30 shorts, including ‘Concrescence’, ‘Sexual Saga’ and the 24-part ‘Prelude’ series. But in everyday life Stan is also a film teacher, so when budding screen pranksters Trey Parker and Matt Stone begged him to play a cameo role in their feature-length graduation film, a musical comedy about snowbound cannibalism, the big man felt it churlish to refuse. Parker and Stone went on to create ‘South Park’. Brakhage went on to make ‘The Lion and the Zebra Make God's Raw Jewels’. Who’s laughing now?

Gérard Depardieu
One for you: ‘Green Card’ (1990)
One for me: ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ (1990)
From street-tough rapscallion to Le Duc of the period piece was a tough climb for Depardieu, an actor whose medieval mug is rendered leading-man material mostly through sheer, roiling charisma. 1990 may have seen him invigorate the heart and soul of French literature with his pitch-perfect Cyrano, but capes and prosthetic noses were never going to fly Stateside; an immigration chick flick with Old World fish-out-of-water pratfalls, however, was literally on the money (around $30 million in box office) and Depardieu momentarily loomed large in Hollywood’s consciousness. Luckily for Europeans, the Dream Factory held little allure for the big guy and he was soon back on terra firma with further literary plans: hour upon endless hour of ‘Asterix et Obelix’ movies. Merci, la vie.

Steven Spielberg
One for you: ‘Jurassic Park’ (1993)
One for me: ‘Schindler’s List’ (1993)
Perhaps the most infamous example of the art/cash dichotomy remains the fact that, while shooting commenced on devastating Holocaust requiem ‘Schindler’s List’, Spielberg was also remotely engaged in fine-tuning his forthcoming dinosaurs-in-distress moneyspinner ‘Jurassic Park’. Following unprecedented commercial and critical success – ‘Schindler’s List’ won seven Oscars, ‘Jurassic’ became the biggest box-office draw of all time – Spielberg repeated the monsters-on-the-loose/Jews-in-peril-formula in 2005 with ‘War of the Worlds’ and ‘Munich’. We at Time Out are keenly looking forward to 2017, and the almighty double-header of ‘Dinosaurs in Space’ and ‘Massacre on the Mount’.

Max von Sydow
One for you: ‘Flash Gordon’ (1980)
One for me: ‘La Mort en Direct’ (1980)
Legendary European board-creeper von Sydow is a man of many, many faces, so when shooting wrapped on Bertrand Tavernier’s searing media expose ‘La Mort en Direct’ he headed straight over to De Laurentiis studios to be kitted out in leather tights and cowl for his role as evil overlord Ming the Merciless in ultra-camp Queenathon ‘Flash Gordon’. In so doing, he joined a long line of prestigious global thespians who’ve been tempted out of their arthouse comfort zones by the promise of a hefty Hollywood wad: just think Depardieu (above), Maximilian Schell (‘The Black Hole’), Omar Sharif (‘McKenna’s Gold’) or poor old Toshiro Mifune, who dishonoured his immaculate reputation by dressing up as a shrieking submarine commander in ‘1941’. Damn you again, Spielberg.

Judi Dench
One for you: ‘The Chronicles of Riddick’ (2004)
One for me: ‘Ladies in Lavender’ (2004)
With a handful of appearances as 007’s schoolmarmish boss in the Bond films, game Dame Judi Dench was already an old hand by the time she appeared in this odd couple. Written and directed by Charles Dance – who himself has never been averse to slumming for the Yanqui dollar before hightailing it back to Blighty to tread the boards for peanuts – ‘Ladies in Lavender’ is a sprightly chamber piece co-starring Maggie Smith. ‘Riddick’ on the other hand was a Vin Diesel sci-fi behemoth in which Judi wafted about as an Ob-Wan Kenobi manqué for what we hope was serious coin.

---