John Turturro Q&A

The 'Romance and Cigarettes' helmer discusses circumcision, Englebert Humperdinck and dirty northerners.

Mar 23 2006

John Turturro has made his name as an actor by playing quirky outsiders. But in his work as a writer and director, he frequently draws on his own personal experiences of growing up in the working-class suburbs of Queens, New York. His latest film, 'Romance & Cigarettes', is a musical/black comedy that uses popular songs to explore the lives of blue-collar workers and their families.

Which do you prefer, acting or directing?

I do still love to act, but I'd like to direct more if I get the opportunity. Though if I do, it will have to be something original and surprising and I would want at least some input on the script. Throughout my career I've always tried to do films that I really want to do, even when people tell me I'm being foolish and should be doing something more mainstream. It can be hard to be a purist and still make a living.

What made you decide to make a musical?

It wasn't going to be a musical originally. I'd found this Engelbert Humpedinck song that I wanted for the opening credits, but that was it. It wasn't until years later, when I was shooting the musical fantasy sequence in my second film, that I realised that this was how I best remembered growing up in Queens. We had this tiny house and I would put music on to achieve some level of privacy in a situation where there really wasn't that much privacy at all. It was a way of escaping into a sort of fantasy world. That's why popular songs are so perfect for telling a story about working-class people who don't have the means to get on a plane and escape physically.

Did you want to escape?

When I was young I would look at Queens sometimes and see a world I wanted to run away from. Now when I look back I see that it is actually really rich and the people who live there are worthy of exploration and even celebration.

Do the songs you chose have any particular meaning for you?

With some of them, like 'A Man Without Love' and 'Delilah', the choice was almost subconscious because they were songs that my parents used to play all the time at home. And there are certain performers like Janis Joplin, James Brown and Bruce Springsteen who really represent that class of people and have a gritty earthiness about them so they were obvious choices.

Some of the songs were chosen to help further the narrative. For example, I didn't know how to tie up the relationship between the James Gandolfini and Kate Winslet characters until I heard Nick Cave's 'Little Water Song'. And the Buena Vista Social Club track, 'El Cuarto de Tula', gave me the name for Kate's character. I thought that fitted quite well because it sounds like a made-up name, and people who don't have a lot in life try to make up a fantastical identity for themselves. Just look at Madonna!

To what extent is this film based on personal experience?

A lot of the ideas do come from things that I saw and heard while I was growing up, maybe things that happened to an aunt or a neighbour. And there are a couple of images that really stuck with me, like the scene in which Susan Sarandon pulls out a knife. I really saw that happen. I wanted to show that more passionate and less conventional side of love.

So romance is ambivalent?

I grew up in a time when people didn't divorce. People would continue to co-exist in the house even though they weren't talking to each other. As a child you might not understand this and think 'why are my parents still together?' But when you're older you learn to see the positive side as well. To be in a long-term relationship is brutal – especially when you don't have a lot.

People are essentially animals and the spirit and the flesh co-exist and that is something that I find very interesting – the fact that the tender and the obscene go hand in hand.

The men in the film are portrayed as beasts. Do you really think men are hopeless slaves to their libidos?

I think that a lot of men are not that evolved. Some are of course, but not as evolved as they imagine themselves to be. On the whole, I think women are stronger. I was very close to my mother as a boy and I used to eavesdrop on her conversations with her friends. I wanted to put the women at the centre of this movie, because even though men like to pretend to themselves that they are in control, it's really the women who are the survivors. Men are more primitive.

Why did you choose to give Kate Winslet a northern accent?

Kate originally wanted to play the part with an American accent. But I explained to her that our next-door neighbour in Queens was from Liverpool and we had Irish, Scottish, Italian and German people living on our street. That's the real sound of those places, not the stereotypical New York accent. It also makes the character a little more exotic if she's foreign. Plus it sounds more dirty.

I have to ask, why is the film so pre-occupied with circumcision?

That's based on a funny story that my mother told me about my uncle. Italian men of his age were never circumcised, but by the time my generation came along it had become the norm. When my uncle started dating girls a little later on in life, he felt slightly self-conscious about this and decided he had to have it done. Apparently it was agony and he could hardly walk for days. Since then I've read about the recent craze for having cosmetic surgery 'down there'. So it seems that my uncle was ahead of the game.

'Romance and Cigarettes' is released tomorrow.

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