Mike Figgis on Leaving Las Vegas: An Interview Special

0:14Chris Hewitt:Hello pod, I'm Chris Hewitt and welcome to a very special interview... special? Leaving Las Vegas is director Mike Figgis' adaptation of the book by John O 'Brien about Ben, An alcoholic screenwriter, played by Nicolas Cage, who relocates to Las Vegas with one goal, to drink himself to death. Along the way, he meets Sarah, a prostitute played by Elizabeth Shue, and the two quickly fall in love and embark upon an extremely intense relationship. Spoiler alert, it doesn't end well. Released in 1995, Leaving Las Vegas was very much an independent movie shot in a matter of weeks on Super 60mm by Figgis, the British director who had made his name with the likes of Stormy Monday and Internal Affairs but who was already enduring something of a tempestuous relationship with Hollywood.

1:07Chris Hewitt:But the film was critically acclaimed and quickly emerged as a major player in that year's Oscar race. Figgis, who also wrote the screenplay, was nominated for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay and both Shoe and Cage were nominated for their performances, with Cage, of course, winning what remains, at the time of recording, its only Academy Award. And it was a richly deserved one as well, for it is a truly fearless and committed performance. Over the years, Leaving Las Vegas has earned a reputation as, frankly, a difficult watch and, yes, a downer. But when I revisited the movie ahead of this interview with Vegas, I was surprised by what I found.

1:47Chris Hewitt:Yes, the film is dark. Yes, the film is bleak. Yes, there's no escape for Ben in particular, but it is fundamentally a love story between Ben and Sarah and as such has moments of lightness and longing that really stick in the memory. It's enhanced by Figus's jazzy score and some old standards sung brilliantly by Sting, his old mucker and Stormy Monday star, whose voice, incidentally, is the very first thing we hear in the film. It's the opposite of a Marvel movie, I guess, in that this is a pre-credits thing. Sorry. Now 31 years old, shudder, Leaving Las Vegas has been remastered in 4K, a process overseen by Vegas himself, and has just been released on shiny disc, 4K UHD, no less.

2:33Chris Hewitt:So it was the perfect time to sit down with Vegas on Zoom and have a long chat with him about the making of the movie. This is not a spoiler interview per se, but we do take it for granted that people know and have seen the film, and so we talk about key plot developments from the off. So I thought it might sit well here in the spoiler specials section. I had a great time listening to Mike wax nostalgic about his excellent movie, and I hope you do too. Enjoy. We are delighted to be joined on The Emperor Podcast by the director of Leaving Las Vegas, Mike Figgis. How are you, sir? I'm extremely well Chris and it's a pleasure to be here yeah we're pretending Mike we haven't just spoken for an hour for the magazine but we have

3:21Chris Hewitt:but what a pleasure to talk to you about leaving Las Vegas and I know that this is a movie that you did revisit fairly recently what was your big takeaway from that experience Well, what's happening in the last six months or a year or so is that, you know, not prompted by me, but a couple of three films have been digitally remastered. Right. And it started with Internal Affairs and then Leaving Las Vegas, then also Lieberstraum, you know, and they've gone back to the negative. And like frame by frame, they have, you know, actually not just restored, that would be the wrong word. They look better than they ever did before because of the technology now of, you know, of digitizing and then, you know, balancing and all of that.

4:14So number one, from a visual point of view, it's just like quite stunning, you know. And you see the difference, say, between, let's say, Internal Affairs or Lieberstrom, 35 millimeter, and then to see Leaving Las Vegas going back to Super 16 negative and seeing stuff that was in the negative that didn't necessarily come out in quite the same way in the transfer process of 16 to 35, which was not digital. So the joy of just seeing like, wow, the realization that all this information, I know as a photographer, if you digitize an old negative, you find things that you never saw before because it retains all this information.

4:57So visually stunning, that's number one. And then the experience of actually, I had the great fortune to see the film properly for the first time in Berlin with 500 people, you know, in a beautiful venue, the Gerdemite Kunst, audience predominantly young, you know, as in for them, a first time experience of seeing the film. So it's like, okay, how is this going to play, you know? And also, I haven't seen the film properly like that. I've seen bits of it, you know, but I haven't seen it as a long piece of narrative. And I was kind of immensely moved by the film. I'd forgotten how sad it is, how dark it is, how emotional it is, and then all the memories that came with that, which is the circumstance of making the film, the fact that the writer killed himself when we were about to make the film.

5:54Before I even met him, I was about to meet him.

5:57Chris Hewitt:Oh, wow. I didn't know you hadn't met him. No. So my friend Stuart had met him. So Stuart Reagan, who sadly died of quite advanced cancer, and was also already ill. I think he found a book in a second-hand bookstore in Santa Monica, loved it, gave me the book. He bought the rights, which were totally available, and then he gave it to me, and I carried around my bag for ages as a kind of favor because it's like people give you books and they don't normally work, right? And then out of guilt, because I really like Stuart. Stuart, he ran an art gallery. He had nothing to do with the film business, right?

6:43Chris Hewitt:Stuart's into film, right? Yeah. Yeah. So finally, out of guilt, one weekend I read it and I think within – I'd just done Mr. Jones and I was so beaten up that I think within like 15 pages, I went, this is incredible. It's so dark and it's so well written. I have no idea how this, you know, I feel this can be a film, but reading it, it's a challenge. It's all internal thoughts and, you know, it's what's going on in his head. But I said, yeah, to Stuart, yeah, I think it's really, really good. Let me have a crack at it, you know. So that was the genesis of it through Stuart. And then watching the film as a finished thing all these years later, you are reminded at certain points.

7:34But the film is so engrossing that you're not distracted. But at the same time, in a much more wider sense, the bigger picture of the film is very much part of the experience for me of watching it. you know, the experience of shooting it, the experience, because it was the first film where I went, I want to shoot the next film myself.

7:54Chris Hewitt:Yeah. I mean, so Declan's the DP, lovely DP, did a fantastic job, and he, bless him, allowed me to shoot the other camera, you know. I already owned a 16mm Art-on camera, which I believe was the camera that shot the draftsman's contract, you know. Really? I bought it secondhand, you know. And so armed with these two lovely, beautiful cameras, the Artons, and French money rather than Hollywood money, you know, so the freedom of shooting for the first time, how I wanted to make films, first time it happened. And so the joy of that shoot, of that freedom and the creativity, and, you know, you don't realize that at the time, but by sheer luck you have combined the right people, you know.

8:49You've got the right cast. You've sorted out the script, you know, finally, you know, which was a real challenge. and the location is is containable you've got a really great line producer who knows how to make low-budget movies so he's he's you know a fascist when you need him to be one and a schedule that you had to stick to and all of that within those confines and also a decision to make don't carry lots of equipment don't carry cranes don't carry tracking we're going to shoot this either handheld or on a tripod or something like that, you know, for the most part. Minimal lighting, you know, free lighting in Vegas, all that sort of stuff.

9:39So, you know, now you're watching it and then you're just like, and then you're aware of the fact that it's working at a certain point. People did not go for a pee, you know, it was silent. And then at the end, as soon as it finished and the first credits started to come up, they started clapping and you know and then they they they clapped for a while and then they stopped and they just watched all the credits and then when the credits finished they started clapping again and you know unfortunately they hadn't set up a q a which would have been perfect i couldn't you know it was really difficult to leave the cinema because people were just wanted to ask questions and you know talk about it and and i couldn't speak at first i was actually I'm a tough guy, but I was actually very emotional, you know.

10:25Chris Hewitt:What bit got you in particular? Just the crescendo of emotion at the end, Ben's death? It's so sad. Yeah. So beautifully sad. I was like, beautiful sadness. Elizabeth Shue is incredible. I mean, Nick is phenomenal, you know, the two of them, you know, but wow, what a pairing, you know, that's like perfect. you know all those elements and the fact that you know i got to know vivian westwood i'd made a documentary with her she gave me all the clothes you know for for elizabeth you know um and just things like that you know just like oh this is how filmmaking can be you know it can be a joyous emotional wonderful experience there's no guarantee of course but But when it works, it can be like that, you know.

11:18And you read about other directors talking about their films, and they say the same thing.

11:23Chris Hewitt:And because you were an independent production, because you were running and gunning it in Vegas, and I know not always in Vegas, because you were backed by French money, not Hollywood money, I imagine you didn't have a lot of pressure brought to bear on things like the ending. You know, a movie about alcoholism tends, you know, But most studios would go, hey, you can't have the guy die at the end. You can't have him commit to this decision. I mean, obviously, I acquired a new agent in the run-up to this. And I was in Cannes with the Browning version. And they wanted me to do three days of press, like wall-to-wall press.

12:05And I said to them, if I can squeeze – I won't have lunch. If I can squeeze all the press into two days, can I use the third day? And they said yes. So on the third day, Robert Newman, my new agent, who was incredible, and I, we did the circuit. I mean, the soft porn circuit, everything, you know, the low end of Cannes. And the final meeting was with the Cazes couple who said yes, you know, literally the last thing. Prior to that, prior to Cannes, we'd gone to everybody, Fox Searchlight, all the obvious places, you know. Weinstein and they'd all said no that's too dark too dark the same in post production when I started screening the film they all said it's really good but it's too dark too dark too dark until John Calley saw it and he said I love it I'll take it it just taken over MGM so again you can never underplay the hand of fate because there's so many things could go wrong but for some reason at the last minute everything clicked you know so so a part of that is that it was it was a charmed film you know well that's

13:20Chris Hewitt:fascinating to me because you know watching the film again it is really interesting how the movie it never sits in judgment it never sits in judgment of ben never sits in judgment of sarah um there's a it's focused a lot more on sarah that i remembered as well i hadn't seen it in a number of years uh can you talk about that i mean that that sort of freedom to to not sit in judgment of these characters and the choices they make well you could choose to kind of just say it's non-judgmental in the script in the book and i i no longer know what i wrote or what was in the book because you know i i i you know i xeroxed the book and i made these piles and the pile that was filmic was very small and that that was my sequence and i started to write connecting scenes that didn't exist in the book.

14:08And then I started to go back into the book and go, oh, actually, I could take that. That would work there. I could incorporate that into this and so on. You know, so I found enough looking at the film this time. Although it's nonjudgmental, there are attempts, humanistic attempts. She does say to him, I want you to see a doctor. And that finishes their relationship at that moment. And then he says, maybe I should follow you around and see what it's like to, you know, have sex with you. Any time, you know, just say the word, you know. And then he does become judgmental. He does this horrible scene where he gives her the earring.

14:47And he says, you'll feel it as your face is being pushed into the pillow by one of the brothers, you know. And it's horrible, you know. And then a charming moment where Bob Rafelson sort of says, maybe you should, maybe you shouldn't. Maybe she seems, whatever, you know. And it's a humanizing thing. So there is this, it's very important if you're writing something like this, that you don't lose sight of the fact that human feelings do come in at a certain point. Of course. He just doesn't want him to die. And at a certain point, he's not so comfortable, as he says, with the idea of her going off as a prostitute every night.

15:24He's jealous. He's not comfortable with it, despite his apparent total acceptance. So those moments then I think are vital to the balance of the film because it's not just, you know, we're just going to go in this direction, non-judgmentalism, you know.

15:45Chris Hewitt:And Sarah is so crucial to the film as well in that she's basically our way into seeing Ben because the audience doesn't want him to die either. And he can, at times, Mike, be a difficult watch in the film. And I think it's really, really important that we see that Sarah does connect to him and brings out moments of levity and moments of lightness and kindness in him as well. Yeah. And this is an important story now because, you know, I worked really hard on the script. I did three drafts probably over like two years or something like that. I thought I'd nailed it, right? We got the money. we were in pre-production and i woke up one morning just like oh my god there's something missing from the script you know at the end of the day i read the script again he's a drunk he's not very nice he's a pain in the ass i've known alcoholics and they're not fun to be with right why would she fall in love with him and then i went back into the book and i found all these streams of consciousness from her internal thoughts about how she loved him and she was like found herself looking for him again and i thought i've got to find a way of getting that into the into the film so i went to the producer lila kazas and i said oh thank god i i woke up this morning i realized something really important and i told her we've got to put this in and she said no she said no i signed off on the script i'm happy with the script i don't want anything else and she refused and she was the producer right so i thought okay i've got to be really clever her now.

17:21So I cheated. And so we did a camera test before we were shooting, a couple of days before we were shooting. She dressed up in her Vivian Westwood stuff and all of that. And I said to her quietly, so Elizabeth, we're going to do some improvisation. You're in therapy. I'm going to be your therapist. Here are the pages from the book. Don't memorize them. Just read them. Absorb them. And I'm going to ask you some questions, right very influenced by the film clute i make no bones about it um and so in pre-production in this camera test we set up the shot dressed it a little bit some flowers or whatever and um made a little therapy room and uh didn't tell lila when she found out she was furious um and And to the very end, I struggled with getting it into the film because she resisted to the final moment.

18:24But I think if I hadn't done that, the film wouldn't have worked because she allows the audience to like him. And that's the genius of what she does.

18:35Chris Hewitt:Oh, my God. That's amazing. Because I was going to ask about the therapy scenes and about who her therapist was and who she was looking at because we never see. She was looking at you. Yeah. I just, I have to keep like, you know, cause I talk, I go, don't talk, don't talk. You know, just ask the question and shut up. Don't say or anything. So it was a very last minute that you were putting these scenes into the film and the producer was just going, this isn't working. Or did she, once she saw it, she realized, okay, this has to go in. Not quite. No, I had to fight. you know she also didn't like the music at all and she wanted to replace the music at the end including the sting songs or she hated the sting songs you know so i did a really again this is a like this is a joke but it's true so we had this thing i had learned my lesson with with people by now with ridley and with various people right don't argue right over time so we had this conversation i said why don't you like the music it's not just me she said my mother doesn't like it either she doesn't like sting and i went but you know he's given us like a million dollars worth of of music for nothing we have no budget for music you know and it's just still hell under point so i said well you know let's think about it um i'll call you back so i kind of like calm down calm down calm down strategy strategy so i rang her back and i said look i okay i hear i Let's hear your point, you know, that's a personal thing.

20:09I've come up with a better idea. So I said, when I had my own theater company, I did this opera in German, it was all about death and everything, and all the songs are in German, but they're kind of perfect for this film. And I think we should use those songs, you know, Ich wein um meine Mutter, you know, Unendlich Schwarzhöhle, you know, it's a really dark, you know, this is perfect for the film. and she said well but who would sing them i said oh i can sing them you know i may be making this up but she sort of said i'll call you back she called me back and she said we're going to go with sting and i went i'm i don't know i'm kind of insulted lila you know but i lived dodged another bullet right no it's like it was charmed but there was a kind of certain specific kind of charm to the film.

21:03Oh my god, that's amazing.

21:04Chris Hewitt:Because those Sting songs and the score which you wrote is so, again, so important to the film and to the feeling of the film. And again, watching it again, I was struck by yes, how dark and bleak the last half hour is or so. But the Sting songs have this wistful quality which is really interesting. And you have this almost it's not quite this of course but almost rom-commy nature to the early meetings between ben and sarah they have a meet cute for god's sake where he nearly runs her over in the car all of that is so important the lightness of the first hour or so of the movie is so important plus you know i'm like a massive you know we could talk for hours about music but i was thinking the other day what's wrong with music now is is that you know ever since you know everybody decided you You don't need to do a chord change.

22:00You repeat the same phrase 400 times, and that's a song, right? And I was thinking, oh, what a shame that they're missing out on the great American songbook style of writing, which is actually genius. It's like contemporary opera. And you analyze the words of Angel Eyes, or you analyze My One and Only Love, or Lonesome Old Town, and they are narrative. This is operatic narrative. The words are amazing. and I'm such a huge fan of that period of songwriting, you know. So the end of that story is, so MGM show interest in buying the film, right? And they're in London and they say, let's have lunch.

22:42So we're going to have lunch at somewhere like, you know, the Savoy or somewhere really fancy, right? And it's Frank Mancuso Sr. So, you know, back from the days of Paramount. and with him is the new head of the studio, John Calley. And Robert Newman rings me up and he says, here's what you should know about John Calley. He's really quite a character. You know, he retired from the film business. He's come back to save MGM. He's a really interesting guy. And I'm sitting next to John Calley. We start talking and I quickly discover he's an ex-jazz musician, right? He's a book player back in the day, right?

23:22He was in New York. And he was really good friends with Charlie Parker's widow, Chan Parker. So we start talking about, and he loves this music, right? So we just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah about music, about jazz. And then I say to him, look, I've got a funny question. I said, my favorite drummer of all time, no one's ever heard of, is a guy called Dave Tuff. You know, he's the drummer's drummer. He's Charlie Watts' favorite drummer, right? and he is a kind of he's the guy that made the transition from let's say dixieland traditional jazz into modern jazz as a drummer he's unsung but drummers know who he is john kelly sort of tears up and he goes he was my godfather get out of town yeah he said i've got his musicians union card you know um and i went good god you know um and so we bonded and at a certain point i remember mancuso senior saying you know john we should go we have this other appointment he goes on top of the mic you know so he bought the film right so lila kazez then rings him up now mgm have got distribution in america and she says john we need to have a talk about the music because i don't think the music's right.

24:38Now, Mike's got vinyl cut, but you're the distributor. So if you put pressure on him and say, we've got to change the music, in other words, do a Harvey, you know, he's going to have to give in. And he says, Leela, one of the reasons I bought the movie is because I love the score so much and I wouldn't change a note. So again, a fairy godmother. and I didn't find this out until a year or so later when we became friends because I then got a deal at MGM and at Sony through John Kelly but it was John Kelly who just said no I'm not going to change it.

25:20Chris Hewitt:Oh that's wonderful I love that. Watching the film with those 500 people did anything take you by surprise or was there a moment when you looked at the film and thought, hey, Mike Figgis of 30 years ago, that was a good decision you made. Yeah, a lot of that, a lot of it was like, wow, it's quite smart. And enough time has passed. Somebody asked me in the introduction, so how do you feel about it? And I said, I feel like it's not me. It's like it's somebody called Mike Figgis from that time that I'm kind of like proud of. you know like I sort of like yeah it was he was what you know he was functioning that day kind of thing in a good way um you did good kid you did good I did okay yeah yeah um I want to talk about some of the choices you made Mike uh obviously Nick and Elizabeth are are huge parts of the movie before we get on to them I want to talk about some of the rest of your cast because Jesus Christ, this thing is stacked.

26:24Chris Hewitt:Not least, two appearances from one Mike Figgis. So, Red Mullet, the Red Mullet advertising sign on the taxi, and then, of course, your mobster number one as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was watching it in Berlin with my wife, and we were holding hands because it was kind of tense, you know, and every time the taxi stopped, she squeezed my hand. But when I shot Julian Sands, her hand didn't move. and I said afterwards what did you think of my she said you were great on the taxi I went no I'm mobster number one she went you were so that was good you know thanks Rosie well you know your hair was slightly different it was tied back yeah but I mean just going through some of the people who are in this because you get there are people who are on the cusp of something people who would go on to become big names.

27:19Chris Hewitt:Mariska Hargitay's in the film. Shawnee Smith's in the film. You get people, you get musicians, you got Bob Rabelson, as you said. Julian Lennon is in the film. Kind of people who became part of... Yeah, absolutely. But also people who became part of your kind of repertory company. Julian Sands became part of your repertory company. Sander Berkeley, people like that. It's a loaded, loaded cast, Mike. Yeah. And Laurie Metcalf. Laurie Metcalf. know um and they were coming for one day two days at the time and that was it um valeria galena you know so these were all people that i kind of had become friends with in hollywood as part of the alternative you know universal you know um and so it was like the joy of just saying i do want to come and just do a day you know or two days you know and they said sure that's son swanson la you You know, it's fine, you know.

28:12So, yeah. But also the sons of, you know, movie royalty, you know, Houston, Haggerty, you know. And then Julian, who is wonderful, you know.

28:24Chris Hewitt:Yeah, he's terrific in this. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Danny Houston, you know, Richard Lewis. It just goes on and on and on. But obviously this is the Nicolas Cage and Elizabeth Shue show. I mean, they're so good together. was Nick did either of them I mean I imagine Elizabeth auditioned but was Nick at that moment he was off running? Nobody auditioned nobody auditioned in this film at all I met Elizabeth when I was going to do a film called The Hotspot that Dennis Hopper ended up directing but that was going to be my first American film and it fell apart for various reasons but as part of the casting process I met Elizabeth you know and did like a two hour casting with her and she was phenomenal and she was famous for adventures in babysitting and things like that and cocktail.

29:13One said, Elizabeth Shue is a hooker. She's like the girl next door. She's perfect. Then I did one of those things, which is very tricky. I then met Uma Thurman aged 18 and read with her. She was also phenomenal. Provisionally, I then cast Uma Thurman and apparently devastated to Elizabeth, you know, because we'd had such a great reading, you know. And I bumped into her a year or so later at the Chateau Montmont, and we got drunk together, and I apologized and explained, you know, this is the movie, whatever, this stuff happened. So when I did the script, I offered it to her, nobody else, never.

30:02And we didn't audition, you know. I mean, I'm sure we met and talked about it, but I'd made up my mind that she was fantastic from the reading we did for The Hotspot, which was also a very dark character, you know. And so, and then with Nicholas, he had a fabulous agent called Ed Lomato, old school, who represented Michelle Pfeiffer, Richard, everybody, and was at that point briefly representing Nicholas because Nicholas never stays with anybody for more than six months, right? and he said can I give this to Nicolas Cage I'd met Nicolas for another film for Lieberstraum and had not cast him which apparently pissed him off and he read it and he sent me a fax saying please I beg you don't offer this to anybody else I will pay to be in the film which he kind of did he paid for all pre-production he rented a suite at the Chateau Marmont we rehearsed there, you know, he dug into his own pocket very deeply with this film.