At 69, Anthony Hopkins feels like a film rebel
Garondo Marondo
By Bob Tourtellotte
PARK CITY, Utah (Reuters) - He's an Oscar-winning actor with roles such
as serial killer Hannibal "the cannibal" Lecter, but at age 69, Anthony
Hopkins said he has arrived at a new, rebellious stage of life
directing low-budget art films.
Hopkins' "Slipstream," which premiered this weekend at the Sundance
Film Festival, marks the veteran actor's debut as a first-time
filmmaker and is part of a new edition to Sundance called "New
Frontier" where art and cinema collide.
"Yeah, I'm a rebel. I want to poke people, not to cause pain, but just
make people wake up," Hopkins told Reuters late on Sunday. "I feel I've
arrived. I feel I'm starting anew ... I got a feeling I can be a
guerrilla movie director."
Hopkins said that he has long admired directors who took chances with
their films such as John Cassavetes, Roman Polanski, Oliver Stone and
Quentin Tarantino. They are directors, he said, who like to mix things
up and "upset the apple cart" of mainstream moviemaking.
"Slipstream" puts a new spin on storytelling technique. The film tells
of a Hollywood screenwriter, Felix Bonhoffer (played by Hopkins), who
begins to confuse his own life with the characters he is creating on
the page.
Audiences are taken on a journey through Bonhoffer's mind to see
historical events such as the Vietnam War that have shaped his thinking
and, as a result, the thinking of his screenplay's characters.
Current events in Bonhoffer's life, such as getting pulled over by a
police officer, begin to bleed over into his writing, and audiences are
never quite sure -- until the end -- what is reality and what are
simply Bonhoffer's thoughts and emotions.
HE DID IT HIS WAY
Hopkins said he wrote "Slipstream" to challenge audiences to consider
the nature of time and space, and how human ideas can manifest
themselves in reality.
"Slipstream" is not an easy film to figure out because it goes
back-and-forth between present day and history and between what is real
and what is fiction.
"I was really interested in breaking all the rules of cinema," Hopkins
said.
At the "Slipstream" premiere in front of a packed audience at Sundance,
festival director Geoff Gilmore told audiences, "It is rare that you
get to see a real work of art" on film.
But Hopkins' "Slipstream" is not the only film and video art being
showcased here at the top U.S. film festival backed by Robert Redford's
Sundance Institute for filmmaking.
Joining him in the New Frontier is "Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait,"
in which directors Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon used 17 cameras
to track soccer player Zinedine Zidane through one 90-minute match. The
film is more than a sports movie as it attempts to show Zidane's
internal state-of-mind, memory and sensory perception.
The festival also is sponsoring a video art installation it calls the
"Rabbit Hole" of the New Frontier. In one of the pieces, called
"Academy," filmmaker Luke Dubois has used digital computer technology
and taken all 75 Oscar winning films and condensed each one into one
minute, but retaining all of the film frames that were in the original
movie.
"Artists have always taken advantage of the highest forms of
technology," he said.
In "Slipstream," Hopkins, too, has used quick editing and digital
technology to create a fast-paced movie that helps speed audiences to
the conclusion of his nearly two-hour film.
"I was always fascinated with way you can twist everything around, and
reshape it," he said, much like he is doing now with his own career.