Outside the door of the allotted room theres a buzz of activity.
Which is when we hit him with our bombshell… Well done, well done…
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[Laughs.
I think he thinks Im not serious.
Youve been doing this for longer, of course, but what changes?
How does it evolve, directing your own performances?
And what changes when you then play the antagonist?
Its an interesting question.
Kevin Costner reminded me on this one.
We met in 1990 to talk about acting and directing.
He was picking my brains.
Id just doneHenry V, and he was about to doDances With Wolves.
Much of it is to do with logistics.
I think Ben Affleck has a point about that.
So I would rehearse way in advance of everyone else.
I had an acting coach, an actor called Jimmy Yuill.
As much detail, based on research into individuals, as possible.
Then let me learn what I have to say phonetically.
All of that way in advance of sitting down with Chris [Pine].
What kind of stuff?
We did all of that ahead of time.
Id always let them know, and that they didnt have to go.
But sometimes, to make it keep them fresh, I would do that.
Jimmy would sometimes read off for me.
I would just see to it I had enough time.
I often repeated scenes around them again and again.
We did it many, many times.
We would go over it again.
Wed improvise a bit.
I would allow myself that chance to play, which I would offer the other actors as well.
So Ive got practically more organised about it.
The least number of other people around.
And then I did it as many times as I thought was right.
And sometimes when I got it wrong, I would do it again.
Its two slightly contrasting things there.
You say when youre at your freshest, and when there arent that many people around.
But also that youre doing your own stuff at the end of the day.
Well, you know, that would be sometimes when youve got rid of a big scene.
You feel fresher, you feel more ready for it when your brains a little less crowded.
The directing state of mind is that youre on constant high alert, so many questions.
you’re able to get yourself into the zone at the right moment.
So I would cross-shoot this scene [gestures to the two of us talking.
I put my game face on].
I would shoot each of us at the same time, so that was a conversation with the DP.
Each actor would know theyre on, its their shot.
And wed start with the close-ups at eight oclock in the morning.
Everybody knew it was a shot that was likely to be in the film.
So we kept that kind of technique to keep the febrile energy that the movie needed.
That it was part of how you ran your days and ran your film sets.
Hows that changed for you with digital, where the film in the can isnt the limit.
That you might build in the different takes automatically.
How do you keep the spontaneity of that?
So we still had the atmosphere of film, which I like.
I dont feel a Luddite about it, but weve enjoyed it.
We wanted a grainy, 70s thriller-style quality to this.
So we were always kind of improvising along the way.
Chris is very open to this kind of thing.
All of it is part and parcel of the same thing.
How do you not get too set and stuck in your ways.
You talked about the restaurant scene.
Ive always really loved the Jack Ryan movies, because theyve resisted being action movies.
Theyve respected that these are thrillers.
And that restaurant scene had an old-style thriller element to it for me.
But was this always a thriller?
So they needed someone to come in and take a strong point of view about that.
Mine was that character and performance was going to be key.
Its the territory you hope to enter when you go and see something like this I think.
They miss a detail.
You talked about this key scene as a small play, and thats how it worked for me.
Seven, eleven minutes whatever it is between them.
Chris plays the drunkenness well, and we establish enough about Cherevins goatish ego and romanticism.
They were part of what individualised it and made it more thriller-y.
So for my money it was always about getting that atmosphere.
Tight, character-led but still suspenseful.
70s pictures from the young masters of that time.
Before we run out of time, can we talk about one of your older films.
Because I really, really loveIn The Bleak Midwinter [we wrote about ithere].
And that leads me to two questions.
Are you still interested in making those sorts of films as a director?
And also, can you sort the DVD release out kindly?
Oh yeah, yeah.
It would be good to do that.
But its a film that means a lot to a significant number of people.
I would like to make that kind of film again, and I suspect that I will.
It was very personal.
And at the cast and crew screening, as everybody came out, giving everybody a cheque.
In their hand on the day?
Everybody was on the same money.
So Joan Collins was on I think it was 400 a week at that time.
Could you have given her that in postal orders?
Maybe we did [Laughs].
But that gave me enormous pleasure.
The opportunity for films like that to get made and distributed now is so intensely competitive.
The room and the patience and the viewing habits of people are so different.
I would like to, and I suspect that I will.
I think its my favourite Richard Briers performance too.
[smiles] Yeah.
It was a special thing with him.
And lovely, lovely to see.
Still, its good to see you back on thrillers again.
It feels youve come full circle now afterDead Again.
That was my second film.
Were you doing a Sean Connery impression at the time?
[Laughs] I cant do a Sean Connery impression!
Well, well see about that on the DVD commentary.
Kenneth Branagh, thank you very much.
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruitis out on the 24th January in the UK.
