Kevin Spacey directs and stars in his dream project, Beyond the Sea, the biography of singer Bobby Darin. A fan of Darren since his mother drilled the music into his head as a child, Spacey struggled for over a decade to put the project together. Even when production began, things looked uncertain. Spacey thanked his crew for sticking by him in the toughest times.
“I had a production team on this film who stood by me when we lost our financing,” Spacey said. “We were supposed to start shooting in July, and the money fell out, and I was building sets and I’d cast the movie for the most part, and we didn’t start shooting until November. And there were these four and a half, almost five months, where nobody was sure if the movie was happening. I was sure the movie was happening. I never lost faith. This movie was going to happen even if I had to rob a bank. But it was tough because agents were saying, ‘This movie’s never going to happen. They’re all bullsh*tting you. They don’t have the money. I’ve got a studio offer.’ And this is not just cast but production people. Every single actor and production person stayed with us, and that dedication and that loyalty is what got me out of bed every day, because I didn’t want to disappoint those people.”
Doing double duty as director and star also gave Spacey a unique approach to his actors. With the film’s avant-garde structure, based on Bobby Darin directing his own life story, and Spacey playing the lead, some actors had a hard time finding their place.
“I remember Greta [Scacchi] , when we were shooting a scene like the first or second night, and it was freezing cold and we were outside in Berlin, we did a take and Greta said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ and I said, ‘What?’ She goes, ‘I just became very self-conscious. I suddenly realized that you were the director.’ And I said, ‘And?’ And she said, ‘I suddenly saw you looking at me as the director and not me as Bobby.’ And I said, ‘Greta, Bobby is the director.’ And she went, ‘Oh,’ literally, and then just completely relaxed.”
In playing the role, Spacey had a number of choices to make. He ultimately decided not to use Bobby Darin’s original tracks, but to sing the songs himself in his own voice. He also decided not to imitate Darin per se.
“I never wanted to be on that set thinking, ‘Oh, Bobby didn’t do his hands like that,’ or ‘Oh, he didn’t exactly do it that way.’ I just never wanted to be standing outside of myself and being that nitpicky and anal about it. I wanted to enjoy it. We went into the recording studio with Phil Ramone and we laid down all these tracks at Capitol Records, which aren’t the tracks in the movie, these were just rehearsal tracks because I was taking acting jobs. They weren’t where my heart was, but I was taking acting jobs, and so wherever I was, I was listening to these tracks and singing in hotel rooms and keeping people awake at night. And then we went onto a soundstage, because I was doing a bunch of pictures for Universal, and so I got a soundstage at Universal and we created a nightclub there with mirrors and a big huge computer screen, and I could punch up any performance of Bobby’s. We had everything on these towers. It was great, every Dick Clark show, every Ed Sullivan, every television program he ever was on we had, all of it cataloged, because I got so much material out of Warner Brothers, because I got all their scripts, all the documentation and all the interviews they did with everybody.”
Spacey got so good at playing Bobby Darin that he is now going on the road performing Darin’s music. However, he is not posing as Darin on stage. “No, it’s me but it’s me singing Bobby and talking about Bobby and talking a little bit about the movie, but I will be dressed as Bobby. I’m pulling out some of the costumes from the movie. Nine cities I think. We start in San Francisco, we play L.A., we play New York, Boston, Chicago, Miami, Atlantic City and we end in the Wayne Newton Theatre at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas.” |
