by Ray Routhier, Portland Press Herald Writer
Friday, June 22, 2001
Copyright 2001 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
BATH -- The man who plunged off Mount Rushmore for Alfred Hitchcock and won an Oscar for playing Bela Lugosi spent his 70th birthday in Maine on Wednesday, by the shore of the Kennebec River.
But Martin Landau didn't take time out to party. "I don't celebrate birthdays anymore, unless you can subtract them," he said.
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Martin Landau, an Oscar winner and an actor for the last half century, takes a break between scenes of a movie being shot in Bath, Maine. Photo by Herb Swanson. |
Instead, Landau spent the day shooting scenes from his latest movie and regaling the crew and visitors with tales of the great films he's made and the great artists he's known.
During one break, Landau explained the famous Mount Rushmore scene in Alfred Hitchcock's "North By Northwest" (1959), in which the villain, played by Landau, chases Cary Grant and Grant ends up dangling over the edge of a cliff.
Hitchcock wanted the hero to dangle because in an earlier movie, "Saboteur," he had made the villain dangle from the Statue of Liberty and felt audiences didn't care that the villain might fall. And he always regretted that.
"Hitchcock told me, 'Martin, I made a grave error, I had the bad guy in jeopardy and nobody gave a damn,' " said Landau, doing a dead-on Hitchcock impersonation, stiff-lipped British accent and all. Then, in his own mild-mannered voice, Landau said, "It was a pretty damn good movie."
Landau, who won an Oscar as best supporting actor in 1994's "Ed Wood," was in Bath on Wednesday to shoot a one-day cameo appearance in the independent film "Wake," being made by his daughter and son-in-law, Susan Landau Finch and Henry Leroy Finch. The two Los Angeles-based filmmakers recently bought a house in Bath and hope to make at least two films in Maine.
"We just fell in love with the house, and it inspired us to do this film here," said Landau Finch. "People have been very friendly and willing to help."
Henry Leroy Finch had spent summers in Maine, near Moosehead Lake, and always wanted to come back. In February, the Finches and Finch's mother bought a 255-year-old house on the north end of Washington Street in Bath. They plan to live in it at least part time.
The house inspired them to come up with the story for this film, a tale of four sons who return to their mother's home one night for different reasons and with different motives.
The brothers are the stars of the film, and are played by a group of rising actors: Gale Harold, the star of "Queer as Folk" on Showtime; Blake Gibbons; Dihlon McManne; and a Maine-based actor, John Philbrick.
The Maine comedian Bob Marley also has a role in the film. Martin Landau plays one of the brothers later in life. Landau Finch is the film's producer while her husband is the writer and director.
Most of the film is being shot at the house, which is on a lovely, quiet spot on the Kennebec River.
Wearing a tweed hat, corduroy pants and a plaid shirt, Martin Landau took breaks from the filming Wednesday by sitting on the grass near the river, under a stand of trees, and smoking cigarettes. Much of the time he entertained the crew and a few visitors with lively stories, stories often punctuated by impersonations of Hitchcock, Woody Allen and Jack Nicholson.
Landau talked about how his acting career began in Maine about 50 years ago this month. It was 1951, and Landau got a job doing summer stock at a theater on Peaks Island in Casco Bay. He smiled as he recounted being one of 40 cast and crew member spending the summer together on the island in a big clapboard house.
"We did 12 different shows in 13 weeks," said Landau, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y. "It was great, but it was tough. I spent some of my most important moments here in Maine."
Before he started acting, Landau was a newspaper cartoonist for the New York Daily News. When he told his bosses that he wanted to quit to pursue work in the theater, they thought he was crazy.
"I think they thought I was going to become an usher," said Landau.
Before coming to Maine on Wednesday, Landau had just finished work on a film with Jim Carrey called "The Majestic," which is due out in December and is set during Hollywood's blacklist era of the early 1950s.
Landau said the movie has a populist feel similar to the work of the great 1930s and '40s director Frank Capra. He also said some critics will call it overly sentimental, and he knows exactly who those critics are. Landau also heaped praise on Carrey, saying this role takes him beyond his comic background and comparing him to James Stewart.
"There were some terrific actors on that film," Landau said. "Present company excluded."
Landau's coming to Maine marked only the second time he's worked with his daughter, Susan Landau Finch. The two worked on the 1988 film "Tucker: The Man and His Dream." Landau was a lead actor while his daughter was a publicist.
For Bath, the Finches are the latest filmmakers to fall in love with the picturesque, historic shipbuilding town. Parts of the recent Hollywood films "Message in a Bottle" (1999) with Kevin Costner and "The Man Without a Face" (1993) with Mel Gibson were filmed there.
The crew of "Wake" has been filming in Bath for three weeks, and expects to be finished by this weekend, Landau Finch said. Few people knew that a film was being made, and the crew didn't attract crowds.
Landau Finch and Finch hope that this small, independent film will get picked up by a movie distributor and will help them get the backing to make a larger, $4 million film called "Sleepwalking." That film is slated to feature Martin Landau, Gina Gershon and Benjamin Bratt, and Landau's other daughter, Juliet Landau, an actress whose roles include Drusilla on the TV show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
Susan Landau Finch said the couple hopes to film "Sleepwalking" in Maine as well.
"Investors want us to make that in Canada," said Landau Finch. "So part of the reason we're making this one first is to show people that Maine is a great place to make films."