By focusing on independent films rather than Hollywood, Campbell Scott has found a productive niche, he tells Michael Dwyer
A new, caustic satire on Hollywood, The Dying Gaul, follows the triangular relationship that forms between a young gay writer (Peter Sarsgaard), a rich Hollywood studio executive (Campbell Scott) and his indolent wife (Patricia Clarkson). In an early sequence laced with barbed humour, the producer pithily outlines his cynical philosophy on film-making, warning the idealistic screenwriter that nobody wants to pay to see a movie that makes people think.
As it happens, The Dying Gaul, which opens in Ireland next year, is exactly the type of thoughtful and provocative movie that its film producer character would shun. "People always laugh at that line in the film, but it's true," says Scott. "Nobody wants to go to the movie theatre to think or to learn anything. This film is brutal, and I like that."
Asked if the film reflects accurately on the industry, Scott says it certainly reflects accurately on the views of its writer-director, Craig Lucas, who saw his Tony-nominated play, Prelude to a Kiss, mangled by Hollywood. "Craig's been through it all. He had that one Hollywood film. They took his play and it was not a pleasant experience for him. What I like is how The Dying Gaul begins that way, dealing with Hollywood so bluntly, and then it becomes this relationship thriller about these three people who betray each other. The victim keeps changing, which I think is cool."
The son of actors George C Scott and Colleen Dewhurst - he was named Campbell after his father's middle name - he says that despite his family background, he had no desire to act until he was 20. "If my parents encouraged me, I would say it was by osmosis. Obviously, it was a theatrical kind of family, though my father disappeared when I was 13, when they divorced. In my teens acting couldn't have been further from my mind. I went to college to be a teacher, a history teacher, although truthfully I went to get drunk like everyone else. Then I did a few plays in college and got hooked."
Campbell Scott made his film debut in a Z-movie that was shot in 10 days. "It was originally titled Evil Valley USA," he laughs. "It was terrible, a horror thing, and all the money went on the blood. They didn't pay me." His first "real" film role was in the late Norman Rene's moving 1989 drama, Longtime Companion, as one of a group of close gay friends living under the new threat of Aids.
That film was the first scripted by playwright Craig Lucas, with whom Scott worked again on The Dying Gaul and on The Secret Lives of Dentists, which has finally opened in Dublin three years after its North American premiere at the Toronto festival. Starring Scott, Hope Davis and Denis Leary, it deals with a pair of married dentists who share an office, and explores the consequences when the husband suspects his wife of having an affair.
Scott grew a moustache for the role because he felt it made him look "more dental", he says. "The producer turned to me and asked if I was really going to wear that moustache in the movie because it made me look like a porn star. He said no one wears moustaches anymore except for police officers and firemen. I told him that most of the dentists I know have moustaches.
"My character stands behind the moustache. He's completely non-communicative, completely passive-aggressive and violently introspective. When he suspects his wife is having an affair, he creates an alter ego in the Denis Leary character, this angry patient of his. It's a very smart concept.
"Basically, it's about a marriage that's in trouble. This couple have been together a long time and have three kids. They have an office together and a home, where they don't relate to each other anymore. It's really about the nature of communication in a relationship that's been going on for a long time.
"It's very interesting that it's not the man that is the mystery figure who may be having an affair, but the woman. He's the one who's at home with the kids. It did very well in the States, especially with married couples and people over 35. They got it. It really makes you very tense, as well as being very funny."
Based on Jane Smiley's novella The Age of Grief, The Secret Lives of Dentists is Scott's second movie for director Alan Rudolph, following Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle in 1994, which dealt with the Algonquin Round Table literary set and featured Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dorothy Parker and Scott as humorist Robert Benchley.
AS WAS THE case with most of the three dozen movies in which Scott has acted, his two films for Rudolph were independent productions made outside the Hollywood mainstream. "I don't think I make a conscious attempt to steer away from the mainstream," he says, "but I do seem to end up a lot in the world of smaller, independent pictures, and I'm happy with that. It's geographic, too. I live in New York and prefer to work there because I like to be near home. And I find those smaller pictures can be a lot more interesting. That's where the joy is."
It was different in his father's time, he notes, as when George C. Scott played the title role in the war movie biopic, Patton, for which he famously refused to accept the 1970 best actor Oscar. "In those days Hollywood made big movies like Patton, but they were also serious, complex pictures as well as being made on a big scale. That film had a brilliant screenplay, written by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund North, and Patton was a fascinating man to play - contradictory, fiery yet quite religious."
In recent years Campbell Scott has become more involved in the movies he makes, doubling as producer and actor on The Dying Gaul, The Secret Lives of Dentists and Roger Dodger, in which he gave the sharpest performance of his career to date, as an unrepentant womaniser taking his teenage nephew for an eye-opening night on the town in Manhattan.
In addition, he has directed four movies, beginning with the 1996 epicurean feast that was Big Night, which he co-directed with his co-star, Stanley Tucci. Set in late 1950s New Jersey, it built to an elaborate banquet in an authentic Italian restaurant threatened by a rival outlet aimed at diners who chose spaghetti and meatballs over risotto and radicchio.
Five years ago Scott directed a three-hour film version of Hamlet, in which he took the title role. "It was given a short release in the States before it went on television. It was quite an experience. It was ideal for me because I'd played Hamlet on stage twice, first when I was 26 and again when I was 34. The film was a very American version of the play, set at the turn of the century"
SCOTT HAS A small part in Loverboy, which is directed by his friend and fellow actor Kevin Bacon. "And I was making out with Kevin's wife, Kyra Sedgwick, in the movie," he laughs. "I've known both of them for years."
Scott seems quite circumspect when the subject turns to David Mamet, who directed him and Steve Martin in the sly 1997 thriller, The Spanish Prisoner. "David loves the con game and pulling the rug out from underneath the audience when they least expect it," he says. "David is obviously a brilliant writer, and as a director, he certainly has his own style. As an actor, it was quite a trip to get on board with that style because I hadn't worked with him before. I definitely was resistant at first. It was much the same for Steve Martin, who's also not a Mametean actor. Like all great comedians, Steve is incredibly serious, but we got along very well together. David doesn't want you to do anything. He just wants you to say it and we would go back and forth about exactly how to do it."
Now 44, Scott has been busier than ever the past few years and he has another two movies due for release in the months ahead. He describes The Exorcism of Emily Rose as "a double genre movie - half a courtroom drama and half dealing with the exorcism", adding, "it's based on a true event in the 1970s somewhere in the hillsof Germany or Austria. This girl had a series of exorcisms and died during one of them, and the priests were put on trial and charged with negligent homicide. The film takes place in the States. It's very intense. I play the prosecuting attorney, a man with a mission and no sense of humour whatsoever."
On a lighter note there's the family film, Duma, the second film, after The Secret Lives of Dentists, in which he and Hope Davis play a married couple. "We're the parents of a boy who befriends a cheetah. It was nice to do because, having a seven-year-old son of my own, it seems to be the only kind of movie I get to see these days. I don't know how many times we've watched The Incredibles and Madagascar."
The Secret Lives of Dentists is at the IFI, Dublin