E-mail a friendSir Ben Kingsley
airdate June 17, 2008
One of England's most respected actors, Sir Ben Kingsley earned international stardom after his Oscar-winning lead performance in the film Gandhi. He's balanced an impressive stage career with a wide range of film and TV work, including the films Schindler's List, Sexy Beast and The Wackness and the TV movie Anne Frank. A talented musician, Kingsley turned down a recording contract—he wrote the music, sang and played guitar for the London stage production, A Smashing Day. He was knighted on his birthday in '01.
Actor discusses the message of the self-healing aspects of adolescence in his new movie "The Wackness." (3:10)
Full Interview (12:38)
Sir Ben Kingsley
Tavis: Pleased and honored to welcome Sir Ben Kingsley back to this program. The Oscar-winning actor is as busy as ever, get this, with not one, not two, but five (laughs) - he working like a Jamaican - five new film projects this summer. In addition to his role in the Mike Myers' film "The Love Guru," and John Cusack's "War, Inc." you can also catch him in "The Wackness." The film is open now in select cities with more on the way July 3rd. Here now, a scene from "The Wackness."
[Clip]
Tavis: So the studio was nice enough, Sir Ben, to send me a copy of the film. I'm watching it at my house in the bedroom and I'm thinking "This is a long way from 'Gandhi.'" (Laughs) This is not the advice - what are you doing here?
Sir Ben Kingsley: I'm being a terrible role model. (Laughter) I'm being a failed, collapsed role model. But somewhere in his failure and his collapsedness is that grain of reckless truth. You cannot perfect your growth by staying on a very narrow path. Sometimes to stray off, to get your heart broken, to land face down in the gutter, I could weed out of the things, the crazy things that crazy Dr. Squires says, and find a real kernel of truth in them.
And that boy has no parents. He is parentless, basically. They are endlessly squabbling and lying to him. I live in a home bereft of love. My wife ignores me and my stepdaughter is dismissive and disdainful of me. So here is a boy desperately seeking a surrogate parent to guide him; he stumbles across me. Here is a man who needs a child to give some of his own hard-earned wisdom to, and wrapped up in a beautiful comedy. That's the sort of central dynamic, and I think it's good for a comedy to have that heart to it.
Tavis: The comedy genre notwithstanding, what's your sense of - how shall I put this? - the redeeming value, the redeeming virtue of Dr. Squires? Because you got to look for it initially in this movie.
Kingsley: You do have to look for it, but I think that he is ultimately unafraid to find himself face down in the gutter and start again. And also, I think the redeeming quality is that he's a man who knows that he needs to hold on to his childhood and his adolescence inside to resolve certain issues, that he has to stay a child.
He is completely childlike. Luke Shapiro, played beautifully by Josh Peck, there's the adult in this scenario as the film progresses. There's the adult leading the way. I am the child, trotting along a couple of steps behind, learning from my patient, supposedly. So he's unafraid to learn, he's unafraid to be reckless and experiment with life, and he's determined to stay plastic and soft and adolescent until he knows his life has to change, and then he will allow it to change by finding himself at rock bottom, if you like.
Tavis: Lot of funny scenes, lot of funny lines. I think one of the favorites, one of the best ones, from my vantage point - I think I got this right - I'm the dopeness, you're the wackness.
Kingsley: And I didn't know what they were talking about.
Tavis: (Laughs) I love it. I'm the dopeness, you're the wackness. When you see a script like this come across your desk called "The Wackness," what draws you - you explained wonderfully well who the characters are. What draws Ben Kingsley to the character of Dr. Squires?
Kingsley: I think New York. New York in that era, because we only read about the changes that New York was going through in the media in Europe, because I was European-based at the time that Giuliani was altering New York, working on the -
Tavis: That's a nice way to put it.
Kingsley: Well.
Tavis: (Laughs) Giuliani was "altering New York," okay.
Kingsley: And so there's a curiosity in me to enter that little time capsule of that music, that graffiti, that whole drug-crazy, reckless side of New York that has subsided to a great deal now. It's a very different New York; it's a post-9/11 New York, it's a very shocked and traumatized and now a more, if I may say, benign and adult New York than it was - it was like a crazy adolescent before.
Squires' vulnerability. I don't think that he has an ounce of armor plating on him. He wears his heart on his sleeve, he expresses his hopes and wishes and his own adolescent status and his addictions and his weaknesses so openly to young Luke Shapiro, and I found that very endearing.
Tavis: You mentioned graffiti. There's a scene in the movie - funny in its own way - I don't want to give too much away, where you and Luke get caught tagging.
Kingsley: Yes.
Tavis: But I raise that because here is an adult - to your point, though, Luke is really the adult, but here's the doctor, who is the elder of the two, who's supposed to be the adult - you're dispensing advice. You're hanging out with this kid, you're tagging, in part because as the clip that we showed earlier suggests, you want - you say to Luke that to be young again.
This is the best time in your life, to be young. I raise that only because I wonder if there is a message in the movie or message that Ben Kingsley took from the movie about that thing that we all want to do, so many of us want to do, which is to go back, to get back to those days, to get back to our youth, to place the kind of value on youth that we don't place, necessarily, on age and on wisdom.
Kingsley: I think youth has become very tangled up with consumerism, and I think the very extraordinary years that we call adolescence, moving from childhood to adulthood, they're very fleeting, and I don't recall my adolescence being so consumer-driven, so constantly invaded by peer pressure, fashion, gossip, very transient musical fashions and tastes, clothes, role models.
It seems to be very cluttered. Adolescence is hard enough without a whole multi-billion-dollar consumer industry jumping on the backs of adolescents and making them - and squeezing them, squeezing dollars out of them, where in fact the reverse should be happening.
That we should, as an adult society, be squeezing encouragement into them, and decent values into them, and beautiful thoughts and ideas into them. No, we just want their money. It's pathetic, and I think somewhere in the story and in the dynamic, in the essentials of adolescence being a necessary time for experiment - I must repeat, this is all wrapped in a beautiful comedy. It's a very, very funny film. But at the heart of it is in order to grow, you must make mistakes, you must be reckless, you cannot follow the herd, you have to follow your heart.
You have to, to quote my crazy character, end up face down in the gutter, get your heart broken, make a mess of things, because that is what adolescence is, and it's self-healing. We make a mess as adolescents, and it's self-healing. Unless, of course, we stray into narcotics, which are killers, or into alcohol, which are killers, or into any kind of very destructive, compulsive behavior.
But we are constantly - adolescents are constantly invited to be compulsive consumers. So how - it's a little unfair to expect adolescents to stay free of certain substances - eating disorders, drug disorders, alcohol disorders - and at the same times say but you do have to consume. It's very unfair on them.
Tavis: I'm listening to Sir Ben Kingsley, and I'm thinking to myself that this Academy Award winner ever decides he wants a day job, Dr. Phil, you're in trouble. (Laughter) (Unintelligible) that was some beautiful advice to parents, and just to talk about the status of our kids, it was profound - it's profound.
Kingsley: Well, I am a parent, and I love -
Tavis: You have these talks? You have had these talks with your kids (unintelligible)?
Kingsley: No, definitely not had talks with them, but the way - I can talk to you as a fellow adult, but I hope - of course they've seen me stray and collapse and reemerge, but now they're all healthy adults and beautiful kids. I think that we - I hopefully will just let it come off me by example, by behavior, and really, I hope, by how I listen to them and how I allow them to listen to and question me, and that's how we hopefully will evolve.
Children are deaf to their parents now. Very often, the child's gesture, rather like my stepdaughter in the film, delightfully played by Olivia Thirlby, the child's gesture to the parents is this: (makes face). That's the gesture.
Tavis: It's that whatever.
Kingsley: It's terrible.
Tavis: Whatever.
Kingsley: It's terrible, and it's replicated in many supposedly family shows, so the family is sitting there thinking well, what are you trying to tell us? And the adolescent seeing this as a role model thinks oh, I know what I have to do next time Mum asks me to do something; I'll go (makes face). Then I've got it right. (Laughs)
Tavis: Well, I am sure that your children have gotten and will continue to get from you the most important lesson of life, which is that love wins. That comes through loud and clear in your life, given your humanity. But I suspect they will also get the value of hard work - five films this summer.
Kingsley: Well, two films you can't say to - two things you can't say to a Capricorn. One is don't worry, (laughter) and the other is don't work too hard.
Tavis: Five. That's ridiculous.
Kingsley: I know, it's - I was just talking about compulsive disorders recently, wasn't I? Well, I love my job, and I love, as you can tell - I could chat with you all day - I love conversation and I love storytelling. I love imparting the flow and energy between human beings. There's nothing more precious in the world. And I think that film and drama offers us a way of keeping that flow alive. Four hundred, 500 people sitting in a cinema together, enjoying something together, is very, very bonding, and it's very healthy.
I love my job and I've just been very fortunate to have offer after offer after offer. I'm working with Martin Scorsese now, or just finishing. I go straight on to another picture a day later.
Tavis: And you retain all the copy how? How do you - your sides, how do you remember it all? How do you retain all of this from one project to the next so quickly?
Kingsley: That's a hard slog. That really is a hard slog. I literally have to sit down at home or wherever I am and learn the dialogue like a parrot. And hopefully by the time I get to the new venture, the new job, I'm pretty well off the book, off the page, word perfect, and then I can give my energies to my fellow actors and my director.
Tavis: Well, I could talk to you for hours as well, so one day we've got to grab lunch or dinner or something and just talk without these cameras on. Nice to see you.
Kingsley: I'm so glad you like the film. I'm delighted.
Tavis: Well, what can I say? It's a great movie, but so is just about everything else that Ben Kingsley does, and pretty much you can catch him any day of the week - any day of the week this summer and any number of films; five, to be exact. Nice to have you on, as always.
Kingsley: Great to see you.
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