{"id":2701,"date":"2005-03-23T13:31:05","date_gmt":"2005-03-23T18:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2701"},"modified":"2015-05-17T08:02:27","modified_gmt":"2015-05-17T12:02:27","slug":"michael-caine-sitting-in-mud-huts-in-tanzania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2701","title":{"rendered":"Michael Caine \u2013 \u201csitting in mud huts in Tanzania\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excerpt from Michael Caine’s awesome book Michael Caine – Acting in Film: An Actor’s Take on Movie Making<\/a>\"\". Here he describes his attitude towards how he chooses projects – an attitude for which he is pretty famous. Hilarious – I love this one.<\/i><\/p>\n

I choose a script because the part is good for me and because it’s different from the last role I did. I look for an acting challenge.<\/p>\n

But as I get older, I’m also a lot more interested in the circumstances under which a film will be shot. Will it be a little shoestring picture that will have us sitting in mud huts in Tanzania? Or are we going to be put up in the George V in Paris? I never used to look at that side of making a film.<\/p>\n

I once spent 26 weeks in a Philippine jungle which, looking back, could just as well have been the tropical garden at Kew, for all the difference it made to the picture. In the jungle, you can’t see the sky, you can’t see the scenery. All you can see is jungle. We lived for 26 weeks in an unfinished brothel. The rooms were expected to be used for 20 minutes at a time and were furnished accordingly. 26 weeks in rooms like that. And there wasn’t a girl in any of them. After that experience, I did The Magus<\/i> without ever reading the script because the weather in England is lousy in January and I’d get a few weeks in the South of France out of it. That choice was a bit of a mistake on some grounds, but in turns of climate, I had a winner.<\/p>\n

I close a script quickly if it starts, “Alaska: our hero is stumbling through a blizzard …”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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