Gary Oldman exposes himself as a dirty jokester on 'The Book of Eli' set

Gary Oldman

Gary Oldman has played a good guy in "Harry Potter" and "Batman" movies, but in "The Book of Eli," he played a down’n’dirty villain — literally. In the action thriller, Oldman portrays Carnegie, the evil leader of a makeshift town in a post-apocalyptic world where food and water are scarce, and cleanliness is a luxury. When a mysterious stranger named Eli (played by Denzel Washington) enters Carnegie’s town, Carnegie finds out that Eli possesses a rare and powerful book, and Carnegie will stop at nothing to get it.

It’s ironic that Oldman plays a menacing villain in "The Book of Eli" (directed by twin brothers Allen Hughes and Albert Hughes), since Oldman was the one most likely to tell jokes on the movie’s set, according to several of his co-stars. At the Los Angeles press junket for "The Book of Eli," Oldman’s droll sense of humor and candid demeanor were very much intact. During a roundtable interview, he talked about which famous actor he had in mind when playing Carnegie, what scene in "The Book of Eli" he wanted to do over, and why he’s in a better place in his life to direct another movie.

Did you have anyone in mind when you played Carnegie, someone who’s s hungry for power and control?

Well, anyone in this town. The first person I thought of, funnily enough — I don’t know why these things come to your mind — is Gene Hackman.

Gary Oldman in "The Book of Eli"

Why?

I don’t know, just the certain look. It’s weird. Sometimes you can read something, and you get an image in your head, and I don’t know why it happens. Sometimes you hear a voice or you see the way someone walks or you see an image, or you read a script, and it reminds you of a photograph or a book or a passage from a book. It’s weird how it formulates and how it comes together.

I read "Eli," and I thought it was like a Western. It reminded me of a Western. It was like a post-apocalyptic Western without horses, with armored trucks. And maybe my mind went to [the 1992 Western movie] "Unforgiven," and I saw this image of Gene Hackman, so that was the kind of face of Carnegie.

Did you have any love of Westerns as a kid? Is that a genre you’ve appreciated over the years?

Yeah. I was more of a Western kid. I wasn’t a comic-book kid. But I’d never been in [a Western], if you could class ["The Book of Eli"] as a sort of Western, but it was something I had an ambition to do. I’d quite like to.

Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis and Denzel Washington in "The Book of Eli"

What do you think the metaphor is for Eli’s book?

I think he [Carnegie] somewhat misreads … Faith is a wonderful thing, and it’s a miracle in itself. You can’t see something, you can’t touch it, and yet you wholeheartedly believe in it, and you carry it with you. If it’s someone like Eli, he is irremovable from it, as many Christians and devout Catholics are. And they just have a belief in it; they just believe. They know it’s so. And I could be cynical or skeptical or challenge that. It wouldn’t matter because they’re not here to convince me. They just know what they feel and what they believe. And Carnegie is misreading that.

I don’t know organized religion. There are arguments to be made for it and against it. But he wants to bring a sense of order to the chaos, and I think you have to, first of all, have to have tenacity and a charisma and such a sense of survival to even achieve what he’s achieved to put that community together, where everything we know and take for granted would just disappear. There’s no refrigeration, there’s no heating, there’s no cooling, there’s no water, there’s no food — all of those things. So for him to even have gotten that far …

He wants the final word, and that word is the word of the Lord. You know what I mean? And maybe the vision he had got distracted. Who the hell knows what’s in that water [in "The Book of Eli"]? It could be arsenic. It could be lead, couldn’t it? I mean, they could all be slowly going out of their minds. But the attraction for me was it’s a great part. Eli’s faith is the foundation, the message, the cornerstone of the film.

Gary OIdman and Denzel Washington in "The Book of Eli"

What’s some dirt you can tell about what went on behind the scenes on "The Book of Eli?"

You want dirt? Am I deliverer of the dirt? I don’t have any dirt … [Denzel Washington] can be quite serious, and rightly so. Whatever gets you through the night. There are people who come in and have their process, how they approach it. He can be quite isolated. And I guess that was part of the role anyway … Carnegie’s the pack animal, the guy [who’s] the alpha dog in the pack, and then there’s this loner, the lone wolf: Eli. So I guess maybe he was doing that.

So sometimes you disrespect the process and you don’t even know you’re doing it. I’d just go up and say, "Hey, Denzel, how’s it going, mate?" And I got him talking about the theater, because we both come from the theater. I got him laughing. I was told that on the days that I worked, they saw a different shade of Denzel. But it was a great script, an interesting story, and I hadn’t played a character like this in 10 years [because of] "[Harry] Potter" and "Batman." So it was nice to kind of chew the scenery up a bit.

Gary Oldman in "The Book of Eli"

Did you have any conflicts about how Carnegie was going to be played?

When I first read the script … the part was already being rewritten by Tony Peckham. I probably didn’t even see the first version. I saw a diluted version of the first version, and it was more evangelical. [Carnegie] spoke more like a preacher. I said to Allen [Hughes], "There are certain things you’ve got to embrace. The cliché things you sometimes avoid, and there are things where you go, ‘They’re there. You might as well really go for them.’" And I said, "If you’re go to go for it, like Jim Jones, really go for it." But somehow, it got changed. Maybe it was the studio.

[He sighs.] Nowadays, the world is beige. You can’t say this, because then that offends that person. That person doesn’t like crucifixes and that person gets offended by Jesus Christ and that person doesn’t like Buddha and that person doesn’t like Allah, so maybe they thought, "We don’t want to offend anyone or upset anyone." And they’re going to upset or offend someone away, a few people. And then if you’re not upsetting people, you’re not doing your job.

Carnegie gets injured in the movie. Was it a drag to have to remember which scenes you had to limp?

Yeah. You know what’s a drag? Having all that yuck on you, and it’s like this sort of thick syrup. So every day, you get the bandage thing, and they put this stuff on, and it seeps through and sticks to the hair of your legs. So you’re always aware [of] that. [He says jokingly] I’m not trying to be clean. I’ve played a lot of dirty parts.

When I’m Jim Gordon [in the "Batman" movies], I love it, because I’m clean, I’m in a suit. It’s fantastic! Batman falls off the thing. God bless him. Rather you than me. I just want to be nice and clean. I’ve played roles where I’ve been covered in blood for almost the entire shoot. It wears you out after a while. But the limp, yeah, you’ve got to keep track of the limp.

Gary Oldman in "The Book of Eli"

You’ve done a lot of films where you have big scenes where you show immense rage. Do you find that directors only want you to do one or two takes of that scene? Because how many times can you conjure up those emotions without feeling drained?

[SPOILER ALERT]

I’ll tell you a story about this, funnily enough. When [Carnegie] gets shot, and I’m upset because [Eli’s] got away and we didn’t get him and [Carnegie] is stupid to get injured, because I know it’s over for me when you get injured like that … So you’re over-compensating. You’re angry at yourself. You’re more angry at yourself than anyone else.

[END OF SPOILER ALERT]

So that scene with Redridge [where Carnegie says], "It’s more than a book! It’s aimed at the hearts and minds of the people, and we have to have it more than anything!," I did that, and then I thought about it that night, and I wanted to play it differently. And I brought it right down and played it really small. And I said to Allen [Hughes], "I want to redo the scene, reshoot it, the close-up." And he said, "OK." And they reshot the close-up, but they went with the big [raging] scene. I think the smaller one was better. If I were directing the movie, I probably would’ve put the smaller version in. I saw them both, and I felt it [the smaller version] had more color. They put the big, histrionic [version] in, but it’s their choice. I’m just a passenger.

Gary Oldman at the Los Angeles premiere of "The Book of Eli"

Are you going to direct again?

I will. From 2003, I adapted a book for three years, but could never really get it right. It’s not quite the movie I want to make, so I never ended up doing it. And I’ve written three original screenplays since [the 1997 film] "Nil by Mouth"], and I’m rewriting and working on something right now. But I’ve been bringing up my kids. So when people say to me, "Why haven’t you made a movie since ‘Nil by Mouth’?" First of all, I have another job that pays the rent, and that’s how I live.

And I was really lucky to land "[Harry] Potter" and "Batman," really lucky, because it enabled me to work, and I could do one movie a year, rather than five, and I was at home. So for the last 10 years, I’ve been bringing up these two boys because I’ve been a single dad. It’s really paid off. They’re great kids. I feel like that’s what I’ve been directing. That’s been my project for 10 years. So now they’re 10, 12. And I’ve got a 21-year-old [son] — he’s a P.A. [production assistant] on "Harry Potter." … It’s great when I get a knock on the door, and I open it, and he says, "Dad, they want you on the set." It’s freaky! [He laughs.]

So now [my younger sons] are a little older, and I could maybe take something that’s maybe a bigger commitment or takes me further away, because I’ve limited what I’ve done and where I’ve done it, how, where and when. "It’s in Romania." "No." "It’s England [in] the summer." "Well, yeah, that could work, because that’s the holidays and they’re not in school." I’ve tried to work it around the two boys. I’m lucky it’s all worked out … And I don’t earn much money. I don’t earn what Denzel earns, but it’s enough to go work for a chunk of time, and enough that I can spread it out … that I can be at home. I’ve been at it for a while. I’ve been an actor for 30 years.