Dustin Hoffman makes directing debut at 74

LOS ANGELES—At 74, Dustin Hoffman finally fulfills his dream to direct. The actor, winner of a couple of Oscars and several Golden Globes, makes his directorial debut in “Quartet.”

“Do you want the psychoanalytical answer?,” Dustin quipped when asked why it took many decades before he sat on the director’s chair. The material that he chose for his first stab at being behind the cameras seems to resonate strongly with him. It is Ronald Harwood’s screenplay adaptation of his own play of the same name, “Quartet.”

The award-winning writer of such films as “The Pianist,” “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” and “The Dresser” wrote the play after watching “Tosca’s Kiss,” a documentary on Casa Verdi, a retirement home for opera singers in Milan.

Dustin’s “psychoanalytical” explanation had to do with his father, Harry. “My father was a prop designer and assistant set designer for Columbia Pictures,” he began in his trademark nasal voice. “I remember his stories all through growing up, that his lunch breaks were spent watching Frank Capra film. He wanted to be Capra—but, he never got past being a prop man. He was fired before I was born in the 1930s. Like in ‘Death of a Salesman,’ he became a salesman—he was selling furniture and Diamond Mattress.”

Dream

“Somewhere in there, I didn’t want to usurp my father, but I didn’t know that then,” Dustin said. “It took a lifetime to figure that out. It was OK to be an actor, but don’t take away my father’s dream (to be a director).

Now that he made the jump, Dustin said, “It was a wonderful experience. We’re cutting it (the film) now.” He shared his screenwriter’s passion for “Tosca’s Kiss,” the documentary directed by Daniel Schmid which inspired “Quartet.”

“It’s extraordinary,” Dustin said. “I know nothing about opera, but the documentary is about Verdi, the great opera composer who was very wealthy. He built a mansion shortly before he died in Milan, Italy. Like most artists who weren’t content with their work, Verdi said that designing his mansion was the best thing he has ever done. He said that when he dies, he wanted the opera singers to use the mansion as their retirement home.

Opera singers

“That was because opera singers unfortunately join a community of artists who are at their peak, being at La Scala and all that, then 30 years later, they’re totally forgotten, and without any funds! To this day, opera singers live in the house of Verdi in Milan, Italy.”

Dustin explained that Ronald Harwood moved the story “from Italy to outside of London. The main setting is Beecham House, which was named for Sir Thomas Beecham, who was an opera conductor. It’s about retired opera singers and musicians who were great in their day, are now displaced and can only live in a retirement home. Great British actors, Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly, Pauline Collins and Michael Gambon, play opera singers. The other characters in the movie are real opera singers and musicians who are retired.”

“Dame Gwyneth Jones is in it, too,” Dustin said of the legendary Welsh soprano. “I’ve learned this since I took on the project, that she was one of the great opera singers. If you Google her, you will see her doing Wagner and hitting notes like you can’t think are possible! That’s the fabric of the movie.”

Dustin, who began acting in 1960, talked passionately about “Quartet’s” theme. “What the movie is about is a debunking of the myth of one’s third act,” stressed the actor whose horse-racing drama, “Luck,” was recently canceled after a third animal was injured and put down during production.

“The third act in our culture is oblivion,” he said. “We are invisible. It’s about a body of people who, in this case, happen to be musicians and opera singers who aren’t fazed by their physical limitations. They refuse to leave. You also see that in ‘Tosca’s Kiss.’ There’s a trumpet player who’s 85, and a jazz pianist who’s 82. The spine of it is, do not go gentle into that good night. When we die, die singing. Die doing your art; die doing what you love—and there is great vitality to it. This isn’t a movie where you smell the urine as you do when you go to most nursing homes.”

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