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Death Race Interview II: Ian McShane
Toto, we're not in Deadwood anymore. By
Josh Gordon
August 19, 2008
Ian McShane, co-star of DEATH RACE(2008).
© Mania.com
In Death Race’s dystopic future, Ian McShane plays Coach, the head of Statham’s pit crew. A great casting choice, Ian McShane has the world weary wisdom to own this part. McShane is confident but approachable, extremely smart while never patronizing. He’s no-nonsense and tells it like it is. He has spent the better part of forty years as an actor appearing in projects as varied as the British crime show Lovejoy for which he played the title character for eight years, The Golden Compass, Kung Fu Panda, Miami Vice, Roots, Babylon 5, Sexy Beast, Space: 1999, the list goes on forever. Of course he’s attained his widest reach with Deadwood, HBO’s swear-happy, hard boiled version of the old west. Of British descent, McShane regaled us with stories of Harold Pinter, Wall-Mart, and the truth about Death Race.
Question: Can you tell us what appealed most to you about this role?
Ian McShane: uh, the check and the location (laughter ensues)
Q: Do you like Montreal?
IM: Yeah, I love it. It’s a great city, a nice city; good food. The script was good; good character, good lines.
Q: Have you seen it (Death Race) with an audience? The audience really responds well to some of the lines.
IM: That’s good, that’s good.
Q: The audience seemed to have a really good time with it.
IM: That’s what it’s meant to do. I mean, it’s a boy’s wet dream. With girl navigators, excuse me, nobody’s trying to set a moral reason behind this, I mean give me a break. If it’s your kind of a movie then you sit there and have a good time and that’s it, it’s that kind of a movie. The back story is immaterial.
Q: Do you usually distinguish between that and art when you chose your roles?
IM: You have to. I mean, I just did a Pinter play, The Homecoming, on Broadway so doing that straight after this, it’s nice you know? This was fun! I’d never done a big action movie like this one so that was good. Jason’s a lovely guy, we had fun.
Q: The whole pit crew, your pit crew in the film actually seemed to be above par for this type of movie; the acting, the writing –
IM: They were good. The two kids that were with me in the movie? Fred and Jacob, they were great. We got a nice rapport going, you know? I mean, we didn’t take pit school lessons; somebody said to me “did you (learn how to be in a pit crew?)” I said “oh god no, something goes wrong with the car, you call a mechanic.”
Q: Are you into cars?
IM: I like cars, I mean, my first car was a Mini-Cooper it was like 1963 so it was a great motor car, I’ve had a Lotus sports car and a Rolls Royce and Mustangs, but it’s never been an obsession with me. I mean, I don’t go to tracks on weekends.
Q: Jason talked about going on a strict diet regimen for this movie. It sounds like you like to eat for real.
IM: I like the good things, yeah.
Q: So you’re never going do that diet thing for a role?
IM: I think to start doing it now would be a little weird. To fancy myself an action star at my age would pushing it though I’m very happy to be the coach thank you!
Spoiler ahead:
Q: What do you think about Joan Allen saying lines like “you cocksucker” and things like that?
IM: I think it’s funny that someone will come to this movie and hear Joan Allen saying those kinds of lines and not me.
End Spoiler
Q: Your line “I love this game” got a good applause.
(Note: All the other actors had talked about a new ending to the film that was shot just a couple of weeks ago. The ending was less ambiguous and more upbeat than the original ending. McShane had not been informed of this…)
IM: I think that was the last line of the movie but knowing the studios they probably added something on to it. (everyone bursts into laughter)
Q: They did!
IM: Oh yeah! They can’t help it! Never underestimate the stupidity of the American public according to the studios! They can never leave it like “well, what happened to them (the characters in the film).” It’s always “why don’t we draw them a big picture.”
Q: How has your Comic-Con experience been?
IM: We came down yesterday and did the panel with children that were asking questions which was weird.
Q: For this movie especially.
IM: Well, what I love is that they have a sign (in front of you) that says “please remember there are children under 18 years of age here.” And then they show a sequence with someone ripping somebody’s head off – only in America!
Q: No sex or swearing but decapitation is ok!
IM: Absolutely, you got it.
Q: What are some of your favorite movies or plays? What did you grow up interested in when you were becoming an actor or before becoming an actor?
IM: I had a teacher who was instrumental in me going to drama school but I’d never really thought about it before that. I loved movies, American movies. I grew up; don’t forget, in the ‘50s so movies were a little strange, a mixture. You think American movies in the ‘50’s; you’ve got a lot of Doris Day movies…When I became an actor that’s when movies really started to change, in the early ‘60s. You had this whole British movement of working class movies, you know, things like The Long Distance Runner and then the Americans tended, in the late ‘60s they put a lot of money into European movies; the whole industry shifted. I remember I did a movie called If it’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium. I remember coming to MGM studios in 1968, you know; the Irving Thalberg building, MGM studios, it was a magical place and I asked “who’s here? What other films are being made?” There was nothing. There was one film coming from the studio: Marooned. If you look back at cinema history it was a strange time. And of course the boom of television, now you can move from film to TV and media rules but back then TV was the great monster and of course in the ‘50s it was the thing that wouldn’t last, you know “this is just a passing fad”, then it was the great threat and then you realize there’s room for everything, it’s all business.
Q: It’s happening now again with the Internet
IM: There’s room for everything. I mean People (magazine), It invents itself ,you know, you talk about celebrity journalism and you know, well it invents itself, the magazine feeds the…I mean it’s like Wal-Mart! Wal-Mart fulfills its own purpose. It employs poor people to feed poor people, so it’s said but in the end it ends being this world giant or whatever that destroys itself because it depends on one area and then the first people to go are the working class…but that’s another subject, we won’t go into that.
Q: Tyrese (Gibson) has described this film as Road Warrior meets Shawshank Redemption.
IM: You could do that I guess, I mean it’s a big, big, big boy’s adventure movie which girls will like as well.
Q: Are you the Morgan Freeman character?
IM: Oh, maybe they should have given me a big philosophical speech at the end, I would have enjoyed that!
Q: What are your favorite stage pieces?
IM: Well, I just did the Pinter (play) which was great. He’s a great writer, it was a great play to do with a great cast and, we’ll see, every two or three years I’ll go do another play. I don’t have any “and next I’m going to do…” I mean, you come up with something next, we’ll see what happens. This (the Pinter play) was a total one off. Jeffery Richards, who produced it has had a great year, it was a great revival of Pinter – ‘cause Pinter is one of those play writes where everybody knows the name , not that many people go and see it because their frightened of it, they think…it’s difficult and it’s not. It’s fantastically funny and black and dark and strange. So this was great. We did five months and it was a great time. It’s great fun, you know, you get to do a movie, you get to do a play. I’m very lucky.
Q: What’s next?
IM: I just finished a follow up to Sexy Beast; it’s called 44 Inch Chest with Ray Winston, me, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson. We just finished this movie –
Q: That’s a fantastic cast.
IM: Yeah, it was great, it was great. We just finished seven weeks at this studio in London. Same writers that wrote Sexy Beast. It’s not the same characters but it’s the same genre. And I’m going to do a series for NBC, we did the pilot, Kings, we start filming that in September.
Q: Is that King David?
IM: It goes into the story, King Saul then David and Goliath and then moving that whole story to –
Q: - Modern (times)?
IM: Modern version of that, New York happens to be the capitol of this country. New York is Shiloh. We’ll see if the follow up script is as good as the pilot. The pilot was excellent.
Q: And your character is…
IM: I play the King. King Saul. King Silas in the script and then this up coming young kid called David, he wants to be king, and it’s good to be king! Nobody wants not to be king, I mean, just look at the last eight years.
We will continue covering the premiere with our interviews of leading star Jason Statham and Paul W.S. Anderson tomorrow. To check out Josh talking to co-star Joan Allen from yesterday, click here.
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