OPERATION ERASE SPACEY!
When disgraced Kevin Spacey failed to call and apologise, Ridley Scott axed him from All The Money In The World – even though filming had ended. Here the legendary director reveals how he pulled off...
RIDLEY Scott was not a happy man. His new film, All The Money In The World, had been shot and edited to his satisfaction. All that was left in the six or so weeks until its release was to add finishing touches and finalise the music. He was on the home straight – or so he thought.
Then the news broke about the film’s star, Kevin Spacey, who had been cast as Jean Paul Getty, the richest man in the world.
The film recounts the kidnapping of Getty’s 16-year-old grandson John Paul Getty III in 1973, and the family rows about the ransom cash. The story made headlines as the famously miserly Jean Paul stalled on paying as he believed it was a ploy to extract money by the boy himself.
This resulted in his grandson’s ear being chopped off and posted to the family with a promise he would be further mutilated if the cash wasn’t paid. It would be fiveand-a-half months before it was.
Spacey made headlines of his own after some very unsavoury allegations about his behaviour. On October 29, American Star Trek actor Anthony Rapp accused Spacey of having made a sexual advance to him in 1986, when he was only 14, and the floodgates opened. Spacey said he did not remember the encounter but that he was ‘horrified’ and apologised.
Within days, Spacey, 58, once the golden boy of stage and screen, had become a pariah. The question was, what to do about the film? Clearly it could not be put out without big changes.
Ridley – who admits he was ‘stunned’ by the allegations – sat back and waited for an apologetic phone call, and possibly a few constructive suggestions about the film’s future, from its star. It never came. ‘I got nothing,’ says Ridley tartly when we meet in London. ‘I was waiting for Mr Spacey to call me and say, well, whatever he would have wanted to say about it. I would have expected that. But I got nothing.’
THE irony, he says, is that he very much enjoyed working with Spacey. ‘I thought he did a fantastic job,’ he says. ‘This story we’re telling is a tricky subject. It’s not about crashing spaceships or shooting at people – it’s about a family tragedy.
‘It is, in essence, a character study. Kevin is a terrific actor and, until that point, had been a valuable asset to the film.
‘I never witnessed any of that sort of behaviour and I certainly didn’t regret having cast him – not until we’d finished the film and I got all that other information.’ There was no question the explosion of ugly accusations about the star’s private life had cast a giant shadow over the entire project.
Ridley says: ‘I was angry because we have some terrific work in this film. Any film is an ensemble piece: it’s not just the actors, the writer, the cameraman or the wardrobe and art departments – it’s everything working well together. So the idea I could have all of this infected by one man’s behaviour was absolutely unacceptable.’
He says Spacey’s silence made his decision about what to do next easier. ‘It left me free to say, “OK, let’s just move forward.” ’
His solution was supremely practical. He decided to call Christopher Plummer – the only other actor he had considered for the role – to ask him to step in and re-shoot every scene that had featured Spacey. ‘But it was going to be tricky, because we would have to get all the actors to come back, and find out which locations would be available for a second time,’ he added.
‘I knew, though, in about two days this was achievable. And from that moment on, I knew we were going to do it.’ Nevertheless, for any film director, let alone one who turned 80 in November, it must have been stressful.
‘Nothing stresses me!’ he laughs. ‘I make films for a living. They’re about the unforeseen happening. I’m so experienced in this business that somebody could say, “The roof is falling in!” and I’d say, “Well, let’s fix the roof and move over here and carry on working.”
The first step was to get in touch with Plummer. ‘I’d met him in the past so he wasn’t a complete stranger. On this occasion I flew from LA to meet him in New York – and he was thrilled to bits to be asked. His actual words were, “It’s about bloody time!” ’
Once Plummer was locked in, it was a question of contacting actors who had shared scenes with Spacey – mainly Michelle Williams, who played Jean Paul Getty’s former daughter-in-law Gail Harris Getty, the kidnapped teenager’s mother, and Mark Wahlberg, who portrayed Getty’s fixer, ex-CIA man Fletcher Chase – to persuade them to re-shoot.
‘But they didn’t need persuading. I said, “You know what this is about?” and they said, “Yes”. So I said, “For how much?” They said, “For free!” Everyone came back for nothing. That’s how strong the feeling was.’
For Williams, it was less a matter of saving the movie than of making a public protest against sexual predation. ‘It’s not that often you get the chance to stand up to a bully,’ she says. ‘I’m very angry on behalf of the people that Kevin hurt, because the tyranny of abuse is that it’s always about the abuser more than his victims.’
She recalls: ‘When Ridley contacted us for the re-shoot, it was galvanising. Each one of us – every single cast member, every crew member – reassembled because we thought it was the right thing to do.’
The re-shoot meant flying from Williams’s home in New York to the film’s various locations in Europe during the last week in November. It also meant she missed spending the Thanksgiving holiday with her 12-year-old daughter Matilda, whose father was the late Heath Ledger.
Williams says it was Matilda who urged her to go. ‘All these incidents of abuse that have come out lately have been a very big deal in our household, and it was my daughter who said, “You can’t let that happen, you can’t let the bad guy win.” She sent me off with nine cards, one for every day I was away, all of them saying, “If you feel sad today, open this card”, or, “I’m proud of you.”
‘So it all turned out really well, because Matilda was excited to be part of this story and to stand up to support what was right.’
As for reinhabiting the character of Gail, the feisty mother of the kidnapped John Paul, unafraid to speak her mind to his intimidating grandfather, she says it was relatively easy. ‘When I work on characters as much as I did on Gail, they sort of live on inside me. So when I went looking for her again, there she was.’
For Plummer, the task was rather more daunting. In just a few days he had to create, rehearse and bring to life J. Paul Getty, billionaire, businessman and miser.
‘I was given the script and three or four days later we were shooting,’ he says. ‘But there was no point in being nervous, because there wasn’t the time to be nervous. The only thing I was worried about was learning the lines, because there were so many.
‘This character never stops talking and it’s all in monologue – in real life Getty was a recluse who didn’t mix well socially, and on the screen it’s just me and the monologues, there was one after another. So I was nervous about my memory, I’ll tell you that.’
THE fact he was able to learn the lines – all the more impressive as he turned 88 last month – is something he attributes to his stage training. ‘Situations like this happen in the theatre a great deal more often than in films. I’ve replaced two or three people in my time, so I know the importance of quick study.’
He declines to comment on the circumstances that led to him being offered the role. ‘Like any selfish actor, I didn’t think about it at all,’ he says. ‘I just thought, “How nice, I’ll jump in any time”, which I did with great glee.’
Whatever his motivations, Ridley says he could not be more delighted with the job Plummer did in the end, out-acting Spacey.
He says: ‘I think the new Mr Getty is even better than the one Mr Spacey did. There’s something about Christopher. He’s got a charm, a smile, a twinkle.
‘Getty was a pretty interesting guy – people say he was a tough guy, a mean guy, but I don’t think he was all bad at all. And I think Christopher gives him more dimension than Mr Spacey did. He gives him more heart.’
And given that Plummer has just been nominated for a Golden Globe for the performance, Ridley Scott might well be thinking: ‘How’s that for karma, Kevin?’