0901 Empire

September 2001
Empire
On Set: Ripley's Game
by CH

John Malkovich is not happy. It's taken him some time to bring Ripley's Game, the third in Patricia Highsmith's crime series, and the not-at-all-related-to-The-Talented-Mr.-Ripley, to the

screen. "I had an interest some years ago, to direct," he says. "I always liked the Highsmith novels." Instead, he's now bringing Ripley to life as an actor, but there are problems - as you might expect of a shoot which combines an English-language script, shot mainly in Berlin (where we are today, for a scene in Ripley's apartment), with a multi-national crew, and an Italian director (Liliana Cavani) who instructs Malkovich in French. Relaxing in his trailer, Malkovich sighs as he considers the troubled shoot. "Allegedly we finish on Saturday, but you just never know how these things go." Co-star Ray Winstone, meanwhile, is equally unhappy. "I feel that I've just walked through the film. It's the language barrier. It's like having two mobile phones in your ear at the same time." Cavani, though, is nonplussed. We would have needed about two more weeks," she admits, through an interpreter. She never got those weeks - soon after this interview, she left the production, with Malkovich taking over. Happy now, John? CH

Note: Empire posted a correction to the above article on their website on August 3, 2001. Click here to read that article.