MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
How's this for a delicious setup for a new movie set in London's art world? Ian McKellen plays Julian Sklar, who is, A, a famous artist; B, broke; C, not entirely sure he likes his own children; and D, just realizing that these same awful children have hired a forger to steal and complete his unfinished paintings so they can sell them and get a whopping inheritance. Ian McKellen joins me from New York. Ian McKellen, what a pleasure.
IAN MCKELLEN: Thank you. Nice to talk to you. Well, you make the movie sound as exciting as it is.
KELLY: (Laughter).
MCKELLEN: It's a rattling good yarn, and I love it to be in the center of it.
KELLY: So at the center of it are these unfinished paintings. They are also - that's also the name of this new movie, "The Christophers." Explain what...
MCKELLEN: Yeah.
KELLY: ..."The Christophers" are.
MCKELLEN: Well, Christopher was a lover of Julian, and it was when the relationship soured and stopped that he found he could no longer paint - not only those portraits of the Christophers, but he lost interest entirely really in painting. Became a celebrity of another sort - I mean, extremely famous as a painter, as it were, but going on TV shows and selling his soul, really. And this is 20 years on when he's really dried up and rather sour.
KELLY: And by the time we meet him, he is - I mentioned he's broke, Julian Sklar. He is - what? - kind of selling his soul in the form of agreeing to do little birthday card jingles, where he records his voice and he signs his name, and you can buy this from...
MCKELLEN: Yes. The (laughter)...
KELLY: Yeah.
MCKELLEN: I'm laughing because the - Ed Solomon, the scriptwriter, has written some very amusing things for me to say. Yes. And so really, it's a sort of film of redemption because the woman who comes into his life, played by Michaela Coel...
KELLY: The forger.
MCKELLEN: Yes - is a forger. And once he realizes that and that he's dealing with someone who's on the same sort of wavelength as he is, he comes to life in a positive way and, I think, ends up a better person than he started at the beginning of the movie. And I won't let you know whether he wins as to the battle between him and his two dreadful children. But...
KELLY: (Laughter) They really - they're really awful.
MCKELLEN: I can't really talk about this film without laughing because there's so much good fun in it, and we had great fun making it.
KELLY: Circle back to the paintings at the...
MCKELLEN: Yes.
KELLY: ...Center of this, the Christophers, this series of portraits that are frozen in time. They have been languishing in an unused bathtub in the attic...
MCKELLEN: Yeah.
KELLY: ...Of your character Julian Sklar's house, where he's planning to do what exactly with them?
MCKELLEN: I think it was an emotional shock and break, and they belong to the past, as far as he's concerned, and a relationship which ended before it should have done. And so likewise, the paintings are unfinished business. But he's happy to leave it unfinished until it's awakened by this plot of his children to take the paintings and turn them into masterpieces by forging new stuff on top of the sketches. They're mere sketches that he's made.
He's a sad man, really, in that he was clearly, in his time, a revolutionary and highly regarded and worthwhile painter. Living in the city, you know, that I do, where, Francis Bacon used to be a next-door neighbor of mine. David Hockney is a good pal. Other painters, too - Lucian Freud - he's of that sort of stature...
KELLY: Wow.
MCKELLEN: And then throws it aside, throws it away...
KELLY: Yeah.
MCKELLEN: ...And wallows, really, in his negative view of the world whether it's his family relationships, his love affairs or his - indeed, his painting. And through it all, he's very celebrated, and that allows him to earn an income and survive. But he's an unhappy man, deep down. Funny, he may be, but - there's a sort of - as I said, there's a sort of redemption. By the end of the film, I think we can be happy for him that he's rediscovered himself or part of himself, at least.
KELLY: Do you paint, Ian McKellen?
MCKELLEN: Do I paint? No, I don't. But it wasn't long ago - about five years ago - that I announced to myself and a couple of friends that I thought I would take up painting. And so they started to give me paints and brushes and canvases. And I'm afraid to say...
KELLY: (Laughter).
MCKELLEN: ...That I never really picked them up or did anything.
KELLY: You have all the supplies. Yeah.
MCKELLEN: Yeah.
KELLY: Yeah.
MCKELLEN: I have painted my Christmas card for the last five years...
KELLY: Oh, lovely.
MCKELLEN: ...With some sort of panache because some friends have collected my Christmas cards and indeed framed them, I'm told. So (laughter) there...
KELLY: There's hope yet.
MCKELLEN: ...Must be something in the way that the robin is cocking his head at the world.
KELLY: So here's something I'm so curious about. You are 86 years old, if I'm not mistaken.
MCKELLEN: Thank you for reminding me of that.
KELLY: Yes. You would seem to have achieved everything it is possible to have...
MCKELLEN: Oh, no.
KELLY: ...Achieved as an actor. No?
MCKELLEN: No.
KELLY: What do you still want to do?
MCKELLEN: Anything that's different. I just did a film for BBC television about another painter, an English painter called L.S. Lowry, one of my favorites, and he left behind him some tapes, interviews with a young admirer of his. The tapes have recently been found and cut together in an entertaining way. And I play Lowry on television but lip-synch to his actual voice. That's gone down terribly well. So I'm now a lip-syncher.
KELLY: So you are just looking for something different and something fun.
MCKELLEN: Well, something entertaining, something to play to my strengths. The idea of retiring, stopping, is a depressing notion, and I'm going to avoid it as long as possible. And indeed, if the legs give way.
KELLY: Yes.
MCKELLEN: If I can't learn lines anymore, guess what? I can always do radio.
KELLY: Yes, you can.
MCKELLEN: And I look forward to the time when radio drama comes back into its own. When I was a child, we used to listen to the "Saturday Night Theatre" on BBC Radio. And that's how I met Chekhov and Shakespeare and Ibsen and Coward, on the radio. And we don't have that anymore much in the U.K., anymore than you do in the States. So maybe that's something old but something new at the same time.
KELLY: I would listen to that. Here's to not retiring.
MCKELLEN: Thank you.
KELLY: That's Ian McKellen talking to us about his new movie, "The Christophers." Thank you so very much. This was a pleasure.
MCKELLEN: Nice to be with you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCKELLEN: Well, we got to plug in for radio.
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: We sure did. Thanks for that (laughter).
MCKELLEN: Yeah. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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